The Mare

Silvia

With me my son is soft but arrogant too, and I can feel his maleness growing in him; with any other adult or older child, his arrogance hides, and without it his spirit is shy and so soft it has no shape; his words too are so soft they have no shape, and he mumbles like a half-wit. I understand him even in English. But the people he talks to don’t and they think he’s stupid, then he thinks he’s stupid.

So I feel bad to make him talk on the phone with one of these machine people who they get to answer phones — except it turns out, it’s not even a machine-person, it’s really a machine. Which at least can’t think he’s stupid as he tries to give machine answers, whispering so the thing can’t hear him, finally shouting. “Mami, what do we want, a reservation or a service or something else? Coño, now it’s talking about a dining car, it won’t let you ask the price — something else, you stupid nonfiction puta, something else! Mami, I can’t!” He slammed the phone on the floor so the cap broke off the end of it, and I knocked it on his head, the insane voice talked on and he cried, “Just call the man, Paul. Tell him to call them.”

“No,” I said. “No.”

“Wait,” he said and grabbed the phone, listening. “An agent is a person, it says it thinks I want to talk to an agent.” He told the phone, “Yes, agent, you puta,” and it answered him with music.