Come a Stranger

A lot of people were getting off in Wilmington. Mina stepped off the air-conditioned train and into what felt like a solid wall of heat. She hesitated briefly, then moved away from the throngs, moving along the platform, looking up and down the platform.

  It was hot on the asphalt and the air shimmered with heat and moisture. Her blouse stuck to her skin, but the air felt good as it wrapped around her body. She didn’t mind nobody being right there, mostly because she didn’t know what she’d say to Zandor or her mother. She guessed she might never say anything again because when she looked down her throat to find words, there weren’t any there. She felt locked away into the silence she had been moving around in for the last twenty-four hours.

  They sure got her out of there fast enough, once they got moving. As if they couldn’t wait to get rid of her.

  People moved away and the platform got empty. The sun poured down through the thick air. There was a city smell to the air, metal and engine fumes. City noises were moving, off in some distance. Mina stood. She wasn’t waiting, because she didn’t much look forward to being picked up. She didn’t know what she was going to say to anybody, especially when she knew perfectly well that what she’d been thinking—for the last year and more—had been getting-away-from-them thoughts.

  But she wanted to see her mother, she wanted Momma’s arms and love wrapped around her. Her momma would be angry at the camp, she’d be all on Mina’s side no matter what. Mina wanted some of the kind of love Momma gave to her children, where love was the first and deepest thing, and the questions came later and the answers wouldn’t matter much measured up against the love.

  But she didn’t want to see her momma, because she didn’t know what to say.

  When a big man, dressed up fine in a dark suit and tie, his shoes polished to high gloss, came walking up toward her, Mina got ready to run if she had to. She’d leave her suitcase. It had only dance things in it anyway, and she wouldn’t need those. She didn’t know if she’d have to run, but she thought if he looked like he might grab for her she’d take off, go inside to the waiting room where there were people around. Just because someone was black didn’t mean you could trust them.

  “Wilhemina Smiths? I’m sorry to be late, I had trouble parking. I’m supposed to escort you home,” his voice went on talking. Mina stared at him, not hearing what he was saying.

  He looked vaguely familiar, with heavy straight eyebrows and round, sympathetic eyes, as he introduced himself and reached out to take her suitcase for her. Then she could identify him, although she’d missed his name. He was Alice’s husband, the summer minister. She wondered if she was about to meet Alice, and she hoped so at the same time as she didn’t want to. Not now, not like this.

  She walked along beside the man. He tried asking her a couple of questions, how her trip was, whether she minded traveling alone. Mina just nodded or shook her head. She wondered why her mother hadn’t come. She hoped her mother wasn’t angry with her.

  The summer minister had a big, dusty station wagon. He put Mina’s suitcase in the back. The rear seat had two child car seats strapped on it. He asked her if she wanted to sit in front or in back. Mina sat in the front seat. He told her to strap in, and Mina pulled the seat belt down and latched it. He asked her to be sure she knew how to unlatch it, so she did. She wished she could get some words out, to thank him for meeting her, or ask where her mother was, but she couldn’t. He was going to think she was pretty weird.

  And she felt pretty weird. She felt as if she hadn’t done anything wrong, except be black and grow up, which there wasn’t much she could do anything about; but she still felt ashamed, as if she’d done something wrong and was being punished.

  The car pulled out of the parking lot and into traffic. The summer minister stopped talking and concentrated on driving through the city streets.

  Mina looked straight ahead. “Your people mature earlier,” that was what Miss Maddinton had said, but she didn’t know what she was talking about. After Mina, the most physically mature girl in her class was white. Almost all the girls wore bras by the end of sixth grade, not just black girls. Besides, Kat didn’t yet and she was black. Mina wished she’d said those things to Miss Maddinton. She wished she’d pushed Miss Maddinton out of the window, or something—done or said something to someone to let them know they couldn’t just push her around like this. Even though they could, because they did.

