Horsebroken

Handcuffs 

On the way to see our boy in the detention centre I was wearing invisible handcuffs. “Don’t try to make them like you this time,” my husband said. He was talking about the guards. The bus lurched and my lunch wanted to become free of its cage. A sense of humor was what I once loved about him, but now, any time I made a joke, it shocked him. The bus was our chapel. We grew silent because we didn’t want anyone else to hear us. There were other parents on the bus. Every time we wound up that road, we were on the way to see our son, who used to love staring at horses in the fields. 

Horse

When our son was younger, he wanted to be a horse. “I don’t want to be the kind that lives behind a wire fence,” he said. “I want to be the kind that knows where it belongs.” We didn’t know things then, and our hearts were broken every day we couldn’t afford what we wanted for him. It was the year my husband and I lost our jobs, and the neighbor’s car backed over my foot, and our son said he didn’t want to ride to school anymore without a horse. Every day, he wore a uniform, the same sweatshirt and hood. When teachers demanded to see his face, they said, that hood comes off, or you don’t come back tomorrow.

Uniform

My uniform was a pair of jeans and a David Bowie t-shirt my old best friend gave me before she stopped calling because I didn’t pick up the phone even though it would have done me some good. There was a secret chapel I handcuffed myself to at night, and I talked to the bones of my foot, and I asked the foot to please behave like a limb again. “It’s not like you’re always going to be broken in two,” I said, and then laughed at myself because what kind of mother talked to her foot in the dark?

Wire Fence

After they caged our son, my husband erected a real wire fence around the front yard as a way to ward off more unseen problems. “That’s a bit extreme,” I said, but now he seemed to believe in doing whatever it took to make things right. He bought a pair of handcuffs from a sex catalogue, and we tried them out one night, hoping to bring sex back into our lives and knowing that we couldn’t be overheard. “All I’m asking tonight is that you stop acting heartbroken,” he said. I tried to feel slippery and young for him but it wasn’t happening. Finally, he unlocked me, and we lay in bed naked, staring at the ceiling. “Let’s just stop worrying,” I said. “Us, worry?” he said because sometimes he had the old sense of humor back.

Chapel

They had our son in the detention centre because he broke into a riding equipment store, stolen a number of saddles and bridles, left his fingerprints everywhere, and when the police came out, he blew air out of his lips like an angry horse. On the bus, my husband and I talked about how this was a temporary condition that all of us had fallen into. “Like a curse after the car ran over my foot,” I said, and meant it. There was the small chapel at the detention center, but none of the parents were ever in it. We were trying to remember the type of horse our son liked best. “The type with the freckles on its back, I think,” I said.  We couldn’t remember the breed of this horse. The roads were wet, and the bus driver was trying to break the ice. “Slippery day, folks,” he said. 

Heart Broken

In the chapel, we sat there feeling heartbroken, and then suddenly, we both started to laugh. About time, I thought, but didn’t say. It was a tiny, damp outbuilding, with only six pews. “I doubt God is hanging around here much,” my husband giggled with wetness in the corners of his eyes. I imagined presenting our son with a spotted horse. How he would smile at me like the child he once was. He would ride into the future, and we would wave as if to say, we’ll miss you, but we know you’ll do great and come back happy. 

Slippery

The day he was released, we went home on the bus, my son’s suitcase next to us on its side. He was quiet as we rode past the farms, and he didn’t look out the window. “There are your horses,” I wanted to say as he stared at my extra-large shoe. I stared at his eyes as if they were caught there. “The walking is going a bit better,” I lied because I still used a cane. He no longer had on a hood and his bare head looked too tender without it. I said, “We have a surprise for you waiting at home.” This was true. We’d rescued a dog found in the field near our house. We thought it might help all of us, even if the road remained potholed. My son kissed me on the forehead as if I were his freckled horse, as if, for the first time, he felt he could talk to me about the accident. “Mom, I prayed for you in that stupid chapel,” he said, as if we had always been handcuffed to each other, but it felt good.