The Mare

Velvet

Ginger asked me why I said I was at the top of my grade when I wasn’t even giving in my homework. I told her that I did give it in; that the teacher was lazy or just lying. She said, “All your teachers?” I didn’t say anything. She said, “You would be at the top of your grade if you were turning it in.” I still didn’t say anything. We were sitting out in the backyard in plastic chairs. The grass smell was in our noses and the crickets were out. The neighbors were behind their fence talking about the Iraq War, how it had to happen because of the Bible. Paul was away somewhere and Ginger was drinking something, I wondered what.

She said, “Why did you tell Edie that you were going to ride at the county fair?”

“I didn’t tell her that.”

“Then why did she say you did?”

“I said I know somebody who’s riding at the fair.”

Ginger said, “If you’re going to lie, you should learn to do it better than that.” She said, “You keep lying to me, we aren’t going to stay close. Lying creates distance between people.”

“I’m not lying.”

She didn’t say anything. The crickets went, I’m a boy I’m a boy, I’m a girl I’m a girl. Ginger sipped her drink. I thought about what Shawn said, why she could be so nice. I thought about the dream of a trapdoor in her yard, and how she went down the stairs to steal treasure from hell. I thought, It’s you who’s the liar. “It all started in the Bible,” said the neighbor man. “With an Arab woman named Hajar.”

Trapdoor. I got up and walked in the back door, through the house, and out the front door. Ginger called to me, but I didn’t stop. I went directly to my mare. No one was there. I opened her stall and went in. This time she didn’t turn her back to me. I rubbed her neck and thought of when I took my paper for school and put it on the counter where water had spilled; I watched the words I wrote with Ginger melt and then I went to school. I thought about myself giving the clean, dry paper to the teacher and getting it back with a 4 on it. My horse put her head on my shoulder. I thought both things, the clean paper and the ruined one.

Pat says, “This mare tolerates no bullshit,” and she is right. It wasn’t bullshit; I was telling her the truth just standing next to her: destroying the paper but giving the teacher the paper. The county fair. Me and Fiery Girl at the county fair. It hadn’t happened. But it would. I could feel it. So could my mare.