The War that Saved My Life by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

On Thursday afternoon, when we got home from shopping, I tried a
smaller bridle, and everything worked a treat. Butter came to me when I
called. I fed him a piece of dried porridge from my pocket. I put the bridle on
him, and it fit. (I didn’t know the words then: bridle, bit, reins, cheek piece or
headstall. But I know them now. And the thing with the pieces of paper and
the picture of a bridled horse was a book. My first.)
Anyway, there stood Butter, bridled, and me, ready. When I climbed onto
him he sighed, and went to put his head down to graze. I yanked on the reins,
and he threw his head up, startled. That was better. I kicked him a bit, because
I’d discovered this would make him move. He walked forward. I pulled on
one side of the reins, and he turned. I pulled on both, and he stopped. It was
all easy, I thought. I thumped him hard with my legs, to try to make him run.
He threw his head down, bucked, and tossed me over his ears. I landed on my
back in the grass.
Jamie ran to me. “Ada! Are you dead?”
I scrambled to my feet. “Not a bit.”
I got back on and Butter tried it again. This time I kept his head up, and he
couldn’t buck, not exactly, so he jumped sideways and got me off that way
instead. I thunked my head on the ground and went dizzy for a moment.
“You can have a turn,” I said to Jamie.
He shook his head. “I don’t want one. I don’t think he likes it.”
I considered this. Butter might not like it right this moment, when he was
used to eating all day long. But he’d like it later—later, when we were
running, out in the open, soaring over stone walls. He’d like it then.
I liked it right away. Falling off didn’t scare me. Learning to ride was like
learning to walk. It hurt, but I kept on. If Miss Smith wondered why my new
blouse was covered in grass stains, or how my new skirt got a rip near the
hem, she never said a thing. She just sighed, as usual, and threw the shirt into
the wash boiler and mended the rip with a shiny metal thing like a toothpick
and a piece of thread.
“Why does she make that noise?” Jamie asked at night. He imitated Miss
Smith’s sigh. It wasn’t a noise Mam ever made.
I shrugged. “She doesn’t like us. She didn’t want us, remember?” I tried
not to make much work for her, so she wouldn’t force the iron woman to take
us back. I washed the dishes, and made Jamie dry. I went along with the baths
and the hair-brushing, and I got Jamie to cooperate too. I even made him eat