Mary Gaitskill - The Mare

“Stay back, Velvet,” said Pat, all quiet.

“She thinks she’s the damn ‘horse whisperer,’ ” said Gare.

“Whisper-ess,” said the boy. “Whisper-ass!”

Pat threw them a look over Fugly’s back. But she kept going.

I didn’t look at Gare. I said, “I do not know what you are talking about.”

“Yeah you do.”

“Why does a Mexican kid walk around like she owns the place?” yelled the boy.

Gare said, “The way you act with that horse, and you don’t even know shit about horses, like, that’s dangerous.”

The boy yelled, “Because her father built it and her mother cleans it!”

And Gare said, “You’re gonna get deported outta this barn if you keep that up— word. ”

I was in the kitchen getting a pork roast ready to cook when I heard her come in the front door. She came in fast, running up the stairs, and then there was a heavy thud through the floor on the other side of the house. Paul came in from his studio and started to say something; there was a crash. “Uh-oh,” he said, and then we heard her scream.

“Velvet?” he yelled. There was silence, but it was humming.

“I’ll go,” I said to him, and on the stairs, I shouted up, “What is it?” She didn’t answer. When I came in, she was sitting on the bed crying quietly and angrily. The covers were all but twisted off, and the bedside lamp was broken on the floor; she threw herself backward, staring, but not at me.

I sat on the bed. “Honey,” I said, “what is it?”

She didn’t say anything. I heard Paul coming up the stairs. With a hard, embarrassed motion, Velvet wiped the tears from her eyes.

Paul sat on the bed with us. He was calm, and that gave him authority. “Velvet,” he said. “Did somebody do something to you?”

She reacted to his authority; she collected herself. “That girl,” she said. “That girl in the barn? She basically called me a illegal. Her and that stupid boy. He said he’s gonna tell Pat I talk to my horse and give her apples, and they gonna send me home.”

“That’s crap; they’re just being hateful,” I said. “I’ll talk to Pat. She might scold you, but nobody’s gonna send you anywhere.”

She wiped her eyes again and stopped crying, though she was still not looking at us. We sat with her, feeling shame. At least I did. Her hurt felt too private for us to look at. Paul must’ve felt that too, because he said, “Do you want to call your mom?”

She sat up. “No,” she said. She wiped her face. “She wouldn’t care. She would just laugh.” She said this like an adult would, resigned.

We sat for a long minute. Then I said, “Do you want me to brush your hair?” She nodded. I went and got her brush from the dresser. She sat with her back to me. I smoothed her hair with my hand first, getting at the big tangles with my fingers. Then I went to work with the brush. I could feel her concentrating on the sensation, letting it relax her. I could feel Paul near me; I could feel him relaxing too.

“I hate that girl. She was rude to me from the first day. The boy’s too stupid to hate.” She spoke quietly. “But that girl, I’d like to cut her tongue out.”

Paul wiped his nose. He got up and left the room.

“Did you do anything to her? I mean after she said it?” I asked. “Hit her or anything?”

“No. I didn’t because if I started, I woulda smashed in her face.”

“Good. I’m proud of you for holding back. Not because I care about her. I don’t. But because it would’ve been worse for you.”

I kept brushing her hair. The hard, clean waves of her anger entered my body; I remembered what it was like to feel that way, and it felt good, right, to feel it so purely. I began to sing softly as I brushed her hair, a song I remembered from childhood: Roses love sunshine, violets love dew. Angels in heaven know I love you.

Paul came in with a broom and began sweeping up the broken lamp. I kept on.

Know I love you dear, know I love you. Angels in heaven know I love you. And then I couldn’t remember the rest, so I just sang “La la la la” to the tune of it, still combing her hair, even though it was smooth now and untangled.

Yes, Velvet was a lovely kid. Watching Ginger brushing her hair and singing to her moved me in a different way than I had felt before in my first marriage, made my reservations seem stingy, selfish; Becca had always told me that I was selfish like an only child, that I was jealous of her bond with Edie. Which was true. I was jealous, even though I loved Edie profoundly; she was my blood. But this girl was not my blood or Ginger’s. And poor Ginger, who’d had no child of her own, didn’t seem to know the difference.

The next day I went to the barn early, at eight instead of nine. Ginger said she would go with me, but I didn’t want Gare to see me walk in with her. Because that would make the stupid bitch think I was afraid of her and I wasn’t. What I was afraid of was that they took my horse away. I didn’t know where they’d put her. But I was afraid I’d go and she wouldn’t be there anymore.

But she was there, biting and kicking her stall like normal. Instead Gare wasn’t there, not the retarded boy either. There was just Beth, looking at me too hard and saying hi too nice. I expected Pat to give me hell, but she didn’t even say nothing. Except that we were short that day, so there was more work to do, which she said I’d be happy about because it meant I earned my lesson quicker.

I almost forgot about it. Until it was almost lunch and Beth was already outside the barn eating out of her brown bag. I was still cleaning Little Tina’s stall when Pat came and stood next to me. She said, “After you left, I had a little talk with Gare Ann and she decided to take the day off. Now I need to talk to you.”

I wanted to ask what happened to the boy, but I didn’t say nothin’. Because I didn’t know what to say. I kept my head down and cleaned extra hard.

“I see you got something going with Fugly Girl. I notice she’s a lot quieter when you’re around.”

She didn’t sound mad.

“I’d almost say she likes you.”

“She’s nice,” I said.

“She is nice. She’s also dangerous. Do you understand that?”

“Miss Pat, she’s not dangerous, she—”

“Look at me, girl. Put that thing down and look at me when I’m talking to you.”

I dropped the fork in the dirty sand.

“Fugly Girl is not a person. She’s an animal. She’s not a kitty or a doggie. She’s a thousand-pound horse. That is one thousand pounds of unpredictable power. That right away means handle with care. And in this case, ‘care’ isn’t enough. Don’t look away from me! You never noticed the scars on her face? How her one ear looks twisted? That horse has been abused. Do you know what that means?”

I didn’t just look at her then, I stared. Because she was mad. But not at me. She was mad at something else, really mad.

“That means she can hurt you, even if you’re nice to her. She can lash out at anybody just because something made her nervous. Like a person can do or say something crappy because they’re in a bad mood, and they’re in a bad mood a lot. Except most people, what they do, it won’t kill you. She could kill you, like you or me would swat a fly.”

I looked down. “You mean I can’t feed her no more.”

Pat didn’t answer. I waited. On the other side of the barn, Rocki whinnied and started hitting his food bucket. I looked up. Pat was looking at me with a face I didn’t understand. “I didn’t say that,” she said. She turned, turned back. “I think you remind her of somebody.”