The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls

by Anton Disclafani

  It was so easy to be here among these girls, who knew nothing of my visit to Masters, who knew nothing of the intensity of my thinking, which I could feel hurtling toward obsession.

  “I’m bored,” Sissy said, and drew a stack of Boone’s letters from her schoolbag, which was what she did when she was bored.

  There were a few girls who studied at the Hall—Gates, from our cabin—but most of us didn’t; our classes didn’t require it. We knew boys at boarding school received grades, which meant something in their lives, though what grades meant remained vague. We learned in class, were lectured to about wars and famines, ancient kings and queens, the habits of the presidents. But the lectures were cursory. We needed to know what had happened, because we were the well-bred daughters of men who could afford to educate us—but not why, or how. Not any of the stories that made the facts interesting.

  We were ranked according to our equestrienne skills, but none of us would compete professionally, or do anything besides ride as a diversion once we left Yonahlossee. And many of us would go back to places where we couldn’t sit astride a horse.

  The few girls here who did truly care about learning—Gates, in our cabin—were not popular. It meant you were too hungry, that you sought something unappealing and vague. It was better by ten to be charming and witty, like Sissy, than to care about books.

  I watched Sissy hold the letter to her face, then draw it back again as if she were trying to trick her mind into seeing it for the first time. I wondered what she would be as an adult, whether or not she would still seem so young. Sissy’s charm, her thin wrists, her easily tangled hair, her long, awkward neck, seemed so clearly and profoundly childish to me. She was lovely, Sissy, anyone could see that. But she was lovely because she seemed harmless.

  What would it feel like to be Sissy? I thought of Boone gently and urgently kneading her breasts. Sissy smiled to herself, serenely, and I saw Boone’s hands and felt a familiar sensation in my stomach. I turned my head and watched Jettie paint a disfigured mountain peak until the feeling went away.

  Sissy would never have gone to see Mr. Holmes in the dead of night. The idea wouldn’t even have occurred to her. She had chosen a normal beau. Boone came from a good family; the good implied that his family was wealthy. Their biggest hurdle would be that they were too young, that Boone was not Southern enough, not Alabama royalty. He was from Asheville, which Sissy had told me was fine, but not wonderful. But I gathered he had enough money to smooth that particular wrinkle. All of this seemed so ridiculous, the nuances of hierarchy, the subtleties of position, and though Sissy sometimes made fun of all this fuss, with me, I could see she took it seriously.

  —

  Outside, I hugged myself against the cold, my old coat too small. I squinted my eyes against the sun until I entered the woods, and then it was dark, the light dappled onto the forest floor and the effect was eerily beautiful, a pricked pattern engineered by randomness.

  There was no trace that Decca had fallen. The iodine had been absorbed by the earth long ago; Bright was back in his stall, chomping hay; the felled tree had been cleared away. I lingered at Bright’s stall and he whuffed into my hand, curious. He had no memory of what had happened, no idea at all. I envied a horse’s dumbness, not for the first time in my life.

  We took turns jumping the combination Mr. Albrecht had devised. I went next to last, and I watched girl after girl fail, go either too fast or too slow between the second and third jumps, then nick a rail.

  “Well done, Thea,” Mr. Albrecht murmured as I passed him.

  Just then I saw Mr. Holmes walking alongside the ring, toward me, and I was hot and panicked but also terribly eager.

  “Hello, Thea,” he said, and smiled.

  “Mr. Holmes.”

  “Well,” he said, after a pause, and rested his arms on the railing in the posture that was so familiar to me, “Decca is feeling better.” He looked beyond me, at the other ring, and I knew he was in front of me only briefly, before he continued his tour of the riding rings, before he would stop and chat with other girls. Jealousy was still such an odd feeling. At home, there had been nothing to envy, nothing to want that I didn’t already have, or could get.

  “Is Decca lonely?” I blurted, and then tried to speak more slowly. “I mean, does she miss her sisters?”

  “I think she must. She’s the youngest. She’s never been alone before.”

  “I know that feeling,” I said.

