Perennials, page 8
“Spanish?”
“Yeah, that’s what I meant.”
“Not really,” she said, picking up a stick from the ground as she walked. “I understand it sometimes when my grandma comes over ’cause that’s all she speaks, but she doesn’t come over a lot.” That was her other grandma, her abuela. Once Sheera had asked her father why her abuela came over less and less as Sheera got older, and he’d said it was because it was too sad for her to come to the apartment without Sheera’s mom there.
They kept going until the lake was completely out of sight and walked for what felt like a long time. All the elements were starting to beat up Sheera’s body—the mosquitoes that seemed to love to bite her, the prickly tree branches that stuck out too far, the loose rocks she kept tripping over in her flip-flops. She looked at her watch; it was ten-thirty. The activity period ended at ten-fifty.
“Don’t you think we should get back?” she said.
“We’re almost there,” he said, pressing on.
They came upon a steep, rocky incline almost entirely covered in moss. Mikey slowed his walking as they approached it. He cupped a hand dramatically around an ear. “You hear that?” he whispered. When Sheera stopped, and the leaves stopped crunching beneath their feet, she did hear something different: a whirring maybe, like the sound the wind made over the platform tents at night.
Mikey began to climb the hill, and he directed Sheera on how to climb it too as he did so. “Hold on there,” he would say, looking behind himself as he climbed, pointing to a root, a rock, or a trunk as the whirring noise grew and grew. He kept holding a hand out for her, but she didn’t take it; she focused on finding the outcrops in the hill to propel herself up. Mikey stood at the top now, hands on his hips, watching her.
When she got there, he pointed down the other, mossy side of the hill where a waterfall rushed down the rocks and fell into a stream that meandered out of sight. She was surprised that something so small could make so much noise.
“It’s called the Fall of Three Indians,” he said. His pride in leading them there was palpable, and Sheera could almost catch some of it for herself.
They sat down and dangled their feet over the edge.
“Have you ever seen a waterfall before?” he asked.
“Obviously,” she lied.
She kicked a stone and watched it arc and fall into the water below.
“Do you have brothers and sisters?” he asked her.
“Three brothers.”
“Lucky.”
“I’m the youngest. It’s not that lucky.”
“It’s better than nothin’.” He pointed to himself. “I got nothin’.”
Her brothers beat up on her a lot. It was because it would make her tough, they said, because they loved her.
“I’ve seen you playing four square,” he continued when she didn’t say anything. “You’re really good. And you’re really nice to everyone even when you beat them. And you don’t brag about being good or being nice.”
She was surprised that he had noticed her. She didn’t think that anyone at camp had noticed her.
A little bird, a sparrow or something, flew down and began to peck at the moss between the two of them. Sheera looked down at it. Birds this small, how could you tell the difference between the mother and child? Mikey hovered one finger over the bird as if he was about to pet it. Surprisingly, it didn’t move.
“Aren’t those things dirty?” Sheera asked.
“No. I don’t think so,” he said. Then Sheera too went to tentatively place her pointer finger on the animal, but it flew away before either of them could touch it.
The bird flapped up to the treetops that shadowed the stream and then deeper into the woods until it was out of sight.
Sheera looked at her watch, which read 10:55. “We have to go!” She stood suddenly and brushed the bits of dirt and grass off her shorts.
“It’s fine,” he said, waving a hand dismissively. “Chad’s a softy.”
“I don’t wanna get in trouble.” Without knowing whether Mikey was following, she began to take long, fast strides down the slope of the hill. About halfway through her descent, her right flip-flop lost its grip on the earth, and her foot was propelled forward while the back of her right thigh scratched itself on the face of a rock. Her sandal tumbled down the hill. Ignoring the stinging pain, she stood, righting herself on the uneven ground fast enough that Mikey wouldn’t get a chance to see that she’d fallen.
“Are you okay?” she heard him say from behind her. “You’re bleeding!”
“I’m fine.” She took off her other flip-flop and hobbled down barefoot to where they first had landed. “Let’s just go.”
