The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls by Anton DiSclafani Page A

home, Mother had been angry, Father mainly mute, as if there was nothing to be said. They blamed me. And so I came to Yonahlossee a person worthy of blame.

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    M ost of the time, my home was very quiet, and my life was constant in the way of happy childhoods. Mother took Sam and me to Orlando once in the winter and once in the summer, where we shopped and dined in a restaurant, perhaps saw a picture, spent the night in a hotel. These excursions were exciting, though I hated to miss a ride, but they, too, were part of our custom.
    Sam and I accompanied Mother to town once a month and trailed her from store to store while she ran errands. People knew us; she was the doctor’s wife, and we were the doctor’s children. Mother was charming in the stores as she told little stories, said funny things while she fingered plain fabrics we would never buy—we bought our clothes in Orlando or from catalogues—and placed orders.
    Mother thought gossip was vile. So she did not ever say that the other people in Emathla were beneath us. But we knew anyway. Now I understand that my mother’s status was complicated; my father was a country doctor, there was no other woman who occupied the same position as she did. In Gainesville, where there were other physicians, and lawyers, like my uncle, perhaps Mother would have had friends. But what Mother wanted, truly wanted, was, and always would be, a mystery to me. It does not seem possible that a woman so charming and beautiful could find her life’s happiness with three people: me, Sam, my father. And once every few weeks, my aunt and uncle and cousin.
    But back then I did not ponder my mother’s happiness. I was a child. I just wanted the drive to end, so I could get to Sasi.
    I rode him once a day, sometimes twice. I never skipped a day. If I was sick, I rode; if it rained, I rode. I spent hours and hours in the barn each day, but only sat in the saddle for a small fraction of that time. The rest of the time was devoted to chores, but they weren’t chores to me, couldn’t possibly be placed in the same category as weeding Mother’s garden with Sam, or helping Idella polish our infinite collection of silver. I cleaned my bridle daily, my saddle weekly; curried Sasi’s coat until it shone. Carved the packed dirt from his hooves and squirted iodine onto his tender frog to prevent thrush. I picked manure and spread fresh hay in his stall, changed his water and fed him a mix of sweet feed and oats at eight in the morning, a lighter meal of grain at four in the afternoon. I did these things every day; I took pleasure in them. No one had to remind me.
    Mother rode, in her youth. Sidesaddle, which she said she didn’t mind, which I’d tried once or twice and hated. Sasi would not take a single step without my asking first. And sidesaddle, one leg hooked over the saddle, rendered me powerless.
    Sam could often be found with me at the barn, especially in the afternoons. He didn’t ride, but he liked Sasi, and he would arrange courses for us that included elaborate combinations, exact distances between jumps. The trick was turning Sam on to a task; after that he was fully engrossed, a dog with a bone. He would time us and record in his notebook our numbers and how many jumps we had knocked over. And beside that he would write a number, one through ten—his own ranking of how well we had done.
    And sometimes, though we weren’t supposed to do this, because Mother didn’t think it was safe, I would bring Sasi out back and take his saddle off, and convince Sam to sit behind me. I loved riding bareback, though it was painful, less the padding of the saddle: but that was the beauty of it, too—nothing between me and Sasi, like the Indians rode. I could feel every twitch of his muscles, every slight hesitation or surge of interest. Sasi did not think—he simply acted. And in order to ride well, you had to stop yourself from thinking, had to act on instinct alone, and this was something