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Overview
Velveteen Vargas is eleven years old, a Fresh Air Fund kid from Brooklyn. Her host family is a couple in upstate New York: Ginger, a failed artist on the fringe of Alcoholics Anonymous, and Paul, an academic who wonders what it will mean to “make a difference” in such a contrived situation. The Mare illuminates the couple’s changing relationship with Velvet over the course of several years, as well as Velvet’s powerful encounter with the horses at the stable down the road, as Gaitskill weaves together Velvet’s vital inner-city community and the privileged country world of Ginger and Paul. The timeless story of a girl and a horse is joined with the timeless story of people from different races and socioeconomic backgrounds trying to meet one another honestly in a novel that is raw, striking, and completely original.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781101870624 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 11/03/2015 |
| Series: | Vintage Contemporaries |
| Sold by: | Random House |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 464 |
| Sales rank: | 598,527 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
About the Author
Hometown:
New York, New YorkDate of Birth:
November 11, 1954Place of Birth:
Lexington, KentuckyEducation:
B.A., University of Michigan, 1980Read an Excerpt
Velvet
That day I woke up from a dream the way I always woke up: pressed against my mom’s back, my face against her and her turned away. She holding Dante and he holding her, his head in her breasts, wrapped around each other like they’re falling down a hole. It was okay. I was a eleven-year-old girl, and I didn’t need to have my face in my mama’s titty no more—that is, if I ever did. Dante, my little brother, was only six.
It was summer, and the air conditioner was up too high, dripping dirty water on the floor, outside the pan I put there to catch it. Too loud too, but still I heard a shot from outside or maybe a shout from my dream. I was dreaming about my grandfather from DR; he was lost in a dark place, like a castle with a lot of rooms and rich white people doing scary things in all of them, and my grandfather somewhere shouting my name. Or maybe it was a shot. I sat up and listened, but there wasn’t anything.
That day we had to get on a bus and go stay with rich white people for two weeks. We signed up to do this at Puerto Rican Family Services in Williamsburg, even though we’re Dominican and we just moved to Crown Heights. The social worker walked around in little high heels, squishing out of tight pants like she’s a model, but with her face frowning like a mask on Halloween.
My mom talked to her about how our new neighborhood was all bad “negritas,” no Spanish people. She told her how she had to work all day and sometimes at night, keeping a roof over our heads. She said it was going to be summer and I was too old for day care, and because I was stupid she couldn’t trust me to stay inside and not go around the block talking to men. She laughed when she said this, like me talking to men was so stupid it was funny. But I don’t go around talking to men, and I told the social worker that with my face.
Which made the social worker with her eyes and her mouth tell my mom she’s shit. Which made me hate the woman, even if my mom was lying about me. My mom acted like she didn’t see what the social worker said with her eyes and mouth, but I knew she did see—she saw like she always does. But she kept talking and smiling with her hard mouth until the social worker handed her a shiny booklet—she stopped then. I looked to see what had shut my mother up; it was pictures of white people on some grass hugging dark children. Mask-Face told us we could go stay with people like this for two weeks. “It sounds like hell,” whispered Dante, but Mask-Face didn’t hear. We could swim and ride bicycles, she said. We could learn about animals. I took the booklet out of my mother’s hands. It said something about love and having fun. There was a picture of a girl darker than me petting a sheep. There was a picture of a woman with big white legs sitting in a chair with a hat on and a plastic orange flower in her hand, looking like she was waiting for somebody to have fun with.
My mom doesn’t write, so I filled out the forms. Dante just sat there talking to himself, not caring about anything like always. I didn’t want him to come with me, bothering me while I was trying to ride a bicycle or something, so when they asked how he gets along with people, I wrote, “He hits.” They asked how he resolves conflict and I wrote, “He hits.” It was true, anyway. Then my mom asked if we could go to the same family so I could take care of Dante, and Mask-Face said no, it’s against the rules. I was glad, and then I felt sorry for saying something bad about Dante for nothing. My mom started to fight about it, and Mask-Face said again, It’s against the rules. The way she said it was another way of saying “You’re shit,” and the smell of that shit was starting to fill up the room. I could feel Dante get small inside. He said, “I don’t want to go be with those people.” He said it so soft you could barely hear him, but my mother said, “Shut up, you ungrateful boy! You’re stupid!” The smell got stronger; it covered my mother’s head, and she scratched herself like she was trying to brush it off.
