Mary Gaitskill - The Mare

After Dante ate all the aspirin we couldn’t get him to wake up. Rose called her mom to come, and then my mom came home. We were all crying, and pretty soon my mom was screaming at Rose that she would kill her if Dante died. Rose’s mom defended her daughter: She screamed back that if my mom was going to talk like that, Dante would die as punishment. The police came, an ambulance came. They put my little brother on the stretcher; my mom cried and threw herself on his body, they had to pull her off to take him down the stairs. When they drove away in the ambulance, our neighbor Mrs. Gutierrez hugged my mom and told her Dante would be all right, that she would be praying for us. My mom thanked her and smiled at her as she walked away. Then she turned to me and said, “How could you let this happen?”

Finally the bus came and they made Dante get on it. My mom walked me up to the table inside the fenced area and they put a card on me that said “Red Hook.” “Be good,” she said. “Don’t give them any trouble.” And she kissed me, then left because she was late for work. I went in and sat down and this lady smiled and said hi and asked if it was my first time and I said yes. She asked if I wanted a coloring book and I said no. Other kids came in who were mostly younger than me; they sat on the floor and colored. A girl my age sat down and took out her phone. I didn’t have a phone, so I just sat down. More and more kids came — at least I wasn’t the only one whose mom wasn’t there. But it did seem like I was the only one who didn’t have something to look at. And the ugly music was still playing.

You’re no good, said some words in my head. It’s your blood that’s bad. These are words I hear a lot. I don’t really hear a voice saying them. It’s more like I feel them in my brain. Over and over. When that happens, I try to listen to the people around me to drown them out. Which is how I heard the white lady standing behind us talking to this other white lady. She was saying, “They got us to bend over backward to get this kid on this bus and now they don’t even show up ?”

“They don’t understand,” said the other lady. “Families arrange their whole summers around this and then they don’t even show.”

“It’s their culture,” said the first one. “They don’t understand time the way we do.”

I wanted to say, Excuse me, but we were here early? But then they changed the subject to themselves and how they were making a difference.

“…they come up and they see this big house and all these nice things, and they want to know, How do you get all this?” The same lady was still talking like no one could hear her. “And I say to them, We get it with hard work. Do you see how Jeff gets up every morning at four a.m. and goes to work ? And then comes home and relates to his kids?”

“At least they have an example,” said her friend. “We’re showing them another way. What they do with that is another thing, but—”

I tried to remember the little voice of the lady I talked to on the phone. I tried to put my mind on all the things she said we would do, the fair and swimming and horses. But it seemed like there was nothing but the bus station and that it would go on forever, my brain talking shit to me and these women talking basically the same thing.

Right then a black man with dreads said, “Okay, let’s go!” And he picked up some bags and walked to the door Dante had gone through. Kids finally said good-bye to their moms and we all got on the bus, which distracted my brain from talking. This bus was a dark and rumbling cave, with deep seats full of close smells and tiny jewelly lights on the arm-parts. You had to step on a platform to get into the seats and all of them had TV screens in front of them. Even the shy little kids threw themselves into these seats so they could bounce. The woman who said that thing about a “example” got on last, smiling and talking about how we were going to watch Harry Potter. My brain started again: You’re no good. I told it, Oh, shut up.

“Hey,” said a black lady in a green T-shirt. “Can I sit next to you?”

I told her yes and I was glad; she was nice. She said, “Hi, Velveteen. My name is Roxanne. Have you ever been to Friendly Town before?”

I said, “No,” and the bus rumbled for real.

“You’re gonna like it,” she said. “I went when I was little. It’s a lot of fun.”

The bus backed up and turned into a tunnel. Roxanne said she wished we were watching Freaky Friday with Lindsay Lohan instead. “It’s about a girl who switches bodies with her mom. It’s funny.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I smiled and looked out the window. We were coming out onto the street. The Example lady was standing up and talking about the rules of the bus and the bathroom in the back. I wondered if Roxanne thought the same things she did.

The night that Dante got poisoned my mother didn’t talk to me, not even when they said he was okay. I helped her make dinner and we ate it. She hardly looked at me. I cried and my tears ran into my mouth with my food. But when we got in bed, she didn’t turn away from me. She lay on her back with her eyes open and said, “It’s not your fault. You have bad blood from your father.” I said, “Bendición, Mami.” She didn’t answer. “Mami?” I whispered. She sighed and blessed me, then turned her back and let me curl against her.

“Velveteen?” said Roxanne. “Are you a little bit nervous?”

“Yeah.”

“Don’t be, sweetheart. Because your host family? They are gonna be so happy to see you. Trust me.”

The bus came late. We waited in a hot schoolyard for an hour because we didn’t get the message. We figured it out when we saw nobody else was there, but we were afraid to go get a cold drink because we weren’t sure how early we were. Paul sat in the car with the door open listening to the radio. I got out and paced up and down the asphalt. I didn’t like the look of it, this dry flat line between earth and sky — who would want somebody else’s empty schoolyard to be the first thing they saw in a new place? I thought about the girl’s voice on the phone. Velvet — she sounded so full and round, sweet and fresh.

I wanted to give that voice sweet, fresh things, to gather up everything good and give it. The night before, we had gone out and bought food for her — boxes of cereal and fruit to put on it, eggs in case she didn’t want cereal, orange juice and bacon and white bread, sliced ham and cheese, chicken for barbecue, chocolate milk, carrots. “Did your daughter like carrots when she was little?” I asked Paul. “I don’t remember,” he said. “I think so.” “All kids eat carrots,” I said, and put them in the shopping cart. “Ginger, don’t worry so much,” he said. “Kids are simple. As long as you’re nice to them and take care of them, they’ll like you. Okay?”

I paced the asphalt. Other cars driven by middle-aged white people pulled into the lot. The problem was, I didn’t know if I had everything good to give. Or even anything. “Yourself,” Paul had said, holding me one night. “The real self is the best thing anyone can give to anybody.” And I believed that. But I did not think it would be an easy thing to give.

Paul got out of the car. “Look,” he said. “They’re here.” And there were the buses, two of them huffing into the yard. I thought, Act normal. The buses stopped; doors jerked open and rumpled, hot-looking adults poured out, intense smiles on their faces. Last names and numbers were shouted out. Kids jumped out of the buses, some of them blinking eagerly in the sunlight, some looking down like they were embarrassed or scared. And then there was this little beauty. Her round head was too big for her skinny body, and her long kinky hair made it seem even bigger. But her skin was a rich brown; her lips were full, her cheekbones strong. She had a broad, gentle forehead, a broad nose, and enormous heavy-lashed eyes with intense brows. But it wasn’t only or even mainly her features that made her beautiful; she had a purity of expression that stunned my heart.