The Mare

by Mary Gaitskill

  And then it all happened: Beverly saw me and spun so she damn near hit herself with her own whip—just before Joker reared up on her from the back and she fell down. Then Fiery Girl took off almost out from under me, running down the trail toward the water. I grabbed her mane with both hands, but I could barely stay on. Was Beverly dead? The mare went off the path into the neighbor farm’s orchard. The trees came at me with black claw-arms and rushed away, green leaves and rotting fruit. I ducked; she took me through. I yelled, Whoa! but she didn’t even slow. Everything was flying past and I would go to jail, my mom talking forever about what shit I was. I pulled the reins, feeling for her mouth, but it was no good; I was already slipping when I saw the fence coming. I screamed, “Whoa!” and pulled the reins hard, she came up on her back legs, and I saw nothing but sky that went forever until I slammed down on my back so hard my head bounced. The sky blurred and black came in on the edges. I pushed it back and made myself sit up. My horse was trotting slowly alongside the fence. I felt vomit coming. Ginger’s voice said, Our relationship is over. I called to my horse; she ignored me. My eyes blurred; my horse blurred and then she was gone. Dominic was there, his arm around Brianna. We were outside the school. He was walking with her and at first I thought he didn’t even see me because he had turned his back to me, both their backs were to me. But then he turned his head back around and looked at me that same way he looked a long time ago, when he was with Sondra, joking and serious. But it was horrible now. Because he had touched my breasts and my lips and his eyes mentioned that while he turned away to be with someone who hated me. Alicia saw. Other people saw. I was all of a sudden a tiny hurting center of something huge that had nothing to do with me.

  I felt dizzy. Grass and trees stretched away. Now I was not at the center of anything. I wasn’t anything. Grass and trees stretched away from me, not touching me. The mare ate grass, ignoring me. Far away was a road with cars and people that had nothing to do with me. The sky was like the ocean, full of things I couldn’t see. Birds flew, hunting for invisible things to kill. People said this was beautiful, but it was not. It would kill you if you were alone in it and I was alone. I was alone everywhere. There was nothing to stand on, nothing to hold. My mother wouldn’t even hit me because I wasn’t worth it. I bent over and vomited.

  The next time I saw Shawn, I went with him and I did what he told me. I wanted Dominic to hear and be mad. When I finished, I don’t even know why, but I said, “So you love me?” He said, “Sure, you cool.” The next time I saw Dominic he was with another girl, a friend of Brianna’s named Janelle. He didn’t even look at me.

  Any man could have her and who would want to?

  Beverly would say it about me if she knew. It wasn’t true. But she would say it. Maybe even Pat would. Why? Why did they talk like that about somebody? I bent over again, but instead of vomit, pain came with a sound that was horrible to me. I fell onto my knees and the sound became words. I hit myself and said them: Ugly stupid chicken-head bitch. Worthless, stupid. Nobody wants you. Even the horse doesn’t want you. You’re worse than shit. Even the horse knows. You’re not worth it.

  I wiped my mouth with my shirt. The black closed in and then parted; the grass was so green beneath me. I felt her breath on me. Then her nose against my shoulder. The grass was so green. I lifted my face and she lipped my hair. I almost laughed because she had come back, but then I saw she was scared. She was scared, but she still came back to see if I was okay. I could not make her more scared.

  The blackness cleared. I stood up and touched her shoulder with both my hands. She shied away. I made my voice softer and I talked to her like she was a kitten. I said I was sorry I said those things, that I wasn’t talking to her. I said I would never say those things again. I tried to kiss her and to hug her. She shied away again. I tried again, and she moved away again, stronger this time, like I was scaring her. I didn’t understand and it hurt me. I needed to feel her, but I couldn’t make her more scared. Her skin was shining, and her head was up, nervous, even though her eyes were trusting me. I put my head down and moved close enough to put my hand on her shoulder. She stayed. I felt her muscles, her blood. I felt her. I remembered suddenly how it was when I walked to the barn with Ginger that first time, how all the green was too much, too open, and I knew: She didn’t feel safe enough to hug in the open. Like she knew I understood, she put her head down and began to eat the grass. I petted her neck and then picked up the reins. I let her eat for a few minutes—it made me feel calm to watch her eat, looking a little piggy with her snout. Then when I was ready I said, “Come on” and pulled her head up. I led her to the fence like it was a mounting block. I climbed up on it. She shied away at first, but I talked her back. She saw what I was doing; she let me. I sat on her and swung my hair behind me. The sky was huge and bright, but it was touching me now, it was friendly, and the huge brightness of the grass stretched before me. I started her at a walk. This was my place. No one would ever be in this place but me and my horse. No man, not even children; they would never come here with me. This place was only for me and my mare.

