Come a Stranger (7 page)

But all the rest of her life—she minded about all the rest of it. She wished the year were over and she was back at summer, back at camp, back with dancers. Back where she really belonged.

She looked down at her hands, but she didn't recognize them
as her own, those hands resting on the photograph album. Mina closed her eyes. The house around her was silent, except for the pattering noises of people going to bed, or the muted sounds of people already sleeping. The wind blew around the house, and the sound of rain on the tin roof got sharper, so that she thought the rain had turned to sleet. Sleet would blow down sharp through the dark air.

In her mind, she saw a high hill, with stone buildings on it among tall, leafy trees, and the great golden lion pacing there. He would know her, who she really was; with him, she would be who she really was. In her mind, she heard the overture to
Swan Lake
,
all the orchestral instruments playing together, in harmony. She could almost smell the studio, a mixture of wax and sweat and the perfume Miss Maddinton wore.

Mina opened her eyes. The hands lay flat on the bright fabric with which the album was covered. She looked at them, at the square fingernails and the black skin. She turned them over to see the pinky skin of her palms. She felt as if these hands didn't belong to her and she didn't want them to. But could you feel that way about your own hands?

M
ina tackled Kat on the subject the next time they were alone together. That occurred when they walked to Miss LaValle's for dance class. They had class twice a week, Tuesdays and Thursdays, from five to six. They always walked together, because their parents said they had to. It wasn't dangerous, not Crisfield, but it wasn't smart for girls to go walking around alone in the dark of evening. They both carried their slippers in plastic sacks, against the damp; they both had already changed into leotards, because the one changing room in the garage, with a plastic curtain hanging down over it, wasn't a very nice place to change clothes in.

“What do you mean, telling your mother I'm a snob?” Mina demanded.

For a long time, Kat didn't say anything. Mina didn't look at her. She watched the sidewalk pass under her feet instead. They didn't walk close anymore, they were too old to walk around hand in hand the way they used to.

Finally Kat said, “That's the way you act.”

Mina didn't know, really, why she'd asked. She didn't care, really, what Kat thought. She just wasn't going to let Kat get away with saying things like that, without Mina letting her know that she knew about it.

“It
is
,”
Kat said. “All you'll talk about is that boring music, all
you do is—and boasting about camp, or going off to babysit somewhere—”

“You know I need the money, for tights, and slippers. It isn't as if my parents can afford those things, the way yours—”

“That too,” Kat interrupted. She stopped and turned to face Mina. Her face was twisted up with anger and didn't look at all pretty, Mina noticed. “I don't know you anymore. You're always criticizing me these days.”

“Like when?”

“Like right now, as if there was something wrong with my father earning good money. Oh, you don't say anything, you don't do it with words, you do it with your eyes, as if there's something wrong with the way I dress and talk and act, as if—And all you do is write letters to those camp people. I bet they don't even write you back. Answer me that.”

Mina didn't answer.

“And trying to make me different too, make me read books and listen to your music. And they're boring and dumb—the Narnia books. It's just pretend, fairy-tale stuff, with magic, and if I don't like them, you look at me as if I'm stupid. I'm not stupid. I don't know you anymore and it's not my doing.”

Kat was breathing heavily. The white breaths floated away in the darkening air. The trees around them were bare branches, except for a big magnolia behind a fence. Mina didn't know why Kat was so worked up. Looking at the girl, Mina thought probably Kat was jealous. It was as if jealousy had gotten into her and twisted up her face.

“You said we were best friends, but you don't act like a friend at all.” Kat started to cry.

Mina guessed maybe they weren't friends. People changed. But if they weren't, she didn't see why Kat was so worked up. She started moving again. “We don't want to be late,” she
said. “I only told you to read Narnia because I wanted you to understand about Tansy's dance,” Mina reminded Kat. “You said you wanted to hear about it.”

“I did, but not over and over again. As if there was nothing else in the world. And nobody else.”

