I was really hoping that Mica and I would become good friends. Our connection was so much more than the superficial friendships I had in high school. We have tons in common, like our strong opinions, high expectations, and affection for quirky cool activities. We both come from poor families. People who grew up poor understand other people who grew up poor in a way no one else can. We’ve experienced the same hard times. I don’t have to explain myself like I do with everyone else. She doesn’t make me feel like I have to defend why I don’t have a cell phone the way every other person I’ve ever met has. Mica isn’t confused about why I’ve been eating bagels for dinner most nights since I moved to New York City. Or why I wear old shirts that have holes in them instead of buying new ones. Mica knows that when money is extremely tight, luxuries like cell phones and square meals and new clothes aren’t always an option.
I hope Darcy appreciates how lucky she is with her parents paying her bills. She won’t have a pile of student loan debt towering over her for the next ten years. I’ll be in debt long after I’ve graduated and am finally a social worker. Not that I’ll be making good money. I don’t care about being rich. I care about helping other people and making their lives better.
The subway comes just as I’m passing through the turnstile. I get to camp—which is in part of an elementary school we’re allowed to use for the summer—ten minutes early and rush over to the main office before first period starts. The camp’s administrative assistant, Cecelia, is always so nice to everyone. The world would be a better place with more kind people like Cecelia in it. She gives me the number to the Upper East Side camp and lets me use the office phone. My palms sweat as I dial.
“Hi,” I say when a woman answers the phone. “This is Rosanna Tranelli. I’m a counselor at the Lower East Side camp? I was wondering if it would be possible to get the phone number of one of your counselors.”
“Which counselor?” she asks.
“Addison. I don’t know her last name.” I take out the red pen and small notebook I always carry in my bag. Addison is probably at camp already, but maybe she’ll answer her cell before first period. Waiting until tonight to talk would be excruciating.
One of the older girls streaks into the main office. She runs over to Cecelia and starts squealing about some doctor’s note. I press a finger against my free ear.
“There’s no Addison here,” the assistant says. “I didn’t think we had a counselor by that name, but I just checked the system to make sure. Could she work at our affiliated location?”
“I’m calling from that location right now.”
“You’re sure she doesn’t work there?”
“Yes. I’m a counselor here. I know all of the other counselors.”
“Well, I’m sorry,” she says, her tone taking on a sharp edge. “I don’t know what to tell you.”
“That’s okay,” I reply. “Thanks for checking. Bye.” I hang up and stare at the phone. How can Addison not work there? The camp party was only for counselors and staff from both camps. She told Mica she works at the Upper East camp. Why would she lie about where she works?
“Is everything okay?” Cecelia asks me.
“Yeah.” I put my pen and notebook away. “Thanks for all your help.”
“Anytime.” Cecelia gives me a warm smile before answering a call.
I head over to the cafeteria to pick up my group of campers. I’m assigned to six eight-year-old girls. We go to activities together in the morning, sit together at lunch, and then have more activities and free play in the afternoon. At the end of the day, I take the girls to the pickup area in front of the school and wait with them until they’re all picked up by guardians or put on the buses that take them home. I love kids in general, but girls this age are the best.
Momo and Jenny, two girls from my group, are at their table in the cafeteria. The camp provides free breakfast to kids who qualify.
“Ready for nature?” I ask them. Learning about nature at an indoor camp isn’t the most ideal situation. But we’re making the best of having camp at a school. We’ve renamed and repurposed some of the rooms to sound more like a real campground. The cafeteria is the dining hall. The tables with benches in the courtyard are the arts and crafts area. The set of lockers we’re allowed to use are cubbies. The yoga studio is really just a classroom. Street games take place in the gym. Once a week all the groups leave for a special activity off campus. We’ve been to the Central Park Harlem Meer for fishing and gone swimming at a nearby public pool. Coming up we have kayaking in the Hudson River, roller-skating in Brooklyn, and an afternoon at the Museum of Natural History.
“Boo.” Momo frowns into her chocolate milk. “Why do we have to do nature?”
“How else are you going to learn about the environment?” I say, even though the “nature” they’re learning about is hardly enough.
“Do we have arts and crafts today?” Momo asks.
“You know we do.”
Momo brightens. Arts and crafts is her favorite activity. She also likes street games and yoga.
“I heard we’re making jewelry in arts and crafts this week,” Jenny says. “Monday is earrings—that’s today—Tuesday is bracelets, Wednesday and Thursday are necklaces, and Friday is tiaras.”
“That sounds awesome,” I say. “I can’t wait to see what you girls make.”
“I’m using pink and purple beads on my bracelet,” Momo informs us.
“I’m making a rainbow one,” Jenny says. Jenny loves everything rainbow. Even her sneaker shoelaces are tie-dyed rainbow.
The bell rings over the loudspeaker. Time for first period.
“Let’s go,” I say. The girls take their trays up to the counter. The smell of hash browns is making my mouth water even though I just had a bagel. If counselors qualified for free breakfast, I’d be all over that.
Nature takes place in a classroom with southern exposure. All sorts of plants are growing in ceramic pots along the counter that runs under the windows. Today we’re learning how to repot plants. Then everyone will decorate a pot. At the end of the summer, the kids will get to take their plants home.
