Half Broke

by Ginger Gaffney

  An older woman stands in the middle of the next row, studying the fresh tortillas on the bottom shelf. Her daughter holds her up by the elbow. I try to slide my cart past them, but instead I bump their cart and push it farther into the aisle.

  “I’m sorry,” I apologize and try to roll their cart back into place. The mother and daughter turn away from the tortillas and look down at my empty cart.

  “You’d better start putting something in there, my dear,” the mother says with a smile. “Here, have some fresh tortillas.” Her daughter takes the tortillas from her mother and hands them to me. “I used to make my own, every day, you know?” the mother tells me. I reach out for the plastic bag filled with fifteen plump tortillas.

  “I’m always debating on which I like best, the thin ones or the nice soft ones, like these,” I confess to the mother, who looks serious now, ready to give me a lecture on how to make the best tortilla. I can see a few buttons are missing at the top of her blue dress. The folds of skin under her chin lap down to form a U shape right above her bustline.

  “Both,” her daughter says. “Both are good.” The three of us nod our heads in agreement and begin to roll our carts in different directions. Halfway down the grocery aisle, I realize that those are the first words I’ve spoken all day.

  We are rolling our carts through this box store, right to left, left to right. It feels like we are taking part in a practiced military drill formation. I wish there was a bench somewhere along the meat and cheese section, or over by the produce, where I could sit and watch, like city people do on Sundays at the park. I need to shop, but what I need more is to sit and talk. I want to be with people who are going about their everyday business of being alive. I pull my cart to the side, bend over, and pick up a bag of pinto beans to go with my tortillas. When I look up, I see a crowd gathering down by the corn bin.

  I roll my cart toward the sign that reads California Corn and start picking up the cobs like the rest of the shoppers. Two men, one in bib overalls with a neatly pressed white undershirt taut over his chest and another man dressed top to bottom in camouflage, are picking up the cobs and peeling back the layers to check for freshness and color.

  “I like the white; the white is sweeter. Qué no?” The first man leans into the bin and picks up another piece of corn.

  “Sí vecino, el blanco is the best corn of the summer,” the camouflage man says, putting two cobs in his cart.

  I peel back the husk of three corncobs to reveal an abundance of white kernels. The men smile at me with their dark, lumpy faces.

  “Eeeeh. You won the prize, mi hija,” the first man says to me and grins so wide I can see all the fillings in his back teeth. It doesn’t take much to break me wide open. A few great pieces of corn. A man three times my size cheering me on.

  “Thank you.” I beam a smile back at him.

  “Take more,” the other man offers. “They’re so fresh. They’ll be gone by the end of the day.” I pull out three more cobs and peel back the husks again.

  My cart is starting to look a little better and so am I. I feel color coming into my face. I’m not so tired, and I feel I could push this cart around the store for a few more hours.

  In the next aisle over, two adolescent girls are standing in the middle of the tomato section. I make my way over to browse through the choices. My eyes roam until I see the sign for Local Tomatoes: Alcalde, New Mexico. They are hydroponically grown just across the river from our house, and the price is good. I pick three irregularly sized, imperfect, fresh tomatoes and put them in the child seat of my cart. They roll around loosely, like squirming toddlers. When I look up, the girls are watching me. They scan my clothing, my shoes. I’m dressed like a guy in my denim workshirt and belted jeans. I’m obviously a woman with my long blonde hair pulled back into a ponytailed knot behind my head. I’m an older woman, likely the age of their mothers, who doesn’t fit the norm for who and what a woman should look like. I smile at them, but they don’t smile back. They walk away, bumping into each other’s hips, whispering back and forth.

  On my way to check out, I pass a worker loading California peaches into a giant box. He holds one up to show me. “Fresh today,” he says. A young father cuts one open with his pocket knife and feeds it to the baby girl bobbing in his arms. The child gums at the peach pulp that spills out of her rubbery lips as the father tries to take his bandana out of his back pocket to wipe the baby’s drool off her chin. The bandana falls to the ground right by my feet. I pick it up and hand it to the father.

