Absalom's Daughters Read Online Free PDF Page A

hadn’t spoken more than two words to her since that time five years before when she’d split Bethel’s lip. Bethel hadn’t spoken much to Cassie either.
    â€œWell?” Bethel said.
    â€œWell what?” said Judith. “We come to d’liver the laundry. Where’s your momma?”
    â€œShe’s here, but she ain’t feelin’ well.” Bethel moved to one side so they could see Mrs. Hill, hunched at the kitchen table, polishing the silver. The chemical smell of polish filled the room. “I’m helping today.”
    â€œMornin’, Mrs. Hill,” said Judith.
    â€œLet the girls in,” said Mrs. Hill. “You ain’t gone carry that laundry by yourself.”
    â€œWhere you want this, Mrs. Hill?” said Cassie.
    â€œBe helpful if you’d drag it to the laundry room upstairs. But mind the boy.”
    â€œThe al-biner boy?” said Judith.
    â€œCrazy boy,” said Bethel.
    â€œI don’t know how crazy he is,” said Mrs. Hill, “but he got some music up there ain’t no one else should hear.”
    Bethel led them to the narrow back stairs that smelled of coffee and silver polish and left them to wrestle the laundry up to the second floor. Cassie took the top end and Judith grappled with the bottom. The bag was a dead weight. They made it to the high polish of the second floor and collapsed in the doorway, panting. In the breathy silence, Cassie heard someone singing from the back part of the house where the upstairs hallway made a turn toward the bedrooms.
    â€œThat’s his phonograph ,” said Judith in the exact same tone that she’d used to tell Cassie about the pink eyes . She picked herself up. Cassie thought Judith might walk right on down the hall, leaving the laundry and Cassie behind.
    â€œWait,” said Cassie.
    Judith turned back, lips parted and damp.
    â€œWe got things to do first,” said Cassie.
    The two of them dragged the laundry into the room Mrs. Hill used for ironing. The black sounds coming out of the white end of the house were harder to hear; they were a vibration through the floorboards.
    Judith brushed her hands across her dress. “You wanna see what he look like?”
    â€œThat boy?”
    Judith was breathless, but not from dragging the laundry up the stairs. She took a step toward the door. “Come on,” she said.
    Outside the door, the wood of the upstairs hallway gleamed forbiddingly. The music wasn’t any louder, but Cassie could feel it, and its dancing rhythms, through her shoes. “What if Mrs. Hill sees us?”
    â€œMrs. Hill ain’t comin’ up them stairs.”
    â€œWhat about Bethel?”
    â€œBethel scared of the al-biner.”
    â€œAin’t you?”
    â€œHe ain’t no ghost.”
    â€œThen why he look like one?”
    â€œYou scared?”
    â€œI ain’t.”
    â€œWell, then,” said Judith. “Well, then.”
    They tiptoed down the hall until they came to the albino boy’s open bedroom door and peered in. The afternoon sun filled his window, framing him from behind as he sat on the bed, tall and pale, his white hair bright as a halo. Music rose from a phonograph on his nightstand. Records lay on the bed, in and out of their jackets.
    Judith stepped into full view. “Hi,” she said.
    â€œHi,” the boy said and looked right at Cassie with his pink eyes. “You’re the other laundry girl.”
    Cassie saw what he was. There was a newspaper photo of a white tiger on the papered wall at home. Not a true albino, as the cat’s eyes are not pink, but still a pet worthy of the royal Hindu Raj. Cassie wasn’t sure what a Hindu was or a Raj, but she understood pink eyes, and this white-haired, ghost-white boy had them. He was the whitest white boy she had ever seen. She thought of Lil Ma, and she thought of Grandmother, and then she thought of herself. Her whole body went