The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls

by Anton Disclafani

The wind whipped against our cabin, which felt unsturdy, suddenly, like a house made of paper. A branch hit the window and Eva gasped. Sam had briefly been afraid of Kate the Bell Witch, when we were seven; he said she could disguise herself as anyone or thing, recognizable only by her green eyes. A snake, a bird, a little girl. Georgie had told him the legend, scared Sam silly. Mother blamed him, he had let the outside world in. For years Sam looked carefully at the faces of people we encountered. But we didn’t encounter many, and none of their eyes, to his relief, were green.

  “A question?” I asked.

  “I have a question,” Gates said, which surprised us all. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

  “Will we be all right?” Her voice wavered, ever so slightly, which it never had before and never would again, at least not in my presence.

  —

  That winter I got better and better on a horse. The cold seemed to agree with me. At the very least, you could ride longer without fear of overheating your horse. Faster and stronger, I jumped perfectly any course Mr. Albrecht arranged, usually on the first try. My legs no longer ached after I finished a ride. My arms were stringed with muscle. Eva had cut my hair off; now it fell to my shoulders, and I looked less like a child. When I examined myself in the mirror over my washstand, I liked what I saw, I liked what I’d become again: perhaps it was my imagination, but I looked in the mirror and saw that I was superior to the old Thea, I was more powerful than she’d ever been.

  I cleared my plate most mealtimes. Henny watched and sipped glass after glass of cold water. Not fat, not yet—she was plump, very round, but anyone could see that she would be fat soon. It was her fate.

  Sometimes I asked about her wedding. She was pleased with me then—oh, it was so easy to put myself into Henny’s good graces. She talked less about her fiancé than about her flowers, the rolling cart of desserts, her dress from New York. Martha and Jettie were going to be bridesmaids. I wondered if it pained Henny to think of beautiful Martha standing next to her. Miss Metcalfe was silent when Henny spoke of her impending matrimonial bliss, and I realized with a shock that she was jealous.

  I asked a question about their new house, the one they would move into after they were married, and Henny turned to me, excluding all the other girls at our table.

  “You’ll know what it’s like, Thea, you’ll know how much joy there is.” Her hot breath smelled faintly of chocolate. What an odd way to phrase it, the joy floating somewhere, an infinite quantity of it, as if you only had to stand in the right place to catch it.

  —

  When Mr. Holmes did appear, a week into my visits with Decca, it was nothing extraordinary. So many things were like that: you waited and waited and waited, and then it happened, and you were still you. I wasn’t yet sure if this was a disappointment or a relief. It seemed to be a little bit of both.

  We were downstairs, playing dominoes on the coffee table. I was drinking tea and watching Decca’s milk—her glass rested very close to the edge of the table and I was afraid she’d knock it over with her elbow. I’d already told her to be careful, twice, and there was a limit, I’d learned from spending so many hours with Decca, to how many times you could warn a child.

  There were expensive pieces in this room: a collection of tiny Limoges boxes in a glass case, six silver calling-card cases on an end table, all engraved with various initials. An oil painting of a girl sitting in a field, a sheep in the distance, that reminded me of Tess of the D’Urbervilles. There was nothing personal except for the initialed card cases; again I wondered if any of these things belonged to the Holmeses. Was there a discretionary fund that each headmistress was allowed to draw from? But that fund surely would have been stopped now, with the trouble. Even if the money in the fund hadn’t been affected, it would be in poor taste to use it.

  “Go.”

  “Sorry,” I said, “sorry, let’s see . . .” But I didn’t see. I’d never played dominoes before and apparently the Holmes girls had played since birth. It was a dull, endless game.

  Decca wore a summer dress, evidence of a father’s hand. Decca could be obstinate, and she was picky about her clothes. I imagined she’d insisted on this, and Mr. Holmes had given in to his daughter’s seasonally inappropriate whims.

  I was wearing the Yonahlossee uniform but I didn’t mind it. I had gotten used to the sight of us, all alike at first glance. I wore no jewelry.

  Decca stood; I interrupted the caressing of my hair.