  The car left the city on an elevated highway, moving along over the tops of row houses and stores. The highway merged with several other highways to form a new road, jammed with trucks and cars and heavy white heat. Stoplights came up, one after the other, quickly. At every one, brakes groaned and people honked their horns. All along the side of the road there were fast-food restaurants and motels and stores.

  The summer minister, Alice’s husband, drove on south. The signs overhead said Annapolis and Baltimore and Dover. He picked Dover, sticking to the main road. All the car windows were open, so it was cool enough when they were moving, although it was noisy from the motors working all around them.

  Mina looked out her window, to catch the breeze and keep her face private. All of the feelings churning around inside her were looking for words so that she could understand them. But she couldn’t find any words, and she didn’t know why her mother hadn’t come to meet her, because Momma could guess how she’d be feeling. She was heading home, but Mina didn’t know what she’d be able to say when she got there.

  She was so sorry for all the things she’d thought. She was sorry for herself too, because they’d taken dance camp away from her. Because she wasn’t good enough. Because she was black. She’d worked hard to be good enough, as hard as she could. But she couldn’t work hard enough. She was disappointed in the people at camp and angry at them for not wanting her anymore. The same ideas ticked over and over inside her head, as the minutes ticked by and the car moved on south.

  It was still a highway, but it had farms beside it now, except for crossroads where there would be a gas station, or a little restaurant. Mina wondered how far they’d gone, and how much time had passed. She felt the summer minister studying the back of her head. She felt him trying to start a conversation. But she didn’t want to talk to him. If she didn’t have any words for her own family, she couldn’t have anything at all to say to a perfect stranger. Mina concentrated on the fields they were passing, and the occasional house.

  “So,” she heard his voice begin. He had a quiet voice, deep. “How does it feel to be an ex-token black?”

  Mina turned her head slowly to look at him. He had spoken words that connected so directly to her that she didn’t know what to think. His eyes were on the road.

  “A former token black? Or retired. Token black, retired,” he said.

  What a thing to say, Mina thought, as she burst out laughing and burst out crying, all at once together. Whenever the laughter was about to take over, Mina would remember how bad things were and the tears would continue. Whenever the tears started to dominate, she would hear his voice asking her those questions and she would keep up laughing.

  “My wife usually has tissues in the glove compartment,” he said after a while.

  Mina needed several tissues before she finished with her nose and her eyes. She crumpled them up into her pocket when she was through.

  “Thank you,” she said. “I don’t know what I’m going to do now,” she told him.

  He thought about that. “Do you mean now, here and now, or now, ever in your life?” He didn’t wait for her to answer, which was just as well because Mina didn’t know which she meant. She only knew it was true. “Your mother didn’t come because she’s sitting with Miz Hunter, who’s had a bad summer virus. She’s on the mend but when you’re that old you’ve got to be careful with yourself.”

  Of course Momma would be there, helping out. Mina wondered why Alice didn’t do it, to free Momma. But she couldn’t ask him that, and she remembered that Alice had those three children, two of them pretty young.

/>   “She’s pretty. Your wife, I mean. I saw some pictures from last summer, and she’s really pretty.”

  “Isn’t she?” the man said, as if just thinking about Alice made him glad. “We’ve been married over nine years now, and every time I see her—I think, what fine work God did when He made Alice.”

  Mina liked the picture he made, of God up there like a sculptor, shaping the bodies and the faces.

  “You know, you never answered me. Have you had lunch?”

  “No,” Mina said. “They gave me money for it, but I didn’t.”

  “Are you hungry?”

  “I think I am,” Mina realized. It was midafternoon.

  “If we pool our resources—I was up in Wilmington interviewing for a position and they gave me some travel expenses—I’ve got twenty dollars. How much do you have?”

  “Five.”

  “How about it then, will you have lunch with me, Miss Wilhemina Smiths, whatever else you figure out you’re going to do now?”

  He really did understand, Mina thought. She thought she’d like to have lunch, and she liked this summer minister. He was funny.

