Catfish

by Madelyn Bennett Edwards

  The ceiling height in the public library had to be 50-feet or more and chandeliers hung over the long reading tables between huge curve-topped windows down both sidewalls. It smelled of ink and paper and bodies, wonderful.

  During our first trip to the library we just wandered from room to room, holding hands, the only sounds our gasps and breaths of amazement. Later we found a table in some out-of-the-way cafe in Soho and talked for hours about the books we’d found, the art we loved and the architecture we admired. When we returned to the library the second day I tried to piece together, in my head, how I would write Catfish’s stories, while incorporating the history of slavery in our country. Rodney was interested in how he could help Negroes achieve a higher standard of living, what the liberals in Greenwich Village referred to as Civil Rights and Equality. The Toussaint Parish Library didn’t have books about Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. and other subjects that could help the colored people. All Rodney knew about the civil rights movement was what he had read on microfish, because all libraries carried newspaper and magazine articles pertaining to current events.

  We found so many books that interested us. Time ran out before we could ever run out of reading material.

  The first evening we went to a free concert in Central Park and heard Bob Dylan sing,“Blowin’ in the Wind,” and Joan Baez belt out her rendition of, “House of the Risin’ Sun.” We were smitten with folk music and ballads, rather than Elvis and Rock ’n Roll. We fell in love with Simon and Garfunkel’s “Sound of Silence,” gravitated towards Sam Cook’s “A Change is Gonna Come,” and Marvin Gaye’s “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.” We loved the Temptations and the Four Tops who mesmerized us with their performances of semi-dance and smooth harmony in “My Girl,” and “Baby I Need Your Loving.”

  We found a little blues club in Harlem where we danced to, “Sitting on the Dock of the Bay,” “When a Man Loves a Woman,” and “Stand By Me.” We clung to that music for years and, even today, when I hear Otis Redding or BB King, I go back to the eighteen year old girl in the arms of her twenty-year-old dream-boy, and my heart sinks and rises simultaneously.

  During that magical week we even went to mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral together. No one bothered us. No one seemed to notice. We were wrapped in a cloud of bliss and I guess you could say our physical attraction morphed into a real, deep love that week when we found so many common interests and never ran out of things to talk about.

  I finally agreed to stay overnight with him the evening before his last day in New York. I went to his hotel with a small backpack that held a few toiletries, a nightgown and a change of clothes. I told myself it made sense, because I was going to the airport with him in the morning. But I was nervous.

  I tapped lightly on #1174, and he opened it immediately, before I got my hand down and my fist uncurled. He looked serious, unsmiling.

  “Is something wrong?” I asked as soon as he pulled me into the room and closed the door. We were standing just inside, facing each other, his back against the door, his hand still on the knob behind his back. I stood still, my backpack hanging on one shoulder. We looked at each other. He didn’t answer.

  “Rod? Are you okay?” I whispered. He just stared at me. It was unnerving. A silent fear began to grow in my chest. I swallowed hard, it tasted like bile. He just looked at me. We stood like that for what seemed forever. Finally he spoke.

  “I’m afraid.”

  “You? Afraid? What are you afraid of?”

  “You.”

  “Rod. You aren’t making sense.” Aside from a far off siren and the soft whirl of heat coming from a vent in the floor, there was no sound but the hallow echo of his voice that hung in the space between us. I breathed deeply. The smell of old carpeting and paint masked Rodney’s fresh showered smell, his shaving soap and deodorant and the starch in his green, cotton shirt with the alligator on the left breast and buttons at the points of his collar. It was opened at the neck and I could see his chest hair trying to stick out.

  His hand fell from the door knob and circled in front of his body, bent at the elbow, reaching straight out from his belt. He turned his hand palm side up and opened it, his unblinking gaze fixed on my startled stare. I looked at his hand. It was cupped ever so slightly as if waiting for something to be put into it. I slowly raised my left hand, the one not holding the strap of my backpack on my right shoulder, and placed my hand lightly into his inviting palm. He gently folded his fingers around mine and tugged lightly, as you would on a fishing line to see if there’s something on the end. I moved a step towards him. He inhaled and held his breath for a few seconds, then exhaled slowly, as if releasing pent up emotions for which there were no words.

