An Animal in the Stalls

Unraveling family mythology

Ohio is long ago.
Ohio was last week.
My days and minutes and years are so full, so out of the lines, I can’t expect to remember it all. I never have. Neither have you.

Renee, my 60-year-old aunt with not a single grey hair, told me she works circles around everyone who comes to the farm. I was haunted by this when I offered to help. My 97-year-old grandmother had broken her wrist after breaking seven ribs, and needed surgery. All the doctor’s appointments led to a letting go of the farm’s needs. The animals were fed, but the shit piled up. And shit piles up. And then it is wetted with urine.

I loaded my truck with a camping cooler filled to the brim and bags of food. Fruits and vegetables and bread. My favourite butter. Olive oil, spices. Cans of things and jars of things. Cheese. I was planning to cook for them and to clean. To help with the animals. And to be there in the hospital. But how many of us would be home to eat?

This all happened, but also The Laughing. The last time we were all together was in my mom’s house, winter of 2020, when my mom was dying. When she was taken away.

We tell the stories we tell. We repeat these stories. Even if they make no sense. Even if they aren’t our own — especially if they aren’t our own. These stories keep the distance between us, but as soon as we are together, the laughing and the remembering happen, and we find ourselves.

Once we settled into the hospital room, my grandma made us laugh until our tummies hurt, and I wondered why I had forgotten this. We would get together, all women and girls, and my brother — twice yearly. We’d drive out to Western Pennsylvania for White Christmases, always, on the mountain. Some trips over the mountain had the passenger open the door and guide the driver by the white line.

They’d come to us in the summer. We’d rent the shittiest, smelliest, smalliest, stalliest beach motel where we had all we needed. Most of the space was filled with laughter and bellyaches.

The drive to Ohio was eight hours on the straightest, most boring roads. Lucky for me, the clouds were fantastical — all cotton candy, pink and blue, with blinding lightning outlines. I could see them, still, when I blinked. I listened to Priestdaddy, Mick Flannery, and I talked to friends. I digitally signed not-my-signature for an offer we put in on a semi-old church built in 1949, one year before my mom was born. I stopped for the night and sped the rest of the way the next day, imagining a Black Mirror episode where GPS gives you estimated time — not based on the road’s speed limits, but on your previous drive time above the limit — a perpetual hastening. As I imagined the episode, I realised this is how I live. It’s no Black Mirror.

I made it, somehow avoiding the patrol vehicles lined up on the highway like ants at a drop of honey. My grandmother was prepared for surgery and rolled away. We were no longer wary of anesthesia after talking with the surgeon, who was in no rush and talkative and friendly. She woke up seconds after returning and had us all in stitches.

Grandma and Renee loved every meal, giving me confidence I’ve never had. None of us grew up cooking. Not my grandma, nor her children, nor her children’s children.

I am still learning.

We started in on the horses’ stalls on the second day. The smell was acrid. My nostrils burned. Winston’s was the darkest and smelled the strongest. He has ulcers. Lucy’s was the cleanest. Pee on one side, poo on the other. And she didn’t kick it around. The edges were the soft yellow fluff of her bedding. All the other stalls were somewhere in the middle. I launched heavy shovelfuls into the tractor whilst Renee expertly sifted bedding from poo, letting the poo fly from her rake to the tractor.

Later, I’d hear Renee telling Grandma, “Margaux’s an animal in the stalls!” Success.

The drive home was slow. Part exhaustion, part desire to savour those four days.

The horses, after two days outside, returned to their clean stalls and immediately released their hot, steamy piss onto the fresh bedding. But the stalls have walls.

At home, the land is vast and stretchy. I work on one part, and behind me the land tapes a kick-me note to my back. I start by pulling the weeds whose name I don’t know. I find burrs on my socks, my laces, my shirts, and even in my hair.