  “We can afford a respectable meal. They’re not expecting us back until after supper anyway. There are some good restaurants around Easton. Can you wait another forty-five minutes?”

  “Sure. But I don’t know your name. I wasn’t listening when you said it. What is your name?” Mina asked. She was studying his profile now, as they drove along westward across Delaware. His hair was short, curling close to his head, and his eyes were set deep in their sockets. He had a broad mouth and good teeth, well-kept hands and long legs. He was a handsome man. His suit didn’t look rumpled at all, even though the day was so hot and sticky.

  “My name’s Shipp. Tamer Shipp.”

  “Reverend Shipp,” Mina repeated, trying the name on.

  “I’d be more comfortable if you’d call me Tamer,” he said.

  “I didn’t mean—” Mina started to say.

  “It’s that name, ‘reverend.’ Because I have trouble feeling like—I should be revered. You know?”

  “It’s not a name, it’s a title,” Mina pointed out, amused because he was taking words so exactly.

  “A title’s a kind of label. It’s also a name, if you think about it.”

  Mina thought about it. She could see what he meant.

  “Your father, now, I could call him ‘reverend.’ Though I’ve never met him, because he’s always gone by the time I get here. I’ve met up with his work, over and over.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You can’t step into a man’s shoes, into his job like I do, into his life, and not learn a lot about him.”

  “I guess not,” Mina said, thinking about the dancing slippers she had packed away in her suitcase. She planned to throw all that away as soon as she got home.

  “I envy him, I think. My people—”

  “Up in Harlem?”

  “Harlem—the Harlem I see—the ghetto I serve—is down,” he said. “Down from everywhere. Wherever else you might be, if you go to Harlem you’re going down.”

  He was being exact again. But he sounded tired when he said that, and his voice lost some of its richness. “I don’t want to think about that right now,” he said.

  “Sure, Mr. Shipp.”

  “The kids I know, the kids I work with, all call me Tamer.”

  “Even at home?”

  “My home or your home?”

  “Crisfield.”

  “Yep.”

  “Why?” Mina asked, before she thought to keep her mouth shut.

  He didn’t answer right away. Fields of corn, coming up green, flowed past the car windows. The fields were edged by rows of trees, like high green fences. The sky, bleached white by summer heat, stretched out overhead. Mina figured, after a couple of minutes, that he wasn’t going to answer her question.

  But, “I can’t think of why,” he said, sounding surprised. “I’ve never thought about it, and I don’t know why I didn’t. Because I tend to think about things,” he said.

  “Oh,” Mina said, not knowing what else to say.

  “Drives Alice crazy.” He turned to smile at her. There was something sure and strong in him, and his eyes, resting briefly on Mina, looked amused and interested and sympathetic. They looked knowing too, she thought, as if he knew a lot about her.

  Mina was willing to bet that Momma had sent him up on purpose to meet her. But he said he’d had a job interview, so it couldn’t have been that, and he said Momma was sitting with Miz Hunter, so she would have come with him if she could have. So it was just good luck he’d been the one, unless it was what her father called God’s good time.

  They had lunch in a little restaurant in the town of Easton, a couple of miles off of Route 50. They were the only ones eating lunch at that hour. Mr. Shipp thought Mina should order crab cakes, because she’d been away from crab country, but Mina explained about how when you were used to crab cakes as good as her mother’s were, anything else wasn’t worth the money. She had chicken instead. Mr. Shipp couldn’t decide. “My mother could give your wife the recipe,” Mina said. “Or I could. They’re easy.”

  He shook his head. “TV dinners are what Alice thinks of as easy. Roast chicken counts as hard. I’m hoping one of my girls will turn out to be a cook. I guess I’ll compromise with stuffed shrimp.” He smiled up at the waitress—who looked about thirty-five and worn out—who didn’t smile back at him. “Baked potato, house dressing, and a glass of iced tea,” Mr. Shipp said, before she had to ask him. She nodded to show she’d heard, but her blue eyes never left the ticket she was writing. Mina watched her walk away, noting her thick-soled shoes and the bend of her neck, and the way she put her shoulder not her hand on the swinging door into the kitchen, as if she needed her shoulder’s strength for the task of getting through that door. Mina got just a glimpse into the kitchen—long stainless counter and two black men at work.

