Once upon a time in a land far away was a little girl. The little girl ran up and down the hallway in order to figure out how slippery her socks really were.

The first room had hardwood floors, not unlike the grand foyer. The chill from outside spilled in from the window and onto the floors and the cold penetrated my thin, white socks. Compared to other rooms in other houses I’d been in, it was similar in that it had a bed, a dresser, and a mirror. This room was strange, however, because it didn’t smell of anything or anyone. It was like an empty page in a new journal, all ready for someone to inhabit, but the page was just blank. There were no decorations, no clothes, and most importantly, no toys.

Time for the next room.

Only the next room was the same. The only difference was that this room had fewer windows and was a little less cold.

There were so many of these rooms who never had lives to color the pages of their story. And all the rooms were the same.

Until they weren’t anymore.

One room felt different as soon as I walked in. A life had been here. There was a four-poster bed with a pink canopy on top. The blinds were closed, but cool afternoon autumn light peaked through the sides of the wooden blinds onto what appeared to be, yes..

TOYS!

Right under the window in this dimly lit room was a three-story dollhouse. Inside the dollhouse were two barbies. One perched her gigantic frame on the side of one of the stories, holding on for dear life at the edge of a bedroom made for dolls three sizes smaller. The other Barbie lie uncomfortably on a bed like goldilocks on baby bear’s bed. That bed was definitely too small.

I peared further into the dollhouse to find other treasures. A tiny teddy bear that was hard and fuzzy. He was small enough to stick on the end of a pencil and he had a little red bowtie on with beady little black eyes. Slips of paper, carefully folder to keep their secrets.

I sat on the floor in front of the dollhouse and glanced to my left.

Next to the dollhouse was a shelf with two tiers of dolls and stuffies. Dolls, real dolls. I picked up one doll in a purple dress with flowers on it and tilted her back. When I did, her eyes closed. When I tilted her forward, her eyes opened once more.

And as I sat down, I wished that I had someone else to play with. My hunting party had all but deserted me and they wouldn’t have been interested in playing with dolls anyways. I wondered if Grandaddy or Gus wanted to play with me, but figure they were busy executoring the will or some other grown up thing that you had to do when someone passes away.

Like the answer to a prayer, next to the bed was a phone. I looked at the dialpad of the phone and I could call any number of friends that I had already met. I could call snow white, cinderella, or even sleeping beauty! I picked up the phone, wondering if they would really answer. I took my hand and wiped away the dust from snow white’s face and placed my finger in the hole next to her name, dragging it around the circle. The familiar ticking sound of a rotary phone came from the device and I heard a ring.

Snow white had a message for me. She said that she really wanted to play with me. This was going to be perfect. And as I started to make plans about which toys to play with, I realized that I needed to ask for permission.

I uncrossed my legs with a dart of excitement and pittererd down the hallways, echoing my footsteps through the house, listening for the familiar buzz of the two men talking.

I waited for them to stop talking and address me.

“Mr. Gus?” I asked.

Gus, the caretaker knelt down on the floor next to me.

“Yes,” he asked.

“I was exploring around the house and found a room full of toys. I wanted to know if I had permission to play with those toys.”

Gus didn’t say anything, not for a long while. I could tell that he was going to say “no” because he didn’t say yes right away, but something else was wrong because after I asked that question, he placed a hand on his knee and lifted the other to his forehead.

“I would love to say ‘yes,’ but those toys were my daughters.”

I’d played with other kids toys before. I was confused why he wouldn’t let me play with them still. Then, I wondered where she was, wondered if we could play. I didn’t realize there was a girl my same age in the house.

“My daughter died, and those toys are exactly as she left them. I go into that room sometimes and sit with her toys since I don’t have her anymore.”

“How did she die?” I asked.

“She was playing outside in a pool. I wasn’t there, and she drowned.”

He didn’t cry, he didn’t look like he needed a hug, he just kept kneeling.

Then I realized what I had done. I hadn’t touched any of the dolls, any of the bears, but I did touch the phone. I dialed snow white. After I had dialed her, the placement of the rotary phone was different, it was moved, from when I had come into the room.

And I didn’t tell him that I moved the dial.

I didn’t tell him anything.

I just ran away because I had moved the toys from where she left them and I didn’t remember where the phone was before I dialed snow white. I didn’t remember who his daughter had last called, and i couldn’t move it back.

