The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls (12 page)

Dear Thea,

We’re told you’re well. The mountain air is better for you than the air here, I’m sure. And all those girls for you, all those horses. Are your teachers teaching well?

You haven’t sent a letter in almost a month. I hope that your silence is a sign of how busy you are, at the camp.

Nothing seems to have changed—Sam and I continue with his lessons, your mother is out in the garden all day, preparing all her precious flora for winter.

Take pity on your parents and send us a letter. Be merciful, Thea, it is a capacity that God has granted only us.

And nary a week until your birthday. Happy You Day. (I will shout the other half to Sam!) Did you think I would forget? That day was the happiest day of my life, of all our lives.

Love,

Father

It was true, I had not written a letter since I’d been in the infirmary, since I’d learned that I would not be returning home at the end of the summer. I was angry—they’d known I was ill, and had not come to get me—but as my anger dissipated, I saw that I needed to not think of them in order to survive here. I would train myself not to want my family. I needed to live my Yonahlossee life without thinking of how to frame it in a letter for my parents and brother.

I put the letter in my vanity drawer, along with Sam’s handkerchief, which I had not been able to bring with me to the infirmary. I had missed it, at first, but then the want had disappeared.

If I had been stronger I would not have opened their letters, which came once a week. Mother and Father alternated the task. They were brief, briefer now that I gave them no reply. I was glum after their letters; Sissy noticed. But I was not strong enough to leave them unopened. There might be some news of Sam inside, or even Georgie.

—

T
hanksgiving at Yonahlossee was a small affair, a more elaborate version of Sunday dinner. Sissy was gone for the week, pining away in Monroeville; that she would miss her weekly tryst with Boone, who came every Thursday, would hang over her week like a cloud. Mary Abbott was the only girl from Augusta House who hadn’t gone home, and the atmosphere in the dining hall was solemn, almost.

“Thea!” Decca called out when I entered the dining hall with Mary Abbott. I scanned the room and saw that girls sat out of place. I felt sorry for Mary Abbott, who I knew would have jumped at the chance to follow me, but you did not sit at the head table without an invitation, and Decca wound her hand through mine while thoroughly ignoring Mary Abbott, as only a child could.

Decca led me to the head table, where a few teachers sat along with Alice Hunt, who must have also been granted a head-table invitation. Miss Brooks smiled at me, and I smiled back. Mr. and Mrs. Holmes were at either end of the table, as if they were hosting the dinner. Which they were, I suppose. Mr. Albrecht sat next to Mrs. Holmes; he smiled when he saw me. Sissy told me Mr. Albrecht and Mrs. Holmes were friends. Nobody cared, though, because Mr. Albrecht wasn’t handsome and Mrs. Holmes wasn’t beautiful.

“Here,” Decca said, and pointed to the chair next to her, only sitting down herself after she made sure I was settled, even lifting my napkin from my plate and tossing it into my lap. Mr. Holmes watched her with his amused expression.

“Thea,” he said, “I’m glad that you could join us. You’re quite famous in the Holmes household. Decca especially is your biggest fan.” Decca nodded seriously. Sarabeth grinned at me, but Rachel looked as if she had been crying, her cheeks mottled and pink.

“I’m flattered,” I said, and I was.

True to form, Alice Hunt barely looked at me. I watched the girls file in and saw Leona, her hair pulled back into a tight bun. She looked straight at me, as if she had caught me thinking about her, but her expression revealed nothing. There had been whispers that her family was suffering financially. That was how Sissy had put it—suffering, as if lack of money was a wound. Which it was, the worst kind. But Sissy didn’t believe the rumors, and I hadn’t, either—Leona’s very bearing, the way she carried herself around the room—seemed wealthy, but I wondered why she hadn’t gone home for Thanksgiving.

Mrs. Holmes wore an old-fashioned mourning cameo pinned at her throat, the hair of the dead intricately plaited behind glass. You had to look closely to see that it was hair at all; it almost looked like a piece of textured fabric. I knew from my lessons that the Victorians had been wild about mourning jewelry, just another way, along with séances, they had tried and failed to reach the dead. Or perhaps they had not failed—Father did not believe in spirits, but how could he know, for sure?

Mother had a mourning locket, passed down to her from her great-grandmother. It was pure gold, designating the loss of her five-year-old son. My parents might as well be dead: the thought sprang into my head, unbidden, and I was ashamed. I was a nasty girl, with nasty thoughts.

