Come a Stranger

by Cynthia Voigt

  CHAPTER 19

  When Mina showed up at PE the next morning in gym shorts and sneakers, she discovered that of the ten girls taking tennis, she was the only black. Four of the others were obviously best friends, and the remaining five all wanted to get into that group. Mina didn’t know any of them. They all came from the other feeder school. None of them was at all interested in her.

  The coach was a tall, rangy woman, who bounced on the toes of her sneakers as she demonstrated, and her short hair bounced on top of her head, and her words bounced around as she handed out racquets to those girls who didn’t have them (the four had brought their own) and showed them how to grip for the forehand. Her name was Mrs. Edges and she was so tan she looked as if she must have spent all day all summer out playing tennis somewhere. Her eyes kept going to Mina where she stood at the end of the line of girls. Mina could see why: When they came to divide themselves up over the three tennis courts to practice hitting, everybody went somewhere else than where Mina stood. Mrs. Edges finally called out, “There’s room for one more girl over here,” and waited through a long two or three minutes, before saying, “Bonnie, come over here.”

  Bonnie was one of the outsiders, the furthest outside. When she was told to hit with Mina, she did it. Nobody said anything.

  Nobody needed to. Mina felt like she had been transported back to dance camp, that second summer. The first summer too; only she had been too dumb to notice it. She wondered if she should try to switch into a regular PE class, which was what her friends were taking. Swinging her racquet, she got one ball over the net, where it plopped just beyond Bonnie’s reach. Bonnie forgot to move, so she swung and missed. She giggled and looked at the other two courts to see if anyone wanted to join in the joke.

  “Hey!” Mina called. “Over here, I’m over here. See if you can hit it to me.”

  On her third try, Bonnie succeeded in getting the ball over the net. Mina watched it, moving toward where it was going to land at mid-court and got her racquet back in time to stroke at the ball. The return went to Bonnie’s backhand and she stood still, watching it go by.

  Mina almost groaned aloud. This was going to be a real drag, a waste of her time. She didn’t know what she could do about it.

  Mina also didn’t seem to be able to figure out how to meet Dicey Tillerman. After a week of school, she hadn’t even said hello to the kid, which was strange even if Dicey was a white. People at least pretended they didn’t notice black and white. Dicey always wore the same clothes, except they got cleaned in between wearings. She always sat at the back of the class, without seeming to pay any attention, but she always knew whatever answer the teacher called on her for. Mina tried to catch her eye, but Dicey didn’t look at anybody. She moved around on long skinny legs, with her toes showing through holes in her sneakers, as if she was alone in the world. Mina watched her, going down a hallway or moving across a classroom to her desk. Mostly, her face was expressionless, but sometimes it seemed to wake up, or come alive, if something interesting was going on. What interested Dicey, and this interested Mina, was never anything the kids got up to; it was something that somebody said, a teacher or a kid. This had happened only in Science class, so far. Dicey obviously hated Home Ec, but did the diagramming in English without any trouble. Mina learned some about Dicey by keeping an eye out for a chance to start a conversation. But she never got that chance. Dicey kept herself clear of everyone.

  Mina asked around a couple of times, but wasn’t surprised to hear that nobody knew anything about Dicey. She didn’t seem to fall in with any group—she was a minority of her own, Mina figured, watching the dark eyes across the class as they observed what Mr. Chappelle was doing and then turned to the sky and treetops outside the window.

  Mina figured she had all year, she had time. Meanwhile, she had her own life to lead. She didn’t drop tennis, because she liked it. She liked pulling the racquet back and then swinging it forward, using her whole arm for the stroke, using her strength and her weight to stroke it properly. Mrs. Edges often volleyed with her, letting the rest of the corps de ballet (as Mina called them in her mind) arrange themselves on the other courts.

  Kat’s advice, given as they walked home from church together the second Sunday after school started, was to switch to PE. “It isn’t bad, we’re doing gymnastics now. You’re good at that, you always were.”

  “I stopped being good at it.”

