Dicey's Song (20 page)

“Aren't they having a dinner?” Dicey asked.

“I said, no,” Gram repeated.

“I could ride my bike. If they were having a dinner he wouldn't ask me,” Sammy said.

“I said no and that's an end of it,” Gram said.

“But then — I won't have
any
friends,” Sammy told her.

But Gram shook her head firmly.

Sammy turned abruptly and left the room. When he returned, he was smiling and didn't mention it again. Mr. Lingerle said he would help with the washing up before he left. Gram said she had expected him to stay into the evening, if he would like to. He said he would like to and that only part of his reason was that he could have a real helping of the pies for supper. Gram snorted. He nominated James as his helper in the kitchen. The rest of the family he sent to lie down in the living room. To gather their energies for the walk, he said, the After-Thanksgiving-Dinner walk.

Late in the afternoon, everybody wrapped up in coats and walked down to the Bay. A film of ice lay over the water, going out about a hundred yards from shore. Gram recalled the times when the Bay had frozen so hard that you could walk out on it. Dicey thought of the oystermen working in this bitter weather and thought that the gray clouds reflected the gray of the water. She turned around to look back over the muted winter browns of the marsh to where the house stood, if you could see it.

As if it had been waiting to catch her full attention, the sky loosed a flurry of snowflakes. This wasn't a real snow, but swirled down lightly, like a rain shower. It came down so few and so slowly, you could watch the descent of an individual snowflake.

The children, led by Sammy, ran back up the path to the house. Once they'd arrived there, however, there was nothing to do. So they dashed back down the path, to join the two adults, who moved more sedately.

“It's snowing!” Sammy cried. “I don't have mittens!”

“I'll find some,” Gram said. “I always wondered if it was worth hoarding all those old clothes away, but now I guess it was,” she said to Mr. Lingerle.

“Makes me feel like running too,” he remarked. He had a plaid wool scarf wrapped up tight around his neck. Snowflakes lay scattered on his thin hair.

“You should,” Gram said. “You should take
some
exercise.”

“I know, but I don't. I can't really,” he told her.

“It's not good for you,” she said. “All that extra weight.”

He agreed, but didn't say anything. However, as they entered the warm kitchen, Dicey heard him say quietly: “If you really thought that, you'd not have invited me to dinner.”

“You know better than that, young man,” Gram snapped. Dicey grinned. Gram's way of reaching out was sure original. Dicey herself was thinking about several things at once, about what that last letter from Boston might have said, about why Sammy wasn't angry at being refused permission to go to Ernie's, about James's friend Toby, who was going to spend the night with them on Saturday for James's birthday present. (“That's all I want,” he'd told Gram. “Just that. And a chocolate cake, like Sammy's. And if you'd make a crab imperial? For supper. And —” “I have just been struck deaf,” Gram announced. “I cannot hear another word you are going to say on the subject.”) And Dicey was thinking about how the ocean never froze but always smashed up the little ridges of ice that dared to form at its edge at a quiet low tide.

By the time they went to bed, a light dusting of snow glittered over everything, glistening white in the dark air. But when Dicey emerged from Millie's the next afternoon, there was no sign of it. The cold weather had been nudged aside by an unexpectedly balmy day. Sunlight poured warm out of a cloudless sky; the breeze blew gently, wafting the warm air around. The temperature, Millie told her, had reached the sixties at midday. Dicey peeled her sweater over her head and saw Mina walking toward her, wheeling a bike.

“I brought my bike,” Mina said unnecessarily. “I thought I'd walk out with you a ways. I've had enough family to last me a year, and it's gonna happen all over again at Christmas. Can you believe that?”

Dicey didn't know what she was supposed to say. She didn't say anything.

“So can I?” Mina asked.

“Can you what?”

“Walk with you.”

“Sure,” Dicey said. They were silent for a block, until Mina asked if Dicey had a nice Thanksgiving, and Dicey said she had.

They were silent again. After a while, Mina asked, “Was it awfully different from your other Thanksgivings?”

Dicey was watching a bright red cardinal fly across the road into an empty field. He flew with a queer, swooping motion, low to the land. He flashed red ahead of them and at eye level.

“They don't fly high, like other birds,” Dicey observed to Mina.

“We get a lot of cardinals around here, all winter long,” Mina told her.

“We never had Thanksgiving before, with Momma,” Dicey said. She couldn't seem to keep her mind on the conversation; she couldn't seem to pay attention. It felt like spring fever. “We were too poor,” she explained.

“That's no sin,” Mina declared.

“I never said it was.”

Mina turned her head and looked at Dicey. “I never said you did. I was just trying to tell you — where I stand. Your brother's a lot like you.”

“Did you meet James?”

“Sammy.”

“Sammy isn't. He looks like Momma.”

“That's not what I meant.”

“Then what did you mean?” And suddenly Dicey's mind was clear again, like a sudden cure from spring fever when an icy rain surprises you.

“What's got you jumping down my throat?” Mina demanded.

Dicey looked up at her, struck by a sudden thought: “Or is this the way you talk about the other person?”

Mina chuckled. “I should have known better than to write that where you'd hear it. I should have known you'd understand it and remember.”

“Yeah, but is it?” Dicey insisted.

“Yes and no,” Mina told her. The road was almost untraveled, and they walked slowly, in no hurry to get anywhere. “Look Dicey. See, I've got these problems.”

That surprised Dicey.

“I mean, I'm pretty smart, and certainly smarter than most of the kids around here. I'm black. I'm a black female. “Oh and — well, look at me. Tell the truth, I could be thirty years old and have kids of my own, couldn't I? Big as I am. If you just look. See what I mean?”

Dicey grinned, and nodded.

“And I began getting these — bosoms — when I was ten; I started bleeding when I was eleven — I ask you, what are people going to think?”

