I’m not sure what lessons Nat was to leave behind for me. Yet, when I think of her, I realize her place in my heart remains soft and warm. Quite the unexpected remains of a young girl who lived her life wrapped in a rough edge.
Nat and I met at Camp. She was a sixteen-year-old resident Camper and I was her twenty-two year old supposed Counselor. I had no experience or education in counseling, but I was willing to live in the woods year round with juvenile delinquent/emotionally disturbed teenage girls. Somehow, that made me qualified to be their counselor.
A predictable routine was part of Camp’s therapy. Rise at 6:30, do chores, breakfast, then move on to the next pre-agreed upon group activity. Sometimes it was school. Other times it was wood gathering, tree cutting, latrine digging, swimming - - whatever was planned the week prior by the group, was put on the agenda. The meals were prepared in the campsite in the cook tent, which had a fire pit, a table and a dish rack. The one source of potable water in each campsite was located outside the cook tent at a single spigot that delivered only cold water. Dishwater was heated over the fire. The girls were assigned to either prepare the meal or clean up after. If the group preparing the meal couldn’t work together, a circle-up was called and we'd assembled wherever we appened to be and talk about the situation. If after the girls had gone to bed a counselor discovered that not all the dishes and pans were cleaned, the entire group was called from their warm beds to a circle up at the cold logs, to talk about the problem. Peer pressure was a very effective tool in these instances.
Nat was at Camp for nearly a year before I was transferred to her group to be one of her counselors. She was there because she had nowhere else to be. A chronic runaway of the foster home system, her caseworkers lobbied to have her sent to the woods to help, “channel Nat’s energies in a positive way.” Although I had six years on her, she was the wiser of the two. Nat saw more of life than I could but imagine. This life left Nat with a surly confidence that was uncommon. So uncommon that I spent my first months with Nat trying to pierce through what I thought to be her facade. When tested, however, Nat’s self assurance held true. I will forever wonder if this self-assuredness became her undoing.
Despite her urban childhood, Nat took to life in the woods with exceptional ease. Her body was short and stout, capable of doing the hard work that living in the woods required. Nat could carry an eight foot fallen tree by herself. She could deftly steer a canoe through the most obstacle-riddled stretches of a river She chopped firewood “for fun”. Nat also studied books from the library and had a special fascination with plant taxonomy. She delicately collected, pressed and labeled each plant she found interesting in the piney woods of East Texas where Camp was located. I often found her at night in her tent, carefully labeling and mounting her latest dried plants into one of the notebooks she stored in the bottom of her footlocker. The caseworkers were delighted to see that Nat’s energies were “positively re-framed” while living in the woods.
What I struggled with was finding a way to help prepare Nat for life back in the real world.
I spent nearly two years living with Nat in the piney woods. Two years spent trying to find a place in the world for this girl with uncommon confidence and intelligence. Every morning, I stroked her wild black hair from her face and whispered gently in her ear, “Good morning, Natividad.” Every morning she would respond by thrashing her head wildly in one direction and then the next, then with the evil scowl of the possessed she’d answer back, “Fuck you, Patty.” At the end of each day I went from bed to bed and carefully tucked each delinquent, disturbed, violent and forgotten little girl into her bed. I tried to leave each of them with a warm, kind thought to end their troubled and uncertain day. I often saved Nat for last. “Good night, Nat” I’d say, kneeling next to her cot, my knees pressed into the bare tent floor and my face as close to hers as she might allow. “G’night, Patty,” she’d usually respond. If I got lucky, she’d ask me for a butterfly kiss and I would gratefully comply. Leaning my cheek next to hers, I let my eyelashes brush gently against her brown cheeks.
Nat was a social service child - - in the system in one form or another ever since she was three years old. It was a system that did little to protect Nat from the horrific things that can happen to a child. Nat was first found by Social Services all alone in the closet of a rat-infested apartment in West Texas. Her mother, a Navajo Indian, left Nat alone in the apartment while she went with her most recent boyfriend on a drinking binge. In her file I found a photo of her taken that first time she was removed from her mother’s care. It was a faded black and white photo bearing the wide-eyed stare of a frightened little child. Her straight black hair framed her round face and her dirty, bare legs poked out from a pair of torn shorts. Nobody knows how long Nat was in that closet before she was found. She had several rodent teeth marks, but they paled in comparison to what they found on her hand. Her right palm revealed a third degree burn that was in a concentric circle pattern. Purple, blistered and infected. It took several years of skin graphs and physical therapy before Nat regained full use of that hand.