“Besides, everybody says they're really good books, and they are too.”

“Who everybody? I know who. Your new friends, your white friends. That's who. I notice what part they gave to
you.
But you don't notice, because that would be criticizing them, and they're perfect.”

“You don't understand,” Mina said.

“Oh yeah? I bet—if you could—you'd go up there and live with them and be just like them—”

So what if she would, Mina said to herself. Kat didn't even know what she didn't know. Who was she to act so uppity at Mina?

“—You act—at school too, I've seen it—as if you're ashamed of us.”

For that matter, sometimes Mina was; she knew that. It was too bad, but it was true.

Kat snuffled along beside her for a while, then said, “Everybody says that anyway.”

“Says what?”

“You're a snob.”

Just because you were interested in other things they called you a snob, just because . . . that was just the kind of thing the kids here did.

“Yeah, well, nobody says it to my face, do they,” Mina answered.

“That's because everybody likes you,” Kat told her.

Mina started to laugh. It was so completely illogical—

“You may think it's funny but I don't. I think it's sad,” Kat cried.

—but true too, Mina thought, not laughing anymore. She was popular, but she didn't have friends, not here. The funny thing was that they seemed to care about it more than she did.

“I don't know why you complain anyway,” Kat said as they came to the cement driveway that led to the studio. “Since you've got so many better things to do than be friends. Since you don't care.”

“I wasn't complaining,” Mina pointed out.

“Well, then,” Kat said, her face looking purple as a plum under the street light.

“I don't see that I've got anything to complain about,” Mina added, to let Kat know that she was perfectly contented with the way things were. “But I don't like you telling things like that, when your mother repeats them to my mother,” she warned Kat. “It made Mom worry. I don't want her worrying.”

Kat wanted to quarrel back, but she didn't dare. Mina could see that. It wasn't that Kat was afraid to, not exactly. It was more that she knew Mina was right. Mina was usually right, because she was smarter and had broader experience, she read more and knew more and asked the right questions. Mina knew Kat wouldn't quarrel back, and she knew she could make Kat do what she wanted.

“You're going to get yourself in trouble one day,” Kat prophesied.

“It sounds like you hope you're there to see it,” Mina answered. T-rou-ble, that was what she was around here, and she didn't mind a bit. To start with, it was miles better than being just nobody, like everybody else was.

“How can you say that?” Kat asked her. “How could I feel that way when we're friends and have been for ages? You talk like I don't like you, Mina.”

“It sounds like maybe you don't,” Mina reminded her.

“But that doesn't mean I want something awful to happen to you. You've really changed, Mina.”

Mina had had enough of the conversation. She'd said what she wanted to say, and her mother wouldn't be hearing any more, she guessed. They were wasting time they could use dancing, hanging around out here.

Miss LaValle's studio still had the green plastic crowsfoot firs hung around the walls, with little Christmas lights blinking on and off, red and blue and green and orange and white, blinking on, blinking off. The studio had originally been the two-car garage for the little one-bedroom, one-story house. Miss LaValle had remodeled it herself, painting the walls, purchasing and hanging the long, cheap mirrors, which were now mottled with some kind of rusty stains. Overhead, fluorescent lights in long bars gave off uneven light. Mina worked by herself at the far end of the barre.

The floor was the hardest part of the job, Miss LaValle had told her once. She'd had to learn how to lay wooden flooring herself, measuring, cutting, and laying the long, narrow strips. Then she'd sanded it smooth with a rented sander and waxed and polished it herself. The floor was always cold in winter, because it had been put down over the cement slab that was the garage floor. Most of the wax had worn off and Miss LaValle hadn't gotten around to rewaxing it. As Mina did her warming-up exercises, she tried not to hear the scratchiness of the record Miss LaValle was playing, for the class that was taking place at the other end of the room. The record was a waltz, “The Blue Danube,” so worn with use that the violins sounded as if they were being played with metal bows and the winds seemed to be gasping for breath. Now that Mina knew how the instruments could sound, and should sound, she almost couldn't stand to listen to Miss LaValle's records.