Mrs. Holmes noticed me looking and her hand went to her throat. It was easy to see how Mrs. Holmes could have been pretty before she’d lost her figure.

I wondered who she had lost, or if she wore the piece for fashion’s sake. I wondered how she and Mr. Holmes had met. It was camp lore that Mr. Holmes had defected from the North to the South, and though nobody could say for sure why, the wilder speculations involved gambling debts, a lost love (not Mrs. Holmes).

I had thought that we would be allowed to dress in our own clothes for Thanksgiving, but even the Holmes girls wore starched white shirts. Sarabeth was almost old enough to be part of the first-year class, but I doubted she would ever live in a cabin.

I had begun to love the Holmes girls, especially Decca, who loved me back. Sarabeth, who so resembled her mother, had turned pretty to me, her inherited stoutness transformed into a charming plumpness. Rachel, quiet and afraid of the world, I hoped I would teach to be unafraid, at least as far as horses were concerned. And finally, Decca; her path seemed already lit by a charmed light. She was the natural rider of the three girls, which was perhaps why I loved her most.

I was needed suddenly, and I liked the feeling, being needed instead of needing. Decca held out her arm, and I noticed a diamond-and-emerald bracelet clasped around her thin wrist.

“That’s beautiful,” I said, and traced the rectangular emerald baguettes that alternated with sparkling round diamonds. It was much too fine a thing for Decca to be wearing; even Alice Hunt studied the bracelet attentively.

“The girls got into my jewelry this morning,” Mrs. Holmes said. “Decca chose to ornament herself most exquisitely.” She sighed, but not unkindly; the holiday must have put her in good cheer. It occurred to me that Mrs. Holmes had fared better than my mother, at least in terms of jewelry. Mother kept all of her finest jewels in a safe.

Decca beamed. “I’m exquisite!” she shouted, and Sarabeth put her finger to her lips.

The room fell silent, as it always did, but I had never observed so closely how it all worked. Before Mr. Holmes’s knees had straightened, the room was silent.

“Hand,” Decca whispered, when I kept my hands folded at my skirt, oblivious. Apparently the head table held hands.

Mr. Holmes bowed his head, but still his voice projected, deep and melodious. I watched him as best I could with my neck bent. He thanked God for all the normal things: us, health, happiness, and, because of Thanksgiving, the spirit of generosity.

“And please remember those who are not as fortunate as us, in this time of great instability. May God grant them and us mercy.” He stopped, and seemed to want to say something else, but nothing came. A few girls fidgeted. It was hard to hold our attention for very long. “We are not untouched by the tragedies of late. The girls who have had to return home—hold them in your prayers.” He had our attention, now. It had never been said, by him or Mrs. Holmes, that the girls who had left had done so because their fathers could no longer afford tuition. We knew, of course, but not officially. Mrs. Holmes frowned, but the source of her displeasure—her husband’s revelation or the sadness of the lost girls—wasn’t clear, at least not to me.

“Amen,” we chorused. Decca held on to my hand, and smiled up at me. Her two front teeth had a gap between them, only a small space, and though I knew it probably would disappear when she lost her baby teeth, I half hoped it wouldn’t. She tugged on my hand and laughed, inexplicably, before she dropped it. She was always involved in a game, most often played by herself. Children
were
careless and unpredictable, as I had feared, but that was the fun of them.

“What kind of dressing does your mother make?” Sarabeth asked suddenly, as the food was still being served. The subtext was clear: Why are you here, and not there? Sarabeth seemed to have inherited her mother’s shrewdness.

“She doesn’t,” I said.

“Our mother makes corn bread dressing,” Decca said, “for our own Thanksgiving.”

“Take your elbow off the table, Decca,” Mrs. Holmes said.

“Your own Thanksgiving?” I asked.

“Tomorrow,” Mrs. Holmes replied. “The girls have to learn how to cook, how to set a table. They won’t be served all their lives. One would imagine.” She was ladling gravy as she spoke, her eyes darting back and forth from her plate to her girls. Where would all the other girls learn these things, I wondered. I knew how to roll out a passable piecrust, how to clean a chicken; this year, Idella was supposed to teach me how to put up preserves. But I didn’t much care for cooking, or any of the domestic arts.

“Do you eat snakes down in Florida?” Rachel asked. “Alligators?”

I blushed. Eva had told me my blushing was the curse of a redhead, though my hair wasn’t truly red. Close enough, Eva had said.

