Absalom's Daughters (22 page)

Boston. Judith. New York. The tar. Boston. Judith.

What would Judith do if Cassie abandoned her in Remington? Judith didn't need help finding Bill Forrest. She didn't need Cassie to become a big singin' star.

Boston. Judith. New York. The tar. Boston. Judith.

Judith would be all right without Cassie. Not happy. Furious when she had time to think about it. But unstoppable.

The sun was coming up, turning the blossoms, the sky, and the drab interior of the train different shades of pink. The iced tea changed from a pressure to a need. Cassie picked up her suitcase and her purse and went into the colored ladies' toilet, a seat with a hole and tracks rushing underneath it. There was a mirror but no washbasin. The mirror was opposite a shaded window. Faint daylight rippled through the shade as Cassie looked at her reflection. Mrs. Glade had brushed her dry hair out, oiled it, and braided it up behind her ears. It was soft and thick and looked better than it had since she'd left home. The tar in her dress pocket was a hot wad against her thigh. She took it out and touched her hair with it, lightly. She expected it to stick, a sticky joke on sticky hair, but where the tar touched, the texture changed. Kink became smooth. Black became brown. A strange feeling gripped her in the chest, like joy, or the kind of strangle she felt before breaking into sobs. She pulled out the pins and bands. She pulled her hair out of its careful braid. She wiped the tar all through until her hair became a white girl's hair. Not like Judith's, which was lank. The glossy kind, the kind white girls flipped over their shoulders and tied up in sprightly ponytails. It fell around her shoulders, loose and full. The tracks rattled past below the hole of the toilet. The hair lay around her cinnamon-colored face like a wig.

She tore the tar in half and scrubbed both sides of her face with it. Her hands shook as the cinnamon came off. She wound the tar into each ear, behind her ears, over the back of her neck. In the mirror, the hair framed her white face, her lean nose, her lips so similar to Judith's. The last thing that might speak for her, her skull, the shape of her bones, the skull underneath this skin, was mute.

Remington! Remington, Virginia!

She was sweating, and there were tears coming out of her eyes, which she was afraid would wash off the white and leave streaks showing the color still inside. She couldn't look at herself. She scrubbed her hands with the tar instead, back and front, and her arms up to her shoulders. The train slowed. She struggled out of the secondhand shoes and socks and wiped away color from her toes up to her underpants. She straightened up to see little tear-trails on her face. These she dabbed away with great care. Underneath, she was still white.

The train stopped. Outside the toilet door, people were getting off, thumping luggage. She pushed the window shade aside a finger's width to see the platform. She should get off. Her ticket was only good for this stop. She would have to get off without Judith seeing her, or all the black would come right back. She searched the platform frantically through the sliver of window. Where was Judith? Cassie saw only colored faces. Remington was the city rising beyond the platform—a traffic light, a brick bank, a wooden warehouse. New-looking cars waited at the traffic light. White people in the cars. Colored people crossing the street on foot.

Richmond! Richmond Special!

Richmond? How far was Richmond? Was Judith still on the train? What if she'd fallen asleep? Cassie turned from the window and saw herself in the mirror again, a panicked white girl. A white girl in the colored toilet. She made her face close, the way she made it close when white people looked at her. The expression looked different, but there wasn't time to figure out why.

Cassie put on her socks and shoes. She opened the toilet door an inch. The man and the woman who'd stayed in the car after the women had gotten off at Maddox were still in their seats. The man was sleeping. The woman was looking out the window. Cassie opened the door wider. No one stirred. She put her foot and one shoulder through the opening in the door. No one noticed. Her armpits were slick. She gripped the handle of her suitcase hard enough to feel her own short nails dig in her palm. She stepped out with her back to the woman looking out the window and the sleeping man. She made her legs move, her white legs, through the door, into the first of the cars for white passengers.

