Come a Stranger

  Dicey didn’t move a muscle and Mr. Chappelle talked on. He was edging up on the accusation. Everybody else caught on, and the whole air of the classroom got that excited silence, like people gathering together around the scene of an accident, people watching somebody else’s trouble and pain.

  Mina looked at Dicey, who wasn’t giving Mr. Chappelle an inch, not a word. She was so disappointed. She really wished Dicey had written the thing herself. Mr. Chappelle paced his sentences out slow, talking about plagiarism. He knew Dicey was helpless. He knew anything she said or did wouldn’t do any good. So he kept on slow, making it as hard on her as possible. Everybody was enjoying it too. Nobody liked Dicey, nobody cared about her because she didn’t pay any attention to anybody, so they were almost glad she was the one chosen to be humiliated like this.

  Served her right too, Mina started to think to herself; and then she realized that if Dicey had cheated on the essay, then Mina was entirely wrong about everything she’d thought about the girl. Mina didn’t think she could be so entirely wrong about something, not entirely like this, and she started to think that the kind of person who would cheat wouldn’t just stand there like that, not giving an inch.

  “What I primarily resent is the deceitfulness of it,” Mr. Chappelle said, dragging each word out, “the cheap trickery, the lies.”

  Nobody in that room could begin to think that Dicey cared enough about them to go to so much trouble. Mina was on her feet before she thought any further. Whatever Dicey Tillerman might think of her personally, she thought more of herself than to stay quiet. Mina figured if she had to choose, she would choose to be among the people who were willing to stand up for the truth. One of the minority who stood up against. . . whatever was trying to press people down by lies. She was already stuck in a couple of other minorities, she thought to herself, she might as well join this one. “That’s not true,” she heard herself say.

  She met Dicey’s eyes across the classroom. Mina’s mind stayed cool as she talked, but she didn’t feel cool in any of the rest of her. She was angry at everybody, at the teacher for doing this to a kid, at the rest of them for allowing it, and at herself for not having the courage to write out the truth. The bell rang before Mina was through, but she told everybody, including Mr. Chappelle, to stay there.

  As Mina said that, she felt herself spreading out her whole personality, like limbs from some big tree, over everybody in the room. They stayed put, and she had known they would. The only one in that room she couldn’t keep in place by the force of her personality alone was Dicey, and Dicey’s eyes looked like the eyes of somebody walking home after a war, someone whose side had lost and was going to have to rebuild a whole life.

  Mina didn’t let her sympathy get in her way, and she didn’t try to stop herself from enjoying herself. It took about five questions to show everybody that Dicey would never have cheated. Mina asked those questions. Dicey answered them. Then Mina nodded her head and left the classroom without a backward glance.

  People caught up with her in the hall, to tell her how terrific she was and to laugh about the teacher’s embarrassment. Mina heard them, but didn’t count them for much, because these people had been just as ready to let Dicey stand alone there and be lied about. She didn’t expect Dicey to do anything so commonplace as say thank you, so she guessed she wasn’t disappointed to be ignored in Home Ec. Besides, Mina admitted to herself, she hadn’t done it for Dicey Tillerman, or for Tamer Shipp either. She’d done it for herself, Mina Smiths. She hadn’t done it for pity, but for her own self-respect.

  CHAPTER 21

  When the phone rang, late that evening, Mina was drilling Belle on a list of vocabulary words for Math. This was Business Math, and there was a lot of accounting in the course, Belle said, which made it harder. You had to know the vocabulary to understand the way the problems were stated. “Invoice,” Mina asked. Belle started to spell the word, and Mina watched her sister’s face as she concentrated. Belle was proud of being practical; her standards for herself in this course were as high as her standards for personal appearance. The phone rang, and her father called out from the living room that he’d get it. Mina watched Belle and decided that she’d probably make a really good secretary.

  “Do you know what time it is?” their father’s voice asked.

  Belle smiled at Mina, sharing the joke. It was probably one of the boys who often called Belle up. Their father was pretty strict about phone calls, and he wasn’t too wild about Belle being so popular. All of their friends had been grilled by him for calling up at what he considered the wrong time.

