Free I'm Down: A Memoir by Mishna Wolff

I was wringing it out, I hollered, “Can I have some ice cream, too?”
    “Is your head in a bandage?” Dad snapped back. I decided to skip the smart-aleck remark about how easy it would be for me to make that happen.
    I brought the rag dutifully and asked again, “So, what happened to Anora’s head?”
    “Oh,” Dad said, wiping the antelope skin with the grain, “she was playing a game with some girls and the bathroom doors.”
    “Tug-of-war,” my sister said.
    “Yeah,” Dad said, looking at Anora. “With the bathroom door!”
    Anora was dizzy, but still had the energy to brag, “With third-graders!”
    To which Dad responded, “I guess you learned your lesson about messing around . . .” Then Dad got sucked into
Care Bears
and trailed off, “Her head went into the door . . . stitches. But she’s a’ight.”
    “How many stitches?” I asked, awed that she was making friends with third-graders.
    “Four,” my sister said proudly, because four was a respectable amount of stitches. It wasn’t anywhere near my record of nine stitches, but it was decent. My sister reached for her bandage to show me, when Dad pulled himself out of
Care Bears
and said, “What’s wrong with you, Mishna? Anora, leave your bandage alone.” I took a seat next to Dad and quietly started watching TV, even though I thought
Care Bears
was lame.
    Dad suddenly shifted his attention to me. “Mishna,” he said. “About your school.” There was a pause during which I wondered how I had suddenly become the focus.
    “It’s been a few months, and I been wondering . . . How you getting along with the sisters?” This was a trick question. There were only two black girls in my whole class, Dad knew this from the open house. And I wasn’t really “friends” with anyone. But rather than concede I said, “Well . . . I’m kinda friends with Latecia and Lanelle.”
    To which Dad replied, “Yeah, well . . . They’re not
really
black.”
    I quietly crossed them off my list of people to beg for friendship.
     
    I was increasingly desperate to make friends at school. And soon I lied again. I was standing on the playground butting in on a group of kids who were talking because they had no idea what to do with a recess. Gretchen, the tallest girl in our class, was talking about her weekend. “I rode at the Kirkland stable all day Saturday.” She said, “I don’t have my own horse yet, but my parents think we might get one in Germany next year.”
    “I have my own horse,” said Catrina Calder, a girl with trendy glasses and an even trendier haircut. “But it’s not German, it’s just for riding.”
As opposed to plowing?
Then she said in baby talk, “But, I love my Mastro. He’s my handsome guy.”
    “I want to get a Hanoverian,” said Gretchen.
    That was when I said from out of nowhere, “I have a horse!” I was aware that it was a risky whopper, but everyone else was talking about their stupid horses.
    “What kind of horse?” Gretchen asked.
    “Coco,” I said.
    “That’s the breed?” she asked.
    “No,” I said. “I mean Coco is her name. She’s a dapple.” Ihad heard the word
dapple
when my mom sang the lullaby “All the Pretty Little Horses.”
    “Dapple is a color,” Gretchen said. “What’s the breed?”
    That’s when Catrina blurted out, “You do not have a horse . . . I mean, I thought your dad was a contractor?”
    “He is,” I said, not knowing what one was, and thinking that sounded more important than what he really was.
    “So how do you have a horse?” she asked.
    I told them we kept it on my uncle’s ranch on the Skagit River, turning a rundown cabin into a ranch. And even I cringed at how thick I was laying it on.
    But Gretchen just said, “That’s cool. We should go ride together sometime.”
    And as the recess bell let me off the hook, I pushed my luck. “Coco has won prizes for her looks.”
    Catrina looked skeptical and repeated, “Your dad is a contractor,” forcing