  I was vain, I was sixteen years old and would never again feel so watched.

  “Father’s home,” she announced, and twirled in a tight circle.

  “Decca,” I scolded, “behave.”

  There was always some tragedy that accompanied his arrival: the milk, this time.

  “Decca!” I was furious. All this waiting, all my calibrations, and now the milk was spilled and Emmy unavailable—how to call her without sounding coarse?

  Decca ran to her father and I busied myself with soaking up the milk with my skirt.

  “An accident?” Mr. Holmes asked, and lifted Decca on his hip. He offered his free hand to me and I accepted it and stood.

  “Emmy,” he called, and she appeared so quickly I knew she must have been waiting.

  “We were just . . .”

  “Playing?”

  I nodded, looked to the right and out the window. Everything was blank, still and cold. “Playing.” I felt defeated. Decca sat curled and small on her father’s hip, Emmy scurried on the rug, patting and feeling.

  “That’s fine, Emmy.” And although he sounded distracted, he spoke gently to Emmy, who stood and curtsied and backed out of the room without ever meeting his eye.

  I wasn’t going to say a thing, I wanted him to speak next, after I’d waited and waited.

  But it was Decca who spoke: “I’m winning at dominoes.”

  “Don’t boast.”

  “She’s not. It’s true.” I smiled at Decca, who grinned back.

  Mr. Holmes put Decca down but she clung to his leg. He rested a hand on the top of her scalp, carefully extricated his leg from her grip.

  “Is that right?” He smiled.

  Decca nodded, unsure; there were adults laughing and sometimes that was fine and sometimes it was not.

  “Go upstairs, now,” he told Decca. “Please,” he asked, anticipating her refusal. “I’ll be up in a second.” And we were to be alone, now! I wondered if he thought I was pretty. I willed him to look at me, to notice me, but he seemed distracted.

  Decca kissed me on the cheek and my cheek flamed scarlet, she was so close to me, her scalpy smell and her thin shoulders.

  Mr. Holmes patted Decca’s head as she passed and smiled after her, and I knew that if she had not been his favorite before she would be now.

  There was one thing in this room that did not belong, I thought, and it was me: I was intruding; surely Mr. Holmes thought I was a bother. Sometimes the house mistresses met here with Mrs. Holmes, but mainly the Holmes house was private, theirs, not a place for girls. As Mr. Holmes arranged himself in a chair, I knew that he did not want me here.

  “Well,” I said, ready to make my excuses. What had I thought? That Mr. Holmes would fall in love with me? This was how crushes made fools of girls. I resolved to never have one again, to never love someone until they loved me first: to control my heart.

  “Sit, sit,” he said, “please,” and gestured toward a chair, and I had been wrong. He wanted me here. He seemed genuine. I had not imagined everything.

  Just then Emmy reentered the room, carrying a tray, which she set on the coffee table. She refilled my teacup in careful, measured steps: first pick up the teapot, support it under its belly as well as by its handle. Angle your wrist, do not allow your arm to tremble. Pour. Straighten your wrist now, quickly, so that you interrupt the stream of tea decisively, so that no drops of boiling wa
ter leap from the weakening stream and land on the porcelain tray—or, God forbid, silver, which shows everything and more—or even worse, on the lady for whom you are pouring.

  Emmy did not once raise her head or glance at me. Her hand was perfectly still. She was here in Masters for a reason.

  She handed Mr. Holmes a tall, clear glass and left. My mouth felt chalky. More tea was exactly what I wanted least.

  Mr. Holmes took a long swallow from his narrow glass, halfway done already. He was pale, but that could have been the quickly dimming light, orbiting us into darkness.

  A bell rang. Everyone would still be at the Hall; I thought of Sissy, who was probably expecting me. I was going nowhere.

  “Class time,” Mr. Holmes said, but so informally, as if I needn’t worry myself. He swallowed the rest of his drink.

  I heard water run upstairs, Emmy drawing Decca a bath.

  “Excuse me for a moment, Thea,” he said quietly, and left the room.

  Mr. Holmes returned with a glass decanter. We kept similar ones in our formal room.

