Homecoming (22 page)

“What was?”

“To enter a sisterhood. To become a nun. I was going to be a nun before . . . and
Father Joseph had made the preliminary arrangements for me. It’s a useful life. I
have a substantial savings account, which would make up my dowry, that and the house.
So you see, I could have managed well.”

“It sounds—” Dicey tried to think of what she should say. “Nice. You’d make a good
nun.”

“Do you think so? I had hoped so. However, that is out of the question now.” Cousin
Eunice’s eyes filmed with tears, and she shook her head. “Because of you children.
You need me more, Father Joseph says. It is God’s work, just as much, caring for the
abandoned children.” As she spoke, she looked over Dicey’s shoulder at something Dicey
couldn’t see, something Dicey suspected wasn’t there at all, and her eyes shone. “That
is my duty. You will be my family now.” Her soft voice vibrated with the pleasure
of resolution and sacrifice.

“Are you sure?” Dicey asked.

“It is God’s will,” Cousin Eunice said, bowing her head.

Dicey sipped tea, which she had never liked, and thought about this. “That’s awfully
kind of you.”

Cousin Eunice smiled at Dicey.

“You’re giving up something you want,” Dicey said.

“You are not to speak of that,” Cousin Eunice said. “I wasn’t going to tell you at
all, but Father Joseph said that you and I especially must understand one another.
So that if sometimes I grow sad . . . you will know why and sympathize with me rather
than feeling you’ve done something wrong. Perhaps Maybeth is meant to be a nun, perhaps
she has a vocation, and it will be my place to guide her to it. Perhaps she will be
my purpose in life.”

Dicey wanted to get up and run, but she made herself sit still.

“Father Joseph suggested that I adopt you, so that I will be the legal guardian.”

“What if Momma comes back?”

“Surely she has shown herself unfit to raise children,” Cousin Eunice answered. Her
lips pursed.

Dicey couldn’t answer that.

“However, Dicey, you and I must deal with Sammy. He’s causing some trouble at camp.
Not just today—constantly. Father Joseph said he had spoken to you about this. Sammy
has to be brought into line. I couldn’t adopt a child who will bring nothing but trouble.
Could I? You saw how he behaved at supper. Sammy has to understand that his behavior
is unacceptable.”

“But—” Dicey said, and then changed her mind. “How would you do that?”

“I’ll talk with Father Joseph. He’s not sure that my house is the best place for Sammy,
but he feels we should try it for a while, to see if we can keep your family together.
He’s concerned about Maybeth, too, he told me, but I could assure him that we would
do well, Maybeth and I. But Sammy—I don’t know. I’ll see. Father Joseph knows about
disciplining boys. James, fortunately, is biddable. Sammy has to be brought into line,
so he doesn’t shame me.”

Dicey stayed absolutely still. She didn’t even blink. She didn’t trust herself to
speak.

“I do feel better, now that we’ve talked. Don’t you?” Cousin Eunice looked happy.
Her curls bounced on her head. “You will be like a family of my own. If I’d had a
daughter, she might be just your age. You’ll grow up and have children of your own.
So that when I’m older, I won’t be alone. Just as Mother wasn’t alone. In a way, I’m
glad about this. Aren’t you? And you children will have a good mother.”

We already have a good mother, Dicey said angrily to herself. Hold on, she said to
herself. This was what Father Joseph had decided. It might be for the best. The Tillermans
would be able to stay together—maybe. They would have a home. Dicey knew she should
feel grateful to Cousin Eunice. But she didn’t. She felt like crying.

A
ugust choked the city. The morning sun had to burn its red path through low-hanging
hazes and clouds of industrial smoke. The streets steamed, as concrete reflected heavy
sunlight. The temperature climbed until one in the afternoon, and then continued climbing.
When it rained, fat gray drops plopped down upon the roads, then bounced up, as if
in a half-hearted effort to escape. At evening, darkness gradually smothered the sun,
until night fell upon the city.

Dicey rose early every morning, cooked the breakfasts, cleaned the kitchen, walked
her family to their daily activities and hurried back to pick up her equipment and
wash whatever store windows were on her schedule for the day. Then she completed whatever
housekeeping chores Cousin Eunice had assigned before she went to fetch her family,
played briefly with them, prepared dinner and made Cousin Eunice’s cup of tea.

