Absalom's Daughters Read Free Page B

unhappy.”
    A window rattled open in its sash upstairs. Lil Ma, in the heat of the second floor.
    â€œYou went with her because you think she’s your sister. Did she act like your sister?”
    Cassie wasn’t sure what the correct answer was, but she knew what to say. “Nome.”
    â€œShe never will.” Grandmother broke a bean neatly in half. “You want to know where you come from. I’ll tell you where you come from. From Lil Ma’s blood, and Lil Ma came from my blood, and my blood came down through your great-great-grandmother, who was a slave woman named Cassandra, just like we named you.” Grandmother took up another handful of beans and snapped their ends off. “Cassandra’s father was a white man. He seeded the land with cotton, and he seeded his slave women, and he got him a white woman for a wife, and he seeded her too. He had two children by her, a girl and a boy. The girl died of sickness, and the boy grew up into a murdering criminal. The boy had to run from the law, but while he was running, he took after his father and seeded his way all around the state. His descendants are all around here. I’m one of them. You’re one of them. That white girl is too, I’d bet, which would make her your half sister and your cousin. But no matter how twice-related you are, she’s no kin to you. Kin has a feeling for how far back the blood goes.” She rifled the beans, looking with her fingertips for any that had escaped with their ends on. “She’ll never have that feeling for you.”
    *   *   *
    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.
    â€œThem 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.
    â€œCheck ’em for what?”
    â€œWait 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.
    â€œMama brought ’em home.”
    Which meant they were castoffs from one of the little white Wivell girls.
    â€œYou 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.”
    â€œI ain’t got no daddy,” said Cassie.
    â€œYou 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.
    â€œMy 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.
    â€œYou know Tommy Main?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œHis daddy got ten acres o’ good lumber. You know what lumber is?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œTrees. Tommy’s daddy make wagons and such. He sell ’em to the white folks. Tommy gonna take over the business