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Queechy Girls
There was always one girl at camp whom everyone hated.
It had nothing to do with cliques or teams or personal dislikes, and it was not even that everyone had discussed it and a
consensus had been raised based upon certain irrefutable evidence.
It was just like everyone hated lima beans and the
color brown. It was obvious and it was universal, so it didn't
require organization.
Everyone at Queechy Lake Camp hated Lisa Hope Mermen.
There were no reasons why and there were a million
reasons why. Her breasts were too large and her hair was
limp. She had probably had her period since she was ten. She
was a very mediocre athlete. She was not nor ever would be
considered coltish. She was nice to everyone and some people hate that. She had no friends and some people took that as
a sign. She had two first names and insisted on using both. At
best, she was ignored. At worst, she was teased and bullied
and shoved into the lake. Tricks were played on her, food
stolen from her. Intimate articles of her clothing, particularly
her brassiere and large to-the-waist panties, were raised
on the flagpole in the morning just before assembly. There
they were buffeted unkindly by the Maine breeze, these colors
of the enemy territory, to be saluted by smirking, suntanned
cuties.
Why was she still here, Lisa Hope Mermen? Why did she
return summer after summer to a camp where a philosophy of
equality symbolized by a de rigueur camp uniform of simple
white midi blouses and navy shorts still failed to work in her
favor because her midi blouse required darts? Why didn't her
parents switch her to music camp or send her to Europe
where everyone had limp hair?
Queechy Lake Camp was certainly the most beautiful girls'
camp in Maine. It was situated on a tree-topped hill which
gracefully sloped down to the edge of the lake, clear, blueblack,
and serene. At the high end of the camp the bunks
formed a large circle around a perfectly manicured blanket of
grass, unlike the bunks at Pine Forrest and Bluebird Lake,
which were dotted willy-nilly throughout the woods. At the
center of the circle was the aforementioned flagpole. As
night fell, this happy configuration of lodgings, their lights
winking in the dusk, resembled nothing so much as a shoreline
of exclusive summer cottages; the darkening courtyard,
a navy lake. Paradise.
Then, a little lower down, there was Queechy House, an
enormous green Adirondack affair standing exactly as it had
for almost one hundred years, its plaque-covered walls a testament
to the overachievements of past Queechy girls: Best
Field Hockey, Best Basketball, Best Waterskiing. The Archery
Award. The Craft Award. The Queechy Spirit Prize. On one
side of Queechy House there were the living room and the
commissary and the mail room, and on the other side were
the dining room and the kitchen (which no one ever saw
except on Cinnamon Toast Nights, when everyone in your
bunk got to go in and eat as much cinnamon toast as they
could. The record, set by Rose Bunnswanger in 1957, was
something like forty-nine pieces). Behind Queechy House
was a gathering of humongous old pine trees and beneath the
trees were twenty or so Adirondack chairs, painted dark
green. This spot was called Beneath the Pines, without sarcasm.
Team rallies happened here, and Friday night services.
If you were friends, one of you sat in the seat and one of you
perched on the wide armrest, so you were connected, so
there was no mistaking it.
Every building had a name. Please Come Inn and Nellie 's
Nest and The Barn and Hill House and Mildred, just Mildred,
after an English lacrosse counselor who perished in the
bombing of Dresden. She had gone there with false papers to
search for two elderly cousins who were believed to have
been in hiding. There was a field hockey field and a lacrosse
field and two softball fields and there were tennis courts and
volleyball courts and basketball courts and sailing and canoeing
and waterskiing. And there was kickball and newcomb
for the younger girls. The field hockey and lacrosse counselors
came from England, like Mildred, because the English
know those sports best.