  I took another step towards him and he gently pulled my hand around his waist, folding his arm around his back with mine. We stood still, our chests and the tops of our thighs touching, his breath in my hair. With his other hand he pushed the backpack off my shoulder.. He took my hand that had held the strap as the bag fell to the floor with a “clunk.” He pulled that hand around his waist until both my arms encircled him, his hands still holding mine behind his back. My head fit under his chin where his collar parted and I breathed in what came from his pores, all the Rodney scents I knew and a new, indescribable one I couldn’t name then, but now I know it was desire.

  I knew he smelled it on me, too, as he rested his chin on top of my head and sighed. The only other time he had held me this close was when I was in the hospital, two years. How could you love someone this much and not touch intimately? How could you not touch intimately and know you love someone this much?

  When I lifted my face to look at him a fat tear fell slowly from his eye and traveled down the length of his cheek. Just before it fell under his jawbone, I unconsciously licked the salty drop, then kissed the spot where it had been. Rodney shuttered. He put two fingers under my chin and lifted it to meet his lowered face. His kiss was wide and gentle. There was no urgency, no pressure. It was as if everything that had gone before us to this moment was dress rehearsal. Never before had we both known our kiss would lead us to a place we’d never dreamed we could go. We dared not ... dream.

  He kissed me more deeply, released my hands and folded his arms around me. First he rubbed my back, then his hands reached lower and cupped the cheeks of my butt. His tongue found the backs of my teeth and I gasped. He lifted me off the floor a few inches and pulled me against his hardness. I took a deep breath, and when I did, my breasts lifted and I felt the my nipples rub against him. The wetness between my legs felt like a river.

  In one motion he slipped one of his arms under my knees, the other around my back, my head tucked under his chin and took me to the bed. I could feel and smell the whole of him. Wonderment seeped from his skin and I trembled.

  It seemed hours before our naked bodies came together in that hotel room. His gentle, unhurried wanderings told me he wanted every moment to count, every touch to mean something, every feeling to be emblazoned in his memory—and mine. And when he started to enter me, he took his time, coaxing me, asking me if he could go further and, when we finally came together completely, he cried—his tears falling on my face and neck. He didn’t try to hide them. He cried openly, without any sound, but with a passion and feeling I’ll never forget as long as I live.

  I’ve relived that moment thousands of times, and each time I am more amazed by the completeness of it. Of him. Of us.

  In the morning we lay naked. wrapped in each other’s arms, spent, but gloriously happy.

  “Rod?” I whispered so softly I was barely audible, but I knew he felt my breath against his chest.

  “Yes, Baby.” I paused and took a deep breath.

  “Do you still love me?” He was silent for a few seconds.

  “Do you have to ask?” I didn’t answer. I knew, but I needed to hear it.

  “Yes. I love you. Never doubt that.” I was quiet for a long time. Finally I said what was on my heart.
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  “I’m afraid, Rod. I’m always afraid.” He pulled away from me just far enough so he could see my face.

  “I know, Baby. But you don’t have to be afraid anymore. I’ll take care of you. I’ll keep you safe.” I opened my eyes fully and looked at him.

  “But who will protect you? Who will keep you safe?”

  He didn’t answer.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Louisiana Christmas/Land Deal

  1969

  CHRISTMAS VACATION ARRIVED AND I flew home on the heels of the most magical week of my life. I tried to leave the memories in New York, to compartmentalize, but it was impossible, and Daddy seemed to hover around me and wouldn’t let me out of his sight until the Monday after Christmas, when he had to go to Baton Rouge on business. He tried to convince me to go with him. I considered it, thinking that maybe Rodney could meet me somewhere, but I was afraid. In the end Daddy and I argued and I won when I explained I wanted to get a jump-start on my studies for next semester so I didn’t get behind again.

  Mama had a bad case of “Baby Blues,” and ignored me, which was fine by me. I did worry about her, though, because she sat in a rocker in her bedroom and cried most of the day while Tootsie cared for little Albert.

