The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls

by Anton Disclafani

  “When summer session ends,” I continued. “Next week.”

  Mr. Holmes did not speak for a moment. “Thea,” he said finally, “you won’t be leaving Yonahlossee next week.”

  “But I will,” I said. “There must be some sort of misunderstanding.” This was what Mother had said last year, when an Emathla shopkeeper had ordered the wrong hair tonic for Father. But even as I protested, I knew that Mr. Holmes would not lie to me. I traced the cover of my book. “How long, then?” I asked. I could not look at him. Surely they would bring me home for Thanksgiving. We’d never spent a holiday apart.

  “Your father reserved a space for a year.”

  “A year,” I repeated. “A year.” The cover of the book blurred. I could not fathom it. Father had not told me himself. He had let a stranger do his bidding. My father was weak. I saw that so clearly now.

  Mr. Holmes spoke again. His voice was kind. “You are liked here. This is not a place of punishment, regardless of your parents’ intention. It is a privilege, to be here.” He paused, and the pleasure his voice had brought disappeared. I looked at him, and offered a small smile, so that he would go on. “You’ll make of it what you will, but please don’t hate it. I imagine you might grow to love it.”

  I said nothing. I did not trust my voice. He stood, as if to go. He must have thought I wanted to be alone. I wanted nothing less.

  “Do they know I’m sick?” I asked.

  He didn’t want to answer, I could see he didn’t want to, but he nodded, and pursed his lips together, and I could tell he thought my parents were terrible. He was thinking of his own girls, how quickly he would go to them if they fell ill, and I wanted to tell him that he was correct, my parents were awful, but I also wanted him to know that they loved me, that he did not know what I had done. That he should not judge them. And that none of us knew how we would act, under certain circumstances. None of us, including him.

  “They are concerned,” he said hesitantly.

  The sound of my laugh surprised him; he looked at me curiously.

  “You must think I’m a fool,” I said, before he could go on. “A rube.” A word I would never have been allowed to say at home. Slang, common.

  “Thea,” he said, shaking his head. He was so close I could see the stubble where his beard fought to grow. “I have never for an instant thought you were a fool. I do not pretend to understand the intricacies of other families.” He paused, and shook his head. “I’m sorry. I should speak plainly. I do not know your parents, Thea. I do not understand the way in which your family operates. But I know that things have a way of working themselves out, if not immediately, then eventually.”

  Before he left, he said one last thing: “It has always been a great comfort to me that I could bring a book anywhere, to any place. To any part of my life. I’m glad to see you’re taking the same comfort.”

  When he closed the door and the room was empty again, I sobbed into my pillow. I had not cried like this since home. I must mean so little to them that they had not told me themselves. My chest was on fire, I could hardly breathe. I made it to the wastebasket in time and retched into it. The taste was bitter in my mouth. I’d eaten nothing, but still my body produced enough to expel.

  I opened the closet where the supplies were kept and stared at my reflection. I was ugly already, pale and dirty and sharply thin. Now my eyes were swollen and red. My lips were cracked. I looked like some kind of monster; it seemed impossible that my family would ever recognize me. I’d never spent more than a night away from my home, and that was only in Gainesville with Georgie.

  When Sam and I were ten, young enough not to be told directly what had happened but old enough to put the pieces together, a woman in Emathla killed herself. She put her infant to bed on a cold night with a quilt; she came back in the morning to find him dead, his face in the quilt. She’d smothered him by trying to protect him, and after she found him, after my father had come and examined the body, after the funeral, the condolences, the stream of calls from neighbors and well-wishers, she’d drunk a bottle of ammonia. My father was called to the house again, though she was already dead when he arrived, and Sam heard him tell my mother that her throat was badly burned, that she’d found a way to punish herself even as she died.

  Sam had found me in the tack room, excited by the news, not quite sure what it all meant. I had understood. Not much scared me, but this had: that a person could be so brutal to herself.

