Come a Stranger Page 16

  Thinking of all that, Mina smiled to herself, and then laughed within herself: She guessed that dance camp was turning out to be good for something, if it was helping her to understand why what Mr. Shipp had told her troubled her so. She wished, for Mr. Shipp, that what lay at his secret heart was as good as what lay at her own secret heart. She wished there were such things as healing hands and that she had them and that she could lay them on Mr. Shipp, on this grief. She wondered about Samuel Tillerman.

  One September night, just before school started, she asked her parents. “Did you ever hear of anyone called Tillerman, any family around here?”

  “I don’t think,” her mother said. “Why? Is this somebody you’ve met?”

  “No,” Mina said.

  “There’s one I know of,” her father said. “She’s a widow, and I don’t think she has any children. She’s a strange one.” Her father was taking a week off again, a vacation with his family after the long summer.

  “Strange?” Mina asked him.

  “A hermit, or as near as makes no difference. She almost never comes out and the farm is going slowly to ruin. It was never much, but now it’s rundown. Neglected. She doesn’t have a car or anything. She keeps entirely to herself. Kind of wild-looking, she brings a boat into town maybe three times a year. You’ve probably never seen her, Raymonda.”

  “Is she the one who smashed the window at the phone company?” Minas mother asked. “Is she dangerous?”

  “Is she crazy?” Belle wanted to know.

  “I couldn’t say,” Poppa told them. “I’d hate to say, seeing as I don’t know anything about her. I expect she’s just terribly alone. Her people just—just let her be alone. Whatever made you ask, Mina?”

  “I heard the name,” Mina said, “and I wondered.” She guessed someone who was a widow could have had a son. But she couldn’t think of anything to be learned by trying to talk to some crazy old white hermit lady.

  “I don’t understand how her people can just leave her alone like that,” Poppa said.

  “When I get to be a crazy old lady,” Momma said, “I expect you all to take good care of me.”

  “Then you better not get too crazy,” Belle answered. “I don’t want to have to explain to my children that their old granny is a nut case.”

  “I’ll take care of you, Momma,” Louis promised.

  “Why should you get crazy?” Mina asked.

  “For one thing, if I do, then I can do all the things I’ve wanted to, and nobody will make me feel guilty. I can sit around and eat chocolate bars and read until my eyes pop. I can—oh—say what I think the way I think it and nobody’ll take me seriously enough to give your father grief about his nasty wife. Life might be a lot easier.”

  “Then who’ll take care of me?” Poppa asked.

  “I will,” Momma told him. “For you I won’t be crazy. Or maybe you won’t know the difference.”

  “I’m glad to know that the perils of our old age together are so well planned.” Poppa laughed.

  “It’s the perils of this coming year I’m having trouble with. If Zandor loses his scholarship—”

  “That’ll be his own fault. For playing around so much,” Belle said.

  “That’s no consolation,” Momma answered. “I don’t know where we’d get the money to make up the difference.”

  “If Zandor does let his grades slip and loses the scholarship,” Poppa announced, “he will have to make up the difference himself. But I doubt he will. He’s a quick student, even if he’s not dedicated.”

  “Besides, he can work, he got himself a job for the summer, so he must be serious about getting through college,” Mina reminded her parents. Like CS, Zandor found summer work up near school, where pay was better.

  “Admit it. Aren’t you glad now you’ve got one child who doesn’t want to go to college?” Belle asked.

  “You know, I’m not sure I am,” Poppa said.

  “It’s up to her, Amos,” Momma repeated her old argument. “I can see why Belle would rather do a secretarial course and work in Washington, or some large city. Crisfield doesn’t have that much to offer by way of marriageable young men.”

  “Mother!” Belle protested. “You act like all I think about is getting married.”

  “Why shouldn’t you?” her mother asked. “You’ll do a good job of it and you’ll like it. As long as you’ve taken some training, you’ll have skills should you need employment.”