Ever watch one of those time-lapse videos where the caterpillar becomes a butterfly? After Gus told me about his daughter, I was the opposite of that, I transformed back into the caterpillar and shrank back into my chrysalis. I became someone else. I was no longer the little girl exploring a big house, I transformed into the girl who ruined Gus’s memory of his daughter, a worm of a human.

After that moment, it was too painful to see Gus’s face. His face became a reminder of what a terrible little girl I was. I avoided him for the rest of the trip. I stayed away from the bedroom of toys, and the hunting party never came back to play. I spent the rest of the day in misery in order to punish myself for what I had done.

In the car on the way back to grandaddy’s house I realized that there was one way that I could make up my insurrection. I had my new teddy bear and had yet to name him. So, this soft, white bear, that my grandaddy gave me became my leverage of power.

Now that I think about it, why in the world would you take a little girl to the house where a woman had passed away, a woman that she had never known? Either way, I put on my shoes and went outside for a moment, looking for a swing set or toys. There was nothing of the sort, the only thing that awaited my wide brown eyes were the magnolia trees and the light that pulsed through them onto my baby blue sweater with my initials on it. GML. But my name had changed. I used to be Gail Marie Laporte, but now I was Gail Marie Menius.

No toys, just magnolias.

The yard was great for playing in, though, if you could even really call it a yard. The size of it was something I would have called the grounds of the estate. The driveway wound through those magnolia trees past the gates at the entrance. I Imagined a hunting party on their horses, stoppping by the grand entrance of the house, waiting on another party to ride off with them to hunt for foxes. This house was weird because you coudln’t see the edges of the “yard.” It was like the universe in that way, no edges.

I galloped from the strip of magnolia trees over to the entrance of the house, imagined what other horsemen would be with me, and what their titles would be. His Majesty Sir Richard of Frankfurt, wherever Frankfurt was, was galloping at my heels. There were barking dogs, hounds, rallying around us. And someone, at least in my imagination, had a trumpet.

Once the hunting party had arrived at the grand entrance, the rest of our party never exited to join us, so my imagination went elsewhere. And so did my stomach. I was always hungry. It could have been from all of the galloping. I dropped off the side of my horse of 7 hands onto the ground littered with acorns and leaves and then the pecans grabbed my attention. I knew then that I would have to start foraging for my family in the wilds of North Carolina, so I boldly walked into the foyer, looking for the gear I would need to gather my bounty.

”Grandaddy!” I didn’t know where that man was. It was imperative that I procure the gathering acrutremon necessary for the pecans on the sprawling estate.

I heard some mumbling in the next room and took off my shoes at the door as not to track in any mud or dirt for the caretaker.

”Gus?” I called, feeling suddenly alone in this godforsaken place, neglected as all girls feel in houses this big. Lost, alone, and only needing some human connection. If only my governess wouldn’t have had the weekend off I would have had some comfort. I had to look instead to the caretaker of the estate, Gus.

Two men walked into the foyer. Gus and Grandaddy.

”Are you having a fun time playing in the yard?” Gus asked?

I nodded, forgetting about my family starving in the wilds of North Carolina, their pecans forgotten, their fate sealed with my inattention and forgetful nature.

”It’s getting a little chilly outside, though.” I said.

Playtime transitioned from outside to inside as the shadows grew longer. I knew not how long the staff and my family would take to suss out the details of Great Aunt Nell’s Estate, but I knew that I could not be bothered with such details when the house itself had yet to be explored. I was then like the girl from the Secret Garden in a manor with suites to be discovered, the secrets of the estate lay in wait for my tiny eyes to explore.

I found myself in the attic. The ladder was down and I had no fear of heights, being the explorer and tree climber that I was. The ladder came down from the ceiling into the hallway of the second floor. As I rose into the attic I found that it was nothing like any other attic I had ever seen. The roof loomed overhead at a height that rivaled the second story rooms, but even higher in the middle. The round portals let in light from the outside, shining through the dust, making it shimmer. The wood floor wasn’t like the hardwood downstairs, it was more like planks of wood that were nailed down. It was a floor still, but not exactly a hard wood floor. Is there such thing as a soft wood floor? I imagined that I could easily carve my name into the boards, but would never dare to do such a thing.

