 As a junior counselor, part of my job, in addition to being in charge of a bunk of girls, was to oversee a table of campers at mealtime. Most of them hated breakfast, especially the lumpy oatmeal. One morning, I was doing my best to encourage them to eat when I heard a loud, unpleasant argument coming from the kitchen. Soon the cook stormed out of the dining room, followed by the director who stood, dismayed, watching the cook leave. I heard her say to some of the senior counselors, “I don’t know what I’m going to do. I’ll be lucky if I can get another cook by tomorrow.” No one suggested any action.
What possessed me, I don’t know, but without thinking about whether I could do it, I went up to the director and said, “I can make the meals until the new cook arrives.”
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 As the newly elected executive vice-president of the association, I was in line to become the next president. Normally the president would have chaired the meeting but he’d been called home to deal with an emergency. I got a message from an administrator telling me I had to chair the meeting fifteen minutes before it was scheduled to begin. I wasn’t worried. I had the agenda that had been sent to the new board members, and running a meeting didn’t seem all that different from meeting new students at the beginning of a semester.
 He was Black. I was white. He was tall. I was short. He was a southern Baptist. I was a northern Jew. He was a scientist. I taught world literature. He dressed with elegance. I favored loose-fitting ethnic clothing. He lived in the city. I lived in a small community about seven miles away. He grew up in the south in a time of overt segregation. I grew up in the north in a time of mostly covert segregation. He was married. I was divorced. Outwardly we were totally different.
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Monthly StoriesLife tales from a woman different living in The City Different. Archives
July 2023
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Nancy King is a widely published author and a professor emerita at the University of Delaware, where she has taught theater, drama, playwriting, creative writing, and multidisciplinary studies with an emphasis on world literature. She has published seven previous works of nonfiction and five novels. Her new memoir, Breaking the Silence, explores the power of stories in healing from trauma and abuse. Her career has emphasized the use of her own experience in being silenced to encourage students to find their voices and to express their thoughts, feelings, and experiences with authenticity, as a way to add meaning to their lives.
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