Authors: Catherine Madera
“You must be a Republican,” Melissa said in disgust.
“Republican? Hardly. But I do try to think for myself.”
On the drive home Taylor pondered the conversation with Melissa. Republican, Democrat, Christian, Catholic, Agnostic, Tree-Hugger, Pro-life/Pro-choice. Labels, all of them. Labels and agendas people all too often slapped on their lives like bumper stickers with no idea whatsoever what that label looked like in practice. She thought about her senior year in California and debating with another student about abortion in speech class. Back then she’d been so sure of herself; she could not yet say in despair
,
been there and done tha
t
. The assignment had quickly turned personal.
“I just don’t know how you get off tellin
g
m
e
I can’t make certain choices fo
r
m
y
body.”
“I thought you were Catholic?” Shelly, pious daughter of a local Baptist preacher, raised her eyebrows. “The pope himself condemns abortion as killing a human life. How can you be Catholi
c
an
d
Pro-choice?”
“I don’t care about that pompous old fart.” Anger warmed Taylor’s resolve like a stove burner turned up high. She wanted to blast Shelly and her Bible into outer space. “A person has no right to tell another what to do. Free choice. Go
d
Himsel
f
gave us free choice. Plus, a ball of cells is hardly a human life.”
“Be careful girls.” Mr. Whitman, the teacher, raised his arms and pushed his palms down. “Keep it civil. This is a huge issue in our culture and worthy to explore. However, we want to be respectful of our differences.”
“Of course, Mr. Whitman,” Shelly nodded, her voice low and smooth as honey. Taylor wanted to punch her in the nose.
“Are you familiar with the protected status of the Bald Eagle?” Shelly turned again toward Taylor.
“Duh.”
Mr. Whitman raised his eyebrows.
“I mean, yes, Miss Pomoroy.” Taylor pasted a smile on her lips.
“Bald Eagles are a national treasure. It is a federal crime not only to kill or capture a bird but to take even an egg out of the nest. I wonder why … The egg, after all, is hardl
y
lif
e
; it’s just a ball of cells.”
“The egg wil
l
becom
e
a bird if left to grow.” Taylor felt herself mentally backing into a corner. Noting the victorious grin on Shelly’s face she added quickly, “And it’s not like human beings are endangered like Bald Eagles.”
“I think a human being, in God’s eyes, is more of a treasure than some dumb bird.”
“This debate needs to be shelved for another time, girls.” Mr. Whitman
looked at the clock. “Time for lunch.”
On the way out Shelly elbowed Taylor as they squeezed out the door. “I still can’t believe a Catholic advocates abortion.”
“And I can’t believe a preacher’s kid is such a judgmental snob.”
“I just hope you make the right choice … should the situation present
itself someday.”
It had all been theory back then, when serious issues could be concluded
at lunchtime.
Taylor pulled into the driveway and parked in front of her tiny
home. She’d never bee
n
agains
t
life; she just desperately wanted choices,
a way out. Like a terrified animal caught in a trap, she had gnawed off her own limb in an effort to escape.
Catholic; Republican; Democrat. All the labels faded when she became the girl in the poster. The girl who’d made the choice that placed her on a path no federally-funded procedure could magically lift her from.
Chapter 9
“H
orses value congruency.”
Taylor glanced quickly at Liz and adjusted her position in the saddle as Rain walked stiffly around the yard. “What do you mean?”
“Congruency means your actions match up with your emotions,
with what’s going on inside. Horses never lie and their own actions always
match what they’re feeling. They always tell the truth.” Liz’s hands continually knotted and unknotted a lead rope as she talked, her body moving to an internal demand for constant motion.
They’d spent the better part of an hour going over basic horse care, saddling, and safety procedures like tying a quick release knot. Bits and pieces of summer camp lessons appeared at the edges of Taylor’s memory as if they’d simply needed a gentle shake to come to the surface. Now Taylor perched on Rain’s back and tried to get comfortable. Rain continually hesitated, stopped, and walked on when she was prodded.
