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Dedication

For Norma
and all my friends,
then and now

Prologue

Prologue

In the middle of North Carolina, there is a beach that has no ocean. Eons ago, the land faced the sea and the actions of surf and wind built up huge dunes. Then the waves withdrew, foot by foot, behind silt the rivers laid down. Today a coastal plain over a hundred miles wide separates the sand hills from the ocean that made them.

Now the soft rolling land is overlaid with golf courses and planned communities. Before the real estate boom, it was thought best suited to timber. Camp Courage was built on a forty-five-acre tract that had been planted in pine forty years before. Once planted, the trees were left alone by absentee owners.

With active management, the trees would have been thinned at regular intervals. The weaker ones would have been taken. The others, judged more likely to thrive, would have been nourished. The result would have been a regiment of uniform, straight trunks, ideally suited for the market, with just enough space between them to bring in machines when it came time to turn them into logs.

With neglect, however, the pines grew dense. Roots plunged deep to find the water that filtered through the sand. Trunks twisted toward the sun; limbs became so entangled that it would be hard to say where one tree ended and another began. Low to the ground grew a struggling crowd of seedlings, waiting for their chance to take over when wind or disease took down the big trees. Some made it. Young pines shot up amid the old growth.

In the deep shade below the lowest branches grew a hardy crop of weeds: nameless grasses, leaves, and vines not planted by design but accidentally sown by wind and animals. The weeds could do without sun. Their short roots found nourishment enough in the musty layer of decaying plant matter. They got their living from their own remains.

Most of the tract was covered with those woods. A single dirt road cut through the trees and brush and wound up and down and around the dunes. Not counting the lake, Camp Courage occupied about three acres. There the underbrush had been cleared away and the pines thinned. The remaining trees had room to thrive. Periodically, they were inspected, trimmed, fertilized, and protected from parasites. However, at this stage no amount of management could change their basic nature. Thin and thick, twisted and shapely, bent and straight, they remained. Unrehabilitated.

They were products of what is called the natural law of survival of the fittest. But their fitness was not defined by human needs, or market forces, or any grand design. In truth, they did not survive because they were fit. Rather, they were proven fit because they survived. They survived by accident.

Day One

Day One

An arrival necessarily implies a departure from the place previously occupied.

My shoulders are sticky with my father’s sweat where I took his arm to get out of the station wagon. We’re met by a tall brunette in Bermuda shorts. “I’m Sue, the senior counselor in Jean’s cabin. Carole’s around here somewhere.”

“Pleased to meet you.” My parents speak in unison so perfect that someone really ought in some manner to express amusement. But instead Sue and Dad shake hands and my mother accepts a clipboard loaded with forms, while I sit, silent, beside the car. The sun beats down on my head.

“Has Jean ever spent a night away from home?”

My dad says, “No.”

“Well,” Mom adds, “only with us with her, on family trips and whatnot.” She’s working on the forms on the hood of our station wagon. Inside my sister Cindy is sprawled across the backseat.

Sue says, “We have a lot of first-time campers this time. Jean’ll fit right in.”

Mom’s smile is a little rigid. “Well, I know she will. She always does. You know, she’s in public high school. Going to graduate next year.”

“With honors, I might add. Beta Club. Key Club. I-Don’t-Know-What-All Club. And perfect attendance for seven years in a row—” Dad’s habitual grin goes up a wide notch.

“At any rate,” Mom says, “we thought it would be good for her to have an experience away from home. Away from us too. She needs to find out she can survive without us. She’s never let cerebral palsy hold her back.”

I shrug. I feel no need to prove anything, but if this is what my parents want, I can indulge them. While I’m at camp, my family will be sleeping in a tent on the beach.

“I know she’ll have a great time. You’re not nervous, are you?”

It takes me by surprise, her turning from my parents to me without warning, and I’m not ready to talk. I’m struggling to get words out, and I realize I don’t even know what words I’m going for. There’s no way out when it gets like this.

Sue jumps back in. “Hey, that’s a really cute outfit.” It’s a culotte suit in a funny print—the words NO NO NO NO NO repeated all over.

Dad’s still grinning, and I know what’s coming. “Like I told her this morning: Just look at those clothes to remember what to tell the boys at camp!” He rubs my head the same way he rubbed it this morning when he made the same joke, the same way he always rubs his best dog. He always makes dumb jokes, and I always laugh. I laugh now, but I hope the talking will end soon and they’ll get me out of the sun.

