Broken

Mama never liked Willie. Willie stunk. Willie was rude. Willie ate too much. But I didn’t have any other friends and I didn’t have siblings. I loved Willie. All I asked for in return was for Willie to love me back.

Willie was a black horse, we thought, but my cousin Fidel said she was actually a cross between horse and mule, or horse and donkey. I can’t remember which. She was a mutt with a male name. Dad gave her to me as a birthday present and he had bought her for less than a hundred dollars from the same farmer friend that sold us Christmas pigs.

Riding Willie was a challenge. I tried often, but would spend more time thrown on the ground than on her back. There wasn’t a trigger as far as I could tell. She simply would snap. Whether because riding her insulted her pride or because she loathed the extra burden on her back, Willie came to hate me, and instead of just throwing me off, she started to kick at me and then she started to bite.

Dad had sectioned off about half an acre for her. It was like thunder on a sunny day the sound of her running back and forth along the border of her field, racing the neighbor’s golden boxer. Willie’s hooves clapped against the flat limestone ground. Back and forth they’d race each day, pausing only to pant away the exhaustion brought on quickly by the smothering tropical heat, and stopping only to eat. To feed Willie, I had to enter her race track.

She didn’t mind at all when food interrupted; she’d trot to me as I held her bucket of grains. Sometimes before she stuck her muzzle in the food, sometimes after or during, she’d bite me. Over time my stomach my back, my arms were covered in the rosie blooms of her bites. Eventually, my love for her was wrapped in fear. A kick to the head, a broken spine from a bad fall, losing too much blood to her jaws—so many ways she could hurt me. She could, if she wanted to, end my life.

Dad made a call, and Fidel came. He was the family expert at breaking horses, but Willie was not pure horse. Fidel brought a whip and rope and began to snap at her as he tied her up. She couldn’t bear being leashed. Her skin quivered and she bolted ,but Fidel whipped her and yanked the rope around her neck until it was digging into her flesh. The goal, I realized as I watched in tears, was to force her to let herself be hurt.

An ageless fairy tale about friendship, loyalty, and love—that’s what I wanted from Willie. But for hours Fidel whipped blood from her skin and yelled at her like she was beneath dignity until I stopped wanting her love and became a traitor to my own cause. I switched sides. I hoped Willie would not stop fighting him, I hoped she would burst into lighting and fly from her suffering, and I wanted Fidel dead. It was a second. I only thought that for a second, and I didn’t mean for anything to happen to him but she kicked him to the ground. And he lay limp.

Willie walked away from him. He wasn’t dead, but stunned and vanquished. He picked himself up, went calmly to Willie, and loosened the rope. She would never love me now.

The next day, Dad sold her back to the farmer. Willie could not be broken.