The Mare

Paul

We had her up to confront her about it; that was my idea. Ginger was ready to cancel the next visit and deal with it on the phone. It was me who said, No, face-to-face. I think it felt like an ambush to her, but that’s what she did to some fool — I could just picture the guy — and I wanted to do the same to her, both of us get right on top of her, jab our fingers at her, call her names, see how it felt.

Of course we didn’t. We waited until after dinner and then I asked her if it was true. She said no. I said, Then why is Ms. Johnson saying it? She said Ms. Johnson didn’t like her. Ginger said, “Stop lying.” Her voice was ice-cold, and Velvet looked down, scowling. Ginger said, “Tell the truth. Just tell the truth.” In Ginger, anger is cold, and I could see anger coming up in Velvet too. I spoke just to assert normal feeling.

“You know I’m a teacher,” I said. “Do you know how hard it is to go into class sometimes? When you know the students don’t like you and don’t want to hear anything you say and still you have to try to make it good for them, make it exciting? When you don’t feel excited at all?”

She looked at me and said nothing.

“Why did you treat somebody like that?” asked Ginger.

She said, “I don’t know,” and Ginger stood up and shouted, “Don’t use that tone with me!”

“It’s you that’s using tone!” cried the girl, and she stood too.

“Easy!” I said.

“Ahh dunno,” mocked Ginger. “You think I’m an idiot? Answer me! Why did you treat somebody that way?”

“We didn’t do nothing!”

“Call him bitch, do this shit”—Ginger triggered her index with her thumb—“at his face?”

“We didn’t hurt him!”

“You did! You hurt him like that woman hurt that horse!”

“He’s not like a horse, and I didn’t have a whip!”

But Ginger had hit home, and she kept at it.

“Was it because he was weak?” she said. “In his body and also here?” Ginger put her hand on her chest.

Velvet looked down; I realized with strange distress that she was upset.

“Look at me!” cried Ginger.

The girl looked, alarmed. Ginger sat down and spoke quietly. “I’m weak,” she said. “I’m small and I’m weak.”

Velvet’s eyes changed powerfully; I could not define their expression except it was like something in her had stood erect.

“Do I deserve to be treated like that?” asked Ginger softly.

“I’d never treat you like that!”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“No! But you don’t come around acting like you gonna tell people what to do! If he’s too weak to be there, then he shouldn’t be there!”

“He probably had to be there,” I said. “If he’s doing that and he’s not a kid, he really needs the money. And they aren’t paying much.”

Lots of things were said; the upshot was that, because of what she’d done, she couldn’t see her horse this visit. She accepted that but asked if she could go visit the horses at the barn next door.

“No,” said Ginger. “We can’t let you do that because you aren’t allowed there and you know it.”

Velvet looked angry for a minute and I thought she was going to explode. But instead her shoulders sagged and she said, “Then what am I gonna do?”

“Read,” I said. “Write.”

“I want you to write something specific,” said Ginger. “I want you to write about why you behaved that way to the teacher.”

“Huh?”

“Write it and be honest. Then we can do something fun. We can go see a movie. Or walk at night.”