  “She’s beautiful,” I tell him, “and she loves these peaches, doesn’t she?” I ask.

  “She does. She likes any kind of fruit,” he says and thanks me as he takes the bandana from my hand.

  I watch him wipe her chin, her nose, her neck. The peach juice is dripping down the snaps of her jumpsuit. “What’s her name?”

  “Marie,” he says.

  “My grandmother’s name,” I tell him as we both stare at the baby, whose eyes blink open and closed, lost in the reverie of her peaches.

  There are five people ahead of me in the checkout line, and everyone looks tired. Standing in the checkout line at Walmart, fatigue often catches up with me. Usually I stand with a slight quiver as I wait to be checked through, but today I feel better. The woman in front of me tells me how she finally got a job up in Los Alamos, and the older woman in front of her congratulates her.

  “Aheeeh, mi hija, that’s good. Good for you.”

  The man behind me is worried about his ice-cream cake melting. He’s on his way to a birthday party, and everyone lets him move ahead in our line, so he can be on his way with his frozen cake intact. Eventually another woman with a smiley face on her chest rings my items up, and I roll out the automatic doors into a beautiful blue-sky day. The clouds have burned off, and the air feels fresh and cool.

  I park my cart and carry the two bags of groceries uphill to my truck. I see a young woman about five feet back hustling to catch up to me.

  “Excuse me, miss?” She’s just behind me now, so I turn to face her. “We’ve run out of gas and are trying to get to Taos. Could you help us out?”

  She’s stringy and pale with torn jeans so long the tattered hem drags along the damp pavement and darkens the fabric above her worn-out high tops.

  “Where’s your car?” I ask, and she waves vaguely toward the northeast corner of the lot.

  I look for the worst beater out there and see three guys in a Chevy Duster with its hood crunched in. The windows are rolled down and smoke seems to be exploding from the interior of the car. Tattooed arms hang out the windows. Their bald, shiny heads shimmer through the windshield. I have some cash in my wallet. Not much, but enough to get them some gas and be on their way, if that’s how they’ll spend it. Flor told me she used to work this parking lot before she came to the ranch. White women were the easiest to get money out of, she told me. In one afternoon, she could get enough cash for a few days’ supply of heroin. I hesitate to answer the woman. Perhaps a few bucks will keep her from breaking into someone’s car. Perhaps a few bucks will give her the chance to buy cleaner heroin, something not laced with that which could kill her. She’s not interested in getting gas or food; that much is obvious. Skin hangs from her collarbone—no fat, no muscle. Her black hair falls forward across her gray cheeks. She watches me thumb through my wallet, with eyes that wink shut for far too long. I wonder whose daughter she might be.

  We all come from somewhere. From broken homes. From good homes. From rich families. Poor families. Foster care and adoption families. We all have origin stories. It’s the one thing we all have in common.

  I give the woman five dollars. She walks away without a thank-you. I see her wave at the Duster to come get her. The muffler sounds like a low-flying helicopter, black smoke pumps out from the back bumper. The men drive up to her and she jumps through the back door. They head out the lot, uphill past Wendy’s, then up to the light where they turn south, back into Española.


  Sitting inside the cab of my truck, I watch the shoppers come and go. Everyone in a hurry. Everyone with so much to do, so much on their minds. I’ll busy myself, too. Go home and cook a meal for Glenda and myself. Tomorrow I’ll head to work, riding horses all day at a ranch up north. I’ll keep myself busy. I’ll stay on track. I’ll try not to let my mind wander to things I can’t change.

  I sit in the parking lot another fifteen minutes. Can’t get myself to turn the key.

  HUNDREDS MORE

  March / 2014

  “Ginger, are you there? Hello?” I recognize the voice at the other end of my cell, but I’m not answering. I put the phone down to my lap, bring it back to my ear, then back to my lap. I turn my truck north onto Highway 84, heading toward another horse ranch in Abiquiu. I’m already fifteen minutes late, and I still need to stop for diesel.

