Dicey's Song

by Cynthia Voigt

  “Not only shy,” Gram told him. “But that, too. What we want to know is, do you have any ideas?”

  “Ideas?”

  “About what to do about Maybeth,” Gram repeated patiently.

  “Oh sure, but nothing any good. She could go into a special school. Or, we could take her out of school and have tutors. It’s only seven years until she can quit. We could work harder with her, helping her — but she works so hard already. Poor Maybeth,” he said.

  “You can do better than that, James,” Gram snapped at him.

  He looked up, hurt and surprised. He started to answer, then stopped himself. His eyes went back to the long shelf of books behind the desk. “You’re right,” he said. “I’m sorry. All right, let’s think about it. The basic problem is reading, isn’t it?”

  “Right now, yes,” Gram said.

  “Maybeth isn’t learning how to read. Now, what does that mean? It means —”

  Dicey let out a gust of exasperated air. What was James doing now?

  He looked at her and shook his head to stop her saying anything. “It means she reads slowly, can’t remember what she has read, out loud or silently — because she hasn’t understood the words — because of her mistakes, and because if you go so slowly —. It must be like, if you try to walk in slow motion. You always lose your balance.”

  He stopped speaking then. He was staring hard at his hand spread out on the rug. The light from the flames made shadows that moved across his face. Gram got impatient: “Well?”

  “I’m thinking,” James said. “Let me think. Because what all that means — Maybeth sees the words with her eyes, but she doesn’t connect them in her brain right away, the way I do. The question is, why the connection isn’t made. So that, if we want to solve the problem, we have to work on the connection part of it.” He raised his face and smiled at them all.

  “I don’t understand,” Dicey said.

  “Look. Maybeth can talk, can’t she? So she knows the meanings. She can see, so she can see the words. But she doesn’t make the connection.”

  When he put it that way, Dicey thought she could understand. But she didn’t see that it helped them any.

  “OK,” James said eagerly. “Now listen. The way Mrs. Jackson teaches, and I guess the whole school system, is to look at a whole word and recognize it. Maybe that’s it, maybe that’s what we should do.”

  “What do you mean?” Gram demanded.

  “Well, Maybeth sees the whole word, but that doesn’t make sense to her because she can’t remember it, as a word. But we know she can remember the letters. Maybe she should be working on reading the letters, not the whole word.”

  “But she can read some whole words,” Dicey protested. “I’ve heard her.”

  “Yes, but not as many as the other third-graders can. That’s where the slowness comes in.”

  “Do you mean we should go back to the beginning with her?” Gram asked. “Do all the lists again?”

  James shook his head, hard. “No. I mean we should try another way. I have to think more about it, I don’t know anything about the subject, I’ll have to go to the library. But that’s what I think would work for Maybeth. Another way.”

  “I don’t know,” Gram said doubtfully.

  Dicey had a sudden memory, of Millie reading cornflakes for corn chips. “You mean, what Maybeth does is sees — like the beginning of the word, and then she guesses?”

  James nodded.

  “And she’s not a guesser by nature,” Dicey went on. She didn’t know exactly what James had meant, but she could see how it would work on Maybeth, this guessing. “It would make her nervous, and she’d always be waiting to be caught in a mistake, and she wouldn’t hear what she was reading, so it would be hard for her to understand what she was reading. Maybeth likes — knowing how to do what she’s doing. When she gets nervous, and scared — she can’t think about things.”

  Gram looked over at Mr. Lingerle. “Do you have anything to add?”

  “No.” He shook his head. “Except to say that I never found Maybeth stupid. But you know that already.”

  “We do,” Gram said, “but sometimes we get to doubting. It’s good to hear. All right then, James, you’ll do some reading on the subject. In a hurry.”

  “I’ll do it when I can, as soon as I can. I’ve got my job and all,” James said.

  Dicey felt her mood of hopefulness fading as she remembered that James was good at ideas but not so good at following them through. She made a mental note to remind him.