My mother hands Sue the clipboard. “Did I do everything right?”

Sue shows them where to sign. They sign. Along with the intake forms, I’m handed over in the sandy parking area. Mom bends down. I tilt my head up for a kiss that smells like face powder and feels like lipstick. Dad gives me a noisy smack on the forehead and a friendly slap on the back. “Now try to behave yourself, girl. Do us proud.”

I wonder if it will be this hot the whole time.

That’s it. I should have a spaz attack, but I don’t. There should be a strong emotion of some kind, but there isn’t. Ever since that August in 1970, I’ve pressed hard to squeeze something out of my memory, but I always find it dry. I have to accept it. When I lean back to receive goodbye kisses from my mother and father, all I feel is hot.

*   *   *

The doors thunk shut and the engine rumbles. Dad waves through the window and honks good-bye. I can’t see, but I know Cindy is lolling around and Mom is worrying. Mom does so much worrying that I never have to worry about anything.

Sue lays the clipboard on my lap. “Jean, I’m going to take you to the lodge now.” She pushes me toward a low building framed in natural timbers with a steep pitched roof.

“Since this is your first time at camp, I know you’re wondering what it’s like, and I can tell you you’ll have a great time. You’ll make all kinds of friends. There’s a lot to do.” Her voice fills the space behind and above my head. Below, my casters scrape through sand that’s too loose for traction.

“I think Carole’s down at the cabin. She’s the other counselor. I’m sorry your folks didn’t get to meet her.” She doesn’t give me time to talk. Maybe she thinks I can’t.

“Almost everyone’s here now. We have eight girls in the cabin—a full house—and we’ll mix with other cabins for activities.…”

The one-sided conversation doesn’t bother me. She means well. We get past the sand and roll onto the pavement in front of the lodge. In the heat I can smell the blacktop.

*   *   *

Dolly and I have been properly introduced, and she’s sitting right beside me at the end of this long metal table, but clearly there’s no point in trying to have a conversation with her. She’s talking CP talk. I can’t understand at all.

So I sit here and watch my eyes get adjusted to the inside darkness. In deep shade under the eaves, with open screens all around, you’d expect it to be cool here, but instead it’s just a different kind of heat. Outside, the heat was hammered into my head; here it oozes into me from all sides. At the other end of the table I see another girl, sitting stiff and tense on the edge of a metal folding chair.

Dolly keeps on talking. She doesn’t seem to care whether I understand or not. A geyser of meaningless vocalization shoots from a contorted throat toward the beams overhead. I’m not really trying, but I start catching phrases. “The Tonight Show … Johnny Carson … at the earliest … you know what I mean … never before midnight … to bed with the chickens … hate to complain … my novella … PRETTY RISQUÉ.…” Saliva bubbles up, and her right arm shoots out with force that startles me.

“I work on it constantly … well, you know … pretty steamy in spots.…” Her body has slipped down, almost off the chair seat; it fights against straps that are supposed to bind her waist but instead mash into the flesh under her arms. The right knee punches into her rib cage, and the left foot is pinched between the aluminum footrests of the wheelchair. It looks painful. “But here lights out at ten P.M. … Tonight Show … Doc Severinsen.…” Tangled shorts and tank top barely cover the essentials. She should wear a bib to catch all the drool.

I try not to listen, try not to look. That rigid girl at the far end of the table is tapping one eyebrow with the tips of two fingers. Her thin face is pasty white, and her hair, as short as a boy’s.

“Pretty explicit.…”

I see a plump young woman on a stretcher, lying on her stomach, propped up on her elbows like a sunbather. She is talking to a blind girl, who gently sways from side to side.

“It takes up a lot of my time … novella … risqué in places … for adult readers … MOST definitely.…”

A quadriplegic is driving his electric wheelchair with his mouth. Whirring and clicking.

“Not at all what I’m used to … Taps … And I can’t seem to fall asleep … one or two in the morning … Johnny Carson every night.…”

A boy camper and a good-looking boy counselor are talking in sign language. That eyebrow tapper across the table is still at it.

Dolly’s talk swirls and spirals, around to the novella, back to staying up to watch Johnny Carson. Bedtimes and sex scenes. Dolly’s voice merges with other voices, other sounds. In the high rafters, big fans churn the air, folding the smells of sweat and bug spray into sweet odors sucked in from the kitchen.

