Not a Happy Camper (10 page)

Hannah Moss, our catcher, was only seven years old and short for her age. She could barely hold up the bat.

I pulled her aside and asked, “Can you stand like this?” and demonstrated crouching down so that my knees were in my armpits as I held the bat over my head. “The strike zone is between your knees and your armpits.”

“But if I stand like that,” she said, “there is no strike zone.”

“Exactly.”

Hannah was a very smart seven-year-old who giggled as she crouched by the side of home plate. Four pitches in a row sailed over her head, the umpire called them balls, and she walked to first base.

“Other Mindy, she's our man—if she can't do it... we're gonna lose!”

Like Casey of Mudville, my teammates' hopes rested with me. If I could hit a homerun, we would win. I watched the first pitch come toward me. It looked pretty good. I thought about swinging
and then I had another thought:
Kenny is watching. If I hit a homerun, he'll know the truth about me, that I'm probably a better athlete than he is.
It was like that moment at the end of
Annie Get Your Gun
when Ms. Oakley had to decide whether or not to best her beau, Frank Butler, in a shooting match. But I didn't know what decision she'd made. When I saw the play at Camp Cicada, it ended before they got to that part.

“C'mon! You can do it! Other Mindy! Other Mindy!”

The shouts weren't deafening, but all in all, pretty loud. I didn't swing. Strike one.

“Time!” Autumn Evening brought the game to a halt, jumping up off the bench and running over to me.

I stepped out of the batter's box to see what she wanted. “What is it?” I asked. “You don't even know anything about softball.”

“I saw this old movie once,” she explained. “There was a guy who pointed to the outfield and then hit the ball there. He looked like Oliver Hardy. Only without the moustache.”

“I think you mean Babe Ruth,” I told her. “He played for the Yankees.”

“He's a real guy?”

“He was. He's dead now.”

“Would you like me to get in touch with him?”

“Um, maybe later. We're in the middle of a game. Is there something you want to tell me?”

“Yeah. Hit the ball like Babe Ruth. I know you're kind of shy, so you don't have to point first. Just hit it really far so we can win this silly thing and you can be the hero. Or heroine. No, that sounds like drugs. Be the hero. I mean, unless you're afraid or something.”

“Afraid?”

“Well, you're not one to jump into the spotlight. You're always hanging back, like you're thinking about doing something, but then you don't. What are you so afraid of?”

What was I so afraid of? I was afraid of screwing up, of letting people down. That's why I couldn't tell my parents how upset I was when we pulled into camp that first day. If I'd told them I was disappointed, then they'd have been disappointed too, like the time I showed my father an A I got on a book report and he said, “How come not an A+?” Grades were really important in my family. We were all supposed to be geniuses even though only Jay was really that smart. Still, we were expected to get A's all the time, except in penmanship, because that didn't reflect how smart you were and also because both of my parents had really bad handwriting, to the point where no one could read our grocery list so we always wound up buying the wrong stuff at the market, and somehow I'd get blamed for that, too.

It was as if, no matter how hard I tried, nothing I did was ever good enough. And if nothing I did was ever good enough, then maybe it was best not to try. Maybe it was best just to stand around and watch other people do things, watch other people live. What was I so afraid of? I was afraid of everything, which is why, sometimes, it was easiest to do nothing.

“Earth to Mindy,” Autumn Evening broke in. “Are you even listening? Lookit, this isn't like singing—which by the way you're fine at—or straightening your hair. You can do this.”

I knew she was right. And I wanted to be popular and I wanted to save the day, but was this the way? Was it worth winning a dumb old softball game if I risked losing Kenny before I'd even gotten him? As the first girl to play baseball in Springfield, New Jersey, I'd found out what it was like to have kids and their parents swear at me and accuse me of destroying the Great American Game. I was certain I would never have a boyfriend at home. Camp was my only chance.

As I stepped back into the batter's box, I glanced over at the crowd from Kin-A-Hurra. Everyone was cheering me on. Everyone.
I realized I couldn't let them down. I couldn't let myself down. If I was going to get a boyfriend this summer, it was going to be because of who I really was, a lefty who could hit the ball to right field, the position where the other team always puts the weakest player.

The next pitch was good and I turned my body toward first base as I swung, delivering a strong line drive. It went over the infielders' heads and onto the grass where, like the girls from my hometown softball league, the right fielder watched it go through her legs. When I crossed home plate, the victory was ours. The Kin-A-Hurra contingent raced onto the field where Hannah and I nearly had our eyes gouged out by the wired braids of a dozen shrieking Pippi Longstockings.

On the truck ride home, we stopped at a place suspiciously named Dairy Kween and Kenny came over to me and told me how wonderful I was.

“You're amazing,” he said. I thought this might be the best day of my life until he added, “you should've been a guy!”

Another boy felt differently. He pushed Kenny out of the way, proclaiming, “I'm glad you're not.”

“Mindy Schneider, Mindy Schneider, take some good advice from me...” shouted one of the older girls.

And with that, my fate was sealed. I was being sung about in public. There was no stopping it now. I had my first boyfriend. Philip Selig.

Just what I was afraid of.

to the tune of
Pomp and Circumstance

“Greasy French fries, unscrambled eggs
Soggy toast and sour milk
Walking turkey legs
Shredded cardboard and Ill-Bran
Fish that never swam
Vinegar and STP
Peanut putty and jam
Live, watery bug juice
Hot dogs that bark
Hamburgers made of Alpo
Jell-O that shines in the dark
Doughnuts used for anchors
Olympic shot-put pancakes
These are the meals they serve us
Just like mother makes”

I
HAD SO COMPLETELY DEVOTED MY LIFE TO TRYING IN VAIN TO GET A
boyfriend and then dealing with defeat, it never crossed my mind what I'd do if I did actually get one. Especially if it was the wrong one.