  The next day was Sunday, and Dicey had a whole afternoon to work on the boat. It was a cool afternoon, but in her new jeans she was warm enough. Sunlight came in through the opened doors, a broad beam of yellow light. Dust motes danced lazily up and down in the light. Dicey stood, pulling the scraper across the curved planks. She was singing to herself, “When first unto this country, a stranger I came.” She wasn’t thinking about anything in particular. She was wondering vaguely how long she should give James before she reminded him and wondering how long Mr. Chappelle would take correcting their essays, how long before she got her essay back. Sammy came in and stood beside her. She broke off the song, and her thoughts. She hoped he wouldn’t stay too long, because she had been enjoying her mood.

  “Gram’s teaching Maybeth how to knit,” he reported.

  “Is she.”

  “I just said so,” Sammy pointed out.

  “Yes, you did,” Dicey agreed.

  “Can I help you?”

  “Isn’t there wood to cut?”

  “Gram said Miss Tieds says I’m good.”

  “So I heard,” Dicey said. She hadn’t looked at him yet and she didn’t plan to. He stayed for a few seconds, as if waiting for her to say something, or do something, then he turned sharply away. He turned so sharply, his shoulder shoved against Dicey’s. The blade of the scraper dug into the wood.

  “Sammy!” she yelled. “Watch out what you’re doing!”

  He was already by the barn doors, standing in the stream of sunlight. He turned back to face her, and the sunlight glowed around him.

  Sammy had gotten taller, in his legs especially, she thought. His hands were on his hips and his face was hard. It was as if he was daring her.

  Daring her to do what? Start a fight, probably. She stared at him, and he stared at her.

  Then Dicey began to remember. She remembered Sammy’s sturdy brown legs walking, all that long summer long, keeping up with the bigger kids. And she remembered Sammy, memory going backwards, like flipping through a photograph album, until she came to a vague picture of the little baby Momma brought home from the hospital. Their father had walked out by then, he’d left pretty soon after Momma told them that Sammy was coming. Because she was the oldest, Sammy was Dicey’s responsibility. She was the one who changed his diapers and fed him cereal on a spoon when Momma was at work. She was the one who watched him sleeping in the night until Momma got home. She was the one he’d splashed water all over in his baths in the dishpan, slapping at the water with his chubby little hands, and his eyes laughed.

  His hands looked strong now, and you could see the bones running from his wrist to his fingers. His eyes weren’t laughing now, they were as flat as his mouth. Their colors didn’t shine out at her.

  No wonder, she said to herself, still looking back at his expressionless face, feeling for a minute as if she were Sammy and hearing the conversations they’d just had as he might have heard it. Or, she corrected herself, the conversation they hadn’t just had.

  “Can you find me some sandpaper?” she asked him.

  “Why?” he asked, without moving. It was as if he wanted to stay angry.

  “So I can sand this place smooth. And then” — Dicey thought fast and it seemed like a good plan — “if you really do want to help — ”

  “I do!” he cried, running back to the work bench. “I can!” he cried.

  “The next thing, after scraping, is sanding. We’ll have to sand it down abou
t three times, three different times. The book said.”

  “Why so many?” He passed her a square of sandpaper.

  “I dunno, it just said that was the best way to do it. I’m planning to do this job the best way, start to finish.”

  “Good-o,” Sammy said. “If you show me, I could sand where you’ve already scraped. I could be careful.”

  “Yes, I think you could,” Dicey said. His eyes had colors shooting out of them again, yellow flecks and green, that made up the hazel color when they mixed in with the brown. He hadn’t grown so tall after all, she noticed, measuring him against her body. Not up to her shoulders yet. They settled down to work.

  Sammy worked like Dicey did, without hurrying, without dawdling. They got into a kind of rhythm, working together. Dicey told herself, I should have remembered this about Sammy.

  “I like these new jeans,” she remarked. “Don’t you?”

  “Umhnm,” he said. “I guess you and Gram had a good time. Do you think she’d take me for a bus ride and out to lunch? Ever?”

  “I don’t see why not. But she tells you what to order.”

  “Did she tell you what to order?”

  “Yup.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I ordered it. What do you think I’d do?”

  Sammy laughed, a round, tumbling sound. “I think you’d refuse to get it. Because she told you.”

