Patiently Alice Read Free Page B

recreation center, where we would board the buses.
    Pamela was with the Wheelers when they drove up, and all four of us—Gwen and Liz and Pamela and me—were in shorts and tank tops. Elizabeth’s legs actually looked good again; you wouldn’tmistake her for a prisoner of war, with sticklike thighs and knobby knees.
    Mrs. Wheeler was on the short side, like Gwen, and wore her hair in a well-shaped Afro. “Off you go, into the wilds,” she said, smiling. “Please don’t break any bones, Gwen.”
    Gwen’s mom is a lawyer who works at the Justice Department. Even though it was Saturday, she looked smart in her linen shirt and pants, while we looked like we were going to dig potatoes or something. “Your father wants you to call home every weekend,” she said. I saw Gwen roll her eyes. “Humor him, please.”
    “And I suppose I should call Granny,” Gwen said.
    “That would be nice.”
    I think we all envied Gwen’s extended family. She seemed to have aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents all over the place. The closest relatives I’ve got are Dad’s brothers, Uncle Howard and Uncle Harold—twins—down in Tennessee, though I don’t see them as often as I see Aunt Sally in Chicago.
    So one minute we were taking our bags out of the trunk of Mrs. Wheeler’s car, and the next we were walking up the sidewalk toward the recreation center, where about eighty kids were milling about, yelling and chasing each other, swinging their duffel bags at friends, teasing, laughing, jumping, andspinning, all except a dozen or so who had grown tearful and were clinging to a relative or caretaker.
    The full counselors were already at work comforting the weepers, and after pointing out the buses we’d be riding on, they gave us clipboards with names of campers on them. We were each responsible for locating the kids on our list and showing them where to line up.
    I had just started toward a group of girls sitting on the steps of the building when I heard Pamela say, “Whoa!” Coming out the door of the center were two guys, very good-looking guys, also holding clipboards. They noticed us about the same time and came over.
    “Name, please?” one of them said to Pamela jokingly, looking over his list. “Age? Marital status?”
    We smiled.
    “Craig Kimball,” he said to all of us. “Nice to meet you.”
    “Andy Simms,” said his friend, a tall African American wearing an Orioles T-shirt.
    “I’m Pamela. This is Elizabeth and Alice and Gwen,” Pamela told them.
    “You have your cabin assignments yet?” asked Craig. “It’s there on top of your clipboards.”
    We checked. Gwen and I discovered we were in the same cabin, number six. Elizabeth was in eight, and Pamela was in twelve.
    “Darn!” said Craig. “They did it again, Andy. Girls on one side of the camp, guys on the other.”
    We laughed, but there were kids to be rounded up, so off we went.
    Gwen and I were to be in charge of six girls, ages seven to ten. One was a little Korean girl, Kim, who sat tearfully on the steps clinging to a grown woman.
    It was Gwen who knew how to handle that. She reached in her duffel bag and pulled out a little black box, the hinged kind that jewelry comes in. She simply sat down on the steps next to the little girl and, without a word, opened the box. Inside was a butterfly, perfectly preserved under a plastic bubble. Its wings were a shimmering pattern of brown and yellow with orange spots.
    Gwen held it out for Kim to see.
    “It’s beautiful,” said the woman, and introduced herself as Kim’s aunt.
    “Can I touch it?” asked Kim.
    “No, because it would crumble,” Gwen said. “I collect them. But not till after they die.”
    Then she let Kim try on her watch and rings, and by the time we were to get on the bus, Kim had attached herself to Gwen, and I herded the other five girls on board.
    The youngest was a chubby African-Americangirl of seven named Ruby, but the smallest child, who was eight, was Josephine. I