The Mare

by Mary Gaitskill

  Velvet

  That night I couldn’t sleep. Everything in me was still going too fast. Also, my stomach felt sick from the food at the restaurant, like I might have to go to the bathroom. I thought about my mom, especially her cooking, how you could feel her in her cooking. I thought about my horse: her rough mane, her powerful shoulders. Her wise wrinkled mouth. Her thinking dark eye. I sat up and turned on the light. I took my cotton-ball box out of my backpack and laid my things out on the blanket: the plastic bell, the red heart, my father’s blue shell, my grandfather’s sea horse, my one-legged Ginger-doll in her checkered coat and her orange ring. I put my new ring in with them. I thought of my horse. My grandfather said, Go.

  So I made sure their lights were out and then I got out of bed and put on my butterfly ring and my clothes. I went downstairs really quiet and out the door quiet too. I walked on the dark path to the barn. I would’ve been scared normally, but that night I wasn’t. I wasn’t scared even when I went into the barn and it was so dark at first I couldn’t see at all. The horses moved and asked me to come say hi, and the fast thing in my body got slower. I didn’t talk to anybody else, I just went to her. She was curled on the floor of her stall, her head even curled down with her nose resting on the floor like some little animal. When she felt me there she raised her head; I spoke soft to her and she uncurled to stand and come to me.

  When horses are curled up and then they stand, it is beautiful and funny, like babies walking. They put their front feet down like it’s the first time and they don’t know for sure how, they need to go slow and feel on each foot, their body going one way and the other until they find the strong spot and boom, they are proud on their legs again. Watching made my heart soft, made me want to hug her. So I did something I never did; I opened her stall and came in it.

  Which I should not have done. She wasn’t expecting it, and she came to me too fast. I held up my hand like I saw Pat do and I said, “Alto!” like my mom when she means business. And the mare stopped. And I made my head and shoulders soft. I petted her, first her shoulder, then her neck. I told her how much I’d missed her and promised I’d clean her stall the next day because I could smell it was mad dirty. I tried to sing her a Christmas carol but I couldn’t remember all of one, so I sang, Safe under mama’s wings, huddling up / Sleep the little chicks until the next day. I sang it to her until the fast thing was gone. And then when I walked out, I sang it so they could all hear it.

  Paul

  Edie came over that afternoon. Velvet was shy and sweet around her and Edie was nice in a way that seemed unnatural to her. Not that my daughter isn’t nice; she is. But there was a subtle theatricality about her manner that, to my surprise, Velvet seemed not only to enjoy, but to match. Each seemed to know her role and to fall into it easily—though what those roles would be called wasn’t an easy thing to put a name on.

  “Do you want to come to the stable with me?” asked Velvet, her voice lower and sweeter than the one I knew.

  “I’d love to!” cried my daughter. And then, when Velvet was up in her room getting a sweater, Edie turned to me and said very soberly, “Dad, I am so glad you are doing this.”

  “I am too, I guess,” I answered. “I just wish I knew what it was.”

  Velvet

  My best present was from Little Tina. I rode her without a saddle. It was cold and so muddy I slipped and fell off the ramp at the end of the barn and that was even before I got on the horse. Pat said when it was this cold, she used to like to go bareback to feel warm from the horse. And I said, “Can I do it?” And she told me yes, because it was Christmas. And we took off the saddle and when I got on Little Tina it was warm all up in my legs. The cold air was on my face but I was warm. I could feel her muscles; it was like I could feel her blood. We only walked and practiced steering, going backward and in a circle and zigzag around things.

  But then she started to go at a trot. She did it without asking me. “Whoa!” yelled Pat, but she kept going. So I pressed my butt deep into her body and I talked soft and pulled back on the reins and said, “Whoa” soft. And she stopped. Pat came running up and said, “Excellent!” And I was in the sky.

