Frankly Feminist: Short Stories by Jewish Women from Lilith Magazine

Frankly Feminist

SHORT STORIES BY JEWISH WOMEN

FROM Lilith MAGAZINE

Edited by Susan Weidman Schneider & Yona Zeldis McDonough

Brandeis University Press

Waltham, Massachusetts

Brandeis University Press

Compilation © 2022 Lilith Magazine

The Woman Who Lost Her Names, story by Nessa Rapoport, © 1979, 2021 Nessa Rapoport

All rights reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

Designed and composed in Garamond Premier Pro, Weiss BT, and Mr Eaves Sans by Mindy Basinger Hill

For permission to reproduce any of the material in this book, contact Brandeis University Press, 415 South Street, Waltham MA 02453, or visit brandeisuniversitypress.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names  Schneider, Susan Weidman, editor. | McDonough, Yona Zeldis, editor.

Title  Frankly feminist : short stories by Jewish women from Lilith magazine / edited by Susan Weidman Schneider & Yona Zeldis McDonough.

Other titles  Lilith (New York, N.Y.)

Description  Waltham, Massachusetts : Brandeis University Press, [2022] | Series: HBI series on Jewish women | Summary: An anthology of the best of feminist Jewish short stories published in Lilith Magazine by well-known and less-well known authors from all over the world—Provided by publisher.

Identifiers  LCCN 2022018488 | ISBN 9781684581269 (paperback) | ISBN 9781684581276 (ebook)

Subjects  LCSH: Short stories, Jewish. | Short stories, American. | American fiction—Jewish authors. | American fiction—Women authors. | Jewish women—Fiction. | Feminism—Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Women | FICTION / Jewish | LCGFT: Short stories.

Classification LCC PN6120.95.J6 F73 2022 | DDC 808.83/1088924—dc23/eng/20220607

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022018488

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FOR Lilith MAGAZINE’S WRITERS AND READERS

Contents

Foreword

Anita Diamant

Introduction

Susan Weidman Schneider and Yona Zeldis McDonough

TRANSITIONS

The New World

Esther Singer Kreitman

(translated from the Yiddish by Barbara Harshav)

In Every Girl’s Heart

Myla Goldberg

In Vegas That Year

Adrienne Sharp

A Wedding in Persia

Gina Barkhordar Nahai

News to Turn the World

Katie Singer

Sylvia’s Spoon

Michelle Brafman

Max’s Mom Goes to Camp

Judith Zimmer

My Daughter’s Boyfriends

Penny Jackson

Unveiling

Racelle Rosett

INTIMACIES

1919: At the Connecticut Shore

Jane Lazarre

The Curiosa Section

Harriet Goldman

Glass

Diana Spechler

The Wedding Photographer’s Assistant

Ilana Stanger-Ross

The List of Plagues

Audrey Ferber

Road Kill

Miryam Sivan

Probabilities

Elizabeth Edelglass

Sound Effects

Michele Ruby

The A-Train to Scotland

Ellen Umansky

TRANSGRESSIONS

Lot’s Wife

Michal Lemberger

Paved with Gold

Beth Kanter

Driving Lesson

Kate Schmier

Little Hen

Emily Alice Katz

The Proper Care of Silver

Emily Franklin

Boundaries

Ilene Raymond Rush

Face Me

Elena Sigman

Zhid

Yona Zeldis McDonough

Deep in the Valley

Cherise Wolas

WAR

La Poussette

Rachel Hall

The Fronds of Knives

Rebecca Givens Rolland

Street of the Deported

Anca L. Szilágyi

Facts on the Ground

Ruchama Feuerman

BODY AND SOUL

The Lives under the Stones

Amy Bitterman

Do Not Punish Us

Chana Blankshteyn

(translated from the Yiddish by Anita Norich)

Working the Mikveh

Amy Gottlieb

Ironing

Sarah Seltzer

What Was Cut

Beth Kanell

Flash Flood

Hila Amit

(translated from the Hebrew by Ilana Kurshan)

