The next morning I pulled a stool close to the steel kitchen counter, daunted by the Mount Everest of creamy white garlic heads on the cutting board. Daunted and hungry and sad. At breakfast, Emma sat huddled with Poose and the Malcolm X boys. Their laughter mocked me across the dining room. Carrie invited me to join her and Wynona and Willow, the twins from Queens, but I told her I wasn’t hungry and sat alone.
The camp cook, Skinny Myrna, showed me how to press down firmly with both hands on the side of the heavy cleaver to crack the crisp skin of each garlic clove so it peeled off easily.
“You’re not one of those garlic press girlies, are you?” Myrna’s top lip curled up on the right side of her mouth, revealing one brown front tooth.
“Oh, no,” I said quickly. “My mother and I always chop by hand.”
“Good.” Myrna turned away to get the celery and onion choppers started. My head felt light and whirly and for a second I wished I were an onion chopper, so I would have an excuse for tears. But my fingers knew the work, and my mind flew home to the marsh hawk that lived in the fields behind my house. One day when I was little and walking in the field, I startled the bird and we stared at each other for a long moment until it flew off. I ran back to the house and looked through the New England field guide until I found the right picture. That weekend Jake pointed out the marsh hawks’ nest. I named them Sadie and Hawkins.
Sadie was my particular friend and I often spotted her perched in the big oak between our field and our neighbor’s. She let me borrow her wings and eyes when I wanted to fly. While my hands chopped garlic that morning at camp, my mind swooped and soared in spiraling circles, catching small breezes off Mount Tom. The field down the end of the road was our favorite flying place. It was much bigger than my family’s field, and the grasses moved like ocean swells in the wind. From the sky, my house looked small and secrets didn’t matter.
I brought my fingers to my nose, inhaling the pungent tang of the garlic, and rubbed the stickiness between my fingers. I reached for another head to break into cloves.
Then I was back in the air, swooping low over Rogers Drive where the poor white trash lived. Esther said it was disrespectful to call them that, but the kids at school did. All the Rogers lived along one road in misshapen family combinations amidst rusting cars without tires, and straggly sunflowers at odd spots instead of in neat gardens. I flew over the five Rogers boys riding the row of oversized metal mailboxes like cowboys on their rodeo horses, then circled back above the abandoned tobacco barn.
With the edge of the cleaver, I shaped the mound of minced garlic on the cutting board into the double hump shape of the mountain at home. The lines started to waver and float and my head felt light and spinning. The heavy knife slipped from my hand and clunked onto the table, the tip gouging into the mountainside.
Myrna glanced at me over her bony shoulder. “You look awful,” she said. “Go see the nurse.”
I didn’t feel well but I certainly didn’t need a nurse. So I wandered back to the empty bunk, stopping at the narrow mirror hanging between Sharon and Carrie’s cots. I tugged a corkscrew curl to twice its usual earlobe length, then let it spring back.
I didn’t belong at this camp. I didn’t know the people the buildings were named for, and anyway, I was scrawny for twelve and I needed braces. Esther joked that I was “dentally retarded” and the orthodontist said my teeth weren’t ready yet, even though most of the kids in my seventh grade class had braces by the time school ended in June. Chest bumps like Hershey’s kisses tented my T-shirt. When I rounded my shoulders, the tents disappeared in folds of cotton. Esther said I was a late bloomer and breasts would come, but I didn’t want them because cancer could grow there. The hurt in my throat expanded, sending aching down my chest and into my arms. The floaty feeling came back stronger and there were sparkles in the air, and I grabbed for the edge of Carrie’s cubby but I missed and fell.
I woke to a loud buzzing and thumping, the persistent drone of a June bug bumping against a screen. My head throbbed at the sides, near my eyes. I was in a bed, not my cot. Not at home and not in Harriet Tubman. There was a row of beds and the nurse was there. Sue. She sat on a folding chair next to my bed.
“What happened?” I asked her.
“You fainted. How do you feel now?”
“Okay.” Fainting didn’t sound as serious when the nurse wore a tank top.
“Has it ever happened before?”
I shook my head, but that made it hurt more. “No.”
“Any idea why?” Sue asked.
My eyes filled.
Sue’s voice was quiet. “Tell me about it?”
About what? About Esther having cancer? About people being sent to prison or even executed for crimes they didn’t do? About not knowing anymore who were the good guys and who were the bad guys and how to tell them apart? About Emma’s lies? Or maybe worse than lies? About Emma not wanting to be my friend? Sue probably wouldn’t understand any of that.
Sue nodded. “It’s hard to be away from home when you’re sick. Did you have breakfast today?”
