Elaine Wolf: Camp

When I was fourteen, not quite four years ago, I’d lie awake at night and pray my mother would die.

If I had known her secret, I might not have hated her. But my parents didn’t tell me about the ghost that slipped into the hospital the day I was born. It crept across my umbilical cord, linking me to my mother’s past. Then it wedged right between us. My father said doctors couldn’t explain the purple blotches on my chest. But now I’m sure of this: That phantom punched me hard. And though the black-and-blues faded before I could crawl, the ghost kept pushing my mother from me, flexing its muscles, bulking up. So by the time my parents sent me to sleepaway camp, that ghost was larger than I was. I just hadn’t seen it yet.

Dad sprang the news about camp on us in the fall when I was in ninth grade. “I heard from my brother today,” he announced at dinner as my mother carried a plate of lamb chops to the kitchen table. The smell of meat thickened the air. “Ed closed the deal on that girls camp he’s been looking at.”

My mother’s hands shook on hearing Ed’s name. Back then, in 1962, I couldn’t have guessed the real reason my uncle rattled her, though I would find out in time.

“And there’s great news for you, Amy,” my father told me. He smiled so wide I saw his gold tooth. “Guess who’s going to sleepaway?” Dad used his happy-birthday voice, the tone usually followed by a brightly wrapped package.

But camp was a present I didn’t want. What if all the girls knew each other from past summers? And how could I leave my little brother, Charlie? Who would play with him when he’d come home from summer school at The Woodland Center for Handicapped Children? Who would read to him while our mother made supper or brought the laundry up from the basement or mopped the bathroom floor?

“Dad, I don’t want to go,” I said flatly.

“You’re not worried about the cost, honey, are you?” He kept talking before I could tell him that wasn’t it—not at all. “’Cause everything’s worked out already. I’ll help Uncle Ed with the bookkeeping, and you’ll go to camp for free. Isn’t that great news?” My father lifted his water glass as if to toast me. “The two oldest cabins are for girls just your age.”

My mother uncovered a pot. The lid clanged the stove. “Lou, you said we’d discuss this when the deal went through. We need to talk about it.”

“We will. It’ll be fine.” My father faced me and smiled again.

“Dad, I really don’t want to go.” What if nobody liked me? I’d be all alone. Not even Charlie to talk to, to care for. I slid closer to him and jabbed a bite of meat. But when I held out his fork, my brother refused it. Instead, he drummed the table—a kind of frenzied patting.

“Don’t be silly, Amy,” my father said. “Of course you want to go. Who wouldn’t want eight weeks by a lake in Maine?”

“Lou,” my mother said once more, turning from the stove this time. She stared hard at my father, then fixed on Charlie. “I said we need to talk about this.”

“But Ed says it’s a beautiful place.”

“What could Ed possibly know about running a camp?” “Sonia, come on, Sonia. He’ll learn. And the property’s terrific. In great shape, Ed says.” “I don’t care what Ed says.”

“Why can’t you just be happy for him? We’re family, for God’s sake. Brothers support each other. And anyhow, Ed got a good deal, and Amy gets to go to camp. What could be wrong with that?”

“I told you,” my mother answered. “Ed doesn’t know the first thing about running a camp.”

“And I told you he’ll learn. And he won’t even have to change a thing. He already talked to the head counselor. She’s been there two or three summers, and she said she’ll come back.”

“Dad, I really don’t think…” I placed a hand on Charlie’s, stilling his fingers. Everything stopped: the air in the kitchen, the swish of my mother’s spoon in the vegetable pot, the questions in my mind.

“Your mother’s right, Amy. Right as usual. She and I will talk about this later.”

I forced a playfulness into my voice then, a reassurance for myself as well as for Charlie that nothing would change, that no one would go away for the summer. “Let’s pour some ketchup, buddy. Then you can dip, okay?”

My mother turned a thimbleful of peas onto Charlie’s plate. He grabbed his fork, holding it tight in his scrawny fist. “No.” Charlie mustered up his gravelly voice. “No. No!” He swiped at his plate, sending meat and vegetables through the kitchen.

My mother leaped up behind him, her hands heavy on Charlie’s birdlike shoulders.

“It’s okay, son,” my father said, as Charlie struggled to twist loose, his eyes finding mine.

“Mom, let him go!” The words spilled from my mouth. I couldn’t stop them, though I knew I’d get in trouble. “Please, Mom. You’re hurting him.” I looked to my father in silent pleading: Do something.

My mother’s eyes burned into me. “You think you’re so smart, Amy? You know what’s best for your brother? Then you make him behave.”

“Please,” I tried again, my voice softer now. “Just let him go, Mom.”

“Oh, you don’t know anything, Amy,” she said. Charlie wriggled faster to escape our mother’s grip. “You don’t know anything. Nothing.”

“But you’re hurting him!” I tried once more, my courage fueled by anger. How dare she treat Charlie like that. “Stop squeezing his shoulders!”

My mother shot Dad a look. “Don’t you tell your mother how to manage her own son, young lady,” my father said.

Charlie finally freed himself and flew from the kitchen. I followed my brother up the stairs, pounding the steps to the beat in my mind: I hate her. I hate her. I wish she were dead.

I hated how my mother made my father buckle. I hated how my mother treated Charlie. I hated how she made me feel unworthy of her love.

That night my father told us about camp, I prayed my mother would die.

The day before camp started, my mother and I went to Woolworth’s for the toiletries I hadn’t packed in my trunk: a soap holder, collapsible plastic cup, Prell shampoo. When an extra dollar popped up on the cash register, my mother tapped her foot, ticking off seconds while the checkout girl struggled to cancel the overcharge. My mother glanced at her watch. Charlie’s bus was due at the house in twenty minutes.

“Sorry, ma’am,” the cashier said. “I need the manager.”

“What’s your name, young lady?”

“I’m trying my best, ma’am.”

My mother sighed loudly enough for the clerk to hear, then asked again, “What’s your name?”

I wished I could shrink to dime size and slide right into the register. Why did my mother always make a fuss over every little thing?