The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls

by Anton Disclafani

  My mother watched me for a moment. “Why, Thea? Why did you do it?” Her mouth was screwed into a small, ugly knot. She did not look so beautiful, in this moment. She looked betrayed.

  “Why was it so bad?” I asked. My voice cracked. “You loved Georgie.”

  It seemed like she was ready for the question, like she had already asked it of herself.

  “I wanted more for you!” she cried. “Don’t you see, that Georgie is not enough? And even if he was, it’s all a horrible mess now, Georgie in the hospital, your brother the one who put him there. Uncle George and Aunt Carrie cannot forgive. And I’m so angry at Georgie . . . and at you.” She gestured outside the barn, at our thousand acres. “We had everything, Thea. Everything. This place is ruined.”

  “Please,” I cried, “where are you sending me? Don’t. Please don’t.” I touched her arm. “Please keep me here. I’ll be good.”

  She looked at her forearm where I had touched it, then up at me again.

  “I’m afraid it’s too late for all that,” she said, calm now.

  —

  We settled into a semblance of routine in my final week at home. I woke up early in the morning and rode until Sasi was exhausted. I made jumps that were higher and higher, and Sasi cleared them because he could feel how reckless I was. Mother busied herself with chores, and I helped her by making myself scarce. I knew I was the last person she wanted to see. Sam disappeared for hours at a time out back. Hunting, I presumed. Father left before I rose and returned after I was in bed. When I passed him in the hall, he made some mention of a sickly infant who would not nurse. I did not ask again about my cousin. I assumed that Father would tell me if his condition changed for the worse. I was naive, I thought my parents’ silence meant that Georgie was getting better.

  I was supposed to be packing my clothes. Mother had been vague about what I’d need. I had gotten as far as emptying my drawers onto the floor. Now I combed through these piles of all my fine things: shimmering dresses, stiff cotton skirts, smooth silk scarves. I didn’t deserve them. I couldn’t imagine a future in which I’d wear them again.

  A knock. I’d been keeping my door closed to spare my family the sight of me.

  “Come in.”

  Idella’s brown hand, first. I went back to my things. The disappointment was nearly unbearable.

  “Your mother sent me to help pack.”

  I gestured at the piles. “I’ve made such a mess.”

  “Let me.”

  I watched as she made better piles, put skirts with skirts, breeches with riding shirts; deftly folded all the things I’d unfolded.

  “Your mother says to pack lightly.” Idella glanced at me. “She says there will be a uniform.”

  “A uniform,” I repeated. “Do you know why I’m going away?”

  Idella smoothed the collar of a blouse. I knew so little about her. She wasn’t married. She lived with her mother and two sisters; they were all deeply religious.

  “I’m sure it’s all fine.”

  I nodded, close to tears. “It’s not,” I said.

  “God willing,” Idella said. “God willing.”

  {23}

  The train from Asheville to Orlando was half empty. There was another girl my age who sat in first class. We ate together in the dining car, at separate tables. I studied her. She did not look at the waiter when she ordered, and when her food came she ate in a hurry, shyly, as if she were in danger of offending someone by dining. She wore beautiful, teardrop-shaped emerald earrings, which she touched constantly, in the same way that Sissy touched her horseshoe pendant. The horseshoe pendant hung around my neck now, and I found myself tapping it constantly, as Sissy had, but not for the same reasons: I touched it because Sissy had, because I missed her.

  I could not eat the tomato soup the waiter brought. It wasn’t very good, but I should have been hungry; I hadn’t eaten very much in days. I forced myself to eat the roll. As I sat here, on this train, this bland food before me made everything real again. I could feel my resolve scattering like dandelion fluff. It was so green outside the train window, so green and alive. The beauty of North Carolina lay in its austerity, the mountains so far away, so cold, so distant. Once we crossed into Florida, everything was alive, at you. I knew as soon as I stepped off the train the heat would greet me like an old friend, even though it was only spring.

