Half Broke

by Ginger Gaffney

  “What team are you on?” Carla asked me.

  “Old Dominion,” I answered, and she shrugged.

  She was on the “Duke” squad. Duke and Old Dominion were not in the same division. That meant we wouldn’t meet up on the court anytime soon.

  “Pickups are at night. You coming?” she asked.

  Nighttime pickups were the one time during the day we could hook up with other players outside the divisions and play more run-and-gun. I told her I would try.

  Carla was from Ventnor. She was a freshman starter herself, along with her twin sister. Her high school was only twenty minutes from my hometown, but they weren’t in my district. I watched her almost-dreadlocked curls swirl around her ears. She was short, and I knew that meant agile. She walked that cocky jock walk I would later try to imitate: head and neck bobbing back and forth like a turkey’s, legs swinging in slow rhythm with a bounce at the end of each stride. Her shoulders rolled forward and swung in time with her prancing legs, as her arms dangled like ropes by her sides.

  Later that night in the pickup game, Carla called out, “I got her.” She bent down and touched my right hip with her left hand and pushed me back a step. She kept her hand there longer than the referee should have allowed. It laid right on top of my underwear line, which she plucked and sprung as I dribbled up the court. I lowered my stance and put my left arm out to defend the ball. Once across half court, players were screaming and waving for an open pass. Good players—players I would later see coaching in the WNBA. I widened my stance and turned my shoulders away from Carla, bumping back into her pressure with my almost nonexistent weight. I took a jab with my right foot, gesturing like I was cutting in that direction. Carla fell for it. I crossed the ball behind my back and shook loose of Carla. Free of her, I headed down the center lane only to be picked up by a six-foot-two girl I had met in the New Jersey state tournament that spring. I pulled up in front of her and did a double pump fake. Her enormous frame rose above me into the air. I bounce passed around her to the girl she left in the lane, wide open and unguarded. Layup. I whipped around and headed back on defense.

  “Yum,” Carla said as she came up from behind and tugged my shirttail.

  “Carla, leave her alone,” a black-haired girl scolded as she ran past me with #22 on her jersey.

  “Who’s got twenty-two?” one of my teammates barked.

  “You, new girl, get her,” another yelled.

  Twenty-two was Joan, Carla’s twin. She dribbled so low to the ground, the ball almost didn’t bounce. She had the kind of arms that had a natural hook, like a ball was always meant to be in her grasp. She covered the court like a low-sliding animal. I crouched as low and wide as I could and touched the back of her waist with my right hip bone. She never turned square to the basket, never really looked at her teammates. She saw them all from just over her protected shoulder, the ball skimming across the asphalt.

  I didn’t like the feel of her control. I bumped against her as she dribbled toward the right-hand corner baseline. Shoving her out and cutting off the driving lane with the jab of my pointy hips. I could see the corner of Joan’s lip curl slightly and turn into a smile, when she tossed the ball high into the air, never looking at anyone, over to the six-foot-two-inch girl, who came as close to dunking a basketball as I’d ever seen a girl able to do. I turned and jogged back on offense, my skinny legs tingling under my shorts.

  Later that night, Carla and Joan came to my room. We all had roommates, but mine had not arrived back from their games yet. Joan sat on the bed across from us. Carla sat so close to me, the damp skin on our legs stuck and peeled off each other’s intermittently. Carla joked about my underwear line. How she could see the bumpy edge of it through my gym shorts. How it distracted her. My face went hot as I stared down at the floor. Joan told her to cut it out.

  “She’s a flirt,” Joan said. “Watch out for her.”

  A flirt. She said it like it was normal. Like girls could flirt with girls. I remembered the feeling of my hip bones pushing against Joan’s back, as we jockeyed for who would be in control. I lost. And now I remembered how that didn’t bother me. How, after the near dunk, it felt like I was the player who scored.

  Carla came to my room by herself on the last night of my stay at camp. I had just showered and dressed, sitting on the corner of my bed, tying my sneakers, when she walked in. Her face was gentle and calm. It wasn’t her clowning-around face, the one with the mischievous grin.

