Absalom's Daughters (20 page)

She needed light.

She went downstairs in the dark. On the first floor was a powder room with a toilet and a mirror over the sink. Cassie turned the electric light on with the switch. There was a rose in a little vase on one side of sink and a bar of scented soap on the other. Cassie recognized the way the soap smelled. She squinted in the light and checked her hands. The tar held the impression of the inside of her fist. The skin on the back of her hand still showed the light mark where Charlie had demonstrated what this gift could do. She peered at her face and found the pale streak she'd made herself. How hard would she have to scrub, how long would it take, to change herself completely? And what about her skull? Like Mister Mallard, would her bones give her away? She examined her features: her mother's eyes, Judith's mouth, and an unremarkable nose that looked nothing in particular like one race or another. She touched her hair with the hand not holding the tar. It was dry, flat, and neglected. It needed to be healed with oils and experienced hands. What would happen to her hair?

Someone turned on a light in the hallway, and a female voice said, “Cassie?”

It was the minister's wife, Mrs. Glade. It would be impolite to not answer. Cassie cracked the powder room door. Mrs. Glade came into view and smiled. Cassie pushed the hand with the tar into the pocket of the bathrobe.

“Can't you sleep?”

“Nome.”

“Come on. I'll make you some warm milk.”

In the kitchen, Cassie sat at the small table by the window. Mrs. Glade poured milk from a glass bottle into a pan on the stove and lit the gas burner. She adjusted the gas and came and sat down across from Cassie. “Reverend Glade and I were talking about you girls after you went to bed.” Mrs. Glade was a chatty woman, Cassie now recalled. She didn't look a bit sleepy, and Cassie wondered if she'd been to bed at all. “Your friend—well, your sister—seems to have things all planned out for herself, but she didn't really have anything to say about your future. Have you thought about your future?”

“I want to get to New York with Judith.”

“And do what when you get there?”

It was hard to think. Hadn't she and Judith discussed this? “If Judith can't get famous, I can find laundry work.”

“It takes years and years to get famous,” Mrs. Glade said, in a tone reserved for children—sleepy, uninformed children. “What're you going to do for years and years?”

“We've always been together one way or the other,” said Cassie.

“Just because things have been one way for a long time, doesn't mean they have to stay that one way,” said Mrs. Glade.

This conversation, Cassie finally realized, was about sending Judith off on her own to become a reddio star and never seeing her again. Because telling anyone about the tar—and maybe especially telling Judith—would make all that black come right back.

“For example,” Mrs. Glade said, “have you thought about learning a trade besides the laundry? Or starting a business of your own? Or going to school?”

It was the middle of the night. What kind of questions were these to get asked in the middle of the night?

“Reverend Glade and I have friends in Boston we'd like you to meet. They grew up here, but they've moved on. We could send you up on the train. You'd be welcome at their house and in their community.”

“You'd send me to Boston?”

“We'd be glad to pay for your ticket.” Mrs. Glade got up and went over to the stove. The milk was steaming. She took a spoon from a drawer and lifted the skin that had formed. She lifted it like it was a thin wet napkin and shook it off into the trash.

“What about Judith?”

“What about Judith?”

“Well. She's my sister.”

“Your half sister, isn't that right?” Mrs. Glade poured the milk into a pink coffee cup and brought it to the table. “No matter how you're related to her, she's really not your kin. Kin doesn't ask kin to be their servant while they seek fame and fortune.”

“She never asked me to do that.”

“Of course not,” said Mrs. Glade. “But when she's auditioning, what'll you be doing? Waiting in the wings with her hat and coat? When she has a performance, where will you be? Cleaning her apartment?” Mrs. Glade pushed the pink coffee cup of steaming milk at Cassie. “Would you do anything for her because she's your sister? Or is it that you haven't given any thought to what you could be doing instead?”

“You make her sound like a bad person.”

“There's nothing bad about knowing what you want out of life,” said Mrs. Glade. “It's the waste of an opportunity that's bad.”

