Dicey's Song

by Cynthia Voigt

  He started to sing, in a thin, soft voice. “When first unto this country, a stranger I came. And I cour —” his voice held the note high and round, for three beats ” — ted a young girl, and Nancy was her name.” He kept singing, and Dicey kept listening, trying to memorize the melody, while the song told the story of how the man was rejected by the girl and arrested and put in jail and had “a coat of many colors.” What did that mean, a coat of many colors? Dicey hummed the melody inside her head, concentrating on it.

  When he finished, he strummed a couple of chords. “Have a sit, kid.”

  Dicey shook her head and turned away. She heard the guitar begin another melody as she unlocked her bike and rode off downtown.

  That day, Dicey began on the shelves. She’d done a quick surface dusting, just so things wouldn’t look so old, the week before. Now, she took a bucket of warm water and a sponge and began washing down the long shelves. Millie was behind the meat counter, cutting up a side of beef that had been delivered that morning. When Dicey said hello, she saw the huge knives and cleavers, the thick-bladed saw, all laid out on the butcher block table. Millie had wrapped a bloodstained apron around her. When she cut into the beef, she leaned all her weight against the knife and the muscles worked in her arms.

  Millie’s cuts were sure and straight. Even when she hacked at a bone with the cleaver, she always hit the same spot. Dicey would have liked to stay and watch her, but she had money to earn.

  Often, as she methodically moved cans of soup off the shelf, washed down the bottom and sides and back, then replaced the cans, washing each one off with a damp sponge. Dicey heard someone come in and interrupt Millie at her work. The store owner would give the customer what she or he wanted, then plod down to the counter and patiently add up the bill. Nobody said how much better the store looked and smelled. But Dicey figured maybe her plan was working out the way she hoped.

  When she finished her hour she was about halfway down the long shelf. She replaced the unwashed cans, making a mental note that she should begin the next day at chicken noodle soup. She went back to the meat counter to say she was leaving.

  There, she lingered for a few minutes. Millie was cutting out a roast with what looked like rib bones in it. She used a thick, cutlass-shaped knife to go through the meat between two ribs, then whacked once with the cleaver before taking the saw and cutting through bone with five strong strokes. Then she took a short, slim knife and cut off large pieces of fat, tossing them without looking into a lined trash barrel beside her. All of her movements were confident. Her little eyes concentrated on what she was doing. It was like watching somebody good play a sport, Dicey decided. A couple of odd scraps of meat went onto a growing pile beside the carcass. Stew beef?

  “I’m off now,” Dicey said.

  “Is it an hour already?” Millie asked. She turned over a fat wrist to look at her watch. “I’m being awful slow with this.”

  “You had interruptions,” Dicey reminded her.

  “That’s right.” Millie sounded surprised. She couldn’t have forgotten, Dicey knew. She’d heard her employer talking with the customers, about the weather and the hog market. “That would slow me down back here, wouldn’t it,” Millie asked, as if she had just realized the connection.

  It was getting on to five when Dicey rode her bike up the overgrown driveway. She decided she didn’t have time for a snack, not if she wanted to get some scraping done on the boat. She dropped her books on the desk in the living room and asked James, who sat reading the Bible again, if he didn’t have homework. “Some, not much,” he told her. Maybeth was in the kitchen with Gram, reading a list of vocabulary words aloud while Gram listened and peeled potatoes for supper. Sammy she saw spading fiercely at the garden.

  Dicey pulled the barn doors wide, for maximum light, and settled down to work. For scraping the old paint off she had a special tool Gram found for her, a kind of spatula with its tip bent back. It was slow work. The first couple of strokes over a place were the easiest, then you had to scrape away at old paint layers that had been smoothed down by the first couple of scrapes and were, thus, harder to get off. From this tedious point of view, the twelve-foot boat didn’t look so little to Dicey.

  Sammy wandered in behind her. Dicey greeted him. He was carrying the shovel and he cleaned it off with his hands before setting it back in its place against the dark wall. Dicey, leaning her weight into her work, trying to find just the right amount of pressure so that she would scrape off the paint without gouging the wood beneath, forgot he was there. Until he spoke into her ear.

