Catfish

by Madelyn Bennett Edwards

  ‘I know that, son,’ Mr. Van said. ‘Sometimes I don’t understand how people around here think.’

  “Me, neither, sir,’ Daddy said. They walked quietly for a while. ‘Can I ask you something, sir?’

  ‘Sure, go ahead.’

  ‘Why is you different from the other white folks in Jean Ville?’

  ‘I’m not so different, son,’ Mr. Van said. ‘Remember I once owned your daddy and George and all the others. That’s not something I’m proud of. I don’t think God means for some people to own others, but I did.’

  ‘Oh,’ my daddy answered. They walked in silence the rest of the way home, the small boy and the big, tall man, both deep in thought.

  *

  “And that’s the story my daddy tole me,” Catfish said. His eyes were at half-mast. He was tired and began to rock and let his chin drop to his chest.

  “Wow, Catfish,” I said. “That was quite a story. For a while I thought you were Sammy.”

  “Granddaddy knows how to spin a yarn,” Marianne said. She laughed and winked at her granddaddy. He winked back under heavy eyelids. “You girls done wore me out again,” he said. “Now run along and give an old man a rest.”

  We skipped down the rickety wooded steps. I turned back towards Catfish.

  “I’m going to be a writer one day,” I said. “And I’m going to write all these stories you tell us. I can’t wait for the next one.” Catfish grinned but didn’t say a word. I turned and ran off after Marianne, towards the barn.

  After supper that night I sat at my desk, took out a clean sheet of paper and tried to recreate the story Catfish told me about his daddy and uncles. I wanted to record the quotes and the colloquial speech as closely as possible. Over the next few weeks I wrote down everything I could remember about the story of Catfish’s granddaddy being separated from his mother and sold on an auction block in downtown Jean Ville and the one where the half-brother brought Catfish’s great grandmother to Jean Ville. I hid my pages between the mattress and box springs of my huge four-poster bed, towards the middle, so even Tootsie wouldn’t feel them when she changed my sheets.

  Chapter Seven

  The Real Enemy

  1965

  I WAS DREAMING ABOUT playing baseball when, suddenly, a spotlight came on and I was under interrogation in a police station. The roar of a man’s voice sounded like a dragster race going around my room as this man, hidden behind the light, belted questions.

  “Who do you think you are?” Before I had time to think of an answer he continued, rapid-fire.

  “What makes you think you can . . ?”

  “Where did you think you were going?”

  The engines revved and I hear a volcano erupt on the side of my bed. I sat straight up, my arms waving in the air as if to shoo-off bats that tried to get in my hair and eyes. In a deep fog I fought to get my bearings, and I heard another loud rumble of words.

  “I’ve had it with you!” I glanced at the clock: 2 AM!!

  “God, Daddy, it’s two o’clock in the morning,” I yelled loud enough for Mama to hear me so she would come to my rescue. I thought I saw a shooting star just before something hard, silver, sharp, caught the side of my face and a vice grip grabbed my arm and threw me in the air. I fell in slow motion as if falling from an airplane and heard a voice filtered through the clouds I dropped through, like the sound came from a microphone below.

  “It doesn’t matter what time it is.” Oh, my God! I smelled whiskey and sweat and knew I was headed for the side of a cliff. “You disobeyed me and you disobeyed your mother.”

  I couldn’t make sense of the situation so I decided to jump off the cliff and sail through the air to safety. A metal object swinging on the end of a leather belt whizzed towards me and I saw a breathing monster with a look of disgust on his face and fire in his eyes get closer by the mili-second. The metal shined as it twirled around on the end, like a silver ball on the edge of a twirling lanyard. I sat up with my knees drawn to my chin, arms looped around them and wrists clasped together, hugging my legs to my chest and pretended to be in take-off position, a parachute on my back.

  The face of the monster got redder as his anger grew and fire projected from its nostrils.

  “What did I do?” I knew I should keep my mouth shut, but it was too late. My words were already floating in the air above the bed.