“What does that matter?” Dicey asked.

“So here I am, this giant oddball — and with more personality than anybody needs — and along comes a scrawny little kid who's at least as smart as I am and nobody's doormat. So I said to myself, Mina Smiths, you get to know that girl. I mean, I've known you for two months, and you never got close to asking me if anybody ever French-kissed me.”

“Cripes,” Dicey said, “why should I want to know that?”

“That's what I mean.”

Dicey thought about it. “It could be, I'm just immature,” she said.

“I thought of that, but that's not the feeling I get. So I'm really interested in you, because you're interesting. Get me?”

“Yeah,” Dicey said.

“So what is it about your brother that makes you jump down my throat?”

And Dicey told her about the fights he'd been in recently, and the fights he'd been in before, in Provincetown and in Bridgeport. “He won't tell us why,” Dicey said. “That's why we're worried.”

“Who's we?”

“Me and Gram,” Dicey said.

“Did he tell you before?”

“No, but I could figure it out.” Dicey told Mina about what it was like for them all in Provincetown and about how she had finally understood this summer how scared and angry Sammy got. “But it's not the same here,” Dicey argued, although Mina hadn't said anything. “It's not at all the same for us. Even Maybeth — shows the difference.”

“Lemme think a minute,” Mina said. Dicey waited, feeling how warm the lowering sun was on the side of her face. It wasn't as warm as a fire, but it warmed her in a deeper way. Then Mina threw her arms up into the air and clapped her hands together over her head. Her bike clattered onto the ground. She ignored it and turned a bright face to Dicey. “It's gotta be your grandmother,” Mina declared.

“Hunh?”

“Maybe you don't know this,” Mina continued, talking fast and eagerly, “but your grandmother's — people around here have considered her —” As she realized what she was saying, her voice slowed down. “I mean — she's got a reputation for weird chess. As long as I can remember.”

Dicey could feel anger mounting. “You never even met her. You don't know anything about her, and she isn't.” She bit at her lip.

“See what I mean?” Mina asked, ignoring Dicey's anger. “You're like him, you flare up — don't try to deny it — as soon as I brought your grandmother into it. I bet you did some fighting too, when you were younger. I bet. Did you? Come on, tell me. Did you?”

Dicey had to smile, Mina was so pleased with herself. “Yes, of course, and about Momma. So you think the kids might be saying things about Gram?”

“Don't you? Doesn't that sound like what kids would do?”

It did. “But what can we do about it?” Dicey asked.

“I dunno. How could I know that?” Mina asked.

“What would you do?”

“Me? I'd probably go down to school and bash in a few faces. I've always been so big, nobody fought back against me much. But that'd be the wrong thing to do.”

“Yeah,” Dicey agreed. She could see a picture of Mina descending on Sammy's second-grade classroom. “You wouldn't really,” she said.

“I'm not sure,” Mina said. “What's your grandmother like?”

Mina didn't give you a minute to catch your breath, Dicey thought. Conversations with her were like running, running along the ocean. “Come and meet her and see for yourself.”

“Another time. Today, I've got to get back home. I'm only loose for a couple of hours, under strict orders to get back to help with supper. There are fifteen people eating at our house.”

“Who are they all?” Dicey asked.

“They are all — every one of them — immediate family. My parents and brothers and sisters, a couple of husbands, a couple of wives, a couple of little kids. It's a circus, I can tell you that.” She looked west to where the sun was and said, “And now is the time for me to pedal back to it.”

“Come meet Gram sometime,” Dicey asked.

“Wild horses couldn't keep me away,” Mina said. “See you.”

“See you.” Dicey mounted her own bike and rode off in the opposite direction.

She found Gram sitting on the back steps. Gram wasn't doing anything, for a change, just sitting in the sunlight. Dicey sat down beside her. She didn't know how to say what she was going to say.

“What if Sammy's fighting about you?” she asked Gram.

Gram's face swiveled around to look at Dicey. Gram's hazel eyes were set deep into her face. Her nose was straight and proud. “Don't be stupid,” she said. Her skin in this light showed fine lines under the fading tan.

“I'm not,” Dicey answered. Anger tightened Gram's mouth, but Dicey sat it out.

Gram just stared at Dicey for a minute. She was sitting about where she had been sitting when Dicey first saw her, ever. She was dressed as she had been then, too, long overblouse, a long full skirt and bare feet. Then Gram stood up. “It's too cold for bare feet anyway,” she said.

“But Gram — ”

Gram turned around.

“What about it?” Dicey asked.

Gram just turned away and went back inside. Dicey followed her into the kitchen. “It's what you told me,” she insisted to Gram's back. “It's what you said, about reaching out.”

“And even if it's true, what am I supposed to do?” Gram asked. “It's too stupid.”

“I think you ought to find out,” Dicey said. “You could talk to Sammy.”

“It's not as if I haven't already done enough,” Gram declared. Her chin was high and stiff.

Well, that was true. Dicey knew that.

“It's nobody's business how I live my life,” Gram announced.

Dicey left the room. She went out to the barn and worked on the boat. She finished the side she had started in September. In the failing light, she saw Sammy ride his bike up to the big doors. The dim light disguised his individual features, so he could have been any seven-year-old, home and tired. He dismounted, holding the bike upright with his hands and landing lightly on his feet. He could have been a picture of his uncle, the other Samuel — Bullet — Dicey thought. She had always assumed from Gram's reaction to Sammy that he looked like Bullet. But she didn't know, she didn't know anything about Gram's children. Except Momma. She wished Gram would talk about them, so she could understand — Understand what? she asked herself. Understand why Gram wouldn't even think about if Sammy was fighting over what people said about her, wouldn't even talk about it. The figure in the doorway wheeled its bike inside and became Sammy himself.