Mary Zelinka opens her essay “Grooming” with a statement that lets us know up front that she is going to tell us an emotional story: “I wanted to hate Papa Burke, but by then I loved him too much.” I do not yet know who Papa Burke is, or what his relationship is to the speaker, but since the title of the essay is the term for how child molesters hook children into accepting their attention, I know I am going to read about a difficult situation. Not long after that first sentence, I learn that in this essay, the word “grooming” also refers to horses and a childhood spent working with them.

Now that I know I am going to read about a young girl’s learning about horses, I immediately think of the play How I Learned to Drive, which won the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for drama. The playwright Paula Vogel presents a young woman recounting the relationship she had with an uncle who seduced her while giving her driving lessons. In that play, the young girl’s love for her uncle remained despite the predatory nature of their relationship.  Reading Mary Zelinka’s opening lines, I feel the same vulnerability of a young girl lured into sex by a man who is mentoring her and teaching her skills.

Mary’s description of herself as a young child who adores running and whinnying like a horse and the way she describes herself scuffing her Keds in the dirt as she sits on a swing succeed in making her youth real to me. When I read that her feet seem to kick at the pale moon, I understand the strength of her frustrated passion. That she stuttered and therefore didn’t ask for much, especially from her father whose responses embarrassed her, makes me realize how private a person she is already becoming.

As the speaker gets closer to her goal of becoming immersed in the world of horses, the writing places me in her young viewpoint–I focus on the horse’s feet like giants’ footprints and then high in the air as they enter the show ring. The older speaker interrupts the narrative to let me know the harm done to show horses to guarantee they’ll keep  their tails raised high; she interrupts to let me know that as a young rider, she didn’t anticipate that she would be one with the horses, having to bear injury and insult.

By entrusting me with knowledge about her experience, Mary Zelinka, like the playwright Paula Vogel, lets me know how children hide what hurts for the sake of having other needs met. I end my reading sad that so many children suffer and grateful for an opportunity to recommit to facilitating the children I know in pursuing passions without risk of being mishandled by adults.

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Grooming
by Mary Zelinka

I wanted to hate Papa Burke, but by then I loved him too much.

And I needed his world of horse smells every bit as much as I craved my mother’s thin split pea soup when I was sick. Horse manure, hay, fresh sawdust. The sudden dry dustiness of the grain bin as I climbed inside, searching out soybeans to suck on later. Papa’s cotton shirts smelling relentlessly of Pall-Malls no matter how many times his son Danny washed them at the laundromat.

The pervasive scent of a horse during a workout. Sweat foaming from under the saddle and the reins where they rubbed against an arched neck. Sometimes when I rode, that thick sweat soaked into my socks. When I got home I’d carefully wrap them in waxed paper. I’d savor the sweet-bitterness until my mother discovered them under my pillow and tossed them into the wash as though they were dirty.

 Horse shows brought their own smells. Neatsfoot-oiled saddles and bridles. The sharp metallic of polished stirrups and bits. Ginger.

I had ached for horse smells even before I knew they existed. At four, I had scoffed at the other children shooting one another with Roy Rogers cap pistols. The empty holsters slapped stupidly against their thighs and dirty strings strained at their necks against bouncing cowboy hats. I galloped alone. I’d throw my head back, toss my hair, and whinny.

My sister Gracie thought my games were babyish, but once she played horses with me all afternoon. Then a real horse pranced down the street ridden by a girl who couldn’t have been any older than Gracie. She watched until they disappeared, but I ran behind the house crying because I was only pretend.

The slap of the screen door and Mother calling, “Girls, it’s Howdy Doody time!” echoed in the dusk’s stillness, but I stayed out on my swing, scuffing my Keds in the red Carolina clay. I leaned way back, until I could feel my hair stirring the dirt. My insides cold and empty, I stretched my hand towards the pale moon. If only, my heart pleaded. If only I was the girl on that prancing horse. I arched my back, clenched my hands into fists around the ropes and swung hard, kicking my feet at the moon.

It must have been because Gracie begged that Father took us horseback riding once. I stuttered so bad I never risked asking for anything. “I can’t understand a word she says!” Father always shouted. Mother would nod, her back to us as she washed the dishes.

