The Mare

Velvet

I hated doing homework. But I liked talking to Ginger on the phone. I liked how her voice was trembly when she explained something to me; I liked how hard she listened, how you could feel her listening like she was close. I liked feeling her like me.

My mom liked her calling me at first. If she answered the phone, she would make her voice nice and she would say, “It’s Ginger,” instead of “that lady.” And she would even kind of be quiet in the background, moving around a little stiff and straight, like she thought Ginger was there in the room, watching her. Once she even asked, “What did she teach you about this time?”

But then she started not liking it. She said, “Doesn’t she have anything better to do than children’s work? Does she work at all? Or does she just lie around?” I said, “At least she knows how to read.” And my mom said, “You think anybody’s gonna pay you to read? I don’t!” She laughed; Dante laughed. “Ginger’s husband didn’t marry her because she can read! Why he did, I don’t know, but something tells me it was more to do with this”—she slapped me on the ass—“than that!” So Dante tried to slap too, but I swung around to slap him and he almost fell over his feet getting out the way. We all had to laugh at that.

I felt like saying to Ginger, See, we laugh. Later that night, my mom washed my hair and put relaxer and bleach on it and I felt like saying, See? I felt it again when I looked at my mom and Dante sleeping, the sweet way she was with him. And when I saw my mom do her push-ups every morning before she went to work, before she even made our food, before it was even light. And after we did eat, she cleaned everything in the kitchen, rubbed the counters really hard to keep out infection. My mom was so strong. I remembered how she said to us once that if anybody ever hurt us, she would come after him with her body, and I knew it was true. I knew it was more true than grades.

And I also remembered what Alicia said to me, the thing I didn’t tell Ginger: “You stole my grade. And you better stop.” She said it like it was a joke. But it wasn’t funny.