Come a Stranger (28 page)

“Not without asking Gram,” Dicey said, before Mina finished her sentence. “I keep forgetting—she says we decide things together, and she'd be angry if I went ahead, and she'd be right. I'm sorry, Mina, I'll ask her right now.”

Mrs. Tillerman didn't say anything when Dicey asked if she and Sammy could go to Mina's church. Mrs. Tillerman stayed crouched by a row of tomato plants, working the soil with a claw-fingered hand tool. Maybeth worked on quietly, and Mina studied the way her cheeks got dusted with a golden tan color. Every time she saw Maybeth, for some reason, Mina felt good about the whole world. It made no sense, which didn't bother her.

“Is it all right if we all come?” Mrs. Tillerman asked.

“Of course. I'd like that. I would have asked but I didn't want to impose.”

“I'll just bet you didn't,” Mrs. Tillerman said, knowing better.

Mina grinned.

“It's no imposition,” Mrs. Tillerman said.

“I know,” Mina answered back.

*   *   *

She was in the choir when they entered the church. They had all of them come: Mrs. Tillerman with her chin up high and an old-fashioned blue straw hat on her head, Dicey with Maybeth, both wearing denim jumpers, then James and Sammy. James looked around him, curious and alert. Mina smiled at them once they'd gotten themselves seated, about halfway up the aisle. Hearing the talk, Momma turned around once, briefly, then looked at Mina with an eyebrow raised, and then concentrated on worship.

When the service started, nobody talked anymore and only a few people kept staring at the Tillermans. They started off with a traditional hymn, “The son of man goes off to war, a golden crown to win.” Mr. Shipp and Mina's father were at the front of the church, facing the choir. Mina sang out her harmony line. She could hear Maybeth singing among the congregation and saw that the people around could hear it too. They liked what they heard, and they wanted to turn around, but they didn't. Mina watched. The bubbles in her stomach just bounced around and there was devilment all over her face that she couldn't keep hidden. This was, she thought, sitting down again, much better than standing around feeling dismal about the last time Mr. Shipp would speak a sermon in their church.

The church was filled with people who wanted to say goodbye and good luck to Mr. Shipp. Samuel sat next to Louis, looking serious, watching his father come up to read the text. Mina sat up, ready to listen, thinking that she couldn't hear a thing because her own thoughts were all tangled up and, deep under the dark surface of her, mixed together. She could barely wait for the moment when she introduced Sammy to Tamer Shipp. She wanted to slow down every second that was ticking past.

Mr. Shipp stood at the lectern and opened the book. He read from Isaiah, the Old Testament prophet, but he had a way of skipping back and forth in his mind between the Old and New Testaments, so Mina couldn't predict what his sermon would be about. He read the text like a poem: “The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light.” When he finished, he closed the Bible and looked up.

He couldn't help but notice the Tillermans then. Mina saw his eyes briefly on them, and his eyebrows went up. Nobody was staring. It would be bad manners to stare at people just because they were the only whites in the room. But everybody was so carefully not noticing, you could see how much they noticed.

He didn't talk for long, and he was talking about the Prince of Peace from Isaiah, but his idea was that the people at Jesus' time didn't want a prince of peace at all. “They wanted a prince for war, a hero who would scourge out the oppressors, a man invincible in battle with mighty armies to come behind him where he rode over the earth, burning the earth clean for God. But God sent them a man of peace, a man of sorrows, a man of righteousness, instead. I think, if we think about it, we can understand why the people wanted a man of war—their anger, the injustices of oppression, the sufferings they had lived with. We can understand the desire for a burning out of the oppressor. But”—Mr. Shipp changed the note-cards from which he was speaking—“I think we have also lived close enough to a war to glimpse God's purposes. How many of us still carry grief for our sons, our brothers, sweethearts and husbands, grief for friends forever lost,” he said in his bassoon voice. The congregation murmured agreement, and a few people called out, answering him with names. Mrs. Tillerman sat there with her face unreadable, but Dicey was
looking at her grandmother. “So God sent us a man of peace, knowing that what we wanted was not what we needed,” Mr. Shipp said.