He ran down the hill to her, making it look so easy, and took off his shirt and wrapped it around her leg to stop the bleeding. It was just a scratch, she told him, grimacing as she felt the cloth now sticking to her raw skin. He had such a skinny torso, like he didn’t eat at all. It looked a lot like Helen’s, flat in every which way. Not like her own chest, which didn’t want to stop growing, and her waist, which kept widening. When she stood up after sitting for even a few minutes these days, there were red lines on her stomach from where the skin folded over.
Mikey led the way back to the shore, and she followed, struggling to keep up and hiding a limp. When they got to the canoe, Sheera hoped he didn’t see her grimacing as she sat down on the hard bench.
On the lake, she paddled furiously, wordlessly, her face hot with shame. She could see that across the lake at camp the kids were gone: There were no other boats in the water now, no heads bobbing in the swimming hole. There was only Chad at the shoreline, waving with his arms over his head. Her leg throbbed.
“Where the hell have you two been?” Chad spat as they got closer. He waded thigh deep into the water, his face red. “Paddles up, now.” He pulled their canoe in hard.
“What is that?” Chad said, approaching Sheera as she stepped out of the boat. “Is that blood?” She looked down and saw that a few red spots had stained the shirt around her thigh.
“It’s just a scratch,” Mikey said, shrugging.
Chad closed his eyes and massaged the bridge of his nose. He took a deep breath, then looked at Sheera. “Are you okay?”
Sheera nodded, holding in her tears. She could not let them see her cry. It wasn’t just that her leg hurt so bad—and it did hurt; it was a gash, not a scratch. It was that it felt like that one fall exposed her. She’d been getting along just fine until this point. Now Mikey, or Chad, or anyone else who learned what had happened could know that she might not be cut out for this place.
“All right, let’s go to the nurse.” He looked over at Mikey. “Walk with us. Explain what happened.”
“We got stuck, dude,” Mikey explained as they walked up the gravel road. “Wedged between two rocks. Sheera jumped out to try to get us unstuck, and that’s when she scratched her leg.” He glanced almost imperceptibly at Sheera. “I know we went past the buoys,” he continued. “We fucked up. But we’re here, right? And I promise it was all my idea.”
“Watch your mouth,” Chad said. He looked at Sheera. “Is that true?” he asked. “Was it all Mikey’s idea?”
Mikey and Sheera held eyes for a moment. He was either challenging her to tell the truth or to go along with his story. She thought about her father telling her to be careful. She thought about what she knew about boys: that they were fun but trouble.
Sheera shook her head. “He’s lying,” she said. She understood, instinctually, that Mikey could get away with things that she could not. “We went to the other shore.”
“Jesus.” Chad stopped walking. “Do you have any idea what kind of trouble you two could get me in?”
“But you were supposed to be watching us,” Sheera said.
Mikey looked at her in disbelief.
“Excuse me?” Chad said.
“I said—” Sheera began.
“I heard what you said.” He locked eyes with Sheera for a minute: wide, wild eyes. He was scaring her, but she would not let him know it. She willed herself not to be the first to break the eye contact, and in doing so, she felt brave, almost impenetrable. She could feel Mikey’s presence, could feel him looking between her and Chad, suddenly aware that this no longer involved him in a way he could articulate.
Then Chad turned around and walked ahead of them, muttering under his breath. He led them to the nurse’s office.
It was a cabin near the dining hall; Sheera had not yet been inside it. The three of them walked in together. There was a waiting room with a worn fabric couch, a boy sitting on it with an ice pack pressed to his elbow, and chairs in equal disrepair. A TV high up on the wall played a talk show on mute, in which five women—some black, some white—were sitting at a long table, looking like they were making important points. The air conditioner in one of the windows was blowing cold air into the room.
“What happened to you?” Mikey asked the kid sitting on the couch.
“Beesting,” he said, lifting the ice pack briefly to show the red mark.
Mikey shrugged. “That’s no big deal.”
