Dicey's Song (21 page)

“You finished one side,” he announced.

“Looks good, doesn't it,” Dicey said. He came to stand beside her, and she put her hand on his shoulder.

“Are you going to work tomorrow morning?” he asked.

“Sure, it's Saturday.”

“Would it be all right if I sanded it, even if you weren't here?” Sammy asked. “I'd do a good job.”

“I know you would,” Dicey told him. “That would be OK with me, if you wanted to.”

“Good-o,” he said. He looked earnestly at her. “I won't try to share the boat with you, Dicey. Honest.”

Dicey looked back down at him. “You're a goof,” she told him. Her arms slipped down behind his back until her fingers could dig into his rib cage. “A genuine goof and I'm going to call you Goofy.”

He laughed, twisted away, and ran out of the barn. Dicey followed him, crying out that she was going to get him, and tickle him until he wet his pants. Sammy laughed so hard he fell over onto the ground. Dicey pounded on him.

SATURDAY WAS as warm as Friday, and Dicey changed into her shorts and a T-shirt after lunch, to work on the boat. She preferred wearing the boys' shirts, but they had to be ironed. She ran her hand carefully over the area Sammy had finished that morning when she had been washing down shelves at Millie's. The wood was silky smooth under her fingers. The air was silky smooth around her body. James and Maybeth were working in the kitchen. Gram sat knitting and listening. Sammy was off delivering papers. Dicey scraped at the second side, puzzled by this strange warm weather but pleased by the chance to spend an afternoon alone with the boat.

When someone spoke her name from behind her, she swung around, startled. Jeff stood in the doorway. He had a bike, and his guitar was slung over his back. “Whatcha doing?”

“I'm the one to ask that,” Dicey snapped. What was he doing there anyway?

He stepped back and moved his head confusedly. Dicey just about decided she didn't think much of him when he spoke again.

“Look,” he said. “I thought I'd come out and see you, and I want to meet this sister of yours. If you're busy, I'll go. If you don't like the idea of me being here — you just have to say so.”

Dicey was already sorry for her anger. “No,” she said quickly. “It's not that. Come on in. I've only got a little more to do here. I was just surprised to see someone. You surprised me.”

He leaned his bike against a post and came closer. She thought he might be laughing. “If that's the way you react to surprises, I'll be careful not to surprise you again. What
are
you doing?”

“Scraping it down.”

“That looks hand-made. Do you sail?”

“I have. Just once. My grandmother's going to teach me. I like it,” she added.

“Want to hear a song while you work?”

“What about the one you played for Sammy.” That way, he'd know she was really trying to make peace.

“Ah, my twenty-minute number.” He seemed to understand that Dicey didn't want to fight with him. He sat down on the ground and ran fingers over the strings. He adjusted the tuning of two, then ran his fingers along the chord again. For a minute, Dicey watched him. Then she went back to work.

The song was about a man and a lady, just like Sammy said. It told him about the wife of a rich man who fell in love with somebody else and took him home with her while her husband was away. The husband came back and caught them together. He challenged the other man to a fight and killed him. Then he made up to the lady, sitting her on his knee, asking her which man she preferred. But she told him she preferred the other man, even though he was dead, preferred him “to you and all your kin.” Dicey liked that. She liked the spirit of it. So the rich man took the lady where everybody could see, and he cut her throat.

Dicey had finished what she planned to get done that day, but she worked until the song was done. “But why are they all like that?” she asked Jeff. “Why are they all unhappy endings?”

He shrugged. Dicey cleaned off the scraper and put it away.

“Do you know any happy songs?”

“A couple. Not many. Tolstoy says happy marriages are all the same, but unhappy ones are each different. Maybe that's why, maybe being unhappy is more interesting.”

“Tolstoy? Who's that?”

“A writer. A Russian. My father told me about it.”

“Why would he tell you a thing like that?”

Jeff shrugged. He didn't want to talk about it. Dicey rubbed her hands clean on her shorts. “Well, come on in and meet people. James's friend Toby's coming over this afternoon too, so there'll be lots of people around.”

“What's your sister's name?”

“Maybeth. She's gonna like hearing you play.”

