Notes from Camp Chaparral By Hillary Tiefer

Date entry: Sunday, July 12, 1970

I’m coping by writing these notes. I got the idea from Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground that was assigned in my AP English class during my last semester of high school. I purchased a notebook and a pen and here I am sitting on my bunkbed at Camp Chaparral writing my own notes this summer.

 I can relate to feeling wicked just like the man in Dostoevsky’s novel. I didn’t burst into tears when my mother informed me that my father died nor at his funeral. I haven’t shed any tears. But I have at times felt as if hands grabbed my throat, choking me.

Maybe it has to do with fear—what will happen to me. In the fall, I was supposed to begin Douglass College in New Brunswick, New Jersey, near our home. As I predicted my mother said that was no longer possible. We’d have to move to California and live with my grandparents in Encino for maybe as long as a year. Then we’d be residents there and I could apply to state colleges.

My Grandpa Joe is nice enough but how he puts up with Grandma Ida is beyond me. She never misses a chance to point out my shortcomings. During a visit to our house when I was twelve, she called me fat. I admit that motivated me to diet and lose over twenty pounds. On another visit, she let me know my teeth were crooked and then soon afterwards my mother sent me to an orthodontist. After three years of wearing braces, my teeth are straight but this has not ingratiated me with my grandmother.

And she’s the one who told me about my father’s affair. On her last visit she was causing lots of mischief. I was upstairs in my bedroom typing a research paper for my AP History class when I heard my father yell from the kitchen, “Shut your mother up, Doris!” A shouting match ensued. Then I heard footsteps climbing the stairs. A moment later my grandmother entered my room.

I twisted my head around and said, “What was that about?”

“You’re old enough to know,” she said, creeping up to my desk. “Your father’s been having an affair with his bookkeeper. A wife of one of his partners told your mother. Apparently, they went to cheap motels near the tannery. So she’s finally confronted him.”

This came as a surprise but I wasn’t completely shocked. At family parties Anita did hang around my father a lot. They seemed to be the best of buddies. After the last Christmas party my mother made some remark about this and he said, “Drop the subject, Doris.”

I didn’t want to hear anymore from my grandmother and shouted, “That’s enough! Please leave—I have homework to do.” She huffed out of the room but I couldn’t go back to typing.

Obviously, Anita didn’t really adore my father. While she was charming him, she was also embezzling seventy-five thousand dollars from his company, Irvington Leather. When he finally became suspicious, she skipped town. Soon afterwards he had his first colitis attack. 

I suppose I had a right to know about my father—but I hated hearing it from Grandma Ida. Of course, I didn’t want to stay with her, but my mother gave me little choice. She informed me she was putting the house up for sale and that meant Looky-Loos would be snooping around my personal belongings. Also, my friends encouraged me to go, telling me how much fun it would be to lie on the sand of a sunny California beach and also meet surfer boys.

When my grandparents picked me up at LAX, Grandma Ida showed little sympathy at the loss of my father. “I’m sorry he died but he made your mother miserable,” she said as we passed the many palm-tree lined streets and stucco houses, nothing like my New Jersey neighborhood.

Grandpa Joe silenced her on the topic but she wasn’t done with me. While I was hanging my clothes in the closet of the spare bedroom she sat on the bed and said, “I hope my daughter isn’t a widow for long. She deserves better. She deserves a man who won’t cheat on her.”

I realized then I had to leave. That’s why I agreed to take this job at the summer camp.

My grandparents are spending ten days in Las Vegas and would have dragged me along with them but then Grandma Ida asked her friend, Margie, if her brother who ran an overnight camp might have a job for me. Sure enough, he did. Their secretary quit after the first few days of camp. I had no idea how to be a secretary. During my interview over the phone with her brother, Pete Fripp, he asked me nothing about my skills but told me I should come the following day (Sunday) and I’d get the rundown about my job Monday morning—seven a.m. sharp. So here I am at Camp Chaparral, in Upland, California. I’ll be stuck here for most of the summer—seven more weeks.

