Homecoming (45 page)

The first thing she said was “You’re in the wrong school, Dicey. You should be in
the junior high. I’ve called and they’ll expect you tomorrow morning. Mr. MacGuire
will be your guidance counselor. Can you find the junior high?”

“She can,” their grandmother said.

Dicey hadn’t thought that she’d be in a different school.

“James will go into the accelerated section of fifth grade. We have some special programs
for the gifted student. They should suit you, James. Your teacher will be Mr. Thomas.”

James looked at Dicey and grinned. She knew what he was thinking: a man teacher. There
weren’t any men teachers in the elementary school in Provincetown, not one.

“Sammy will be in Miss Tieds’s second grade.”

“Okay,” said Sammy. “I don’t care.”

“James and Sammy,” Mrs. Jenkins said, “I want you to meet your teachers today. If
you go to the principal’s office, they will
come there when the recess bell rings. That will be in ten minutes. It’s the third
door on your right, as you go down the hall. You may go now.”

The boys left together. James walked eagerly, but Sammy dragged his heels. James turned
at the door. “Don’t forget your purse,” he said to their grandmother. She waved him
away.

Mrs. Jenkins gathered her papers into a pile.

“What about Maybeth?” Dicey asked. She got herself ready to fight for Maybeth.

“I’m coming to that,” Mrs. Jenkins said. Maybeth sidled over between the two chairs
Dicey and their grandmother sat in. She didn’t say anything.

“Your records—Maybeth, are you listening to me?” Mrs. Jenkins asked. She spoke without
emphasis. Maybeth nodded. “Your records show that they wanted to hold you back in
second grade. That would be the second time you have been kept back. Did you know
that?” She turned to their grandmother. “Their recommendation is—most strong.”

“But—” Dicey began.

Mrs. Jenkins cut her off, to say: “Our school, however, has a policy not to put brothers
and sisters in the same grade. Do you want to be in Sammy’s grade, Maybeth?”

Maybeth shook her head, no. She looked at Dicey.

“Why not?” Mrs. Jenkins asked.

Maybeth waited. No one else said anything. “Because I’m bigger than he is,” she whispered.

“I thought so.” Mrs. Jenkins smiled. When she smiled, with her short dark hair and
bright cheeks, she looked like a kid herself, Dicey thought. She was as fresh as apples.

“I thought that would be the case. If you want to go into third grade—and mind you,
I’m not promising anything—but if you want to try, you’ll have to take some tests
for me.”

“What kind of tests?” their grandmother asked.

“A quick IQ, then reading and math, achievement and aptitude. They’re short and not
precise, but they’ll give a fairly good idea of where Maybeth can be put in school.”
Mrs. Jenkins waited for an answer.

“How long will it take?” their grandmother asked.

“An hour at the most. Will you do that, Maybeth?” Mrs. Jenkins kept talking to Maybeth.
Maybeth looked at Dicey with wide eyes.

Their grandmother stood up. “We have errands to do, so if you’ll tell James and Sammy
to bring Maybeth and wait for us by the boat, I have no objections.”

Maybeth’s hand held on to Dicey’s arm.

“But—can I stay?” Dicey asked Mrs. Jenkins. “It’ll be better. You don’t understand—”

“No,” her grandmother said. “Maybeth will take the tests by herself.”

“I would prefer that,” Mrs. Jenkins said.

“Don’t argue, girl,” her grandmother said to Dicey, just as Dicey was opening her
mouth to say she wasn’t going to leave Maybeth there alone. Her grandmother spoke
to Maybeth. “Maybeth? You’ve got two hard times coming. This, now, is the first. Tomorrow
morning is the next. Nothing will make them easier. That’s the way it is. Do you understand
that?”

Maybeth nodded, but her hand stayed on Dicey’s arm.

“Will you try?” their grandmother asked. “It’ll take some courage, but I think you’ve
got that. Do you have it?”

“I don’t know,” Maybeth said. “I’ll try.” She released Dicey’s arm. “It’ll be okay,
Dicey.”

Dicey wasn’t sure.

“Come along,” her grandmother ordered. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning, Mrs. Jenkins.
Mind you, she’s ripped a tendon in her right arm so her writing won’t be much.”

“Yes, thank you,” Mrs. Jenkins said. She stood up, and Dicey followed her grandmother
out of the little office, leaving Maybeth behind.