I shook my head, just a little.
“Well, that’s probably why you fainted.” Sue stood up. “We’ll start with some crackers, then a little chicken soup.”
Sue sat with me while I ate.
“This is good,” I said.
“I’m going to keep you here in the infirmary overnight. Just to be sure you’re okay.”
“Can I call my parents?” Phone calls were discouraged. They said it made campers more homesick. But maybe they’d allow it because I fainted.
“Wait and see how you feel tomorrow.”
“I know how I feel. I don’t like it here. I want to call my mother.”
“Why don’t you like camp?”
“I don’t belong here. I’m too skinny and no one likes me and my family is all wrong and I don’t fit in.”
Sue rubbed my shoulder. “Did something happen today, besides not eating?”
“Do you know about Red Rosa? Emma’s mother?”
Sue nodded. “I’ve heard the story.”
Maybe I could talk to Sue. She seemed like an ordinary person, someone who wouldn’t hate a person for something her mother did when the person was just a baby. Something her mother maybe did.
“Rosa had a sister.”
Sue nodded. “I remember. They both came to this camp.”
Maybe I didn’t have to tell Sue everything. “Emma says the sister betrayed Rosa, sent her to prison.”
Sue hesitated. “That’s what people say. I don’t know what actually happened.”
“Emma said her mother hasn’t spoken to her sister in all these years. Rosa hates her sister. Just because Esther made a mistake.”
Sue wiped my cheeks with a napkin that smelled like chicken soup. “Maybe both sisters made mistakes.”
Sleepy, relieved, I let my eyes close.
When I woke up again the room was shadowy, as if the infirmary had been sketched in charcoal. Stripes of moonlight fell across the blanket. I scooted up in bed, propped my pillow against the pine wall. My finger traced the moon stripes as they crashed into the checks of my pajamas.
“Hey, sleepyhead.” Emma’s voice came from the next bed.
I turned to look at her. “Are you sick too?”
Even in the dim light, I could see Emma roll her eyes. “Duh. I’m here to visit you.” She slipped off her bed and onto mine. We sat cross-legged, kneecaps just touching. “I’m really sorry that I made you sad. And that your mother’s sick.”
“I don’t know if I believe you. What you said.”
That wasn’t totally true, I realized. I did believe it. Mostly. But I didn’t know what to feel about Emma’s story. I didn’t know what it meant about my family or what it meant about me.
“Anyway, it’s no fair that I never knew. How come you knew all about it and I didn’t?”
“It’s no secret in my family.” Her voice got that proud edge again, like she was making a speech even though she was whispering.
My throat went tight and achy all the way down to my chest. “I hate this place. I’m going to go home as soon as Jake can come pick me up.”
Emma shook her head. “Please don’t. Lots of kids are homesick, especially at first, but you’ll like it here when you get used to it.”
“I hate it here.”
“Stay. We can do a skit together for visiting day.”
Visiting day? Esther and Jake and Oliver here, in the same place as Rosa?
Emma seemed to take the silence for yes. “We don’t have to talk about our mothers.”
But there wasn’t room in my brain for much else. I’d been thinking about our mothers constantly—what they did, what happened. How did they feel about each other now? How did Esther feel, being sick without her sister even knowing about it? And what did it have to do with their daughters? With us.
“Could you do something like that?” I asked Emma. “Throw things at policemen?”
“Maybe. If I felt strongly enough. Could you?”
I didn’t have an answer. I wondered about the horse. And the policeman. “Do you ever think about the cop?” I asked. “Like if he ever walked again. Or if he had little kids?”
Emma hesitated. “Rosa would say we should think about all the Vietnamese who were killed, and their kids.”
“I guess. That seems kind of far away.”
“Yeah.”
The sound of a door closing silenced us. “Probably just Sue going to the bathroom,” Emma whispered.
But I had more questions. “Weren’t you ashamed that your mother was in prison?”
Emma looked surprised. “Rosa’s a hero. I’m proud of her. Esther’s the person to be ashamed of, after what she said in court.”
I wasn’t sure what a hero was, except people in history like Joan of Arc or Madame Curie. And what could Esther have said at the trial that was so wrong? Did she tell the truth? Was she supposed to lie? I couldn’t bring myself to ask. “I just can’t believe my parents never told me,” I said. “I’m really pissed off about that. But then I think about Esther being so sick, and I can’t be angry with her. It’s so not fair that I never knew I had an aunt and uncle and everything.”
We stared at each other across the dark inches of nighttime. We both seemed to have the same thought at the same moment, but I said it first.
“We’re cousins, aren’t we?”