I gathered around me a large sum of boxes to be inspected. One box was round and covered with flowers with a string handle which I grabbed the undiscovered treasure with. I’d never seen a round box before. Boxes in my life had always been box-shaped before. But this wasn’t the only round box, so I gathered many round boxes and put them together to be examined. I then gathered smaller boxes which had writing on the side, the size of shoes, but much too elaborate to actually carry shoes inside. Then there were smaller boxes, boxes I could fit into the palm of my hand. I gathered as many of these as I could possibly find, knowing that they must contain the best of all prizes. And when all of these boxes were gathered, I ploppped myself in the midst of the adventure to sort and set my gaze upon the treasures I had found.

And treasures indeed I did find.

The round boxes had hats in them. One was a little round, blue hat with a net of some sort that ploped over my eyes in the front. One hat was a pink hat that was much the same, but this one was a little flatter and I sat it on the back of my head. Some of the round boxes were bigger and contained the larger hats with rims.

The shoe-sized boxes indeed had shoes in them. None of the shoes were my size, and I wasn’t much of a heel girl, so I put those aside. But you would not imagine the treasures I found inside of the smaller boxes! One of the longer, slim boxes was gold. As I opened it up, there was a layer of cotton hiding inside a string of the most beautiful pearls I had ever seen! Note that I had never seen pearls before except on soap operas that I watched with my grandmother, but they were the size of grapes, these pearls! I put them around my neck and the went all the way to the floor. I had to wrap them three times in order to get them to appear to be a real necklace at all. And in some of the small square boxes I found a sparkling version of a poodle with a pin in the back of it. I wasn’t sure what to do with the pin, so I put it back into the box where I found it and began looking through the other boxes for where I knew must be hiding a pair of gloves. I wished it and it was so!

There were black gloves and white satin gloves and very short gloves that barely covered the meat of your hand. Some gloves were made of holes and others were made of the dreams of women who went to balls. I knew that some of these gloves must have been clutched when a young man made his advances and another pair could have been used to ride horses.

And then it struck me.

Great Aunt Nell isn’t here to tell me the stories. Great Aunt Nell isn’t here to slip on her gloves made of holes and her pearls the size of grapes and slip on her kitten heels in order to brunch with the ladies down at the country club any more.

And I never knew Aunt Nell, and I never would. And suddenly the treasures took on a new meaning, but I wasn’t quite sure what it was. All I knew is that the hats must go back into the hat boxes and the gloves must go back into the glove boxes.

But the pearls were to stay on my neck. I didn’t know why, but I suspected that Great Aunt Nell wouldn’t have minded so much if she knew that I was padding around her house with her pearls. So I wore them as I continued on my quest. Now if I could only find some toys.

Great Aunt Nell had died. I never knew my great aunt nell, but she was another spectacular specimen of a Menius that I was supposed to be aware of. She was some kind of personal assistant to Elanoor Roosevelt. I didn’t know much about that, but what I did know was that she has a lot of hats.

Grandaddy was the executor of Great Aunt Nell’s Estate. I supposed that means that they were close, or that she thought Grandaddy was trustworthy or something. So, we drove to her house in the fall of 1987. It was a North Carolina fall, not too cold that you had to wear a full-blown jacket. So there I was, sitting in the back of Grandaddy’s Osmobile, heading down the road in my jean jacket with my new present, a teddy bear.

I tried not to be disappointed about the bear, because, you know, teddy bears are supposed to be brown. But I was just excited to have a teddy bear at all. I figured that every girl needed to have one teddy bear and one baby doll. And this one was going to be my teddy bear and i was going to be proud of it. So, he needed a name.

“I think I’m going to name him Zach, like Zach from saved by the bell,” I said, moving his arms up and down, playing like he was saying the words instead of me.

I rode in the back seat, and I didn’t see much of Grandaddy’s face as I went through the possibilities, but he did respond.

“That could be a nice name,” he said.

The bear was soft, softer than anything I had ever had before. He was so soft that I could ball him up and hide his little face inside of his own guts. I could hide his arms and his legs too. It made him a little white ball of fluff.

“Zacheus could be a good name too,” I said.

Grandaddy nodded from the front seat, “Zacheus would be a suitable name for a bear, I think.”

And it went on like this until we arrived at the estate. Great Aunt Nell’s Estate. Now, normally when you have an executor of an estate, you don’t really have an “estate” per se, at least not in the way I usually think about estates. I usually think about a sprawling lawn, horses, probably. There should be multiple stories, and staff, you know, like a butler or some sort of staff like that. And normally I wouldn’t go around calling any old house an estate, but Great Aunt Nell did, in my opinion, have an estate. She had the yard, the multi-storied house, and an attic filled with treasures. She also had a caretaker, Gus.

