Mary Gaitskill - The Mare

When we were all done, I said, “What are you going to do over there for two hours?”

First she said, “I dunno,” and then, “Talk to Fugly Girl.”

“Be careful,” I said. “You heard Pat. Stay back from the stall.”

“I will. I want to see the other horses too.”

I walked over with her. Pat was there leading a baby horse outside. I didn’t see any other kids. “We came early,” I said.

“Good,” said Pat. “Want to come out to the round pen with me and Jimbo?”

I said I would be back to watch Velvet ride and left her following Pat to the corral, smiling and looking at her feet.

When I got back to the house, I was surprised to hear Paul speaking Spanish into the phone — or trying; he didn’t really know the language. “Qué?” he asked. He looked like he was struggling to understand what was being said — and then he held the phone away from him as angry words poured from it. He put the phone back to his ear and then hung it up. He looked at me with a baffled face. “That was Velvet’s mother,” he said. “I’m not sure what she was calling about. At first it sounded like she was saying she was in trouble. Then it sounded like she meant to say we’re in trouble. She was talking too fast for me to understand, but I’m pretty sure she called me ‘stupido’ before she hung up.”

We laughed, but uneasily. We decided to call the office of the organization that had brought Velvet out. No one answered; we left a message that we needed a translator to speak to Velvet’s mom.

We went with the horse to a fenced circle. Pat told me his name was Jimbo, and that he was only a year old. She told me to stay outside the fence and then she went in and took Jimbo off the leash. She stopped talking to me and started talking to Jimbo. I couldn’t pay attention to her, I just watched the horse. I could see he was a baby, not just for being small, he moved like a little kid. She made him come to her by walking away, and then if he moved away from her, she raised her arms and walked at him swinging the leash, like she wanted him away. Once when he wouldn’t come, she came to the fence where I was and crouched down. I said, What are you doing? She said, Shhh and told me to get down too. The baby horse just looked at us. We waited. And then he came. He came up to Pat and put his nose near her. She told him he was good. I wished he would put his nose on me, but Pat got up and clipped the leash back on him.

When we took him back in the barn, I asked her why Fugly Girl had that name. She said, “It’s not really her name, it’s just what the girls call her. Because her head is a little too big for her body.”

People said my head was too big too. This girl I hate calls me “Flat-Ass Fathead” and “Velveeta Cheese.”

“Her ear too — one of ’em looks like somebody might’ve twisted it.”

“What’s her real name?”

“Funny Girl. Which doesn’t suit her.”

I agreed, it did not.

“Not much funny about the mare’s background. She’s an Appendix quarter horse — that’s a quarter horse — thoroughbred mix — but I don’t know the mix on her, and I can see both in how she’s put together. Her last owners — or rather, the owners before last — brought her up from down south, where she was bush-track racing.”

“What’s that?”

“Rough-type racing, basically to train jockeys. Hardly any rules. People get hurt all the time.”

“She ran races?”

“Back in the day.”

“Can I ride her?”

“No one rides that horse. Remember the sign? It’s there for a reason. Don’t even touch that horse.”

I thought, I already touched her. She already touched me. And you saw it.

Pat showed me the horse I would ride; she was just plain white and a little fat. But she was nice. Her name was Reesa. Pat put a halter on her face and brought her out of her cage — her stall — and “cross-tied” her, that meant she was tied by her face to both walls. And then she gave me a brush to clean her with. I brushed her whole hard body; Pat showed me the place on her back where she specially liked it, and I did it there a lot. Then we put the saddle on her; when I strapped it on with this thing called a “girth,” Reesa puffed out her stomach like to push it away, but Pat said it was okay. Then Pat put a helmet on my head, meaning my head might break, and I got scared. But she gave me the end of the leash (the “lead rope”) and I had to lead Reesa out into the circle. In the circle there was a wooden step-thing called a “mounting block,” and Pat put it next to Reesa. “Okay,” she said. “Ready?”

I stood still and breathed. Pat waited. Reesa waited. I climbed up on the top step and put my hand on her. “Keep the reins in your left hand. That’s your control,” said Pat. “But take hold of her mane with the same hand — it’s okay, you won’t hurt her — and slip your left foot in the stirrup.” I took the mane; Reesa seemed like she was saying, It’s okay, but I was scared. “Go on,” said Pat. “Foot in the stirrup, take hold of that saddle, and get on your horse!” So I held the saddle and swung my leg and then I was on top of her. And then I felt her. I felt her say things, deep things; mostly I felt that she was strong, that she didn’t have to let me on her, or do anything I told her. But she did and she would.

“She accepts you,” said Pat. “She doesn’t care who you are, how much money you have, where you’re from. She accepts you.”

I thought, I know.

“She can feel your head move; she can feel your stomach tense or relax. Her skin is so sensitive she can feel a mosquito land on her before it bites. To make her move, you tap with your calves, you don’t kick. Kicking her is like screaming at her, and you don’t need to do that. She can hear you.”

I smiled so hard it made tears come. Pat just kept talking. With my legs, I asked Reesa to go. And she did.

They must’ve started early; she was already on the horse when I got there. Pat had the horse on a lead, and she was talking to Velvet, making corny jokes, telling her to sit up straight and stick her chest out “like Dolly Parton.” But when Pat led the horse around, and I saw the girl’s face, I could see it didn’t matter; she was in a state of joy. When she saw me and the camera I’d brought, she smiled even bigger.

Pat got her to move the horse forward, backward, then in a wide circle. She got her to trot. She got her to stand up and sit down in time with the horse. Velvet did it all, now and then giving me a movie-star smile so I could take a picture of it.

It felt so good, I completely forgot about my private radio signal, whether it was there or not. That was a metaphor that did not have any meaning in this situation. This situation was something else entirely.

When I saw Ginger there I felt the same as when I first got in the car with her and Paul: that she was a strange nice lady with a mixed face who didn’t have anything to do with me. I liked her taking my picture, I liked it that I was going to have some pictures to take back home with me. But it was strange.

And then it wasn’t. I can’t explain it. Just all of a sudden, it made sense, her being there, me being with her. I still don’t know why. But I got it. It was like I was looking at puzzle pieces all over the floor that magically got snapped into place and I went, Oh, okay. I still couldn’t say what the picture was. But it made sense.

That night after dinner, instead of a movie, I asked her if she wanted to go for a walk; she said yes. It was a beautiful night, with light still in the sky, the moon glowing behind slow-moving clouds. We could see the outlines of huge old trees against the soft-lit night, and the tall grass of the field moving gently, the fireflies. The road looked pale and glowing against the dense summer foliage. I could feel her taking all this in. I could feel her enjoying the lights of the houses set back from the road, the mystery of other people’s lives. At least I thought she enjoyed it the way I did, and I loved it that we could feel that together.