The Mare

by Mary Gaitskill

  A replacement: Michael. The fever-feeling of youth coming up inside me, suddenly animated like a cartoon trying to become human. Sparkling dreams of passion and tenderness unlimited by time and its wounds—stupid for any woman my age to dream of such things. But I did dream, so how can I complain about “cheating”? I didn’t get physical with Michael, or at least not genital; we made out like kids. But I tried to start it up again with him; for days, weeks, I e-mailed with him, trying to make it happen again even as he lost interest.

  I stop on the edge of the graveyard, paralyzed with sadness and loss. It’s dead now, my adolescent longing, and even so I can’t help but press it against my cheek one more time, hoping to bring it alive again. Paul is flawed but alive and here I am still rubbing this dead thing on my face—why? How did this dead thing come up out of the past and eat my happiness? Why did I allow it?

  I walk out onto the parking lot. People pass me and our eyes do not meet. What will I tell my friend? Nothing. Just that Paul and I are having trouble. It doesn’t matter why I allowed it; I did, and so did he, and now nothing will be good again. I am finished. Except for Velvet. Velvet and the horse. Even though she is so aloof now and doesn’t tell me anything. Even though Paul is right, everyone is right, the whole coarse world is right: I can’t even be her pretend mother. I give in. I agree. I’m over. It is what it is. But I can still get her on that fucking horse. I can help her win.

  Velvet

  For my birthday my mom made asopao with chicken, which she knows I love, and we don’t have hardly ever. But that night the delicious taste hurt, like it was love that wanted to protect me but could not and could be torn away like nothing. It doesn’t make sense, but that’s what it felt like in my mouth and in the way my mom watched me chew.

  “What’s wrong with you?” she said. “Don’t you like it?”

  “I like it.”

  “You’re eating it like a robot,” she said, and Dante did lame robot arms.

  I wanted to be with them, to hide from the world with them. But I couldn’t. We were separated even in the same room. Ginger and Pat and Fiery Girl were even further away. The only thing close was Dominic, and he did not want me. He didn’t even respect me.

  “So,” said my mother, “what’s this about your riding in a race?”

  She looked at me; Dante put his head down. He put his fork down too.

  “I’m not riding in a race,” I said.

  “Dante told me about a race.”

  “There’s a competition, but I’m not in it.” As soon as I said it, it was true.

  “No? The great horsewoman isn’t riding in the competition?”

  Dante’s eyes came up to look at me.

  “Why not?” asked my mom.

  “I don’t want to,” I said.

  They both stared at me. Dante’s eyes lost their brightness.

  I shrugged. “You don’t want me to, Mami.”

  Dante’s eyes said Liar. My mom said, “Huh. You finally stopped being stupid.”

  Dante pushed his food around but did not eat.

  “I’m glad,” said my mom. “Here.” And she dished more asopao onto my plate.

  Ginger

  Velvet of course needed her mother’s permission to enter the competition; there was a form to sign. If I forged the signature and Velvet fell off or something, it would be a legal disaster, not just for me but for Paul, and even he didn’t deserve that.

  “Be openhearted,” said Kayla. “Talk to the woman from your heart. She’s accepted so much so far—”

  “She beats her daughter, Kayla.”

  “Do it for the girl’s sake.” She said it like she didn’t even hear me. “Give the mom a chance. Let her know you’d love her to come up and watch her daughter shine.”

  “She doesn’t want her daughter to shine.”

  “Give her a chance. Make her feel respected.”

  But how could I make her feel respected? I’d lied from the beginning—really, why stop now?

  I picked up a pen and held it poised over the paper that declared that I, as her parent or legal guardian, understood and accepted that there was a chance of serious bodily injury or even death. Because Velvet was not going to die, she was going to win. Even if something did happen, and she broke her arm or her leg or something, her mother might not even realize she could sue us.

  Judas. I put down the pen, then picked it up. I tried to open my heart. I prayed; I begged the air. I put down the pen. I got on a conference call with the churchy-voiced translator and told her to invite Mrs. Vargas up to see her daughter shine. The ignorant woman sailed forward under the bright banner of her voice, and was cut to pieces before she even got three full sentences out.

  “She says no,” said the translator. “She says her daughter doesn’t want to do it. She’s going to put her on so she can tell you herself.”

  Velvet

  She asked why. I said, “I don’t want to because my mom doesn’t want me to.” And I could feel her trembling, like, through the phone, and I thought how my mother said, “Shut up or I’ll give you something to cry about!” Because the trembling was like crying, like how Ginger’s face would look when she had nothing to cry about, and I was glad to fuck with her like that, to refuse what she gave, my mother beside me with her hand on my shoulder.

  But when I hung up I could still hear what Dominic said. I would hear it for the rest of my life. If I went to Williamsburg I would see him and Brianna and their baby and he wouldn’t even talk to me. I didn’t have him and now maybe I didn’t have my horse. Ginger loved me and I disappointed her. Why would she let me keep coming there? I disappointed her all the time. And then I had bad thoughts about her.

  I said, “I’m going to sit outside”; my mom said, “Don’t go far.”

