Dicey's Song

by Cynthia Voigt

  “You can’t be music,” Mina argued.

  “But you have it, don’t you?” Dicey asked. “Don’t you?”

  Mina started laughing instead of saying anything. “That’s what I like about you, Dicey. With everybody else, they want to talk about boys, or clothes, having babies. You know?” Dicey didn’t know. “But with you — ”

  “I don’t know anything about boys, or clothes, or having babies,” Dicey pointed out.

  “But if you did you wouldn’t talk about them the same way. I bet,” Mina said.

  AFTERWARDS, Dicey couldn’t remember if it was that same afternoon, or another one, that she got home to find Gram slamming around the kitchen. When she tried to remember, she only knew that it came between Thanksgiving and Christmas, that day. If she could have, she would have thanked Momma for waiting so long, to give them time to get used to each other.

  When she found Gram crashing piles of dinner plates down onto the counter and then angrily scrubbing out the cupboard with a sponge, Dicey figured the welfare check had arrived again. Whenever it came, Gram was in a bad mood for at least a day.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Dicey said to the stiff back. “It’s only four and a half years before I can get a full-time job. Then we won’t need any extra help from anyone.”

  Gram slammed the plates back in place and began pulling out glasses. When a glass shattered, she seemed satisfied rather than angry. “No, you won’t. You’re going to college, girl. Whether you like it or not.”

  “But —” Dicey said.

  “I didn’t, and your grandfather didn’t. So you are. And James and probably Sammy, too. There’s to be no more talk about quitting school.”

  She jammed the broom into the closet and got back to the shelves.

  “Did any of your children?” Dicey asked. She was playing for time, fishing around in her mind for some understanding of why her grandmother seemed so particularly het up.

  “John did. Last I saw of him. He was gone and gone.”

  “Ah,” Dicey said. Her grandmother’s hair was slicked down, as if she had combed it with a wet comb.

  “Now go get together some clothes,” Gram said. She still didn’t look at Dicey. “There’s a suitcase in your room, I already put my stuff in it.”

  “But why?”

  “We’re going to Boston.”

  “To see Momma? But why? I’ll miss school and work, and who’ll take care of the little kids? Is something wrong?”

  But Gram wouldn’t answer her. She wouldn’t answer any of them when they asked. Dicey thought it must be bad news and probably that Momma was worse (but how could she be worse?) or dead (but why would Gram take Dicey and go up to Boston if that was the case?). Sammy thought maybe Momma was better. Maybe coming home with them. James didn’t say a word, but he agreed with Dicey, she could tell. Maybeth just sat quiet at the table. She had her hands clasped together in front of her, clasped tight.

  Mr. Lingerle was going to drive Gram and Dicey to the airport in Salisbury, where they would take a plane to the airport in Baltimore, where they would try to get a plane to Boston. “We can’t afford that,” Dicey said.

  “We’re selling that wretched cranberry spoon,” Gram told her. “It’s not a vacation.” She glared at Dicey.

  Dicey packed underwear and her brown dress and a couple of blouses. She wore her jumper for traveling in. She put the few dollars she’d saved from her wages in the pocket of her jumper, just in case. She wished she knew what to expect, so she could begin getting ready; but Gram wouldn’t say anything.

  It was deep, hazy twilight when Mr. Lingerle drove them up in front of the little airport building. Gram had sat silent and hunched forward all the way up there. Neither Dicey nor Mr. Lingerle could think of anything to say, except when Mr. Lingerle looked at Dicey in the rear-view mirror and told her, “I’ll call your school to tell them where you are.”

  At the airport, Gram burst out of the car and into the one-room building. Dicey and Mr. Lingerle hurried after her, not even bothering to park the car properly. Dicey carried the suitcase. The plane they were going to take was already outside, its two engines grinding, its two propellers turning. Mr. Lingerele came with them as far as a tall cyclone fence. “Mrs. Tillerman — Ab —” he said, awkward. “I just want to say, I’ll take care of the kids. Don’t worry on that score.”

  Gram turned a stony face to him. “I know that or I wouldn’t have asked you.”

  She didn’t say it very nicely, Dicey thought, but the effect on Mr. Lingerle was as if she had paid him a big compliment. He stood up a little straighter. He pulled an envelope out of his pocket.

