Dicey's Song

by Cynthia Voigt

  “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.

  “You finished one side,” he announced.

  “Looks good, doesn’t it,” Dicey said. He came to stand beside her, and she put her hand on his shoulder.

  “Are you going to work tomorrow morning?” he asked.

  “Sure, it’s Saturday.”

  “Would it be all right if I sanded it, even if you weren’t here?” Sammy asked. “I’d do a good job.”

  “I know you would,” Dicey told him. “That would be OK with me, if you wanted to.”

  “G
ood-o,” he said. He looked earnestly at her. “I won’t try to share the boat with you, Dicey. Honest.”

  Dicey looked back down at him. “You’re a goof,” she told him. Her arms slipped down behind his back until her fingers could dig into his rib cage. “A genuine goof and I’m going to call you Goofy.”

  He laughed, twisted away, and ran out of the barn. Dicey followed him, crying out that she was going to get him, and tickle him until he wet his pants. Sammy laughed so hard he fell over onto the ground. Dicey pounded on him.

  SATURDAY WAS as warm as Friday, and Dicey changed into her shorts and a T-shirt after lunch, to work on the boat. She preferred wearing the boys’ shirts, but they had to be ironed. She ran her hand carefully over the area Sammy had finished that morning when she had been washing down shelves at Millie’s. The wood was silky smooth under her fingers. The air was silky smooth around her body. James and Maybeth were working in the kitchen. Gram sat knitting and listening. Sammy was off delivering papers. Dicey scraped at the second side, puzzled by this strange warm weather but pleased by the chance to spend an afternoon alone with the boat.

  When someone spoke her name from behind her, she swung around, startled. Jeff stood in the doorway. He had a bike, and his guitar was slung over his back. “Whatcha doing?”

  “I’m the one to ask that,” Dicey snapped. What was he doing there anyway?

  He stepped back and moved his head confusedly. Dicey just about decided she didn’t think much of him when he spoke again.

  “Look,” he said. “I thought I’d come out and see you, and I want to meet this sister of yours. If you’re busy, I’ll go. If you don’t like the idea of me being here — you just have to say so.”

  Dicey was already sorry for her anger. “No,” she said quickly. “It’s not that. Come on in. I’ve only got a little more to do here. I was just surprised to see someone. You surprised me.”

  He leaned his bike against a post and came closer. She thought he might be laughing. “If that’s the way you react to surprises, I’ll be careful not to surprise you again. What are you doing?”

  “Scraping it down.”

  “That looks hand-made. Do you sail?”

  “I have. Just once. My grandmother’s going to teach me. I like it,” she added.

  “Want to hear a song while you work?”

  “What about the one you played for Sammy.” That way, he’d know she was really trying to make peace.

  “Ah, my twenty-minute number.” He seemed to understand that Dicey didn’t want to fight with him. He sat down on the ground and ran fingers over the strings. He adjusted the tuning of two, then ran his fingers along the chord again. For a minute, Dicey watched him. Then she went back to work.

  The song was about a man and a lady, just like Sammy said. It told him about the wife of a rich man who fell in love with somebody else and took him home with her while her husband was away. The husband came back and caught them together. He challenged the other man to a fight and killed him. Then he made up to the lady, sitting her on his knee, asking her which man she preferred. But she told him she preferred the other man, even though he was dead, preferred him “to you and all your kin.” Dicey liked that. She liked the spirit of it. So the rich man took the lady where everybody could see, and he cut her throat.

  Dicey had finished what she planned to get done that day, but she worked until the song was done. “But why are they all like that?” she asked Jeff. “Why are they all unhappy endings?”

  He shrugged. Dicey cleaned off the scraper and put it away.

  “Do you know any happy songs?”

  “A couple. Not many. Tolstoy says happy marriages are all the same, but unhappy ones are each different. Maybe that’s why, maybe being unhappy is more interesting.”

  “Tolstoy? Who’s that?”

  “A writer. A Russian. My father told me about it.”

  “Why would he tell you a thing like that?”

  Jeff shrugged. He didn’t want to talk about it. Dicey rubbed her hands clean on her shorts. “Well, come on in and meet people. James’s friend Toby’s coming over this afternoon too, so there’ll be lots of people around.”

  “What’s your sister’s name?”

  “Maybeth. She’s gonna like hearing you play.”

  By the time introductions were made and questions were answered, Toby had arrived. And Sammy had returned, and a whole new set of introductions and questions had to be covered. Toby was about James’s size, with light brown hair and big glasses that magnified his eyes. At first, they all stood around in the kitchen, then Gram moved them into the living room. Jeff went right to the point with Maybeth. “Dicey says you sing.”

  Maybeth gripped her hands together and looked big-eyed around the room. She didn’t say anything.

  “So do I,” Sammy declared.

  “I wasn’t thinking of this much audience,” Dicey added.

  “As a fact,” Gram announced from the doorway, “they all sing. I don’t,” she added. “Not where anybody can hear me, that is. You wouldn’t either.”