  And I didn’t mean to go. I only started walking because moving with people, hearing them say shit back and forth, held me down, took the bad thoughts out of my mind. Men’s eyes on me made me feel better too, though I don’t know why. Because I knew what my mom meant about them now. I knew why she’d been so mean. It was true what my grandfather said when he was still alive, that she said what she did out of love. I felt love for her. I didn’t want to make her mad.

  But I wanted to see Gaby. That’s why I went to find the street she lived on, in case I might find her there. It was where Cookie lived, where my mom told me to stay away from, and I never had a reason to go there anyway. Really, it looked better to me than where we were, with more stores and places to eat and churches, and this store-church had a red electrical sign that said “Mercy Time, 7:00–8:00.” I kept going, past the project yard where people were out drinking from bags and little kids were chasing each other, this girl riding on a boy’s back.

  When I got to Gaby’s street I guessed the building and went to find her name on the buzzers. I was just going to find it and go home, but when I did find it, these boys came out the door, almost men, and their eyes were all over me and I went to get in the building past them, mostly just to move, and they blocked me, going, “You coming to see me, beautiful?” “I ain’t ever seen you before.” “Damn, what I could do with you!” So I pressed the buzzer like I’ve got business, and one of them said, “Hey, you the little Dominican girl, ain’t you? From St. Marks Avenue?” I didn’t know him, but I said, “Yea-ah,” like, So what? And he smiled like I was eleven years old and said, “You and your lil’ brother used to know Cookie, right?” I smiled and Gaby’s voice came out the intercom; I said who I was but she didn’t answer, instead he went, “Cookie said you and him used to talk! He said he gonna wait till you turn sixteen and till then—” Gaby said, “The buzzer doesn’t work!” like she was shouting through fuzzballs. “I got it!” said the man, going for the door. “What floor?” I said. I didn’t hear what she said. He said, “She on the third floor, number ten” and let me in.

  I didn’t wait for the elevator because I could hear more people coming from somewhere and I didn’t like their voices, so I went for the
stairs. I was sorry right away because a light was out and it smelled like a nasty bathroom with disinfectant on top. But it was just the third floor, so I went up anyway.

  Ginger

  She said it was her mom who said no, but I still thought it had to do with that big fancy barn and big show. Courtesy of Becca’s friend Joan who had generously gotten Velvet invited to Spindletop, where her confidence was hurt. Though that was surely not the intention; the woman just wanted to be kind, if ostentatiously so.

  Which is exactly what Becca was accusing me of when she said I was “playing at being a parent,” not to mention exactly why her friend Laura had talked down to me that time outside the drugstore for being—unlike her!—a white person who was “messing with” this non-white woman’s child. Judging me like I’m an ignorant racist or just a childless neurotic fool—and now they are proven right, and can smugly nod their heads. The big barn, the big show that a kid from up here would take in stride was too much for Velvet and could only hurt her. Naturally her mother didn’t want her to compete because of course it would be threatening to her to see her daughter do something she herself could never do, something only I could offer her. And Becca’s friends plus Becca herself felt the offense of that right away because after all, they’re moms like her. I couldn’t blame Silvia; she was just protecting her daughter, and even herself, but them—how hateful, if I really am so clueless and bereft, to rub it in like that. “Playing at being a parent”—God, I wish I’d said something and not just sat there accepting it like I always do. I wish I’d said, “What are you playing at, you mad cow? Being the wounded wife? Is that your reason for acting out the aggression you’re so obviously proud of? It’s bullshit, you kicked him out before I even met him. You don’t care about that except what people think of you, the usual stupid shit: Oh, poor Becca. She’s so humiliated.”

  Of course it did occur to me that Becca was not “playing” any more than I was. That she actually had been humiliated. That she was lonely and sad even now. Even with Edie, even with all those big women around her. Of course I knew it was natural for her to dislike me; it was almost her job. But that still didn’t stop the cattywampus conversation in my head, back and forth, blaming Becca and then myself, in the house or the gym locker room or driving in the car, sometimes making me smack the steering wheel at the light. I would catch myself doing it and feel crazy and then keep doing it. Until one day I saw her alone in the diner and did it at her.

  Velvet

  I went down halls full of noise and warm food smell to her door. I knocked and when she came she was wearing a bathrobe and these big glasses all crooked on her face, but still she smiled at me and said, “Hello, child. Come in.” I did, and a cat ran out of the room; there was another skinny cat with a bad eye on the couch. “Sit down,” said Gaby. “I only have ginger ale, you want some?” I said yes, even though I don’t like ginger ale. She went out of the room and I heard a old voice asking a question and Gaby saying, “A friend, Mama.”

  I sat on the edge of the couch. The cat stared the hell out of me with its one eye. It was little like a kitten, but its face was old—its jaw was old—and both its eyes cried old greasy tears. There were no lights on and the room was getting dark, but I could see there were pictures of saints on the walls and a picture of Martin Luther King with a white president from a long time ago, their faces pressed together sideways, like they were also saints or old movie stars. Gaby came back in clothes (not her bathrobe), and carrying two big cups of ginger ale. She sat next to me and told me the electric was off, and that she would light the candles soon. I saw the candles, like the ones my mom brought home from work, they were half burned down. My mom would be missing me now.

