Absalom's Daughters (5 page)

Grandmother walked through the small kitchen, past Judith. Cassie heard Grandmother's footsteps on the stairs. The bed creaked as Grandmother lay down. Cassie watched the street outside, waiting for Lil Ma to come back, but the rain stopped instead. When she was sure the wine stain in the wedding dress was less than a shadow, she went into the kitchen. Judith was asleep with her head down on the table, her breathing a quiet, raw snore. If she'd made herself a cup of tea, she'd finished it, washed the cup, dried it, and put it back on its shelf.

“Judith,” said Cassie.

Judith sat up. “Laundry,” she croaked. “I d'livered it.”

“Not yet. It just stopped raining.”

Judith rubbed her eyes. “I was dreamin' I had it done.” She peered through the kitchen door at the empty front room.

“Grandmother's upstairs. Lil Ma went to get onions.”

Judith took something metallic and golden out of her dress pocket. “Look what he give me.”

It was a tube of lipstick. “Who gave you that? That albino boy?”

“Mm-hm.” Judith took the top off and twisted the tube. A blunt stick of bright red came out. Cassie had seen the women in church use lipstick. Lil Ma didn't own any. Neither did Grandmother. Grandmother said the stuff was
lascivious
. But Cassie liked the way lipstick looked when it twisted up out of golden cases, always with that sharp, tapered point, always thickly colored, like summer fruit. She had seen enough new lipstick to know that Judith's had been someone else's.

“When he give you that?” Cassie sat in the chair across the table from Judith.

“Yestiddy. I ain't even used it yet. Savin' it for tonight. We got a
date.
”

“Your momma kick you outta the house?”

Judith let out a tense laugh. “Why you askin' me about that?”

Cassie wanted to ask about the
feeling
and
heat
. She put her hands in her lap instead. “Grandmother says you pregnant.”

“I ain't stupid. You know what we do when we're together?”

Cassie wanted to touch the lipstick case, to feel its smooth golden sheen. “What?”

“We sit in the woods in the car and lissen to the New York reddio station. He goes on and on and on about who singin' what song and when it was recorded and all that kinda junk.”

“That's all?”

“Mostly that's all.”

Cassie lowered her voice. “Grandmother was sayin' to me … I mean … do you ever feel … like a heat?”

“Heat?” said Judith. “Sure. Them boys
want
you to feel that. They say, ‘Honey, you
hot
.'” Judith leaned back with an expert air. “But you cain't jus' drop your panties ever' time they say it, or ever' time you feel a little somethin'.
That's
how a girl kin git kicked out.” She gave Cassie a sly grin. “Now if you're
progeny
, it's a different thing. It don't matter if you git kicked out.”

“What's progeny?”

“It's what you are when someone you related to dies and you in-herit. And once you got some money, you find your own place.”

“
Pro
geny.” It wasn't like Judith to come up with complicated new words.

“I'm progeny,” said Judith.

“How you figure that?”

Judith took a folded envelope out of her pocket and put it on the table. It was addressed to
Mrs. William Forrest
. “This came in the mail,” said Judith. “At home we read it the best we could, but I brought it 'cause you read better. It's all about progeny.” She opened the envelope and spread out the letter. The paper was thick, the color of cream; the handwriting tight and exact. It was stamped in the top right corner with
The Veranda Hotel
in fancy script.

“Read it out loud,” said Judith.

Dear Mrs. Forrest:

First, let me introduce myself. I am a woman of advanced years who is a distant relative (by marriage) of your family and a friend, in some respects, of your wayward husband, William Forrest. Your Mister Forrest is alive and well here in Remington, Virginia. Though he has spoken of you infrequently, I feel I know you and your family, and as you will see from this letter, I have the greatest sympathy for your situation.

“He's in Virginia?”

“Keep going,” said Judith.

