Dicey's Song

by Cynthia Voigt

  “Were they bad?” Maybeth asked.

  There were good things and bad things,” Gram acknowledged. “But there was nothing that made me regret you living here with me.” The children exchanged pleased glances, and Sammy’s face (Dicey noticed) was flushed with pleasure. “I was proud to go in and say, I’m Sammy Tillerman’s grandmother or Maybeth’s or James’s.”

  Dicey bit on her lower lip. What Gram would say about Dicey’s home ec grade — she was almost sorry she hadn’t tried harder in the class, if it mattered to Gram.

  “Is that all right with you, Dicey?” Gram said.

  “Sure, if you want to,” Dicey said.

  “We’ll take the bus up to Salisbury, where there’s a mall,” Gram said.

  “I like bus rides,” Sammy volunteered.

  “Well, I don’t,” Gram said.

  APPARENTLY, Dicey thought from her seat by the window that Saturday morning, Gram meant exactly what she said. Gram sat straight and stiff beside Dicey. She was wearing her blue suit and a white blouse, tucked in. She carried a purse and had put on her loafers, with stockings. Gram wasn’t planning to enjoy herself. Dicey wore her shorts, as always. She thought about talking to her grandmother, but shrugged and looked out the window instead.

  Because Dicey did like buses. She liked any means of transportation. She liked going places. They rode up a highway, past marshlands and farmlands. A brisk wind blew at the grasses and trees. For the first time, Dicey felt like it really was fall. The sky hung low and gray over fields. She could see smoke curling up out of chimneys in some of the houses they passed. It was one of those first fall days, that look colder than they really are.

  But it really was cold. When they had stood waiting at the bus station, her legs got goose bumps from the wind. Mr. Lingerle drove them into town, and he said he’d come pick them up, too. Gram didn’t want to take the ride, but he pointed out how large the waves would be under this wind, and that if they bought anything it would be soaked before they got home again. He said he liked to help.

  Gram’s chin went up when he said that, because she did not like to be helped. But he had insisted and insisted, saying that Saturday was usually a pretty long, lonely day for him, saying that he was going to try riding on Sammy’s bike (Sammy bit his lip to keep from saying something about that), saying finally that he liked being welcome at their house, and he was only offering what family friends offered. So Gram gave in.

  The bus entered the limits of the scraggly city. Dicey studied the shopping centers and the low office buildings, each surrounded by its own parking lot. Cars and trucks crowded the road. For a few minutes, Dicey found this exciting, all the people, all their different lives and faces. Then the grayness, the papers blowing on sidewalks, the sandy-colored sameness of the buildings diminished that excitement. Beside her, Gram stirred.

  “Do you know where we’re going?” Dicey asked.

  “Yes,” Gram answered.

  The mall had an arched gateway leading to acres of parking lots. The bus stopped before an entrance to the long building. Dicey and Gram climbed down the steps and went in.

  Gram went straight to a list of stores in the mall and began reading down it. Dicey planned to enjoy herself, if she could. She listened to the voices of the crowds of Saturday shoppers, she stared at families and couples, at gangs of girls and boys. Some of the people were hurrying on, as if they had a lot to do and not much time. Others were meandering about, stopping at store windows, as if they had a whole day to kill.

  Gram joined Dicey. “When I was a girl,” she said, looking about her, “Crisfield was the big town. The people from Salisbury came down to Crisfield.” She took a breath and her chin went up. “Let’s get going, girl, we’ve got a lot to do.”

  “But I thought we were going to talk,” Dicey said.

  “That too,” Gram said, stepping briskly out.

  Gram took Dicey first to a five-and-ten. They stood in front of a small table covered with wool, while Gram touched the skeins of yarn and made “hnm”sounds. At last she turned to Dicey. “You like any of these?”

  Dicey studied the unnaturally bright colors, greens and reds and yellows. She tried to find one that wasn’t as bad as the rest. “No,” she said.

  “Neither do I.”

