Absalom's Daughters

by Suzanne Feldman

  It was a warm night. Satiny moonlight reflected from the surface of the creek, shimmering on tree trunks on the opposite bank. Spring peepers chirped in the shadows. The intruding moon made her restless. She walked along the river until it reached the road. The bridge there was concrete with 1947 molded into it at the near end. There was no trace of traffic. Cassie looked across the bridge and thought she saw lights on in a house, but it was the moon shining through the trees. The trees stood in a perfectly straight line, thick-trunked but branchless. Were they telephone poles? She squinted against the moon. They weren’t trees or telephone poles, but columns that had at one time held up some part of a mansion. The other trees around them were saplings growing inside where the veranda had been. In the dark from where she was standing on the bridge, the shape of the vanished house was surprisingly distinct.

  Cassie crossed the bridge and stood at the edge of the road, where short-stemmed brush had broken through the remains of a flagstone terrace. Some of the flagstones had fallen away, leaving open holes, which were filled with water, maybe from when the creek ran high. A pool glittered in the moonlight in an opening behind the columns where the front hall or the foyer might have been. The moon shone on the water through the five remaining pillars. Water lapped against what was left of the house.

  Someone was kneeling in the ruins of the house. The lapping was the slap of wet fabric on stone.

  A short woman, a colored woman, was scrubbing clothes in the flood of the house’s foundation. Two wicker laundry baskets flanked her. Cassie heard herself make a surprised sound, and the woman stopped her washing.

  “Who’s that?”

  Cassie said her name and stepped down into the ruin, where the woman could see her from the opposite side of the pool.

  “Come on over heah,” said the woman. “Stan’ wheah I kin see ya.”

  Cassie came around the edge of the pool, carefully across cracked flagstone. “We just passin’ through. Sleepin’ in a car by the crick.”

  “We?”

  “Me an’ ’nother girl.”

  “Where you from?”

  Cassie told her.

  The woman looked her over. “Ain’t you et properly?”

  “We et what we brung.”

  “You friend thin like you?”

  “No thinner’n she ever was.”

  The woman wrung out the shirt she was washing and put it in one of the wicker baskets. “You hep me tote this’er laundry, an’ I’ll fix you up some ets.” She put one of the baskets on her head and pointed to the other. “Follow me.”

  Cassie picked up the basket and set it on her hip. It was heavy with wet wash. Down the road was an old house set back about ten feet from where cars went by during the day. There was a light on in the front room downstairs, and when the woman with the laundry basket opened the door, another woman, very elderly, looked up from a rocking chair.

  “Now who’s this?” she said.

  “This a vagrant chile who sleepin’ by the river.”

  The house reminded Cassie of her home on Negro Street. Stairs went up along one wall of the house. Upstairs there would be two underheated rooms. Were there bits of newspaper covering the walls? She felt terribly homesick.

  The younger woman took the baskets into the kitchen. Cassie heard an outside door open and knew the younger woman was on her way to hang the laundry on lines out back.

  “Why you a vagrant?” said the old woman.

  “I’m no vagrant. I left home is all.”

  The back door slammed again, and the younger woman, the daughter probably, came back into the front room. A puff of cooking smells followed her from the kitchen.

  “You done let the stew burn,” said the daughter.

  “Ain’t burnt,” said her mother.

  The daughter turned to Cassie. “You like rabbit stew?”

  “Yessum.”

  “Your friend like rabbit stew?”

  “I think so.”

  “You know how to make corn bread?” the daughter said and eyed her mother. “This old woman was s’posed t’ make some, but she so damn old she plumb fergot.”

  “Lawd,” said her mother. “I plumb fergot. I was bein’ so keerful ’bout the damn rabbit stew.”

  The daughter turned back to her. “It a wonder you still alive. One o’ these days you gone plumb fergit to take yo’ nex’ breath.”

  “I kin make the bread,” said Cassie.

  “I ain’t so old you got to bring vagrant gals inna middle of the night to make the corn bread,” said the mother.

  “Oh you ain’t, is you?” said the daughter. “Then how come we ain’t got no supper?” She caught Cassie by her wrist and pulled her into the kitchen.