But she couldn’t and so when we left, she hit Dante on the head and called him stupid some more. Going to this place with bicycles and sheep had been turned into a punishment.
Still, I had hope that it would be fun. The lady I would stay with had called to talk to me and she sounded nice. Her voice was little, like she was scared. She said we were going to ride a Ferris wheel at the county fair and swim at the lake and see horses. She didn’t sound like the lady with the big legs, but that’s how I pictured her, with a plastic flower. I thought of that picture and that voice and I got excited.
I got up and went out into the hall and got into the closet where our coats were. I dug into the back and found my things I keep in the old cotton ball box. I took them out through our living room into the kitchen, where it was heavy-warm from all the hot days so far. I poured orange juice in my favorite glass with purple flowers on it. I took the juice and my box to the open window and leaned out on the ledge. It was so early there was nobody on the street except a raggedy man creeping against a building down below us, holding on to it with one hand like for balance. He was holding the wall where somebody had written “Cookie” in big red paint. That was because this boy called Cookie used to stand there a lot. He was called that because he ate big cookies all the time. We used to see him in Mr. Nelson’s store downstairs and we weren’t supposed to talk to him because he was from the project over on Troy Avenue. But I did talk to him and he was nice. Even if he told me once that even though he liked me, if somebody paid him enough, he’d kill me. He wouldn’t want to because I was gonna grow up fine, but he’d have to. He said it like he was making friends with me. We stood there talking for a while and then he broke off a piece of soft cookie and gave it to Dante. He said, “Stay fine, girl.” A little while later a cop killed him for nothing and his name got put on a wall.
I took my things out of the box and laid them out on the ledge. They looked nice together: a silver bell I got from a prize machine, a plastic orange sun I tore off a get-well card somebody gave my mom, a blond key-chain doll with only one leg wearing a checkered coat, a dried sea horse from DR that my grandfather sent me, and a blue shell my father gave me when I was a baby and he lived with us. My father gave me two shells, but I gave the brown-and-pink one to this girl Strawberry because her brother died.
I held the blue shell against my lip to feel how smooth it was. I looked up and saw the sun had put a gold outline on the building across from us. I looked down and saw the raggedy man stop against the wall, like he was trying to get the strength to breathe.
After Cookie got shot I heard these men talking about him at Mr. Nelson’s. I heard his name and this man said, “Suicide by cop.” I thought, What does that mean? so loud it was like they heard me because they got quiet. When we left, my mom whispered, “Gangbangers.”
On the street, the raggedy man stretched up against the wall, his arms and hands spread out like he was crying on the red-painted word. For a second, everything was hard and clear and pounding beautiful.
The last time I saw my father I was almost ten and Dante was four. We had to leave our old apartment in Williamsburg, and my mom was staying with a friend and trying to find a new place, so he came and took us to Philadelphia in the car with his friend Manuel. I remember blowing bubbles on the fire escape with his other kids from this woman Sophia; she had soft breasts pushed together in a green dress, and she made asopao with shrimp, and mango pudding. She never liked me, but her girls were nice. We slept in the same bed and told stories about a disgusting white guy in history who cut people up with a chain saw and danced around in their skins. And the littlest girl would rap Missy Elliott, like, I heard the bitch got hit with three zebras and a monkey / I can’t stand the bitch no way. And it made me and Dante laugh, ’cause she’s so cute—she’s only three. There were dogs going in and out, and Dante was scared at first, then he loved them. It was fun, but on the way back in the car, my father took my emergency money out of my pocket to pay the tolls and didn’t give it back. Manuel was in the car and he made fun of me for being mad. Then he came to New York and started renting a room from us.
My father sends Dante a dollar in a card for his birthday sometimes. Never me.