There were no socials or dances with boys' camps because
Queechy girls were renowned for their winning combination
of athletic ability, teamwork, and pep, and pitting them
against each other for the attentions of pimply-faced, perpetually
engorged (that's Deb Edelstein's word, not mine) boys
from, say, Camp Tonkahanni, might undermine the confidence of even the most spirited, talented Queechy girl, not to
mention threaten many deep friendships. I, for one, was perfectly
happy not to have to deal with some dopey tennis nerd
trying to guess my bra size. There were male counselors, of
course, but it was not the same because they were all over
eighteen. There was Bill Ski and Mark Ski and Jamie Canoe
and Jack Tennis and Bill Tennis and Chris Swim and Mike
Softball. There was Somebody Riding whose name I never
remembered because I hated riding. And there was Corey
Silver Shop whom everyone assumed was gay even though
most of us had no idea what we were talking about.
There was a theater called Marion's Tent, though no one
remembered Marion and there was no tent. My theatrical
career at Queechy Lake Camp was distinguished by many
memorable performances as the second lead; a girl named
Wanda Massey always got the starring role. For seven summers,
I was the male half of nearly every romantic coupling
written for the musical theater. I was Oscar to her Charity,
Captain Von Trapp to her Maria, Tony to her Maria. She
was, metaphorically speaking, always Maria.
The very moment parts were posted and scripts handed
out, each of us would rush to the edge of some grassy slope
to count our lines. The more lines, the bigger the part. Plot
development and character were irrelevant. This summer we
were doing The Miracle Worker. Wanda Massey was Annie
Sullivan and I was Helen Keller. When I opened the script
and saw that I had only one line for the entire first half of the
play, and that line consisted of one word, "wawa," I nearly
went berserk.
Once a summer the Story of Queechy Lake Camp was
retold by Aunt Jeanne, the camp director. The entire camp
gathered Beneath the Pines, a tangle of interlocked arms and
legs, with much tickling of forearms and backs and braiding
of hair, to hear how during World War I the camp planted its
playing fields with navy beans. Girls as young as nine years
old pushed the seeds into the soil and two months later
plucked the beans from the leafy vines. They sewed shirts
and knitted socks. They were industrious and patriotic and
occasionally had air-raid rehearsals. They wore baggy
bloomers and smocks and maybe in those days it didn't matter if you were bad at sports or had a large bosom. Some of
these girls were the grandmothers and mothers and aunts of
future Queechy girls. Katie Cohen was a legacy and so was
Beth Reingold and so was Deb Edelstein. Tessie Green's
grandmother won the spirit prize twice in a row and she was
completely deaf in one ear. Joan Grobman's mother lost half
her middle finger in a rock-climbing accident in 1968, the
summer she was fifteen, and came back to camp as soon as
she was out of the hospital. That's what Queechy girls did.
When the story was over everyone sang Queechy Lake
songs: "Spirit of Queechy," "Far Above Dear Queechy
Waters," "Queechy Friends Forever."
Surely Lisa Hope Mermen was not the only girl whose
bathing suit, with its built-in brassiere, remained dry on the
front following the backstroke race at swim meets. Surely she
was not the only girl without a lilting voice or curly ringlets.
And surely a lilting voice and curly ringlets were not the only
prerequisites of a successful adolescence. Although who was
I to say, since I had a reasonably lilting voice and a decent
head of curly ringlets?
But did Lisa Hope Mermen really look all that unhappy?
She cheered from the benches at softball and field hockey
games, gave her ineffectual all on the "B" basketball squad,
sang her heart out in the chorus of Call Me Madam. She
befriended younger girls who either didn't know any better
or were similarly ill suited to the demands of popularity.
Counselors were sympathetic. I was bewildered almost out
of my complacency. Almost.
I'd had too many s'mores. I had a weakness for them. I liked
the marshmallow to catch fire and burn the entire outside
black. I liked the Hershey's chocolate to still be hard, even a
little cold; it had to hold its own dually against the heat of the
marshmallow and the firm crunch of the graham cracker. If
you ate a s'more during a lunchtime campfire, chances were
the chocolate bar would be melty from sitting in the sun.
Then it melted even more when it came into contact with the
marshmallow, and suddenly the graham cracker dominated. I
hated that. I'd just as soon skip it if that was how it was going
to be. At night, though, on the beach, when everything
cooled down, the grains of sand a silver trickle between your
toes, when the lake met the sky, when hooded sweatshirts
were in order, that was the time to gorge yourself into oblivion
on s'mores.
