Come a Stranger

  “Mrs. Tillerman?” Mr. Shipp sounded surprised, but also not at all surprised as he checked carefully what he’d heard.

  Mrs. Tillerman’s chin went up and she met his glance, to meet whatever might make him ask that question, that way.

  Mina hurried on. “And her grandchildren. Dicey”—they shook hands—“James, Maybeth and this is Sammy,” Mina concluded.

  For a minute Mr. Shipp didn’t say anything and then he did something that Mina—even though she hadn’t known what she expected—would never have expected. He turned to Mina and wrapped his arms around her in a hug. He was so big that he lifted her off the ground. He turned her around in a circle, with her feet off the ground, and then he set her down and kissed her on the cheek and kept his arm around her shoulders. Mina’s heart was beating so hard she thought she’d explode. “Oh, Mina Smiths,” he said, his voice low and rich, like a bassoon, as he said her name.

  The Tillermans were just staring. Dicey knew something was up even if she didn’t know what it was. Mina was terribly afraid her own face was giving away more truth than she wanted it to. She made a face at Dicey, feeling like a goop.

  But Mr. Shipp had moved away to take Mrs. Tillerman’s hand, not to shake it but to put it in both of his. He looked down into her face. He was trying to think of what to say. Mrs. Tillerman was waiting, but Mina could see she didn’t know what to make of it.

  “I admired your son,” he finally said.

  “Bullet?” she said, asking a question.

  He nodded.

  “That wouldn’t have been easy to do,” she said.

  “Oh no, he didn’t make it easy. But it was the most natural thing; you couldn’t do anything else. I couldn’t. I—I was on the track team with him—his last year, before he dropped out. He was—” Mr. Shipp couldn’t finish that sentence, as if he’d come to the outer limits of his voice’s range. “It’s so good to meet you.”

  Mrs. Tillerman didn’t say anything, just stood there with her small hand in his two big ones, looking at him. While tears went down over her cheeks.

  Mina wondered if she’d done something wrong, or unkind. Sammy moved over to stand in front of his grandmother and to glare up at Mr. Shipp.

  “Gram?” Dicey asked, worried.

  Mrs. Tillerman put one hand on Sammy’s shoulder, without taking her hand away from Mr. Shipp. She nodded her head. She paid no attention to her own tears.

  “I was so sorry,” Mr. Shipp said. “And angry too. I’ve wanted to say that to someone who’d understand.”

  “Yes,” Mrs. Tillerman said. She took her hand back then and wiped her eyes. Her eyes were smiling. “I thought of him, when you spoke—”

  “I thought of him, writing it—”

  “I’m pleased to meet you, young man. These aren’t his children.”

  “I didn’t think so,” Mr. Shipp said.

  This wasn’t going at all the way Mina had expected. He was giving his attention to Mrs. Tillerman, not Sammy. They were looking at each other, the older white woman and the grown black man, as if they were the only adults there . . . Mina laughed then. Because they were, and because she had wrapped up this gift for Mr. Shipp, but he had taken something she hadn’t even known she was putting in. Mina looked at Tamer Shipp, at the familiar planes and curves of his face: He was glad, the gift had gladdened him. That was what Mina had wanted, so she didn’t mind at all that what he had taken was not exactly what she had given.

  When they all moved around to her back porch, Dicey kept Mina back, while Mr. Shipp walked ahead with the others, telling Maybeth he heard her singing.

  “What was all that about,” Dicey asked.

  Mina, who was down to her last days with Tamer Shipp, said, “Tell you later.”

  Dicey didn’t press her. “Okay. But you’re right about him, Mr. Shipp. He’s really something.”

  “I never said a word,” Mina protested.

  “That’s what I mean,” Dicey said.

  As they drank lemonade, Mr. Shipp explained that he’d known Mrs. Tillerman’s son years ago, and Mrs. Tillerman explained that Bullet had been killed in Vietnam, and Mina’s mother shifted the conversation away from that to Mr. Shipp’s new job. They sat at the long table on the back porch. It wasn’t relaxed, but it was friendly enough.

