Chapter One is linked here.
He whips the station wagon onto the road’s shoulder before I know what’s happening.
In less than three seconds his 6’ 5”, nimble frame slides out the driver’s side door, curves around the car front, and wrenches open the right passenger door where Jake is sitting.
“You think that’s funny? Farting in my car, you little asshole? Step outside with me and I’ll show you what I think’s funny, you little jerk.”
My 13-year-old brother’s mirth slides off his face, and he seems to collapse into himself. My mother’s eyes dart between the two of them as she white knuckles the door handle. Terror silences all of us so that the only reply to his provocation is the screeching of the wiper blades as they rub out the sprinkles freckling the windshield.
Through my window, I watch as cars crawl by, their passengers gawking at the large white guy screaming on the side of the road. When he rages like this his skin tightens and you can almost see the sutures in his skull.
A dozen heartbeats later, the fury mysteriously drains out of his face and he collects himself, slams the door shut at Jacob, and gets back in the car. But no apology is offered. He just peels out and we stare catatonically at the road wondering how we got here, where we’re headed.
If this had been an isolated incident, it would be forgiven.
The problem is that just a year into their marriage James’s outbursts are already a pattern. Usually preceded by manic highs, his mood nosedives when Jake or I do something he considers “uncouth” and disrespectful. At other times, any behavior that deviates from what he considers normal is enough to send him spiraling, like when I used two paper towels on a small spill instead of just one.
Mom often tries to neutralize the tension, but even her charm is no match for his bipolar disorder. So pretty soon my brother stops coming to their New England-style house in the desert. If he ever believed in the fantasy that home was supposed to evoke, the belief vaporizes in James’s tirades.
But I need Mom’s nurturing more than my brother does, so I hang around longer. Plus I feel guilty when I think of abandoning her to be back with my dad and Jake in our comfy old house where you can fart whenever you want to (and probably score a high-five).
I still cling to the memory of Mom, James, and I as the trio who’d awoken before dawn to revel under skies filled with hot air balloons. If that was real, then maybe we’ve just lost our way and we can return to that twilight-tinged moment of being reborn. If not, Mom’s choice of a second husband might be evidence that her judgment is poor, maybe poor enough to have wrecked her first marriage. And that’s not something I want to acknowledge.
So, I play along as best I can with her desperate attempts to hold our fledgling family together. In one such effort, she buys a DIY Victorian-style model house for James and I to build together (nothing like making a metaphor concrete!). We take some stabs at the foundation, but I don’t remember ever putting the roof on.
James is more strategic than she and decides I should finally get the horse I’ve always wanted. So at Christmas, I become the owner of a short, chestnut-colored Tenessee Walker named Lady. She’s not as tall or as young as I’d hoped when I drew sketch after sketch in Martha’s bedroom, but I radiate with owner’s pride when I’m face to face with my own animal’s velveteen nose.
We board Lady at stables several miles down the road. The place is owned by Darlene, a thin, tough-as-rawhide woman with short silver hair. On weekends Lady and I ride with Darlene and her white dappled Arabian, clip-clopping carefully across paved streets until we reach a broad stretch of sandy, undeveloped home lots. I live for the moment Darlene lets us canter to the edge of the property line and back–all that velocity churning from Lady’s hooves to the top of my cranium, each stride creating a moment I’m weightless and swift, both in control and breathlessly along for the ride. When I get home I gimp around bow-legged, saddle sore and pleased as punch with myself.
But I don’t get out to see Lady as often as I’d planned to. Between joint custody and Kristi and boys and school and 7th grade volleyball, it’s infrequent enough that I feel neglectful.
And of course, the gift of this animal does nothing to address James’s mental health. Now, with Jacob out of the house, most of his tongue lashings are directed at Mom for her spending habits. Often, when they argue at the opposite end of the house, I sit on my bed ensconced in a down comforter wishing my dad would pull up in the driveway and break me out of the house.
One Saturday when James is off on a bike ride, I wander the house looking for Mom. I open the bathroom door and see her standing there naked except for a towel draped over her waist, the comb of her ribs articulated as she bends over one leg. She’s cradling a wireless phone to her ear with her right shoulder while she dry shaves with her left hand, saying Uh-huh to the receiver.
