“Oh. I just wanted to say thanks for the invitation to Spindletop. Very nice place.”
“Actually, it was Joan who—”
“Yeah, I know, but I’m just saying it was nice. Although it didn’t go all that well for her there.”
“Oh, here’s Laura!” Her expression went from discomfort to warm and welcoming as she tracked her friend’s pleased scarf-flapping, cute-little-bell-on-the-door-ringing entry.
“Oh, hi, Ginger,” said Laura. “Do you mind?”
Meaning, Get out of my way; you’re blocking my seat. And I did mind.
“How are you?” gushed Becca as Laura squeezed past me.
“I’m not sure why it didn’t go well,” I said. “But she seemed pretty upset when she came back.”
“What are we talking about?” Laura asked Becca.
“Velvet,” I said.
“Who?”
“You know, the girl from the culture I know nothing about, but who I’m messing with anyway.”
They stared at me. A middle-aged waitress with stalwart eyes came dragging a bad foot in an Ace bandage. “Are we two or three?” she asked.
They answered together: “Two!”
“Two it is,” said the waitress and left with the extra laminated menu she’d brought just in case.
“Ginger—” said Becca.
“I’m going,” I said. “And by the way, I wasn’t kidding. You did say that, Laura, that I was messing with somebody else’s kid.”
“I don’t remember.”
“I’m sure you don’t. And I’m sure, Becca, that you don’t remember saying to me that I’m playing—”
“This is inappropriate,” said Laura.
I flushed. “Inappropriate? Well, I don’t think it was appropriate to tell me I’m messing with a child I love when you don’t know anything about it. Or to tell me I’m ‘playing at being a parent.’ ”
From the look on Becca’s face, she did remember.
“I understand why you don’t like me, and I’m sorry. But you had no right to talk that way to me. You don’t know me.”
“If you don’t like the way we talk, then don’t force your company on us and needlessly make a scene,” said Laura.
“A scene? This is your idea of a scene?” My laugh was empty, and I reddened at the sound of it. “You really are an awful woman—both of you.” And I left red-faced and trembling, but also glad, glad that I finally said something, even if it was weak. That at least I didn’t just let them treat me like shit again.
But I guess I didn’t look glad because when I got home and Paul saw me he said, “Ginger, what’s wrong?” and he even sounded like he cared.
“Nothing’s wrong,” I said. “I just told Becca and Laura they’ve been total bitches to me and that it’s ‘inappropriate,’ to use their repulsive language.”
For a second he looked scared—that was good—but then he put his head in his hand and shook it, like this was just too idiotic to comment on. And I slapped him. I slapped the shit out of him. One, for politely looking the other way while Becca insulted me for years; two, for undermining my relationship with Velvet; three, for being an asshole generally; and four—ooh, let’s not forget—for cheating. When I stopped, I expected him to start with AA crap, and that made me start looking around for something besides my hand—but he didn’t. He stood there holding his face and looking at me like he’d just woken up.
I looked back thinking: Finally the glass is broken. Thank you, Michael. Thank you and fuck you.
Velvet
He texted me that he wanted to see me. He wanted to see me away from Brooklyn so nobody would know. He said just one last time, because it should not end with that disrespect or an apology on text. I said, “How do I even know it’s you?” Right away he typed back, “Wherefore art thou?” He said meet him at Riverbank Park up near Washington Heights. He said “plz.”
So he picked a time after school, but I didn’t go to school. I took the train into Manhattan and went to Penn Station, where I always met Ginger. I bought a Krispy Kreme donut and a soda and stood eating it because to sit you had to show your ticket to a guard who was keeping homeless people out. I looked at the covers of magazines and at the people like me and the people like Ginger walking past each other. I could walk down the stairs and ride through a tunnel to get to my mare and to the house with the blue and white diamond floor.
Instead I paid my last money to see a movie with J. Lo in it, except she got pregnant in like the first five minutes and then died and it was all about white people. I wondered if maybe it was luck to see a movie where a pregnant girl died and then she was just gone. I knew that was evil to think, but what a weird thing in a movie. Then I don’t remember what else I did until I came off the subway at 145th Street. He said to text him so he could wait there for me and he did. He looked nervous and embarrassed. I was not embarrassed and I was not nervous.
We went to a place by the water. The same water I saw out the train window when I went to see Ginger. He said, “I come here by myself to think.”
I said, “It’s nice.”
We sat on a bench. It was still cold, so not many people were out. The water was blinking and bright in flipped-up pieces. We looked at it and he said, “So you gonna be in a competition on the horse?”
The way he looked at me in front of Brianna’s girls. His voice saying Awesome sarcastically. “No,” I said. “I’m not.”
He looked at me quick and then away. “Why not?”
“My mom won’t let me,” I said.
“Oh.”
I said, “So why—” at the same time he said, “You know—” Then he said, “I didn’t mean what I said in front a them.”
“Then why’d you say it?”
“I told you I couldn’t be with you. I know I shouldn’t’ve let nothin’ happen, but—” He sat forward with his arms on his legs. The water pushed and pulled, bright and dark like eyes. People went past. A lady smiled.