  I was jealous of the girl, whose name I didn’t even know, who I would never see again. I had never wanted to be someone else so badly. I wanted to begin again: at birth, without a twin, without a cousin so close he was a brother.

  “Do you know the next stop?” the girl asked. She stood before me. I hadn’t even noticed that she’d left her table. For a moment the name would not come to me. But finally it did.

  “Church Street,” I said. “Orlando.” The girl seemed nervous, and I wanted to take her by the shoulders, say, Look, please, you have nothing to be nervous about. But I didn’t know that. I didn’t know what or who she would meet when she stepped off the train, which was beginning the slow process of stopping. I could see the station, where I would soon be, and it seemed impossible that I could be here on this train but that in five minutes, ten, I would not be. And that I would not be by my own volition. Why, Thea, why. Why had I wanted to return to all this? To my brother who hadn’t written me a single word for months, to my mother and father who had sent me away so quickly it was as if they’d known all along how they would handle a crisis, a tragedy, a thing Mother hadn’t planned: Send the girl away, keep the boy?

  And then I saw them, my parents, waiting on the platform, my father in a suit, my mother in a wide-brimmed hat. And I knew why I had wanted to come back. Yet I was not ready to see them. I faltered. I put my head in my hands.

  I looked up again and saw the girl was watching me. At Yonahlossee she would not have been popular; she was too nervous, too needy.

  “Who are you meeting?” she asked.

  “My parents.” I looked outside the window. My mother stood in front of my father; my father’s hands were clasped behind his back, his head bowed. My mother looked agitated. My fast mother, who had once been beautiful and shameless. She looked thinner. Sam was not there.

  I watched my parents as the train pulled in, stayed in my seat as the other passengers disembarked and my mother peered anxiously into their faces.

  I stood. I could already feel my legs weakening, atrophying ever so slightly from disuse. I hadn’t been on a horse in days.

  When I finally emerged from the train, the last passenger, my mother was visibly relieved.

  “Thea,” she said, her voice high. Her eyes roamed over my body, and lingered on the necklace; then her eyes hardened. But she couldn’t help this; I saw that she was trying to be kind.

  My father raised his head and I saw with surprise that he had aged. He had gone completely gray in my absence. Even his eyebrows were gray. We waited while a porter gathered my luggage, while my father tipped him and my mother wrapped a scarf around her hair for the drive. Passengers for the next train milled around, and I was glad. They were someone else. The women wore pinks and purples and greens, a surprise to my eyes after so many days of white. And nobody watched them. Nobody made sure they got to classes on time, or turned off their lights at nine, or rose at seven. Nobody cared.

  My mother and father turned to go, and they expected that I would follow. My mother turned first, then my father, and I waited for them to say something.

  “It’s time to go,” my father said. “Come.”

  My father held out his hand; my mother’s eyes were desperate.

  “Yes,” I said, “let’s go home.”

  But still I stood where I was. I had misspoken. We wouldn’t be going home. I looked behind me and saw my train leaving, another giant machine poised to take its place. There would be other trains. I smiled at my father and allowed him to take my
hand. I had not wanted to let go of his hand so many months ago, and now I had to make myself touch it. We were all being very brave.

  My father opened my door, and waited until I was settled to shut it. We were silent while my father navigated our car onto the road. Orlando looked so busy—I had not seen cars, or roads, or any other tall building besides the Castle for so long. Then my mother turned so that I could see her pretty profile and I knew that I didn’t have to try at all to love my mother and father; I hadn’t known how easy it would be. They had my heart on a string, and I saw that they always would, until they died. Then I would truly be free, except for Sam. One string, instead of three.

  I watched Mother’s profile, that old familiar view. It was sharper, now; I had done that. I waited for her to speak.

  “Thea,” she began, and I could smell her, even from here; I could smell her old familiar smell. I leaned forward in my seat.

  “Yes?”

  Then she turned and faced me, closed her eyes, and lightly touched her forehead with two fingers, a new gesture. “This headache,” she said. “It won’t leave me.”

