Mary Gaitskill - The Mare

So Ginger gave me her phone again. And finally my mom answered.

So after that she relaxed. She ate and even talked with my friends, smiling, wanting to feel Carolina’s pregnant belly. They found her delightful. Mrs. Vargas told us a story about having to take the brother to the emergency room because his stomach hurt. I didn’t believe her, but I was just glad she was all right. Even if she said it was too late for Velvet to come home, and asked if I could keep her for the night.

Julian said we were welcome to the guest room. We had to sleep in the same bed, but Velvet didn’t mind. We got under the covers and settled in back-to-back, with the excited feeling of a sleepover. “Good-night,” I said.

“Good-night,” she answered.

“Good-night!” I said.

“Good-night!” she replied.

We were quiet and I thought I could feel her sinking into sleep. Then she said, “I need to ask you something.”

“What?”

She didn’t answer right away. I turned my head to encourage her.

“Why is it…” She stopped. Her voice came very earnest in the dark. “Why is it that white people can walk their path in a way that black people — and people of my color — cannot?”

“Honey,” I said. “You just don’t know enough about white people.”

“What do you mean?”

“The white people you see where we live have money. They all know each other. They’re not going to start trouble, because they have something to lose. White people start with advantages, you know that, right?”

She said, “Yeah,” but uncertainly.

“And still, sometimes they wind up going down the toilet anyway. Have you ever heard about the Hell’s Angels? They were worse in their day than any gang you’ve heard of. Murderers, rapists. And they were all white. They had the advantages. They became what they were because they wanted to, not because they had to. My sister was like that. That’s what I mean when I say ‘self-destructive.’ ”

I felt her thinking. I knew she wanted to say something but didn’t know what. I waited. She didn’t say anything. I said, “We can talk about it in the morning if you want.”

“Okay,” she said.

“Okay, then. Good-night for real.”

That night I dreamed of horses running together like they were water with a brain that could decide where to go. Except you could see their faces and their feet and tails coming out and then going back into the water of themselves. Ginger was there and so was my mom and Strawberry and Alicia. But I don’t remember them. I remember the horses and that they were running toward a giant red sun and that nothing could stop them and that I was with them.

The next day I asked her if she wanted to ask me any more questions like she did during the night. She said no. So we went out of the room and ate breakfast with Julian and Carolina.

Then I took her to meet a cousin at Penn Station. Dante was with her, but he barely nodded at me when I said hello. The cousin was an exhausted-looking, heavyset woman with eyes that were hard, quick, and reactive. Without looking at me, she patted Velvet and greeted her in Spanish. She didn’t seem to realize I was there until Velvet hugged me good-bye. She finally said good-bye to me and then, as they were walking toward the subway, she added, “Thank you,” as if she’d realized she hadn’t even greeted me.

People of my color.

Her tone when she said that: forthright, courageous. With the purity of expression I had recognized at first sight. It made my heart hurt.

I went into the station and sat down to wait for my train. It was not very crowded; the usual businesspeople were at home, celebrating with their families still. The people seated around me were slumped and threadbare, carrying their possessions in shopping bags or cheap canvas totes. A bearlike young black man in baggy too-long pants with torn filthy hems paced around cursing at somebody on his cell phone. A dry-haired stringy white woman my age sat very erect, gripping a purse and a computer bag. I knew none of them were homeless because you had to show a ticket to sit in this area. But somehow even this stringy woman with a purse had a homeless feeling about her.

When we first left Penn Station there were people in the subway with happy faces: people with nice clothes, and kids with parents that had bought them things who were laughing and playing with each other. I had my things too, but my cousin and Dante were quiet and looking up at the ads about Dr. Zizmor taking pimples off your skin and people on TV. I was getting a sick feeling. The happy-looking people started getting off. More and more dark people were there, sitting and staring quiet. The farther we went, the more there were. A lady across from me had a shopping bag that said GET MORE JOY!! but under her glasses she looked like she was going to cry and not stop.

I remember what I said to Ginger about people like me not walking our path and I did not like myself for that.

Then a man got on and sat next to the woman, and I could tell he was Spanish. He was by himself, but he did not look sad or quiet. He looked strong and happy in his body. He was looking at me like he liked me, like he knew me. I looked at him and my sick feeling opened up and became deep feeling. I remembered my dream of the horses, running into the bright red sun, moving in and out of each other. The subway ran faster and faster in the underwater tunnel. We moved into Brooklyn toward my cousin’s house. My feeling went deeper. It was like we were the horses, moving together, in and out of each other, going someplace we needed to go. Even though Dante told me my ring looked like something you get from a gum-ball machine and I smacked him and my cousin said my mom gave her permission to whip me, so quit it.

Even though my mom screamed at me all night that I was lazy and she wished she didn’t have me and then took my CD player in the bedroom and played Celia Cruz on it with the door closed.

Even though when I tried to show Strawberry my ring she wouldn’t look and just walked past me. Even though I saw her on the street and she was with Dominic with their arms around each other, which I wouldn’t even care about, except she was smiling her evil smile at me and I knew she wanted me to care so she could laugh at me for it.

Even though when I put my ring with my cotton-ball-box things it didn’t look nice anymore because it made everything else look ugly.

Because when we got up in the morning and my mom did her push-ups and we all got washed and dressed and my mom made our oatmeal with brown sugar, and we all went out — we were moving like the horses. And I was going to let my mare out again one day and she was going to run too. With the others or alone or with me riding her.

I wanted to tell my mom this, but I couldn’t. It didn’t make any sense. And also my mom thought the horses would kill me.

When I called her for our homework session after Christmas, she told me she got spat on. She said she wore her blue Gap shirt that we gave her and her new ring. All morning people stared at her and then while she was waiting in the cafeteria line, girls walked by and spat on her. They spat on her while she walked to her seat with her tray. So she waited till nobody could see, and then she hit somebody. They told, she said they lied, then she got detention. I said I didn’t care if she got detention, I was glad she hit the bitch who spat at her. I told her how I’d hit somebody in school once too. I asked if she had any friends who would help her. She said, “I don’t got no friends.” I asked about the friends she’d talked about, Strawberry and Alicia. She said they were the ones that spat on her. I told her she was better off without them. We read then, a book that was technically under her age range about a little boy who meets a dragon. I kept thinking, But that shirt wasn’t even very nice. I listened to Paul; I didn’t buy something that was too fancy. That shirt was cute but normal. They spat at her for wearing a normal shirt.