  I’ve gotten into a bad habit since Mrs. Holmes left, I imagined him saying.

  He seemed very far away, at the other end of the room, mixing a drink on top of the piano, his sweaty glass on the bare wood—it would leave a ring, he was a man and did not think about rings—but no, he picked the glass up and smoothed away the dampness with his coat sleeve.

  He sat down and examined his drink. We heard a noise from upstairs and both looked up. I caught his eye and smiled, he smiled back, this was how to be easy and natural with a man. I looked up again but Mr. Holmes was looking down, stirring his drink with his finger.

  “Thea,” Mr. Holmes began, then paused. He flicked his spirit-sopped finger and then smelled it, and I was suddenly and unbearably embarrassed—these were private gestures, I was not meant to see them. He took a long swallow of his drink.

  And because I was nervous, the first thing that came into my head popped out, like one of Sam’s tree frogs.

  “Mrs. Holmes is still gone?” And it was precisely the wrong thing to say. It sounded like I sat in judgment of Mrs. Holmes’s absence, when truly I was grateful: if she was here I would not be, that was certain.

  He nodded slowly. “I’m of half a mind to send Decca there, brace and all, but I think I would be too lonely.”

  I smiled—it did not seem possible that an adult’s loneliness could be relieved by a child. But I supposed we had relieved Mother’s loneliness.

  “Only a month until her return,” he continued. “Hopefully I can hold the camp together for another month.” He took a sip of his drink and grimaced the way adults did when they drank hard liquor. The grimace meant the taste was pleasurable. I knew from watching Uncle George.

  “Are there more donations?”

  He looked up at me, surprised. “You mentioned before,” I explained, “that people were not donating as much as you’d hoped.”

  “Yes, yes. You have a very excellent memory, Thea.”

  “Not really,” I said. “My brother is the one with the excellent memory. He knows all the names of all the plants and animals, hundreds and hundreds of them.”

  “Your twin,” he said. “I remember some things.”

  I could feel my face flush with pleasure. He could remember one detail about my life and make me so, so happy, more happy than I could remember being in ages.

  He finished off his drink and cradled the glass in his lap.

  “Beth is having better luck, yes. Better her than me. I’m no good at separating people from their money. Do you know what has made everyone more willing to contribute?”

  I shook my head.

  “Horses.” He laughed in disbelief. “For the women, at least, this seems to be their soft spot. There are girls here, girls on scholarship, girls who will be sent home if their scholarships are not funded. The women are unmoved by the plight of such girls. But mention the plight of horses and”—he snapped his fingers—“the check is signed.”

  “The plight of horses?” I did not want to align myself with the women he so obviously held in contempt, but I wanted to know what he meant. If I couldn’t ride, I didn’t know what I’d do.

  “Oh, I didn’t mean to alarm you, Thea. The horses aren’t in any danger of being taken away.” He sighed. “No one would buy them now, anyway. It’s their expense that’s daunting. Grain prices have shot sky-high, thanks to the drought. I never thought I’d be so familiar with the agricultural economy. Horses eat a great deal, as I’m sure you know well.”

  “Yes. They’re big creatures.” I understood the impulse to protect the animal that had no voice, no parents to look out for it. I would certainly be more willing to donate to a horse fund than a girl fund.

  “I shouldn’t bore you with all this,” he said.

  “I’m not bored.” And I wasn’t. I’ve never been less bored, I wanted to say, because this adult world, where I was not someone’s daughter, or niece—well, this was entirely new to me.

  “Thea Atwell, from Florida. So serious. Were you a solemn child?”

  “I don’t know.” Usually Mr. Holmes held something in reserve; his current sociability seemed an act, bought with a drink.

  He laughed. “I don’t know what’s gotten into me. Look here,” he said, leaning forward, twisting his glass around and around, “thank you for all your help. You’ve been a blessing.”

  “In disguise,” I said, and Mr. Holmes didn’t laugh, as I had intended, but nodded, as if he agreed.