  After Daddy had been gone about an hour, and I felt sure he wouldn’t return any time soon, I sneaked off to the Quarters. It had been more than a year since I had seen Marianne or Catfish. He wasn’t on his porch and there were no kids in the yard. It was eerily quiet. I knocked on Catfish’s back door. I heard shuffling inside, then footsteps on the porch next door.

  “I didn’t think you would come,” Marianne said. She walked up behind me. We hugged.

  “Hi. I missed you, too. You look beautiful, older, more—I don’t know. You look wonderful, Mari.”

  “You look good yourself. A little on the scrawny side, but beautiful. You look older, too.”

  “I finally turned eighteen. I’m still two years younger than the girls in my classes, but it feels different.”

  “Yeah, eighteen is good. Sit down. Tell me about school, about Christmas.” We sat on the steps of Catfish’s porch.

  “Where’s Cat?” I asked.

  “He hasn’t been feeling well. He’s probably in his bed. Want me to check?”

  “Sure, if you don’t mind,” I said, tapping my toe on the wooden step, aware that I didn’t’ have much time. “I want to see him.”

  Marianne went into Catfish’s cabin and closed the screen door behind her. She didn’t invite me inside. I realized I’d never been inside any of the houses in the Quarters, not Catfish’s, not Marianne’s. Suddenly I felt like an intruder. What kind of friends were these that they never invited me into their houses, offered me a cool drink? Then I remembered how many times Marianne begged me to stay for supper and Catfish asked me if I was thirsty. Tootsie would call from her kitchen window and ask if we wanted sweet tea. I’d always refused, trying to be polite, but they probably thought I didn’t want to drink out of their glasses or eat at their tables. I felt so insecure. Maybe time and distance did that to people.

  “I knew you wouldn’t come to Jean Ville and skip coming to see me,” Catfish said as he hobbled out of his back door onto the porch leaning on a wooden walking cane. He patted me on the shoulder and sank into his rocker. He looked so old. He was thin and his eyes were bloodshot. He wore his standard straw hat but I could see, on the sides, that his hair was white and thin.

  “You too curious about my stories.” He laughed at himself. “You going to get rich one day selling books about me.” He leaned over in his rocker and laughed so hard he began to cough. He pulled out a white handkerchief and coughed into it. He quickly folded it over when he was done, but I saw the red stain on it.

  “Are you okay, Cat?” I asked.

  “Fine as wine, Missy.” He coughed again and Marianne appeared behind him with a glass of water. He drank greedily. “Now sit down and let me tell you about how we got to be property owners. Imagine, Negroes owning land before the first war.”

  “Oh, I love your stories, for sure,” I said. “But it’s the two of you I want to see.”

  “Well, I been thinking about the next story to tell you cause I knowed you’d come back to see me and I want to be sure you have enough stories to write in that book one day.

  “Sit down, Mari. You might want to know about your ancestty.” Marianne and I shared a look of concern for Catfish, but we tried to hide our worries from him.

  *

  Land Owners

  “Let’s see. Now my daddy, your granddaddy,” he pointed to Marianne with his cane as he rocked, his feet rising an inch off the floor and returning, flatfooted with each back and forth movement. “Like I tole you before, my granddaddy was freed after the Civil War, then Simon and Jacob left for the North. My daddy stayed with his parents, my granddaddy and granny, here at Shadowland and spent ten years as a sharecropper for Mr. Van.

  “I need to back up a little and tell you about my daddy, that’s Sammy, you know, and my Mama.

  “Ten years went by for two Samuels, that’s my granddaddy, Samuel the First, and my daddy, Samuel the Second, who they called Sammy.”

  “Why weren’t you named Samuel the Third, Catfish?” I asked.

  “Well, you see, I had an older brother, and he got that name. But he gone and got kilt in the first war.

