Come a Stranger

by Cynthia Voigt

  “I used to think, to wonder—I used to complain too, to Him—why God didn’t lead us out of America the same way He led the Jews out of Egypt. There was a lot the same in the situations,” Mr. Shipp said.

  “I guess there was,” Mina said, thinking about it.

  “I’d wonder why we didn’t have any Moses. Then—if there was a Moses coming along. Dr. King, I thought, might be the man to lead us back to our own country.”

  “Except, of course, Moses wasn’t black. The Jews weren’t,” Mina explained.

  “Neither am I,” Mr. Shipp said.

  Mina almost laughed. It had to be a joke. Then she saw that it wasn’t a joke.

  She couldn’t think of what to say. She wondered if he had a patch of craziness in him, that let him pretend to himself that he wasn’t black. She thought she must have been wrong about him being strong and at peace, and that was depressing. She didn’t know what she could possibly say to him now. Somehow, she knew that the one thing she felt like saying—“You are too”—was the one thing she couldn’t say. She turned her face to the fields again.

  “But I’m not, Mina, and neither are you. Look at me. Look at yourself. We’re not black, are we?”

  Mina looked at the skin of her hands. It looked black to her. She looked back out the window, embarrassed.

  Between the rows of soybeans the earth showed brown, the dark brown that meant rich soil, but lightened by the clay characteristic of this low land. This soil was dark, but not really black-brown like the soil where the bay ate away at the marsh grasses.

  “I’m brown, really,” Mr. Shipp said to her silence. “We are. Shades of brown. We call ourselves black because—the other words have been used and used derogatively. Negro—that’s black too, in another language.”

  “Spanish,” Mina mumbled, a little embarrassed at herself now.

  “But I wouldn’t like to be called brownie, would you?”

  Mina giggled.

  “Blacks, it’s what we call ourselves, so that’s all right.”

  “What would you rather be called?” Mina wondered.

  “I always liked colored,” Mr. Shipp said. “Because that covers just about everything.”

  Mina was looking at him again, and she saw he was half teasing. She thought about that, about all the colors the blacks were. There was dark, like Mr. Shipp, dark, dark brown so that in certain lights you could see the purply black that went into it. Her skin was like a chocolate candy bar, a Hershey bar to be precise. Kat’s had coppery tints in it. Some blacks were so light they were beige, almost, and some had golden tones and—She started to laugh, because he was exactly right about it.

  “What’s so funny?” he asked. But she was willing to bet he already knew the answer.

  “I’m not surprised you didn’t get the job,” she told him.

  Mr. Shipp’s dark eyebrows went up, surprised, and his surprised laughter poured out of him into the warm air. “I’m going to have to watch out for you, Mina Smiths,” he said. “You’re—”

  She waited.

  He said what everybody had always been saying about her, all of her life, except at camp. “You are t-rou-ble.”

  Mina wished he’d said something else. Something different from what everybody else always said.

  Then he added, “I haven’t known you but three hours, and already—”

  “Already what?” she asked, when he didn’t finish the sentence.

  “Already you’ve got me talking with you like a friend,” he said.

  She was glad to hear him say that.

  “I’ve got a congregation, and people I work with. I’ve got a family and a wife. But friends are in short supply. Unless maybe you count God, but I can’t make out if He’s my friend or what.”

  He didn’t say that as if he minded not knowing, or even minded feeling as if he didn’t have what he’d call friends. Mina didn’t mind him thinking she was trouble, if that was how he thought about it.

  She looked across at Mr. Shipp, at his heavy, dark eyebrows and at his dark hands on the wheel of the car. There was a smile building up in her, of mischief and gladness and being free. They thought they were turning her out, turning their backs on her, but really they were sending her home.

