The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls

by Anton Disclafani

  The girls nodded in tandem, and a panic seized me. Did they do everything in tandem? How would I know?

  “And this,” Mr. Holmes said, starting with the girl on the left, “is Elisabeth Gilliam, Gates Weeks, Mary Abbott McClellan, Victoria Harpen, and Eva Louise Crayton.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” I said, and all of the girls inclined their heads slightly. Elisabeth, the first girl, broke her stance and broke the order, and I was so grateful. These were just girls, like me. She tucked a piece of ash-brown hair behind her ear and smiled; her smile was crooked. She seemed kindhearted. I liked her blue eyes; they were wide set, like a horse’s. She would be my Sissy.

  I wondered, in that dimly lit cabin that smelled so strongly of wood, what had brought each girl there. Or who had brought them. We each had half of a bunk bed, a tiny closet, a washstand, a desk, a vanity. Our house mistresses roomed with each other in another cabin; we girls were to be left completely alone. I took my father’s hand, which hung by his side, and hoped the other girls would not think me childish. His grip surprised me, and then I knew it was true, he meant to leave me here. I tugged my hand free of his and stepped forward.

  “I’m pleased to be here.”

  My father kissed my cheek and pressed me to him in a sort of clumsy half hug; now I was embarrassed instead of sad, all these girls watching. Mr. Holmes turned his head politely. Then they left, and I stood there alone in this room full of girls and felt terrified. I was accustomed to the feeling of fear—it threaded itself through my brain each time I tried a higher jump—but that fear was accompanied by a certain exhilaration.

  Now I watched the unreadable faces of all these girls and they watched me and I felt frightened in a way I had never felt frightened before. There was no place to go but here, no one to take comfort in except myself. I started to cross my arms in front of my chest but then an instinct told me to stop: I didn’t want any of these girls to know I was scared.

  “Theodora?” the pretty girl with the full figure asked, and I remembered her name. Eva.

  “Thea,” I mumbled. But I wasn’t from a family that mumbled. I cleared my throat. “Thea. A nickname.”

  “Well, that’s better,” Eva said, and grinned. “Theodora’s a mouthful.”

  I hesitated—was she making fun of my name? But then she patted the bunk beside her. “This is you. You’re my bottom.”

  Sissy laughed. The sound startled, then comforted me. “Have you ever slept on a bunk bed?” she asked. “I have the bottom, too. It’s the worst, but you’re here so late.”

  I pointed at my trunk, which rested at the foot of my bottom bunk; pointing was bad manners, now the girls would think I had none, but poor manners were better than explaining why I had come so late.

  “My trunk’s already here,” I said.

  “One of the men brought it,” Mary Abbott chimed in. Her voice was fragile-sounding.

  “But not the handsome one!” Eva said, and Sissy laughed.

  Gates turned from her desk, where she had been writing something—a letter? I wondered to whom—and I could see she did not approve.

  “Oh, Gates,” Eva said. “Don’t be so serious. It’s just chatter.” Eva turned to me, languidly; she moved about like she didn’t have a care in the world. “There are two men here who do chores. One is very handsome. And the other . . . you’ll see.” I felt my face go hot, and quickly walked to my bunk so the other girls wouldn’t see. I blushed at the drop of a hat. I busied myself with my trunk, and after a moment I noticed that everyone was changing into their nightclothes. I changed out of my clothes quickly—no other girl had ever seen me naked. Only Mother, and she was not a girl. I was careful to hide the handkerchief as I disrobed—the other girls would think me childish if they saw I’d hidden a piece of fabric from my brother beneath my clothes. Or worse than childish: odd.

  Our nightgowns were all the same—mine had been laid upon the bed—soft cotton shifts with V-necklines, a mid-calf hemline, YRC embroidered over our left breasts. Over our hearts. The nightgown I had brought with me was high collared, ankle length, ruffled at the wrists. It would have given me away immediately. Mother had told me that I’d be wearing a uniform, so I didn’t need to pack much; the idea had made me furious back home. I was going to be treated like everyone else! But now I was glad. I had not known my nightgown was all wrong.

