Drinking Coffee Elsewhere

At a primarily African American Girl Scout camp, Camp Crescendo, a group of black Brownies decides to beat up the all-white Troop 909. Laurel, the story’s narrator, explains, “Troop 909 was doomed from the first day of camp” (1). The girls watch the white Brownies as they arrive, and Arnetta, the most outspoken of the group, makes everyone laugh by joking that the white girls smell like wet Chihuahuas. Their troop leader, Mrs. Margolin, ignores Arnetta’s misbehaving because Arnetta is the best student in Mrs. Margolin’s Bible-centered teaching of the girls. Mrs. Hedy, the mother of Octavia, another girl in the troop, scolds them vaguely. Laurel notes that at the girls’ school, it was a common pastime to adopt long and exotic-sounding words into use as slang, and the students had been using the word Caucasian as a popular insult.

The troop is from the southern suburbs of Atlanta, and they rarely see white people in their everyday lives. On the second day of camp, Arnetta tells the girls that “she’d heard one of the Troop 909 girls call Daphne a nigger” (5). Daphne is a quiet, thoughtful girl who once won a journal in a contest for Langston Hughes Day for a poem she wrote. Although Laurel didn’t fully understand the poem, the last lines kept repeating in her head. Laurel tried to befriend Daphne, but her obsession with Daphne’s poem made Daphne uncomfortable. Hesitantly and under pressure from Arnetta, Daphne agrees that she heard one of the girls call her the slur. Arnetta insists that they must get revenge and plans a secret meeting. She then confronts Laurel, whom the girls call Snot due to an unfortunate sneezing incident at school, and demands to know if she plans to tell on them.

Later, the girls are watching the white troop, which they haven’t had the chance to see up close. Troop 909 is being supervised by a white woman, which frustrates Arnetta, who knows that they can’t take revenge until the girls are alone. Laurel suggests that they catch them in the bathroom, and Octavia tells her to shut up, but Arnetta agrees that this is the best plan. The girls go into the bathroom and discuss the course of action. When the white troop goes to the bathroom, Arnetta and Octavia will challenge them. Then they’ll signal the rest of the group to come in and fight. Daphne remains silent, and Arnetta tells her, “You don’t have to fight. We’re doing this for you” (14). Quietly, Daphne starts cleaning the messy bathroom. Arnetta leads the girls out, but Daphne stays behind and continues to pick up trash. Leaving, the girls run into Mrs. Hedy, Octavia’s mother. Mrs. Hedy is currently going through a divorce, and to Octavia’s embarrassment, she often weeps and talks about it in public. Morose, Mrs. Hedy can only be consoled when the girls sing Brownie songs, which they do reluctantly until their two chaperones leave them to go to bed.

The girls are allowed to go to the bathroom alone. Octavia accepts when Daphne doesn’t want to accompany the troop, but when Laurel tries to bow out, she insists, “No, Snot. If we get in trouble, you’re going to get in trouble with us” (21). Arnetta and Octavia go into the bathroom and the girls nervously wait for the signal. They hear one of the white Brownies deny the accusations vehemently, and they decide to just go in. They’re surprised to realize that the girls in the white troop are mentally disabled. The biggest girl in the group threatens to tell on them, but the leader of Troop 909 discovers them in the bathroom.

The girls in Troop 909 are crying, and Mrs. Margolin reassures them that her girls will apologize. The troop leader of 909 tells them some of the girls are afflicted with the impulse to repeat what they hear, and that it’s possible that one of them heard the word at home and said it without understanding what it meant. Arletta tries to point out which of the girls said it but cannot be sure. They spend the third day of camp under close monitoring and ride the bus home on the morning of the fourth day. Daphne sits with Laurel and, unexpectedly and with no explanation, gives her the unused journal she won for her poem. While Mrs. Margolin is busy consoling Mrs. Hedy, who has begun to weep about her divorce, Arnetta begins to mimic and mock the girls from the white troop, and the other girls join in. Octavia wonders why they had to go to camp with the mentally disabled girls, and Arnetta replies, “You know why” (28). Arnetta tells a story about a time when she and her mother were stared at by a white woman at the mall.

Laurel begins to tell a story, but Octavia tells her to shut up. Then Daphne—the first of the girls to call Laurel by her name—tells Laurel to keep telling her story. Laurel describes being at the mall with her father and staring at a group of white Mennonites. Laurel’s father told her that as part of their religion, Mennonites were required to do whatever favor someone asked. The girls are skeptical, but Laurel’s father asked one of the Mennonites to paint his porch, which he did. Laurel repeats what her father told her, understanding it for the first time: “He said […] it was the only time he’d have a white man on his knees doing something for a black man for free” (30). Daphne wonders if they thanked the Mennonites, and Laurel says that they didn’t, recognizing that “there was something mean in the world that [she] could not stop” and that sometimes the impulse of someone who has been made to feel lesser is to do the same to someone else (30).