Come a Stranger

  “My guess is he was afraid to go into Nineveh. Like any man living, Jonah was afraid to go out and live among strangers. Do you blame him?”

  Poppa waited, just half a minute, watching the heads shaking no, to be sure they’d got his idea down clearly.

  “Strangers are a fearful people, now as then,” Poppa said.

  Mina folded her hands in her lap and listened.

  CHAPTER 2

  All the windows were open and Mrs. Landseer was keeping a close eye on the storm clouds blowing along on a gusty wind. The wind blew the air in the classroom cool. Sooner or later, Mina knew, would come the cold edge that meant that the storm was imminent. She hoped it would hold off until after lunch recess. No, she didn’t; she hoped it would hold off until the middle of lunch recess. She wanted to be outside when the storm came, to see it pull at the branches of the trees, feel the wind whip around her body, and hear the long roll of thunder. She wanted to see lightning bolts, at least one, rip down through the dark sky and feel the shiver of fear go along her bones. She wanted the hard slanting rain to soak her, before she ran back into the building. Mina loved storms. Crisfield didn’t get much by way of winter storms, but you could count on thunderstorms, all summer long. Kat couldn’t understand it, not even when Mina dragged her over to stand at a window and watch. “It’s so big,” Mina would say, “it’s just so—big,” as a storm fought its way across the sky.

  This was the season of lasts: last science experiment, last spelling list, last math chapter, last assembly. It was the last all-school assembly they were rehearsing for now. The fifth grade was giving plays. This was their last rehearsal before the performance tomorrow morning. And then, after another week, it would be the last weekend, then the last Monday, last Tuesday. Excitement was building up. Mina had already begun on her firsts for the summer. The first dinner eaten on the porch, while the long day stretched out like the bars of golden light falling across the yard. She might miss the first fireflies this year, because she would be at ballet camp, for the first time in her life.

  She brought her attention back to the rehearsal. They had three short plays to perform. The biggest cast, twelve of them, had the first play, and Mina had helped out by arranging things and writing it down, so everybody knew where they were supposed to stand and how they were supposed to look. It was a pretty dumb story, Mina thought, about villagers learning how to share a magic pot that never ran out of stew. It started to get disorganized whenever the soldiers of the king (who wanted to take the pot away from the villagers) came onto the stage. She watched the soldiers enter, watched Bruce especially. He was prodding Jason and Jake with his wooden sword, getting them out of the straight lines soldiers stood in. Mina stood up at her desk. “Bruce Billings,” she called out. “If you know what’s good for you you’ll cut that out right now.” He stuck his tongue out at her and rolled his eyes toward the ceiling to show how bossy she was, but he cut it out.

  The next play was all boys, four of them, doing a take-off on Mr. Rogers. Mina watched John Cooper carefully, because he had asked her how to act when he was playing Mr. Rogers, and she wanted to be sure he did things right, like the way he messed up tying his shoes. John had written the play too, and it wasn’t bad at all, Mina thought. She smiled at him when they were finished, to let him know she thought he’d done okay. The rest of the boys, Mr. Speedy Delivery and King Friday and Handyman Negri, would ham it up too much, but John didn’t care so much about them, so—except for a few suggestions to them—Mina kept her mouth shut. John was just a perfectionist for himself.

  In Mina’s play, Snow White, she played the wicked queen. She came dancing onstage, because Kat—who had chosen it and was directing it and had made up the script—and all the rest too, agreed it looked good. Mrs. Landseer stopped things when Mina did that. “Why are you dancing?”

  “Because,” Mina said. It was strange to dance without any music. “It’s to make the queen look different, because she’s got magic.”

  “Kat, was this your idea?” Mrs. Landseer asked. Kat was over by the classroom door, ready to be Snow White.

  “Well,” Kat said, looking from Mina to Mrs. Landseer.

  “I thought so. This was your own idea, wasn’t it, Mina?”

  “Everybody said it was good.”

  “I’ll bet they did,” Mrs. Landseer said. “I’ll just bet they did.”