All That Remains of Etta

Erica W. Jamieson

The Comet Neowise Listens In

Carolivia Herron

TO BELONG

Flight

Phyllis Carol Agins

The Miscreants

Tamar Ben-Ozer

Home

Zeeva Bukai

The Woman Who Lost Her Names

Nessa Rapoport

Raised by Jews

Naomi Seidman

Acknowledgments

Contributors

Questions for Discussion

Foreword

ANITA DIAMANT

Frankly Feminist: Short Stories by Jewish Women from Lilith Magazine is a welcome celebration of women’s voices. I have my favorites and you will have yours, but I doubt they’d overlap. I imagine us having a lively discussion—maybe even a worthy argument for the sake of heaven—about the merits of this one or that. The strength of this collection is its multidimensional breadth in style, subject matter, mood, voice, and message. Not that this should come as a surprise.

In college, I was assigned collections of Black poetry, Latin American stories, Native American writings, and Asian literature. The prefaces to those books tended to be breathless—as if Black, Latin American, Asian, and Native cultures weren’t worlds unto themselves with long, illustrious histories full of genius. The official canon of Western literature had dismissed, overlooked, or simply ignored the existence of genius outside the narrow rubric of Western Civilization: male, white, and European. Those collections—even if worthy or well intentioned—implied the writers in these categories were other, were niche.

Frankly Feminist is not an introduction or discovery. We are way past that. Jewish women have produced stories, plays, poems, novels, essays, and reportage for centuries, though sadly, most of that work is known mostly through citations in the Jewish Women’s Archive and the Encyclopedia Judaica. But for the past fifty-plus years, obscurity gave way to the limelight. Jewish women have won prestigious literary prizes (Pulitzer, Man Booker, Pen Faulkner), published countless bestsellers, received six-figure book advances, gotten front-page attention from the New York Times Book Review, attracted legions of loyal readers. And that visibility has inspired more of us to turn on our laptops and get busy.

The forty-four stories in this volume were selected from the two hundred Lilith has published over the past forty-five years; and those two hundred were culled from more than six thousand submissions.

Frankly Feminist is distinctive in its focus on our experience of Jewish-ness, with kaleidoscopic results. There are some unforgettable stories from the worlds destroyed by the Nazis and a few remarkable narratives about life in Israel. Lilith is an American magazine so these are mostly American tales. Brooklyn and neighboring boroughs are well represented, but so are California, the Midwest, and the South, generation after generation from sea to shining sea. We meet immigrant grandmothers and great-grandmothers—some adored, some feared—then watch their grandchildren and great-grandchildren’s adventures: summer camp, sexual awakenings straight and gay, testing the boundaries of tradition, brave, afraid, smart, foolish.

There are many more stories to come in the next forty-five years. More stories by and about Jews of color, Ladino and Mizrachi Jews, and LGBTQ rabbis and cantors: about Jewish life online and about the diverse constellations of our households—religiously and racially mixed, adoptive, informal, polyamorous. Also witty, clever, sharp, and naughty stories about the mishegas/locura of our lives.

I’m always telling people that there has never been a better time to be a Jewish woman. I have many proofs, including Lilith, which has given public voice to our concerns and our anger, celebrating our achievements, plumbing our sorrows, and creating a platform/living room for our conversations. And now Frankly Feminist.

Thank you to the contributors, editors, funders, volunteers, and interns who bring Lilith to life. Thanks to the subscribers. Thank you all.

Introduction

SUSAN WEIDMAN SCHNEIDER AND YONA ZELDIS MCDONOUGH

Short story collections focusing on Jewish writers have—no surprise—typically given women authors short shrift, as have most general fiction anthologies. Even those ubiquitous Best of volumes, for example, typically present only a moiety of their stories contributed by female authors, often the same ones at that. Of the few previous, estimable collections of short stories written by Jewish women, none has the geographic scope of this volume; none were published in this century; and none used a particular Jewish feminist lens to scout out their selections.