  They heard him say, “I’ll get Mina,” which surprised them both. He came into the kitchen with an odd expression on his face to tell her a Dicey Tillerman was on the phone. “Don’t talk long,” he told her, following her back to the living room.

  “I won’t, Dad,” she told him, and she didn’t. Dicey had just called to say thank you. Mina made conversation, from the front of her head, but most of her mind was thinking how weird it was: What kind of a person wouldn’t realize for hours that she wanted to say thank you? It didn’t sound like someone was forcing Dicey to call, so how come—having put it off for so long—Dicey didn’t wait until school.

  Mina’s father was watching her, and she knew he was going to have something to say. She knew he remembered the name.

  “What was that about?”

  “Oh,” Mina said, still standing by the phone table. “It was just . . . the teacher accused her of cheating today, and I . . . kind of defended her.”

  “Mina?” Belle called from the kitchen.

  “She’ll be a few minutes,” their father answered. “Sit down,” he told Mina. She sat across from him on the sofa. “Why did you defend her? Is she a particular friend of yours?”

  Mina watched the way her father reserved judgment. He wasn’t ever hasty. He waited until he had the information that he thought he needed. His eyes looked at her, waiting to understand.

  “I guess I like her. I’m not sure how she feels about me. But—I knew she wouldn’t cheat.”

  “Do you know her that well?”

  Mina shook her head. “She’s new this year. It wasn’t just rooting for the underdog, Dad, I know that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with looking out for the underdog.”

  “It’s that she just wouldn’t. Some people are like that. Like—Zandor might cheat, but Louis probably wouldn’t, and Selma Shipp, you couldn’t make her, ever. You know what I mean?”

  He did.

  “So I was certain, and Mr. Chappelle was pretty awful about how he did it, accused her.” Mina laughed: “It was fun, the way I knew what questions to ask her. It was a pretty dramatic scene.”

  “That’s why you were lit up like a roman candle at supper.”

  “Yeah, I guess I feel pretty good about it.”

  “So you’re satisfied you did the right thing,” her father asked.

  Mina was. She thought it was the rightest thing she’d done in a long time. She wished her father could see it that way, although she was glad he didn’t know the wrong things that made this so right, worth being proud of. Mr. Shipp would understand, she thought.

  “Right for whom?” he asked her.

  She didn’t understand what was bothering him. “Right in general, because she really hadn’t cheated. Mr. Chappelle didn’t say anything—but he wouldn’t—but he knew.”

  “Was it right for this girl?”

  “Of course. You weren’t there, you don’t understand. How could it not be right?”

  “Sometimes people get into the habit of letting others fight their battles for them.”

  “Dicey’s not like that. The opposite, if anything. It wasn’t like that.”

  Her father believed her. Because she knew that, Mina wanted to explain. “It was right for me too, because I don’t want to be the kind of person who sits by, sits safe, while somebody else is being done wrong to.”


  “And in God’s eyes?” her father asked. He sat so quiet when he talked, and he so seldom brought God in like this, Mina knew he thought it was important.

  “I can’t really know that, can I?” she asked him. He was asking her, by asking her that, all kinds of questions. Her father didn’t push religion at them, not that way. But he tried to know what they were thinking, without pushing it. Mina thought privately that if it was right for what was good in her, it was probably right for God. But that sounded too conceited to say. “Dad, everybody was just letting him go after her, and she—I don’t know what she was thinking, she didn’t say anything. I don’t even know why everybody else let it happen. It was almost as if nobody could think it out, that somebody who doesn’t care about what people think of her doesn’t care enough to cheat. Or if it’s because people are scared to do what’s right, because then they’ll come under fire. But nobody was objecting at all, not even to the way he was trying to shame her, and—I couldn’t just sit there, could I?”

  “I guess not. Although you do know you could have, that it’s possible. Sometimes it’s the best thing, Mina.”

  “Maybe,” she said. “Not this time though.”

  “Well, your mother will be proud of you,” he said.

  “What about you?” she teased.

  “I think I am too,” he admitted. He didn’t want to encourage her to be t-rou-ble, she could see that. She could also see why. She went over and kissed his cheek, rough now at the end of the day.

