Let the Tornado Come: A Memoir (16 page)

I
n addition to my cavaletti lessons with Gerta, I rode other horses with other instructors whenever I got the chance. There were jumping lessons that taught me to rise up out of the saddle and give the horse the reins and let myself get carried through the air. And there were trail rides into the mountains that taught me the many different sounds horse hooves can make against the earth—and that in the sport of riding, there should always be time to relax and meander through the trees.

I was learning so much, and the more I learned, the more I kept coming back to dressage. The first time I heard the word
dressage,
I was in college, rehearsing lines for an acting class with a girl who lived in Belmont, the wealthy horse country of Maryland. She was a lovely girl—articulate and upbeat—and when she told me she “did dressage” with her horse, I didn’t want to admit I had no idea what that meant, though it sounded fancy, like the kind of thing a girl like me would
never do. But as I stumbled somewhat accidentally into it as I learned to ride, I discovered that the history of dressage (derived from the French:
to train
) belies what one might think when watching the prancing of upper-level horses in competitive dressage: those dance-like movements are arguably more athletically demanding than any other equestrian sport, and their earliest uses were actually to prepare horses for war, through fostering obedience, strength, and agility. Dressage replicates movements horses make naturally in the wild—whether at play, under threat, or while courting. Ultimately, so much of dressage is based on balance: on the equilibrium and strength of both the horse and the rider to carry themselves separately and to work together as a team. And none of this can happen without the willingness of the horse, which is based on his trust of the rider.

The earliest surviving documents on dressage come from the Greek master Xenophon, who advocated sympathetic training based on kindness and reward, a bedrock for an ideal practice: to combine what is best in the horse and best in the rider and cultivate this powerful harmony, this beautiful and unassailable force. Unfortunately, the reality of modern dressage is often quite different. But as I traveled around meeting horses and horse people, I didn’t fully understand this yet. I was still naïve, but full of verve and hope, and after six months of lessons on Danielle, I knew it was time: I was ready to find a horse of my own.

I
had planned to meet lots of horses before I made my choice, but it turned out there was only one, and he chose me: this spark-eyed chestnut looked at me—peered intently into my eyes—until I felt my world shift underneath me as if I were standing on the edge of a mountain. The first time I saw Claret, I fell in love. His face was marked by a white blaze shaped like an hourglass, and his sweeping back rose into high withers and a long neck. Not only was he beautiful
but he was absolutely engaged in the world: he would paw the ground the minute you stopped paying attention to him and wasn’t shy about frisking a stranger’s pockets for treats. In those first few minutes he burned himself into me the way the shape of a light stays on the retina after you’ve closed your eyes. “Hi there,” I said, running my hand along his blaze. As if to answer, he pressed his nose into my hands, then resumed his frisking. When he found the pocket with the jelly beans, he rubbed at it with his lips. “You win,” I said, reaching in for the jelly beans, which he lifted gently, one at a time, from my hand.

When I rode him for the first time, I knew he was special. Bigger than most of the other horses I’d ridden so far, he trotted smoothly. His canter was comfortable and deep—a fluid power—and even though we were moving in circles, to me it felt as if we were going somewhere.

I
already knew I wanted to bring him home. Gerta and I went out to his barn in New Hampshire to watch the vet conduct the prepurchase exam: a thorough physical examination that assesses a horse’s soundness and seeks to uncover any underlying conditions. “He’s a big boy,” the vet noted, as he put Claret on a lunge line to examine his trot and canter. When he asked him to canter, Claret gave a little squeal, then bucked high into the air. “Feeling good today, huh?” The vet laughed, and I was thrilled to see Claret’s spirit, right there—flashes of it igniting in the air above him. Throughout the exam, I kept noticing Claret’s eye on me, and I couldn’t help wondering if he was checking to see what I thought. But it wasn’t until the end of the exam, when the vet tranquilized him in order to take X-rays, that I understood how deeply this horse had gotten into me. Within seconds, Claret’s inquisitive eyes went sleepy, and his head drooped down into my arms. And as I held the weight of him, I felt the ache of responsibility you feel only for those you love, and I knew right then that I already belonged to Claret. I was his.