I have been given a bunkbed in a cabin I’m sharing with the swimming, arts and crafts, and nature counselors. I arrived an hour ago after my grandparents took me to dinner at La Paloma Mexican Restaurant in neighboring Claremont. Pete Fripp wasn’t around but his assistant, Tina, greeted me. She had stringy long brown hair, wore a halter top that revealed the nipples of her big breasts, and a long madras skirt, nearly covering her bare feet in Birkenstocks. She seemed to be the hippie type—like all of the counselors I’ve seen so far. They wear tie-dyed t-shirts displaying peace symbols. Many of the boys have long hair and lambchop sideburns.

Some of these male counselors are cute and I’d like to get to know them better. I doubt they’ll be interested in me. I already sense I won’t fit in. I’m experiencing culture shock here in Southern California, so different than Monroe Township in New Jersey. Hardly anyone in my graduating class could be called a hippie or rebellious. We raised our voices mainly at our football games—“Go Falcons!” I was on the pep rally squad, cheering on our team while wearing a cable sweater over a plaid wool kilt and knee-high socks—like most of my friends. I’m also a virgin. I have a strong sense that makes me an oddity among the camp staff.

Date entry: Monday, July 13, 1970

I had a terrible first night here in this camp. I thought it strange that by ten p.m. none of the counselors arrived at our cabin—after all, we had to begin work early in the morning. I took a shower in our cramped bathroom then climbed into my bottom bunk to sleep. Tina told me that Fran, the nature counselor, preferred the top bunk. I have no idea why.

Then later I felt someone tugging my arm. I opened my eyes to bright light and had to squint. Then I saw a girl kneeling by my bed, staring at me. She was about my age, maybe eighteen. She had wild yellow hair, a freckled face, and round hazel eyes. Her eyes looked like they’d pop out of her head. No one else was here. My alarm clock by my bed showed eleven thirty.

I finally shook off my sleepy stupor and asked her who she was.

“I’m the arts and crafts counselor, Bonnie. You should know—I’ve dropped L.”

I was sitting up now, feeling confused. I wondered who El was that she dropped. “I don’t get what you mean.”

“I took LSD. One of the other counselors snitched on me to Pete. He’ll be here any second with the cops.”

This came as a shock. In Monroe, the class “hoods” were known for their black leather jackets and liked to smoke cigarettes in the parking lot of our high school, but the police never had to raid the school grounds. I heard rumors of some kids daring to smoke marijuana, but these were only rumors. No one dared ingest LSD or any psychedelic drug—that was what the weird professor Timothy Leary did—far from Monroe.

A few minutes later I heard pounding on the door. “We’re coming in,” Pete shouted and opened the door. With him were two police officers who quickly put handcuffs on Bonnie then told me to step outside. They had to search the cabin for her stash of drugs. This couldn’t really be happening. It was my Kafkaesque nightmare—like what I read about in The Trial in my AP English class. Poor Herr K. hears a knock on the door, then opens it and faces men who have come to arrest him but won’t tell him why. Of course, Bonnie knew why she was arrested. Yet she hardly seems like a criminal. I grabbed my bathrobe from the crowded closet and went outside. It was so cold I couldn’t stop my teeth from chattering.

It reminded me of the other time I couldn’t stop shivering, but on that occasion, it had nothing to do with the cold. I went to visit my father in the intensive care unit of the hospital. As soon as I was buzzed inside, I heard screaming—I knew it was him. That’s how much pain he endured after his colectomy. My mother stopped me before I entered his room. “You should wait outside for a while,” she said.

I left for the hospital’s main lobby with my hands pressed against my ears to stop the sound of screaming—which I continued to hear in my head even in the lobby. My body shook so hard I could hardly remain on the Naugahyde chair.

