Dicey's Song (2 page)

“Really?” Millie smiled at this. “Did she really?” Dicey nodded, it was the truth. “Ab always was smart and quick. You know, we all — all of us in school — hankered after John Tillerman. He was so handsome and dignified, you know?” Dicey nodded, even though she didn't know. “But it was Ab he courted. There were some tears shed over that, I can tell you.” Millie nodded her big head wisely.

Dicey didn't know how to get the conversation back on the track she wanted. “Gram says your husband taught you how to be a butcher.”

“When we got married, that's right. I wasn't so fat then,” she said. “We never did have any children.” She relapsed into silence.

“If I worked here,” Dicey said finally, “there's lots I could do.”

“Aren't you supposed to be in school?”

“I mean, maybe after school for an hour, maybe Saturdays in the mornings.”

“That wouldn't be very long. So it wouldn't cost me very much. I'd like the company,” Millie said. “How much were you thinking of me paying?”

“A dollar an hour,” Dicey said. She was under age, so she couldn't charge much.

Millie thought about this, her fat sausage-shaped fingers working on the countertop.

“I thought, if I worked four days a week after school, and then three hours on Saturday,” Dicey said.

The fingers moved. “That would be seven dollars a week,” Millie announced. Dicey nodded. She figured, with seven dollars, she could give each of the little kids an allowance of a dollar a week and the rest to Gram. Except — now she changed that plan — she'd give herself an allowance too. They'd never had allowances. Momma never had any extra money at all to be able to count on to give them. So when they wanted paper or pencils for school, or shoelaces, they had to ask her, and her face got all worried until she figured out where to find the extra money.

“I don't know,” Millie said.

“We could try it,” Dicey offered. “I could work for three weeks on trial. Then, if your business wasn't getting better, you could fire me.”

“I never fired anybody, I don't know how,” Millie objected.

“You see,” Dicey spoke urgently, “my theory is that your business will get better, and so instead of costing you money, I'd be making you money.”

“Do you think so?” Millie asked.

Dicey bit her lip and nodded. This was like talking to a bowl of Jello. Everything you said slipped in and jiggled the Jello, but it didn't make any dents.

“So you think it might work out that way?”

Dicey nodded. Like a bowl of strawberry Jello, her least favorite kind.

“Then maybe I should.”

“I'll start on Monday,” Dicey said quickly. “I'll come in after school on Monday, so that'll be about three fifteen I'll be here.”

“All right,” Millie said.

Dicey left before the woman could change her mind. Maybe it would work, maybe it wouldn't; her guess was that it would. In any case, she had the next three weeks taken care of. She was satisfied, she thought, riding seven miles back over flat, curving roads to her grandmother's house. To our house, she corrected herself. But when she said
our house
she couldn't help thinking about the cabin in Provincetown, up against the windy dunes; even though she knew that wasn't their house any more.

At dinner, she told everyone about her job. She looked mostly at Gram while she was telling, and thought the woman approved. “But aren't you under age?” Gram asked her.

“Yes, but Millie didn't seem to mind. She didn't even ask,” Dicey said.

“That's because she never had a thought in her head that somebody else didn't put there for her,” Gram said.

“You mean she's stupid?” Sammy asked. He shoveled spaghetti into his mouth in long strands, because he was too hungry to practice winding it on a fork. He had spaghetti sauce all over his face.

“You might say that,” Gram agreed. “What about school?” she asked Dicey.

“School's easy,” Dicey told her. “I won't have any trouble in school.” At least, she wouldn't have any trouble passing, unless it got so bad in the stupid home ec course they made her sign up for that she started cutting classes. “I thought” — she looked at James's admiring face, and Sammy's spaghetti decorated one, and Maybeth's quiet one — “we should have allowances. A dollar a week,” she announced, pleased with herself.

“Even me?” Sammy demanded.

“Even you,” Dicey agreed.

“Good-o,” Sammy said. “Even Gram?”

Dicey met her grandmother's eyes. She couldn't tell, from the expressionless face, whether Gram was amused, or angry, or insulted. “Gram too, but Gram gets more. It's only seven dollars a week, all together,” she apologized. “That would be only three dollars a week. And if her business doesn't get better, after three weeks I'll have to find something else.”

“You could get some shoes,” Sammy told his grandmother. “You need to wear shoes when the weather gets cold.”

Gram's expression resolved itself into amusement.

“Well, you do,” Sammy pressed on. Gram always wore bare feet, unless she was going into town, bare feet and a long skirt, with a blouse loose over it. She wore her clothes for comfort, she told the children.

“I have shoes I wear in cold weather,” she told Sammy. “How do you think I lived so long? Not by going barefoot in cold weather.”

“I didn't know that,” Sammy complained. “How could I know? I thought it was a good idea.”

“It was,” Dicey assured him. “So it's all right?” she asked her grandmother.

“If you've made the arrangements, it'll have to be,” Gram said. “But I always thought, if you were a family, you talked over your plans first.”

“And got permission,” James reminded Dicey.

“Not permission,” Gram said, “just to check in.”

Dicey bit back anger. She thought, she said to herself, she was doing something pretty smart and to help out too. Nobody said thank you, or anything.

“I'm proud of Dicey,” Maybeth said softly.

“Oh, so am I,” Gram said. “I think Dicey knows that. You get things done, girl, I've got to give you that.”

“So do I,” Sammy said.

“It's what Tillermans do,” Dicey said, feeling better.