“You’re not comfortable.”
“
I
know
.
”
“You’re ignoring your feelings and Rain senses it; that’s why she isn’t moving out nicely.”
Great, a psychic horse. Just what I need.
“Relax. I’m remembering a girl I saw a few days ago, sitting bareback like it was the most natural thing in the world.”
That was differen
t
, Taylor thought. Now she was on display and Liz was sure to see how unprepared she was to own a horse. She pulled the mare to a stop and turned toward Liz.
“Rain wants to know you’re the leader; that you’re going to take care of her and keep her safe. Horses are herd animals and they find security in solid leadership within the herd.”
“I’m not a good leader. What if I mess up taking care of Rain?”
“You’re going to make mistakes, Taylor,” Liz’s tone softened,” we’re not looking for perfection. This will all come to you with practice. But try to match your actions with your emotions. Think about it. We’ve done enough for one day.”
When was the last time her actions had matched her emotions? Taylor couldn’t remember. She’d been hiding her feelings for so long it had become a way of life.
“So, tell me how you started riding?” Besides being curious as heck about Liz, Taylor wanted to shift the attention. She dismounted and tied Rain. Liz didn’t respond immediately. She waited for Taylor to remove the mare’s headstall then picked it up and began fiddling with the bit.
“Aren’t you gonna ask me the million-dollar question?”
“What’s that?”
“Th
e
‘what’s wrong with you,
’
question.” Liz’s small eyes twitched.
“Do you want to tell me?”
The air between them seemed to compress and become charged with energy, the moment before a secret is revealed. Liz’s shoulders slumped. “I was born with spina bifida. Do you know what that is?”
Taylor distinctly remembered a certain picture from a textbook: senior
year anatomy and physiology. Hunchback babies, the spinal cord freakishly bursting from their backs like ill-conceived flowers in bloom.
“It’s like a spinal cord deformity, right?”
“Pretty much,” Liz nodded. She seemed surprised at Taylor’s knowledge and momentarily relaxed.
“But you can walk … and ride. Is that normal?”
The twitching started again and Taylor watched Liz’s defenses rise like hackles on a dog.
“I just love that word
…
norma
l
. As if anyone is really normal, without a handicap of some sort.”
“I didn’t mean to insult you. I’m just curious.”
“Everybody is.” Liz had an edge to her voice but she hitched up her leg and continued. “The lower the injury to the spine, the more use of the legs you have. My injury was low but I was born with swelling on the brain like a lot of spina bifida cases. That causes neurological issues. In case you hadn’t noticed.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Why would you be sorry? That’s a stupid thing to say.”
Taylor cringed. “You’re right.”
“The sorry thing would have been if my mother had thought I wasn’t worth her time. Incidents of spina bifida are down because there’s a test so parents can terminate a pregnancy before being burdened with a less than perfect baby. A
n
abnorma
l
baby. Good thing Hank Williams senior didn’t get terminated, or John Mellencamp, or Frida Kahlo.”
“Those people had spina bifida?” Taylor paused from brushing Rain’s back and flanks. “For real?”
“Oh yeah. Other famous people, too: wheel chair Olympians, poets, and Pulitzer Prize winning journalists. My favorite is Buddy Winnett, a jockey. He wasn’t expected to live past the age of six.” Liz smoothed Rain’s forelock and seemed to go to a faraway place. “He found his freedom on the back of a horse.”
She suddenly looked at Taylor. “Did you know the information from the DNA of one person would stretch to the moon and back? A human being is a miracle. That’s what my mother always told me; that I’m a miracle. I think of that when people look at me like I’m some kind of science experiment gone wrong.”
“Is your mother still around?”
“Nope,” Liz looked away and hobbled toward a bucket. She picked it up and wiped at invisible dirt inside. “Her DNA carried a cancer handicap. She fought breast cancer, twice. Lost that battle a couple years back.”
