Come a Stranger (6 page)

Mina thought she knew what her mother meant. “I'm not upset,” she promised.

“I think I am,” her mother said. Mina's head jerked up and she just stared at her mother. “All these things put together, and I read too many history books to think that you can get away without putting things together, if you want to understand.”

“All what things?” Mina asked.

“These symphonies and things that you listen to. The way you've been blow-drying your hair, as bad as Belle about how you look. Practicing so much at Miss LaValle's—which, if you were going to be a professional ballerina, might make sense.”

“How do you know I won't?”

Her mother was not to be diverted. “Then Mrs. Parker asked me to come in for a meeting.”

“About my grades,” Mina decided.

“No, although we've been wondering.”

Her mother waited.

“Wondering about your grades,” she added, and then waited again. She was giving Mina a place to step in and explain, but Mina didn't want to.

“No, Mrs. Parker wanted to talk about your attitude. She says you're a debilitating influence. Those were her exact words. Do you know what that means?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“She says she doesn't mind a lively child—she's got three children of her own, she knows about children.”

“I didn't know that,” Mina said. “How old are they?”

“Don't you try to derail me, young lady,” her mother answered, and Mina laughed. “She says you act the wit. I did tell her that you've always had a good sense of humor.”

Mina grinned at her mother. “Thanks, Mom.”

“But she said that acting the class clown is different. And she's right.”

But, Mina thought, but it was different, but—

“And she says that you're directing your remarks only to a select audience. The white girls, as if . . .” Mina's mother didn't finish the sentence and Mina didn't feel like asking her what she almost said. “Mrs. Parker told us she was pleased and surprised when you asked in September if you could do book reports.”

“She was surprised, that's for sure.”

“But that you don't read the books she recommends. She says they're good books.”

Mina shrugged.

“And she asked me how you felt about all the growing you've been doing. If it worried you.”

Mina had gone back to sorting pictures, which would only take about one-quarter of her attention.

“I told her I was a nurse and we were pretty frank about puberty. She said it wasn't only that, she wondered if maybe you were ashamed about looking so mature. And I hadn't ever thought of that, which didn't please me too much, but she's right. She said someone like you, she'd expect bold colors, bright things.”

“They're loud,” Mina answered. “I can dress the way I want to, can't I? Just because I'm developing, and all that, doesn't mean I have to act like I'm trying to be Belle, does it? I can read what I want to too.” She thought her mother might really understand this, so she really tried to explain.
“You
read what you want to. Nobody says you shouldn't read something just because it's not about black people, do they? And how would you like it, if they did?”

Mina's mother just looked at her and looked at her. Mina thought, I should've kept my mouth shut.

“Does Mrs. Parker tell you to read about black people?”

Mina shrugged.

“What do you do?”

“I write it down, title and author, and then I go to the library and look for something I want to read. The thing is, Mom, except for slavery, nothing ever happened to black people. I like England,” Mina said, knowing it sounded disconnected. “They had the Middle Ages. And knights. And all. I don't think you can understand,” she said, hoping that when she said that her mother would prove that she
did
understand.

“Me, not understand? With all six of my children named what they are?” Her mother was angry, instead.

“Naming people after kings and queens isn't the same as understanding,” Mina said.

“I'll tell you who doesn't understand,” her mother said.

“Nobody does, that's who,” Mina said. She felt unhappiness start to block up her throat. “So let's just get this job done, all right?”

“Yes, maybe,” her mother said. Both of them went to work, and neither of them tried to speak, because, Mina thought, both of them knew there wasn't anything that could be said. She wondered, not for the first time, why God made some people black and some white. And why, if He did that, he made Mina one of the black ones. She knew there was no use to wondering about that, but she still wondered.

Mina worked her way through pictures, selecting those that had the family in them: Louis digging in the sand, Belle and three of her friends dressed up to go to a dance, CS at a picnic table. There was one of everybody who had been at home that summer, with her mother at the head of the line and then, from youngest to oldest, Louis, Belle, Zandor. “You didn't have much to do this summer, did you?” Mina asked, before she remembered that they had given up speaking for a while.

“It was easier, with only half of you around. I'll give you that. CS got home for some weekends.”

Mina came to a family picture of the summer minister, a portrait pose. The little children were on their parents' laps. It looked like a church occasion of some kind. The girl stood between her parents. Mina's eyes were drawn again to the woman, Alice. Her white button earrings matched her necklace, the sundress she wore made green folds over her knees, her legs were slim, crossed at the ankles: She was a pleasure to look at. Her face, and the expression on it . . . “She looks like she's crazy about him. Was she?”

“In her own way, I think so,” Mina's mother answered, looking across at the picture.

“Does he love her as much?” Mina hoped he did. It wouldn't be right if Alice wasn't loved back.

“I expect so. She's the kind of woman men idolize and spoil. You'll be able to date the pictures from the fall, so you take these while I do the summer ones. We didn't get any pictures from your camp, did we. I'd have liked one or two. I don't even know what it looks like.”

“Oh,” Mina said, “it's beautiful. It's up on a hill, and the buildings are stone and the grass stays green. It doesn't dry out like here; it's like, like a carpet. Lots of tall trees, really old trees.”

“I can't picture it.”

“I can. I can remember it perfectly. Everything about it.”

“Are
you thinking of a career in dance?”

“Why?”

“I'm interested, as you know very well. It's not an easy life.”

“All the competition?”

“That. And a lot of other things too. Look at Irene LaValle, look at her life. Your father's a little concerned, and so am I.”

“I don't want to be a nurse, Mom.”

“Neither did I. But I like my work fine. Let's get these into the album, so I can get to bed. I'm pretty nearly wiped out.”

Mina's mother peeled back the plastic sheet that covered the first page.

