Mary Gaitskill - The Mare

I smiled and Pat said, “You think I’m joking? People say you can tell a gelding, discuss it with a stallion, ask a mare. I say beg a mare is more like it. Unless she likes you. And sometimes even then.”

I dreamed I went to hell, just like I told Velvet. In the dream I was little again, and again, I went looking for treasure. I found it, but in this dream I lost it; I got lost in hell. I met a naked old woman carrying love wrapped in pain. But I wasn’t afraid of her. There were horrible things happening all around us, all the terrible things that can happen in the world — but most of them I didn’t even notice. The old woman took me to a terrible hallway where living human heads protruded from the walls, talking incessantly in every language, unable to understand or hear each other and crying in desperation to be heard. One of them was me and one of them was a beautiful young man. The old woman said, “He is your love.” And he was. He was Michael.

I fought to wake up. I fought to run. An iron hand was holding me; there was a spider that was also a person. And then someone came to help me. An old man and someone else I couldn’t see. The old man carried me in his arms over a field. But I said something he didn’t like and he dropped me. And I woke up, turning violently on my side and remembering: Velvet had dreamed of going to hell too. Through a door in our backyard.

Beverly and Pat were always saying somebody didn’t want to work. They said it about people and horses. They told stories that ended “he just didn’t want to work for it.” It could be about a horse who didn’t win a contest or a horse that didn’t want to pull Beverly around in a circle while she sat in a buggy. Or a person who couldn’t ride very good or somebody they knew in school who flunked like about a hundred years ago. Once Pat said it about her own father, that he didn’t want to work to get a better job. Once Beverly said it to me. She put her hand on my shoulder and said, “Your trouble is, you don’t like to work.”

It was the same thing my mom said to me. And I thought the same about Pat and Beverly as I thought about my mom: Look what your work got you. Shoveling shit and carrying it back and forth all day in hell-heat and half the horses standing pissed off and hot in their stalls while the other half go out and play because they can only use one paddock because they’re trying to grow out the grass in the other one, and they can’t all go out at once because they fight. That’s why Beverly wouldn’t let Diamond Chip Jim go out even though he was rearing up and wanting to be out; he’d fight in the same paddock with Rocki and Officer Murphy. And besides, there’s not enough room. And Beverly’s going, He don’t like to work, like that’s got anything to do with it.

He don’t like to work. It was like flies buzzing at you all day, like Fiery Girl banging on her door that she could not open, because they let her out hardly at all. “She has to go out by herself because she fights and there’s not always time or room to let her out by herself. Besides which, listen to her.” She meant, listen to her banging and cursing, probably snaking her head around. “Do you want to turn that horse out right now?”

“No, but—”

“I didn’t think so.”

“But it’s not fair. She hasn’t been out for like, days.”

“Guess what, life ain’t fair. But you know that already, right?”

I looked down so she wouldn’t see the expression on my face.

“Look at me,” she said. I did. She saw what I thought. We stood for a minute. And then she said it: “You’re right. It has been too long. We’ll take her out early evening.”

We had to argue to get the halter and the nose-chain on her, and when we did, she came out her stall feeling like a freight train running even though she just walked. Pat said, “Pull the chain if you need to.” I said, “Does it hurt?” and Pat said, “It reminds her that you’re there.” We stepped outside and I saw Heather and Gare and this other girl Elizabeth were still there, hanging around in the driveway. I didn’t like them being there. I especially didn’t like it that when we walked out to the arena they stopped talking and stared at us. I lost my concentration; Fiery Girl picked up her pace, like she wanted to trot. Pat said, “Be in control!” I tugged the chain and the mare slowed, but her engine ran and she pushed on me with her shoulder. Pat snapped, “Cut it out!” but the horse lunged, jerking me almost off my feet. I heard somebody giggle. I remembered “Why does a Mexican kid walk around like—” and I yanked on the chain. I didn’t care if it hurt. Fiery Girl rose a few inches off her front feet. Pat said, “Give me the lead.” But I did not. Fiery Girl yanked me and I yanked her, and my mom reached out of me with her fist, she grabbed the rope, and I swung around in front of Fiery Girl and yelled, “Oye, slow up NOW!” And she jumped back so fast, it was funny. I came back to the side, my heart pounding, and we walked, her still a bit ahead, still all fresh, but for show; I had her. There was no giggling. I didn’t even have to look to know their eyes were all on me.

Pat put her hand on my shoulder. “I’d say I didn’t think you had it in you, but I knew you did.”

I smiled and felt my face turn red, proud and embarrassed to be that way.

“But FYI, that’s not a great idea, getting in her face like that. Next time, she could dance on your head. Next time, just use the chain.”

When we walked past, Elizabeth and Heather turned around and walked away. But Gare didn’t. She stood there and she didn’t talk, but her face said, Awesome.

I thought: What if her mother could move up here? Mexicans live here; I see them, mostly working in restaurants or biking on the roads with plastic bags of groceries hanging from their handlebars. Down the block from us, in a boatlike three-story house, live a couple of Mexican families. One night, when Velvet and I walked past, we saw they were having a lawn party with colored lights and music and food. A woman looked at us and smiled as we passed. After that I noticed the Mexican grocery store in the little strip mall by the Laundromat. I went in and bought some candy, sweet red peanuts and sugar animals dyed green. I asked the guy behind the counter if he would be willing to talk to Mrs. Vargas. He looked at me like I had three heads and said sure.

I asked Velvet too: “Would your mother like to move up here?” It took her a long time to answer. When she finally said, “Yeah,” she sounded like I had three heads too. Still, I asked, “Would you talk to your mother?” and she gave me the three-headed “yeah.”

But later that night, she asked if she could see where the middle school was. So I drove her there. The school was up a hill, on a windy road. It was very visible in the moonlight. Its name was written on a stony mound thick-grown with tiger lilies that looked pale and velvet-gray in the dark. We sat in the car and looked for some minutes. I said, “Will you talk to your mom about it?” And she said, “Yes.” Different word, different tone.

One day when Gare was eating her sandwich on the feedbag, I was going past her on the way to the house for lunch, and she said, “Hey.”

I stopped and looked.

“Heather’s a cunt, right?”

I just looked at her.

“Calling her horse Totally Crushed ?”

I stayed quiet, looking.

“She told me she wanted to call her Totally Fucking Crushed, but they wouldn’t let her register the horse that way. Duh. ”

I said, “Why did she want to call her horse that?”