Mary Gaitskill - The Mare

When horses are curled up and then they stand, it is beautiful and funny, like babies walking. They put their front feet down like it’s the first time and they don’t know for sure how, they need to go slow and feel on each foot, their body going one way and the other until they find the strong spot and boom, they are proud on their legs again. Watching made my heart soft, made me want to hug her. So I did something I never did; I opened her stall and came in it.

Which I should not have done. She wasn’t expecting it, and she came to me too fast. I held up my hand like I saw Pat do and I said, “Alto!” like my mom when she means business. And the mare stopped. And I made my head and shoulders soft. I petted her, first her shoulder, then her neck. I told her how much I’d missed her and promised I’d clean her stall the next day because I could smell it was mad dirty. I tried to sing her a Christmas carol but I couldn’t remember all of one, so I sang, Safe under mama’s wings, huddling up / Sleep the little chicks until the next day. I sang it to her until the fast thing was gone. And then when I walked out, I sang it so they could all hear it.

Edie came over that afternoon. Velvet was shy and sweet around her and Edie was nice in a way that seemed unnatural to her. Not that my daughter isn’t nice; she is. But there was a subtle theatricality about her manner that, to my surprise, Velvet seemed not only to enjoy, but to match. Each seemed to know her role and to fall into it easily — though what those roles would be called wasn’t an easy thing to put a name on.

“Do you want to come to the stable with me?” asked Velvet, her voice lower and sweeter than the one I knew.

“I’d love to!” cried my daughter. And then, when Velvet was up in her room getting a sweater, Edie turned to me and said very soberly, “Dad, I am so glad you are doing this.”

“I am too, I guess,” I answered. “I just wish I knew what it was.”

My best present was from Little Tina. I rode her without a saddle. It was cold and so muddy I slipped and fell off the ramp at the end of the barn and that was even before I got on the horse. Pat said when it was this cold, she used to like to go bareback to feel warm from the horse. And I said, “Can I do it?” And she told me yes, because it was Christmas. And we took off the saddle and when I got on Little Tina it was warm all up in my legs. The cold air was on my face but I was warm. I could feel her muscles; it was like I could feel her blood. We only walked and practiced steering, going backward and in a circle and zigzag around things.

But then she started to go at a trot. She did it without asking me. “Whoa!” yelled Pat, but she kept going. So I pressed my butt deep into her body and I talked soft and pulled back on the reins and said, “Whoa” soft. And she stopped. Pat came running up and said, “Excellent!” And I was in the sky.

—

I got some other good stuff too. A pink radio and CD player that said “Princess” on it and earrings in the shape of tiny red flowers and a Celia Cruz CD and a blue Gap shirt with a big zipper in the front. And I met Paul’s daughter from his other wife. She was nice.

On the train I tried to talk to her. I told her I knew how hard life is, how cruel people can be. “People are assholes,” I said. “They will say whatever they think will hurt you. You can’t listen, and you can’t try to please them. If people at school don’t like it that you’re doing well, it’s because it scares them. If you don’t want trouble, hide it. Act like you don’t care about school. Just do the work quietly and act the same in class. I’ll talk to Ms. Rodriguez; she should understand.”

She listened and looked out the window, sort of smiling. I talked about when I was in school, how I didn’t fit in. A black woman one seat up across the aisle glanced at me with a curious face. My mother floated into my mind and out. I had only half listened to my mother; I hated the way she was with Melinda, and I did whatever I could to make her not be that way with me. My mother was very flawed. But even half listened to, her words built me, and I’m glad she said them. Velvet was already built, but still it seemed she needed words, even dumb ones. So I talked until I ran out of words. Then she put on her headset and played her new radio and I read a book.

When we got to the station, I looked forward to seeing her mother, to connecting with her like we had at the diner, showing her the pictures of Velvet opening her gifts. But her mother wasn’t there. We waited outside like always. Snow was finally coming, light and wet, whipping around in the wind. It was getting dark. We stood near the Thirty-Third Street entrance, and the big doors blew hot dry air on us as they opened and closed for the many-faced people trudging in and out of them. Christmas music played from speakers. Dirty, ragged people sat on the ground under the concrete overhang of the building, some with bulging garbage bags. The digital red clock on the side of the station said Mrs. Vargas was fifteen minutes late.

I called her home number; she wasn’t there. I called her work number; they said she had left over an hour ago. Velvet looked afraid. I bought her a hot dog from a vendor. A woman with dry dark patches on her face had pulled up her pant legs and was scratching at sores with both hands, her mouth open in concentration. I began to be afraid too. I said, “What kind of neighborhood does your mom work in?” And she answered, “There’s white people there.” I wanted to say, That’s not what I asked. But I understood her. We had understood each other. Mrs. Vargas was half an hour late.

I asked Velvet to go into the station to look for her while I stayed outside with her paper bag of Christmas presents. I called the home number again. Velvet took so long that I began to be scared I’d lost her too. When she came out, she looked like she’d been crying. “We’ll wait until it’s been an hour,” I said. “Then I’ll call the police.”

“No,” she said. “You can’t do that.” Her voice was tearful and I knew she had been crying. “They might take us away.”

I didn’t argue. The hour came. Tears ran down the girl’s face. I put my arm around her. “Don’t worry,” I said. “We’ll go back upstate if we have to.”

“I don’t want to go back upstate,” she said. “I want my mama. I want my brother.”

I wound up calling a friend, Julian, an editor at an art magazine, one of the few people from my past who actually had made a plush life for himself — and who, not coincidentally I’m sure, had come from money. I explained the situation and he told me to bring her over, he and his wife were sitting down to dinner.

We went to stay with these people who lived in a building with a glass door and a shiny stone hallway. We went up in a big elevator with too many buttons and came out into a hall with a sign somebody wrote in crayon that said “Take off shoes, please.” Ginger’s friend was the only apartment on the floor. The door was open and the man that came out was dressed in white and he was smiling and I wanted to cry.

Because this place did not look like a house is supposed to look. It was too big and bright and everything was white, all the furniture and even the floor. The windows were so big you could see buildings everywhere; it was like being outside up in the air in the middle of buildings. We sat in little white chairs at the white table and the lady put food on the white plates. She was pregnant and she was nice, but I couldn’t eat. I was thinking of my mother and how it felt to be next to her. I was thinking these people knew I was a girl whose mother did not come for her. I was thinking if I could only get back to her, I would never go to Ginger’s again. Even if it meant I would never see my mare. Everybody was staring at me. I was crying. The pregnant lady tried to hide it, but she was starting to cry too. Ginger was looking like she always did, only more. She said, “Please eat something. It will make you feel better.” I said, “I want to call my mom.”