“Did you want to be something like a doctor?” Mina asked. She couldn't imagine her mother a doctor; it didn't seem right somehow.

“I thought about that, maybe once or twice altogether, but never seriously. My parents couldn't have afforded the schooling, and I wasn't smart enough to get a scholarship. I had a choice between nursing or teaching or social work; you can find positions
anywhere in those fields. Then, when I met Poppa, well, I just wanted to have my courses finished so that we could get married.”

She arranged four pictures on the page. Mina looked at them and nodded. Mina put the plastic cover back over the page and smoothed it down with her hand.

“Poppa never did live out of Crisfield, except when he went to school,” her mother said. “If I hadn't been there, I never would have met him. He's always wanted to live here.”

“I know,” Mina said.

“I think maybe that's why he's so—He never got his feet knocked out from under him. Being a service brat,” Mina's mother went on, “I kept getting my feet knocked out from under me. Every two or three years we'd move, every time we moved we had to get to know a whole new bunch of people. I always wondered if that's why Poppa seems so much surer of himself than other people.”

“I thought it was religion,” Mina said.

Her mother ignored her. “Almost everybody says you've changed. Miz Hunter too; but she says anybody worth his salt gets unsettled while they're growing up.” Mrs. Smiths smiled to herself. “I'm surely glad we have her around to talk sense.”

Mina realized that her father was the one mostly saying she'd changed.

“Helene Beaulieu said Kat thinks the summer turned you into a snob.”

Did she then? Mina thought. Did she just think that? “All they want to do is form clubs. All the clubs do is leave people out, because you know how Rachelle likes leaving people out.”

“And making sure the people know they're left out. I know how that is.”

“And—I'm just not interested in their stupid clubs.”

“Did they ask you to join?”

“Not really.”

“Why not?”

“I guess, they don't like me anymore.”

They weren't looking at each other, just arranging pictures on pages and setting them under the plastic covers, working pretty fast.

“Mina—you know they like you.”

“I guess. But—”

“But they don't know anything about you?”

Mina guessed that was about it. Mina guessed there was an awful lot her mother did understand. “At first, we started a reading club. To do book reports too. But—”

Mrs. Smiths waited, then asked, “But?”

“It was my club, really, it was my idea, and I started it and picked the people, with Kat.”

“So I guess you had an idea about how it would work.”

“Yeah.”

“And their ideas were different.”

“They said I was being bossy and showing off. But, Mom, didn't you ever think? There are all these myths about gods and goddesses, because the ancient Greeks believed in them, and the Romans, and all we ever had was Brer Rabbit. And the Ananse stories. And things like that. Even the Bible, we didn't write that. . . .” Mina's voice drifted off.

“I imagine only the Jews could write the Bible—the Old Testament.”

“What do you mean?”

“They're a minority too, Mina.”

But that wasn't what Mina meant, at all. Her mother yawned, turned over a page of the album and selected the next four pictures. They were Halloween pictures, Louis as a ghost, Belle as a
Spanish gypsy and Mina herself wearing a tutu Miss LaValle had loaned her and a little crown she had made herself out of wire and foil. She had made her regular dancing shoes look like toe shoes by winding silky ribbons up her legs. She told anybody who asked that she was Odette, but only Kat knew who that was. Looking at the picture, Mina realized that it didn't matter what name she had taken, she could have been about anybody from any of the stories, Giselle or Juliet or anybody. Not the Firebird, though. Next year, I'll try the Firebird, Mina thought to herself. If I'm still going out on Halloween.

“Poppa says he guesses you're just beginning to realize the realities; waking up, he says. He thinks you're too young.”

“You've been talking about me. You've been talking to everyone about me,” Mina complained.

“What do you expect? I love you, and I don't think you're particularly happy.”

“I'm fine, I'm just fine,” Mina protested. Except for wanting to be at camp, she was.

“You've been going around making things hard on yourself. You know you have, so don't try to deny it. A lot of people care about you, honey.”

Since that had nothing to do with anything, Mina wasn't going to bother denying it.

They worked quickly. Thanksgiving, with Eleanor and John and the babies, CS too, at home, then Christmas, four pictures to a page. It was like filling in the pages of the year, Mina thought.

“What do
you
think? Do you think I'm so different?” Mina asked, as she smoothed the plastic sheet over the last pictures. She didn't know if she wanted her mother to understand or not.

“I think it's puberty, if you want to know. All those hormones shooting around.” Mrs. Smiths chuckled. “But it's hard on you, and I respect that.” Her mother kissed Mina on the head, putting
her dirty cup in the sink to be washed with the breakfast dishes. “I'm going upstairs. I go on duty at six in the morning tomorrow.”

“Good-night, Mom,” Mina said. She watched her mother leave the room, a strong woman, with her broad back and her heavy legs. Her mother's strength—even when she was tired, like now—showed in every move her body made.

Mina folded the album closed, but didn't get up. She thought she was right not to tell anybody what was going on. How could you say to your own parents that you didn't feel at home with them?

Just about everything felt wrong to Mina—like underwear that didn't fit properly—just about every day—like a wrong-sized bra, something tight and uncomfortable underneath whatever you had on. The only thing that didn't feel wrong was choir singing, even though her voice was getting lower, even though she was changing there too. She was closer to an alto these days, which seemed to match all the filling out her frame had been doing. It wasn't fat though, it was muscle. You couldn't work the way Mina did every morning in her room and most afternoons at Miss LaValle's studio and be fat; dancing had never been such hard work before.

Mina sang softly, “Jacob's Ladder.” “We are climbing Jacob's ladder.” Inside her head, she added two harmony parts, a third above and a third below. She was beginning to think that there was something too show-offy about singing soprano anyway, singing solos, as if you were always trying to be the star of everything.