by Nadia Gould
As soon as we had time off, we went searching for handsome escorts. We were more interested in showing off than in pursuing the real thing. The search itself was the excitement. We laughed and had thrills looking at possibilities, or impossibilities, and imagining. This was much more satisfying than if we had found somebody. We were window-shopping. At curfew, we would get back in the nick of time and laugh ourselves to sleep, exhausted and fulfilled.
The day the atomic bomb exploded in Hiroshima, we had picked up two toothless soldiers on the boardwalk in Long Branch. They were cooks at Fort Dix, and they told us: “The war is over.” Gloria and I laughed hysterically, left them and ran and ran. They were too ugly, and the news they gave us empowered us to be mean to them. Everything was yet to come for us: life was full of promises. We were sixteen.
That summer also stands out for me because one day I heard the counselors talking about entering someone in a beauty contest. I was shocked to hear them mention me as a possible contestant. It sent all kinds of new emotions down my spine. I had thought that I had a terrible figure—I was still under the judgment of Luba about my lack of beauty. I began wearing a bikini, which was rare in those days; and I gave up my coat in the summer.
In my last year in high school, I saw an ad in P.M., a liberal daily newspaper. The only newspaper I read and loved. The ad asked for counselors to work in the first co-racial camp in America. I replied with the list of my camp experiences. Dr. Patrick, the owner of this co-racial camp, asked me to come for an interview. We met in his office in Harlem—my first visit to Harlem.
Dr. Patrick was unusually good-looking with light tan skin, blue eyes and curly short hair, gray on the sides. He spoke with a hushed voice, so low I had to pay close attention. I was intimidated, but he put me at ease and told me about the camp: “It’s in the Catskill Mountains in Roscoe, New York, an experimental camp, a co-racial camp—the first of its kind in the States. You’ll have to attend our training sessions. I want the camp workers to know one another and to know everything about the campers and their families. This is meaningful work. I want it to succeed!”
I couldn’t believe my luck to be even considered for a significant job like this at Camp Willowemoc. I agreed to attend the training sessions and do as much work as necessary. I told Dr. Patrick that my friend Joan might be interested. “Good,” he said. Joan decided to go with me and agreed it would be a fulfilling job and a worthy cause for us.
We met new, dedicated people, black and white. Dr. Patrick led awe-inspiring meetings. He talked to us, and we talked back to him as we sat on the floor in a circle. This was my first participation in a democratic exchange of ideas.
By the time we settled in camp all the counselors were friends. I was the counselor for the small boys on the hill. The hill had two sides, a side for the boys and a side for the girls. All the boys had men counselors except the boys in my tent. That was because they were only seven-years-old and Dr. Patrick thought they would fare better with a girl. My boys were openly disappointed at having me as their counselor. They wanted a man, and they told me so. To make up for this and have them save face on the hill, I promised I would look extra tough in public. When the campers in the neighboring tents teased my boys because I was a girl on the boy’s side, I went through a fit of anger and screamed at my boys so hard the surrounding tents had to agree I was the toughest, meanest counselor on the hill.
Everything was going on well until the counselor of the nearby tent asked that I take one of his boys into my group. He had problems with him, and he thought it might be better for the boy to be with a younger group. Dr. Patrick and his nurse authorized the move, and I had no choice. They told me: “This boy is a leader. He has creative ideas. He knows how to get others to do what he wants.” Hearing this I decided perhaps he wouldn’t be so bad in our group and that by flattering him, I might make him my assistant.
After a few days, we smelled a foul odor that we traced to his trunk. We opened the trunk and found that all his pants, neatly stacked, had shit stuck to them. Now I understood why they gave me the boy. I was furious. My colleague said it was not his fault and that he had told Dr. Patrick and his nurse about the problem. “So?” I demanded. “What am I supposed to do?” I just got a blank stare and a shrug as the answer.