  —

  I got some other good stuff too. A pink radio and CD player that said “Princess” on it and earrings in the shape of tiny red flowers and a Celia Cruz CD and a blue Gap shirt with a big zipper in the front. And I met Paul’s daughter from his other wife. She was nice.

  Ginger

  On the train I tried to talk to her. I told her I knew how hard life is, how cruel people can be. “People are assholes,” I said. “They will say whatever they think will hurt you. You can’t listen, and you can’t try to please them. If people at school don’t like it that you’re doing well, it’s because it scares them. If you don’t want trouble, hide it. Act like you don’t care about school. Just do the work quietly and act the same in class. I’ll talk to Ms. Rodriguez; she should understand.”

  She listened and looked out the window, sort of smiling. I talked about when I was in school, how I didn’t fit in. A black woman one seat up across the aisle glanced at me with a curious face. My mother floated into my mind and out. I had only half listened to my mother; I hated the way she was with Melinda, and I did whatever I could to make her not be that way with me. My mother was very flawed. But even half listened to, her words built me, and I’m glad she said them. Velvet was already built, but still it seemed she needed words, even dumb ones. So I talked until I ran out of words. Then she put on her headset and played her new radio and I read a book.

  When we got to the station, I looked forward to seeing her mother, to connecting with her like we had at the diner, showing her the pictures of Velvet opening her gifts. But her mother wasn’t there. We waited outside like always. Snow was finally coming, light and wet, whipping around in the wind. It was getting dark. We stood near the Thirty-Third Street entrance, and the big doors blew hot dry air on us as they opened and closed for the many-faced people trudging in and out of them. Christmas music played from speakers. Dirty, ragged people sat on the ground under the concrete overhang of the building, some with bulging garbage bags. The digital red clock on the side of the station said Mrs. Vargas was fifteen minutes late.

  I called her home number; she wasn’t there. I called her work number; they said she had left over an hour ago. Velvet looked afraid. I bought her a hot dog from a vendor. A woman with dry dark patches on her face had pulled up her pant legs and was scratching at sores with both hands, her mouth open in concentration. I began to be afraid too. I said, “What kind of neighborhood does your mom work in?” And she answered, “There’s white people there.” I wanted to say, That’s not what I asked. But I understood her. We had understood each other. Mrs. Vargas was half an hour late.

  I asked Velvet to go into the station to look for her while I stayed outside with her paper bag of Christmas presents. I called the home number again. Velvet took so long that I began to be scared I’d lost her too. When she came out, she looked like she’d been crying. “We’ll wait until it’s been an hour,” I said. “Then I’ll call the police.”

  “No,” she said. “You can’t do that.” Her voice was tearful and I knew she had been crying. “They might take us away.”

  I didn’t argue. The hour came. Tears ran down the girl’s face. I put my arm around her. “Don’t worry,” I said. “We’ll go back upstate if we have to.”

  “I don’t want to go back upstate,” she said. “I want my mama. I want my brother.”

  I wound up calling a friend, Julian, an editor at an art magazine, one of the few people from my past who actually had made a plush life for himself—and who, not coincidentally I’m sure, had come from money. I explained the situation and he told me to bring her over, he and his wife were sitting down to dinner.

  Velvet

  We went to stay with these people who lived in a building with a glass door and a shiny stone hallway. We went up in a big elevator with too many buttons and came out
into a hall with a sign somebody wrote in crayon that said “Take off shoes, please.” Ginger’s friend was the only apartment on the floor. The door was open and the man that came out was dressed in white and he was smiling and I wanted to cry.

  Because this place did not look like a house is supposed to look. It was too big and bright and everything was white, all the furniture and even the floor. The windows were so big you could see buildings everywhere; it was like being outside up in the air in the middle of buildings. We sat in little white chairs at the white table and the lady put food on the white plates. She was pregnant and she was nice, but I couldn’t eat. I was thinking of my mother and how it felt to be next to her. I was thinking these people knew I was a girl whose mother did not come for her. I was thinking if I could only get back to her, I would never go to Ginger’s again. Even if it meant I would never see my mare. Everybody was staring at me. I was crying. The pregnant lady tried to hide it, but she was starting to cry too. Ginger was looking like she always did, only more. She said, “Please eat something. It will make you feel better.” I said, “I want to call my mom.”

