The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls

by Anton Disclafani

  “But your hair is brown.” I paused. “You don’t look alike.” And this was true: Emmy was pretty, and Docey wasn’t.

  “Do you look like your sister?” Her tone was pointed.

  “I don’t have a sister.”

  “None?” She seemed surprised.

  I shook my head. “I have a brother. And we do look alike, we’re twins.”

  “A twin?” she asked. It was the first time I had ever heard her sound pleased. “What’s that like?”

  I smiled. “It’s all I’ve ever known,” I said. “It’s like there’s another you, out there.”

  “I don’t know if I’d like that.”

  “You wouldn’t like it or not like it, if you had it. It would just be . . . how things are.”

  Docey said nothing. I watched her lazy eye. I wondered if it could be fixed, if there was some corrective method available, or if people with lazy eyes simply had to live with them. I wondered what she saw, right now—did my face stay still? Did it move, wildly? But of course Docey would never be able to fix her eye.

  I realized I’d been staring. “How many siblings do you have?” I asked, and then thought she might not know what that meant. I flushed. “Brothers—”

  “Twelve,” she said. “Twelve,” she repeated.

  I was astonished. I couldn’t even name twelve relations. Between Georgie’s family and mine, there were only seven.

  Docey smiled at the shock on my face.

  “What do they do?” I asked.

  “What do they do?” she repeated. She shrugged, and I understood how vile Yonahlossee must appear to Emmy and Docey. Mary Abbott’s father, the preacher, had written of two little boys who lived not far from here, up in the mountains. They had died from eating poisonous berries. All the other girls thought they simply hadn’t known they were poisonous, but of course they had; in Florida I had known exactly which berries I could eat, which would send me straight to death. And surely these boys had spent as much time outside as I had, or more. They’d eaten them because they were starving. I wanted to apologize to Docey, but for what? Luck, fortune, fate.

  She’d turned away from me anyway, bent down, and wound up the woven rug beneath the desk into a tight roll. She seemed to linger. I helped Mother clean, I was familiar with the desperation it entailed, born of futility. It was a fixed system of entropy, like Father had explained by tossing a coin.

  “Do you like to clean?”

  Docey laughed. It was a stupid question. Mother liked to clean, enjoyed ordering her world like that. But this wasn’t Docey’s world; it was ours. I turned to slip my shoes on and then leave, but then she spoke.

  “I don’t mind it.” But she was lying, we both knew that.

  —

  He was quiet today, sat almost mournfully with his gin. His shirt was buttoned crookedly, and though Mr. Holmes was somber, his shirt made him seem playful.

  “Let’s go out back.” I rose and Mr. Holmes followed. I knew he would, he was in his passive mood.

  It was a little bit thrilling to walk through the parts of the house I’d never seen—the dining room, to a formal sitting room whose French doors opened onto the porch. There was a table next to the window, heavy with glass bottles, their necks slender. I went to it. The sight, up close, was a marvel—various exotic plants that I’d never seen before, growing in bottles like model ships.

  “Beth’s.” Mr. Holmes had come up behind me. I remembered that Mrs. Holmes loved to garden. He picked one up. “She sends away for the seeds.”

  I imagined all the attention they must require, the special tools, the careful nurturing. I had not thought Mrs. Holmes capable of magic like this.

  The back porch was clearly built for entertaining—there was a bar in the corner, and clusters of small tables surrounded by chairs. I imagined fathers of alumna who came out here with Mr. Holmes to admire the view and talk—about what? The purpose of a place like this. The goal of women’s education. Things that none of us girls ever spoke about.

  I didn’t want to be here anymore, where fathers came and spoke of their daughters with Mr. Holmes. “Let’s go outside,” I said.

  “I have such a headache.”

  “The fresh air will help,” I said.

  He opened the screen door to the woods that lay beyond the porch. Outside, the footing was rocky, but it was fine because Mr. Holmes had to offer me his hand, and he seemed reluctant to touch me, today.

