Even a Dirty Pool is a Mirror

TW: Themes of childhood death, dying, and terminal illness

It was the summer of 1990 at Girl Scout Camp in Upstate New York, and I was 15 years old. The first thing I noticed the day I was dropped off was the eerie outdoor pool. A flimsy sign indicated a maximum depth of 12 feet near the thin diving board, which inched out hesitantly over the stagnant water below. The water seemed to grow a kind of green, sludgy mildew that only would be tamed by an intricate cocktail of every cleaner that existed in the world. Glistening from afar, the pool’s liner made me shiver as I pictured how slimy it would be if my wandering leg were to brush up against it while grabbing on to the concrete siding. Just the thought of being inside that pool made me want to scream.

“Margot Zingerman?”

I snapped out of the trance the pool’s horrors had sent me into, looking over at the face that the irritatingly chipper voice belonged to.

“Hi, Margot,” sing-songed a middle-aged woman with rust-colored, frizzy hair. “Welcome to summer camp! You are going to be in the Juliette Gordon Low cabin. Assignments were done based on first name, in ABC-order. The lovely Mavis will be your cabin-mate!”

I groaned internally. I didn't want to be there in the first place, and I certainly didn't want a cabin-mate to deal with. My mother had decided that Girl Scout summer sleepaway camp was my fate when she’d caught me smoking a cigarette outside of church during the sermon. I didn’t even think you could sign up if you had never been a Girl Scout a day in your life, as was the case for me.

“Girl Scouts do not smoke cigarettes,” she’d explained, as if she could name even one Girl Scout and provide any evidence about her smoking status.

Besides, I tried it once and wasn’t even into it. It made me cough so hard I popped some blood vessels in my eye. And it made Nate, the hottest guy at church and the main character of all my daydreams, make a face of utter disgust when we lined up for communion.

“Do you smoke?” He’d whispered in horror, sniffing my shoulder.

So that’s how smoking one cigarette banished me to a summer in the wilderness with a bunch of goody-two-shoes who probably thought being climbed like an obstacle course by centipedes and eating salisbury steak for dinner sounded like a real treat. Oh, not to mention, not only would Nate not be there, but there would be no XY chromosomes present whatsoever. And I’d finally sized up to a double-D that past month, too.

I’m fairly certain that a lot of it had to do with my mom’s marriage to my stepfather this past February rather than utter horror over one measly cigarette. She wanted to spend her summer with him, not me. Brad was fine, but he was still more or less a stranger.

I tried to push the anger that had started to brew within me away and took the welcome bag from the frizzy-haired woman, who was still grinning at me. I lugged my black duffle bag down the trail to the Juliette-Gordon-Low Cabin (why did it have to have such a horrifyingly long name?) and used the tip of my fingernails to open the creaky door. A pair of spiders scurried away from my feet, making me jump and nearly fall down the stairs backwards.

The cabin was about the size of a small studio apartment and had two bunk beds with thin blue plastic mattresses on top and a pillow about as thin as a Lays potato chip.

I decided to sit out on the front steps of the cabin because I was not a fan of my 8-legged roommates. I stared out at the wilderness around me. My cabin was one of 8 in total that were arranged in a rectangular shape around a sorry-looking fire pit. Girls my age bustled around with their moms and older sisters, running and shrieking with delight when they saw their friends. Family members lugged in packages of colorful bedding, games, and snack stashes.

In the midst of all that, I saw Mavis. I didn’t know it was her at first. I just saw a thin, sickly-looking bald kid walking slowly toward my cabin with presumably her mom by her side. When she got closer, I noticed that I could see the blue veins in her face and neck so clearly it was like her skin was translucent. She must have weighed about 80 pounds. A pink T-shirt with Madonna’s face on it clung on to her bony shoulders for dear life.

“Hi, I’m Rory, Mavis’s mom. You must be Margot,” the mom said.

“Hi,” I said awkwardly, trying not to stare at Mavis.

Mavis only smiled at me and looked down at the floor at her purple sneakers. “Hey, Margot. Excited for the summer.”

Mavis dragged her purple bag into the cabin and began unpacking. Her mom lingered outside for a second before beckoning for me to come toward her. Hesitantly, I got up from my perch and walked over.

“Margot, I wanted to tell you a little bit about Mavis,” her mom began, pulling me aside and away from the cabin window. “She has stage four cancer. It’s in her muscles and bones. She’s taking oral chemo right now. She–” Her mom began to tear up and turned her head to face the leaves that calmly blew in the wind like someone’s whole life wasn’t falling apart in that very moment.

“Excuse me. It’s been hard. She asked for this for her Make-A-Wish, to come to Girl Scout Camp. She’d never been able to go before since she was too young. And she missed last year because of treatments… I don’t expect you to be responsible for her wellbeing or anything like that. I just wanted to tell you about her situation.”

I nodded, unsure of what to say to something so morbid, standing awkwardly near the outside of the cabin while Mavis and her mom said their goodbyes.

“I’ll miss you Mave,” whispered her mom, hugging her closely. “Remember your mid-afternoon medications.”

The first few days were extremely awkward. I walked with Mavis to the dining hall each day, where we ate stale biscuits and unseasoned hamburgers and sat at a table with girls who liked to sing what seemed like endless rounds of “Boom Chicka Boom.” We made friendship bracelets at craft time and roasted S’Mores over the fire pit each night. I wasn’t really bonding with any of the girls, to be quite honest. Maybe it was my lack of enthusiasm. Maybe it was the fact that I felt like I had the grim reaper at my shoulders every second of the day.

