The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls

by Anton Disclafani

  “Sam,” Georgie said, taking his eyes away, “no. None of that for me today. I’m going to stay inside and work on homework.”

  Georgie’s voice was cruelly casual. In an instant, I regretted everything; I wanted Georgie to be nice, I wanted Sam not to be hurt, I wanted it all the way it had been.

  “Why?” Sam asked, crestfallen. He looked to me, then Georgie, like he was trying to put the pieces together. But I did not want to be a piece of this puzzle. I was furious at Georgie, suddenly. He should not goad Sam. He should not try to make him wonder.

  We both waited for Georgie to speak. I did not want to say anything; speaking would mean choosing a side, and which side would I choose? I looked at Sam, his auburn hair cut just yesterday, by Mother. Then Georgie, who watched Sam calmly.

  “Why?” Georgie said, mimicking Sam. My stomach turned, it truly did—a flip beneath my skin. “Because I don’t want to pretend to camp. I don’t want to pretend anything, today.”

  “Georgie!” I said, and they both looked at me, my brother and cousin. I shook my head. “Nothing. I’ll go with you, Sam.” I stood.

  Sam shook his head. It was too late. “No,” he said, “I’ll go by myself.”

  “Thea,” Georgie said, after Sam had gone inside, but I was so mad I felt sick with it.

  “Why did you do that?” I asked. “Why?”

  He began to answer, but I didn’t want to hear. I slipped inside the house, quietly, in case the adults were near; I meant to follow Sam, but he had already disappeared. I could have found him if I’d wanted to, I knew all the likely places he had gone. But if he didn’t want to be found, there was no point in looking.

  —

  I sipped Mother’s champagne while the adults visited. Uncle George had said it was four o’clock in the afternoon, cocktail hour somewhere. Aunt Carrie’s one sister was doing poorly; her other sister had responded to the death better than anyone had predicted. Wasn’t it always a surprise, my mother said, how a person acted after he had lost someone.

  “Where are the boys?” Uncle George asked.

  “Out back, I think,” I said, though I didn’t know. They had both disappeared after this morning’s squabble.

  “Hunting,” Father said. He looked at his glass, which he held with two hands, a child’s grip.

  “Maiming the defenseless and innocent,” Uncle George said, and then dropped the glass decanter stopper he had been holding on the mahogany coffee table, the one that was particularly hard to keep unblemished. Its surface had been buffed and varnished until you could see a blurry reflection of yourself in the reddish wood. That hadn’t been what Father had meant. He meant they were hunting animals for Sam’s terrariums, not hunting animals to kill. But they were doing neither.

  “Oops,” Uncle George murmured, and spilled a little whiskey onto the rug. Mother moved to help but he waved her away. He was quick with his napkin, blotted the spilled alcohol instead of rubbing it, which would smear the dyes.

  “You do that well,” I said.

  “Thea,” my father said sharply. I turned my face. I was not myself right now, and it was difficult to be kind to Uncle George, who looked so much like his son. I didn’t think this was possible, but somewhere on the edge of my mind an idea lurked: Georgie would find Sam, tell him about us, and it would all end.

  Uncle George laughed. “It’s fine. I might as well help myself to another while I’m here,” he said, and poured a neat glass.

  We were all silent for a moment. My father stared into his drink. Mother watched the carpet; I knew she wanted nothing more in the world than to be able to properly clean it. I knew well the idea of self-preservation, from Sam and his animals. Georgie would not tell, because telling would mean something bad for him, too.

  “Thea,” Uncle George said, and my father’s glass trembled when his brother spoke. “Thea, you’re getting awfully pretty.”

  “Thank you.”

  “She looks exactly like her mother did at that age. She’s the spitting image. Wouldn’t you agree?”

  My father glanced at me briefly, and shrugged. “No, I wouldn’t know. I didn’t know Elizabeth at that age, remember? Neither did you.”