Taylor said nothing. “Sorry” could never encompass the emotion that twitched a calypso dance over Liz’s sharp features. Sorry, now that she considered it
,
wa
s
a stupid thing to say.
As if the wor
d
mothe
r
had the power to summon its object, Taylor watched in disbelief as a silver Lexus pulled into the drive. She untied Rain and quickly put her in the pasture.
“Great … speaking of mothers … ”
“I gotta go anyway. We’ll get together next week.”
Liz didn’t give Taylor time to answer, but simply pulled herself into the truck and rumbled down the driveway. Taylor’s mind raced as she watched her mother step out of the Lexus wearing a fitted powder blue jogging suit. Minnie danced at the end of a leash, a matching hoodie snuggled around her tiny body. She wiggled and whined as she watched Taylor approach.
“So, this is the place.” Her mother stepped carefully off the grass with pristine white tennis shoes.
“How did you find me?”
“The address is on your information at the office. I have a GPS app on my Blackberry. Thought I’d come see where you’re spending your time. Since it isn’t at the office.”
Taylor felt admiration mix with something close to anger. How could her mother continually stay on top of life, of people? Taylor pushed the feelings down. Congruency was overrated. So much of life demanded one’s actions contradict the emotions inside.
“I’ve been working on the real estate course here at home, plus hours at the coffee stand.”
“You need to begin spending time with Steve. He said you haven’t called.”
“I will. Wanna come inside?”
Taylor pointed toward her small house, desperate to get her mother safely behind closed doors where she would hopefully forget about the horse grazing outside.
Her mother pursed her lips but nodded. “I do not understand why you chose to live so far away from everything.”
“It’s peaceful.”
“Your father’s paying for it so I’ll keep my feelings to myself.”
Right
.
Her mother could take a lesson or two i
n
no
t
being congruent.
Once inside her mother surveyed the small space dismissively, and then gazed out the picture window into the cemetery across the street.
“That’s a Catholic cemetery.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
Actually, th
e
firs
t
thing Taylor had ascertained about the place was that it was Catholic. Feigning ignorance annoyed her mother and gave her a perverse sense of delight.
“Bellingham has a couple good churches. I’d like to take you to Mass some Sunday.”
Her mother spoke with the assurance of someone used to getting her way. Taylor shook her head. “I don’t go to Mass anymore, Mom. That’s your thing. We’ve talked about this.”
They’d been talking about the Catholic faith since Taylor was twelve. About the time she refused to kiss the priest’s ring for the sacrament of confirmation. Her mother had been incredulous. She was not used to being refused by her only daughter.
“For heaven’s sake, Taylor Ann, it’s just a small kiss. The priest is the representation of Jesus Christ. Imagine you’re kissing him.”
That was worse. Taylor would look at the twisted Jesus on the cross
,
his facial features arranged in agony, blood painted on his thin naked
body, and recoil. Jesus didn’t look kissable. She understood that it all was symbolic and that a line-up of good Catholic kids behind her would receive the same treatment. But … No. It was the first time she had refused her mother anything. She’d gone to Mass, learned Hail
Marys and completed catechism, but confirmation, if it included kiss
ing a stern-faced guy wearing a dress, was not happening.
She’d paid penance for this decision; grounded for a month plus thirty days of badgering: how ashamed she should be for treating the embodiment of Christ in that manner, how stubborn and willful and disappointing she had become. She should at least be willing to do confession for her sins and take first communion.
Her mother eventually wore her down, along with the fear she was kept out of heaven for sure.
O My God, I am heartily sorry for having offended thee and I detest all my sins, because I dread the loss of heaven and the pains of hell but most of all because I love thee, my God, who art all good and deserving of my love. I firmly resolve, with the help of thy grace, to confess my sins, to do penance, and to amend my life. Amen.
It didn’t escape Taylor that listed first was the fear of hell and loss of heaven, not love for God, but she didn’t want to split hairs. She had put on a black skirt and trudged to Saint Catherine’s like a sheep to the slaughter. A black sheep.
