“Hold on, Dan. Sounds like you’re straying into Spinoza and maybe some Hindu philosophy, here.”
Just then, a gust of wind strikes the sail, suddenly and at an unlikely angle, threatening the boat’s balance. Pastor Dan calls out, “Bob, I hope you’re prepared to teach us all how to walk on water!” as he makes some quick maneuvers to keep us on an even keel.
I give Pastor Dan a startled look. He chuckles softly. “Sacrilegious?”
“No,” I say. “I’ve just never heard a minister talk this way before.”
“Fair enough,” he says, gently. “Fair enough.”
This first week of camp flashes past on waves of frustration, adventure, and unexpected tenderness. I’m assigned to a cabin with six girls from Baltimore City’s elementary schools, a rainbow of colors and ethnicities. Most of them are seven, eight, and nine years old. One chubby little girl named Mary Lou is about to turn six, so she’s really too young for this group. She tends to overeat, get homesick, and cry easily. As expected, Toni’s Wanda is part of my group. Wanda is very talkative, and calls me “Teacher.”
On our first night in the cabin, Mary Lou begins to fret. Her mother forgot to pack a pillow, so I give her my pillow and try to calm her down. I fall asleep in my upper bunk, exhausted after a day of crafts, swimming, canoeing, and singing around a campfire. In the middle of the night, I wake to feel a soft prodding under my head. It’s Wanda on tiptoe, pushing her pillow under my head. Toward morning, I wake up to Wanda’s snoring, Mary Lou’s farting, and moist, chilly air puffing up from the river through the wide-screened cabin windows.
The first week goes pretty smoothly. My girls are all sweet-tempered. Wanda turns out to be a natural teacher. She shows Mary Lou how to swim, and by midweek, Mary Lou has gained so much confidence, she forgets to cry for her mother at night.
The toilet and shower facilities are a short walk from my cabin. If the girls need to pee at night, I have to go with them. To cut down on the nighttime walks to the toilets, I get my girls to limit the amount of bug juice (the camp’s name for Kool-Aid) they drink at the evening meal.
At bedtime, I tell the girls stories about what it’s like to live out in the country. Most of them have never seen a farm.
On the last evening, three of the girls—Wanda, Mary Lou, and a doe-eyed girl of Puerto Rican descent named Dolores—get my address on scraps of stationery and promise to write. We are treated to a final bonfire, and a display of fireworks set off from a pier across the river. The small girls compete to walk next to me and hold my hand. As the final fusillade peppers the night sky with light and color and sound, and the faint smell of gunpowder lingers over the river, Dolores squeezes my hand and tells me of the night she saw her uncle gunned down in the street beneath her bedroom window.
Week two is more of a challenge. I share my cabin with six junior high school girls from impoverished Baltimore neighborhoods. Two cabins are reserved for a dozen “troubled juveniles”—six girls, six boys, charged with an assortment of off enses—petty theft, shoplifting, indecent exposure, possession of illegal drugs, assault. One girl, we are told, is a kleptomaniac and compulsive liar. These troubled youths are assigned specially trained counselors.
Before long, I run into Jamal, a thirteen-year-old from a broken home, who, we have been warned, is a troublemaker who bears watching. On the first afternoon, I return to our cabin with my girls after an unsuccessful attempt at rowing. Initially, when I told the girls I had never rowed a boat before, Patty, the oldest and most athletic-looking of my brood—and a bit of a loudmouth—swore she knew how to row. But soon it became obvious that Patty had no more experience at rowing than I did. We got stuck mid-river, with Patty rowing in circles, and the other girls freaking out with fear. Finally, Todd, the camp maintenance guy, came roaring across the water in his motor-boat to haul us back to the dock.
“I thought you said you knew how to row,” I say to Patty.
Patty giggles back at me. “I lied. I just wanted to go rowing.”
Feeling humiliated and sorry for myself, excruciatingly aware that I am the youngest and least-experienced counselor, I trudge up my cabin steps late that afternoon, my girls in tow. And there’s Jamal, squatting under the farthest bunk, rifling through one of our suitcases!
Just then, Jim, Jamal’s counselor, comes searching for him, and Jamal takes off, sprinting down the lane back to his cabin.
“I’ll have a word with Jamal,” Jim tells me. “Just make sure you’re not missing anything.”