White people were getting on at the other end of the car, bustling around with children and luggage, hats, and lunch buckets. Colored porters helped them with their bags. Cassie sat in the first seat she came to, the seat against the back wall of the car. She slid over to the window farthest from the train platform. She would go to Richmond, wherever that was. She looked across the car at the crowded platform. Was Judith there? Cassie huddled down, with her suitcase and purse. There was room for three in her row, and she dreaded someone sitting next to her, but the front of the car filled up and everyone seemed to settle in, leaving the back half of the car mostly empty. The porters left. The conductor cried, “
Alll aboooard!
” The train lurched forward. Cassie looked over at the platform once more and this time saw Judith standing with her purse clutched to her chest, watching blankly as the train pulled away.

 

CHAPTER
THIRTEEN

Cassie had never been around white people for such a long time without having to do something for them.

The women's toilet for the car was at the end of her unoccupied row. She could hear everything anyone said if they were standing there. It was strange to listen with no pressure to answer any demands. She looked the other way, out the window. The meadows, fields, and forests of Virginia sped past.

Mama! Look what I found!

Oh, where'd you pick up that nasty trash?

I found it on the railroad tracks. Look, it's a medal! I'm a soldier!

Get that filthy thing off that nice white shirt. It's just a dirty bit of tin. Here, give it to me. Give it to me 'fore I tan your hide! Now git in there and pull down your pants.

For a while no one came to use the toilet. Apart from the rhythmic chug of the train, Cassie heard disconnected threads from the conversations around her. Outside, a river ran invitingly, shaded by willows, maples, oaks. There were ducks on the water and neat little houses with colored folk on the porches and chickens pecking in the yards. The trees thickened, obscuring the river and any houses along its banks. Two women, older women, came to the toilet door.

I would never, ever say this to her face, but I have to wonder if all her health problems aren't God's way of sayin', You lived a wicked life, woman, and here's your reward. I mean, I would never say that, but I think you know what I mean.

That time she had with Thomas.

While she was married to Richard!

But Richard was cheatin' on her.

I'm sorry, but revenge-cheatin', or whatever you want to call it, ain't in the Bible, an' if it ain't in the Bible, God's got every right to give you bleedin' troubles in your womb and pains in your titties. Ain't it seem righteous to you?

Cassie tried to imagine Mister Mallard, the albino man in Porterville, talking like this and couldn't. His bitterness was different. And the widow behind the curtain at the church in Porterville, her daughter in her lap, and the sticky black baby balanced on top of both of them? Would any of them say a thing like “God's got every right to give you bleedin' troubles in your womb and pains in your titties”? It was easy to imagine Mrs. Duckett, in the laundry, having a conversation with Lil Ma about God's revenge and “bleedin' troubles.” Still, there was something in the way these voices spoke that made them different, as though they had a handle on something in particular that made their opinions, no matter how mean-spirited or common, more correct than if the same words came out of the mouth of a colored person.

The door at the far end of the car opened. The conductor came through saying, “Tickets, tickets, please.” Cassie had seen him before, when he punched her ticket on the way out of Parmetter. He was an older white man with a short bristled beard and white hair under his conductor's cap. He arrived at her row.

“Ticket, miss.”

Her old ticket was in her purse. The ticket didn't say
COLORED
on it. It didn't have to. She was afraid even to touch it, though, afraid whatever residue it carried would make him recognize her. She gripped her purse. Her fingers wanted to open the window next to her and leap free of the train, roll down the grassy embankment, and run away under the peach blossoms.

“Ain't you gotta ticket, miss?”

She shook her head.

“Where you gettin off, Richmond?”

She nodded at the purse in her hands.

“Four dollars and fifty cents,” said the conductor. “You got that much in your purse?”

She looked hard at her fingers to see if there was any color left on them, but the tar had taken everything. Her hands were pale and lined with pale blue veins, which were so fascinating she just wanted to stare at them. She made herself open the purse and gather five bills in a sweaty crumple.

The conductor took the money and gave her change. He punched her new ticket. He went on through the door to the colored car. That was all.

