Absalom's Daughters (19 page)

“Mister Legabee was a respected man. His family been here a long time,” said Charlie.

“He gave advice,” said Junior.

“Good advice,” said Charlie. “He'd help you find the right direction for your life.”

“Like a preacher?” said Cassie. “Or minister?”

“Like an elder,” said Junior.

It would have been hard for Mister Legabee to be anything but an elder at a hundred and twenty-five, Cassie thought.

Junior had to park way down the street because the dirt lot behind the church was full. They ended up walking half a mile only to be the last of the latecomers.

Junior pulled the basement door of the church open for them. Inside, the room was filled with mourners and with the aromas of home cooking. People sat in groups in folding chairs. Others chatted at tables piled with casseroles and hot dishes. Among all shades of darker folk, the crowd was salted with white faces.

“Let me introduce you to the Reverend Glade,” Junior said. “Then you can help yourselves.”

The Reverend Glade was a light-skinned colored man in the middle of the crowd, shaking hands heartily with a well-dressed white man. He shook Junior's and Charlie's hands too.

“Your father didn't come,” said Reverend Glade.

“I hope you weren't expecting him,” said Charlie.

“I'm glad to see him once in a month of Sundays.” The Reverend Glade smiled at Cassie and Judith.

Charlie introduced them to the Reverend Glade and told him they'd been directed to Porterville by a man in Hilltop.

“Back in Mississippi?” said Reverend Glade. “Did you meet Mister Beale?”

“Mister Ovid Beale told us you were just down the road,” said Cassie. “But we didn't find you until South Carolina.”

“Maybe you were using an old map.” The Reverend Glade clasped his hands in front of him. “Where're y'all headed?”

Judith took a breath to answer, but Cassie laid a hand on her arm. “Judith's on her way to becomin' a big singin' star in New York City, but our car broke down.”

“We fixin' it,” said Junior, adding that Judith and Cassie needed a place to stay for the night.

“Let me find my wife and tell her.” The Reverend Glade clapped Junior on the shoulder. “You young ladies help yourselves to the food. The Mallard boys can introduce you to the widow Legabee so you can pay your respects.” This last the Reverend Glade directed to Cassie, excluding Judith, but Judith didn't seem to notice, or if she did, she didn't care. Judith lost no time finding a plate and filling it with fried chicken, potato salad, collards with bacon, and a delicious-looking piece of apple pie. Cassie tried to take less than Judith but found herself just as hungry after their interrupted breakfast. She and Judith sat together at the end of one long table and dug in, starting with the pie.

“We ain't never gonna get to Virginia,” Judith said. “They're gonna fix that ol' trap, an' it's gonna break down again, just outside Remington.”

Cassie thought Judith was probably right but kept forking in the collard greens with bacon. “Maybe they'll sell us a car that's more reliable.”

Judith took another bite of the pie. “You think they got somethin' faster?”

“Anything would be faster.”

“You think they got somethin' that'll get us to Virginia in less'n six days?”

“All we can do is ask.”

Judith straightened up to look for Charlie. A colored woman came around, offering squares of corn bread on a platter. Judith declined the offer, and the colored woman moved on. “I'm so sick of corn bread,” said Judith. “When I'm famous I ain't never eatin' corn bread agin'. I be drinkin' champagne and eatin' ka-vee-yar.”

An elderly colored lady scooping black-eyed peas from a floral bowl moved closer to them. “Honey, you know what caviar is?”

Judith wiped her mouth. “Somethin' famous folks eat, so I hear, ma'am.”

“It's fish eggs,” said the woman. “They scrape 'em out of a kind of carp.”

“I might've got the name wrong,” said Judith.

“Tiny little black eggs,” said the woman. “Like pinheads, floatin' round in salty oil.”

“You had 'em before?” said Judith.

“Oh yes,” said the woman, “and champagne too.” She took a neat square of corn bread from the next platter and put it beside the peas on her plate. “Caviar is an acquired taste, honey, let me tell you.” She disappeared into the crowd.

“You think she famous somewhere?” Judith said.

“I think she playin' with you.”

Just as they were thinking about a second helping of everything, Charlie Mallard came over. “Come on, now,” he said before Judith could start asking him about a new car. “Let me introduce you to the widow Legabee.”