This collection, though, has not been created to right past wrongs. It is a unique sampling of the range of stories published in Lilith magazine since 1976. As the editors of the collection, we’ve been struck again and again by the variegated cultures and contexts and points of view these stories offer: Persian Jews; a Biblical matriarch; an Ethiopian mother in modern Israel; suburban American teens; Eastern European academics; a sexual questioner; a Jew by choice; a new immigrant escaping her Lower East Side sweatshop; a Black Jewish marcher for justice in the streets of Washington, DC; in Vichy France, a toddler’s mother hiding out; and more.

Every person holds multitudes, and each of us brings more than one identity to our encounters with one another. We identify ourselves—as do the characters here—by religion or race or ethnicity, by our choices of pastimes, friends, partners; by our causes, by our passions, by our worries and joys; by what we say and what we signal. It’s not simple, and these stories reflect the complexities of history and geography, gender and sexuality, blessings and their opposite.

These are subtle stories that explore complex relationships. There is the attraction-repulsion energy and tension of both endogamy and exogamy, and as readers, we too understand that the poles of like and unlike can attract as well as repel. Characters’ interactions here are not simply girl meets boy, or girl, but include encounters comfortably familiar and dangerously illicit. No tidy stories here, wrapped up neatly; their conclusions are never foregone. They invite the reader in, often to experience an emotional world with the narrator, or to witness a fraught moment.

Moreover, these are distinctly modern short stories, sometimes open-ended and ambiguous. They tease, provoke, beguile, and challenge. We have gathered a few dozen, each uniquely of its moment and also distinctive in its feminist, Jewish perspective.

Like Lilith magazine, the matrix in which these stories appeared, the voices here turn a feminist lens on Jewish religious practice, Jewish history, and Jewish popular culture, spotlighting inherent inequities in gender roles and expectations while working to correct or subvert these constraints. At the same time—again like the magazine—their authors speak with a Jewish voice in the larger world of women’s and gender issues. These stories face both inward and outward.

Since its launch in 1976, Lilith magazine has been committed to attracting and publishing short fiction that elucidates what we editors perceived as important truths or particularly revealing experiences in the lives of Jewish girls and women—both in the Old World and the New. Submissions have come from an annual short story contest and from an invitation on the magazine’s own platforms: in print and also, from the 1990s onward, online at Lilith.org and face to face in more than a hundred Lilith salons where readers meet to discuss each new issue of the magazine.

Hundreds of published stories later, it’s clear that some themes are forever with us. Family relations provide endless fodder: stories about our mothers, and mothers about their children. Persistent memories of the Holocaust—and the reverberations from this and other traumas of antisemitism and gender injustice through generations—surface, again and again. And familiar biblical narratives become a springboard for examining their modern-day parallels.

Small moments that connect one character memorably to another are at the core of many stories here, whether the touch points are tenderness, jealousy, or other hurts. Woven through this collection are dynamic relationships of women to one another, with bonds that provide emotional scaffolding for a pivotal interaction. Regardless of a story’s theme, we have sought out good writing that offers intelligence and empathy, often seasoned with anger and humor. And it has not been easy to choose!

In Lilith’s early years, we considered some of the submissions a kind of necessary ancestor worship, homage to women of previous generations, grandmothers with various accents, avatars of traditional cooking, demanding while fiercely loving. But the excavations went deeper. Though fiction stands apart from the literal truth, many of the same experiences probed in memoir are present in this fiction: misogyny, tight control of women’s options (and hence our lives), undercurrents of violence, and the joys of unexpected self-awareness, or of being seen and understood by another. And as with any stories that engage us, this collection brings us into imagined worlds similar to—and perhaps very dissimilar from—our own.

And there are pieces missing. You’ll see that notably scant in this collection is the leverage that the workplace exerts on contemporary Jewish women’s lives. Here, jobs and even professions are barely a means to an end, not in themselves provocations for this feminist fiction. Because the stories here came to Lilith starting in 1976, some subjects that appear in the magazine’s nonfiction features seem not yet to have worked their way into our short story submissions: living with disability, for example, or undertaking gender transitions.