Not that I knew what a caretaker was.

Not that I know now what a caretaker is.

“A caretaker is someone that takes care of the grounds,” explained grandaddy.

And Grandaddy expected me to know what grounds were. I figured it was the ground, so that’s why I thought Gus mowed the lawn. it was a big lawn. I remember hoping that he had a ride-on lawnmower. Then I didn’t know what else he would do if he had a ride-on lawnmower if he was the caretaker.

Grandaddy had a clipboard. He kept his shoes on inside of the house, and the house had hardwood floors, so his shoes clacked against the floors as he walked and echoed through the hallway. But it wasn’t really a hallway, it was the front entrance to the house. it was pretty tall, having the staircase inside of it, and it wasn’t just grandaddy’s shoes that echoed in that hallway, anything you whoed or hawed would echo too.

“And, sir, would you like to take the rugs with you as well?” Gus asked, following my grandaddy through the hall.

“I don’t suppose I’ll have room for all of them, but I’ll take the one in the hallway upstairs,” Grandaddy said.

“And we’ll leave the others for the estate sale?” Gus asked.

I didn’t have on my shoes, so I started my sprint at the very back of the house, stopped running just in between the two staunch men, and slid all the way to the front door.

“Whooooooooo” I said.

It echoed.

The two men were silent for a moment. No one laughed.

“This is a very large house,” Grandaddy said, “why don’t you go explore a little bit and see what you find.”

So I wandered the house. The whole house had wooden floors, and each room had rug in it. The rugs were thick, and when I drug my feet across them, they left little marks in the rug. After I had done this in a few rooms, I went around and tried to erase my footmarks from the carpets becasue I figured that Gus would have to go around after me and vacuum my footprints out of the rug if I didn’t erase them.

I found Gus’s room. I could tell because it smelled like him, like the earthy smell I couldn’t place at the time. But the room definitely smelled like a man. He had an entire bedroom set made out of wood. His bed was made and the room was very tidy. It looked like he had staged the whole house to sell, including his own room. It surprised me that Gus stayed in the house, and I wondered if he and my Great Aunt Nell were romantically involved. Then i realized that Great Aunt Nell must have been much older than Gus, so Gus must have been like a butler for her. So a caretaker must have been like a butler and a gardner. He could, in fact, still have had a ride-on lawnmower and had things to do if he were supposed to take care of the whole house.

My dad's middle name is an important thing to know simply for the fact that it was the last name that he had before he was adopted by my grandaddy. His parents were killed in a car accident. Dad had a brother named Fred. He kept his last name, so maybe Fred was never adopted. Fred's name was Fred Benfield. As far as I know, Dad never really talked about it, but I think my dad lived in a children's home, Nazereth's Children's Home in North Carolina. That's the same children's home that Grandaddy Menius was a board member on, just like his father before him.

And I think something happened to my dad.

I don't know if it happened at the children's home, at Grandaddy's hands or both.

People all over Harstville, SC knew Grandaddy. Even people who weren't in the family, just people around town would call him Grandaddy Menius, or just Grandaddy.

With a name like “Grandaddy,” you'd think he was going to be a rotund individual that smoked cigars and handed out family assignments to show force to the guy who didn't pay his “rent” on 33rd street again, but Grandaddy was nothing like that. He was a box checker. He checked so very many boxes that showed the world that he was an intelligent, kind man who cared for children, his community, and the Almighty. He was an electrical engineer that worked with a team of people to build a nuclear plant. Intelligence box. He was on the board for a children's home in North Carolina and had adopted four boys. Children checkbox. He worked with the city of Hartsville to improve the sidewalks. Community checkbox. He also went to church every Sunday and tithed 10 percent of his income... before tax. Almighty checkbox. And if he ever heard me refer to his life accomplishments as checking off boxes, he probably would have cried.

And I feel terrible about it, knowing that there is no way to encapsulate a life into a story which really gives credit to any individual. I know that stories boil things down to just an archetype of a person confronted with some kind of personal issue that culminates into a crisis, the character grows in some way and the crisis is averted. And this story will never be able to give credit to the life that Grandaddy lived. It'll only be a brush with him along with several other individuals whose real story will never be known, including Grandaddy Menius. But this story isn't even about Grandaddy Menius.

This story is about me.

Grandaddy, however, has a part in my story.

The first time I met him, I was six years old, just before my dad married my mom.