I'd had seven, which as anyone knows is four too many.
And actually I was feeling all right until the camper-counselor
game of duck duck goose. A few woozy moments after
I'd chased Karen Basketball two loops around the circle, I felt
the s'mores rising up. I felt a revolution of s'mores. I ran up
the beach and gave them their freedom behind the sailing
hut. I looked down to inspect the damage (everyone looks at
their vomit, everyone) and catch my breath. Running and
then vomiting is harder than just vomiting. I leaned against
the side of the hut. My breath was loud in my ear. Too loud.
And there was a funny humming noise. Mmmmm. Mmmmm.
It took me a minute to realize it wasn't coming from me. I
inched forward, careful not to step in my pile of ex-s'mores,
and moved around the corner of the sailing hut until I was
crouching beneath its one open window, just next to the door.
At first I thought it was, I don't even know, just this big
thing, this moving shadow, it was so dark in there. Oh, God,
it's a bear. Shit, fuck, shit. But then, then -- in that way you
can see people in the movies when there are scenes in the
dark, like there 's an illogical light source but you accept it
because it's the movies and you really want to see what's
going on -- then, I saw her. Years later I realized the moon
must have broken through some clouds.
Lisa Hope Mermen lay all but naked on a pile of sails. Her
brassiere was wrapped like a bandage around one arm, her
dark blue camp shorts scrunched between her legs. Her white
body, all breasts and belly and thighs, was aglow. She was
breathing heavily; her face looked...I didn't know. Like
she was constipated but happy about it. What was she doing?
My legs, already vomit-wobbly, were starting to ache from
crouching at the window, but I couldn't tear my eyes away. I
was watching the Lisa Hope Mermen Movie. The humming
got louder. Why was she lying there, naked, humming?
Why? It wasn't even a song. Then, suddenly, the dark shorts
between her legs were moving and I saw that they weren't
her shorts. It was like realizing a piece of mud stuck to your
ankle is really a leech. The thing between Lisa Hope Mermen's
legs rose up and smiled. A glistening, mustached smile.
Mark Ski.
He moved out of the shadows, naked, his back to me, and
stretched his neck to both sides. She said, "That was
yummy." He said, "Good." There was a rushing noise in my
ears. He lowered his whole body onto Lisa Hope Mermen
very, very slowly. I saw his penis. My legs collapsed beneath
me. I dropped onto the sand. Poomf.
When I returned to the beach everyone was sitting Indian
style in a big circle around the fire and singing "Leaving on a
Jet Plane." Joan Grobman and Deena Saks made a place for
me between them. I guess I sang along.
A substantive discussion of What I Saw did not commence
until after the campfire died and everyone more or less
headed off to bed. It lasted until well after two and included
my own eyewitness testimony, followed by a question-and-answer
period and concluding with a sort of fake, sort of real
hypnosis session, in case there was something I was repressing.
Then we tried to levitate Beth Reingold.
We slept in pairs in canvas tents on the sand. Lying in my
sleeping bag beside Deb Edelstein, her soft asthmatic wheezing
keeping time in the dark, I realized this would be the last
time. In the morning we would have blueberry pancakes and
hot chocolate and go skinny-dipping in the glassy, dawn-cold
lake, and then head off up the hill to our various scheduled
activities -- lacrosse or archery or pottery. But this was the
last senior overnight. The last campfire on the beach. And
there was only one more swim meet to go and one more day
trip to Acadia National Park and maybe one more pajama
breakfast, if we were lucky. There was only the counselor
show, Man of La Mancha, left to see. All the craft projects
would have to be finished in the next week, all the bunk food
eaten, all the lost things found. Suddenly it would be the very
last night, the night of the Senior Serenade, when we would
go by flashlight from bunk to bunk, like carolers, singing the
old songs. I was not going to come back the next summer as a
junior counselor because my parents wanted me to do a summer
session at Andover. And anyway it wouldn't have been
the same. When something's over, it's over.