  CHAPTER 10

  Momma was in Miz Hunter’s bedroom, not waiting in their own kitchen, but that was the only thing different from the way Mina had imagined things. Momma wrapped her arms around Mina and Mina wrapped her arms around her mother. Even though she was almost as tall as her mother, the arms made her feel little again, and safe. She breathed in the faint odors of rubbing alcohol and hand lotion that Momma carried around with her. “I know it’s selfish, but I’m glad you’re home. I miss your company,” Momma’s voice said in her ear. They drew apart, but Momma went on. “You look crumpled, you’ve got that travel look to you. You go right on home and take a bath, get your laundry sorted. It’s fried chicken for dinner and you can imagine Belle is going to be glad you’re here to help her out.”

  Mina slipped back into summer, like slipping into a comfortable old bathrobe. She took her mother’s place sitting with Miz Hunter for the last recovery days. Mina would go over to the old lady’s house late in the morning and make her some lunch. Then, while Mina swept and dusted the three rooms, Miz Hunter would get washed up and dressed, with Mina nearby to help in case she fell or felt suddenly weak. They spent the afternoons sitting on the front porch, with Louis under orders to stay close. They talked sometimes, and they played Scrabble. Mr. Shipp usually dropped by, for a shorter or longer visit. Mina’s mother brought over a covered plate for Miz Hunter’s supper before she went off to work. More and more Miz Hunter got well enough to look after herself.

  It was a peaceful few days for Mina. She didn’t see much of anybody, because nobody much knew she was home. Miz Hunter asked her, right off, if she’d gotten tired of living among strangers.

  “Yes and no,” Mina said. They had a little table set out between them on the front porch with the Scrabble board on it. “I learned a lot.” She arranged her seven squares on the rack.

  “Yes, your daddy does keep you all wound around in your cocoon here. But it doesn’t seem to have done the older two any harm, so maybe it won’t hurt you either, Missy.”

  “Actually,” Mina said, “I meant learned like—learned things I never knew anything about. Books and music and stuff.”

  “I heard some of that music, last year, coming from your room. I haven’t heard any since you’ve been back.”

  Mina hadn’t played any records, she hadn’t wanted to. In the same way she hadn’t wanted to dance, or anything.

  “I hope you like learning,” Miz Hunter said. “I did myself. I still do. Education learning, that is.” Her little hand, brown as a sparrow’s back, made the word lease. Mina could use that S, if she could find a good enough word to attach to it. She shuffled her letters around, trying to find a word with an H and a Y both, that could end in S. Her mind kept skittering around, coming up with words she didn’t have the right letters for, like hyphen or hyena. History had the S in the middle, and it was long too, but she didn’t have a T or an I or an R.

  * * *

  On Sunday morning, she rejoined the choir. It was kind of fun watching the expression on peoples’ faces when they saw her up there. From where she sat, she could look over the whole congregation. Mina saw the fine summer dresses and caught her first glimpse of Alice sitting up front, with Momma and Miz Hunter. Miz Hunter had her red straw hat bright on her gray head, but Alice didn’t wear a hat. Instead, she braided her hair into many little braids, each one woven through with colored ribbons. The colors danced whenever Alice moved her head. She was as pretty as her pictures, as pretty as a picture, and Mina stared at her for a long time. She had big, big, dark eyes under curved eyebrows, a nose that turned up just a little at the end, and a red mouth that looked kissable. That was all Mina could think of, looking at Alice’s mouth with its red lipstick, that it looked like what they called a
kissable mouth, and she didn’t think she ought to be thinking like that during church. A little girl, about eight or nine Mina guessed, sat beside Alice, her hair in three thicker braids, one down the back of her head and two at the sides. Mina thought they must have spent hours getting their hair ready. Beside the girl sat a thin little boy in a suit that was too big for him, with glasses. The littlest child sat on Zandor’s lap, pulling at his nose while Zandor talked over the heads of the children to Alice, as if he couldn’t take his eyes off her. Mina didn’t blame her brother.

  When the service started, Mina looked over and around the congregation, at the different colors of the faces. Mr. Shipp was right, she thought, colored was the best name for them. The service went on around her, Bible readings, hymns, collection, and Mina looked around her. There was as much variety of color as you would see in a furniture store, Mina thought. The faces were all the colors of wood, seasoned and stained, oak and pecan, maple, pine. Mr. Shipp, she thought, her eyes resting on the back of his neck, was darker, like black locust that had been around for years and years, stained by smoke, maybe.

