New Project: Chapter 26
I dropped out of college after my freshman year and came home. Washington D.C. was not the glamorous metropolis for which I’d hoped. College was less and more and too much. At sixteen, still grieving and totally broke, I was ill equipped to deal with its offerings.
I wore Levi’s and flannel shirts. My roommates wore Gap and perfume and radiant hope. They had allowances, bedding, and parents who didn’t refuse when they called collect. I played Billie Holiday and Janis Joplin. They played Bruce Springsteen and Billy Joel. My world collided with theirs.
I couldn’t reconcile what I had read and believed with the homeless men and women who lined the streets. Metro escalators descended, futuristic and whistle clean, into tunnels that felt overwhelming and mildly obscene. Automatic doors on brightly lit trains slid open like mouths waiting to eat me. Whoosh of air and screech of brakes frightened me like the eyes of transient government employees who arrived quickly and worried about leaving. I drank. I smoked. I slept with boys. In the wee hours of the mornings, I climbed trees.
When I left – broken, disillusioned, and defensive – I vowed to work on a ranch, to be a woman full and free. I applied for the job on a June morning. I hadn’t saddled a horse by myself ever, so I lied to the property owner. He smiled and tucked his laugh behind a cough when I saddled the horse backward. Then he offered me the position – head wrangler at a dude ranch ten miles north of Pecos, New Mexico.
Hugh, the owner, had fled New Jersey to be a cowboy. Maybe, in my eyes, he recognized his dream. He couldn’t control the economy, the drought that dried up business and streams, or the way his wife looked at him while she sucked a candy and cleaned. He could control what he gave to me.
That job changed me. I learned to ride, to train precocious horses, to mend and care for tack. I got a puppy, a blue heeler, who helped me in the mornings when cold lay in the valley. At that hour, the horses snorted steam, pranced and ran, not wanting to get caught. I wore, again, comfortable jeans, got strong, tan, and muscled, and learned to two-step to country songs. Then, as summer waned and fall crept into the canyon, something happened.
One evening, returning from a long ride, I spotted a mare – my barnyard nemesis – lying ghost-like on the ground. Her pale, white coat glowed softly in the twilight. She was thirty, had cancer, and was spoiled rotten because my boss had raised her from a colt. She was the first horse he broke and I think she broke him, too. Something about that mare made him soften.
She wouldn’t get up. She couldn’t get up. I put a harness on her and attached a rope. I pulled, tugged, cajoled, but all she could do was roll her eyes and thrash a bit. I got my boss. He took a look, sighed heavily, and pulled a pistol from its holster on his hip. “You do it,” he said, handing me the gun.
“Do what?”
“Do it,” he hissed through tight lips. “I can’t.”
He strode away, bowlegged and limp, and I watched him until the oncoming dark blurred him into a myth. Then I looked at the mare. I hefted the heavy gun, took a deep breath, and pulled the trigger, hitting her in the head. The shot shattered the stillness like a clap of thunder. Gun smoke muddied the clean scent of pine and creek and manure. A fountain of blood spurted crimson across her white coat and pooled dark and thick in the dirt.
She screamed – horses do scream — and tried to get up. Her head flailed in every direction and I knew I’d failed them both. I shot again, aiming carefully because my fingers were trembling, and missed. Tears fell down my cheeks and I let them. The mare’s movements gradually slowed. Finally, as dusk swallowed the last of the light, they stopped.
Numb, I staggered to the ranch house and handed my boss the gun. He put a bottle of tequila in my hand. The only words he spoke were, “Go home.” Not long after, he let me go. Winter in the mountains is tough and money is quickly gone.
For thirty odd years, I have loved that man. I loved him for giving me a chance when most wouldn’t and I loved him for trusting me to give to him. Ending the mare’s life was brutal and merciful all at once. It stayed with me and I’ve known since that all suffering comes to an end. I’ve also known what giving is.
After I left the ranch, I worked a variety of jobs. At every one, someone wanted something from me that I was loath to give. Finally, after showing up for work on a cold, February afternoon to find the doors chain locked and owners who had fled without issuing my last paycheck, I knew hungry again. It is hard to find work in a tourist town at that time of year. My mother, broke herself and overwhelmed, couldn’t help. There was no safety net. I had no car, no savings, no degree and no prospects. I rationed pancakes and jelly – all I had in my fridge. Finally I found a job, wore an apron, and served burritos to high school kids. Minimum wage and very few tips.
When spring came, I found a better job working as an underage cocktail waitress. The men patted my ass, tried to pull me in their laps, and made crude comments to their friends. They did, however, tip. Generously. The tighter my clothes, the better I did. I met a man one night I thought was cute and he asked me out. Lonely and thrilling to his attention, I accepted. We left the bar where I worked and he said he needed to stop by his apartment real quick. I followed him upstairs, waited while he unlocked the door, and stepped inside. As I did, he bent me over the back of his couch, pulled down my pants, and took me without consent. There was porn playing on a large TV, the only décor in a beige bland room, and I knew in an instant that this was a setup. I laughed it off, made it okay for him, because I had been stupid and thought I deserved what he did to me.
The next year, it happened again, but worse, and I agreed to marry the man who rescued me from the resulting alcohol-fueled oblivion. He was my hero, but it turns out, heroes need victims.
These are confessions. Like you, I have more of them. I’m telling you because my life as it unfolded should never have been. At nineteen, I was the dangling comma of young sexuality, poverty, lack of formal higher education, and an ill-timed father’s death. And yet…
Here I am. I made it through okay. I achieved some things and have most of what I want. I took privilege. I clawed my way out. More importantly, at the most desperate moments, I had help.
Hugh, the ranch owner, was first. Then came Jim, the foundry owner who took pity and offered me an apprenticeship. I am the product of kindness. My life is what it is because of the generosity of good men and women who gave when they didn’t have to and weren’t trying to get. A landlord gifted me equity in a house I rented, helped me buy it, and ensured a stable future for my kids. When I lost my job after 9/11, a friend showed me how to start an art business. When my son needed private school and I had to use my savings, Steve – who I had just started dating – bought me the tool I had been saving for and thought I would have to forego. That tool made me a better artist and helped my business grow.
There are countless people in my life who gave when they could have taken, believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself, made possible opportunities when I asked, and continued to affirm my hope. Collectively, they instilled a conviction that defied the conventional narrative. I pulled myself up by my bootstraps because others believed I could and were willing to help. We’re in this together. It is not a competition or race to the top. Tragedy befalls every single person and we’re all each other have.
When push comes to shove, politics don’t matter. Instead, the dreams we share, achieve, or lose are what bind us to each other. When we focus on them, we reveal our common humanity and, as a result, survive or even thrive. Neoliberal policies would have us negate this truth. They would have us turn our attention to special interests, global concerns, and the ways in which each of us are not good enough. But, when we stick together and give to each other, we define our worth. Then we have the energy, confidence, and compassion necessary to build a better social/economic construct and save this beautiful earth.
