The Mare

Ginger

When I called her for our homework session after Christmas, she told me she got spat on. She said she wore her blue Gap shirt that we gave her and her new ring. All morning people stared at her and then while she was waiting in the cafeteria line, girls walked by and spat on her. They spat on her while she walked to her seat with her tray. So she waited till nobody could see, and then she hit somebody. They told, she said they lied, then she got detention. I said I didn’t care if she got detention, I was glad she hit the bitch who spat at her. I told her how I’d hit somebody in school once too. I asked if she had any friends who would help her. She said, “I don’t got no friends.” I asked about the friends she’d talked about, Strawberry and Alicia. She said they were the ones that spat on her. I told her she was better off without them. We read then, a book that was technically under her age range about a little boy who meets a dragon. I kept thinking, But that shirt wasn’t even very nice. I listened to Paul; I didn’t buy something that was too fancy. That shirt was cute but normal. They spat at her for wearing a normal shirt.

The next day I called the social worker, Eliza Lopez. She said she knew Velvet had gotten detention, but she didn’t know anything about spitting. She said that Velvet talked instead about her mother hitting her. I asked if she thought it was true. She said she knew the mother was verbally abusive, but she couldn’t be sure about anything physical. A year ago she said her mom beat her; they brought in Child Protective Services and Velvet took it all back. So now the woman didn’t want to call anybody unless she saw bruises and when she asked to see bruises, Velvet couldn’t show anything.

I thought about why Velvet had not wanted me to call the police, that she didn’t want to be “taken away”; I did not tell Ms. Lopez that Mrs. Vargas had not come to meet me. Instead I repeated to her what Velvet had asked me about how white people “walk their path”; I told her my answer, that she didn’t know enough white people. “Do you think that was appropriate?” I asked.

“Oh,” said Ms. Lopez, “I think it was perfect. I’ve told her the same. I told her I’ve been in poor white neighborhoods and they are so disgusting she wouldn’t believe it. More disgusting than anything she has ever seen in her life. That’s what I tell her.”

When I hung up I thought, Now we are really in it. We can’t go back. It was the first time it occurred to me that Paul had been right.