Mary Gaitskill - The Mare

We didn’t always do that; we at least a couple of times went to Grand Street, and she showed me how to shoplift from Rainbow and the Gem superstore. I would go in by myself wearing a big coat and walk slowly, leaning on the displays, and the store people would follow staring the crap out of me — and she would walk out with makeup or a manicure set and once even a purse. The one time I tried I only took a nail file, but still they almost caught me. I just got away because I ran into the traffic and the man chasing me almost got hit, and when Strawberry caught up with me, we walked to her house singing “Pon de Replay.” That was fun.

But mostly she just wanted to go to her room and talk about what her friends in New Orleans said or did while we looked at magazines with stars in them. Either that or she wanted to put makeup on — except it was mostly her putting makeup on me. She put makeup on me like her friend Maciella used to wear. She did it over and over, like she was trying to make it perfect. I asked when I could do her, and she just said I didn’t even know how. She let me brush her hair and then she plucked my eyebrows, which made my mom really mad when I got home. The next time, I said, “Strawberry, stop. I’m not Maciella.” And she said, “Could you just pretend to be?”

And I did. It was not fun. In school Strawberry acted like she barely knew me. Even on the days I went to see her, I had to wait and meet her at a bus stop and she would look around like she was making sure nobody saw we were together. Then she’d get in the closet with me and put makeup on my face. If I didn’t say the right things, Strawberry would stop me and say, “No, that’s not what she was like.” It was not fun. But I kept on doing it. I don’t know why.

I started calling the school, but nobody would return my calls. Finally I was told that they weren’t allowed to talk to me unless Velvet’s mother gave me written permission. And so I found somebody who could speak Spanish and I figured out how to make a conference call. But the call was near impossible. The translator was Kayla’s aunt, who’d learned Spanish in the Peace Corps. She was religious and churchy-voiced, and worse, her Spanish was apparently too crude for her to understand Mrs. Vargas’s rapid-fire style of speech. I hadn’t wanted to involve Velvet because I knew she was sick of having to read and translate for her mom. But we had to get her on the phone finally. And I don’t know why, but that seemed to help; Mrs. Vargas was clearly amused by the translator’s ineptitude. She laughed; she said she’d sign the permission letter if I wrote it, even though it wouldn’t matter because Velvet was always doing bad.

But she wasn’t doing bad. When Ms. Rodriguez finally called me back, she said that while Velvet still had “discipline issues,” she was definitely behaving better than she had last year. She was even turning in some homework and it looked like she was doing the reading.

“What about the book report about the African-American family?” I asked.

“The what? Oh, right. I haven’t assigned a book report on that. They were supposed to write on another book. Which she didn’t do. But still, I’m happy with her progress.”

I was thrown only for a second. I told the teacher that Velvet had done a beautiful job on the African-American family and that she should ask her to show it to her. And I asked her to be sure that Velvet’s mother knew about how well she was doing. Ms. Rodriguez promised that she would.

So I told Strawberry I was going to the horses. I told her in front of people. Maybe I shouldn’t’ve, but she was pretending she didn’t know me and it was making me mad. The other girls got quiet and all she said was “So?” But then in the bathroom she said, “You gonna ask her?” And I said, “Yeah” like what a dumb question. Also like I might not really do it. And she did not talk back.

I went on Friday night after my mom got off work. She yelled at me the whole time, even on the subway. The people on the subway looked at us because my mom sounded crazy yelling at me about what an idiot Ginger must be and saying I stole out of her purse and I eat too much and I wore her nightgown, dragging Dante along while he talked to himself about killing some people he made up in his head. When we came up out of the train, the wind was blowing trash all over and we had to walk into it. At least that made my mom shut up. Crazy people were all over the place by then though, so nobody would’ve noticed her. “Look,” said Dante, “there’s your stupid woman.”

And there was Ginger, in white leather pants and a white puffy jacket, and her white-blond hair blowing around, shading her eyes with her hand and her legs apart, so she looked powerful, like the White Witch in her book. Except that then she saw us and she dropped her hand and smiled with her sad eyes and was Ginger again. And I went to hug her.

She was strange on the train, like she didn’t quite know me. I felt awkward, too; I didn’t know what to talk about with her. She was restless in her seat, asked me twice how long it was going to take to get there, was saying she was bored before we were even out of the station. I thought, An easy way to play at being a parent; my heart felt cold.

Then she said an amazing thing. We were leaving the city and she was looking out the window at the buildings across the water. Her lips were parted slightly and she had that dreamy look on her face. Then her expression changed abruptly and she turned to me and asked if it was true that they were planning to put a new building at Ground Zero that was even taller than the World Trade Center. And I said yes, that’s what they were talking about. She said, “That is the stupidest thing I ever heard. That will just make them want to knock it down again.” So I said, “But that’s why they want to do it. To show we’re not afraid of being knocked down.” And she said, “Are you kidding me? Everybody in New York City is afraid. You should not build to be what you are not.”

And I was so proud of her. I didn’t care what that asshole Becca said. I was just proud to be with her, and I told her so. She smiled huge and then, shyly, looked out the window again. She was still quiet, and it was still awkward — but it was the awkwardness of people who love each other and don’t know how to show it yet.

It was dark when we got there, but still, I wanted to see the horses. I asked Ginger to walk to the barn with me because I wasn’t used to the kind of dark it was out there anymore. But I made her wait outside and she didn’t mind because I asked her nice.

Inside the barn was warm and right away the horses moved and said hello to me all differently. I went up to them one by one and nearly all of them came to me — Joker snorted and got his spit on me and I just laughed and rubbed him. Rocki looked even happy, and Officer Murphy moved his head up and down for me to rub his head more. Then Fiery Girl came and I saw she had this thing on her face. It was leather and metal and it was wrapped around her throat and face and it made her look like a serial killer. She came up and tried to bite the wood of her stall and the metal thing seemed to choke her. I went and got Ginger and brought her in to show her and she just said there was probably a reason for it, I should ask Pat the next day. She tried to pet the mare, but Fiery Girl tossed her head and gave her a “don’t mess with me” look. I realized Ginger did not know anything about it.

Still, when we went back out, Ginger put her arm around me and said, “Are you okay?” and I said yes, and put my arm around her and we walked like that for a while. I wondered what it would be like if Strawberry was here now.