Absalom's Daughters (15 page)

“What you know 'bout mules, gal?”

“They the mos' nigger of all critters.”

The old woman leaned forward in the chair so that it gave a deep, aching creak, and gave her the same disbelieving look as the man who'd been sitting in the mule wagon back by Ellie's store.

The kitchen door opened, and the younger woman came in. She sniffed at the smells coming from the stove, eyed the ham frying in the pan, half-hidden by the limp darkening collards, and gave her mother a look, as if she knew exactly what Cassie had felt in the pantry.

“Dammit,” she said to her mother. “I kin see the gooseflesh on her where you gone and scairt her witless.” She pushed in front of Cassie and took over the stove and everything on it. “Gal,” she said, “this ol' woman send you into the pantry?”

Cassie nodded wordlessly.

“We got some cold spots in this house.” She gave the collards a good hard stir. “Some people likes to think of them as spooks. This the overseer's house back in slavery time.”

The old woman leaned back in her chair. “Cold norm'ly drift down, but not in this house, cause this house ain't normal.”

“There ain't no damn spooks,” said the daughter. “An' even if there was, I ain't letting 'em have the run of this place. This place belongs to me, an' I got things to do.”

The younger woman scooped half the collards into a big, chipped bowl. She took the hot corn bread out of the oven, sliced up two big hunks, and put them in the bowl with a generous scoop of the rabbit stew. She put in two big spoons and covered it all with aluminum foil.

“This vagrant gal stayin' with us for supper,” said her mother.

“No, she ain't,” said the daughter. “I ain't gonna let you play with her jus' cause you got nuthin' better to do.” She opened the pantry door without hesitation and took out an empty basket. A cold draft curled through the kitchen, but there was no moaning or sighing. The cold smelled of old wooden beams and onions.

She packed the food into the basket and handed it to Cassie. “Share that with your friend out there by the crick. Careful you don't spill. You need help findin' your way?”

“Nome.” Cassie held the heavy, fragrant basket in both hands. She wanted to bolt out the door, but there was one more thing she needed. “I was wonderin', though, if I could bother you for some vinegar and salt.”

“Someone bleedin' on they clothes?” demanded the older woman.

“Yessum.” Even though it was a harmless lie, the words sounded suspicious and hung in the room like the cold air from the pantry. “The blood done set,” she added, because at least that was true.

The younger woman reached into a cabinet and took down a bottle of vinegar and a box of salt. She poured out about a quarter cup of salt into an empty jam jar and screwed the lid on tight. She put it and the vinegar in the basket with the food. “You leave this and the basket by that pond inside the mansion.” She led Cassie to the door. “Where're you goin'?”

“Virginia,” said Cassie.

“Long way,” said the older woman.

“You an' your friend be careful,” said the younger woman.

The old woman got up from her chair and grabbed Cassie's arm. “Take yo' friend's bloody draws to the pool. Not that li'l crick—the
pool
. Scrub it with that salt and vin'gar an' save the squeezin' water off it in that jam jar.” She angled her head at the pantry door and the row of glass jars, unseen behind it. “Blood and salt water. That's how we keep evil things away.” The old woman sat down in the straight-backed wooden chair again; righteous.

The daughter led Cassie to the front door and opened it to the night.

Cassie crossed the bridge and followed the creek back to the car. Judith was huddled in the front seat, shivering in her coat.

“Where the hail have you bin? Mah Gawd! I thought you run off.”

Cassie got into the junk car and handed Judith the basket. “Folks gave me supper. And stuff to wash out your dress.”

“You knockin' on doors and doin' laundry inna middle of the night?”

“I couldn't sleep.” Cassie pulled the foil away to show Judith the food. She took one spoon and gave Judith the other, and they ate every bit of the rabbit stew and corn bread and collards. Cassie let Judith eat all the ham.

*   *   *

In the morning Cassie washed the dress in the pool where the old mansion had been. Judith sat cross-legged in her draws and undershirt. The basket, empty except for the bowl and two spoons, sat in the shade by one of the disintegrating columns.