  “You’re the youngest?” he asked.

  “No.” I shook my head. I was relieved that he did not know as much about me as I had thought; and then also disappointed for precisely the same reason. He looked at me expectantly, waiting for an answer.

  “I’m a twin,” I said. “Fraternal.”

  “Ah,” he said. He seemed neither interested nor surprised. He must hear so many things about us girls, all the time. He took his hands from the rail, preparing to leave.

  “May I visit Decca?” I said, before I lost my chance. “Sit with her?”

  He paused. I could tell I had pleased him. Parents liked when you were interested in their children. I wondered if Mother and Father had felt the same pleasure when people complimented me and Sam. But no one had, except occasionally, in town.

  “She would like that, Thea. Thank you.” He began to turn around, but then he stopped. “I almost forgot—I wanted to tell you that Rachel is fine. That everyone is grateful Decca was not seriously injured.”

  I wondered what his memory of that night was. I had been so bold, and he did not seem to mind.

  I watched him walk away, his slim, busy hands swinging by his sides, then folded behind him, then in his pockets. I knew what the feeling was, now, that had embroidered itself in my brain. Knowing made me feel less horrible. I had what so many girls had: a crush. It was as simple and harmless as that. I had never had one before. With Georgie, things had simply happened, one after the next; I’d never had any control. But this time, I had control. This was just a crush.

  I turned Naari around and saw that Leona stood at the gate, watching, and I got rid of the stupid smile that had been on my face.

  —

  The Holmeses’ housekeeper met me at their door that afternoon, when everyone else was at the Hall studying, or feigning studying. I stepped into their house and unlaced my boots.

  “There’s no need,” the housekeeper said. She was young, with golden-blond hair coiled into a braid. A smattering of freckles dotted her cheeks. When she spoke, I could see that her teeth were horribly crooked. Still, she was pretty. She had that Appalachian look, wan, thin. The mountain families were large, I knew, and inbred. Sissy told me that they thought nothing of marrying their cousins. But who else were they supposed to marry, I wanted to point out, isolated in hollers and valleys unreachable by automobiles and trains, places that never saw outsiders. When the only boy there for you happened to also be your cousin.

  “I’ll make a mess.” I pried off my boots and handed them to her; she returned a moment later and led me up the stairs.

  Decca’s room was chilly. I was glad I’d kept my scarf and jacket. I felt Sissy’s gloves in my pocket, lent to me for the winter, but to put them on would be impolite, even if I was only in the presence of a housekeeper and a child.

  “Is she warm enough?” I whispered, because Decca was asleep.

  The housekeeper paused a moment, as if considering whether or not to answer me.

  “Hot-water bottles,” she said, finally. She left, then.

  I sat by a bed in a chair clearly meant for this purpose: Mr. Holmes must sit here, too, I knew, for hours, days if the hours were added together.

  Decca was swathed in pink blankets. Her long lashes rested dramatically on her pale skin. Her hair—so dark it was almost black—was shiny with oil. I wondered if Mr. Holmes knew anything about washing girls’ hair, about tending to a child of De
cca’s age. I touched her soft forehead and though she stirred she did not wake.

  If he came into this room while I sat here with his daughter it would be happenstance. I could not be accused of being bad. I could not be accused of being forward. It would simply be a meeting engineered by chance. I wanted to be close to him again, I wanted him to speak to me, to ask me questions, to answer mine.

  I would come again tomorrow, and the next day. I drew my gloves on and rested my head on the back of the leather chair. It was big and comfortable, meant for someone larger, a man’s easy chair. The furniture in this room was the same as ours: washstand, desk, and vanity.

  A homely embroidered mat hung between the beds, the Lord’s Prayer stitched in green. Mother would have hated this room. It was clean, spotless, but looked mean. I took off a glove and fingered Decca’s bedspread—made of some rough linen, with a thick border of dark red. There was a timeless quality about this room, perhaps due to its sparseness; except for the lamp, I could have been sitting in a bedroom from a hundred years ago. Was this house an accurate representation of Mrs. Holmes’s taste, or had it always stayed the same, Mrs. Holmes only changing small things, grace notes? Pictures, maybe dishes. That would undo Mother, to live somewhere that was not her own.

