My parents added a girls camp. Pocono Camp Club was coed. I was falling in love with all the beautiful boys. Rough, pushy, ball-throwing, shoving, shining-in-the-lake-water boys.
The press of slow-dancing body against slow-dancing body, the rainy days, the pressing of tan cheek to tan cheek. The smell of fresh-cut mountain grass. Earth. Sun-warmed stone. The pine smell of the social hall. Lenny Buckner. Arny Roth. Mike Schimmel. Jerry Brown. Every summer these same children met again in July and said good-bye September first.
At eleven I was a nonperson, a non-girl. At twelve, to my great shock and rapidly beating heart, I emerged a hot girl—my dream come true.
I was in the arts and crafts bunk at the Pocono Camp Club, twining leather strips for a key chain, when I turned, and in the old foggy mirror between the windows I saw a beautiful girl. I stepped closer. Touched my face. Touched the mirror. It was a miracle. The beautiful girl was me!
I looked around for someone to show, but the bunk was empty. Where was everyone?
I ran down the hill to the dining hall. I knew my grandmother was in the kitchen.
“Grandma, Grandma, look at me! See my tan? It makes my eyes so blue, Grandma, doesn’t it? Doesn’t it? I’m pretty, aren’t I? I’m so pretty.”
My grandma became my mirror and nodded, caressing my hair.
Narcissus, gazing in the pool of water, falling in love with himself, and drowning in his own image—that was me.
My adolescence had begun. I’d morphed into Scarlett O’Hara. Pocono Camp Club was Tara, 148th Street the Old South. Completely delusional.
At Pocono Camp Club, from age twelve on, I slashed through all my competition, telling the senior girls to their shocked faces, “I can have any of your boyfriends I want.” Boys, men, followed my Fabergé Woodhue perfume and my Flame-Glo lips. A spell was cast. I could not believe my sudden power. I developed whims, which changed weekly—for Lenny, then Marvin, then back to Jerry. But I could never have Mike Schimmel. Mike had contempt for me. I was the privileged daughter of the camp owners; you couldn’t punish me. I couldn’t be sent home. I fell into arrogance. I could do anything I wanted and it was all right, no one said no to me.
Mike Schimmel, who was the oldest boy and the camp conscience, bought a hundred tin clickers shaped like frogs. At lunch, the clicking started and seemed to spread. Conversation stopped. All was quiet except for the clicking sound. The boys swiveled, facing the girls’ tables. At my place was a little tin frog facing me. Looking at me. I suddenly realized I was the target. I was being chastised and criticized for bad behavior, for hurting many feelings, boys’ and girls’. I felt humiliated and helpless. I grabbed the little frog, ran through the girls’ side of the dining hall to the screen door, and ran up the steep dirt steps, hurt and ashamed, holding one of the clicking frogs in my hand. I ran up the hill to my bunk. I threw myself on my cot and sobbed, clicking the little tin frog to further punish and humiliate myself.
A counselor came in and talked to me. I don’t remember her words, but I knew I couldn’t run away. I had no place to run. I had to take it.
I was very mean to the girls’ head counselor that summer. I did caricatures of her in the camp newspaper. She was a tall, gangly Christian lady, very nice, but awkward. One day she called me in to her bunk, showed me a particularly devastating cartoon I’d done of her, and asked, quivering with hurt, “What have I ever done to you?”
My shock was total. Till that minute I had had no idea that children had the power to hurt adults. Caricaturing her had made me popular; any collateral damage was undreamed of. I was awkward and unprepared for her obvious pain. “I’m sorry,” I said.
“Just go,” she said.
Years later when I was on my way to the Neighborhood Playhouse, I ran into her on the subway. “I’m really sorry and ashamed to have . . .” She turned away from me.
Looking back, I think other children always taught me about boundaries. I never knew there were boundaries until I was slapped down; then I became shocked and aware. Like the little Irish girls in elementary school teaching me never to turn anyone in. Like Mike Schimmel. I always respected him for it and wanted desperately to be his friend. He wouldn’t have it. The other girls couldn’t stand up to me. I was the boss’s daughter—a privilege I abused without realizing I had it.
I think going through puberty, coming out on the other side with sudden breasts and waist and cheekbones, made me fall in love with my new self, my new popularity, and the mirror. My new best friend, the mirror! Want me. Want me. Everyone.