Avoda

Abba’s arms were string-cheese thin and being held back by AK’s much larger and stronger ones, made them look as if they were going to break in half, or rip right off. AK wove his fingers together and placed them around Abba’s neck. He started to apply pressure as Abba began to sob, chest heaving so much it made his small body move in unison.

AK, like an impatient five-year-old getting bored with a toy, finally left. He had been trying to teach campers how to perform a Full Nelson. Abba, I would later learn, was always AK’s personal punching bag.

Speakers discharged static-pocketed music at 6:30 in the morning to get us out of bed. We would march to the flagpole where we would raise the American and Israeli flags, hold kippahs to our hearts, and sing both national anthems. I was at Avoda, a Jewish boys summer camp in Massachusetts.

“We’re just Jewish teenagers,” Benji, another camper, had said while trying to introduce me to the camp. “Reach into the name pool and you’ll find a handful of Schwartz’s, Goldfarb’s, Steinberg’s, and Cohen’s.”

My parents had dropped me off in the blaze of mid-July, to a man who shook their hands and identified himself as AK, my counselor. Before, as my family and I crossed the border from Connecticut to Massachusetts, my father began to teach me some Hebrew. He told me that Avoda meant “work,” said that he hoped that I’d learn to toil and get strong in the camp.

A few weeks into camp, I found myself standing on a metal dock, splashes collecting around my feet as a game of water polo raged on in the enclosed area. I touched a toe to lake. I could not compete. I still wore the hospital band around my wrist from two days earlier.

Before pushing me into a CT scan, the doctor told me, “You have a concussion, Boaz. Now we’re just testing to see if you have any more immediate brain damage.” He prescribed two months without physical activity. Abba couldn’t play either, but he wasn’t on the dock. He stood on the small beach, spinning around with a stick in his hand, completely uninterested in the game. I watched from the sidelines as my team scored and as Abba slashed circles in the sand.

Abba was a thirteen-year-old camper in my age group. He only ate bread and jam: he was allergic to almost everything else. He took vitamin and nutrient pills to supplement his body, but they didn’t help him grow any more. The nurses had banned him from any intense physical exercise. His twig-body was just too fragile. When I met him, I asked him why he was named Abba. Abba means father in Hebrew, years of calling my dad this had honed it into my brain. He gave me a mumbled answer. His parents wanted his name to symbolize something strong. Abba got cold at night, though, I heard him from bunks over. His body was too small to hold enough heat. His teeth rattled together like dice.

Post concussion, other campers and I sat on the bleachers cheering on our basketball team during an annual match we had every summer. It was Avoda vs. Elmcrest, another Jewish boys camp.

“We brush our teeth, with crest!” counselors had us chant, louder and louder until we drowned out even the ref’s whistle. Elmcrest had come with about 50 kids and they tried to cheer on their own team, but were no match   for our volume. They decided to give us glares and wander off. They hated us.

Abba had been going to Avoda since he was five. I only went for two consecutive years: a two-week session the first year and a month the next one. Abba told me that AK had been his counselor for half of his time at the camp. Because of this: he told me that he liked AK. I wasn’t sure why. I had always thought their relationship was abusive. I worried for Abba constantly, thought one day it would get too rough, he would snap in half like the sticks he played with. Yet, Abba told me he loved to fight with AK: it made him stronger.

In an attempt to humiliate Abba, counselors set up a tug-of-war-show-match in which they pitted him against a six-year-old. Rope lashed around his wrist, Abba pulled until his skin peeled to red. Other campers cheered for the younger kid. He was the favorite to win. I stood silently as I watched Abba’s frame get dragged across the marker, one hand still grasping the rope, as if he had a chance of winning. AK stood to the sidelines. Disappointment seared his face. The younger kid pulled Abba almost twenty feet further, showcasing his muscles.

It was pouring and Abba and I were down at the waterfront. He traced circles in the rain-bleached wood with a stick as he held his fishing rod in the other hand. Fishing was one thing Abba was good at. He had me gather worms from the wet dirt as he spliced them open with his fingernails. He attached them to his hook and cast the line into the lake.

Abba and I stood under foliage in a small forest near the camp. Sunlight streamed through open cracks as Abba and I kicked last autumn’s leaves. His knees, semi-locked, rustled them only a few feet off of the ground.  My leaves, however, floated higher. Rising past our heads, they rested in tree branches, came down minutes later to surround us in a bubble.

On a field-trip Wednesday, we were packed sardine-tight and sent us off to the nearest mall. After a movie and eating the first un-kosher meal in weeks, we left. But, during a role call on the bus, we found that Abba wasn’t there. AK and I were delegated to go back and search for him. Twenty minutes later, and I found him in front of a Dairy Queen, looking longingly at the menu. Back on the bus, he told me that, in that moment, he wished we’d left him.

AK sat at the head of our meal table, surveying us like he was a king. He had Abba sit to his right so he could hit him whenever he wanted or felt like Abba deserved it. These strikes toppled the kippah off of his head, an article of clothing mandatory at meals. Saturday morning breakfast was bagels.

Organizers split the camp right down the seams, and drafted everyone into two teams: white and blue. They had us compete against kids in our age group in different sporting events. This is how I got my first concussion. We played football on a rainy Saturday, the ground so muddy it felt like a Slip ‘N Slide. I tried to explain that I couldn’t play football, that I barely knew the rules. They put me on the line anyways. Minutes later I was taken out because I was kicked in the head. I stumbled through the rain to the nurse.

The second concussion came later that day, during volleyball. A bump-set-spike to my face set me off-balance for the rest of the game. I eventually toppled to the ground, leaving a sand-angel imprint from the impact. A counselor took me to the hospital, where I was able to call mother for the first time in a month. On the car ride there, I told the counselor facts about my life. I talked about first-grade teachers and snow and holidays. My loopy state was much more open than my conscious one.

I watched as Abba hurled rocks and insults at AK who was sitting with other counselors at a picnic table. AK chased Abba down and held him to the ground, almost forcing him to eat the grass. Sympathy towards Abba and his antics had evaporated long ago. Benji had told me on the first day here about his strategy: “He gets beat up, cries until we stop, runs after us cursing, gets caught, repeat.” Abba was no angel, but he was resilient I respected him for that. In his own way, Abba was far stronger than I was.

Abba approached me later. He had a large bruise on his face and waved a stick in the air. He told me that he’d found some of the Elmcrest kids snooping around our bunk, trying to break our locks. He said that he’d fought them and chased them away. I told him that he was brave, but he said that he’d sustain any injury to protect Avoda.