The stories have sorted themselves into categories, but the book reads comfortably as a thumb-through experience as well, useful as much for a gift to a friend as for a survey of women’s issues in Jewish life. The first section, Transitions, cycles through female lives, birth to burial, paving the way for the widening lens of the section Intimacies. The stories that follow, in Transgressions, imagine Procrustean pulls on women stretched between loyalties—to oneself, to another, to tribe, or family, or to a more abstract notion of how one ought to behave in the world. The category War should need no explanation. Body and Soul, the next theme, is especially germane because so much of Jewish religious ritual is indeed embodied: what we’re supposed to eat, the kinds of fabrics we’re supposed to wear, sexual relationships we’re supposed to honor or eschew. Regardless of where a woman might locate herself on the grid of Jewish identification or observance, the concluding category, To Belong, is open to all. Except, of course, that belonging—whether to one’s own kind or to the cohort one aspires to join—is a fraught subject.

In dividing this collection by theme, we have foregrounded content, but our hope is that in reading you’ll appreciate the liveliness of the burgeoning self-awareness brought to life in each tale, and the occasional funny, call-your-friend-and-tell-her-about-it moment. Skip around, encounter an author whose other writing you may know, be enticed by a title, or an opening line. We hope you’ll find both pleasure and enlightenment—and perhaps even revelation—within these pages.

TRANSITIONS

There was a time in some families, and not so long ago, when the arrival of a newborn daughter was not a joyous event. It was just another fact of life marking time until a son (or another son) was born. That’s the cold reality of the world the narrator of The New World was born into, and the early life of the story’s author bore out this unattractive truth.

But thanks to somewhat more enlightened attitudes toward gender (we said somewhat, remember) things have improved over the generations. Now, ceremonies and blessings welcoming a newborn baby daughter into a Jewish family are in many communities as common as the ceremonial welcoming of a son. Changes like these do not come about because of some general benevolence, or a sudden recognition of past injustices, but because strong women were brave enough to state, even to themselves, at least a little of what they wanted from life.

The stories in this opening section of the collection do not offer a linear progression from birth to old age, nor a collective portrait. Instead, each story frames a few episodes in the lives of their imagined protagonists, girls and women each sharp-eyed in her own way, trying to make sense of the world around her. Despite historical constraints on the options for females, the lead actor in each of these stories looks for ways to manage her own destiny.

The undervaluing of daughters is not unique to Jews, but in a religion where practices are determined so strongly by gender—who lights the Sabbath candles, who has the right to say aloud the Kaddish prayer in memory of a deceased relative, who is permitted to chant from the Torah—discrimination often seeped into secular conditions as well. The author of the opening story was sister to the celebrated writers Isaac Bashevis Singer and Israel Joshua Singer; their mother destroyed all of Esther’s early writing, claiming it would render her unmarriageable. Messages like this weren’t lost on generations of Jewish girls and women who were warned by concerned parents to be smart, but not too smart.

Differentiation between the sexes provides a framework for understanding social strictures, including strife between women made to feel that they’re competing for scarce resources—the attention of other girls, or a parent; later for the attention of males, if they’re following the prescribed path into heterosexual marriage and childbearing. Which brings us to fertility, and the pressures on women to become mothers. As much as shame has been heaped upon unmarried females who were pregnant, there was equal shame (though perhaps easier to conceal or deny) for women unable to conceive.

In Jewish life there has never been an honored place for the celibate. Jewish texts—including the liturgy—elevate study, good deeds, and chuppah—the marriage canopy. The particular pressure on LGBTQ Jews has been profound (and is still so today, in some spaces). Sexuality isn’t dismissed or frowned upon in Jewish life, but the formal expectation is that it will take place within a sanctioned marriage. Even in proudly secular or assimilated families, these social norms were maintained, despite the sexualization of girls and young women in twentieth-century Western culture at large. And then there’s the ever-present threat of gender-based danger: harassment, discrimination, outright assault.

The fiction in this section references many of these matters, even if just by suggestion. Whether the characters are living in a contemporary Ashkenazi-American community or in the Sephardic Middle East in another era, the tensions between expectations and reality make for rich narratives.