“Whatever,” the kid scoffed. “Where’s your shirt?”
Mikey pointed to Sheera, who still had it wrapped around her leg.
Chad approached the nurse, a nice-looking older lady, and waved for Sheera and Mikey to follow.
“What do we have here?” the nurse asked Sheera with a sweet tone in her voice.
“I scratched my leg,” Sheera said.
“Sweet of you to give her your shirt,” the nurse said to Mikey. Then she looked up at Chad. “I can take her from here.”
Chad seemed almost disappointed that the nurse hadn’t asked him any questions. He gave Sheera one nod as a goodbye, still with that hard, scary expression on his face. Mikey looked disappointed to be leaving too, but Sheera didn’t know if he was disappointed to be leaving her or just the air-conditioning and the TV. She had to admit, it felt nice to be in a real indoor room, even if it was only for a few minutes.
“Have a seat,” the nurse said to Sheera after the boys left, gesturing to one of the folding chairs next to the desk. When Sheera sat down at first, it hurt her leg, so she moved her butt all the way to the edge of the seat. The nurse reached forward and slowly, gently untied the shirt from around Sheera’s upper thigh.
“Yowza,” the nurse said, looking first at the blood that had soaked through Mikey’s shirt and then at the gash on the back of Sheera’s leg. “You took quite the spill.”
Sheera nodded wordlessly, afraid that if she said anything she would start crying. Her leg stung intensely, and she realized, for the first time, that she missed home. Something about the muted TV and the air-conditioning and the ugly couch: It felt a lot like her apartment on a summer afternoon.
“How did you do this? You were in boating class?”
“I, um…I scratched it on a rock.”
“Okay,” the nurse said.
“It’s a long story.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” the nurse said.
Sheera was grateful she didn’t have to explain anything further. How tiring it would have been to have to decide all over again if she would tell the truth or not.
“Let’s go into one of the rooms, okay? So I can bandage you up properly.” The nurse stood up from her desk. “You can go to your next activity now, Bobby,” she said to the boy with the beesting, who frowned and slowly got up.
The nurse led Sheera into an examination room, where there was a desk with supplies and a padded table with a clean piece of wax paper over it. The nurse patted it. “Lie down for me, tummy first.”
Sheera got onto the table using a step stool and did as she was told. She watched the nurse pull two plastic gloves from a box on the desk and put them on. Then she took a couple of creams and a large square bandage from a drawer.
The nurse took one of the creams and squeezed some onto her pointer finger.
“Is it gonna hurt?” Sheera asked, surprised by the weak tone of her own voice.
“No, sweetie,” the nurse said, looking Sheera in the eyes. “It’ll feel nice.”
Sheera closed her eyes and let the nurse put the ointment on her. It did feel nice, cooling. The nurse stuck the bandage onto the back of Sheera’s thigh and gave her a note saying she couldn’t swim for a week.
“A week?” The thought of having to sit out at the pool or the lake and everyone looking at her made her want to cry again.
“It’s a big gash, sweetheart. You don’t want it to get infected. And trust me, it wouldn’t feel good. Especially not the chlorine.”
Sheera nodded, holding her tears in. But when the nurse placed her hand maternally on Sheera’s shoulder, she couldn’t help but let all the tears go.
“Oh, sweetheart,” the nurse said. She sat down on the table next to Sheera and put an arm around her. She stroked the top of Sheera’s head and kept saying things like “Shh, that’s it” and “Let it out.”
When Sheera was done crying, she looked up at the nurse.
“Can I stay here?” Sheera managed. “Just for a little longer?”
“You stay as long as you need,” the nurse said. “Do you want to watch TV?”
Sheera nodded. They went back into the waiting room, and Sheera settled on the couch, which was torn up but comfortable, and watched the ladies making important points on the TV, occasionally hiccuping from a leftover sob.
6
“I’ll go first,” Rachel said in the tent that night. She was sitting on one of the girls’ hard-topped trunks, an electric lantern upright in the space between her crossed legs. They were doing roses and thorns, one of her favorite bedtime activities from her own time as a camper.
