I was stunned. I couldn’t even think of anything to say. I never thought about boys or even my friends, outside of school.
“Don’t mind her, darling. She’s having a bad day,” Sherwin whispered, flashing his bright white teeth through his smile.
5
As I got older, people started to get more and more aggravating. Everyone had an opinion. Everyone told me what to do, or why what I did was wrong or right, for whatever reason.
I started to see adults in a new light. They were not always right, they did not always know what to do, and they did not always have the right answer. My mother was not perfect. She was no longer the confident, single parent I knew when I was younger. She was always scared and worried. She started asking me for advice. Me! I was about ten when I became her confidante.
My grandparents were narrow-minded, judgmental, and relentlessly unhappy. My father was just nuts. He insisted that everyone was out to get him and that he was the greatest thing to walk the face of the earth. I was the second best thing, because I was his daughter.
I also lost a great deal of respect for most of my teachers when I discovered they all had an answer book that went with their lectures. How could I trust a history teacher to teach me history when she didn’t know where King Tut was buried without the answer book in her hand? I started to feel alone, because I couldn’t and wouldn’t trust adults. They weren’t better or smarter than me. They were just older.
Then, finally, I met Mrs. Edwards in the fourth grade. She taught writing. She was the only black teacher in the school, and my father’s attempts at indoctrinating me with his racism failed because of her.
She was composed, she was patient, and she was smart, really smart. I knew she was brilliant, not just because she could recite lines from the books we read from memory, nor because she was impressively eloquent. She was intelligent because no matter what opinion I articulated in class, she had a seemingly magical skill of molding it to whatever she wanted. I had never before met someone who could take hold of my thoughts and manipulate them as she wished. My father tried, but he was too obvious about it. Mrs. Edwards had finesse. She was graceful and elegant. I was fascinated by her ability to lead my mind in any direction she wanted, like it belonged to her instead of me. That didn’t mean I gave in to her. On the contrary, I tried harder and harder to resist her mind control and actually persuade her to agree with me. What set Mrs. Edwards apart from most adults is that she invited my challenges. She forced me to think, rather than memorize.
I once engaged her in a debate (or she engaged me, I still don’t know who started it), which was a great thrill for me, because I felt like I was able to challenge an intellectual.
“You know, kids, my teenage daughter insists that I not go into her room, which I think is ridiculous, since it’s my house she’s living in,” she vented.
“But Mrs. Edwards, you yourself just said it was her room,” I argued.
“Yeah, so?” she continued.
“Well, if it’s her room, doesn’t she get to say who’s allowed in or out?” I persisted.
“No, because I own the whole house, and that room is one of the rooms in the house that I own. Therefore, I own that room too, and since it’s mine, I should be able to determine who is allowed in or out,” she clarified.
“But you keep calling it her room. That means you know it’s not your room. So, since you know it’s not your room, and you even call it her room, it really belongs to her, and she should be able to do whatever she wants with it.” I didn’t really feel argumentative; I just thought she was wrong and I felt like she needed to know.
She smiled and proceeded with the lesson of the day.
__________
In school, I had made two really good friends, Hanna and Sabrina. Both were outgoing, social, and smart, and we had a lot of fun. We ate lunch together every day except every other Wednesday. For some reason, the school enrolled Sabrina, me, my little sister, and a few other students in a lunchtime seminar with the guidance counselor, to talk about divorce. I had been grateful to have school as an escape from my home life, so I really resented how divorce now followed me to school. I never really had much to say about divorce, and didn’t feel like I was being deprived of anything, so I wasn’t terribly interested in sharing my story.
I was stunned when, in one of the lunch sessions, Sabrina suddenly broke down and started sobbing, as she was talking about her father. I had no idea what to say. She was my friend, so it was my job to soothe her, but I had nothing comforting to say. All I could do was pet her hair as I wondered, what’s the big deal? Isn’t everyone better off with their father out of the house? Why is she crying?
Either there’s something really wrong with me, or really wrong with her, I thought to myself as I walked home with my sister that afternoon. I was nowhere near as upset by divorce as she was. It’s got to be her, I concluded.
6
Tango. I knew he was special from the moment he burst out of the horse trailer, like an over-amped boxer ready for the ring. He hopped back and forth, as if waiting for the perfect opportunity to throw out the first jab. Every signal he gave was a clear “stay away from me,” but everything about him drew me in.
First, he didn’t seem threatening, as he wasn’t a large horse. He was unlike any horse I had ever seen, as his dark brown body contrasted with a bright blond mane and tail. Bright blond hair on a dark horse! It just never happens. He was the most exotic horse I had ever seen. Everything about him was stunning. His yellow hair slashed the air with every furious toss of his head. He reared up and struck out with his front legs at whoever approached him. I stood just a few feet away from him, mesmerized.
“You’re riding this one until he’s calm enough for trail riders,” Leslie told me, as she wrestled him from his handler and struggled to get him into the barn.
Yes! My heart leaped at the thought that he would be mine, even if just temporarily, but I coolly responded, “OK.” Still, I couldn’t control the huge smile that took over my face.