  “Here,” he said. “Just in case.”

  “What is it?” Gram demanded.

  “Some money,” he told her. “You might need it if you’re there long.”

  Dicey stood, biting her lip. The little windows in the plane shone yellow, and the air was filled with the noise of the engines. Purple twilight crowded down around them.

  “I thank you,” Gram said. She took the envelope and, without looking at it, put it into her purse. Then she wheeled around. “Come along, girl,” she said. Dicey picked up their suitcase and followed her onto the plane.

  There were only a couple of other people riding on that flight, two men in business suits who had papers spread in front of them. They drank something from short glasses and talked. Gram took a seat by the window. “You sit ahead of me, if you want to look out,” she instructed.

  A man in only the trousers and hat of a uniform, his plaid shirt unbuttoned at the neck and the sleeves rolled up, leaned over to tell them to strap themselves in. Dicey shifted the suitcase to the floor in front of the empty seat beside her and obeyed him. She’d never ridden in a plane before. She didn’t know anything about what to do.

  Nothing was what to do, apparently. The plane rocked along the ground for a while, then struggled up into the air. Below, looking out the window, Dicey could see scattered lights. Some of them were still, and those would be houses. Some of them moved, and those would be cars. After a few minutes, they were over the Bay. Night darkened around the humming plane.

  The same man offered her coffee or tea, but she shook her head. She wasn’t hungry or thirsty. She wasn’t anything clear. She felt her grandmother’s silent stony presence behind her, and Dicey wished she knew whatever it was Gram knew. She felt like she shouldn’t be excited about flying, but her heart lifted with the plane, and her nose was pressed against the thick glass. She felt worried and depressed about this hasty journey, because it had to mean something bad. Something bad for Momma.

  Unless Sammy was right, but then why was Gram so — angry? If Momma was going to come home, it would mean more expenses, and a lot more work for Gram. Until Momma could help. If it was good news, and Gram was trying not to be optimistic so she wouldn’t be disappointed, she might act this way. You never could tell with Gram. You could trust her, but you couldn’t tell.

  Dicey turned her head to look at Gram through the narrow slot where her seat didn’t meet the curved wall of the plane. Gram was staring out the window. She hadn’t unbuckled her seat belt, she hadn’t taken off her coat, she hadn’t moved her purse off her lap. Her face was turned out the window, but Dicey bet she wasn’t looking outside at anything. Every now and then, Gram blinked.

  Dicey looked back out her own window. Below her, more lights, clustered together (towns or cities, she thought) and the long, snaky stream of red and white lights that marked highways. She smiled down at the moving picture, like some kind of Christmas display. She shouldn’t be smiling, she thought, but it was so new a way of seeing things, and beautiful; she couldn’t really help herself.

  The airport at Baltimore was a huge, sprawling building. Gram and Dicey threaded their way through throngs of people. Dicey followed Gram, saying nothing. She stopped when Gram stopped, standing just behind her. Gram stopped first at an information booth to ask about flights to Boston, then hurried down a long hallway to the cou
nter of an airlines. She bought two tickets for the 8:45 flight to Boston. One-way tickets. She checked in their suitcase. Then she led Dicey to a coffee shop and instructed her to order something to eat. “You’ve got to eat,” she said.

  Dicey asked for a hamburger and french fries. Gram asked for a pot of tea.

  “And something to eat,” Dicey told her. Gram snorted, looked at Dicey, and ordered an English muffin.

  The plane to Boston was a large, a turbo-prop, Dicey read in the information folder. She settled herself into the seat by the window, with Gram beside her now. This plane had two propellers and two jet engines. Dicey watched the activity on the ground around them as they waited for take-off. Gram sat stiff beside her.

  Dicey didn’t know what she, Dicey, was doing here. She turned in the soft seat to ask her grandmother. They were rushing ahead, into the night, and Dicey really wanted to be back home, back in her own room with nothing more to think about than whether she had done her homework well enough. She felt like asking Gram to help her.

  But help her with what?

  “Gram?” Dicey said. Her voice croaked a little.

