Mary Gaitskill - The Mare

And she went up the stairs so fast and jerky that she slipped and fell on one knee. “Oh crap!” I said and went to her. She let me hold her. She didn’t cry. But I could feel the pain beating against her body like it was too big to get out without breaking her. It made me hold her tighter, and she hardened against my grip.

“Ginger,” she said, and her calm was terrible. “I can’t talk about my mom no more.”

“All right,” I said. “All right.”

I expected her to keep going upstairs to her room. Instead she said, “Ginger, do you have a Bible?”

“Yes,” I said. “Why?”

“Can I just see it?”

We went downstairs and I gave it to her and watched as she flipped through it, clearly looking for something. I asked what it was and she said, “Nothin’.” Then she found it and read it intently, moving her lips as she did.

Once I heard my mom talk on the phone to this woman Rasheeda, the only black person my mom ever liked. It was when we just moved to Crown Heights, and my mom kicked Manuel out for not paying and maybe for messing with me and he’d come back pounding on the door. I heard my mom say, “It’s like there’s a hurricane and I’m sitting in my chair holding on with white knuckles.”

Now I knew how she felt. I couldn’t hear the hurricane and I couldn’t see it. But it was there and I didn’t even have a chair to hold on to. I had to ride a horse through it. I took out my phone and played my mom’s message again. There won’t be a home for you anymore. I knew she didn’t mean it, any more than she meant most of what she said. But still, her voice pulled on me and made me want to tell Ginger the truth and not compete, just go back to my mother’s hurricane.

That’s when I realized: When she said that to Rasheeda, it was only her in the hurricane. Like me and Dante were just part of the storm blowing around her with a bunch of other stuff. I turned off my phone and put it in a drawer. I took the piece of blue shell from Providence that I broke off to carry in my shirt pocket while I rode along with the sea horse and with Dominic. I took it all the way out into the field where me and Fiery Girl practiced jumping and I dropped it there. I looked up into the sky; it was cold with purple on the bottom of it. I thought the words I saw on Dominic’s chest and then I said them: “You armed me with strength for battle, you humbled my adversaries, you made my enemies run. And I destroyed them.”

I was 95 percent sure she wasn’t telling me the truth — she would’ve convinced me but for that break in her expression, her concentration, then the forceful switch back before she spoke. Still, I didn’t make the call. I made dinner with Paul, acted normal, got the chicken in the oven, then went up the stairs to my workroom, address book in hand. I stared at my failed painting of Melinda, the divided face; ugly woman, haunted girl. That break in Velvet’s expression, in her concentration, the pain — I had to call, if only to try and make her mother come. Instead I sat and stared at the picture of my dead sister and felt my flesh tingle with the words no and don’t. Over and over: No. Don’t. The hair on my arm stood up. I heard Velvet come in the door and go into the kitchen. I went back downstairs thinking, I’ll do it later.

The refrigerator is broken: the seal is worn away and water gathers, I have to clean it constantly to keep black mold from growing, and even so, I can’t keep the mold out of the cracks. When I got off the phone I cleaned it again, pulling everything out again, wiping and wiping. I washed the windows, mopped the floor. The whole time I’m thinking, It’s no good. We don’t belong here. Not in this neighborhood, not in this country, not on this filthy planet where anything good is chopped into little bits trying to join and be whole, but they can’t. My prayers are worthless, I have no grace, and my daughter does not respect me because some fool woman has made her into a pet. My son cries, “You think she’s going to be crippled but you let her go ?” I hit him, but I was thinking, Yes, I let her go, like I knew she was sneaking out some nights and didn’t stay awake to stop her. A good mother would stop her, a good mother— A good mother wouldn’t let her daughter get turned into a pet for a few hundred dollars a month.

“And she’s not even worth a few hundred dollars a month!”

I said that out loud and shoved the mop so hard I banged a table leg and my only good vase fell and smashed, and I hit myself to not hit Dante again. I felt his fear and then my shame, coming on fast. I shut my teeth against it, pushing it back. Holding it back, I got down on the floor to pick up the pieces of my one beautiful thing, reaching under the couch for it — and saw the blue shell from the beach at Providence. My poor gift for her, the hope of a woman who gets it in the ass with a man who doesn’t love her. I would’ve smashed it, but surprise stopped my hand. What was this thing doing under the couch? I thought she kept it where she keeps her little things, what was it doing here? The beach; the light between water and sky. I sat on the couch and looked at it; it was broken. A big piece was missing, like it had been snapped off. My thoughts sank so deep I no longer knew what they were. The TV was on but Dante was watching me like he could see what was happening, like it was a picture being drawn. And it was a picture being drawn. She’d just sent three hundred dollars, and I just cashed it. I had it in my drawer. “Dante,” I told him. “Turn that off and get the phone. I need you to make a call for me.”

I expected dinner to be tense, but it wasn’t. Ginger kept drama out of her eyes and Paul seemed happy I was there; he asked me questions about the competition. But when I went back to see my mare again I started to wonder, Why am I doing this? I am alone here. I still like Ginger, but I can’t talk to her. I love Fiery Girl, but she’s not mine. If I win I can’t tell my mom, and nobody else where I live cares. I stopped walking and put my face in my hands; I was thinking about my mom hitting herself in the face because of me. She never did that before, never. Feelings by themself ain’t what matters. Dominic was right and it made me wish I wasn’t here on this earth. Not exactly dead, just not here.

Still, I went to the barn. And that’s when it happened: I heard the horses talking to me like the first time I came. I don’t know if I made it up because of being so sad, but it didn’t matter — it made me feel better. Hello, girl! We know you! Come see me! Have you got something for me? What’s the matter? But Fiery Girl didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to. She just looked at me like she saw me to the bottom, and all her muscles were proud and ready. Like a Jesus heart with fire and thorns inside it.

And I knew: I am doing it for this. If somebody asked me what this was, I wouldn’t be able to tell them. But I knew, I knew.

With me my son is soft but arrogant too, and I can feel his maleness growing in him; with any other adult or older child, his arrogance hides, and without it his spirit is shy and so soft it has no shape; his words too are so soft they have no shape, and he mumbles like a half-wit. I understand him even in English. But the people he talks to don’t and they think he’s stupid, then he thinks he’s stupid.

So I feel bad to make him talk on the phone with one of these machine people who they get to answer phones — except it turns out, it’s not even a machine-person, it’s really a machine. Which at least can’t think he’s stupid as he tries to give machine answers, whispering so the thing can’t hear him, finally shouting. “Mami, what do we want, a reservation or a service or something else? Coño, now it’s talking about a dining car, it won’t let you ask the price — something else, you stupid nonfiction puta, something else! Mami, I can’t!” He slammed the phone on the floor so the cap broke off the end of it, and I knocked it on his head, the insane voice talked on and he cried, “Just call the man, Paul. Tell him to call them.”