Mary Gaitskill: The Mare

“Do you like them?” asked Ginger.

I said, “Yes,” and then, “Can I touch them?”

“Yes, but be careful. Some of them can bite.”

I went up to one named Rocki. He was cream-colored with a short mane and a black stripe down the center of it. He was beautiful but with sad, hurt eyes. He didn’t have any pictures or toys. I put my hand out to him. He let me touch his nose and his strong neck.

Ginger said, “Hi, Pat.” I turned and saw a round woman with a red face and blond-gray hair sticking out everywhere. She was wearing old beat-up clothes and she was pushing a big wooden wheelbarrow like I’d seen in books about farm life; it was full of wet dirt and bits of straw. “I just brought the young lady over to see the horses.”

“Hello, young lady,” said the woman. It was funny, the way she looked at me; she looked past me, but still it felt like she was looking right at me. It was like her eyes were on the sides of her head. Like the horses. “What’s your name?”

Her face was nice but her voice was strong, like she might beat your ass, so my answer came out like a whisper.

“Nice to meet you,” said Pat. “I see you met Rocki. He’s a good guy.”

I wanted to ask her why he was so sad, but I just looked down instead.

“Look around all you want, just pay attention to the signs.” She picked up the handles of the wheelbarrow again and began walking the other way.

“Is she the one that gives the lessons?” I whispered to Ginger.

“Yeah.” Ginger smiled down at me, and that crying thing moved through her face really fast. “Interested?”

I was confused by Ginger’s face, by everything that was happening. But Pat was moving away and I suddenly felt like I had to talk or my chance would be gone. “Yes,” I whispered.

And so we went down to the other end of the stable so that Pat could check her appointment book. I walked slowly after them so I could look at the horses. I looked at the stable too; there was cool stuff in it: leather straps hanging everywhere, metal boxes, chains, helmets, saddles — everything was old and beat-up, but somehow that was what made it cool. It all looked like it had a reason, even the dirt and balls of hair and straw on the floor of the stable — even that somehow was right, and didn’t seem like dirt.

Ginger and Pat were in an office somewhere off to the side when I saw a girl in one of the horse-cages by herself. It was open and the horse was gone and it looked like she was cleaning the cage with a fork. She was a white girl, thin but strong-looking, with long shiny brown hair and a chin that reminded me of a pit bull. When she looked up and saw me, she didn’t say anything and neither did I. She just looked, then went back to what she was doing.

And then two other white girls came in from a hallway I didn’t notice. One of them had a boy-face and hair that was half blue, half purple; the other was regular. They were leading a huge horse and talking loud, like they thought they were hot. When they saw me they stopped and stared. Suddenly there was this loud, mad-pissed-off banging, and I heard a horse making angry wanting noises. The other horses answered like, We hear! The boy-girl yelled, “Shut up, Fugly Girl!” And the other said to me, “We don’t mean you.” And the boy-girl laughed.

I walked away from them toward the office. One of the girls muttered, “Sorry.” The banging got louder. And then I saw where it was coming from. There was a gold-brown horse kicking and biting the hell out of her cage. Her eyes were rolling in her head and you could see the white around them. But she was the best one so far, not the most beautiful, the best. There were no ribbons or toys or even a name on her cage, just a sign that read “Do Not Touch.” I came close to her and she looked at me. That’s when I saw the scars on her face, straight, deep scars around her nose and eyes. She turned her head all the way to one side and then the other. I thought, Your scars are like the thorns on Jesus’s heart. She stopped biting and kicking. I could see her think in the dark part of her eye. The white part got softer. The girls behind me went quiet. The wonderful horse came up to me. I put my hand out to her. She touched it with her mouth. I whispered, “You are not fugly.”

“Hey, can’t you read?” the boy-face girl yelled at me. “That horse is dangerous, get away from it!”

“She’s only dangerous if she doesn’t like you,” said Pat. I turned and saw her and Ginger coming out of the office. Pat came up to the horse and rubbed her on the nose. “The trouble is, she doesn’t like anybody except me — and sometimes she doesn’t like me.” Pat looked at me, straight on this time. “So I’ve got a slot open tomorrow. Does that work for you?”

When we got back to the house she wanted to eat a sandwich, so I fixed her a ham and cheese with tomatoes for health. She asked if there were any pickles and I said, No, I’m sorry. She looked at me quizzically while she ate. Tomatoes dripped out. She asked if those girls would be at the barn when she went for her lesson. I said I didn’t know. I wondered if they said something racial to her, but I didn’t want to embarrass her by asking. I didn’t think there would be direct racism in this town. But it might come in a subtler form.

“What did you think of them?” I asked.

“I dunno,” she said.

“Would you want to see them again?”

“No.”

I asked if she’d brought a swimsuit. She said yes. I told her we’d gotten a life jacket for her, for when we went to the lake. She asked to see it, and when I brought it, she put it on and frowned; it was too small. My heart sank a little. We both went out to the garden, where Paul was pulling weeds, and told him we were going to the store to get a new life jacket. He said he would go with us. She wore the life jacket into the car, and I was aware of her fiddling with it as we drove. When we went over the Kingston Bridge, I sensed her stop fiddling for a moment; I turned and saw her hands still in her lap, her soft, responsive profile as she looked out the window, reacting to the huge bright sky and sparkling water. I felt pulled by big feelings, but I didn’t know what they were.

When we got to the parking lot of the store and found a place, she said, “I made it fit.” And she had! She had worked out the adjustable straps and fasteners that we hadn’t even thought to look for. Paul said, “You’re smarter than we are!” and her eyes sparkled shyly.

We decided that since we were at the mall, we would buy her a bike. It took a long time because she was so uncomfortable about choosing one. We kept asking, What about this one? Do you like this one? Do you like the color? And she would say, “I dunno” and look down, as if confused. I asked her, Do you want a bike? She said yes, but almost in the same way she might say no. A salesman came over and that only made it worse. I was beginning to feel we were doing some strange violence to her when she said, “That one” and pointed to a violet bike with flowers on it.

When we got back home, Paul and I got our bikes and we all went for a ride in the neighborhood across the county road behind our house. It was a short ride, but it seemed like an adventure, and it linked the three of us. We sweated up some hills, and then coasted down fast. We came to some broken asphalt — I yelled “Lumpety bumpety!”—and Velvet grinned triumphantly as we bounced over it. When we came to a little park with a duck pond, she wanted to stop and see the ducks. There was a swing set and even though it was preschool size, Velvet wanted to swing on it. We were too big to swing with her, so we took turns pushing her. Then we played on the teeter-totter and the rickety wooden go-round — then she wanted to go back to the swings. She did everything with enchanted hunger, like she was maybe too old for this but wanted it anyway, because she knew it was something she should’ve had. Besides, it was fun— we thought it was fun.