  We were going at a trot when we saw Pat on Graylie and Beverly on Diamond Chip. I slowed to a walk. They stopped and they stood there waiting, Pat with her face like she just saw God, Beverly like somebody’d stuck a rake in her face.

  “Get off that goddamned horse,” Beverly said, “before you do any more damage.”

  I got off. Pat got off Graylie. She was trying to make her face mad, but I could see she was really something else and she was barely holding it back. She said, “Do you realize how lucky you are that you didn’t get hurt?”

  Beverly said, “Do you realize how lucky I am that I didn’t get killed? He came up on me and hit the back of my knees. He could’ve kicked my skull in.”

  “Both of you could’ve been killed,” said Pat.

  “I’m sorry, Miss Beverly,” I said. “I’m sorry, Miss Pat. But Fiery Girl wouldn’t kill me. She loves me.”

  “Don’t be a fool!” Pat said. “She’s an animal!”

  “I know. But she loves me.” Then I fainted.

  Beverly

  Jesus Christ. Even her, the tough black girl from the city—or Puerto Rican, or whatever she is—even she’s been ruined by the Disneyfied horse-snot they sell in the multiplex. Love and self-esteem, love and self-esteem—love is good for babies and that’s it. Yes, you make a horse good by raising it up with a little love and a lot of discipline. But you make a horse great by making it feel like shit. Because it knows it is not shit and it will turn itself inside out to prove it to you. Sure you give it love, just a touch. And then you make it crave the love, make it try to please you for another little taste—it will turn itself inside out to show you it’s good; you make that horse prove it over and over, every time. If that horse is worth anything, it will pull up everything it’s got for you and it will find what it’s worth and be more and more proud. It will know it can take whatever you got and sometimes it will give it back. But it will know its worth. And it will do anything to make you know it. It will die to make you know it. Not that I’d go that far. That would be stupid. Because that horse is worth more than me. The dumb animal just doesn’t know it. It’s me that’s shit. Not him.

  Ginger

  When I saw Pat and Velvet come into the house I thought, She’s won a prize. Because that’s what their faces said, even when Pat said, “There’s been an accident.” Velvet smiled and said, “I’m okay. I just fell off.”

  I felt a lump forming under her warm hair; there was a little blood. I asked if she’d blacked out. She said yes and I told her to go get her Medicaid card. I thought of Mrs. Vargas and began to sweat. Velvet went up the stairs and I said, “What happened?” Pat said the girl had broken the rules of the barn and that she’d been expelled.

  “What did she do?”

  “Improperly handled a horse, rode bareback without permission or supervision, endangered herself and others. She fell off the horse and passed out. She
’s probably got a concussion, but she could’ve broken her neck.”

  “My God!”

  As Anglo as she was, she suddenly reminded me of Mrs. Vargas; powerfully in her body, peering out of it with the expression of someone looking at a world she didn’t fully understand and didn’t think much of. She said, “I’m pretty sure she’s okay; she was only unconscious for seconds. But call me tomorrow and let me know.”

  On the way to the hospital, I asked Velvet what she’d done and she said, “I rode my mare.” Her face was withdrawn, like into some powerful dream, but something exalted and private radiated from her. Consequences, I thought. Why doesn’t she understand?

  “They’re not going to let you go back to the barn.”

  “Miss Pat will. She told me I can even come to her house.”

  I thought, Yeah, like I’m going to homeschool you; my heart went dark and sore. We pulled into the hospital parking lot. She said, “I stopped this other horse from being hurt,” and I gathered the crazy trainer had been distracted by Velvet’s antics and gotten knocked down. Which was, I guess, the idea.

