Elaine Wolf: Camp

“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:

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.”

“Just a sec,” Erin said, then whispered to me, “I think I know what Rory’s up to, and it could be even worse if the boys think you’re flirting with them. So just tell Rory you met them, the kitchen boys: Andy and Jed.”

“Andy and Jed?”

“Right.” Erin’s pitcher clanked the metal pass-through. “I gotta go before Rory sees me.”

I repeated the names to myself: Andy and Jed. Andy and Jed. What did Erin mean about flirting with them and making things worse? Something to do with my initiation? And that’s when I knew what Rory had done: She had turned the job wheel to stick me with dining hall duty.

She started in as soon as I returned to our table. “You met them, right? The kitchen boys?”

Her question sent a tingle up my back. I eked out a measly “Uh-huh.”

“What’d you say?”

“Rory!” Patsy squared her shoulders. “I don’t like your tone of voice. We’re family for the summer, and I expect us to act like one.”

Rory looked from Patsy to me. “Why that’s exactly what I’m doing, Patsy. Treating old Amy here like family. Isn’t that right, girls?”

“Now you heard what I said, Rory, and I mean it. I don’t appreciate that tone, and I’ll bet your mama and daddy’d be real disappointed to hear you talk like that.”