  “Gram said you’re being an angel at school. Except you don’t fly.”

  Sammy nodded, looking at Dicey’s eyes. “It’s all I can do, being good. Nobody there’s even yelled at me, all this year so far. That’s pretty good, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Are you sure you can’t fly?” Dicey teased him. Then she said yes, it was very good, it was better than she had managed. “Do you like any of the kids in your class?” she asked.

  Sammy shrugged, his eyes watching where the sandpaper rubbed at the wood. “The guys — well, you know, Dicey, they don’t like goody-goodies. It doesn’t matter.” He shrugged again. “It’s OK with me.”

  Dicey looked hard at him. His eyes were flat again. She wondered if that flat, holding-in expression was the one he wore all day long. “Is there anything you like about school?”

  “Phys Ed, because we play games. You know, baseball and kickball.”

  “Don’t you play those at recess too?”

  “Not me.”

  “Why not?”

  “If I did — I’d get angry, and — if I exploded — you see, Dicey, when I get angry I don’t know what I’ll do. So I watch, and that’s OK. Another thing I like.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I like being good. Because Gram will like it. Sometimes, I wish I’d been better, when Momma wanted me to.”

  Alarm bells were clanging in Dicey’s head. “Sammy Tillerman,” she said, shaking her scraper at him. “You don’t think it’s your fault, do you? About Momma?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “But that wasn’t anybody’s fault, not even Momma’s. It was just the way things happened.”

  “But I didn’t help,” he said. “And Dicey — you know what they say about Gram.”

  “But we know that’s not true,” Dicey said.

  “But if Gram —” Sammy said. He stopped himself. “And I like Gram,” he added. “It’s not so much trouble to be good in school, if I keep remembering.”

  “Are you good, Sammy? I mean — you know what I mean. Are you?”

  “No a’course not, you know that. But that’s OK. If I had a job — but I’m too young, it’ll be years before I can help out with a job.”

  Dicey thought for a minute. “Cripes,” she finally said, “you’ve given yourself a pretty hard job as it is, as far as I can see. And you’re doing pretty good work at it,” she said.

  He nodded, pleased.

  “But then, that shouldn’t surprise me, because I know how hard you can work,” Dicey said.

  “Yeah I can, can’t I?”

  “Maybe you’ve outgrown fighting,” she suggested.

  He shook his head.

  “I used to get in fights,” Dicey told him.

  “You never said that,” he protested.

  “You never asked me,” Dicey countered. “I used to fight with girls and boys, and just about anyone. I can’t even remember how many fights I was in. But I used to win a lot.”

  “Of course,” Sammy said.

  “And I’ll tell you something funny. Not ha-ha funny, but queer. You want to hear it?”

  “OK.”

  “I used to feel good, after. Even if I lost. As if — I don’t know — as if I’d exploded and that was over now.”

  He stared up at her. “You never get in trouble,” he told her.

  Dicey laughed. “I’m in trouble right now,” she told him, feeling not at all upset about home ec and her apron. “I’m in trouble and I don’t even care. Because” — she hadn’t thought of this before — “it’s my own trouble I made myself.”

  Sammy just stared at her. Then he turned back to his work and Dicey went back to hers. They worked without talking for an hour or more. Then Dicey felt a rubbing on her back, going around and around. Sammy was sanding her back. She turned and scraped down the leg of his jeans, but she had to bend over to do that and he started sanding her fanny. He was giggling. Dicey dropped the scraper and grabbed hold of his ankles. Sammy toppled over into the dirt beside her.

  Before he could scramble up again, she started to tickle him under the arms. He squirmed and twisted under her hands hammering on the ground with his fists.

  Then Sammy twisted around underneath her and wriggled free. He ran over to the workbench, and stood there, poised to fight her if she came near him. Dicey made a growling noise, on her knees like a tiger. She leaped at him. Sammy turned and ran to the dark side of the barn. He scrambled over the doorway into an empty stall.

  “Hey, Dicey,” his voice made little echoes from within the darkness.

  “You OK?”

  “You could keep chickens in one of these, they’re huge. Look.”