  “Stand up and bend over.” Fear filled me and I tried to pull the covers up and fold myself into a ball, against the headboard of my bed, that felt like a mountainside. I was virtually backed against the wall. The vice grip grabbed my arm and threw me from my perch and my head struck something hard and sharp as I went down. I saw stars and felt horses gallop over me and squash me into the dusty ground. I became flat with the earth so cars could roll over me and lions could chase tigers on my back and bees could sting my cheeks, while I was simply part of nature, one with the world. Just as I began to feel pain and noticed blue carpet, not earth, around me, an anvil fell from the sky on my head and everything went black again.

  I heard a voice in the clouds scream, “I told you there would be no interracial relations and you were warned not to go to the Quarters. Do you have any idea what this could do to my career and my chances for mayor if anyone finds out?”

  I’m not sure how long I lay there, but light softly filtered around the edges of the blue drapes on the windows and I got a whiff of the Magnolia blooms outside. I tried to pick my head off the blue carpet but it pounded so hard I left it on the floor. I couldn’t open my right eye, and my left eye was buried deep in the wooly blue rug. I lifted my neck a few inches and opened my left eye, just a slit. It was still dark outside, but I heard footsteps in the hall, then smelled coffee. Mama must be up, I thought. She’ll come to see about me soon. I tried to get my arms out from under my body, but one of them hurt so bad I couldn’t move it without a jolt of excruciating pain through my entire body.

  Slowly, gingerly, I rolled over on my back, and let out a blood-curdling yell. Pain came from every nerve and sinew, searing through my left arm and back. I must have blacked out again.

  When I awoke sunlight streamed through the slits in the floor-to-ceiling curtains of my corner room. I tried to take stock of my condition. All I remembered was the roar of motors and the stampede of horses as I parachuted off a cliff and landed, in a heap, on my bedroom floor, pools of blood turning the blue carpet purple beneath me. My head pounded and I reached my right arm to my face and felt my swollen eye with trembling fingers. The entire right side of my head felt huge and, when I pulled my hand away, it was filled with blood. I screamed, again.

  Tootsie barged into my room.

  “Why you yelling like that?” Tootsie demanded when she opened the door, then she screamed. “Miss Anne, Miss Anne. Please ma’am. Please come!”

  Tootsie got on her knees in front of me and tried to lift my head into her lap. She slid her hands down my back and jerked them away. They were filled with blood.

  “Oh, Gawd,” Tootsie said. “He done gone and done it now. I’ll get some wet rags and try to clean you up.”

  “No, Tootsie, please don’t touch me. It hurts too much. Just stay here with me until I can sit up.”

  “You don’t need to sit up on that behind, Honey-Chile. It’s all blue and purple, at least the parts of it that ain’t bleeding. And your pajama shorts is in shreds, your panties, too. And your shirt. Oh, Gawd, what to do, what to do?”

  She jumped up and ran into the short hallway where Sissy had escaped the night before. The bathroom we shared with Mama was off that hall. Tootsie screamed for help as she gathered wet washcloths and towels. No one answered her. No one came.

  She put a towel under my head and began to gently wash my face with a wet rag. After two or three swipes across my forehead, the cloth was so bloody Tootsie switched to the other one.

  “Oh, Gawd, Oh Lawd, what I gonna do? Help me, Lawd. I needs help here.” She just kept praying out loud while she tr
ied to clean me up. Even Tootsie’s gentle, light touches hurt and I moaned and whined. Tootsie went back and forth to the bathroom, rinsing rags and towels and returning for more cleaning. I was in too much pain and too exhausted from the long night to argue or resist.

  “Can you get me an aspirin?” I whispered.

  “Shore, Baby girl, I can do that. Tootsie be right back.”

  I didn’t move. I wanted to sleep through the pain, but I couldn’t get comfortable. When Tootsie came back she had an aspirin and a glass of water. It was an almost impossible task to swallow a pill and drink water, but somehow Tootsie got the aspirin down while she gently rubbed my throat. I was so thirsty I drank the entire glass of water—at least what didn’t spill on me and the carpet.