My mom and dad met in Alcoholics Anonymous. And... I don't know if you know this or not, but you're not supposed to even date anyone in AA, much less marry them. But such is life. And people live such secret lives, I've learned. I remember her getting her 1 year chip. She had a “birthday” party down at “the building.” The building was what everyone called the AA building. She had a cake and blew out her one candle. I was five.

I'm pretty sure a lot of her chips she shouldn't have earned. I remember reading part of one of her books where she talked about hiding bottles of alcohol from her family when I was growing up. She was really good at hiding it because I never knew until I read her book.

I usually played with the kids outside of the building while the adults were inside talking about their stories, which sometimes sounded more like celebrations of drinking than any kind of repentance.

I remember hearding my dad say, “I didn't really like that new guy's story because it sounded more like he was bragging than anything else.”

Segregation

My mom's name is Angela. She was born in South Carolina, Fort Sumpter. That's because her dad was in the Air Force. His name was Robert Frederick. He met my grandmother on a double date. My grandma's name was Winnie Hazeldon Frederick. So Winnie and Robert were from different sides of the Mason Dixon line. They had different ways of thinking about segregation and the relationships between black people and white people.

Teddy Bears are supposed to be brown. This thing was white.

climbing to the top of the mountain with hand-me-down gear ropes which were stepped on and dirt was ground into beaners which have been dropped

You tell me that it's just a matter of standing up on my own two legs one leg at a time one grip at a time

it's your own weight you're carrying, but i'm carrying mine

to you, the air is crisp up here, but my windbreaker has holes

to you, the sandstone is tacky and good for climbing but my palms are sweaty and everything is slippery

you're climbing to the top and i'm just waiting to fall

I'm here because this is the best thing I could have imagined.

Now, the best thing I could have imagined isn't all that great. I'm a project manager with an admittedly cool husband, a lop of a giant schnauzer, and a mound full of debt. Why couldn't I have imagined these things without the debt?

What's worse is that my imagination is working, but it's working to perpetuate the patriarchy. I keep thinking that someone is going to swoop in and come save me. Someone is going to come into my life and say, “You're brilliant, you should write for a living,” and somehow have the funds and the drive to make that happen.

That's the problem with this world, isn't it, that there really are no saviors. We're all just roaming around with our giant schnauzers hoping that someone will recognize our brilliance.

It's not going to happen. We're all brilliant. That's the problem.

But I'm not really feeling it anymore.

Six kids are carrying red and green fiberglass canoes, upside down and over their heads, two by two, like animals loading the arc, but this morning, they're loading canoes onto a trailer. A trailer bound for the Nantahala River, a wild and potentially nasty river.

Last weekend was our practice run down the river. Us counselors and the Counselors in training didn't take any campers with us so we could suss out the best path through the rapids. The Counselors and the CITs did well, but I was still worried we would lose someone, especially one of these flighty teenage CITs who were too busy being flirting with one another than with concentrating on the rapids.

Today, nearly 40 pre-teen campers were going to be rolling around on the top of the rapids like marbles in a game of Hungry Hungry Hippos. The banks of the river were the hippos. I wondered many kids were going to get gobbled up. The difference between marbles and kids were mainly that marbles didn't panic when they were tangled in brush.

Logically I knew we were prepared. I'd taken my swift water training a week ago. The counselors were all strong swimmers, Nicholas was even a lifeguard himself, and we had all the gear we needed for a rescue. Odds were that the kids were going to stay in their canoes. This was the third time we'd taken this route. Once with the swift water rescue team, once by ourselves, and today was the day we were in charge. But there was still something heavy about this day, foreboding, and no one else felt it.

It's like I was the only one who knew we were in the upside down.

The sun, already brimming the top of the treeline was burning the clouds away, but the fog still clung to their roots at the edge of the road. It lay heavy in the ditches and hid the undergrowth with it's thick tendrils of early summer doom.

The moist air makes it impossible for my sweat to dry out and my green 4-H t-shirt was soaked with nervous sweat. Hot.

I rolled the sleeves of my t-shirt under themselves and into my nervous pits. The day was going to be filled with not only these kids, but children, almost forty children... in boats... without their parents and without a cell in their brain which was prepared to be dipped into the water.

Who thought this was a good idea?