  “I come up here sometimes on Naari,” I said. Mr. Holmes said nothing. I was still careful about mentioning horses around him. “It’s easier when she does the climbing.”

  He laughed.

  “Are you feeling better?” I asked hopefully.

  “It’s not a horrible one. When I was a boy I had to lie in a dark room on the floor. Always the floor, for some reason it felt better, and wait until it went away. There was no logic to it. Sometimes it went away immediately, and other times it took days.”

  “And you had to lie on the floor for days?”

  “Mostly, yes.” He stopped, and leaned against a tree. “My governess would sit outside the door and forbid anyone to come close. I couldn’t stand any noise.”

  I closed my eyes and pictured a small Mr. Holmes, laid flat by pain, his English governess barring the door.

  “You had a governess?”

  “Yes. You sound surprised. My family was very wealthy. Is very wealthy. Well, less wealthy than they used to be, I imagine, but I’m sure they’ve survived.” He gave a hard little laugh.

  I hadn’t been surprised. I knew he came from money.

  “My family was very wealthy, my mother and father lived in Europe for most of the year, I had a governess. I failed out of Harvard, twice. Then I met Beth.” I opened my eyes. “And the rest, they say, is history.” His voice had changed, was stiff and distant.

  “And the rest, they say . . .” I trailed off.

  “Is history,” Mr. Holmes finished. “I was very disappointing to my parents.”

  “So was I,” I said.

  “Yes. But there are worse things.”

  I was silent.

  “Thea, when you’re young, disappointing your parents seems like the worst thing in the world. But it’s not. Believe me, it’s not.”

  I nodded. We walked in silence for a moment. The air was warm, felt like spring. Sometimes I resented always having to wear a skirt—I could never play as wildly as Georgie and Sam—but right now a skirt was convenient, allowed me to take giant steps to keep up with Mr. Holmes. I thought pants—especially wool pants, like Mr. Holmes was wearing—would have constricted me, been too hot and smothering.

  “What is the worst thing, then?” I asked tentatively. “If not disappointing your family?”

  “Disappointing yourself,” he said quickly. “Disappointing yourself,” he repeated. “And it’s such an easy thing to do.”

  I turned this phrase over and over—the thought had never occurred to me. Why should my disappointment matter? My parents were disappointed in me. And my brother, and my aunt and uncle. The word seemed to come unhinged, the way that words always did when you lingered on them too long—disappoint. What did it really mean? How was it even possible to disappoint myself? I was just myself. I was Thea, I was a girl, I was a daughter and a cousin and a sister and now a friend.

  “Did you disappoint yourself?” I asked.

  He laughed. “In too many ways to count.”

  I watched the back of his head, he was silent for a second. He was so strong, Mr. Holmes; we were climbing a steep incline and his breath remained even, his footing sure.

  I thought he was done with the subject, but he continued. “If I could do it all over again, relive my youth, as they say, I would do things differently. But so would everyone, I think. The trick is not to get mired in the muck.” It was an expression Father used. He tu
rned, and I watched his profile as he spoke. “The past is the past, Thea. I hope somebody’s already told you that. But if they haven’t, well—it’s something to remember.”

  Mr. Holmes stopped at a stand of trees and went through an opening I hadn’t seen. A secret opening, I thought as I followed, for our secret affair. The idea thrilled me. The trees opened and I could see straight through to the sky. I think half the transgressions here were committed because of weather like this. And the other half—in the memory of the weather. I touched his jacket, soft against my fingertips.

  “Where does Emmy think we are?” I asked.

  “I don’t know, Thea.” He shook his head. “You should be at the Hall, with all the other girls. You should not be here with me.”

  “But I want to be here.”

  We were quiet for a moment, and I knew that when he spoke again he might very well end this, send me back to be with all the other girls.

  But instead he bent down and delicately picked up a transparent snake skin. “Snakes are coming out again.”