I'd been successfully ignoring and avoiding Philip for days, choosing to remain on Girls' Side, hiding out in other bunks. I improved my jacks game, learning three new fancies, while being tutored on the intricacies of numbing one's eyebrows with an ice cube before tweezing. Life was temporarily edifying and effortless and it made me wonder if there were any kosher all-girls camps, and if so, perhaps it would be best if I signed up for one the next summer. My self-imposed exile from Boys' Side ended on a Friday morning, when chef Walter Henderson invited my bunk to help him make the challah for that evening. This was a rare honor, not to be passed up.

My bunkmates, counselor and I rode across the lake on the Ferry, a large Huck Finn-esque motorized raft the camp maintenance man had built on a lark, to see if it really would float. The feeling that came over me whenever I arrived at Boys' Side was that this was the Real Camp, and that Girls' Side was just some aberration tacked onto the other end of the lake. Girls' Side was hilly, with its randomly numbered bunks secluded among trees, and
seemingly empty since we tended to stay indoors. Boys' Side was flat and wide open and its bunks, displaying carved plaques with their picturesque names, were lined up in rows. And there was always activity going on, no matter how hard it rained. Saul Rattner rarely visited the girls. Seeing him on our side was like seeing Sammy Davis, Jr. on
All in the Family
. You expected the words “Special Guest Star” to flash in front of him. Big social events were held on Boys' Side. Co-ed Saturday morning services were held on Boys' Side. Saul and his wife ate only on Boys' Side. Even though Boys' Side was a pigsty.

The Boys' dining hall was nothing like The Point. While our building was beautiful, cozy and surprisingly well maintained, the boys' dining hall was a massive aging wreck. While the girls dined at clean, varnished tables set upon gleaming wood floors, the boys sat at old picnic tables on an uneven, beat-up, rotting floor, painted gray with spatters of red, blue and yellow, as if the primary colors might hide the termite damage and filth. The tables were long and narrow and crowded together and, strangest of all, the boys didn't seem to care.

The youngest bunk, the Pioneers, prided themselves on being assigned the most heavily sloped corner of the room. Their counselor, Bobby Gurvitz, had shown them a neat trick: if you held a saltshaker at the high end of the table and let go, you could send it all the way down to the other end without pushing it. This game became known as “Pass the Salt,” but worked just as well with other condiments, hard-boiled eggs and a small lightweight camper named Teddy Marcus.

The kitchen wasn't in much better shape. I'd learned in my seventh grade Humanities class all about the Early American peddlers, men who traveled by covered wagon across the prairies, selling their household wares. Walter's pots and pans looked like they'd come from a frontier settler's homestead yard sale. In some
ways this was quaint. You knew these old kettles had seen a lot of good home cooking, if not here then somewhere else. The long, wide preparation tables had their charm as well. Girls' Side had only one small aluminum table, but Walter worked on a thick maple base. The wood gave you the feeling that it was homey and sturdy, if not also filled with bacteria festering since the turn of the century. The only perfectly spotless thing in the kitchen was Walter himself. A round-bellied 65–year-old black man from Panama, Walter was dressed in a crisp white chef's uniform topped off with a favorite old fishing hat. This was the man who made the world's best Jewish bread.

“Hurry along there boys, before that nasty cereal sticks to my bowls,” Walter warned the waiters. The kitchen staff was running late, still cleaning up from breakfast. It wasn't their fault. They were working short-handed; a waiter had been fired just the night before when he was caught urinating into a pitcher of bug juice he was planning to serve to Saul.

Walter saw us come in.

“I don't understand you kids. I make you nice, hot eggs for breakfast and all you want is Frosted Flakes.”

“The eggs are hot when he makes them?” I whispered.

Maddy nudged me. Walter didn't hear.

“Come in, come on in, girls,” Walter urged us. “Welcome to my beautiful kitchen.”

Walter Henderson had spent thirty-plus years cooking for maximum-security prisoners in upstate New York. Now he was retired and cooking in paradise. We watched as he assembled the ingredients on the long wooden table: vast amounts of eggs, sugar, flour, water, yeast, margarine and honey. I'd never thought about what went into a challah, just that it came out of a plastic bag.

“You care to join us, young lady?” Walter asked Betty Gilbert who was standing in a corner, clutching her current reading
material,
Sheila Levine is Dead and Living in New York,
and working hard to maintain her appearance of hating camp.

“I'm busy,” she said, but from the way she was peering over the top of her book, I knew she wanted to be included.

“Suit yourself,” Walter continued, “but before we start, who knows why we make the challah?”

For all the years of Hebrew School among us, no one knew the answer.

“Maybe
you
do?” I proposed.

Walter let out a sigh. “You kids should know this. Making challah is a mitzvah. Who knows what ‘mitzvah' means?”

I knew that one. “It's a good deed.”

“Yes. And who knows about the twelve tribes of Israel?”

Hallie took a shot. “Um, there were these tribes. Twelve of them. In Israel...”

“Walter, why don't you tell us?” Maddy suggested.

“All-righty then. Eleven of the twelve tribes were farmers, raising their own food. But the twelfth tribe, the Levis, took care of the temple.”

“Far out,” said Autumn Evening, “and then they invented pants.”

“In appreciation,” Walter continued, “the other tribes would bring them donations of bread. Challah is the name for the act of separating the piece of bread given to the Levis. It's why we break off a piece when we make the blessing on Friday night and pass it around the table. Sharing is a mitzvah. God's commandment that we make challah is His way of reminding us to share.”

“Walter!” Dana shouted out, “we wouldn't care if it was pagan food of the devil. It's the best thing you make. Now show us how!”