“Miss, are you all right?” A woman with ringlets of gray hair smiled at me. The day before she visited the hospital bed near my father’s. Someone was very sick in her life, too.

I removed my hands from my ears and nodded even though I really wasn’t all right.

Bonnie must have problems, too, if she’s taking drugs. The police took her away and then Pete came outside and said to me, “Try to get some sleep.”

Surprisingly I did and never heard the others enter the cabin late that night—not even Fran, the nature counselor and my bunk mate, who introduced herself to me this morning.

Then I had more trouble during my first day as camp secretary. As soon as I entered the lobby to begin my job (without any idea what I was supposed to do) Tina told me I had to first clean the restroom in this building, where campers and staff frequently congregate in the dining room and the game room. “Come with me,” she said.

I reluctantly followed her. Perhaps I was toilet trained early in life because I am fastidious about cleanliness. I hate using public restrooms. I braced myself for what I’d see. Sure enough, it was bad. Apparently, no one cleaned this place since the camp began a week earlier, maybe much longer. It stank of urine—and worse. Paper towels overflowed from a barrel-shaped trash can, some towels drifted into the one sink, and on the floor was wet toilet paper leaving a trail from the stalls. I peeked into one of the stalls and saw that the last user didn’t bother to flush. My breakfast was in my throat. I turned to Tina and said, “I’m not cleaning this bathroom. I was hired to be a secretary, not a janitor.”

She fumed and I imagined smoke emerging from her wide nostrils. I think of her as Dragonlady. “I’ll tell Pete you refuse to clean the restroom. He’ll be furious.”

I suspect this was the reason the previous secretary quit. I was about to quit but then it occurred to me that my grandparents were already heading toward Las Vegas. There was really nowhere else for me to go. “I’ll do it,” I said as if I was asked to clean up a murder scene.

“Come with me. I’ll show you where to get the supplies.”

But then came my next bit of trouble. I think I must be one of those ingenuous people that Dostoevsky writes about. It happened soon after lunch. I was sitting at my desk in the lobby when the phone rang. It was my job of course to answer it. I heard a woman’s cheerful voice. She said she missed her child, a six-year-old girl named Monica, and asked if she could come the following afternoon to visit her. I saw no reason why she shouldn’t be allowed to see her own child. Just to be sure I saw one of the male counselors enter the lobby and asked him if the mother could visit.

He had shaggy brown hair, wore the typical tie-dye t-shirt, and khaki shorts. He grinned at me and said, “Sure.”

I repeated the same to the parent, making her happy.

I wanted to acquaint myself with the staff so I introduced myself to the counselor. “I’m Cathy Cooper and you are?”

His grin got wider. “Karl. Karl Marx.” Then he ran off.

Tina checked up on me soon after and I told her about the parent coming the following day. I watched her nostrils flare once again and she shook her head, making her stringy hair fall on her face. “You better call that parent back. We don’t allow visitors!”

I dialed the number but no one answered and I had to leave a message on an answering machine.

Dragonlady wasted no time reporting back to Pete. He stormed into the office, showing me a face as red as a tomato. “We never let parents visit!” he shouted. “That parent could bring disease into the camp. I’ll have sick campers on my hands! You should have asked before making such a decision.”

“I did. I asked the counselor Karl and he said it was okay.”

“I have no counselor named Karl!”

Here I confess to my utter stupidity and naivete. Yes, I know about the founder of Communism and his famous text, Das Kapital. But in my defense, I had little sleep the night before because of that drug raid and then I was exhausted from cleaning a war-torn restroom. When the counselor told me his name I envisioned, Carl Marks, some twenty-year-old from Southern California. No doubt he was getting a good laugh at my expense.

This is not the first time I’ve been blamed for causing illness. When my father was in the hospital my mother said, “You gave him too much aggravation, Cathy—always nagging about wanting to go away to college when we’re already struggling with money problems.”

