Absalom's Daughters (24 page)

There was one thing left to do before she got back on the train.

At the station, she found the phone inside a wooden booth. She had never used a phone before, but Tabitha Bromley had had one in her store, and Cassie had seen how other people did it. The door folded closed, and there was a seat inside. The booth was snug and almost soundproof, and far too small to fit the suitcase. She left it where she could see it and sat for a while in her terrible secondhand shoes. The white ankle socks were now dirty and bunched. Her heels had blisters. She took the receiver off the hook and waited for the operator to speak. She would give her the number and tell the Glades she was sorry, but she was going to stay a colored girl. She was going to go back to Judith, but only until the business with Bill Forrest was settled. Then she would come back to Richmond and find out how the colored woman had gotten her own store and how it was that a colored man chauffeured other colored men. She would ask the Glades if they knew anything about the coloreds in Richmond.

“Operator,” said the operator abruptly, in her ear. “What city, please?”

Cassie told her.

“What number, please?”

Cassie told her.

For a moment there was silence. Then static, then a buzz.

“I'm connecting you now,” said the operator, sounding far away.

The buzz became intermittent. It went on for what seemed like a long time.

“I can't hear anyone,” said Cassie. “Are they there?”

“There's no answer, ma'am,” said the operator. “You'll have to try again later.”

She hung up the receiver and leaned against the booth's wooden wall. If the tar had still been in her pocket, would someone have answered the phone? She repeated the number in her head, but this time wasn't sure she had it right. Or perhaps she'd had it wrong the first time. She picked up the phone again and waited.

A different woman's voice spoke in her ear. “Operator. What city, please?”

Cassie told her.

“What number, please?”

Cassie told her.

“I'm connecting you now.”

Another intermittent buzz, which Cassie guessed was the sound of the phone ringing. It rang for a long time.

“There's no answer, ma'am,” said the operator.

“Thank you,” said Cassie.

She never tried to reach the Glades again.

*   *   *

Cassie bought her ticket to Remington at the Richmond station from a white man in the ticket booth. This one was younger than the man in Remington. He had a thick black mustache, but it didn't hide the look he gave her as she handed him the money for the ticket. It was the same look people gave to Judith—white people as well as colored people—which said, with languid movements of the eyebrows and corners of the mouth, that she was nothing, had never been more than nothing, and would never be more than nothing nohow. Cassie walked down the platform with her ticket, thinking that Judith could probably learn a lot from the Glades. With better clothes and a curl in her hair, Judith might be able to hoist herself up in the world. The Glades's
Opportunity
probably included makeup, heels, and a really good hat. Cassie tried to picture herself dressed just so, but in her mind's eye, it looked like a disguise, the same as this white skin.

She got on the train, avoiding the colored porters' helpful hands, and sat in the white car just in front of the colored car, in case something unexpected happened on her way south.

*   *   *

Cassie arrived in Remington at about four in the afternoon, almost exactly two days since she'd left Judith. To her surprise, Judith was still waiting on the platform, slumped beside her luggage in about the same spot Cassie had left her. She looked rumpled, like she'd been there the whole time. Cassie hunched down in the seat. She shouldn't have left without saying anything, but what else could she have done? To ask what Judith would have done in her shoes was pointless, but what really surprised Cassie was that Judith had faltered. The girl with the bloody dress, the girl with the huge voice, the girl with the
plan
was still sitting out there, chin in her hands, bare dirty knees, and socks without shoes, like somebody's lost child.

The light dimmed inside the car, and Cassie caught a glimpse of her own pale reflection. What would happen now? Her cinnamon color remained on her body within the general outlines of a bathing suit. Her arms and legs and head stuck out of it. What if that was the way she stayed when Judith saw her? What if that was what the Glades and their community considered fair? Cassie dryly swallowed her doubts. The train shuddered to a stop. The conductor shouted “
Remington!
” She picked up her things and headed for the door.

Judith saw her the minute she stepped onto the platform and rushed over, leaving purse and suitcase in a sad little pile.