  I wanted to say something before she spoke. I wanted to tell her about the strangeness of all this, the utter strangeness. So much had happened in this last year, the busiest year of my young life; I felt so old, now. I wanted to tell her, and Father, too, about the strangeness of all those girls at first; then how all those girls had not seemed strange any longer. How now they seemed strange, my own parents, even though I loved them, even though I wanted to please them. I wanted to say: You can’t ever imagine a moment, it seems like it will never come, but then it does, and there you are, Thea Atwell from Emathla, Florida, the same girl you thought you were.

  “Thea,” my mother said. “We’ve been living in a hotel for the past month, but we’ll be leaving next week. We’ve bought a house. There are so many here, abandoned.”

  “Sasi?” I asked. I couldn’t make complete sentences; all I could manage were words.

  “He’s sold, Thea. You were going to outgrow him anyway.” Her voice was soft. She was again trying to be kind.

  “Who has him?”

  “A little girl,” my father answered. “She loves him. The truth is, Thea”—my mother made a small noise of protest, but my father shushed her, which was shocking; more shocking was that Mother did as directed, and fell silent—“the truth is that we can’t quite afford a horse for you right now.”

  “He was a pony,” I said quietly.

  “Pardon, Thea?”

  “Nothing,” I said, “never mind.”

  I looked at my hands, these hands that Mr. Holmes had held. My mother turned around and leaned her head against the window. “This headache,” she said, “is murder.”

  It wasn’t hard, not crying. My mother, after all, was a liar, a liar whom I loved, but still a liar. She had promised me that Georgie would be fine, that she would write if he was not. I had been foolish to believe her, but I had wanted to believe her. I watched the street, and saw a dirty little girl and I wondered if she was poor, if her parents had abandoned their house; or perhaps she was only a little girl dirty from her backyard. Her dress looked nice enough. I would never know.

  The hotel we stayed in seemed grand to me, with red plush carpet and an elevator. A bellhop accompanied me and Mother to my room. It was going to be mine alone, I saw as soon as he opened the door, my brother not anywhere in sight. The room smelled moldy, but rooms often did in Florida.

  The bellhop was young, and handsome, with thick brown hair and long, lean limbs. Of course, I thought, of course I would get the young and handsome bellhop, not the old, wizened one. I told him where to put my things, and when he was done he waited.

  “That will be all,” Mother said.

  “Mother.” I looked at her purse.

  “Oh, yes,” she said, “I’m sorry, so sorry.” She seemed nervous, and I knew why. She was about to be alone with me. And that I had just spoken to a man, and told her what to do in regard to this man, could not have helped. She would rather I hid in the corner until he left, even after he left. Well, I was not going to do that.

  He closed the door behind him, and I turned to Mother and looked her in the eye; I waited for her to speak.

  “Well,” she said, “camp worked wonders for you, Thea. You look well.”

  “It was not a camp, Mother.” She stiffened. But I wasn’t going to get into all that. “No, it’s all right. I’m glad I was there for so long.”

  She watched me for a long time, the electric fan the only noise in the room. She wore a dress I had seen a hundred times before. She was still beautiful; the bellhop had paid more attention to her than to me. I felt my nerve weaken. She was my mother, I was her child, and this was a fact, and this was unchangeable. I waited for her to scold me, to express her displeasure, to tell me she knew all about how bad I had been, for a second time.

  “Well,” she said finally, and took my hand, “what are we going to do with you now, Thea?”

  I began to speak, but she hushed me.

  “No, please. We’ll talk about all that later. I’m tired.”

  “Sam?”

  “Sam is in the room next door. I suggest you let him come to you. But you will do what you wish, I’m sure.”

  I nodded. I would. She was correct.

  —

  I had meant to stay in the infirmary my final night. But I couldn’t. I rose after what seemed like hours of tossing and turning, which had followed Mary Abbott’s visit. I wanted to fall asleep, to take advantage of the brief respite slumber provided. But sleep would not come and I began to feel panicked, hot; my scalp burned on top of my brain. That’s what it felt like, anyway, that my brain was thinking too many agitating thoughts, that it was on fire. I hoped I would not regret leaving. I hoped Sam would be glad to see me. I hoped Sissy’s life would turn out exactly as she wished it to.

