Arrows

I released the bow; the arrow whooshed past my left hand, made an arc in the air, and landed three feet shy of the target, 20 yards away.  The other twelve-year-old girls seemed to be faring better than I.  The counselor blew her whistle and we collected our arrows.

“One last shoot!” she shouted. 

I was relieved that this would be over.  The girls’ giggles and whispers behind my back were getting to me.  I thought I heard the word, “lesbian.”  I didn’t know what it meant.

I loaded my bow, pulled it back, and shot.  The arrow landed on the white ring, the outer ring.

“Hey, she actually got it on the target!” shouted one of the girls.

“Yeah, pure luck,” said another.

“She’ll go running to Maria, the counselor, and tell her,” said a third.

I shot the second arrow.  It landed on the red ring.  The girls, awed, backed off.  I flashed a glance at them, then returned to my bow.

All was silent.  I had to get this right.  An arrow in the grass meant failure and unending teasing.   I stroked my third arrow.  Please, be a lucky one.  Please….This one’s for Maria….

I loaded the bow, pulled back, and held it there for a moment, my fingers by my ear.  Wasn’t the bow singing to me?  River Jordan is chilly and wide, Halleluiah!

I shot the arrow.  It arced ever so gracefully, following a perfect path, to the bulls-eye.

Maria found me afterward, saying, “Julie, that was magnificent.  I saw you.  I saw you hit the bulls-eye.”  She took my hand in hers and we walked together toward the camp dining hall.  “You’re such a special camper.”

“You--it’s you that makes me special.”  I squeezed her hand.  “You’re a special counselor.”  I tried to remember the name the girls had called me, something that began with “L,” but I could not recall the word.  I wanted to ask Maria what it meant.

I’d never truly felt special before, not in the way that Maria made me feel special.  Sure, my grandmother used that word all the time around me--“special”--but she was so old and fussy that I dismissed those remarks as meaningless and overprotective, more an insult than said out of love.  That day, Maria wore flowers around her neck and in her hair, and I wanted to wear flowers, too, just like her.  “I love you,” I told her, as we continued to walk hand in hand, while I not once felt guilty about loving someone outside my family more than I loved my own parents, because this, I decided, was what I’d been craving all along.  This was what love and friendship were all about.  And I wanted to make the summer last forever.

My parents came to pick me up at camp at the end of the summer, bringing with them a friend of mine named Ruthie.  Ruthie had learned to play tennis over the summer, with an opponent and a net, and had been tutored at the art museum in Boston, on the urging of her parents.  Ruthie was a year younger than me, a very pretty girl who wore her hair in a bandanna sometimes.

“Ruthie,” I asked her, “who are you closest to?”  I felt funny asking the question.  It didn’t seem like the kind of question I should ask of someone I hadn’t seen all summer.

Ruthie didn’t seem to mind, though, and she didn’t hesitate to give her answer. “My father,” she said.  “I’m closest to my father.”

How could it be?  How could someone be close--to a parent?  I didn’t think closeness with parents was possible or likely, given that my own parents were distant, and on a “different wavelength” from us kids.  Their conversations always seemed so shallow and meaningless that closeness was out of the question.  “Your father?” I asked, incredulous.

“Of course,” said Ruthie.  “Aren’t you--well, who are you closest to?  Your mom?”

“I’m closest to Miss Maria, my counselor,” I said quietly.

“Your counselor?”

“Yes.  Miss Maria is cool.  She’s against the Vietnam War and everything.  She knows the words to all these cool songs like ‘Big Yellow Taxi’ and ‘Suzanne.’  And we all made gimp lanyards and suede moccasins and did archery, and had tetherball tournaments with Miss Maria, too.”

Ruthie said, “Did you know that if you cross your eyes too much, they’ll get stuck that way?”

Somehow, at that moment, I knew that the summer had ended, and that nothing would ever, ever be the same.

When I returned to school, I was in the eighth grade, and I was beginning to grow.  But now I saw school in a different light.  For I had tasted love.  Maria’s letters came infrequently, but I cherished each one.  Whereas school had been a nightmare before I met Maria, eighth grade was the best year yet.  I developed a certain rapport with the teachers, a certain familiarity; I frequently stayed after school to have friendly chats with them; whether they found me a nuisance or not was of no consequence to me; in my innocence I only saw my conversations with them an opportunity to learn more about the world.  I came very close to knowing them on first name basis; surely this was more than taboo; it was sacrilege in those days!  Perhaps because I had known Maria, I had developed a certain confidence dealing with adults younger than my parents; the teachers I knew were fresh out of college and they themselves were idealistic and a touch naïve.  There was Mr. Egbert, the social studies teacher, who taught me about individualism, Miss Sullivan, another social studies teacher, who I knew only a little, and the math teacher--her name escapes me now--she allowed me to get somewhat ahead of the class.  I explained this to Maria in a letter.  I received her reply two weeks later: “Having crushes on teachers is a prelude to having crushes on boys,” she wrote.  I admired Maria’s uneven, southpaw writing; it made me wish that I, too, was left-handed.  But I asked myself: “What about having crushes on girls?  What then?”  It didn’t occur to me in the least that there was anything special or unusual about my asking this question, and I felt dismayed that Maria didn’t consider it, at least not in her letter to me.

On the first day of high school, Mrs. Simpson took attendance, and when she said my name, added, “Julie Greene…I’ve heard about you.  You are always late because you stay late talking to the tee-chers!”

Peels of giggles emitted from all sides of the room, then the class erupted in full laughter.  “Julie Greene, Julie Greene!” kids shouted.  “She likes the teachers!”  Doug Gorn’s bubblegum fell straight out of his mouth, he was laughing so hard.  And that was the kind of teasing I was up against in high school.  I was the idealist who had tasted love.  I had known love and thought I could find it again in high school.

How did it all begin?  She was my friend.  Sure, we were close, but I found myself having even stronger feelings toward her.  I loved the way she flicked her hair off to the side, her decisive way of walking, and her expressive eyes that told me in an instant whether she was happy or sad or angry or hurt.  I had known her only six weeks or so when, one evening as we were walking down Marrett Road, I turned to her and told her I loved her.

“That’s okay,” she said.  “That’s perfectly fine.”

Did I expect a duplication of my loving experience with Maria?  It was not to be so.  And I found this out very, very quickly.

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