  “They just called me this morning,” Gram announced. Her mouth moved but none of the rest of her face did, and neither did her hands clasping the purse, nor her feet in stockings and loafers. Gram had placed her feet neatly side by side, like empty shoes in a closet.

  Dicey wanted to say to Gram, Can I help you? But she couldn’t do that; Gram wouldn’t tell her. She sighed and put her nose back against the window.

  The plane finally moved, taxied out of its parking slot and down to the end of a long runway marked by lights. When the big machine started down the runway, Dicey was pushed back in her seat by the speed. As it lifted off the ground, she could feel how it turned from heavy to light. She had a sensation of free flight. The plane soared up, and Dicey soared up with it.

  “Can you feel that?” she said, without turning her head. Gram didn’t answer.

  A stewardess, with her face painted on and her hair painted down neat and her uniform as perfect as if it had been shellacked into position, brought them each a little plastic tray of juice and one pastry sealed into plastic. Gram also got a cup of tea.

  Dicey ate the pastry, even though she wasn’t hungry. She ate Gram’s pastry too and drank both their glasses of over-sweet juice. When the stewardess at last came back to take the trays, Dicey turned her attention back to the window.

  If she had a map, she would know what those cities below were. If she had a map, she could trace their journey northward. If she had a map, then she would ask Gram about where they were, and the two of them could talk instead of each sitting there, locked into her own silence.

  In Boston, Gram waited by the baggage claim, pointed out their suitcase to Dicey without a word, then strode out the exit to find a cab. She gave the driver an address. By that time, Dicey was getting sleepy, but she still wondered how Gram knew where she was going.

  City streets passed by the cab windows, most of them empty of people but marked by the lit signs of stores and the illuminated plate glass display windows. Dicey felt the cold on the outside of the tightly closed car windows. Their driver was a dark shape at the front of the car. Gram was a dark shape beside her.

  Gram took them to a motel, two stories high and with some cars parked in front of it. The motel faced onto a busy street. Gram went into the office, where she filled out a form and took a key. She led Dicey, whose hands felt too cold to retain their grip on the suitcase, up some stairs, and down an open walkway to a door. She opened the door.

  The room was square and green. It had a huge TV set attached by a chain to the wall, two beds, each covered by a green bedspread, and a table between them upon which a black telephone sat under a lamp.

  Dicey put the suitcase down on the top of a low bureau. She caught sight of their reflection in the mirror over the bureau, both of them pale and stony-faced. Gram sat down on the bed, her purse still in her lap, her feet close together. She seemed to be thinking.

  Dicey found the bathroom and used it. She thought about taking a shower, but decided she didn’t want to. She returned to see Gram standing in a long flannel nightgown, about to get into bed. Gram had folded back the spread on Dicey’s bed. Gram went into the bathroom.

  Dicey stripped down to her underpants. For a top, she wore one of her shirts. Gram didn’t say anything. When Dicey was settled in the strange bed, Gram reached over to turn out the lamp.

  The room wasn’t quite dark, because the light from the motel’s fluorescent sign slipped in through a crack in the curtains. The noise from the highway outside pushed in too. Dicey lay on her back and looked up at the ceiling. “What about Momma?” she demanded harshly, across the darkness.

  No sound marked her grandmother in her bed, as if Gram was lying like Dicey and staring at the ceiling.

  “Gram?”

  “Tomorrow,” her grandmother said.

  Gram woke Dicey the next morning. Dicey changed into clean underwear and a fresh blouse. She pulled on her high socks and tied her sneakers. She washed her face and brushed her teeth before putting on her jumper. Gram was entirely dressed by the time she had finished, dressed and standing by the door. Dicey grabbed her jacket. Gram wore an old blue wool coat, with big round buttons up the front, which hung tired from her shoulders.

  They had a quick breakfast in a coffee shop just down the street. Then Gram headed up past the motel, walking so fast Dicey had no time to notice what they were walking past. “How do you know where you’re going?” she panted. Her breath came out of her mouth like smoke. She jammed her hands into her pockets and noticed how white and cold Gram’s fingers looked on the hand holding the purse.

  “He gave me directions.”

  “Who?”

  “The doctor.”

