bus to the village near the campgrounds. It was December and chilly, and patches of old hardened snow were on the ground. I didn’t know if the camp would still be there. I walked from the village on a narrow road until I came upon a gravel driveway that led beneath an arch with the camp’s name on it in rustic letters. I wandered around for a while. A stream, full this time of year, formed a natural barrier at one side of the camp. It tumbled and sang in the silence. A memory slid into my mind.
One summer day when I was six, I was riding in the open back of a camp truck and, egged on by the older girls, I hit a child smaller than I was. She was odd-looking. Her lips were nearly invisible and her teeth protruded. I didn’t have a reason—there never is one—except the illusion that I would thus gain favor with the others. She cried out; her hand flew to her cheek. At that very moment, Sophie, sitting in the truck’s passenger seat, glanced back at us through the dust-streaked window.
When we reached the general store where we would buy fruit and sandwiches for our picnic, Sophie led me to the bathroom at the back, sat down on a toilet seat, and placed me across her lap, all this without a word. She spanked me, and I welcomed the punishment as much as I could. I had committed a bully’s crime.
Years later, I told my father that I had returned to the camp when I was sixteen. He said, “Ah, well … people who’ve been parceled out and knocked around are always returning to the past, retracing their steps.” He spoke distantly, in a detached voice.
It was during that same exchange that he told me what my mother had said—after I’d spent a week or so in Hollywood in the house with the waterfall—which had resulted in his leaving me in old Mrs. Cummings’s care.
“She gave me an ultimatum,” he began. “She said, ‘Either she goes or I go.’” He shook his head ruefully. “I had no choice,” he said, in a faintly self-pitying tone of voice.
“I had only a few days to find someone to take care of you.” Then he repeated his words: “I had no choice.”
* * *
Along with the other younger children in the camp, I dug for gold in the bank that rose from the stream. Sophie explained that it was “fool’s gold,” a glittering pyrite, that we were unearthing. The others wandered off. I went on digging as though my life depended upon it, as though I were tunneling out of a prison.
* * *
One free-time afternoon, I explored the other side of the stream, crossing it where flattened stones formed a kind of watery bridge. Although I was watchful, on the lookout for mountain lions, whose roars at night I had heard, and my skin prickled at the swoosh of wings as a bird flew from one tree to another and at the scrabbling sound of a chipmunk running up a tree trunk, I persisted.
After a while, I came to a dip in the hills and, in it, a village. I walked down the middle of the only street. Nothing stirred, not even a leaf on a straggly tree next to the saloon with its swinging half-doors. There was something odd about this place. I looked up. Windows on upper floors framed blue squares of sky. Behind the church, the boardinghouses, the store, a sheriff’s office, were huge braces supporting what were only fronts.
It was so unexpected to come across it, so mysterious. When I told Sophie about it, she said it was a movie set no longer in use. Like fool’s gold, I told myself years after, so false in its promise, so real in itself.
* * *
Every weekday I walked several long blocks to the public school I attended in the flat, dusty little town. On my way there, I passed a large weedy lot. One morning, policemen were all over it, staring at the ground. The headless body of a child I’d known by sight had been discovered the afternoon before. Her head had been found stuffed into her book bag.
* * *
I learned that if I were to see my parents, I had to live away from
One summer day when I was six, I was riding in the open back of a camp truck and, egged on by the older girls, I hit a child smaller than I was. She was odd-looking. Her lips were nearly invisible and her teeth protruded. I didn’t have a reason—there never is one—except the illusion that I would thus gain favor with the others. She cried out; her hand flew to her cheek. At that very moment, Sophie, sitting in the truck’s passenger seat, glanced back at us through the dust-streaked window.
When we reached the general store where we would buy fruit and sandwiches for our picnic, Sophie led me to the bathroom at the back, sat down on a toilet seat, and placed me across her lap, all this without a word. She spanked me, and I welcomed the punishment as much as I could. I had committed a bully’s crime.
Years later, I told my father that I had returned to the camp when I was sixteen. He said, “Ah, well … people who’ve been parceled out and knocked around are always returning to the past, retracing their steps.” He spoke distantly, in a detached voice.
It was during that same exchange that he told me what my mother had said—after I’d spent a week or so in Hollywood in the house with the waterfall—which had resulted in his leaving me in old Mrs. Cummings’s care.
“She gave me an ultimatum,” he began. “She said, ‘Either she goes or I go.’” He shook his head ruefully. “I had no choice,” he said, in a faintly self-pitying tone of voice.
“I had only a few days to find someone to take care of you.” Then he repeated his words: “I had no choice.”
* * *
Along with the other younger children in the camp, I dug for gold in the bank that rose from the stream. Sophie explained that it was “fool’s gold,” a glittering pyrite, that we were unearthing. The others wandered off. I went on digging as though my life depended upon it, as though I were tunneling out of a prison.
* * *
One free-time afternoon, I explored the other side of the stream, crossing it where flattened stones formed a kind of watery bridge. Although I was watchful, on the lookout for mountain lions, whose roars at night I had heard, and my skin prickled at the swoosh of wings as a bird flew from one tree to another and at the scrabbling sound of a chipmunk running up a tree trunk, I persisted.
After a while, I came to a dip in the hills and, in it, a village. I walked down the middle of the only street. Nothing stirred, not even a leaf on a straggly tree next to the saloon with its swinging half-doors. There was something odd about this place. I looked up. Windows on upper floors framed blue squares of sky. Behind the church, the boardinghouses, the store, a sheriff’s office, were huge braces supporting what were only fronts.
It was so unexpected to come across it, so mysterious. When I told Sophie about it, she said it was a movie set no longer in use. Like fool’s gold, I told myself years after, so false in its promise, so real in itself.
* * *
Every weekday I walked several long blocks to the public school I attended in the flat, dusty little town. On my way there, I passed a large weedy lot. One morning, policemen were all over it, staring at the ground. The headless body of a child I’d known by sight had been discovered the afternoon before. Her head had been found stuffed into her book bag.
* * *
I learned that if I were to see my parents, I had to live away from
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