It’s true I was ecstatic when Cornell University accepted me but then my parents agreed on one thing only: they’d not pay for my tuition and board. I had to commute and attend the state-run Douglass College in the fall. No, of course they couldn’t afford Cornell—not after my father’s bookkeeper, Anita, ran off with all that money—the woman he had sex with. Then a war began between him and my mother. That’s when he got sick. If I was truly wicked, I’d tell her to face the truth! 

Date Entry: Monday, 27, 1970

I’ve been too busy to feel like writing now that I’ve become a roving counselor. Pete replaced me with a new secretary who gets to clean that disgusting restroom! Needless to say, I prefer this job. I’m meeting more of the counselors and some are friendly. They’re teaching me Southern California lingo—like the words bitchen and boss. Both words apparently mean fantastic, which I learned from the counselor Jill, who spent her day off in Malibu. (We are allowed two days off each week but I have nowhere to go.) When she returned, with a bronze tan, she said she had a bitchen time at the beach and she met a boss bunch of guys. Then she defined those words for me. I also now refer to the male sex as guys instead of boys—unless they’re under eighteen.

I also like helping campers with their arts and crafts projects. With the seven- and eight-year-old girls I enjoyed cutting flower shapes out of white paper plates then painting them. I especially liked making a jewelry box out of popsicle sticks with the eleven-and twelve-year-old girls. I had as much fun as they did, decorating the boxes with plastic beads. I also like the new arts and crafts counselor, Steve. He’s cute, (or should I say bitchen) with curly brown hair and pool blue eyes that always sparkle. He smiles at me whenever we’re together. Once he whispered by my ear, “I’d like to give you a back massage.”

I giggled at this and probably blushed.

On Saturday I was needed to accompany two of the older girl groups on a camping trip to Mt. Baldy, where we’d camp for the night. This was not an easy activity. The girls weren’t badly behaved but I had no idea we’d be hiking for miles around switchbacks on a treacherous dirt trail littered with rocks and even boulders. There were no trees to shade us—just a scattering of skinny pines and what Fran identified as Joshua Trees, pole-like trees with squat branches holding needles shaped like pom poms. Maybe Westerners are more used to hiking. My legs ached and I had to take deep breaths, sometimes tasting dirt in my mouth. I feared I’d collapse any minute. Some of the girls whined but none looked like they’d keel over. I was particularly annoyed to observe Tina walking briskly with her walking stick, her big boobs bouncing from her t-shirt with each step.

Fran also identified poison oak for us to avoid, warned us about rattlesnakes, and cautioned us not to gulp the water from our thermoses. I was relieved when we stopped for lunch in a clearing near a spring, where she said it was safe to refill our thermoses. I was so thirsty that I gladly took her word for it.

As the sun set behind the hills, a wind whipped up and it was cold. At our campsite we enjoyed a meal of hot dogs roasted at a stone fire pit and potato chips. I helped serve the meal and supervised the cleanup. While I stuffed paper plates into a trash bag Tina approached me and unctuously said I was doing a fine job. She’s still Dragonlady to me.

Then I laid out my sleeping bag on the dirt. We brought no tents. We’d be sleeping under the stars. Fran placed hers next to mine. Snug in our bags we started chatting as if we were at a pajama party. She told me how much she missed her boyfriend, Lance, who was fighting in Vietnam. She and Lance hated the war but he couldn’t help being drafted. Then she told me how great sex was with him—how he knew just the right ways to give her an orgasm. This topic made me uncomfortable.

When she asked if I had a boyfriend, I told her I used to go steady with a boy named Ron in high school but we broke up at the end of our junior year. For some stupid reason I confessed I was still a virgin. She gazed at me and even as the sun set beyond the rolling hills, I saw that her mouth was open in surprise. “You don’t know what you’re missing,” she said. “You must experience sex.”

I wanted to tell her I first wanted to meet a boy (I should write guy) who I’d fall in love with but figured she’d think I was silly and old-fashioned so I merely nodded. She then drifted into sleep. It was amazingly quiet except for a few campers giggling. Then they stopped, no doubt zapped by the hike.