  Walking to my cabin, I savored the quiet campus. I savored his hand that had glanced off my shoulder as I left, lingered—was that my imagination?—no, it had lingered, it had not wanted to leave. He leaned forward and thanked me and it was such a thrill, such a feeling of grace.

  —

  After dinner that night—a thick, dull stew, surprising for something so bland to emerge from the Yonahlossee kitchen, but I ate it anyway—Mr. Albrecht stood as we were eating our dessert of standard shortbread (rich but also a little dull) and told us to find our riding groups. Mr. Holmes sat next to him.

  “But why?” I asked.

  “The Spring Show,” Molly answered, “it’s soon.”

  “It’s still February.”

  “There’s a lot of planning. And then there’s the Spring Fling, right afterward.”

  “You haven’t heard of it?” Henny asked. “Everyone competes, everyone watches. It’s splendid. If you’re a house mistress you sip champagne with the adults and watch the rides.”

  “It is splendid!” Molly said. “There’s a picnic lunch and then you get all pretty afterward for the dance.”

  The dining hall was a swarm of Yonahlossee girls as each of us tried to locate our group. I saw Leona from across the room, walking in a straight line. Girls moved out of her way in a neat sort of folding when they saw her coming, as if she were a thresher and they were the wheat. Her family’s troubles only made us more careful of her. I remembered Leona’s picture, on the wall outside Mr. Holmes’s office. Most people were not themselves in a photograph: the camera rendered them too solemn, too straight-lipped, too unknowable. Sam used to say that the way people stared at the camera made it seem as if they were watching something awful. But Leona was not any more discernible in the flesh. She passed by me without acknowledging my presence and I fell in line behind her.

  We found a table and sat down. My group, advanced, was responsible for designing a course for the intermediate girls. Gates sketched a triple, and we all leaned forward to watch, her pale hand flashing against the white paper. Jettie watched closely, murmured approval.

  This was perfect: Mr. Albrecht still sat with Mr. Holmes at the head table; Mr. Holmes was close enough that I could see the details of his person—his crisp collar, his watch, the blunt edge of his hair—but we were arranged at such an angle that he could not see m
e.

  Mr. Albrecht drew something in the air, Mr. Holmes nodded, his elbows rested on the table but that was fine, everything was cleared and men sometimes did that. Mr. Albrecht crossed his arms against his chest and listened to Mr. Holmes; then they were done speaking, for Mr. Albrecht was not the type of man who was good at speaking about nothing. Both their chairs had arms and ours didn’t, because we were girls, not headmasters, not men. I watched their faces but they were like masks, neither looking at anything, staring past each other into the deep space marked by Yonahlossee girls.

  It didn’t occur to me then that it might be difficult to be a grown man surrounded by hundreds of girls, so certainly out of their reach that we could flirt, we could playfully take Mr. Albrecht’s elbow in the tack room, let our hand linger in his when he helped us dismount, and he could do nothing in return. Mr. Albrecht wasn’t a man, not to any of us, I don’t think, because he wasn’t handsome or rich or young. But we flirted with him because he was there and so were we. He probably touched himself at night, when we were ensconced in our cabins, he at home in town. He would hold himself and think of Leona’s white hair against her naked back, the curve of Eva’s breasts, contained by her white blouse—he cupped his hand against one, then the other, she wanted to unbutton her shirt but he wouldn’t let her, liked to feel how her nipples stiffened against the cotton. She wouldn’t be wearing her thick undergarments, there would be nothing except the thin, stiff cotton between his hand and her breast.

  “Thea?” Leona asked.

  “Yes,” I said, hopefully authoritatively, though I had no idea what they wanted.

  “Does a triple meet with your approval?”

  I shrugged, then tried to still my shoulders, nodded instead. Last week I’d had trouble with a triple. “It does,” I said, and wondered at her composure. Her world had altered dramatically, her family no longer what it was, and she acknowledged nothing.

  Then Martha passed by our table, holding her group’s sketch (she was in Sissy’s class, and though she was a better rider than Sissy, Martha’s tranquility did nothing for her on horseback). She had little diamonds in her ears tonight, and I watched her and she was a sparkle, a glimmer, a flash—something not of this world.