Tango had an attitude, even with me. He wasn’t dangerous to ride. He was just annoying most of the time. He was disobedient and pretty much did whatever he wanted, whenever he felt like it. If he tired of trotting, he stopped in the middle of the arena. When I kicked him, he went backward instead of forward. I was more like an ornament on his back than his rider. But after a few weeks of lessons with Mandy, Leslie’s best trainer, second only to Leslie, I got the green light to ride Tango outside.
I first took Tango out on the trails with a large group, about ten horse and rider pairs, under Mandy’s supervision. I managed to keep him under control through the hour-long ride, until the final stretch, when we let the horses canter. As soon as the horse in front of me disappeared around the bend, I squeezed Tango’s side with my right leg, to cue him to pick up the left lead canter. He exploded into the gait. I wrapped my hands and reins in his mane, just as Mom told me she used to do with crazy horses.
Suddenly, I found myself crouched low in the saddle, in the half-seat position, giving the horse the green light to go faster. I knew I should have sat back and slowed him down, but I couldn’t help myself. I wanted to fly just as much as he did.
As soon as I leaned into half-seat position, his body flattened, and we were galloping through the trail. The ends of his long yellow mane tickled my face, and the wind forced me to squint my eyes, but this ride was like no other. I felt alive, awake, free. Even though I was sitting on a runaway horse tearing through the woods, this ride was nothing like my first riding experience. I wasn’t completely in control now, either, but I was much older, almost eleven years old. This time, there was no fear, only exhilaration. I had been riding many hyper horses at Leslie’s for the past year and a half, so I knew I could handle Tango. But beyond that, I trusted him. So I let him go. I inched my hands forward to let his head extend and his body stretch in the run. Even thoug
h I was totally out of control, I had never felt so united with a horse; we were one. We took the same breath, we moved with the same purpose. Then I saw the huge puddle that spanned across the entire bridle path.
“OK, buddy, let’s see if you jump,” I whispered in his ears. Suddenly, my sure-footed powerhouse seemed unsteady and when his ears pricked forward at the sight of the puddle, he wavered. In one moment, he was heading straight for the middle of the puddle, but in the next moment, he seemed to head to the outside of it. He didn’t know where to go, and I wasn’t sure where to go, either.
But just as we were one stride in front of the seven-foot puddle, his hind legs slammed into the earth, catapulting us both over the hurdle. And then we were flying. Everything stopped. I couldn’t hear, breathe, smell, feel . . . nothing. The world was on mute. It was like hitting pause during a movie. Then, when he landed, I realized I was no longer holding the reins—they were tangled around his ears!
Holy crap! If Leslie sees me galloping without reins, I’ll be in so much trouble! I panicked. I need to stop him before we clear the bend, and get to the clearing where everyone else is waiting.
I couldn’t grab hold of the reins; they were too far from my reach.
How am I going to stop without any reins? I hope he doesn’t crash into one of the other horses!
I knew the best way to stop an out of control horse was to turn him, but since I didn’t have my reins, I tried to use my body to turn, shifting all my weight to the right. I grabbed a big chunk of his mane, and pulled back, like I would have on the reins. It worked! He stopped right in front of a tree, nowhere near any of the other trail riders. But Leslie saw it all.
“Victoria!” I heard the anger already in her voice. “You had no reins!” she roared.
“Yeah, sorry,” I mumbled.
“Yeah, sorry?” she mimicked. “You are not allowed out on the trails with that horse anymore until you can control him!”
“OK,” I said, accepting my punishment.
She then turned in a huff and trotted away on her horse.
We were grounded. We had to work on his training in the indoor arena until he was obedient enough to go out on the trails again. Mandy gave us more lessons.
__________
In one of our lessons, Tango started prancing. He seemed to tense up every muscle in his body, coil his now muscular neck so that his nose was practically in his chest, and gather his front legs close to his hind legs. I could feel he was building up the power to bound forward at any moment. It was as if his body was an accordion, compressing each end. Since I had never experienced anything like this, I asked Mandy what he was doing. I was fascinated by the lightness in the reins and the energy building behind me. It was as if I were sitting in an airplane, and the more power that the engine generated in the back, the higher the plane would rise in the front. I sensed that if I gave him the slightest hint that I wanted to go, the energy in his hindquarters would slingshot us forward.
Oh, that’s why he took off, I realized, remembering when he took off with me in the woods. I leaned forward and gave him the reins! I felt enlightened.
And yet, here, in the indoor ring, as long as I sat straight and kept some contact with the reins, it was like sitting on an idling engine that was ready to go at the first cue.
“It’s this sport called dressage, where the horses do prancing movements,” Mandy explained.
“Do you know dressage?” I inquired.
“Yeah, a little,” Maureen replied.
“Can you teach me?” I asked.
“I have to ask Leslie first.”
__________
After Leslie approved, we began working on the dressage that Tango knew.
“The prancing thing he does is called piaffe. That’s when they trot in place,” Mandy explained.
Wow, I thought, trotting in place . . . how does that even happen?
