Come a Stranger (2 page)

“You tell them later about it. For a while now, I'd like it to be just our secret.”

“You can't keep any secrets,” Kat teased.

“For a while I can. Then”—Mina laughed—“they just bust out. So don't wait too long.”

She thought that Mr. and Mrs. Beaulieu would probably be disappointed for Kat. She thought that they'd rather get to be disappointed together, in the family, without having to cover it over with their good manners for Mina's sake. Mr. Beaulieu had a good job with the state health department, but they couldn't afford to send Kat to dance camp on their own.

“There'll be nothing to do, with you gone all summer,” Kat realized. “Just dumb old Rachelle and Sabrina.”

“They're not so bad.”

“But they're not like you.”

Mina couldn't argue with that. “I'm gonna tell my momma to
put all my babysitting jobs over to you. You've got to save up that money. So next summer, we can both go. Remember? Miss LaValle said they usually figure to give the scholarship three summers running.”

“I can't earn that much money.”

“If you save it, you can. Or maybe near enough.”

“Oh, Mina.” Kat smiled at Mina's reflected face, happy enough again. “There's nothing slows you down, is there?”

“Not if I can help it.” Mina smiled back. She saw Kat's face catch some of her enthusiasm and confidence. “Best friends?” Mina asked.

“Best friends,” Kat answered. They linked arms and went on downstairs.

*   *   *

Mina opened her mouth and sang. The melody flowed out like . . . She didn't know what it sounded like to everybody else, but it sounded like silver to her, her voice flying up above the rest of the choir; it sounded like a silver bird rising, gliding along, falling down and then soaring up.

They were all, all twenty-three of them, swaying gently with the hymn. “Where shall I be when the first trumpet sounds,” she sang, they all sang together, women and girls, all in heavy black robes with starched white collars, sopranos and altos. “When it sounds so loud till it wake up the dead,” Mina sang, singing out.

She could see Kat out of the corner of her eye, four robes down the line from her. For a second Mina thought about switching her swaying, pushing back against the shoulder to her right, and the way the whole line would start banging around against each other. That would give Kat the giggles. But she looked out at the congregation and saw her momma sitting in the front row, with both eyes fixed on Mina's face. Sometimes, Mina could swear her mother could read her mind. Momma's right eyebrow
went up and Mina wiped the mischief off her face. And sang, hearing how her voice blended in, up above everybody else: “Where shall I be when it sounds.”

When they had sat down again, and the people had rustled themselves into attention, Poppa stood up. He didn't wear a robe, just a dark suit with a shirt so white it could have been new snow. He went up to the lectern that had been set up for the readings and the sermon.

Poppa's little church didn't have a fancy altar, just a heavy wooden table with a fresh cloth on it on which the ladies had embroidered words and pictures. A silver cross stood up on top of that. They didn't have proper choir stalls, nor pews, except for half a dozen somebody had picked up at a flea market sale in Cambridge. Mina had been in a lot of churches in her day, between church-going and choir-singing, so she knew what Poppa's church didn't have. The windows were plain glass, the outside was plain wood, painted white, and the little short steeple that rose up above the steep roof had no bell to ring. What happened was, whenever they were having a drive, saving up money for something particular, like more pews so the whole room could be filled with them and not be part pews and mostly folding chairs, something always came up. There would always be some family that needed the help, or some one person in some kind of need. The deacons would empty the church pockets to help out. Like Miz Hunter, when the church took a mortgage on the little house she lived in and rented it to her for what she could afford. Nobody minded that, and nobody seemed to miss the fancy touches. Mina didn't. She liked the way the generous May sunlight poured in through the plain glass windows.

Poppa said he was pretty sure God didn't mind, because he was pretty sure God's mansion was about seventy-seven times as grand as the biggest cathedral in the biggest city in the world.
Rome was Mina's guess, but Momma had said she'd favor something in the Gothic style, with spires and arches, with steeples rising up high as man's hopes. Nobody argued with her, because Momma did a lot of reading and generally knew what she was talking about. Nursing was her vocation, she said, and her family was her life, and Poppa was her dearly beloved; but history was her passion, she always ended up saying that. Poppa always answered he'd rather be her passion, but Momma answered that she didn't think history could make much showing as a dearly beloved, so she thought she had things pretty straight. And Poppa laughed.