  She sat down close to me. This time she threw her left leg over my right and laid it there, swinging. She took my hand and interwove her fingers between mine. Her thumb caressed the softness of my inner palm. No one had ever touched me like this.

  The gesture was so sweet and effortless, I could feel my blood pulsing through my veins. I felt pounding around my temples. When she turned to me and headed for my lips, I pushed into her like an abducted child running back toward her lost family. Lips met. Necks, breasts, hips were sucked. I was no longer the girl alone. The girl who would shoot and dribble, shoot and dribble—for hours, for days—isolated in herself in her backyard court. The girl who stuffed tampons, lengthwise, into her underwear, staring into the mirror, wondering when she would become a boy. The girl who, up until now, had been invisible.

  DURING THAT SCHOOL YEAR, after we met, Carla and I would travel to our two different towns and spend the weekends together. In between our visits we wrote letters. I kept them in the top drawer of my dresser, beneath my socks and underwear. We never spoke to anyone about our relationship, not having the words or experience to know what to call it.

  During one of my visits to Carla’s, we went to the kitchen to have lunch. Her mom came in and asked if I would please sit down.

  “Ginger, your mother called me last week,” she said as she pulled up a chair next to me. “She said she found some letters that Carla wrote you, hidden in a dresser drawer. She wanted me to know about your relationship. She’s worried about you.”

  I slumped in my chair. Carla walked over and sat close to me.

  I had always known something was wrong with me. Since early childhood I knew to hide, to sneak away, to keep the truth of who I was out of sight. My mother was worried about me, and I knew why. This thing that I was should never be seen. It was a disgusting thing. And now it was out. I had brought it into the daylight, for everyone to see. Carla seemed proud of who she was. She rarely hid her feelings. Her mother seemed confused about my mother’s concerns.

  “I told your mother that you and Carla will be fine. That there’s nothing for your mother to worry about.”

  Carla’s mom stood up and pulled two plates from the cabinet. She put one grilled-cheese sandwich on each plate, grabbed two napkins and placed the sandwiches in front of us. I watched as she walked back to the stove, turned the grill off, and took the pan over to the kitchen sink. Everything seemed normal, everything except my body, which began to shake.

  Carla’s mom came over and rested her hands on my shoulders. “Don’t you worry,” she said. “I’ll call your mom again and let her know. Everything is going to be alright. You girls enjoy your lunch.” And with that she went down the hallway leading to her bedroom and never spoke of it again.

  Carla reached for my hand, but I pulled away from her. A burning knot rose in my throat. I started rocking in my chair. My senses severed. I couldn’t feel Carla’s body close to mine. I couldn’t hear her words or smell the scent of her skin. Trembling, I moved my chair away.

  I didn’t speak to my mother about those letters for eight years. I learned to hide, to become invisible again. I learned to lie. I spoke to no one about my life, and no one asked me questions. I moved far away from home. I slept around with many women, some of them angry, confused, and sometimes violent. My body, their bodies, our sexuality was something to be ashamed of, to abuse not love. What started out beautiful with Carla became a dark weapon I learned to wield against myself.

  Eight years later, when I finally spoke with my mother a
bout those letters, she leaned across the kitchen table, took my hand, and began to cry. She told me she couldn’t bear to see me go through what her brother had to endure. My mother has a younger brother who is gay. Like me, he circled on the periphery of our family, living a very private life we knew little about. My mother had to witness her younger brother repeatedly ridiculed and humiliated by a member of her own family. Wiping her tears, she recalled how painful it was to see her brother treated in this way, and she worried that one day I would experience this same hateful behavior.

  LEARNING TO WALK

  April / 2013

  As she walks toward me, I see that most of her weight lists off to one side. Her head cocks sideways. She is definitely crooked. Everything from her waist down looks out of joint. Years of abuse run rivers of pain into her body. Yet Sarah always appears happy. Her rosy-red cheeks, her red lipstick, a Magic Marker around her smile. This natural enthusiasm seems to annoy some of the other residents, but I can see it also commands a canted sense of respect. Sarah is the oldest person on livestock. Before she began to work as a prostitute at a relative’s strip club at the age of thirteen, Sarah lived in the country, on a small ranch. Her memory of her childhood with horses is coated in a pink, dusty haze from her thirty years of drug addiction. Her love for the ranch horses, though, is real. She knew they were in trouble, and it was Sarah’s voice on the line when I got the first call.