  Outside the windows it was a low, gray morning, and it would rain before the day was out, she was sure. The air had that close, squeezing weight to it, of moisture building up. She settled back to hear what Mr. Shipp’s sermon would be like. Her eyes settled over the congregation, contented to be among the warm, woody colors of her own people, in her poppa’s church. Mr. Shipp was about the most interesting person she’d ever met in her whole life; she thought, with a rush of gratitude, that he was one of her people.

  Mr. Shipp talked about Judas, who betrayed Jesus for thirty pieces of silver. But he didn’t talk about Jesus’s sacrifice, how he had allowed himself to be crucified so that everybody’s sins could be forgiven; Mr. Shipp ignored that part of it altogether. Instead, he talked about what Judas did after he had betrayed his Master, how he had tried to return the silver pieces, how he had gone out and killed himself. He talked about why Judas might have done that, until Mina felt so sorry for Judas; she almost felt sorrier for him than for Jesus. Then Mr. Shipp changed the subject, sort of, to talk about an old Italian named Dante. Dante wrote a long poem about Hell and Heaven. This Dante said that in Hell the people who committed suicide got a worse punishment than the pitch and the flames and the tormenting devils, they were trapped inside trees. When you broke off a twig of one of these trees, the tree bled.

  That was a different kind of tree from the dryad tree Mina had imagined, even though it was the same. Mina felt her mind stretching to understand the differences and samenesses as her eyes rested on Mr. Shipp.

  At the Last Judgement, alone of everybody, these suicides were going to get their bodies back, Dante said. God would throw their poor dead bodies down, and the bodies would hang there from the trees. Because, Mr. Shipp said, they despised the body. They despised their own bodies.

  “Judas betrayed twice, once his Master and Our Lord and once himself. This burden of double sin—how far could a man carry such a burden? Judas did not go far before he tried to rid himself of the unbearable weight. The first sin is easy to recognize, so we can choose not to have to carry it. But that second sin, let us guard against it. My body, your body, these are God’s work; to despise them is to despise God’s work. Instead, look around to see the handiwork of the Lord. The eyes that can see, the ears to hear with, the strength of bone and muscle over organs that function with extraordinary efficiency, so perfectly that even scientists stand breathless before it. And the skin, fitted so close and tight over all, to contain and protect it. This must be God’s work, upon us, and for us. To despise it is to despise God. To despair of it is to despair of God. I will not burden my soul with that second sin,” Mr. Shipp concluded.

  Mina rose to sing the final hymn with her mind churning.

  “Does he always talk like that?” she asked her mother when they were back home, setting the table for lunch. They would eat inside, because of the threat of rain. Miz Hunter was well enough to come and join them.

  “Pretty much. Could you follow him? Sometimes I do and sometimes—like today—Well, my mind wandered. A lot of people don’t care for his way of making sermons. But nobody dislikes his ministry, as far as I’ve heard. And I guess, being Poppa’s wife, I’d be the first to hear. Did you enjoy it?”

  “I don’t know. It—got me thinking,” Mina said. “Yes, I did. He’s different from Poppa.”

  Her mother laid out knives and forks and spoons. Mina folded the paper napkins.

  “Poppa keeps his feet in the plain everyday things. Tamer—he’s walking out there among the ideas, like along the mountaintops.” Momma stood looking at the table. The smell of stew filled the house. “Set out the glasses, will you, Mina?”

  “Can we have him and his family for dinner sometime? He’s never had good crab cakes.”

  Momma looked at her, as if Mina had said something that didn’t make sense. “How’d you know a thing like that?”

  “When we had lunch, I was telling him about yours.”

  “What would you say he was sermonizing about today?” Momma asked.

  “About being black,” Mina answered, setting an empty glass at each place. “Except, I can’t figure out what Judas had to do with it.”