  Gram marched out and on down the center walkway. When she found a little store with its windows crammed with pillows on which kittens had been embroidered, she entered. At the back of this store, there was a whole wall of wools. Gram started pulling down colors. Dicey looked around. There were a few women in the store, looking at instruction books or studying kits. The saleslady sat on a tall stool behind the counter, her hands busy with thread and canvas. She looked more like one of the summer residents of Provincetown than a saleslady in a mall, Dicey thought. She wore makeup on her eyes, lips, and skin. Her hair had every strand in a particular place. The woman looked up and caught Dicey’s eye. “Can I help you?” she asked. Dicey shook her head and turned her attention back to Gram.

  Gram had pulled down a dozen colors. She had spread them out on the table before her. Every now and then she would touch one and move it around to sit by itself.

  “What are you doing?” Dicey asked.

  “Sweaters,” Gram answered. “Is there a color you like?”

  “You’re going to make us sweaters?”

  “It’s either that or buy them,” Gram answered grimly.

  “I didn’t know you could knit.”

  Gram shrugged. She put her hand on a yellow the color of daffodils. “This looks like Maybeth to me. And a good blue for Sammy, but brown for James, don’t you think.”

  “Isn’t that an awful lot of work?”

  “Come winter, I’ve got the time. What about you, what do you like?”

  Dicey liked the brown, but Gram pulled out a kind of greeny-bluey skein, flecked with white. “Heather,” she said.

  Dicey liked that all right too, and she liked it more the more she looked at it.

  “Feel it,” Gram instructed. Dicey obeyed, and the wool was thick and soft under her fingers. “Heather’s the one I like for you,” Gram said.

  “What about you?” Dicey asked.

  “I’ve got plenty, I don’t have to go out in public,” Gram said. Dicey, her mind on sweaters, thought that Gram should have one in a dusty rose, or maybe in black to set off the snap in her eyes. But Dicey couldn’t knit. Gram paid; Dicey hefted the awkward bag of wool.

  “Did your momma teach you to knit?” Gram asked Dicey.

  “I can’t do any of that stuff,” Dicey mumbled.

  “Oh well,” Gram said.

  They walked on, into a two-story Sears and Roebuck that occupied one end of the mall. There, Gram wound her way to the children’s department. She picked out eight pairs of blue jeans, and they went to get in the line by the cash register.

  “That’s — thank you, Gram,” Dicey said. Because their grandmother was buying them clothes.

  “Children can’t wear shorts all year round,” Gram answered. “Maybeth’s teacher is worried about her. She’s not progressing, not to speak of. Mrs. Jackson says the school system has home tutors who are trained teachers and know the kind of work the class is doing. She says, we should get one. She says she doesn’t think it will help, but she wants to try, everything because Maybeth is such a sweet child. She says Maybeth is failing. She says, Maybeth gets along beautifully with her classmates and is very mature.” Gram stopped as suddenly as she had begun.

  Dicey felt as if Gram had been hitting at her, punch, punch, punch. “Millie can’t read,” she announced, following her own thoughts. “Not much, not like she should.”

  “She told you that? She’d never admit it to me. We were girls in school together.”

  “I know,” Dicey said.

  “Maybeth’s not like Millie,” Gram said.

  How had Gram known that was a question in Dicey’s mind. “Are you sure?”

  “Sure,” Gram told Dicey. “But — ”

/>   At that moment their turn to pay came, and Gram just said, “We’ll talk about it over lunch. Think about it, meanwhile.”

  They had to go to another department for long-sleeved shirts for the little kids. Dicey already had all the made-over shirts she needed. Gram made quick selections, plain colors for Maybeth, and striped for the boys. They got into another line. “Sammy’s work is all right,” Gram reported. “She told me I was lucky to have such a quiet, well-behaved grandson, because boys could be such hellions. She said if only every boy in the class had Sammy’s attitude.”

  “Well.” Dicey was surprised. She was glad that was all right. “He hasn’t always been that way,” she told Gram, relieved.

  “He still isn’t,” Gram said, then snapped her mouth shut.