I gathered up the soiled, stinking pants and took them to the laundry room. The lady in charge said, “Sorry—you’re not bringing these in here!”
Feeling persecuted, I made a hole in the ground and buried the pants. The way the lady in Philadelphia had buried her dishes to make them kosher. The fat boy had no more pants. The Dr. Patrick consulted again said, “O.K. we’ll call his folks, and we’ll send him home. I don’t know what else we can do.”
All at once I felt sad. Now that the problem was so easily settled, I didn’t want to see the boy leave. In desperation, I told him, “You are going to be tied to me all day. The minute you have to go, you’ll go—I’ll be there and this way there’ll be no accident.”
And that’s how we were, tied together, for an entire day. When I had to be freed I had someone hold him for me. All day long, I asked him, “Do you have to go?” When the evening came, he begged me to untie him. He promised he wouldn’t do it in his pants anymore, and he didn’t. It was a triumph. Later I learned that his parents, who were both doctors, had faced this problem before, but had not known what to do for him. They had not said anything because they were afraid their son wouldn’t be admitted to camp. They had hoped something would happen to change their son and it did. I thought it was a miracle.
The countryside around Camp Willowemoc was beautiful with big old trees and clear cool streams, large enough for going swimming. We took walks and had picnics, and sometimes we went on overnight camping trips with bonfires and cookouts. The boys rolled in the grass and climbed trees, and we read stories in the shade.
The kids thought I was funny because they told me that “fluck” meant rain. And I would say fluck if it rained, and they went crazy with delight. After I learned what the word meant to them, that it was close enough to a forbidden English word to sound shocking to them, I kept using fluck to help me get on their good side. They were a handful. In the evening I tucked them in and kissed them lightly on the cheek, but I remember taking pleasure in pinching their cheeks according to their behavior that day. Sometimes I felt I was ready to explode, but I had to be patient and tolerant with these little monsters. Still I was attached to them.
We, the counselors, had our fun too. Del, who was one of the most sought-after guys in camp, flattered me with his attention. I thought he was the best-looking black counselor. He courted me openly but never made serious demands. He taught me how to dance the jitterbug. To my surprise I loved the dance. Before that I had thought ballroom dancing was frivolous and stupid. Why do people like dancing cheek to cheek, I wondered. Later I learned that Del had sex, in secret, with another girl. I didn’t care, I was seventeen and not ready for sex. We fondled a lot. It was called petting and it was what everybody was doing. Petting was not considered sex. Nothing was more sacred than one’s virginity and one’s reputation. Petting was like necking.
My new friend that summer was Loretta, a music student at Music and Art High School. She was six months older than I, but I felt she was much older because she was so reasonable, with her hair in a pageboy cut and her sweater and her single strand pearls. She looked virtuous. Her sweet beauty and quiet ways attracted the most unlikely young men to her. One asked her, “Are you J.B.?” “What’s that?” she asked. “Jail bait—it means under eighteen!” he said. Her company was very comforting to me when Joan, my best friend, abandoned me for Marshall. We went on our day off together, Loretta and I, and had adventures. Once, we hitchhiked and got a ride with young men who flirted with us during the trip. Loretta was annoyed with me because she had to handle them alone when I fell asleep in the back seat. Our destination reached, they refused to stop and tried to talk us into going somewhere else. We were scared for a while,
but we insisted, and they reluctantly agreed because Loretta had a way of getting us out of trouble; she was so ladylike and reasonable.
Sex was on our minds all the time. Joan was having a most passionate love affair with Marshall, a factory worker who was planning to be a union organizer. She thought he was gorgeous with his fine features and thin moustache. Under his spell, Joan became subdued. I missed her assertiveness and her independence. She lost her authority over me. I was not ready to give in to love, and I couldn’t understand Joan’s total surrender to Marshall. Also, I was irritated to see them constantly kissing and fondling. I resented him terribly.
