Come a Stranger

  “It was easier, with only half of you around. I’ll give you that. CS got home for some weekends.”

  Mina came to a family picture of the summer minister, a portrait pose. The little children were on their parents’ laps. It looked like a church occasion of some kind. The girl stood between her parents. Mina’s eyes were drawn again to the woman, Alice. Her white button earrings matched her necklace, the sundress she wore made green folds over her knees, her legs were slim, crossed at the ankles: She was a pleasure to look at. Her face, and the expression on it . . . “She looks like she’s crazy about him. Was she?”

  “In her own way, I think so,” Mina’s mother answered, looking across at the picture.

  “Does he love her as much?” Mina hoped he did. It wouldn’t be right if Alice wasn’t loved back.

  “I expect so. She’s the kind of woman men idolize and spoil. You’ll be able to date the pictures from the fall, so you take these while I do the summer ones. We didn’t get any pictures from your camp, did we. I’d have liked one or two. I don’t even know what it looks like.”

  “Oh,” Mina said, “it’s beautiful. It’s up on a hill, and the buildings are stone and the grass stays green. It doesn’t dry out like here; it’s like, like a carpet. Lots of tall trees, really old trees.”

  “I can’t picture it.”

  “I can. I can remember it perfectly. Everything about it.”

  “Are you thinking of a career in dance?”

  “Why?”

  “I’m interested, as you know very well. It’s not an easy life.”

  “All the competition?”

  “That. And a lot of other things too. Look at Irene LaValle, look at her life. Your father’s a little concerned, and so am I.”

  “I don’t want to be a nurse, Mom.”

  “Neither did I. But I like my work fine. Let’s get these into the album, so I can get to bed. I’m pretty nearly wiped out.”

  Mina’s mother peeled back the plastic sheet that covered the first page.

  “Did you want to be something like a doctor?” Mina asked. She couldn’t imagine her mother a doctor; it didn’t seem right somehow.

  “I thought about that, maybe once or twice altogether, but never seriously. My parents couldn’t have afforded the schooling, and I wasn’t smart enough to get a scholarship. I had a choice between nursing or teaching or social work; you can find positions anywhere in those fields. Then, when I met Poppa, well, I just wanted to have my courses finished so that we could get married.”

  She arranged four pictures on the page. Mina looked at them and nodded. Mina put the plastic cover back over the page and smoothed it down with her hand.

  “Poppa never did live out of Crisfield, except when he went to school,” her mother said. “If I hadn’t been there, I never would have met him. He’s always wanted to live here.”

  “I know,” Mina said.

  “I think maybe that’s why he’s so—He never got his feet knocked out from under him. Being a service brat,” Mina’s mother went on, “I kept getting my feet knocked out from under me. Every two or three years we’d move, every time we moved we had to get to know a whole new bunch of people. I always wondered if that’s why Poppa seems so much surer of himself than other people.”

  “I thought it was religion,” Mina said.

  Her mother ignored her. “Almost everybody says you’ve changed. Miz Hunter too; but she says anybody worth his salt gets unsettled while they’re growing up.” Mrs. Smiths smiled to herself. “I’m surely glad we have her around to talk sense.”

  Mina realized that her father was the one mostly saying she’d changed.

  “Helene Beaulieu said Kat thinks the summer turned you into a snob.”

  Did she then? Mina thought. Did she just think that? “All they want to do is form clubs. All the clubs do is leave people out, because you know how Rachelle likes leaving people out.”

  “And making sure the people know they’re left out. I know how that is.”

  “And—I’m just not interested in their stupid clubs.”

  “Did they ask you to join?”

  “Not really.”

  “Why not?”

  “I guess, they don’t like me anymore.”

  They weren’t looking at each other, just arranging pictures on pages and setting them under the plastic covers, working pretty fast.

  “Mina—you know they like you.”

  “I guess. But—”

  “But they don’t know anything about you?”

  Mina guessed that was about it. Mina guessed there was an awful lot her mother did understand. “At first, we started a reading club. To do book reports too. But—”

  Mrs. Smiths waited, then asked, “But?”