  “You came to see me,” she said. “I’m glad. Tell me, how are you?”

  I said I was fine. The cat looked at Gaby with love in its one greasy eye.

  “I found him on the street,” she said. “Both his eyes were shut up so he was going blind, and he was looking up at people and crying on the sidewalk. I don’t know why I picked him up, but I did. I cleaned him and fed him and the one eye got better.” The old mother’s voice talked from the other room; Gaby talked back in Haitian. “My mother didn’t even want the one cat. To her animals are just dirty. So I told her I would put him out again when he got better, but I don’t have the heart. Look at his little face.”

  I thought of my mom, looking out the window and seeing I’m not there. It was already darker. I said, “Do you remember the dream you told me you had? That you told me about, where something good happened to me?”

  She looked for a minute like she didn’t know what I was talking about, but then she smiled and said she did remember. I was hoping she would talk more, but she didn’t, she just drank her ginger ale. I asked, “What was going to happen? In your dream?”

  “Child,” she said, “it was a dream. I told it to you in goodwill so you would know I wish you well from my heart. And because dreams come for a reason, even if we don’t know what it is.” She got up and began to light the candles. With her back to me she said, “Why do you ask?”

  I tried to answer, but the answer felt too big to get out in words.

  She sat down again, her eyes soft. “What is it you hope for?”

  My heart beat too fast. I said, “There’s this boy.”

  She moved her head; candle flame burned in her glasses. “Yes, a boy?”

  “He used to love me.” I put my head down to let tears run. But none came. “He used to love me and he don’t no more.” Her arm went around me. I said, “A long time ago, he stopped this other boy from…and now he—” My body went tight like I was crying but still there were no tears, only a numb thing grabbing inside, grabbing and loosing, like I was sick but with no sick coming up. “It’s okay,” she said. “It’s okay. Let it go.”

  Finally I cried, and I told her. She asked me if I let him have my body and I said no, but I would if he wanted it. She shook her head and said, “It’s too soon.” She said, “He knew that and he respected your precious body.” My tears stopped and I said, “No he didn’t. He didn’t respect nothin’.” She said, “In his actions, he did. Think how much worse you would feel now if it had been the other way.”

  I didn’t answer back to her because I didn’t want to tell her what happened. But I didn’t think I would feel worse if I’d done more. Because that way I would’ve been really with him at least.

  “He respected you,” she said. “Now you have to respect him. What he said today, put it behind you. He needs to care for this pregnant girl as best he can. Leave it be.”

  She sat back, candlelight shining from her glasses. Her cat stretched its paws to her and she touched its head. “Tell me,” she said more softly. “Is there something else that you hope?”

  I didn’t have time to tell her about the horses, and I didn’t feel like it either. So I just said there was a competition I wanted to be in but I couldn’t because my mom didn’t want me to. She said then I couldn’t do it; I couldn’t disobey my mother. I said, “I know,” and then I remembered my mom and said, “I have to go.” She said she would walk me to St. Marks. We were at her door when she asked me, “Is there a man who wants you to enter this contest? An uncle or a teacher, an older brother who might talk to your mother?” I said no, and then her mom yelled at her. She stepped away and yelled back and my phone texted at me, so I looked at it.

  It was Dominic.

  She came back and said, “What kind of competition you want to be in?” I put my phone away, but I was too messed-up to explain and it came out all wrong—she never heard of the Fresh Air Fund, so she didn’t understand about the horses, like where I went to ride them. I could see her thinking, This girl lying or loco, because I didn’t make sense, and I was smiling so stupidly even though at the same time I was afraid, because what if he was pranking me or if it wasn’t even him but Brianna, or somebody else. What if they were all gonna be pranking me?

  Then we stepped out of the building an
d my heart was wiped clean; my mom was there on the sidewalk. She didn’t see me. She was talking to people who obviously could not understand anything she said. She looked small and scared and I was going to call out when Gaby said, “Hola, Mami!” and the people stood back. “Beg pardon, Mami,” said Gaby. “I asked your daughter to help me carry some groceries home and she was good enough to take them all the way up the stairs for me.”

  This lady who cared about right and wrong lied for me and I am pretty sure my mom knew it; she usually does. But because it was in front of people, she had to accept it, and then when we walked away, she couldn’t switch out of accepting it. She didn’t say anything to me all the way home except “While you were helping the Haitian, our dinner got cold,” but not even mad. And I wasn’t mad either. She had come to find me, down the street she was scared of.

  And also, my phone was texting. I could feel it on my leg.

  Ginger

  It was rare to see her alone; I don’t think it had ever happened before. She was sitting at a table with a cup of coffee and writing in one of those decorative blank books they sell; without her usual prow-like outer focus, she appeared almost gentle. Until I said, “Becca, hello,” and she looked up, immediately going haughty and retracted, eyes not quite meeting mine.

  “Can I join you?” I asked.

  “Actually, I’m waiting for someone.”