The Mare

Velvet

I went back to school. Ginger said, “You’ve got to, you’ve got to,” and she sounded so fucked-up I felt bad for her and also I needed to see my horse. I didn’t act different in class or in the lunchroom and I didn’t take bullshit from anybody. But I paid more attention to teachers even when everybody else was clowning and throwing gummed-up paper at everything. I did some work and gave it in.

When school got out, I went to the block where I first met Dominic and walked around there until it was time to go get Dante. I saw the same little kids who stared at me before. Once I saw Mrs. Henry, who took care of Strawberry, and she talked to me. I saw boys who said, “Dayum, you need to break me off a piece of that, girl.” Except for one who said, “Charlie, I don’t think so. Look at her eyes, that girl is a hundred miles away, she is aficionado, she belongs to somebody for sure, she’s in love.”

That even made me smile. But I didn’t see Dominic.

I tried not to think about it. I thought about my horse instead. I thought about her following me up into the van, the way her feet looked confused and almost funny, like somebody acting scared by running with their feet high. But my mind kept coming back to his lips and his hands touching me, his open legs, his eyes flashing as he turned to look at me over one shoulder and then the other; feeling flashed at the memory, all through my whole body, moving and breathing, coming out my skin and eyes, quiet and wild in the air. Where are you, where are you, where are you?

I thought, This is stupid. This is the last day I’ll do this.

That was the day I saw him.

He was with the boys who said break off some of that, and he looked at me like they did before he saw me. I stopped; his face changed. He turned from the other boys and said my name. The other boys looked away, then moved away, just a step, but it was like a mile. He said, “How you doin’?” I said, “Okay. How you doin’?” He shook his head and said, “Like hell.” And we started walking like we planned it. He said, “You know about Shawn?”

“Yeah. You know what happened?”

“Yeah, it was crazy. He was just standing next to Angel on the corner—”

“What corner? Where was it, in Williamsburg?”

“No, Bushwick. On a corner of Harmon, Irving — I dunno. This guy Juan, he’s beefin’ with Angel, he come up with his crew and had words and they shot Angel and Shawn.”

“That’s crazy.”

We didn’t talk for a minute. He said, “So, you were with him?”

“Not really. Once or twice. I—”

“Wha’d your grandfather say about that?”

“Dominic, my grandfather’s dead.”

“That old man, that night? He died?”

“No, my grandfather died three years ago. I never even met him. But that night, that man called me granddaughter, and I called him grandfather before I knew what I was saying.”

“You a strange girl.”

His eyes flashing while he walked away with Brianna and some girl, one shoulder then the other. “Vete pal carajo,” I said, then I turned and walked away.

“Hey, no, wait,” he said, “wait, you want to get something to eat?”

“I’m not strange.”

“I don’t mean it bad, I mean more like, you complicated.”

“I have to pick up my little brother in an hour.”

“We can be quick.”

“And why you asking me about Shawn when you with that nasty ho Brianna and also with her equally nasty friend, that is some ratreria shit.”

His face was surprised, like, You funny, but soft too, his open lips and eyes and even his nose so soft they were blurry. But when he closed his lips, the shape of them was cutting. “I don’t know what friend you mean—”

“Janelle, for one.”

“Oh, she—” He smiled, like embarrassed. “She seventeen. And Brianna’s almost seventeen. I’m seventeen, and Shawn is — I mean was—older than me, and you a little girl.”

“No, I’m not.”

“You the same age as my little sister.”

“I’m not your little sister.”

He smiled and my body flashed sick-hard.

“Okay, big girl, why don’t you come eat with me?”

I thought he would take me for pizza. But instead we went blocks away to this place on Grand, with Christmas lights, where my mom took me and Dante once for New Year’s a long time ago. I got a mango drink; he got salami and cheese.

“Why do you call me complicated?” I said.

“I don’t mean nothin’ bad.” He moved his chair around so he was next to me. I was embarrassed, but the man behind the counter looked with nice eyes. Dominic said, “I just mean you diff’rent. I felt it the first time I saw you. It’s in how you carry yourself — even when you was eleven!”

“That’s why they say I’m a conceited wannabe.”

“You think I care what girls in school say? I can see you ain’t any a that. You just diff’rent. I don’t know how. But it ain’t about white people or horses neither.”

And then he kissed me on the side of my head. “But I’d like to see you on a horse!”