“You don’t have to hang out with me, you know,” Mavis said quietly one night while we were lounging in our bunk beds, her voice shaking. “I can tell that you hate this.”

She hadn’t made any friends either. I didn’t respond. I hate that I didn’t respond. I was mad, and I was selfish. I felt sorry for myself for having to be there instead of home with my friends, going to the beach on the weekends and trying to sneak in a “Peace-Be-With-You” at church with Nate. It wasn’t my fault that she had cancer, I remember thinking.

Mavis stopped following me around after that night. She started sitting by herself at lunch, and nobody sat with her. She stopped coming out for S’Mores and was absent during lake time, where she’d previously waded out cautiously a few feet in, her orange life vest engulfing her like a small child.

One night, a few days later, when Mavis and I were in our bunks silently reading, we heard a loud knock on the door. We made brief eye contact, concerned, until we heard the laughter of our camp-mates. Reluctantly, I climbed down the flimsy wooden ladder and opened the door to see them in their nightgowns and matching PJ sets, grinning from ear to ear. The orange light of their flashlights created long shadows behind them.

“We’re gonna check out that creepy pool,” said one of them, giggling.

“Apparently the ghost of Juliette Gordon Low hangs out there. So that means you guys are obligated to come with us since you’re in her cabin,” added another.

“I am not going anywhere near that pool,” I stated firmly, shuddering as I thought of what that murky water must look like in the dead of the night.

“I’ll go.”

We all turned to look at Mavis, whose thin pink cotton PJ set exposed a collection of bruises and knobby knees. She looked somber as ever, but I couldn't read her. Why was she going with them? I let them walk out and attempted to get back to The Baby-Sitters Club, but I felt this urging sensation to join them.

Before I could change my mind, I put on my Sketchers, which looked ridiculous with my short green nightgown, and raced through the woods toward the front of the campsite, where the dreaded pool was. Knowing good and well that New York has its share of wild animals, I kept my eyes straight ahead and ran as fast as I could, nearly tripping over a tree stump and scratching my elbow on a thorny branch.

When I got there, all of the blood drained from my face when I saw what had occurred: Mavis had fallen in the water. I looked at her helpless body struggling to stay afloat, gulping in cups of that bacteria-ridden, probably snake-infested water. The terror in her eyes was like something out of a horror movie.

“What are we going to do?” yelled one girl helplessly, grabbing her hair with her hands.

“We have to wake up the troop leaders!” added another in a panicked voice.

I guess my body went into autopilot mode because before a coherent thought could even pop into my head, my legs were taking me toward the pool. I jumped in.

I felt slimy water cover my entire body up to my neck, a sting from something that must have bitten me, and the taste of what sewage smells like. With Mavis propped up over my shoulder, I struggled to get to the side ladder, if there even was one. I tried to gently place her on the concrete so that I could actually get out of the haunted pool. The sound of the site of her head hitting the concrete a bit harder that I had hoped for made me wince. I pushed up on the concrete and felt my shoes touch the side of the pool, feeling thankful that at least my bare feet didn’t have to touch that liner that I’d had nightmares about.

Giving myself a minute for my heartbeat to slow down and my breathing to normalize, I stretched myself out on the concrete next to Mavis. Miraculously, she started coughing.

Her mom came to get her that next day. I couldn't bring myself to be present when they packed up the cabin. Even though she and her mom thanked me profusely, I still felt so guilty and ashamed of the way I'd treated her. They left bags of chocolate, a box of assorted chips, and this adorable stuffed frog along with a heartfelt thank-you note. I didn't deserve it.

A few weeks later, on a lazy Sunday afternoon filled with birdsong and the sound of wind chimes, I heard the news. And they played "Taps" and lowered the flag.

Day is done,

Gone the sun

From the lake,

From the hill,

From the sky

All is well,

Safely rest,

God is nigh.

“Campers, we have a sad announcement to share. One of our fellow Girl Scouts, Mavis, passed away in the comfort of her home this past weekend. She was surrounded by her mother and her two dogs, who she loved dearly.”

I didn’t even know she had dogs. I felt hot tears run down my face, and I angrily tried to brush them off. I journaled a lot and spent some time pouring my heart out to that frizzy-haired lady who welcomed me at the very beginning. I talked to God and the birds in the woods and my reflection in the horrible pool. But that wasn't the last time I thought about Mavis.

You see, I'll never not think about Mavis. She changed me, even if it was after she died that she did. I thought about Mavis today when my youngest child was headed off to sleepaway camp for the first time. With tears in the corner of my eyes, I gave her the small piece of advice I had to offer.

“Give the different kid a chance. Sit with the person sitting alone. And don’t just sit there and pity them - talk to them like they’re human--”

"Mom, I know about Mavis. I'll keep a lookout for the Mavises," my daughter promised, only making the tears fill my eyes completely.

Now that I'm pushing fifty, I realize more how fragile life is. Mavis’s last wish had been to spend the summer at Girl Scout camp, relying on a stranger to make her experience a good one. What was supposed to be a magical experience was mediocre at best and ended with a near-drowning scare.

The campsite is gone now. It was bought out by some rich family who created a wedding venue, complete with one of those highly impractical glass-stained chapels. That pool, though… Thank God that pool is gone. Out of all the errors in my thinking back then, there was one thing I was right about: nothing good was going to come out of that pool.