“What happened?” Judith demanded. “What happened? You fall 'sleep? You fergit to git off? I bin waitin' here forever.”

Cassie looked down at her arms, as brown as ever, maybe turning the moment Judith laid eyes on her. The white people around her, who had been on the same car with her, who hadn't noticed her when she was white, took no notice now. Maybe the saddling gift of the tar was to encourage people to see what they expected to see, but she doubted it.

“Sorry,” she said to Judith. “I fell asleep. I went all the way to Richmond, spent a night there, an' I had to pay to come back.”

“I din't want you t'think I'd run off an' left you,” said Judith, “so I stayed here till you came back.”

“I'm real glad you did,” said Cassie.

Judith squinted at her. “You miss me?”

“Maybe a little.”

“For a while there, I was afraid you ain't never comin' back.”

“It was only two days.”

“Felt like longer.”

“'Cause you was sittin' by the tracks the entire time.”

“Where'd you sleep in Richmond?”

“Under a tree. Near a circus.”

Judith's eyes lit up. “You go in?”

“I touched the elephant.”

Judith looked impressed.

“The lady riding him called me names.”

“For touchin' her elephant? That's jes' shameful.”

“I thought so too.”

 

CHAPTER
FOURTEEN

Remington was smaller than Richmond and bigger than Enterprise. It lacked a dusty hardware store and a diner specializing in pie. No incongruous marble monuments stuck up out of its main street. But there were cars, bars, banks, and restaurants, tall brick buildings, and telephone poles. Drivers waited impatiently in the morning heat as people on foot made their way between traffic lights with speed and determination. The women—white and colored—wore heels and hats. The men wore ties and jackets. They all seemed to have business. Nobody took a second look at the girls from Heron-Neck.

“Did you eat?” said Judith.

“I had breakfast,” said Cassie.

“Nice ol' granny lady gave me a sandwich this morning,” said Judith. “Guess she thought I looked poor.”

“You do look poor,” said Cassie. Compared to the hats and heels and suit jackets, they looked like beggars.

“You don't look no richer.” Judith smoothed her hair, uselessly. She straightened herself like a soldier, which made her look skinny as a stick. After her experience as a white girl, Cassie saw Judith's self-importance as painfully revealing. Cassie knew just what was going through her mind.
Progeny. Inheritance. New York City. Big reddio star.
Cassie smiled, because it was good to be in familiar company.

“What's so funny?” said Judith.

“Nothin'. Let's find us a newspaper and see what the date is. Then let's find your daddy.”

*   *   *

Newspapers were easy to find. A colored boy was selling them on the corner but refused to tell them even the date without a nickel for the paper first. Judith, exasperated and tired, finally gave him the nickel but didn't take the paper. The boy told them that it was was Saturday, March nineteenth.

They were two days early for whatever was going to happen with Bill Forrest, Eula Bonhomme-Forrest, and the riches left over from the estate.

Up the hill from the train station, they found the Veranda Hotel: a white four-story building with white columns across the front, like an old plantation house. They stood across the street from it, surveying the front and the people going in and out.

“It look kinda like Miz Tabitha's ol' place,” said Judith. “'Ceptin' not so run down. You think they coulda made a hotel outta that ol' house?”

“Who'd come to Heron-Neck to stay inna hotel?”

Judith crossed her arms. “Still. Shame to let a nice ol' house jus' fall to pieces.”

“It was fulla ghosts,” said Cassie.

Judith studied the hotel across the street. “You think this place got ghosts?”

“It's got your daddy in it.”

“Our
daddy.”

“Ain't that enough?” Now that they were so close, Cassie felt uncompelled to claim any part of Bill Forrest. “How much money you got, Judith?”

“Half the singin' money plus 'nuff to git to New York City.”

“I got enough to get to Boston and a little more.” Close to fifty dollars. A small fortune in her purse.

“Boston?” said Judith.

“I don't know yet.” It was important to keep the money, not spend it on something frivolous that Judith might come up with. “Can you do maid work?”