Mrs. Holmes glared at Rachel. “Rachel,” she said, “that is not an appropriate question for the table.” Rachel nodded. She hadn’t meant to be inappropriate; it was so hard to know, sometimes, what was and what wasn’t.

“That’s fine,” I said, and smiled. “No snakes, but I’ve eaten plenty of crabs. And crawfish.”

“Crayfish,” Mr. Holmes corrected, and winked at the girls. “We have a Southerner on our hands.”

Alice Hunt perked up at this reference, eager, I assumed, to lay claim to the South.

I laughed. “Hardly.” But his daughters were little Southern girls, with their smocked dresses and Southern accents and big bows clipped to their hair.

“You’re from the southernmost state. What else would you be if not a Southerner?”

“I’m a Floridian. And we’re a different breed.”

“Unbound by the rules of society and civilization, a breed apart?”

We were the only people at the table speaking, and I felt, suddenly, as if onstage. I was drawing too much attention to myself. Alice Hunt patted the corners of her mouth with a white linen napkin, so gently.

“I can’t speak for everyone from the state,” I said lightly, but even as I spoke, my voice sounded cold, serious. “But Florida’s a different place. And besides, I don’t think we’re Southern enough for the rest of the South.”

Alice Hunt nodded, and I had a feeling it was the first and last time she would ever agree with me. Mr. Holmes looked at me for a long second. Then Rachel, who hadn’t touched her food, began to cry. Her arms were crossed, and she looked fiercely at her plate. We all gazed at her, stupidly, before Mr. Holmes broke the silence.

“Oh, Rachel,” he murmured.

Then Mrs. Holmes rose. “Come with me, dear.”

After they were gone, the table was quiet. “Rachel’s had a difficult week,” Mr. Holmes said to the table at large, but no one responded. I nodded, and he looked grateful. “She’s quite sensitive.”

Leona found me at the end of the meal, as I slowly made my way out of the dining hall.

“Thea,” she said, and threaded her arm through mine. I looked at her, surprised. “Full moon tonight.” We were descending the stairs now, and I looked up and saw the moon was, indeed, full.

I waited for her to say something else—Isn’t it beautiful, makes me miss home—something to account for her arm through mine, for the anticipation that made her voice almost quiver, which was something Leona’s voice never did. Leona was steely in her stoicism. Her behavior was rare at Yonahlossee, where there was always a girl crying, a girl giggling, a girl flinging her head from side to side in delight or hysteria or some combination.

“The perfect time for a night ride,” she said, and looked at me; her expression was hopeful, and I realized that she hoped I would go with her.

The barn was empty, but we were silent just in case. Mr. Holmes would be disappointed in me if he knew I’d disobeyed the doctor’s orders, but there was little chance he’d come down here tonight. Besides, it was more exciting this way, to pretend we might be caught, to pretend that we risked something tonight; there was so little we ever risked at Yonahlossee. We could fail our classes, smoke in the woods, be insolent to our teachers, and all we would get was a warning. It was only boys that were a true risk to one’s place at Yonahlossee, one’s reputation. For all of Mrs. Holmes’s talk of education, of carving a place for women in this world, the worst thing we could do here was give ourselves away too easily.

Leona and I tiptoed, did not let the hard soles of our boots meet the ground, though there was no one to hear except the horses—who all watched us curiously, eyes wide, ears tipped forward, their necks pressed against their stall doors. I slipped Naari’s bit into her mouth and led her to the front of the barn; she whuffed into my shoulder, nervously, and I murmured soothingly. She was a ball of energy, and after I mounted she danced beneath me like some sort of overgrown sprite, clumsily, her hooves knocking against each other. She was out of practice, too.

Leona led on a trail wide enough for only one horse. Though Naari didn’t like it, kept trying to pull ahead of King, I held her back, slid the bit over her tongue, shifted my weight to keep her attention.

We rode on the trail briefly before we came to a large clearing, where we both let our horses go without speaking, stood up in our stirrups and let them fly beneath us. I was so close to Leona our boots brushed; this was how horses raced, neck and neck. The moon was an orb above us, lighting our way; for a while, there wasn’t an ending to this, just the blank space of the field for as far as I could see. I gave Naari her head and felt the stinging cold in my ears, the warmth of my calves where they touched Naari’s barrel. My hair, which I had not had a chance to braid, whipped my cheeks. I could do this forever, was how I felt; and what else is there to say about galloping? A feeling so close to fear. One misstep and Naari might break a leg, and I would certainly fall, hurtled to the ground with astounding velocity.