Too Much Happiness

the war in Vietnam. Men on bicycles riding along a street in Saigon would be wearing them, or women walking in the road against the background of a bombed village.
    It was possible at that time-I mean the time when Charlene and I were at camp-to say
coolie
, without a thought of offense. Or
darkie
, or to talk about
jewing
a price down. I was in my teens, I think, before I ever related that verb to the noun.
    So we had those names and those hats, and at the first roll call the counsellor-the jolly one we liked, Mavis, though we didn’t like her as well as the pretty one, Pauline-pointed at us and called out, “Hey. Twins,” and went on calling out other names before we had time to deny it.
    Even before that we must have noticed the hats and approved of each other. Otherwise one or both of us would have pulled off those brand-new articles, and been ready to shove them under our cots, declaring that our mothers had made us wear them and we hated them, and so on.
    I may have approved of Charlene, but I was not sure how to make friends with her. Girls nine or ten years old-that was the general range of this crop, though there were a few a bit older-do not pick friends or pair off as easily as girls do at six or seven. I simply followed some other girls from my town-none of them my particular friends-to one of the cabins where there were some unclaimed cots, and dumped my things on top of the brown blanket. Then I heard a voice behind me say, “Could I please be next to my twin sister?”
    It was Charlene, speaking to somebody I didn’t know. The dormitory cabin held perhaps two dozen girls. The girl she had spoken to said, “Sure,” and moved along.
    Charlene had used a special voice. Ingratiating, teasing, self-mocking, and with a seductive merriment in it, like a trill of bells. It was evident right away that she had more confidence than I did. And not simply confidence that the other girl would move, and not say sturdily, “I got here first.” (Or-if she was a roughly brought-up sort of girl-and some were, having their way paid by the Lions Club or the church and not by their parents-she might have said, “Go poop your pants, I’m not moving.”) No. Charlene had confidence that anybody would
want
to do as she asked, not just agree to do it. With me too she had taken a chance, for could I not have said, “I don’t want to be twins,” and turned back to sort my things. But of course I didn’t. I felt flattered, as she had expected, and I watched her dump out the contents of her suitcase with such an air of celebration that some things fell on the floor.
    All I could think of to say was, “You got a tan already.”
    “I always tan easy,” she said.
    The first of our differences. We applied ourselves to learning them. She tanned, I freckled. We both had brown hair but hers was darker. Hers was wavy, mine bushy. I was half an inch taller, she had thicker wrists and ankles. Her eyes had more green in them, mine more blue. We did not grow tired of inspecting and tabulating even the moles or notable freckles on our backs, length of our second toes (mine longer than the first toe, hers shorter). Or of recounting all the illnesses or accidents that had befallen us so far, as well as the repairs or removals performed on our bodies. Both of us had had our tonsils out-a usual precaution in those days-and both of us had had measles and whooping cough but not mumps. I had had an eyetooth pulled because it was growing in over my other teeth and she had a thumbnail with an imperfect half-moon, because her thumb had been slammed under a window.
    And once we had the peculiarities and history of our bodies in place we went on to the stories-the dramas or near dramas or distinctions-of our families. She was the youngest and the only girl in her family and I was an only child. I had an aunt who had died of polio in high school and she-Charlene-had an older brother who was in the Navy. For it was wartime, and at the campfire sing-song we would choose “There’ll Always Be an England” and “Hearts of Oak,” and “Rule Britannia,” and sometimes “The Maple Leaf Forever.” Bombing raids and battles and sinking ships were the constant, though distant, backdrop of our lives. And once in a while there was a near strike, frightening but solemn and exhilarating, as when a boy from our town or our street would be killed, and the house where he had lived, without having any special wreath or black drapery on it, seemed