It turns out to be a difficult and, in some ways, illuminating second week. On Tuesday, one of my girls, Belinda, emerges from the pool red-eyed and screaming, “I can’t see! I can’t see!” and is rushed to the hospital to have her eyes flushed. The rest of us are banished for the day from the pool while it is drained and cleared of excess chlorine. We try to amuse the kids with crafts and a sing-along, and Jamal persists in substituting the foulest lyrics he can come up with to get our attention and try to shock us.
On Wednesday, it rains, and we continue halfheartedly with camp songs and crafts.
On Thursday, we take a long hike through the woods. Later that night, as the sky begins to darken, I start to change into my pajamas for bed. Behind me, just as I unhook my bra, I hear branches scratching against the cabin wall, just beneath one of the large cabin windows. I turn to look and spot Jamal, hiding outside in the bushes, his face pressed against the window screen, spying on me. Unintentionally, I present this precocious Peeping Tom with a full-frontal view of my bare breasts. Jamal’s mouth falls open. For a moment he stares, and then—I’m convinced this “bad” little teen is embarrassed at seeing more than he planned to—Jamal blushes, snaps his head away, and runs off to find security among the lengthening shadows. Jamal’s vulnerability and innocence are so striking, so endearing, that for the moment I forget to be self-conscious about my own nakedness.
On Friday I wake with a bad case of poison ivy crawling up both legs, and realize I neglected to wear my long pants for yesterday’s hike. Ted, a good-looking blond counselor who is studying to be a doctor, insists on having a look at my legs, but his obsessive fascination with the ugly pink rash and oozing yellow pustules makes me feel more like a specimen than an attractive girl.
On Saturday, when Pastor Dan drops me off at the bus terminal, I am more than ready to go home. Pastor Dan hands me my stipend, extends a firm handshake, and says, “Is this enough to cover your expenses?”
“Yes.” I stuff the money into the pocket of my shorts and start to board the bus, feeling a bit defeated.
Pastor Dan lays his hand gently on my shoulder and gives it a firm squeeze. I turn and look up at his face. He seems to be studying me, reading me like a book. Finally, he says, “Would you be willing to come back again next summer?”
“Yes.” I nod and beam up at him. An irresistible feeling of pride and strength and burgeoning self-confidence washes over me as I find a seat on the bus.
Daddy is waiting at the Crossroads bus stop in our maroon Corvair, smoking a cigar. “I missed you, my little squirrel ears.”
“I missed you, too, Daddy.” I flip down the mirror on the windshield visor and take a good look at myself for the first time in two weeks. I’m tanner than I’ve ever been, and my teeth look extra white. I feel healthy.
Before school starts, Paloma insists on taking me shopping for a new school dress at Hutzler’s. I gawk at the magnificent gray stone palace storefront on Howard Street, craning my neck to take in the building’s intricately carved arabesques. I feel like a poor kid standing on the pavement outside, pressing my face against one of the store’s huge display windows.
“Come on, Lissa,” Paloma calls to me, and I rush over to follow her and her mom through one of the revolving doors. At one point, we board an elegant elevator operated by a uniformed woman. Seated on a stool that’s pulled out from the wall of the elevator, she announces the floors and the names of the departments. I am intrigued by a department called Notions.
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As we shop in one of the junior dress sections, a lady comes over to help me find the right size. I am just home from my stint as a camp counselor, so I’m fit and tanned. After looking me up and down, the store lady says, “I’ll bet you’re a perfect junior size eleven.” She pulls several outfits off the rack, and shows me to the fitting rooms. When I come out modeling a bright orange and yellow patterned jacket and matching skirt, she smiles.
“I’m a fashion director here. I run the teen fashion shows,” she says. Let me know if you ever want a job here as a model.”
Paloma and her mom buy the orange and yellow outfit for me. They won’t take no for an answer.
CHAPTER TWELVE
ESCAPING TO “FLORIDA” ON SUNDAY AFTERNOONS
IT turns out the shopping trip to Hutzler’s for the new outfit was a kind of farewell gift to me from Paloma and her mom. The day before I start tenth grade, I get a phone call from Paloma.
“I won’t be seeing you for a while, Lissa. My dad is forcing me to go to Bryn Mawr. It’s kind of a status thing with him.” I learn that Bryn Mawr is a girls’ prep school in Roland Park. It’s a private school in a wealthy Baltimore neighborhood.
