I stabbed a piece of French toast and tried not to sound teary. “May I be excused?”
“Excused? You haven’t eaten anything,” my mother said. “And please, Amy, sit up straight.”
The camp logo rode high on my breast as I uncurled my spine. “But I’m not hungry, and Uncle Ed said we’re eating on the bus.”
“I don’t care what your Uncle Ed said!”
Charlie started to tremble.
“Sonia, please,” my father tried again. “It’s a big day for her.” He turned to me. “You nervous, honey?”
“A little.”
“Well, no need. Why I’ll bet you make so many friends you won’t even want to come home.”
Now Charlie’s whole body shook. “It’s okay, buddy,” I said, placing a hand on his knee, then poking at a bite of French toast.
“You’ll have a great time, Ame.” My father spoke too loudly, as if trying to convince us.
My stomach knotted when I held the fork to my mouth. “Don’t play with your food,” my mother said.
I searched for an excuse to leave the table. “I have to go check my room. I need to make sure I didn’t forget anything.”
“What could you forget?” my mother asked. “We had a list.”
True enough. She had ticked off the items as I laid them in my trunk. Four pairs of shorts. Check. Ten pairs of underpants. Check. Two bathing suits. Check.
When the packing was done, she had placed the camp list in that metal box in her closet—the box in which I saw her put Charlie’s progress reports. The box where I assumed my mother stowed all those papers she took care of: birth certificates and vaccination records; school notes and clothing receipts.
I caught my father’s eye across the table. “Go ahead,” he said. “You’re excused.”
“No she’s not. She hasn’t eaten yet. She doesn’t know how lucky she is to have a good breakfast.” My mother’s variation on starving children in China. The long version went like this: You don’t know what it’s like to be hungry and wonder where your next meal is coming from when you’ve left home in a hurry and you’re all by yourself.
A clue to my mother’s past. I had heard it so many times that I didn’t even pay attention anymore.
“Go ahead, Ame,” my father said again. Charlie pushed back his chair. “Go on now, both of you.” My anxiety must have been visible: My father was risking my mother’s fury to help me. I avoided her eyes as I left the kitchen, shadowed by Charlie, who followed me upstairs.
“You wait in your room, buddy,” I said at the door to mine. I needed a moment to myself, a chance to breathe without reprimand or interruption. “I’ll be there in a minute.”
Charlie wrapped himself around my leg.
“I know. I wish I didn’t have to go away today.” I kissed the top of his head, then disengaged his arms. “But you go ahead now. Scoot.” I gave him a playful nudge. “Scoot, scoot, skedaddle.”
“Scoot, scoot, skedaddle,” Charlie whispered, running the heels of his hands over his eyes.
I shut my door and opened my Russian nesting dolls to line them up on the dresser. The next-to-the-smallest doll stuck, trapping the tiniest one inside. I held Puppy to my face and inhaled my stuffed animal’s peanut butter scent.
A half hour later, we were in the car—Charlie and I in the back of the brown Impala, our parents up front. A warm breeze whipped my face when my father rolled down his window. I grabbed a rubber band from the bag at my feet and pulled my hair into a ponytail.
“Well, at least one of us won’t sweat to death all summer,” my father said, raising his voice over the whoosh of passing cars. “I hear the weather’s perfect in Maine. You’re one lucky girl.”
Lucky? Then why was my stomach doing somersaults?
I reached over to calm Charlie. His legs jiggled on the tan seat as we bounced along a road pitted with potholes. My mother inched forward with every bump.
“Sonia, for God’s sake, Sonia. Relax,” my father said.
“If she misses the bus, then what? We’re driving to Maine?”
“Of course not. Helen’s riding with the girls. She won’t let the buses leave till everyone’s accounted for.”
My mother stayed quiet for a while after that, perhaps thinking about Aunt Helen and Uncle Ed. I don’t know why, but I thought about last year’s Thanksgiving dinner, when Aunt Helen told my mother, “It would be nice if we could come to your house for the holiday sometimes, Sonia. But I guess it makes more sense doing it here, what with our place being so much bigger. And anyhoodle, Thanksgiving’s not really your holiday…I mean…well, it’s not really part of your background, it being an American holiday and all.”
“Who cares if we go to Aunt Sonia’s?” my cousin, Robin, mumbled. “She can’t even cook.”
“Watch it, young lady,” Uncle Ed warned his daughter. He caught my mother’s eye and winked.
I wondered if Robin had seen what I had. All through dinner her father seemed to study my mother, as if his eyes could peel the dress from her slender body, leaving my mother naked at the table. Is that why she hurried out to the car with Charlie while my father lingered on good-byes? My father in his too-large pants and worn brown cardigan—so different from Uncle Ed, in a crisp sport shirt and sharp khaki slacks. Robin too must have noticed the contrast, or so I imagined she did.
Now I pictured my cousin as my parents, Charlie, and I drove in silence toward the Triborough Bridge—toward the camp bus—the only sound in the car the popping up and down, up and down of Charlie’s legs as his skin kissed the vinyl seat.
“Sit still,” my mother commanded.
I leaned over to quiet him.
“You never know what might happen to children who call attention to themselves,” she went on. “Children should be seen and not heard.” Another rule not to be questioned.
I stroked Charlie’s legs and prayed that Robin and I wouldn’t be in the same cabin. I hadn’t said anything to my father about that. How could I have explained why I didn’t want to be with my only cousin? How could I have told my father that Robin’s vanity table with assorted makeup and hair rollers made me wish I could disappear?
“Setting and teasing your hair will just make it fall out,” my mother had said in Woolworth’s when I once begged for rollers. “If you took better care of your hair, you wouldn’t have to worry about setting it.”
Now my mother spoke again as we crossed the bridge from Queens to Manhattan. “Amy, if they serve sweets at camp, don’t eat too many.” Her back stayed rigid as she shifted in her seat to glimpse over her shoulder. “It’s a lot easier putting on weight than taking it off.”
“Yes, I’ll watch what I eat,” I answered, wondering what camp food would be like.
My mother faced forward again but kept talking, pushing her voice over the clacking of tires on the metal joints of the bridge. “And go easy on the starches too. You’ll never have a boyfriend if you gain weight.”
“Well now, your mother’s an expert on that, on keeping herself in shape,” my father said, a smile in his voice. I noticed his arm move, his hand creeping across the front seat. “I mean, don’t you agree she’s the prettiest mom? No middle-age spread for her.”
I didn’t answer, just looked over at Charlie, who stared at the cars snaking toward toll booths.
“I’ll tell you this, Ame,” my father kept on, lowering his voice as bridge traffic slowed, “I guarantee your mother’ll be the best-looking woman at the bus. It’s no wonder your Aunt Helen’s jealous.”
“Lou!” My mother jerked up tall.
“But it’s true. The way you always put yourself together, why I bet it makes Helen crazy. And Ed…well, he still goes nuts when he looks at us. I mean, really, he was the one who always scored with the girls. But look which brother won first prize.”