Mr. Jamison turns, walks off, his dress shoes crunching the gravel. Ella climbs off Nightshade and their father takes her into his arms, lifts her off her feet as he swings her around. He can’t stop grinning. “Unbelievable!” he gushes. He whistles again.
Marveling at her father’s joy, Angie is suddenly furious. Why wasn’t he hugging her, swinging her around?
“You look damn good out there, girl!” He shakes his head, still grinning. “Looking like a jockey if I ever seen one!”
They lead Nightshade back to her stall, reward her with water, extra oats. But suddenly Ella grabs on to her father. “I feel like I’m gonna—”
She faints, tumbling onto the hay. Their father runs to the first aid kit he keeps in his cluttered cubbyhole office and grabs smelling salts, puts it under her nose. As she watches Ella regain consciousness, four-year-old Angie feels a fresh pang of guilt over her jealousy.
No one would know for years, but Ella had fasted for three days, living on water and a daily carrot she shared every morning with Nightshade. She was determined to keep the figure her father had praised her for.
“Wait ’til you see her!” Samson told his wife later, bedroom door flung open for all to hear. “She’s got it. She’s got that thing that a jockey’s gotta have. I’m telling you, she can do this. Long as she don’t get much taller, and she stays the same size, she can do this.”
“I want her to do something respectable with her life,” said Nanette. “Something clean and upstanding. I don’t want her to spend her days at one dirty racetrack after another, all kinds of men lurking about. And I certainly don’t want her getting run over by a horse, lose her life in some freak accident.”
“Do you hear what I’m saying?” Samson was exasperated. “The girl has a gift! She could be the first colored female jockey! That’s as respectable as they come.”
“She’s got a brilliant mind,” said Nanette. “I want her to use it.”
“You don’t think it takes brilliance to ride a horse to victory? You don’t think that requires a high level of intelligence?”
“You know what I mean, Samson. Don’t try to mix up my words.”
“Imagine it! She’ll be in Ebony, a whole spread, her posing on top of a fine-looking horse, trophy in hand. Can’t you see that?” He paused, looking at the imaginary magazine feature. “I see it clear as day.”
“I’m just worried about you pushing her into it,” said Nanette.
“That’s because you haven’t seen her ride! Going at it like she got a hunger she can’t satisfy. And I know all about that, how you get them horses up inside you and you just can’t stay away. She loves it, Nan. She downright loves it.”
“What she loves is pleasing you,” said their mother. “And I’m here to tell you Samson, that’s not the same thing.”
Angie and Denise grew up hearing family lore about Ella: how she walked at eight months, talked in full sentences by her first birthday, and could read a book by age three. Those facts made Angie feel that whatever she did, she couldn’t compete, could never catch up, had already blown it before she was out of toddlerhood.
When Nanette took Ella to be tested, the psychologist said she had the highest IQ he’d ever seen in a Negro girl. Each time she told the story years later, burnishing it over time, their mother shook her head, as if marveling anew at the mind of her oldest daughter. But anyone who listened knew she was really bragging. She was proud of Ella, certain she’d be a first. She’d be the first one in the family to go to college, the first to have a professional career. Maybe the first Afro-American female in Michigan to become a psychiatrist, a judge, or a US congresswoman, like Shirley Chisholm. Who could say? She’d be living proof that migrating north had been worth it, that given the opportunity, a child of two southern blacks with slight education could achieve greatness. She’d make every indignity her mother and father faced at the hands of a hostile white world worth it.
And then there were the tales of Ella’s bottomless hunger, her insatiable appetite for something once she fixated on it. How she ate oatmeal every day for one year, refusing to eat anything else. How she discovered Nancy Drew mysteries in third grade, and devoured them so steadily, reading them through the night, that her mother had to talk to the librarian at the local branch, ask her not to loan any more of the series to Ella, who’d developed dark circles under her eyes. How she became obsessed with her first two-wheeler, had to ride it to school daily, threw a tantrum when their mother wouldn’t let her ride it in four-feet-high snow.