I miss Paloma, and as autumn withdraws into gloomy winter, I find myself clinging to the safety of the past. On Sunday afternoons, I retreat with Daddy into a comforting ritual. After church, I change into my everyday clothes, fix lunch for the three of us. We used to call it Sunday dinner when Jimmie was still around, and it was a much more sumptuous meal.
After lunch, I clear the dishes, and Spence paces around the kitchen table, “thinking” and wearing off the linoleum in a black oval path. If the afternoon is sunny, I escape with Daddy to the sun parlor to soak in the bright light and warmth coming through the broad banks of windows that Granddaddy Friedrich salvaged from a nearby mill town back in the 1920s, when it was razed and flooded to supply drinking water for Baltimore City. Daddy calls it “going to Florida.” Here, Daddy relaxes on a Craftsman-style wooden rocker and puffs a cigar. I perch on Daddy’s antique watchmaker’s stool, finding comfort on its curved oak seat. Resting the balls of my feet on the stool’s cast-iron frame beneath me, I can walk the seat around to face any angle of the room.
I open the first of Jimmie’s two five-year diaries, the ones she kept when she worked as a licensed practical nurse at Harford Memorial Hospital in Havre de Grace and lived in the nurses’ quarters. That was when Daddy was “courting” her. The diaries were kept regularly, from the beginning of 1936 to almost the end of July 1942, when Jimmie’s writing abruptly ends.
Jimmie used to tell me, “The diaries will be there for you to read, Lissa, when I’m gone. I’ve never written anything there I wouldn’t want you to know.” There are five entries per page, so each passage is very short.
Wed, January 1: Beautiful day—Snow. Am in charge on Emergency Shift III. Miss Linganore very sick. Spent quiet evening in room.
Thurs, January 2: Raining very bad underfoot and overhead! Business picking up on Emergency III. Broke connecting nozzle. Visited Heinricks and received letter from pastor. Morning hours.
Fri, January 3: Beautiful warm sunshiny day. Visited Anna. Had a P.M. with Essie. Was home for supper. Visited Heinricks when returned. Received invitation to Helen Petersen’s party Saturday.
Sat, January 4: Cloudy day. Rained tonight. Miss Linganore, aged 75, passed away at 6:58 P.M. Was with her. Went to Helen Petersen’s party (17 young people). Had the best time “Cheating the Lawyer” (game). All night leave. Stayed home.
Sun, January 5: Beautiful warm day. Miss Craymore and I worked. Went to M.E. Church with Essie and Scottie. Took down Xmas tree. Had morning hours.
Mon, January 6: Snowing turned to rain (had P.M. off). Went to see Shirley Temple in Littlest Rebel with Stouten and to Virginia Dare for dinner. Received leather gloves and 1-lb box of candy. Had lovely evening. Learned a lot about Catholic beliefs.
Tues, January 7: Lovely day. Stayed in. Lived over pleasant memories.
When I look up from Jimmie’s diary I see that Daddy has leaned his head back on the chair’s headrest. His eyes are closed, but I can tell he’s not asleep. The tip of his cigar smolders in his hand on the armrest.
“Daddy, do you remember going to see that Shirley Temple movie with Jimmie?”
He nods. “In those days, you could go to see a new movie every night of the week.” He sits up straighter and leans toward me.
“You know,” he tells me, “your mother was a good woman. I saw her for the first time at the old Allison place out in Harford County. She was running in the field, chasing turkeys. Only thirteen years old. Black curly hair. Dark brown eyes. I knew right then and there I would marry that girl one day, and sure enough, I did.
“When she was a little older, I took her to the circus, and we started up a correspondence. ‘Dear Stoutie,’ she would write. And she’d end each letter with, ‘Your little pal, Jimmie.’
“Course, I thought such a young woman would outlive me. When she trained to be a nurse, I thought she’d learn how to take care of me in my old age. Life takes some funny twists and turns.” Daddy shakes his head and takes a long draw on his cigar. Its tip glows red like a fiery red eye, opening.
One Sunday, as I read from the diary, Daddy and I learn about a mysterious player in Jimmie’s life, a navy pilot referred to only as ESB. We’ve progressed to March 1937.
Sun, March 14: N.D. [Jimmie’s shorthand for night duty] Snow to rain all day (4 inches). Took Levine to church. Had emergency appendectomy at 8 A.M. with Dr. Stebbins. Went for walk with Levine this evening in snow. Met ESB. Walked back with us. (Forgot to call me for church.)
