The Mare

Ginger

I let her come again anyway. What could I do? I wanted it so badly, and also it seemed wrong to punish her when I knew she had been doing actual work. A casual acquaintance backed me up on that, a woman named Robin, Kayla’s friend, a single mother who’d adopted a three-year-old Romanian child she’d named Jewel, a girl who was half out of her mind when she’d arrived and who, at five, had revealed herself to be preternaturally bright. “You need to give her something to hope for,” said Robin. “Even if she can only meet you halfway, she’s got to know you’re always there, believing she can do it.”

We had the conversation at a dinner at Kayla’s house, a big spread on her long wooden table. It was me and Paul, Robin and the five-year-old Jewel, plus Kayla’s grouchy sixteen-year-old, Jenny. It was festive and lovely. There was music on, and I thought, We could have this, too: children at the table. We could have Velvet’s friend up. We could have maybe her mother and brother. Jewel looked up suddenly, and fixed me with penetrating adult eyes. I had seen this look on her before; it was curiously natural on the little girl. “Why do you like this girl from another family to come see you?” she asked.

“Because she makes me feel part of life,” I said.

Paul looked down and I thought he was annoyed — but then he looked up with soft eyes, and put his hand on my leg.

So I got my church-y lady to get Velvet’s mother on the phone and ask if she could come again. Mrs. Vargas laughed jaggedly and said something the translator couldn’t understand, though she did get the word donkey. And then she said, sure, Velvet could come. If I wanted her.