“My thorn today,” she said, “was hot dogs for dinner.”
“They were, like, raw,” Helen confirmed from her bunk.
“And my rose?” Rachel clapped the heel of her flip-flop against the platform tent’s wooden floorboards, thinking. “Oh, duh. My rose was sticking a reverse off the high dive.”
“She did,” Helen said. Her hay-colored curls bobbed up and down, and the gigantic shadow of her head on the canvas wall behind her moved in tandem. “I saw it.”
“Helen,” Rachel said, “your turn.”
Sheera turned her flashlight toward Helen, whose top bunk was across the tent from hers. There were eight bunks in the tent with a square platform made of cedar planks below them and wooden posts on all four sides to hold up the canvas roof and walls.
Helen threw a freckled forearm over her eyes. “Sheera!”
Sheera tried to figure out where to cast the light, and the white-yellow circle darted around the tent like an unruly moth.
“Chill out,” Sheera said, settling the flashlight on a spot toward the peak of the tent.
“Anyway.” Helen cleared her throat and sat up in her bunk. “My thorn was swimming in the lake. I jumped in from the dock and touched the bottom of the deep end, and it felt like diarrhea.”
The girls shrieked and giggled at this admission. Rachel saw a glimmer of her own younger self in Helen, who had a matter-of-fact way about her that most girls her age did not and a natural interest in pushing buttons.
“And my rose.” Helen put a finger to her mouth. “My rose was getting to play four square with Mikey Bombowski.” Her voice went up on Bombowski like it was a question.
“Oh, Helen,” Rachel said. “He’s cute.” Mikey Bombowski wore long basketball shorts with his boxers showing. He was the sort of boy that Rachel herself would have gone for at that age, only Rachel would not have been excited by something like playing four square with him. She would have known even then not to relish such inanities.
“So cute,” said Sarah. Rachel felt sort of sorry for Helen—still a very young-seeming girl stuck in a woman’s body.
There were whispers now about Mikey and the other Hemlock-section boys: Johnny, Joey, Danny, and Sam. It was a Sunday night in early July; the coed dance was six days away, and Rachel had told the girls in her tent that a boy had up to exactly three days beforehand to ask a girl on a date. After that, she could, and should, make other plans.
Rachel checked her watch: ten P.M. She stood and switched off the lantern. “Time for you girls to sleep. Flashlights off.”
Then she waited at the tent’s entrance until the girls appeared to be swallowed by total darkness.
—
Post-lights-out was usually a good time to check email in the computer lab; most people were already drinking in the staff lodge by then, or sitting around a bonfire, or taking a late-night swim down by the lake, so the computers were unoccupied, and the Internet was relatively fast.
Rachel sat down at one of the desktops, opened the browser, and signed into her email to find some junk—a sale on the Gap’s website, a Facebook invite to a house party in Brooklyn—and a note from her mother with the subject “call me when you get this.” She opened the email; there was no message in the body.
She worried it might be about her grandma. Or maybe Pickles, their aging cat. She picked up the landline phone on the desk and dialed home.
Denise sounded breathless and tired when she answered, as if she had just come home from a long, hard day.
“Mom, it’s me.”
“Hi, hon. How’s it going out there?”
“It’s good. I just saw your email.”
Denise let out a heavy sigh on the other end of the line.
“Is it Grandma?” Rachel asked.
“Grandma’s fine,” Denise said.
“Okay,” Rachel said. “What is it?”
“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” Denise said, her voice softening. “It’s your father.”
For a moment, neither woman spoke. The line between them was now weighted with meaning and consequence, and each one recomposed herself as she figured out the correct attitude with which to proceed.
“He had a heart attack, sweetie.”
“What?” Rachel said. “Are you crying?”
“It’s not an easy thing, Rachel.”
“I thought heart attacks were no big deal.”
“His heart just isn’t working right anymore. It’s all of the smoking,” Denise said. “Sweetheart, it’s not looking good. He’s on life support.”