He led them to the far end of the crowded basement hall, where there was a stage with a red velvet curtain. People of all shades and ages stood on one side of the stage, chatting in low tones, dressed in solemn black, waiting to go behind it. The women wore fantastic hats. The men wore shoes so shiny they reflected the red drape of the curtain.

“That where the widow is?” said Judith to Charlie, and he nodded. “Why she back there?”

“Just the way her family does things. Her daughter's there too, and her grandson.”

“This like Miz Tabitha's estate sale back in Heron-Neck,” said Judith. “When she passed, the whole county showed up. She a white woman. But she run a store and she sell to ever'body, so all kinds of folks came down. Course,” she added, “they didn't mingle so.”

The Reverend Glade waved at them from the other side of the stage and came over with a trim, light-skinned colored woman in a demure black dress. “Here they are,” he said. He took Judith by the elbow. “This is my wife, Mrs. Glade, our choir director. She's very interested in your singing career.”

Judith, happy to go into detail, allowed herself to be guided away by Mrs. Glade. Charlie caught Cassie's shoulder.

“You should meet the widow,” he said.

A mass of people were waiting in line to speak to the widow. “Ain't all these people first?”

“You're a visitor,” said Charlie. “She'll see you ahead of them.”

“I never even met her husband,” said Cassie.

“Still,” said Charlie. “You should pay your respects.”

Cassie didn't understand this. She hadn't paid her respects to Tabitha Bromley, and she'd seen Miz Tabitha once a week for her entire life. She followed Charlie around to the side of the stage and behind the red curtain. A heavyset colored man sat in a folding chair, straight-backed, like a soldier. He wore a patterned brown-and-white cape and a hat made of the same fabric. It wasn't a normal hat—it had no brim and came up straight from the sides of his head, like something military, except for the colors. He nodded to Charlie and gestured to the darker, back part of the stage.

Cassie had expected the stage to be crowded behind the curtain, but she and Charlie were the only ones. A table was covered with candles and plates of food, as though people had left their dinners as offerings, but neither the widow nor her family were eating. They were sitting together on a big armchair. The two women were black as black could be—frightful black, Mister Mallard would have said—and so squeezed together that the younger woman was practically sitting on her mother's lap, and the baby, a boy, black as coal, sat on top of the two of them. If not for the arms on the chair, they might've fallen off onto the floor.

Charlie stopped in front of the strange arrangement of women and baby boy. He ducked his head. “My sincere condolences, Missus Legabee.”

“Your daddy come?” said the widow.

“No, ma'am.”

“He still havin' his problems?”

“Yessum,” said Charlie. “Still havin' his problems.”

“He like the talkin' skull,” said the daughter. “Lots to say, but nothin' helpful comin' outta his mouth.”

“You'll be buryin' him next,” said the widow, which struck Cassie as truly improper, but Charlie just opened a hand toward Cassie.

“Here the young lady the Reverend Glade told you 'bout.”

The two women eyed Cassie like predatory birds, their eyes black as ink, and the baby's somehow even blacker.

“You a pretty girl,” said the widow. “You light-skinned too, like Ovid Beale said.”

“Mister Beale told you 'bout me?” said Cassie. “Is he here?”

“He ain't here, but we talked to him,” said the daughter.

The man who was a mule—or whatever they'd seen weeks ago in Mississippi—came back to Cassie as a bad feeling. “How—how can you talk to him?”

“Girl, ain't you heard of a telephone?” said the daughter. “He my daddy's nephew. Course we talk. He told us you was headed to Virginia with a crazy white girl claimin' to be your half sister. That true?”

Cassie nodded. The bad feeling might have been just too much pie in her stomach.

“Half sister,” said the widow. “You daddy a white man?”

“Yessum.”

“You almost light enough to pass,” said the widow. “Tell me that ain't somethin' you long for.”

“I ain't wishin' for something that ain't gone to happen.”

“You a liar,” said the widow.

“You meet Charlie Mallard's daddy?” asked the daughter. “You see how white that black man is? And you see how black he is underneath that pale skin? He a cursed man, 'cause if his skull woulda look different, he coulda walked on outta the South that he was born into, free as a bird. Coulda gone to some white man's school in the North, coulda got some good-payin' white man's job, but 'cause of the way he look underneath his skin, all he ever gone to be is a pink-eyed, white-lookin' Negro. You hear me?”

“Yessum,” said Cassie.