  Dicey felt her shoulders sag. It wasn’t because they were tired, or she was tired. The bags they got were big, but not heavy. She thought she had a good idea what Gram was thinking. Sometimes she almost wished she didn’t have any brothers and sisters. “How about James? Was James’s teacher pleased with him?”

  Gram had her purse open to pay, and she put bills into the salesclerk’s hand before she answered. Dicey almost told Gram not to bother saying, unless it was something good.

  “Oh yes. He says what we all — including James — know, that he’s unusually intelligent. He says James’s work was better at the beginning of the year, but the other kids caught up with him pretty quickly. He especially mentioned James report. He showed it to me.”

  “James got an A,” Dicey said.

  “It wasn’t the same report he showed us,” Gram said.

  Dicey took the bag, jammed it into the bigger one that held the jeans and did not answer.

  Back in the center of the mall, Gram looked about her. “Lunch,” she said. She led Dicey back, along the length of the building, to the other end, where there stood a two-story department store. There was a restaurant, too, right by the entrance, a real restaurant where there was a special waitress who asked how many you were and led you to a table.

  “But Gram,” Dicey protested. They had seen a couple of hamburger stands.

  Gram ignored her. The waitress gave them a table by a window that looked out to the center of the mall. “Put those bags down,” Gram instructed Dicey.

  Dicey obeyed, jamming the bags up against the wall.

  “This is my treat, for me,” Gram said, looking around with satisfaction. She opened the menu and looked at it.

  Dicey followed suit. She studied the prices. She found the three cheapest things and then looked to see what they were. When Gram asked her what she wanted, she said, “Spaghetti.”

  Gram stared at her over the top of the menu.

  “I like spaghetti,” Dicey said.

  “My rule is, when you go to a restaurant, you have something you don’t get at home,” Gram announced. “I’m going to have a club sandwich and I advise you to do the same.”

  Dicey skimmed around for a club sandwich, to see how much it cost. “Why?” she asked, playing for time.

  “Because it tastes good,” Gram said, folding her menu firmly onto the table. “I know what you’re thinking, girl, and with the amount of money we’re spending today this little isn’t going to make any difference.” Then she smiled, quickly. “Besides, I’ve handed you some problems you’ll need food energy to work on.”

  “OK,” Dicey said. “I hope I like it.”

  “If you don’t, I’ll eat it,” Gram said. She ordered them two club sandwiches on white toast with extra mayonnaise. For herself, she ordered a pot of tea. Dicey wanted a soda.

  “Small, medium, or large?” the waitress asked.

  “Small,” Dicey said.

  “Large,” Gram corrected her.

  Dicey just shook her head.

  When their drinks were before them, Gram looked at Dicey and said, “What do you think?”

  Dicey didn’t know what she was talking about.

  “About your family, girl. Snap out of it. You’ve had weeks and weeks without worrying, but the vacation is over now. You’ve got to help out.”

  But, Dicey thought, I am helping out, I have a job. And I haven’t exactly not worried.

  “I don’t know,” she said. Gram snorted impatiently. So Dicey tried. “If the teacher says Maybeth can get a real tutor, for nothing, that’s not bad is it?” she asked.

  Gram waited.

  “And Sammy’s all right. And James is doing well. So what’s the problem?”

  Gram waited. Dicey put the straw into her mouth and sipped at her soda. She looked out the window. Walking away from them, down the mall, were a boy and a girl. They had their arms around one another. The boy’s arm was over the girl’s shoulder and his hand was tucked into the rear pocket of her jeans. Her arm went across his back and into the pocket of his jeans. They leaned their heads towards one another, talking, as if there was nothing important in the world except what they had to say right then.

  “When I was a girl,” Gram said, “only engaged couples could spend an afternoon alone together. And even then, the most they would do in public was hold hands. People say things were easier then, and maybe they were.”

  Dicey followed the couple with her eyes. She didn’t know why Gram was talking like this, but she was interested in what Gram would say about what it was like when she was young.