  I reached for the skin, a long tube, dirty and translucent. “This is old.”

  He looked at me, surprised.

  “There are snakes all over in Florida.”

  “You’re not scared of them?”

  “Not particularly. Leave them alone, they leave you alone.”

  I turned my face up and kissed him. I kissed him hard, directed his tongue; drew him closer to me.

  “We can pretend we’re all alone out here,” I said.

  “Because we are.”

  Mr. Holmes kissed my neck, and suddenly we were on the ground, he was on top of me. My skirt was unbuttoned, and his jacket was off. I reached for his pants. Mr. Holmes above me, framed by the bluest sky I thought I’d ever seen, and I felt so lucky, that he was here with me, that I was getting again what I knew I shouldn’t have.

  “No,” he whispered, and instead he licked my breasts, then my stomach, and continued down. His mouth was over my panties, and I started to sit up. He raised his head and pressed his hand into my shoulder and pushed, hard, until I relaxed. What are you doing, I thought of asking, but I felt if I spoke I might end this. My thighs quivered, and his tongue felt like it was inside me. Which was impossible, wasn’t it, but it felt so large and it moved and I put my hands on his head as if in a blessing.

  {18}

  Sissy caught up with me on the way back from the barn. I usually waited for her, but lately I had been scurrying out of the cabin after rest hour before the bell had even rung; and then, when I was done with riding, rushing through cooling out Naari. It was easy to evade Sissy, who was always late. I had started to do whatever I wanted to. Sometimes I didn’t even bow my head during prayer, but watched Mr. Holmes. He made small motions with his hands, even though he kept his eyes closed while he was speaking. I tried it once in the woods, closed my eyes and spoke to the trees. But it felt as strange as walking blindfolded.

  “You’re always hurrying,” Sissy said. “I can never catch you.” She sounded irritated, her raspy voice high.

  I shrugged. There were girls all around us. I opened my mouth to speak but closed it again; I didn’t really have anything to say.

  Sissy shrugged, and I realized with a shock that she was imitating me. I stared at her.

  “What?” She shrugged again. “I never see you, and you don’t seem to care. You haven’t asked about Boone in weeks.”

  So this was what this was about. I was relieved, and, strangely, disappointed.

  “I know he still comes,” I reminded her. “I’m the one who helps you. Takes your place in bed.”

  She drew me to the side of the path, into the woods. “Stop, Thea.” Her voice cracked. “You’ve been walking around with your head in the clouds. You never come to the Hall anymore.”

  “Nobody studies, anyway.”

  “That’s not what I mean.” I started to defend myself, but Sissy continued. “You’re in Masters too much. Girls are talking.”

  I waited for her to go on. But she didn’t. “What are they saying?” I asked.

  “They’re saying you’re obsessed with Mr. Holmes, that you’re lovesick.”

  I laughed, but the sound was strange in my throat. “Sissy,” I said, trying to sound incredulous, “I go there for Decca. She asked for me, you know.” I offered this as if it were proof of something. And then there was also a feeling of relief, that what Leona had said in the Square was gossip, nothing more.

  “Thea, don’t!” Her voice was high. “I’m your best friend. Don’t.”

  I was touched, even in that moment, that she considered herself my best friend. Sissy stood so rigidly; I took her hand, drew it from her side. “I just like being there. With Decca. With Mr. Holmes, too. We talk. He understands me.”

  “What does he understand about you?” She gripped my hand tightly, now, and looked at me plaintively. “You were sent away because of a boy.”

  I nodded. I had told her this, so long ago it seemed like another life, when I was settling in at Yonahlossee and wanted so badly to have a friend.

  “Mr. Holmes isn’t a boy.”

  I took my hand away. “I know that.” I paused for a moment. If I had been brave enough to trust Sissy I might have asked her what she meant, exactly, what she had guessed.

  “What about David?” Sissy asked.

  “David,” I repeated, confused. I’d nearly forgotten about him.