  “Is that what happened? At least, you never work up much sweat in PE,” Kat continued. She was walking with small steps, because she wore low heels now to church. Mina watched Kat. It always rested her eyes to watch Kat.

  “Katanga Beaulieu,” Mina said, “you’re—you could be a model, I bet.”

  They weren’t in any hurry. It was a muggy day at the end of a muggy week, and Momma was serving a cold chicken salad for lunch.

  “You always know, before I tell you anything,” Kat answered. “If I were old-fashioned, I’d think you used voodoo. Because that’s what I want to do, and I think I could. Models make an awful lot of money. My dad says he’ll send me to modeling school, when I get old enough. But he thinks I ought to wait until I’m older, out of high school. He says, if I promise to finish school then he promises to send me to the best modeling school I can get into.”

  “That’s great,” Mina said.

  “But it’s all so long away. Anyway, there’s a beach party tonight. Do you want to come?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “It might be one of the last. You ought to. If you do, you have to bring something to drink or something to eat. You could make brownies. I bet Bailey Westers would like it if you came.”

  “Maybe I will. Not for Bailey Westers, though.” Mina enjoyed the parties. She always enjoyed getting together with people, the youth fellowship group or just a bunch of people gathered around a fire on a beach. They’d bring radios and dance, and some couples would slip away for a little private necking, but you could say no easily, in a group with no particular dates, to someone who asked you to go walking on down the beach. Mostly Mina said no, because . . . anyone who wasn’t Tamer Shipp was just someone who, when she closed her eyes, she might be able to pretend for a minute was Tamer Shipp. Which wasn’t the same.

  What Mina didn’t like about these parties was the conversations the next day, about how far a girl ought to go with a boy, if she loved him, if she only liked him a lot, and the kinds of questions they asked each other. “Have you French kissed much?” Mina always interrupted those conversations with jokes—“No tongues!” she would cry, her hands up in horror—but she couldn’t interrupt them for long. Sometimes she went to the parties, sometimes she went out on dates, and sometimes she stayed home.

  “Boys like you,” Kat said to her that day, walking slowly home from church. “I think because they know you’re not going to be serious.”

  “I think it’s my maternal streak,” Mina said. “They tell me all their troubles.”

  “I want a big wedding, with a dozen bridesmaids and a band at the reception,” Kat said. “Do you?”

  “I never thought about it. We can’t afford it anyway. How’s your aunt?”

  Kat’s aunt Grace, her mother’s sister, had moved in with them temporarily, to get over her divorce. “She’s bored. She says there’s no night life and she’s going to wither on the vine. Just what Dad said she’d say after three weeks with us. I think she’s going to move to L.A.”

  “Like Miss LaValle. I wonder what there is about the West Coast.”

  “It’s more integrated, I think. Like Paris, or Europe; they don’t even care about mixed marriages, can you imagine?”

  “What do you think happened to Miss LaValle? Do you ever wonder?”

  “Nobody ever heard from her, after a couple of letters. She was always so sad. I’d never let a man live with me without marrying me. Would you?”

  Mina thought about that. “It would depend on the man,” she said. She really meant, it would depend on how much she loved hi
m, but she didn’t tell Kat that. Kat wouldn’t know what she meant, not yet. “Like how rich he was.”

  “You don’t mean that.” Kat laughed.

  Mina asked her father, one night out of the blue, because even she didn’t know where the idea came from, if he’d mind if she stopped calling him “Poppa.”

  “What did you have in mind?” he asked. “‘Father’ sounds distinguished. I like father.”

  The boys called him “Pop,” but that didn’t sound right to Mina either. “Dad,” she said.

  “You already used to call me that, once,” he reminded her. “You don’t need my permission.”

  “It’s just that Poppa sounds so childish.”

  “And Dad sounds more white, is that why?” her mother asked.

  “No,” Mina said. “I wouldn’t make that mistake again.”

  “Oh?” her mother asked, looking at her father.

  “I know what that kind of significant look means,” Mina told them both, letting them know she didn’t much care for it. Parents had a way of dragging up dead history against you.