“An' don't think he ain't bitter 'bout it,” said the oil-black widow. “Don't think he ain't come to us asking for somethin' to change his state of affairs.”

“An' don't think we ain't tried,” said her daughter. “An' don't think we don't know what he likely told you 'bout us.”

“He didn't say anything.”

“You a liar,” said the widow again. “But it don't matter, because even if we cain't do for him, I knows we kin do for you. We gone to gift you, little cinnamon-color gal. We gone to give you a gift like you ain't never got before, and we givin' it to you 'cause Ovid Beale sent you this way and 'cause Mister Charlie done brought you to us.”

“You don't have to give me anything,” said Cassie.

“But we do,” said the daughter, “an' you gone to take it. But first you gone to make a solemn pledge.” She held up her right hand, and Cassie did too. “I pledge never to forgit the past,” said the daughter. “I pledge to recollect my roots, no matter what my state of affairs.”

Cassie repeated the words and was about to put her hand down, but the widow shook her head sharply, so she kept her hand up.

“And you further pledge never to say a word 'bout what you gone to find out in a minute.”

“I pledge it,” said Cassie.

“That's good,” said the widow. “Now touch the baby. Go on,” she said impatiently as Cassie hesitated. “Touch his head. Touch his hands.”

Cassie put her fingers to the baby's warm forehead. His jet eyes seemed to soften, and he smiled at her. He stuck out his baby hands, and she put her fingers into his palms. His palms were the same black color as the rest of him, not pale, like every other colored person she'd known. He gurgled and squeezed her fingers with his damp baby hands. When he released her and she turned her hands over, there was some kind of sticky substance left behind.

Charlie, who'd been standing back this whole time, stepped forward. “Rub your hands together,” he said in a soft and urgent tone.

Cassie did. The sticky stuff came off in a tarry black wad. Charlie took it from her fingers and turned her right hand so the knuckles were up. He rubbed the stuff across them.

“Look,” he said.

Her skin was lighter where he'd rubbed, like he'd taken an eraser and wiped away a layer of her.

“God,” she said.

He put the stuff into her palm and closed her fingers around it.

“Now git,” said the daughter, “and 'member.” She shook her coal-black finger in Cassie's face. “You don't show nobody, or that black gonna come right back.”

Charlie pulled Cassie away, and the next thing she was aware of was trembling beside a punch bowl on one of the buffet tables, gripping the wad in her right hand. Charlie was next to her with a paper cup and a ladle. Cassie heard herself ask where the bathroom was, and he pointed to the left. She wobbled off until she found the door marked
WOMEN
.

She locked that door behind her and stared at herself in the mirror. She looked at the black wad of stuff in her hand. What was it exactly? It looked like tar, exactly like tar, and when she sniffed it, it had a faint tarry smell. She looked into the mirror again and touched the tar to her cheek. She took away the tar. The spot it had touched was ever so slightly lighter. She had the impression that if she started to scrub at herself, within an hour she would be as white as Judith, as white as some of the people out there at the wake, waiting to get behind the curtain, to leave their food at the candle-covered altar. Waiting to leave Porterville and their past behind.

 

CHAPTER
ELEVEN

Cassie lay awake that night with Judith beside her, snoring peacefully, while the lump of tar, or whatever it was, stayed hot inside Cassie's fist.
You don't tell nobody, or that black gonna come right back.
At home, she would have shown it to Lil Ma, shown her what it could do. And then what would have happened? Because she had told, would Lil Ma's black come right back? Or only her own? Was this piece of tar for her and her alone? If she found some roundabout way to tell Lil Ma that Beanie Simms was right and there was no need to have a light-skinned child now, how could she help Lil Ma find this place, which seemed to be one place on the map and somewhere else in reality? Cassie sat up in the bed. Judith sighed in her sleep. Cassie put on one of the bathrobes Mrs. Glade had left at the foot of the bed. She put it on over the nightshirt she couldn't remember ever seeing before, over the smell of scented soap from a bath she didn't recall taking. Cassie went out of the bedroom, closed the door softly, and sat in the dark hallway at the top of the stairs. A clock somewhere on the first floor chimed two. She squeezed the tar in her hand until it oozed between her fingers, black in the blackness, just texture and warmth. Was it changing her now? Was it turning the back of her hand the same pale shade as the palm?