A
few weeks later, I officially made him mine and brought him home to a barn ten minutes from my house. Soon even those ten minutes seemed like too much distance between this magnificent creature and me.

Despite all the lessons I’d taken over the last year, as it turned out, I still knew so little about horses. For starters, on the day I tried to bring Claret home, I realized I had no idea how to load a horse onto a trailer. I figured he’d simply waltz on, perhaps lured by a carrot or two, but even with Gerta attempting to wrangle him, he went in every direction except the trailer. It was only after a lot of angle calculation and strategic coaxing that he walked in. As I handed him the carrot, he looked around nervously, and I stroked his forehead.

Once we arrived at the barn, I walked Claret outside and led him to the paddocks, then to the indoor arena, and he followed eagerly. As we explored, he put his nose on each new thing, sometimes pausing for a couple of seconds as he inhaled deeply before turning back to me to see where I’d lead him next. “That is your mounting block,” I told him. “That is your radio. That is your plastic chair.” I walked him back into the barn. “This is your stall,” I said, leading him in. He pressed a nostril between the bars separating the stalls and touched the nostril of the horse next door, and they breathed into each other for several seconds before Claret dismissed him and put his eyes back on me. Perhaps I should have felt fear, to stand in this small space with this relatively unknown and sizable animal, but I didn’t: instead, I felt longing. So I pressed my nose to Claret’s nostril like he’d done to the horse next door and I exhaled into it. Claret exhaled back, and his breath was warm and grassy and sweet, and we cycled through many breaths like this, unmoving except for the susurrus of these small waves between us. I could have spent the rest of the evening breathing into that velvety muzzle.

Eventually, he began to eat his hay, but after each time he dove down to take a bite, he lifted his head and touched his nose to my palm
before diving back for another bite. We played this game until it was dark, and it was clear that he wanted me there as badly as I wanted to stay. He was calm then, and happy, and even after I left him to go home, my mind kept tracing the white hourglass on his face, until
everything
—the moon, the porch light spilling onto the walk, the sheets on our bed—became a reflection of his face, of this horse who, although I didn’t know it yet, would change my life.

O
ur driver stops in Fairfax and parks his truck behind a building. Without fanfare, he climbs on top of me in the cramped front seat while Melissa sits motionless at my side. It doesn’t take long, and then we’re standing with our bags on a street in Virginia.

“Are you okay?” Melissa asks. We start walking.

“Yeah, I’m fine. You do what you gotta do,” I tell her, trying to sound tough and worldly. I look at her and realize I’ve never really noticed how pretty she is, probably because her Mohawk gets most of the attention. On her forehead, a single curl hangs down and curves to the right, and a purple feather dangles from her left ear.

We walk and walk. As we pass a cacophony of catcalls from a construction crew, one of the workers leaves his pride to approach us. He pulls off his hard hat, and a wavy blond mane falls to his shoulders.

“Excuse me, but I just had to come over and say that you are the
sexiest woman I’ve ever seen with a Mohawk—in fact, the only sexy woman I’ve seen with a Mohawk.”

“You got a razor? I’d be happy to give you one of your own,” Melissa says.

I hold out my hand. “I’m Roxanne, and this is my friend Anastasia.”

His hand is callused and dusty. “I’m Rick, and this is your lucky day.”

As we walk the streets waiting for Rick to finish his work, Melissa looks at me crossly. “Anastasia?”

“What’s wrong with Anastasia?”

“Well, for one, it’s like twenty-seven syllables long. Why couldn’t you have given me a normal name?”

R
ick brings us to his two-bedroom apartment, where he lives with his wife, Lynn, and a girl named Gina, a spunky twenty-year-old with a tan and frosty golden hair. “Just until I can get my shit together,” she tells us. Her eyes are small but gleaming, her smile wide and eager.