I summon the positive attitude that always serves me well. I look at Dolly. She’s the worst CP I’ve ever seen. If the counselors can take care of her, I’ll be no problem at all. I’ll do fine. I always do fine—better than fine. I’m the only crippled student, ever, in my school; I’m the only crippled person in my hometown. When I was four, I was a regional state poster child; of course, at age seventeen I’m no longer so adorable as to stop traffic, but I still have my blond hair and blue eyes and skin that tans just right. I look down at my lap.

NO NO NO NO NO.

*   *   *

“I’ll be back for y’all in a minute.” Sue is taking Dolly and the eyebrow tapper away, leaving me with a ten-ounce bottle of Coke and yet another girl in a wheelchair.

“I’m Sara.” She acts like I should have heard of her already. “I see you’ve met Dolly.” She rolls her eyes. Her head, which looks fairly normal, barely reaches the tabletop; it seems shoulders and arms sprout right from her seat. “This is my eighth year here. How about you?”

“My first time.” I speak carefully, separating each syllable. If I take my time and people pay attention, I’m not that hard to understand.

I hear a boy’s voice behind me. “Hey, Sara, I just found out you’re here.”

Her sharp eyes crinkle with delight. “Willie. You’re a sight for sore eyes. Or perhaps—more accurately—I should say an eyesore.”

“You’re just as sweet as you’ve always been.”

He steps in front of me, and the sight of him hits like an explosion of ugliness. He’s skin and bones; a shocking lack of flesh in general, but with big knots of flesh on random places. Misshapen shinbones bowing over high-top sneakers. Khaki shorts flopping above giant knobby knees. A camp T-shirt, hanging loose at the waist and chest, stretched tight over a hunchback. Skin and bones. How does he move?

But it’s the face— I can’t look at it, but yet I see lips stretched like putty over twisted teeth, fish eyes, too far apart on his head, one sticking out, one almost buried by a bulging lump of something, flesh or bone, I don’t know—

The face is just too much.

My panicking eyes jump back to Sara, Sara who now represents a place of safety. But she has no thought of me. Her eyes are locked on his, glowing gladness. “Meet Jean. It’s her first year. Jean, Willie’s been at camp about as long as I have. He’s just finished his first year of college.”

His voice speaks polite words of welcome, and I wonder what I ought to say. He must be so brave, to go to college, to face everyone looking like that. People say I have courage and determination, but he—

Does he want to hear that? I don’t know. It doesn’t matter, I guess. I can’t talk with all these shock waves still rumbling through my body.

“She’s been getting an earful from Dolly,” Sara says.

I manage to shrug. Maybe I can pull myself together.

“It’s okay to ignore Dolly,” he says. “If you don’t, she’ll drive you nuts.”

Sara pitches her head back and tells the rafters, “I’m writing a novella!” It’s exactly like Dolly, I mean, like Dolly if Dolly were coherent. “An incredibly steamy sexy lurid pornographic novella for adult readers only! Based on my own experiences very very very very late at night, after lights out, with Johnny Carson!” I try not to, but I choke. The thought of Dolly and Johnny—

“Sara, you’re awful. Be on your guard, Jean. She gets the greatest joy from making people spaz out.” He drags a chair to Sara’s other side and leans on her armrests in a familiar kind of way. I’d say he’s getting comfortable, but how could someone like him get comfortable? “So what’s the plan this year?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Don’t act innocent. I’ve been around too long. If the plan’s a secret, just say so. At least tell me who you’ve got.”

“It so happens, I do have Margie again.”

“Useful. Very useful. I’ve got the quad.”

“Well, well. Good work. The only real talent in the whole camp.”

“C’mon, give me a hint. I don’t see how you’re going to top the pie in the face.”

“I didn’t do that.”

Willie turns to me, but I know he’s doing it for effect, for Sara. “She never does anything. She has henchmen.”

“No I don’t.”

“Like people with IQs under forty-five. If someone leads them astray, they don’t get punished. They’re incompetent. Untouchable.”

“Now, I’m not admitting anything, you understand, but I have heard that if you take time to prepare an Untouchable, and prepare her well, she’ll accomplish the mission to perfection and will never rat on whoever put her up to—whatever it was.”

I still can’t get my words together. Even my thoughts are stuttering.

