there they took a turn and disappeared into the woods and I was the only one to see them go.
At breakfast on Saturday morning, which would be our last full day and night at church camp, Mrs. Canary told me that I was the only camper who had not taken the walk to the altar. She had tears in her eyes as she said this, and told me that it was a great pain to Minister Bob and to all the staff but most especially to Jesus himself. Couldn’t I just? she asked me. Couldn’t I just put whatever was stopping me aside and accept eternal salvation? And if I couldn’t, did I realize I wouldn’t be able to attend the going-away sock hop that night? Because I could be an influence, she said, still on the verge of crying. I could be a dark influence on all the beautiful souls who had already said yes.
At chapel Saturday night the moment for the altar call came and I could not move. Because it was the last night, like the last night of a fair, everybody streamed past me, making my stubbornness even more apparent and perverse. There was loud praying and shouting; Claire, I think, came close to fainting, and there I stayed, on my knees. The safety pin in my skirt had come undone and was performing the appendectomy I didn’t yet need. The old bird at the piano watched me with her one black eye, and I watched her back, and when we left the chapel that night everyone else headed to the dining hall for the sock hop and I headed back to the cabin.
I sat on the front stoop in my cutoff shorts, barefoot. My T-shirt and bathing suit and towel were hanging on the line in the moonlight, drying, and for some reason I found the sight very reassuring. No one was around; the crickets were noisy, and I could hear the music from the dance coming up the hill very clearly, but it wasn’t for me and I didn’t want it. I heard footsteps and feared an assault by a ministerial brigade, but it turned out just to be Robin Hicks, my neighbor. He said, “Hey, you.”
I said, “Hey, Robin.”
He smiled at me and there was that broken tooth — I had done that and he still liked me just fine. He was seventeen, and I was eleven. “I came up here to see if you’d like to dance.”
The song that began was “If,” by Bread, a song I already found so painfully beautiful I couldn’t add it to my record collection at home.
If a face could launch a thousand ships, then where am I to go?
I stood up in the leaves and pine twigs, and took a step toward Robin. He very gently put one hand on my waist and one on my right shoulder, and we swayed so slowly I bet to the stars it looked like we weren’t moving at all. When the song was over he kissed the top of my head and walked back down to the dance, and I went inside the cabin to pack. To go home.
Hairless Tails
Our three faces had seen better days. Rose was sitting in her backyard studiously avoiding bees or any reference to bees, because she had become convinced that she was allergic to them. She no longer walked barefoot because of the premeditated way bees hung about in the grass exactly where her foot might land. Her sting-allergy fear was unrelated (except perhaps at some very deep level) to the fact that the whole left side of her face was swollen and bruised, the result of a dog bite by a Saint Bernard at a family reunion. The dog, a grown male who had been unprovoked, had gone for her eye — her good eye, the one that didn’t wander — and had missed by about a quarter of an inch. She was full-out traumatized, and I feared by the dejected way she was sitting that she might become afraid of anything with teeth, anything with stingers, and eventually, anything with seeds, like a woman in our church who was constantly pointing out the seeds in certain vegetables and fruits.
Three days earlier, Maggie, in an act of derring-do, had twisted the rings on the swing set until they were only about two inches long, then hung on them as they righted themselves. By the end she had looked like a little tornado.
At breakfast on Saturday morning, which would be our last full day and night at church camp, Mrs. Canary told me that I was the only camper who had not taken the walk to the altar. She had tears in her eyes as she said this, and told me that it was a great pain to Minister Bob and to all the staff but most especially to Jesus himself. Couldn’t I just? she asked me. Couldn’t I just put whatever was stopping me aside and accept eternal salvation? And if I couldn’t, did I realize I wouldn’t be able to attend the going-away sock hop that night? Because I could be an influence, she said, still on the verge of crying. I could be a dark influence on all the beautiful souls who had already said yes.
At chapel Saturday night the moment for the altar call came and I could not move. Because it was the last night, like the last night of a fair, everybody streamed past me, making my stubbornness even more apparent and perverse. There was loud praying and shouting; Claire, I think, came close to fainting, and there I stayed, on my knees. The safety pin in my skirt had come undone and was performing the appendectomy I didn’t yet need. The old bird at the piano watched me with her one black eye, and I watched her back, and when we left the chapel that night everyone else headed to the dining hall for the sock hop and I headed back to the cabin.
I sat on the front stoop in my cutoff shorts, barefoot. My T-shirt and bathing suit and towel were hanging on the line in the moonlight, drying, and for some reason I found the sight very reassuring. No one was around; the crickets were noisy, and I could hear the music from the dance coming up the hill very clearly, but it wasn’t for me and I didn’t want it. I heard footsteps and feared an assault by a ministerial brigade, but it turned out just to be Robin Hicks, my neighbor. He said, “Hey, you.”
I said, “Hey, Robin.”
He smiled at me and there was that broken tooth — I had done that and he still liked me just fine. He was seventeen, and I was eleven. “I came up here to see if you’d like to dance.”
The song that began was “If,” by Bread, a song I already found so painfully beautiful I couldn’t add it to my record collection at home.
If a face could launch a thousand ships, then where am I to go?
I stood up in the leaves and pine twigs, and took a step toward Robin. He very gently put one hand on my waist and one on my right shoulder, and we swayed so slowly I bet to the stars it looked like we weren’t moving at all. When the song was over he kissed the top of my head and walked back down to the dance, and I went inside the cabin to pack. To go home.
Hairless Tails
Our three faces had seen better days. Rose was sitting in her backyard studiously avoiding bees or any reference to bees, because she had become convinced that she was allergic to them. She no longer walked barefoot because of the premeditated way bees hung about in the grass exactly where her foot might land. Her sting-allergy fear was unrelated (except perhaps at some very deep level) to the fact that the whole left side of her face was swollen and bruised, the result of a dog bite by a Saint Bernard at a family reunion. The dog, a grown male who had been unprovoked, had gone for her eye — her good eye, the one that didn’t wander — and had missed by about a quarter of an inch. She was full-out traumatized, and I feared by the dejected way she was sitting that she might become afraid of anything with teeth, anything with stingers, and eventually, anything with seeds, like a woman in our church who was constantly pointing out the seeds in certain vegetables and fruits.
Three days earlier, Maggie, in an act of derring-do, had twisted the rings on the swing set until they were only about two inches long, then hung on them as they righted themselves. By the end she had looked like a little tornado.
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