  “You make me sound like . . . like Alice,” Belle muttered. “With that equivalency test.”

  “Oh no,” Momma said quickly. “Alice is ever so much prettier.”

  “You don’t ever take me seriously,” Belle said. But Mina was already laughing, and Mina’s laughter carried the day.

  Momma was genuinely worried about money. She didn’t know where Louis’s new school clothes were going to come from, and she kept looking worriedly at Mina, who at least seemed to have stopped shooting up and out. “Maybe you’ve done all your growing,” Momma said.

  “I don’t mind not having new clothes,” Mina told her. She didn’t either. Her old clothes were just fine. Denim never went out of style. “Mine still fit.” There was that hollow feeling these days, since the Shipps had packed up and driven north again. She’d get used to it, she knew, but it felt pretty hollow and bad, for now.

  “You aren’t nervous about starting the high school?” her mother asked.

  “No,” Mina said. “Besides, it’s really only eighth grade and—I don’t expect any trouble.” She didn’t know what she expected, except to get top grades. She only knew that she didn’t plan to sit quiet. She planned to enjoy herself, somehow, as she waited through the school year until next summer arrived. She figured that her position in the class was a sure thing, even with new people coming in from the other elementary school. It wasn’t, she hoped, that she was conceited or overconfident; she just knew herself. She recognized that most people didn’t have her amount of personality. That’s what they meant when they said t-rou-ble.

  Mina was even looking forward to school. She’d talked some to Alice about the questions in the practice test booklet, and that had gotten her going. There was a lot she didn’t know, and it was about time she started learning it. Mina was also looking forward to getting back in with her friends, finding out what they’d done over the summer, who was going with whom, who’d gotten up to what with whom. On the first morning, she sat down in a desk in homeroom with her new notebook in front of her and thought how funny it was that CS was a senior in college and she was just beginning high school. She was one of the first people in the room, before even the teacher. She watched people drift in.

  Kat and Rachelle and Sabrina all sashayed in together, looking all brand new, shoes, skirts, and blouses. They sat with Mina, making a little cluster of conversation. “You sure do look fine,” Mina said. She was wearing one of Zandor’s outgrown cotton shirts and a denim jumper that had worn down to a soft, bleached-out blue. “What did you do to your hair?” she asked Kat, whose head looked like something from one of Alice’s magazines, short in the front and brushed back sleek into a kind of tumble of long curls down the back.

  “It’s a permanent. Isn’t it neat?” Kat turned her head so Mina could admire it.

  “Not neat, terrific looking,” Mina said. Kat just got prettier and prettier. It was a pleasure to look at Kat.

  “I’m going to make my mother let me have one,” Sabrina said. “Rachelle’s half asleep after a heavy date, right ’Chelle?”

  Rachelle just smiled, as if she had a big secret.

  Mina felt so good, she felt like laughing. Instead, she started out talking, not bothering to keep her voice down. “I’ve got it figured out,” she said, talking to her three best friends and anybody else who might care to be listening, ignoring the teacher at the front of the room, in her blue suit with an ironed blouse and a little pin on her lapel. “I’m going to sit up front, right about here, in every class. By the door.”


  “Why?” Sabrina asked.

  “If you sit up front, they think you’re really interested, so they assume you must be a good student, so they expect you to get good grades, so that’s what they give you. And you can get out quickly when the bell rings, that’s two. And, you can sort of angle around in your seat,” Mina demonstrated, “and watch everything that’s going on, without looking like you’re not paying attention. In fact, they take that to mean that you’re really interested. How do you think I get my A’s?”

  Everybody around was listening. She could hear that. “Hey, Mina,” people from her old school greeted her. “Where you been?” She smiled and waved and greeted them back. “Hey, how was your summer?”

  The homeroom teachers name was Miss Eversleigh. She was pale, washed-out looking, with her washed-out-looking suit and her plain pumps, and her washed-out-looking hair held away from her face with combs, and her washed-out fish-belly face. She held her thin body straight and wouldn’t say a thing until everybody was absolutely silent. Mina had her figured in less than a minute: a female Mr. Bryce. She had a flat, fish-belly voice.