  I felt light-headed again and, drifted off. When I woke up, it was dark outside and I was alone in the deadly quiet room. Darkness wrapped around me like a shroud. Both doors to my room were shut and I felt like the bed was spinning.

  My head pounded.

  The next thing I knew, Tootsie was back and daylight streaked through the draped windows. I couldn’t hear anything but a ringing in my ears. Tootsie sat on the edge of the mattress and stroked my tangled hair.

  “What day is it?” I asked. I wasn’t sure Tootsie heard me.

  “Wednesday,” Tootsie said.

  “I’ve been here since Monday night?”

  “I’m not sure. You was here yesterday morning when I come in.”

  “Where’s Mama? Has she come into see me? I’ve been sleeping a lot so I don’t remember.”

  “Yesterday she tole me she gonna make you see the light, that she not gonna come in here and baby you. She told me to tell you to, ‘Straighten up and fly right.’ I think those her words.”

  “Geez.” I thought. I went into a fog. My light-headedness made me feel like I was in a dream. Rodney and I were kissing and he told me he loved me and that he would take me away from everything that hurt me and he would keep me safe. No one would ever hit me again.

  When Daddy got home from Baton Rouge he took me to the emergency room at Jean Ville Hospital where Dr. David stitched up a long, deep cut on my back, above my right kidney, and gave me a shot of antibiotic. I was on the stretcher behind a curtain when I overheard a conversation between Mama and her sister, Aunt Betty, who’d come to visit from Houston.

  *

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do about her, Betty,” I heard Mama say in a faraway voice. “She’s on my last nerve. It’s all I can do to look at her.”

  “I told Bob that I want to send her to boarding school next month, when she starts high school, but he won’t hear of it.

  “Bob used to tell me how beautiful I was. Now that I’ve had five children, he doesn’t tell me anymore, but he tells Susanna how pretty she is. In fact, he tells her all the things he used to tell me, ‘You are so pretty, so talented, so smart, you make me so proud!’ I could throw up. He calls her, ‘Pretty Girl.’ He idolizes her.”

  “Have you told Bob how you feel?” I heard my Aunt Betty ask. She must be visiting from Houston, I thought. When I was a little girl I admired my aunt’s wardrobe and beautiful shoes, but as I got older and realized Mama took money from our household allowance, earmarked for clothing for me and my siblings and sent it to her sister, I felt myself fighting resentment.

  “Of course I have,” Mama said. “He just doesn’t hear me. He says things like, ‘How can you be jealous of your own daughter.’” Mama cried and Aunt Betty consoled her. I peeked through swollen eyes to see Mama’s head in her hands and her elbows on her knees. Aunt Betty leaned forward and rubbed Mama’s back.

  “I’m the one who made him spank her,” her mother whimpered. “He didn’t want to, so I kept fixing him drinks. The drunker he got, the angrier he became. I didn’t mean for him to take it this far.

  “I don’t want to hate my daughter, I really don’t. She is pretty and smart and talented. She can sew, draw, write poetry, dance, twirl a baton, play sports and she’s only thirteen! What’s she going to be like when she gets older?”

  My mother hates me?

  “You need to convince Bob to send her away to school,” Aunt Betty said.

  “I’ll try again,” Mama said. “The worse that can happen is for me to have her three more years.”

  “Only three? She’s thirteen. Where is she going at sixteen?”

  “To LSU, of course.”

  “At sixteen?”

  “Yes. She’ll be in the ninth grade this year and, with summer school, she can finish high school in three years.”

  “Anne, sixteen is way too young to go to LSU.”

  “She’ll grow up fast,” Mama said.

  I lay under the white sheets in the sterile room and considered my options for the future. Survival became my primary focus in high school.

  Part Three: 1966-67

  Chapter Eight

  Wrestling/Sharecroppers

  1966

  IT WAS THE SUMMER before my junior year in high school, which was my last year—so, technically, I guess I was a senior, although I was only fifteen. I didn’t have much time for Marianne or Catfish that year, but I sneaked to the Quarters every month or so. Rodney didn’t come when I was there and I told myself he was over me, and that was probably a good thing, seeing as how dangerous it was. I was stupid enough to risk it, but then, what was the risk for me? I was white.

