Big Book Of Lesbian Horse Stories (16 page)

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Authors: Alisa Surkis

BOOK: Big Book Of Lesbian Horse Stories
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“I put our last hundred dollars on Silk Stockings to win—do you think I did the right thing?” Ginger asked with a sly grin.
“I hear it's a sucker bet,” Terry teased her.
“Love is always a sucker bet,” said Ginger. “This time I decided to be one of the suckers.”
T
HE
C
HOSEN
H
ORSE
L
ena hurried along the narrow, tenement-lined streets. Her brown eyes darted everywhere and her nose quivered at each new smell wafting past, but she knew that today she must not allow herself to be distracted. Mama had told her to go to the market, buy the pickles, and come straight home, but Lena had decided that if she ran the whole way there and back, there would be time for a visit with her two friends.
Still, when she spotted Izzy, the pool hall owner, handing a thick roll of bills to Officer O'Brien, she could not repress her curiosity. “Why are you giving money to Officer O'Brien? Does he work at the pool hall when he is not being a policeman?” Lena jumped back just in time to avoid the billy club that the normally good-natured policeman swiped in her direction.
Lena hurried on, but spotted another acquaintance farther up the street—Guide, the organ grinder, with his monkey Pepe. As she approached them, Lena shouted out, “How's business, Guido? Have you had more visits from . . . what did you call them . . . the Cosa Nostra?” Guido scolded her in rapid Italian, crossing himself. Lena sighed and continued on her way. How she wished she understood Italian!
Lena knew that she should keep her questions to herself—Mama and Papa had been telling her this since she was a little girl. In the neighborhood they called her “Lena of the thousand questions,” and laughed at her everlasting curiosity. Still, Lena's thirst for knowledge was so great, that questions seemed to rise unbidden from her lips. Her greatest sorrow in life had always been that, because she was a girl, the study of the Talmud, which contained the greatest wisdom of her people, was forbidden to her. Lena quickened her pace as she thought of how that sorrow had been replaced by joy since she met her two friends.
“Ooof!” Lena's thoughts were so busy, she had tripped over the wizened old Pretzel Woman, who always sat on a little stool, her basket of pretzels beside her, at the corner of Essex and Delancey. She was wrapped in so many shawls it was hard to tell whether she was a person or a pile of dry goods.
“Ho, little maid,” said the Pretzel Woman in her high, cracked voice. “Where are you going, and in such a hurry? Why are you not at home, helping your mama prepare for the Sabbath?”
“I—I'm on my way,” Lena said guiltily, thinking about Mama waiting at home for her pickles. “Please, Pretzel Woman, can you tell me where Johnny Apple is?”
The Pretzel Woman raised an eyebrow at Lena and answered in her usual cryptic fashion, “Where is a horse when he is bidden to do the work of man, and man is driven by the will of God, but still must live in the world among men, as must a horse, if the nature of the horse is to be that which God intended?”
Of course! Lena's keen mind soon unraveled the old woman's puzzle—Johnny would be on the corner of Orchard Street, where the crowds were thickest! “Thank you, Pretzel Woman,” Lena called as she hastened away.
Lena knew people thought it odd that her best friend was a horse, but Johnny Apple wasn't just any horse, although most people didn't give him a second glance. He hardly came up to the chest of the huge draft horses that pulled the beer carts and he wasn't fast or sleek like the police horses that broke up the union riots. He was a practical horse, small but sturdy, with a thick, rough coat that served him well during the harsh New York winters, when he stood for hours hitched to Mr. Karpels's fruit cart. There was nothing extraordinary about Johnny Apple's size or beauty, but this unassuming little cart horse possessed a wisdom beyond other horses—even a wisdom beyond many people.
The first time Lena had seen Johnny Apple, she had been toting a heavy basket of laundry to deliver to Mrs. Santucci, who ran a boarding house on the Bowery. Lena's mama took in washing to make ends meet, and it was Lena's job to deliver the clean laundry. That day, Johnny Apple was standing patiently while Mr. Karpels bargained with a housewife over the price of a pound of apples. Lena had petted his velvety nose, and he had blown his sweet horse breath over the laundry basket. When she picked up her basket to trudge wearily on, quick as a wink, the horse had turned his head to snatch an apple from the cart and tossed it so that it landed smack in the middle of the clean folded sheets. Lena had looked up in surprise to find Mr. Karpels grinning at her.
