The Mare

Velvet

So I told Strawberry I was going to the horses. I told her in front of people. Maybe I shouldn’t’ve, but she was pretending she didn’t know me and it was making me mad. The other girls got quiet and all she said was “So?” But then in the bathroom she said, “You gonna ask her?” And I said, “Yeah” like what a dumb question. Also like I might not really do it. And she did not talk back.

I went on Friday night after my mom got off work. She yelled at me the whole time, even on the subway. The people on the subway looked at us because my mom sounded crazy yelling at me about what an idiot Ginger must be and saying I stole out of her purse and I eat too much and I wore her nightgown, dragging Dante along while he talked to himself about killing some people he made up in his head. When we came up out of the train, the wind was blowing trash all over and we had to walk into it. At least that made my mom shut up. Crazy people were all over the place by then though, so nobody would’ve noticed her. “Look,” said Dante, “there’s your stupid woman.”

And there was Ginger, in white leather pants and a white puffy jacket, and her white-blond hair blowing around, shading her eyes with her hand and her legs apart, so she looked powerful, like the White Witch in her book. Except that then she saw us and she dropped her hand and smiled with her sad eyes and was Ginger again. And I went to hug her.