Cassie shivered in her own chill. She repeated the Glades's phone number in her head. She understood now why they would have sent her to Boston. For the
Community
. For the
Opportunity
. The
Community
would never have let her travel alone like this, and the
Opportunity
, she was sure, would have shown her exactly how to smile at the conductor and hand over her money, cool as a cucumber, lily-white.

*   *   *

Even the little towns around Richmond seemed bigger than Remington. They were so crowded together, she couldn't tell where the city itself began. There were traffic lights and junk yards and a big road with four lanes paralleling the tracks. The train rattled across switches and crossings. Cars drove as fast as or faster than the train; sometimes it looked like the car was still, and the trees behind it were moving. On one side of the tracks the houses were painted white, with flower gardens. On the other side were the Negro streets. Shoeshines, fruit stands, a laundry. A mule hitched to a cart. Children, barefoot in the dust, waving at the train. The train rumbled by in the midmorning, casting a shadow over all of them.

Last stop, last stop Richmond! Last stop, Richmond Special!

The train slowed to a crawl, and the passengers got up to collect their things. The train stopped. Some passengers hustled right off. Others, with children mostly, took longer. Cassie shuffled out behind the first group. At the door, a colored porter steadied a wooden stair while a second colored porter helped people off the train.

Cassie stepped forward, and the second porter caught her elbow to help her down. She gave him a nervous smile. He gave her the smile he saved for white folks.

“Help you with your bag, miss?”

“No, thank you,” she said and knew immediately that
no thank you
meant something else coming out of this mouth; a curse, concealed in politeness. The wooden stair wobbled under her. The porter's hand on her arm was all that kept her from tumbling onto the brick platform.

“Steady there, miss,” he said.

She didn't say anything at all, and that felt terrible too
.

*   *   *

The beautiful shop windows of Richmond—jewelry and furniture, bakeries and dresses—were framed by blossoming trees and telephone poles complete with wires. It was lunchtime, and men either rushed past Cassie with a briefcase in one hand or sat, eating and drinking in restaurants. No one looked at her for more than a moment, which would have made her think that the tar had actually erased her if she hadn't seen her own white face in every display window she passed.

Her feet hurt in the secondhand shoes, and her mind was numb. What should she do now? In Remington, Judith was probably looking for work and a room. Perhaps, in Remington, Judith had found her father, confronted him with her state of progeny, and grabbed whatever money he still had right out of his pockets. Maybe she was already on her way to New York, leaving her past behind as well.

There were a few signs for jobs posted in the shop windows.
SALESLADY WANTED. COUNTER HELP NEEDED
. Nothing about laundry. Laundry jobs would be on the other side of the tracks, or in the backs of the stores, and for colored women. Cassie tried to imagine Judith, brash as usual, walking into a ladies' fine dress shop and offering her services as counter help. The ladies in the shop would laugh at her and yell at her to leave, because there was nothing more lowly than Judith, except for a colored girl. Even with white skin, Cassie understood that she had risen only a notch, and a shallow notch at that.

She repeated the Glades's phone number to herself. There were three choices. Go back to Porterville—if she could still find it. Go back to Remington and tell Judith about the tar. Or go on to Boston, where she knew no one and would be depending entirely on strangers. If she went back to Remington, she might not have to say a word. The minute Judith laid eyes on her, the tar's effects would evaporate. Cassie would be the same as she was before, with only a sidestep in time.

She kept walking until late in the afternoon, when she found herself at the edge of a park. She took off her shoes and walked in the grass until she could see down a long hill to a river. Train tracks paralleled the river, just like back home, and she could see the station, perhaps two miles behind her, past a long, lazy oxbow. From the other direction, she heard music playing, and when she craned her neck, she could see a white tent rising behind blossoming trees. She smelled popcorn and roasting peanuts. She put the white ankle socks and flats back on her bare, dirty white feet. She tucked her suitcase under a low-hanging pine and covered it with needles, took a nickel out of her purse for ice cream, and walked down the grassy hill to see the circus.