Come a Stranger

by Cynthia Voigt

  They were the last of the youngest class to give their performance. By the time they moved onstage, Mina had been so nervous for so long she was too tired to be tense. Mr. Tattodine played the tape they had put together. Mina listened to the first bars of music and watched the curtain draw apart. She wore her black leotard and a mask over her eyes, a black Halloween mask that she had edged with red and gold glitter. Isadora, with her long hair loose, like Aslan’s golden mane, wore a golden leotard and tights; Charlie wore white, with a skirt wrapped around it, and Tansy wore green. The other three had to buy new leotards, but Mina just had to buy the mask, which was lucky. Tansy had thought everything out. Mina’s part required angular steps and positions, while Isadora, as Aslan, moved in arcs and circles. Isadora never came into Mina’s part of the stage, until the end; Mina sometimes moved a little into Isadora’s part, like the tip of a triangle, but she danced out quickly. The two children in Narnia went back and forth.

  When Mina changed into Tash himself, all she did was take the mask off. They had painted her eyebrows dark and her mouth red and larger than it was. The music’s sharp lines of melody, broken off, matched her steps. As Tansy had explained it to them, Tash made triangles and Aslan circles. All the dancing showed that, just as the music clashed and couldn’t ever be made to play together. So Isadora moved in circles, leaping, turning, golden, while Mina moved dark and strong and cruel to the points of triangles. At the end, Aslan’s circles wound all around Tash, and he was driven from the stage. Then the two children and Aslan danced together, to Mozart.

  When they took their bows at the end, everybody in the audience stood up to clap. They held hands and bowed and bowed, still breathing heavily, smiling at one another and at the audience. At the reception afterward, punch and cookies served in the dormitory living room, just about everybody in the camp came up to tell Mina what a good job she’d done.

  “Thanks.” She smiled. She couldn’t stop smiling. She wished—that they hadn’t performed yet and that it was something she could do again, right away.

  Miss Maddinton came up, with another instructor, while Mina was getting another cup of punch. “It was very good, Mina,” Miss Maddinton said. “You’ve learned a lot this summer, haven’t you?”

  “Yes.” Mina knew she had.

  “I envy you that class, Fiona,” the other instructor said. “And you, young lady, you were absolutely frightening. I was on the edge of my chair.”

  “It’s Tansy, really,” Mina said. “It was her dance, her idea, and all.”

  “You don’t have to be so modest,” Miss Maddinton corrected her.

  Mina smiled. She felt goofy smiling so much, but she couldn’t stop. “Thank you. But it really was Tansy.”

  “I know that; do you think I don’t know that?” Miss Maddinton said.

  Mr. Tattodine came up to the four of them. “You’ve had the success of the evening, and I’m very proud of you. It was good theater,” he said to Tansy.

  Tansy lowered her head, embarrassed and pleased. Mina smiled.

  “And well danced, all of you. You have shown me that ballet is still a living art. Oh, I’ve enjoyed your performance.”

  They all had trouble going to sleep that night. They all sat around in Mina’s room, in the dark, talking in low voices. It was the last night of camp, and Mina suddenly felt as if she couldn’t bear to wait the whole school year before she came back.

  “It’s not that we were the best,” Tansy was saying, trying to put their feelings into words.

  “Except that we were awfully good for our age,” Isadora said.

  “I hate that for-your-age stuff, don’t you?” Charlie protested.

  “We were the only really original ones,” Mina said. “Everybody else, except the instructor for the oldest class, danced the usual dances and even hers—she danced to jazz but it was still traditional. Ours wasn’t like anybody else’s.” She smiled.

  “It was worth all that work, Tansy, I’ll admit it,” Charlie said.

  “Yeah, thanks,” Isadora agreed. “And to Mina too—did you hear the way somebody gasped when you took off your mask, Mina? I don’t know what they expected to see. It was like a horror show.”

  Mina smiled. “Thanks a lot,” she joked.

