Come a Stranger

by Cynthia Voigt

  She did look out, everybody did around Mr. Bryce, who was the school principal too; but that didn’t mean she was going to shut up. Mina thought about Mr. Shipp, and whether he’d let anybody treat him this way. She wondered if, if Mr. Shipp was in their class as a student, she’d let anyone treat him the way Mr. Bryce treated the black kids, barely taking the time to tell them they were pretty stupid. So Mina made a point of standing up for blacks in general, and the kids in her class too.

  “What would your father say about your manners,” Mr. Bryce asked Mina one day, in front of everybody, when she had asked a question about three times, waiting for him to respond to her. “What would he say about how rude you are. He’s a minister, isn’t he?” Mr. Bryce added, looking around the class to make sure everybody got that point.

  Mina didn’t know how to answer him. She did know that she hadn’t been rude, in any way, not even in her tone of voice and barely in what she’d been thinking about the man. She didn’t want to answer his question, however, because it would look like a quarrel, whatever she answered. Mr. Bryce was setting up a quarrel.

  “Well?” he insisted, staring at her in the front row, where he had moved her the third day of class.

  He was pushing at her with the full force of his personality. Everyone got quiet, uncomfortable and a little eager for any kind of excitement, even if it was only somebody getting sent out. Mina didn’t want to get sent out of the room for a discipline report. She also didn’t want to apologize, because she didn’t think she had been rude. She wasn’t going to let him make her lie either, by forcing an “I’m sorry” out of her. But the way he’d asked the question, she couldn’t think of what she could say without it looking like a quarrel, unless she lied.

  Then she thought if there was going to be a quarrel, she wouldn’t lose it. She was a match for this man, she thought, feeling the storminess building up in her. But she thought of what Mr. Shipp would think was right, and even though she was afraid of a real quarrel she thought that for Tamer Shipp she ought to answer. So she tried an answer, looking right back into his unfriendly eyes, not smiling, not looking smart, keeping her voice level. “Yes, my father is a minister, over at the Oak Street Church. He takes a pretty firm line on rudeness, you’re right.”

  She wondered how he’d answer that, and she watched him wonder too. Mr. Bryce wanted to make an example of her, to make sure everybody knew he was in control. He wanted to put her down.

  But if he kept on with it, everyone would know that it was him making the quarrel, by picking on her. Things were tense in the room, but not—Mina noticed—in her. Then one of the white kids raised a hand at the same time as two of the black kids did. Mr. Bryce called on the white boy, and Mina didn’t let her expression give anything away.

  After that, Mina didn’t make any issues, but she didn’t lie low either. On Fridays, when they reported on current events, she talked about newspaper articles that had interested her, like race riots in Cape Town in South Africa, where sixteen blacks had been killed, but for the first time the rioting had taken place within the white areas. That interested Mina, as did what was going on in Rhodesia. Mr. Bryce wanted them to concentrate on the election, so most everybody talked about the issues and the debates, week after week, because they knew that would get a good grade. Some of the boys reported on science, especially the Viking expedition, and on natural disasters, like Hurricane Liza. Bailey Wester had the reports Mina looked forward to. He always picked some obscure incident—like when Allied Chemical was fined thirteen million dollars for polluting the James River, or the time Serbo-Croatian Nationalists hijacked a TWA jet, with a fake bomb. But Mina was the only one Mr. Bryce kept saying it to: “The assignment was to cover the significant news.”

  When Mina saw on her first report card that her Social Studies grade was a C, she wasn’t surprised. Mr. Bryce should have given her an A, she knew; all of her homework papers were perfect, all of her test papers were perfect. He wanted to fail her, she thought, but he didn’t dare to. He didn’t even dare give her a D. So he gave her a C and wrote a comment in the blank where teacher comments went: “Wilhemina is disruptive.”