  At the end of the hour I was taken to the front door and shown outside by the housekeeper, who managed to lead me through the house and hand me my boots while ignoring me. Decca had spent the whole visit asleep.

  I looked up at the house, for some sign of Mr. Holmes. The drapes were drawn against the cold, and even if they hadn’t been, it was impossible to see through a window lit by daylight.

  —

  Mr. Holmes had still not appeared. I asked the housekeeper where he might be—I had come three days in a row and seen neither hide nor hair of him. She shrugged. “You’d have to ask Mr. Holmes.” I thought there was a note of challenge in her voice. Insolence. Or a note of satisfaction—of course I could not ask him, because he was gone when I came to the house. Because he was distant when we met in the dining hall—or did not meet, he made sure of that. He stayed away, it was not my imagination. And so I began to imagine that he also wanted to see me, that there was something that existed between us. I could not yet say what—I did not know. If I were a better girl according to Mother, I would stop all this, reinsert myself into Yonahlossee life, go to the Hall with Sissy instead of coming here every day. But I no longer knew what kind of girl I was.

  I played with Decca, or read to her, or sang her songs. She had not slept after that first visit. I lay awake at night and rose when Boone threw his rock and shook Sissy awake, hard. Boone, so handsome and nice; he waited outside like a trap, waited for Sissy to fall. I lay in Sissy’s bed and listened to her tiptoe out—she was so loud!—and hated her, hated Boone for making her furtive.

  I hated the girls in Augusta House, who thought my visitation arrangement strange. “You only sit there?” Mary Abbott asked that night, sidling up beside me on the way to the bathhouse. “Why do you?” Wasn’t that very apparent? Achingly clear? But no, it was not. Only to me, only I knew.

  Now I was awake and knew I would not get back to sleep, and felt so hot, so ready.

  “Do you love me?” I imagined Sissy asking. “Do you love me? Me?”

  “Do you love me?” He would ask me that.

  “Why did you stay away for all that time?”

  “Because I loved you,” he would say. He would put his hand on my breast, underneath my dress. Those slim, long fingers inside me, touching me, feeling parts of me, the odd pressures, the closeness.

  Oh. I bit my pillow and there were sparks against my eyelids. If only this could last—longer, longer. If only, but it never did.

  My breaths were quick but deep. My limbs were heavy against the sheets. I wiped between my legs with my handkerchief and left it there.

  I could fall asleep now. I closed my eyes and was not ashamed. Mr. Holmes, Mr. Holmes, Mr. Holmes. When I closed my eyes, he was all I saw.

  Dear Mother,

  I do like my coat—thank you. It’s so nice I don’t know when I’ll wear it. It’s cold here, but beautiful. I think I prefer the cold to the heat. You can ride forever in the cold. I’m riding again, did you know? I don’t know what else to report. There’s nothing to report, I suppose. It’s cold and I’m riding and camp life is the same. We do the same thing every day, exactly, except for Sunday but then our Sundays are exactly alike so everything has its order.

  You wouldn’t like it here, I don’t think. There isn’t any green in the winter except for the evergreens and they don’t really count, do they? Everything dies and the world is all one color—white—until spring. I never knew anything but colorful, humid Florida and I thought that was what I preferred, but truly it was simply what I knew. I wonder what the desert is like, or up north. Who knows what I prefer?

  Mrs. Holmes was your friend? I didn’t know. I didn’t know you had friends. I would write more but we’re kept so busy. Don’t worry about me. Don’t even think about me.

  —

  My father spoke on the telephone,” Decca said. “To my mother.” I was reading to her from a book she loved, called Winnie-the-Pooh; she should keep still, the housekeeper told me. But Decca was back to her old self, a sling she had to wear to keep her right arm immobile so that her collarbone could heal the only evidence she had fallen. There was no need for me to come like this, I knew that, and though I told myself, and everyone else, that I came for Decca’s sake, really I came for my own. I wanted to see him.