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I’m already wondering what Tansy’s going to ask us to do next year, aren’t you?” Mina asked them. She had gotten so much better in just the weeks here. She could work every day, practically, if she got organized, and by next summer—“Oh, I’m looking forward to next summer,” she said.

  “Mina! We’ve still got two weeks of vacation. What’s wrong with you?” Charlie demanded. “Don’t wish away my only vacation time.”

  Mina thought that camp was her vacation, but she didn’t say so. They heard the college bell chime two in the morning before they finally were sleepy enough to go to bed.

  * * *

  Miss Maddinton was the one who greeted Mina’s father when he drove up. She made her report as he loaded Mina’s suitcase into the backseat of the dusty car. “She’s learned a lot about discipline this summer.”

  All around them, girls were greeting their families, saying good-bye to their friends, getting into cars, driving away. Mina waved and waved at Tansy, going off in a red sports car with her father, who looked as small and mousy as Tansy.

  “I’ve enjoyed having her in class. It seems to have been a good experience for everybody.”

  “I know she’s had a good time here,” Mina’s father said. “We thank you.”

  “See you next summer, Mina,” Miss Maddinton answered. “Keep practicing.”

  “Oh, I will,” Mina promised.

  She got into the car. Her father got into the car. She turned her head to look at him. “You better belt in,” he said. Then he reached out a big arm to hug her, and she hugged him back. There hadn’t been any hugging or hand-holding or putting arms around all summer long. Mina thought, for a minute, that she thought there should have been, but then she dismissed the idea: It wouldn’t have been right for dance camp; it wouldn’t have suited.

  “We’ve got a long drive ahead,” her father said. He drove down the road beside the river, then along the ramp and out into the speeding traffic. He didn’t talk. Her father didn’t like these crowded thruways, Mina remembered. He was concentrating hard. She didn’t like them much either, once it stopped being exciting to be hurtling along, rushing, once the sad feelings started coming up again inside her, at leaving and having to be gone from camp for so long. The truck motors roared in her ears, the hot air smelled of gasoline and oil, and the scenery at the roadside was mostly the backs of houses, backs of shopping centers, backs of factories. Mina sat quiet, remembering, feeling sad.

  “Mina?” her father asked.

  Mina turned her head to look at him. She had forgotten how rich the sound of his voice was.

  “Were you the only little black girl there at camp?”

  “I guess so,” Mina said.

  “Why was that?”

  “I was the only one good enough, I guess,” Mina said.

  CHAPTER 5

  Mina and her mother were sitting at the kitchen table, sorting through a pile of pictures, to decide which ones would go into the album Zandor had given their parents for Christmas. An icy January rain drummed on the tin roof over the back porch, and darkness lay outside the windows.

  Mina was downstairs because it was Belle’s turn for the record player. Even in the kitchen, you could hear the heavy rhythm of rock music, and the sound of Belle’s feet, dancing around their room. Louis was asleep while Zandor did homework. Zandor would be sitting there at his desk, in a pool of light, turning pages of textbooks or maybe scratching his pencil over his notebook. He had exams coming up. Dad was out at a meeting that night. He’d gone right after dinner, bundled up in his overcoat.

  “It was a pretty paltry effort, that Christmas tree,” Mina’s mother said, studying a photograph.

  Mina was worki
ng her way through the pile of pictures from the summer, sorting out the ones where the focus was bad, or the people had moved at the last minute. She didn’t study them, she just flipped through. Last summer she had been at camp. It felt like about a hundred years ago, and it felt like another hundred years before she could go back again.

  “Mina? Did you hear what I said?”

  “Yes, Mom.”

  “Don’t you have anything to say?”

  “Not anything I haven’t said before. I told you, I think we should have made some popcorn and cranberry strings. That would have helped a lot.”

  “I wish Ellie’d been able to get home.”

  “You wouldn’t have wanted her to leave her husband alone over the holidays,” Mina reminded her. She got up to throw the rejects into the wastebasket under the sink. While she was up, she thought she’d have a glass of milk. “Heat me a cup of coffee, would you, honey?” her mother asked.