The New World

ESTHER SINGER KREITMAN

translated from the Yiddish by Barbara Harshav

From the start, I didn’t like lying in my mother’s belly. Enough! When it got warm, I twisted around, curled up and lay still . . .

But, five months later, when I felt alive, I was really very unhappy, fed up with the whole thing! It was especially tiresome lying in the dark all the time and I protested. But who heard me? I didn’t know how to shout. One day, I wondered if perhaps that wasn’t how to do it and I started looking for a way out.

I just wanted to get out.

After pondering a long time, it occurred to me that the best idea would be to start fighting with my Mama. I began throwing myself around, turning cartwheels, often jabbing her in the side; I didn’t let up but it didn’t do any good. I simply gave myself a bad name so that when, for instance, I’d grow tired of lying on one side and try turning over, just to make myself a little more comfortable, she’d start complaining. In short, why should I lie here cooking up something, it didn’t do any good—I had to lie there the whole nine months—understand?—the whole period.

Well (not having any other choice), I consoled myself: I’ll simply start later! Just as soon as they let me out into God’s world, I’ll know what I have to do. Of course, I’ll be an honored guest, I have a lot of reasons to think so. First of all, because of what I often heard my Mama tell some woman who (as I later found out) was my Grandma:

Grandma comes in and smiles at Mama. She looks happy—probably because her daughter has come through it all right. She doesn’t even look at me.

Mazal tov, dear daughter!

Mazal tov, may we enjoy good fortune!

Mama smiles too but not at me.

Of course, I would have been happier if it were a boy, says Mama. Grandmother winks roguishly with a half-closed eye and consoles her:

No problem, boys will also come . . .

I listen to all that and it is very sad for me to be alive. How come I was born if all the joy wasn’t because of me! I’m already bored to death. Oh, how I want to go back to the other world.

All of a sudden, I feel a strange cold over my body. I am jolted out of my thoughts; I feel myself clamped in two big, plump hands, which pick me up. I shake all over. Could it be—a dreadful idea occurs to me—is she going to stuff me back in for another nine months? Brrrr! I shudder at the very thought.

But my head spins, everything is whirling before my eyes, I feel completely wet, tiny as I am! Am I in a stream? But a stream is cool, pleasant, even nice. But this doesn’t interest me as much as the idea of what the two big, clumsy hands want to do with me. I am completely at their mercy.

It does hurt a little but I almost don’t feel it, Mama would say. I’m glad! I was so scared I was barren. A trifle? It’s already two years since the wedding and you don’t see or hear anything . . . Minka the barren woman also said she would yet have children. And why should I be surer of it?

Well, praised be the one who survives. With God’s help, it will come out all right; and God forbid, with no evil eye, Grandma would always answer. From such conversations, I assumed I would be a welcome guest.

I knew that, here in the other world, where I lived ever since I became a soul, when an important person came, he was supposed to be greeted with great fanfare. First of all, a bright light was to be spread over the whole sky. Angels (waiting for him) were to fly around; merry, beautiful cherubs who spread such holy joy that the person only regretted he hadn’t . . . died sooner. It was quite a novelty that I, an honored, long-awaited guest, expected to be born into a big, light home with open windows, where the sun would illuminate everything with a bright light . . .

Every morning, I waited for birds who were supposed to come greet me, sing me a song. And I was to be born on the first of Adar—a month of joy. When Adar begins, people are merry.

But right here it comes—the first disappointment.

Mama lay in a tiny room, an alcove! The bed was hung with dark draperies, which completely screened out the light. The windows were shut tight so no tiny bit of air could get in, God forbid; you shouldn’t catch cold. The birds obviously don’t like screened-out light and closed windows; they looked for a better, freer place to sing. Meanwhile, no happiness appears either; because I was a girl, everybody in the house, even Mama, was disappointed.

In short, it isn’t very happy! I am barely a half hour old but, except for a slap by some woman as I came into the world, nobody looks at me. It is so dreary!