  There were other stories of people who sought their own death, some successful, some not. I had a closet of infirmary supplies at my disposal. Sharp scissors, a selection of pills, bottles of alcohol and disinfectants. It seemed uncharacteristically careless of Mrs. Holmes that she had not locked the closet.

  The woman had been young, newly married, probably no more than twenty; not so much older than me. I watched myself smooth my hair, the way my hand so easily clasped and released, over and over again until I stopped. I would stop, I would close the closet doors and return to my bed, perhaps start my book again where I had left off.

  I wanted to be alive. I wanted to live. I was not weak. And in order to do that, I would make a home here. I would make a home without my family.

  —

  A slice of light fell upon my bedspread, and I could feel someone looming near the bed. Sam, I thought, half asleep; here to pull me out of bed like he did nearly every morning.

  “Thea?”

  “Sissy,” I said, and sat up straight.

  “You look like you’ve seen a ghost!”

  “I was surprised,” I said, drawing my covers around me more tightly. Sissy did look like a ghost, pale in the near darkness.

  “Mrs. Holmes let me come. I’m her favorite,” she said, and framed her face with her hands. She waited for me to laugh, but I couldn’t.

  I was silent for a moment, and so was she; then I switched on the lamp, illuminating us both.

  “She probably thinks you’re a good influence,” I said finally, avoiding her pressing gaze.

  “What’s wrong, Thea?”

  I looked at her briefly. She looked so concerned, so upset for my sake.

  “My parents aren’t coming to get me.” She looked unsurprised. “You knew,” I said.

  “I figured,” she said. “I hoped.”

  “I want to go home.” I was embarrassed by the sound of my voice, thick and overwrought. I covered my face.

  “But why?” she interrupted, and gently pulled my hands from my face. “What’s so good about there?”

  I looked at her incredulously. “I miss it,” I said. “I miss my brother.”

  “Your brother, who hasn’t written you a single letter?”

  “But,” I sputtered, “it’s not his fault. You don’t know what I did, Sissy.” Sissy could not understand. I felt sorry for her, that she hadn’t ever loved her sister like I loved Sam.

  “Try me.” She gazed at me levelly; I’d never seen her so firm.

  “But I don’t want to try you.” I was feeling desperate. I put my hand to my throat. “I want to go home.”

  She paused. “The rumor was that you were sent away because of a boy.”

  “The rumor?” I repeated.

  She gave a short laugh. “There’s always a rumor. Some girl knows someone who knows someone who knows your parents. Something like that.” She tilted her head. “Is it true?”

  “Yes,” I said, and the words that were both true and a lie tumbled from my throat so easily. “I was sent away because of a boy.”

  “Believe me, you’re not the only one.” She felt for my hand, through the covers. Her touch was surprisingly strong. “I’m sorry that you can’t go home. But look what you have here—me!” I smiled—I couldn’t help it. “And people who send you chocolates.” She picked up a box from my nightstand. “What’s so good about home? They’d send you away anyway, in a few year
s, with a husband.” She fiddled with the bow on the box and seemed hesitant suddenly.

  “Sissy?”

  She looked up. “I need your help.”

  Some people were so easy to read. What would that be like, to wear your heart on your sleeve as Sissy did? My life might be better now, if my heart weren’t so carefully tucked away.

  “With Boone?” I asked. The cabin had known he was writing her letters, and that she was writing back. She’d shown me parts of them. I could picture his blocky, masculine handwriting.

  “I’m in love,” she said very seriously. I wanted to laugh.

  “How can you be in love with him?” I asked. “You’ve only spent an evening in his company.” Then it occurred to me that this wasn’t necessarily the case. “Isn’t that right?”

  Sissy turned her cheek, and I noticed a small scar near her ear. From chicken pox, perhaps. I thought of my own letter, from David, which had been brief. It was a perfectly reasonable letter, one I should have been glad to have received. But boys were trouble. Boys didn’t know how to behave. I’d taken it to the Castle and thrown it into the fire when no one was looking. I knew from the other girls that unless I wrote back, David wouldn’t send me another letter. It would be the height of bad manners, to write a lady again when she hadn’t responded the first time.