One of the CITs is climbing the sides of the trailer, digging her sandals into the metal crevices, climbing around the boats, leaning over canoes, and guiding the incoming boat into it's nesting place for the journey. The last kid is running around the back of the truck, weaving ridged, red straps in and around the boats to lash them down for the morning's journey to the launch point.

I had an advantage over all the other counselors, I had all the boats. There wasn't much better than lying in the bottom of a metal boat, listening to your weight make the boat push a ding out of the boat in the middle of the lake, and feeling the coolness of the aluminum kiss your shoulders and your thighs as you watched the stars slowly turn in the night sky. The only thing better was doing that with Anthony Butcher. Well, lying in the bottom of the boat with Anthony was great until I caught him holding hands with the girl from New Zealand.

I was twenty years old when I learned that steamy, hot sex with men from other countries was nothing more than steamy hot sex. Too bad that wasn't what I was after.

“Tell Claire-Marie that we'll be loaded in twenty,” One kid shouted at me like I cared or were paying attention. I pretended to do both.

“Great job, Smith! You guys are ON IT!” I shouted and skipped into motion towards the director's lodge.

The river trip was going to take us through the scenic wonderland of the Great Smoky National Park. It was only really enjoyable, however, if you weren't worried about a safe place to live and a plan for life after camp ended. If those things weighed on your mind it was just going to be a shit circus. Kids were going to fall out of boats and cry. Someone was invariably going to hit their head and demand to go home despite the fact that we were another hour from the pickup point.

The rapids were only going to be about a two, which was good because these kids were at best 12 years old and some of them had just learned what a paddle was.

I need a smoke. I'd get one off the back deck of the director's house. No kids there.

The director's house was a combination of an office and a home. It was sealed, a home meant for year-round living with all the amenities like windows that closed and and running water. When I opened the front door, the hermetically sealed house seemed to billow in and out with the pressure from the air conditioner and it made a whooshing sound the door closed.

I was immediately cold and shivered my way down the hallway past the reception desk and to Claire-Marie's office.

What I wouldn't give for a movie, a blanket, and a morning off to watch some documentary about writing or spies in her house. But those luxuries are for counselors with homes to go to, after camp, when they're home with their families, waiting to go back to college in the fall.

It wasn't going to be that bad, though. I had two boyfriends I could stay with for a few weeks until the dorms opened up again. Two because you always have to have backup. Don't judge me, you probably have a mom and a dad and a grandma and a grandpa you can stay with if you need to. I don't have any of those things, so I make sure to have backup.

“Claire-Marie,” I knocked on her door and pushed the wooden six panel door open with my raps, “the counselors in training will be done loading the canoes in about twenty minutes.”

Claire-Marie had two names for her first name. There was a hypen in between almost like she had been one of those people who had a twin in the womb and then she ate the other one. A parasitic twin, right, be she ate it. It was called Marie. Now she had to go by Claire-Marie because she was really like two different women.

Now, you'd think that a camp director would be leaning back in her chair, knitting or something, but she wasn't. Her frizzy red mop flared out from her face like a raging sun as she poured over one piece of paper work or another, pen in hand. She crossed something off of a list as I walked in.

I wondered if she would be like Jeckyl and Hyde, that she inherited some of the traits of her ingested twin.

“Come in, Virginia and have a seat.”

I only had about twenty minutes before I had to be back at the canoes to check the lashings. You can't let 15-year-old kids be solely responsible for proper boat lashing. Counselors in training didn't have the best track record for job performance. This little chat was eating into my cigarette time.

“First, I wanted to tell you that we're all glad you're here, me especially.”

Oh, here we go. It's going to be one of those talks. “We're glad you're here, but can you just... change everything that you're doing because it's wrong” talks are the worst. And suddenly, I couldn't remember which was the bad guy... Jeckyl or Hyde. One was a doctor, right? The doctor had to be good.

Claire-Marie put down her pen and picked up a clipboard from on the wall.

“You joined us late, and we really needed a canoe instructor,” she pushed her finger down the clipboard, scanning the words written there as she paused.

I hated this place. I needed a rest. You're with the campers all day, and when you're not with the campers, you're making a hundred friggin hot dogs or mopping the child sludge off of the floors in the gym at night.

“I'm so glad you chose me to be here, Claire-Marie,” I nodded and smiled.

She lowered the clipboard and smiled at me, a genuine smile. I need to figure out how she does those smiles so I can do them too. I feel like my smiles are always the ones where people look at them and think to themselves, “that girl hates me,” and they're not wrong.

I hate everyone right now.