  “Oh?” I asked.

  “Yes. Father sounded angry.”

  I tried to hide my surprise. Mr. Holmes should speak more carefully. But clearly Decca did not know what this all meant.

  “Why was he angry, Decca?”

  “When will my sisters be here?” Her voice was plaintive. She missed them, I realized. She didn’t understand their absence. I understood. Boone had told Sissy that a boy at Harris Academy had been sent back to school with a suitcase full of money, and told to hide it. He’d stored it in his mattress. It was such a dumb hiding place I didn’t know if the story could be true, but the banks were failing, we all knew that; a girl’s uncle was president of First National, Charlotte’s bank that had closed in December. Yet the Harris boy’s family had money—he was at Harris, after all, not beneath the earth working in some mine. His father didn’t know what to do with their money, though, how to keep it safe, how to ensure that it would protect them.

  There was enough money in the world for all of us to be here, to ride our horses, to wear our white clothes. I wondered if Mother’s citrus fortune was in a bank. Surely it was. I couldn’t imagine Mother hiding money among her furniture, her things. But I didn’t know, I realized, I didn’t know anything at all about how my family was handling their financial affairs. I had never known. The citrus income had shadowed us, all my life; it was impossible to imagine the Atwells without it: I saw now that it gave us an edge, a little way to feel better than people who did not have wealth from a distant, exotic source.

  Mother would never have used the word better. We were simply different. Unique.

  “Thea?”

  I gazed at Decca, who looked at me curiously.

  “They’ll be back soon,” I answered. I hated how vague I sounded, but I didn’t know how else to sound.

  Mr. Holmes seemed angry on the telephone. I would have given my left arm to know why. But Decca was just a child—she might have misheard. Perhaps Mr. Holmes had sounded upset, not angry.

  I wondered how much she remembered about the accident. It seemed a mercy, that she was too young to understand Rachel’s part in it.

  Decca picked up her doll—its hair was patchy, its clothes smudged. It must have belonged to Sarabeth, then Rachel; finally, Decca. I had never had to share anything with Sam. I’d never liked dolls, but still I’d had at least half a dozen.


  Decca whispered to her doll. I tried to listen to what she said but then drew back, embarrassed, a sixteen-year-old girl straining to hear the mutterings of a child. I should let Decca have her secrets.

  If our lives had not been so blessed, if we had not had Mother’s money—if, if, if. But this particular line of possibilities had never occurred to me. Then Father would have had to live in a city, where there were more paying patients. Then Mother could not have kept herself, and us, so apart from everyone else. We might have lived hours from Gainesville. We might have only seen each other once a year, for Christmas.

  We would not have had money to give them. We would not have been able to help. We would not have been better. We would not have been lucky.

  Did my parents hope I’d been taught a lesson? They thought they’d sent me somewhere safe. Away from men, away from cousins. Georgie, Georgie must be—I tried not to think of Georgie here. I stood—Decca was still playing with her doll, the room was still ugly and stiff, I was still alone in this house with his child.

  I thought we knew each other, my mother had said, and then, later: This will all be fine, do as you’re told, do as we say and this will all be for the best.

  If my parents had kept me at home, I might have learned their lesson, I might have wanted to please them more than I wanted to please myself. In my head, I thought, if I can make Mr. Holmes love me, it will all be all right.

  {14}

  It was bitterly cold the next time we went to Gainesville. Aunt Carrie’s mother had taken a turn for the worse and died very suddenly, and we were going to offer our condolences. I’d wrapped a scarf around my neck and head and face, left room for only my eyes. I watched the landscape speed by, punctuated occasionally by houses: they all looked the same to me, splintering wood, windows that were glassless black squares.

  Since Christmas I’d seen Georgie only three times, which was, I thought, less often than we usually saw the Gainesville Atwells. But how often we saw each other was never something I’d tallied before. But now—now I wanted to see my cousin more than I could ever remember wanting anything.