  “You yeast your bread?” said Cassie, as the daughter dragged her under the drape separating the kitchen from the front room. The daughter looked back like Cassie was crazy.

  “We ain’t got time to let it rise, gal. I got to git up in two hours and clean the damn houses.”

  The kitchen was wide and warm and brightly lit, and the rabbit stew simmered on a white enamel gas stove. Cornmeal, baking powder, salt, a big bowl, three brown eggs, and a pitcher of milk sat on the kitchen table along with a metal baking dish. The daughter handed Cassie a wooden spoon.

  “Mix it up,” she said, “an’ git it inna oven. I got to finish hangin’ these damn clothes.” She went out the kitchen door into the dark. Her mother came in under the drape, limped over to the table, and sat in one of two rough wooden chairs.

  Cassie poured cornmeal in the large bowl, guessed at the amount of baking powder, broke in the eggs, and poured the milk. She stirred until the old woman said, “You fergot the salt.”

  Cassie added the salt, mixed, and was about to pour it into the pan when the old woman said, “Butter it!”

  Cassie got butter from the refrigerator—not an icebox like the one at home but an actual electric refrigerator—found butter and greased the pan. She poured the batter and faced the stove. She’d never used a gas stove before.

  “Here, now,” said the old woman, “see them knobs?” She told Cassie how to turn them for the right temperature, which struck Cassie as being something like tuning the radio in the car. She put the cornbread in and brushed off her hands.

  “You think you done?” said the old woman. “Grab out them collards from the sink.” She took a long paring knife out of the folds of her skirt and handed it to Cassie. Cassie trimmed the collards and cut them into neat strips, stems in a pile for the garden, like Grandmother had taught her. “Ma’am,” Cassie said. “If you don’t mind my askin’. Do you gen’rally do cookin’ and cleanin’ in the middle of the night?”

  The old woman let out a snort. “We do what we got to do when we got to do it.” She pointed to a door by the refrigerator. “Look in the pantry and slice off a little of the ham hangin’ there.”

  Cassie took the knife and opened the door. The pantry was tiny, no bigger than a small closet. It was dark inside and almost as cold as stepping outside on a winter day. Cassie’s breath let out as steam.

  “Ham’s in the back,” said the old woman. “Over them baskets of dried apples.”

  A dozen little jars of clear water sat in a row just inside the door. Cassie stepped over them and ducked under braided hanks of onions hanging from low unpainted beams. Baskets full of potatoes, turnips, and roots she didn’t recognize were stacked close together on the cold stone floor and gave the air a brittle fragrance. The pantry was so dark, she could barely see the smoked ham. She took a step, stumbled on a potato basket, and flung out a hand for the back wall, but there was no back wall. Her hand touched a surface like a stair instead, filthy with age and icy to the touch. And there was something else, densely cold, almost solid. Whatever it was, when her hand brushed through the icy space, something sighed a melancholy sigh. Cassie stiffened, the smooth wooden handle of the knife in her hand.

  “What you doin’ in there, gal? Don’t be steppin’ in my baskets!”

&nbs
p; The ham swung in an unfelt breeze. Cassie stepped back, eyes locked on the invisible thing in the dark.

  “What you doin’ in there, gal?” demanded the old woman. “Ain’t you see that ham? Git me two good slices an’ come on out!”

  Cassie jammed the knife into the ham and hacked off two pieces. The presence on the stairs moaned as if it had known the hog personally. Cassie reeled backward between baskets, spun around, ducked the onions, and with two thick strips of ham in her fist, jumped the line of glass jars. She emerged into the kitchen to see the old woman rocked back in the kitchen chair.

  “You look chilled, gal.”

  “Cold in there,” whispered Cassie.

  “Sure as hell,” said the old woman. “Bit crowded, too. Now get that ham in the pan.”

  Cassie dropped the ham into the skillet and stood half-frozen while the meat sizzled. She remembered to put the collards in, but her feet itched with the desire to run right out the door. Grandmother had always sneered at people who told stories about ghosts. She dared to look over her shoulder at the kitchen door and the front door beyond. The old woman had blocked any clear escape. Cassie turned to the collards.

