The Mare

Velvet

I texted him over and over and told him I needed to see him. He kept saying he would get back to me, but he didn’t. Until finally I told him I was at Lydia’s and he came to me. But then he wouldn’t kiss. He hugged me back but said he couldn’t kiss me. I dropped my arms and waited for him to explain. He just stood there, so I said, Why? He sat on the couch and said, I told you it could only be once. I said, Then why you here? And he looked away. The heat was still on high even though it wasn’t cold out, so the room was hot. He took off his hoodie and he sniffed all wet in his nose. I touched him on his leg and said his name. He said, “Brianna’s pregnant.” I pulled my hand away.

He got up and walked around. Brianna lived with her aunt, who was taking care of five other kids and a retarded girl from the neighborhood and also this other girl who tricked the retard into getting raped by a man with AIDS. He said it was like some rape crisis center over there, Brianna could not be bringing a baby into that reality show, he had to take care of her.

“You gonna support a family?”

He said, “I have to try.” And he put his head down, but not ashamed.

“You can still see me.” I said it real quiet. “Like now.”

He looked at me and looked down. “If you was like some hood-rat puta, maybe I would. Even with you bein’ young. But you not that. You not that, and you would hate me if I did you like that. You’d hate yourself. I don’t want—”

“What you think I am? Where you think I live? I live down the block!”

He came and sat close enough that I could feel how warm he was. “I know where you from. But it feels like you from someplace else.”

“What place?” I tried to make my voice mad so I wouldn’t cry.

He looked me in my eyes. “I don’t know. Someplace I can’t picture. Someplace I can’t be. Even if it’s beautiful.”

I looked down and bit the inside of my mouth to stop crying. I was thinking about the barn and Spindletop and Ginger and that gray dappled horse riding in a circle around the jump. I’d wanted to talk about it with Dominic, talk like before. Now I wished I’d never seen any of it. Because it was “someplace else.” He sat next to me like he felt what I was thinking, not saying anything. Then he took something out of his pocket and said, “Look.”

It was the picture he told me about, where he was Romeo in the school play. He was wearing pants that looked like velvet, and slippers and a silky shirt. He was smiling and holding his arms out like a girl was about to run to him. He looked even younger than me. The picture was so wrinkled and old, there was a crease right across his face. Still, he looked beautiful. Like he came from “someplace else.”

“So you know I don’t lie,” he said.

I took the picture and put it on my knee to smooth the wrinkles from it. “How old were you?” I asked.

“Twelve,” he said.

“Can I keep it?”

“Naw,” he said. “It’s the only one I got. I never even showed it to nobody else except my mom and my sister.”

I wanted to ask, What about Brianna? But I didn’t.

He took it from my hands and put it back in his pocket. He said, “You tell anybody you saw it, Ima say you a liar, right?”

I said I wouldn’t tell nobody.

He said he had to go.

I said, “But we can still talk, right? Like friends?”

“We friends,” he said. “I won’t forget that time.” He looked at me when he said that. “But for right now, don’t call me or text me, okay?”