Come a Stranger

  “You used to take me dancing,” Alice reminded her husband.

  “I did, didn’t I?” Mr. Shipp said. “Tell you what, honey. For our tenth anniversary I’ll take you out for an evening, a first-class evening, dinner and dancing.” He was teasing again.

  “Downtown?” Alice asked. His eyes stayed on her.

  “Downtown. We’ll go to”—he considered it, watching her face as she waited for him to finish—“the Persian Room at the Plaza Hotel.”

  “Oh, Tamer,” she said.

  “Take me too,” the oldest girl, Dream, said. “I could get a new dress. I can dance.”

  “This is for grown-ups,” Alice explained, while the rest of the people tried not to encourage Dream by laughing.

  They lingered over dessert and coffee, while the little children went out into the yard to run around in the last of the sunlight. Selma fell asleep in her father’s lap. The voices blended together, floating out from the screened porch to join in with other voices from other houses, everybody relaxing at the end of a day. Mina listened as Kat and Belle asked Alice about hairstyles in New York, as her mother told Mr. Shipp about something called the Hundred Years’ War, in Europe, because he had said he had never understood what it was about, and Momma said it was about economics, as always. Mina sat back, her stomach full, tired after the work of the dinner, her mind resting. She wished her father was here.

  Mr. Shipp seemed to think the same. “I would like to know your husband, Raymonda,” he said, right in the middle of things.

  “Amos says the same,” she answered. They leaned down the table toward one another to talk, while Mina tucked away the knowledge of the way her mind and Mr. Shipp’s mind ran along the same lines.

  Darkness settled down through the air, and the children went inside to watch TV on the Smithses’ little black-and-white set. “It’s better than nothing,” Alice said. “We don’t have one out at the Beerce house.” She went in with them to select the program and stayed with them to watch. They let Selma sleep on the sofa. Mr. Shipp walked Miz Hunter across to her own house and then walked Kat to her house. Momma helped Belle and Zandor with the dishes. Mina would have liked to walk along with Mr. Shipp through the dark evening air, but thought she’d better not say so and she wasn’t asked.

  After everything was cleaned up, Belle, Zandor, Momma, Mina, and Mr. Shipp sat around the table, just sitting there, not talking about anything much. Momma had citronella candles burning, and the light flickered over the dark faces. Mina didn’t think she’d ever felt so good. She felt contented, from the soles of her feet to the ends of her pigtails contented.

  “Say, Belle, you must have a radio or a record player, don’t you?” Mr. Shipp asked. “Unless I misunderstand human nature entirely.”

  “I couldn’t live without it,” Belle answered.

  “Do you have any music a man could dance to?”

  “You aren’t going to go lugging that thing downstairs,” Momma objected.

  “We’ll open the windows. It won’t be loud, Raymonda,” Mr. Shipp said. “One of the things I enjoy most about summers here is the quiet. The simple quiet. I just wanted to ask Miss Mina to tread the boards with me.”

  “The boards?” Mina wondered.

  “The grass, precisely,” he said. “It piques my curiosity when a young lady says she can’t dance.”

  “But,” Mina began, but by then Belle was already on her way upstairs. “Not too loud,” Momma called after her.

  The music fell down from the open window like a fine summer rain. Belle dragged Zandor out to dance with her, while Louis and Momma watched from the porch. “I picked light rock,” Belle told Mr. Shipp.

  “I’m glad to hear that,” he answered solemnly, and then, when she had grabbed Zandor’s hands and started in dancing, he lifted his eyebrows at Mina as if to say he didn’t know what Belle was talking about. Mina giggled. She felt weird, standing there in their backyard, in the shadowy air. He held out his hands for her to take, and she hesitated, feeling weird. Then the music began to wrap itself around her feet with its steady beat, and the melody started to move in her shoulders, while the singers’ voices got into her ears; and they danced. Mina heard his voice humming along the way hers was. She was surprised at his coordination, as they stepped out and then stepped in together, but she didn’t know why she should be. He was a good dancer, she thought, as their hands separated and their arms went out, moving from the shoulders down to the wrist. They backed around each other, moving together in the dance. At the end he just said, “I thought so,” before the next song started up.

