Jodi Picoult - Harvesting the Heart

She was standing in the center of the oval-the ring-and a girl on a pony danced around her. “Transitions, Brf tÑ€†ittany,” she called. “First you’re going to take him to a trot. Squeeze him into it; don’t lean forward. Sit up, sit up, push those heels down.” The girl was leggy and small. Her hair hung in a thick blond tail from beneath the black riding helmet. I leaned against the rail where I’d stood earlier, watching the squat brown horse jaunt its way around in a circle.

My mother walked to the edge of the ring and adjusted one of the redwood rails so that it was lower to the ground. “Feel when he’s going too fast and too slow,” she yelled. “You need to ride every step. Now I want you to cross the diagonal… Keep stretching down in your heels.”

The girl steered the horse-at least I thought she did-coming out of the corner and making an X across the ring. “Okay, sitting trot,” my mother called. The girl stopped bouncing up and down and sat heavy in the saddle, wiggling a little from side to side with every step of the horse. “Half seat!” my mother called, and the girl bounced up once, freezing in the position that held her out of the saddle, hanging on to the horse’s mane for dear life. My mother saw me and waved. “Let’s cross the diagonal again, and you’re going to go right over this cavalletti,” she said. “Ride him right into the woods.” She crouched down, her voice tense and her body coiled, as if she could will the horse to do it correctly. “Eyes up, eyes up… leg, leg, leg!” The horse did a neat hop over the low rail and slowed down to a quiet walk. The little girl stretched her legs out in front of her, feet still in the stirrups. “Good girl,” my mother called, and Brittany smiled. “We can end with that.”

A woman had come up beside me. She pulled out her checkbook. “Are you taking lessons with Lily?” she asked, smiling.

I did not know how to answer. “I’m thinking about it,” I said.

The woman scrawled a signature and ripped off the check. “She’s the best there is around here.”

Brittany had dismounted, neatly sliding off the saddle. She walked up to the fence, leading the horse by the reins. My mother glanced at me, looking from my head to my shoulders to my walking shorts and sneakers. “Don’t worry about tacking Tony down,” she said. “I think I need him for another lesson.” She held out her hands for the reins and watched as Brittany and her mother disappeared up the hill toward the barn.

“My three-thirty has the flu,” she said, “so how’d you like a lesson for free?”

I thought of the horse that morning taking the jumps with the power of a locomotive, and then I looked at this little horse. It had long dark eyelashes and a white patch on its forehead in the shape of Mickey Mouse. “I don’t think so,” I said. “I’m not the type.”

“I never was, either,” my mother said. “Just try it. If you don’t feel comfortable, you can get off.” She led me toward the little redwood rail and paused, holding the horse’s reins. “If you really want to know about me, you should try riding. And if you really want me to know about you, I can learn a hell of a lot just by watching you in the saddle.”

I held the horse’s reins while my mother adjusted the stirrup lengths and pointed out the"›‹Ñ€† names of things: blanket, pad, and English saddle; bit, bridle, martingale, girth, reins. “Step on the cavalletti,” my mother said, and I looked at her blankly. “The red thing,” she said, kicking the rail with her foot. I stepped onto it with my right foot and then tucked my left foot into the stirrup. “Hang on to the mane and swing yourself over. I’m holding Tony; he isn’t going anywhere ”

I knew as soon as I was sitting that I looked ridiculous. A little girl might have looked cute on a pony, but I was a fully grown woman. I was certain my legs almost touched the ground. I might as well have been riding a burro. “You’re not going to kick him,” my mother said. “Just urge him into walking.”

I touched my foot gently to the horse’s flanks, but nothing happened. So I did it again, and the horse shot off, bouncing me from left to right until I leaned forward and wrapped my arms around its neck. “Sit up!” my mother yelled. “Sit up and pull back.” I summoned all my strength and did what she said, sighing when the horse slowed to a quiet walk that barely jogged me at all. “Never lean forward,” my mother said, smiling, “unless you’re planning to gallop.”

I listened to my mother’s calm directions, letting all the words run together and feeling the simple meter of the horse’s movements and the scratch of its hide against my bare calves. I was amazed at the power I had. If I pushed my right leg against Tony’s side, he moved to the left. If I pushed my left leg against him, he moved right. He was completely under my control.

When my mother urged the horse to a trot by clucking at him, I did what she said. I kept my shoulders, my hips, and my heels in a straight line. I posted up and down, letting the horse’s rhythm lift me out of the saddle and holding the beat until the next hoof fell. I kept my back erect and my hands quiet on Tony’s withers. I was completely out of breath when she told me to sit back and let the horse walk, and I turned to her immediately. It wasn’t until then that I saw how much I wanted her approval.

“That’s enough for today,” she said. “Your legs are going to kill you tonight.”

She held the reins while I slid out of the saddle, patting Tony on the side of his neck. “So what do you know about me now that you didn’t know before?” I asked.

My mother turned, her hands on her hips. “I know that at least twice during that half hour you pictured yourself galloping across a field. And that if you had fallen the first time Tony pulled away a little fast, you would have got right back on. I know you’re wondering what it’s like to jump, and I know that you’re more of a natural at this than you think.” She tugged on the reins so that the horse separated us. “All in all,” she said, “I can see that you are very much like me.”

It was my job to make the salad. My mother was simmering spaghetti sauce, her hands on her hips in front of the old stove. I glanced around the neat kitchen, wondering where I would find a salad bowl, tomatoes, vinegar.

“The lettuce is on the bottom shelf,” my mother said, her back to me.

Ñ€†iv height="1em" width="1em" align="justify"›I stuck my head into the refrigerator, pushing past nectarines and Bartles & Jaymes wine coolers to find the head of iceberg lettuce. My father believed you could tell a lot about people from their kitchens. I wondered what he’d have to say about this one.

I started to peel the leaves off the lettuce and rinse them in the sink, and looked up to find my mother watching me. “Don’t you core it?” she asked.

“Excuse me?”

“You know,” my mother said. “Take the core out.” She rammed the heel of the lettuce against the counter and neatly twisted it out. The lettuce fell open in a series of petals. “Your father never taught you that?” she said lightly.

My spine straightened at the criticism. No, I wanted to tell her. He was too busy doing other things. Like guaranteeing my moral conscience, and showing me how to trust other people, and letting me in on the unfair ways of the world “As a matter of fact,” I said quietly, “he did not.”

My mother shrugged and turned back to the stove. I began tearing the lettuce into a bowl, ripping it furiously into tiny pieces. I peeled a carrot and diced a tomato. Then I stopped. “Is there anything you don’t take?” I asked. My mother looked up. “In your salad, I mean.”