  “Gal, you like yams?”

  Cassie wished the younger woman would get back from hanging the laundry. “Yessum.”

  “You knows where yams comes from?”

  Cassie concentrated on the collards, stirring them as they wilted down. “From the garden?”

  “Yam come from Africa, gal. Some people call it sweet potato, and sometime I expect the yam think of himself as a sweet potato, but the sweet potato and the yam two different things confused for each other.” She scowled at Cassie. “You knows where you come from, gal?”

  “Mississippi, ma’am.”

  “Right there, you like the yam. You think of yo’self as one thing, but then there’s another thing. You don’ know it. Nobody round you know it, but there ain’t no way you cain’t be it. No more’n a yam kin be a sweet potato.”

  “Is it like the mule, ma’am?” said Cassie.

  “What you know ’bout mules, gal?”

  “They the mos’ nigger of all critters.”

  The old woman leaned forward in the chair so that it gave a deep, aching creak, and gave her the same disbelieving look as the man who’d been sitting in the mule wagon back by Ellie’s store.

  The kitchen door opened, and the younger woman came in. She sniffed at the smells coming from the stove, eyed the ham frying in the pan, half-hidden by the limp darkening collards, and gave her mother a look, as if she knew exactly what Cassie had felt in the pantry.

  “Dammit,” she said to her mother. “I kin see the gooseflesh on her where you gone and scairt her witless.” She pushed in front of Cassie and took over the stove and everything on it. “Gal,” she said, “this ol’ woman send you into the pantry?”

  Cassie nodded wordlessly.

  “We got some cold spots in this house.” She gave the collards a good hard stir. “Some people likes to think of them as spooks. This the overseer’s house back in slavery time.”

  The old woman leaned back in her chair. “Cold norm’ly drift down, but not in this house, cause this house ain’t normal.”

  “There ain’t no damn spooks,” said the daughter. “An’ even if there was, I ain’t letting ’em have the run of this place. This place belongs to me, an’ I got things to do.”

  The younger woman scooped half the collards into a big, chipped bowl. She took the hot corn bread out of the oven, sliced up two big hunks, and put them in the bowl with a generous scoop of the rabbit stew. She put in two big spoons and covered it all with aluminum foil.

  “This vagrant gal stayin’ with us for supper,” said her mother.

  “No, she ain’t,” said the daughter. “I ain’t gonna let you play with her jus’ cause you got nuthin’ better to do.” She opened the pantry door without hesitation and took out an empty basket. A cold draft curled through the kitchen, but there was no moaning or sighing. The cold smelled of old wooden beams and onions.

  She packed the food into the basket and handed it to Cassie. “Share that with your friend out there by the crick. Careful you don’t spill. You need help findin’ your way?”

  “Nome.” Cassie held the heavy, fragrant basket in both hands. She wanted to bolt out the door, but there was one more thing she needed. “I was wonderin’, though, if I could bother you for some vinegar and salt.”

  “Someone bleedin’ on they clothes?” demanded the older woman.

  “Yessum.” Even though it was a harmless lie, the words sounded suspicious and hung in the room like the cold air from the pantry. “The blood done set,” she added, because at least that was true.

  The younger woman reached into a cabinet and took down a bottle of vinegar and a box of salt. She poured out about a quarter cup of salt into an empty jam jar and screwed the lid on tight. She put it and the vinegar in the basket with the food. “You leave this and the basket by that pond inside the mansion.” She led Cassie to the door. “Where’re you goin’?”

  “Virginia,” said Cassie.

  “Long way,” said the older woman.

  “You an’ your friend be careful,” said the younger woman.

  The old woman got up from her chair and grabbed Cassie’s arm. “Take yo’ friend’s bloody draws to the pool. Not that li’l crick—the pool. Scrub it with that salt and vin’gar an’ save the squeezin’ water off it in that jam jar.” She angled her head at the pantry door and the row of glass jars, unseen behind it. “Blood and salt water. That’s how we keep evil things away.” The old woman sat down in the straight-backed wooden chair again; righteous.