  “Won’t it keep you awake?”

  “Nothing’ll keep me awake tonight.”

  “You work too hard,” Mina said, lighting the burner under the coffeepot. They never used a pilot light; it cost less to use matches. Zandor had once worked out just how much it saved and it wasn’t terribly much, Mina remembered.

  “Working too hard is when you’re doing it for somebody else’s purposes,” her mother said.

  “Like school,” Mina agreed.

  “Maybe,” her mother said. “Maybe it is.”

  Uh-oh, Mina thought. There was something her mother wanted to talk with her about. That was why she’d asked Mina to help with the photographs, Mina was willing to bet on it. Her mother wanted to get them sitting down, just the two of them. Mina guessed she’d known it was coming. In their family, you couldn’t go from straight A’s to straight B’s without somebody saying something. She poured out the cup of coffee, adding sugar and cream.

  “That’ll be too sweet,” her mother observed.

  “You need the energy,” Mina said.

  Her mother tasted it. “You’re right, this tastes perfect. Thanks.” She put the cup down. “I was actually thinking about slavery.”

  Mina just kept herself from groaning aloud as she sat down again and picked up the stack of good photographs. They acted as if slavery wasn’t dead and gone, a hundred years ago and more. They acted as if—as if people around now were the same ones who had owned slaves.

  “Your father’s worried about you,” her mother said.

  They didn’t look at one another.

  “I’m sorry,” Mina said. She thought, These must be pictures of the Fourth of July picnic. She remembered where she’d been, Fourth of July.

  “I notice you aren’t asking why.”

  Mina wasn’t asking why because she had a pretty good idea of why, and she didn’t want to talk about it. “Is this the summer minister?” she asked, pointing to some people she’d never seen before, a man and wife, a girl, and two little children.

  Her mother said yes, it was.

  “She’s awfully pretty, isn’t she?” Mina asked, her eyes drawn to the woman, who looked especially dainty standing beside her husband, her tiny waist emphasized by the brightly colored belt wrapped at the waist of her wide skirts. That woman knew how to dress. Mina liked the plain pink dress and contrasting colors of the wide striped belt.

  “Oh yes, Alice is that. She’s like your friend Kat—or, your used-to-be friend.”

  “But your letters sounded like you didn’t like her much. Alice.”

  “I didn’t mind her personally. She just isn’t much use to her husband, she’s one of those women who always seems to need taking care of and never seems able to take care of anyone else.”

  Alice wore dainty high-heeled sandals, even though it was an outdoor picnic on a field. “How did she manage, with those shoes,” Mina wondered.

  “Honey, I’m trying to talk with you.”

  “I know.”

  “And you’re avoiding me.”

  “Well . . .” Mina laughed. “. . . I’m trying to.” Her mother laughed too, so Mina knew that she wasn’t in line for a scolding.

  “Your poppa doesn’t agree with me. I guess, I’m just never so confident in my opinions as he is.”

  “Dad has God on his side.”

  “Don’t be fresh, Mina. But I can’t believe it’s so bad for you to learn something about music, and listen to . . . all that.”

  All that, Mina thought, smiling because her mother was lumping Beethoven and Tchaikovsky and Brahms into a pile, and calling the pile all that.

  “Your father doesn’t really understand.”

  “I know, Mom,” Mina said. “I don’t mind.”

  “Not because he’s not smart,” her mother said quickly. “You got your brains from both of us, as I hope you know. But there are different ways of being smart and he’s not the man for studying something, reading about it. He values education, that’s not what I mean, only . . .”

  Mina thought she knew what her mother meant. “I’m not upset,” she promised.

  “I think I am,” her mother said. Mina’s head jerked up and she just stared at her mother. “All these things put together, and I read too many history books to think that you can get away without putting things together, if you want to understand.”

  “All what things?” Mina asked.