She invites Melissa and me to freshen up in her room, where there’s a small bathroom. The only furniture is a mattress with the sheets crumpled half off. Beside it towers a purple bong, and beside that is an empty container of butter pecan ice cream tipped on its side. There are piles of clothes and a few opened duffel bags strewn around.

“So Rick and his wife just let you stay here?” I ask.

“Yeah, but I have to fuck them.” Gina pulls off her T-shirt and starts washing her face at the sink.

“Both?”

“Yep, and his stupid ‘associates.’ ” She pulls on a lavender lace camisole, which glows against her tan. “But, like I said, it’s just until I can get my shit together.”

Melissa is by the window, looking out. I realize I’ve made a mistake to take her with me.

T
hat night, Rick takes us to the house of his friend Rob, a tall, blunt-faced fellow with a puffy wheat-colored mustache and a space between his two front teeth. He pulls out five bottles of beer from his refrigerator and hands one to each of us, then looks us over. “You’re all right, Rick, you know that? You are aaall riiight, my man.”

Rick nods his head. “Hey, look, Gina and Ana here will party with you tonight. How’s that?”

“What about this one here?” Rob asks, pointing at me.

“She’s not on the menu this evening.”

“Not on the menu, huh?”

“Nope,” Rick says unapologetically. He’s cleaned up nicely from his day job: his hair looks swept off the set of a Pert commercial, and his tight jeans, cowboy boots, and height remind me of the Marlboro Man. Before we left his apartment, he’d pulled out some black-and-white head shots of himself and presented them to us. “I’m an actor,” he announced. And though he admitted to never having actually landed a part, he told us, “Man, I’m acting all day, every day. And when they call me, I’ll be ready.”

“Okay, ladies, it looks like just the three of us then,” Rob says, putting his arms around Gina and Melissa. “Let’s go on back and have some fun.” Gina looks at me and winks, then rolls her eyes, so I roll mine in solidarity. Melissa doesn’t look at me at all.

And the three of them disappear behind a dark wood door.

Rick knocks back his second beer. I finish mine, too, and turn on the stereo. I start to dance. Nothing can ever be wrong, I think, if you’re dancing. So I keep dancing, while Rick watches.

When the bedroom door opens an hour later and the girls walk out, I go to them. Gina’s hair has lost its volume, Melissa’s black eyeliner is smudged, and their lipstick has been rubbed away. Rob follows them out, wearing only a pair of jeans. His hairy chest is flabby, his belly button
deep. As I follow Gina and Melissa into the bathroom, I catch Rob slipping money into Rick’s hand. I close the bathroom door behind us.

“Are you guys okay?” I feel as if they’ve traveled to the moon and back without me.

Gina sits on the toilet while Melissa hunches over the sink and swishes water in her mouth, spitting out forcefully each time.

“Sure, we’re fine. Right, babe?” Gina looks up at Melissa.

Melissa spits again. “Yeah, we’re fine.”

Gina stands up and zips her jeans. In the toilet, a stream of blood swirls down, bright red.

T
he next day, Rick pulls me outside. “Ana’s gotta go.”

“What do you mean?”

“She’s gonna drag you down,” he says, flicking his cigarette ash into the grass.

“If you want us to leave, that’s fine. But we came together, and we’ll leave together.”

“Listen, what do you think? I’m stupid? You guys have the word
runaway
written all over you. I could go to jail for having you here. And everywhere you go, she’ll be sticking out like a sore thumb. I can’t take that kind of risk.” He hands me a cigarette, and I lean into the flame.

“And if you were smart, you wouldn’t take that risk, either. You have a chance without her, but with her, you’ve got nothing.”

The image of her spitting into the sink the night before is burned into my mind. “How much
nothing
, then, did she make you last night for fucking your friend?”

“That’s not the point. The point is that she’s gonna get you both caught. Besides, you’d be doing her a favor. She’s not cut out for this—and you know it. If you were really her friend, you’d let her go.”

