Hours later, we arrived at camp. Pine Lodge was a converted two-story house. All the boys stayed downstairs and all the girls stayed on the second floor. In the girls’ room stood rows of bunk beds. There was one bathroom on the floor for all the girls to share. Oddly, the door to the bathroom had been removed, so any girl who needed to use the toilet or the sink could walk in on someone taking a shower. Coming from a modest culture and an even more modest family, I had never seen another person naked, not even my mother, so the idea that someone could walk into the bathroom while I was naked in the shower seemed unbelievable. I decided then and there not to bathe.

Out of the eleven other girls in my room, ten appeared to be mean. Mary, who slept on the top of my bunk, was the only girl who would speak to me, or rather cry to me. I liked her right away, not as a friend, but as someone who made me look good. Mary and her younger brother, Willy, were both campers, and they spent all day trying to be on the same team for all activities and all night crying at the idea of being separated. I had never known a brother and sister who actually enjoyed each other’s company so much. I soon discovered it wasn’t that they enjoyed each other’s company so much as they were simply afraid of everybody else. The two of them managed to be the butt of every joke. Mary felt responsible for Willy, whose Coke-bottle glasses and tendency to tremble made him an easy target for all the boys. Mary, herself, was not much more resilient. All someone had to do to reduce her to tears was to call her a name, any name. Mary and Willy were a huge source of comfort to me, not only because they hated Pine Lodge Mountain Summer Camp as much as I did but because they were the ones whom everyone picked on. I knew that in the pecking order of favorite targets for mean kids, I followed Mary and her brother. But those two, between their crying, their trembling, and their throwing up when nervous, proved far more satisfying targets than I could ever have hoped to be. In fact, not only did I not get picked on, but I was completely ignored by everyone, including the counselors. Had it not been for Mary’s sobbing to me every night, I could have sworn I was at a Zen retreat.

Since I wasn’t going to bathe, I decided to minimize getting dirty by participating only in arts and crafts. I skipped the horseback riding, the overnight campout, the archery lessons, the hikes to the Indian grounds, and basically every activity outlined in the camp brochure. Every morning I showed up at the macramé station ready to make another key chain.