At the stables, a boy led a big black horse out to me. I touched the horse’s nose and he blew hot air into my hand. His coat, coarse and matted, felt rough. I loved him instantly. Someone lifted me high in the air onto his back. My legs stuck straight out over the saddle. The ground looked far away. We set off at a slow, lumbering pace.

The boy walked next to us, but I forgot all about him as I looked out at the world through the horse’s ears. His body swayed from side to side, and so did I. Suddenly I felt myself sliding. I tightened my grip on the front of the saddle, but it was too late. I landed hard on the ground.

Probably accustomed to a lifetime of children falling, the horse stopped as soon as I began slipping. I lay flat on my back in the dirt. Gasping for air, I stared at his feet. Now that they were at eye level they looked bigger than a giant’s footprints. The horse lowered his head, looked into my eyes, and breathed in my face. Then someone lifted me back into the saddle and we continued our ride.

“H-h-how c-c-ome Fa-a-ther n-n-ever t-takes us r-riding anym-more?” I asked Mother afterwards.

“Because you fell and were scared.”

But I was only scared for a minute. The rest of the time I liked it.

We moved to Florida before I started second grade. Paved driveways and sidewalks separated Miami’s lawns and there were no woods to hide in. So I pranced around our block, my teeth clenching a tinker toy bit.

When I was eight Father took us all to a horse show. I don’t know why – we hardly ever went anywhere together. We sat in the stands watching riders parade their shining horses in front of a man wearing a suit. He smiled at the riders and rewarded them with silver cups and long ribbons.

Then some horses picking their feet up high in the air trotted into the ring. “Five-Gaited American Saddlebreds,” Mother read from the program. I stared. Long graceful necks curved their heads close to their chests. Eyes wide, nostrils flaring, ears twitched forward and back. Long legs brought knees high and then hooves neatly tucked before briefly touching the ground again. Tails swished like flowing scarves.

“W-what’s that s-smell?” I asked Mother. A sharp odor had suddenly cut right through the earthy horse smells.

“Shush!” Father glowered at me. Mother patted my leg.

Years later I would learn that heady odor was ginger. Grooms chewed the white root before inserting it in the horse’s anus so he’d carry his tail high during a horse show. I would learn too that the excitement of horse shows came at an even higher price than the burning sensation of ginger. Trainers cut the Saddlebred’s tail between two vertebrae and when not being ridden the horse was confined to a harness-like tail set. After Danny told me the horse eventually lost his ability to switch flies, I begged Papa not to cut any more tails.

But at that moment, watching those high-stepping sleek horses, I didn’t know about tail cutting. Or what it would cost me to become one of those straight-backed riders. I just knew galloping around my block wasn’t good enough anymore. I begged until Mother finally allowed riding lessons.

Horse smells then became my life. Palmetto Stables, home. Ma and Papa Burke and their son Danny, four years older than me, family.

At first, Mother waited in the car while I had my lesson, like the other mothers. “Up-down-up-down-up-down,” Ma Burke ran alongside the thick-necked pony as I posted clumsily. Later Mother dropped me off early in the morning, driving back the seven miles after I had exhausted myself from a day full of riding and grooming horses. By the time I was ten I ran beside the beginners myself, calling, “up-down-up-down-up-down,” in my best Ma Burke voice. I didn’t have to beg Mother to buy my lessons anymore. Instead, I earned them by helping the beginners and cleaning stalls.

Palmetto Stables was primarily a training barn. Papa bought green American Saddlebreds and then turned them out as polished three- or five-gaited show horses, reselling them after one or two successful shows. Or he might take a seasoned, but unremarkable, show horse and sell him as a child’s equitation or lady’s park-type pleasure horse.

We had a team of riders ranging in ages from twelve to seventeen, but I got the most attention. Probably because I worked so hard. “That girl’s got more energy than sense,” Ma said. But she smiled when she said it. When there weren’t beginners to teach or horses to cool down after rides, I tagged after Papa. I’d hold the twitch so the horse wouldn’t move while Papa clipped his ears, or stood next to him as he coached Danny or one of the other show riders.