“And I had something to talk over too,” Gram told them. “I've got an appointment down town next week, about getting welfare money”she said, as if the words tasted bitter. Then she added, “I thought I might as well talk to a lawyer and get advice and ask about adoption. If that's what you want.”

“But what about Momma?” Sammy asked.

“Momma's sick, you know that,” Dicey said quickly. “She can't take care of us. She might get better, and she might not.”

“The doctors think she won't,” James added.

Sammy had stopped eating. “Because she's crazy sick?” he asked.

Dicey nodded.

“But how does she eat?” he demanded. “If she doesn't eat she'll die.”

Dicey looked helplessly at her grandmother. “They have ways of feeding people, with tubes and special liquids,” Gram said. You could see Sammy thinking about this.

“But if you adopted us and Momma came back —” he said to Gram.

“Then we would put you and James into one bedroom, and your Momma would sleep where you're sleeping,” Gram answered quickly, “because that was her room when she lived at home.” Dicey could have gotten up and hugged her grandmother, except that they never did that kind of thing, the Tillermans, hugging and kissing. “Or,” Gram said, “we might turn the dining room into a bedroom. We never use it and she would have more privacy.” Gram waited a minute for more questions, then nodded briskly. “That's all taken care of then,” she said.

“If you wanted to adopt us,” Dicey said, “I'd like that.”

“And me,” Maybeth said. The boys, too, agreed.

“It would be safer for us,” James explained. “We'd have legal status, and rights. But what about you?” he asked his grandmother.

“Might be safer for me, too,” Gram said sharply. James looked at her, with sudden intensity, as if he wondered what she was thinking and suspected that it might be very interesting. But he didn't say anything.

Dicey and Maybeth washed up the dishes. Dicey hurried through them, but Maybeth lingered, humming. It was Momma's song, about giving her love a cherry without any stone, and Dicey joined in. She was drying the forks and putting them away while Maybeth scrubbed down the wooden table. “How can there be a baby with no cry-ing,” they sang. All of a sudden, Dicey remembered how the words to the last verse answered that question, and the other impossible questions the song asked. “That's funny,” she said.

“What is?”

“The song. You just look at things another way and it all makes sense. When a chicken's an egg, it doesn't have bones. Isn't that funny?”

“I think it's sad,” Maybeth said. “Anyway, the music is. Momma sang it sad.”

Dicey didn't know what to say, so she started the last verse.

They worked at fractions. Maybeth's class had done them last year, in second grade. Mrs. Jackson had told Maybeth she should understand fractions from one half to one eighth. Dicey figured that would be pretty simple. She took an apple and a knife and cut the apple in half. Then she cut it into quarters, then halved the quarters. Maybeth watched with big eyes. When Dicey wrote down the fractions and showed Maybeth the numbers one fourth and one eighth and asked her which was bigger, Maybeth pointed to one eighth.

Dicey tried to explain. “That
one
up there doesn't mean anything. I mean, it's called the numerator and it tells you how many of the eight parts are there.”

“I know,” Maybeth said, studying the numbers seriously. “Since the
one
is the same, the fraction with
eight
is bigger.”

Dicey showed her on the apple pieces, but since she had to combine two of the eighths to make a quarter, Maybeth said the
two
was bigger than the
one
now.

Dicey tried another aproach. “In fractions, the bigger the number in the denominator — that's at the bottom — the smaller the fraction is.”

“But how can that be?” Maybeth wondered.

“Because you're talking about parts, not the whole number. It's different from the whole numbers.” Dicey felt frustrated. It was so clear in her own mind, and Maybeth just sat and looked at her, or at the apple pieces, or at the paper. Her eyes got bigger.

“I don't understand,” she whispered.

Dicey didn't know what to do. “That's OK,” she said. “They aren't important.”

“I'm supposed to know them,” Maybeth said.

“We'll try again,” Dicey said. “Some other time. I am going to eat an eighth,” she announced, popping the crisp apple slice into her mouth. She had done it wrong and she didn't know how to do it right. She tried not to look as discouraged as she felt.

Maybeth smiled at her. “And I'm eating a half,” she said, eating another eighth, one that had been set beside its equal to make a quarter.

The rest of the family was in the living room. They had opened the windows to catch any suggestion of a breeze. Outside, the sun was setting and splashing the sky with colors. Maybeth went right to the battered upright piano and picked out the tune she had been singing in the kitchen. She searched for notes that harmonized with the melody lines. Dicey watched her for a while, trying to figure out how to explain about fractions. Maybeth's back was straight. Her face was serious as she watched her fingers on the piano keys. After a while, she tried to add more harmony with notes played by her left hand.

Gram and Sammy sat playing checkers, both of them barefooted, both concentrating on the board. They sneaked looks at one another's faces, as if trying to see what the opponent was thinking of for his next move. When Sammy was doing something tricky, it showed on his face. His eyes danced while he waited for his grandmother to fall into his trap, as if he could barely keep his cleverness inside. Gram gave herself away by her mouth, Dicey decided, because it would get all stiff and straight. That way, you could tell she was hiding something, and all you had to do was look at the board to figure out what her scheme was. Dicey thought she'd like to play a game of checkers with Gram. She thought she could probably beat her.

“King me,” Sammy ordered. Gram pointed out that he was still one move from the end of the board. “Momma used to,” Sammy argued. He was losing the game. His voice quivered.

“If you're going to play with me, you're going to play by the rules,” Gram said. “You're big enough, aren't you, to play by the real rules.”

Sammy didn't want to say yes and he didn't want to say no. When he saw the way Gram looked across at him, he didn't say anything.