By the time introductions were made and questions were answered, Toby had arrived. And Sammy had returned, and a whole new set of introductions and questions had to be covered. Toby was about James's size, with light brown hair and big glasses that magnified his eyes. At first, they all stood around in the kitchen, then Gram moved them into the living room. Jeff went right to the point with Maybeth. “Dicey says you sing.”

Maybeth gripped her hands together and looked big-eyed around the room. She didn't say anything.

“So do I,” Sammy declared.

“I wasn't thinking of this much audience,” Dicey added.

“As a fact,” Gram announced from the doorway, “they all sing. I don't,” she added. “Not where anybody can hear me, that is. You wouldn't either.”

James and Toby were standing awkwardly in the middle of the room. Sammy stood with them, studying Toby. “You wanna go down to the dock?” he offered. Toby looked at James; they didn't seem to know what they wanted to do. “We could ride bikes,” Sammy suggested.

Jeff sat down on the floor by the empty fireplace and spoke to Maybeth. “Dicey did tell me you could sing well,” he repeated, looking across the room at the little girl. “Actually, what happened, I told Dicey I thought she had a pretty good voice and she boasted about you.” He played a couple of chords.

James and Toby went over to look at the bookcases.

“Gram, could you make cookies?” Sammy asked.

“I think I know how,” Gram said.

“Chocolate chip?” he insisted.

“Maybe,” she agreed.

“Now?” he said. “Please?”

“In a minute,” she said, looking at him sternly.

Jeff began to sing, accompanying himself. “When first unto this country, a stranger I came —” He stopped. “Dicey?”

“OK,” she agreed.

Dicey sang with him, and after a couple of verses, Maybeth joined in. Her voice was stronger than either Dicey's or Jeff's, and after a bit they tapered off singing and just listened. Once she was singing, watching Jeff play the guitar, Maybeth forgot to be shy.

At the end he said, “Dicey was right,” at the same time Maybeth moved to sit in front of him and say, “I like that song.”

“But it's wrong,” James said. “Jacob doesn't have the coat of many colors, it's Joseph.”

“Because that's the one his brother put blood on,” Toby added, standing beside James. The two earnest, intelligent faces looked at Jeff. “Jacob's the one with Esau, remember?” Toby asked.

“And the birthright and the blessing,” James said. Dicey thought there was no need for him to show off that way.

“And Joseph goes into Egypt,” Toby said, matching James. “And his brothers do all bow down to him, just like in his dream.”

Jeff's gray eyes were dancing, Dicey saw, and he was having a hard time not smiling. “I know,” he told the two boys. James's eyes lit up, and he glanced quickly at Dicey, and nodded at her. The two boys sat down on the floor. “I wondered about that,” Jeff went on, talking seriously to them. “If it's Jacob because he's a thief, the man in the song. And it can't be Joseph — only, the man in the song is part Joseph, part Jacob, isn't he? I mean, Joseph was a stranger in Egypt, and Jacob stole.”

James looked impressed, and if anyone had asked Dicey she would have admitted that she was, too. She didn't know what they were talking about, except it was probably from the Bible. But everybody had relaxed and she knew that when she suggested another song, Maybeth would join in eagerly. She tried to think of all the songs she wanted to sing. They had the whole warm afternoon before them.

“You said you'd make cookies,” Sammy repeated to Gram. “I could help you,” he added, going to stand beside her.

“All right,” Gram said. They left the room. James and Toby took out the checkers set. Dicey looked at the gleaming guitar on Jeff's lap and asked him if he'd ever heard “Who Will Sing for Me?” He hadn't, so Dicey and Maybeth sang it. He asked them to teach it to him. He had a light, rhythmical way of playing his guitar, picking at it with his finger, not strumming it.

They were perfecting their version of “Amazing Grace,” in three-part harmony, when Gram came back into the room. Mina entered behind her, smiling broadly. “Brought you an alto,” Gram announced.

Jeff flashed a smile up at Gram. Dicey got up to say hello. “I didn't hear you knock,” she said.

“She didn't. Came right in the back door. Like certain other people,” Gram said, looking at Dicey who had done just that, that first day they came. “Not what you're thinking,” Gram said quickly to Mina.

“I didn't think it was,” Mina answered just as quickly. “It looked like — I thought, Dicey's family weren't the kind to use the front door and scrape shoes — so I thought I'd just be one of the gang. It is a gang here, isn't it?”

