Come a Stranger

  “What about one of the county summer tennis programs? You could try one of those. Don’t tell me you aren’t coordinated, because you have to be to dance ballet. Coordination isn’t the kind of thing you can lose.”

  Mina wondered. She didn’t feel like going into it, about how she’d grown too big, outgrown her own frame. “I’ll think about it,” she told her brother, to shut him up.

  “What’ll it be then?” he insisted. “Track? Softball?” But she wasn’t about to commit herself. Because he didn’t know anything about her, “Develop a little competitive spirit,” he advised, sitting back and lighting up a thin cigar. That was something else he’d learned at college: how to smoke a long thin cigar. He’d come home with a moustache that looked all right, and what he called a goatee, which was so wispy and stringy that it didn’t take more than two hours to laugh him into the bathroom to shave it off.

  All that vacation, the house was jam-packed with people. At night, there wasn’t any room except the kitchen that didn’t have somebody sleeping in it. Mina knew she was all interconnected with her family, like roots all interconnected underground, but she still felt different.

  That feeling was made stronger by the job she got herself, babysitting every day after school. There were two kids, twins, first graders, two little blonde girls. Mina walked them home after school and kept them amused until their father got back from the store where he worked, or their mother came home from the real estate office where she worked. Mina didn’t really want to work for whites, but blacks didn’t hire babysitters. Black kids went to a friend’s house, or a neighbor who was there to keep an eye on them, or an older sister or brother would have the job. So she wasn’t surprised to find herself being interviewed by a white lady when she answered the ad. Mina made fifteen dollars a week and gave twelve of it to her mother. Because her mother took it, with thanks, Mina knew money was pretty tight.

  She didn’t much care for the people who employed her. They were the kind who would be an hour late without calling up, and they never paid her for extra time. They paid her on Fridays, the woman handing over the bills with a pursed-up mouth and pursed-up eyes, as if she was sorry they had to pay her anything. They’d have made great slave owners, Mina thought. They were like Mr. Bryce, in the effect they had on her. Mina was getting tired of her running battle with Mr. Bryce, bored by it, but she stuck with it. He thought she’d get worn down and start toeing his line; but Mina was more stubborn than that. It was only until June. She could keep it up until June.

  Mina lived that year waiting for summer. She wondered if that was going to be the story of her life, just waiting out the year from September to June, so that her real life could begin in summer. There wasn’t anybody who could really get through to her, because—because the only thing that really mattered to her was Tamer Shipp. So that, when one of the twins told Mina, “I don’t like your color, its ugly,” Mina didn’t even mind. That surprised her: Even while she was getting angry enough to smack the kid, she didn’t care what she’d said, not really. She didn’t much care for white skin, if it came to that. It all looked to her like the undersides of fish at the market, like fish bellies. But Mina didn’t say that. That would be fighting them at their own level.

  She moved along all right among the whites in her school, even though she didn’t care about them one way or the other. Maybe that was why they seemed to want to be friends with her, although she noticed they didn’t invite her to their birthday parties or slumber parties. That didn’t surprise her. She understood whites. But it wasn’t so very different with her own friends, except in how she felt comfortable among them. She’d go along with whatever was going on, played spin-the-bottle in the coatroom during dances, went out roller skating and to movies with whoever asked, did a little kissing, a little flirting, and a lot of listening to peoples’ problems, with their parents, with their boyfriends, with their girlfriends. Mina wondered if she’d known Tamer Shipp when he was in seventh grade, what he would have talked about.

  The days and weeks rolled on by. Winter in Crisfield was a dismal season, wet and cold. What Mina liked best about winter was Sundays, with the warm church and choir singing and the big Sunday dinner after. Spring kind of dribbled in, one day a couple of green shoots, then a few forsythia blooms, maybe a daffodil in somebody’s yard and a warm breeze up from the south for a day, and then you noticed that spring had already arrived and you’d missed it. Mina turned thirteen in the spring, and she had a hard time remembering she was that young. On the other hand, she couldn’t believe she was already that old either. Inside herself, age had nothing to do with who she was. Let everybody else count up numbers as if they were real, as if they made a real difference.