  “It was my club, really, it was my idea, and I started it and picked the people, with Kat.”

  “So I guess you had an idea about how it would work.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And their ideas were different.”

  “They said I was being bossy and showing off. But, Mom, didn’t you ever think? There are all these myths about gods and goddesses, because the ancient Greeks believed in them, and the Romans, and all we ever had was Brer Rabbit. And the Ananse stories. And things like that. Even the Bible, we didn’t write that. . . .” Mina’s voice drifted off.

  “I imagine only the Jews could write the Bible—the Old Testament.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They’re a minority too, Mina.”

  But that wasn’t what Mina meant, at all. Her mother yawned, turned over a page of the album and selected the next four pictures. They were Halloween pictures, Louis as a ghost, Belle as a Spanish gypsy and Mina herself wearing a tutu Miss LaValle had loaned her and a little crown she had made herself out of wire and foil. She had made her regular dancing shoes look like toe shoes by winding silky ribbons up her legs. She told anybody who asked that she was Odette, but only Kat knew who that was. Looking at the picture, Mina realized that it didn’t matter what name she had taken, she could have been about anybody from any of the stories, Giselle or Juliet or anybody. Not the Firebird, though. Next year, I’ll try the Firebird, Mina thought to herself. If I’m still going out on Halloween.

  “Poppa says he guesses you’re just beginning to realize the realities; waking up, he says. He thinks you’re too young.”

  “You’ve been talking about me. You’ve been talking to everyone about me,” Mina complained.

  “What do you expect? I love you, and I don’t think you’re particularly happy.”

  “I’m fine, I’m just fine,” Mina protested. Except for wanting to be at camp, she was.

  “You’ve been going around making things hard on yourself. You know you have, so don’t try to deny it. A lot of people care about you, honey.”

  Since that had nothing to do with anything, Mina wasn’t going to bother denying it.

  They worked quickly. Thanksgiving, with Eleanor and John and the babies, CS too, at home, then Christmas, four pictures to a page. It was like filling in the pages of the year, Mina thought.

  “What do you think? Do you think I’m so different?” Mina asked, as she smoothed the plastic sheet over the last pictures. She didn’t know if she wanted her mother to understand or not.

  “I think it’s puberty, if you want to know. All those hormones shooting around.” Mrs. Smiths chuckled. “But it’s hard on you, and I respect that.” Her mother kissed Mina on the head, putting her dirty cup in the sink to be washed with the breakfast dishes. “I’m going upstairs. I go on duty at six in the morning tomorrow.”

  “Good-night, Mom,” Mina said. She watched her mother leave the room, a strong woman, with her broad back and her heavy legs. Her mother’s strength—even when she was tired, like now—showed in every move her body made.

  Mina folded the album closed, but didn’t get up. She thought she was right not to tell anybody what was going on. How could you say to your own parents that you didn’t feel at home wit
h them?

  Just about everything felt wrong to Mina—like underwear that didn’t fit properly—just about every day—like a wrong-sized bra, something tight and uncomfortable underneath whatever you had on. The only thing that didn’t feel wrong was choir singing, even though her voice was getting lower, even though she was changing there too. She was closer to an alto these days, which seemed to match all the filling out her frame had been doing. It wasn’t fat though, it was muscle. You couldn’t work the way Mina did every morning in her room and most afternoons at Miss LaValle’s studio and be fat; dancing had never been such hard work before.

  Mina sang softly, “Jacob’s Ladder.” “We are climbing Jacob’s ladder.” Inside her head, she added two harmony parts, a third above and a third below. She was beginning to think that there was something too show-offy about singing soprano anyway, singing solos, as if you were always trying to be the star of everything.

  But all the rest of her life—she minded about all the rest of it. She wished the year were over and she was back at summer, back at camp, back with dancers. Back where she really belonged.