Mon, March 15: N.D. Snow and rain all day (6 inches). Levine and I walked to bank this A.M. Had my duty shoes reheeled. Saw ESB in truck. On maternity ward. Everything quiet.
Tues, March 16: N.D. Beautiful. Cold. Levine and I walked out on errand for Miss Craymore. Met ESB on way back. Have date for Friday night.
“Who’s this ESB?” I ask Daddy.
“Don’t know.”
“I thought you were courting Jimmie then.”
“I was.” Daddy starts to pluck at his hair. He does that sometimes, when he’s tense and thinking hard. I found out from the encyclopedia that this habit is something called trichotillomania. “Thought I was the only one.”
Wed, March 17: N.D. Clear, warm, snow melting. Levine ½ night off. Took her to bus terminal. Wrote letters and stitched fine seams. Got up at 4 P.M. Went out for walk. Beautiful.
Thurs, March 18. Rain to cloudy warm. Levine, Hendricks, and I walked to post office. Called ESB at 6:30 P.M. Quiet evening. Girls went to St. Patrick’s service at M.E. Church.
Fri, March 19: Beautiful, warm. ½ night off. Levine relieved. Drove home at 8 A.M. Got Struggle stuck in snow. Had to be pulled out by horse and wagon. Went to Baltimore to Stouten’s to pick up watch. Had date with ESB at 7 P.M. Went to ESB’s home to meet his mother.
“What does Jimmie mean when she says, “Got Struggle stuck in snow”?
“Struggle was Jimmie’s car. Her father and brothers didn’t think a woman needed to know how to drive a car, and refused to teach her. Well, she could already drive a tractor, so I taught her to drive my car. She got her license, and eventually saved enough money to buy herself a sporty little roadster. She named it Struggle.” Daddy chuckles softly, then leans forward and gestures with his cigar.
“What I want to know is, who is this ESB fellow? Jimmie never mentioned him to me.”
I skim through Jimmie’s entries now, searching for more information about ESB.
Sun, May 23: ESB and I went to Mt. Zion M.E. Church tonight. Wore blue crepe dress with flowered jacket and yellow picture hat. Lovely evening.
Sun, June 6: Went to Children’s Day at M.E. Church. Had date with ESB at 7:30 P.M. Went for drive. Talked of future. Came in at 10:30 P.M.
Gleaning these tidbits and reading between the lines, I pull together the following scenario. ESB works at Willow G
rove, an airfield in Pennsylvania where they design, construct, and test aircraft. He helps build planes, falls in love with flying, and joins the navy, hoping one day to become a pilot. On leave, he meets Jimmie at a Methodist Episcopal Church service and invites her home to dinner with his family. Soon, she becomes good friends with ESB’s mother and sister. When Jimmie visits her parents, ESB often comes along for meals, and becomes friends with Jimmie’s brother Ray, who is in the Coast Guard. In February 1937, Jimmie goes ice skating with ESB on his family’s pond, and when she falls through thin ice, ESB rescues her, carries her into the house, wraps her in a warm blanket, and makes her a hot toddy.
Later in February, ESB seems always available to lend a hand when Jimmie’s car, Struggle, has a flat tire or needs a wash, an oil change, or a grease job.
In March 1937, Jimmie and ESB begin to date. Jimmie’s diary mentions phone calls, moonlight drives, visits to nearby towns, seeing the movie Waikiki Wedding, listening to the radio together, having long talks on his family’s front porch that result in confessions and revelations. “ESB told me of an accident he had as a child.”
Jimmie’s entries are mostly in black or blue fountain pen ink. Occasionally, a few days are recorded in pencil, as if no pen was at hand when Jimmie wrote them. In some places, the ink is faded or blurred, or the script becomes so small it is illegible. The pencil entries have become dim, but still, the diary gives me glimpses of a youthful love, the pendulum of emotions as their hearts open and close: “lovely time,” “ESB very tired,” “misunderstanding,” “cross words,” “parted as friends.”
In May, Jimmie gives ESB a military set—two silver-plated, monogrammed boar-hair-bristle brushes—for his birthday. He is eleven months older than she is. Their dates become more frequent, and they continue to “talk of future.” In June, while driving Struggle, Jimmie hits another car, breaks her radiator, and bends both front fenders. ESB brings a truck and tows Struggle home. ESB gives Jimmie a gold necklace with a cross. Three days later, she loses the cross.
At the Far End of Nowhere Page 14