  Mina ended the year with all A’s, even in Social Studies. That A meant, she knew, that she had worn Mr. Bryce down. She was class valedictorian at the graduation ceremonies, so she got to sit up on the platform, right next to Mr. Bryce. Mina enjoyed that.

  But she was really waiting, and the time was coming closer: waiting for her father to pack up their car and drive away; waiting through two long days of cleaning, polishing up the Beerce house so that there wouldn’t be a smallest corner, or a single windowpane, that wouldn’t be sparkling clean. Mina did the work, singing aloud, and the other women sang with her. “O, what a beautiful city,” she would start, on her knees with a scrub brush to get the linoleum clean. “There’s twelve gates into the city, Hallelu-liah.” That Halleluliah echoed around her heart, sounding like a whole orchestra was playing it.

  * * *

  On the day they were due to arrive, Mina waited on the front porch to greet the Shipps. Supper was ready, under cloths on the kitchen table. The icebox had basics in it, and the beds were made up. Mina sat in the expectant silence, entirely patient. She had told her employer that she wouldn’t work that summer. The woman asked her to work full time, watching the little girls (and cleaning their house, and doing their laundry and “maybe a little cooking too, if you can cook—you do cook, don’t you? We love fried chicken”). She’d find another way of making money. She didn’t like the way the man teased her, calling her “Our Own Little Mammy.” She had no immediate plans, but she had a couple of ideas. For now, all she wanted to do was say hello to Tamer Shipp and his family and know that he was right here in the Beerce house. She would ride home quickly; she’d promised her mother she wouldn’t hang around long.

  The corn was low in the field, just a fence of green. You could hear cars going along the road. Then one car turned into the dirt driveway. Mina stood up. Her heart thumped painfully.

  The Shipps arrived quarreling, the way families do after a long drive. Samuel had punched Dream in the arm and Selma wouldn’t move to sit between them, and Alice was almost in tears because she said Mr. Shipp wouldn’t do anything to stop them fighting even though he knew how it wore at her nerves.

  Mina looked at Mr. Shipp, standing beside the open door of his car, and she thought for a terrible minute she wouldn’t be able to smile at him. He looked worn out and ground down. It wasn’t just the droop of his shoulders, or the exhausted way his arms hung, or the way he wasn’t saying anything. It was his eyes that got her. She remembered his eyes as looking out with a whole mix of feelings, but now he had stepped back from them, he was somewhere way behind them, as if he couldn’t come out at all because it was too hard, and it would hurt too much. “Stop that whining, Alice, and do something useful,” were the first words Mina heard him speak.

  Everybody was surprised to hear that. The three children got silent. Alice got silent and then burst into tears and ran into the house. He didn’t even look at Mina, as if he was ashamed to see her there.

  Mina knew what he needed. “Mr. Shipp, why don’t you go for a walk, up to the beach. We’ll unload the car and get supper out onto the table. It’s all cold, so you can eat it whenever.”

  The eyes looked at her from under his heavy eyebrows, but not even really seeing her, she thought. That wasn’t important. “Yo
u look like the fresh air would do you good,” she said.

  He didn’t answer, but he did shed his jacket, dropping it onto the hood of the car, and turned away.

  Mina didn’t wait to watch him move so slowly up and away, toward the creek and trees. She organized the two older children, telling Dream that if she’d just take her own suitcase up and unpack it, that would be all. Dream gave in.

  There wasn’t much Selma could carry, but Mina took some boxes out of the grocery bags so she could do something. They carried the bags in first, Samuel and Mina and Selma. Alice was sitting despondently on the sofa in the living room, with the skirt of her dress crunched up in her hands where she was using it for a handkerchief. Mina sent Selma out to get the tissues from the glove compartment for her momma, while they unpacked the staples the Shipps had brought down from New York.