  Momma almost took offense, then she started laughing. “Oh, I do like the way you’re growing up, Mina. You’re growing up to be quite something.”

  Mina wondered if quite something was the adult version of t-rou-ble. She thought she’d rather be t-rou-ble, because it seemed more honest to her. But she didn’t tell her parents that.

  Louis turned ten that week and had a birthday party and gave Mina more information about Dicey Tillerman. He had made out his list of ten guests, one for each year of his life, and presented it to Momma, who would have to give the party, and to Mina, who would bake a rocket-shaped cake for him. “Willy and Josh,” they read down the list, recognizing familiar names. “But who’s Maybeth?”

  “She’s a girl,” Louis explained. They didn’t say anything. “She’s in third grade.” Mina and her mother exchanged a look. “They just moved to town.”

  “What church does she go to?” Momma asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Where does she live?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “It doesn’t sound like you’ve talked to her at all. How come you want to ask her to your party?” Mina asked.

  “She’s pretty,” Louis told them. He made himself look back at them as if it was nothing, but he had a goofy smile on his face.

  “What will Dream say?” Mina teased. But Louis did like pretty girls. She didn’t blame him. She liked to look at handsome boys herself.

  “Dream just teases me anyway. Maybeth is nice.”

  “Will she mind being the only girl?”

  “I don’t know.” Louis’s eyes filled with tears. “Please let me.”

  “I guess, if you really want to—” Momma waited. She knew already, as Mina did, that Louis would stick by what he said. He was quiet, but he had a way of knowing what he wanted. He nodded his head. “What’s her last name, we’ll look her up in the phone book.”

  “Tillerman,” Louis said.

  “But—” Mina objected. She tried to communicate with her mother, but her mother must not have made any connection. “But, Louis,” Mina asked carefully, “isn’t she white?”

  “I don’t mind.”

  “Oh, but, Louis,” Momma joined in. “You’ve got to consider the little girl’s feelings, honey. She’ll be the only girl, the only third grader, and the only white person. Use your imagination, Louis. Can you be sure she’ll have a good time? Can you promise her she’ll be glad she came?”

  Louis shook his head sadly. His mouth quivered.

  “Think of someone else you’d like to invite to make the tenth,” Momma said.

  “There’s nobody else. I’ll just have nine.”

  “Are you terribly unhappy about this?” Momma asked. Sometimes you had to ask Louis.

  “No, I can understand.”

  “Then why don’t you, if you want to, you could take her a piece of your birthday cake. So she’ll know you want to be friends,” Momma suggested.

  Louis liked that idea and went away happy, while Momma happily made lists of what food and prizes they’d need, what games they’d play.

  Everybody was happy except Mina, who was itching with impatience to get Louis to herself and question him. But when she did do that later in the evening, after Louis had finished up his day’s homework at the kitchen table where she did her math, he didn’t know much of anything.

  “There are three of them,” he told her. “She’s got two brothers.”

  “Can’t you find out?” Mina asked.

  Louis shrugged. Mina knew what she’d have done, she’d have gone right up to Maybeth and said, “Who are you; do you have someone called Bullet in your family who’s dead?” But Louis was gentler and more considerate than she’d been. “Can you try?” she asked him.

  “Sure,” he said.

  It was the middle of the next week before he had anything to tell her. Mina had almost forgotten that she was waiting to hear, she was getting so griped by the corps de ballet. It seemed to Mina that they were getting a little ruder every day. Nobody stopped them, so they were making a kind of group joke out of her. The outer five especially were saying things and looking things. Mrs. Edges seemed to notice nothing. Kat and Sabrina said she ought to drop tennis, and Rachelle said she ought to report them to the counselor. “If you let them get away with this,” Rachelle advised, “they’ll just try something else.” But Mina had always fought her own battles.

  Moreover, Dicey Tillerman barely ever even crossed eyes with Mina in any of the three classes they had together. Probably prejudiced, Mina decided, and who cared? It was the poor whites who were the most prejudiced, that was what people said. And immigrants. Because people needed to be sure there was somebody lower than they. Well, Mina didn’t consider herself lower than anybody. Frankly.