Years later, as I sat with Nat beside the dying campfire, she took my finger and traced the circular pattern the scar still revealed. “This is all I have to remember my mother by,” she said softly to me and to the night that surrounded us.
Camp could not keep girls as residents - - or, “campers” as we called them - - after they turned 18 years old. Once they turned 18, they had to go somewhere else. As Nat approached the magic age, her caseworkers began looking for another living situation for her. They arranged for Nat to transition into some apartments in Houston that were designed for foster kids who were getting ready to leave the system. It was decided that the three months before Nat’s 18th birthday, she would spend longer and longer “home stays” at the apartments and less and less time at Camp. Home stay happened every month. Every month the campers were sent back home for five days to practice whatever they were trying to learn at Camp. As Nat didn’t have a home other than Camp, Home stay was especially hard for her. She was bounced back and forth between foster homes and group homes, never at the same two months in a row. To be able to return to the same place for three consecutive months appealed to Nat.
In July, Nat left Camp three days early and returned at the same time with the rest of the girls. In August, she left Camp a week before the others, but met the camp’s bus in Memorial Park and rode with the other campers back to Camp. In September, Nat was only at Camp for two weeks, spending the other two weeks at the apartments. Each time she returned to Camp, she told the other girls about how good it was going to be to back in civilization. She bragged about the freedom she would have and how she planned to get a job and a car. But, in private she pleaded with Jeff, the Camp’s director, to find a place for her to work at Camp. We all knew that it was in Nat’s best interests to sever the tie and push her out of the nest, so we all reassured Nat that she would do fine being on her own in the city. We applauded ourselves for nurturing her so well that she didn’t want to leave. “Nat was going to be just fine,” we said over and over, to her - - and to ourselves.
September came, but Nat wasn’t on the bus returning to Camp. Did she decide to stay at the apartments and not come back to say goodbye? The thought stung and I realized in that moment just how much I was going to miss my little Nat. I was gathering what remained of my group together and was heading them down the trail to our campsite when Nat’s caseworker motioned me over. “Where’s Nat?” I asked the obvious.
“She ran away from the apartments sometime Saturday afternoon,” she replied. Unexpectedly, this information healed my wounded heart. Nat didn’t leave me - - she left the apartments. Of course! More than half of the girls run away from Camp in their last weeks here. It’s as if they want us to be absolutely certain that they are ready to leave. Then I heard what she really said - - Nat had been missing since Saturday. That was four days ago. Where could Nat be? She had no friends, no family. The caseworker read my concern. “Not to worry,” she said. “Wherever Nat is holing up, she is sure to wear-out her welcome soon.”
True enough. I nodded in agreement and told myself I’d be tucking Nat into bed later that night. But bedtime came, and no Nat. All the next day I looked for signs of people approaching the campsite, knowing that Nat was soon to be escorted back to me. But nobody came and another bedtime passed without me saying goodnight to Nat. She had been missing for six days now. Where could she be?
The next day as we were preparing to go take showers, Karla came down to the campsite to say Jeff needed to see me. She took over the group and I half ran up the trail to the main office, certain that Nat would be waiting for me there. As I approached the building, I spotted her caseworker’s car in the parking lot, further confirming for me that Nat was waiting for me inside. But when I entered Jeff’s office, no Nat. Jeff sat behind his desk and the caseworker sat on one end of the sofa. Neither smiled when I entered the room.
Did Nat steal something? Was she in jail? Did the apartments decide to kick her out? What could be so bad?
“Sit down, Patty,” Jeff motioned to the chair opposite him. I sat. Jeff looked at the caseworker and then back down at his desk. “Nat’s body was found on Galveston beach late last night,” he said in a voice so low that I had to strain to hear what I didn’t want to hear. “She was found nude and had apparently been strangled with one of her own socks.”
