Absalom's Daughters (3 page)

Later that summer, Lil Ma sent Cassie up to the Wivells' to give Mrs. Hill a package of table linens, which had been specially pressed. At the Wivells' big fancy house, Mrs. Hill's daughter Bethel opened the kitchen door. Bethel was eleven, a year older than Cassie, and was allowed to play the organ in church. She wore black-and-white saddle shoes, which were always spotless no matter how dusty or damp the ground.

“Them the linens?” said Bethel.

Cassie handed them up. Bethel examined the package, wrapped with paper and string, but didn't open it. “My mama have to check 'em,” she said.

“Check 'em for what?”

“Wait here.” Bethel disappeared inside. The screen door slammed behind her.

The late August air was hot and thick. Bethel's shoes clumped away and then returned. She opened the door and came outside. “Mama's busy,” she announced. “She be here presently.”

They stood together on the threshold of the kitchen in the heat. Cassie's eyes wandered downward to Bethel's shoes again. “Where'd you git those?” she said.

“Mama brought 'em home.”

Which meant they were castoffs from one of the little white Wivell girls.

“You like 'em?” said Bethel. She cocked her hip so one shoe stuck out farther than the other. “Mebbe you should ask your daddy t'git you a pair.”

“I ain't got no daddy,” said Cassie.

“You know who your daddy is.”

Cassie looked past Bethel at the gleaming kitchen to show that even if she did know, she didn't care.

“My daddy got a wood shop,” said Bethel. “He fix stuff for folks.”

Cassie had once overheard Beanie Simms tell Lil Ma that Bethel's daddy couldn't put a broken-down, two-dollar chair back together proper.

Bethel shifted and stuck out the other shoe. “Wanna hear who I'm a'gonna marry?”

This shoe had a dent in the toe, but the dent was mostly hidden with white polish. “Who?” said Cassie.

“You know Tommy Main?”

“No.”

“His daddy got ten acres o' good lumber. You know what lumber is?”

“No.”

“Trees. Tommy's daddy make wagons and such. He sell 'em to the white folks. Tommy gonna take over the business one day. I'll be his wife, an' we gonna have some money. Money and ten acres of good lumber.”

What would happen when all the trees were cut down? Bethel would probably consider that a stupid question. Any eleven-year-old who already knew who her husband was going to be would probably have thought that far ahead.

“I'll be Bethel Main,” said Bethel.

“That sound nice,” said Cassie.

Bethel pulled her dented saddle shoe back. “Who you gonna marry?”

She said it in such a mean-sounding way, Cassie had to look up from the fascinating shoes.

Bethel gave Cassie a nasty little smile. “You ain't gonna git married. Your granny gonna find you a white man an' make you have a baby with him.” She waited for Cassie to say something, but Cassie was too surprised to say a word. “She made your mama do it. She gonna make you do it. She gonna find the whitest boy in town for you—ghost-white if she can. Ever'body in town know it.” She took a step closer. “You think it gonna be one o' the Wivells? Or maybe Joey MacReedy—that blond-headed boy plays football?”

Cassie reached for Bethel's arm, meaning to grab her wrist, to squeeze it hard enough to hurt. Bethel yanked back, tried to turn, and fell in the dirt outside the kitchen door instead. She kicked at Cassie with the hard saddle shoes, missed, and jumped up to let fly with both fists. Cassie hit her first, in the shoulder. Bethel staggered. Cassie swung again and caught the girl's mouth with the edge of her hand, and Bethel fell hard with a split lip. Bethel touched her mouth, saw the blood, and screamed. The screen door opened, and Mrs. Hill came down on the two of them like a thundercloud. She jerked Cassie up by the yoke of her dress and shook her hard. “What's the matter with you, crazy gal? What is the
matter
with you?”

Cassie opened her mouth to say what Bethel had said, but what came out in a hot rush was
“What she said!”

Bethel, on her feet and quivering, hand over her mouth, said, “I tol' her the truth, Mama.”

Mrs. Hill let go, and Cassie jerked away. Her head felt like it was boiling and light and ready to float off into the trees. She ran down the long drive and out into the street. A breathless wind was rising from below. She ran from it, past the big rich houses, until she was at the top of the hill.