I put down the shell and picked up the sea horse. I never met my grandfather, but he loved me. He talked to me on the phone and when I sent him my picture, he said I was beautiful. He called me “mi niña.” He told me stories about how bad my mom was when she was little, and how she got punished. He sent the sea horse. He said one day my mom would bring me and Dante to visit and he would take us to the ocean. I remember his voice: tired and rough but mad fun inside. I never saw him and I almost never talked to him on the phone, but when I did, it was like arms around me. Then his voice started getting more tired and the fun was far away in him. He said, “I’m always gonna be with you. Just think of me, I’m there.” It scared me. I wanted to say, Grandpa, why are you talking like this? But I was too scared. “Even in your dreams,” he said. “I’m gonna be there.” I said, “Bendición, Abuelo,” and he answered, “Dios te bendiga.” A month later, he died.
I put my things back in the box. I looked down in the street. The raggedy man was gone. The gold outline on the building was gone too, spread out through the sky, making it shiny with invisible light. For some reason I thought of a TV commercial where a million butterflies burst out from some shampoo bottle or cereal box. I thought of Cookie’s face when he gave my brother a cookie. I thought of the big-legs lady in the booklet holding the fake orange flower, looking like she was hoping for someone to come have fun with her.
###
Reading Group Guide
The questions, discussion topics, and reading list that follow are intended to enhance your reading group’s discussion of The Mare by Mary Gaitskill. In Gaitskill’s hands, the timeless story of a girl and a horse is joined with a timely story of people from different races and classes trying to meet one another honestly. The Mare is raw, heart-stirring, and original.
1. Kirkus Reviews writes, “Gaitskill takes a premise that could have been preachy, sentimental, or simplistic—juxtaposing urban and rural, rich and poor, young and old, brown and white—and makes it candid and emotionally complex, spare, real, and deeply affecting.” How does Gaitskill manage to do this?
2. Why do you think the book opens with an epigraph from National Velvet? Why do you think Gaitskill refers to another famous horse book/movie? What does “intolerance” have to do with this book? And why do you think she named one of her main characters Velvet?
3. Why this title? Is Ginger The Mare as much as the horse is? Is Velvet’s mom also the mare? “‘My mare,’ like ‘mah mere’ or ‘ma mère’” (p. 99).
4. Describe the structure of the novel. Why do you think there are no chapters, just short sections interweaving different voices together? What is the effect on you as a reader to hear Ginger’s and Velvet’s perspectives, sometimes on the same events or subjects? Do you think this makes the novel a more compelling, more personal story? What effect do the various viewpoints and voices have on your reading experience?
5. Describe the home environments of Velvet and Ginger. How and why are they different? How are they similar?
6. Describe Velvet’s relationship with her mother. How does it compare with what we learn of Ginger’s relationship with her mother and sister?
7. Compare and contrast Velvet’s friendships with the other girls in her class with Ginger’s relationships with the other women in the novel. How and why are both Velvet and Ginger outsiders? How have both of them “created ways to keep others at a distance” (p. 10)? How are both rootless?
8. How do Velvet’s stereotypes of “rich white people” and Ginger’s stereotypes of inner-city kids evolve over the course of the novel?
9. Why do Ginger and her husband fall for the Fresh Air Fund brochures? “It was sentimental and flattering to white vanity and manipulative as hell. It was also irresistible” (p. 14).
10. Why is Ginger enchanted by Velvet? “Her presence made everything special” (p. 55).
11. After Fiery Girl accepts her, how is Velvet enchanted by the horse?
12. How is Pat different from other horse trainers? Do you like her style and way with horses? Contrast her methods with Beverly’s.
13. How does Ginger’s past haunt her present? The abusive boyfriend? The drinking? When do the two coincide and meet her directly in the present?
14. Describe Velvet’s relationship with Fiery Girl. Why do the two gravitate toward each other? What does each get from the other?
15. Cosmopolitan magazine said, “Gaitskill’s clear, raw prose rips open notions of race, class, age, and what it means to love something greater than yourself.” How does the author open up notions of race, class, and age?
16. Did you find The Mare a hopeful novel? Was it depressing? How could it be both?
17. There are numerous instances of Velvet describing people as being like horses. Reread those passages and discuss: “We were moving like the horses” (p. 185); “This angry was big and warm like a horse” (p. 196); “They get beat down and locked up but still, when they run, nobody can stop them” (p. 288).
18. Describe Velvet’s relationship with Dominic. How does it contrast with Ginger’s relationships with men? Despite their age difference, are there similarities in their relationships with males?
