Mary Gaitskill - The Mare

She must’ve brought it right back in after I was gone; the box was just about disintegrated when I came across it. I pawed through everything in it — Barbies, old-style talking dolls, troll dolls, Beatle dolls, plastic horses — to find Glinda.

The next time I came to see Ginger, it was late, so I didn’t go to the barn until morning. Nobody was there. The radio was pulled out of the office on an extension cord, and it was playing embarrassing cowboy music, but there was nobody. The horses had gotten watered and fed, but their stalls were dirty and they were looking with nervous eyes. Then I realized I didn’t hear Fiery Girl kicking. I got scared and went to her. She was standing in the middle of her stall, but when she saw me she came up to the bars and looked at me with her eyes saying something I at first didn’t understand. Then I saw: Her stall was full of shit, and she was saying Help me.

I wanted to, but I was scared and I told her.

Help me.

“But there isn’t even anybody here in case you hurt me.”

Help me. I won’t hurt you. Help me.

We looked at each other without any more words. She still did not kick or bite. I said, “All right. I’m going to trust you. But if you hurt me, I will never see you again.”

And I got a wheelbarrow and a fork and went back to her stall. Normally I didn’t go into the stalls to clean, but I didn’t want to put a halter on her. I blocked the door with the wheelbarrow and went in. She got out of my way and let me clean. When I was finished with one half of the stall, she moved and let me do the other. She didn’t look at me. But her neck was soft, and her head was down. With her trembly lips she said, Thank you.

I stayed in the barn and talked to the horses for like an hour. But no people came until I left. That’s when I saw Beth, the girl from my first visit. She told me Pat and Beverly were at a horse show and she was taking care of the barn. I thought, Not very well, and she got pink in the face like she heard me.

The best part of that visit happened the first night; Paul and I fucked and it felt great. It was especially great because we hadn’t done it for a while, and we’d never done it when Velvet was in the house, I’m not sure why. But this intimacy now made her presence more real, and I felt joy at getting up and seeing her the next day. I felt like we were all putting roots down into something deep and rich.

It was barely light when I woke up the next day. I didn’t wait; I got dressed and walked over. There was mist in the air and it was soft, and the sky was soft too, but with bright clouds. There was the so-much space and the green too, green and green. There were the little fences. There were the horses. The horses were out in the grassy place where girls had advanced lessons and they were running. I got closer; they were running wild, shining-wild. I saw Joker, he jumped straight in the air, with all his legs. Spirit kicked his back legs, Baby wiggled herself and kicked sideways, Officer Murphy jumped up front-ways, Little Tina ran in and out among them all, like she was laughing. And beautiful fat Reesa high-stepped in a circle all around them, like she was the proud grandmother. They were dancing, all different ways, and because they normally all ran together, it was crazy for them to be doing different things, showing their steps, throwing up mud and clumps of grass— dancing.

Pat was by the fence with her sticking-out hair and her red face. “Hey,” she said. “I never saw you smile like that before.”

I smiled more.

“Look at them smiling. They’ve been in for a while, so they’re going a little crazy, but I’ve never seen ’em like this before. Hey!”

She said “hey” because Spirit back-kicked Blue Boy’s leg right on the elbow part, and Blue Boy was running in a hurt way.

“You stay outside,” said Pat, and she opened the gate and went in with the dancing horses. She wasn’t afraid of them even though they were wild; she walked through them to Blue Boy. And he came to her, and she stood there with him, petting his nose and talking nice to him while the others ran and played.

When she came back out the fence I asked if Fiery Girl could come out.

Pat said, “Who?”

I felt my face turn red. “It’s my name for Fugly Girl.”

Pat smiled and said, “I like it! But no, she can’t come out, not with the others. She fights with them.”

“Can she come out later?” I asked. “By herself?”

“No,” said Pat. “I don’t have anybody here to help me with her, and she’s all stirred up.”

“I can help.”

“Sorry.” She put her hand on my shoulder.

“Miss Pat, I can handle her.”

She just looked at me like, Don’t push it.

So I went in and just talked to the mare, or tried. I saw what Pat saw: She was moving around hard and quick and her eyes were like covered up, not thinking. But she came to me right away, looking at me with thanks, still. She said, Touch me, and I put my hands in through the bars and put them on her head to stop her from bobbing it. I told her I’d let her out one day, I promised. She started to swing her head like she was upset, but she stopped just short. I promise. She wanted to believe me. But her wrinkled mouth said, I can’t.

—

Then when I was back at the house, just before we ate, something happened I would never believe. Somebody knocked on the door and it was for me. It was Gare. She had her hands in her pockets and she was looking at me like, I don’t know, a dog with its ears up. “Pat sent me to get you,” she said. “They’re bringing Fugly out.”

We didn’t talk when we walked over except she asked how many times I came up and I told her. We got to the paddock and the mare was already out, running. Her muscles were going like the muscles of the world, and her face when she came around was like a crazy skeleton in a old cartoon, blowing from her open nose. But it wasn’t scary, it was cute, because her eye was on me like, Check me out! See what I can do! And then something more cute happened. When she slowed down, Beverly came out to stand with me and watch for a minute on her way out to her car. She watched and shook her head and pointed at the mare, like jabbed with her finger, and said, “That horse is trouble!” And Fiery Girl spun around in a circle, like a whole circle, and kicked with her back legs — it was like some nasty thing came out Beverly’s finger and made her spin around and around till she shook it off. Even Beverly had to laugh, and she said, “Damn straight!”

But that wasn’t even the best. When she was done running, she sank down on her knees and went on her back like a cat on the floor. She wiggled in the dirt and her lips wiggled and she ran in the air except her feet were light. She rolled.

There was calling over me and I looked up. There were big birds flying in a V shape and calling each other. Birds in the city fly like a moving hairnet. But these flew like a arrow in the sky, going somewhere definite. I thought, I am going to do my schoolwork like Ginger wants and bring Strawberry here. And I am going to ride Fiery Girl.

I asked her what kind of grades she was getting on her papers. I asked her if she’d ever given Ms. Rodriguez her paper on the African-American family. And she said, Um, can I tell you what happened today with my friend Alicia? I said, Okay. And she told me that Alicia, who used to be her real friend but who was now only a little bit her friend, choked herself with her scarf in the bathroom. She said she walked in the bathroom with a hall pass and saw Alicia in there choking herself in front of the mirror. She was doing it because her mom was mad at her because she got a 2 on a paper. I said, That’s horrible. At least your mom’s not like that. But what about your paper? And she said it must’ve gotten lost.