Mary Gaitskill - The Mare

—

The second week I was there I got to ride a bigger horse, a boy. Pat said that normally, she would wait till I’d had more lessons, but that I was doing so good I could ride him sooner. His name was Joker and he was light brown with white socks. He looked a lot stronger than Reesa, and he lifted his feet higher when he walked. I was scared to ride him and that made me want to ride him even more.

I came early and went to talk to Fugly Girl. Pat pretended not to see me leaning right up against the door of her stall. The horse came to me and stretched her head out like she wanted some apple, but when she saw I didn’t have anything, she stayed still and licked her stall, like thoughtfully. I asked her if I could touch her nose for courage. She looked down like, Oh, all right —and flared it open; quickly I kissed it. Then I knew I could handle Joker.

Except I couldn’t. He wouldn’t do anything I said. He would stop and he would go, but not when I asked. He moved too fast for me and he wouldn’t go in the direction I wanted. Pat was getting on my nerves, saying dumb things about sticking my chest out like Dolly-somebody. Either that or telling me to do things I couldn’t do.

“Focus your mind,” she said. “Pick a direction, pick a spot right there on that fence, then look at it. He’ll feel your intention, but you have to mean it.”

I tried and it seemed like it almost worked.

“Do it again,” said Pat. Her voice was starting to sound mean. Joker walked toward the barn while I tried to turn him. Pat said, “You have a little brother, right? When he was three years old and he was doing something he wasn’t supposed to do, what did you do?”

“Hit him,” I said.

“You don’t want to try that with Joker. Was there anything else you did besides hit?”

“Pick him up and move him.”

“Then do it. That horse is just like a three-year-old. Pick him up and move him !”

And I did it. I picked him up with my legs and I moved him with my butt. I did it before I even picked a spot. I could feel it happening, and then I saw Ginger. She was walking toward us, smiling. I saw she had her camera again. I looked at her and Joker went to her. It wasn’t what I told him, but when he did it, I tapped him and made him go faster. And when I did, all of a sudden I didn’t see Ginger, I saw my mother. Not really — it was Ginger standing there. But it felt like my mother, my mother smiling at me, more than she ever really did. Then it was just Ginger again, and it felt like I was running to her, not the horse but me, on my own legs. And she was taking my picture and telling me I looked like a movie star.

—

I decided I would put the tiny flower ring on the blond key-chain doll with the checked coat. It would be like having Ginger in my box.

That day was the first time it looked like she was really riding a horse. It wasn’t because it was trotting — I’d seen her on the white horse when it was trotting. But then, she was just on the white horse and it was trotting. She was riding that big brown horse; even I could see the difference.

The lesson was over then, and I went with them into the barn. I stood to the side and watched Velvet secure the horse in the middle of the barn and begin to groom it. The way she moved was very different from the way she moved around the house; there was no deference or absentmindedness in her, just purpose. She looked bigger, stronger, and completely comfortable with the huge animal. “She’s a natural,” said Pat. “It takes most kids twice as many lessons to get where she got today. Too bad she’s leaving next week.”

That night they both sat on the bed and read to me like always. The witch had hypnotized this boy by giving him too much candy, and it made him bad so that he went over to the witch’s side against his family. They took turns reading and their voices made me think about my mom, singing at night: The little chicks say “pio pio pio” when they are hungry, when they are too cold to sleep. The mother looks for corn and wheat, she gives them food to eat. She sang that to my brother at night before we slept. She sang to him, with her back to me. Once I asked her to sing to me too, and she said, “You’re too old for that!” But she didn’t sing to me when I was young either. Still, I listened to the singing, and she knew I listened. Safe under mama’s wings, huddling up, sleep the little chicks until the next day.

I tried to stop thinking and pay attention to the story. But I couldn’t. I missed my mom. I missed lying next to her and hearing her. I tried to think of how I would tell her about all the things that had happened — Ginger, riding Joker, Pat, the purple-haired girl, Beverly, and Fugly Girl. But I just pictured her getting mad and finding some reason to call me stupid. I tried to look at Ginger and see my mom, like what happened when I was on Joker. But how could I see my mom reading? She didn’t know how to read, even in Spanish. Right then, Ginger looked up and smiled at me. And I wondered what it would be like to live with her instead of my mom. Some of the time.

I tried to pay attention to the story again. The witch had locked the boy up and his family was trying to save him. I didn’t care. I was sad. I closed my eyes so Ginger and Paul wouldn’t see.

After we put her to bed — she looked at me so longingly, her golden eyes slowly and heavily closing — I talked with Paul about keeping her longer. “We can’t,” he said. “It’s time for her to go back.”

We were sitting at the kitchen table, the little red Formica table I’d moved from my East Village studio, drinking soda from juice jars. I told him about the way she was on the brown horse. “She needs more of this,” I said.

“Do you mean you need more?”

“I want more, I don’t need it. But so what if I did?” My voice went from soft to sharp back to soft. “What’s wrong with satisfying a mutual need?”

“Nothing, if you’re talking about people in an equal position. But you aren’t. She’s a disadvantaged child. She has needs you can’t satisfy. It’s unfair to act like you can. And—”

“I can get her horse-riding lessons.”

“—you have needs she can’t satisfy. And I thought this was supposed to be maybe a first step toward adoption.”

We both took drinks; he put his glass down too hard and looked away. He was mad, and so was I, but why?

“Do you even know she wants to stay longer?”

“Yes. If it weren’t for the horses I wouldn’t say that. But you didn’t see her on that horse.”

He looked doubtful.

“What if the organization agrees to it?” I asked. “Would that make you feel better?”

“Maybe,” he said. “Though I doubt they will. At least not on their insurance.”

I dreamed that I woke up and it was day, but only for me; that it was light for me and dark for Paul and Ginger and they were sleeping. I got up and walked through their house, looking at everything: the fruit in the bowls, the colored curtains, the paintings and tiny giraffe toys on the windowsill. I went out into their yard and looked at Paul’s garden; in the plants and flowers I saw a trapdoor, and I knew that it was the door to hell. I was scared, but then I realized that my grandfather was there, in the backyard. Don’t be afraid, he said. The devil isn’t paying attention — now is your chance. I’ll guard the door.

“Grandfather,” I said. “Why are you telling me to go to hell?”

Because someone you love is there and she is in danger of being lost.