“I'll wash it,” Judith said for the second time. “It's my dress.”

“That's all right.”

“Don't scrub so hard.”

The dress was old and thin, but a stain was a stain. “Don't worry about the dress,” said Cassie.

“I'll worry if I want to,” said Judith. She waved away gnats.

The salt roughed itself into the damp fabric, gritty, then slippery as it dissolved. Vinegar added something to the mix that made the stains slide out and vanish in the rinse. In the cool light of sunrise, the dress was dark with water but clean. Cassie squeezed the dress where the stains had been and let the water trickle into the empty jam jar. The water had a brackish look to it, an unpowerful look.

Judith propped herself up. “What in the world are you doin'?”

“What's it look like I'm doin'?”

“It
look
like you saving the damn bloody washin' water.”

“I guess I am.” How could she say what the water in the jar was really supposed to do?

Judith picked up the jar and threw it into the pool. She took up the dress and wrung it until it was as dry as it would get without being hung. She put it on. “It'll dry when we get drivin',” she said.

“You'll catch cold,” said Cassie.

Judith straightened her damp dress. “Cain't you tell it gonna be a hot day?”

Cassie drove, east through Alabama. The land looked a little different. The pines taller and thicker in the woods and a smoky quality to the air, especially higher up in the hills. Overall, though, the flatland was still flat, and where the land was farmed, there was always a man and a mule. Two times there was a man and a tractor. Always, there was a tumble of shacks, and in the distance, a big house on a hill, falling to pieces under huge old trees.

Cassie thought about the jar and the water, mixing with all the other washing water in that pool. She thought about what Lil Ma might be doing, which was easy. She was doing the wash while Grandmother kept an eye on her, and from beyond the grave, the mothers of grandmothers and grandmothers before them kept an eye on her. Clear back to slavery mothers. Maybe beyond. Was the ghost in the pantry kin to the older woman and her daughter?

“You b'lieve in ghosts?” Cassie said.

Judith had been frowning at the road, not really seeing it.

Any other time this would have been enough to launch Judith into some convoluted story she'd made up on the spot; this day Judith just hunched into her shoulders. “Don't you?”

 

CHAPTER
EIGHT

For the three days it took to get to Enterprise, Judith didn't say much. The junk car puttered along the two-lane highway. People in other cars yelled at them to
git outta the way.
Even other junkers passed them.

Cassie turned on the radio and found a station with a man playing a melancholy guitar and singing cowboy songs. Judith didn't sing along. She cried at night. Cassie tried to say things she hoped were comforting, but when nothing seemed to help, she said, “Is you sick? Mebbe you need a doctor to look at you.” Back in Heron-Neck, Mrs. Duckett had known about every female trouble. She knew who was confined to bed rest, who'd miscarried, who'd had twins (each by a different daddy). She knew who was trying hard to get with-child and who didn't need “enny more chillun ennyhow.” Mrs. Duckett talked about male troubles too, but those were discussed mostly with raised eyebrows and hand gestures, and only when Grandmother wasn't around. Cassie felt far less informed about male problems.

At the end of the third day, the land turned hilly, and the car, unaccustomed to climbing, began to overheat. Even though it was early in March, the day had been hot. Cassie had stopped often to make sure there was water in the radiator. Judith slept in the backseat, oblivious.

In the late afternoon while Cassie was peering into the heat and darkness of the radiator, Judith woke up. “Where are we?”

“Alabammy hill country.” Cassie shut the car hood and picked up a galvanized bucket she'd found on the side of the road. The bucket had been shot at, but the holes were only in the upper half, so the bottom still held water. She'd been keeping it in the foot well of the passenger seat. There seemed to be a creek in every little valley.

“I mean where on the map?”

“I guess about a day away from Enterprise.”

Judith sat up in the backseat. She looked better, not so bloodless. “Where we gonna stop?”

“I ain't seen a safe place. I seen a lot of lil shacks with white folks an' big dogs. None o' the coloreds been wavin' back.”

“Ever'body think you stole this car, an' now you drivin' round showin' it off.” She got out of the backseat and made her way gingerly to the front. She sat down with her feet on either side of the bucket without acting like she'd even seen it. “You lucky you ain't been shot at.”