  They were having a long homeroom, Miss Eversleigh told them. There were four forms to fill out—one card for the school office, one for the counselor, one for the PE department, and their class schedules, of which they needed to make four copies from the master she would give them, one for the office, one for the counselor, one for the PE department and one for themselves. The master schedule, she pointed out in her flat voice, was her own copy, one she had made herself.

  Mina looked up at that. There were about—she counted—thirty-eight kids in this homeroom. That was an awful lot of extra work for a teacher. She was sorry for Miss Eversleigh if she didn’t have anything more interesting to do with her time than fill out those thirty-eight schedules.

  They were supposed to do the schedules first, step by step. Miss Eversleigh told them what to put on each line at the top and in each box for the periods of the school day. They were supposed to all work together.

  Mina went on ahead and filled her schedule out, then made three more copies. The rest of the class was on sixth period Tuesday when she finished her last copy, so she went on ahead to fill out the two student information cards. Name and address, parents’ occupation, previous school, religious affiliation. There was a place for sex, circle M or F. There was a place for race, circle W or B or Other (specify). Mischief rose up in Mina. She thought of filling in Other, specifically colored. Or maybe specifically homo sapiens. She wondered if they’d notice if she inserted Other (specify) under sex. When they asked her to say if she planned on going to college, she thought of asking them back how she was supposed to know at her age. There was a final blank, Track Level. Mina couldn’t figure that out, so she shuffled her papers until she came to her schedule. Track Level A, she saw, and filled that in. She hoped it meant what she thought it meant. She figured this homeroom was operating at about Track Level Z.

  Thinking that made her chuckle. Chuckling brought Miss Eversleigh, who was going up and down the aisles checking, to Mina’s desk. “Now,” Miss Eversleigh said, “once again fill in your lunch period.” Her pasty white hands came down on Mina’s papers.

  Mina watched the teachers face as she looked the papers over. Mina expected a lecture, and she hoped it wouldn’t be a long one. She knew she deserved a little trouble, because Miss Eversleigh had been pretty specific about not going ahead.

  But the pale eyes just studied her for a minute. “You’ll stay quiet,” Miss Eversleigh said.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Mina answered, giving her word. She thought that was fair enough. She settled back to think, not looking around her at all.

  In the limited time she had, Mina let her mind dwell on Mr. Shipp. Her memory settled on that day there were just them at the creek, and she played it back slowly to herself, from the minute she felt his towel drop beside her. She could almost see Bullet. He’d have bright blond hair and blue eyes, a strong build; her imagination couldn’t make him run. Mostly she heard Tamer Shipp’s bassoon voice. She heard that voice playing over her different feelings like wind playing through the leaves of a tree. For a minute, she wished, she really wished—

  The bell rang, and they handed in their cards and filed out into the hall. Mina had signed up for tennis, she wasn’t exactly sure why since she’d never played it and didn’t have a racquet. But she’d heard of Arthur Ashe and Yvonne Goolagong. After this first day, she’d start each day off with tennis. Then she’d have classes, Math, Science, Social Studies, English and Home Ec. All the girls had to take Home Ec, no matter what your track level was. All the boys had to take Mechanical Drawing. These were minors, half as important as the major courses, Miss Eversleigh had told them. Miss Eversleigh was the Home Ec teacher. Mina wondered how she’d do in Home Ec, because she already knew an awful lot about it, from her life.

  As the first morning crept by, and she filled in sign-up sheets for textbooks and heard what they’d be doing all year, she noticed that people in this school stuck together pretty close. There were also more white people than black, because the other elementary school was kids from the other side of town. They were better dressed, a lot of the girls, and most wore makeup. Boys wore jeans, whoever they were. Most girls wore skirts, but some wore jeans.