After the service, Mina made the Tillermans wait, standing out under a tall pin oak, with its narrow leaves and its bark that twisted up along the trunk and branches. “He used to come down and minister for the summers,” she explained. “He's got a new job, so this is his last sermon. His name is Tamer Shipp,” she said. “His new job's at a college in Ohio. So everybody's saying good-bye. I want you to meet him,” she finished, not looking at anybody in particular.

“It was an interesting sermon,” Mrs. Tillerman said. She didn't say any more.

“I liked the singing. I'd like singing in your choir,” Maybeth told Mina.

Mina thought she was asking. “You can't, even though I'd sure like to sing in a choir with you.”

“I know, I'm the wrong color,” Maybeth explained.

Mina couldn't help it, she got a fit of the giggles. People were walking by, carefully not staring at the strangers as they went by, returning to their houses and their dinners. Mina's parents had come to be introduced and to ask the Tillermans back for lemonade. “I haven't seen you for an age,” Momma said to Sammy.

“I love lemonade,” Sammy told her. Mrs. Tillerman, as wary as Mina's father, watched all this, and every now and then her eye would come back to Mina, but she didn't ask any questions.

Finally, Tamer Shipp was free and Mina waved him over. Samuel trailed behind his father.

Mina took a deep breath. “Mr. Shipp,” she said. “I want you to meet some friends of mine.”

“I did notice you all, in there,” he said, laughter in his voice.

Mrs. Tillerman flashed one of her sudden smiles at that, a smile that flickered on and off across her face.

Then Mina didn't know what to say or how to say it. She felt so much, all at once, all she felt was big and clumsy. “Mrs. Abigail Tillerman,” she said, starting with the oldest.

“Mrs. Tillerman?” Mr. Shipp sounded surprised, but also not at all surprised as he checked carefully what he'd heard.

Mrs. Tillerman's chin went up and she met his glance, to meet whatever might make him ask that question, that way.

Mina hurried on. “And her grandchildren. Dicey”—they shook hands—“James, Maybeth and this is Sammy,” Mina concluded.

For a minute Mr. Shipp didn't say anything and then he did something that Mina—even though she hadn't known what she expected—would never have expected. He turned to Mina and wrapped his arms around her in a hug. He was so big that he lifted her off the ground. He turned her around in a circle, with her feet off the ground, and then he set her down and kissed her on the cheek and kept his arm around her shoulders. Mina's heart was beating so hard she thought she'd explode. “Oh, Mina Smiths,” he said, his voice low and rich, like a bassoon, as he said her name.

The Tillermans were just staring. Dicey knew something was up even if she didn't know what it was. Mina was terribly afraid her own face was giving away more truth than she wanted it to. She made a face at Dicey, feeling like a goop.

But Mr. Shipp had moved away to take Mrs. Tillerman's hand, not to shake it but to put it in both of his. He looked down into her face. He was trying to think of what to say. Mrs. Tillerman was waiting, but Mina could see she didn't know what to make of it.

“I admired your son,” he finally said.

“Bullet?” she said, asking a question.

He nodded.

“That wouldn't have been easy to do,” she said.

“Oh no, he didn't make it easy. But it was the most natural thing; you couldn't do anything else. I couldn't. I—I was on the track team with him—his last year, before he dropped out. He was—” Mr. Shipp couldn't finish that sentence, as if he'd come to the outer limits of his voice's range. “It's so good to meet you.”

Mrs. Tillerman didn't say anything, just stood there with her small hand in his two big ones, looking at him. While tears went down over her cheeks.

Mina wondered if she'd done something wrong, or unkind. Sammy moved over to stand in front of his grandmother and to glare up at Mr. Shipp.

“Gram?” Dicey asked, worried.

Mrs. Tillerman put one hand on Sammy's shoulder, without taking her hand away from Mr. Shipp. She nodded her head. She paid no attention to her own tears.

“I was so sorry,” Mr. Shipp said. “And angry too. I've wanted to say that to someone who'd understand.”

“Yes,” Mrs. Tillerman said. She took her hand back then and wiped her eyes. Her eyes were smiling. “I thought of him, when you spoke—”

“I thought of him, writing it—”

“I'm pleased to meet you, young man. These aren't his children.”

“I didn't think so,” Mr. Shipp said.