Gram surveyed the room. She didn't say a word, and they waited for her to say something. Sammy ran in to fetch her, because the cookies were ready to come out of the oven.

They went through “Amazing Grace” again, and Mina's voice
was
a full alto. Dicey wondered how Gram knew that. “I hope you're not sung out,” Mina said, settling into a chair. “I could spend the afternoon singing, and that's the truth.”

“You choose the next one,” Jeff told her.

“You won't know it,” she countered.

“I can pick up almost anything,” he said. “Can't I, Maybeth? You tell her — you've been watching close enough.”

Maybeth just smiled, and said, “I think he can.”

Mina, curling her legs up under her denim skirt, challenged Jeff. “It's a gospel tune.” She started to sing, a kind of prayer song, about a man whose only friend was God. By the time she got to the third line, Jeff had joined in, to show Mina he already knew it. They sang together: “Someone beckons me from heaven's open door, and I can't feel at home in this world, any mo-ore.”

Maybeth looked at Dicey. “That's like Stewart's songs,” she said.

“Who's Stewart?” Jeff asked. He was playing softly now, as if he didn't want ever to stop.

“Somebody we met last summer,” Dicey answered. She pushed her lips together, because she wasn't going to say any more about it.

“Because of the way you say the words,” Maybeth explained.

Mina looked at Jeff and shrugged. “Whatever they say, right?”

“Let's do it again,” he suggested. “Maybeth, can you? Dicey?”

Maybeth could, but Dicey didn't remember the words yet, so she hummed along. Gram brought in a plate of warm cookies and sat down to join them, listening. Sammy perched himself on the arm of Gram's chair, like a pet watchdog, Dicey thought.

S
AMMY RAN UP the street to meet Dicey as she rode to work the next Monday. It had rained the night before and he splashed in the puddles. The arms on his sweater flapped and his gait was awkward, as if his knees might at any time give out. It wasn't until he was close to her that Dicey saw why: he was laughing.

“You know what she did? She came to school. She beat — ”

“Who?” Dicey interrupted. She gave him about half of her attention, glad that he was glad. The rest of her mind was trying to remember something about Miss Eversleigh, something that had begun to tickle at the edge of her memory while she was separating eggs today in home ec. But it had nothing to do with eggs, and how to beat the whites stiff, and how the yolks were rich in iron.

“Gram. Dicey, are you listening?”

Then Dicey did listen. “Gram? What about her?”

“I told you, she came to school. She had a bag of marbles, and they weren't new ones either. They were old. She said she found them in her attic and they must have belonged to one of her sons. She gave them to me!” he cried. “I left them safe with Millie, but she gave them to me. You can see them.”

“So she brought you some marbles at school?” This was strange behavior.

“No, that's not what I said.” Laughter poured out of Sammy's face, like lights from a firecracker. “It was at recess, lunch recess. And she played marbles with us. She won all of them, everybody's, even mine.”

Dicey stopped walking and waited to hear the rest of this story. A couple of firecrackers were going off inside her head, too.

“She made us let some girls play too. And that got Ernie mad, but Gram said if he was going to play he was going to play fair or she wasn't going to be in any game with him. She was kneeling down, and her skirt got in a puddle.”

“How did — did everyone play?”

“Everyone wanted to. They asked her to come back tomorrrow, but she said she was the Lone Marble Ranger and only came once. So we better learn all we can.” Dicey could picture her grandmother crouching down among the second graders, concentrating on the marbles.

“The Lone Marble Ranger.” Sammy giggled. “So we did. And then she gave everybody back the marbles she won. Because she said she had so much more practice. Except me,” he said, “she gave me her old ones.”

“Good-o,” Dicey said, that being about the only thing she could think of to say.

“Yeah,” Sammy agreed. “And Custer said he wished he had a grandmother like that, and Ernie said he was glad he didn't have a crazy grandmother.”

“And what did you say?” Dicey asked.

“Nothing. Why should I say something?” Sammy asked. “It was fun; I wish she would come back. They asked me, would she, and I said, ‘No, Gram does just what she says she will.' But wasn't that a crazy thing for her to do?” he asked happily.

Crazy like a fox, Dicey thought, but did not say.

Gram had also been in to see Millie, and Millie had something to say about “Ab when she's up to something.”