She doesn’t know I’m there and I gather that she’s talking with someone about James when a thin runlet of menstrual blood slides down her inner thigh and a gasp escapes my mouth.
Her head whips up at the mirror and she sees my reflection standing behind her, and I begin, I-I’m sorry, I didn’t know! I just wondered if you could take me to go see Lady…
I fly out of the bathroom because I see the anger and shame in her eyes and cheeks and I know an invective about ‘sneaking around’ is headed my way. Instead, she gets dressed, grabs her keys, and says, Are you ready to go?
In the car, she makes no move to open up a conversation about what I’d just seen, so my eyes remain glued on the pecan groves that whip behind us as we drive. At Darlene’s, she pulls over and I say, I’ll see you later, to which she nods and sputters away.
I lift the latch on the chain link fence that surrounds her paddocks and take in the smell of alfalfa and horse manure. Darlene’s not in her small ranch house, so I head to the tack room to see if she’s there instead. It’s empty but I linger for a few minutes, breathing in the glory of saddle-soaped leather and creaking steel hardware.
Lady whickers when I pop out to her pen with a halter and curry comb and for a moment I forget the crimson stain on my mom’s body. Once I’ve combed Lady, dug out her hooves, saddled her, and trotted around the small pen, I get the urge to ride along the irrigation ditch that flanks the back perimeter of the property. If I take that ditch for two miles, I can ride up to our house and surprise James and Mom, maybe make them proud. It’s not something I’ve ever done before, but I reason that it’s no less dangerous than riding alone in Darlene’s yard. Either way, I could fall off with no one around to help me. This way, I’ll “hitch” a ride back home and possibly impress my parents and that skater-boy neighbor whose eye I’ve wanted to catch for a while now.
When riding, I try to project confidence to the animal because I know that when horses smell fear, that’s when you have something to worry about. But this ride is just outside of my comfort zone and my palms are sweaty.
I’m monitoring Lady’s ears very closely and I keep repeating, Shhh, girl, trying to calm myself by calming her.
I’m looking ahead half a mile where the ditch intersects with a paved road, wondering if I should dismount before I arrive there when a small tree branch snaps, and I feel Lady’s hind legs gather underneath me.
In a split second her fight or flight switches on and she takes off in a dead run, causing me to drop one of the reins.
Her ears point rigidly forward, her nostrils suck and blow, and a dark patch of sweat has bloomed across her withers.
She’s absolutely flying, heading straight for the street where unexpecting cars drive by every ten seconds.
The pounding of her hooves is riotous.
The loose rein slaps against the dirt, coming hideously close to her feet.
I can already feel what it’s like to be t-boned by a pickup truck, how my guts will mix with hers and fly all over the pavement, how the poor driver will feel it’s his fault when nothing could be further from the truth. I see myself lying in the road, the same thin streak of blood that ran down my mother’s leg now running down my cold gray forehead.
I’m just a foolish little girl taking on things too advanced for me, I think.
Always trying to be big enough, brave enough, calm enough…
With every last bit of strength I have I’m tugging on the left rein while I clutch the pommel of my saddle.
Stop! I scream one last time. La-dy, stoooppp!
About fifty feet before the pavement begins she digs her front heels in the dirt and her neck becomes my airbag.
I bite my tongue hard, slide off to the ground, and collapse on the ditch floor three feet from the road.
She stands over me, her mouth foaming green, her rib cage flaring, and the wild look in her eye remains.
When I’m finally able to stand up, I grab the reins and walk in front of her the remaining mile and a half to my house, never realizing how much easier it would be to turn around and take her back to Darlene’s.
***
Shortly after that ditch run I decide to live full-time with my dad. James sells the horse, shutters his struggling business, and then sputters out of Mom’s life in his bronze station wagon.
On my visitation weekend, I come to clean out my room and help box up our things before the house goes back on the market. While Granny and Mom wrap dishes in newspaper, I stare out the window at the willow in the front yard watching its leaves hiss in the breeze.
It occurs to me that I’ve never heard Jesus’s footsteps creaking on Mom and James’s hardwood floor, and I scoff at how silly I’d been as a younger child to believe he was real enough to occupy our home. I know now that life has no direction or director. It’s a reinless horse ride, a mile in the back of a maniac’s taxi, and we’re just a bunch of hapless passengers holding on for dear life.