  “I could help.”

  Dicey grunted and shook her head.

  “Why not?”

  “There’s no tool.” Dicey gave the first excuse she could think of. Sammy went to the workbench and began rummaging around.

  After a while he came up to her again, holding a rat-tailed chisel. “What’s this for?” Dicey didn’t answer. “Dicey, do you know?”

  “Nope,” Dicey said. “Better put it back.”

  She heard him rummaging around behind her. With an angry sigh, she turned to see what he was doing. He was pulling out the little drawers from the miniature cupboard where Gram stored nails and screws of different sizes. “Better not mess around with that.”

  “Why not?” Sammy demanded, ready for a fight. And dropped one of the little drawers, scattering thin nails along the surface of the bench and onto the dirt floor.

  “Oh, Sammy,” Dicey said. She only had a little time for this work, and she didn’t want to have to interrupt it to help him pick up after himself.

  “I’ll fix it,” Sammy told her. He bent down and began to pick up the nails from the floor.

  “Don’t get dirt or straw mixed in there,” Dicey warned him.

  “I won’t,”Sammy said. “I said I’d pick it up.”

  Dicey turned her attention back to the job. But she couldn’t concentrate, because she was waiting for the sounds Sammy would make putting the little drawer back in, so she could take a quick look to be sure he cleaned off all the nails before replacing them.

  Sammy seemed to understand that, because he brought the little drawer over for her to check it. She nodded and he went away again. She heard him climbing around.

  “What are you doing?” she demanded.

  “Bet you can’t see me,” he answered.

  Dicey looked around quickly, and she couldn’t. “C’mon, Sammy,” she pleaded.

  “I told you,” he said, pleased with himself.

  Dicey felt anger spurt up her spine. “Wherever you are, get back where I can see you,” she said, tossing the scraper into the ground like a jackknife. “I’ve about had it, you hear me? There’s almost no time for me to work on the boat, and you’re interrupting me. You know the lofts aren’t safe to play in.”

  Sammy stepped out of the shadows beside an old stall. He looked chastened and sulky. “We don’t know that. We just haven’t checked them yet. You said you’d check them,” he reminded her.

  “I will,” Dicey told him, bending down to fetch the scraper, wiping it clean on her pants. “I will. But not right now, please, Sammy?” She felt desperate.

  Sammy went back to the workbench and began to fiddle with the paintbrush soaking in its can of turpentine.

  Dicey gave up. “OK,” she said, feeling in him the kind of unused energy her frustration was giving her. “Tell me about school today. How was it?”

  “I already told Gram.”

  “So tell me. I wasn’t there, remember?”

  “It’s boring,” Sammy said.

  “All right,” Dicey said. “Suit yourself.”

  He watched her work.

  “Why won’t you let me help?” he asked.

  He was too little, he wouldn’t be sure to do it right, and Dicey wanted some time at least to herself. She wanted the boat to herself. But she couldn’t say that, so instead she asked him, “Do you know fractions yet?”

  “Naw, not until spring.”

 
“Tell me something, Sammy,” Dicey began.

  He sat down. Contented now.

  “If you had an apple and you cut it up, what would be bigger, the half or the quarter?”

  “The half, a’course,” he said. “Why?”

  “And if you cut the quarter in half, what would you have?”

  This he had to think about. “An eighth?”

  Dicey nodded. “If you cut the half into eighths, how many pieces would you have?”

  “You mean, if I had half an apple?”

  Dicey nodded.

  “I think four. Why?”

  “No reason, I was just wondering. You already understand fractions,” Dicey said.

  “Then why doesn’t Maybeth?” Sammy asked.

  “I don’t know,” Dicey answered.

  After supper, they did homework. James was usually finished first, but that night he worked as long as Dicey, doodling on a piece of lined paper. He had a report to do, on the pilgrims, and he was trying to pick a subject, he told Dicey. He didn’t want any help, he had lots of ideas, it was just a matter of finding the right one. What did he mean the right one, Dicey asked. James explained that he wanted one the other kids would enjoy, because they were going to read them out loud in front of the class. He wanted them to like his. Dicey said she thought the kids in his special class were all smart. “They’re OK,” James said.