I said nothing. I could hear my heart pounding in my ears.
The caseworker said nothing.
Jeff sat behind his desk, looking at his hands.
The gloomy silence was broken with Jeff saying that he would come down and tell the group himself later that afternoon. I nodded. I wanted to cry, but the scene played out so matter-of-factly that my tears were uncertain. Nat was dead. Murdered. With one of her own socks. This news was delivered as if I was being told my car loan hadn’t been approved, or that my suitcase was lost. Nat was dead. l felt nothing. I couldn’t feel my body in the chair. I couldn’t hear what Jeff said next. I couldn’t see the late summer sunlight bounce against the leaves of the trees.
Strangled by one of her own socks. I could visualize those socks. They were purchased especially for Nat. Regular knee-high socks were too long to fit her short stubby legs and too narrow to accommodate her muscular calf. These socks, 10 pairs of them, were extra wide and short. She took special care of these socks, making sure each was returned to her after laundry day. Now, ironically, one had been used to end her young life.
The caseworker cleared her throat and spoke softly in my direction. She held up some folded paper sacks and said, “We’ll have to get Nat’s things, you know? Some of her jeans are brand new and her boots still have a lot of wear in them.”
I looked at her and then at Jeff. I was being asked to go pack up Nat’s things and make room for another girl. The office began to spin and the air felt much too still and warm. I stood to leave and the caseworker put two of her sacks in my hand.
“Will two be enough? I can give you another.”
“Two is enough,” I said, taking the sacks from her and somehow making my way to the door. I had to leave that room. I had to be alone. I had to be somewhere else.
“I’ll tell Karla to stay with the group,” Jeff said. “Take your time.”
I walked with numb legs back to the empty campsite and went into Nat’s tent. Kneeling beside her wooden footlocker, I opened the lid and immediately a memory flashed in my mind. It was a hot summer afternoon and the girls were in their tents putting away their clean laundry. When Nat opened her footlocker she found a coral snake resting on top of her neatly folded underwear. At Camp, we were trained to demonstrate respect for all life - - this included snakes, rodents and all fashion of creepy crawly things. How we were to handle snakes, even the poisonous ones, was to coax the snake onto a long handled shovel or stick and calmly walk it out of campsite and set it free. I was alone that particular afternoon, the only counselor in the group, making the task of walking the snake out of camp mine. I hated snakes and my fear of them bordered on irrational. I dreaded what I would have to do next.
However, as the other girls ran out of the tent, Nat remained inside. Using her walking stick, she coaxed the snake onto the stick and then, with a quiet assuredness, she gently strolled outside the tent, down the trail and many yards beyond our campsite before she stopped and watched as the brightly colored viper oozed itself off the stick and scurried out of sight. I knew I should have stopped her. I knew that I should have done this task myself. But she had more confidence than I could ever hope to muster. With some degree of shame, and with many degrees of gratitude, I let Nat do my job.
But now I was alone in the campsite. Only the sounds of birds and the wind could be heard. It was a peaceful setting for this painful chore. I emptied the top tray first. Her neatly folded underwear, her nine other pairs of sock, her bandanas, long underwear and various small items were placed in one sack. I lifted the top tray and began removing the t-shirts, flannel shirts and blue jeans and placed them in the other sack. At the bottom of her locker, I saw her taxonomy scrapbooks. I slowly lifted one out of the box and placed it on my lap. With a sort of reverence I opened the cover and gently fingered through every page of leaf and flower that my wild girl of the woods had so carefully gathered, pressed, mounted and then labeled into these books. I brought the book to my face and breathed in, hoping to catch some scent of my lost Nat. But, like the rest of the woods surrounding us, it all smelled of pine.
I fingered each leaf, each flower petal. I ran my fingers across her neatly lettered labels. The tears that were so uncertain a few minutes earlier flowed with great certainty now. “Nat,” I said to myself. “Nat. Oh sweet Nat.”
I kept the books for myself. I never told the caseworker or Jeff about them. I kept them so I would never forget this girl who I had come to love.
And, I never have.