  The girls left in pairs—Eva and Sissy, Gates and Victoria—until only Mary Abbott and I remained. I had no choice but to follow. I didn’t want to ask where we were going, but I did.

  “The privies. I know what you’re thinking, how can we not have a toilet in our cabins?” she asked. She dropped her voice conspiratorially: “They think it’s good for us.” Her accent was very Southern. Mr. Holmes had an accent, but I couldn’t place it—he spoke in clipped tones, the opposite of how everyone in Augusta House spoke. I didn’t have an accent, not compared to these girls. “But at least there’s indoor plumbing. And running water for our baths.”

  I nodded at Mary Abbott, unsure of how to respond. I’d always had indoor plumbing, and running water.

  Eva and Sissy passed us on their way back to the cabin, along with pairs of other girls from other cabins. We looked like ghosts in our nightgowns, and I hated this place, hated these girls, my first clear, unconfused sentiment since I’d arrived. I wrapped my shawl tighter around my shoulders and hated my mother.

  The privies were spotless—I was grateful for that. I didn’t wait for Mary Abbott, rushed back to the cabin without once meeting anyone’s eye. When we’d passed Eva and Sissy, I knew by how they smiled that Mary Abbott was not someone I wanted to align myself with. I was already in bed when Mary Abbott came in; she looked at me for a long second, wistfully, I thought, but that was unreasonable, she’d known me for an hour—and then someone entered the cabin, too young to be a woman, too old to be a girl. She barely looked at any of us. When she saw me, she nodded—“Theodora Atwell. Glad to see you’ve settled in.” And then she turned off our lights.

  “Good night, girls,” she called as she left the room.

  “Good night, Henny,” everyone called back, in unison.

  The girls said good night to each other then, in sleepy whispers; I thought they were done when Eva spoke.

  “Good night, Thea,” she whispered, and all the other girls followed suit, my name whispered five times, and it seemed astonishing that I knew which voice belonged to whom; it seemed astonishing that already these girls laid claim to me.

  The last girl I had known was Milly, a neighbor, and she had moved away years ago. She carried a doll with her, always. I thought she was boring, which in my family was least what you wanted to be. Other people were boring; the Atwells were interesting.

  Sam liked Milly, though. She would watch him tend to his terrariums, help him carve branches of trees into a more manageable size, listen with interest as Sam explained how his huge cane toad transmitted poison from the glands behind its eyes. Only Sam was able to pick the toad up; when I tried, it puffed to twice its normal size. Sam had a carefulness about him that animals trusted. People, too.

  I did not like Milly there with Sam when I returned from a ride. And so I stole Milly’s doll and buried it behind the barn. She never came back.

  Sam knew what I had done. I had been cruel, and Sam hated cruelty. I think he did not understand it, the impulse to harm another living creature. It’s why he couldn’t ride. The thought of pressing a spur into a horse’s tender side, or lifting a whip against a dumb animal—well, Sam could not imagine it.

  He was ashamed of me, and I was almost ashamed of myself, but Milly was quickly forgotten, ground into the dust of a child’s memory.

  A girl muttered something nonsensical, talking in her sleep.

  “Shh,” Gates said, “shh,” and the muttering stopped.

  In Atlanta, my father and I had slept in separate rooms. We’d never traveled
alone before, so I didn’t know how to interpret this, but in my great big room I’d cried, and then slapped myself for being so silly and desperate: this was nothing, I told myself, take hold of yourself. I’d fallen asleep to the noise of cars underneath my window, wondering if my father heard the same in the room across the hall, wondering if he was even awake to hear it or dead to the world.

  The cars outside my window had made me feel less lonely, though that was silly—the men and women in those cars were no friends of mine.

  I wondered if Sam was still awake now, listening to the Emathla crickets. I wondered what else he had heard, today, what else he had done. Mother would still be awake, reading, listening to the radio; Father would still be driving if I had to guess, twisting carefully through the mountains.

  I thought of my cousin, Georgie, and wanted to weep, but I would not let myself. I had wept enough for a lifetime. Two lifetimes. Three.

  —

  The next morning a bell woke me. I sat up quickly and banged my head on Eva’s bunk. Her face appeared next to mine, from her top bunk.

