Sometimes We Win

Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote “The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.”

Over three decades ago, I decided to become a writer after a back injury defeated my dancer dreams. I’ve plodded through more rejection, fear, and self-doubt than anticipated, but writing has been immensely satisfying and sustaining.

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​​As some of you know, my current writing project is RIPE: An Intergenerational Pregnancy Memoir in Flash Stories and Prose Poems. I’m revising a manuscript I drafted thirty years ago. At the time, I considered it a failed effort. But I’ve realized recently the project has been waiting patiently for me—and I’m finally ripe enough as a writer to do the work justice.

I’m grateful to my younger self for her determination to get stories—however awkwardly expressed—onto the page. I have a trove of material that would have been lost without resilience and perseverance.

Plucking potent tales from this verbose morass and polishing them has been exciting. Studying drabbles (100-word stories) and dribbles (50-word stories) helps.

As Shakespeare’s Polonius says to the king and queen in Hamlet, “Brevity is the soul of wit.” And strong prose.

Yesterday, after a long day of writing, I learned one of my memoir excerpts, “Horse Story,” won second-place prize in a creative nonfiction writing competition sponsored by the literary journal Does It Have Pockets.

The editors (thank you, Camille Griep) called my story “a rhythmically beautiful meditation.” I won $100 and was published in their journal. My story is available here.

The editors wrote about my submission: “Our second place piece, ‘Horse Story’ from Bella Mahaya Carter, transports us to a cool dry day in New Mexico, with the sound of a drum marking our steps. Music, color, and rhythm welcome the reader into the space alongside Bella and the horse she sings to sleep.”

Please check out all the stories here. Two honorable mentions--Ellen Notbohm and Donna Cameron—are fellow She Writes Press authors. Read editorial notes for all stores here.

Meanwhile, I include “Horse Story” below. I hope you enjoy it. 

On another celebratory note: a quick shout-out to writing circle member Kristina Garvin, whose stellar fiction appears in Tangled Locks Journal. Kristina’s story was written in our circle. You may read it here.

I received this message from Kristina this morning: “I hadn't finished anything in three years before taking your writing circle, and from your spring circle alone, I produced three pieces that got published. You’ve given me so much confidence. Plus, it's the highlight of my week!”

HORSE STORY​

In Taos, visiting a friend, I take a solo walk while beating my new handheld drum. Thump-pa-dump. Ambivalence wears a sneaky grin and pokes my side, but an inner voice tells me to ignore the ribbing. 

Thump-pa-dump. I want to be a woman with many stems and brilliant blooms, like the Scarlet Bugler, prolific and regal under the desert sun. But it’s April—Mom’s birthday month—and cold. My chest is frozen and my ankles wobble. As I walk, I imagine my skinny hollow calves filling with blood and sucking water from the earth—life beneath life—to support each step. Words stuck behind my tongue taste bitter as I try to outpace a mind full of judgments and expectations. What are you waiting for? Your clock is ticking!

Thump-pa-dump, thump-pa-dump, thump-pa-dump. I enter a neighborhood cemetery I’ve never seen before, keep the beat going while wandering among the dead. Roberto Martínez, Padre. Carmela Arcón, Abuelita. María Duende, Hermana, Hija, 1967–1988. Twenty-one. Her resting place is marked with what looks like a sandcastle made of sunbaked mud. Perched on top, the wings of a plastic cardinal on a stick rotate like a pinwheel in the wind. Its whipping sound startles me. I resume beating my drum. Two purple feathers, attached to the cardinal’s wings with black onyx beads, flutter and flail.
  
Nearby, behind a chain-link fence, a penned horse meanders my way. I continue drumming and strolling and begin to sing folk songs from my childhood: “Donna, Donna,” “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?,” “Blowin’ in the Wind,” and “500 Miles Away from Home.” 

I stop singing and walking but continue beating my drum gently as I read another tombstone: “Our baby, Esperanza, 1980-1981.” Esperanza. Hope. Expectation. Perished in her crib. The wind kicks up. I zip my jacket. 

The horse whinnies me over. I walk toward it, humming Donna, Donna. 
We come together at the fence, which is about five feet tall. I peer over it and into the horse’s eyes. Murky brown basins of sadness. I meet them with lyrics about a calf with a melancholy gaze and a swallow careening through the sky.

The horse watches me. Its mouth is open, upper lip curled, revealing large, yellow-brown teeth. Its ears perk up and forward. It lets out a benevolent neigh.

I sing about laughing winds and then riff and rhyme off the last “Don” of my song, crooning about not having to be alone, about speaking on the phone to the ageless, genderless God who appears in my dreams on a throne, encouraging me to roam.

The horse sighs heavily through its nose. 

I slow my tempo. Soften my tone. Begin a new song about times of trouble and good old Mother Mary—and mothers everywhere—showing up when you need them most. 

Over time—I cannot say how long, nor after how many songs—the horse’s head and neck droop. Its ears relax. It sits. Eventually it sprawls over the ground onto its side. A few minutes later, in the wake of my lullaby, its eyelids close. Soon, its lower lip quivers. 

I sang a horse to sleep. How hard could a baby be?

Slumber swells my chest and quiets my mind. Breath dilates my vitals. When I stop drumming and humming, my body feels like the sky. My solar plexus, the sun. My legs, prisms. My guts, polished stones. I feel the earth beneath my feet and imagine how warm it must be underneath the horse’s muscled flank. 

I wonder if she dreams. 

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I am deeply grateful to Drake Childress, Meg Pokrass, and Courtney Harler of Harler Literary for helping me edit “Horse Story.”

Thanks for reading.
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