Mrs. Glade was a light-skinned woman. Her hair was straight and fine. She was lighter than what Cassie's grandmother referred to as
redbone
, lighter even than what she'd heard white folks refer to as
high yellow
. If Mrs. Glade herself had her own piece of tar, why wasn't she a white woman yet? Why was she still here? Why wasn't she in Boston with her friends and their
community
? What
opportunity
was she waiting for? Or was she like Beanie Simms—only the messenger?

Cassie gripped the sticky wad in her pocket. “You mean the—the tar.”

“The what?”

“The tar. From the baby. That's what you mean about Boston and—community and opportunity.”

Mrs. Glade smiled faintly. “You must've had a dream. I didn't realize I was upsetting you with all this talk. Drink your milk now and go back to bed. You've had a long day.”

*   *   *

In the morning, the Reverend Glade let in Junior Mallard in his mechanic's coverall. Junior was explaining that the old junk car the girls had driven across three and a half states was no longer fixable. It was dead, deceased.

Judith had come downstairs in her nightgown and terry robe just before Junior knocked, and was standing in the kitchen doorway with a cup of tea when Junior broke the news. Cassie was at the top of the stairs, where she could see but not easily be seen.

“How kin it be daid?” said Judith from the kitchen door. “It bin sittin' inna woods for years. Some ign'rint redneck boys't cain't even read done made it run, an' you cain't—.” She stopped herself. In the uncomfortable silence, the smell of pancakes, syrup, and bacon drifted up the stairs.

“Miss, you been runnin' it without a lick of oil,” said Junior. “The engine got so hot it melted.”

“Mistah Beale's nephew made it run. All he hadda do was put gas innit.”

“Sorry, miss,” said Junior. “There's nothing we can do.”

“Hail,” said Judith. Then, with a glance at the Reverend Glade: “'Scuse me.” She looked up the stairs to see Cassie. Cassie watched the Reverend Glade put a comforting arm around Judith's shoulders and walk her back into the kitchen. He would be talking about putting her on the train to Virginia or New York, whichever she preferred.
But I ain't got that kinda money
, Judith would say.
Don't you worry about that
, the Reverend would say to her, and Cassie could almost hear him
. We'd be glad to pay for your ticket. You can leave today if you'd like.

After breakfast Cassie and Judith sat together in their bedroom upstairs. Mrs. Glade had left a basket of clean, neatly folded clothes for them, all from church donations.

“For the needy,” said Judith. “I ain't feelin' so needy no more, though. One day soon I might buy me a new dress.” She held a light-blue frock up to her chest. “You like that?”

“It's okay.”

“S'matter with you? These folks gonna pay t'put us onna train to New York or Virginia or ennywhere else we want to go. We kin git to Virginia with time to spare. These right Christian folks for sure—an' I never said that 'bout ennyone else, not even all them white church ladies with their tater salads and fried chickens—so why you so sad-lookin'?”

“I'm not sad.”

Judith shook out a pink dress with dainty rosettes at the cuffs of the sleeves. “Now you know that'd look so pretty on you. Pink's your color.”

Because it gave her cinnamon skin a rosy cast. Lil Ma had always said so. “Ain't there somethin plain in there?” said Cassie.

“How 'bout this ugly ol' apron dress? No, that's for some woman with big boozums. Why you want somethin plain? Oh well, here's a white dress with no ruffles or nuthin'.”

It was a chalk-colored dress, short-sleeved, and would fall just below her knees. It would be a marker for her change. A yardstick to measure her difference by. Cassie held it against her chest and felt a surge of hatred for it. It was a particular and familiar hate she'd last felt at Tabitha Bromley's estate sale, when a worthless old white woman on a sagging old porch called Lil Ma a nigger because of a wringer. Cassie's grandmother had overseen the humiliation, to make sure it happened, because there would be no new wringer without it. Nothing so simple as paying. She'd hated Grandmother for knowing that so well. It was that exact hate she felt for this dress and for the people in this house. She understood why it was important to erase everything dark, but it had never been so clear to her as now. It had never been so apparently possible. She hated that too.

Judith paused her pawing through the basket of donated clothes. She was nearly to the bottom, where panties and brassieres were hidden underneath everything else. Judith looked at them doubtfully. “I kin see wearin' some other gal's dress, but I ain't sure 'bout their knickers.”