  James and Toby were standing awkwardly in the middle of the room. Sammy stood with them, studying Toby. “You wanna go down to the dock?” he offered. Toby looked at James; they didn’t seem to know what they wanted to do. “We could ride bikes,” Sammy suggested.

  Jeff sat down on the floor by the empty fireplace and spoke to Maybeth. “Dicey did tell me you could sing well,” he repeated, looking across the room at the little girl. “Actually, what happened, I told Dicey I thought she had a pretty good voice and she boasted about you.” He played a couple of chords.

  James and Toby went over to look at the bookcases.

  “Gram, could you make cookies?” Sammy asked.

  “I think I know how,” Gram said.

  “Chocolate chip?” he insisted.

  “Maybe,” she agreed.

  “Now?” he said. “Please?”

  “In a minute,” she said, looking at him sternly.

  Jeff began to sing, accompanying himself. “When first unto this country, a stranger I came —” He stopped. “Dicey?”

  “OK,” she agreed.

  Dicey sang with him, and after a couple of verses, Maybeth joined in. Her voice was stronger than either Dicey’s or Jeff’s, and after a bit they tapered off singing and just listened. Once she was singing, watching Jeff play the guitar, Maybeth forgot to be shy.

  At the end he said, “Dicey was right,” at the same time Maybeth moved to sit in front of him and say, “I like that song.”

  “But it’s wrong,” James said. “Jacob doesn’t have the coat of many colors, it’s Joseph.”

  “Because that’s the one his brother put blood on,” Toby added, standing beside James. The two earnest, intelligent faces looked at Jeff. “Jacob’s the one with Esau, remember?” Toby asked.

  “And the birthright and the blessing,” James said. Dicey thought there was no need for him to show off that way.

  “And Joseph goes into Egypt,” Toby said, matching James. “And his brothers do all bow down to him, just like in his dream.”

  Jeff’s gray eyes were dancing, Dicey saw, and he was having a hard time not smiling. “I know,” he told the two boys. James’s eyes lit up, and he glanced quickly at Dicey, and nodded at her. The two boys sat down on the floor. “I wondered about that,” Jeff went on, talking seriously to them. “If it’s Jacob because he’s a thief, the man in the song. And it can’t be Joseph — only, the man in the song is part Joseph, part Jacob, isn’t he? I mean, Joseph was a stranger in Egypt, and Jacob stole.”

  James looked impressed, and if anyone had asked Dicey she would have admitted that she was, too. She didn’t know what they were talking about, except it was probably from the Bible. But everybody had relaxed and she knew that when she suggested another song, Maybeth would join in eagerly. She tried to think of all the songs she wanted to sing. They had the whole warm afternoon before them.

  “You said you’d make cookies,” Sammy repe
ated to Gram. “I could help you,” he added, going to stand beside her.

  “All right,” Gram said. They left the room. James and Toby took out the checkers set. Dicey looked at the gleaming guitar on Jeff’s lap and asked him if he’d ever heard “Who Will Sing for Me?” He hadn’t, so Dicey and Maybeth sang it. He asked them to teach it to him. He had a light, rhythmical way of playing his guitar, picking at it with his finger, not strumming it.

  They were perfecting their version of “Amazing Grace,” in three-part harmony, when Gram came back into the room. Mina entered behind her, smiling broadly. “Brought you an alto,” Gram announced.

  Jeff flashed a smile up at Gram. Dicey got up to say hello. “I didn’t hear you knock,” she said.

  “She didn’t. Came right in the back door. Like certain other people,” Gram said, looking at Dicey who had done just that, that first day they came. “Not what you’re thinking,” Gram said quickly to Mina.

  “I didn’t think it was,” Mina answered just as quickly. “It looked like — I thought, Dicey’s family weren’t the kind to use the front door and scrape shoes — so I thought I’d just be one of the gang. It is a gang here, isn’t it?”

  Gram surveyed the room. She didn’t say a word, and they waited for her to say something. Sammy ran in to fetch her, because the cookies were ready to come out of the oven.

  They went through “Amazing Grace” again, and Mina’s voice was a full alto. Dicey wondered how Gram knew that. “I hope you’re not sung out,” Mina said, settling into a chair. “I could spend the afternoon singing, and that’s the truth.”

  “You choose the next one,” Jeff told her.

  “You won’t know it,” she countered.

  “I can pick up almost anything,” he said. “Can’t I, Maybeth? You tell her — you’ve been watching close enough.”

  Maybeth just smiled, and said, “I think he can.”

  Mina, curling her legs up under her denim skirt, challenged Jeff. “It’s a gospel tune.” She started to sing, a kind of prayer song, about a man whose only friend was God. By the time she got to the third line, Jeff had joined in, to show Mina he already knew it. They sang together: “Someone beckons me from heaven’s open door, and I can’t feel at home in this world, any mo-ore.”