  Louis brought Dream out to dance, and Alice claimed her husband from the steps. “I want to dance with you,” Alice said, sounding happy. “Mina won’t mind.”

  Mina didn’t mind. She went up into the house to fetch Samuel out. “I can’t,” he said, his eyes solemn behind his glasses.

  “It’s easy, you just—move around to the music,” she told him. He was miles shorter than she was and moved with funny little jerky steps, self-conscious, until they both started laughing and he relaxed. Then he took off his glasses, running up to set them on the table, and ran back. “Okay,” he said, satisfied. “You’re a good teacher.”

  Everybody danced with everybody, switching partners. But nobody could persuade Momma to join them. “I’m not built for this. I’ve been on my feet all day, and it’s no relaxation for me to get back on them to—jump around.”

  “I can fox trot,” Mr. Shipp called up, but she shook her head. “You’re as bad as your daughter,” he told her, his voice floating through the dark air.

  “You said I was a good dancer,” Mina protested.

  “You know what I mean.” She heard his laughter but she couldn’t see his face. “Don’t you make trouble, Miss T-rou-ble. I haven’t danced for years, have I, honey?” he asked Alice.

  Even after everyone had gone home, the house was filled with the good time they’d had, as if it could linger in the air like the voices and music lingered in memory. Mina wrapped the memory up and put it in her heart; there was a quiet gladness, deep like a tree and tall in her.

  CHAPTER 13

  A couple of days after that, Mina and Kat and Louis rode out to the Shipps’ house. Alice had told them to come on out, anytime, anytime soon, because she got pretty lonely out there all day with just the children. She had some magazines she was sure Kat would enjoy, she said. There was a little beach just down the way, on a creek, but it had sand. They put on bathing suits and shorts and rode out the three miles to the Beerce farm.

  Alice was still in her bathrobe, but she didn’t mind having them come over. While Alice was upstairs dressing, Mina and Kat washed up the breakfast dishes for her. Then they all sat on the porch, drinking Kool-Aid, and talking. Alice didn’t like the house much. It had no air conditioning, no dishwasher, no TV for the kids. The linoleum floors always looked dirty and the windows had to be propped up with pieces of wood. Mina thought it was a fine house, set among the fields the way it was, with a few straggly wild cherry trees behind it and a couple of locusts out front. The heat built up and she listened, picking at the paint of the porch with her fingers.

  “Can’t we go swimming?” Louis finally asked. Alice said it was all right, but she didn’t want to go with them. She asked if Mina would mind watching the children, and Mina said it was no trouble. So Kat stayed behind while Mina walked off with Dream and Selma. Samuel was upstairs, doing something, so she didn’t ask if he wanted to come with them, but he came running after them, in a sweat.

  “You should have called,” he said, angry at her. His bathing suit was twisted wrong at his skinny waist and his glasses were halfway down his nose. He couldn’t fix them without dropping the towel.

  “I said I was sorry once,” Mina reminded him. If he was going to just be cross, she wished he’d go back to whatever he’d been doing.

  “It wasn’t fair,” he said.

  Mina ignored him. Selma had such short legs, she wondered if she sho
uld offer to carry the little girl, but she suspected that Selma wanted to do things all by herself.

  “You never even said you were here, when you came,” he continued.

  “Cut it out, will you?” Mina told him. Louis had run on ahead along the path that ran between two cornfields. She hoped he’d have sense enough to wait for them before going into the water. She had no idea of how deep it was, or anything. “If you feel like this, why didn’t you stay home?”

  Samuel walked along ahead of her, studying the path. It was close in there among the tall corn. The heat multiplied itself, and there were more bugs than Mina cared for. Sweat sat prickly on her skin. She wondered how much farther they had to go. She wondered if the line of scrawny trees ahead marked the creek, because such trees often grew up beside the creeks. She wondered if Selma would have a fit if Mina suggested carrying her, so they could move a little faster.