  I tapped Sissy’s wrist. “Sissy?”

  “Only once,” she said finally.

  “Sissy.” The disappointment in my voice surprised me.

  “Don’t scold me.” She took my hand. “I can’t help it.”

  “But if you’re caught, you’ll be sent home.”

  “Oh, that would be the least of my worries. My grandfather would murder me. He’d marry me off to some boring Monroeville boy in an instant.” She snapped her fingers, then paused. When she spoke again, her voice was softer. “He wouldn’t think twice about it.” She shuddered. “If I play my cards right, I’ll decide who I marry. And I won’t get caught. Not if you help me.” She squeezed my hand, as if entreating me, as if it were up to me whether or not Sissy and Boone could be together. And I saw that Sissy was good, that she had learned to move through this world and love people, and let them love her back; that she did not love too intensely, as I did, or not at all, as I imagined Leona did.

  “Of course,” I said, “of course I’ll help you.”

  She needed me to help her meet him in the woods at night, after the rest of camp was asleep. My bed was near the window, on which Boone could easily signal his arrival with a tap. And I would sleep in Sissy’s bed once she was gone, because Mary Abbott, who was the lightest sleeper in the cabin, faced Sissy’s bed. This had been my idea—Sissy had told me how good I was at this. That she didn’t seem to appreciate the risk she was taking made me want to help her more. One false step and Sissy would be gone, removed from Yonahlossee as quickly as if she had never existed.

  Was there something about me that spoke of a receptiveness to this sort of thing? An explicitness in my nature, some quality I was unaware of that made me bad? This was all fun for Sissy. And I wanted it to be that way for her, because she was not like I was.

  I thought about the woman in Emathla who had smothered her child with love. I thought about Mother, how isolated she had kept us, how now she had turned me out completely, had thrown me to the wolves. She had known I was sick, and not even telephoned. Father—he had let Mother have her way with us. But knowing all this, how completely I had been cast out, and how Father could not even bring himself to tell me, made being in this place easier. How could I go home, now? What kind of home would it be? I wondered. Would it be any home at all? Yesterday Mrs. Holmes had told me I could use the telephone. She felt sorry for me. I had considered her offer for a moment, considered the sound of my family’s voices, which I had never heard before except in person. And then I shook my head no.

  They had kept Sam, because he had not done anything bad. But my poor twin—there was this world here, among other people, and he knew nothing of it.

  {7}

  When I left the windowless infirmary after three weeks, the first thing I noticed were the trees, covered now in a brilliant palette of reds and oranges, bright and rich, indescribable, really. The colors, I thought; in Florida the leaves never changed colors, or even died, instead appeared everlasting. I’d read about fall in other places, and Eva had mentioned the colors, but it had happened so quickly; while I had been away, the world turned into a painting; it almost hurt my eyes to look.

  I closed my eyes against the electric color. Why should it be surprising that this beauty signaled death? Eva had told me the Indian myth: four hunters tracked a bear into the sky and killed him; he bled scarlet from the heavens, onto the leaves of all the trees as he died.

  I had gotten sicker before I’d gotten better, and Mrs. Holmes had kept me confined because she had not wanted to note the health of all the other girls. Thank God for health and happiness, everyone said, or murmured, or shouted, depending on the girl. A chorus as I reentered my camp routine, made my way from Augusta House to the dining hall, clinging to Sissy’s arm, out of weakness, but out of shyness, too: the girls had become strangers in my absence. Henny was engaged to a boy from home. Katherine Hayes’s uncle had murdered his wife and shot himself in the head upon learning that his railroad fortune had evaporated. A teacher had almost been bitten by a rabid raccoon; Mr. Holmes had heard her screams and shot the animal just in time. Jettie had been caught drinking, for the second time, by Mrs. Holmes; the real story there was that she had been drinking alone. Like a man. She was not allowed to ride for a week, which even seemed a worse punishment than embroidering handkerchiefs. Gossip abounded. And Augusta House was one girl smaller: Victoria had left, gone back to Jackson, Mississippi. The clothing stores her family owned had collapsed all at once, like a house of cards. The bunk above Sissy was empty now, but she stayed put. She said she was afraid of falling.