19. Why is Velvet’s mother so opposed to her daughter riding horses? How do you think she feels at the end of the novel?
20. Ginger thinks at one raw point with Velvet, when she wonders if she’s doing any good in the girl’s life, “Maybe they really are different from us. More violent, more dishonest—nicer in some ways, yes, warm, physical, passionate . . . Everybody was right. I’m racist. At least now I know.” Why does she think so? How do you feel about the way race plays into the novel? How does Ginger try to connect with this girl from another background? How does she connect and how does she misstep?
21. "I can’t even be her pretend mother. I give in. I agree. I’m over. It is what it is. But I can still get her on that fucking horse. I can help her win” (p. 452). Discuss the significance of these lines spoken by Ginger in the context of the entire novel.
22. How does the author deal with Velvet’s preteen desire, evolving sexuality, and falling in love? How does she juxtapose it with Paul’s infidelity and Ginger’s fleeting interest in an abusive ex-boyfriend?
23. How does the author capture the energy and excitement and anxiety of horseback riding?
24. What do you think of the ending of The Mare?
Interviews
Barnes & Noble Review Interview with Mary
Gaitskill
Mary Gaitskill's short stories and novels are often dark and
complex considerations of loneliness and relationships, such as
Veronica, nominated for the National Book Award.
Referred to as "the best practitioner of dark literary arts" by
Elisabeth Donnelly in the LA Times, Gaitskill casts a spell
on the reader, exposing what is raw and true.
The Mare is less interior than her previous novels, and
therefore very different from her previous work. Writing from
multiple perspectives, Gaitskill tells the story of a Dominican girl,
Velvet, a Fresh Air Fund kid who is introduced to horseback riding
by her host family, Ginger and Paul. Silvia, Velvet's mother, is
another prominent character in the book. When Velvet's outside
the confines of her Brooklyn life, she forms a deep attachment with
a difficult horse, and in doing so, challenges herself.
Gaitskill herself was a Fresh Air Fund host, and in order to
research this book, she spent three years learning how to ride
horses. I recently chatted with her on a beautiful fall day while
sitting outside of a restaurant near her apartment in
Williamsburg.
--Michele Filgate
The Barnes & Noble Review: The
Mare feels like a big departure from your other books.
There's darkness, but there's also a lot of hope, and I'm wondering
if the writing process was different for this particular novel than
your previous books.
Mary Gaitskill: It was. It's stylistically different
as well, I'm sure you noticed . . . It's more direct, both in the way
the sentences are structured and then the emotional expression. In a
way, it's not as much of a departure as it seems because it's really a
more direct expression of a particular type of emotional way of
being in the world. And it's different in that many of the characters
are from a different socioeconomic place, but in some ways they
struggle with the same things as my previous characters have. How
much you can trust people, how much you value love, what is love,
what does love come with? Is it love that's being cruel, or is it the
attachment of things to it? I mean, people in my stories aren't
asking themselves these questions directly, and neither are the
people in The Mare, but I think that's part of it for all
of them.
BNR: Ginger feels judged by the other women
in her town, but in many ways she's kind of her own worst critic.
And I kept thinking of performance while reading The
Mare, because Velvet performs her role as a tough city kid
who manages to get a scarred and scared horse to like her, and her
mother plays the fearful, ignorant mother who takes out her anger
on her oldest child. Ginger plays the artist trying to repair by
helping out another person and even resorts to community theatre.
Did you think a lot about the roles we play in our lives and
authenticity while writing this book?
MG: Actually, I don't think Velvet's mother is
playing a role. You're probably thinking about the section in which
she thinks, Why are people acting the way they are? It's like they're
playing parts like the kids in her school. And I think Ginger also is
very aware of that, the role of a mother, what is a mother supposed
to do? How am I supposed to act?
But I don't think Silvia is doing that. I think she kind of has to do
what she does, and there's no acting involved whatever. But I can
see why you asked the question . . . I would say Silvia's not like
this because she's not really a product of American culture, but
American culture now has become unbelievably self-conscious and
unbearable, almost. It's like everybody, even small children.
I remember feeling that way when I was a kid, too, sometimes.
Having watched television, I would kind of play the role or picture
myself on a television show or something like that. That's maybe
always been true of a certain type of kid, even before television,
maybe, but I think it's been amplified to an insane level.
