The Mare

Velvet

Once a teacher asked the class if we had to show the whole world in just one picture, what it would be. A boy said he’d show a picture of war, a girl said she’d show a baby being born. I didn’t say, but I thought, All the feet walking past my building. Like these old-lady feet with a cane and quick boy feet like rubber running past her and this girl in strappy red shoes and this man walking after her trying to make her smile. And sometimes somebody trying to make me smile.

Like Mr. Nelson at the store downstairs. He’s old and so dark he’s black, with a big stomach, but he has happy wrinkles around his eyes, and he’s kind to my mom — he gives her extra sandwich meat sometimes. She says it’s garbage, but still. He comes now and says, Hello, Sweets, what’s good? So I tell him, Nothin’. I’m hungry and my mom wouldn’t give me nothin’, not even bread. So he says come to the store, he’ll fix me something. I ask him to give me a egg and cheese sandwich and he says yeah. I go to the store with him and he makes it on the grill behind the counter. People come in and out the store. He talks to them and me. He asks about school. He asks if I went to “those people” in the country. I say yes. I tell him I rode my favorite horse. I tell him I rode her at night when nobody knew. It was the first time I told it to anybody, and when I told it to him, his eyes changed, like he’s a child listening to me give him a story for bed.

I think that’s what made him want to kiss me. He gave me the sandwich on a paper plate and waxy paper and I said, Ima go eat it on my steps and he said, You not even gonna stay with me? And I said, Noooo, but I smiled so he would know I still like him and he said, At least Ima walk you out, and he did, but before we were out, he put his hand on my head and kissed me on my mouth. I kissed him too. Even though his mouth was old with gray hairs around it. He said, “Keep ridin’ that horse,” and I smiled.

Then I went and sat back down on the steps and ate my sandwich. I watched the people. It was between day and night, so both day and night people were out. I remembered when Manuel grabbed my head and pinched my jaws till my mouth came open and put his tongue in. I remembered him banging and cursing at the door, me being scared, hiding behind my mother. But I wasn’t nine now, I was twelve, and I was watching the whole world get ready for the night.

I finished my sandwich. My mom shouted out the window, I thought you were hungry. Don’t you want some food? So I went up and she told me I was going to have my own room where Manuel and then Mr. Diaz used to be.