Wilson - I Rode a Horse of Milk White Jade

Twilight Is a Magical Time

Oyuna! Come away from the door flap! I heard the worry in my mothers voice, but the horses were galloping along the horizon and my eyes followed where my feet could not. I felt her tugging at my del , trying to pull her stubborn seven-year-old daughter, the one who had shaken loose her braid, letting the hair fall in a long black mane, back inside the ger .

Here, she ordered, pressing my fingers one by one around a long wooden spoon. You stir the soup.

As the newborn baby is wrapped around and around, each felt layer hugging him away from the winds, protecting him, so my family had wrapped me away from a keen-scented world whose laughter I could only hear. Because my foot now dragged clumsily, like a chunk of meat roped to my flopping ankle, I was wrapped inside the thick felt walls of our ger . And told to stay.

The filtered glow of each mornings sun found me limping fitfully behind my mother, confined to learning the skills of the hands. Only in the rare moment was I allowed, blinking, into the bold sunshine: to lug water from a stream, to quickly squeeze milk from a goat, or to set fat slices of aaruul to dry on our slanting roof. Every day was like the one before it and the one after it.

Stirring. Always there was a pot in the fire to stir: mutton boiling, yogurt thickening, tea leaves brewing. I was still but a child then, sitting lopsided by the fire, clutching the wooden spoon in my small hand, yet I remember feelingno, I remember knowing, even thenthat I was misplaced. You belong with the horses , my mind whispered. My eager heart could only whicker a soft response.

When my fingers werent wrapping a spoon, they were pinching a needle. I was taught to mend the tears in the silk dels of my mother and father, but as my stitches grew straighter, other members of my ail began leaving me their torn clothing. Too busy, they would say, smiling. I could do it. The gods had at least blessed me with skillful hands. Sometimes I wondered if the sadness I stitched into a del followed its wearer, like a shadow, out across the steppes.

And of course there was the beating. For hours each day, until my shoulders ached, I banged a big stick within the bulging sides of the goatskin bag holding ayrag . Day after day I pushed that stick through the foamy mares milk, waiting for it to ferment into the drink so enjoyed by my father and his brothers. The most stifling of tasks, until I discovered that the sloshing echo could be coaxed into hoofbeats: Thud. Sl-slosh. Thud. Sl-slosh. Thud. Sl-slosh.

The cadence reawakened my heart, sent it bucking. So much that at nightfall, when my father poked his head through the door flap, I threw myself at him. Rubbed my face against the sleeve of his brown silk del , sucked in the sweet, sweaty smell of the horse. And begged to go with him.

Carry me in the saddle with you, I cried.