  “She does,” my mother said, and touched the end of my braid. I knew she was trying to distract my father, but I didn’t want her to touch me. And besides, I didn’t look like her. I wasn’t ever going to be as pretty as she was. Which was fine—what had it gotten her? A house in the middle of nowhere. “My hair, mainly. She has Felix’s forehead, more and more.”

  Father smiled, as if at a private joke.

  “It’s interesting,” she continued, “to look at photographs and see how you change year to year.”

  “Is it?” Aunt Carrie asked. “I’ve always thought looking at pictures of myself was an exercise in vanity. And boring, besides.” I looked at Aunt Carrie, shocked. I’d never heard her speak to my mother like this.

  Mother furrowed her brow and pretended the rim of her champagne flute was the most interesting thing in the world. She was close to tears. Aunt Carrie stared intently at the fireplace, empty, swept clean, and the men did nothing.

  My father broke the silence. “You are quite pretty, Thea,” he said. “A smart, pretty girl.”

  “The whole world’s at her feet,” Uncle George said, his voice picking up again, eager to help his brother relieve the pall that had settled over the room.

  “I’ll bet you have twenty suitors by this time next year,” Uncle George said. “Thirty.”

  “I don’t think so,” my father said humorously. “Not in my house.”

  “I don’t want any suitors,” I said.

  “That will change,” Aunt Carrie said. Her voice was strange. I wondered how much she’d had to drink.

  “It will!” Uncle George said. “Of course.”

  I heard the distant slam of the screen door.

  Sam came in first. He walked to the coffee table and took a handful of cheese biscuits, then flipped the tail of my braid, and the relief I felt—it felt like another chance.

  “One at a time,” Mother said, and Sam nodded but continued to stuff himself.

  Georgie came in and met my eye and smiled, then sat next to Sam—at his feet, because there wasn’t another chair—and they continued a conversation they’d begun elsewhere, chattering about a swimming hole in Gainesville. And then the adults began their own chatter, about nothing, about everything, and I was so grateful Georgie hadn’t told, I wanted to weep.

  But the quality of the adults’ chatter was off; they sounded tense, distracted. I noticed that while Georgie was pretending to listen to my brother, his attention was elsewhere. He was watching the adults, very carefully. He caught me staring, and grinned in a way that chilled me. Something about the way he had turned his attention from them to me, as if we were connected.

  I understood then that my family could never know my secret. Money, money where money did not belong, had almost ruined us. I understood that loving, where loving did not belong, would be much worse. No, they simply could not know. But that did not mean that I would stop.

  —

  After I had lain on top of the covers for an hour, the rest of the house asleep, after I stopped feeling impatient and entered into desperation, my door opened, and Georgie motioned for me to follow. He was wearing his regular clothes, thoughtless, my brother would have noticed. The stairs were mercifully quiet. The remnants of a key lime tart had been moved from the dining room onto the kitchen table, a tacky, grotesque mess now.

  He almost let the screen door slam, and I felt a flash of anger. I caught it and eased it shut.

  A fog had come and made the outside world impenetrable. I slowed, walked more carefully; Georgie plowed ahead, almost disappeared into the white.

  We were both barefoot, and as we walked blindly to the barn I was half afraid I’d step on something
sharp. But not afraid enough to turn around and get my shoes, or to have paused as we left the house and slipped them on. Not afraid enough to make Georgie wait.

  He dipped in and out of the fog, in flashes; I saw a hand, an elbow, then nothing at all. He was a stranger to me, that’s how I could do this, behave like a girl who would shame her family so easily.

  When I reached the barn, I went first to Sasi. Before my brain caught up with my heart, I thought he was missing. But then I saw that he was lying down, asleep, his knobby, thin legs tucked carefully beneath him.

  “Thea?”

  I turned and put my finger to my lips, but Sasi was already hoisting himself up, illustrating in a second how improbable a horse’s body was, how dainty and inadequate his legs were.

  “Why did you do that?” I asked.

  “Do what?”