  So Ginger gave me her phone again. And finally my mom answered.

  Ginger

  So after that she relaxed. She ate and even talked with my friends, smiling, wanting to feel Carolina’s pregnant belly. They found her delightful. Mrs. Vargas told us a story about having to take the brother to the emergency room because his stomach hurt. I didn’t believe her, but I was just glad she was all right. Even if she said it was too late for Velvet to come home, and asked if I could keep her for the night.

  Julian said we were welcome to the guest room. We had to sleep in the same bed, but Velvet didn’t mind. We got under the covers and settled in back-to-back, with the excited feeling of a sleepover. “Good-night,” I said.

  “Good-night,” she answered.

  “Good-night!” I said.

  “Good-night!” she replied.

  We were quiet and I thought I could feel her sinking into sleep. Then she said, “I need to ask you something.”

  “What?”

  She didn’t answer right away. I turned my head to encourage her.

  “Why is it…” She stopped. Her voice came very earnest in the dark. “Why is it that white people can walk their path in a way that black people—and people of my color—cannot?”

  “Honey,” I said. “You just don’t know enough about white people.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The white people you see where we live have money. They all know each other. They’re not going to start trouble, because they have something to lose. White people start with advantages, you know that, right?”

  She said, “Yeah,” but uncertainly.

  “And still, sometimes they wind up going down the toilet anyway. Have you ever heard about the Hell’s Angels? They were worse in their day than any gang you’ve heard of. Murderers, rapists. And they were all white. They had the advantages. They became what they were because they wanted to, not because they had to. My sister was like that. That’s what I mean when I say ‘self-destructive.’ ”

  I felt her thinking. I knew she wanted to say something but didn’t know what. I waited. She didn’t say anything. I said, “We can talk about it in the morning if you want.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  “Okay, then. Good-night for real.”

  Velvet

  That night I dreamed of horses running together like they were water with a brain that could decide where to go. Except you could see their faces and their feet and tails coming out and then going back into the water of themselves. Ginger was there and so was my mom and Strawberry and Alicia. But I don’t remember them. I remember the horses and that they were running toward a giant red sun and that nothing could stop them and that I was with them.

  Ginger

  The next day I asked her if she wanted to ask me any more questions like she did during the night. She said no. So we went out of the room and ate breakfast with Julian and Carolina.

  Then I took her to meet a cousin at Penn Station. Dante was with her, but he barely nodded at me when I said hello. The cousin was an exhausted-looking, heavyset woman with eyes that were hard, quick, and reactive. Without looking at me, she patted Velvet and greeted her in Spanish. She didn’t seem to realize I was there until Velvet hugged me good-bye. She finally said good-bye to me and then, as they were walking toward the subway, she added, “Thank you,” as if she’d realized she hadn’t even greeted me.

  People of my color.

  Her tone when she said that: forthright, courageous. With the purity of expression I had recognized at first sight. It made my heart hurt.

  I went into the station and sat down to wait for my train. It was not very crowded; the usual businesspeople were at home, celebrating with their families still. The people seated around me were slumped and threadbare, carrying their possessions in shopping bags or cheap canvas totes. A bearlike young black man in baggy too-long pants with torn filthy hems paced around cursing at somebody on his cell phone. A dry-haired stringy white woman my age sat very erect, gripping a purse and a computer bag. I knew none of them were homeless because you had to show a ticket to sit in this area. But somehow even this stringy woman with a purse had a homeless feeling about her.