This wasn't going at all the way Mina had expected. He was giving his attention to Mrs. Tillerman, not Sammy. They were looking at each other, the older white woman and the grown
black man, as if they were the only adults there . . . Mina laughed then. Because they were, and because she had wrapped up this gift for Mr. Shipp, but he had taken something she hadn't even known she was putting in. Mina looked at Tamer Shipp, at the familiar planes and curves of his face: He was glad, the gift had gladdened him. That was what Mina had wanted, so she didn't mind at all that what he had taken was not exactly what she had given.

When they all moved around to her back porch, Dicey kept Mina back, while Mr. Shipp walked ahead with the others, telling Maybeth he heard her singing.

“What was all that about,” Dicey asked.

Mina, who was down to her last days with Tamer Shipp, said, “Tell you later.”

Dicey didn't press her. “Okay. But you're right about him, Mr. Shipp. He's really something.”

“I never said a word,” Mina protested.

“That's what I mean,” Dicey said.

As they drank lemonade, Mr. Shipp explained that he'd known Mrs. Tillerman's son years ago, and Mrs. Tillerman explained that Bullet had been killed in Vietnam, and Mina's mother shifted the conversation away from that to Mr. Shipp's new job. They sat at the long table on the back porch. It wasn't relaxed, but it was friendly enough.

“I've never been an assistant before,” Mr. Shipp said. “I'm not sure how I'll do being somebody's assistant. And the college has as—and I quote—‘its stated objective'—Why do they talk like that, Amos; haven't they ever read their Bible to learn good prose style? The objective is to improve relations between the different races. So they hired me—as a show and tell? You've got to look out for these liberal whites.” He chuckled. “They think
everybody's the same. They don't know the first thing about being hungry.”

“It'll be a nice life for Alice and the children,” Mina's mother said. “The schools should be good—you'll like school, Samuel. It'll be a small town. Lots of fresh air, trees and all that.”

“They might let me teach a course,” Mr. Shipp said. “Now
that
I'd be grateful for, a chance to try teaching.”

“People must always be looking up to you,” Mrs. Tillerman said, getting up to leave. She had sat pretty much silent, but listening. “That must be hard on you.”

“She's right,” Mina's father agreed, standing up to walk them around front. “You're absolutely right, Mrs. Tillerman.”

“Call me Ab,” she said.

“I've never thought about it from that angle,” Mina's father said.

Dicey waved briefly to Mina, leaving last because she wanted to say she was glad to meet Mina's mother. When they'd gone, Mr. Shipp turned to stare at Mina across the table, and she couldn't guess what he was thinking.

But Momma wasn't satisfied, and she wanted to hear more. “It's a long story,” Mr. Shipp warned her as Mina's father came back onto the porch to pour himself another glass of lemonade.

“With a happy ending,” Momma said.

“No,” Mina said and Mr. Shipp said, “No,” at the same time.

“A happy ending isn't possible, Raymonda, but it's an ending that makes peace with a long grief, and that's something. You remember the sixties, don't you?” He moved down to sit beside Mina's mother.

Mina's father sat down next to her. He picked up her hand and held it. “That little girl.”

“That's Maybeth,” Louis said.

“We like Maybeth,” Mina interrupted, so that her father wouldn't get too nosy about Louis.

“What a voice she has. Could you hear her where you were sitting?”

“I've heard her before too.”

“You know, it's a real pity . . . I know she couldn't join the choir, but—”

“I agree, Dad,” Mina said. “So you've decided they're all right, after all.”

“It's not an easy life for anybody, is it?” he answered her.

“I dunno,” Mina joked. “I think I've got it pretty good. If you asked me.”

A
lmost two years after she had last seen Tamer Shipp, Mina sat with Dicey in the crowded auditorium, watching Jeff's graduation. Ordinarily, underclassmen weren't invited, so they were two of just a few sophomores there, among families and faculty and anyone who played on the varsity teams with the graduating seniors. Kat was there, somewhere too, with her boyfriend's family. Kat always had a boyfriend, a steady boyfriend, but she didn't change her mind about wanting to be a model. Now, however, she said she wanted at least a year of college, to be sure about her choice. She had modeled some clothes for a big mail-order catalogue, hard work, Kat said, but it was a beginning. Kat didn't want to know Dicey and Dicey had no time for Kat, but Mina was friends with them both. When Mina was with them both, they all three got along fine.