When they stepped out of the building into the hot morning sunlight, her grandmother
turned on Dicey. “You’ve got to let her make her own way.”

“I know,” Dicey said. “But—”

“But nothing. But hogwash. If she can’t do that—”

“But she
is
,” Dicey argued. “She’s doing it right now.”

Her grandmother nodded her head briskly. “Yes, so she is.”

They strolled back to the main street and entered the grocery store Dicey had gone
into days earlier. The storekeeper and butcher, Millie, looked like she wanted to
say something when she saw them, she looked like she had several somethings to say,
but she didn’t dare. Dicey didn’t know how her grandmother stopped the questions,
but she did, by the glitter in her eye and the lift to her chin. Dicey took part of
their list and went around the store finding cans of tuna, jars of peanut butter,
bags of apples, and all the odds and ends that go to keeping house for a family. The
store was warm and dim. Her grandmother spent a long time at the meat counter.

When they were ready to check out, Dicey stood awkwardly aside. The bill came to forty-seven
dollars. Dicey chewed on her lip. Maybe she could find work. Maybe she could find
work here, dusting the shelves and washing the windows and making the place look brighter,
cleaner, more like someplace where you wanted to buy groceries.

Her grandmother paid the bill. Millie took the money and gave her back her change
without a word. She packed the groceries into four large bags.

Then the shopkeeper could hold her tongue no longer. “I see you found work,” she said
to Dicey.

“Yes,” Dicey said. She said no more. She turned her chin up the way her grandmother’s
chin was held. It worked in just the same way.

“Tell me, Millie,” her grandmother said, with a side glance at Dicey. “Do you get
Social Security money?”

“Of course, since Herbie died. It’s my due. I paid into it every month, all my working
life. It’s a widow’s due, I tell you. I couldn’t get through the month without it,
not with what the store brings in. Widow’s due, that’s what I call it, and there’s
no shame. You take it too, don’t you?”

“I didn’t work to pay in,” Dicey’s grandmother said.

“No more you didn’t, Ab Tillerman, raising three children and working on that farm.
Your John did, too, every year in his taxes. It’s for widows and their children, as
much as for people older than we are, and helpless. So don’t raise your nose at me.”

“Ever buy a Christmas tree?” Dicey’s grandmother demanded.

The abrupt change of topic flustered Millie. “What?” she asked. “What do you mean?
For Christmas? Why should I do that, when I can get one cut for me just by asking?
I know a lady in Cambridge that bought one, but I never did. What kind of a question
is that?”

“How much did she pay?”

“How should I know? Ten, fifteen dollars, I think she said. And it was a scrawny thing,
too, some poor relation of a loblolly. She had more bulbs than branches on the thing,
trying to make it look right. You feeling all right, Ab?”

Dicey looked at her grandmother, glad because it meant her grandmother was thinking
of putting in a cash crop, to repay herself the money she’d spent on the Tillermans.

“See if your family’s around, girl,” her grandmother said. “We’re going to need some
extra hands with these bags.”

Dicey went out through the door.

Sunlight burned on the street. She saw James across by the docks, leading Maybeth
and Sammy down to the boat.

“Hey!” she called. “Hey! James! Over here.”

They turned and strolled toward her. They looked tanned, healthy and perfectly ordinary.
Dicey tried to read in Maybeth’s face what had happened.

“I thought you were at the boat,” James said.

“There are bags to carry. Maybeth?” Dicey asked.

Maybeth nodded and her eyes gleamed. “I can go into third grade. I read for her, the
most I could. Out loud. I tried to sound out the words I didn’t know, just like they
said at school. It was easier, because it was the story about the little goats that
get left at home and the wolf comes and tries to trick them into opening the door.
So I knew the story. I told Mrs. Jenkins I already knew it and asked her if she wanted
to find another story to test me with, but she said it was okay. She said even if
I knew the story I’d still have to read the words. I answered all her questions about
it, but they were easy ones. I got two wrong on the adding and three on subtracting,
and they don’t start multiplication until third grade. But they know fractions already.”

“I can show you fractions,” Dicey said. “Was it hard?”

“Not as hard as I thought,” Maybeth said. “Not as hard as tomorrow will be. But I
think maybe I can do that too.”

Their grandmother pushed the screen door aside. “What are you waiting for?”