  When we talked at the Esso station he said how good it was to see me and he always told me I looked beautiful. He seemed genuine and I believed him. Sometimes he passed a note or a poem to me by sticking it in the slit where the window disappeared. Most times we gave our notes to Marianne and she would begrudgingly deliver them when I came to the Quarters and when she saw Rodney at school. I wondered whether she lectured Rodney every time, like she did me.

  “You two have got to stop this,” she’d say and turn her head in disgust.

  “There’s nothing to stop, Mari,” I’d say. “We haven’t been together except for that one time two years ago.” But she didn’t believe me and she worried constantly that something would happen to Rodney. We never talked about what could happen to me. Turns out she told Rodney about the beating I got when my dad found out I went to the Quarters and the two of them, Mari and Rod, decided it was too dangerous for me, too. Here I was trying to protect him and years later I discover he was trying to protect me, which is why he never came to the Quarters on Wednesdays—although I didn’t know any of that at the time or that Marianne, well, she tried her best to protect us both.

  Marianne was needy and clingy when I was with her, but I didn’t care. We finally came to an agreement about sex—I liked boys and she liked girls, but we loved each other.

  “It’s hard for me,” Marianne said to me the day we finally had that difficult conversation. “I’m attracted to you.”

  “No you aren’t, Mari,” I said. “I’m just the only girl you are close enough to think that way about. Once you find other girl friends, you’ll be attracted to someone else.”

  “That’s not going to happen because none of the girls like me,” she said. She pouted and her bottom lip stuck out so far it could catch flies.

  “That will change when you get out of this podunk town,” I said.

  “You’ll be leaving next year, but I might never get to leave.”

  “You’ll go off to college, won’t you?”

  “I don’t know, Susie. We don’t have the money and, well, Mama can’t do without me.”

  “Let’s get jobs and start saving now, so you can go to Southern University. That way we’ll both be in Baton Rouge.” We talked a good game, but, other than babysitting jobs, my parents wouldn’t let me work. It would make them look bad if their daughter, “worked.” Marianne and I didn’t talk about Rodney except when she’d get angry about our notes and would lecture me about the Klan.

  Sometimes, when I left the Esso station and looked in the review mirror I cou
ld see Rodney watching the back of my car. He would stand there until I turned the corner on Marble Avenue. I wanted to turn around, go back, jump out of the car and throw my arms around him and say, “Dang all of you who think the color of someone’s skin can dictate who they love.” But, of course I didn’t.

  It was August and I had returned to Jean Ville High School the previous week for my final year. I was afraid to graduate and go off to college, but with all the tension and escalating violence at home, I needed to move on and learn to take care of myself.

  It had been two years since the “accident,” that landed me in the hospital and Daddy wouldn’t let me out of his sight unless Tootsie was at home. If he had somewhere to go at night, I had to tag along, even if I didn’t want to.

  My dad had promised to take the boys to a wrestling match at the Cow Palace, a place where livestock auctions were held during the day. He insisted I go with them.

  “I don’t want to go to a wrestling match,” I said. “It’s gross. There won’t be any girls or women there, only men and boys.”

  “You are coming with us, don’t argue.”

  “I have homework.”

  “You can do your homework when we get home. Be in the car in five minutes.” He started for his bedroom to tell Mama goodbye, then he turned and said, “You should thank me for this.” I didn’t know what he meant. Later I realized he was protecting me from Mama—but who was protecting me from him?

  The smell in the arena was horrible. It greeted me outside the Cow Palace and grew in intensity as I reached the front doors. Inside, the stench was almost unbearable—horse and cow dung, pig slop, stagnant muddy water where flies and fleas hovered, and male sweat. The entire area from the parking lot to the main arena was a cesspool. Past the concession area with its concrete floor was a huge open area with a stinky mud floor and bleachers on two sides with views of where they auctioned livestock in the daytime and set up a wrestling rink at night.