At first I think the horse is dying. With Paul’s hand on her forehead, she folds into the grass at his feet, her thousand pounds yielding to his 160. An unfiltered Pall Mall tilts in his mouth, burning almost to his chapped lips.
I’m seven and have just started riding, but even I know how unruly this horse is: Kicking her stall in the barn—pow-pow-pow!—like she wants out. Kicking at the other horses in the pasture like she wants them dead. Biting people like she hates them for loving her. But here she is folding. Paul’s ash may fall on her, but it won’t burn. Lying in the grass, she is saying, I will.
At home I keep hearing I’m being ungrateful, talking back, arguing for argument’s sake. I’m rebellious, defiant, so I’m sent to the barn, driven there by my newly single mom, or my newly single dad, or my grandparents, or someone else. Another parent told my mom I should try horseback riding. Ice-skating and tae kwon do and ceramics didn’t stick, but I can already tell I’m a horse girl.
Paul’s wife, Marsha, is teaching me to ride. They live in a ranch house by the barn, so they’re right there to take care of the horses. At the start of each lesson Marsha greets me with her wide, toothy grin—so bright I can feel its warmth. She shows me how to shake a coffee can full of feed to call the herd in from the field. How to hop on bareback and ride to the barn if a horse won’t come in for the feed. How, on days when the mud has dried hard, to use the currycomb first and the brush second. How to scrape away botflies throughout the summer so the larvae don’t burrow into the horses’ legs and hatch their way out. How to observe nostril flare to figure out how much cooldown a horse needs. How to start a bath with the legs when a horse is too hot. How to understand that horses can’t vomit, and if their intestines twist, things can go wrong fast. (This is called colic and can be deadly.) How to pick stones from their hooves, because a lame horse means everything will come to a stop, not to mention the guilt I would feel for my laziness. How to always clean up after myself, because if I don’t, someone else has to.
A plaid shirt with pearl snap buttons hangs from Paul’s bony shoulders. Rustler jeans barely cling to his hips, and white velcro shoes from Walmart peek out below the cuffs. Through a stall slat I watch him hang hay for the horses: Using the stump below his right elbow—there’s just enough of the joint left to allow him to flex and hold—he hoists a hay net halfway up to an eyelet in the corner of a stall. Then he grabs the bundle with his left hand, shoving the nylon string through the eyelet and pulling it toward his body so that the hay rises up, up. He ties a knot in the string, and the horse comes to eat. When others hang hay, some horses will charge before it’s ready. With Paul, every horse waits.
While my family of three cracks open, I fill my head with horses. I think of Rattler, the faded sorrel ridden by every new rider at the barn, her bony withers poking up at the crest of her neck. I think of an early lesson where I struggled to find my center of gravity while riding at a trot. When I tipped forward onto Rattler’s neck, she gently slowed to a stop and then lifted her neck to ease me back into the saddle and keep me from falling.
I ping-pong between Dad’s dark rental house, where I sleep on funny-smelling sheets, and Mom’s bright condo, where I sleep in a trundle bed with my underwear in a drawer beneath the mattress. The trundle bed is hard to make. I miss when we all lived in one house and I had sheets with little flowers that matched my lilac-painted walls. I don’t miss the fighting and yelling, or Dad threatening Mom with a pan of hot grease. Don’t miss Dad standing outside and ringing the doorbell until Mom calls the police. Don’t miss the time they each took one of my arms and pulled me back and forth.
In the corner of Dad’s new living room is a wooden box. When you open the lid, a toy mongoose springs from the darkness. It’s supposed to make me laugh, but instead I see the mongoose in the corner of my bedroom at night, orange eyes glowing, mouth hissing. To hold back the mongoose until daylight, I don’t count sheep; I count how many brown spots are on Marsha’s big Appaloosa, Slim. I ponder how Slim got his strange habits, like lying down to sleep and lipping mints out of Paul’s shirt pocket.
At school I imagine the soft tickle of horse whiskers against the back of my hand and daydream of running my fingers down the inside of their flexor tendons, from knee to fetlock, until they lift their hooves for me to pick clean. I think of how they wait for me to come to the gate in the afternoons and how they linger when I turn them back out to pasture after a ride. I can tell they hope I’ll come back.
Girls in the barn say that, when Paul was younger, he was a volunteer firefighter and had an accident with a downed power line while trying to save a kid. That’s how he lost his arm. All that electricity also blew a hole in the top of his head, leaving a round scar you can see when you’re looking down on him from the back of a horse. But the kid lived.
The girls say Paul used to ride Grand Prix. Owners paid him big money to take the high, fancy stadium jumps on their horses. Once, a horse named Sputnik, who was famous for raring back and taking the jump like a rocket, fell on Paul and broke some of his ribs, but he got back on and finished the course anyway.
The girls say Paul doesn’t ride much anymore, but every now and then he’ll get on and make a horse do piaffe, which sounds like “pee off,” where the horse trots in place. It’s really something to see and basically impossible to do. That’s how good he is. “Would you have ever guessed? I mean, Paul doing dressage?” Nothing about Paul seems fancy, except when he tucks his shirt in to leave the farm.