I saw when I was coming back on the train today a mother filming
on her phone her small child looking out the window and watching
the water, and the child, of course, is very aware of it. When
looking out the window and watching the water becomes a drama,
then literally everything is a drama. And people are watching, and
there's no room for just being there, doing something without
thinking about what you look like. I set the book in a time
somewhat before phones and people filming everything was so
prominent, but it was starting to happen even then. I think the story
starts in 2006 and ends in 2009 or '10 maybe, I'm not sure.
But yes, I think that that's become a huge issue in the last I would
say twenty years. I remember hearing people talking about it a lot.
Though actually people were doing that even before -- I think in
the '80s maybe is when I remember people first talking about
authenticity like a little too much . . . Maybe it's now an
assumption that it's not there. I don't know. I had a friend who
commented to me that he thinks everyone is acting as if they don't
know it. I think she thinks she's not doing it, but everyone else is,
and they don't know it. And I've thought about that. What does that
mean? Is that true? Because there is a sense in which we have --
like I go in to teach a class, I may be somewhat different than I
would be talking to you, although it's related because it's public.
I'm very different with my roommate or my lover or my cats. But I
don't know if that means you're acting really, if you're being
truthful. I think of acting as something you do almost by definition
on purpose. I think people in like Velvet's socioeconomic group
are very aware they've been cast in a certain role by how they're
talked about, like terms like "at risk" or "making a difference" or
hearing those women at the bus stop talk about Latino and black
people, like we have to show them another way. That's really
aggressively being cast in a role by people who do not know
you.
And as much as you might hate and resist that role, it affects you,
especially if you're a kid. And I'm not speaking as if I know about
Latino people having this experience, but there's other ways to
have it. You know, if you're one person or a minority in a large
group and that large group is saying you're this way and saying
you're this way over and over again, you're going to become aware
that's your role. Some people are strong enough to resist it
completely, but other people survive it by acting the role. They're
like "Oh, okay, that's what I am. And fuck you if you don't like
it."
And again, white people can do that, too. It's not a phenomenon
about any particular one group, but it's just what people will do if
they're cast in a role. But then somebody like Velvet, you question
it. Why? Where did this come from? Who invented this?
And somebody like Ginger will also be aware of motherhood. As a
woman, she feels very strongly. And again, you're right, she's her
own worst critic. The other people may not even judge her that
much, but she thinks they are because she's had it impressed upon
her at various times in her life that this is what women are
supposed to do.
BNR: Did you do a lot of research for the
novel? I'm wondering if you interviewed Fresh Air Fund kids and
hosts and if you already knew a lot about horses before you started
writing.
MG: Most of the research I did was about
horses. I didn't know anything about them.
BNR: Did that involve going and riding
horses?
MG: Yeah. I learned how to ride at fifty-six.
BNR: That's wonderful.
MG: It was terrifying.
BNR: Did you like it?
MG: I seemed to. I didn't at first. At first I hated
it because I was scared. I was a Fresh Air Fund person. My
husband and I did that starting in 2002 and it was quite the
experience . . . It was a really involved relationship. They were
really, really great. They were so wonderful, these kids. I don't
know how much it helped them, but it certainly helped me to be
involved with them. It made my life better.
So that's how I knew that experience. And horses were . . . I was so
dumb at first. I actually thought I could learn what I needed to
know. And the girl, by the way, did really like to ride. That's where
I got the idea. She didn't do what Velvet does because she didn't
come up that much. I mean, Velvet comes up every month and
does it a lot. She would not be able to ride at the end as well as she
did if she did not do that. The girl didn't have the opportunity for
that. She wouldn't have done it anyway. That wasn't her nature.
But I actually thought that I could go to the stable with my
notebook and ask, "Have you ever had a connection with a horse?
What did it feel like?" I realized quickly that I was not going to get
what I needed by that. So I thought, Well, I'll just take maybe ten
lessons, but again I realized that really wasn't adequate, especially
for me. It's hard to learn anything new when you're older, and that
really takes a lot. So I spent three years. [Horses are] quite
sensitive, and they react to you. If they know you're nervous, it
makes them uncomfortable. There's a "lesson horse" that can be
used with nervous people, but I was really nervous, and some of
the horses I was on were lesson horses, but they were at barns that
didn't necessarily get a lot of business, so they weren't the type of
lesson horse that every day they had five people come in and ride
them one after the other. They were horses that were ridden maybe
a couple times per week by different people, and I was probably
one of the least experienced people. And also frequently, although
not always, children are -- even if they're really new, they're less
nervous because they're kids and they aren't imagining they could
fall off and have every bone in their body broken and be in the
hospital forever.