  “I wanted to go swimming more than I wanted to be angry,” Samuel said, turning around and walking backward.

  “Hunh?”

  “You asked me why I didn’t stay in the house,” Samuel reminded her.

  He didn’t call it home, Mina noticed. She looked at his little face. He didn’t look that much like his father. “How old are you?” she asked.

  “Five. I’m going to first grade. There it is.”

  They stepped out from between walls of corn into some trampled underbrush and then onto a narrow beach. Louis was sitting with his legs in the water. The creek was narrow, and another cornfield lay across it. But a little breeze ruffled the water, here where there was room for air to move, and the trees gave some shade. They spread out their towels and splashed into the water.

  It was shallow, never over Mina’s knees, but deep enough to splash in. She lay around in the water and then walked out, wetted down thoroughly, to sit and watch the little children play. It was entirely private, entirely their own, rather like a swimming pool in their backyard.

  Mina hadn’t planned to stay too long at the beach, but she did. She watched Selma potter around at the water’s edge and Samuel resolutely try to teach himself how to swim. Louis peeled himself a fishing rod and Dream sat weaving long grasses together, lost in her own thoughts. Mina sat on her towel to watch, flopping back into the water whenever she got too hot. Kat and Alice knew where they were. It was funny that she called Alice, Alice, but couldn’t imagine calling Mr. Shipp, Tamer.

  The late morning sun poured down over the creek and beach, sparkling along the surface of the water. In spells of silence, you could hear the little noises the water made. There weren’t many spells of silence, not with three children from one family to start games and then quarrel them to an end. Selma was the best quarreler. The little girl consistently got exactly what she wanted, even from Louis. By sheer stubbornness and refusing to give up ever, that was how she did it. Mina was amused. She was willing to bet that Selma’s short hair was because Alice would be easily defeated during quarrels about braiding Selma’s hair.

  Samuel told her about what school was going to be like, as if he didn’t realize she’d been six years in school herself. She listened to him with half of her mind as he walked around in front of her, talking. She looked at the field opposite and the clear hot sky overhead, at her own big feet digging into the rough sand. The Shipp kids took this for granted, she thought; they’d have been just as happy with a plastic pool in the dirt of the backyard.

  “Are you listening?” Samuel demanded, stopping right in front of her with his feet planted and his hands on his skinny hips. She started to just say she was, then she realized that he knew better.

  “I wasn’t, but I am now.” Laughter bubbled up in her voice, and she hoped he wouldn’t notice.

  “So I’m going to learn how to really read.” He stayed right in front of her, to be sure he kept her attention.

  “What do you mean really read. Can you already read things?”

  Louis splashed water over Dream, but gently, as if he was making her a private waterfall. Dream rewarded him with laughter. Louis would think Samuel was boasting, but Mina wasn’t sure.

  “I can read Sesame Street, but that’s not like reading books.”

  Mina stared at him.

  “Daddy said my school will have a library. There’s going to be bad kids there, but I’ll ignore them. There’ll seem like there’re more bad kids than good kids, but Daddy said that’s just the way it seems.”

  Mina stared.

  “Not the way it is.” Samuel clarified himself, in case she misunderstood.

  Mina couldn’t stop herself. She reached out and grabbed him close, and hugged him close. He was so little, with his little shoulders and his little bathing suit with his pipe-cleaner legs sticking out of it. She didn’t wait until he started to struggle free, but let him go right away. “That was because I like you.”

  “Good,” he said. That made Mina laugh.

  “I like the way you laugh,” he told her. She knew what he meant, just as she thought she knew why Selma came up just then to drop wet, muddy sand on the front of Mina’s bathing suit.