The girls wonder why Marsha married Paul, because she’s young and sweet and pretty with great skin, and he’s old and not that good-looking and can be a grump and smokes a lot. But they also say Paul took Marsha and her daughter in after Marsha’s no-account ex-husband left them.
The girls say you don’t want to pee off Paul, because when Paul gets mad, it’s very bad. I’ve seen girls leaving the arena with red faces and tears. I’ve seen Marsha leaving the arena after Paul teaches her, and sometimes she’s quiet and doesn’t look me in my eye and sets her saddle down on the saddle tree extra hard. Disappointing Paul is the worst feeling. But when he says, “There you go! That’s right!” it’s the best.
Every now and then it isn’t the rider who needs to learn something; it’s the horse. Paul will tell the rider to get off, and he’ll get on and show the horse who’s boss. Within minutes the horse gets it. Girls say there was even a time Paul got on, and it looked like the horse was crumbling under him, but really it was bowing for him. It put one leg out, and Paul bowed his head and tipped his hat—“Like in a movie!” The girls say you don’t see that too often. Might never see it again.
They also say that when Marsha calls to the house for Paul to come teach you, it’s a good thing, because it means you’re ready for the next stage in your learning.
I am nine and at the lake on Dad’s boat. His friends in another boat have a water-balloon launcher: It takes two people to hold the handles and one to pull back the balloon in the sling, aim, and fire. I turn to get a Dr Pepper from the cooler and am knocked on top of it when a water balloon hits me from behind. It slams me in the back so hard that the air is knocked out of me. Soaking wet, I turn to see Dad is laughing, and his friends in their boat are laughing, and the friend who fired the balloon is holding one hand in the air like, Sorry, oops, the other hand over his mouth to hide that he’s laughing. My breath comes sharp and shallow, and Dad says, “You’ve got to be tough if you’re gonna play with the big boys!” But I don’t want to play with the big boys. I don’t want to be on his boat at all. I want to be on a horse.
Later, looking over my shoulder in the mirror, I see a bruise has bloomed from my shoulders to my waist.
There are times when I hear Dad’s voice rise, and I will say anything to make it stop: Yes, sir. I will. I won’t. Next time. Every time. Never again, I swear. Once, on the boat, I forgot to bring the ladder up as soon as the last person got in (actually I don’t think Dad asked me to do it, but he said he did), and when the boat went fast, the ladder was ripped off the back. “That’s five hundred dollars you cost me!” Dad yelled. “Do you know how long I’ll have to work to pay for that? You don’t take care of things. So disrespectful.” I shrank into the boat’s upholstery until I was as flat as a folded towel.
I don’t invite friends to sleep over at Dad’s because I’m afraid they’ll screw up, and he’ll yell at them too.
Dad’s peed-off and Paul’s peed-off are not the same. Paul’s doesn’t stick. Dad’s latches on to me like an anchor. I try to move, but I can’t. Whether I’m with him or away from him, his anger is always there. Pulling. Holding.
I am ten when his rage starts shooting through my hands to pop the horse with the reins while I ride, or flying down my legs to kick the horse with my heels. I learn I can be mean too, and it feels glorious: Do this, and I’ll pull. Do that, and I’ll hold. Try to move. You can’t. I’m stronger than you. When I pop the reins, it numbs the memory of Dad yelling at me for using too much tape on a package, for dotting my i’s with little circles, for putting on pounds. When I kick, away goes the red-hot embarrassment of being in the Burger King drive-through with him, waiting for him to say, “Hamburger,” and when they ask, “Would you like cheese?” for him to fire back, “Did I say cheese?” When I pop or kick, poof, away it all goes.
I keep this up lesson after lesson until Marsha calls Paul out from the house. “Jerk her like that,” he says, “and she’ll never give you her head again.” I’m sheepish. Caught. He has seen through me.
This is what we’re always working on: the horse giving me her head, meaning she isn’t bracing to resist me. She feels soft in my hands. We’re connected, her neck arcing, her body bending to mine, willing. I want her to listen to me, to do what I say no matter how I say it, but I also want her to be supple. Maybe I can’t have both.
In time I see that a jerk of the reins or a kick of the heel is blunt and quick, but there’s another possibility. Something quieter, deeper. Like how the horse knows when I’m holding my muscles tight or when I’m holding my breath, even when I don’t realize it. The horse always tells me, always makes me aware of what I feel, of what my feelings make me do. The horse won’t let me lie about what’s going on inside me, not even to myself.
Because the horse doesn’t let me get away with anything, I stop trying to get away with anything. Paul sees this and says, “Yes.” Marsha sees this and says, “Good.” A thing that felt secret is no longer secret. The horse is supple and willing because I am supple and willing.
Sometimes my temper is too strong, and I slip, but mostly I stop trying to break something precious, because I understand it’s precious.
At Mom’s, after a fight, I slam a styrofoam cup full of cherry slush on my speaker, and the cup bottom busts, spilling red sugar water all over my baby-blue carpet. At Dad’s I turn his shouts inward and pound on my thighs until they bruise purple.