There was a sharp twist in the road, with a metal guard to keep cars from going off the edge. Cassie climbed over the metal guard and pushed her way through the weeds until she had a clear view of the river, where it bent, here and there, like the neck of a heron. Below, in the overcast afternoon, the railroad tracks paralleled the river to where it bent, then crossed the water and headed east alongside a macadam road. The tracks and the road narrowed to nothing and vanished into the forested hills in the distance. Gray clouds hung over everything.

*   *   *

That evening, Lil Ma was waiting for Cassie downstairs in the kitchen, heating irons on the stove. “You took your time.” Cassie came through the swinging door in the counter. “What happened to you?”

Cassie touched her hair, which felt wild, and her dirty clothes. “Nothing.”

“Mrs. Hill was by. She said you hit Bethel in the mouth. I didn't believe her.”

There was no denying it. “I hit her.”

Lil Ma rearranged the irons. Her hair had gone frizzy in the humidity, but her dress, her shapely arms and legs were like the pictures of the ladies on the walls upstairs. Behind her, half a dozen bridesmaids' dresses, pressed to perfection, were on hangers over the back door like a dark purple curtain, as though Lil Ma was on a stage. “I told her I didn't raise my girl to be violent.”

“I
did
hit her,” said Cassie, “because of what she said about us
.
”

“People say all kinds of things,” said Lil Ma. “You can't live your life by what comes out of ignorant mouths.” Her tone was cool in the hot room, level, like the irons on the stove. Everything Bethel had said, Cassie now understood, Lil Ma had heard before.

Upstairs the floor creaked under Grandmother's feet. Lil Ma moved two of the dresses, unblocking the door to the backyard. “You look tired,” she said, “and it's awfully hot in here. Why don't you go out and sit for a while?”

“Yessum,” said Cassie. She slipped past Lil Ma, past the rustling purple curtain of bridesmaids' dresses, through the door, and into the dusk.

She sat where she could hear what was being said inside and not be seen from the door. “I thought I heard Cassie,” said Grandmother. “She's not home yet,” said Lil Ma. “I heard another voice,” said Grandmother. “You must have been dreaming,” said Lil Ma.

Grandmother's footsteps creaked across the floor and back up the stairs. Cassie listened to the hissing of the irons as Lil Ma worked. She looked at the stars and the thin sliver of moon. The back door opened, and Lil Ma stepped out into the narrow frame of light that fell across the back steps. She sat next to Cassie.

“What did Bethel say?”

“She said that you … and Grandmother … and I was supposed to…” She couldn't bring herself to say anything more.

Lil Ma ran the hem of her apron back and forth through her fingers. She looked up at the second-floor window where Grandmother had been and lowered her voice to a whisper. “It's true.”

“It isn't.”

“Now listen to me. Your great-great-grandmother Cassandra saw how the lightest of the mixed children could escape. She made a plan to take whiteness, bit by bit from the white man.” Lil Ma gripped her apron. “Not every daughter could keep to the plan. Your grandmother couldn't. She fell in love with a very dark man.”

“Who was he?”

“I never knew him. Your grandmother left that part of Mississippi before I was born, and she told me my daddy was dead. Maybe he is. Maybe if she'd thought about what she was doing, she would have fought harder against her feelings. But here we are.”

Lil Ma looked into the dark. A wind rattled the empty clotheslines against their metal poles. “What Bethel said to you, I've been hearing all my life. I would have said, ‘You'll understand one day.' But I don't understand it. Things change. Just because someone keeps insisting on something doesn't mean it's the right thing.” She wrapped her hands in her apron, so tightly Cassie thought the fabric might tear. “I won't let it happen to you.”

There was some comfort in that.

 

CHAPTER
TWO

Afterward, Cassie avoided Bethel, and Bethel stayed away. What were people in town thinking about Cassie and her family? After a while that question was like a dull ache. The subject of Cassie's prospects didn't come up again for quite a while. In the meantime, Beanie Simms went from carving fox heads to stick in his garden to human heads, which Lil Ma called
hoodoo
and Grandmother called
hokum
, but the new heads were just as effective as the old ones at scaring off rabbits. The circus came and went four more times, and Cassie actually got to see a magician make a woman disappear inside a cabinet while doves flew out of a hat. That was the only truly magical thing that happened until Cassie was fifteen and Judith was sixteen; that was when the albino boy came to town. His magic wasn't the good kind.

