Absalom's Daughters Read Online Free

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.
    â€œI’ll be Bethel Main,” said Bethel.
    â€œThat 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.”
    â€œMrs. 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.”
    â€œI did hit her,” said Cassie, “because of what she said about us .