Elaine Wolf: Camp

“Well, it’s a good thing we’re not betting then. ’Cause you don’t know squat about my family. Why, my mama and daddy ’d feel right at home with this kind of talk.”

Nancy ended their battle when she stood in the front of the dining hall to lead the Takawanda welcome:

Even Rory sang out. She looked right at me while I prayed she would drown in the lake.

Iforced myself to smile the next day at lunch when Rory asked, “What did the elephant say to the naked man?” She answered her own riddle: “How do you eat with that thing?” I laughed even though I didn’t get it then. I laughed even when Patsy said, “Now stop it, all of you. I thought we had an understanding, Rory. No more of that talk, and I don’t care if your mama and daddy’d think it’s okay. It’s not, and I won’t have it at this table or in our cabin. Is that clear?”

“Why perfectly, ma’am,” Rory answered, like a lady who had never heard a dirty joke.

“Let’s go!” Rory ordered during our first rest hour. She spoke from the foot of Donnie’s bed, not ten minutes into our letter-writing session. “Meeting with Bunk 10. Nature hut. Remember?”

“Give us a break,” Donnie answered, sitting cross-legged on her Hudson Bay blanket, the blanket all my bunkmates had, the only item on the camp list—other than new sneakers—my mother had refused to buy. Why spend money for a fancy blanket with stripes when we could buy a plain green one on sale? “Ease up, Rory,” Donnie kept on. “I’m writing to my folks.”

“Not anymore you’re not.” Rory ripped the paper off Donnie’s pad.

“Give it back. Come on. I want to get this letter done.”

“Well, la-de-da. Like it matters what you say to your parents. Like they’ll really read your dumb letter.”

Donnie stood up. “Look, I’m sorry if you have trouble with your folks, Rory, but—”

“Shut up! Don’t you dare say that again.” Rory balled up Donnie’s letter and took a long shot toward the trash can at the front of the cabin.

Donnie crawled back onto her bed. She opened her writing pad and chewed on her pen.

I peeked at Rory, holding her ground at the foot of Donnie’s bed, stretching her arms and studying her shiny pink nails as she spoke. “If you’re thinking of starting another letter, don’t bother. We haven’t got time for that nonsense.”

“But we need meal tickets,” Jessica piped up.

Rory strolled toward her own bed, next to Jessica’s. She flicked Fran and Karen on their legs as she passed. “Patsy won’t know to check our mail, her being new and all. And we’re certainly not gonna waste senior rest hour privileges sitting in the cabin waiting for our counselor to keep us in line. So just stuff a blank sheet in an envelope and address it home. It’s meeting time, girls. Jess, Fran, Karen, Donnie, let’s go!”

I kept writing, pretending not to listen. Meeting time for everyone but me. Time to plan my initiation, no doubt.

The screen door creaked when Rory opened it, then slapped shut behind the girls as they dropped blank pages onto Patsy’s bed and went out. Donnie was the last to leave. At the door, she glanced back and shrugged her shoulders.

Would Robin meet with them? Would Erin? Alone in the cabin, I looked through the screen, where a window pane should have been, out at the senior camp tetherball, at bathing suits slung over clotheslines, at the door to Erin’s cabin. Loneliness clumped in my chest.

Patsy breezed in while I was still working on my letter to Charlie. “Well, hey there, Amy,” she said just as I wrote about the great time I was having with all my new friends. “What’re you doin’ all alone in here, gal?”

I wanted to tell Patsy about Rory and the meal tickets. About the meeting in the nature hut, that the girls were planning to do something awful to me. I wanted to tell Patsy I was sorry I had laughed at lunch, that I didn’t even understand Rory’s riddle. Yet before I could say anything, the knot in my chest loosened, releasing tears.

I let Patsy hold me the way I imagined a mother would comfort a child who had gotten picked on at recess. I took a long breath, filling my nose with the smell of Noxema. It hung in the air from the night before, when Rory and Jessica had coated their faces with cream and reminded us that “our first social, with the Saginaw boys, will be here before you know it.”

Patsy hugged me tight. “I don’t know what in tarnation those gals have done,” she said, her accent as embracing as her arms, “but I want you to know that I, for one, am right glad you’re here.”

I had to tell her about the initiation. This would be the time—maybe the only time—to ask her to protect me. I sighed as Patsy eased her grip. She held me at arm’s length.

“Thanks, Patsy. I’m…well, I’m glad you’re here too. And there’s something—”

“Now I know what you’re fixin’ to say, about laughing at the lunch table.”

“But—”

“No need to explain, gal.” Patsy dropped her hands, though she continued to hold me with her deep blue eyes. “I know what it’s like tryin’ to fit in, ’specially when everyone else knows one another. Why, I’ve got just that same problem with the staff. The way they criticize your Uncle Ed, it’s downright sinful, always comparing the way he wants things done with how the former owner did things. And I can’t really say anything without alienatin’ myself. But I’ll tell you this: Your uncle seems to be a mighty fine man. And he sure is handsome. That’s one thing the staff agrees on.” Patsy grinned. “A regular James Dean kinda guy, I’d say. But I can’t speak up and tell the other counselors to mind their p’s and q’s. No siree. So sometimes I pretend to go along with what they say, like what you did at lunch, laughin’ with Rory and the others. But don’t you worry ’bout that, ’cause I know you didn’t mean any harm. You’re a fine gal, real well- mannered. I saw that right away, that your parents have done a right good job raisin’ you.”

Patsy pulled a tissue from the box on my cubby and handed it to me. “So remember, Amy, we’re in this together. We’re both here to have a good summer. That’s what I’m fixin’ to do. And that’s what I want for you as well.”

I wiped my face and smiled. So what if Patsy thought Uncle Ed was handsome, sexy even? That had nothing to do with me.

My counselor hugged me hard again. And when she did, the screen door groaned. I slipped out of Patsy’s arms as Rory walked in, my bunkmates in tow.

“Amy, you lied to us.” Rory addressed me from her bed after lights out.

“What do you mean?” Fear choked my words.

“You lied to us, and people who lie get punished. Isn’t that right, girls?”

A flashlight beamed through the screen door, aiming like a rifle at each bed. “Bunk 9, pipe down in there.” The on-duty counselor used a schoolteacher voice. “And if I have to warn you ladies again, I’ll spend this OD shift sitting in your cabin.”