  On my third trip to the ranch, I arrive with a trailer full of horses I have trained. The residents meet me at the main gate, mouths agape, not accustomed to seeing a woman drive such a big rig. I drive north up the ranch road, past the pastures on my left, and pull off under the shade of cottonwood trees, which run the length of the nighttime corrals. I asked Flor and Sarah to leave the ranch horses in their pens this morning. If we were to let them loose, they would certainly attack my horses, and today we need calm. We unload my horses and tie them to the trailer. They stand peaceful in the cool, April morning air.

  As I tie the last horse, I feel dizzy. I’ve been holding my breath. The tips of my toes and fingers are numb. I have that shaky, fragile feeling. My heart is beating too fast. I can feel it push my shirt away from my chest. I lean up against my gray gelding Izzy, who is standing at the far end of the trailer, and lay myself over his midbody, with my arms draped over his back. Today, for the first time, I’ll be working with all eight members of the livestock team—six men, plus Flor and Sarah—and I’m nervous. It’s not just that they are all beginners, people who know almost nothing about horses. It’s not just that teaching eight people at a time is an almost impossible task. Mostly I worry about what to do with the broken parts: their lack of attention span, their wounded bodies, their anger, the dullness in their eyes.

  I watch the men move about the corrals, picking up manure with rusted shovels, the handles of which have been broken off. Bent over and mindless, they roam the corrals like trolls. Their hoodies cover their rounded shapes. The light touch of sunlight on their backs seems misplaced.

  Alive but dead, I think to myself and begin to realize why I’m so nervous. Their broken parts look like me. For many years I had no compass. My ability to perceive what was healthy and good for myself had fallen silent. No gesture was big or loud enough to wake me. I moved through my days just like these men. Facing the ground. Shuffling my boots. Hiding from myself and everyone around me.

  Izzy twists his neck around my slumping body. He puts the edge of his lips on the corner of my jacket and starts to nibble. I look up and see the men hauling the last wheelbarrow of manure out of the corrals. Sarah and Flor are leaning against the cottonwood tree, wearing new cowboy boots and leather gloves. They wave for me to come over. Flor has her long, light brown hair pulled away from her face this morning. She tilts her head to the left and asks if I’m alright. I look again at the men. As they walk toward the hay barn, they remove their hooded sweatshirts. The shape of their torsos looks straighter, more refined. But still, their heads dangle downward from their necks.

  “I have a simple plan for today,” I tell Flor and Sarah. “I hope it works.” I call the men over and ask everyone to gather around me.

  “Before we get started,” I say, “I want everyone to line up facing down the road.” The men strut over in short choppy steps, looking confused and tired. To a painter’s eye, it would be a cacophony of forms. Some round, some thin, slumping shoulders, and a few arrogant chests. They hold their heads slightly turned, twisted, and fallen—the shape of defiance compromised by uncertainty.

  “Today we’re going to learn to walk,” I say. The men shake their heads and start to mutter to each other. I line up next to Sarah and ask everyone to watch me. I walk down the road, taking long, smooth strides, my head upright, eyes forward, arms loose and swinging. I turn and walk back, demonstrating the same flow.

  “Seems easy enough, so who wants to try?” I ask. No one speaks up but Sarah, who waves her hand in the air like a third grader.

  Under his breath, Tony gives a hiss and rolls his eyes, stares back at the ground. Marcus, the young man who is close to being released from his prison term and beginning his work out, is thoroughly bored. He’s yawning and staring off at nothing. With one hand on his left hip, his weight shifts onto his right leg. He has the look of a lone bull in pasture.