  Dicey looked up into his narrow, thoughtful face. She could hear Gram and Maybeth working in the kitchen. It sounded like Maybeth was stumbling through the same list of words she’d been reading that afternoon.

  “I thought they were smart,” Dicey insisted. “Like you.”

  He shook his head. “Not like me,” he said. “I thought they might be, but they aren’t. They’re OK,” he repeated. His eyes slid away from hers and back to the boxes he was drawing on his paper.

  When Gram and Maybeth came into the living room, Dicey asked Gram if she’d ever heard the song the guitarist had played that day. Gram said she hadn’t. Dicey hummed the tune, and Maybeth hummed it with her. So Dicey taught Maybeth the first verse, which was the only one she could remember.

  “I like it,” Maybeth said. Her eyes had little bags under them, and no wonder, Dicey thought, since she spent most of her days bending her face over one book or another. Trying to catch up and keep up. They sang the verse together, twice. Maybeth went to the piano to pick out the tune. Dicey made a mental note to find out the rest of the words, if she could see that boy again. “It has something about a coat of many colors,” she told her family, who were kind of half-listening, the way families do.

  “Joseph’s coat,” James said. “Right Gram?”

  Gram agreed, and told how Joseph’s father had given him that coat because he was the favorite of twelve sons, in Israel.

  “But this was about a man who went to jail,” Dicey said. “It sounded American.”

  “There’s gotta be a book, somewhere, where somebody’s written down these songs,” James remarked. “I bet there is.”

  Gram cleared her throat. “I have a question to ask you all. Maybeth? You too,” she called.

  They waited.

  “I went to see Maybeth’s teacher today,” Gram began. James caught Dicey’s eye. “Her music teacher, a Mr. Lingerie,” Gram said. “A pleasant young man. Well — he wouldn’t seem young to you. He told me — are you all listening? Sammy? — he told me that he thought Maybeth should have lessons.”

  “She doesn’t need lessons,” Dicey said hotly.

  “Take it easy, girl,” Gram said. Her eyes were laughing at Dicey. “The kind of lessons he was talking about were special lessons.”

  The children were puzzled, and she let them sit in their puzzlement for a long minute.

  “Lessons for someone who is talented.”

  Dicey felt a smile begin and she looked at Maybeth. Maybeth’s face hadn’t changed, as if she hadn’t yet understood that this teacher note was different from all the other ones she had carried home.

  “Piano lessons are what he suggested,” Gram said.

  “Can I too?” Sammy asked.

  Gram shook her head at him. “Just Maybeth. What do we think of that?”

  “Terrific,” Dicey said.

  “But how can we pay for them?” James asked.

  “Do you think I can?” Maybeth asked Dicey.

  “Do you want to? It would mean even more work, practicing. You have to practice piano, don’t you Gram?” Dicey asked.

  “Mr. Lingerle said he would be happy to give Maybeth the lessons, once a week, after school, and he would drive her home afterwards,” Gram announced. “He said he would charge five dollars a lesson, which isn’t unreasonable in my opinion.” She sat back then to let them think about that.

  Maybeth was on the piano bench, her hands clasped tight together, not looking at anyone.

  “He said,” Gram added, “that in over ten years of teaching, Maybeth is the most exciting student he has ever had.”

  “If, instead of having allowances, I’m earning seven dollars a week at Millie’s and it looks like I’ll be able to keep the job —” Dicey rushed out the words because she was so glad for Maybeth and because, if she rushed them out and committed herself to them, it wouldn’t do any good to think about how she was going to be able to buy caulking material and paint, if she ever got through the job of scraping the boat.

  “But I want an allowance,” Sammy protested. “You said.”

  Dicey could have throttled him.

  “There’ll still be two dollars left,” Gram told him. She didn’t even sound angry. “You could each have fifty cents.”

