Read White Rubber Boots before reading Paper Horses
Sony hovered over the small still form propped up on a pile of pillows on the couch. Sony was playing nurse again. She did that every time anyone was hurt or sick. Somebody gave her a play nurse kit and that just encouraged her all the more. Now she had another patient while Wendy was recovering.
Wendy had been sleeping or dead for two days. I wasn’t much good yet at telling sleeping from dead. Take that rabbit last winter for example. I thought for sure that when whisker man had skinned it out it was dead. Then it got up and started hopping around the room with no skin on. Whisker man thought it was funny. Sony started crying, mama started yelling and the more they got upset, the harder he laughed.
Whisker man put that rabbit right out in the snow, bare naked with its meat showing. It only had fur on its feet and its head. I was glad when our collie dog caught it and killed it. I was feeling real bad for that poor little rabbit outside with no coat on until I almost felt like I had been skinned naked inside.
So there was Sony now, watching over Wendy, hoping she could make her feel better. Mama wouldn’t let anyone touch Wendy because she would start screaming right away. If she wasn’t propped up she was struggling to breathe. Mama and whisker man were even taking her in their bed at night, propped up between them, to make sure she kept breathing.
Wendy woke up sometimes now, so I knew she wasn’t dead. Mama had washed all the poop and mud off her, but she still looked terrible, all swollen up and ugly colors. It hurt me to look at her but my eyes still wouldn’t cooperate and I kept looking at her until hot tears were running down my cheeks again. She couldn’t move even a little bit without crying and then mama and Sony would start fussing over her and whisker man would start cussing the horses again.
Whisker man had told mama that Wendy had climbed up on the rail fence while he was in the barn milking old Jenny. He said she fell right in amongst the horses and that by the time he got out there, they had trampled her.
I was getting really confused because that wasn’t what I remembered happening. To reassure myself, I looked over where the boots were and sure enough, there were Wendy’s little white boots with mud inside and out and some horse poop on them too. I sure didn’t understand about the horses.
Sometimes I wished I could talk better and ask mama things. I could tell her what I saw if I could use words better. Maybe it wouldn’t help though, because sometimes Sony tried to tell mama things and mama would always say whisker man was right and Sony must be mistaken. So she’d probably tell me that I didn’t see what I saw and then I would be worse confused than I already am. It isn’t that I can’t talk. I just can’t talk like everyone else talks. I can think OK in my head but it doesn’t come out right when I try to talk. Then sometimes whisker man hits me and mama gets upset with me too. It’s better to just be quiet.
Whisker man was cutting paper over by the table and mama was watching over Wendy. I heard her saying “Bad, bad horses! Poor little Wendy! Those bad horses did this to you!”
Whisker man motioned to me “Come over here, Lin. I have something for you.”
He unfolded the paper to reveal a whole chain of paper people holding hands. I felt a glow of happiness as I took the chain of paper people from him. The rest of the world disappeared as I joined the people into a circle so everyone was holding hands all the way around. I could make them dance around and around until I was in a world where there was no whisker man.
”Lin,” and the spell was broken.”Lin, take this over to Wendy,” commanded whisker man.
Before me he unfolded a chain of paper horses, joined tail to tail and nose to nose. I felt that warm glow again as I gently took hold of the chain of paper horses.
Wendy was awake as I stretched out the chain of paper horses for her to see. Her eyes filled with panic as she pushed back into the pillows.
”No, no forshees, no, no, no!” she screamed.
Mama grabbed the paper horses, crumpled them and threw them into the fire.
”No more bad forshees,” said mama. “We won’t let the bad forshees hurt you ever again.”
I noticed about then that whisker man had a satisfied smile on his face as he watched mama and Sony trying to get Wendy settled down again. That confusion was coming over me again. I gathered up my paper people and moved as far away from all of them as I could get in that small house. I joined the hands of my paper people into a circle within which I could escape the confusion as I danced them around and around and around.