Absalom's Daughters Read Online Free Page A

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    â€œPeople say all kinds of things,” said Lil Ma. “You can’t live your life by what comes out of ignorant mouths.” Her tone was cool in the hot room, level, like the irons on the stove. Everything Bethel had said, Cassie now understood, Lil Ma had heard before.
    Upstairs the floor creaked under Grandmother’s feet. Lil Ma moved two of the dresses, unblocking the door to the backyard. “You look tired,” she said, “and it’s awfully hot in here. Why don’t you go out and sit for a while?”
    â€œYessum,” said Cassie. She slipped past Lil Ma, past the rustling purple curtain of bridesmaids’ dresses, through the door, and into the dusk.
    She sat where she could hear what was being said inside and not be seen from the door. “I thought I heard Cassie,” said Grandmother. “She’s not home yet,” said Lil Ma. “I heard another voice,” said Grandmother. “You must have been dreaming,” said Lil Ma.
    Grandmother’s footsteps creaked across the floor and back up the stairs. Cassie listened to the hissing of the irons as Lil Ma worked. She looked at the stars and the thin sliver of moon. The back door opened, and Lil Ma stepped out into the narrow frame of light that fell across the back steps. She sat next to Cassie.
    â€œWhat did Bethel say?”
    â€œShe said that you … and Grandmother … and I was supposed to…” She couldn’t bring herself to say anything more.
    Lil Ma ran the hem of her apron back and forth through her fingers. She looked up at the second-floor window where Grandmother had been and lowered her voice to a whisper. “It’s true.”
    â€œIt isn’t.”
    â€œNow listen to me. Your great-great-grandmother Cassandra saw how the lightest of the mixed children could escape. She made a plan to take whiteness, bit by bit from the white man.” Lil Ma gripped her apron. “Not every daughter could keep to the plan. Your grandmother couldn’t. She fell in love with a very dark man.”
    â€œWho was he?”
    â€œI never knew him. Your grandmother left that part of Mississippi before I was born, and she told me my daddy was dead. Maybe he is. Maybe if she’d thought about what she was doing, she would have fought harder against her feelings. But here we are.”
    Lil Ma looked into the dark. A wind rattled the empty clotheslines against their metal poles. “What Bethel said to you, I’ve been hearing all my life. I would have said, ‘You’ll understand one day.’ But I don’t understand it. Things change. Just because someone keeps insisting on something doesn’t mean it’s the right thing.” She wrapped her hands in her apron, so tightly Cassie thought the fabric might tear. “I won’t let it happen to you.”
    There was some comfort in that.

 
    CHAPTER TWO
    Afterward, Cassie avoided Bethel, and Bethel stayed away. What were people in town thinking about Cassie and her family? After a while that question was like a dull ache. The subject of Cassie’s prospects didn’t come up again for quite a while. In the meantime, Beanie Simms went from carving fox heads to stick in his garden to human heads, which Lil Ma called hoodoo and Grandmother called hokum , but the new heads were just as effective as the old ones at scaring off rabbits. The circus came and went four more times, and Cassie actually got to see a magician make a woman disappear inside a cabinet while doves flew out of a hat. That was the only truly magical thing that happened until Cassie was fifteen and Judith was sixteen; that was when the albino boy came to town. His magic wasn’t the good kind.
    It was only late summer, but Miss Helen claimed Henry was too sickly to work and too frail to leave the house by himself. Usually, Henry was sick in the fall when the rains began, but now Judith almost always came to pick up