  They stayed out at the Shipps’ almost the whole day, going back to the house for lunch, where Mina made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for everyone, and more Kool-Aid. They sat on the porch, not moving much. Dream and Kat and Alice, who had the only chair, studied magazines, talking about dress styles and hair styles and makeup styles. Selma fell asleep, so Mina carried her upstairs to the room she shared with Dream. None of the beds was made, not even the double bed. The bathroom had towels on the floor, which she picked up. She could sympathize with Alice, too bowed down by heat to bother polishing the house up. It wasn’t the kind of house that any amount of polishing would make look good anyway.

  Back with the others again, Mina studied the house from her seat on the porch. The wood had never been painted. It had just weathered down to gray. Overhead, the tin roof glared up against the sunlight, hot silver. The other three turned pages of magazines while Samuel and Louis, at the far end of the porch, built with clay. Mina leaned back against the wooden post.

  All around her the day was quiet. No cars, no radio or TV sounds, only occasional voices. The corn grew silently. Bugs whirred or buzzed quietly. Except for the two bikes parked just on the side, under a dilapidated-looking loblolly, it could have been any time at all. It could have been a hundred years ago. In more peaceful times, Mina thought. It could be anytime. But if it were just a hundred and fifty years ago . . . they would have been slaves.

  That thought sat her up straight. For the little kids, things would be about the same—the slow, hot summer hours. Except they’d belong to someone, who could sell them just the way that blond boy sold corn and tomatoes. And the man who wasn’t there, he could have been sold away, or he could have tried to run away, heading up north to freedom, however he could. Or he’d be out in the fields, working. So would Alice; except someone as pretty as Alice would probably be a house slave, dressed plain and waiting on her mistress, or maybe working in a washhouse. Kat would never be there, Mina thought, looking at her friend who was entirely engrossed in the glossy magazine. She’d be down in Louisiana, near the swamps Miz Hunter talked about. And Dream—looking at Dream a hundred and fifty years ago, Mina’s heart twisted with pain, because Dream was going to be too pretty, and she’d be noticed. If you were a slave, it wasn’t good to get noticed.

  Samuel’s bony spine stuck out as he bent over his clay. He’d never have learned how to read or had glasses even if his eyes needed them. He’d have learned never to open his mouth and say what he was thinking. Selma would have her stubbornness whipped out of her if they couldn’t teach it out of her. They’d try to teach it out of her, her parents, or her mother, if her father wasn’t around for some reason, just like they’d try to teach Samuel’s way of thinking true out of him.

  And herself? Mina looked at her legs, lined up neat, two strong thighs and the knees flexed at the joint, long calves and big feet. She registered her bust under th
e bathing suit and knew she looked much older than she was. A hundred and fifty years ago, it wouldn’t have mattered how old she was; she’d have been treated like a woman grown. Broken to slavery from day one of her life.

  She’d have been entirely different. She’d never have had a chance. There were so many people, then, who never did have a chance, no choices to make, not about what to eat or where to go or what to do. She’d never even have had a chance to make her own mistakes. A black girl who was t-rou-ble didn’t make anybody smile a hundred and fifty years ago. And all because of the color of her skin, all because the skin covering that bony back at the far end of the porch was dark skin.

  But the blood under it was red, and the bones were white.

  Looking with a long eye, Mina saw how close they sat to a hundred and fifty years ago, and fear ran along her blood. Her stomach closed up in fear and pity. Her heart rose up in anger, against the whites that had done this.

  It wasn’t just a hundred and fifty years ago, she thought, remembering dance camp. A black girl who was t-rou-ble at dance camp got sent home. As if she’d failed, as if she couldn’t dance because she couldn’t dance their way.

  Mina couldn’t sit still. She got up and walked back to the driveway. Her legs moved long over the ground, and she turned around to look at the faded house, with the people sitting under the sagging porch roof, and at the pile of bricks holding the floor of the house up from the ground. Her fists clenched. She guessed she’d show them. She guessed she wouldn’t let them drive her into any swamp to die.

  “Hey,” she called. All the faces turned to her. “Let’s go,” she called. There was a moment’s hesitation and then they scrambled up.