  Two blocks up from the motel and one block off the busy street, Gram mounted cement steps to a square brick building. She entered through the heavy wooden doors that swung out into the cold. Each door had a green wreath on it.

  Dicey scurried after her. Why had Gram told her to come along, she wondered angrily. She might as well not be there, for all the attention her grandmother paid to her.

  The building looked like it had once been a school. It had a broad central corridor. A woman sat at a long desk in the middle of this, with chairs lined up in rows on either side of her. All of the chairs were empty. Gram marched up to the woman. “I’m Abigail Tillerman,” she said.

  The woman’s face registered no expression. She was a soft-looking woman, with her hair in white waves and a light sweater over her creamy blouse. Her nails gleamed pink. “Yes?” she asked politely.

  “My daughter —” Gram began.

  Understanding flashed across the woman’s face. She put one hand on the phone beside her. “Yes, of course, Mrs. Tillerman. Dr. Epstein is expecting you. You’ll want to go down the hall, take the second door on your left, and the fourth door on your right after that.”

  “I want to see my daughter,” Gram said.

  “But Dr. Epstein — and it’s not visiting hours —” the woman mumbled. She still had her hand on the phone. Then she said, “All right. The little girl can wait down here. It’s the fourth floor, the ward on your left. I’ll call up to tell them to expect you. The elevators are back by the entrance, you can’t miss them.”

  “The little girl,” Gram said, “will come with me.”

  Dicey almost smiled in her relief at Gram acting normal again.

  “If you insist,” the woman said. Her worried eyes went from Gram to Dicey and back to Gram.

  Gram didn’t say anything.

  “They’re self-service elevators,” the woman said weakly.

  It was a large elevator, about as big as Dicey’s bedroom at home. Two young men in white pants and doctors’ shirts were on it, but they didn’t say a word and got off at the third floor. Dicey and Gram got off at the top and walked down a central hallway that matched the one downstairs. The lino
leum had been laid on in blocks and worn down colorless. The place smelled of cleansing liquid and the empty hall reverberated with muffled sounds.

  As they came to a set of glass-topped swinging doors, a nurse came through them. She stepped out into the hallway. Her uniform was crisp, and she wore a white cap on top of her brown hair. She had a heavy, strong face. “Mrs. Tillerman? I’m Preston, the floor nurse.” Her voice was soft and sweet, like a summer breeze. As soon as she heard the nurse’s voice, Dicey felt better, as if things couldn’t be so bad after all. Preston’s voice didn’t match at all with her face or her mottled red hands. It would be soothing to hear her voice, Dicey thought. If you were sick.

  “And you must be the oldest girl, Dicey, wasn’t it?” Preston asked. Dicey looked up, and then looked down again. Her tongue was twisted in her mouth, but she couldn’t answer.

  “Just come with me then,” Preston said.

  It was a big room, where the light was tinged with yellow from the yellow shades halfway down over the windows. After the nurses’ desk, with a counter and a phone, with cabinets filled with bottles, the room was filled with beds in rows. Each bed was surrounded on three sides by curtains.

  Some of the beds had people lying flat in them. Some had people drawn up, knees drawn up, hands drawn up around knees, bodies drawn up back against the headboards. One of the figures, which Dicey saw out of the corner of her eye as they walked past, was so small she couldn’t help staring at it. It was a kid, a little kid about as big as Sammy. The little figure curled back against the pillows, staring blankly ahead. Dicey had never seen anybody so still, not even Sammy deep asleep.

  “Here we are,” Preston said. She stood aside.

  Gram went to one side of the bed. Dicey stood at the foot. Inside her, her heart was squeezed tight against her chest. She stood and stared. Her heart was squeezed so tight it broke into pieces, sharp pieces that cut against her lungs and throat and stomach.

  Momma.

  CHAPTER 10

  MOMMA LAY absolutely still, with her arms down beside her body. The veins along the back of her hands stood out blue. The sheets were pulled up over her chest. Her neck looked small, too small to ever have held up her round head. Her head lay back on the pillow, surrounded by an aureole of honey-colored hair. The bones in her cheeks and her forehead and along her jaw were covered by such thin skin that it looked like a pale veil fitted around her, not like skin at all. She lay still, absolutely still.