Lately there has been a death in the family, which has brought the division of the Forrest estate—the mansion, the furniture, the land—into question. It is a lengthy process and I do not trust the lawyers, so I have situated myself here, in the Veranda Hotel, in hopes of getting my due. Unfortunately, so has every relative for miles, some with tenuous ties to the family, at best.

My own husband deserted me, much like yours deserted you, when I was younger and helpless. Although I am lucky enough to be able to sustain myself by my own small means, it is clear that your husband is able to support himself only from the odd jobs he took to get this far from home. I was unable to hold my former husband accountable to my family, so I am writing this letter to make sure you can hold your William to the responsibilities of his. You and your children are inheritors of what ancestral wealth is left here in the state of Virginia. I know that your husband has no intention of returning to you or sharing with you any of the assets that remain. It would behoove you and your progeny to make your way northward to claim your share before March twenty-first when the estate will be settled.

I hope that this letter finds you in time.

Yours most sincerely,

Eula Bonhomme-Forrest

Judith had been playing with the lipstick. Now she took the letter back and smoothed the creamy paper out on the rough tabletop.

“Do you understand it?” she said.

“Your daddy”—Cassie decided not to say
our daddy
—“he's stayin' in a hotel in Virginia with an old lady who related to him by marriage.”

“When she says ‘the estate,' she's talking about the mansion, the furniture, and the land. Ain't she?”

Cassie read the paragraph again, to herself. The room was so warm that the paper seemed to have its own aroma, like perfume, lifting off of it. “Looks like it.”

“Someone died, so they have to sell everything off. Like Tawney's.”

“If it's like Tawney's, all they'll have is leftover junk the rest of the relatives didn't get a chance to steal.”

“She says they got
wealth
.” Judith pointed right to the word Cassie had been certain she couldn't read.

“You want to go to Virginia?”

“Why not?”

“Virginia's a thousand miles from here. How you gone get there by March twenty-first?” Cassie got out of her chair, went over to the
OXYDOL
calendar, and flipped the page to March. “That's just a month away. Even if you started walking right now, it'd take more'n that to get there.”

“We'll find a way,” said Judith. She folded the letter up again and put it in her pocket. She capped the lipstick and pushed it in as well.

“
We
will?”

“Yeah,” said Judith, “You're progeny too.”

*   *   *

The albino boy wasn't at the Wivells' that Friday afternoon and never appeared at his window, no matter how many longing glances Judith cast over her shoulder as she and Cassie rumbled the wagons down the soaked cobbles. Well into the evening, at the bottom of the hill, Judith announced that she had to get ready for her date and skipped away, rattling the two empty wagons behind her, just as it started to rain again.

That night, Cassie twisted in her narrow bed in the upstairs front room, listening to the midwinter wind rush though the bare February treetops. Not a cold wind, never really
cold
, but carrying the distinct sound of more rain.

Grandmother and Lil Ma snored together in the bed on the other side of the room.

Cassie turned over toward the window, where the moon was edging up from the windowsill, making its way through bare branches and clouds. She thought about Judith and the letter from Virginia, Judith singing along with colored music on the radio, Judith out in the woods where the albino boy might be kissing her on lips covered with color from the secondhand lipstick. The wind and the moon and whatever Judith might be doing made her think about the open windows in summer. Through the windows on a summer night, she could hear the older boys and girls running down the dark street in pairs. At the end of Negro Street, the road dwindled into a footpath, which disappeared into the woods and then into the reeds at the edge of the Heron River. Whatever was done in secret there came out as gossip later. Cassie had heard plenty of it from James's mother, who didn't mind calling her Lil Ma
Adelaine
instead of
I'da lain down with any ol' white man
.

The ceramic jug filled with drinking water was outside on the back step. If she had a drink of cool water, she'd be able to sleep.

Downstairs, outside, Cassie huddled in her nightshirt and drank from the cold metal dipper. She had no illusions about what Grandmother, Lil Ma, or anyone else thought of Judith: Judith was sneaky, wild, dirty. Had Judith told Cassie the truth about not being pregnant? Judith could not possibly be leaving for Virginia. Judith would eventually come to no good, but no good didn't have to come tonight.