“What was she up to?”

“Dunno,” Millie said. “But she made me laugh, I guess. She had that devilment look in her eye, and I guess I've seen it often enough to know what it means.”

“What does it mean?” Dicey asked. But Millie couldn't tell her.

Dicey was washing the outside of the front windows, taking it slowly because the sun on her shoulders felt so good, when she felt somebody come stand beside her. Miss Eversleigh, in her same suit and pin, with her same teacher face. Dicey smiled at her. She couldn't help it: her mind was still on Gram beating all the second-graders at marbles.

“I didn't know you could smile,” Miss Eversleigh remarked. Something about her tone of voice and her glance made Dicey remember.

“Miss Eversleigh.” She dropped the squeegee into the bucket and dried her hands on her jeans. “I wanted to ask you. You were talking to us, but I wasn't listening. Last week? But I think I'd like to know what you said.”

“I was talking to you,” Miss Eversleigh said. “Mostly to you. I was talking about you.”

“But what did you say?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Because I have a feeling I should have paid attention.” That was as far as Dicey was willing to go. Miss Eversleigh pursed her lips.

“I said that it was important to learn the things we are doing in the class.”

Then Dicey found she could remember. “Because they take skill. That's what you said, isn't it? You said it takes as much skill as building something.”

Miss Eversleigh nodded. She was looking at Dicey as if she couldn't understand what Dicey was up to.

“OK,” Dicey said. “Thank you. I remember now. I never meant to be — disrespectful to you.”

“And?” Miss Eversleigh insisted.

“And?” Dicey asked. She knew, though, what Miss Eversleigh wanted her to say. Instead she said, “I guess I think it's interesting to say that, and I'll think about it.”

“But you won't try harder and care more?” Miss Eversleigh inquired.

“How can I say that? I haven't even thought about it yet.”

“You're a strange child,” Miss Eversleigh said. She was holding a purse in her two hands, right in front of her stomach.

“I guess so,” Dicey agreed.

“Well. It was nice running into you,” Miss Eversleigh said. She didn't sound like she thought it was nice.

Miss Eversleigh walked on down the street. Dicey forgot about her and turned back to her work. Maybe it
was
important to know how to do those things. If Gram didn't know them, where would the Tillermans be? Maybe Dicey ought to try to learn them. If you learned something, that didn't mean you had to do it. Just because you knew how to do it. All it meant was, if you had to, or if you wanted to, then you could.

When Gram put a tall apple pie down on the table for dessert, Dicey knew she was up to something. When Gram brought out a quart of ice cream to serve with the pie, Dicey was sure of it. Dicey sat quiet while the pie was cut and scoops of ice cream put on top of the flaky brown crust. The pie was still warm. You could tell because the ice cream slipped off the top and nestled down against the side of the slice. The apples inside smelled tart and sweet and had been cooked to a deep honey-brown color. Dicey put her nose over it and inhaled the aroma: apple, cinnamon, nutmeg.

“What did you do today?” she asked Gram. As if she didn't know.

Gram fixed her with a mischievous eye. “Not much. I changed the sheets and did a wash. I made a pie. I played a game or two of marbles — and won.” She waited. Dicey didn't say a word, didn't let her face show any emotion. “As you undoubtedly heard,” Gram said at last. Dicey grinned. “Then I picked up a few things at Millie's.”

Dicey just waited. She was sure there was something more.

“And I had an appointment at the lawyers,” Gram announced. “At which I was told that you are now, legally and officially and permanently — and any other lee they could think of — my responsibility.”

“We're adopted?” James asked.

“That's what I said.”

“No, it's not,” he pointed out.

“Well it's what I meant and since you understood me it must be what I said.”

The children looked at one another around the table. Gram looked at the pie she was eating.

“Good-o,” Sammy said. “Good-o,” he repeated.

“And we'll always live here?” Maybeth asked.

“You are my heirs and assigns,” Gram said. “I thought it was good news,” she declared.

“It is,” Dicey said. That explained Gram's mood. Dicey herself had felt pretty good after hearing about the marble game. She felt pretty terrific now, knowing they were adopted. If this was really their home now — and it was — she could understand why she felt safe now, but why was she also feeling excited?