  The Square was deserted. There was a full moon, which was so, so pretty. There wasn’t a single light on at Masters. Augusta House was quiet, all my friends fast asleep. Boone would not come anymore, now that Sissy had almost been caught. It didn’t seem that Boone’s identity had been revealed, a bit of luck. I’d made Sissy promise to write him a letter, to be more careful.

  I thought of Kate the Bell Witch as I walked to the barn, the woods deep and black on either side of me. It would be so easy, to disappear.

  Most of the horses didn’t bother to swing their heads over their stall doors. It was late, not near feeding time. But Naari did. She recognized my footsteps. And she would forget them, and not ever know what she had forgotten.

  I held her muzzle to my face, breathed in her softly pungent smell and let her breathe in mine. Who knows what I smelled like. Like a girl. Like Thea.

  I heard the sound of metal on metal behind me, and jumped; I thought I’d been caught. But what else could they do to me? I had nothing to lose, nothing left to give them.

  It was Leona, emerging from King’s stall, closing the gate behind her. She wore her nightgown, which fell only to her knees while mine hit midcalf. Though I had changed into my day clothes before I’d come down here. I noticed her feet were bare. It was the height of foolishness, to walk in bare feet around a horse. Her hair was wild. Or nearly wild, as wild as Leona’s hair ever got. King put his giant head over the gate and looked at me. Leona reached behind herself and patted his muzzle, absentmindedly. I’d thought her capable of such treachery. But really my first instinct about her had been right: she only cared about horses.

  “Thea Atwell,” she said. “You beat me. Nobody has ever beaten me before.”

  “Sorry,” I said, and in that moment I was: I should have been kinder, I should have let her win.

  “Don’t be. I would have done the same thing, in your shoes. In your boots.” She smiled, and I did, too.

  “I’m sorry about King,” I said, and ge
stured behind her, at his big, handsome face. Leona turned and buried her face in his neck, and King relaxed into her embrace, like a child. In the ring he was fierce, but on the ground he was gentle. I thought she was crying, I knew I would be crying, but when she looked at me again her face was dry as a bone.

  “There will be other horses,” she said, “but not like this one. And not for a long time.”

  I nodded. I believed her. If anyone could find her way back onto a horse it would be Leona.

  “You’ll have to leave her, too,” she said. There was no malice in her voice.

  “Yes.” I looked at Naari’s small, dainty face. “But she was never mine in the first place.”

  —

  Sam did not come to my door. I lay in my bed for hours and hours. I fell asleep; when I woke, the window was lit by streetlights, though I could tell by the way the darkness hit the windows that it was nearly dusk. My mouth was dry. There was no Docey here to pour me water, no other girl to tell me what time it was.

  I poured myself a glass of water from the sink and drank it, quickly, then poured another and drank that, too. My eye caught a slip of white; a note, placed under the door. My heart caught; Sam. But no, Mother, telling me they didn’t want to wake me for dinner. They. Had Sam been with them? I saw how sad it all was; my family living in different rooms in a hotel. I heard something outside, in the hall, but I wasn’t familiar enough with this place to know what it was that I heard.

  I opened the door slowly, and there he was, my brother. The back of him, but I knew, the same way I would recognize my hand if someone brought it to me.

  He turned and in the bright light of the hallway I saw that he had indeed become more handsome than I was pretty, as I’d predicted. He was a man, now, his shoulders broad, a head taller than I was, at least. It was so amazing, this life: it took a person I knew completely and utterly and made him into a stranger.

  “Sam.”

  “Thea.” His voice was deep. I’d never hear it again as I’d left it, soft and pretty. He had a voice that asserted itself, now, that directed other people, that made itself heard in a crowded room. A man’s voice.