“Do you ever have a wonder about your cousin?” Tika would ask me.

Sometimes I did have a wonder. Was there a hoof stamped on my heart muscle? Was my DNA a carousel? I did not know a lot about genetics. I knew it made me look like Nanny. It stretched out to encompass maybe the fact I knew a Y had one less leg than an X. I didn’t even think about the fact my cousin couldn’t be part horse.

……

Rere spun in a circle with his eyes shut, hooves snapping in the air to make sounds. Around his neck was an empty soup can crudely attached to a length of wire, and in the can were four tiny yellowy apples of varying size. He had picked them from Tika’s tree. Delicious, he thought in horse, and whispered other bits of horse quietly to himself.

……

It is here I attempted to remember the horse things that happened when I was young, not only to find out how Rere discovered he was part horse but to discover whether maybe I was part horse too. Like I said, the somewhat farfetched and grisly process of creating a human-and-horse had not crossed my mind. I was only ten and Nanny didn’t even talk about the birds and the bees or dicks and frontbutts or whatever yet. I once heard my cousin Alamein say that white farmers sometimes did fucks with sheep. I just assumed there was a resulting sheep person somewhere who looked like a person but was distinctly sheep-like.