  “Did you notice her ring?” Mr. Shipp asked her.

  “She wasn’t married.”

  “That faint mark, where her finger wasn’t tanned. Like a ghost of a wedding band,” he said. He took his water glass and drank it half down. “A woman her age, probably there are children. I think an unreasonably large tip is in order, don’t you?”

  “Because you feel sorry for her?” Mina guessed.

  “Because I know about how she feels,” Mr. Shipp corrected her.

  “But, Tamer,” Mina said, his name uncomfortable in her mouth, “you’re not divorced, are you?”

  He shook his head.

  “Have you been a waiter?”

  He shook his head again, smiling, teasing, waiting for her to work it out.

  “And you’re not a woman, and you’re not white.”

  He just waited.

  “And I’m not going to call you Tamer, either; I’m going to call you Mr. Shipp,” Mina finished up.

  He laughed then, and Mina joined in.

  “You can’t say I didn’t try,” he said. “So, are you beginning to look forward to getting home?”

  Mina realized that she was. It was going to be all right, she realized.

  They didn’t hurry over their meal. They didn’t dawdle. Mina had a slice of pecan pie for dessert, while Mr. Shipp drank his coffee. They left almost ten dollars for a tip.

  Back in the car, strapped in, back on the highway south, Mina asked him, “Did you get the job?”

  “What job”

  “The one you interviewed for.”

  “Oh, that’s right, I did have an interview. No, I don’t think so.”

  “Did you want to get it?”

  “Only partly. I keep thinking about my family living in Harlem, my kids growing up there, where there’s so little room to grow, and it’s dangerous. . . . Then I keep thinking about my work, and the people who destroy themselves because they think they’re being destroyed. And they are too.” It was anger she heard now. “I think about . . . what it is I’m mea
nt to be doing. If that doesn’t sound too conceited.”

  “No, it doesn’t.”

  They traveled on without talking for some time. They went over the Choptank River, broad and blue at Cambridge. They crossed the little humped bridge at Vienna over the Nanticoke. The land flattened out around them and the air began to smell like home.

  “Looks like there’s been rain this summer,” Mina said, breaking the long silence.

  “There’s been some good rainy days. I like this part of the world,” Mr. Shipp said, his head moving to watch a chicken farm go by his window. “I always did like it. I lived around here for a couple of years when I was younger. For the last two years of high school,” he answered her unspoken question, “when we were first married, Alice and I.”

  “It’s really different from Connecticut,” Mina told him.

  “Worse?”

  “No, just really different. I liked the hills and the trees up there, especially the trees. Connecticut is up, isn’t it?”

  “Definitely up,” he answered. “You’re finished with the grief then.”

  Mina wasn’t surprised that he was understanding her. “I guess so. I guess it wasn’t all that serious.”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” She watched his face. His skin fitted smooth over his forehead and cheekbones. He had a good strong jaw. “Some grief is sharp and sudden, and some is slower and longer. Sounds to me like you had the first kind, which is the easier—once it’s behind you.”

  “Both would be pretty bad. Having both together.”

  He didn’t answer, just nodded his head. Mina didn’t know if that was to say he agreed with her, or just that he’d heard her. She wondered why he didn’t answer, since he seemed to have something to say about almost everything. She wondered what he was remembering and understood that he didn’t want to talk about it, so she changed the subject.

  “I like this country too.”

  “Do you mean this country America? Or this country Dorchester County.”

  “I mean Crisfield. I’m not too sure about America.”

  “Really? Because of being black? Because of slavery?”

  “I don’t know,” Mina said, because she didn’t. “I just don’t feel comfortable, feel like I belong . . . I don’t know.” She’d never thought of that before, but it was true.