  “Thanks,” she said. She wasn’t the kind of person to be slow in giving thanks.

  “Her name is Tillerman.” He stopped her on her way back to the kitchen. “What do you know about her family?”

  “Next to nothing,” Mina said. He was worried about that too. He was a worrier, her father. Neither of them was going to say that word, white.

  For one day, Mina and Dicey were the stars of the school. They walked down the hall like they were a triumphal procession. Mina knew it was a fake; it would only last a day and then the excitement would blow over; but she didn’t mind. Dicey knew it too, but she minded.

  Mina walked Dicey downtown to her job, and on the way Dicey told her that they lived with their grandmother. She knew what people said about her grandmother, Mina saw, but it didn’t bother her. So maybe she knew better, Mina thought.

  Dicey worked at Tydings’s grocery store, down near the docks. The only person besides Mrs. Tydings in the store was a little boy, a little blond boy about eight years old. Dicey introduced him to Mina. “This is my brother, Sammy.”

  Sammy’s face was marked up, as though he’d been fighting. Mina barely noticed that and paid little attention to their conversation, because the suddenness of the whole thing had her entirely off balance. For about the first time in her whole life she wanted to ask God to stop time rolling, because she couldn’t keep up. She needed a few minutes to step aside and notice everything that was happening, to be sure she didn’t miss anything. Usually Mina could keep up with the pace of things and stay ahead, but Dicey—Dicey was about the most sudden person Mina had ever met. There were no half measures with Dicey. Either, Mina guessed, you were nobody at all, or you were a friend.

  She was glad to be considered a friend, but she thought Dicey made things pretty hard on herself being that way. And pretty hard on her friends too, probably.

  But it was Sammy Mina wanted to talk to right then, because he must be Samuel Tillerman. Since all he wanted to talk about was marbles, she asked him to teach her how to play. They went outside and tried the wood porch of the store, but the marbles rolled too quickly. Mina didn’t care, but Sammy did. “It’s no good,” he said.

  Mina sat back. “You look like you were in a fight. You look like you did all right.”

  “I did.” He sat back on his haunches and looked at her, measuring her.

  She was measuring him too, and recognizing that made her laugh.

  “What’s so funny.” He stood up. He was ready to tackle her too, if he thought he needed to.

  “That’s for me to know and you to find out,” she told him. She got up herself and handed over the marbles she still held in her hand.

  “Maybe I will,” he said. Mina was willing to bet money he didn’t even notice how much bigger and older she was.

  “Maybe you will,” she agreed. She was teasing him, and he knew it, and he didn’t mind. She knew this little kid, she recognized him—he was t-rou-ble.

  * * *

  Mina didn’t meet Dicey’s grandmother until Thanksgiving weekend. By that time, she had laid out for Dicey exactly who she, Mina, was, in case Dicey wanted to change her mind about being friends. “I’m smart,” Mina had said, “and I’m black. I’m a black female. And look at me.” Mina just laughed to herself, remembering it. None of it had been too important to Dicey. Dicey didn’t say much about herself and certainly didn’t talk about herself the same way. Mina wondered if Dicey knew about herself in that way or whether she just was herself. Mina didn’t care, and it wasn’t a matter of either way being better. She was simply curious about Dicey, and excited too, because every day brought her closer to Bullet. She was going to find him, in some way, and be able to give him to Tamer Shipp, in some way. As if she could wrap all her love in a single box. Feeling love, Mina thought, was easy; it was finding the ways to give it that was hard.

  * * *

  When Dicey invited her to their farm for the Saturday after Thanksgiving, Mina rode her bike out, expecting just about anything. The only thing she hoped for was to find out if this grandmother was any relation to Bullet, but that was a question that she didn’t need to have answered right away. She had time.

  Mina rode her bike around to the back, where other bikes were parked. The front of the house, set way back from the road, looked blank, behind a big tree that began to spread out its limbs close to the ground. She’d never seen a tree that grew in that spreading fashion; it would look like a coolie hat with leaves on it. Trees were supposed to rise up straight along their trunks, Mina thought, and then spread out limbs. Even the Tillermans’ trees didn’t act the way they were supposed to.