“I wanted to ask you today what it was about this experience, being here with us at the 4-H camp that you most value,” she put the clipboard back on the wall and crossed her hands and legs in a conversational tone.

I knew the right answer.

“The kids. It's always the kids,” I said.

She smiled again, that beaming smile that crinkled her eyes behind the 1980s reading glasses with a string around the back of her neck. Her shirt had tiny little ducks all over it. I didn't even know they made hunting shirts for women.

“I knew you would say that!” Claire-Marie exclaimed.

I got it right.

“That's why we're all here, isn't it?” she asked.

I nodded and smiled. I tried doing the crinkly smile that she made just now, but all my face felt was dry and fake. I worried she could tell because my smile was as fragile as a jello sculpture on a hot summer day at noon. It melted under the intense heat of this radiant woman. But she didn't radiate beauty, she radiated passion for the children, and it was annoying.

“Since we're here for the children, I wanted to let you know that some of the children feel that you're a little too militant” she said.

“Oh no,” I said. “It's the marching, isn't it?”

My heart fell. I'd done something weird and wrong. I couldn't get fired. I needed this place right now. I couldn't stay with either of my boyfriends all summer.

“Mhmm, and a few other things. Can you think of anything else that might not seem camp-like and a little too militant?”

I seriously had thought the campers liked the cadences and the marching. I played army all summer long when I was growing up, digging trenches and covering them up with pieces of particle board I had found and lobbing dirt on top to camoflage. But I guess this isn't exactly a military boarding camp, and these girls weren't used to playing army.

“Sometimes I would sing cadences too, while we were marching?” I asked.

Claire-Marie let you down with sunshine and lolipops, and she let you figure out on your own how you were fucked up. The idea was that you figure out on your own what you had done wrong, but it always felt like you just weren't good enough after you'd talked to the woman. She could bring anyone into her office with her sickeningly sweet serpent tounge and have them figure out what they were doing wrong, even the model counselor, Norma.

“I think that might be it,” Claire-Marie nodded.

The desk

Jeddediah was a lumberjack of an 8th grader. Crammed over his desk, not able to put his head down on the teak-finished surface for a simple game of seven up- heads-up, Jeddediah had enough. His size 14 shoes barely fit between the metal bars underneath the child-sized contraption, so his legs were usually like fallen, twitchy tree trunks in the ailses on either side of his desk.

“Ms.Abernathy,” Jeddediah rasied his hand as he spoke, “I really gotta get another desk.”

Alana Powell’s hands were meant for war, not for dusting and sanitizing. She should be packing her Jtagulator and her raspberry pi into her Alice Pack instead of scrubbing the barracks like some prol.

“Everybody’s gotta be a chum,” her dad said.

General Powell had been a chum. He was an influential man, so much so that Alana had her own secret service agent tagging along with her to her Advanced Individual Training classes.

Jim, her agent, was here now, eating a Braeburn, hovering and unhelpful as always.

Alana’s room was across the hall from the bathroom on the floor. There were only 5 shower stalls, but they ran nonstop from zero four hundred until breakfast, which is now, so Alana’s room was filled with the steam from what seemed to be the showers of a hundred chums.

stainless steel wrapped mirror and pulled it out. She dusted it with the blue rag because blue rags were for mirrors and glass, then she gently refolded the articulating arm and pushed it back into the cabinet.

“It’s like they knew we were all going to be women before they even built the housing facility” Alana’s fingers gripped the pine wooden snack board back into the storage cabinet, surprised she didn’t get splinters from the well-used board.

One bar of white, unscented, Generic soap, check. One bottle of unscented Generic shampoo, check. Cleaned and sanitized wooden snack board, check

“It’s like they knew we had to buy whatever they told us in order to steal our money,” Dani dusted the Bible.

One Gideon bible, check.

Dani gently placed her newly purchased clipboard onto the mid-century modern bedside table next to the Bible. Either the legs of the table were uneven or the floor was sloped because the weight of the Dani’s clipboard caused the feet of the stand to tap, tap, tap from being disturbed. She knew that the Mendel furniture had been here since the 50’s, the 1950s because the Spirit Corps couldn’t afford to and would never think to purchase authentic vintage decor.

“We’re not even supposed to eat snacks in here,” Alana said, “there must have been a time when the Spirit Corps was a lot more lenient than they are now.”

“I guess,” Dani ran her fingers over the olive drab wool blanket that looked like it came from an army surplus store, “I don’t really know much about the Spirit Corps.”

