Lorrie Moore - 100 Years of the Best American Short Stories

“It’s all right. It’s all right,” the 909 troop leader reassured Mrs. Margolin. Her voice lilted in the same way it had when addressing the girls. She smiled the whole time she talked. She was like one of those TV cooking show women who talk and dice onions and smile all at the same time.

“See. It could have happened. I’m not calling your girls fibbers or anything.” She shook her head ferociously from side to side, her Egyptian-style pageboy flapping against her cheeks like heavy drapes. “It could have happened, see. Our girls are not retarded. They are delayed learners.” She said this in a syrupy instructional voice, as though our troop might be delayed learners as well. “We’re from the Decatur Children’s Academy. Many of them just have special needs.”

“Now we won’t be able to walk to the bathroom by ourselves!” the big girl said.

“Yes you will,” the troop leader said, “but maybe we’ll wait till we get back to Decatur—”

“I don’t want to wait!” the girl said. “I want my Independence patch!”

The girls in my troop were entirely speechless. Arnetta looked as though she were soon to be tortured but was determined not to appear weak. Mrs. Margolin pursed her lips solemnly and said, “Bless them, Lord. Bless them.”

In contrast, the Troop 909 leader was full of words and energy. “Some of our girls are echolalic—” She smiled and happily presented one of the girls hanging on to her, but the girl widened her eyes in horror and violently withdrew herself from the center of attention, as though she sensed she were being sacrificed for the village sins. “Echolalic,” the troop leader continued. “That means they will say whatever they hear, like an echo — that’s where the word comes from. It comes from ‘echo.’” She ducked her head apologetically. “I mean, not all of them have the most progressive of parents, so if they heard a bad word they might have repeated it. But I guarantee it would not have been intentional .”

Arnetta spoke. “I saw her say the word. I heard her.” She pointed to a small girl, smaller than any of us, wearing an oversized T-shirt that read: EAT BERTHA’S MUSSELS.

The troop leader shook her head and smiled. “That’s impossible. She doesn’t speak. She can, but she doesn’t.”

Arnetta furrowed her brow. “No. It wasn’t her. That’s right. It was her .”

The girl Arnetta pointed to grinned as though she’d been paid a compliment. She was the only one from either troop actually wearing a full uniform: the mocha-colored A-line shift, the orange ascot, the sash covered with patches, though all the same one — the Try-It patch. She took a few steps toward Arnetta and made a grand sweeping gesture toward the sash. “See,” she said, full of self-importance, “I’m a Brownie.” I had a hard time imagining this girl calling anyone a “nigger”; the girl looked perpetually delighted, as though she would have cuddled up with a grizzly if someone had let her.

On the fourth morning, we boarded the bus to go home.

The previous day had been spent building miniature churches from Popsicle sticks. We hardly left the cabin. Mrs. Margolin and Mrs. Hedy guarded us so closely, almost no one talked for the entire day.

Even on the day of departure from Camp Crescendo, all was serious and silent. The bus ride began quietly enough. Arnetta had to sit beside Mrs. Margolin, Octavia had to sit beside her mother. I sat beside Daphne, who gave me her prize journal without a word of explanation.

“You don’t want it?”

She shook her head no. It was empty.

Then Mrs. Hedy began to weep. “Octavia,” Mrs. Hedy said to her daughter without looking at her, “I’m going to sit with Mrs. Margolin. All right?”

Arnetta exchanged seats with Mrs. Hedy. With the two women up front, Elise felt it safe to speak. “Hey,” she said, then she set her face into a placid vacant stare, trying to imitate that of a Troop 909 girl. Emboldened, Arnetta made a gesture of mock pride toward an imaginary sash, the way the girl in full uniform had done. Then they all made a game of it, trying to do the most exaggerated imitations of the Troop 909 girls, all without speaking, all without laughing loud enough to catch the women’s attention.

Daphne looked at her shoes, white with sneaker polish. I opened the journal she’d given me. I looked out the window, trying to decide what to write, searching for lines, but nothing could compare with the lines Daphne had written, “My father, the veteran,” my favorite line of all time. The line replayed itself in my head, and I gave up trying to write.

By then, it seemed as though the rest of the troop had given up making fun of the 909 girls. They were now quietly gossiping about who had passed notes to whom in school. For a moment the gossiping fell off, and all I heard was the hum of the bus as we sped down the road and the muffled sounds of Mrs. Hedy and Mrs. Margolin talking about serious things.

“You know,” Octavia whispered, “why did we have to be stuck at a camp with retarded girls? You know?”

“ You know why,” Arnetta answered. She narrowed her eyes like a cat. “My mama and I were in the mall in Buckhead, and this white lady just kept looking at us. I mean, like we were foreign or something. Like we were from China.”

“What did the woman say?” Elise asked.

“Nothing,” Arnetta said. “She didn’t say nothing.”

A few girls quietly nodded their heads.

“There was this time,” I said, “when my father and I were in the mall and—”

“Oh, shut up, Snot,” Octavia said.

I stared at Octavia, then rolled my eyes from her to the window. As I watched the trees blur, I wanted nothing more than to be through with it all: the bus ride, the troop, school — all of it. But we were going home. I’d see the same girls in school the next day. We were on a bus, and there was nowhere else to go.

“Go on, Laurel,” Daphne said to me. It was the first time she’d spoken the whole trip, and she’d said my name. I turned to her and smiled weakly so as not to cry, hoping she’d remember when I’d tried to be her friend, thinking maybe that her gift of the journal was an invitation of friendship. But she didn’t smile back. All she said was, “What happened?”

I studied the girls, waiting for Octavia to tell me to “shut up” again before I even had a chance to utter another word, but everyone was amazed that Daphne had spoken. I gathered my voice. “Well,” I said. “My father and I were in this mall, but I was the one doing the staring.” I stopped and glanced from face to face. I continued. “There were these white people dressed like Puritans or something, but they weren’t Puritans. They were Mennonites. They’re these people who, if you ask them to do a favor, like paint your porch or something, they have to do it. It’s in their rules.”

“That sucks,” someone said.

“C’mon,” Arnetta said. “You’re lying.”

“I am not.”

“How do you know that’s not just some story someone made up?” Elise asked, her head cocked, full of daring. “I mean, who’s gonna do whatever you ask?”

“It’s not made up. I know because when I was looking at them, my father said, ‘See those people. If you ask them to do something, they’ll do it. Anything you want.’”

No one would call anyone’s father a liar. Then they’d have to fight the person, but Drema parsed her words carefully. “How does your father know that’s not just some story? Huh?”

“Because,” I said, “he went up to the man and asked him would he paint our porch, and the man said, ‘Yes.’ It’s their religion.”