“My Johnny Apple doesn't give such presents to just anyone,” he had said. “You must be someone quite special.”
“What a clever horse he is,” Lena said admiringly.
“Ah, but more than just clever,” Mr. Karpels had replied solemnly. He then told Lena how, on the previous day, they had been selling fruit outside the yeshiva on 14th Street. Some of the young scholars were arguing over the Talmud, and one of them had quoted a passage incorrectly. He had paid no attention to Johnny Apple's indignant snorts, and not until an overripe peach knocked his yarmulke off did he realize his error.
This story thrilled Lena. “If a horse can know the Talmud,” she had thought, “surely so can I!” Lena had a thousand questions to ask about this wondrous horse. Where did he come from? How had he learned the Talmud? What other things did he know? But before Lena could open her mouth, Mr. Karpels and Johnny Apple did something which left even Lena speechless.
With a twinkle in his eye, Mr. Karpels had tossed fruit in the air, pears, apples, even a cluster of grapes, and deftly Johnny returned them with a toss of his muzzle. Lena watched spellbound as horse and fruit seller kept the fruit aloft with their juggling for several minutes, by which time it was bruised and unsaleable. “You see,” Karpels had concluded, “Johnny Apple's teacher was not only a learned rabbi, but also an accomplished juggler. Johnny Apple himself is as skilled as any of the great rabbinical jugglers about whom the Talmud teaches us. Once he even kept aloft eight flaming torches, a feat not seen since the great Rabbi Shimon ben Gamaliel! In the old country he was called Herschel the Wonder Horse, and I was Karpela-shovsky the Juggler, but here”—Karpels shrugged philosophically—“ here we have American names, and we sell apples. So it goes, so it goes.”
To Lena's delight and amazement, Mr. Karpels had answered all her unspoken questions. But then a new question had occurred to Lena. Breathlessly, she asked, “Mr. Karpels, I have always wanted to study the Talmud, but I have had no one to guide me in this study. Could he . . . would you . . . do you think that Johnny Apple could teach me the Talmud?”
“I think we should let Johnny answer that question, don't you?” Mr. Karpels had replied with a smile.
Johnny whinnied and nodded enthusiastically. Mr. Karpels had found some old Hebrew books for Lena, and from that moment on, Lena spent every spare moment with Johnny Apple. It was slow going—Johnny could correct her only with snorts and whinnies—but Lena had made a beginning. She hoped to work on a particularly difficult tractate of the Mishnah today.
As Lena approached the corner of Hester and Orchard, she noticed that a crowd had gathered and she heard shouting. Another anarchist, Lena thought, making speeches. But then she began to distinguish words—“What is this you do? Have you stolen another apple from me? Do you take me for a fool?” Frantically Lena pushed her way through the tightly packed crowd. Breaking through the front ranks, she saw Johnny Apple, but the man beside him was not kindly old Mr. Karpels, but a much younger man with a scowl on his face. The man brandished a horse whip at Johnny Apple, shouting, “You useless horse, I'll teach you to steal from me!”
Lena stood, frozen with horror. But before the lash could fall, a girl about Lena's age—at least Lena thought it was a girl, for she was so ragged and dirty it was difficult to tell—threw herself in front of Johnny Apple. Her voice, when she spoke, was unexpectedly sweet, like a bird in Corlears Park. “I'm sorry, mister! Johnny always gives me an apple for a present. I . . . he . . . we did not mean to do anything wrong!” The man's face grew redder and redder as he stood there, still holding the whip over his head. Then cries began to rise up from the gathered crowd.
“What are you going to do? Beat the girl?”
“Leave the beast alone, man!”
“Can't you see that the horse was only doing a
mitzvah?
”
Finally, the man threw the whip back into the cart and, without a word, sullenly led the unfortunate animal away. Lena realized, with a sinking feeling, there would be no Hebrew lesson today. What had happened to Mr. Karpels? Who was this new man? And most importantly, who was this other girl, to whom Johnny Apple also gave presents?