  “I’ve never been an assistant before,” Mr. Shipp said. “I’m not sure how I’ll do being somebody’s assistant. And the college has as—and I quote—‘its stated objective’—Why do they talk like that, Amos; haven’t they ever read their Bible to learn good prose style? The objective is to improve relations between the different races. So they hired me—as a show and tell? You’ve got to look out for these liberal whites.” He chuckled. “They think everybody’s the same. They don’t know the first thing about being hungry.”

  “It’ll be a nice life for Alice and the children,” Mina’s mother said. “The schools should be good—you’ll like school, Samuel. It’ll be a small town. Lots of fresh air, trees and all that.”

  “They might let me teach a course,” Mr. Shipp said. “Now that I’d be grateful for, a chance to try teaching.”

  “People must always be looking up to you,” Mrs. Tillerman said, getting up to leave. She had sat pretty much silent, but listening. “That must be hard on you.”

  “She’s right,” Mina’s father agreed, standing up to walk them around front. “You’re absolutely right, Mrs. Tillerman.”

  “Call me Ab,” she said.

  “I’ve never thought about it from that angle,” Mina’s father said.

  Dicey waved briefly to Mina, leaving last because she wanted to say she was glad to meet Mina’s mother. When they’d gone, Mr. Shipp turned to stare at Mina across the table, and she couldn’t guess what he was thinking.

  But Momma wasn’t satisfied, and she wanted to hear more. “It’s a long story,” Mr. Shipp warned her as Mina’s father came back onto the porch to pour himself another glass of lemonade.

  “With a happy ending,” Momma said.

  “No,” Mina said and Mr. Shipp said, “No,” at the same time.

  “A happy ending isn’t possible, Raymonda, but it’s an ending that makes peace with a long grief, and that’s something. You remember the sixties, don’t you?” He moved down to sit beside Mina’s mother.

  Mina’s father sat down next to her. He picked up her hand and held it. “That little girl.”

  “That’s Maybeth,” Louis said.

  “We like Maybeth,” Mina interrupted, so that her father wouldn’t get too nosy about Louis.

  “What a voice she has. Could you hear her where you were sitting?”

  “I’ve heard her before too.”

  “You know, it’s a real pity . . . I know she couldn’t join the choir, but—”

  “I agree, Dad,” Mina said. “So you’ve decided they’re all right, after all.”

  “It’s not an easy life for anybody, is it?” he answered her.

  “I dunno,” Mina joked. “I think I’ve got it pretty good. If you asked me.”

  CHAPTER 24

  Almost two years after she had last seen Tamer Shipp, Mina sat with Dicey in the crowded auditorium, watching Jeff’s graduation. Ordinarily, underclassmen weren’t invited, so they were two of just a few sophomores there, among families and faculty and anyone who played on the varsity teams with the graduating seniors. Kat was there, somewhere too, with her boyfriend’s family. Kat always had a boyfriend, a steady boyfriend, but she didn’t change her mind about wanting to be a model. Now, however, she said she wanted at least a year of college, to be sure about her choice. She had modeled some clothes for a big mail-order catalogue, hard work, Kat said, but it was a beginning. Kat didn’t want to know Dicey and Dicey had no time for Kat, but Mina was friends with them both. When Mina was with them both, they all three got along fine.

  Rachelle, who also had a boyfriend, also a senior, wasn’t there, although she should have been; Rachelle was big with the seventh month of pregnancy and had dr
opped out of school and what she was going to do Mina didn’t know, because that boy wasn’t about to get married. Rachelle was living with Sabrina’s parents for the time being, because her parents hit the ceiling and hadn’t come down yet. What she’d do, she didn’t know. Sabrina’s parents said there were worse things, much worse trouble to get into, and they wanted Rachelle to be sure she did what she thought was right. Rachelle’s parents said they were grateful, mostly, Mina thought, because her father had stepped in. He was minister to both families.

  Somewhere in the audience also were Jeff’s father and their monk friend, Brother Thomas. Dicey and Mina sat together separate from them. At graduation, the kids liked to stick together. They wanted their parents and relatives there, but they wanted them to go home right away, afterward.

  The seniors sat on bleachers up on the stage, behind the podium. Mina had finally found Jeff, in the middle, between Phil and Andy. They tried to get the seniors to line up in alphabetical order, but the kids always chose to sit with their friends, regardless of the alphabet. Mina remembered that from Belle’s graduation, and Zandor’s. This was the fourth graduation she had been to, and she could tell Dicey with confidence, “It’s long and boring.”