  “I’m glad to see you,” Samuel said, putting spices into the cabinet.

  “How was school?” Mina asked. She lined up a couple of wine bottles on the counter. “Did you like it?”

  “There’s an awful lot of sitting down,” Samuel said. Mina started to laugh, and he laughed with her. “Wait’ll you hear me read. Momma didn’t want to come with us,” he said.

  Mina made murmuring noises, and they went back to unload suitcases and the boxes and bags of books and toys. She and Samuel unpacked the children’s things into the bureaus and shelves. Dream, who seemed cheered up by the task of arranging her drawers, helped with the games and stuffed animals. When they went back downstairs, Alice was in the kitchen with a glass of wine, her eyelashes still damp but seeming to feel a little better. Selma was lifting the cloths and looking to see what was under them.

  “Is that for dinner?” Alice asked. She had to know that it was, but Mina guessed she didn’t want to say thank you, or something.

  “Yes. I’ve got to be going now.”

  “You won’t stay and visit? Where’s your little friend, what’s her name—”

  “Kat.”

  “She’s so pretty,” Alice said.

  “We’ll come by soon. Promise,” Mina said to Samuel and Selma. Dream stood beside her mothers chair, winding her fingers in her mother’s hair. “Mr. Shipp went for a walk,” she told Alice.

  “He always does,” Alice added.

  Mina went outside. The evening was getting cool, the way June evenings did. In June, there were cool, dark nights after warm days. She looked up the pathway to the creek and saw Mr. Shipp returning. He was running.

  Mina stared for a minute. He wasn’t jogging, he was really running. It wasn’t running away from something chasing him, or running to some destination. It was—just running. She lifted a hand and waved, but he didn’t raise a hand to answer, so she guessed he hadn’t seen her.

  “Mr. Shipp looked terrible,” she reported to her mother.

  Momma was reading at the kitchen table, a big book about Mary, Queen of Scots. “Tamer always does, the first week or so—looks like a man after a war, or something.”

  “Raised from the dead, more like, and none too glad to be back,” Mina said.

  Mina’s mother raised her face from the book and took off her reading glasses. The overhead light shone along the curls of her hair. She stared and stared at Mina, until finally Mina said, “What’s so funny looking?”

  “Oh. Oh, nothing. I wasn’t really seeing you. Sorry, honey, my mind was elsewhere. We probably can’t even imagine what Tamer’s ministry requires of him, I was thinking that. Did you eat?”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  For a wonder, Momma nodded and went back to her reading. Mina discovered she was hungry after all, and she cut some ham to make herself a big sandwich. She ate it out on the back porch, alone.

  CHAPTER 17

  The next morning, Alice and the children came by the house, bright and early. Louis took Dream and the little children out to the backyard to play, because Belle was sleeping in upstairs, while Alice sat down for a cup of coffee and a visit. “Tamer’s already started out seeing people.” She sighed. “I wanted to get these dishes back to you.”

  “We’re glad to have you back,” Mina’s mother said.

  “And Tamer said, last night, when he got back and saw how fast everything had been settled in—because he doesn’t want me to feel tied down too much, because he says it’s bad for a person to feel tied down—Mina, will you come work for me and help out? The children like you and you seem to have more patience than I do. We can’t pay very much, just twelve dollars a week, but you can’t get a regular job at your age anyway, can you? You’re not sixteen yet, are you?”

  “Far from it,” Mina said. “Yes, thank you, I’d like that.”

  “Because Tamer said he wants me to take the High School Equivalency Test—do you know that one, Raymonda? The one that gets you a high school diploma. Because I never did get mine, so I’ll have to study,” Alice said. “And I’ll have time to make more friends. So I’ll be happier,” she concluded happily. Mina just smiled at her, glad at the thought of working for the Shipps, amused by Alice’s butterfly mind, the wings of which just touched things gently.