The aunties, her father’s sisters, had some of the best family tales about Ella. The aunties had taken care of their brother’s child from the time she was five until she was seven. They called her Daughter. They’d ply her with a heaping of butter beans or fried chicken or smothered cabbage and watch her eat. Every time they dumped more food on her plate, she ate it all. “Had enough?” they’d ask, in unison. “Had enough?” And on cue Ella always said, “Not even!” which just tickled her aunties to death.
Aunt Bea loved to tell the story of Ella joining her parents in Detroit. “The day Daughter left for up North, Oh my Lord, that was some sad day. But not for her. No ma’am. She said, ‘Auntie Bea, I got to go, so don’t you cry. Mama and Daddy are waiting for me and I been waiting for them.’ She was not afraid of riding the train alone neither. She was itching to get on it. ‘I’m not gonna shut my eyes the whole ride,’ she said. And you know that girl could do whatever she put her mind to. When that locomotive pulled out of the station, you talking about tears, oh I cried me a little river. But Daughter was dry eyed. I waved goodbye till I couldn’t see her no more, and I thought, She is going far in life. That’s what come to me. I could tell right then and there, she was gonna be something. ‘Cause I’m here to tell you, that child was fearless.”
Another apocryphal Ella tale: Samson letting her ride his pony, Bill, around the little inside track, and Ella always wanting to go faster, faster, until running beside them, her father couldn’t keep up, let her go, and one day she lost her grip on Bill and fell off, flying before hitting the hard dirt. Ella lay there, in pain; her arm broken.
Their mother hadn’t been there, had been at five-year-old Denise’s birthday party, amid the cacophony of celebratory girls, already pregnant with Angie. When they walked into the house, Ella upstaging the party with her bright, white cast, their mother gasped, “What happened?”
As soon as he explained, she lit into her husband right in front of the kindergartners. “How the hell did you let that happen, Samson?”
“She kept saying, ‘Faster, faster!’” he said, in defense. “And I asked her over and over, ‘Had enough?’ And she kept saying, ‘Not even.’ That’s what she said, God do hear me say, she said, ‘Not even!’”
“She’s nine!” her mother screamed.
“But I wanted to do it,” said Ella.
“You broke your arm,” her mother pointed out.
“It was worth it.”
Angie remembered so little, really, of her father: His curly yet wild salt-and-pepper hair, those saddle-rough hands, the way he’d give her piggyback rides as he made his rounds at the horses’ stalls. Those practice sessions on the track.
His smell was an intoxicating mixture of the outdoors and aftershave. Early mornings in the car, headed to the track, sun just peeling away the darkness, she’d scoot close and inhale him deeply as they sat three abreast in the front seat, cool jazz spilling from the radio.
He was on the road so much that his presence was like a holiday. Everything felt special—eating pancakes together in the morning, watching him repair things around the house, greedily eyeing him and their mother as they slipped behind the closing bedroom door. As a family, they’d go to all the races running his horses. Angie loved the crowds, the whooping yells, the starting bell, the discarded tickets scattered across the ground like oversized confetti. And when one of his horse
s placed—not first, but often third, sometimes second even—she loved going down to the winner’s circle and standing with her sisters and parents and her father’s horse. She remembered warm summer nights, cicadas singing out, the family posing as the photographer snapped, his giant cone of a flash blinding them briefly. And then her father’s racetrack family would take over, crowding them out. They’d whisk him off for some post-race chatter and another hour would go by. Their mother knew the drill, like the girlfriend of a musician after the gig, so she drove her own car to the track. Angie and Denise rode with her to the Chinese restaurant where they always had dinner afterward. But Ella stayed with their father. “You want to hang out with me a bit?” he’d say to her. And she always did, even though she had to be hungry, or tired, or just ready to go. Or maybe not. Her needs or desires could never compete with his need to show her off, his daughter, the soon-to-be jockey.