  “Don’t play dumb,” I said. I put my hand flat against his chest, and I could feel his heart thumping against bone, through blood.

  “Oh, that.” He touched my finger. I wondered if he could also feel his heart, through my hand. “He’s such a child sometimes.” I started to speak and he touched my lips, then put his finger inside my mouth. It tasted like dirt, and I liked it. “I’ll be nice to him, don’t worry.”

  And I didn’t worry. I had other things to think about, now. Sasi pricked his ears toward us, curious, and then Georgie was kissing my neck, then licking it, and there was a roar in my ears, and he roamed over my breasts with his thick hands, and the roar subsided, turned into a distant buzz. Georgie combed his fingers through my hair, tenderly, and I thought of my mother, who was the only other person who did that.

  “You are certainly,” he said, and then paused, and undid the top button of my nightgown and put his hand down the front, “very beautiful.”

  He led me to a stall, and slid the lock open and pushed me inside. There was a blanket from the house already draped over the packed-dirt floor; a good blanket, from Mother’s stacks.

  I pointed to the blanket. “Don’t leave that here. Mother will notice.”

  He shook his head and relocked the stall door, the familiar sound of metal against metal. He turned back to me, his erection pushing against his pants, like a tumor, a growth. He backed me into a corner and thrust his groin into me. His pants were thick, wool—winter pants. My nightgown was thin cotton. I felt everything, his sensation was dulled. I closed my eyes and unbuttoned Georgie’s pants on the second try, I reached inside and was surprised again by how soft and tender his penis felt.

  There were little flashes where my brain should have been, as if it had receded for this. We were on the blanket, Georgie was on top of me, my nightgown was hiked to my waist, and Georgie’s penis was touching me, was slippery because I was wet and he had parted me and put his penis against the slickness. Then it felt very big between my legs, almost painful, and I didn’t want this to happen, not yet, not in this way, so I flipped him over, in one smooth motion, and he was surprised. I was surprised, too, but I wrapped my legs around his thigh and moved while I also moved my hand fast over his penis. The same rhythm in my legs and my hands, and I couldn’t get it quite right, the rhythm, I was doing two things at once and neither was right. So I moved faster, and the intense ache between my legs subsided briefly before it exploded, and then I stopped touching Georgie altogether for a second. I could see more clearly now, could see that Georgie was watching me, his hands folded beneath his head as if he were looking at the sky on a clear day. I smiled at him. I began again where I had left off.

  I remember feeling very adult, for the first time in my life.

  —

  I came in from hitting golf balls with Georgie and Sam around lunchtime and saw Mother, who had been upstairs all morning. Uncle George was off with Father, but Aunt Carrie had made herself scarce on this visit.

  Mother smiled at me and returned to her paper, the glasses she used when reading small print slipping down her nose. I took three sandwiches from the platter Idella had left on the table.

  “Aren’t you going to ride today?”

  “We’re playing golf.” Mother nodded slowly. I didn’t want to tell her I had started menstruating this morning. It was private. “We’re not very good,” I added.

  She reached underneath the table; I didn’t know what she was doing until I noticed that her arm was now weighed down by the blanket.

  “This was out,” she said. She pushed her glasses up. She hated to wear them, but Father said she would wear out her eyes if she didn’t.

  “Oh?”

  “In the barn. Maybe Sam and Georgie were using it, for their hunting? Not you? Sam should know not to use the good blankets. This is an old carriage blanket, it’s older than you, you and Sam together.”

  I nodded, and after I gave Sam and Georgie their sandwiches I went to the front, muttered something about the mail, and sat on the steps. I looked at the road that was only traveled twice a day: my father going, my father returning. I had been stupid. Stupid, stupid girl. I felt very desperate. This is what it feels like to be desperate, I whispered to myself. Stop it.

