Mary Gaitskill - The Mare

Anyway, at least the bus came before they did anything else, and nobody was on it but some asleep bad-smelling people and a lady my mom’s age who looked like she was coming home from work. I looked out the window and wondered why I was doing this. It was stupid, but I had to. I had to try.

Except it was even more stupid than I thought. I got off a stop too late because I didn’t see no party and when I walked back I saw why: there wasn’t one. The building was dark and shut up and it looked broke and poor, like somebody hit it with a wand and turned it back into a place for rats and homeless. I felt disappointed but also relief, and then my neck hair stood up. Men were talking, close. I saw them come around the side of the building, dark moving in dark, arms, legs, jaws. They saw me and stopped. I kept walking. They didn’t call out. But I felt them looking and their look was like a animal following me. I made myself not run. I felt animal-breath on my neck. I made myself not pee. Then one of them laughed and the animal turned away.

I got to the bus stop. There was a old man there, talking to nobody. I sat close to him like we were together and he was talking to me. I was still feeling the animal-eyes of those men and I wished he would pretend to be my grandfather, but he didn’t.

I got home and went to the kitchen to change back into my sleep clothes. From the window, voices and lights talked on my skin. There was a noise down the hall and I jumped, but it was just Mr. Figuera coming in. He came out of the hall, his dark shape moving in dark, like the men back there, not like someone who sat next to Dante watching Family Guy. The dark shape saw me and I was a stranger to him too; I could see because he stopped with a tiny jolt and then he relaxed and said, “Chica, what are you doin’ up?” I said, “Nothin’. I can’t sleep.” He sat on one arm of the couch and I could see him, except he didn’t look like him. Mr. Figuera had sleepy eyes and a friendly, hairy face; the man in front of me had a hard mouth and eyes like a cur between shrink and bite. I asked him where he was comin’ from, and he told me, “Bushwick.”

“You know people in Bushwick?” I asked.

“Yeah, sure. Why you ask?”

“You know a boy there named Dominic, half Dominican, half African-American?”

“Sure. Everybody knows him. You ain’t messed up with that boy, are you?”

“Not really. Why? He bad?”

“Nah, not bad, just, if you a young lady, you know, a lil’ tiguera like that liable to be trifling. Also liable to be into shit he really don’t know how deep it is until it’s too late, you know what I’m sayin’?”

“Yeah.”

His face looked more like his day-face now, but that animal feeling was still on him like a cloud. He could feel me seeing it and he said, “What you lookin’ at, girl?”

“Nothin’. I’m just tired.”

He put his hand on my head and rubbed it. “Try to sleep,” he said, and then he went to my used-to-be room and unlocked the padlock that he kept on it.

Except he had to fool with it in the dark, and while he was fooling I said, “Dominic in some kind of trouble, that what you mean?”

Mr. Figuera stopped fooling with the lock and stared at me. “You not messed up with him?”

“I’m not, it’s just somebody else told me he might be in trouble, so I thought you—”

“Who?”

“Just this girl who knows his sister.”

He shook his head. “You shouldn’t listen to people who talk other people’s business. Or talk it yourself.”

He went into my used-to-be room. I lay down and tried to sleep, but I couldn’t because I knew that in just a few hours my mom would be up in the kitchen with the radio on. And because I kept hearing liable to be trifling and You were just emergency pussy. And I thought, I’m gonna beat the brakes off any man who talks to me that way. Ima beat the brakes off any man that even thinks it.

Because I got the phone call from Ms. Johnson that first school week, I called her, maybe once every month. I knew she wasn’t supposed to talk to me, and usually she didn’t. But every now and then she would return my call and let me know how Velvet was doing. At first it seemed she was back on track; then I could tell Ms. Johnson was being optimistic for my sake; then she told me Velvet had been given detention for bullying a teacher. I thought I hadn’t heard right. I had. Velvet had joined a group of girls who ganged up on and bullied a substitute teacher.

“They didn’t hurt him,” said Ms. Johnson, “it’s more like they—”

“ Him ? They attacked a male teacher? Girls ?”

“They didn’t attack, its more like they picked on him.”

“ Picked on him ? A man?”

“He’s new and not so young, and he’s small and real nervous. They were just, you know, calling names, knocking his things off the desk, flicking at him with their fingers, just basically challenging his authority. I know Velvet wasn’t the instigator. But you might want to talk to her about it, let her know you disapprove.”

We had her up to confront her about it; that was my idea. Ginger was ready to cancel the next visit and deal with it on the phone. It was me who said, No, face-to-face. I think it felt like an ambush to her, but that’s what she did to some fool — I could just picture the guy — and I wanted to do the same to her, both of us get right on top of her, jab our fingers at her, call her names, see how it felt.

Of course we didn’t. We waited until after dinner and then I asked her if it was true. She said no. I said, Then why is Ms. Johnson saying it? She said Ms. Johnson didn’t like her. Ginger said, “Stop lying.” Her voice was ice-cold, and Velvet looked down, scowling. Ginger said, “Tell the truth. Just tell the truth.” In Ginger, anger is cold, and I could see anger coming up in Velvet too. I spoke just to assert normal feeling.

“You know I’m a teacher,” I said. “Do you know how hard it is to go into class sometimes? When you know the students don’t like you and don’t want to hear anything you say and still you have to try to make it good for them, make it exciting? When you don’t feel excited at all?”

She looked at me and said nothing.

“Why did you treat somebody like that?” asked Ginger.

She said, “I don’t know,” and Ginger stood up and shouted, “Don’t use that tone with me!”

“It’s you that’s using tone!” cried the girl, and she stood too.

“Easy!” I said.

“Ahh dunno,” mocked Ginger. “You think I’m an idiot? Answer me! Why did you treat somebody that way?”

“We didn’t do nothing!”

“Call him bitch, do this shit”—Ginger triggered her index with her thumb—“at his face?”

“We didn’t hurt him!”

“You did! You hurt him like that woman hurt that horse!”

“He’s not like a horse, and I didn’t have a whip!”

But Ginger had hit home, and she kept at it.

“Was it because he was weak?” she said. “In his body and also here?” Ginger put her hand on her chest.

Velvet looked down; I realized with strange distress that she was upset.

“Look at me!” cried Ginger.

The girl looked, alarmed. Ginger sat down and spoke quietly. “ I’m weak,” she said. “I’m small and I’m weak.”

Velvet’s eyes changed powerfully; I could not define their expression except it was like something in her had stood erect.

“Do I deserve to be treated like that?” asked Ginger softly.

“I’d never treat you like that!”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“No! But you don’t come around acting like you gonna tell people what to do! If he’s too weak to be there, then he shouldn’t be there!”