So it was awkward because the horses would just look at me and
be like, "Oh no, not her again." And I knew they were feeling that
way. And I remember I would be tacking them up, and they would
do a perfectly normal horse thing like toss their head or stamp their
feet and I would flinch because it looked like aggression to me. I
would flinch, and then they would be like what's wrong? And it
would be this horrible feedback loop.
And at one point, oddly enough, I was more comfortable -- I
wanted to ride bareback for a minute because I saw this young girl
riding a horse bareback, and she was trotting, and I thought Oh, I'd
like to try that, just because I thought my character would want to
do that. So I said "Can I try that?" And I'd really not done posting
before. I think I'd experimented a little with posting, but it was
really early. So the instructor was like, "Are you sure?" And I was
like, "Yeah, I just want to get a feel for it."
And it was in the winter, and it was such an experiment when I got
on because paradoxically, although I was afraid of them, the more
connected I felt, the more relaxed I felt. And so when I got on the
horse without the saddle, and the warmth was so striking because it
was cold, I was like "Oh my God, this feels so good." And so I was
much more relaxed. I just felt literally more connected with the
animal because I was calmer, so the horse was calmer, and the
lesson went much better.
And the next time -- we didn't trot; we just walked. I was just
practicing steering and basic things. So the next time we did it
again. And I said, "I think I want to try posting." She said, "Are
you sure?" And I was like, "Yeah." And the first time I did it, it
worked. I could do it.
So the second time I was a little overconfident. And something
happened also to startle the horse. It's one of these horses that's
normally bulletproof, nothing disturbs it, and I don't remember
what it was. I think maybe it was hunting season and somebody
fired a gun close by. I think what happened too is I squeezed it
inadvertently and he thought I was telling him to trot so he did and
I first fell off. And it really scared me. I was lucky because I didn't
break anything, but I bizarrely cut my chin on a rock on the
ground.
Because I tried to do what's called a quick dismount. I tried to get
off when I could feel I was falling. That's how I fell on my front
instead of my back. It was very jarring. I didn't break anything, but
I pulled a muscle, and I was really shaken up. I'm ashamed to say
that I did not get back on the horse.
BNR: You didn't after that?
MG: The trainer was like, "Get back on." I was
like, "No, no, no, no." So I didn't, and I went back to another barn I
was working at and decided I'm not going to do this. I'm going to
break my stupid ass if I keep trying to do this. So instead I just
groomed them and cleaned their stalls, and I did that for
months.
I realized, gradually, that I was no longer nervous around these
horses because I knew them. And I realized not only were they not
nervous around me, they actually kind of liked me because I was
very gentle with them. And I had learned how they liked to be
touched; I learned how they liked to be groomed; I knew when
they liked being scratched in a certain place; and I did a really
good job cleaning their stalls, and they knew that. And I suddenly
realized I want to ride them. I want to ride one. So I went back, and
because I was more calm, things went much better. I still wasn't a
very good rider. I never became really good or skilled, but I did
basically learn how. And I actually could learn at that point
because I wasn't so frightened at everything that I would tense up
at anything the horse did. And I also became very attached -- I
would say I fell in love with a particular horse.
BNR: Is it like the horse in the book at all?
MG: No, he was a very mild horse, very gentle.
Although he did shove me with his head a few times and almost
knocked me down, but not out of meanness. I don't know about the
head thing. I think because I was talking on the wrong side, and he
was trying to say "Hey, over there." But I didn't know that, and it
scared me. And as I put in the book, it was a mistake. The place
that I was going to -- you shouldn't actually do this, but some
people do it -- with some of the larger horses, they didn't walk
them into the stall and turn them all the way around and take all the
efforts that you're supposed to do. They would just walk them up
to the door and unclip them and kind of gesture them in. And that's
what this horse was used to, and I didn't know that. So while I was
leading, I was leading him in and he was just expecting to run right
in. So even though I put my elbow in his side so he'd remember I
was there, boom, he just ran right into me. Because my elbow was
there, he basically flung me against the wall. I was like, Never
again. I don't know why, but this horse doesn't like me and I won't
deal with him ever again. But another time I was in there and it
was an emergency and his stall was really dirty, and he literally
said, "Please help me. It's gross in here. Please help." And so I did.