Dr. Patrick had forbidden lovemaking and particularly co-racial love. He didn’t want black-and-white couples to go to town together. The counselors remarked that Dr. Patrick made rules that he didn’t follow because he was having an affair with his secretary, who was white. We thought it was unfair.
As discontentment grew, other injustices were pointed out. The one that surprised me especially was that blacks like Dr. Patrick could be discriminatory. We were told to observe who had been chosen to be a counselor and who had been designated to work in the kitchen. Then it became clear that the light-skinned people were the counselors and the very dark-skinned ones were in the kitchen. They were all college students, and we had all trained together to be counselors, so why were the very black people made kitchen helpers?
A secret meeting was called to discuss this problem in depth. I remember I was talking just as Dr. Patrick came into the room. I froze, sure that I was going to be struck down. But Dr. Patrick was not concerned about me. He sat and asked that we continue. I took it upon myself to go on with what we had been in the middle of discussing, even though I was agitated to have Dr. Patrick listening. I remember trying to be honest and at the same time feeling embarrassed to tell the truth. It was not the same having the “enemy” there. I felt awkward because I liked him, and I also felt treacherous. Yes I was discovering that people are not always what they claim to be. Some people can be self-serving even while working for a good cause. I had to face some of the truth about Dr. Patrick and continue to like him in spite of it. He admitted there was discrimination in the way he chose the counselors. He said he thought that the white parents who came to look over the camp would prefer light-skinned people to deal with their children. But we knew better because the Whites who were sending their kids to this camp were more liberal and certainly poorer than the black parents. The irony also was that the Blacks who could send their children to camp were very rich. It was clear that Dr. Patrick wanted to please them at this point.
Washington Irving High School’s yearbook of 1946 was called “Daisy.” Washington Irving was an all-girls school. Daisies were the symbol of its students. My name appears as Dina Nadia Balter. These were the names given me by my parents and registered as my official name on my birth certificate. My parents called me Nadia. Dina was just an extra name. When I came to the United States the school secretaries registered me under my official name Dina, which followed me through my entire school career. But when I applied for a passport I changed the order of my names and I took Nadia as my first official name.
The Principal of my high school was Dr. Mary E. Meade. Annette Rubman, Mary Holbrook and Clara B. Garnett were teachers who signed my yearbook.
Names. Family names. I enjoy putting these names down just for their own sake. Like spices, I think they add taste and color and they help memories to surface. I remember vaguely Dr. Meade. She was a formidable administrator, serious and ethical. The school was run like a ship: clean with shining copper knobs, waxed floors, clear windows, well built like a bank. It was famous as an art school but offered a regular diploma also.
I chose the school because Annette was there, and she had chosen it because it was close to her home. My good friend Joan Bromberg chose the school because it was close to Greenwich Village where she lived. The closest school to my house was Julia Richman, considered a good academic school. In 1944 all New York high schools were considered good.
“You are always welcome here, and we trust that you will share with us the happiness and joy that we hope will be yours in the years to come.” This is what our Principal told us upon graduation but I knew as well as everyone knows you can’t go home again.
As I leaf through the yearbook, I can find neither Joan’s nor Ingrid’s names. Frances Roena Young is there. Her face seems to jump off the page with her bubbling self. She married a ship designer and moved to a port city. I wish I could call her right this minute. I am curious to know how many children she has. The yearbook is a disappointment because it is so thin.
Mariane Bloch—Oh! Marianne! I remember her well. She was French, and I first met her in my gym class. She was never prepared, never wore shorts nor tennis shoes. She didn’t care if she failed gym.
She had come to America, with her family, just a few years before I did. Her mother was a painter. She painted Parisian scenes like Utrillo. Marianne’s aunt had stayed in France. She was a famous translator of novels such as Rebecca. Marianne’s father was a successful manufacturer of porcelains: Les Porcelaines de Paris. They had to abandon everything, home, flourishing business, in France to escape the Germans. They were well off and lived in the Village. Marianne had an older brother who attended Cornell University.
