The Mare

Velvet

She hit me with her shoe, panting so hard spit flew. I hit too, I cried and hit wild, just to keep her off, to keep her words out of me with knife words of my own.

“Why are you so proud? Why do you think you’re so special?”

“Because I don’t think I’m shit? Because I don’t want to think I’m shit? Ginger doesn’t think I’m shit, Pat doesn’t think it, only you, my own mother!”

“Ginger?” She laughed and instead of hitting me, she hit herself, both hands on her face, then me, and then herself again. “Maldita, malcriada! What did I do to make you like this? God help me, what do I need to do to stop you?”

“You’ve already stopped me, you don’t do anything but stop me!”

“Maybe when you’re crippled by that horse you’ll learn!”

Like a machine that cried tears, I closed my bag up. Crying machine tears, I dragged it down the hall. My mom shouted after me, “At least when you’re in a wheelchair, you’ll—”

But I was gone.