“Bless me, sir, for I have sinned.” Taylor slumped on the stool inside the confessional and recited the mantra her mother had repeated at least three times in the car on the way to the church. The priest loomed behind the curtain, a dark and disapproving shape.
“I am not ‘sir,’ I am ‘Father.’ For that do three Hail Marys and one Our Father.”
It was not a good sign to flunk one’s first confession. Taylor trudged
to a pew and sat down in defeat. She reached into her pocket. The rosary
was pretty much the best thing about being Catholic. As a reward
for agreeing to confession and first communion, Ann had taken Taylor’s
cheap plastic rosary and replaced it with one made of black onyx. It felt like a bribe. Taylor wondered what the priest, not to mention Jesus, would think o
f
tha
t
.
Still, the rosary was the most beautiful thing Taylor owned. The smooth stones were polished impossibly glossy, the white Jesus on the dangling cross a stunning contrast in ivory. It invited her to touch it, to open her mouth and confess everything. Taylor fingered the new beads and recited the Hail Marys
:
Hail Mary, full of grace! The Lord is with thee; blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.
Did the Holy Mary really pray for her? Taylor thought of the prayer now as she watched her mother’s face.
Ann sat carefully on the denim futon that constituted the living room furniture.
“Do you still have the rosary I bought you?”
Over time her mother had ceased to bring up the confirmation debacle and seemed content that Taylor attended Mass with her. But after moving to California Taylor shed Catholic rituals along with her insulated Pacific Northwest clothing. Time to rid herself of hot, uncomfortable attire. Her father and his partner, Tom, did not attend church of any kind, especially not Catholic. “I don’t take guilt trips anymore,” her father had shared once, with a wink. “Those are for your mother to enjoy.”
“Yeah, I have it.”
She not only still owned the rosary, she held it frequently and touched the beads in reverence, silent prayers running a merry-go-round in her mind. The prayers helped her relax on sleepless nights, like counting sheep. Counting black sheep.
Chapter 10
T
he only sounds along the trail came from the hum of insects in the warm fall air and the clopping of horse hooves. Taylor gazed at the slender backside of Liz and Toby’s broad rear end in front of her. Rain followed so closely every swish of Toby’s tail smacked her in the face.
“You should back off. Practice staying at least a horse length behind me,” Liz instructed, without turning around. “For safety’s sake.”
Taylor pulled up on the reins and Rain slowed. She chomped the bit in impatience as Toby moved farther ahead. Liz continued talking.
“Rain is probably insecure, this being her first trail ride with only one eye. That’s why she wants to be right on our butt. She’ll have to learn to compensate for her blindness on one side and you need to be extra aware. Especially on the trail where you’ll encounter all sorts of obstacles. Rain depends on you. She needs to trust you.”
Liz had been a running commentary on horses and horsemanship since they’d arrived at the mountain trail head for Taylor’s first time out. If all went well they’d make a weekly date of riding together until the weather turned. Taylor listened, relaxing into her saddle and the balmy scenery around her, and watched the easy sway of Liz’s hips moving with Toby’s stride. No wonder the woman rode every chance she could get. In the saddle it was hard to recognize any physical handicap. Taylor thought of Liz’s deceased mother who had nurtured the childish Liz and introduced her to the one thing that allowed her freedom from a cumbersome body.
Liz’s mother appeared saintly when Taylor considered her own parents: a mother continually disappointed and a father who simply didn’t pay attention enough to know much about her. How often had she wished, irrationally, for a physical handicap like her adopted brother, Anthony? If she had cystic fibrosis would her father have a reason to invest himself in her life?
Taylor hated herself for resenting Anthony; it would be hard to find a sweeter ten-year-old boy. Abandoned to social services when he was a toddler, Anthony never knew his parents or siblings. He had especially severe lung damage from the disease and was not expected to live past the age of 15. Using his background as a nurse, her father had made it a life mission to ease the suffering of Anthony and give him some kind of life before he died
—
Building tomorrows into every da
y
, her father liked to say, echoing the motto of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.