  Sarah steps in front of me and tries to balance on her twisted frame, both feet spread to the width of her shoulders. She takes her first few steps and veers off to the right. Wobbling down the driveway, trying to correct her trajectory. Each step met with a head, neck, and shoulder bob, as if her entire upper body is guided by one melded muscle. She turns, loaded with a grin, and teeters back into the line.

  “This was a good effort,” I tell her. “But, please, I’d like to help you?” As I reach my hand out to Sarah, some of the men begin to chuckle. Rex and Paul begin to shove at each other. They furrow their eyebrows, trying hard to look tough. It sends all the wrinkles on their faces downhill.

  “If you want these horses to respect you, you’ll have to respect yourself,” I say, speaking loud enough to command their attention. “How you walk, how you hold your posture, this will tell the horses whether to stomp you or follow you. It also tells them whether you are trustworthy or a fake. Believe me when I tell you, they know the difference.” All the men look straight at me, adjusting their bodies trying to find the perfect pose. I watch them fix themselves into false positions, looking back and forth at each other, wondering who’s got it right.

  I reach out for Sarah again, and gently place my hands on her head, neck, and shoulders, trying to help her find some balance. I pull down on her left arm until her left hand is level with her right. I stand in front of her, scanning her body for equilibrium. I speak again so everyone can hear.

  “Sarah, you love these horses, but you walk around them like a hobbled woman. When they see this, they’ll walk all over you. We need to fix this, okay?”

  With her head momentarily unified with her body, she concedes with another giant smile. She readies herself again, in front of the line, and steps out. Conscious to correct everything to the left. It’s another good effort, and I can see she is proud. Flor greets her return with a high five.

  Omar steps forward; Flor, too. They take off together, looking crisp. Their arms swing equal distance, forward and back. The rhythm of their strides so effortless you can hear their pant legs swoosh. Omar’s eyes are soft and round like river pebbles. I see stories in them as he comes over and shakes my hand.

  “You know, Miss Ginger, I almost finished high school with honors. I played baseball and ran track, too, before I got hooked on meth and started dealing. You think I’ll be good with the horses?” he asks. Omar is the youngest person on livestock, his innocence still as intact as it can be after what he’s experienced. I reassure him that he will do well.

  “Dude, what the fuck? It’s just a fucking walk up the road. Get back in line,” Randy commands. He has his arms spread away from his torso like he’s gett
ing ready to hit something. Before anyone else says anything, I jump in.

  “Each of you will need to stay conscious of all your behaviors and movements around the horses. That kind of emotional and physical control is the only way these horses will ever take an interest in you. I’m telling you this; you will have to change, on the inside and out, for this to work. Every person here needs practice. Flor and Omar, that was great. Who wants to go next?”

  Randy stomps forward. “I’ll go.”

  He turns and pounds up the road, mad as hell. His head held high, eyes poking out of their sockets. His hands clench into fists. Randy weighs more than 250 pounds and stands about six foot three. It looks like his wife was right to send him here to get control of his anger.

  “These horses don’t mess with me. I’m not scared of ’em,” Randy announces as he struts back into the lineup. Shoulders slouched forward, arms doing a downward punch, popping up and down off his toes. “I know horses. I used to work with them on the track in Florida. I ain’t afraid of these ponies.”

  I look over at the other men who are all shaking their heads.

  “Oh,” I say. “Well, good. Then why don’t you head over to the trailer and untie Billy. She’s part Thoroughbred. Second one from the right, with two white socks. Untie her, then bring her over.”

  Randy’s eyes squeeze shut in a long blink. When they open again, he’s batting them side to side.

  “You want me to do what?” he asks.

  I repeat myself as he shuffles his feet and looks at the ground. He gives his head a good shake and the shimmy of it travels down his baggy jeans. A few moments pass as he manages to put his hammering body back together, leaving for the trailer at a much slower clip. The residents break the line and come behind me in a semicircle. The horses are standing at my trailer, each tied with a chain of slip knots and a lock at the end of each one. Randy’s first challenge will be to tuck his enormous body between my two biggest horses and release those knots, standing only inches away from Billy’s mouth. He stops at the corner of my trailer and points to Moo, my Morgan gelding who’s tied at the near end of my trailer.