“But what?” I said finally.
“I had feelings for you.”
Had. “Then why you—”
“Because feelings by themself ain’t what matters.”
“You had feelings for me but it don’t matter?”
“That ain’t what I said!” He got up and I did too. He walked to the water and came back. He came close and I thought he would touch me; I could feel he wanted to. “Just, if you feel one way and what’s right is the other way, you gotta do what’s right, even if—”
“You made me come all the way out here to say that shit?”
He sat down. “To say I’m sorry. I ain’t gonna be able to say it no other time.”
I knew what he meant. That he would see me on the street and act like he didn’t know me. Even if he had feelings. I said, “You a asshole. You say you love me just so you could get away from the police and—” Get your dick sucked; even to think it made me feel like shit. My face flashed hot, and I looked down to hide it.
“You know that ain’t true. You know it. I wouldn’t be here if that was true. I wouldn’t never have come to see you and told you about Brianna. I wouldn’t never showed you—”
And he took his Romeo picture out of his pocket. My body shut off; my face went cold. I snatched the picture and tore it in two. His face fell and he stood up. “It don’t matter,” he said. “I was gonna give it to you anyway.”
“I don’t want it.”
I didn’t feel wind, but the torn picture was moving anyway. He said, “A’ight, then.” And stood up and walked away. I covered my heart with my hands, like it might cry out. And maybe it did because all of a sudden he stopped. He turned around and came close enough for me to hear him. He said, “You don’t have to worry about Brianna’s girls. They ain’t gonna bother you.” He went to go again but then turned back again and said, “And also I’m sorry you ain’t gonna be in the competition. ’Cause I think you’d win.” Then he turned around and left for good. I watched him until he was all the way gone. Then I
picked up the pieces of his picture and kissed it and held it to me.
Ginger
“Never again will a disaster of this nature be handled in the terrible and disgraceful way that it was handled.”
I sat in the dark watching last years’s footage of John McCain talking outside a church in New Orleans. Fast forward to now: there’s still crap from broken houses on the sidewalks, and signs for mold removal on telephone poles. What will Obama do?
Paul was cooking in the kitchen, making pasta with the swordfish from last night. I was drinking wine, but he didn’t dare say anything. The night I slapped him we did it for the first time in months; he was not going to say anything. Yet.
The phone rang and I got up slowly. Last year, of course, the house defied the president, preventing the administration from cutting federal spending for the poor. Halfway up the stairs, I heard Velvet’s voice come on the machine; the poor, my poor, my poor kid. I thought of her friend, the cruel child in the see-through shirt—Strawberry—stranded on her roof with rising water all around. When I got upstairs, her voice was saying something about her mother changing her mind; I grabbed the phone.
“Changed her mind about what?”
“About the competition. She says I can do it.”
“That’s so great,” I said. “Why did she change her mind?”
“Ah dunno. She’s just like that sometimes…”
“You don’t sound happy.”
“I am.”
For a strange and active moment I felt my house close around me—water pipes and wires and slow-speaking wood with insects living in it, wallpaper and rugs and furniture, emotions and odors, the air beating with thoughts—and all of it, all of me so far away from the girl on the other end of the phone, even though she had slept and ate and cried here.
Downstairs Paul went, “Ginger?”
“You don’t sound happy,” she said, and I felt it coming from her side too: her apartment, her family, her friends, the street outside—the things she never told me but that I could feel in the warm electronic phone dark where the voice is tactile and subtle as an animal.
“I am really happy that you’re going to do it,” I said. “Your mom needs to sign the permission though, like now.”
“You can send it, she’ll sign.”
“That’s great. Is she going to come?”
“Ginger, dinner’s ready.”
She said yes, in the smiling voice she used for lying, and I believed it for the same reason she told it; because believing made the good thing real for a second.
Velvet
On the weekend before the competition, Pat talked to me about what it would be like, the busy parking lot, the horse traffic, the trailers. I didn’t tell her I already knew what it would be like, and that I was sending pictures of parking lots and people on carts to my horse every time I put her away for the night.
“You’ve got an advantage because this mare does know how to compete, and she’s probably got a taste for it. But you’ve got a disadvantage too, because her form of competition was racing, not show jumping. You have to keep hold of her, keep her steady and following your instruction so she doesn’t just decide to start racing. Use her impulse for speed, but control it. And remember, she’s sensitive. Loud noises, unexpected movement, anything unexpected could spook her—keep on top of it, keep her steady, take care of her. You’re also sensitive, and this will be new to you. You can’t spook. You’ve got to be in charge, and give her confidence and comfort, all the way.”
Confidence and comfort; she said those words like they were deep, and for me they were. All weekend, when I groomed my mare and tacked her, I would think those words, through my hands to her. And when we were done and I would wash her, I would also think the words that Gaby said to me: He respected your precious body. She had said that about Dominic, but I didn’t think about him. I thought your precious body through my hands to the mare. For confidence and comfort.