  The daughter led Cassie to the front door and opened it to the night.

  Cassie crossed the bridge and followed the creek back to the car. Judith was huddled in the front seat, shivering in her coat.

  “Where the hail have you bin? Mah Gawd! I thought you run off.”

  Cassie got into the junk car and handed Judith the basket. “Folks gave me supper. And stuff to wash out your dress.”

  “You knockin’ on doors and doin’ laundry inna middle of the night?”

  “I couldn’t sleep.” Cassie pulled the foil away to show Judith the food. She took one spoon and gave Judith the other, and they ate every bit of the rabbit stew and corn bread and collards. Cassie let Judith eat all the ham.

  * * *

  In the morning Cassie washed the dress in the pool where the old mansion had been. Judith sat cross-legged in her draws and undershirt. The basket, empty except for the bowl and two spoons, sat in the shade by one of the disintegrating columns.

  “I’ll wash it,” Judith said for the second time. “It’s my dress.”

  “That’s all right.”

  “Don’t scrub so hard.”

  The dress was old and thin, but a stain was a stain. “Don’t worry about the dress,” said Cassie.

  “I’ll worry if I want to,” said Judith. She waved away gnats.

  The salt roughed itself into the damp fabric, gritty, then slippery as it dissolved. Vinegar added something to the mix that made the stains slide out and vanish in the rinse. In the cool light of sunrise, the dress was dark with water but clean. Cassie squeezed the dress where the stains had been and let the water trickle into the empty jam jar. The water had a brackish look to it, an unpowerful look.

  Judith propped herself up. “What in the world are you doin’?”

  “What’s it look like I’m doin’?”

  “It look like you saving the damn bloody washin’ water.”

  “I guess I am.” How could she say what the water in the jar was really supposed to do?

  Judith picked up the jar and threw it into the pool. She took up the dress and wrung it until it was as dry as it would get without being hung. She put it on. “It’ll dry when we get drivin’,” she said.

  “You’ll catch cold,” said Cassie.

  Judith straightened her damp dress. “Cain’t you tell it gonna
be a hot day?”

  Cassie drove, east through Alabama. The land looked a little different. The pines taller and thicker in the woods and a smoky quality to the air, especially higher up in the hills. Overall, though, the flatland was still flat, and where the land was farmed, there was always a man and a mule. Two times there was a man and a tractor. Always, there was a tumble of shacks, and in the distance, a big house on a hill, falling to pieces under huge old trees.

  Cassie thought about the jar and the water, mixing with all the other washing water in that pool. She thought about what Lil Ma might be doing, which was easy. She was doing the wash while Grandmother kept an eye on her, and from beyond the grave, the mothers of grandmothers and grandmothers before them kept an eye on her. Clear back to slavery mothers. Maybe beyond. Was the ghost in the pantry kin to the older woman and her daughter?

  “You b’lieve in ghosts?” Cassie said.

  Judith had been frowning at the road, not really seeing it.

  Any other time this would have been enough to launch Judith into some convoluted story she’d made up on the spot; this day Judith just hunched into her shoulders. “Don’t you?”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  For the three days it took to get to Enterprise, Judith didn’t say much. The junk car puttered along the two-lane highway. People in other cars yelled at them to git outta the way. Even other junkers passed them.

  Cassie turned on the radio and found a station with a man playing a melancholy guitar and singing cowboy songs. Judith didn’t sing along. She cried at night. Cassie tried to say things she hoped were comforting, but when nothing seemed to help, she said, “Is you sick? Mebbe you need a doctor to look at you.” Back in Heron-Neck, Mrs. Duckett had known about every female trouble. She knew who was confined to bed rest, who’d miscarried, who’d had twins (each by a different daddy). She knew who was trying hard to get with-child and who didn’t need “enny more chillun ennyhow.” Mrs. Duckett talked about male troubles too, but those were discussed mostly with raised eyebrows and hand gestures, and only when Grandmother wasn’t around. Cassie felt far less informed about male problems.