Danny and I unloaded hay together, sliding bales as fast as we could across the smooth haymow floor. And as Danny hauled manure out of stalls, I replaced it with wheelbarrows of crisp shavings. Sometimes I’d perch on the tailboards that were mounted inside each stall to keep the horses from rubbing their tails against the walls, and watch Danny, tall and lanky, spear his pitchfork into the old bedding.

Most of the time Danny ignored me as though I were a pesky younger sister, but sometimes he’d toss a “road apple” at me. This would start a battle quickly escalating into a manure-throwing frenzy, stopping only with Papa’s hollering, or with Danny slinging me over his shoulder and dumping me into the water trough in the back field.

Penny, or Penelope’s Choice, was my favorite. Nearly seventeen hands high, she was a blood bay, with a thick black mane and tail. She’d just turned three and Papa hadn’t started riding her yet. I stood close to Papa as he lunged her. “Look at that,” he said as she circled us on the long rein, picking her feet up high. “All that is natural action. Just wait until we put weighted shoes on her and see what she does. She’s gonna make a dandy five-gaited horse – hard to beat.”

“But then you’d have to cut her tail,” I said.

“Pah! Nothing wrong with that. That’s just part of grooming for a show horse.”

“She could be a pleasure horse,” I countered. “They don’t have to have their tails cut.” Penny trotted steady, but kept her eye on us as she circled and twitched her ears as though she were listening.

“She’s too good to waste on that,” Papa said and the subject was closed for that day.

“Do you think I’ll ever be good enough to ride her?”

“Sure, someday. Here,” he handed me the lunge line. “Keep her steady.” He clicked out of the side of his mouth at her. Papa stepped behind me, keeping his hand on my shoulder so I would stay in the same spot as I circled with Penny. “Keep grooming her. She’ll get to trust you.”

Every day I groomed Penny. I’d pick up each hoof, carefully cleaning it with the hoof pick, pressing my fingers over the fleshy frog to check for signs of thrush. Then, making small quick circles over her coat with the hard rubber curry comb, I’d bring all the dirt to the surface. The stiff brush whisked it away. Her deep red coat gleamed like copper after a quick rub with an old feed sack. I hand-picked her tail, one hair at a time, so it would stay thick. Once done, I’d lead her around the stable and let her eat grass.

When it rained I’d lie on my stomach on the tailboards in Penny’s stall and she’d twitch her lip across my back, sending shivers down my spine. The rain chimed down on the metal roof.

Weekends and holidays I was the first one at the stable, sometimes surprising a sleepy-eyed Papa, his coffee in one hand, the hose in the other as he refilled water buckets emptied during the night. I’d race up to him, knocking him off balance as I flung my arms around him. “Well, good morning Princess,” he’d always say, his cigarette pinched between his lips. I’d take the hose to finish watering, and watch him amble off to the feed room to mix grain, his boots polished under his tan jodhpurs, suspenders over his white long-sleeved shirt with the cuffs rolled up to his elbows. During summer, he’d cut holes around the crown of his felt hat for ventilation, leaving his bald head circled with tan rectangles.

Papa or Danny began picking me up after school and taking me home after I rode. I often went with them to supper at Howard Johnsons. Sometimes I stayed overnight.

The Burke family stories became more familiar to me than my own. I knew that when Ma Burke was just my age she’d climb the wall at Al Capone’s Miami Beach home so she could watch his parties with all the beautiful ladies in their satin dresses. Papa had fallen in love with Ma at the Miami Charity Horse Show after she won the Championship Amateur Three-Gaited. She ran off and married him when she was only seventeen, even though he was older than her father.

I knew Papa trained horses in his sleep because I could hear him dreaming in the next room when I stayed over. Danny sounded like a big cat purring; once he had fallen asleep against my shoulder as Papa sped us down the freeway in his big yellow Buick after a horse-buying trip.

Just after my twelfth birthday I rode in my first horse show. I still have the black and white 8×10 glossy of me on Grey Destiny taken by the show photographer. I’m wearing a tan riding habit an older girl had outgrown. My left wrist drops a little, a bad habit I had not yet broken. But it’s the look on my face, the intense ecstasy, that now brings tears to my eyes.