The storage cabinet was built into the wall, purposefully, built into the plans, even. Pine, painted eggshell white which seemed to make the room a bit cooler than it actually was. It was, at least, cool to the touch. The drawers were just wood on wood; they didn’t glide, and the paint on the bottom of the drawers would scrape off and collect on the laminate floor below.

The paint chips were a constant problem for inspection, but the crew had been here for about three months and knew by now to get ready for the day. Get everything out of the drawers before you swept for the day. Make sure you are already showered with the cool barracks water, dressed in crisply pressed and scratchy uniforms, and all your gear is ready and downstairs before you sweep. That way, you see, the pain chips would be swept up before anyone important laid eyes on them.

Dani’s room was inspection ready, now for the floors.

The smell of simple green stung their noses with concentrated pine as they began their communal chores. Alyssa grabbed more simple green above the washer and dryer because she was taller. Dani tottled behind, no slower, but with a quicker gait, the gait of a gymnast and hauled the mop bucket into the utility sink, filling it with warm water for their morning chores.

“It’s our last day at the holding facility, chum,” Alyssa poured an ever-wavering amount of the pine cleaning solution into the swirling water.

Dani’s reddened hands from the heat of the water still held onto the side of the bucket as if it were going to lift off somewhere.

There were no instructions for how much of the product to add, no one had time to read the package on the back of the bottle, and even if there were directions on the package, there would have been some tribal knowledge that was supposed to have been handed down from the first day at the facility where an instructor mumbled the instructions incoherently and the chum was supposed to have remembered that amount for posterity.

Lost.

Just like the reason anyone was here in the first place.

“What are you going to do when you get to your first duty station, chum?” Alyssa helped Dani lower the plastic, yellow bucket onto the floor. It fell with a clatter into the wheeled base and the sound of it echoed through the mostly empty halls.

The women knew it was past time to get out of the hallway, but Dani wouldn’t start yelling at anyone until she plopped the mop which badly needed a wash, down for the first time on the floor.

Dani kicked the bucket into place with a slosh of their cleaning cauldron, “I’m going to get myself a car, one I can pay for in cash.”

With this information, Dani leaned over and began to push the bucket from the top lip, racing towards the end of the hallway. They knew by this point how to work as a team with the other chums. The rule was that everybody had to mop their own rooms, but that took way longer than just two chums knocking it out. So the other women made sure Alyssa and Dani’s gear was laid out as it’s supposed to be with everyone else’s while the two ran through the rooms with a mop.

“Start with Juliette’s room, chum!” Alyssa cried out.

Juliette was an absolute champ. She ran the fastest, she did more pull-ups than any of the chums of any sex, and she had the highest scores on her training evaluations too. But that chum, her room always smelled like rotten blood.

“It’s not going to make any difference. I don’t know where she’s keeping those rags at, or why she doesn’t simply use tampons like the rest of us,” Dani cried out as she slowed down to do Juliette’s room first.

“She’s trying to do the right thing by the environment, Dani,” Alyssa pulled out the mop and started from the far corner, making sure to leave no footprints on the way out.

Dani wondered if she wasn’t just jealous of Miss Perfect, making up excuses to dislike her because of her scores in everything chummy. But no, Dani was a simple girl who just didn’t like the smell of someone else’s cycle.

“Why can’t she find an environmentally friendly way to deal with her period that doesn’t include having to wash and dry reusable pads? Don’t they have some kind of a cup you can use?” Dani complained as she pulled the bucket closer to the exit as Alyssa mopped.

“Not that it’s any of your business,” Alyssa explained, “but she’s allergic to all kinds of plastics.”

“Then why is she a chum?” Dani squeaked.

Alyssa mopped.

Dani moped.

This was how the mornings went.

Even though the floors were already swept by people who lived in each room, there was still a certain amount of grim that was mopped up and deposited into dirty little swirls on the speckled white linoleum. It didn’t matter how many times you mopped a day, the grime chums brought in could never be cleaned thoroughly away.

That’s why they were all here to begin with, especially Alyssa. There was just grime that couldn’t ever be erased.

I'm always afraid, just like everybody else. I'm afraid of things that I know will happen. I'm afraid I'll die. I will die. I'm afraid I'll lose this job. Jobs aren't forever.

Don't rock the boat when you jump out without that life jacket. Nobody wants to scare the children.

Best wishes,

Gen X