“It’s very important that you water your plant right after you repot it,” the nature instructor explains to the group. He’s repotting a plant on a table in the front of the room for everyone to watch before they repot theirs. “Plants are in trauma when their pot is changed. Make sure you give them plenty of water right away.”
After the demo, the girls begin prepping their areas to repot their plants. They spread newspaper on the floor. They bring watering cans over to their stations. Momo digs her trowel into a bucket of soil, then pulls too hard when she scoops the soil out. Soil goes flying all over her shirt. She tries to rub it off, but then she has streaks of soil down her white shirt.
This is why every camper is required to keep a change of clothes in the main office.
“Come on,” I tell her. “Let’s go change.”
“My shirt is ruined.”
“No it’s not. That soil will come out in the wash.”
“Are you sure?” Momo sounds more worried than she should be about getting her shirt dirty.
“Absolutely.”
“Good. My mom would be mad if I ruined another shirt.”
We go to the main office. Cecelia makes pouty lips at Momo’s shirt.
“Your nice white shirt,” she sympathizes. “I’m always spilling things on my white shirts.”
“Tell me about it,” I mumble. The white top that Addison spilled punch on was permanently stained. And that was my only presentable top until Darcy gave me all those fancy clothes. “Can we grab Momo’s backup shirt?”
“You bet.” Cecelia unlocks the door to a storage room and returns with Momo’s extra shirt. “Just have your mom send another clean shirt with you to camp tomorrow, okay?” Cecelia instructs Momo.
“Okay,” Momo says.
“Or I can call her for you.”
“No!” Momo yells. “It’s okay. I wo
n’t forget to tell her.”
“All righty then.” Cecelia throws me a look. I press my lips together to prevent myself from saying something I shouldn’t. At least in front of Momo.
We find an empty classroom where Momo can change. The girls usually have no problem changing in front of one another. On days when we go to the public pool, they all take their clothes off to change into bathing suits in the same room. But Momo darts to the corner to change into her clean shirt. She faces away from me, hunkered down.
“Can you not look?” she says.
I turn away from her. “I’m not looking.”
She changes quickly. On the way back to nature, we stop at her locker to put her dirty shirt in her backpack.
“Are you sure this dirt will come out?” she asks me again.
“Yes. Just tell your mom to wash the shirt in hot water.”
“Maybe she didn’t do that last time.”
“What happened last time?”
Momo pauses for a second. Then she runs back into nature without answering me.
I follow her in, lingering near the door. The last thing I want to do is crowd Momo and scare her off from telling me something I should know. I’m getting worried about her. Most of the time she seems fine. She gets along with everyone. She acts like a normal girl. But sometimes she’ll say or do something that seems a little off. Something that strikes a familiar chord.
She jumped a mile when a metal tub fell in arts and crafts. Then she ran over to the water fountain, sweaty and shaken. Her reaction reminded me of how panicked I was when that guy grabbed me at Come Out and Play. When he grabbed me from behind, all I could feel was being grabbed by the man who molested me.
Momo said she told something she was supposed to keep secret. Her jewelry box was taken away as punishment. Permanently. And now she’s stressing over a dirty shirt. What eight-year-old gets that concerned about dirty clothes? I wonder what happened the last time she got a shirt dirty.
I wonder what her mom did to her.
After the kids go home, I stay late to talk to the camp director. Frank is not someone you’d guess works with kids. He’s a gruff guy in his fifties with leathery skin and a bald spot, and doesn’t appear to enjoy his job. The kind of guy who starts watching the clock when it’s almost time to go. He’s not mean to the kids and he’s not rude to the counselors. He’s just not the easygoing, energetic, enthusiastic camp director I was hoping for.
Frank is using one of the classrooms as his office. Papers are scattered over his desk. A few file folder boxes are stacked on the floor nearby. The room smells musty. I knock on the open door.
“Come on in,” Frank says from behind his desk. He looks back down at his paperwork.
I stand there awkwardly, waiting for him to look at me.
Eventually he does. “Pull up a chair,” he says, gesturing to a stack of orange plastic chairs against the wall.
I pull the top chair off the stack and place it in front of his desk. I sit down without knowing exactly what I’m going to say. The blinds on the windows behind Frank are all the way down with their slits half-open. An office building is next door. People are working at their desks, but none of them are looking over here. Do they ever watch the kids in class during the school year? Or is this school just part of the background scenery?
“So,” Frank says. He folds his hands together and rests them on the desk. “What’s up?”
“There’s a camper who . . . I mean, I’m not completely sure, but . . . I think she’s being abused.”
“Do you have hard evidence of abuse?”
“No.”
“Then what makes you suspect this is an issue?”
I tell Frank about the way Momo’s been acting. The things she’s said that sound like red flags. The way she jumped a mile and ran away from the table when that metal tub fell. How she was so worried about showing her dirty shirt to her mom. It’s difficult to look him in the eye as I’m talking. A torrent of embarrassment from my own past makes it hard to articulate what I want to say. I can’t help but recognize a part of myself in Momo. I know I shouldn’t be embarrassed about what happened to me. It wasn’t my fault. But talking about Momo is bringing up all of those ashamed feelings I buried at the bottom of my emotional suitcase a long time ago.