  “I wouldn’t need any,” Maybeth spoke softly.

  At fifty cents, it would take twice as long to save up, Dicey thought. “But then we couldn’t give any to you,” she told Gram.

  “Let me worry about that,” Gram said.

  Dicey was willing to go along with that.

  “Maybeth, do you want to take piano lessons?” Gram asked. “Even if it means another lot of work for you?”

  “Yes, please,” Maybeth answered quickly. “If it was all right with everybody. If Dicey doesn’t mind and Sammy can still have an allowance.”

  “That’s decided then,” Gram decided.

  “You talked to a lawyer too, today, didn’t you?” Dicey asked.

  “It was a busy day,” Gram agreed.

  “Anything else?” Dicey asked. Gram shook her head.

  Dicey guessed that whatever it was that took her to Dicey’s school, she wasn’t going to say anything about it.

  James was looking at Dicey curiously, as if he suspected there was something she was thinking about. “I have a report due in three weeks,” he told Gram. “Something on the pilgrims. So Mr. Thomas will have something to show parents at the conferences.”

  “What conferences?” Gram asked, startled. “What parents?”

  “You don’t have to come in,” James assured her. “There are conferences when we’ve finished six weeks of school, so the teachers can talk about how the kids are doing, and the parents can meet the teachers. Lots of classes have special projects due just before then, so the parents have something to look at.”

  “We’re going to make a bulletin board with poems on it,” Sammy said. “Poems,” he repeated, without pleasure. “We’re going to vote,” he added, with more enthusiasm.

  Dicey could figure out what he meant, probably vote on the poems to be put up on the bulletin board. “I bet you can write poems all right,” she told Sammy. He shrugged.

  “I’d like to write something the kids in my class will be interested in,” James said. Dicey wasn’t sure who he was talking to, and what he wanted to be answered.

  “I’d think you’d want to write something you would be interested in,” Gram said.

  “I wanna play checkers,” Sammy announced.

  James shrugged his shoulders. Gram began setting out checkers on the board. “I would,” Gram said to James.

  “Yeah,
but you —” James started to say, then didn’t finish. Dicey knew what he was thinking, that Gram wasn’t like other people, she was different, an oddball. A lot of people in town thought she was just plain crazy. Dicey had found that out the first day they arrived in Crisfield, before she even walked out to her grandmother’s farm. It was what Millie said. But Millie didn’t seem to really think that. At least, not now, not any more.

  James was squirming in his chair. Gram just looked at him, waiting, and didn’t say a word. “Let’s play,” Sammy demanded.

  Dicey thought maybe James and Gram should have this conversation. “I’ll play with you, Sammy,” she said.

  “No, her, she’s more fun anyway.” He rejected Dicey’s offer without a thought.

  “Then I can hear Maybeth read,” Dicey said.

  “I already did that,” Gram told her, ignoring James. So all Dicey had to do in the time before the little kids went up to bed was sit with Maybeth on the piano bench and sing. That was OK with her. James came over to join in, and she could hear Sammy’s voice sometimes too.

  That Friday, when the science teacher announced that they would need partners for the next two weeks, which would be laboratory work classifying rocks, Dicey felt a moment of unease. There were thirty-seven kids in the class, so probably one person wouldn’t have a partner, and probably that would be her. That was OK, she liked working alone, she was used to it; but she wanted to be sure everybody knew that she didn’t care about not having a partner. She stared down at the notebook opened before her on the high table, pretending to read what was in it, to show she wasn’t interested in the babbling of voices. When she felt someone standing beside her, she thought probably it was the teacher and didn’t look up, as if she was too engrossed to notice.

  “Wanna work together?” A ringing voice spoke.

  It was Wilhemina. Dicey was too surprised to do anything but nod. The big black girl put her notebook and textbook down beside Dicey’s. She dropped a half-dozen pens and pencils beside it. She hoisted herself up onto the stool beside Dicey. “I’m Wilhemina Smiths, Smiths with an s at both ends,” she told Dicey. “My friends call me Mina. You’re Dicey Tillerman.”