While the class was working at the barre, Mina moved to the center of the room, back at the far end, near where the changing room had been made catty-corner, where the clothes and bags were piled up against a wall. She worked adagio and allegro, then did batteries, increasing her elevation. Her muscles had to work hard because her body seemed to protest; and it wasn't long before she was working up a sweat.

Miss LaValle changed the record, to
Nutcracker
selections, but Mina barely noticed. The record gave her rhythm for the two enchainements she had worked out, but it wasn't music. As she went over the arrangements of steps, doing both completely each time, she tried to watch herself in the mirror. It didn't feel quite right, but she couldn't figure out what she was doing wrong. She was too often too close to off balance, she knew that. The steps in an enchainement were supposed to flow, one into the other, but hers didn't feel like they were doing that. Mina concentrated hard, slowed down to regain fluidity of movement, then pushed up to the proper tempo. She heard Miss LaValle working with the class—the teacher was too patient, Mina thought. It was better to make the girls do more, work to higher standards, if you were going to teach them how to dance. Dance class shouldn't be a social occasion.

There wasn't anything more Miss LaValle could teach Mina; Mina had realized that right away. She continued coming for class time and giving Miss LaValle a five dollar bill at the end of each week. Mina had used to think that being a dance teacher like Miss LaValle would be a perfect life. You could dance all day long, if you wanted. Now, looking at her former teacher, she wondered. Miss LaValle's dance slippers were scuffed and worn, she wore the same black leotard and tights Mina had always seen her wearing, and her hair wasn't long. A dancer needed long hair. Mina was growing hers, which was a
pain but was necessary. Miss LaValle kept hers short and curly, which looked good on her, but wasn't what a dancer should do.

Miss LaValle was built like a dancer, long legs and muscular calves, a narrow torso, long arms and neck. Narrow shoulders. She had a flat stomach and small breasts. She looked weak and delicate, but she was actually strong.

There had been a time when Mina could imagine nothing more rewarding than living the kind of life Miss LaValle lived; now she could imagine more, so much more. . . . The bad side of that was that, now, she didn't feel like she belonged even here, in the dance studio, anymore.

She was always feeling out of place these days, Mina realized. She thought of it during her silent walk back with Kat and again in her own kitchen, where Louis read at the table he'd have to set in a couple of minutes, once their mother got home. Mina had put the burner on under a stew and preheated the oven for biscuits. She had the biscuits mixed and shaped when her mother came in the door. “Go over to the church and tell your father his dinner will be on in—?”

“Twelve to fifteen minutes,” Mina said, slipping the two cookie pans into the oven.

“Take a jacket,” her mother called.

“It's not far,” Mina called back. “I won't be cold.” She didn't take her jacket.

She went slowly down the front steps, rather enjoying the icy cold of the damp winter air on her bare arms and bare legs. From Miz Hunter's porch came the question. “Where you going to, Missy?”

Mina halted in the concealing darkness. Miz Hunter probably stepped out onto her porch to say hello to Mina's mother, coming back from work. Miz Hunter's tiny body was silhouetted against the yellow light at the open front door.

“Where you going to, Missy?” Miz Hunter asked again.

I don't know, Mina thought, and everybody's getting in my way. Stop
asking
,
she thought. “I'm going across to bring Dad home for supper,” she said.

“Well, you have a good evening.”

“You too,” Mina responded.

September, October, November, December—they were all gone and done with. January was almost over. It wasn't that long now anymore.

M
ina's heart was beating so fast, and so hard, she thought for sure it must show, thumping away under her blouse. Her father was driving slowly through the city of New London and then, slowly, up the river road. They had been riding for hours, without talking much, and Mina had made herself be patient. But now they were so close, and the car was going so slowly, waiting to turn and enter between the stone pillars and creeping up the road to the quadrangle.