Neal also volunteered at the school, took Anthony to baseball practice whenever he was healthy enough to participate, and to Boy Scout activities. Anything that might allow the boy to “live a little.” This was in between the sleepless nights and hospital trips that left Neal, Tom, and Anthony exhausted: A trio of misery and hope.
As a healthy 17-year-old girl, Taylor discovered quickly she didn’t fit in to the fantasy home life she’d naively imagined would exist when she finally got the chance to spend time with her father. She’d soon found other pursuits to take up her time, including a lover engaged to be married.
A deeply private man, Taylor knew her father’s involvement with the public, through Anthony’s on again off again social life, was difficult. Even in a liberal state like California gossip circulated around a gay couple and their adopted boy. Taylor vacillated between hating the situation for not being “normal” and admiring and protecting her father. More than once, her feelings nearly got her in a fist fight. One situation in particular remained burned into her memory.
Not long before moving back to Washington, Taylor had accompanied her dad, Tom, and Anthony to the beach on a day the boy felt good. She’d overheard two college guys talking by the outdoor showers at a state park as she exited the bathroom.
“You see those faggots with that little boy? Probably recruiting him for their faggot lifestyle. Makes me sick.”
Instead of continuing down the walkway to the beach, Taylor wrapped her towel tightly around her torso and marched herself into their faces.
“Guess what? You would have bee
n
reall
y
sick to see those men last night with that kid.”
The guys smirked back at her, looks of disgust twisting their features.
“Yeah, that’s right. Last night they were up about three hours hitting his back to loosen the gobs of phlegm so he could breathe. He threw up all ove
r
my da
d
from being suffocated by the junk in his own lungs. Good times. Don’t pretend you kno
w
anythin
g
about ‘the faggots’ down there. You jerks wouldn’t know about that kind of love and devotion.”
People had stopped to stare by the time Taylor finished. She nearly screamed out the last words, her hands balled into fists in case she needed to use them.
“Whoa. Just chill, okay?”
One of the guys held his hands up in surrender. Taylor simply glared at him, hoping to mask her own horror at the vehement outburst, and then stalked back to the beach with tears in her eyes.
“It’s okay, Honey, just another day in paradise for us. Shhhh … ”
Her dad had patted her arm when she plopped by his side. She leaned into him for a moment, feeling as if her life were an iceberg, the visible tip the only thing her father was capable of seeing. Ironic that she couldn’t share her deepest pain with the one person who perhaps understood those feelings better than anyone else. But he had enough to do caring for a child that would surely die; a child no one wanted to die.
Still, her da
d
ha
d
provided a doorway of escape when she needed one. Taylor breathed in the salty smell of warm horse and smoothed the long strands of steel grey hair that fell along the crest of Rain’s pale neck. He’d arranged for riding lessons after she confessed to him in California that she’d always loved horses.
Gazing at a hawk floating high above the tips of evergreen trees, Taylor felt more alive here than she’d possibly ever been, like a winter animal beginning to awaken after a long hibernation. Her dad had given her a gift neither of them realized would only be fully unwrapped at a future time. She felt grateful.
“We’re coming to a pretty good sized stream here, look sharp.”
Taylor was abruptly jolted from her dream world at the sound of rushing water not far ahead. Rain turned her head to the side and craned her neck, then snorted. Taylor felt her body contract as her neck stiffened.
“She’ll be a little nervous. Because of the placement of their eyes, horses do not have great depth perception. And of course Rain’s will be worse because she only has one eye to work with.”
“Maybe I should get off.” Taylor felt her stomach churn into a knot.
Ahead of her, Liz allowed Toby to sniff the water that coursed swiftly over a bed of jumbled river rock, before urging him on. The horse methodically placed his feet over and around the slick obstacle course of rockery. Liz shouted over the noise of the water, “Don’t do that, you’ll get all wet. Rain can do it if you just take your time. Don’t panic, that’s the main thing. Remember what I told you about congruency.”