Camp (5 page)

Boys on the Brain

M
y first letter from camp set the pattern for the start of that summer. The big lie: Camp is great. If I had told the truth, my mother would have said it was my fault, and my father would have felt guilty for sending me.

The letter wasn’t all lies: Camp
was
beautiful, the land having been tamed only where necessary for buildings, sports areas, and meeting places. I noticed the trees, their clean scent of pine, the moment we went through the gates. Girls belted out
We’re here because we’re here because we’re here because we’re here
as the bus rolled past the gatehouse and down a long pine-needled path to the recreation hall, where Uncle Ed and Pee-Wee Bassen, the athletic director, welcomed us with cabin assignments and lemonade. Uncle Ed winked at me when I lifted the icy pitcher. I shuddered, picturing how he always acted with my mother and remembering how he often reminded us that my father went to City College while he got to party and play ball at Penn State.

Aunt Helen hardly greeted him at the rec hall, but Robin made up for it, hugging her father as if it had been years since she’d seen him. “I promised my daughter here, Robin, a great summer,” Uncle Ed said when he introduced himself. “And I know you’ll all make that happen.”

Pee-Wee led us to senior camp. With her squat body and slapdash haircut, she looked like someone who had always been chosen first for a sports team and last at a dance. “When you get to your cabins, ladies, start getting organized,” she said. “No lollygagging now. And as soon as all the campers are in, we’ll ring the dinner bell. So let’s go, Takawanda!” The girls took up the cheer:

Takawanda, Takawanda. We’re the best.

Takawanda, Takawanda. Beats the rest.

Go, Takawanda!

We marched ahead. I looked for Erin. She walked with a group at the front of the pack while I straggled near the back.

I glanced around to get a sense of where I was. Athletic fields, tennis and basketball courts, blacktop areas for volleyball and badminton. I noticed a perfectly mowed spot with a flagpole in the middle. We passed what I later learned was junior camp, its clean white cabins clustered on two sides of a meadow. The path on which we walked grew wider as we approached the dining hall, built lakeside as if whoever designed Takawanda had started with that structure, choosing the best site for mealtimes.

I followed the girls along the water’s edge, on a moist earthen trail sprinkled with pine cones. The path took us to senior camp, where six brown cabins with peeling green shutters sat in a clearing. Girls dropped arms from around each other’s waists and raced for their summer homes.

I found Bunk 9, angled next to Bunk 10 as if these two cabins had been an afterthought, tacked up on the last spit of cleared land. Patsy held the door for me. “Well, let’s see now.” She dazzled me with her platinum blond hair. Not exactly my image of a camp counselor, this Marilyn Monroe look-alike with a thousand-watt smile. “You must be Amy. It’s right nice to meet ya.”

I set my bag on the only unclaimed bed, next to Donnie’s, at the far end of the cabin, and looked around the room I had silenced with my entrance. Six beds in a row with the counselor’s against the opposite wall; trunks all over the floor; and pine walls graffitied with reminders of past summers: liz was here, 1951. alice, 1957. betty and connie, friends forever, ’60. A construction paper job wheel, posted by the door, showed our names on an inner circle, our chores on an outer: bathroom; first sweep; second sweep; clothesline; trash; dining hall. While Rory was in the bathroom, Donnie told me that the names rotate each week, giving us at least one turn at every job. I found my name lined up with “dining hall.”

“I’ll make sure you meet the kitchen boys, Amy,” Rory said at dinner that first night. We sat in the rear of the dining hall, Patsy at the head of our table with me to her left, next to Donnie.

“Yes indeedy. The kitchen boys,” Rory announced, clapping Jessica on the back. “But first, more cake!”

Everyone took seconds. Everyone but me.

If they serve sweets, don’t eat too many.
I heard my mother as if she had squeezed between Donnie and me. Hundreds of miles away, and her voice played in my head. I tried to shut her off.

“More cake!” Rory said again. “Enjoy it now, ’cause after tonight, seconds’ll be hard to come by. Yes indeedy. Just ’cause Mr. Becker’s real good-lookin’ doesn’t mean he won’t be stingy to the bone like that last guy who ran this place.”

“Rory!” Patsy’s voice drew us to attention.

“What? It’s true. The less he feeds us, the less it costs him. Simple as that. Or were you maybe jumping at the good-lookin’ part, Patsy?”

“That’s enough now. Mr. Becker’s a right nice man, and I won’t have you talkin’ ’bout him that way. And he’s family to Amy. So just watch what you say now. Ya hear?”

“Sure ’nough, Patsy. Anything to he’p Amy.”

Giggles rose as if Rory had told a joke in a code only I couldn’t break. Why did she keep poking fun at Patsy’s accent? I loved my counselor’s drawl and the way she tried to protect me.

The laughter continued until Donnie asked for thirds on dessert. Rory took the serving plate and scraped her index finger in the extra icing before passing the platter. She licked off the chocolate, her tongue circling her finger in slow, deliberate fashion. Snickers erupted again, full force.

“Don’t you think that’s funny, Amy?” Rory asked.

