The Mare

Velvet

Dante wasn’t on the same bus as me — his was supposed to go at seven thirty and then me at nine. Outside the Port Authority were dirty homeless sleeping against the walls; inside, mostly closed stores, hardly anyone but police, and ugly music playing. We went where they said to meet them and nobody was there. My mom told me to ask a police if this was where the Fresh Air Fund was supposed to be and he said he didn’t know anything about that, which made my mom look worried and Dante glad because maybe we would just go home. I thought we were just there too early as usual, and I was right: While we were standing there, these people wearing green T-shirts came smiling at us, carrying yellow metal fences like they use to keep people back at parades. They said, “Great, you’re early, that’s great,” and then they made a big square place with the fences and put a sign on it. They laughed and smiled with each other and then over at us. They put up tables and got out their computers and said they were ready. But then they wouldn’t let us all the way in behind the fence, just Dante; he had to be inside the fence by himself. They told us he would get used to it, but that we could stand right by the fence until he left. They put a information card around his neck and gave him a coloring book, but he dropped it and ran to the fence to grab my mom, crying, “I’m hungry, I’m hungry!”

If it was me, my mom would’ve told me to shut up and gone to work. But Dante, she put her hands through the fence and talked to him like a baby, like “my little mother-nature boy!” But he wouldn’t be quiet, so she gave me money and told me to go get him a cookie and her a coffee at this place that just opened, we saw this sad-faced man opening it.

She always pays attention to Dante when he cries, so he cries a lot. Or pretends to. Especially since he got poisoned by the babysitter. That was before Crown Heights or even Williamsburg; we lived in Queens then, all of us in one room that smelled like the garbage under the sink no matter how many times we took it out. I was eight, Dante was three. The babysitter was a girl named Rose who lived down the block, the daughter of the lady who did my mom’s hair. She wanted to watch a TV show that wasn’t what Dante wanted and he wouldn’t shut up about it. He started crying that something hurt, so she gave him aspirin. He kept crying, probably because they were the orange chewy kind and he wanted more. She gave him the whole bottle and he went to sleep.

When I got back with the cookie and coffee, he was still sort of pretend-crying; he even kept doing it while he ate the cookie. Other kids were inside the fence by then, and they were coloring in books with the Fresh Air Fund people. I wished I could go in there, just to sit down away from Dante and my mom. I even asked if I could, but they said no, I couldn’t go in until my group came.

I walked around in a circle behind my mom, dragging my suitcase until this girl in a green T-shirt said I could leave it inside the yellow fence; then I walked around without it. More people were in the station, their faces looking like they were already someplace else. More kids were coming too — the fenced-in Fresh Air space was filling up. Kids were sitting on the floor coloring in books or playing cards while the people in green shirts watched. Other moms were standing along the fence, with their children close to them. This boy came up to Dante and said, “Don’t be scared. You’ll like it. Where I’m going, they have a swimming pool.” I felt like I could walk away and nobody would see me.

After Dante ate all the aspirin we couldn’t get him to wake up. Rose called her mom to come, and then my mom came home. We were all crying, and pretty soon my mom was screaming at Rose that she would kill her if Dante died. Rose’s mom defended her daughter: She screamed back that if my mom was going to talk like that, Dante would die as punishment. The police came, an ambulance came. They put my little brother on the stretcher; my mom cried and threw herself on his body, they had to pull her off to take him down the stairs. When they drove away in the ambulance, our neighbor Mrs. Gutierrez hugged my mom and told her Dante would be all right, that she would be praying for us. My mom thanked her and smiled at her as she walked away. Then she turned to me and said, “How could you let this happen?”

Finally the bus came and they made Dante get on it. My mom walked me up to the table inside the fenced area and they put a card on me that said “Red Hook.” “Be good,” she said. “Don’t give them any trouble.” And she kissed me, then left because she was late for work. I went in and sat down and this lady smiled and said hi and asked if it was my first time and I said yes. She asked if I wanted a coloring book and I said no. Other kids came in who were mostly younger than me; they sat on the floor and colored. A girl my age sat down and took out her phone. I didn’t have a phone, so I just sat down. More and more kids came — at least I wasn’t the only one whose mom wasn’t there. But it did seem like I was the only one who didn’t have something to look at. And the ugly music was still playing.

You’re no good, said some words in my head. It’s your blood that’s bad. These are words I hear a lot. I don’t really hear a voice saying them. It’s more like I feel them in my brain. Over and over. When that happens, I try to listen to the people around me to drown them out. Which is how I heard the white lady standing behind us talking to this other white lady. She was saying, “They got us to bend over backward to get this kid on this bus and now they don’t even show up?”

“They don’t understand,” said the other lady. “Families arrange their whole summers around this and then they don’t even show.”

“It’s their culture,” said the first one. “They don’t understand time the way we do.”

I wanted to say, Excuse me, but we were here early? But then they changed the subject to themselves and how they were making a difference.

“…they come up and they see this big house and all these nice things, and they want to know, How do you get all this?” The same lady was still talking like no one could hear her. “And I say to them, We get it with hard work. Do you see how Jeff gets up every morning at four a.m. and goes to work? And then comes home and relates to his kids?”

“At least they have an example,” said her friend. “We’re showing them another way. What they do with that is another thing, but—”

I tried to remember the little voice of the lady I talked to on the phone. I tried to put my mind on all the things she said we would do, the fair and swimming and horses. But it seemed like there was nothing but the bus station and that it would go on forever, my brain talking shit to me and these women talking basically the same thing.

Right then a black man with dreads said, “Okay, let’s go!” And he picked up some bags and walked to the door Dante had gone through. Kids finally said good-bye to their moms and we all got on the bus, which distracted my brain from talking. This bus was a dark and rumbling cave, with deep seats full of close smells and tiny jewelly lights on the arm-parts. You had to step on a platform to get into the seats and all of them had TV screens in front of them. Even the shy little kids threw themselves into these seats so they could bounce. The woman who said that thing about a “example” got on last, smiling and talking about how we were going to watch Harry Potter. My brain started again: You’re no good. I told it, Oh, shut up.

“Hey,” said a black lady in a green T-shirt. “Can I sit next to you?”

I told her yes and I was glad; she was nice. She said, “Hi, Velveteen. My name is Roxanne. Have you ever been to Friendly Town before?”

I said, “No,” and the bus rumbled for real.

“You’re gonna like it,” she said. “I went when I was little. It’s a lot of fun.”

The bus backed up and turned into a tunnel. Roxanne said she wished we were watching Freaky Friday with Lindsay Lohan instead. “It’s about a girl who switches bodies with her mom. It’s funny.”

I didn’t know what to say, so I smiled and looked out the window. We were coming out onto the street. The Example lady was standing up and talking about the rules of the bus and the bathroom in the back. I wondered if Roxanne thought the same things she did.

The night that Dante got poisoned my mother didn’t talk to me, not even when they said he was okay. I helped her make dinner and we ate it. She hardly looked at me. I cried and my tears ran into my mouth with my food. But when we got in bed, she didn’t turn away from me. She lay on her back with her eyes open and said, “It’s not your fault. You have bad blood from your father.” I said, “Bendición, Mami.” She didn’t answer. “Mami?” I whispered. She sighed and blessed me, then turned her back and let me curl against her.

“Velveteen?” said Roxanne. “Are you a little bit nervous?”

“Yeah.”

“Don’t be, sweetheart. Because your host family? They are gonna be so happy to see you. Trust me.”