Mina studied her father as he opened the pages of his sermon. He was a big man, with a strong face and dark eyes that had a way of answering to what they were seeing. He had a big, quiet voice that carried through the whole church. Oh, Mina thought, with a swelling of her heart, oh, she loved her poppa. Oh, she was proud of him.

“‘Now the word of the Lord came unto Jonah,'” Poppa read. He always started a sermon with a text. “‘Saying, Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it.'” He looked up then, and all around at the people.

“I always wondered how Jonah had the heart to say no to the Lord. Did you ever wonder about that? I always did. I thought I'd have tipped my hat and said yessir so fast He'd have wondered if I truly heard Him. I would have been too frightened to do anything else. But when I study the situation, I think I can understand where Jonah's courage came from. I think it must have been the courage that comes from fear.

“What was there for Jonah to be afraid of? What could wind a man's heart around more than the voice of God speaking into his ear? Think of Jonah, think of him caught there between his two fears. What was that other fear, I ask myself.

“My guess is he was afraid to go into Nineveh. Like any man living, Jonah was afraid to go out and live among strangers. Do you blame him?”

Poppa waited, just half a minute, watching the heads shaking no, to be sure they'd got his idea down clearly.

“Strangers are a fearful people, now as then,” Poppa said.

Mina folded her hands in her lap and listened.

A
ll the windows were open and Mrs. Landseer was keeping a close eye on the storm clouds blowing along on a gusty wind. The wind blew the air in the classroom cool. Sooner or later, Mina knew, would come the cold edge that meant that the storm was imminent. She hoped it would hold off until after lunch recess. No, she didn't; she hoped it would hold off until the middle of lunch recess. She wanted to be outside when the storm came, to see it pull at the branches of the trees, feel the wind whip around her body, and hear the long roll of thunder. She wanted to see lightning bolts, at least one, rip down through the dark sky and feel the shiver of fear go along her bones. She wanted the hard slanting rain to soak her, before she ran back into the building. Mina loved storms. Crisfield didn't get much by way of winter storms, but you could count on thunderstorms, all summer long. Kat couldn't understand it, not even when Mina dragged her over to stand at a window and watch. “It's so big,” Mina would say, “it's just so—big,” as a storm fought its way across the sky.

This was the season of lasts: last science experiment, last spelling list, last math chapter, last assembly. It was the last all-school assembly they were rehearsing for now. The fifth grade was giving plays. This was their last rehearsal before the performance tomorrow morning. And then, after another week, it would be
the last weekend, then the last Monday, last Tuesday. Excitement was building up. Mina had already begun on her firsts for the summer. The first dinner eaten on the porch, while the long day stretched out like the bars of golden light falling across the yard. She might miss the first fireflies this year, because she would be at ballet camp, for the first time in her life.

She brought her attention back to the rehearsal. They had three short plays to perform. The biggest cast, twelve of them, had the first play, and Mina had helped out by arranging things and writing it down, so everybody knew where they were supposed to stand and how they were supposed to look. It was a pretty dumb story, Mina thought, about villagers learning how to share a magic pot that never ran out of stew. It started to get disorganized whenever the soldiers of the king (who wanted to take the pot away from the villagers) came onto the stage. She watched the soldiers enter, watched Bruce especially. He was prodding Jason and Jake with his wooden sword, getting them out of the straight lines soldiers stood in. Mina stood up at her desk. “Bruce Billings,” she called out. “If you know what's good for you you'll cut that out right now.” He stuck his tongue out at her and rolled his eyes toward the ceiling to show how bossy she was, but he cut it out.