He touches a gnarled hand to her skinny shoulder. “I’ll see you later. Time to sneak off to my cabin.”

*   *   *

“How about handing me that stuff from the middle of the table?”

“All that?” I ask.

“Yeah.”

I figure I’ll try. I reach out and rake over a tangle of Magic Markers, plastic string, and wood pieces. Sara extracts a marker and a sawed-wood disk. With her teeth she uncaps the marker and then sets to work on the wood with small, precise movements.

“Camp’s pretty weird. The teenage session isn’t really set up for non-MR people, but I keep coming for some reason.” I look around again. MR must mean mentally retarded. There are lots of them around.

She concentrates on threading string through holes drilled in the wood. Her long dark hair is crimped in waves like it’s just been unbraided. She’s wearing big round glasses, a baggy dress, and sandals. Her legs aren’t shaved. What? A crippled hippie? The crippled people I’ve seen have been at the telethon. There we all wear our Sunday best.

Not far away, a black MR girl is peering at us sideways, over her shoulder. Sara notices her just when I do. “Margie! Hey! Guess what? I got you switched to my cabin. We’re going to be cabinmates again!” The girl just stares at her feet. “Listen, Margie, do me a little favor. You see that knife up there on top of the trophy case? Can you get it for me?” She points with one thin finger. “You see? Up on top.”

“Should we mess with the knife?” Margie asks.

“It’s okay.” She speaks with considerable authority. “I’ll take full responsibility. Just pick it up by the handle, the black part. Don’t touch the sharp part and you won’t get cut.”

The MR girl makes sure no one is looking, then reaches for the knife, lays it on the table, and skitters away.

“Margie’s just a little tiny bit shy—at times.” She takes the knife and, with a little grunt, scrapes the string across the serrated blade. Then she cuts a second piece.

“So what do you want your name tag to look like?”

I am puzzled.

“I’ll give you some options.” On a scrap of paper from the pile of supplies, she writes Jean three times. In block capitals, then a neat capital J and e-a-n in lowercase, and then in round cursive letters, just like the smart girls who take notes for me in school. I look around; all the name tags I see are in block capitals. That’s how the counselors are making them.

“I like the last one.”

She sets back to work. “Do you go to school?”

I say, “Yes.” Very distinctly.

“Where?”

“Near Cha-pel Hill.”

“Where exactly? Butner, maybe? You’d know Dolly.”

Butner! All over North Carolina people tell jokes about “going to Butner,” the place for the criminally insane and mentally retarded. When I was three years old, our family doctor urged my parents to send me. “But there was no way I could send my baby off” was how my mother told it, so proud, on the telethon. “I just kept her at home. Then I wanted her to go to school. At first they said no, but then they said they’d give her a try if her daddy built a ramp. We always treated her just like a normal girl. We didn’t know what else to do.”

I’ve started stuttering again. Sara is looking at me with an inquisitive face, waiting for me to answer her question. I drop whatever got me stuttering and start over.

“I’ve ne-ver been to But-ner.”

She busies herself with her little project. I stare at my Coke bottle, study the green glass neck, observe the cold smoke rising. I’ve been left with eyebrow tappers and babblers and all kinds of strange people, left to stay for ten days at this place—a place where it seems Butner is normal and Crosstown High is unusual. Can this be an outpost of Butner? A dress rehearsal? My nerves spark with silent terror. But as soon as the terror becomes conscious, I will it away. Ridiculous. I’m not the kind of person who goes to Butner.

I draw in some Coke through a plastic straw and feel it burn cold in my throat. I listen to all the sounds around me. The voices. Strange voices. That big roaring fan.

Sara holds up my name tag. Against the fresh sawed wood, the smart-girl cursive looks cheerful. She runs the string through the holes, ties a knot, and lays it on the table. Then she lowers her head and puts on her own name tag. It has Gothic letters in green ink. This wasn’t among the options she offered me, but no matter. I’m no show-off.

“So what school do you go to?”

“Cross-town.” She clearly doesn’t understand. I spell, “C-r-o-s-s-t-o—”

“Oh, Crosstown. Crip school or Norm school?”

Puzzlement spreads across my face.

“Do you go to a crippled school or a normal school?”

“Nor-mal. It’s a small town. There is no crip-pled school there. Just one high school. I am a ris-ing sen-ior. Do you go to nor-mal school?”

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