Weekends were a little different. For those two afternoons, the Tillermans could go
off to a park or a public beach after they had completed the morning chores, or after
Maybeth had returned from church with Cousin Eunice.

Sometimes it was more convenient for Dicey to meet Maybeth at the church, if they
were going to picnic at the park, or if Cousin Eunice had friends she wanted to visit
with. Dicey would wait outside the big brick building, waiting for the heavy doors
to be opened from within. The steeple stretched tall up into the sky. There was a
gold cross on top of the steeple, and from below it looked like the tip of the cross
scratched the bottom of the sky.

When the doors opened, Dicey watched carefully for her sister. Lots of children went
to church with their parents, all of them dressed up. The girls wore organdy dresses
and party shoes and ribbons in their hair, or hats. The boys wore real suits and ties.
Cousin Eunice always walked out slowly, surrounded by a group of women who could have
been her sisters. They dressed alike. They all wore those high-heeled shoes. They
all had curled their hair into sausages.

These women made a pet out of Maybeth. She would stand in the middle and they would
tell her how pretty she was, how lucky she was to have naturally curly hair, and what
a sweet, quiet girl she was. “You’re going to break some hearts for sure,” they said,
giggling.

Maybeth listened to this and smiled foolishly.

“An angel like you—nobody will be good enough for you. She’s a treasure, Eunice,”
they said.

“Don’t I know it?” Cousin Eunice answered smugly.

“A doll, a perfect doll.”

Dicey put her hands behind her back and clenched her fists, waiting for Cousin Eunice
to see her.

When Cousin Eunice called her, the women stepped back and smiled primly at her. Maybeth
put out her hand for Dicey to take. Her eyes were wide as she looked at Dicey, wide
and pleased with the attention. The silly smile stayed.

Sunday afternoons the Tillermans chose to go to a small park nearby because on summer
weekends it was less crowded than the beach. There were trees there, and grass. Several
times Dicey saw Mr. Platernis in the park, who greeted her warmly with:
“How’s my go-getter today?” Nobody commented on this, except James, but Dicey abruptly
changed the subject.

She found a time, soon after her talk with Cousin Eunice, to try to explain the situation
to Sammy.

“You’ve got to be cooperative at camp,” Dicey said.

“I don’t like them,” Sammy said.

“Don’t like who? The boys? Or the teachers?”

“Don’t like any of them.”

“Why not?”

“They’re all bossy.”

That was all he would say. His little jaw stuck out, and he pulled at blades of grass
as they sat by the sandbox.

“We’ve got a problem, Sammy,” Dicey said. “We have to please Cousin Eunice. The way
for you to help is to cooperate at camp. Act more friendly.”

“Why?” Sammy asked.

“So we can all stay together with Cousin Eunice,” Dicey said.

“When Momma comes we won’t have to. And I don’t want to anyway.”

Dicey sighed. She didn’t much want to herself. She daydreamed about Crisfield and
a farm; but she had learned her lesson about believing in daydreams, learned it from
Cousin Eunice and her house that wasn’t a big white house by the ocean.

“Would you do it for James and Maybeth and me?” Dicey asked him. “Would you try, for
us? I know it’s hard. I know you get angry. But we need you to try. When we were on
our own, you stopped quarreling and helped. Remember?”

Sammy nodded.

“You liked that, didn’t you?”

Sammy nodded.

“All I want you to do is be more that way at camp. Can you try?”

Sammy nodded. “You sound like Momma,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you do. When she’d ask me to be gooder, that was the way she’d talk.”

He ran off to join Maybeth on the swings. Dicey watched him catch a flying swing and
leap onto it, then pump furiously with his sturdy little legs. When he caught up with
Maybeth, he cheered for himself.

Day succeeded day in slow procession. Cousin Eunice treated Dicey differently since
their talk. She wanted to sit with Dicey in the kitchen every night, with cups of
tea, which Dicey could never completely drink, and talk about religion and serving
God and how when she was a girl she had wanted to be a nun. But her mother said she
wasn’t strong enough in spirit, didn’t have a real calling, should wait to see if
she got married.

Dicey listened. She began to feel sorry for Cousin Eunice, who had lived all of her
life in this city, who had gone off to work every morning along the same gray city
streets. Dicey didn’t like the sound of Aunt Cilla. She had lied to Momma in her letters.
It seemed to Dicey that Aunt Cilla had tried to keep Cousin Eunice all for herself.
And then, Dicey thought to herself as the soft voice droned on about service and prayer,
just when Cousin Eunice was about to do what she’d always wanted, the Tillermans turned
up to tie her down again. Poor Cousin Eunice.