  Dicey bit her lip. She’d only come because Jeff wanted her to. She’d only gotten dressed up because Mina and Mrs. Tillerman had told her she had to and found a pattern that they thought would suit her and picked out a fabric Dicey admitted wasn’t too bad. “Why that boy puts up with your antics,” Mrs. Tillerman had grumbled at Dicey.

  Mina, who had been in on the long relationship, thought she understood why. What she didn’t understand was how Dicey managed to maintain the distance from Jeff that she did. Mina had changed from being a friend and sometimes advice-giver to Jeff into having a real crush on him for a while: There was something about his long, narrow body and his long, dark eyelashes that pleased her eyes, and something about his quiet courage to love Dicey that touched her heart. She’d known, while she had the crush, before it changed back into friendship, that Jeff never looked at anybody but Dicey. That was all right because she’d also known that having a crush on Jeff meant she was growing free from Tamer Shipp. Not entirely; not as a person; not as probably one of the best men she would ever meet. But when Mina had found her eyes lingering on the bony shoulders under Jeff’s oxford shirt and found herself thinking that he looked like some Greek statue of what a young man should look like, part of the rush of feelings she felt was a sense of freedom, of being ready to grow upward even farther from the strong tangled roots of her life.

  The principal started things off. Mina glanced over at Dicey, who was thinking about something else. What, Mina couldn’t guess; some scheme, some plan maybe, although with Dicey it was just as likely that she daydreamed about Algebra. The dress Mrs. Tillerman had made was plain white, with a high collar and no sleeves, with a blousy top over a gathered skirt. Mina and Maybeth had forced Dicey to put on a touch of Mina’s lipstick, which she was in the process of chewing off as she thought. Sometimes Dicey just made Mina smile, the way she was.

  After the principal came the valedictorian. This year, it was a weedy-looking boy with sandy hair so long he tucked it behind his ears, who talked about commitment. Belle’s year it had been a girl whose voice had barely whispered out, as she talked about what women were not able to do in the world. Mina figured she’d probably be valedictorian her year, and she was considering what she’d talk about: God, maybe, which would get some people squirming in their seats; maybe a quick history of race relations, which would sit people up, especially if she refused to take it too seriously, which might be fun to try and write. She figured she had plenty of time to think about it. She knew if she got Dicey to vet the possibilities, Dicey would smell out anything second rate.

  The graduation speaker was somebody from one of the local community colleges who talked about what education could do for a person. Mina listened, in case he had anything interesting to say, but he didn’t. After the speeches, one after the other, all alike in their black robes and mortarboard hats, the seniors moved across the stage, took their diplomas and shook hands and returned to the bleachers. When everybody was in place again, the ceremony was over. People flowed onto the stage and down from the stage; they flowed out into the aisles and back among the seats. People flowed all over the place.

  “Let’s go wait by the car. He won’t be long,” Dicey said to Mina. It took Mina a little while to get there, because there were some people to say hello to, but with Dicey tugging her along impatiently it didn’t take very long. They stood by the Greenes’ station wagon, which Jeff had for the evening. Brother Thomas would take Jeff’s father home.

  The lamps overhead that lighted the parking lot attracted most of the bugs, and it was pretty quiet outside. “Did you give it to him yet?” Mina asked Dicey. Dicey had made Jeff a strap for his guitar, out of the mainsail of her boat. She’d saved the big pieces of canvas when the sail blew out. She had put the strap together at work. Dicey had a job with a small-time sail-maker in town, so she knew how to handle canvas. Once she had the strap made to her satisfaction, she’d found fittings for each end of it, the boat fittings of polished brass, small enough to attach to the guitar.

  “No, I haven’t yet. What if he doesn’t like it?”

  “Dicey Tillerman, you could give him an old shoelace and he’d treasure it because it’s yours,” Mina told her.

  “Yeah.” Dicey grinned. “He’s something, isn’t he?”

  “You look good too. Are you sure you won’t go to the party?”

  “Sure. He doesn’t want to either. He just always asks, you know how he is. But I’m going to miss him when he’s at school.”