  Mina knew what Mrs. Landseer meant to be saying, and she knew that Mrs. Landseer didn’t really mind. “You are t-rou-ble,” that was what Mrs. Landseer said to Mina, all year long. Sometimes she said it to stop whatever mischief Mina was up to. Sometimes she said it to tease her, and let Mina know she was watching her. Sometimes she said it as if she thought Mina was funny. This was one of the funny times.

  “It won’t do,” Mrs. Landseer said now. “Wilhemina Smiths, you go have a little talk with your director and do what she tells you to do.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Mina said. She knew what Kat wanted her to do, because Kat had sort of suggested it quietly a couple of times. She wanted Mina to come on with big, dangerous, sneaky steps. Mina walked over to Kat that way, crossing the stage section of the classroom, and Kat giggled. “That’s right,” Kat said. “Thank you, Mina.”

  “And no more of this Queen for a Day act from you,” Mrs. Landseer added.

  Mina just grinned at her. She’d try.

  The air in the classroom turned cold, chilly as October, and Mrs. Landseer ran for the windows. Mina ran too, and hesitated just a few seconds—listening to the sky growl in the distance, watching the way the leaves clutched at the branches of the trees, smelling cold rain in the wind—before she reached up and slammed down the window.

  * * *

  The way things were, the Smiths family had to work together, the whole family, figuring out where the money was going to come from, how it ought to be used. Poppa was a full-time minister; part of his salary came from the church, which spread out over a lot of states, and part from his own congregation; but it wasn’t much money. Momma had a job at the hospital, because she’d become a nurse before she married, so that helped and it gave them all medical insurance too. The house they lived in belonged to the church. Living there was part of Poppa’s pay. Taking good care of the house, the church and Miz Hunter’s house was part of Poppa’s job. Everything worked out. They worked everything out together.

  So Mina’s summer at ballet camp got worked out by the whole family. Mina’s oldest sister, Eleanor, married to a man who worked for the electric company up in Cleveland, Ohio, with two little children already, sewed up some skirts and blouses and dresses from patterns Momma sent her. Charles Stuart—“CS”—was at college, a sophomore, so he couldn’t help out much, but he sent down some material he’d copied at the library there about the campus where the camp was being held and the city where the college was. Mina spent saved-up allowance money for enough tights, and Zandor bought her one new pair of dance shoes. After the football season ended, he always got a job bagging groceries, so he had the extra money. “But I’m not buying you any toe shoes,” he told her, standing as tall and broad as Poppa. “Those things are ex-pensive.”

  “If you expect me to hire you as my manager when I’m famous, you ought to be making sure I feel grateful to you now, while I’m just learning.”

  “Oh-ho, Miss Big Future,” Zandor said.

  Belle complained and started to get thirteen-year-old sulks, until Momma brought her up short with a, “No more of that, Isabelle.” And Louis—well, between planning ahead how awful it was going to be with Belle in charge of him and planning on missing Poppa as usual and wondering if Mina would bring him a present back from up north—Louis kept himself busy.

  Summers, the church hired Poppa extra to go around to big cities, while the minister from one of the cities came to Crisfield, to rest up. This was the third year of the project. Reverend Jefferson, the minister who had come to Crisfield for the last two summers, had gotten sick, so he was retiring back to Chicago where his
people were. He stayed with the Dutleys, whose children were all grown and out of the house. Mr. Jefferson had a room there when he came south to rest up. But the new minister had a wife and three children. The church was renting him a house outside of town, on the edge of the Beerce property. The house was small, but it would make a big change from the city. It had room for the children to run around outside and a little beach just up the way, on a creek. Momma and some of the women got it cleaned up and cleared out of the wildlife that moved in during the years it was empty. They rounded up a refrigerator and some decent mattresses. The new minister had a church in New York, which was the biggest and baddest place to work. So he’d appreciate the peace and tranquility of the country, Momma said.

  Poppa said he liked his two-week stint in New York least of any of the cities he visited. He liked Richmond best, and he didn’t mind Birmingham either. He kept wishing, every year, that they’d send him to New Orleans, but Momma said she thought New York might be bad, but New Orleans was Sodom and Gomorrah all rolled up into one, and she’d just as soon he steered clear of that place.