I looked up in wonder at the night sky, cluttered with sparkling stars. Two were brighter than the others—one in particular. When we were studying astronomy in my tenth-grade science class, the teacher, Mr. Harris, told us that those that were the brightest weren’t actually stars but planets—Jupiter and Saturn. I felt at peace for the first time in months, as I lay there wondering which one of those sparkling orbs was Jupiter and which was Saturn. I didn’t even mind the cold, sharp wind. Soon I fell asleep. 

When I returned late Sunday afternoon I trudged back to my cabin, looking forward to taking a warm shower. Just as I walked through the door, I heard grunting then saw two naked bodies on my bed, pale hairy flesh rocking in unison. Elise, the swim instructor, was on top of Jay—the adolescent boys’ counselor. I had seen them holding hands a few times at the pool. I watched as her breasts dangled above his head. Then I snapped out of my trance and shouted, “Get off! That’s my bed!”

I left and ran to the outskirts of the camp. I’m surprised I had the energy after my weekend trek up and down a mountain. I sat on a wooden bench under a sycamore tree and tried to still my racing heart. I wished I could obliterate that vision of two naked bodies copulating. That’s the way I saw it—not making love. Maybe they were in love but I had the terrible feeling my romantic notions were outdated. I was also fuming.

I did force myself to re-enter that cabin and I was prepared to bash the two of them. They were gone. I flung the blanket and sheets off the bed then holding the disgusting bundle I bounded over to the big log cabin where Pete and his wife, Judy, spent the summer. I banged on the door as loud as he had banged on our cabin’s door the night of the raid.

Judy opened the door and smiled at me. She wore a gingham maternity top, which bulged with her pregnant stomach, over capris. She lost her smile when I dropped the bedding on the doormat. 

“Elise and Jay had sex on my bed,” I said without preamble. “So now I need new sheets and a blanket.” 

She cocked her head at me as if what I said confused her. “Why did they do that on your bed?”

I shrugged. “I guess because she’s got the top bunkbed and was afraid that with all their rocking and squirming, they’d fall off.”

She winced at this reply. “I don’t keep fresh bedding here.” Her mouth turned into a snarl as she looked down at the pile. “I’m not responsible for cleaning these. Please pick them up and give them to Tina.”

I was forced to again lift the defiled bedding into my arms. I found Tina sitting at a picnic table, gorging on pizza with some of her pals, including Elise and Jay. I dropped the bedding by Elise’s feet in flipflops. “Here—clean these!”

“They’re not mine,” she said and laughed. Others laughed with her.

“I will quit now if I don’t get new sheets and a blanket,” I said to Tina, meaning it, though I had no idea where I’d go. Maybe I’d contact my distant cousin, Sheila, who lived in Palm Springs.

“Don’t be so uptight,” Tina said. “You know what your problem is?”

“It’s not me who has a problem!”

They all laughed again.

“Try cooling it,” she said. “People will like you better.”

“What about my bedding?”

“You’ll get it later.” She lifted a bottle of Coke to her mouth.

Jay grinned at me, making his brown handlebar mustache turn upward. “You should’ve watched us. You might’ve learned something useful.”

They all tittered as I strutted away.

I’m still humiliated. I have made a reputation for myself as the camp prude. As soon as my grandparents return from Vegas I will quit and move in with them. 

Date Entry: Sunday, August 2, 1970

This will be my last entry in my Notes from Camp Chaparral. I am writing it on a wooden bench while I wait for Grandpa Joe to pick me up and take me to his house. My suitcase is by my feet. Yes, I have quit. The secretary, Erica, let me call my grandparents on the office phone (though she wasn’t sure long-distance calls were allowed). I liked the sound of my grandfather’s cheerful voice. He told me my mother already sold the house and at a good price. “She’s flying out soon,” he said. “Everything will work out for you two.” I wish I can believe that.

