Girl Unwrapped (11 page)

Julius sighs and tugs at his goatee. And then comes that soft, dry, helpless click produced at the back of his throat when he swallows, a sound that’s like a tickle in the small of her back where she can’t reach and that makes her want to jump out of her skin and makes the desire to kick him almost irresistible. She can’t, of course, because he’s delicate, her papa, he wouldn’t fight back, he’d run away, and it’s been such a long time since he’s sat at the edge of her bed like this. And she doesn’t want her papa to leave.

“I once thought exactly as you do,” he says at last. “I considered myself a citizen of the world. Vienna was a cosmopolitan city. I read English papers, listened to Italian opera, drank French wine, went to a nightclub where good Austrian citizens applauded Yiddish wit.”

He draws himself up as he speaks, his voice swells with the rhythm of his story, speaking to her equal-to-equal, instantly erasing that volcano of irritation within her that was about to erupt. Suddenly she’s full of wonder at that younger man she glimpses: clever, carefree, and at ease in a place of mystery called a nightclub.

“I voted for the socialists who promised that all mankind would be as one if only the filthy capitalists could be toppled from power. And then, one day, there were no more filthy capitalists. Only filthy Jews. No. No. I know what you want to say. You are thinking: ‘This is so negative. Why must we allow others to define us?’”

He holds a raised palm in the air, as if to stop her in mid-protest, though no such objection has occurred to her.

“And you are right, in principle. But the world does not operate in principle. In the end, you cannot choose whether to be Jewish or not. You can only choose
how
you will be Jewish. Those ordinary Canadians you mention, they have their Christmas trees and their churches and their Thanksgiving dinners. Everyone belongs to a tribe of some sort. Like it or not, and I don’t, that is human nature. When the Nazis ordered the Jews of Germany to wear the yellow Star of David, one of our leaders said, ‘Wear the yellow star with pride.’ A bit quixotic, no? To make a mark of shame into a badge of honour? Not very effective. But noble, nonetheless.”

Julius smiles broadly so that the gold tooth at the back of his mouth winks at Toni.

“When the day comes that race and nationality are meaningless everywhere in the world, then you can choose to be nothing in particular. In the meantime, you can’t throw away your Jewishness like an old coat. First of all, as I have explained, the
goyim
won’t let you. But more important, you must be proud of who you are for your own sake. You must not renounce your people. To do so is to live without honour. It is to lose your soul, as your mother says.”

He cradles his chin and looks down at her gravely, the evening light reflecting off his glasses and the taut skin of his bald head. She tries to fathom this old-fashioned word, “honour.” She rather likes the grand sound of it and how her father suddenly appears to her a bit like Yul Brynner in
The King and I
. At the same time, the unfairness of what he has said sinks in.
You cannot choose.
Isn’t that always what grownups say?

And so, her fate is sealed. Toni allows herself to be dragged by her mother to buy new shorts, T-shirts, a bathing suit, and a plain white bathing cap (she will
not
wear the one covered with yellow rubber daisies) for summer camp.

According to the brochure, the word “
tikvah
” means “hope” in Hebrew. The camp’s name echoes the title of the Israeli national anthem, “Hatikvah.” Toni feels anything but hopeful as the date for her departure approaches. Her gut churns with grim foreboding.

chapter 8

Their new names are Angela and Sharon. They’ve developed into teenage goddesses, the kind that gaze out of magazines, perky and bright, yet with a glitter of insolence that seems to say, “Go ahead and stare. We’re used to it.”

They set the pace among the girls of Cabin Eleven, determining when it’s time to get up and go, whether it will be a pedal-pushers or a Bermuda shorts sort of day, whether a boy’s joke is hilarious or deserves just a weary smirk. They are the sun around which the others spin, even their counsellor, Lorna, who is just a couple of years older than the rest and has squinty eyes and a residue of yellow where she’s dyed the fuzz on her upper lip. When Lorna gives an order, all eyes turn to Angela and Sharon to see how they’ll respond.

