Absalom's Daughters (14 page)

Cassie built a fire on the riverbank and hung the dress on a stick to dry. It was still stained. Only vinegar and salt, or bleach would truly clean it.

Judith sat among the pebbles in her undershirt and discolored drawers. “I wonder if it woulda looked like him. All pale like he was.”

Cassie pushed twigs into the fire. “Din't you think he was good-lookin'?”

“I guess. Those pink eyes bothered me. Did you think he was? You know. Handsome?”

“I kinda thought so. He wasn't too nice to you, though. Good lookin' don't mean nothin' if he ain't good to you.”

Judith hugged herself. Her skin showed gooseflesh. Cassie got her patchy red coat from out of the car and draped it around Judith's shoulders.

“That what your mama said?” said Judith

“My mama never talked 'bout no men.”

“Your gramma?”

“What your mama tell you 'bout men?” Cassie stirred the fire.

“'Fore daddy left, she'd say, ‘Find yo'sef a man just like yo' daddy.' She used to make me an' Henry get down on our knees an' pray with her every night 'fore bed and thank God for our lil fam'ly. We did that until the day Daddy run off, an' after he left, she'd say, ‘Don't never marry no man like that! He gonna bamboozle you, an' no one gonna forgive you for bein' so stupid! Not even God.'” Judith studied her own bare feet. “You know how in fairy stories the pretty girl gits rescued by a knight on a white horse? She'd tell Henry stories like that when he was sick. She loved them stories more'n she loved the ones in the Bible.” Judith looked up at Cassie. “But unless you a beautiful princess locked in a tower or in some magical sleep, ain't no man ever gonna come rescue you. They ain't interested in your misery.” She hunched over her belly.

The fire smoked and gave off no heat to speak of. Cassie tried to think of something to say to make Judith feel better. “Beanie Simms used to tell me stories, but they never made no sense. They was animals instead of people. Like this monkey who found gold in the river behind his house. So he gets his friends—the elephant and the lion—to help him dam the river and dig up the gold. He says he gone share it. When they're done, he breaks the dam and they all drown, and he keeps the gold.”

Judith pushed her arms into her coat and gave that some thought. “How you drown a elephant?”

Cassie poked the fire. “Guess it was a big river.”

“Din't that monkey's friends know he never gonna share nothin' with 'em? What kinda story's that—one monkey gits rich, but ever'body else dies in the end?”

“It's just a story,” said Cassie. “What kinda lady stays locked up in a tower till the right man come along?”

Judith put her head in her hands. She looked weary, like an old woman. “I'm gonna go lay down.”

“You feelin' all right?”

“Just tarred.”

“Well. G'night then.”

“G'night.”

Later the moon rose over the bare trees, so full it woke Cassie out of her sleep. She knew it was the moon, not a noise, and she sat up in the front seat, not afraid but alert.

She got out of the car as quietly as she could. Judith was curled up in the back, sleeping too deeply even to snore. Between the river and the car, Judith's dress hung drying on its rack of sticks. The dress was a light color, possibly white at one time, or maybe a pale pink. In the moonlight, the stains spread down like maps of unknown places. Maybe they could pick up some bleach, or vinegar and salt at a store, soon, depending on which was cheaper.

Cassie went back to the car and took Lil Ma's shoes out from under the passenger seat and went barefoot to the creek to count the money they had left. One dollar bill, four quarters, and some change, which added up to another forty-six cents. She put all of it back into one shoe, put both shoes on, and stood.

It was a warm night. Satiny moonlight reflected from the surface of the creek, shimmering on tree trunks on the opposite bank. Spring peepers chirped in the shadows. The intruding moon made her restless. She walked along the river until it reached the road. The bridge there was concrete with 1947 molded into it at the near end. There was no trace of traffic. Cassie looked across the bridge and thought she saw lights on in a house, but it was the moon shining through the trees. The trees stood in a perfectly straight line, thick-trunked but branchless. Were they telephone poles? She squinted against the moon. They weren't trees or telephone poles, but columns that had at one time held up some part of a mansion. The other trees around them were saplings growing inside where the veranda had been. In the dark from where she was standing on the bridge, the shape of the vanished house was surprisingly distinct.