  “Things were surely simpler. But I guess we made them hard, because I don’t remember anything simple, or easy, about it. I’d be inclined to think things are easier now, wouldn’t you?”

  Dicey looked back but didn’t answer.

  “I didn’t say better, just easier,” Gram told her.

  Dicey nodded, to show she was listening. But she was wondering: how long was she going to have to spend worrying about her brothers and sisters?

  “It’s for as long as you live,” Gram said, as if Dicey had spoken aloud. “That’s something I learned, even though I didn’t want to. For as long as you live, the attachments hold.”

  At that moment their sandwiches were put down in front of them. Dicey looked at hers, four triangles of toast layered with turkey and bacon, lettuce and tomato, like rock strata on cliffs. A pile of potato chips was in the center of the plate. Gram passed her a little glass of mayonnaise.

  “So you’ve got to think,” Gram said, “and I’d be grateful if you’d tell me what you think.”

  Reluctantly, Dicey agreed. Well, Gram was right, she’d had a nice long rest from it, longer than any she could remember ever before in her life. And she couldn’t fool herself that her family didn’t matter to her. She took a bite. “OK,” she said. “I think I know about James. But Gram — this sandwich is good.”

  “I told you, didn’t I?” Gram answered, pleased with herself.

  “James never had friends, none of us did really, on account of Momma and where we lived, and a whole lot of things. But James always wanted them. I think — if he wrote another report — he did it because he didn’t want to be too different. Because if you’re too different people don’t like you.”

  “But is he making friends?”

  “I dunno,” Dicey said. “I never asked. He told me the kids liked his report. The trouble is,” she went on, “that if James doesn’t have something to think about he gets bored and — because he doesn’t like working the way I do, not physical work. Working with his mind, that’s what James likes. So he needs to do a lot of thinking in school.”

  “Which he won’t, because then he’d be too different,” Gram pointed out. “So he will have to find something to think about at home.”

  “He reads those books,” Dicey said.

  “Your grandfather read books at home, alone.”

  “Was he like James? Is James like him?”

  Gram didn’t answer. “I don’t know what to do,” she said finally.

  Neither did Dicey.

  “And what about Sammy?” Gram demanded.

  “He’s just trying to be good.”

  “I appreciate t
hat,” Gram declared. “But he isn’t good, you know. Not the way she thinks he is; he isn’t her idea of good. But he’s trying to be that. She said he sits quiet as a mouse, all day. It’s no wonder he’s got so much energy to burn off when he gets home. Did you ever think of that?”

  Dicey hadn’t.

  “Well, think about it,” Gram said. “See if you find it a pleasant thought.”

  “No,” Dicey said, her voice low, “I don’t. But Gram? If he wants to be the kind of boy she likes, it’s for you, and for me. For all of us.”

  Gram nodded grimly. She had finished her sandwich, and she poured out a cup of tea.

  Dicey had a picture in her head of Sammy putting on a mask every morning, to wear all day long. It was a heavy iron mask, and he pulled it around his own face and bolted it closed.

  “If I was just in the same school,” Dicey wished.

  “But you’re not,” Gram answered. “Do you remember when you were little in school?”

  “Not much. I got in trouble, for fighting.”

  “What stopped you?”

  “The other kids learned to steer clear.”

  Gram stared at Dicey for a minute and her eyes snapped as if she was either angry, or trying not to laugh. “But what were you fighting about?”

  Dicey made herself meet Gram’s dark, hazel eyes. “They’d say things — about Momma. About — our father being gone — about our not having his name — ”

  “I can guess,” Gram cut her off.

  “Sometimes, they’d laugh at me, I don’t know why. I didn’t like that. But Sammy doesn’t mind being laughed at. He likes being a clown.”

  “Not the Sammy that woman’s got sitting in her class. That Sammy — I don’t know, he’s not at all like our Sammy.”

  “Not the good ways or the bad ways,” Dicey realized. “But what can we do?”

  “That’s what I thought we could talk about. That and Maybeth.”