  “I didn’t tell you,” Momma said. She stood still, not setting anything out, not going back to the kitchen, “but your Miss LaValle, she tried to kill herself.”

  “Because of me?” Mina was shocked.

  “The world does not revolve around you, young lady.” Momma’s voice was angry. “Believe it or not, there are people who think some things are more important than you being sent home from that camp.” Then she came over and hugged Mina. “I’m sorry, child. I shouldn’t have said that—I know how much it mattered to you.”

  But Mina couldn’t think of why else Miss LaValle . . . “But why?” she asked. “What’s wrong?”

  “Her man left her,” Momma said.

  “What man?”

  “The man who’s been paying her bills. I was sure you knew. You didn’t think she supported herself just from ballet lessons, did you? We’ve got to get the biscuits made.”

  “But, Momma—” Mina followed her mother into the kitchen. Her mother dropped mounds of soft dough onto the pan. Mina dipped her fingers into cold water and shaped the dough into smooth-topped rounds. “Did she love him that much?”

  “Who ever knows, about love. Maybe she did, or maybe—at her age—she was afraid of starting out again, afraid of being on her own.”

  “She’s not so old.”

  “She’s my age. If Poppa were to leave me—”

  “He wouldn’t do that.”

  “Men die, you know. There are always accidents to happen. If that did happen, then I’m so tangled up in my life, children and grandchildren, my job, all the friends we have, the church—I wouldn’t go under. But she didn’t have anything. Not a single child. I always felt so sorry for her.”

  This was an entirely different person from the Miss LaValle Mina had known for years, the woman who had taught her how to dance. It was like a horror movie on TV, a Friday late-night horror movie, where the monster peels back the mask-face to reveal his true, horrible face. “I should go see her,” Mina said.

  “She’s gone.”

  “You mean she died?”

  “No, although she tried. No, she moved out, moved away, clean away. She’s gone to the West Coast, where she has friends, people she met when she worked as a professional dancer up north.”

  “She was a ballerina?” Miss Maddinton could be wrong, there could be black ballerinas.

  “No. She said once she wanted to, but she couldn’t.”

  “She wasn’t good enough?”

  “I wouldn’t know about that. They don’t let blacks in—or at least they didn’t when I was a girl. Irene danced in chorus lines. She was actually on Broadway twice, or so she told us. It was years ago.” Momma put the two trays of biscuits into the oven and then just st
ood there with her back to Mina, her shoulders sagged. When she turned around, she had to wipe her eyes.

  “Momma? What’s the matter?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Sometimes, it just seems like so much uphill work—she must have been awfully good, to get as far as she did, being black, and a woman, and then she ends up in the emergency room having her stomach pumped and wanting to die. If Tamer hadn’t been there . . .”

  “But she didn’t go to our church,” Mina asked.

  “She didn’t go to any church. But you know how it is, Mina; we all know all about one another, and we take care of each other. No matter what church anybody goes to.” Then Momma seemed to relax and feel better. “I thought that was what Tamer was sermonizing about, about Miss LaValle. He’s not the young man to let things go unspoken when people want to avoid them. Everybody’s been gossiping and I guess he just thought we needed a little bringing up short.”

  Mina didn’t want to think about it anymore. “Will you ask them to supper?”

  “If you’ll help out. Don’t even bother answering; I know you. You go ahead and ask them, honey. I’m only working nights for a few more days, then I go back to days, so it’ll be fine next week. Do you want to slice the tomatoes or drain the beans?”

  They got back to work. One thing about a big family, Mina thought, hefting the pot of green beans over to drain through the colander, the jobs got split up. Mina helped her mother with the cooking, because it was what she liked. Belle and Zandor wanted to hang around after church and see people, so they would do the washing up. When Zandor went off to college in the fall, Louis would take over most of the jobs he did, because he was about old enough. They did take care of one another, Mina thought. Her mother was right about that. Then Mina thought—alone in the kitchen, moving the baked biscuits from the trays onto the serving platter, piling the layers up—how lucky she was that this was where she was. She liked being where people knew how to keep close to one another; she liked having these people her people.