  Shit, I say to myself and pull over.

  “Ginger, it’s Eliza. I’m calling to see if you’re coming back.” I shake my head no even though she can’t see me, and I listen to her talk. Her voice is beautiful in my ear. I can see her smile, her fresh skin, the clarity in her eyes. I have watched Eliza change from a sullen, silent, hunched-over creature into a brave, insightful, generous woman over the last year. I’d like to believe in this voice at the other end of the line, but I don’t know if I can.

  “We’ve got two new people signed up for livestock,” she says. “Everyone wants to know, when are you coming back?”

  It’s been over three weeks since I’ve been to the ranch.

  Three eighteen-wheelers speed past me and rock my truck side to side. I roll my windows up and turn the air conditioner to low.

  “I don’t know,” I tell her honestly. “What can I do that may help anyone there?” I fiddle with my windshield wipers, spraying the windshield three times to knock off the bugs. I bite my nails and wiggle my knees under the steering wheel, nervously. My clients in Abiquiu are texting, wondering when I’ll arrive.

  I teach every day. I ride horses six days a week. But right now the work lacks meaning. My clients are wonderful, caring individuals who love their horses. Most of them work long hours at their jobs and, with what free time they have, they devote themselves to their animals. I’ve always felt honored they put their trust in me. It is not the horses, nor is it my clients who leave me with this vacant feeling. It’s stuck somewhere deep inside me—a hollow spot I’ve always known was there.

  I don’t fit neatly into this world. As a woman who loves women, I was born with the man my culture says I need, already a strong living presence inside my body. I am like other women, but I am nothing like them at all. Some days I’m filled with anger, some days nothing but sorrow. Some days I feel safe. But it is rare when I find a place where I feel I really belong.

  I think about going back to the ranch and working with the residents again. Heartbreak and joy twist and compete, eventually dropping into my gut simultaneously. I feel queasy.

  “Ginger, there will always be more of us. Hundreds more. Who knows what will be the thing that saves us? The horses, they saved me.” Eliza speaks slow and deliberate, her tone measured and serious. She takes a long breath, then there is silence.

  “Two new people? You have two new people on livestock?” I ask her.

  Olivia and Joey—they want to join livestock—Eliza tells me. They are learning how to groom the horses and where to put the saddle. They’re excited for me to return and teach them how to ride. It seems no one has missed a beat. One day follows the next. No one has given up. I’m the only one holding onto failure. I think about Terry, that feisty little filly, all those years ago. She never gave up, never gave in. Even after her injury, how she fought the famous trainer out the back of that big rig.

  “Two new people,” I say again. “That’s great. Do they know anything about horses?” I ask Eliza.

  “No, but we are teaching them what we know. Tony, Randy, and myself, we’ve been meeting every Tuesday and Thursday since you left.”

  They had gotten up the next day and stayed with the plan, working the horses, training new people. I went back to my busy life, my clients and horses, essentially running away from the one place I feel the most at home.

  They keep working. They have too much at stake, too much to lose. What do I have to lose? I ask myself as I listen to a second round of silence at the end of my cell phone.

  Everything. I have everything to lose.

  “Ginger, we need you,” Eliza says into my ear.

  “I need you, too.”

  I insert the Bluetooth in my ear and pull back onto the highway.

  “I can come out next Tuesday if that works. I’ll bring my extra saddle and Moo, too.” Two new people. Two new people. I wonder what they look like. The shape and gesture of their bodies. I wonder what the horses think of them.

  OLIVIA

  April / 2014

  Shoulder to shoulder, we bend over to pick up Hawk’s right front hoof. Olivia’s hair drapes over her cheeks and hides her eyes from my view. She holds the hoof pick upside down. I turn it in her palm and feel her pull away from my touch. She’s been on the ranch four months. She’s eighteen years old. She’s been in and out of juvenile and county detention centers since she was twelve. She gets out of jail, she goes back. In between these stints, she shuffles between foster homes.