  Dicey came over and unbolted the door. She stepped into the stall. Sammy heaved an armload of dry hay over her head.

  Dicey puffed and sneezed and brushed the brittle hay from her face and hair and shoulders. “Just you wait until I get my hands on you, Sammy Tillerman,” she said, trying to keep laughter out of her voice. He dashed past her, through the barn, out into the sunshine.

  “Can’t catch me!” he called.

  “Gram doesn’t like chickens anyway,” she answered to his disappearing back.

  DICEY WORE her new jumper to school, and the bra of course, but she almost didn’t notice that any more. You could get used to just about anything, she thought. Nobody noticed her new clothes, but then nobody noticed her much anyway, so she wasn’t surprised. When she left English class to go to home ec, she saw Mina hanging around by the door. “Hey, Dicey,” Mina greeted her.

  “Hey,” Dicey answered, walking right on past Mina and her friends. Mina got the message all right. Dicey heard one of the other voices talk as the girls followed her down the hall, falling behind because she was hurrying: “I don’t know why you’re looking for honky friends,” the voice complained.

  Dicey was hurrying to home ec class to get her seat in the back, at a table by herself, and to get her face all set and ready. They were starting a new unit today.

  Miss Eversleigh stood in front of the class wearing her usual dark suit and usual nylon blouse with her usual pin on the lapel of her jacket. Nutrition was the new unit. Dicey kept herself from groaning out loud. She could peel potatoes and fry an egg, and that was about it, and she didn’t want to learn more. She could also, she reminded herself, figure out things to eat and cook them over an open fire. But still, she wished Maybeth could be here instead of her. Maybeth would like it and be good at it. She hoped Maybeth could get this far in school.

  Miss Eversleigh began to lecture about nutrition and food groups. Dicey sighed, opene
d her notebook, and began drawing a picture. In her picture, there was a little boat on an ocean, without any land around. The boat’s sails puffed out. Dicey put some high-headed clouds in the sky. She grinned and put a crab at the bottom, under the water. The crab was staring up at the boat. Dicey decided not to put in anybody steering the boat; she knew who it was anyway. Miss Eversleigh’s voice droned on.

  Later, Jeff was waiting by the bicycle rack. Dicey thought he noticed her jumper, but he didn’t say anything. He had a song for her, he said. Dicey stood in front of him, holding her books. He looked quizzically at her, as if there was something he wanted her to say, but when she didn’t he began to sing right away. The song he had that day was called “Pretty Polly.” Dicey had heard this cruel song, once before.

  “Polly, pretty Polly, won’t you come and go with me,” he sang. His hands brought music out of the guitar. The story went on, and the man — Handsome Willy — killed Polly and rode away, “over mountains so steep and the valleys so wide.”

  Jeff looked at Dicey, waiting. Finally, he asked, pushing his dark hair from his forehead: “What do you think”?

  Dicey shrugged.

  “But don’t you wonder? Why he killed her? What happened to him?” Jeff asked.

  “Yeah, I do,” Dicey admitted.

  “So what do you think?” Jeff asked again.

  “I gotta go,” Dicey said.

  Jeff shrugged. He was wearing a brown sweater with the kind of softly mixed greens and whites that was in the wool Gram bought for Dicey. Heather. “See you tomorrow, maybe.” His gray eyes were concentrating on the face of his guitar.

  “Sure,” Dicey said.

  Millie noticed her jumper and liked it and made a kind of fuss about it. Dicey thought, after all, she’d rather not be noticed. That afternoon there was another letter for Gram from the doctors in Boston, but this one was thin. Dicey wondered if Gram wrote answers to these letters. She wished she could read them, but she figured, if it was anything important — especially good news — Gram would tell them about it.

  Sammy came out to sand with her while she scraped. He told her about a couple of boys in his class who had to stay in the principal’s office almost all afternoon. They had tried to walk tightrope over the top of the swings, he reported. Everyone, he said (meaning all the teachers), got angry and scared. His own opinion was that since they had talked so much about it before they tried and had gathered a huge audience before they started shinnying up the tall poles, they planned to get caught.