  “Don’t tell me that, tell him,” Mina advised.

  “He knows,” Dicey said.

  “Besides, he’s only going up to Baltimore. He doesn’t want to get too far from you.”

  “I know,” Dicey said.

  They waited without saying anything for a minute. A few people started to come out into the warm night. “Nobody knows,” Mina started to sing, because the song had come into her head, “the trouble I’ve seen.” Dicey joined in, both of them singing softly. “Glory, halleluiah,” they sang. That was odd, Mina thought, because it was a trouble song, but with the glory halleluiah at the end, it was almost as if you should praise God for the trouble you’d seen. The song was a mournful, mourning song, but it was also a praising, thanking song. Mina had never understood that before; and now she wondered what else there was in that song, and in everything, that she didn’t yet understand. She would have talked to Dicey about it, but Dicey was watching Jeff approach, working his way through the parked cars, with another boy behind him. “Who’s that?” Dicey asked Mina, but Mina didn’t know.

  This other boy had slung his jacket over his shoulders because of the heat. He was bigger than Jeff, not so much taller as broader through the shoulders, built thicker, built muscular. His trousers rode low on his hips. Mina, for some reason, always liked the way that looked on a boy, especially when he wore a vest, as this boy did. The “Gambler Look,” she named it to herself, liking it. Jeff introduced him, Dexter Halloway. “His family might be moving down here,” Jeff said.

  “Down from where?” Mina asked.

  “Baltimore.”

  “Crisfield’s not down from Baltimore,” Mina declared. “I’ve been there, I’ve got family there, Crisfield’s not down.”

  The boy laughed. He had a good, rich laugh.

  “We ought to get going,” Dicey told Jeff. “Maybeth made you a cake. Sammy decorated it.”

  “I’m glad you came,” he told her. “I like your dress.”

  “They intended you to,” Dicey said.

  Dexter asked, “Mina, where do you live?”

  “In town, just a few blocks from here. Why?”

  “I could walk you home. I’m supposed to chat up the locals, Jeff, and it’s safe to walk around here at night, isn’t it?”

  ?
??Except for the mosquitoes,” Mina said. “But the mosquitoes are pretty vicious.”

  “My dad’s having a drink in the hotel bar with your father and Brother Thomas, and there’s no way I’ll get lost. So I’ll see you around.”

  “Is that okay with you, Mina?” Jeff asked.

  Mina didn’t want to be a third party tagging along. “Sure,” she said.

  “But you have to look out for Mina,” Jeff warned Dexter. “She’s t-rou-ble.”

  After the station wagon had driven off, Mina waited for Dexter to start walking. “Do I want to move to Crisfield?” he asked her. He had about six inches on her, maybe five. He didn’t move.

  “How would I know?” Mina asked, waiting. “It depends on what you’re looking for.”

  “Sanctuary, I think. At least, that’s what my parents are looking for, although they don’t say so. A change of scene, for sure.”

  “Oh,” Mina said, curious, but not wanting to pry.

  Then they had nothing to say and were just standing there.

  “Shall we go then?” Mina asked.

  He agreed, but didn’t move.

  After another couple of minutes, he asked her, “I don’t know where you live.”

  Mina threw back her head and laughed, causing people passing nearby to look curiously at her. “I’m sorry. I was working so hard to be feminine, you know, letting you take the lead. It’s this way.” She was still chuckling when they left the parking lot and moved toward town.

  “You don’t look fifteen,” Dexter said to her.

  “I never looked fifteen,” Mina answered. “I looked ten for a while, then I started looking twenty-eight. How old are you?”

  “Seventeen. I’ll be a senior next year.”

  “You’re going to move before your senior year?”

  They made their way along one of the main streets, then turned off to where there were no streetlights, just lights from the windows of the houses. She couldn’t see his face, if she had looked.

  “One of my sisters—she’s gotten in with a bunch of kids—My mother thinks the best thing is to relocate. She got picked up for shoplifting, that’s what precipitated the crisis,” his voice told her. “But we none of us suspected that . . . that she was up to anything. It’s hard on a family when that kind of thing happens. Especially—it’s my mother’s second marriage, and she had these three kids and Dad took us all on. I’m the oldest.”