Toni knew from the moment she laid eyes on them on the first day of camp that’s how it would be. Everyone stood outside the bunkhouse, waiting for the trunks to arrive, and introduced themselves. There was Deena, a cute, pixie-faced girl with a breathless manner; Faye from Cape Breton—a place none of the others had heard of—speaking in a strange accent and wearing braces and a good-natured smile; heavyset Marion, blotchy red under the afternoon sun, but with pretty forget-me-not blue eyes. They offered eager or bashful grins as they spoke their names and looked appealingly around the circle. When it was Toni’s turn, she kept her eyes neutral, her back stiff. Her name came out gruffly, a crow’s hoarse croak. Angela and Sharon registered no surprise. Their glances flicked over her, cool and bland. Speaking to the others out loud, they said, laughing, “You can tell us apart by our rings,” and presented their soft, golden hands to be admired. While Toni remained aloof on the sidelines, the others twittered and crowded around, in awe of the thick signet rings each of the twins displayed on the middle finger of her left hand. Going-steady rings—one with an onyx stone, the other with the McGill crest—proof of college boyfriends back home.

“Don’t worry if you mix us up,” they said graciously. “We’re used to it.”

Toni remembered how they used to live next door on her street and how, egged on by her buddy Arnold, she used to throw dirt at them when they passed by. She remembered their hoity-toity airs.
Assie and
Shittie
. The kindergarten insult floated into Toni’s mind to mock her, not them. They no longer dressed identically or wore the same hairdos (Angela had a bouncy, shoulder-length flip, Sharon’s was slightly shorter and turned under). Still, they were a picture of mirror-image loveliness. They both had well-cultivated tans, as if they’d worked on themselves with sun reflectors before coming to camp. Pearly pink nail polish winked from their toes. Maybe it would have been better to admit she recognized her old enemies, but the opportunity passed, and then it was too late. She was trapped by her own falseness. The twins exchanged a look. They telegraphed some kind of understanding between them.
We know you
, their pitying smiles said,
we know you
know us, but if you want to pretend otherwise for some twisted reason,
that’s your business.

Now Toni hears the twins chatter a few feet away as the entire camp assembles in a giant “U” around the flagpole, the oldest groups along the sides, the youngest in the middle, for the morning routine: roll call, pep talks, exercises, anthems. Kids shuffle into place on the grassy slope above the lake and turn to face uphill where Myron, the camp director, stands at attention, beaming down on them. He’s a swarthy, thickset man, barrel-chested, with gleaming white teeth beneath a toothbrush moustache. He generally looks like a jolly uncle, except when the sarcastic edge creeps into his smile. He raises his hand for
sheket
, silence, and the counsellors all shush their charges. Angela and Sharon lower their voices but continue with their business of sorting out the guys—who’s cute, who’s a drip, who’s merely so-so. What does it matter, since they already have boyfriends to whom they write letters sealed with big, pink lipstick smears on the back flap? It matters. Their voices hiss with urgency. They deliver judgements with confident authority. They ignore Lorna’s feeble attempts to hush them up.

Myron launches into a speech about Camp Tikvah’s goals—sound minds in sound bodies, Jewish identity, love of the struggling, heroic, new-born state of Israel—as his voice grows husky, his barrel chest swells, and his face gleams with the perspiration of earnest effort. How dearly he wants his campers, his 120 “Tikvah-maniacs,” to understand the importance of Israel, far away in miles but close to our hearts. Imagine, he implores, that they are in two places simultaneously. They are here at this beautiful spot on Lac Sainte-Cecile in the Laurentian mountains, surrounded on all sides by spruce and poplar forests, but they are also in the ancestral Promised Land. Look beyond the Canadian bush to another landscape of orange groves, sand dunes, ancient hills. Admire the pioneers with sun-bitten faces, work-hardened hands, the modern-day Davids and Sampsons who carry rifles on their shoulders and books of poetry in their hands. Remember the great ones of history—Moses, King Solomon, the Maccabees, Theodor Herzl, Ben Gurion. Think of the countless other heroes, the kibbutzniks, the citizen soldiers, male and female, and even the children, the bold, miraculous new generation.

“Him? He’s got tits. Didn’t you notice at swimming? And Hank? Oh, Hanky Panky? He’s O.S.I.”

A burst of giggles sweeps through the row of Cabin Eleven girls. Toni does what she’s been trying not to do; she leans over to look at the twins, as if looking will tell her what O.S.I. means. The twins clutch their stomachs and slap their thighs and catch her watching, and their grins turn doubly wicked.
We know you don’t know, and we’re not telling.