  She drops the hoof pick to the ground, straightens her back, and stands up. Her hands start shaking and flapping at her wrists. I step back from her and watch her eyes dart inside their white perimeter.

  “I don’t want to do this,” she says as she keeps wringing her hands in circles, raising them to her ears like they have something to say.

  “Do what?” I ask her, looking for clarification.

  “Touch him. Touch Hawk. I don’t want to touch him.”

  Eliza told me that Olivia has obsessive behaviors. She constantly wipes clean the doorknobs in the room she shares with two other women. She’s worried people are touching her toothbrush, her soap and shampoo. At dinner, her fork, knife, and spoon can never touch her plate. If they do, she asks for a new set. Eliza thought having her out here with the horses could help.

  I put my two hands out in front of me, palms up facing her. “Try it with me first.”

  “What?” she asks.

  “Touch me. Lay your palm on mine and touch me.”

  Her thin, black eyebrows scrunch and thicken. Her turquoise-blue eyes close to a slit, and her lips wrinkle in disgust.

  “You’re going to have to touch someone, something that’s alive, at some point,” I tell her. “Come on, touch me.”

  She takes her hands up to her mouth and blows on them. She sighs through her open fingers, then moves her palms down. I feel the heat from their surface as she inches toward me and touches down like paper in the wind.

  “That’s it. Stay here a little while,” I encourage.

  She can’t meet my eye. She’s looking at the ground with a blank, worried expression. Her neck and shoulders pinch and tilt forward. She looks like she is shrinking.

  “Okay. Good,” I say. She rips her hands from my palm and starts twirling her wrists up by her ears again.

  I want to reach out and hold her. Hawk stands behind her twitchy, swirling hands and keeps a close watch. She looks like an injured moth, upside down on the pavement, waving its wings, trying to get upright.

  “We’ll do it again, a few more times,” I tell her.

  She says yes with a nervous nod of her head. She takes a deep sigh. I can tell she wants to do it, just a little. She’s made it through the worst and it didn’t kill her. She sets her palms against my skin. She looks straight at me. The corners of her mouth rise a tenth of an inch. I can see her teeth break through her lips.

  We’re not allowed to touch here. But every day since I returned, I reach out to hug every person on livestock. I ask them how they’re doing. Are they having any troubles? What new things have they been learning? They hug me again, just before I leave, one at a time, and t
hank me for coming. I hold their bodies like treasured friends, because I know at any moment, I could lose one of them. The touch of our skin, our chests and necks, the feel of ribcage against forearms, helps stave off my loneliness. I’ve spent my whole life feeling like I was odd, queer, different. Alone. None of that is true now. None of it. It never was.

  There will always be more of us, hundreds more.

  I know the flow of people onto this ranch will never end. I know Olivia, Eliza, Tony—all of them—will be replaced by others one way or another. This ranch receives over one hundred calls from prison every few days. Only a handful will pass their interview and trial period. Olivia, Randy, the whole livestock team made it through. They are the winners, the ones who showed some promise. I know that at any given moment they will falter, make big mistakes, fail to be who they strive to be. I know now that my role isn’t to save them; it’s to help them get back up. These hugs are my way of saying, I’m here and I want you to stay.

  I hug everyone, everyone except Olivia. She stands back from the group, close or behind the cottonwood tree, where she looks down at the ground as the procession of hugs continues. She says hello. She says goodbye. She thanks me for coming. But we never touch. Olivia never touches anyone.

  “How about Hawk?” I ask after our third round of hand on hand. Hawk is standing in the shade with one of his hind legs cocked. He looks sleepy. “How about we try to put Hawk’s hoof in your palm?” I ask her. She’s not so sure. Her body folds forward, heading toward the fetal position. “I’ll do it first. I’ll show you. I’ll be right here.” Olivia comes along my shoulder and tucks behind me.

  “Alright,” she whispers.

  I move in close to Hawk’s shoulder, pinch behind his knee lightly, and he lifts his hoof off the ground and places it into my cupped hand. Olivia is peeking over my shoulder.