  Mina went up the sagging back steps and knocked on the door to the kitchen.

  A woman opened it. She didn’t say anything. Her hair was a tangle of gray curls and she had to look up at Mina with suspicious eyes, dark hazel like Dicey’s. She wore no makeup, not even lipstick, and if her hair had ever been brushed it hadn’t made much impression on the curls. She wore a loose cotton blouse over a long skirt, and her feet were bare. She looked at Mina as if she didn’t know whether she planned to greet her or not. Mina wondered if she had done something wrong.

  Mina moved her face into a polite expression and opened her mouth to ask if Dicey was home.

  “You’re Wilhemina Smiths,” the woman told her.

  For once in her life, Mina felt tongue-tied, outgunned.

  “Your father’s the minister.”

  Mina was still standing there, outside the door.

  “Well, come in,” the woman said impatiently. “Although I don’t know what your father will think. Does it matter what he thinks?” She stood aside to let Mina enter a big kitchen.

  “Of course,” Mina told her. She wondered if she shouldn’t have come here, if Mrs. Tillerman minded having a black in the house as a guest. Dicey didn’t, but you couldn’t tell about a person’s family just by the person. “He’s my father,” she said to Mrs. Tillerman.

  Then the woman smiled at her, a quick smile, and held out her hand, which had flour on it. “I’m making cookies. I’m Abigail Tillerman. Dicey’s grandmother.” Her grip was firm. So maybe you could tell about people’s families, sometimes at least. “They’re out front. You can hear them.”

  Mina could. There were people singing, and a guitar. They were singing “Amazing Grace.” For a minute, she just listened. “When we’ve been here ten thousand years,” the voices sang. A soprano, unusual in that it was both clear the way it was supposed to be and
also round in a way sopranos almost never were, dominated the trio. The other two voices sang harmony, behind the soprano. “Bright shining, like the sun.” The guitar played a quiet background, making part of the song.

  It was a good sound, coming into the warm kitchen with its long, scrubbed wooden table, and the smells of chocolate and sugar and baking. . . .

  Mina smiled and said, “How do you do, Mrs. Tillerman.” The woman was watching her, still wary, so she said more. “Can I go ahead in? I’m an alto.”

  She earned another smile and followed her hostess down a hallway.

  Jeff Greene was there with his guitar, and Dicey and two younger boys, one of them with Dicey’s dark hair and the hazel eyes Mina was starting to expect. A girl sat cross-legged in front of the guitar. She looked up when Mrs. Tillerman introduced Mina. Maybeth: Solemn and a little frightened, or maybe shy, she stared up at Mina out of huge eyes, light brown and mixed with colors. Mina looked over her head at Jeff, whose gray eyes, quiet as a sky with low cloud cover, seemed to be trying to communicate something she couldn’t understand, but something about this little girl. Maybeth was entirely delicate, Mina thought, delicate not fragile, with the slender bones all over her body, chin, wrists, shoulders. She thought how she could tell Louis she’d met Maybeth and that she agreed with him. She included the little girl in her general smile, not singling her out, trying not to just stare at her. This was some of God’s finest work, she thought.

  “She came to the back door,” Mrs. Tillerman announced. Then the woman’s face turned back to Mina. “Not what you think,” she said.

  Mina could have laughed aloud. “I know,” she said. Mrs. Tillerman’s mind just jumped around, and Mina guessed she could understand how she got her reputation.

  When they settled down to sing something else, they asked Mina what she wanted. Her mind had been running on friendship, so she named, “Oh Lord you know, I have no friend like you.” For a wonder, Jeff knew it. Mina didn’t sing out; she kept her voice at his tone, so the voices would blend. Mrs. Tillerman sat down to listen for a while, and Sammy charged over to sit on the arm of her chair. Mina knew what he was thinking, sitting there like that, and she wished she could tell him he didn’t have to worry about her. She thought Mrs. Tillerman was a lot like Dicey, and Dicey was a loner, but she wasn’t crazy. She looked across at the little boy and grinned at him. After a minute of staring, he grinned back at her.