Elaine Wolf - Camp

Rory and I had played our own version of hide-and-seek, I saw then. Like my mother, Rory stole my voice, then forced me to find it. Well, la-de-da. Am I right or am I right? One, two, three. Yes indeedy. Little Charlie-boy could be Robin’s brother. Four, five, six. Catch my drift, Amy Becker? Seven, eight, nine, ten. Almost home. Ready or not, here I come.

“Welcome home,” my father cried when we pulled into the driveway. “I’ll bring your bag up for you.”

“Amy can manage herself,” my mother said. “She might want a little privacy.”

Since when was she concerned about my privacy? Hers, yes. Her secrets, her whole other life. But mine? It’s not my privacy she’s worried about, I thought. It’s what I might say to my father if she leaves us alone.

But I had decided not to tell Dad about my mother and Uncle Ed. Why hurt my father when the enemy was my mother? Yet I should have told him about those secrets Robin had shared. The lava was already flowing. I should have asked for help.

“You get organized, and I’ll be up soon,” Dad called as I climbed the stairs, Charlie behind me.

“I’ll see you in a minute, buddy,” I said when I opened my door. Something cold and hard settled in my chest as I took in my room. I fingered the Russian dolls on my dresser, stopping at the next-to-the-smallest one. It cracked open with barely a touch, revealing that tiniest doll I had left trapped inside. I cradled the baby in my palm, amazed at the ease with which it had tumbled out, then lined it up with the others. I kicked off my shoes and plunged to my bed, where I snuggled with Puppy. “I’m home,” I whispered to my oldest stuffed animal. Home, where I would learn the truth about my mother. Home, where I would get Charlie to trust me again. We had time before the beginning of school. A whole week to build with his blocks, to kick a ball around the backyard, to go for ice cream at night—if my father would take us; if my mother would let him. Two items on my imaginary clipboard: find my mother’s past and right my brother’s present. I would check them off, I believed, starting now.

I padded into Charlie’s room in my stocking feet. He sat cross-legged on the floor, a rectangular block in his hand. “Look what I have.” I held out the trophy as an offering. He glanced at me, then lowered his head. “I won this for you, buddy. Want it on your shelf?”

No show of excitement. Not a flapping of arms. I curled next to Charlie and placed the trophy in front of him. “Look, buddy. I won it playing tennis. So why don’t we build a fort and put the trophy inside? We’ve still got a while till Mom calls us for supper.”

Charlie fingered my gift: a golden girl, racquet skyward, ready to serve. She stands on a wooden base, a plaque glued to its front. Camp Takawanda for Girls. Senior Champion. 1963. “It’s for you,” I said again. I placed my hand gently on his head and waited a moment before tousling his hair. “A tennis trophy.”

Charlie picked it up as if it were a jewel. “Amy. Tennis,” he whispered.

I choked back tears. “That’s right. I played tennis at camp. And now I’m home.” I pulled my brother close in a promise I would be there for him always.

The next morning, Charlie hugged me when the minibus came. “Only three more days of summer school, buddy. Then we’ll have a whole week together.”

With Charlie off to school and my father at the office, my mother and I worked at avoiding each other. I hid in my room, where memories played in my mind: the initiation; Rory at the ice cream party; Andy at the social, on visiting day, at my tennis match; Uncle Ed and Patsy.

I listened for footsteps before I came downstairs to make myself something for lunch. Let Mom be doing laundry , I prayed. Let her be in the basement. We had barely spoken since I’d gotten home. Better not to say anything, I decided, until I knew as much as Robin.

On the camp bus, I had figured out how to get what I needed. If my mother had a secret family, there’d be proof: photos, letters, birth certificates maybe. And if those clues existed, I knew just where I would find them.

Alone at the kitchen table, I thought again about what my cousin had said. A husband in Germany. Another daughter. How was that possible?

My mother carried up the laundry basket as I finished my sandwich. “Find everything you need?” she asked.

Not yet, but I will , I vowed to myself as I grunted a “Yeah.”

Later that afternoon, my mother announced she was going marketing. “Take your time,” I told her. “I’ll look out for Charlie.”

“The summer driver’s not as good as the regular one,” my mother reminded me. “Sometimes he pulls away before I get to the curb.”

“Don’t worry.” I tried to smooth the edge in my voice. “I’ll be out there.”

From my bedroom window, I watched the Impala roll down the driveway, then forced myself to wait. I had to make sure my mother wouldn’t come back in for a coupon she might have forgotten or to count the eggs in the refrigerator. Sitting on my bed, I listened to the hum of the house and thought about what Erin might be doing. Probably shopping with her mother, buying school clothes, I assumed. They would stop at a coffee shop on their way home, order pie à la mode, and laugh about something Erin said or a silly TV show her mother had seen. Erin would go on about the last half of camp while eating all the ice cream off her pie. Then Mrs. Hollander would spoon over some of hers.

I checked my clock, the same one that had awakened me the morning I left for camp. My mother had been gone more than five minutes. It was safe now. Time to find out who she was.

I crept downstairs to my parents’ room. My mother’s closet door groaned when I opened it. I pulled the chain to turn on the light. It shone on a lineup of shoes: brown high heels and navy pumps; black patent leather and tan sandals; the white flats my mother had worn on visiting day. Each perfectly positioned, toes and heels aligned. A sentry of shoes guarding her metal box. I moved them aside, careful to memorize where each pair belonged—slippers next to moccasins I had never seen; red pumps next to gray ones.

Kneeling beneath her dresses, I smelled my mother’s floral cologne as if she had sneaked in beside me. I grabbed the box by its handles and tried to drag it out. Then wrapping my arms around its cool metal sides, I tugged hard at my mother’s fortress, harder and harder until the box inched forward.

How much time did I have? Forty-five minutes until Charlie’s bus. If my mother hurried at the market, she could be back by then. My heart jumped in my chest. I opened the lid.

A hodgepodge of papers. No file folders or big clasp envelopes. I couldn’t pull everything out. How would I get it back in right? Sitting cross-legged on the beige carpeted floor in front of my mother’s closet, I thumbed through Charlie’s progress reports—in order from preschool through last year—a note from his speech therapist, a letter from one of his teachers. Not jumbled at all, I noticed. A perfect system. His birth certificate had to be there. I found it in front of Charlie’s school papers. Name of father: Louis S. Becker. I forced all the air from my lungs. Good, not Uncle Ed. But my mother could have lied, I realized. She would have, probably, if Uncle Ed was actually Charlie’s father. I’d have to find out some other way, some other time.