“You gonna need a bra in New York City. And clean knickers.”

“I s'pose.” She picked out a bra with cups like soup bowls.

Cassie fished out a pair of pink panties. “These'll fit you.” She tossed them into Judith's lap.

Judith squealed and pitched them back. “I ain't wearin somebody else's panties!”

“You'd wear 'em if they was mine.”

“No, I wouldn't neither!”

“Yes, you would, I mean washed and all.” She shook the panties for emphasis. “These is washed. They even smell good.”

“I don't care.” Judith threw herself back on the bed, rumpling the covers and scattering pillows. She covered her face with both hands. “I don't care. I ain't wearin' 'em!”

“Why?” said Cassie. “Because they come off some colored girl?”

Judith lay still with her hands over her eyes, breathing hard.

“Oh, that's just stupid,” said Cassie. “That's stupid, and I don't even believe it.”

Judith let her hands fall away from her face. “I said a bad thing this morning.”

“Judith, a day don't pass when you don't swear. I know you cain't help yourself, not even in a minister's house.”

“I don't mean the swearin'. I mean I said something rude to Mister Junior when he came in to say the car ain't never gonna run again. I said even redneck white boys could fix that car, and I was ready to say some more. An ever'body got real quiet. An then Reveren' Glade started talkin' to me 'bout leavin' on the nex' train.”

“I heard you.”

Judith blinked away tears. “I cain't stay 'cause I insulted them.”

“You want to stay?”

“Ain't you stayin'?”

“Why you say that?”

“I kin see you like it here. They nice people. They like you.”

Cassie put the panties down on the bed. The wad of tar was like a hot coal in the pocket of her bathrobe. “You goin' to New York City, Judith. You cain't stop now.”

“I cain't see myself goin' without you.”

“You got a callin', Judith. All I got is laundry. What'm I gonna do in New York sides be your maid?”

Judith pushed herself upright on the bed, flushed and serious. “You ain't never gonna be my maid. You my sister.”

“I ain't really. If I was your white sister, it'd be different. Maybe we'd sing together.”

“But you cain't sing. I mean you kin carry a tune and all.” Judith picked at the clothes in the basket. “Is that what you want to do?”

“I ain't no singer.”

Judith's face started to crumple. She moved closer on the bed. “What you want to do, Cassie?”

“I don't know.”

Judith threw her arms around Cassie's neck, and Cassie felt hot tears on Judith's cheek. “You got to come as far's Virginia. Kin you come that far? Come back here after, but we got to do that together.”

Cassie put her arms around Judith's shoulders. Judith started to sob.

“If I was your colored sister,” Judith wept, “would you come to New York with me?”

“What you gonna do,” said Cassie, “cover yourself with shoe-black and pass for a gospel singer?”

“You think that'd work?”

“No.”

Judith sniffled and tried to laugh. “Will you come to Virginia?”

Cassie nodded. “I'll come to Virginia.”

“And then we'll see?”

“And then we'll see.”

Judith went to wash her face and Cassie went to wash hers, and when Cassie came back, Judith had fallen asleep curled up on the blue dress, which would have to be ironed now.

Cassie sat next to Judith. Judith didn't budge. “Judith?”

Judith sighed in her sleep. Her skin was so fair and fragile-looking after being washed, she looked almost bruised. Cassie wasn't sure she'd ever seen Judith this clean. Her hair was fluffy and made little curls around her ears. Even her ears were pinker, like someone had made her scrub them, front and back. Cassie imagined Judith covered with shoe-black. Seeing her that way wasn't very hard.

Cassie looked at her own lightened knuckles and at Judith's chapped red hands. She waited a long minute and took the tar out of her pocket. She held it so it was hidden in her fist. Was just taking it out with someone else in the room a form of “telling”? Judith was asleep. Cassie watched her knuckle, but the light streak didn't waver. She opened her fist to expose the tar to daylight. The light streak stayed. The tar was black with an oily sheen, but when she rubbed it with her fingers, it felt almost powdery. She picked it up with her thumb and forefinger.