The Mare

Velvet

That Christmas Fiery Girl took the jumps — not just one, but four in a row. It was cold, but the ground was firm and dry with no ice or slush, and I put my legs on her like business, not feeling. Because I was going to find a way to be in a competition, get points, and be in a bigger competition where I could win some money and buy clothes and do my hair and go to that club and find Dominic.

That’s all I thought about back home, trying to sleep on the couch with people brawling at each other outside and their cars pumping music so hard it pumped up in the walls of my building. That’s all I thought about when I was on the mare, and damn, she seemed to get it. The one time she gave me trouble in the stall, lifting her head and resisting the bit, I slapped her mouth and she minded. “Real smart,” said Pat. “You just smacked somebody that outweighs you by a thousand pounds.” But when I took her out, that horse took the jumps better than ever, better than Chloe, fiercer, like she’s gonna eat ’em. When we were done, she cantered proudly, and I remembered that on the couch, watching lights and shadows tangled on my ceiling, hearing voices and music tangled with pretend pictures of me at the club; Dominic’s face when he saw me looking bad — everybody would see it.

That’s what I was thinking when we were in the subway going to Macy’s. Normally that is not a place we would ever go, but Ginger had gotten my mom a gift card. I had to go to translate, and we couldn’t leave Dante, so there we were on the subway, my mom complaining that she could only get junk with this card, Dante dumping potato chips on her head, me waiting for her to hit him, her not even noticing but bitching at me instead. Then the train broke down and we had to get off in Manhattan and wait on another train. My mom started laughing over these stupid white girls wearing colored sneakers in winter, but I wasn’t listening because these Indian-kinda dudes with scarves on their heads were playing for change on little wooden flutes with a machine on the floor making the song like it was from a movie. Oh my love, my darling, I hunger for your touch. I need your love, I want your love.

That’s when she hit me in the face. “You stupid girl, you give everything away! In front of people!”

The train came in screaming. We got on it pushing. Huge tired people pushed in between me and my family and I faced the flying tunnel out the back door of the last car, hiding my hit face.

My mom got a purse and crap gloves that day. That night I got up off the couch. I waited until they were asleep and I found my old birthday shirt Ginger gave me. I saw it wasn’t any good; it was made to go with a summer skirt and also it was only cute, not hot-cute. If I couldn’t be fly with my clothes, I had to make it like I’m so fly I don’t even have to try, work my face instead. So I put on my black jeans and my Puma hoodie with the silver cat and the silver hoops I stole with Strawberry. I made up my face in the kitchen, by the window where all the light came in, I put gold around my eyes. I left my North Face jacket open so you could see the silver on my chest. And I went out to find that club again.

The street was poppin’, not too cold for people to be mobbed-up around cars, music and powerful feeling up in the air. I walked with my head down and myself pulled in — people looked, but left me be. Until I got to the bus stop. I had to wait and then it was like, Hey, Mami, what’s up? Can I talk to you? Oh, you waitin’ for your boyfriend, that’s awright. Except this one dude, he’s like So is your boyfriend a black man? Where is he? Why he keep you waitin’ here? It was starting to be aggravating when this woman suddenly came down on the dude like a Rottweiler, pulling the whole show away from me, but screamin’ about me, You can’t wait two minutes to work on some underage pussy? I looked away. She’s going, You said you loved me! And he’s, You crazy ho-bag. I as good as told you, you were just emergency pussy till the real shit come back!

I thought it was just boys who fronted this shit, boys in my grade acting stupid. This was a man and he was not acting.

Anyway, at least the bus came before they did anything else, and nobody was on it but some asleep bad-smelling people and a lady my mom’s age who looked like she was coming home from work. I looked out the window and wondered why I was doing this. It was stupid, but I had to. I had to try.

Except it was even more stupid than I thought. I got off a stop too late because I didn’t see no party and when I walked back I saw why: there wasn’t one. The building was dark and shut up and it looked broke and poor, like somebody hit it with a wand and turned it back into a place for rats and homeless. I felt disappointed but also relief, and then my neck hair stood up. Men were talking, close. I saw them come around the side of the building, dark moving in dark, arms, legs, jaws. They saw me and stopped. I kept walking. They didn’t call out. But I felt them looking and their look was like a animal following me. I made myself not run. I felt animal-breath on my neck. I made myself not pee. Then one of them laughed and the animal turned away.

I got to the bus stop. There was a old man there, talking to nobody. I sat close to him like we were together and he was talking to me. I was still feeling the animal-eyes of those men and I wished he would pretend to be my grandfather, but he didn’t.

I got home and went to the kitchen to change back into my sleep clothes. From the window, voices and lights talked on my skin. There was a noise down the hall and I jumped, but it was just Mr. Figuera coming in. He came out of the hall, his dark shape moving in dark, like the men back there, not like someone who sat next to Dante watching Family Guy. The dark shape saw me and I was a stranger to him too; I could see because he stopped with a tiny jolt and then he relaxed and said, “Chica, what are you doin’ up?” I said, “Nothin’. I can’t sleep.” He sat on one arm of the couch and I could see him, except he didn’t look like him. Mr. Figuera had sleepy eyes and a friendly, hairy face; the man in front of me had a hard mouth and eyes like a cur between shrink and bite. I asked him where he was comin’ from, and he told me, “Bushwick.”

“You know people in Bushwick?” I asked.

“Yeah, sure. Why you ask?”

“You know a boy there named Dominic, half Dominican, half African-American?”

“Sure. Everybody knows him. You ain’t messed up with that boy, are you?”

“Not really. Why? He bad?”

“Nah, not bad, just, if you a young lady, you know, a lil’ tiguera like that liable to be trifling. Also liable to be into shit he really don’t know how deep it is until it’s too late, you know what I’m sayin’?”

“Yeah.”

His face looked more like his day-face now, but that animal feeling was still on him like a cloud. He could feel me seeing it and he said, “What you lookin’ at, girl?”

“Nothin’. I’m just tired.”

He put his hand on my head and rubbed it. “Try to sleep,” he said, and then he went to my used-to-be room and unlocked the padlock that he kept on it.

Except he had to fool with it in the dark, and while he was fooling I said, “Dominic in some kind of trouble, that what you mean?”

Mr. Figuera stopped fooling with the lock and stared at me. “You not messed up with him?”

“I’m not, it’s just somebody else told me he might be in trouble, so I thought you—”

“Who?”

“Just this girl who knows his sister.”

He shook his head. “You shouldn’t listen to people who talk other people’s business. Or talk it yourself.”

He went into my used-to-be room. I lay down and tried to sleep, but I couldn’t because I knew that in just a few hours my mom would be up in the kitchen with the radio on. And because I kept hearing liable to be trifling and You were just emergency pussy. And I thought, I’m gonna beat the brakes off any man who talks to me that way. Ima beat the brakes off any man that even thinks it.