The Mare

Ginger

I thought: What if her mother could move up here? Mexicans live here; I see them, mostly working in restaurants or biking on the roads with plastic bags of groceries hanging from their handlebars. Down the block from us, in a boatlike three-story house, live a couple of Mexican families. One night, when Velvet and I walked past, we saw they were having a lawn party with colored lights and music and food. A woman looked at us and smiled as we passed. After that I noticed the Mexican grocery store in the little strip mall by the Laundromat. I went in and bought some candy, sweet red peanuts and sugar animals dyed green. I asked the guy behind the counter if he would be willing to talk to Mrs. Vargas. He looked at me like I had three heads and said sure.

I asked Velvet too: “Would your mother like to move up here?” It took her a long time to answer. When she finally said, “Yeah,” she sounded like I had three heads too. Still, I asked, “Would you talk to your mother?” and she gave me the three-headed “yeah.”

But later that night, she asked if she could see where the middle school was. So I drove her there. The school was up a hill, on a windy road. It was very visible in the moonlight. Its name was written on a stony mound thick-grown with tiger lilies that looked pale and velvet-gray in the dark. We sat in the car and looked for some minutes. I said, “Will you talk to your mom about it?” And she said, “Yes.” Different word, different tone.