Afterward, they’d all sit at a big round table at China Delight, passing plates of pepper steak and egg foo young and shrimp fried rice. Sometimes, by the time her father and Ella joined them, Angie was already asleep in her mother’s lap. And sometimes Denise would try to gain her father’s attention, telling him about a book report she’d done on racehorses, or a math project that determined the probability of winning. Once, she showed him a sketch she’d drawn of a horse, a pen and ink done in her art class. She’d filled it in with watercolor, giving the horse a sandy brown hue. She was clearly talented.
“Which horse is that?” asked their father.
“It’s just one I made up,” she said.
“See, if you’d learn to ride a horse, you’d know what one really looks like,” he said, chuckling. “That there is a nice picture, but it don’t look like a real horse.”
Denise said nothing. Why didn’t you just draw Bill, Daddy’s pony? Angie thought. Silly! Throughout the rest of the meal, Denise poked at her food until the gravy on her egg foo young congealed. Later, Angie found the deft, delicate watercolor tossed in the trash. She felt sorry for Denise, but she left it there.
Another day in the stalls. A chilly morning. Their father is beside himself. He failed a stress test and Dr. Benjamin has ordered him to take some time off, said otherwise he wouldn’t sign off on the yearly physical exam required of all racetrack employees. “How the hell I’m gonna do that?” he complained to his girls—to Ella really, but Angie pretended he was talking to her too. “Can I tell a horse to take a break? Can I tell the races, in the middle of the season, to take a break? Can I tell these owners breathing down my back to take a break? Folks depend on me. I stop, everything stops.”
He rubbed down Baby’s Breath’s legs and wrapped them with bandages, tenderly lifting her hoofs. This was a new horse of his, the owner new to him as well. She’d been bred from two winners and expectations were high for the pedigreed Thoroughbred. “Thing is, if I start cutting back now, I might as well admit it’s all over,” said her father. “And what’s my legacy gonna be, huh? One big win? Just one?”
The summer before, Jet magazine had on its cover the picture of a black female jockey with the headline, “Cheryl White: Teenage Girl Cracks Barrier On Racetrack.” Someone else had gotten there first. Ella never commented on the article, but she taped the cover photo to her wall.
Now, she stroked Baby’s Breath on the nose. “This one’s a winner,” she said. “You can look at her and tell.”
Their father rose from the stool he’d been squatting on, stood beside Ella. “Yeah, she’s a beauty.” He held the horse’s face in his hand. “I do have high hopes for this one.”
Later, they walked Baby’s Breath out on the track. “She’s still got a bit of wildness in her, but I’m not too bothered by that,” said their father. “Gives her a winning spirit.”
“Can I ride her around?” asked Ella. She’d just turned sixteen.
“Alright, but go easy. We just giving her some exercise right now.”
As soon as she mounted the horse, Ella said, “Daddy, I’m your legacy,” pulled the reins tight, leaned over, and took off. Fast.
“What the hell are you doing?” their father yelled. Angie, confused by her father’s harsh tone, prayed that Ella would ride perfectly, impress him again, like before. Make him joyful. Go on, she thought. Just get it right. But as she watched her father’s agitation, fear gripped Angie. He waved his arms as Ella flew around the track. “Slow down, slow down! She’s not ready for that! She’s not broken in all the way yet! Slow down!”
But Ella was too far away to hear him.
“Goddammit, that girl don’t know the meaning of the word stop.” He took off his baseball cap, threw it to the ground. “Goddammit!”
Suddenly, the horse rose up on its hind legs. Their father began running toward Ella and Baby’s Breath, but they were at least a quarter mile away. He stopped. “Hold them reins tight,” he whispered, as if Ella were within earshot. “Hold on, and calm her down, ride her out of it.”
Terrified, Angie ran to her father and he held her in his arms, eyes on the racetrack. The horse stayed on two legs for an eternity. Angie could see Ella’s blue parka, the hood flapping around as she struggled to stay on.
“Don’t fall off. Hold on, just hold on,” their father chanted. “Just hold on.”
Miraculously, the horse brought down her front legs, and landed well, didn’t snap a limb. Ella regained control, and Baby’s Breath slowed to a steady gallop.
