—
The cafeteria building was split into two single-sex dining halls. Apparently, the boys and girls sat on opposite sides of the same room years ago, but there had been too many distractions—the kids didn’t eat, just socialized—so they built a wall to separate the two sides. Mo felt grateful for any same-sex separations like this; she had had the idea that maybe she would meet a man that summer, and yet the more divisions there were between the genders, the more excuses she had to not meet one.
The girls sang some sort of grace before every meal. This morning they sang “The Birdie Song,” linking their thumbs together and fluttering their fingers above their heads.
“Way up in the sky, the little birds fly,
While down in their nest, the little birds rest.”
The girls made beds for the invisible birds with their arms, rocking them back and forth like infants.
“With a wing on the left and a wing on the right,
The little birds sleep all through the night.”
Rachel, the counselor for tent three, led her girls, putting her hands together against her ear and resting her head on them like they were a pillow.
“The fuck is she wearing?” Nell whispered.
Rachel and her friend Fiona were Americans who grew up going to Camp Marigold. Normally, Mo would have said something bitchy to Nell about the girl’s too-short dress. But Mo knew, because she was Rachel’s boss and had to deliver the news from the outside world, that Rachel’s father had died just a few days earlier. She was shocked that Rachel hadn’t left, let alone seemed cheerful and happy to still be at camp. So instead of making a snide comment to Nell, she simply shrugged.
The campers raised their voices at their favorite part of the song and yelled: “Shhh….You’ll wake the dang birdies!”
They laughed, clapped, and sat, and the kitchen workers came out of the swinging doors wheeling carts filled with identical breakfast trays. Mo and her table of camp leadership were served the sausage links and French toast sticks first.
“Of course breakfast is good on Visitors’ Day,” Nell said, dousing her meal with syrup. “So the first thing a Maple kid will tell their parents is, ‘Mom, we had French toast sticks for breakfast!’?” she said, mimicking an American accent.
After breakfast, the parents began to arrive. They parked their SUVs on the lower fields and carried picnic baskets, balloons, and shopping bags to the boys’ and girls’ camps. The weather wasn’t ideal: The sunny morning had quickly morphed into a gray day, and a uniformly cloudy sky had cast itself over the camp, the freshly cut grass appearing a dull, dirty green.
“This makes me miss my mom,” Rachel said to one of her counselor friends outside the head tent, where Mo was also standing. The dads stayed outside their daughters’ tents, peering in, while moms straightened up bunks and took items out of shopping bags: shaving cream, gum, Pixy Stix, cups of ramen, Seventeen magazines, nail polish, Snapple iced teas.
Mo noticed two parents standing silently outside tent three. The older girls all welcomed their parents’ initial arrival but seemed to remember quickly afterward—now ignoring their parents and giggling over magazines with one another on their tents’ front steps—that it was not cool to spend too much time with or to be too excited by the presence of one’s family.
“Hey, Rachel,” Mo said. “Could you go over and chat up the parents over there? They look a bit…idle.”
Rachel stood still for a beat and then, without looking at Mo, strolled over to the tent. Mo watched her put on a saccharine smile as she shook the parents’ hands.
Sheera came up to Mo’s tent hand in hand with a tall man in slacks and a fedora. “Mo, this is my dad,” she said proudly.
“I’ve heard so much about you,” the father said, taking both of Mo’s hands. Then he said more quietly, “Thank you for watching over my girl.”
Sheera stopped by Mo’s tent every morning. The other girls in tent three didn’t seem to understand Sheera, who lived in an apartment in the city instead of a house in the suburbs. Those girls had yards and dogs; they lied and said they had their periods to avoid swimming in the lake; they never signed up for activities at the nature lodge. Sheera ran from one activity to the next, hiking and going horseback riding and swimming in a lake all for the very first time.
“She’s a pleasure,” Mo said. Over Sheera’s shoulder, Mo saw Rachel laughing with the father at the tent, throwing her head back.
—
After a picnic lunch on the flag lawn, activity demos began. Each girl chose her favorite activity and participated in a show for the parents—a dance performance, a horseback-riding expo, a swimming or boat race. After the section was cleared of campers and parents, Mo walked down to the stables to help Nell.
Parents stood around the wooden fence of the arena with cameras around their necks. In the dim barn that smelled of leather and manure, Nell, Rachel, and the other riding counselors had already lined up the twenty campers from youngest to oldest. Since there were only twelve horses, they split the expo into two age groups. The counselors would walk alongside the younger group for the show; the older campers could go unspotted.
“God, there you are,” Nell said to Mo, pulling her by the arm. “Stay here.”
Mo watched the older girls in the barn while Nell and the other riding counselors went out with the younger girls. “Hi, Mo!” Sheera waved from the back of the line.
“Hi, Sheera,” Mo said, distracted by two ten-year-old Buckeyes shoving each other and bickering over who was first.
“Mo, I’m riding Micah!” Sheera called. “Your favorite!”
“Girls!” Mo approached the shrieking Buckeyes and physically separated them from each other. “You’re acting like kindergartners!”
Now she turned her attention to the arena, the ambling procession of horses and the girls sitting proudly atop them. The small girl riding Micah looked timid, unsure of what to do. He stood out from the pack, moving at a slow, almost lethargic pace, his eyes toward the ground. Every now and then he shook his head or blew out air or stamped an erratic hoof. Nell walked beside Micah and the girl; even though Nell wasn’t even touching the horse, you could sense her poise and her comfort in the arena. One could easily imagine her as a serious English riding competitor, showing horses in gray jodhpurs and freshly polished boots, a long red braid falling from under her helmet.
Behind them, a girl rode Firework, a younger horse with a shiny black coat, and Rachel stood by, chin up. The families clapped and snapped photos. The younger girls retreated to the barn.