Writer Elizabeth Banicki has come realize that she belongs most where she is most needed, and in 2021 that means she’s needed at the Kaufman Kill Pen to buy a horse that no one has ever ridden and that no one wants. Elizabeth already has a horse and certainly doesn’t need this one. But after reading this, I get it, and you will, too.
by Elizabeth Banicki
A little brown and white mare nickers at me when I walk into the barn, her big eyes watching through the wire grate. The pandemic has not yet hit so I don’t have that straining and relentless paranoia that will soon infest every aspect of my daily life. But I do feel an uncomfortable pressure because every time I come here, she is watching me, just shamelessly staring at me, following me, waiting for me. She is a pit of need and I don’t have time for it because I already have the boy and that’s as much as I can handle.
I finish cleaning his stall and filling up his water tub and I give him a good grooming. She is there in the stall next to us with her small body pressed up against the fence. She tries to be close to us, to be a part of us. I have things on my mind, things to do. “I can’t be your mommy.” She nickers and pricks her ears towards me when she hears me speak. “No,” I say. I work until he is fed and clean. Done with today at the barn, my responsibilities are managed. Grabbing my shades and keys I make eye contact by accident. “What?” She looks at me unblinking with hopeful innocence shinning in her eyes. “Fine,” I extract a flake of alfalfa from his bale and walk it over, push it through the open stall window. She rips out a bite but leaves it to bring her head back up to me and rest her chin on my shoulder. I rub her face and stroke her shoulder and can feel her come to peace. Her muzzle tickles my neck blowing soft warm breath through my hair. I kiss her on the velvety skin of her nose and she half closes her eyes resting the full weight of her head on my shoulder. “Don’t do it” echoes inside my head.
One of the first things I’ll do in 2021 is ride over to the auction at Kaufman Kill Pen and try to buy Leyla. My chances are good, I think, as it is not likely anyone will dedicate themselves to outbidding me on a skinny, small, never-been-ridden mare. I don’t know if it has anything to do with the pandemic or if it is just a thing that happens with age, but I have come to understand that I belong most where I am most needed. I have had, as I imagine everyone has, visions of where I think I should be but rarely if ever have they matched up with the reality of my life. Always I have been searching, longing, waiting sometimes in a great deal of frustration to arrive at that place where I know I should be.
A frigid storm rolled through on New Year’s Eve. As the cold rain dripped down my forehead from the hood of my coat while I fastened Leyla’s blanket around her, I knew that I had come to understand myself better than I ever have. Horses do not think about where they should be. They do not imagine a version of themselves that is more acceptable and accomplished than that which they are. Leyla did not try to be a better horse so that I would embrace her as something marvelous, yet she was able to infiltrate my dreams at night, and as each month passed my concern for her wellbeing and future grew. My most worthwhile act of 2021 may be adopting this little abandoned mare and ensuring that she prospers. If I have any self in that act, I only recognize it as the means to lift her above the uncertainty she faces without my support. Leyla’s arrival in my life has taught me that I might need to be where I am and who I am for the simple purposes of being useful to another soul in their time of need.
A retired professional exercise rider at horse racetracks, Elizabeth Banicki is now a freelance writer who has been published in The Guardian, The Austin Chronicle, Courthouse News, and Los Angeles literary journal Slake Magazine. She is currently working on her first book about her experiences at the racetrack, the first three pages of which appeared in The Experiment in March, as well as a collection of short fiction. You can follow her on LinkedIn.
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