  The whole thing just made Mina laugh. She guessed she’d gotten through to him, all right. It made her laugh also to see that whole row of A’s, everything straight A’s, even PE, and then this C. Everybody else had written something like “Excellent” or “Exceptional,” and Mr. Bryce complained that she was disruptive. Well, maybe she was, if disruptive meant asking questions he couldn’t answer or bringing up subjects he’d planned to avoid.

  Mina thought everybody would be as amused by the report card as she was. She knew Mr. Shipp would be, and she wished she could tell him about it, to see him smile; but her parents took it seriously. There were just five of them at the table these days, with Zandor off partying his days away at college, if his letters told the truth. Belle and Louis had done what their parents expected them to do on their report cards, Louis mostly B’s, Belle mostly C’s. So Mina got the attention. As she twirled spaghetti around her fork and listened to them, Mina guessed she should have known they wouldn’t think it was funny.

  “You’re awfully obvious about it,” Belle interrupted, wiping tomato sauce from her chin with little dabs of her napkin. She wore a bathrobe to dinner because she was going out later, up to the mall in Salisbury with her current boyfriend. Belle changed boyfriends about as often, and as easily, as she changed hair styles. “I don’t hear anybody complaining about my C’s. It’s pretty obvious about what you think of me.”

  Mina’s parents let the subject get changed then, which told Mina that she might be in some real trouble. She caught Louis’s eye on her, so she knew he agreed with her about that. She listened to Belle tell her parents about the movie she was seeing that night and who was going with them.

  While Belle and Louis washed the dishes, and her parents had their evening cups of herb tea because coffee kept them awake at night, Mina had to stay at the table.

  “What about this C?” Momma asked. Poppa sat and drank his tea and listened.

  “He didn’t have the nerve to flunk me,” Mina announced, “which is what he really wanted to do. I’d have flunked me, if I’d been him.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I have the nerve. If it was what I wanted to do, and if the only reason I didn’t was because I was afraid of the repercussions.”

  “Has your work been that bad?” Momma asked. She was holding onto her temper.

  “No. It’s been good. Like perfect papers.”

  “Have you been disrupting the class?”

  “No.”

  “He seems to think you have. I’d prefer the truth, Mina.”

  “I’m not lying,” Mina said, getting a little angry herself. “You know that.”

  “I also know you’re also not giving me any information,” Momma snapped back.

  Poppa drank at his tea.

  Mina could see what her mother meant. That was fair enough. “He’s calling me disruptive because I ask him questions he doesn’t want to answer.”

  “Like what?” Momma had to know exactly.

  “Like—questions about blacks. It’s supposed to be a history of Maryland, but he acts as if there weren’t any blacks in the whole state. When I ask him, he kind of hesitates, and then he just goes right on with what he was already saying.”

  That defused Momma’s anger, but she looked at Poppa as if she wanted him to say something in here.

  “Are you the only one asking these questions?” Poppa asked.

  Mina nodded.

  “Are they all, all your questions, about black people?”

  “Not all. He still doesn’t answer. Like I asked him, why we didn’t start studying with the Indians, because they were here first. And how the people in England could just give away things over here, like land, or trade rights. But mostly they are. About blacks.” Mina wished she had a cup of tea or something to fiddle with her hands. Even her milk glass had been cleared
away, so she just had a paper napkin. She couldn’t rip up the paper napkin, because it was clean and could be used for another dinner. She laced her fingers together and unlaced them. She crossed her ankles and uncrossed them.

  “What’s he like, this teacher?” Poppa asked.

  “White,” Mina said. They didn’t say anything. “He’s the same one Zandor and Belle had; you know him. He knows who you are anyway.”

  “They didn’t have any trouble with him.”

  “Yeah, well, maybe they didn’t. I am, but it’s nothing serious. Not serious for me anyway.” Mina’s spirits rose as she said this, because it was true.

  Poppa reached over to cover the hand Momma had held out on the table. “Mina,” he said, “we don’t talk much about this—it’s not the kind of thing talking makes any difference to—but there are things that happen when you’re a minority.”

  “But that’s just it,” Mina said. “More than half of the class is black. That’s not a minority.”

