The Mare

Velvet

I started really liking Ginger. At first I was sorry that she wasn’t more like the big-legged lady with the orange flower, then I started thinking that really, she was better. Her hair looked like Barbie-doll hair. She wore pink polish on her toes; she had rubber sandals with jewels on them, and when I told her I liked them, she went and bought me a pair. When she washed the dishes, she would take off her gold wedding ring and her diamond and put them on the windowsill. She had a gold lipstick case with blue stripes on it and she sometimes put that on the windowsill too, next to this little plant in a purple pot and these little skinny plastic giraffes in beautiful colors that she said were to stir drinks with. She didn’t yell, ever. She was always nice, even when she got mad. But she didn’t act “all that.” The way she looked from behind, like when she was cooking food or something, made it seem like she didn’t even know where she was for sure. She blinked a lot. She always forgot things, like even her bank card in the ATM. It made her seem even more nice, I don’t know why.

One day she showed me her art. It was all up in the top of the house, in this small room with low ceilings, and windows, even windows in the ceiling. Her art was made out of colored shapes. She didn’t like to paint real things, just these shapes. Sometimes they weren’t even shapes, they just looked like things you’d do in preschool. I didn’t like them, but I acted like I did. And there was one I did like a little because the shapes were cool — there was this round red thing like the sun when it came up over the dark line, only this was like the sun down in a hole. She said it was a picture of her sister and I’m like, What?

She said, “That’s what my sister’s personality was like.”

I thought, She must’ve been crazy. But I didn’t say it.

“My sister was very passionate. Do you know that word?”

“No.”

“It means strong feelings, deep feelings. Like this.”

She touched the red. I nodded. She put her hand on my shoulder and said, “You’re passionate too, I think. You seem deep.”

—

That night I took her ring. It was from this glass box where she kept rings she wore before she got married. It wasn’t stealing because she showed them to me once and asked if I wanted one. I said no. But I went and took one, a tiny one with an orange flower that she wore on her little finger when she was a teenager; it reminded me of the orange plastic flower of the big legs lady. I slept with it on my pinkie finger that night.

—

The second week I was there I got to ride a bigger horse, a boy. Pat said that normally, she would wait till I’d had more lessons, but that I was doing so good I could ride him sooner. His name was Joker and he was light brown with white socks. He looked a lot stronger than Reesa, and he lifted his feet higher when he walked. I was scared to ride him and that made me want to ride him even more.

I came early and went to talk to Fugly Girl. Pat pretended not to see me leaning right up against the door of her stall. The horse came to me and stretched her head out like she wanted some apple, but when she saw I didn’t have anything, she stayed still and licked her stall, like thoughtfully. I asked her if I could touch her nose for courage. She looked down like, Oh, all right—and flared it open; quickly I kissed it. Then I knew I could handle Joker.

Except I couldn’t. He wouldn’t do anything I said. He would stop and he would go, but not when I asked. He moved too fast for me and he wouldn’t go in the direction I wanted. Pat was getting on my nerves, saying dumb things about sticking my chest out like Dolly-somebody. Either that or telling me to do things I couldn’t do.

“Focus your mind,” she said. “Pick a direction, pick a spot right there on that fence, then look at it. He’ll feel your intention, but you have to mean it.”

I tried and it seemed like it almost worked.

“Do it again,” said Pat. Her voice was starting to sound mean. Joker walked toward the barn while I tried to turn him. Pat said, “You have a little brother, right? When he was three years old and he was doing something he wasn’t supposed to do, what did you do?”

“Hit him,” I said.

“You don’t want to try that with Joker. Was there anything else you did besides hit?”

“Pick him up and move him.”

“Then do it. That horse is just like a three-year-old. Pick him up and move him!”

And I did it. I picked him up with my legs and I moved him with my butt. I did it before I even picked a spot. I could feel it happening, and then I saw Ginger. She was walking toward us, smiling. I saw she had her camera again. I looked at her and Joker went to her. It wasn’t what I told him, but when he did it, I tapped him and made him go faster. And when I did, all of a sudden I didn’t see Ginger, I saw my mother. Not really — it was Ginger standing there. But it felt like my mother, my mother smiling at me, more than she ever really did. Then it was just Ginger again, and it felt like I was running to her, not the horse but me, on my own legs. And she was taking my picture and telling me I looked like a movie star.

—

I decided I would put the tiny flower ring on the blond key-chain doll with the checked coat. It would be like having Ginger in my box.