“You don’t want to do any jumping?” she asked.
“Why? All we ever do is just make the jumps higher. That’s not as fun as this stuff. It’s kind of like he’s dancing, which is way cooler than jumping fences,” I reasoned.
When my mother picked me up at the end of the day, I asked her, “Hey Mom, ever heard of dressage?”
“Yes,” she smiled slowly, as if I had just discovered a precious secret, “dressage is like dancing with a horse. It is the most elegant sport. Me, I was too stupid as a kid to understand it; I always preferred the excitement of jumping. But I did compete in dressage at the highest levels for two years in Romania, after I broke my collarbone.”
“You broke your collarbone?” I asked.
“Yes, at the National Jumping Championships in Romania. The horse, she fell into the jump and got her legs tangled in the poles. It was bad, she died at that show.”
“I’m sorry, Mom. Was she your favorite?” I asked, knowing I would be devastated if anything happened to Tango or any of my other favorites.
“No, she was just assigned to me for that show by the army. But I was very sad . . .”
“Wait, you were in the army?” I interrupted.
“No, I just rode on the army team. They had a stable open to the public, like Leslie. So if you wanted to ride and compete, you had to wear the army uniform.”
“Oh,” I said, intrigued about this other life my mother had led. She was apparently more than just a dentist.
“Anyway, the doctors said not to get on a horse for a year. So I started riding dressage two months later. I have a good book on dressage, you want to read it?”
“Yes!” I exclaimed.
As soon as we got home, she gave me the book and I was immediately intrigued by the cover. It had a picture of a proud Olympian astride her elegant horse, executing an advanced dressage movement called the passage, a highly elevated trot.
That picture spoke to me on so many levels. For one, I could tell she had the same lightness in the reins as I had with Tango when he was doing his prancing thing. I could envision his hind legs pushing his body off the ground, and imagined how lofty it would look in real life.
I skimmed through the 250-page book in an hour and then started again, slowly, from the beginning. The next day, I asked Mandy to teach me all of the dressage movements I had read about.
“Well, I don’t know everything, kid, but I’ll teach you what I do know.”
That was good enough for me. I felt privileged to ride Tango, and was eager to learn how to dance with my horse.
7
Even though I was at the barn all day every Saturday and Sunday, the weeks grew longer and longer. Five days without riding was too long! So my mother let me go riding on Wednesdays too, after school. I was delighted.
Since I had a regular presence at the barn, I had become friendly with all of its different sets of visitors. I was friendly with the Saturday morning crowd, the Saturday afternoon crowd, the Sunday crowd, the Wednesday night crowd, and the staff.
The end of the cold winter was punctuated by my twelfth birthday. It had fallen on a Sunday, and I could think of no better way to spend the day than to be at the barn all day. Even though it was the end of March, it was frigid and snowy, so most of the regular trail riders skipped that day of riding. But all of those horses still needed to be exercised, so I got to ride more horses than usual. By the end of the day, I was physically cold but my heart was warmed with contentment, having spent my birthday doing exactly what I wanted—riding.
Then, as I was sweeping the barn floor at the end of the day, Mandy called me into the office. Only the staff were allowed in the office, which made the invitation to the perpetually off-limits room all the more intriguing. I set down the broom and walked over to the office, noticing that I was the only one in the barn, a strange sight on a Sunday afternoon.
As I turned the doorknob and slowly pushed the door forward, I heard “SURPRISE!” I froze. Ev
eryone was there! I was too overwhelmed to say anything, and luckily everyone began singing the “Happy Birthday” song. I looked around the room, filled with my favorite people: most of the staff, some of the most dedicated, regular trail riders, my mother, and even Leslie. Mandy came to me with a box full of ice cream cones decorated with smiley faces. They even knew I preferred ice cream to cake!
At the end of the song, they all exclaimed, “Happy Birthday, Victoria!” in unison.
“Wow, thank you,” was all I could muster, overwhelmed by all of the attention.
“Dig in, kiddo!” Mandy encouraged, and she lowered the box of ice cream to me.
“No, wait! Before she gets ice cream all over herself . . .” Leslie said from the back, coming toward me with another, larger box.
Mandy stepped aside, and Leslie took her place in front of me, lowering another big box. This one was wrapped with a beautiful, huge white bow.
I stared, not expecting any of this, and not quite sure what to do.
“Well, don’t you want to see your present?” Leslie asked.
“Yes, thanks,” I mumbled as I took the box from her. It was large, but light. I wondered what it could be as I carefully undid the wrapping, so as not to tear the paper—I wanted to save it.
“Just rip it!” someone urged. I looked up and was met with multiple sets of eyes.
Leslie crouched in front of me, with her back to the crowd, and helped me unwrap it on the floor.
Once I had taken off the wrapping paper, I admired the big, blank white box, just touched that they had bought me a present. And birthday ice cream cones. How did they even know? Why had they gone through all this trouble?
“Open it already!” someone else shrieked.
“Just give her a minute!” Leslie hissed, spinning toward the offending voice.
The Tale of the Dancing Slaughter Horse Page 3