Absalom's Daughters by Suzanne Feldman Page A

crippled-looking house. The house was surrounded by bare oak trees and a variety of run-down sheds. Miz Tabitha had the store on the first floor, leaving the second and third floors to the aged relations who lived with her. Cassie knew from being brought around to the back of the place once a week for most of her life that no one young had lived there in a long time. The winter weeds, old rusted cars, and a tilting, three-wheeled tractor in the front yard told the story of years of neglect.
    The auctioneers had set out every last thing from the store behind the house on the kind of long tables used for church picnics. Lil Ma had taken Cassie to flea markets before, but none of them were as big as this. This was an estate sale, and to see the amount of stuff on the tables was to wonder how Miz Tabitha had fit it all inside the house.
    There were Pyrex dishes, cookbooks, bolts of fabric, hats, clothes, tinned tobacco, cups and saucers, cereal, bags of flour and coffee beans. Washtubs, irons, ironing boards, various hardware like hammers and saws, everything anyone might need except for maybe milk and anything else that could spoil. To Cassie it looked like the riches of the world.
    She lagged farther behind Grandmother and Lil Ma until she couldn’t really see them anymore in the crowd. She knew where they were going. The wringer was at the old house. She would be yelled at for wandering away, but she needed to find Judith. Judith was here somewhere.
    At a table covered with costume jewelry, Judith was circling for the best view of the fake pearl earrings and shiny necklaces. Three women with red-and-white striped ribbons pinned to their bosoms strode around the table, guarding it. Miz Armenia Sutter was one of them.
    â€œGal,” Miz Sutter said to Cassie, “when your momma gone to have my weddin’ dress clean?”
    â€œWe working on it, ma’am,” said Cassie
    â€œYou tell your momma I be by this afternoon to git it, y’heah?”
    â€œYessum, I tell her.”
    Miz Sutter fixed her eyes on Judith. “You too near to them necklaces, Judith Forrest! You ain’t got the money to buy ennythin’ heah. You keep your hands in your pockets and scoot .”
    Judith put her hands in the pockets of her patched red coat and sauntered off. Cassie trailed after her down the grassy incline, where the rest of the tables were arranged in uneven rows.
    â€œI just finished packin’ up the car,” said Judith. “Got a bit of smoke ham, a bag of cornmeal, an’ some aigs.”
    Cassie tried to picture Judith driving off in the junk car, heading for her future. It was surprisingly easy, considering she had never seen Judith do much but pull a wagon. At seventeen, though, maybe it was time for Judith to stop pulling wagons, time to move on. This made her think about the question Judith had asked her the night before— you gonna do what your granny wants for the rest of your life? The answers made her feel bad in her stomach.
    â€œThem boys put on the tires?” said Cassie.
    â€œNot yet, but they filled it up with gas. Fact is, I need to get out of town ’fore them idjits remember to come down tonight and set fire to it.” Judith pulled her red coat tighter around her skinny frame. “Now look. Here’s the reddios.”
    Some of the radios were brand-new, still in boxes. Others were clearly secondhand, with their prices written on bits of tape wrapped around the plugs. Judith examined these while women with ribbons pinned to their bosoms watched her without bothering to hide their suspicions. None of the new radios were less than three dollars, and Cassie moved away, down the table until she and Judith came to a clump of older-model radios with chewed-looking cords. The cheapest was two dollars.
    â€œWhat you gone do with a radio?” said Cassie.
    â€œLissen to it when I git to my ho-tel room in Virginia,” said Judith. “Sometimes I get tarred