  Sissy watched me. Eva walked by, with Gates, and I smiled at them over Sissy’s shoulder. “He’s not . . . I’m sorry.”

  “Oh, don’t apologize. It’s just, it would be so easy, to like him. So fun. Just come around more,” she said, and her voice had returned to normal. “Please?” I’d seen Sissy do this before, decide that a quarrel was over and end it just like this, snuffing a candle. It was one of her gifts, never deigning to fight with anyone. But she had never acted like that with me. She had never needed to.

  I thought about David the rest of the day, as I walked from place to place and nodded at various girls and knew that I was not like them, did not want the same things, had made my life unnecessarily hard, and would continue to do so. And why? Why, Thea, why, Mother’s voice ringing, ringing.

  I knew why, though. I was a smart girl. David was a boy, and he reminded me of Georgie, as any boy would. I was done with boys.

  —

  Suddenly Yonahlossee was a haze of color: candytuft carpeted the fields beyond the riding rings in all manner of pink; grape hyacinth lined the Square; and finally daffodils, my favorite, circled our riding rings in carefully planted beds. Mrs. Holmes had supervised their planting before she left. She has a genius for flowers, Henny said one night, and I had to agree.

  There’s no future in this. I kept waiting for Mr. Holmes to speak these words, but he never did. I knew this would end. I knew the date. I knew how. Mrs. Holmes would come back, and we would simply stop.

  There’s no future in this, Mr. Holmes might have said, might have prepared me for the inevitable. But I wasn’t naive. I could have been called many things—shameful, cowardly, cunning—but not naive. Why did I act this way, first at home, then at Yonahlossee? I risked everything when I was old enough to know better. But there was always this: the hard kernel of want in my throat. I could not push it away. I did not want to.

  Mother would be so disappointed in me. She would hate me, if she learned what I was doing. Yet if my family could cast me out so easily—out of their home, out of their hearts—shouldn’t I be able to act in the same way? I wasn’t weak. There was so much want inside me, there was so much desire. I felt it exploding when Mr. Holmes touched me, I felt it multiplying.

  With Georgie I had felt desire, yes, but a fraction of what I felt with Mr. Holmes. He taught me that desire is divisible, that it changes in relation to its object. I wondered if Mother knew that. I wondered if Father did.
Because you couldn’t know, if you had only ever desired a single person, if you had been kept away from everyone else.

  I thought about what Mr. Holmes had told me, that my parents had made an exchange. He didn’t know them, he didn’t know my father’s tenderness, my mother’s lovely home. He didn’t know how we had loved each other.

  {19}

  Georgie was in Missouri, with his mother and father. Mother had said that we might see him next week, but I couldn’t confirm the date without calling attention to myself.

  I’d woken and gasped for breath, the air was so thick and soupy. The clock on my bedside table read three thirty; in another hour or so it would be light enough to ride.

  In the summers you had a second skin, a layer of moisture and sweat that was always with you. And this was only the beginning of it.

  Outside, the world looked dead and disinterested; there was no breeze to rustle the grass, no crickets rubbing their legs together to interrupt the stillness. I sat on the steps and unbuttoned the first button of my nightgown, which made no difference. I closed my eyes and thought of my cousin, the way he had touched me last time, the way I had touched him, how we were learning.

  “Thea,” Sam called, from behind me. I knew without looking that he was sitting in a rocking chair.

  “Sam.”

  “You weren’t scared?” he asked. He sounded like he had been up for a while. He had always liked to startle others, to jump out from behind doors, to wait in a bush and spring up, suddenly, a surprise.

  “Who else would it be?” The question hung in the air for a moment, two. I spoke again. “Can’t sleep?”

  “Who can? It must be a record, this heat. It feels like it.”

  “It never is. A record.”

  “No,” he agreed, “it never is.”

  We were silent for a few moments. Sam sighed.

  “You’ll be tired tomorrow,” I said.