  Camp was smaller now, too, by a third: the summer girls had gone home.

  Mrs. Holmes left every winter for three weeks to visit the vast troupe of Yonahlossee alumnae, scattered about the South. Mr. Holmes could not go, apparently, because he was not Southern, and, as Sissy put it, Southerners liked to exchange money with other Southerners. Sissy had learned from her grandfather, who sat on Yonahlossee’s board, that Mrs. Holmes would double the length of her fund-raising trip this year. But no one was supposed to know, lest they think Yonahlossee’s fortunes were falling.

  “But won’t everyone notice when she’s gone?” I asked.

  “You’d be surprised at how little girls around here notice,” Sissy said. “And everyone will be glad to have Mrs. Holmes gone. Mr. Holmes’s punishments are half as bad as hers.”

  I would be glad to have her gone. She knew everything about me.

  I was not allowed to ride. The muscles in my calves had grown small during my convalescence, my arms had turned flabby, my shoulders bony. I could hook my hands around my waist if I sucked in all my breath, hard; I had turned weak, for the first time in my life that I could remember. For the first time since infancy.

  I slipped away to the barn one afternoon, when all the other girls were studying at the Hall. Now instead of bird-watching, botany, and painting we had history, literature, and home economics; math and science didn’t seem to exist in this mountain enclave. We didn’t have much homework, either, or nothing that took very much time. I liked literature, unsurprisingly, taught by bland Miss Brooks. She became impassioned, though, when referring to books she loved, and watching her I sometimes thought, isn’t that always the way? A dull girl charmed by a book?

  Mainly girls gossiped in the Hall, or read magazines. Naari did not seem pleased to see me, as Sasi would have; she didn’t know me as well. But it was a comfort to see her, anyway, it was a comfort to smell the smell of horses, to smooth her forelock against her broad face, to pet her impossibly soft muzzle. Like silk, I thought,
but no, it was softer than that.

  I heard footsteps behind me and turned, expecting a groom. But it was little Decca Holmes, holding a short crop. Holding it out to me, it seemed.

  “I found this,” she said. There was a smudge of dirt on her cheek. She was very pretty, with her mother’s almond-shaped eyes and her father’s dark features. Her hair was always braided tightly, in pigtails, but they were loose right now, strands of dark brown hair, almost black, falling in her face.

  I accepted the crop. “Thank you,” I said. And after that I did not know what to say.

  “What’s it called?” Decca asked.

  “A crop.” She seemed to want more of an answer, so I spelled it. But she only looked at me quizzically.

  “Crop,” she repeated. “Crop!” She held out her hand, and I gave it back to her. “What is it used for?” she asked.

  “To nudge the horse along, when he’s being lazy,” I said. The quizzical look, again. “To hit him. To make him go faster.”

  “Like a spanking?” Decca asked.

  “Exactly.”

  The handsome groom entered the barn, and Naari swung her head over the stall door at the sound of his footsteps. It was feeding time. Decca jumped back, and eyed Naari nervously.

  “Don’t be scared,” I said. “She’s just hungry. She’s excited, like you are, for dessert.” I thought it was strange that a girl who had been raised around horses was afraid of them. They were the gentlest creatures in the world. But I couldn’t remember ever seeing a Holmes girl ride.

  “Do you want to give her a sugar cube?” I asked. Decca pushed her hair out of her eyes and nodded.

  I showed her how to hold her hand flat, so that Naari would not accidentally catch one of her fingers. Naari lifted the sugar cube from Decca’s hand delicately, and then crunched it between her back teeth.

  Decca giggled. “It tickled!”

  We walked back to the Castle together, Decca’s small, sticky hand in mine. I was her friend now, it seemed. Being around her had not made me miss my family more, as I had assumed it would; Decca made me miss my family less. She reminded me of Sam, his curiosity, his quiet intensity. She was so observant, and this was how Sam had been, still was: he watched everyone, everything.