“What,” said Judith, “like makin' beds an' such?”

“Sweepin' and dustin' and cleanin' the toilet. Kin you do that?”

“I kin if you kin.”

“Your daddy may not be here,” said Cassie, because it had to be said.

Judith uncrossed her arms and picked up her suitcase. “He's here. I kin feel it.”

“All right,” said Cassie. “You go in front an' see if they need a maid. I'll go in back an' see if they need help in the laundry.”

A narrow alley ran down the shady side of the hotel. Cassie found a service door at the very back of the building. The back of the hotel faced a parking lot, which opened onto the next street, where a movie theater took up a good portion of the block. Two stylized metal falcons faced each other from opposite sides of the marquis with polished monumentality. The marquis said:

OLDIES FESTIVAL!

IMITATION OF LIFE

CLAUDETTE COLBERT AND WARREN WILLIAM

Cassie'd never been to the movies, but the title struck her as obvious. Weren't they all an imitation of life? She wondered how much it cost to get in and if colored people were allowed.

She knocked at the service door. After a minute a middle-aged colored woman opened it, wiping her hands on a towel. Behind her was a huge, well-lit room with large tables stacked with folded towels and sheets. The colored woman looked Cassie over.

“Somethin' you need?”

“I'm lookin' for laundry work, ma'am,” Cassie said. “I been working in the laundry since I could fold a hanky.”

“You're not from around here.”

“Nome. I'm from Mississippi.”

The woman cocked her head at the cars in the parking lot and peered around the back of the building as though there might be accomplices out there looking for work. Birds sang in the warmth of the afternoon. Car doors slammed down by the movie house.

“Mississippi,” said the woman.

“Yessum.”

“That's where my daddy's from,” said the woman. “You from Biloxi?”

“Heron-Neck. It's just a little town.”

The woman looked around a bit longer. Finally, she said, “Let's see how you iron a shirt.”

The woman's name was Eden Pomeroy, and she was in charge of the laundry. She was a big woman with a big bosom. When she put her hands on her hips, she looked even bigger, formidable. She put a basket of shirts on the table beside an ironing board. Cassie took the first one and spread it out. The shirt was linen, finely woven, and no doubt expensive. Cassie flicked water at the iron. Steam curled up.

Eden Pomeroy stood right next to her. “You do the yoke first.”

“Yessum.” She watched her own hands smoothing the white cloth, her cinnamon color compared to Eden Pomeroy's skillet black. She felt how hot and close this room would be, long before the end of the day. She leaned into the iron's breathless vapor. The fabric submitted, flat and crisp.

“Lemme see you do them buttons,” said Eden Pomeroy.

Cassie touched the iron to the cloth between delicate bone buttons.

“Cuffs last.”

“Yessum.”

She did the sleeves and cuffs and put the shirt on a hanger. Eden Pomeroy ran her fingers over the creases approvingly.

“She
fast
,” said someone from the other end of the room, and Cassie looked up to see two molasses-colored women, each with a cart of rumpled white towels.

“Hey,” said one of them. “Your name Cassie? There a white girl upstairs lookin' for maid work sez she knows you.”

Eden eyed Cassie, the same way she'd eyed the parking lot. “That true?”

Cassie wished she'd told Judith to wait half an hour before she decided to explode upon the scene. “Yessum.”

“What's a colored girl from Mississippi and a white girl doing together?”

“We tryin' to get to New York City. We run out of money, so we stop to get some decent employment.”

“What's in New York City?”

“Miz Judith gone be a big singin' star.”

One of the molasses women laughed. “That girl? She way too homely to be on stage.”

“She really amazin' when she sings,” said Cassie. “She lifts up your soul.” She meant it to sound sincere, but the words came out like something she'd said too many times already.

Eden Pomeroy gave an irritated snort and walked off in the direction the two molasses-women had come from, presumably to see what was really going on upstairs. The second she was out of sight, the two women descended on Cassie, demanding her name and introducing themselves as Bethesda and Iris. Both had the last name Meadows but insisted that they weren't related.