Free The Mare by Mary Gaitskill Page A

parenting was like, 24/7? My God, how did anyone do it? How did her
mother
do it, in a foreign country, in a bad neighborhood where she didn’t speak the language?

Velvet
    I always came to talk to Fugly Girl in the twilight, when I knew Pat was gone and nobody else would be around either. During the day I just said hello to her with my eyes when I walked by, and usually she said it back. Pat never said nothin’, but she saw. I was sure she did.
    Then one day when I was raking shit up from Graylie’s stall, Beverly and Pat took Fugly Girl out to work her so she wouldn’t go crazy. I’d never seen her out of the stall before; her tail was high up, she was trotting kind of sideways like she was trying to push on something, her eyes were bugged-out white, and her whole face looked raw, like her hair was on the wrong way, even though it wasn’t. Beverly had her tight by the lead rope and I saw there was a chain across her nose. Pat was walking on the other side of her like she was a police lady, and it still looked like they barely had her. Gare Ann and the retarded boy came out of the stable to look. Right then Fugly made a twisty hump with her back and kicked out with her hind feet. “Knock it off!” Beverly yanked down on the rope and yelled with her mouth big and tight and her jaw stuck out to the side. “You hear?”
    I came out of the stall and tried to catch Fugly’s eye.
    “Stay back, Velvet,” said Pat, all quiet.
    “She thinks she’s the damn ‘horse whisperer,’ ” said Gare.
    “Whisper-ess,” said the boy. “Whisper-ass!”
    Pat threw them a look over Fugly’s back. But she kept going.
    I didn’t look at Gare. I said, “I do not know what you are talking about.”
    “Yeah you do.”
    “Why does a Mexican kid walk around like she owns the place?” yelled the boy.
    Gare said, “The way you act with that horse, and you don’t even know shit about horses, like, that’s dangerous.”
    The boy yelled, “Because her father built it and her mother cleans it!”
    And Gare said, “You’re gonna get deported outta this barn if you keep that up—
word.
”

Ginger
    I was in the kitchen getting a pork roast ready to cook when I heard her come in the front door. She came in fast, running up the stairs, and then there was a heavy thud through the floor on the other side of the house. Paul came in from his studio and started to say something; there was a crash. “Uh-oh,” he said, and then we heard her scream.
    “Velvet?” he yelled. There was silence, but it was humming.
    “I’ll go,” I said to him, and on the stairs, I shouted up, “What is it?” She didn’t answer. When I came in, she was sitting on the bed crying quietly and angrily. The covers were all but twisted off, and the bedside lamp was broken on the floor; she threw herself backward, staring, but not at me.
    I sat on the bed. “Honey,” I said, “what is it?”
    She didn’t say anything. I heard Paul coming up the stairs. With a hard, embarrassed motion, Velvet wiped the tears from her eyes.
    Paul sat on the bed with us. He was calm, and that gave him authority. “Velvet,” he said. “Did somebody do something to you?”
    She reacted to his authority; she collected herself. “That girl,” she said. “That girl in the barn? She basically called me a illegal. Her and that stupid boy. He said he’s gonna tell Pat I talk to my horse and give her apples, and they gonna send me home.”
    “That’s crap; they’re just being hateful,” I said. “I’ll talk to Pat. She might scold you, but nobody’s gonna send you anywhere.”
    She wiped her eyes again and stopped crying, though she was still not looking at us. We sat with her, feeling shame. At least I did. Her hurt felt too private for us to look at. Paul must’ve felt that too, because he said, “Do you want to call your mom?”
    She sat up. “No,” she said. She wiped her face. “She wouldn’t care. She would just laugh.” She said this like an adult would,