If that had happened to Dicey, she’d be angry. Cousin Eunice wasn’t angry at all,
just sad sometimes. As if this was the way her whole life had to be, not getting what
she wanted, always giving it up for the sake of someone else.

Maybe she enjoyed giving things up for the sake of someone else. Some people liked
that feeling. But even if that was the case, Dicey knew her cousin would rather have
been a nun. That was what she really wanted.

It wasn’t very much to want, and she didn’t have even that.

The money in Dicey’s shoebox increased slowly, day by day. Sixty-five, seventy, which,
with the fifty dollars she had left from the car, made one hundred and twenty, then
one hundred and forty dollars, one hundred and fifty.

Maybeth came home from camp with a note addressed to Miss Tillerman. The note requested
Dicey to come to camp the next afternoon at two, an hour before the children went
home. Somebody named Sister Berenice wanted to talk to her.

Dicey didn’t want to go. She knew what the sister would say. She read the note and
reread it. She considered throwing it away and pretending she had never gotten it,
as Momma had done. She ripped it up into little pieces and dropped them into the wastepaper
basket. She didn’t want to hear whatever the sister had to say, about Maybeth being
retarded and needing a special school.

James was no help. He seemed convinced that the fathers, and the nuns too, couldn’t
make a mistake. “Go and talk to her. Maybe she knows something we don’t. Maybe she
knows something that can help Maybeth. Just plan to learn from her, about whatever
she has to say. You’ve got to keep an open mind, Dicey. You’ve got to leave a door
open so understanding can get in. That’s one thing I’ve learned.”

“It’s not just minds,” Dicey said. “You all think it’s just smartness that counts.
But Stewart didn’t think that. And I don’t think I do, either. I don’t want to go.”

“Suit yourself,” James said. “I’d go.”

“I’m not you,” Dicey said.

But she kept the appointment, wearing one of the secondhand dresses that made her
feel stiff and awkward because they never fit properly. She wore sneakers, because
they were the only shoes she had. She held her chin high and a little
angry—she knew Maybeth and this woman didn’t.

Sister Berenice waited for Dicey in one of the classrooms next to the camp playground.
It was a room for very small children. All the chairs were small. The tables didn’t
even come up to Dicey’s knees.

Sister Berenice rose from her desk when Dicey came into the long room. The sister
was very tall and very thin. She wore a black suit with a longish skirt, and her face
was framed by the cowl she wore. She had pale blue eyes and her mouth looked stern.
When she pulled up one of the little chairs for Dicey to sit on, Dicey saw with surprise
that she wore a silver wedding ring on her right hand.

“You’re a child,” she said. Dicey nodded. “I asked Maybeth,” Sister Berenice said,
sounding cross, “I asked her who her guardian was and she said Dicey, her sister.
I asked if you were married and Maybeth said no. Well, actually, she just shook her
head. It is the longest conversation we have had. I didn’t think to ask Father Joseph
how old you were. Who is the person legally responsible for Maybeth?”

“Our cousin Eunice, I guess,” Dicey said. “Until they find our mother.”

“Miss Logan,” Sister Berenice murmured, in apparent disbelief.

“She took us in. She didn’t have to do that,” Dicey said. “She’d never even heard
of us.” She wanted Sister Berenice to appreciate what Cousin Eunice had done. She
wanted to appreciate it herself.

“How old are you?” she asked Dicey.

Dicey’s temper flared. “I’m thirteen. How old are you?”

A smile bent the corners of Sister Berenice’s pale mouth. “Fifty-three, old enough
to recognize spirit when I meet it. Tell me about your sister, Dicey.”

Dicey stared at her in surprise. For a minute she couldn’t think of anything to say.
Usually, people told her about Maybeth, and she tried to explain that they were wrong.
Nobody had ever asked her first.

“She’s shy,” Dicey said. “She almost never speaks to strangers. And people always
want to speak to her, because she’s pretty. Usually, she stays stiff and quiet and
stares, with big eyes. She doesn’t even talk to us much. But when she does, it’s always
the right thing to say. Not right-polite, right-true.”