Cassie went back inside and into the front room of the laundry, where Grandmother's and Lil Ma's coats hung on hooks behind the counter. Cassie's coat and shoes were still wet from the day's delivery. She took down Lil Ma's coat and slid into it. She put on Lil Ma's new, hard-soled shoes, the leather ones that Grandmother said would last as long as a workman's brogans. They were heavy and cold on her bare feet. She went out the front door, closing it quietly behind her, and stood in the empty street. The damp air was cool and wakeful and reminded her that she had no clear idea what she wanted to do next. She glanced up at the second-floor window and saw a motion, like a shadow in a dream. It was Grandmother's short, round shape, framed by the sill, lit by the sliver moon, watching. Cassie turned and ran up Negro Street. The shape in the upstairs window made no move to stop her.

Cassie knew in a general way where the car, the radio, and Judith were supposed to be. At the other end of Negro Street, the road would take her on the laundry route if she went right, or out to the southern edge of town and Duncan Justice's land if she went left. She had never gone the south way before. She stayed close to the trees as she hurried along the edge of the road. If a car came along, she told herself she would jump into the bushes and roll into the leaves to hide. No one would see her. None of the terrible things that she'd heard happened to colored girls running around alone at night would happen to her. She was afraid, though, that they were happening to Judith.

Farther on, she saw the leafless black trees lit from behind and some distance from the road, deeper in the woods, a bonfire. She stepped off the wet macadam and into the weeds and thought immediately of snakes. She stood, listening for the rustle of legless creatures and heard, instead, music, rough and thick with static from the radio in the car.

She tried, from where she was standing, to tell who was back there in the woods. Judith's laugh was louder than the other voices. At least three other people were talking, all of them boys. Cassie moved toward the fire. When she got close enough to see her own shadow, she hunkered down behind a sticker bush.

Judith and the albino boy sat close together on a wooden crate under the trees beside the fire. Two of Duncan Justice's sons, the older boys, were poking around under the hood of an ancient, junk-looking car. The third son, who looked to be about nine, sat a little ways off under a tree with a spotted dog.

Judith and the albino poured brown moonshine into paper cups. The two Justice boys clanked tools against the engine, working by firelight. Behind the bush, Cassie shifted for a better view, and the dog pricked its ears and stood. The little boy, who had been staring up at the night sky, put his hand on the dog's back and got to his feet. There was a rope running from his wrist to the tree. Cassie thought it was a rope for the dog at first and that the dog had wound itself around the trunk, and that if she were to run away right now, it would take too long for them to unwind the dog to set it on her. She held still and held her breath, and the dog lay back down. The boy sat too, and that was when Cassie made out that it wasn't the dog that was tied to the tree, but the boy.

“Woof!” said the boy. “Woo, woo,
woof!”

“Woof!” echoed the dog.

“Shut the hell
up
!” shouted one of the Justice boys from underneath the car hood.

The boy let out a whine and hunkered down. His dog licked his face.

“
You're listening to Radio WINS
,” said the radio. One of the Justice boys extricated himself from the engine, oily-black to his elbows, and slid into the driver's seat. The radio stuttered as he worked the ignition, and to Cassie's amazement, the engine turned over.

Judith and the albino boy cheered. The other Justice boy slammed down the hood and jumped into the passenger seat. The brother behind the wheel gunned the engine, and the car wrenched loose from the dirt. It lurched around the clearing, on rims without tires. The boy who was driving swerved close to Judith and the albino boy and opened the door on his side to knock them off the crate. Judith screamed with laughter as her paper cup went flying.

The car careened to a stop. “Get in, get in!” shouted the boys.

“
… here's Muddy ‘Mississippi' Waters
,” said the radio.

Judith and the albino boy got into the backseat and handed around the bottle of moonshine while the Justice boys searched for another radio station. There was static, then news, then static again, then music.