  Mina liked the work. Early in the morning, when night coolness still filled the air, she would bike out to the Beerce farm. Mr. Shipp was usually gone by then, and everybody else was in the kitchen, finishing breakfast. Alice would let Mina know whatever plans she had for the day, if she had any. Together they’d get the house tidied, and then they’d do whatever. Alice went out in the afternoons. Somebody or other would come by in a car for her and she’d get in to go to the beach or to the mall or to a movie or just out for a drive. “I feel like a kid again,” she said. “I didn’t have much chance to be young,” she told Mina. Dream always wanted to go along with her mother, and sometimes Alice took her. Rainy days they stayed inside. They played board games, or Mina read aloud, or they all baked and frosted a cake. Nice days they moved out of the small house, even if they only went as far as the porch. Alice wasn’t doing much studying that Mina could see, but she’d come back from her outings all giggly and happy. She’d take off her high-heeled sandals and sit on the porch with a glass of wine, waiting for her husband to come home so she could tell him what she’d been doing. Sometimes Alice stayed out late for a movie, and Mina made sure Dream knew how to serve up the supper.

  Mina didn’t even see that much of Mr. Shipp, except she spent her days in his house with his family. She saw him in church, Sundays. Some evenings, if it was rainy, she’d stay and eat out there and he’d drive her home after supper. In late July, Alice went back up north for a week’s vacation. Mina practically lived at the Beerce house then. That same week old Mr. Crofter died, and Mr. Shipp sat with him. Mina fed the kids and got them into bed and then sat out on the porch. Mr. Shipp would drive her into town when he got back. Dream was old enough to look after things for a few minutes. If he wasn’t too late getting back, he’d ask Mina to wait while he had his dinner, which he’d bring outside to eat in the cooler air. Most of the time, when they talked, it was just about ordinary things, but the night Mr. Crofter died there was a change.

  Mr. Shipp was sitting in the darkness of the porch. He was eating the tossed salad Mina had made. She could hear him crunching on the lettuce and celery and carrots. She was on the steps, feeling tired, feeling happy. In the dark air, fireflies flickered.

  “I look at them,” Mr. Shipp’s voice came from behind her, “and I’m reminded—we’re all like that, aren’t we? Like fireflies in the black night of time.”

  Mina had her arms wrapped around her legs and her chin resting on her knees. In front of her the little yellow lights flicked on, flicked off. Maybe so, but why did he say night was black. The sky was black, the night was dark. Her mind drifted. She couldn’t have been more contented.

  “Mina, do you believe in God?”

  His voice sounded all right, no longer strained the way it had when he first arrived. His eyes were back to normal. After a few weeks of summer, he was himself again. She’d watched
that. But it was a strange question.

  Mina had never thought about believing. “That’s like asking me”—she tried to think of a true comparison—“if I believe in my own spinal cord. Or something.” She turned around to look at the shadowy figure in the rocking chair. He’d taken his shoes and socks off, taken his jacket and tie off.

  “I thought so,” he answered. “Your father too, he has the same feeling. He wears his godliness like his own skin. Some men do. And women,” he added, with laughter in his voice.

  “Do you?” she asked him, meaning, do you believe. He knew what she meant, just as she knew that for some reason he needed to talk about this.

  “I guess I must. Some people find Him easy, but not me. I don’t seem to be able to leave Him alone.”

  “Does He want to be left alone?” Mina wondered. For once she felt her own spinal column, held straight as a habit from those years of ballet; for once she was aware of how it ran down her back and everything was built around its strength. Then she forgot it in the conversation.

  “If I knew,” Tamer Shipp’s voice said. “For a long time, I was running away and He was chasing, and now I’m chasing and He’s running away. I think, the way I go after Him, sometime He’ll turn around and just belt me one, any minute now.” He chuckled. “But I wonder about troubling Him the way I do. How can He be easy, the way the world is. How can I expect Him to be as simple as people are.”