Thank God, I am soon taken out of the wet. I am brought back to the alcove, already violated, sad. I am carried around the alcove: everybody looks at me, says something. At last, I am put back to bed. Mama does put a sweet, liquid thing in my mouth: I am really hungry for what is in the world.

Mama looks at me with her nice, soft eyes, and my heart warms. A sweet fatigue puts me to sleep and I am blessed with good dreams . . .

But my happiness didn’t last long, a dreadful shout wakes me with a start. I look around. Where did it come from? It’s Mama!

People gather round.

What happened? Where did that shout come from?

Mama gestures, tries to point, her lips tremble, want to say something and can’t. She falls back onto the pillow, almost in a faint.

Seeing they won’t get anything out of Mama, they start looking for the reason in the closet, under the bed, in the bed.

All of a sudden, a shout is heard from the nurse, who keeps repeating in a strange voice:

Cats, oh dear God, cats!

The people look up, can’t understand what she’s saying. But, except for the word cats, they can’t get anything out of her—so upset is she.

Grandma is also very upset. But she takes heart, makes a thorough search in the bed and, laughing to hide her fear, she calls out:

Mazal tov, the cat had kittens. A good sign!

But apparently, this isn’t a good sign. The people are upset:

On the same day, in the same bed as a cat?

Hmmmm, a person and a cat are born the same way, says one brave soul.

They calm Mama. But again, nobody looks at me. Mama falls asleep. And with that, my first day comes to an end. I am, thank God, a whole day old and I have survived quite a bit.

The third day after my birth was the Sabbath. This time, a big, red Gentile woman puts me in the bath. I wasn’t so scared anymore, already familiar with the way it smells.

Once again, I lie in bed with Mama. Mama looks at me more affectionately than yesterday. I open my eyes, I would like to look around a bit at the new world. I am already used to the darkness. All of a sudden—it grows even darker for me than before.

A gang of women burst into the alcove. I look at them. They’re talking, gesturing, picking me up, passing me from one to another, like a precious object. They look at me, they look at Mama, they smile.

Meanwhile, Grandma comes with a tray of treats.

The women make her plead with them, pretend they don’t want to try any of the cookies, whiskey, preserves, cherry brandy, berry juice, or wine; but, Grandma doesn’t give up, so they open their beaks, and finally consent to do her a favor.

Males also stuck their heads into the female alcove. They talked with strange grimaces, gestured, shook their beards, went into a fit of coughing.

With them, Papa succeeded, not Grandma. And I am named Sara Rivka, after some relative of his.

Now they need a wet nurse. Mama is weak, pale, with such transparent, narrow hands without sinews, she can hardly pick me up. A middle-class woman, she cannot breastfeed me. I am the opposite: a healthy, hearty gal, greedy. I restrain myself from shouting, all I want is to eat.

Not to a goyish wet nurse, says Grandma. Not for all the tea in China. And she can’t find a Jewish one. The pharmacist says I should get used to formula, which is better than mother’s milk. But I say I don’t want to get used to it and I throw up all the time.

This is bitter! Grandma is upset. Mama even more. But Papa consoles them, saying the Holy-One-Blessed-Be-He will help. And He does.

Our neighbor remembers a wet nurse named Reyzl. She has the voice of a sergeant major and two red eyes that scare me. She can’t come to our home. She has six children of her own but there is no choice.

All the details are worked out, she is given an advance and may everything work out all right.

Reyzl picks me up out of the cradle, takes out a big, white breast, which looks like a piece of puffed-up dough, and gives it to me to suck, as a test. Well, what should I say? I didn’t drown. Even my eyes fill with the taste of a good wet nurse.

Reyzl looks happily from one to the other:

Well, what do you say?

Mama and Grandma glance at each other furtively and are silent . . .

I have the good fortune to be a tenant at Reyzl’s! Not that she needs another tenant ’cause she lives in a flat not much bigger than a large carton. When Reyzl brings me home, her husband comes to greet me carrying their smallest one in his arms and the other five heirs swarming around him. He seems to be pleased with my arrival.