Memories of the neighbor who molested me when I was eleven come rushing back. I kept it secret for a long time. He threatened to do the same thing to my little sister if I told anyone. But I finally told my friend and then my dad found out. My dad ran that monster right out of town. I made a deal with myself to forget what happened and move on. By the time I started high school in a different town, no one around me knew about it except my family. I wanted to rewrite my life. I wanted to be a better version of myself, the one I always knew I could be. It turns out that reinventing yourself is hard when you want to lock up painful emotions and throw away the key.
“Have you spoken to her mother?” Frank asks.
“No.”
“Good. Let’s keep it that way. Parents prefer to deal with these situations directly with me.”
“But if a camper is being abused by their parents, wouldn’t they just deny it?”
“You’d be surprised. I’ve heard it all. Some parents have no problem describing the methods they choose to discipline their kids, even when they sound inappropriate.”
I wait to hear some examples. Frank doesn’t offer any.
“So, um . . . what are you going to do?” I ask.
“I’ll call Momo’s mother. Get to the bottom of this.”
“How will you do that exactly?”
“We won’t know specifics until I make contact.”
I wait for more information. Frank doesn’t offer any.
Is it just me, or is this guy brushing me off? Why can’t Frank be a stereotypical hippie camp director who’s all about singing around the campfire and making s’mores? That guy would be racing to call Momo’s mom.
“Anything else?” he asks. He actually has the nerve to look at the clock over the door behind me.
“No.” Isn’t suspected abuse enough?
“Thanks for bringing this to my attention. I’ll let you know when I hear back.” Frank stands, shuffling papers together to make a messy pile. Several other messy piles sigh in exasperation. “Are you walking out?”
“Um . . . I have to go by my locker.”
“See you tomorrow, then.”
“Have a good night.”
“Oh, I will.” He scurries off like he can’t wait to get home, change into sweats, and hit the La-Z-Boy.
People like Frank don’t seem to be motivated by anything. They go to work only because they have to and count down the days to the weekend. How is that enough for them? Aren’t they constantly feeling the lack of deeper meaning in their lives?
My goal in life is to help make the world a better place in any small ways I can. That’s why I can’t wait to be a social worker. I want to work with underprivileged kids in the toughest areas of New York City. Kids like Momo need people in their lives who truly care about them. But being in New York isn’t all about my career. I’ve always known that this city is my true home. This is where I was meant to be. Moving here was the ultimate way to reinvent myself. I can be the best version of myself in the best city. No one ever has to know about the damaged parts of me.
When I moved to New York City, I wasn’t only running from my past. I was running toward my future.
FOUR
SADIE
I WAS LANGUISHING ON THE couch for the fourth consecutive day when Darcy declared an end to my pity party. She said it was time to pick myself up and dust myself off. I had called out sick again yesterday, and the office was closed today for Fourth of July. The couch was all mine and there was no way I was moving. Until Darcy made me move.
Darcy and Rosanna had been leaving me alone. They knew I needed space and that binge-watching was the only activity I could tolerate. But when Darcy threatened to physically rem
ove me from the couch, she wasn’t playing. She came home this afternoon, turned off the TV, and demanded that I march myself into the shower. She was probably just jealous that her couch was having an affair. Darcy led me toward the bathroom when it became clear that marching was not about to happen. I caught Rosanna in my peripheral vision peeling the sheets, pillows, and fuzzy throw off the couch.
Standing in the shower under the hot water might be making me feel better. It’s hard to tell. Everything unrelated to Austin feels blurry. And even the unrelated stuff ends up being related by the time I get finished thinking about it. Like the soap I’m using. One minute I’m lathering up, inhaling the calming scent of lavender, washing away the past four days of the worst emotional trauma I have ever known. The next minute I’m remembering how Austin used this same bar of soap just four days ago, came back into my room, and joked that he smelled girly.
I want to throw out this bar of soap and the other bars of lavender soap in the bathroom cabinet. I want to destroy every bar of lavender soap in the world. But that would be a slippery slope. It’s not like I can get rid of every single thing that reminds me of him. There wouldn’t be anything left.
My arms get tired when I’m rinsing out my hair. I have to rest them, waiting for the ache to subside, before I finish rinsing the shampoo out. Forget conditioner. What would be the point? It’s not like I’m going anywhere. I stand still and let the water wash the suds away. I try visualizing Austin’s lies rinsing away with the soap and shampoo, a foamy froth of deception swirling down the drain. But a fresh wave of nausea washes over me with the water as I remember each betrayal, my tears mixing in. How he said he loved me more than he’s ever loved anyone. How he said he was the happiest he’s ever been when we were together. How being with me made him want to be a better man.
Except he wasn’t a better man. He was a man who was married the whole time.
Freshly showered and dressed in a clean cami and leggings, I go back out to the living room. Darcy and Rosanna have taken over the couch. Probably to prevent me from wasting any more of my life on it.