Cassie crossed the bridge and stood at the edge of the road, where short-stemmed brush had broken through the remains of a flagstone terrace. Some of the flagstones had fallen away, leaving open holes, which were filled with water, maybe from when the creek ran high. A pool glittered in the moonlight in an opening behind the columns where the front hall or the foyer might have been. The moon shone on the water through the five remaining pillars. Water lapped against what was left of the house.

Someone was kneeling in the ruins of the house. The lapping was the slap of wet fabric on stone.

A short woman, a colored woman, was scrubbing clothes in the flood of the house's foundation. Two wicker laundry baskets flanked her. Cassie heard herself make a surprised sound, and the woman stopped her washing.

“Who's that?”

Cassie said her name and stepped down into the ruin, where the woman could see her from the opposite side of the pool.

“Come on over heah,” said the woman. “Stan' wheah I kin see ya.”

Cassie came around the edge of the pool, carefully across cracked flagstone. “We just passin' through. Sleepin' in a car by the crick.”

“We?”

“Me an' 'nother girl.”

“Where you from?”

Cassie told her.

The woman looked her over. “Ain't you et properly?”

“We et what we brung.”

“You friend thin like you?”

“No thinner'n she ever was.”

The woman wrung out the shirt she was washing and put it in one of the wicker baskets. “You hep me tote this'er laundry, an' I'll fix you up some ets.” She put one of the baskets on her head and pointed to the other. “Follow me.”

Cassie picked up the basket and set it on her hip. It was heavy with wet wash. Down the road was an old house set back about ten feet from where cars went by during the day. There was a light on in the front room downstairs, and when the woman with the laundry basket opened the door, another woman, very elderly, looked up from a rocking chair.

“Now who's this?” she said.

“This a vagrant chile who sleepin' by the river.”

The house reminded Cassie of her home on Negro Street. Stairs went up along one wall of the house. Upstairs there would be two underheated rooms. Were there bits of newspaper covering the walls? She felt terribly homesick.

The younger woman took the baskets into the kitchen. Cassie heard an outside door open and knew the younger woman was on her way to hang the laundry on lines out back.

“Why you a vagrant?” said the old woman.

“I'm no vagrant. I left home is all.”

The back door slammed again, and the younger woman, the daughter probably, came back into the front room. A puff of cooking smells followed her from the kitchen.

“You done let the stew burn,” said the daughter.

“Ain't burnt,” said her mother.

The daughter turned to Cassie. “You like rabbit stew?”

“Yessum.”

“Your friend like rabbit stew?”

“I think so.”

“You know how to make corn bread?” the daughter said and eyed her mother. “This old woman was s'posed t' make some, but she so damn old she plumb fergot.”

“Lawd,” said her mother. “I plumb fergot. I was bein' so keerful 'bout the damn rabbit stew.”

The daughter turned back to her. “It a wonder you still alive. One o' these days you gone plumb fergit to take yo' nex' breath.”

“I kin make the bread,” said Cassie.

“I ain't so old you got to bring vagrant gals inna middle of the night to make the corn bread,” said the mother.

“Oh you
ain't
, is you?” said the daughter. “Then how come we
ain't
got no supper?” She caught Cassie by her wrist and pulled her into the kitchen.

“You yeast your bread?” said Cassie, as the daughter dragged her under the drape separating the kitchen from the front room. The daughter looked back like Cassie was crazy.

“We ain't got time to let it rise, gal. I got to git up in two hours and clean the damn houses.”

The kitchen was wide and warm and brightly lit, and the rabbit stew simmered on a white enamel gas stove. Cornmeal, baking powder, salt, a big bowl, three brown eggs, and a pitcher of milk sat on the kitchen table along with a metal baking dish. The daughter handed Cassie a wooden spoon.

“Mix it up,” she said, “an' git it inna oven. I got to finish hangin' these damn clothes.” She went out the kitchen door into the dark. Her mother came in under the drape, limped over to the table, and sat in one of two rough wooden chairs.