I went in and helped him.
BNR: Were you scared at that point, or no?
MG: I was. I actually said, "No, I would like to,
but you shoved me with your head. You knocked me against the
wall. I'm not coming in there. I'm sorry. Somebody else will be
here." I swear he looked back at me and said, "I'm not going to do
that. I need help." And so I put some hay in his feed dish so he
would get out of the way. This is something you also shouldn't do.
It's actually much safer to take the horse out of his stall, but
because I'd had trouble with him while I was leading him I didn't
want to do that. Instead I blocked the door with the wheelbarrow
and went in. But as soon as I walked in, I knew it was fine. I just
knew nothing was going to happen. He was actually very gentle.
So, anyway, he was the horse I really fell in love with.
BNR: Velvet has a strong will, much like the
horses she learns to ride, and you write: "The horses have what the
people here have. They get beat down and locked up but still, when
they run, nobody can stop them." When writing about someone
trying to rise above the world they were born into, it's easy to tread
into sentimental or kind of saccharine territory, and I wonder how
you managed to avoid that while writing this book.
MG: I don't know if I did -- to me, even if
something is romantic or very emotional, it isn't sentimental if
there's some reality to it.
I think people are more frightened of sentiment than they have to
be. Writers. They think any strong emotion is sentimentality, and
that's really bad. I think a lot of writing, or a lot of young writers
especially, hold themselves back unnecessarily because they're so
upset about the idea that they might be sentimental or so concerned
about being criticized that way or even being that way that they
just shy away from any strong expression or emotion. And you can
be really emotional, too emotional almost, and not be sentimental
if it's genuine.
BNR: The title of the book refers to the horse,
but it also refers to the French word for mother
(mère), and at one point Silvia even compares
herself to a horse and says "I am blocked inside the hardness and
nothingness and I can't get out. Like the horse Velvet talks about
the one who kicks the walls. Striking the hard thing, trying to break
it. No one sees. No one hears." Do you see a lot of similarities
between the two?
MG: Not really, but I don't know if there can be
a similarity between a person and an animal really but there is
something beautiful trapped in Silvia. And she knows it. Just the
ability to be yourself, even, because she has to work so hard, and
each one is constantly pushing against survival, the need for
survival. There are so many things you need to do that you can't
come out. Like I think at one point she says "I work so much I
can't think." I can't remember exactly. But that's true, if you're
constantly having to do things just to live, you're not able to think
as well as you can or relax and feel things. So in that sense, she is
confined.
Did you ever see the movie National Velvet?
BNR: No, I haven't.
MG: I was frankly inspired to write this by
seeing a little film clip of it -- I hadn't yet seen the movie at that
point. Liz Taylor, fifteen years old, riding across a Technicolor
meadow. And I learned it is about a young farm girl who's pretty
naturally poor, but pretty naturally talented. She wants this horse.
Her family can't afford it. But it's such a fucked-up horse that
nobody else wants it, so she gets to take care of it. And she winds
up, through various circumstances, entering the National. It's called
National Velvet because she enters this big national race.
But nobody knows it's a girl. She's replacing a jockey because he
can't ride for some reason.
So she rides her horse and wins, and then when they find out it's
her, she's disqualified. She's a fourteen-year-old girl. So it doesn't
change her life, and her mother actually says ,"Don't worry about
it. You don't need to win anything. You're going to go on and have
kids and women are great." And that's the end.
So in an odd way I wanted to do something similar here. I
intentioned originally for her to win big, and I realized because of
the way these contests are structured it would be impossible. She'd
have to enter repeatedly. She can't do that. She would be up against
girls who had such an advantage over her in terms of their horses
being trained, being bred, being just the best possible quality horse
in existence, and also they've been riding since they were seven
years old and they can do it every day if they want to. So she
couldn't possibly consistently win against girls like that. So I mean
for her to triumph and it's meaningful, but is it going to change her
life in a material way? Probably not.
--November
11, 2015