  “Anyways, my granddaddy and daddy talked about owning their own piece of land some day and not having to pay the half-share of crops to Mr. Van no more. They talked about it regular. One day my granddaddy saw Mr. Van by the barn—by that time Van was getting up in years, near about 80. He was old and sickly and walked with a cane, bent over. Granddaddy axed the old man would it be possible to purchase one of the slave cabins, the one he lived in, and the sliver of land it sat on, with the opportunity to eventually buy the fifty-acres he and my daddy sharecropped. Mr. Van told him to come see him up at the house the next day.

  That night Anna Lee scrubbed both Samuels’ shirts and ironed them stiff.

  The two Samuels walked up to Mr. Van’s front porch the next morning and Lizzie showed them into the library, first door on the left off the main hall. It was the first time they ever went through the front door of the house, much less being invited into the study. Daddy said he tried to take it all in, the hanging lights they called, chandeliers, the velvet sofa and tapestry covered wing-back chairs in front of the huge mahogany desk behind where Mr. Van stood, hiding a leather swivel chair, and the ceiling to floor windows covered with silk draperies, tied back with gold-tasseled ropes with sheer, white curtains that floated in front of the glass. The old white man had a paper in front of him that he read.

  ‘This paper says you own a house and one-half-acre of land on Jefferson Street Extension and fifty-acres of farm land on Shadowland Plantation,’ Mr. Van explained. ‘It will be filed in the courthouse after you sign it. Your payments will be 10% of your annual crop for the house and 50% for the farm land. In fifteen years, the property will be yours and you won’t have to pay anymore. This means I hold the mortgage, and you owe me for the land, until it’s paid for in fifteen years. But it will be in your names.’

  Granddaddy was almost 50 and was slowing down, so the work would fall on Daddy. This was just before the turn of the century and they was the first Negroes to have a paper say they owned land in Toussaint Parish..

  Mr. Van died two years later. His oldest son, Mr. Henry came to tell my daddy and granddaddy and they all wept, specially Daddy. He loved that man. Mr. Van was good to Daddy, taught him things, gave him a horse, opportunity. No one knew how Mr. Van’s son, Henry would handle their futures at Shadowland.

  A few days later they found out, when Mr. Henry sent for my daddy and granddaddy. They met him in Mr. Van’s study. Henry Van, handsome and stately, a few years younger than Granddaddy, was seated behind the huge, mahogany desk. He cleared off the stacks of papers and folders that had been there two years before when Mr.
Van sold the 50-acres and the cabin to my daddy. Mr. Henry asked them to sit. They’d never sat in a chair in the plantation house before, they just stood in front of the desk when Mr. Van signed the papers on the property, so they didn’t know what to do. Their clothes wasn’t clean and they was afraid to dirty the beautiful tapestry.

  ‘Please,’ Mr. Henry said. ‘Please sit down. There’s something important I need to tell you.’

  They sat on the edges of those fancy chairs and Henry Van came around and stood in front of them, leaning his rear on the front of the desk. He crossed his ankles in front of him.

  ‘Our attorney read Dad’s will yesterday,’ Mr. Henry said. ‘It included the deed to your property, marked, Paid in Full.’

  They was afraid to look at each other. They just stared at Mr. Henry Van, speechless. They didn’t rightly know what he meant.

  ‘Well, Samuel, aren’t you going to say something?’

  “What does it mean, Mr. Henry,” Granddaddy asked.

  ‘My father left you a gift, Samuel,’ he said and he looked directly at my daddy. ‘The land is yours, debt-free. You don’t have to pay the 60% share. It’s paid off.’

  ‘Oh, Sweet Jesus. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Mr. Henry. I don’t know what to say,’ Granddaddy said. My daddy said he just sat there and stared at the white man with the kind face.

  ‘There’s more,’ Mr. Henry said. ‘The cabins you live in, both of them. And the piece of land they sit on. They are yours, too. In fact, all six cabins are yours because they are on one tract of land.’ The Samuels didn’t know what was a tract of land, but they understood they owned six cabins, the land they sat on and the 50-acres of field in front of the houses.

  ‘The houses?’ Both of them said together.

  ‘Yes. But there’s a small catch. If you ever decide to sell the land or the cabins, you need to let me have the chance to buy them back at fair market value. If I don’t want them or can’t buy them, you can sell to whoever you want. It’s your property.’