I still tried to give the camp a chance even after that awful episode with Elise and Jay. In fact, I tried to change my attitude—not act so innocent and shocked. Anyway, being still a virgin doesn’t mean I’m still innocent. I know this isn’t Eden. I found that out when I heard about my father’s affair, then the embezzlement, and then watched his coffin being lowered into the ground. I’ve swallowed that rotten apple. I’m a post-innocent Eve.

But I remained naïve.

When Steve asked me out on a date last night I was thrilled. All that I had to endure in this camp was now worth it because this good-looking guy wanted to be with me. It’s not like I’m ugly. My former boyfriend, Ron, as well as other guys have said I’m pretty. But there are lots of pretty girls here—especially those tall, blond-haired surfer types. (I’m short with wavy brown hair). He could’ve asked out any one of them but he chose me!

He told me we’d double-date with Bruce (aka Karl Marx) and the counselor, Colleen. I seemed to remember Colleen being among those sitting at the picnic table on the infamous day I dropped the sheets by Elise’s feet. Steve explained that he had no car but Bruce did and was willing to drive us all to the movies. We were going to see a really bitchen movie!

When Bruce drove us in his VW Bug past downtown Upland and onto the freeway and then eventually through a seedy section of Riverside, I should’ve known we wouldn’t be watching a movie I’d like. After we parked a block away, I saw the marquee: Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. Before Steve could purchase my ticket, I had to show my driver’s license to prove I was eighteen. 

From their ruddy faces and grins, I had a strong sense they planned to shock me and get some fun out of it. Yet something weird happened: while I was watching a parade of characters obsess over sex while at an orgy and space-out on psychedelic drugs, I burst into laughter—uncontrollable laughter. The three of them lost their smiles and looked confused.

At one point Steve squeezed my hand and said, “Take it easy.”

Maybe that’s why they decided to pull a new stunt last night when we returned to the camp parking lot. Bruce didn’t park the car but drove to an area where there were no cars and started to drive in a circle around and around in his VW Bug, making me dizzy. The car seemed to be spinning.

Steve grabbed my waist and said, “Give me a good wet kiss on the mouth and the car will stop.”

“Let me out!” I shouted, while the car seemed to whirl. I clung to the door handle.

“Just one little kiss,” he said, while they all tittered. 

Colleen was red-faced with laughter.

Somehow, I managed to open the door and fell out, landing on the asphalt.

Steve extended his hand to help me up but instead I shouted, “Go away!”

My elbows were scratched as well as my knees. My mini-skirt was filthy. I hobbled back to my cabin. 

I quit this morning. I doubt they’ll miss me. Pete said he’d send me a check for the time I worked at the camp. He also added, “Too bad you couldn’t manage to fit in with my staff. But I suppose it’s been tough for you lately, losing your father.”

“Yes, it has been,” I said aloud to no one. I thought about my last visit to the ICU. My father’s face was jaundiced. He managed to form a smile and with his wired-up hand patted mine. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“For what, Dad?” I asked but I suspected he was about to tell me about his affair with his bookkeeper.

“I’m sorry I didn’t let you attend Cornell. I hope you can still go.”

“It’s okay, Dad,” I told him. “Just get better.” I said this but knew he’d never get better.

Tears are rolling down my cheeks. I’m glad they’ve finally come—like a cloud burst. I’m wetting my paper, smudging my words. This is all I can write about my experience at Camp Chaparral. But I’ll add this: just maybe I now can handle whatever else happens. 

*

Hillary Tiefer has a PhD in English. Her short stories are published in Descant, Red Rock Review, Mission at Tenth, Blue Moon Literary Review, Gray Sparrow Journal, Poetica Magazine, JuxtaProse, Smoky Blue Literature and Art Magazine, Five on the Fifth, and The Manifest-Station. Hillary’s novel The Secret Ranch is forthcoming with Histria Books.