I know he’s right. I know that when we jumped out of the back of that truck, this wasn’t what Melissa was envisioning.

I come in and sit beside her. She looks pale. “Too much beer last night?” I ask.

“No, I’m fine. Just a little tired.”

I poke at the bottom of my shoe with my finger. “I don’t know how to say this.”

“You think we should split up.”

Her impassive delivery surprises me. “It’s just that they’re going to be looking for the two of us together, you know?”

“I know.”

“And besides, I don’t think this is good for you. You shouldn’t have had to do what you did last night.”

“I did what I wanted to do,” Melissa says flatly.

“I know, but you’re probably making a big mistake. I mean, you don’t
have
to run. You’ve got this great dad who loves you. Sure, he’s insanely overprotective, but all you have to do is put in a little more time at Good Shepherd and then you’ll be free. It’s different for me. I belong to the courts now, and my dad’s in jail, and my mother hates me. But if I had what you have, I wouldn’t be here right now.”

Melissa’s toughness crumbles and she begins to cry. “I’m ready to go home.” She presses her face into her hands. “I want to go home.”

So Rick takes her home, and when he comes back, he tells me to take my pants off. He does the same, then climbs on top of me on Gina’s mattress, while his wife sleeps in the next room.

W
ith Melissa gone, the four of us establish a rhythm. Rick goes off to his construction job during the day, while his wife spends most mornings and afternoons napping. Gina and I share the mattress, sleep late, smoke weed, and peer into the refrigerator, which is usually empty. Sometimes we go to the gym at the center of the apartment complex and sit stoned in the hot tub for hours. When she isn’t home, I write. I write on spare scraps of paper, torn pieces of grocery bags, the soles of my shoes, the insides of my arms. I write poems about
longing and numbness and the sky. I write about trees. I write letters to my sister and ask her how school is and if she likes any boys. I write to my father, who’s in Rikers Island prison for embezzling money from the newspaper he worked for as an advertising manager, and I ask him when he’s getting out, even though I don’t have his address. I mail nothing. My red purse fills with scraps.

I
’ve just smoked greens. Parsley dipped in PCP. Sweetly chemical, smoother than pot, it’s making the world turn to cotton. Walking is a moon-bounce. My sight is as if through the cardboard tube inside wrapping paper. A Dire Straits song is on the radio, and the radio isn’t here because space keeps pushing it back and back until it’s a small sound cowering in the corner of the room, in the corner of the cottony universe. Air is too heavy, my head is too big, the ground is too soft. Pushing me down like a thumbtack. I’m forgetting who I am. Gina, I’m scared. Help me, please. “You’re okay.” No, I think I’m dying. Gina, I’m dying. And I don’t even know who I am anymore. “You’re Roxanne, and you’re just high.” No I’m not. You don’t even know my name. “It’s okay, I don’t need to know your name. I see your spirit, girl.” But I can’t breathe. Please, someone call an ambulance. “You better shut her the fuck up, Gina—I’m not messing around.” “Why don’t you shut up, Rick? You’re only making it worse. She needs peace.” “I’ll give her a piece all right.” Gina, I’m dying. “You’re going to be fine. Just breathe.” But my heart is beating too fast. Feel it, feel it. It’s beating too fast. A hand like a blanket on my chest. “Your heart is fine.” No, it’s out of control. It’s going to explode. “Just breathe. You’re just high. You’re gonna come down, I promise.” I’m losing my mind. “No, it’s all here. Just breathe. You’re safe.” Her voice is another song. Her hand is stroking my hair. Once my mother stroked my hair in a hospital. The scars on my leg. Do you see the scars? “Yes, and I like your scars.” The hand stays at my head. Please don’t ever leave me. Let me stay here with my head in your lap.
When I close my eyes, the faces are hideous, monsters morphing into monsters. Jagged teeth, fat foreheads, eyes stretching long-ways, dripping into chattering mouths, jagged teeth. This world is so scary. Please tell me you love me.

“I love you.”