  Momma missed Poppa when he was away all summer long. They all did. He called up on Sunday afternoons. He wrote letters and postcards. He even got one or two weekends home, when he was close enough by. But it wasn’t the same as having him there. Poppa minded it, but he went on and did it. “It’s not forever,” he told them. “It’s part of the work. And these men—they’ve earned a couple of tranquil months. We’re all doing the same work, aren’t we?”

  “Things are different up north,” Momma would back Poppa up. “Things are different down south. You children—you don’t know how easy your father makes it for you.”

  “I wouldn’t mind finding out,” Belle said.

  “You will, and soon enough,” Momma answered. “For the time being, I advise you to count your blessings.”

  Belle looked around and studied everything she could see. She held up her hand as if to count on her fingers, but said there wasn’t one thing she thought of to count.

  Momma just laughed.

  “I wish I was the one going away to camp for the summer,” Belle said.

  “So do I, honey.” Momma laughed again. “So do I.”

  “That’s not funny,” Belle said, her voice going high and offended.

  It was too funny, and Mina laughed out loud over it. Catch her being thirteen like that, she thought, as Belle stormed out of the room.

  CHAPTER 3

  From the first, Mina loved her room at camp, room 226, halfway down the long corridor. It had two beds, two windows, two dressers, two desks, and one closet which she shared with her roommate, Isadora. The beds were covered with brightly striped fabric, and the curtains matched the bedspreads. The windows looked out through the leafy branches of trees to the green quadrangle at the center of the college. Although the room was only on the second floor, there was always a breeze to keep it comfortable, because the college had been built along the ridge of the hills that bordered the broad river.

  They stayed on the campus for the whole eight weeks, except for one trip into the city of New Haven, to see a performance of Swan Lake at Yale University. Some of the girls, especially the older ones, complained that they felt cooped up, imprisoned, but Mina never did, not for a minute.

  There were seventy people living in the dormitory, and all of them were dancers. There were four dance classes, divided by age, with sixteen girls in each class. There were three dance instructors and three assistants who were taking the master classes as well as keeping an eye on the younger students. They all lived together and ate together and worked together. Music and dance, dance and music—that was what they did, all day long. They had a dance class every morning and a music class every afternoon, taught by a professor from the college. In the evenings, there was almost always something planned, either observing one of the master classes or listening to a concert given in the small college theater or watching a movie of a ballet or symphony. Sunday mornings they went to the nondenominational chapel, whose bells rang out over the quadrangle and dormitories to call people to worship. Mina sat among the dancers in an oak pew and learned a whole new set of hymns from the bound hymnals that were kept in a rack at the back of each pew with the bound prayer books. The sun shone through the stained glass windows, coloring the air with reds and greens and blues. Mina had never known how much she didn’t know about dancers and about music; she looked ahead at everything she didn’t know, and was glad.

  There was always a song rising in her heart, one they sang at the chapel on Sundays, while the collection was being taken. “Praise God,” the song rose up inside her. “Praise God from whom all blessings flow.” Mina felt like praising God and thanking Him about all day long.

  The majority of the girls had studied longer and more seriously than Mina had and knew more. Isadora, her roommate, was sure she was destined to become a famous ballerina. “My mom says she had a feeling, even before I was born. All the time she was pregnant, she went to at least one ballet performance a week and kept music always playing in the apartment. She named me after Isadora Duncan. I’ve got dance in my blood.”

  Mina knew what it felt like to have dance in your blood. “Who’s Isadora Duncan?” she asked.

  “You don’t know?” Isadora looked at her, as if everybody should know, as if Mina came from a different planet.

  “Nope, never heard of her. Are you going to tell me?” Mina didn’t mind not knowing, she just minded not having her curiosity satisfied.