“Nobody wants this car but us. You want somethin' to eat?”

Judith leaned her head back on the ragged upholstery. “I'd like a steak 'n' taters, please. An' a ice-cold Coca-Cola to wash it all down.” Cassie laughed, and Judith smiled a pale smile. “Let's find us a big ol' billboard for the night.”

A billboard for
TIDE
detergent was at the top of the hill and had been for such a long time that the bright orange-and-yellow bull's-eye box had faded to gray. Cassie and Judith hid the car in thorny weeds and ate stale corn bread, all they had left. Judith marked off the past three days on the calendar and turned the page uneasily to March. Two weeks left and still in Alabama.

“We gonna hafta drive day and night,” said Judith.

“We don't have the money for gas to drive day and night.”

“Well now,” said Judith, sounding a little desperate. “We cain't git stuck out here after comin' all this way.”

“We'll find a way,” said Cassie, “isn't that what you said?”

“I know it's what I said.”

“We got to eat,” said Cassie. “We'll think better with something in our stomachs.”

They picked dandelion greens and tried boiling them the way they thought they remembered their grandmothers had, but the greens were bitter and tough. Not far behind the billboard, Cassie found a stand of mulberry trees with enough fruit for the two of them to feel less like they were starving. In the long grass under twisted trees they found a rotting arrangement of crates, which had once been set up as a table and chairs. Judith pushed a crate over with her foot, and that was when they found the bottles of moonshine whiskey. One was corked, nearly full, and only dirty on one side, where it'd been lying in the leaves for who knew how long. Judith scuffed around it until all the spiders ran off, and took it back with them to the car.

It had been a clear hot afternoon, and the evening was no different. From the top of the hill, their view of the sky was uninterrupted. Stars came out. Crickets, frogs, and night birds sang all around them. There wasn't so much as a porch light showing in the valley. Had they fallen between the crisscross of roads and landed somewhere on the old map they'd started with—on which the markings had worn away?

Judith uncorked the bottle, took a deep whiff, and handed it over to Cassie. It smelled like paint thinner.

“I hope you don' think I'm gonna drink this,” said Cassie.

“Din't nobody in your fam'ly drink?” said Judith. “Not even when your granny wasn't lookin'?”

“You know my momma din't.”

“She shoulda.” Judith reached for the bottle. Cassie handed it back and watched Judith put the mouth of the bottle between her lips and lean back so the whiskey just rolled in. Judith swallowed twice, silently, with a terrible expression on her face, leaned forward, and coughed like she was drowning. Cassie tried to pound her on the back, but Judith held her off.

“'At's how it s'posed to be.” Judith gasped and pushed the bottle at her and made encouraging motions with both hands.

“I felt so sorry for your ma,” Judith said. “She din't wanna sleep with my daddy. She coulda done better by you. I'd see people lookin' at your mama, jus'
lookin'
at her. I felt so sorry for her,” she said again. “Din't you?”

Cassie looked out at the dark and the moon, aware of a pain in the middle of her chest.

“You wanna go home,” said Judith.

“I don't.”

“You do,” said Judith, “but you cain't.” She giggled, got up, and stumbled to the car. The radio came on. Static hissed. A white man's voice read an agricultural report. The idea that white people were right here, talking about how the corn crop was coming along, not just among themselves around a kitchen table, but on the radio where everyone could hear, made Cassie's chest hurt more. Judith had left the bottle on the ground, and Cassie picked it up. It was about half gone.
Cain't. Ain't.
She shut her eyes and tears came out. She took a gulp, fast, so as to bypass her tongue; it was like a mouthful of gasoline. The fumes came up behind her eyes and made them water. She choked for breath.

“Don't you be drinkin' the whole bottle!” Judith said.

The stuff ran down into Cassie's stomach and lay there. Her mouth and throat felt like she'd swallowed lit matches. There was nothing to do but drink again. She did and had to lie down on her back in the grass. She blinked at the moon. Her chest seemed not to hurt as much.