I realize now that Marianne was as ahead of her time as Joan had been. Joan was a progressive. Marianne was a nihilist, or had she been depressed? After she graduated from high school (she had to be excused from gym credits with doctors’ excuses), she failed to attend her classes at Hunter College. She left home in the morning and aimlessly walked around while her parents thought she was getting an education. This behavior was appalling then, while today it would be quite normal for a difficult teenager.
I was horrified to see her talk back to her mother: “I can’t stand you, old bitch.” She never liked the clothes her mother bought for her. “How do you expect me to wear these cheap things? Just because you would wear anything and you look so horrible you want me to look like you? Forget it! I hate it. Don’t worry, I know you like my brother better than me. He is your favorite, so sorry you have to put up with a daughter like me. I hate you Bitch!”
Marianne’s idea of looking good was looking bad although in 1944 it was easy to dress unconventionally, any small deviation was monumental. Marianne couldn’t help herself. She was miserable. I didn’t understand her at all. I knew something was strange, but I didn’t know what was wrong with her.
Since Marianne lived on Waverly Place and I passed by her house every day we became closer. Her mother thought I was a good influence on her, and she encouraged our friendship. I liked Marianne’s mother, and I liked it when I would visit and Marianne was not home so I could talk with her. She told me about Proust, and she invited me to go with her to listen to the lectures of Germaine Bree at the School of Social Sciences.
Marianne was dangerous. She was always on the edge of peril and there was excitement to be around her. She spoke to me endlessly about her recent illicit love affair. It was a tragic, impossible affair with a distant cousin. It consumed her. She said she never, ever, had sex of such a magnitude. I believed her. What did I know? In truth upon refection, now I can see that Joan’s love affair at Camp Willowemoc paled next to Marianne’s, but Joan was not hiding, and her affair was simple. Dull.
Marianne’s illicit affair was entangled, confusing, fraught with eroticism. I loved hearing the details of her love story after she pledged me to secrecy. It was incest, and she could become pregnant. She was very dramatic, and I was frightened for her. She spoke of killing herself. I wondered what I was supposed to do and if I should forget the oath of secrecy.
I introduced her to Sidney D. who had once sent me a Valentine. Marianne liked him, and I was surprised at the speed with which she agreed to go with him and he became interested in her. Their relationship helped her to get over her cousin. It turned out not as dramatic as I had expected. My heroine had be
come as ordinary a lover as my friend Joan.
When I had returned to Paris and before Philip joined me there in 1949, I renewed my friendship with Marianne. She was happy now that she was in France, in her milieu. She seemed more normal. She moved in a close-knit group of young people of the same social class, the children of her parents’ friends. They reminded me of a Proustian world, with their intimacy and the hothouse atmosphere of their parties. We went out as a group, to parties, movies, nightclubs. It was all very chic and upper class. They were snobs and felt superior and I enjoyed being with them even though I didn’t approve of their values. They included me but I was still an outsider. And that suited me fine, because I was embarrassed to be sharing their snobbery and their superior attitudes. But I liked watching them, and it gave me a social setting before I could find my own friends.
Marianne quickly found a new boyfriend and this time it seemed likely that they would marry. Though he was not a relative, he had the same family name she did. This symbolic detail can only exist in real life I thought.
Joan Carol Cohn’s photo has under it a line that says she wants to go to the Yale Drama School to be an actress. At the time I didn’t know about the Yale Drama School, and I am impressed now that my friend knew about it in 1945. She was glamorous and one of the most dramatic looking girls I knew then. I liked her haughtiness; it was part of her knowledge of the world of theater. I could tell she was going to be famous, and I wonder if she did become so.
Under Sally Ufford’s photo it says that she wanted to go to Sarah Lawrence College. This too is quite a revelation for me now, because I didn’t know about that school until my husband went to teach there in 1959.