At the barn, when a dappled gray mare comes off the racetrack and starts kicking holes through her stall—pow, pow, pow!—I touch her velvet muzzle over the stall gate, and she hangs her head and closes her eyes. She does this only for me. When other girls try to touch her, she steps back.
I am twelve, and Tampa Miss becomes my first horse. I don’t know exactly how she came to be mine, but I figure it’s my mom’s doing since my dad is always talking about how it’s hard enough to pay my child support. I call her Missy. Our colors, which we wear to competitions, are pink and black. I’ve developed a habit of cocking my left wrist, which Marsha says will make the bit cock sideways in the horse’s mouth. I don’t want to do that to Missy, so I try to remember to soften my wrist and curl it in, but Marsha and Paul still have to remind me.
At first Missy bucks and takes off sometimes, but she gets used to me, and I get used to her. Something grows between us. When we’re in the flow, the edges of our bodies and the leather of the tack disappear. I can feel it, and Paul sees it and shouts, “Now you’re cooking with grease!”
I’m flat on my back in the dirt after Missy refused a jump and I flew from the saddle. She gallops toward the barn, and Paul’s head eclipses the sun that blazes into my eyes. “You haven’t ridden until you’ve fallen off at least a hundred times,” he says, extending a hand to help me up. I’m maybe twenty falls in—plenty to go before I’m a rider. I take his hand, get up, dust off, take Missy from Marsha, who has fetched her from the barn, and climb back into the saddle.
Marsha drives us to competitions, Paul in the passenger seat of their truck, me in the back, Missy or another horse in the trailer. We stop at Waffle House or Taco Bell, and after we eat, Marsha and I wait in the truck for Paul to finish his cigarette. Whether I’m winning grand champion or hitting the dirt while my horse runs off because something spooked it, I’m always hoping to make Paul proud. Years go by like this: years in which these people and these animals are my family.
Missy has a foal, and I decide to sell her and the little one to another girl. I put the money in my pocket, but it wears a hole there. It hurts but also feels like what’s right. I’ve gone off to college. One summer I work as an exercise rider for racehorses, and I fall off every day for weeks, even getting kicked in the back once, until I finally start landing on my feet. According to Paul’s count I’m a rider, but I don’t feel like going to the barn much anymore.
After I graduate, I move out of state. I work different jobs and try on lots of versions of myself, including the angry one who bites back, but none of them ever feels quite right. I want to be soft and sweet, to be a sun like Marsha, because I can see how good it makes everyone feel. But I fear people will take advantage of me if I don’t stay ready to bite. So I stay ready. I’m still trying to be my father’s daughter, my mother’s daughter, the right kind of daughter, the kind who receives their love, but I’m starting to wonder if all the trying is wearing me out. Maybe I need to start pleasing myself. I start smoking cigarettes like Paul, but mine have filters, and I hold them in my fingers, not my lips.
Back home for a visit, I go to the barn to see Paul. (I don’t know yet that this will be the last time.) He has no eyebrows. Marsha says he was carrying his home oxygen tank when he leaned over to light a cigarette on the stove and the gas blew up in his face. He has scars on his cheeks and forehead. He says nothing but gives me a wiry hug. His body is thinner. Wispy. I wonder if he regrets taking so many breaths through burning tobacco, as if the smoke gave him life.
A year or so later Mom calls to tell me Paul is gone. I hang up, smelling the sweet molasses scent of horses’ necks and dank alfalfa and his swirling smoke. I find myself wondering whether Paul gave me horses or horses gave me Paul.
Two decades later I decide to get on a horse again—a New Year’s resolution. By late January I’m on the back of an eighteen-year-old gelding named Ace. The dark-gray coat of his youth has turned white; I rely on a monthly bottle of dye to keep my own gray covered. I’m at a much fancier barn, all white fences and bronze accents.
In the saddle I experience the familiar sense of being held. At the end of the big indoor arena, where no one can see, I let my tears fall into Ace’s mane and whisper, “Thank you.” I close my eyes, my hands moving with the bob of his head, my hips swaying in rhythm with his steps.
After a few lessons I realize the old habit has persisted: My left wrist is cocked out, not rounded in. I draw my attention to it, making sure the line from my elbow to my hand to the horse’s mouth is unbroken, so that the bit feels soft in Ace’s mouth.
I wonder if there are ever enough lessons for us to learn some things; if I’ll always have to be reminded, or to remind myself, that there’s a girl still living inside me. A girl who, because it felt like the only way, became unruly. A girl who fell in love with an animal and let it show her there are many ways to be.
My father died of a heart attack two decades ago, but when I’m rough on myself, I hear his words. Why do you always have to be so difficult? Arguing for argument’s sake. You should be a lawyer.
I did become a lawyer. I quit within months of his death.
In a rarely opened drawer, I found a picture of him standing next to Missy and me at a show. People tell me he was proud, that he loved me. Maybe he was. But when Ace and I find our rhythm, it’s Paul’s voice I hear in my head: Now you’re cooking with grease! Mostly, though, the voice in my head sounds like me.
