The Mare

Velvet

I didn’t need permission to go to Strawberry’s. I never went home after school anyway. My mom didn’t get off work until five o’clock, so I had to walk around till it was time to pick up Dante at day care, then we went home and waited for my mom there. Last year I was in day care too; I had my birthday there and they had a cake with my name on it and even my mom came for the party. There’s a picture of her smiling with her eyes closed and a paper hat on her head. But I’m too old now, so I just walk around for two hours. I can’t go home and wait to pick Dante up because my mom says if they find out she’s leaving us at home by ourselves she’ll be in trouble. I don’t know why nobody thinks it’s bad that I’m walking around by myself, but I guess they don’t. And I’m not always alone. I see people I used to know, like these men who sit out on their folding chairs, and they say, “Hey, Velvet! Velveteen from the block!” And sometimes Mrs. Vasquez, this old lady who lives in our old building, brings me up for some flavored tea with canned milk in it. But until Strawberry nobody from school invited me over yet.

Strawberry’s house was on South Third in a old building with the name Venus on it. The ceiling in the lobby was like a frosted cake with dust on it, with waves and lumpy flower-shapes painted red and green. And there were lamps hanging down and a plant that looked cool even though it was dead. It looked like a place where beautiful, strange people would live, but the lady Strawberry stayed with and the little girl, they were both normal and fat. Strawberry slept in the room with the little girl. She slept in a corner on a sleeping bag on a cot, and there was a big cardboard box unfolded and propped up by old cans of food and a chair, keeping her cot private from the girl’s bed. It was spray-painted silver and had Strawberry’s name on it in red. There was also a upside-down box by the cot with a silky scarf on it for Strawberry’s things, like lipsticks and a rose made of glass and the shell I gave her and pictures of people in special frames. It was cool. I was expecting to feel sorry for her, but really her cot and her silver box were better than a normal room.

Except that, when we got the little girl to stop bothering us, Strawberry wanted to take the pictures of her friends and go in the closet. It was a big closet with a light in it, but still. She made us go in there and pull winter coats off the hangers and get under them. We were so close. She looked even more beautiful that close. Her eyes were strong and bright, but her skin was so soft and her mouth was shaped soft, too, not like in school. Her breast was touching my arm under the coats, and that made me want to touch her, which made me feel funny.

She started showing me the pictures of her New Orleans friends and telling me stories about them. Mostly it was stories like who she smoked with for the first time, and partied with or fought with. But then there was this one girl with big eyes, and Strawberry said, “This is Miranda. She told me she saw a deer swimming in the water by her house.” And I said, “What, in a pool?” And Strawberry said, no, when this girl was on the roof of her house, she saw a deer in the water. This girl said he had horns, and he looked right at her and she saw he couldn’t swim anymore, and he was going to die. The water must’ve carried him far. I asked where Miranda was and she said she didn’t know. And we were just quiet, looking at the picture of Miranda.

I talked to her about Fiery Girl, too, how she only liked me, and how because she was abused she might still lash out at me with her hooves, like Scorpio had kicked at Pat so she thought they’d have to put her face back together. Strawberry said, “I’m sorry they did that to her, but if she tried that with me, I’d slap the shit outta her.” I said, “Trust me, you wouldn’t do that,” and she said, “Trust me, I would. I don’t care how big she is, I don’t take that shit from nobody.” And then she talked about somebody else from New Orleans.

I wanted to tell her more about the horse, but I didn’t like her saying she would slap my mare. It was just stupid and almost made me really mad. So I just listened to her and thought about the book Ginger read to me, where the little girl went to hide in the closet and came out in a pretend world. Because that’s what it was like; Strawberry’s voice was like a pretend voice. She was talking like a little kid and using kid words. Which would’ve been weird anyway, but was really weird because she was talking about the most real things and she was older than me.

We didn’t always do that; we at least a couple of times went to Grand Street, and she showed me how to shoplift from Rainbow and the Gem superstore. I would go in by myself wearing a big coat and walk slowly, leaning on the displays, and the store people would follow staring the crap out of me — and she would walk out with makeup or a manicure set and once even a purse. The one time I tried I only took a nail file, but still they almost caught me. I just got away because I ran into the traffic and the man chasing me almost got hit, and when Strawberry caught up with me, we walked to her house singing “Pon de Replay.” That was fun.

But mostly she just wanted to go to her room and talk about what her friends in New Orleans said or did while we looked at magazines with stars in them. Either that or she wanted to put makeup on — except it was mostly her putting makeup on me. She put makeup on me like her friend Maciella used to wear. She did it over and over, like she was trying to make it perfect. I asked when I could do her, and she just said I didn’t even know how. She let me brush her hair and then she plucked my eyebrows, which made my mom really mad when I got home. The next time, I said, “Strawberry, stop. I’m not Maciella.” And she said, “Could you just pretend to be?”

And I did. It was not fun. In school Strawberry acted like she barely knew me. Even on the days I went to see her, I had to wait and meet her at a bus stop and she would look around like she was making sure nobody saw we were together. Then she’d get in the closet with me and put makeup on my face. If I didn’t say the right things, Strawberry would stop me and say, “No, that’s not what she was like.” It was not fun. But I kept on doing it. I don’t know why.