  As we parked, I flashed on all the movies I’d taken her to or rented for her: movies where some stupid mean adult is basically knocked down by the heroine and everybody thinks it’s great. I said, “This isn’t a movie, you know.”

  She looked at me and said, “Wha?”

  At the desk they said they couldn’t treat her without her mother’s permission. I said, “Does anyone here speak Spanish?” and the receptionist said, “I’m sure there’s someone.”

  I thought, It’s all over now. And Michael came into my mind with the force of despair. I looked at Velvet; I should not have brought her here. Clearly there was nothing wrong with her; she was alert and even looking rather pleased as the receptionist called for someone who could speak to her mom. I thought, I’ve lost her. I pictured my life with Paul before she came into it and it seemed intolerably bleak.

  Velvet smiled as she picked up the phone and said, “Hola, Mami.”

  I thought again of Michael, of the way he touched his finger to his lips: Shhh. We barely even spoke when I saw him, yet he seems closer now than Paul. How is that possible? How could something I barely remember, that happened in a small room so long ago, seem more real than my real life?

  The translator arrived, a helpful girl with PANIC AT THE DISCO on her shirt.

  Velvet

  Ginger looks like she’s about to cry and I’m like, But I’m okay—then I go, Right, she’s scared of my mom. But I’m not stupid enough to call my mom. I call my cousin and say, “Hola, Mami.” Nobody who can speak Spanish is even there yet, so I tell Donna I can’t bother my mom at work, but I bumped my head and Ginger wants to be sure I’m okay, could she be my mom and give permission? She asked questions, but then the translator came, this girl who hardly knew Spanish, and I knew it was okay, and they let me see the doctor. He tapped my knees with a little hammer and made me balance on one leg and count my fingers. He asked if I knew where I was and where I was from. He wanted to know the name of my horse; he smiled when I said, “Fiery Girl.”

  “When can she go to sleep?” asked Ginger. “I heard you can’t sleep after a concussion.”

  “She can sleep at bedtime,” said the doctor. He thought a second. “Maybe wake her after a few hours. I think she’s fine, though.”

  But I couldn’t sleep. I stayed awake feeling Fiery Girl run under me, and seeing the branches and rotten fruit fly past me like time and outer space. At first it was a good feeling, but it turned sick and bad, like black coming in on the edges of the sky. What if they would never let me see her again? My brain had a bruise on it, that’s what the doctor said, because it hit against my skull. “Crap for brains, but she can ride, you gotta give her that.” That’s what Beverly said. I pictured my brain pressing on my skull and I felt like there was something invisible pressing in the dark, trying to get visible. Was this what happened to my brother when the babysitter gave him the aspirin? I was afraid if I slept I would dream of hell and I would not wake up. Why did my grandfather tell me to go to hell that time? Was he in hell? Alicia said almost everybody went to hell, it didn’t even matter if you were a good person or not. Gare said, “You rode the hell out of that bitch.” I said, “Don’t call her a bitch.” But maybe I sent her to hell. Because if I couldn’t see her, who would take care of her? Who would love her? The way she looked at me when Pat put her away in her stall—even though she did not turn her head, I know she looked and loved me with her dark eye. I thought of Dominic, turning to look at me while he was with Brianna. My heart hurt. I held my chest, and it hurt.

  Ginger came in her nightgown and shook my shoulder. I said, “You don’t got to do that. I’m awake.” She kissed me. I said, “Ginger, when can I see my horse again?” She said, “I don’t know. Don’t think about that now.” “But I want to see her!” “You will,” she said. “I promise you will. But right now try to rest, get better.” She kissed me again. “That’s more important right now.”

  She left, but still I could feel her. I felt my mare, her body standing quiet for me in the field, her muscles and skin, holding me. Still, I felt alone. And there was still the invisible thing, pushing through, and I was scared.