  Neither of her parents said anything.

  “Is it?”

  “No,” her father said. “But—in the whole country, we are. In history, we are.”

  “So what?” Mina said. “And what’s so bad about being a minority anyway?”

  Neither of them answered her.

  “Besides, here we’re not,” Mina insisted.

  “Which is one very good reason to be right here,” her mother said.

  “Is that true?” Mina wanted to know. “Poppa, is that true?” She heard how that sounded, calling him “Poppa” like she was a baby.

  “There’s a lot of truth to it,” her father answered. “But, Mina, being a minority has only part to do with numbers. It has a lot to do with who has power, maybe more to do with that than anything else. Or money. And if you’re black, you’ve got to understand that. You’ve got to accept the limits.”

  Mina didn’t think she had to, and she knew she didn’t want to. She wanted to ask them if they thought Mr. Shipp would say that, would agree with that.

  “It’s also possible that Mr. Bryce thinks you’re trying to make him look stupid.”

  “As if he didn’t know his subject,” Momma explained.

  “If he can’t answer my questions then he doesn’t, does he?” Mina asked, quite reasonably. They both kind of sighed. “He thinks I’m an uppity nigger,” Mina said.

  “Mina!” her mother said, quick and angry. Her father covered his eyes with his hand, which was a sign with him of being really troubled by something.

  “I’m sorry, but what do you want me to do? Say ‘Yes, sir’ and pretend I look up to him, when I don’t, just because he’s the principal? Just because he’s white?”

  “I certainly do not,” Momma said. Mina wasn’t surprised.

  “I only want you to understand what you’re doing,” her father said. He removed his hand and looked at her, straight in the eye. “I want you to understand what you’re up against.”

  There was a silence, and the night lay dark outside.

  “It has nothing to do with grades,” her father said.

  That melted Mina. She knew that. “I know, Poppa, I know. And I know it’s hard on you, because your children are supposed to be better behaved and not get in trouble. I’m not disruptive. Honest. He’s not much to be up against, come to think of it,” she said, grinning, unable to stop herself.

  Luckily, her parents seemed to find that pretty funny.

  “That’s not what Zandor and Belle thought,” Momma said.

  “I’m not Zandor and Belle,” Mina pointed out.

  “I know it. Don’t I know it. You were bound to run into trouble, sooner or later. She was, Amos, we both know that. And, being Mina, sooner rather than later. I blame that camp, I do. I wish you’d never gone to that dance camp. I never liked it, not for a minute, but Irene said what an opportunity it was for you. . . . All right,” she said to Mina’s father, “I promised I wouldn’t talk about it and I won’t. I’ll stop. But Mina—I am going to say this, Amos—have you ever thought that . . . there are men who don’t like girls, women, to be too smart.”

  Mina never had.

  “Read a little history, Mina. If you want to do some thinking about oppressed minorities, read a little history and think about women. Who didn’t even have the power to vote until this century.”

  “But women aren’t a minority,” Mina protested.

  “In terms of power they were. They still are. You said you knew what you were up against,” Momma reminded her. “It’s not just being black.”

  Mina was about sick of that word, black. It was a dark, heavy word. It hung down over their shoulders, like snow weighting down the long branches of pine. She was about ready to agree with Mr. Shipp that she liked the word “colored” because it covered everybody, from Mrs. Beaulieu with her mahogany-toned skin to her own father, whose skin was as dark as the bark on dogwoods, when the bark was wet with spring rain.

  “And I’ll tell you something else. Sometimes people will be prejudiced in your favor, just because you’re black. Blacks, and whites too. And that’s just as bad. It’s never easy, Mina.”

  “I’ll manage,” Mina said.

  CHAPTER 16

  Mina managed, all that year. There wasn’t a day went by when she didn’t remember the man away up north. Sometimes she wanted to go to sleep, like a tree in hibernation, and come to life again in spring. Sometimes she was almost grateful to Mr. Bryce, because standing up to him made her almost forget. She didn’t mind that Tamer Shipp would never love her, she just minded him being where she couldn’t see him, or ever talk to him and know him better. She even wrote a letter to Alice that fall, not about anything important, but it felt—while she was writing—almost as if she was closer. The only answer she got was a Christmas card and the list of signed names didn’t look like his handwriting.