Well, what do you say about this, eh? Ten gulden a week, my word of honor! Along with old clothes and shoes. Along with the fact that, from now on, they’ll give all the repairs only to you! You hear, Berish?

Berish is silent. He turns around so his breadwinner won’t see his joy.

You’re more of a man than me, I swear. You can earn a gulden faster . . . he thinks to himself. But right away he becomes serious. Where will we put the cradle? They ponder a long time.

But Reyzl’s husband, who is an artist at arranging things in his tiny flat, smacks his low, wrinkled forehead with his hard hand and calls out joyously:

Reyzl, I’ve got it! Under the table!

So in a tiny cradle, I am shoved under the table.

With open, astonished eyes, I look at the filthy wood of the table, covered with a host of spiderwebs, and think sadly:

This is the new world I have come into? And this is its heaven?

And I weep bitter tears.

In Every Girl’s Heart

MYLA GOLDBERG

They stand in a circle wearing horrible shirts with the sun shining down. They are red-faced children with shirts the color of traffic cones and sharpened stones for eyes. It is already 90 degrees and it is Horse Day for Bluebirds (Age group 10–12, space is limited so register your daughter today!). Their counselors lead them in song. Let me hear your camp spirit! Cora, a red-haired counselor, has so many freckles it looks like a disease. Marsha, I can’t hear you.

Marsha is making the right shapes with her lips but no noise is coming out. The group with the most spirit gets ice cream after lunch.

Sing, hisses a Bluebird between verses. Marsha sings.

The horses (Remember to include the riding fee with your application if you want your daughter to participate in this extra-special activity!) are kept in a stable at the edge of the camp. The counselors pick the Sunflower Girls (Age group 8–9, please indicate if you wish for your daughter to participate in the end-of-summer sleep-over!) as the spirit winners. It is the fourth time in a row the Bluebirds will not get ice cream.

Bluebirds, line up. Cora is their leader. Every lunch, she sneaks to the boat house (Only campers with a white or red swim band allowed!) to meet her boyfriend. Her freckles don’t stop at her neck.

The Sunflower Girls keep getting the best of us. Cora’s smile is widest when she is annoyed. I’m going to start feeding you worms if you Bluebirds can’t chirp loud enough. Her mouth is a hive of small, uneven teeth. Let’s sing the Worm Song on our way to the horsies.

They walk in groups of three and four, swinging their arms to stir the still air. It’s Marsha’s song, one Bluebird whose name is Heather whispers to another, whose name is Jennifer. They trail Marsha, clipping the backs of Marsha’s shoes as she walks. They sing a special version of the Worm Song just loud enough for Marsha to hear.

Nobody likes you, everybody hates you, you’re just an ugly worm.

Marsha’s heels smack against her flattened sneakers as she walks, flip-flop flip-flop, the sound of Granny’s slippers. Marsha is pretty sure Granny stopped recognizing her. Who is this darling child? I’d like to give her a big kiss, every time Marsha was made to visit. The toothless mouth opening and closing.

On the first day of camp (Don’t forget to dress your daughter in a camp T-shirt!) everyone was told to decorate their name tag according to the name of their group. Marsha drew musical notes around hers (HELLO!! My name is Marsha!), turning the s’s into treble clefs.

What’re those supposed to be? Heather had asked, poking her finger into Marsha’s chest. Heather has impossibly small lips the color of cherry chewing gum. Her barrettes and socks always match her shorts.

It’s birdsong. Since we’re Bluebirds.

Cora had called Marsha creative in front of the whole group. After the first week of camp, Heather passed out invitations to a pool party in her backyard. One Bluebird was not invited.

There is a changing room next to the stable (Do not enter unless you’re dressed to ride!) where the Bluebirds change together. Marsha tries to hide the sweat that has turned her T-shirt a darker orange under her arms.

