Dicey's Song by Cynthia Voigt Page B

pouring a glass of milk. She swept out the downstairs with quick strokes of the broom. She began to feel all right again. She was about to go out to the barn and get down to work, when Sammy and Gram arrived; so she went down through the marsh to the boat, to get the last bags of groceries.
    â€œWe’re having steak tonight,” Sammy announced. “Gram got it.”
    â€œGot the steak, and a check from Welfare,” Gram said. Her mouth was tight. “They paid us everything from the time we first filed. So I thought — something to celebrate. If it deserves celebration.”
    Gram didn’t like taking charity, Dicey knew that because Gram said so. For that matter, neither did she. But Gram had said, when she finally agreed to take them in, that that might be what they had to do.
    â€œI must say,” Gram said, moving from table to refrigerator, “I’ve never gotten money back on taxes before. It ought to feel good.”
    Dicey finished the sentence for her: But it doesn’t. She felt like she ought to apologize to Gram. After all, it had been her idea to come down here and see if they could stay. The words
I’m sorry
started to form themselves on her lips. But nobody made Gram do things. If she didn’t want the children, all she had to do was say so.
    â€œSteak’ll be good,” was all Dicey said.
    â€œIt better be,” Gram answered.
    â€œI wanna play catch,” Sammy said. “Dicey?”
    She shook her head.
    â€œPlease?”
    â€œJames’Il be home in a while. Ask him.”
    â€œGram? Will you?”
    â€œNot today.” Gram was slamming around the kitchen. Dicey guessed she knew about how her grandmother felt.
    â€œI’m gonna go meet James,” Sammy decided. He ran out the door, letting it slam behind him. Gram had taken off her shoes and was putting eggs and butter out on the table. She hauled down her big mixing bowl. “What are you making?” Dicey asked.
    â€œChocolate cake and I don’t want any help, nor need it,” Gram said.
    The last time they had Gram’s chocolate cake was for Sammy’s birthday; but then Gram seemed happy about making it.
    Dicey went out to the barn. While she scraped, she thought about the English assignment. She’d show them she could write something good. She began thinking of how she would write about Momma, how to say enough for it to tell what had happened, but not as if she was talking about her own mother. After a while, she put down the scraper and went upstairs to the desk in her bedroom. She had thought of a way to begin that would give her a good ending too. She began to write.
    Downstairs, she heard the boys come in, with raised voices as if they were quarreling. Vaguely, she wondered what they could be quarreling about. Gram would settle it. Dicey continued writing, until a question that had been hovering around the back of her head, away behind her ideas, sneaked around to the front: wasn’t Maybeth supposed to be home by now?
    Outside, the sun was going down. Time to get to the kitchen, probably past time. Clouds crowded the sky, heavy and dark. The marsh lay under a pale mist, and in the distance, the Bay was dark purple.
    lames and Sammy sat over a game of checkers. Dicey said hello before turning down the hall to the kitchen. “I’d steer clear,” James advised her. “Something’s eating Gram.”
    â€œShe got a welfare check today,” Dicey explained.
    â€œI don’t know,” James said.
    Gram had set the table and put out glasses on the counter. She had put potatoes into the oven to bake. She had a stick of butter ready on the table. The cake she had made stood on the sideboard, tall and frosted. The steak waited beside a huge iron frying pan, beside the stove. Gram sat at the head of the table, in her usual place. Under the yellow kitchen light, her face looked pale and tired.
    â€œAnd what do
you
want?” Gram