Moments after that picture was taken I was awarded a long red second-place ribbon. Ma beamed at me from the other side of the ring, and Papa met me at the gate. Danny took Destiny’s reins as I slid from the saddle into Papa’s arms. “Good ride!” he kept saying, hugging me tight.

A few days after that first horse show, late in the afternoon, I followed along as Papa pushed a wheelbarrow full of grain. I’d lick my finger and dip it into the mixed grain, sucking the sweet bran that coated it. Papa scooped up a bucket and told me which horse to take it to. I’d hurry it into the stall so he wouldn’t get too far ahead of me. When we were done, Papa leaned the wheelbarrow against the wall inside the feed room. I folded the empty feed sacks, relishing the feel of the bristly burlap.

Suddenly, Papa stepped close behind me, pulling me back into his chest. He fumbled quickly at my belt. Then his cold thin callused fingers slid up my shirt and squeezed my brand-new breasts. Breathing hot in my ear, he whispered, “Are you my little Princess?”

Scrunching my neck against the chills, I pulled away from him. I could hear Danny pushing a bale in the loft overhead, beginning to hay. I looked into Papa’s watery blue eyes. He was smiling.

Danny drove me home that night. “Hey kid,” he said, tugging my ponytail. “How come you’re quiet for once?” I shrugged my shoulders and leaned against the car door, my eyes blurring the passing lights.

The fluorescents seemed unusually bright as I walked into the kitchen. Mother stood at the sink peeling potatoes, a yellow apron tied in a bow around her flowered shirtwaist dress. I looked down at my dirty brown jodhpurs, beginning to fray over my scuffed boots, and felt my face go hot with shame.

“Go take your bath, Mary Helen,” Mother said without turning around. “Dinner’s almost ready.”

Without getting undressed, I filled the tub and sat cross-legged on the floor next to it. Leaning on the edge I watched my fingers make circles in the water. Then as the tub drained, I took off my clothes and put on clean pajamas.

I never again called the Burkes Ma and Papa. It seemed like Mrs. Burke didn’t smile at me so much after the feed room day. I worried that Mr. Burke had told her about my breasts. I stopped following Mr. Burke around, but he always seemed to know just where I’d be anyway. That moment in the feed room blurred into countless others.

Years of horse shows and the pungent smell of ginger followed that first long red ribbon. Silver cups and trophies with golden horses perched on top filled my bedroom. Younger kids vied to groom my horses now, and to walk them after I was done with a workout.

I rode Penny in her first horse show and in time we became regular winners in the Saddlebred Pleasure class, where the horses did not need to have cut tails.

When I turned fourteen my tan show habit was replaced with one tailor-made. Navy blue, it had bright red satin lining that flared out as I rode. Mrs. Burke accompanied my mother and me to Gordon Brothers, across from Hialeah racetrack, to be fitted.

A jockey was there at the same time getting new silks. The tailor’s thumb pressed one end of the tape into my crotch as he measured the inside seam while Mother and Mrs. Burke chatted. By then I was accustomed to having a man’s fingers in my crotch and a lot more. I looked across the fitting area at the jockey who had the other tailor’s thumb in his crotch. His eyes bored right through me. Then he grinned.

Almost thirty years passed before I spoke of the feed room moment and its aftermath. I was at a training on child abuse for my work at the Center Against Rape and Domestic Violence. After we paired up, the facilitator instructed, “To help us remember what a child’s world is like, close your eyes and think of the happiest time of your own childhood. Then the saddest. After a couple of minutes, I’ll ring this bell so you can share with your partner.”

I was twelve. The late afternoon air danced golden in the dimness of the feed room. I could hear the horses munching grain as Danny dropped leaves of hay into their hayracks. My tongue tasted like sweet bran and the empty feed sacks felt wonderfully rough as I folded them. Papa smelled like cigarettes and hay.

But his breath was hot in my ear when he whispered, “Are you my little Princess?” My nipple turned hard when he squeezed it. I wanted to hate Papa, but I loved him too much. So I mumbled, “Uh huh,” and hated myself instead.

I looked into the eyes of my assigned partner, a woman I had just met. “It wasn’t your fault,” she said.

Over the years I had said those exact same words to countless survivors. But until that moment I had not understood that they applied to me.