  It wasn’t as if nothing was happening in her life. They had a fine Thanksgiving. Everybody came home for the holiday. Even Eleanor and John flew over for the long weekend, bringing little Mary and Lucas with them. John liked to work Christmas Day and New Year’s, when he could make really good money. CS usually had some girl or some job, or both, to keep him away for Christmas. Thanksgiving was when the family really celebrated.

  Mina and her mother worked for about two straight days, getting everything ready. Mina liked those long hours in the kitchen, working with her momma. They’d talk about different things, and it felt to Mina like Momma was about the best friend she’d ever had. That wasn’t true, Mina knew, but it was true in a way. There were things she never even hinted at, that she was thinking about, because her mother got het up when she thought her kids were being discriminated against, or left out of something, or acting in a way she wouldn’t want them to. Momma got upset when somebody suggested she should spend more time on herself too, even if the someone was Mina. If Mina told her mother she ought to have a new dress, Momma would carry on about money and vanity and having made her choices about what was important. “I’ll thank you not to try to reform a life I’m pretty proud of,” she’d say. Even so, working and talking with her mother was one of the best times Mina had all that year. Momma liked it too, that was part of it.

  While Mina worked the lard into flour to make pie dough, Momma doctored up jars of mincemeat. She didn’t have time to make her own, but she always added her own ingredients to the store-bought, stirring it up hot on the stove, smelling it, adding some brandy, adding some raisins, adding this and adding that.

  They all felt Miz Hunter’s absence at the long table, with the food spread out and Belle’s bowl of flowers moved to the sideboard because there wasn’t room for it anymore. Poppa mentioned it when he was saying grace, after he’d thanked God for absent friends. “Gather into your bosom our friend Eustacia Hunter,” Poppa said. “Amen.”

  “What’s the church going to do with that house now, Dad?” Ellie asked. “Is somebody else going to move in?”

  “Either that or we’ll use it for church act
ivities,” Poppa said. He dished out potatoes while Momma carved the big turkey. CS had the vegetables. The plates started out empty and got filled up as they were passed along the table. “Youth fellowship, evening classes, Bible studies. We need more room. We’re trying to decide if we need the room more than somebody might need the home.”

  John had Lucas in a high chair next to him, which was pretty distracting, but he asked, “How about one of these displaced families—Vietnamese or Cambodian? Central American?”

  “They surely need homes,” Poppa said. “But—well, their agencies aren’t any too eager to take advantage of what a black church has to offer. In their way, they’re right. Things are hard enough for foreigners in a strange land. We’re also considering a kind of summer program, letting inner city families have the house for two weeks at a time.”

  “Isn’t there someone like Miz Hunter who could live there?” Louis said. “She was like a grandmother or something, right next door.”

  “Most people don’t want to go out to strangers when they get older,” Momma told Louis.

  Then they heard about John’s promotion and listened to him try to puzzle out whether he wanted to take a desk job, which was the next step up. He wasn’t sure how high a black man could go in the electric company, and because of that he wasn’t sure that he wanted to stay on with them. CS was studying computers, because he figured there would be a good employment market anywhere you wanted to work. Zandor was all wrapped up with being a college man. He talked about his friends, he talked about parties and the athletics program; he didn’t have much to say, as Momma remarked, about his classes. Over the pies, Zandor started in on Mina, telling her she ought to play some sport to keep herself in trim or no man—and especially Mr. Shipp, he said, winking at her, who had a wife that looked like Alice—would look twice at her. Zandor didn’t listen to Mina saying she wasn’t coordinated and would just as soon just take PE. “There’s nothing but PE anyway that I can take,” Mina said. This was getting oppressive and she wished he’d let it drop.