Maybeth ran over to her and pulled on her arm. Their grandmother bent her gray curly
head down to the bright yellow head. She listened to Maybeth and smiled at what she
heard.

The children went inside. Sammy said he wasn’t too small to carry a bag, but he was,
so Millie divided one bag into two smaller bags, one for Sammy and one for Maybeth.
Her eyes bugged out with curiosity.

“By the way, Millie,” their grandmother finally said, “I don’t believe you’ve met
my grandchildren.” One by one she introduced them. “Liza’s brood,” their grandmother
said. “They’ll be staying with me for a couple of weeks.”

Their grandmother herded them outside before Millie could ask any questions. They
walked together down the hot street and along the dock. Dicey got into the boat first.
James handed the bags down to her.

Sammy had been thinking. “If you’re our grandmother—I mean, if you say you are—I mean,
you know you are but you never said so—now that you say so what do I call you?”

The boat was rocking under Dicey’s feet. She wished they weren’t going to be in different
schools, even for this little time. In Bridgeport, there would be boys’ schools and
girls’ schools, and they’d all be split up. She wished that here, just for this little
while, they could still be in the same school. But it didn’t matter. It was just another
way things weren’t working out.

“You’ll call me Gram,” their grandmother said to Sammy.

“Gram,” Sammy repeated, trying it. He ran to the edge of the dock and wheeled around.
“Hey, Gram!” he yelled. He ran back. “Gram?”

“Yes, Sammy.” She sounded tired.

“You like us, don’t you? You do, no matter what you say. I know.”

“Never said I didn’t,” Gram said. “And I’m pretty proud of Maybeth at this moment.”

“So am I,” Dicey said.

“So am I,” Maybeth said, with a smile at herself, a smile that had no silliness in
it.

They all stood for a minute there. Little bright-topped waves rocked the boat gently
on the way to pattering up against the seawalls. A salty wind blew from the land out
over the water. The
town of Crisfield lay in the sunlight before them, bleached white as the oyster shells
scattered around the ground.

Dicey thought about the bread dough rising in the big earthenware bowl back on the
scrubbed wooden table in her grandmother’s kitchen. She was getting hungry. She looked
at James. He was studying his grandmother, as if he was hungry too, but for something
not food, hungry in a way that food could never fill.

It wasn’t fair, not just for Dicey but for all of them. Well, Dicey said to herself,
life isn’t fair. Everybody said that to you. They had all tried, and they had lost,
and they were going to have to make the best of it with Cousin Eunice.

She remembered the letter then. Gram hadn’t mailed the letter. Dicey thought about
not telling her grandmother; but not for long. What was the use of postponing it?
When something bad was going to happen it got worse the longer you waited. If she
didn’t tell Gram, that would be like asking again. And Gram had said no. Dicey wasn’t
the kind to argue and beg when somebody said no.

“You forgot to mail your letter,” she said.

Gram’s face was surprised. She really had forgotten it. She was also surprised (Dicey
knew this too) that Dicey had remembered and said something. She opened her purse
and took it out.

Dicey looked down at the floorboards of the little boat. She looked at her sneakers,
worn with all the traveling they’d done. Her big toes stuck out through the canvas.
Those sneakers had come a long way.

Wasn’t it worth it, having come such a way, to fight a little harder? A little longer?
Being told no twice couldn’t be worse than being told no once.

“Gram?” Dicey said. She looked up. She was almost as tall
as her grandmother, but now the woman loomed above her, standing on the dock. The
dark hazel eyes stared down at her, forbidding her to speak.

“Well, you should,” Dicey said fiercely. “You should let us live with you.”

That was no way to ask.

“Would that suit you?” Gram asked Dicey.

Dicey was shocked into silence.

“I thought you were the one it didn’t suit,” James said.

“Well, it doesn’t,” Gram said. “But it will. I give up. I do, I give up. You’ve worn
me out. You can stay, you can live with me. You hear that, girl?” she called down
to Dicey.

“Do you mean it?” Dicey asked.

“I don’t say what I don’t mean. You should know that. You’ll live with me and we’ll
see lawyers about adoption and take government money—and we’ll plant Christmas trees
and raise chickens, whatever we have to do, whatever ideas James cooks up that we
can’t talk him out of. But can we go now, please? My feet are itching me half to death.”