  But high school was different. Things were somehow more complicated in high school. The kids from the other elementary school weren’t—weren’t kids like the ones she’d always been to school with. And they were changing things for the whole class, Mina thought.

  So when Louis closed up his spelling workbook and told her, “I found out,” Mina didn’t know what he was talking about. They were alone. Momma was at work, Belle was at a friend’s, and her father was across the way at a church meeting.

  “Found out what?” Mina was whipping through a couple of pages of math problems.

  “About the Tillermans.”

  “Them.”

  “What’s the matter? You sound angry.”

  “I do?” Mina listened to her voice. “I do. I didn’t mean it at you. It’s just—I’m finding life pretty difficult these days. I’m sorry.” He listened to her, serious, his eyes like their father’s. “Tell me.”

  “They live with their grandmother, the one who’s crazy. The oldest boy is in fifth grade, James. He’s in the special accelerated section so I guess he’s smart. The little brother is in second grade, and he’s quiet too, like Maybeth. He kind of stands around at recess. Sammy.”

  “Sammy?”

  “I said. Didn’t you listen?”

  Samuel Tillerman, Mina heard the name with a bubble of laughter and her eyes filling up with tears. She heard Tamer Shipp’s bassoon voice saying it. She felt like getting up and calling him up on the phone to say, “I found him for you.” She could imagine what Mr. Shipp would say.

  “I didn’t know you cared that much,” Louis asked her. “Maybeth stayed back a year, where they lived before, so she should really be in my class. She’s the nice one. She’s got friends, lots of friends. I talked to James a little at lunch one day because he looked lonely. I don’t know if he was boasting, but he said they walked all the way here from Annapolis. Could they?”

  “Across the bay?”

  “I don’t think he was lying, but he might have been boasting.”

  “Where are their parents?” Mina asked. She knew she couldn’t call up Mr. Shipp. But she didn’t know how she
’d wait all the time before next June to tell him. First, though, she had to make sure.

  “James wouldn’t say anything about them. That’s all I know. Except, they’ve got an older sister.”

  “I know about her. She’s in my class,” Mina said. “Her name’s Dicey, and she’s not—not too friendly.”

  “Maybeth is friendly,” Louis said. “She—” He didn’t know how to say what he was thinking.

  Mina knew, but she wasn’t going to let him know she knew his private thoughts. Instead, she told him, “Do you know what Mr. Shipp once said about Alice? He said he thought God had done fine work when He made Alice.”

  Louis liked that. “It doesn’t matter if she’s not black,” he said. “She’s still pretty, isn’t she?”

  “I wish I could figure that out,” Mina told him.

  CHAPTER 20

  It clearly mattered to the corps de ballet that Mina was black, and it was making Mrs. Edges nervous. Less and less of their PE time was used playing tennis, because drill exercises were the only way Mrs. Edges could keep the class in control.

  It wasn’t a terrific way for Mina to start out the day. When she thought about it—which was no more often than she had to, because thinking about it made her feel helpless and dangerously angry—she thought the easiest way would be to start in picking on Bonnie. When you want to claw your way up the pecking order, you start with the person on the bottom. But Mina didn’t want to claw her way up—if it was up. She wanted to play tennis. What she really wanted was to go for the girl named Harriet, who set the styles for that group and set the tone. Leader of the pack, Mina called her, to herself. They were like a pack of dogs, and they treated one another like dogs—casually cruel if they thought Harriet would find them clever, cruelly careless about what they said to one another, and then they tried with emotional apologies to act as if they didn’t mean what they’d said. But it was such a contest, what they called their friendship—who had the most records, who had the most lipsticks, whose father had the best job, which boys liked whom.

  Mina ignored them, mostly. If they started hedging her in too close, all she had to do was look at Harriet and look at her. Harriet wasn’t about to tackle Mina straightforwardly. Mrs. Edges gave up the hope that everybody would get used to things and get along, and she would take Mina onto a court herself. They volleyed, or played a few games. Mina had a good, strong serve. The serve was the easiest part of the game for Mina.