It was only late summer, but Miss Helen claimed Henry was too sickly to work and too frail to leave the house by himself. Usually, Henry was sick in the fall when the rains began, but now Judith almost always came to pick up the laundry alone.

“What's Henry do all day?” Cassie asked, on the way up the hill with the wagons.

“He lissen to the music on the reddio,” said Judith. “What you-all lissen to?”

“We ain't got a reddio.” It was a luxury to let her tongue be lazy, as Grandmother would have said. To speak poorly let her feel like she was someone else sometimes.

Judith opened one arm to the morning air. “Ever'body got a reddio. Even us, and we ain't got nuthin'.”

“Well, we don't.”

“Your granny afraid you gone hear somethin'?”

“My mother sings.”

“I heard her singin' out in back. She got a pretty voice. When you need music, y'all sing?”

“Guess so.”

Judith leaned against the weight of the wagon. “Even Duncan Justice and his boys got a reddio. They got one in some ol' junk car. They sit out at night list'nin' to the New York station.”

Duncan Justice and his sons lived in a disintegrating house, which Cassie had never personally seen, on ten or fifteen acres just outside Heron-Neck. In his backyard, there was supposed to be a stone memorial to the Southern War Dead. Beanie Simms had told Lil Ma that Justice held a service for dead white folks every Sunday afternoon and was, besides that, a Ku Kluxer. Cassie wondered how Judith knew what the Justice boys did at night. “What's on a New York station?”

“Colored music,” said Judith.

“Duncan
Justice
's boys are listnin' to
colored
music from
New York
?”

“Maybe not them,” said Judith, “but I know someone who does.”

“Who?” Cassie wiped her face.

Judith stopped. “The al-biner does.”

They were halfway up the hill, across from Wivells' long driveway. Ancient maples shaded the middle of the street, but dust hung in the humid air, thick enough to choke on. “The what?” said Cassie.

“The al-biner. Over at Wivells'. He their cousin or somethin' from up North.” She leaned closer and whispered. “He got
pink eyes
. Like some kinda ghost.”

“The Wivells ain't got no pink-eyed ghost livin' there.”

“He ain't no ghost. He's alive as you an' me. He told me 'bout the New York music. He goes out with the Justice boys to lissen to it. He got records, too. He played 'em for me so's I kin sing 'em. You want to hear?”

Cassie pushed her wagon against the curb. The fact was, Judith always sounded like she had a terrible sore throat or was just getting over one. Mrs. Duckett said Judith Forrest sounded just like a jaybird when she talked. Cassie thought what Mrs. Duckett said was true; she didn't know exactly what to say right now.

Judith let go of the wagon handle and put her hands on her skinny hips. “Don't you think I kin sing?”

“I guess you
kin
if you say so.”

“Don't you make fun of the way I talk.”

“I ain't sayin nuthin' about you.”

“The al-biner says I could be a reddio star.”

“Well, I guess you better show me.”

Judith closed her eyes and clenched her hands together, swayed to music she was listening to inside her own head, and began to sing. To Cassie's surprise, the hoarseness in Judith's voice turned husky; the sound coming out of her mouth seemed to be coming from someone older than sixteen. The song was about walking out on
youuu.

In what seemed like the middle of the song, Judith opened her eyes and stopped. “The al-biner say I sing good enough to make money at it.”

“I guess he knows,” said Cassie, impressed.

“I guess he does,” said Judith, without a trace of modesty.

*   *   *

Judith knocked on the Wivells' kitchen door. Bethel answered. There was no avoiding Bethel, but Cassie hadn't spoken more than two words to her since that time five years before when she'd split Bethel's lip. Bethel hadn't spoken much to Cassie either.

“Well?” Bethel said.

“Well what?” said Judith. “We come to d'liver the laundry. Where's your momma?”

“She's here, but she ain't feelin' well.” Bethel moved to one side so they could see Mrs. Hill, hunched at the kitchen table, polishing the silver. The chemical smell of polish filled the room. “I'm helping today.”