  “These symphonies and things that you listen to. The way you’ve been blow-drying your hair, as bad as Belle about how you look. Practicing so much at Miss LaValle’s—which, if you were going to be a professional ballerina, might make sense.”

  “How do you know I won’t?”

  Her mother was not to be diverted. “Then Mrs. Parker asked me to come in for a meeting.”

  “About my grades,” Mina decided.

  “No, although we’ve been wondering.”

  Her mother waited.

  “Wondering about your grades,” she added, and then waited again. She was giving Mina a place to step in and explain, but Mina didn’t want to.

  “No, Mrs. Parker wanted to talk about your attitude. She says you’re a debilitating influence. Those were her exact words. Do you know what that means?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “She says she doesn’t mind a lively child—she’s got three children of her own, she knows about children.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Mina said. “How old are they?”

  “Don’t you try to derail me, young lady,” her mother answered, and Mina laughed. “She says you act the wit. I did tell her that you’ve always had a good sense of humor.”

  Mina grinned at her mother. “Thanks, Mom.”

  “But she said that acting the class clown is different. And she’s right.”

  But, Mina thought, but it was different, but—

  “And she says that you’re directing your remarks only to a select audience. The white girls, as if . . .” Mina’s mother didn’t finish the sentence and Mina didn’t feel like asking her what she almost said. “Mrs. Parker told us she was pleased and surprised when you asked in September if you could do book reports.”

  “She was surprised, that’s for sure.”

  “But that you don’t read the books she recommends. She says they’re good books.”

  Mina shrugged.

  “And she asked me how you felt about all the growing you’ve been doing. If it worried you.”

  Mina had gone back to sorting pictures, which would only take about one-quarter of her attention.

  “I told her I was a nurse and we were pretty frank about puberty. She said it wasn’t only that, she wondered if maybe you were ashamed about looking so mature. And I hadn’t ever thought of that, which didn’t please me too much, but she’s right. She said someone like you, she’d expect bold colors, bright things.”

  “They’re loud,” Mina answered. “I can dress the way I want to, can’t I? Just because I’m developing, and all that, doesn’t mean I have to act like I’m trying to be Belle, does it? I can read what I want to to
o.” She thought her mother might really understand this, so she really tried to explain. “You read what you want to. Nobody says you shouldn’t read something just because it’s not about black people, do they? And how would you like it, if they did?”

  Mina’s mother just looked at her and looked at her. Mina thought, I should’ve kept my mouth shut.

  “Does Mrs. Parker tell you to read about black people?”

  Mina shrugged.

  “What do you do?”

  “I write it down, title and author, and then I go to the library and look for something I want to read. The thing is, Mom, except for slavery, nothing ever happened to black people. I like England,” Mina said, knowing it sounded disconnected. “They had the Middle Ages. And knights. And all. I don’t think you can understand,” she said, hoping that when she said that her mother would prove that she did understand.

  “Me, not understand? With all six of my children named what they are?” Her mother was angry, instead.

  “Naming people after kings and queens isn’t the same as understanding,” Mina said.

  “I’ll tell you who doesn’t understand,” her mother said.

  “Nobody does, that’s who,” Mina said. She felt unhappiness start to block up her throat. “So let’s just get this job done, all right?”

  “Yes, maybe,” her mother said. Both of them went to work, and neither of them tried to speak, because, Mina thought, both of them knew there wasn’t anything that could be said. She wondered, not for the first time, why God made some people black and some white. And why, if He did that, he made Mina one of the black ones. She knew there was no use to wondering about that, but she still wondered.

  Mina worked her way through pictures, selecting those that had the family in them: Louis digging in the sand, Belle and three of her friends dressed up to go to a dance, CS at a picnic table. There was one of everybody who had been at home that summer, with her mother at the head of the line and then, from youngest to oldest, Louis, Belle, Zandor. “You didn’t have much to do this summer, did you?” Mina asked, before she remembered that they had given up speaking for a while.