“She’s OK,” her father said, letting out his breath. “He patted the top of Angie’s head. “She’s OK.”
They watched together as Ella made her way toward them. In that minute or so, Angie could feel her father tensing, the anger rising in him.
As Baby’s Breath trotted up to them, he barked, “Get your ass down.”
Ella knew she’d gone too far. “I don’t know what made her rise up like that,” she said, desperate.
“I said get down!” he yelled. Ella swung one leg over and their father didn’t wait, pulled her off the horse, making her stumble. He shook her hard, both hands squeezing her arms. Ella’s face froze in shock.
“What is the matter with you?” he said. “What if she’d thrown you, huh?” His eyes bucked. “What if she’d broken her leg or something, huh? Then what? Goddammit, then where would we be, huh?”
Ella winced, said nothing. Their father shook her again. “Don’t you know when enough is enough? Don’t you know when to stop?”
Loose tears tumbled down her face. “Not even,” she said.
Their father stared at her. Seconds passed before he let out a sad chuckle and wrapped Ella into his arms, hugged her tight. “Don’t you ever scare me like that again,” he said, eyes moist.
Angie grabbed onto her father’s leg, all she could reach. He looked down, picked her up, and the three of them stood there hugging until Baby’s Breath neighed loudly, reminding them that she’d just been through an ordeal too.
That night, Ella let Angie watch as she wrote a letter to God, begging Him to allow Baby’s Breath to win her big race. “In Jesus’s name, I ask these things of you,” wrote Ella. She signed it, “Your loving servant.” She wrote it on plain loose-leaf paper, then folded it neatly and placed it between the pages of the giant family Bible that no one ever read. Angie thought God deserved prettier stationary.
A spring night, which turned out to be Ella’s last at the stable. She and her father were prepping Baby’s Breath for the next day’s race, which she was favored to win. Angie sat on a stool nearby, watching them. Their father was anxious. As the horse stood in a tub of ice, he stroked her mane. “This race right here could change my luck,” he said. “Turn it all around.”
“She’s going to win,” Ella told him. “Look at her. She’s perfect.”
Their father nodded. “Hell, I can’t believe how nervous I am. And I shouldn’t be. Rodrigo Diaz, the jock, he’s as good as they come.”
“Wish I was the one riding her out there tomorrow,” said Ella, wistful. “One day.”
Her father fell silent. He hadn’t done much training with her lately. “About that. You racing. Got to lose some weight if you wanna take that whole thing seriously. Look at that there girl’s picture you got up on your wall. Lean as the day is long.”
Each of her father’s words must have felt like tiny slaps across her face. She’d gained back the weight she’d lost two years before, and then some. After she’d swallowed those diet pills, and had her stomach pumped, she left the amphetamines alone. Yes, she’d tried fasting, but couldn’t keep it up. She tried making herself throw up, but that didn’t work because she couldn’t bear to put a finger down her throat. She stole her mother’s Senokot pills for a while, but hated what laxatives did to her, so she stopped that too.
“I’m not fat,” she said.
“Nah, you just not riding weight. But you can get them extra pounds off; I seen you do it before. Just push the plate away from you, that’s all.”
Hearing advice about willpower from her father, of all people, had to be hard. He was a lithe man who could eat whatever he wanted, never gain a pound. Angie had inherited his metabolism. Ella and Denise had inherited their mother’s, setting them up for a lifetime of weight watching. It wasn’t fair. She kicked over the stool she’d been sitting on, grabbed Angie’s hand, and stormed out, leaving their father bewildered.
She dropped Angie off at the front office, told Adele to keep an eye on her, then wandered through the quiet track; she had to have been furious and sad and hurt and ashamed all at once. She later said that was when she ran into Jeff, one of the new exercise boys, and they went off together for a while.
When she returned to their father’s stable, she found him in the barn, splayed out beneath Baby’s Breath, who was licking his face. He didn’t respond when she called out to him. She hovered over his body, but was afraid to touch him for fear that she would make things worse. Terrified, she ran out, yelling for help. A security guard called the ambulance.
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