  “You look like a bat,” I said, and she looked at me dreamily, and I admired her pretty skin, her plump cheeks.

  I massaged my scalp and waited for the other girls to rise. But no one moved for a few minutes; instead they lay in their beds and yawned and stretched. I had never been alone with so many girls for so long. Mother had sent me and Sam to the Emathla school for two weeks before deciding it wasn’t good enough for us; but the differences between me and those children, the sons and daughters of country people, had been so clear. Here I did not know where I stood.

  All the girls looked dazed, lying in their beds. Eva was the tallest among us; Mary Abbott the shortest. Victoria was the thinnest girl, but she was too thin, with a collarbone so sharp she looked starved. My hair was neither dark nor light; I was neither short nor tall. At home I almost never saw other children. Father taught us our lessons, and when Sam and I did see another boy or girl, in town, we were always looked at closely, because we were twins and resembled each other uncannily: we both had Father’s strong nose, and high, broad cheekbones. Our faces were sculpted, Mother said. And we both had Mother’s hair, a rich auburn color and coarsely wavy. It felt the same, when you touched it. Our resemblance made people notice us. Here, without Sam, I was just like everyone else except a little darker, because of the Florida sun.

  Another person entered, clearly a maid—I could tell by her uniform.

  “Good morning, Docey,” Eva called, and Docey smiled quickly in her direction, then poured water into each of our washstands. Then everyone rose and went to them—they were plain, simple walnut, but their bowls were painted prettily with delicate flowers. The rim of mine was chipped. Docey was smaller than any of us. If I had to guess, I’d say she was no more than five feet, but stronger, with mousy-brown hair pinned into a tight bun and a lazy eye. She spoke with an accent that was rough and quick, Southern, messier than everyone else’s. Later I would learn her accent signaled she was from the poorest part of Appalachia.

  After we washed and dressed, we walked through the Square to the same building I’d come to last night, with Father. I’d slept with Sam’s handkerchief under my pillow. I’d wanted to put it underneath my clothes again, but the risk that Eva or Sissy—I wanted to impress them most—would see was too great.

  When I stepped outside, I was shocked by the sheer mass of the girls. There were so many of them, all dressed in white skirts and blouses with Peter Pan collars, YRC again embroidered over our hearts. My father had told me that there would be almost two hundred girls, I suppose to prepare me, but I wasn’t prepared, not for this army. The only thing that immediately distinguished them from one another was their hair—a girl with tight curls glanced at me and whispered something to her friend, and I realized I was gawking. I stepped into the crowd and tried to keep up, tried to pace my gait with theirs. I looked at all the girls’ legs and realized no one wore stockings; from the waist down, we looked like a crowd of children.

  Sissy caught up with me. Her brown hair was cut in a fashionable bob. I touched my own hair, which fell well over my shoulders. I’d wanted a bob, but Mother hadn’t wanted me to cut it.

  “You’re a quick walker,” she said.

  I slowed my pace. “Yes.”

  “It’s hot in Florida.” Her voice was husky; it contrasted sharply with her delicate features.

  “Where are you from?” I asked.

  “Monroeville.”

  She acted as if I must know where that was. I pretended that I did.

  “What does your father do?” she asked.

  “He’s a doctor. And he owns orange groves.” The last part wasn’t technically true—the citrus was in my mother’s family—but I assumed owning land gave you currency here.

  “I love oranges!” she said, smiling her crooked smile, and I smiled back at her enthusiasm. Oranges weren’t a treat to me. They were a given.

  “What does your father do?” I asked.

  “He manages my grandfather’s affairs. And rides horses. That’s why he sent me here, to learn how to ride. But I’m afraid I haven’t taken to it.”

  “No?”

  “It’s too dirty,” she said. Then added quickly, “But don’t think I’m like that,” and glanced at me sideways. “I just like other things better.”

  I was surprised by the sound of my laughter. I hadn’t laughed in weeks.

  The other girls swarmed around us as we entered the dining hall. Clustered at tables draped with toile cloths, they spoke among themselves, and I could see they liked it here, felt at home.