I thought those words too when I lay on my couch the night before I went upstate for the competition, but they only helped me fall half asleep; all this other mind-noise kept coming up underneath the words and then real noise from outside. I wanted confidence and comfort and I could not find it. How would I give it to my mare? I tried to talk to my grandfather, but he didn’t answer. I listened to the noise from outside: music, cars, and voices—and all of a sudden I remembered something Cookie said forever ago. He said, “I ain’t havin’ a good time. But I am havin’ a time!” That made me smile, and for some reason I finally got calm.
But I only slept two hours, then got up crazy awake, still thinking about Cookie. I went and got my horseshoe from a long time ago; I took it outside and put it under where Cookie’s name was written. I put it where nobody would see it and take it, behind the bars of this boarded-up window. I don’t know why but it seemed like good luck to do that. When I came back inside my mom looked at me like she knew something was going on, but she didn’t know what. I never told her what day the event was and she never saw the paper come because I got it from the box and signed her name and sent it back. But I usually never ask for a doobie wrap to go upstate and I don’t usually pack my best silky top with gold rings holding the sides together. She knew something and so she picked a fight—like I come out of the bathroom wearing my silky top and she’s, “You want to flash your body even up in that sleepy little town? I think those girls there hate you too.” All during breakfast and then while I packed my bag she was looking and knowing but not knowing what was up, and going, “How does somebody so scrawny also have a muffin top?” or “You know, I’m going to let you wear that so you’ll see for yourself how they laugh at you.”
I held back and didn’t even look mad at her because she might say I couldn’t go, even though she said she was glad I was going because at least I wouldn’t be fighting or running down the street to flirt with gangbangers, except why was I wearing that top? Was I looking for boys up there too? And finally it came out of me: “You are crazy, why do you hate me so much? Why did you even birth me? Why don’t you call Ginger and ask if I ever even talk to a boy there?” I went into the bathroom with a sweatshirt and came back with it on and threw my good shirt on the couch, which made her yell at me to pick it up.
“Do you even know me?” I said. “I don’t care about boys. I go to ride. I’m the best one there, and if I would ride in the competition, I would win!”
My mom’s eyes went like prey bird eyes; no feeling, all sight. The TV noise went way up. “Why talk about that, stupid? You told me you didn’t want to do that.”
“You didn’t want me to so I didn’t because—” Because I felt broken.
“Because I don’t want to see you crippled doing something you can’t do! Now pick up that—”
“I could do it if you let me. Everybody else says I could win!” And then I realized I am not.
She did not go for her belt; she was in too big a hurry. She just took off her shoe and turned her arm into a belt.
Ginger
Right before she came, I saw Becca with Edie at the store. That never happened before, not both of them together. It was pretty awkward; usually when we saw each other, we’d nod only if she couldn’t avoid it. If Edie hadn’t been there this time I don’t even think it would’ve been that polite. But she was there, in the checkout line, meaning Becca was trapped, her body automatically doing its big and important thing while her head looked away, like it was for some reason dawning on her what a gross bitch she’d been all her life. Part of me wanted to make nice; part of me wanted to insult her for real. Since I could do neither, I was prepared to stroll on by, but Edie popped out and said, “Hi! Is Velvet here?”
Was she furious at her mom? Or did she just not know what had happened? “Yeah,” I said. “She’s riding in a competition at Grace Meadow tomorrow.” I saw Becca’s head come up slightly at the mention of the place.
“Awesome! I was so sorry I missed the other one, this time I’ll come; when is it?”
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“Tomorrow, starting noon. It would mean so much for her to see you.”
“Awww!”
The skinny old cashier (gentle faded eyes, big moles) looked up mid-bag, smiling at the affectionate sound. Becca loaded the belt.
“I even think her mom is coming.”
Edie did the awww again. Finally her mother turned to look at me, her expression unreadable. Her daughter said, “You should come too, Mom. It’ll be fun.”
Velvet
She hit me with her shoe, panting so hard spit flew. I hit too, I cried and hit wild, just to keep her off, to keep her words out of me with knife words of my own.
“Why are you so proud? Why do you think you’re so special?”
“Because I don’t think I’m shit? Because I don’t want to think I’m shit? Ginger doesn’t think I’m shit, Pat doesn’t think it, only you, my own mother!”
“Ginger?” She laughed and instead of hitting me, she hit herself, both hands on her face, then me, and then herself again. “Maldita, malcriada! What did I do to make you like this? God help me, what do I need to do to stop you?”
“You’ve already stopped me, you don’t do anything but stop me!”
“Maybe when you’re crippled by that horse you’ll learn!”
Like a machine that cried tears, I closed my bag up. Crying machine tears, I dragged it down the hall. My mom shouted after me, “At least when you’re in a wheelchair, you’ll—”
But I was gone.
Ginger
Awww! How do people make this simple noise into such a repulsive mix of real and false, the false mocking the real for the two seconds they rub together, throwing it into high relief that way?
Still, it affected me, the way Becca looked at me; she had never looked at me that way. And then the cashier, smiling to hear that someone’s mom was coming, that she was “even” coming, meaning that she usually wouldn’t, but that now, now—
“I don’t think she’s coming,” said Velvet.
The Mare Page 33