Lena turned back along Hester Street, her quick eyes looking everywhere for the ragged girl. But though she searched from Orchard to Essex, the girl seemed to have vanished without a trace. As Lena reluctantly turned homeward, she saw a skirt peddler jostle the chickpea cart, upsetting several paper cones of the steaming, savory chickpeas. As the two men argued loudly in Yiddish, the ragged girl appeared out of nowhere, and began crawling on the ground like a dog, feverishly gathering up the dirty chickpeas.
“You, girl—” Lena began, but the ragged girl only looked at her fearfully, before darting around the corner. Lena raced after the girl, and found her crouched behind a pile of trash, devouring the chickpeas, heedless of their coating of dirt. Lena opened her mouth to speak, but when she looked into the girl's bright blue eyes, Lena felt a jolt as if she had touched the wires along which the trolley cars ran, and all her many questions flew out of her head. The ragged girl clutched the chickpeas fearfully. To set her at ease, Lena quickly said, “Do not be afraid. I am a friend of Johnny Apple. Are you his friend as well?”
The girl replied with enthusiasm, “Oh yes! He is such a clever horse. When I talk to him, I know that he understands just what I am saying. And oh, he does such wonderful tricks.” As the girl spoke, Lena noticed how thin her face was and how her beautiful blue eyes burned feverishly in their deep sockets, and also how a strong stench rose up from her, like the East River on a hot summer day.
“Where do you come from? Why do you live like this?” Lena questioned her.
The girl hesitated a moment before she spoke. “ I am an orphan and have nothing but the streets to call my home. I come from Russia. My mother died three years ago and my father said that we should travel to the new world and make a new start. But he died soon after we landed, and he has made his new start in heaven with my mother.”
“I am so sorry for your misfortunes,” Lena said, tears springing to her eyes. “I, too, am from Russia. My parents came here eight years ago, when I was seven. What is your name?”
“I am called Lily.”
“And I am Lena.” Lena had a thousand questions she wanted to ask the other girl. Where did she sleep? How would she survive the coming winter? Did she realize how badly she smelled? But the sun was setting and she must go home. “Lily, meet me here tomorrow, so we may talk some more. Since we are both friends of Johnny Apple, we must be friends as well,
nu?
”
Lily smiled for the first time. “Yes, yes! I would like another friend.”
“Shabbat shalom,
Lily,” Lena called over her shoulder as she hurried away.
“Shabbat shalom?”
Lily repeated in puzzlement.
Lena ran the ten blocks home, but when she reached the rickety steps of her family's tenement, she slowed her pace. She'd be in trouble—again. If only there was a way to creep in without anyone noticing. But in their two-room apartment, with one room rented out to boarders, there was no place to hide. Why couldn't she be more like Moishe or Golda? Lena's older brother spent all his time on his studies, and never gave his parents a moment's worry. Golda was a beautiful baby, playing contentedly for hours with a bar of soap while Mama bent over the washtub. Only Lena was a problem.
Lena opened the door and slipped in as quietly as possible, but it was no use. The family was seated around the table that was always moved into the center of the room on
shabbes,
and Mama was ladling out the soup. Everyone looked up.
“Lena,
vee bis du gevoren
?” Each word came out with a jerk, as Lena's mother angrily splashed soup into bowls.
Even though she was in trouble, Lena could not repress her irritation at her mother's old-world ways. “In English, Mama, in English. We are in America now,” Lena reminded her mother as she slipped into her place.
“Yes, my daughter, you are right. Ve are in America now, vere ze children run vild. So I ask you in English. Vere haf you been? And vere are de pickles?” At the last of the carefully enunciated English words, Mama set the tureen down with a thump, splashing Lena with scalding soup.
The pickles! Lena had forgotten them completely. Shamefaced, she laid the pennies on the table. “I stopped for just a moment to visit with Johnny Apple,” she tried to explain, “and there was a big crowd and the fruit man was going to beat him and—”
“Johnny Apple?” Mama said as she threw up her hands. “Again vith the horse! Vat about your father and your brother Moishe? Is this how it is done in America, that young girls vorry about horses, vile ze men go hungry?”

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