“I'm glad to hear that,” Gram said to her, “because I also made a call today, since I was downtown and the weather was fair. I called to meet the family of your friend Mina.”

“What?” Dicey said. Her fork clattered down onto the floor. She bent to pick it up.

“For the same reason that I took on the second grade at marbles,” Gram pointed out.

Dicey didn't know what to think. She wondered what Mina's parents had made of Gram's visit. She couldn't think what Mina would have to report about the call.

As it turned out, Mina didn't have much to report. She told Dicey about it during lunch. “I don't know, Dicey, I don't know what got into her. What gets into her?”

“I don't know,” Dicey said. Although she had some idea.

“They were confused,” Mina told her. “They didn't know what to think. Do you know what she said to my father, first thing?”

“She didn't tell me anything,” Dicey said. She wasn't sure whether she wanted to know or not.

“She said: ‘I've come to put a face on the bogeyman.' What was Dad supposed to answer to that?”

“I dunno,” Dicey mumbled. Gram certainly didn't beat around any bushes. Then laughter escaped her, even though she tried to hold it in. “I wish I'd been there.”

“It went all right, I think,” Mina admitted. “My mother said she's a lady, no question. Mom only says that about any white woman who doesn't ask if she does daily cleaning.”

“Gram wouldn't do that,” Dicey protested.

“She's a minority.”

Dicey looked at her friend with an idea of the difficulties this girl might face; and she knew she had only the vaguest idea of them. Mina must know much, much more. “What are you going to do? What do you want to do?”

“When I grow up?” Mina asked, laughing. “Who knows? My mom's an RN, and there's always work. But I don't know — I'd rather be a doctor than a nurse, if I was going into medicine. I think I'm smart enough. What I want is — not to do something just because it's available to me because I'm black and female. You know? I want to really choose. What about you?”

Dicey was surprised. “I've always been so busy trying to keep things together until tomorrow, I never thought about much else. I just do what needs to be done.”

“I'm pretty sure I want to go to college,” Mina continued. “What about you?”

“I told you, I never thought more than a day ahead.”

They looked at each other with curiosity, with interest.

The world was full of surprises; and, Dicey began to believe, interesting surprises. It was mostly the people who made it surprising. Jeff — who waited for her after school and made it clear he intended to walk with her to work — reinforced that opinion.

Jeff carried his guitar slung over his back again. He put his books on top of Dicey's in the basket of her bicycle. He took her bicycle from her and wheeled it for her. It felt strange to Dicey to walk without anything to carry, without anything to push; with just the walking to do.

Jeff talked about how he had a good time at Dicey's house. He talked about the weather. He told her his father was a college professor and was gone three days a week, up to Baltimore to teach.

“Why do you live way down here?” Dicey asked.

Jeff shrugged. Something he didn't want to talk about.

Dicey changed the subject back to the singing they had done. “Maybeth liked it,” she told him. “She liked you,” she added, because it was the truth.

“Well,” Jeff said. He looked at her with glances out of the side of his eyes, as if he was nervous.

“What's the matter with you?” Dicey finally demanded. They were standing beside the porch of Millie's store, and he wouldn't give her the bicycle so he could take his books out and let her get to work. She saw Sammy watching through the window.

“There's something I want to ask you —” he began.

Dicey knew what it was. “I said she likes you, and that means that any time you want to come back and sing with her it'll be fine. I didn't mean to be so — unfriendly. When you first got there. But she has to work hard at school, and she's taking piano lessons, so only on weekends. OK?”

“But —” Jeff said. He swallowed and tried again. “There's a dance at school.” Dicey nodded; she had seen the posters. “Will you go with me?”

Dicey's mouth opened. It opened and it stayed open. She grabbed for the handles of her bike. Jeff didn't look at her, just reached in for his books. What was she supposed to say?

“You haven't said,” he prodded her.

“But I can't do that,” Dicey told him.

“I didn't think so.”

“Then why did you ask?” Dicey demanded.

“Because I want you to,” he snapped back at her. “There's no crime in that,” he pointed out.

Dicey liked the way he got angry when she was unfriendly. She didn't know why she liked it, but it made her willing to explain. “I'm — too young for dances. I'm only in eighth grade. I don't want to go to dances. And all. Besides,” she added desperately, “high school boys don't take out eighth-graders.”