  “Isadora Duncan was a great dancer, probably the greatest modern dancer. She’s like Martha Graham, Twyla Tharp . . .” Mina shook her head, she hadn’t heard of any of these people. She tucked the names away in her memory, to learn more about them. “Isadora Duncan was the first—she broke away from classical ballet and went back to the ancient Greeks. She wanted dance to be free from rules and things, anything artificial. She thought life shouldn’t have so many rules. She danced in draperies, in bare feet, like the Greeks. Her dances were free and strong. She died young, when the scarf she was wearing got caught in the wheel of a car. See, she always wore long, long scarves around her neck.” Isadora mimed wrapping a scarf around her neck, her long arms graceful. Mina could see what Isadora Duncan must have looked like. Mina was sitting on the floor by her bed, watching Isadora. “But her boyfriend had a convertible. The scarf got caught in the tire and—it just snapped her neck,” Isadora concluded. “It was a tragedy. She had lots of men all madly in love with her, all the time.”

  “What would your mother have done if you’d been a boy?”

  “Name me Isadore. There are male dancers.”

  Mina laughed. “I know that.”

  Charlie, short for Charlotte, who lived across the hall with Tansy, said that Isadora’s mother was typical, a typical stage mother. Charlie often said things like that, in a superior way, as if she knew more. She acted closer to sixteen than eleven, most of the time. “Typical, pushy stage mother.”

  “You don’t understand,” Isadora said. “I’m going to be a prima ballerina. It’s nothing to do with my mother, except she thinks I can, so she helps out. And all.”

  “—and I should know,” Charlie continued, not paying any attention. “I’ve got one too. It’s pretty pitiful in a way—it’s because she wanted to be a singer. But she got married, instead. And had kids, instead. And keeps house, instead. And nags, nags us all.”

  “Even your father?” Mina wondered.

  “Especially Dad. Then she complains because Dad spends so much time out of town on business and nags him more.” Charlie shook her head, pitying the stupidity of her mother. Charlie had no intention of going on with ballet. She wanted to be in the movies. “I’m photogenic, and—there’s never the same kind of life in ballet, even if you’re a success, not like movies, when you’re a movie actress. Ballet teaches you how to move. An actress has to know how to . . . move right.”

  Charlie’s roommate, Tansy, was a little plain girl,
quiet and hard-working. Mina couldn’t imagine why the camp had put Tansy and Charlie into the same room. Tansy had even been homesick for the first week, even though she really wanted to come to dance camp.

  “How can you be homesick?” Mina had asked, trying to comfort her. “Wouldn’t you rather be here?”

  Charlie and Isadora had exchanged a look at that. Mina caught it, out of the corner of her eye. It was almost the kind of look kids give one another across the classroom, when they know something the teacher can’t begin to understand.

  “Well, I would,” Mina said to the two of them. She didn’t know what they thought they knew that she didn’t. “Even though I miss my family too.”

  “Your family’s different,” Charlie pointed out.

  “I miss my dog.” Tansy snuffled.

  Mina chuckled at that, and the chuckle spread out warm into a laugh. The laugh lighted up the whole dormitory room, even the farthest corners of it, and pretty soon everybody joined in, even Tansy, sitting up on the bed and blowing her nose into a tissue. She looked at Mina as if Mina was strange and wonderful.

  The four of them were going to work together on the ten-minute performance that every dancer at the camp had to give for the final exercises. Their instructor, Miss Fiona Maddinton, had told them about it on the first day, after they each had an individual conference with her. In the conference, she had told each of the sixteen girls in her class what she had thought when she watched them during the audition or, in Mina’s case, when she looked at the tape Miss LaValle had mailed up to New York. Miss LaValle had rented a video camera up in Cambridge and Mina had performed in front of it, the barre exercises and a dance they had worked out to part of the Nutcracker Suite. “You have strength,” Miss Maddinton said during her conference with Mina, “and a certain rude grace. Even on that tape your presence made itself felt. A dancer has to have presence. But,” she went on, when Mina opened her mouth to ask what the teacher meant, “you don’t have discipline. It’s discipline I will teach you. Natalie?” she called, indicating that the talk was over, summoning up the next girl. In the long working days, the hours of practice, Mina was learning what Miss Maddinton meant. Miss Maddinton seemed pleased with her. She was surely pleased with herself: She had never worked so hard and learned so much.