  She looked down at her hands, but she didn’t recognize them as her own, those hands resting on the photograph album. Mina closed her eyes. The house around her was silent, except for the pattering noises of people going to bed, or the muted sounds of people already sleeping. The wind blew around the house, and the sound of rain on the tin roof got sharper, so that she thought the rain had turned to sleet. Sleet would blow down sharp through the dark air.

  In her mind, she saw a high hill, with stone buildings on it among tall, leafy trees, and the great golden lion pacing there. He would know her, who she really was; with him, she would be who she really was. In her mind, she heard the overture to Swan Lake, all the orchestral instruments playing together, in harmony. She could almost smell the studio, a mixture of wax and sweat and the perfume Miss Maddinton wore.

  Mina opened her eyes. The hands lay flat on the bright fabric with which the album was covered. She looked at them, at the square fingernails and the black skin. She turned them over to see the pinky skin of her palms. She felt as if these hands didn’t belong to her and she didn’t want them to. But could you feel that way about your own hands?

  CHAPTER 6

  Mina tackled Kat on the subject the next time they were alone together. That occurred when they walked to Miss LaValle’s for dance class. They had class twice a week, Tuesdays and Thursdays, from five to six. They always walked together, because their parents said they had to. It wasn’t dangerous, not Crisfield, but it wasn’t smart for girls to go walking around alone in the dark of evening. They both carried their slippers in plastic sacks, against the damp; they both had already changed into leotards, because the one changing room in the garage, with a plastic curtain hanging down over it, wasn’t a very nice place to change clothes in.

  “What do you mean, telling your mother I’m a snob?” Mina demanded.

  For a long time, Kat didn’t say anything. Mina didn’t look at her. She watched the sidewalk pass under her feet instead. They didn’t walk close anymore, they were too old to walk around hand in hand the way they used to.

  Finally Kat said, “That’s the way you act.”

  Mina didn’t know, really, why she’d asked. She didn’t care, really, what Kat thought. She just wasn’t going to let Kat get away with saying things like that, without Mina letting her know that she knew about it.

  “It is,” Kat said. “All you’ll talk about is that boring music, all you do is—and boasting about camp, or going off to babysit somewhere—”

  “You know I need the money, for tights, and slippers. It isn’t as if my parents can afford those things, the way yours—”

  “That too,” Kat interrupted. She stopped and turned to face Mina. Her face was twisted up with anger and didn’t look at all pretty, Mina noticed. “I don’t know you anymore. You’re always criticizing me these days.”

  “Like when?”

  “Like right now, as if there was something wrong with my father earning good money. Oh, you don’t say anything, you don’t do it with words, you do it with your eyes, as if there’s something wrong with the way I dress and talk and act, as if—And all you do is write letters to those camp people. I bet they don’t even write you back. Answer me that.”

  Mina didn’t answer.

  “And trying to make me different too, make me read books and listen to your music. And they’re boring and dumb—the Narnia books. It’s just pretend, fairy-tale stuff, with magic, and if I don’t like them, you look at me as if I’m stupid. I’m not stupid. I don’t know you anymore and it’s not my doing.”

  Kat was breathing heavily. The white breaths floated away in the darkening air. The trees around them were bare branches, except for a big magnolia behind a fence. Mina didn’t know why Kat was so worked up. Looking at the girl, Mina thought probably Kat was jealous. It was as if jealousy had gotten into her and twisted up her face.

  “You said we were best friends, but you don’t act like a friend at all.” Kat started to cry.

  Mina guessed maybe they weren’t friends. People changed. But if they weren’t, she didn’t see why Kat was so worked up. She started moving again. “We don’t want to be late,” she said. “I only told you to read Narnia because I wanted you to understand about Tansy’s dance,” Mina reminded Kat. “You said you wanted to hear about it.”

  “I did, but not over and over again. As if there was nothing else in the world. And nobody else.”

  “Besides, everybody says they’re really good books, and they are too.”

  “Who everybody? I know who. Your new friends, your white friends. That’s who. I notice what part they gave to you. But you don’t notice, because that would be criticizing them, and they’re perfect.”

