Read Online Absalom's Daughters by Suzanne Feldman - Free Book Online

pushed the bills into her apron pocket. The bargaining was over, and Lil Ma had done her reluctant part. “It ain’t enough,” old Mrs. Tawney said to Lil Ma, “but I reckon nobody else wants the damn thing.” Old Mrs. Tawney looked down from the porch like she owned the whole place and everyone on it. “You-all better have it out of here by tomorrow, or I’ll have it sent to the junkyard. I don’t want no niggers round here after dark, y’hear?”
    â€œYessum,” said Lil Ma. “We have a man come by.”
    Old Mrs. Tawney went back into the house with the money. Lil Ma looked up and saw Cassie, and for a second Cassie saw the unhappiness in Lil Ma’s eyes. Not just today’s unhappiness, or the way she felt about the insult of the moment, but the years of it, a lifetime’s worth.
    Grandmother came out from under the tree. “Good,” Grandmother said to Lil Ma, “good,” like she was talking to a dog. Lil Ma let her shoulders slump. Grandmother motioned to Cassie. “You run on back to the laundry. Get a dollar out of the moneybox and give it to Beanie Simms. Tell him to bring his truck. Right now .”
    *   *   *
    Through the back door of the laundry, past the neatly folded ironing and the dresses waiting to be pressed, Cassie went to the front of the store, took the cash box out from where it was hidden under the counter, and opened it. Inside were five quarters and seven one-dollar bills. She took a dollar for Beanie Simms and put it in the pocket of her old woolen coat. She looked at the rest of the money. She took out three more bills, one at a time, and held them like a fan in her hand, thinking about the New York voices that could only be heard at night. She thought about Judith living in Heron-Neck forever, just like Judith’s mother, and her mother’s mother, and all those horse-pistol-wielding women in Judith’s past, never getting away, never going to Virginia to fulfill her destiny as progeny. She thought about the look on Lil Ma’s face just now at the Tawneys’, and about the albino boy sitting in his sunlit bedroom listening to the blackest music he could find. She wanted a radio. She would listen to it in the middle of the night, and she would hear what other songs black voices sang when it was blackest outside. She put the money back in the cash box, just to see if she could still make an honest motion with her hands, took it out again, and pushed it deep into her coat pocket.
    *   *   *
    Beanie Simms’s truck coughed and shuddered. It seemed ready to rattle right apart. Beanie Simms let Cassie sit in the passenger seat while he drove.
    â€œI wisht I still had my ol’ mule some days,” said Beanie Simms, loud over the noise of the engine. “There was a reli’ble critter.” Beanie Simms held onto the steering wheel as though he thought it might come off in his hands. “I ever tell you ’bout my ol’ mule?”
    Cassie knew most of Beanie Simms’s stories by heart. She looked out the window as the town crawled by.
    â€œWhy you so quiet, gal?” said Beanie Simms. “You sick?”
    â€œI ain’t sick.”
    â€œBetter ain’t let your granny hear you talk like that.”
    â€œI’m not sick.”
    â€œThen what’s the matter with you?”
    Cassie rubbed her knees. “You got a radio, Mister Simms?”
    â€œSure, I gots a reddio. Over at de shoe-shine.”
    â€œWhat you lissen to?”
    Beanie Simms ground the truck’s gears. The road started to rise as they neared the Tawney place. “I lissens to de gospel music.”
    â€œAll week long?”
    â€œWell now, a man kin git tarred of the same thin’ all week long.”
    â€œYou ever lissen to colored music?”
    Beanie Simms laughed. “What you know about colored music?”
    â€œI heard about