The Mare

Ginger

The woman called my cell phone Saturday morning when I was at the grocery. Her voice was friendly and hopeful but with a push behind it; she wanted to know if I was Velvet’s godmother. I had no idea where that came from, but I said, Yes, who’s this? Lydia, she said, down the block from Velvet. The girl had come to her, crying ’cause her mother was abusing her, and she had taken her in. I put down my wire basket and went out into the lot. There were orange and yellow paper turkeys in the windows and little evergreens. There was a Humvee with a sticker over its windshield saying GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY WAY. “Does she have bruises?” I asked.

“No,” said Lydia. “But I don’t think she’s making it up; she’s too upset. Some girl at school is saying Velvet tried to steal her boyfriend, and they’re following her home from school. Somebody threw a glass bottle at her. Velvet says the girl’s lying, but the mother believes the one she doesn’t know over her own child, and she’s been hitting the child and calling her a ho in front of her brother.”

“Where is Velvet now?”

“She’s in the other room sleeping still. She spent the night; I didn’t have the heart to send her back.”

“How do you know her?”

“Just from the block. She sits out on her front stoop like a little puppy, trying to talk to whoever talks back, and a lot do because that girl is pretty and she needs the attention. Last night while we were looking at the TV? She just leaned on me the same way, like a puppy, like way younger than fifteen. I hate to see her treated this way, and when she told me about you—”

“Wait,” I said. “She is way younger than fifteen. She’s twelve.”

There was a silence on the other end. “Maybe I’m mistaken.” The voice was harder, the friendly hope gone stiff and artificial. “But everybody thinks that’s how old she is. I don’t know why she would lie.”

“She looks older than twelve. Maybe people just assume—”

“Well, whateva. I got my own family to consider.” She said she was going to take Velvet back home as soon as the girl woke up so that her mother would know she hadn’t been doing anything wrong. She was going to see the situation for herself. She said she couldn’t really get involved because she had her own problems with the state system. But me being the godmother, she thought I should know.

I thanked Lydia. She gave me her phone number. I put my cell away and stood in the lot. Why she would lie. Because she lies all the time. Because it’s the only way life is bearable. A big, angry-looking woman with gray hair came out of the store with a full cart of groceries plus a bag hanging off her arm. She went to the car that said “Get the Fuck out of My Way,” unloaded her groceries in it, and drove off.