  If Sam suspected, if he could no longer keep the secret and had confided in Mother, if, leaving Sam out of it, Mother had seen something on her own, peered through one of the hundreds, thousands of windows this house boasted—we did not shirk when it came to glass, Father said, your mother loves the light—if she had looked into my world with Georgie, and if in that moment in that world he had touched my cheek, kissed me, bitten my thumb . . . if, if, if.

  {17}

  The next time I saw him it was the same thing: he sent Decca away and accepted a drink from Emmy. We sat for a moment before he spoke.

  “The girls are starting to apply for next year.”

  “Is it a rigorous application process?”

  He smiled. “It can be.”

  “Are we handpicked from thousands?”

  “You weren’t,” he said, “but yes, there is some handpicking involved.”

  From upstairs we heard Emmy’s sharp warning, Decca’s hysterical giggle. She often acted this way in the afternoons, like a horse who had been pent up in his stall for days. A few moments later I heard the front door open and close. Through the window I saw a glimpse of Emmy leading Decca across the Square.

  Mr. Holmes sat in his leather chair, I sat on a couch, two, three feet away from him.

  “How do you pick?” I put my hand on the couch, as if to make smaller the distance between us.

  “Family connections. If your sister went here, or your cousin. What kind of family you come from. We try to have some parity among the states. Though St. Louis is as far north as we ever get. And then after all that I suppose we look at the girl herself. What her parents want her to achieve while she’s here.”

  “What her parents want,” I echoed.

  “Yes. They write the letter, they answer the questions on the application. Her father, usually. Did you think it would be otherwise?”

  I was silent.

  “To have all your decisions made for you is a curse. But it’s one you know well, I assume.” He had known exactly what I had meant; he had articulated what I meant better than I could have. But he seemed distant, today.

  “It wasn’t always like that for me.” I smiled at what I had said—why was I defending my father? But Mr. Holmes looked at me expectantly, so I continued. “I never felt like that, like everything was decided for me, until they sent me here.”

  “Here,” he said, and seemed lost in thought.

  “Do you like it?” I asked. I was losing his attention.

  “Yes,” he finally said. “In the end I do. What I tell myself is that this world is changing quickly, that female education is becoming vital. But truly I fell into this position, and it’s a nice enough life, a nice enough place for the girls. Though most of the time I think I’d rather be reading a book.” He closed his
eyes and rubbed his temples. “You don’t think, when you are young, that you will simply fall into your life. But that,” he said, and raised his head and looked at me, “is exactly what happens.”

  I stood and went to him, quickly, so that I wouldn’t convince myself not to. I sat down beside him, in the small space the chair allowed. And what compelled me to do what I did next? If I had moved away, or simply done nothing—well, I feel certain Mr. Holmes would not have touched me. He had touched me last time, yes, but today it felt as if he would not; today felt as if we were going to erase the sins of yesterday. And I did not want them to be erased; if he erased how he had touched me—well, then he erased me, Thea, what small stake I had eked out in his life. And so I put my hand on his knee, and turned my face into his coat.

  He did not move away. The pleasure of that moment was so extraordinary it felt almost unbearable, a gift too large. At first he was tense, but then I felt him relax. If a Yonahlossee girl walked in and saw us, she would be shocked, briefly, but then she would think that Mr. Holmes was comforting me; that I had been upset, that our headmaster offered solace.

  Or perhaps I was fooling myself. Perhaps she would know exactly what she saw.

  “It’s a beautiful place.”

  “Yes, Thea.” He put his palm on my cheek. His voice trembled. “We can’t,” he said.

  “It’s all right,” I murmured into his shirt. I had been right in divining his feelings.

  He stood, and looked down at me. “You have brought me comfort. I don’t know why. It shouldn’t be this way. Do you know how bad it is out there?” He wore a pained expression, now. “This place might close, Thea. Let’s hope Mrs. Holmes works magic out there, but we are asking people for money they do not have, or money they want to hold on to.” He shook his head. “But let’s hope that’s not true, let’s hope that this is simply the worst year in everyone’s life. And lucky you, to have the worst year come so early. You have nothing except hopeful years ahead.”