The Mare

Ginger

On the train I tried to talk to her. I told her I knew how hard life is, how cruel people can be. “People are assholes,” I said. “They will say whatever they think will hurt you. You can’t listen, and you can’t try to please them. If people at school don’t like it that you’re doing well, it’s because it scares them. If you don’t want trouble, hide it. Act like you don’t care about school. Just do the work quietly and act the same in class. I’ll talk to Ms. Rodriguez; she should understand.”

She listened and looked out the window, sort of smiling. I talked about when I was in school, how I didn’t fit in. A black woman one seat up across the aisle glanced at me with a curious face. My mother floated into my mind and out. I had only half listened to my mother; I hated the way she was with Melinda, and I did whatever I could to make her not be that way with me. My mother was very flawed. But even half listened to, her words built me, and I’m glad she said them. Velvet was already built, but still it seemed she needed words, even dumb ones. So I talked until I ran out of words. Then she put on her headset and played her new radio and I read a book.

When we got to the station, I looked forward to seeing her mother, to connecting with her like we had at the diner, showing her the pictures of Velvet opening her gifts. But her mother wasn’t there. We waited outside like always. Snow was finally coming, light and wet, whipping around in the wind. It was getting dark. We stood near the Thirty-Third Street entrance, and the big doors blew hot dry air on us as they opened and closed for the many-faced people trudging in and out of them. Christmas music played from speakers. Dirty, ragged people sat on the ground under the concrete overhang of the building, some with bulging garbage bags. The digital red clock on the side of the station said Mrs. Vargas was fifteen minutes late.

I called her home number; she wasn’t there. I called her work number; they said she had left over an hour ago. Velvet looked afraid. I bought her a hot dog from a vendor. A woman with dry dark patches on her face had pulled up her pant legs and was scratching at sores with both hands, her mouth open in concentration. I began to be afraid too. I said, “What kind of neighborhood does your mom work in?” And she answered, “There’s white people there.” I wanted to say, That’s not what I asked. But I understood her. We had understood each other. Mrs. Vargas was half an hour late.

I asked Velvet to go into the station to look for her while I stayed outside with her paper bag of Christmas presents. I called the home number again. Velvet took so long that I began to be scared I’d lost her too. When she came out, she looked like she’d been crying. “We’ll wait until it’s been an hour,” I said. “Then I’ll call the police.”

“No,” she said. “You can’t do that.” Her voice was tearful and I knew she had been crying. “They might take us away.”

I didn’t argue. The hour came. Tears ran down the girl’s face. I put my arm around her. “Don’t worry,” I said. “We’ll go back upstate if we have to.”

“I don’t want to go back upstate,” she said. “I want my mama. I want my brother.”

I wound up calling a friend, Julian, an editor at an art magazine, one of the few people from my past who actually had made a plush life for himself — and who, not coincidentally I’m sure, had come from money. I explained the situation and he told me to bring her over, he and his wife were sitting down to dinner.