Marsha doesn’t wear a training bra like the others. Her mother thinks it inappropriate for a girl her age. Before Granny was sent away, she would feed Marsha milkshakes with raw egg and, later, whole sticks of butter. You’re a twig. Better drink this if you want boobies. Marsha’s mother assures her that she will one day be thankful for the high metabolism that keeps her so thin.

Worm. The word echoes through the room, the heat melting its source.

Marsha has a raised mole the size of a corn kernel just below her clavicle. She keeps her back to the other birds. Heather’s training bra has a pink flower in the middle. She likes to walk around in it when she holds butt inspection. Her belly button is a perfect innie.

Get ready, Bluebirds! It’s tush time!

Heather demands the full participation (Our wide array of camp activities build fitness and social skills!) of her fellow campers. From under the Bluebirds’ shorts emerges a flock of cotton panties the colors of the pastel rainbow. Jennifer spreads her legs and pushes her butt out like a model for designer jeans. Despite the small fan in the corner (All facilities are climate-controlled for camper-comfort!) the room stinks of yesterday’s sweat.

Remember girls, stick out your ass to go to the head of the class! Even a little one can go a long way, Heather sings, passing each bird from behind.

Oh, I forgot, worms don’t have butts, do they?

All the Bluebirds, even the shy ones, twitter. Marsha focuses on the tree outside the window, tries to think herself to a branch higher than Heather can reach. Through the window of Granny’s room there was only a creek with thick, brown water.

What’s wrong? Don’t you know how to talk?

Marsha’s head moves up and down.

Heather puts her mouth close to Marsha’s ear. She whispers loud enough for everyone to hear her. Do worms have butts? Yes or no? Heather’s breath smells like peanut butter.

No, Marsha whispers.

Then how’d you get chocolate stains on your underwear?

Sound bounces off the concrete walls and floor until it is the whole world. Marsha smells the metallic stink of shame from her armpits. When Cora comes in, her birds are dressed and ready.

In the stable (Horses hold a special place in every girl’s heart!), the flies have grown too fat to fly. The heat makes Marsha’s clothes (Jeans and a long-sleeved shirt are absolutely necessary!) feel heavier. Marsha’s horse that day is white with brown spots.

My undies are clean, she says to no one in particular. The horse’s name is Lightning. Its mane and tail are yellow-white like Granny’s hair. When it breathes, the air rushes too loudly through its nose. Marsha doesn’t like leading the horse into the sun, doesn’t like being near its large yellow teeth.

Outside the stable, the dark spots on the horse’s coat seem to spread like creeping stains. Marsha is afraid to touch them in case they are contagious like warts. When the horse moves, its bones make lumps ripple beneath its skin. Granny had a bump on the side of her neck that no one talked about. She would stroke it with her fingers until Marsha’s mom would pull Granny’s hand away. Marsha is short for her age. To get onto the horse, she needs extra help.

Most of the Bluebirds came to camp knowing how to canter. Marsha slows the riding class (All experience levels welcome!) down. She has a difficult time remembering that kicking with the left heel means turn right and that the right heel means turn left.

Heat jellies the air Marsha breathes. In it, she can see specks of dust and hairs loosened from the horse’s neck. She can see fly eggs and horse spittle. Heat melts the difference between the horse and Marsha’s leg. Underneath her jeans, she feels rough hairs sprouting. By the time Marsha returns to the changing room, she will be white with chocolate stains. The thought closes around her like a scab.

Marsha! The voice of Graham (Our professional riding instructor knows children as well as he knows horses!) cuts through her thickening skin. Why aren’t you moving? Get your butt in gear. I know Lightning’s ready for a ride.

I have to get down. I can’t ride today. Please let me get down.

Graham turns his horse around. Heather and the other Bluebirds stare. Heat blurs the lines of their faces. Heather’s mouth shimmers small and red.

Why do you even come here? Graham leads Marsha from the ring. He wrenches Marsha’s arm lifting her off the horse, then tethers Lightning to a post beside the stable.

Marsha watches the Bluebirds ride (Good horsemanship is something a girl can take pride in!) as if their bodies have been made for it. Beside her, Lightning snorts. The smell of fresh horse droppings amplifies the