  People stuck with their friends in classes, Mina noted, settling down at a high table in Science, watching how the white kids all gathered together, even pulling an extra stool over if there was somebody extra. She guessed she was really in a minority now, although—she counted heads while the teacher called out roll—she didn’t see how you could be that much of a minority if—the teacher called, “Wilhemina Smiths,” and she answered, “Here”—you numbered a third of the total. “Tillerman,” she heard the teacher call out.

  Mina stared at him, registering the name too late to turn and see what voice from the back answered, “Here.” She swung her head around, scanning the faces. The trouble was, they looked so alike, whites. They all had these bones on their faces that looked like they’d break with one good slug. Well, not all, but most. They all sat so joined together, except for the sullen looking kid in a T-shirt. Mina looked at the boys in the class, trying to match up one of the faces to the story Mr. Shipp had told. That was pretty stupid, since the young man was long dead. She thought she’d pay more attention to roll call from here on. This was a Track Level A course, so he might be in English. If not, she’d know tomorrow, during Science.

  Mina watched people settle into desks for English, while the teacher humped and bobbled around behind his desk, with his bright red hair sticking up and his face pretending that the paper-shuffling was Important. There were some whites she recognized from earlier classes, and that sullen kid again, a girl. Mina had no trouble remembering her because she wore cut-offs—about the only person in the whole school in them—and she looked so poor, with her sneakers that should have been thrown out about seven years ago. The girl kept her eyes on her desk, sitting alone at the rear of the room. Mina felt sort of sorry for her. She didn’t know anyone and she looked, from her face, as if she was probably in the wrong track level. She looked half asleep, or as if her mind was permanently elsewhere.

  Mr. Chappelle called roll slowly. This was a trick some teachers had, if all they wanted to do on the first day was hand out textbooks and thus get one more day of vacation time for themselves. He went creeping through the alphabet, asking questions about nicknames, making slow notes on his roll book, killing time. Mina had trouble sitting still it was so boring.

  “Wilhemina Smiths?” he asked, looking over at the blacks as if he already knew she’d be there.

  “Here.” She raised her hand.

  “Are you Isabelle’s sister?”

  Mina nodded, wondering if he thought she was going to be like Belle. If so, he had a couple of things to learn.

  “And Alexander’s?”

  “Yes.” He must have been teaching for a while.

  “I’ve been tea
ching for a while in this school,” Mr. Chappelle said, and Mina had to stop herself from laughing out loud. He was saying that to show off to the rest of the class. “Moreover, Reverend Smiths is a distinguished member of our community,” he said, with a smile for Mina.

  Thanks a lot, she thought to herself, hearing the muttering among the kids she didn’t know. She didn’t want them to get the wrong ideas about her, to get off on the wrong foot with her, all these people. “Don’t hold that against me,” she said to Mr. Chappelle, smiling broadly at him so he wouldn’t take her for fresh.

  A few people chuckled. He hesitated, before going on in his roll call.

  “Steven Stevens—I guess your parents like that name,” he called out. Mina waited through this last S and a Terrence and wasn’t surprised when he called, “Dicey Tillerman.”

  The kid in cut-offs raised her hand. Dicey? Mina thought. Bullet? What kind of names did these people have. If they were even related, she reminded herself.

  “I don’t know anything about you,” Mr. Chappelle said.

  Everybody turned around, staring. Mina waited to hear the answer.

  Dicey Tillerman thought at first she wasn’t going to have to answer. Then, she saw that he was going to make her answer, and her eyes snapped angry. She was scrawny, but no mouse, Mina decided.

  “I’m new to town,” she said.

  “Would you like to tell us about yourself?” Mr. Chappelle asked, looking at the clock to see how much more time he had to kill.

  The girl’s chin went up. “No,” Dicey Tillerman said.

  Mina grinned. She thought she might like to know more about this Dicey Tillerman, whether she turned out to be one of Tamer Shipp’s Tillermans or not.