  Silvia

  I woke in the middle of a dream I forgot as soon as I knew it was a dream. Voices outside argued and laughed. It was one of those dreams that make you think you’ve realized something, that all the stupid shit in life finally makes sense. Police lights flashed on the ceiling; there was cursing. The stupid shit, same as usual. I rolled over and closed my eyes and remembered: cartoon pictures of wrapped-up gifts, toys, sweet voices, and happy faces. The Velveteen Rabbit.

  I opened my eyes and saw Dante’s little sleeping face. I watched that cartoon when I first came here, in Providence, Rhode Island, with a little boy named Raul, a poor child with a narrow back and a twisted foot he couldn’t walk right on. I couldn’t understand the movie except that it was about toys; Raul said it was about a toy made real by love. He watched it over and over.

  I was pregnant, and I had come to the country alone to wait for my lover, Jesus, to leave his wife. I was staying with Jesus’s brother, Miguel, and his little boy. Raul was only six, but Miguel was almost fifty. His fiancée had disappeared, and so far he had no other woman. He was strange; he didn’t talk much, he just worked and took care of Raul. He had two televisions on mute all the time, one in his bedroom, one in the main room, both of them on crime shows. Most of the time he didn’t even watch, but when he really did watch, it was video movies of women being murdered. At night, in his room, painful light flickered from under his door and women screamed their asses off. In the main room on the couch, I fell asleep to TV screaming and dreamed of being with my husband and child, and watching things like The Velveteen Rabbit together.

  But it was funny about all the murder movies, because—Miguel was gentle! I cleaned the house and cooked for him and we ate together like a family. He read to Raul from The Hulk comics, and, on Saturdays, let him watch cartoons instead of crime. He took us to the ocean. We walked to the edge of the cold water, Miguel carrying Raul so he wouldn’t stumble on his bad foot. The water was dark and the sky was dark too. A slit of cold light separated water and sky. I picked up shells, blue and brown ones that I mostly lost.

  Then one night Jesus called me and told me his wife was pregnant and he wasn’t coming. Just like that. I went to Miguel’s room. He turned down the sound on the TV and he told me that his brother cared for me, it was just too hard for him to get away. He held me and talked to me and watched the show on the silent TV. He said not to worry, that he would marry me at city hall and I would be legal. When the show was over, he asked me if I wanted to see a movie of his fiancée. I said okay, and he put it in the machine and it was a video of her taking her clothes off and rubbing herself. He held me and ran his hands up under my T-shirt. He wasn’t in the movie, but his cock was, and she was kissing it. It sounds disgusting, but I
understood; he missed her. He turned me around and pulled up my T-shirt; I watched his fiancée suck him off. He moved behind me; he was lubricating himself. I resisted but not very much; I wanted something too. He put it up my ass, like his brother did at the beginning. So I wouldn’t lose my virginity to a married man, though of course I eventually did. Miguel was gentler, though, very slow and careful. He kissed my shoulders and tried to make me enjoy it and I almost did. When it was time to sleep, he turned the TV off for me.

  But in the morning, I felt numb. Miguel said we would get married, but then I had to go. I had no money and no man and I spoke no English and the child was due. There was my aunt in New York City, but I hadn’t been able to reach her yet. I looked at myself in the mirror and I thought, Who would want a child who came from this?

  Then the child came and she was dark. It made no sense. I’m light, Jesus was light, and here she is, nearly negrita. Aunt Maria said, “Black Velveteen!” and shook her head. Because the child would have hard luck all her life.

  The police were gone and it was quiet out. I took the pillow that used to be hers and put it close behind me, like it was her. I held Dante and closed my eyes. I thought of Raul with his little foot and I slept.

  Ginger

  It was true: Velvet was invited to ride at Pat’s house. She was barred from the barn indefinitely, but she could visit Pat’s home after four o’clock. She could ride Pat’s mare Chloe.

  “Do you think that’s a good idea?” I asked Pat. “Given how reckless she’s been?”

  “She’s not going to be reckless at my house. Listen, there’s an element of danger any time anybody gets on a horse, just like there’s danger any time anybody gets in a car. Velvet plus that horse she fell off of are a particularly volatile thing. Velvet plus a certain trainer are even more volatile. But one, there’s only two horses at my house and both of them are angels—”