  Sissy pointed out my table, where Mary Abbott, Victoria, and Henny sat amid others. Mary Abbott grinned excitedly when she saw me, and I gave a small smile in return, then chose the seat farthest from her.

  “Hello, Theodora,” Henny said. I started to tell her about my name, but Mary Abbott piped in.

  “She goes by Thea.” Henny didn’t acknowledge that Mary Abbott had spoken, went on and introduced the others at the table, a mix of younger and older girls and a teacher, Miss Metcalfe, who had very smooth skin and small, pearly teeth.

  There were steaming platters of food—eggs, bacon and ham, raspberry muffins, grits—but I had no appetite. Mostly, everyone ignored me, and I was grateful. I thought that Sam would have loved all this food; he had started to eat like a horse the past few months. I knew exactly where he was right now: out back, tending to one of his injured animals, or feeding the insects in one of his terrariums, rearranging a branch so a lizard had a better place to sun himself. He didn’t always have an injured animal to tend to, but he’d been raising a nest of baby squirrels for a few weeks. Their mother had vanished.

  “Can I ask you a question?” Molly said, halfway through the meal. She had buckteeth, which made her seem younger than she was. Her thin brown hair hung loose, an inch past her waist. It needed to be cut.

  “May I . . .” Henny corrected. She was chubby, with a double chin and an unfortunately placed mole on her left temple. She wasn’t homely, exactly, but there was the mole. I did not like Henny but I was relieved by her presence, that there was a near-adult here along with Miss Metcalfe to keep order.

  Molly continued. “Why are you here so late?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Why didn’t you come at the beginning like the rest of us?”

  I waited for Henny to intervene, but she sat quietly, like the others at the table, watching me. Alice Hunt Morgan, from Memphis, Tennessee, traced the rim of her glass. I’d called her Alice and she’d corrected me: Alice Hunt, she’d said, that’s my full name. Now everyone waited for my answer. They were all curious, and I couldn’t blame them: I was an interloper.

  “It was a late birthday present,” I said, “we were in Europe on holiday because it gets so hot in Florida during the summer.” I paused. The girls waited, heads t
ilted. Molly rolled a piece of her ratty hair between her fingers. “We go every year and I didn’t want to miss it, but my father wanted me to come to camp, too. So he arranged it.” I shrugged my shoulders, as if to say it was all in the hands of generous and capable adults.

  “Where in Europe?” Molly asked, but by then the other girls were tired of me, had returned to one another.

  “Paris,” I said. “I love Paris in the summer.”

  Molly nodded and looked away, satisfied. I felt the back of my head for a tender spot from this morning, but there was nothing. I looked across the room and found Sissy, who smiled at me. I smiled back.

  “Thea,” Henny said. So she had heard Mary Abbott; Mary Abbott was a girl one didn’t have to acknowledge. “Drink up.” She nodded at my milk. I contemplated the glass, which I had barely touched. At home we drank orange or grapefruit juice, depending on the season. Never milk. Mother had an aversion to it. We stirred milk into our tea sometimes, or Sam and I had it with dessert. For lunch at Yonahlossee, I’d soon learn, a glass pitcher of sweet iced tea, a chunk of ice floating in the amber, would rest next to Henny’s plate, and she would dole it out among us carefully. This iced tea was thick and syrupy, and, I had to admit, delicious. Years later I’d crave this iced tea, its cool weight on my tongue, the bitterness of the strong tea offset by the copious amounts of sugar; I’d learn that to miss the Yonahlossee sweet tea was something of a tradition among us.

  But that would be later. For now I stared at my glass of pale milk and tried not to cry.

  “Thea,” Henny said again, her voice low, but I knew I would cry if I looked up. Then I could feel her gaze lift; everyone turned their seats around in the same direction and I thought this was some strange way of leaving until I heard his voice.

  “Good morning, girls,” Mr. Holmes said.

  “Good morning, Mr. Holmes,” everyone chorused but me, and Mr. Holmes seemed quietly delighted at this response, even though he must hear it every morning.

  After he had delivered morning announcements and led us in worship, a woman approached me, too old to be a house mistress. She was plump and short, with a pretty face.