The Mare

Ginger

She was so beautiful, so solid in her body, but so shy in the way she took things. I felt excited and scared about how to act — I couldn’t even respond properly to my own family, so how could I take care of a needy child from another culture? It was a cliché to think that way, but I could feel her difference. At the same time, I could feel her child’s goodness, her willingness to help us, and that was more compelling. We gave her privacy to talk to her mother and when we got downstairs, I whispered to Paul, “What do you think?”

“She’s a sweetheart,” he said. “It’s going to be fine.”

She came downstairs almost immediately. Her face was sad, and the shift of emotion was profound — for a moment I thought something terrible had happened. But she just said her mom wasn’t home. I got her to eat some cookies, and asked her what she wanted to do. I said we could go to see the town or to the lake or the bowling alley or for a walk around the neighborhood. Or we could walk over and visit the horses in the stables across the road from us. “The horses,” she said, some cookie in her mouth. “We could see the horses?”