A stiff breeze flaps the flags, Canadian and Israeli, on top of the pole, and the loose ends of the ropes ching-ching against the metal. Grey clouds scud across the sky. Beneath the grassy slope on which the assembly stands lies the lake, ruffled and purple and cold looking. All around the lake, the forest crowds up against the shore, the trees seeming to huddle together as if they too have goosebumps from the chill morning air. Toni shivers. She can’t swim. She will never learn to swim. She ventured into the lake up to her knees, hugging herself, while Hank, the waterfront captain, tried to coax her to at least dunk her face in. When she did, water leapt up her nose and down her throat.

“Your head is like a coconut. It floats,” he assured her. His hand strayed over the hard packed muscles of his chest as if he loved the feel of himself, couldn’t resist it. Dreamboat Hank. The whistle that dangled from his neck was shaped like a miniature pistol. Little kids half her size walloped the water around her, while in the deep end of the roped-off swimming area, all her bunkmates swam laps, arms churning, pink heels flashing. Rooted to the spot, her toes clinging to the muddy lake bottom, she cringed whenever she got splashed, and trembled with self-loathing.

It’s time for the pledge. One-hundred-and-twenty campers and counsellors put their right hands on their hearts, raise the other in the air and chant, first in Hebrew, then in English: “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth.”

One half of the “U” lags behind the other in the slow, mournful chant, so there’s an echo at the end of every line and then another hollow murmur, ghostly and mocking, that seems to come from the lake. Toni pretends to chant along, but she doesn’t know the Hebrew and, even during the English part, her voice remains frozen in her throat.

Myron likes to end the morning assembly with a show of camp spirit in the form of a cheer. Nothing is as important as spirit, which means frantic happiness, and unabashed, shrieking, frenzied enthusiasm bursting forth from every mouth. Their cheer comes from the Bible, from the phrase Moses used to urge Joshua into battle:
chazak
v’amatz
, be brave and strong. Myron calls out the first word and they all answer with the second.

“Can’t hear you,” Myron bellows, cupping his hand around his ear.

One-hundred-and-twenty Tikvah-maniacs yell out the response.

“Louder!”

Kids bend their knees, put their hands to their heads, scream with every ounce of their lungs. The girls of Toni’s group join in, Angela and Sharon shout with savage glee, everyone howls like escapees from the Verdun Asylum, but it’s Toni who’s the weird one. She stands woodenly, with lips pressed together. She lacks what it takes to cheer her head off.

When the assembly dissolves, the girls of Cabin Eleven, all except Toni, form a chorus line, arms draped over shoulders, and march down the hill toward the dining hall singing: “I go to Camp Tikvah, O pity me, There ain’t a damn man in the vicinity.”

Some of the boys of Cabin Twelve lean over the rails of the dining hall veranda and hoot about the cleavage they pretend they can see. Toni lingers behind, having sloughed off Lorna’s attempts to force her in with the group. You’re supposed to sparkle, bump hips together. You’re supposed to be like Alka Seltzer fizzing in a glass. That’s how it’s done when you’re normal.

Dear Diary,
It’s the second week of camp: forty-two days, 1,008 hours, 60,480
minutes of Hellfire to go.

During after-lunch rest period, while the other girls sprawl on their beds with magazines, letters, and toe-nail polish, and a drowsy heat fills the cabin, Toni goes over her lists:

The things I hate:

1)
No privacy
.
I have to hide under the blankets to get dressed
and undressed. There’s just a thin piece of plywood between the
toilet and the rest of the cabin and nothing at all around the sink
area so everyone sees everything. If I have a pimple or that morning
gunk in the corner of my eyes, they all can see me looking at
my icky stuff in the mirror.

2)
The annoying routine
.
We’re up at 6:30, with Myron singing a
peppy song over the loudspeaker. Assembly, breakfast, Period 1,
Period 2, Period 3, etc., until lights out.

3)
The endless togetherness
.
I’m not allowed to wander off by
myself. When I try to escape group activities, Lorna hunts me
down and herds me back, making “tsk-tsk” sounds.

4)
The requirement to be smiley.
If I don’t have a grin plastered
on my face like everyone else, some counsellor gives me a phony
friendly hug and yammers something cheerful in my ear.