I studied my half-eaten piece of cake, my first and only piece. I didn’t understand the laughter, and I didn’t know what I was supposed to say.

“Watch again,” Rory instructed.

I looked at her, across the table, as she circled her tongue about her finger, then puckered her lips around it and sucked.

“Enough, Rory!” Patsy tried to stop her, but Rory revved up. Her mouth pumped her finger. In and out, in and out. Faster, faster, faster until her hand finally dropped, limp in her lap. “Practice for better things,” Rory said. “Catch my drift, Amy?”

“That’s all now!” Patsy said. “I mean it! I won’t have any of that at my table or in my cabin. Ya hear?”

Rory rolled her eyes. “Aw, come on, Patsy. With a body like yours, why I’d guess you’ve had lots of practice on the real thing.”

Jessica giggled. The rest of us stayed silent. The thought of what Rory might be talking about put worms in my stomach.

Patsy glared at Rory. “Just whatever are you fixin’ to say?”

Rory didn’t back down. “You know darn well what I’m
fixin’ to say.”

Her mockery zipped a chill up my spine. I wondered how Rory had gotten so mean. Was intimidation a skill she had mastered, like playing the piano or swimming? “Practice makes perfect,” my mother had said when I learned to swim my first summer at day camp. I shuddered at the thought that Rory might spend this summer practicing on me.

“Seems you’ve got boys on the brain, Rory,” Patsy said. “But that’s not what camp’s about.” Patsy pushed back from the table to get a cup of coffee from the “Counselors Only” urn on the side of the dining hall.

I tried to keep down the chocolate that rose in my throat.

“So, Amy Becker,” Rory said, “I’ll show you how we handle clean up around here since I do believe you’re on dining hall duty this week.” Rory chuckled as she motioned to the front of the room, where two metal pass-throughs in the pine-paneled wall opened into the kitchen. “See those two spaces?"

I nodded.

“Okay then. That place on the right’s where the food comes out. Starting tomorrow, you’ll have to bring it to the table. Not like tonight, when everything was already here.” Rory dropped a chocolate-covered fork onto our tray and pointed again to the front of the dining hall, showing off long fingernails, painted a shimmery pink. Like cousin Robin—all dolled up even at camp, as if appearance might buy happiness here. As if big hair and nail polish were coins of friendship. As if my mother were on to something with the way she always put herself together. Was it only this morning she stood out in her navy dress, so different from the other mothers?

“And that window on the left’s where the dirty dishes go,” Rory continued. “That’s where the kitchen boys will be.” She grinned like the cat in
Alice in Wonderland.
“Are you listening to me, Amy?”

“Come on, Rory,” Donnie said as she stripped the last smidgen of chocolate from her plate and put her dish on the tray. “Ease up on her, okay?”

Rory ignored her. “Let’s do it, Amy Becker. Follow me.”

What would happen if I said no, that I was perfectly capable of bringing the tray up by myself? Would Rory get angry? Would she be even meaner than she already was?

I picked up the tray and trailed Rory through the dining hall. We passed Bunk 10’s table, where Robin giggled with the girls as if this were her fifth Takawanda summer. Past Erin, who didn’t look up, even when my elbow knocked her chair. I followed Rory past other senior campers, who caught the song my bunkmates started. Past the juniors, who meshed their voices as if they were singing with one mouth:

So high, I can’t get over it.

So low, I can’t get under it.

So wide, I can’t get around it.

Oh, rock-a my soul.

We walked past the sophomores and freshmen, heads drooping with fatigue. I followed Rory like a dutiful puppy.

She spoke again as we approached the owner’s table, where Uncle Ed and Aunt Helen sat with Nancy and Pee-Wee and the camp nurse. “Now, Amy,” Rory said, “make sure you introduce yourself to the kitchen boys. I’ll see you back at our table after you’ve met them. Got it?”

I nodded.

“What’s the matter? Cat got your tongue?”

“No,” I answered, my voice barely audible.

Before she disappeared, Rory nudged me toward the line forming at the front of the dining hall: freshmen and sophomore counselors with leftovers and nearly clean dishes; junior campers in pairs, hauling plates and glasses splashed with bug juice (“Bug juice,” Jessica had corrected me when I asked her to please pass the punch. “It’s called bug juice. Not punch.”); and seniors who scooted around me, eager to deposit their trays and escape the new girl they weren’t supposed to talk to.

“Hey, little lady.” The blackest face I had ever seen framed itself in the pass-through as I unloaded silverware. “I’ve been around long enough to spot a pretty new girl when I see one. Welcome to Takawanda.”

I smiled at his velvety voice. “Thanks.”

“The name’s Clarence. Been running this kitchen since before you were born.”

I started to introduce myself as a throat cleared behind me. I turned to face Erin, holding a pitcher. “Hey, Amy,” she said with a smile.

“Hi!” My voice sounded as if it had been caged.

“I knew Rory’d make you do this. God, I hate her.”

“Let’s go, ladies.” Pee-Wee bussed leftovers from the owner’s table. “No lollygagging now.”