  “You don’t understand,” Mina said.

  “Oh yeah? I bet—if you could—you’d go up there and live with them and be just like them—”

  So what if she would, Mina said to herself. Kat didn’t even know what she didn’t know. Who was she to act so uppity at Mina?

  “—You act—at school too, I’ve seen it—as if you’re ashamed of us.”

  For that matter, sometimes Mina was; she knew that. It was too bad, but it was true.

  Kat snuffled along beside her for a while, then said, “Everybody says that anyway.”

  “Says what?”

  “You’re a snob.”

  Just because you were interested in other things they called you a snob, just because . . . that was just the kind of thing the kids here did.

  “Yeah, well, nobody says it to my face, do they,” Mina answered.

  “That’s because everybody likes you,” Kat told her.

  Mina started to laugh. It was so completely illogical—

  “You may think it’s funny but I don’t. I think it’s sad,” Kat cried.

  —but true too, Mina thought, not laughing anymore. She was popular, but she didn’t have friends, not here. The funny thing was that they seemed to care about it more than she did.

  “I don’t know why you complain anyway,” Kat said as they came to the cement driveway that led to the studio. “Since you’ve got so many better things to do than be friends. Since you don’t care.”

  “I wasn’t complaining,” Mina pointed out.

  “Well, then,” Kat said, her face looking purple as a plum under the street light.

  “I don’t see that I’ve got anything to complain about,” Mina added, to let Kat know that she was perfectly contented with the way things were. “But I don’t like you telling things like that, when your mother repeats them to my mother,” she warned Kat. “It made Mom worry. I don’t want her worrying.”

  Kat wanted to quarrel back, but she didn’t dare. Mina could see that. It wasn’t that Kat was afraid to, not exactly. It was more that she knew Mina was right. Mina was usually right, because she was smarter and had broader experience, she read more and knew more and asked the right
questions. Mina knew Kat wouldn’t quarrel back, and she knew she could make Kat do what she wanted.

  “You’re going to get yourself in trouble one day,” Kat prophesied.

  “It sounds like you hope you’re there to see it,” Mina answered. T-rou-ble, that was what she was around here, and she didn’t mind a bit. To start with, it was miles better than being just nobody, like everybody else was.

  “How can you say that?” Kat asked her. “How could I feel that way when we’re friends and have been for ages? You talk like I don’t like you, Mina.”

  “It sounds like maybe you don’t,” Mina reminded her.

  “But that doesn’t mean I want something awful to happen to you. You’ve really changed, Mina.”

  Mina had had enough of the conversation. She’d said what she wanted to say, and her mother wouldn’t be hearing any more, she guessed. They were wasting time they could use dancing, hanging around out here.

  Miss LaValle’s studio still had the green plastic crowsfoot firs hung around the walls, with little Christmas lights blinking on and off, red and blue and green and orange and white, blinking on, blinking off. The studio had originally been the two-car garage for the little one-bedroom, one-story house. Miss LaValle had remodeled it herself, painting the walls, purchasing and hanging the long, cheap mirrors, which were now mottled with some kind of rusty stains. Overhead, fluorescent lights in long bars gave off uneven light. Mina worked by herself at the far end of the barre.

  The floor was the hardest part of the job, Miss LaValle had told her once. She’d had to learn how to lay wooden flooring herself, measuring, cutting, and laying the long, narrow strips. Then she’d sanded it smooth with a rented sander and waxed and polished it herself. The floor was always cold in winter, because it had been put down over the cement slab that was the garage floor. Most of the wax had worn off and Miss LaValle hadn’t gotten around to rewaxing it. As Mina did her warming-up exercises, she tried not to hear the scratchiness of the record Miss LaValle was playing, for the class that was taking place at the other end of the room. The record was a waltz, “The Blue Danube,” so worn with use that the violins sounded as if they were being played with metal bows and the winds seemed to be gasping for breath. Now that Mina knew how the instruments could sound, and should sound, she almost couldn’t stand to listen to Miss LaValle’s records.