The next play was all boys, four of them, doing a take-off on Mr. Rogers. Mina watched John Cooper carefully, because he had asked her how to act when he was playing Mr. Rogers, and she wanted to be sure he did things right, like the way he messed up tying his shoes. John had written the play too, and it wasn't bad at all, Mina thought. She smiled at him when they were finished, to let him know she thought he'd done okay. The rest of the boys, Mr. Speedy Delivery and King Friday and Handyman Negri, would ham it up too much, but John didn't care so much about them, so—except for a few suggestions to them—Mina kept her mouth shut. John was just a perfectionist for himself.

In Mina's play, Snow White, she played the wicked queen. She came dancing onstage, because Kat—who had chosen it and was directing it and had made up the script—and all the rest too, agreed it looked good. Mrs. Landseer stopped things when Mina did that. “Why are you dancing?”

“Because,” Mina said. It was strange to dance without any music. “It's to make the queen look different, because she's got magic.”

“Kat, was this your idea?” Mrs. Landseer asked. Kat was over by the classroom door, ready to be Snow White.

“Well,” Kat said, looking from Mina to Mrs. Landseer.

“I thought so. This was your own idea, wasn't it, Mina?”

“Everybody said it was good.”

“I'll bet they did,” Mrs. Landseer said. “I'll just bet they did.”

Mina knew what Mrs. Landseer meant to be saying, and she knew that Mrs. Landseer didn't really mind. “You are t-rou-ble,” that was what Mrs. Landseer said to Mina, all year long. Sometimes she said it to stop whatever mischief Mina was up to. Sometimes she said it to tease her, and let Mina know she was watching her. Sometimes she said it as if she thought Mina was funny. This was one of the funny times.

“It won't do,” Mrs. Landseer said now. “Wilhemina Smiths, you go have a little talk with your director and do what she tells you to do.”

“Yes, ma'am,” Mina said. She knew what Kat wanted her to do, because Kat had sort of suggested it quietly a couple of times. She wanted Mina to come on with big, dangerous, sneaky steps. Mina walked over to Kat that way, crossing the stage section of the classroom, and Kat giggled. “That's right,” Kat said. “Thank you, Mina.”

“And no more of this
Queen for a Day
act from you,” Mrs. Landseer added.

Mina just grinned at her. She'd try.

The air in the classroom turned cold, chilly as October, and Mrs. Landseer ran for the windows. Mina ran too, and hesitated just a few seconds—listening to the sky growl in the distance, watching the way the leaves clutched at the branches of the trees, smelling cold rain in the wind—before she reached up and slammed down the window.

*   *   *

The way things were, the Smiths family had to work together, the whole family, figuring out where the money was going to come from, how it ought to be used. Poppa was a full-time minister; part of his salary came from the church, which spread out over a lot of states, and part from his own congregation; but it wasn't much money. Momma had a job at the hospital, because she'd become a nurse before she married, so that helped and it gave them all medical insurance too. The house they lived in belonged to the church. Living there was part of Poppa's pay. Taking good care of the house, the church and Miz Hunter's house was part of Poppa's job. Everything worked out. They worked everything out together.

So Mina's summer at ballet camp got worked out by the whole family. Mina's oldest sister, Eleanor, married to a man who worked for the electric company up in Cleveland, Ohio, with two little children already, sewed up some skirts and blouses and dresses from patterns Momma sent her. Charles Stuart—“CS”—was at college, a sophomore, so he couldn't help out much, but he sent down some material he'd copied at the library there about the campus where the camp was being held and the city where the college was. Mina spent saved-up allowance money for enough tights, and Zandor bought her one new pair of dance shoes. After the football season ended, he always got a job bagging groceries, so he had the extra money. “But I'm not buying
you any toe shoes,” he told her, standing as tall and broad as Poppa. “Those things are ex-pensive.”

“If you expect me to hire you as my manager when I'm famous, you ought to be making sure I feel grateful to you now, while I'm just learning.”

“Oh-ho, Miss Big Future,” Zandor said.

Belle complained and started to get thirteen-year-old sulks, until Momma brought her up short with a, “No more of that, Isabelle.” And Louis—well, between planning ahead how awful it was going to be with Belle in charge of him and planning on missing Poppa as usual and wondering if Mina would bring him a present back from up north—Louis kept himself busy.