  Velvet

  When we first left Penn Station there were people in the subway with happy faces: people with nice clothes, and kids with parents that had bought them things who were laughing and playing with each other. I had my things too, but my cousin and Dante were quiet and looking up at the ads about Dr. Zizmor taking pimples off your skin and people on TV. I was getting a sick feeling. The happy-looking people started getting off. More and more dark people were there, sitting and staring quiet. The farther we went, the more there were. A lady across from me had a shopping bag that said GET MORE JOY!! but under her glasses she looked like she was going to cry and not stop.

  I remember what I said to Ginger about people like me not walking our path and I did not like myself for that.

  Then a man got on and sat next to the woman, and I could tell he was Spanish. He was by himself, but he did not look sad or quiet. He looked strong and happy in his body. He was looking at me like he liked me, like he knew me. I looked at him and my sick feeling opened up and became deep feeling. I remembered my dream of the horses, running into the bright red sun, moving in and out of each other. The subway ran faster and faster in the underwater tunnel. We moved into Brooklyn toward my cousin’s house. My feeling went deeper. It was like we were the horses, moving together, in and out of each other, going someplace we needed to go. Even though Dante told me my ring looked like something you get from a gum-ball machine and I smacked him and my cousin said my mom gave her permission to whip me, so quit it.

  Even though my mom screamed at me all night that I was lazy and she wished she didn’t have me and then took my CD player in the bedroom and played Celia Cruz on it with the door closed.

  Even though when I tried to show Strawberry my ring she wouldn’t look and just walked past me. Even though I saw her on the street and she was with Dominic with their arms around each other, which I wouldn’t even care about, except she was smiling her evil smile at me and I knew she wanted me to care so she could laugh at me for it.

  Even though when I put my ring with my cotton-ball-box things it didn’t look nice anymore because it made everything else look ugly.

  Because when we got up in the morning and my mom did her push-ups and we all got washed and dressed and my mom made our oatmeal with brown sugar, and we all went out—we were moving like the horses. And I was going to let my mare out again one day and she was going to run too. With the others or alone or with me riding her.

  I wanted to tell my mom this, but I couldn’t. It didn’t make any sense. And also my mom thought the horses would kill me.

  Ginger

  When I called her for our homework session after Christmas, she told me she got spat on. She said s
he wore her blue Gap shirt that we gave her and her new ring. All morning people stared at her and then while she was waiting in the cafeteria line, girls walked by and spat on her. They spat on her while she walked to her seat with her tray. So she waited till nobody could see, and then she hit somebody. They told, she said they lied, then she got detention. I said I didn’t care if she got detention, I was glad she hit the bitch who spat at her. I told her how I’d hit somebody in school once too. I asked if she had any friends who would help her. She said, “I don’t got no friends.” I asked about the friends she’d talked about, Strawberry and Alicia. She said they were the ones that spat on her. I told her she was better off without them. We read then, a book that was technically under her age range about a little boy who meets a dragon. I kept thinking, But that shirt wasn’t even very nice. I listened to Paul; I didn’t buy something that was too fancy. That shirt was cute but normal. They spat at her for wearing a normal shirt.

  The next day I called the social worker, Eliza Lopez. She said she knew Velvet had gotten detention, but she didn’t know anything about spitting. She said that Velvet talked instead about her mother hitting her. I asked if she thought it was true. She said she knew the mother was verbally abusive, but she couldn’t be sure about anything physical. A year ago she said her mom beat her; they brought in Child Protective Services and Velvet took it all back. So now the woman didn’t want to call anybody unless she saw bruises and when she asked to see bruises, Velvet couldn’t show anything.

  I thought about why Velvet had not wanted me to call the police, that she didn’t want to be “taken away”; I did not tell Ms. Lopez that Mrs. Vargas had not come to meet me. Instead I repeated to her what Velvet had asked me about how white people “walk their path”; I told her my answer, that she didn’t know enough white people. “Do you think that was appropriate?” I asked.