Mary Gaitskill - The Mare

“He probably had to be there,” I said. “If he’s doing that and he’s not a kid, he really needs the money. And they aren’t paying much.”

Lots of things were said; the upshot was that, because of what she’d done, she couldn’t see her horse this visit. She accepted that but asked if she could go visit the horses at the barn next door.

“No,” said Ginger. “We can’t let you do that because you aren’t allowed there and you know it.”

Velvet looked angry for a minute and I thought she was going to explode. But instead her shoulders sagged and she said, “Then what am I gonna do?”

“Read,” I said. “Write.”

“I want you to write something specific,” said Ginger. “I want you to write about why you behaved that way to the teacher.”

“ Huh ?”

“Write it and be honest. Then we can do something fun. We can go see a movie. Or walk at night.”

I didn’t want to walk, I wanted us to ride in the car and play music. But she said No, we’re going to walk. It felt sad because I remembered how much I used to like it, and she still wanted it to be that way. But my mind was different now and the little things in people’s yards, their decorations I used to think were so cute — I didn’t care about it anymore. There was nothing going on at all, except a old person walking his dog and no music, just some kids’ voices talking from somewhere in the park. How could anybody stand it? And Ginger was trying so hard, like we walked over a little bridge and she said, “Remember the time we shined a flashlight in the water and we saw an eel?” I was basically ignoring her until she asked: “You’re having periods, right?”

“For a year now, Ginger.”

“Do you ever get really, really mad when you have your period?”

I tried to think and couldn’t remember.

“Because when I first started? I remember sometimes I would get unbelievably mad. I was once so mad at my mom I remember looking at the back of her head and wanting to kill her and she hadn’t even done anything. It was scary. And then I started my period and I was like, oh, that was why.”

I pictured Ginger staring at her mom’s head and wanting to kill her. I didn’t know what to say.

“It’s normal, if you feel that way. I feel it too sometimes, but in a different way.”

I said, “Different how?”

“Because I’m on the other end of it. You’re starting to have periods and I’m starting to stop. You’re coming up and I’m going down.”

And I don’t know why, but that made me smile. Not because of her going down. More the way she said it. It made me feel her again, and I wished I could explain: You can’t go into a barn weak and tell horses what to do. Horses are real. They don’t care who deserves what. They do what they do and if you can’t handle it, you shouldn’t be there.

When we got back to the house she said she wanted to write some more about what happened with the substitute. She’d written something already, saying she was sorry, that she just did it because she wanted the others kids to like her, that she was afraid to stand up and not go along. It was fine, and when she didn’t give me anything new the next day, I thought she’d forgotten about it. But she hadn’t forgotten. She handed it to me right before she left, and made me promise to wait until after she was gone to read it. I finally opened it when I was on the train, going back home from Penn Station.

You said I was doing what Beverly did to Joker beat him down inside. But that is not true. A teacher is like a trainer its us who are like the horses. The subsitute was like a trainer acting like he know what he is doing giving commands. But if you give the wrong command or in the wrong way the horse knows its bullshit and they won’t do what you say. They ignore you or throw you off of them. I saw Joker throw off Beverly once because she was mean with the bit and also her voice the subsitute wasn’t mean but he was stupid saying “Go away! Go away!” like we were bugs he should’ve said “Go back to your seats.”

And something else, if you are riding horses in a field and one breaks out and starts running they all do. They don’t follow you they follow each other. They forget they have riders and they run together maybe so fast everybody will fall off. Like what happened last summer and I didn’t tell you. I was the last to fall off. One girl got hurt.

I’m sorry if I was bad to the subsitute. I would not be that way with you ever. But that’s what happened. We ran together.

I went to look for him like I always did, walking the block where I met him, and also where we ate. It was so cold it was hard to look sometimes because of keeping my head down in the wind. It was like that when I saw him finally. He was in the restaurant where he took me and he was sitting with Brianna. I went to the other side of the street. I got in a doorway and put up my hood. I got out my phone and I texted, “Hi why don’t u call me u ok?” I watched him take out his phone, look at it, and put it away. I saw him sit over his food with his head down, then look up at her. I couldn’t see his face.

On the way home with Dante, I saw the lady who went off on the dude that night at the bus stop. She didn’t know me; she just went by. But I knew her even though she didn’t have her long weave in and her hair was so short she was almost bald, and her eyes were back in her head like she never had the heart to yell at nobody. And I remembered what I heard a girl say at school, that her mama said to her, “Any time you see a bitch with no hair, that bitch ain’t got no love neither.”

That’s when I heard the text hit my phone. I looked and saw “Hey mami sorry it been crazy get u soon miss u — d”

I should’ve been pissed off. But in my head I heard that beautiful song on the subway the time my mom hit me in the face.

Then I went home and she threw a envelope at my face. She said, “A letter for you.” She watched while I opened it and read.

Dear Velvet: What you wrote about the teacher was beautiful, especially the part about running together. But you are not a horse. You are a person. We’ll talk more soon. Love, Ginger

I put the letter down, smiling. “I got a job today,” said my mom. “So you should be happy.”

“Mami, I am happy.”

“A job at the candle factory. Just like that crazy old woman with all the saints.” She laughed. “But Mr. Figuera is still renting his room. So you’re still on the couch.”

She called me and told me she got the letter and then yelled at her mother, who yelled back. She yelled at me that her mom got a job but that she was going to let Mr. Figuera keep sleeping in her room and make Velvet sleep on the couch.

I said, “Your mom must really need the money.”

She said, “I don’t care what she needs! Why doesn’t she sleep on the couch?” Her mother yelled again and Velvet said, “Can you talk to Dante?”

I said, “About what ?”

Dante said, “Hi.”

So I said, “Hi. What are you doing?”

“Watching The Simpsons. ” The yelling went up and came back down. “Do you want to know what’s happening?” he said.

“Yes, please tell me.”

“Bart went to church and sold his soul! To the devil!”

There was a snatching of air and Velvet said, “Can I come live with you?”

“Honey,” I said, “I don’t think you’d really want that.”

When I saw her again, Fiery Girl came to me with love. She made the nicker noise. When I went in the stall with the halter, she put her head down and forward to show me what she felt. I couldn’t ride her or even lunge her because the paddock was icy. So I groomed her, brushed her, scratched her, rubbed her. She wiggled her lips.