Cassie poured cornmeal in the large bowl, guessed at the amount of baking powder, broke in the eggs, and poured the milk. She stirred until the old woman said, “You fergot the salt.”

Cassie added the salt, mixed, and was about to pour it into the pan when the old woman said, “Butter it!”

Cassie got butter from the refrigerator—not an icebox like the one at home but an actual electric refrigerator—found butter and greased the pan. She poured the batter and faced the stove. She'd never used a gas stove before.

“Here, now,” said the old woman, “see them knobs?” She told Cassie how to turn them for the right temperature, which struck Cassie as being something like tuning the radio in the car. She put the cornbread in and brushed off her hands.

“You think you done?” said the old woman. “Grab out them collards from the sink.” She took a long paring knife out of the folds of her skirt and handed it to Cassie. Cassie trimmed the collards and cut them into neat strips, stems in a pile for the garden, like Grandmother had taught her. “Ma'am,” Cassie said. “If you don't mind my askin'. Do you gen'rally do cookin' and cleanin' in the middle of the night?”

The old woman let out a snort. “We do what we got to do when we got to do it.” She pointed to a door by the refrigerator. “Look in the pantry and slice off a little of the ham hangin' there.”

Cassie took the knife and opened the door. The pantry was tiny, no bigger than a small closet. It was dark inside and almost as cold as stepping outside on a winter day. Cassie's breath let out as steam.

“Ham's in the back,” said the old woman. “Over them baskets of dried apples.”

A dozen little jars of clear water sat in a row just inside the door. Cassie stepped over them and ducked under braided hanks of onions hanging from low unpainted beams. Baskets full of potatoes, turnips, and roots she didn't recognize were stacked close together on the cold stone floor and gave the air a brittle fragrance. The pantry was so dark, she could barely see the smoked ham. She took a step, stumbled on a potato basket, and flung out a hand for the back wall, but there was no back wall. Her hand touched a surface like a stair instead, filthy with age and icy to the touch. And there was something else, densely cold, almost solid. Whatever it was, when her hand brushed through the icy space, something sighed a melancholy sigh. Cassie stiffened, the smooth wooden handle of the knife in her hand.

“What you doin' in there, gal? Don't be steppin' in my baskets!”

The ham swung in an unfelt breeze. Cassie stepped back, eyes locked on the invisible thing in the dark.

“What you doin' in there, gal?” demanded the old woman. “Ain't you see that ham? Git me two good slices an' come on out!”

Cassie jammed the knife into the ham and hacked off two pieces. The presence on the stairs moaned as if it had known the hog personally. Cassie reeled backward between baskets, spun around, ducked the onions, and with two thick strips of ham in her fist, jumped the line of glass jars. She emerged into the kitchen to see the old woman rocked back in the kitchen chair.

“You look chilled, gal.”

“Cold in there,” whispered Cassie.

“Sure as hell,” said the old woman. “Bit crowded, too. Now get that ham in the pan.”

Cassie dropped the ham into the skillet and stood half-frozen while the meat sizzled. She remembered to put the collards in, but her feet itched with the desire to run right out the door. Grandmother had always sneered at people who told stories about ghosts. She dared to look over her shoulder at the kitchen door and the front door beyond. The old woman had blocked any clear escape. Cassie turned to the collards.

“Gal, you like yams?”

Cassie wished the younger woman would get back from hanging the laundry. “Yessum.”

“You knows where yams comes from?”

Cassie concentrated on the collards, stirring them as they wilted down. “From the garden?”

“Yam come from Africa, gal. Some people call it
sweet potato
, and sometime I expect the yam think of himself as a sweet potato, but the sweet potato and the yam two different things confused for each other.” She scowled at Cassie. “You knows where you come from, gal?”

“Mississippi, ma'am.”

“Right there, you like the yam. You think of yo'self as one thing, but then there's another thing. You don' know it. Nobody round you know it, but there ain't no way you cain't be it. No more'n a yam kin be a sweet potato.”

“Is it like the mule, ma'am?” said Cassie.