Mary Gaitskill - The Mare

“If you with her, why you with me like this? Why you callin’ me ‘boo’?”

“I don’t know, I shouldn’t. But I need to touch you. I wanna feel you next to me. We can at least do that, right? You know I have love for you. You love me?”

I said yes by kissing, and we went in the next room, where there was a bed. We took off our shirts and I saw words on his chest tattooed in BIG mad-beautiful letters, like: You humbled my adversaries and I destroyed my foes and 18:39. It was so wicked serious I almost put my shirt back on. I said, “Is that, like…from the Bible ?” “It’s from a letter my uncle wrote me,” he said. “From prison. But yeah, he got it from the Bible.” “You believe in that?” I asked. He said, “Not in a bible-ass way. I ain’t even read it mostly. But this I like. And my uncle, he like a father to me.” I touched his chest with my hand and kissed it. I took off my bra and we pressed hearts together. We talked about his uncle and about Shawn and how my grandfather talked to me, and what happened that night after I went home. About his sister and how he got split up from her when his mom moved in with this boss up in Washington Heights. Also about Fiery Girl; the time I talked to her and she talked back to me and I cleaned her dirty stall. He told me about how he used to think he could be an actor. He said he acted at this charter school he used to be at before he got kicked out for assaulting a teacher; they put on plays and he was Romeo in one of them. I laughed. I said, “You mean like wherefore art thou ?” and he said, “Yeah, you don’t believe me?” I said, “No!” just to be that way, and he promised the next time he saw me he’d show me the picture of it that his teacher took.

And the whole time we were talking, we were touching everything. I took off everything except my panties and he touched everything until it was like a dream. He unzipped his pants and I saw him. There was nothing ugly or crocodile — no. Because it was him, even more than his face, and I kissed it like it was his face. I heard him laugh very soft and I looked up. Was kissing it stupid? But I saw his eyes soft and his lips smiling, and I smiled too. He said, “Go on, beauty, don’t be afraid. It ain’t what it was with Shawn. You know that. Open your mouth, love me. Show me love.”

Reesa lay down again, curled with her nose down almost in her bedding. I went and sat against her body for heat. Out the window, the snow was like the beginning of a old black-and-white movie where they show the outside of the house in the snow and then the inside where everybody’s living the story. I took out my phone and looked. Nothing.

We drove at night, but she didn’t talk and she frowned at my music, like it was distracting her from disappearing into her music — this goopy Spanish stuff, all love songs except for one with snarling dogs and gunfire and guys yelling “Ronca!” That song was the best, all threat and flash in the dark, but when I told her I liked it, she just stared straight ahead, and I remembered her friend who died.

Something else was different too. She stopped leaning against me when we sat to watch TV. When I put my arm around her, she went still under my touch. I thought she was rejecting me, then I realized it was worse: She had lost her trust in touch. Not just my touch, all touch. I still touched her, out of habit; my hand on her back, her arm, her forehead when I said good-night. She stayed remote. Someone had made touch into something else for her and I could not change it back.

That Christmas Fiery Girl took the jumps — not just one, but four in a row. It was cold, but the ground was firm and dry with no ice or slush, and I put my legs on her like business, not feeling. Because I was going to find a way to be in a competition, get points, and be in a bigger competition where I could win some money and buy clothes and do my hair and go to that club and find Dominic.

That’s all I thought about back home, trying to sleep on the couch with people brawling at each other outside and their cars pumping music so hard it pumped up in the walls of my building. That’s all I thought about when I was on the mare, and damn, she seemed to get it. The one time she gave me trouble in the stall, lifting her head and resisting the bit, I slapped her mouth and she minded. “Real smart,” said Pat. “You just smacked somebody that outweighs you by a thousand pounds.” But when I took her out, that horse took the jumps better than ever, better than Chloe, fiercer, like she’s gonna eat ’em. When we were done, she cantered proudly, and I remembered that on the couch, watching lights and shadows tangled on my ceiling, hearing voices and music tangled with pretend pictures of me at the club; Dominic’s face when he saw me looking bad — everybody would see it.

That’s what I was thinking when we were in the subway going to Macy’s. Normally that is not a place we would ever go, but Ginger had gotten my mom a gift card. I had to go to translate, and we couldn’t leave Dante, so there we were on the subway, my mom complaining that she could only get junk with this card, Dante dumping potato chips on her head, me waiting for her to hit him, her not even noticing but bitching at me instead. Then the train broke down and we had to get off in Manhattan and wait on another train. My mom started laughing over these stupid white girls wearing colored sneakers in winter, but I wasn’t listening because these Indian-kinda dudes with scarves on their heads were playing for change on little wooden flutes with a machine on the floor making the song like it was from a movie. Oh my love, my darling, I hunger for your touch. I need your love, I want your love.

That’s when she hit me in the face. “You stupid girl, you give everything away! In front of people!”

The train came in screaming. We got on it pushing. Huge tired people pushed in between me and my family and I faced the flying tunnel out the back door of the last car, hiding my hit face.

My mom got a purse and crap gloves that day. That night I got up off the couch. I waited until they were asleep and I found my old birthday shirt Ginger gave me. I saw it wasn’t any good; it was made to go with a summer skirt and also it was only cute, not hot-cute. If I couldn’t be fly with my clothes, I had to make it like I’m so fly I don’t even have to try, work my face instead. So I put on my black jeans and my Puma hoodie with the silver cat and the silver hoops I stole with Strawberry. I made up my face in the kitchen, by the window where all the light came in, I put gold around my eyes. I left my North Face jacket open so you could see the silver on my chest. And I went out to find that club again.

The street was poppin’, not too cold for people to be mobbed-up around cars, music and powerful feeling up in the air. I walked with my head down and myself pulled in — people looked, but left me be. Until I got to the bus stop. I had to wait and then it was like, Hey, Mami, what’s up? Can I talk to you? Oh, you waitin’ for your boyfriend, that’s awright. Except this one dude, he’s like So is your boyfriend a black man? Where is he? Why he keep you waitin’ here? It was starting to be aggravating when this woman suddenly came down on the dude like a Rottweiler, pulling the whole show away from me, but screamin’ about me, You can’t wait two minutes to work on some underage pussy? I looked away. She’s going, You said you loved me! And he’s, You crazy ho-bag. I as good as told you, you were just emergency pussy till the real shit come back!

I thought it was just boys who fronted this shit, boys in my grade acting stupid. This was a man and he was not acting.