Catfish

by Madelyn Bennett Edwards

  “The sheriff won’t listen to her. He knows me.”

  “Does he, Bob? Does anyone really know you? Does anyone know what goes on in that house where people believe a saint and his saintly family live? You’d better get inside and calm down. Susie is all grown up and knows her rights.”

  “I’m the businessman in this family. She doesn’t know anything.”

  “Suit yourself. I’m going to sit out here and wait.”

  “Wait for what?” Daddy yelled. I didn’t hear any more. By that time I was half-way to Gravier Road.

  *

  I was out of breath when I reached the Quarters, and the bottoms of my bare feet were blistered from the hot asphalt. I heard someone talking, so I stopped on the side of Catfish’s house and peered around the corner. A few women were clearing the long tables and men were packing cars and trailers as the sun set behind the cane fields. I sneaked around to the front of the house, which was almost hidden by several huge oak trees, draped with moss. No one came to the front side of the cabins, all the activity was in the back yard, inside the semicircle of porches that almost touched each other.

  I stepped into the coolness created by the abundant shade and opened the front door. I could see through to the back porch. The doorways that separated the bedroom from the sitting room and the sitting room from the kitchen, lined up with the front and back doors. “Shotgun house,” I remembered Catfish explain.

  I slipped into the bedroom and quickly shut the door between it and the next room, in case someone came inside. With the doors closed, the room immediately became unbearably hot. I opened the front window for relief. There was no cross draft, but at least air came into the room from under the shade trees.

  I turned my back to the front door and realized I’d only been in Catfish’s bedroom once—Tuesday, the day he told me goodbye. I hadn’t noticed anything that day, just Catfish, his sunken cheeks, his raspy voice, his weak grip on my hands as he placed the cotton candy side on top of mine and I put my other hand on top of his and stroked the chocolate side with my pink thumb. I remembered the first time I’d touched his two-toned, long fingered hand.

  I looked around.

  His bed encompassed most of the space in the small room, although it was barely the size of a double bed. I reverently touched the tattered, but clean, pink, blue and white wedding ring quilt that draped the bed almost to the floor. I ran my hand across the one, single pillow, encased in a white pillowslip. A large picture of Jesus was framed above the head of the bed. He had brown skin.

  I ran my hand over the only other piece of furniture in the room, a four-drawer chest with a small fan on top and an oval mirror hanging above it between pictures of Martin Luther King and John F. Kennedy. I turned the fan on. Three clean shirts and two pair of khaki slacks hung on hangers over a pipe extended across one corner of the room. Over the closed door that led to the sitting room was a plain, wooden cross, no Jesus hanging from it.

  I fingered one of his shirts and inhaled the smell of Ivory detergent, Faultless starch and dust. I could feel his presence. Tears ran freely down my cheeks as it hit me, like a delayed reaction, that he was gone. I would have to go on living in this world without Catfish in it. He was my source of wisdom, my example of love and acceptance, my image of what a father, grandfather, husband and friend looked like in its purest form. I began to sob uncontrollably.

  This was the first time I’d been alone with my grief, a chance to feel the stored up pain inside. I had cried with Marianne and Tootsie Wednesday afternoon, and with the gathering family Thursday, but I had concentrated on helping to ease their grief. I knew they could never understand mine—the emptiness inside, the space left behind that no one could ever fill but Catfish. My Cat.

  He didn’t get to tell me all his stories. What happened after the two Samuels inherited the property? What was Catfish’s mother’s school like? I had so many unanswered questions. Without thinking I began to open the drawers in his bureau. In the bottom, right drawer was a yellow legal pad. On the front, in even, almost childlike printed capital letters the word, “STORIES.”

  I started to flip through the pages, slowly. On each page there was a caption in block print. “Annie,” “Mr. Van,” “Mr. Henry,” “Alabama,” “Mama,” and some names I recognized but didn’t know much about, “Audrey,” “Bessie,” “Maureen,” “Big Bugger,” “Lizzie,” “George.” Each had a one-page explanation of who they were, approximate dates they were born and died, and lists of good and bad traits. Halfway through the tablet, the pages became blank, but I kept flipping faster, driven to find something of Catfish I needed. On the very last page, “Suzanah.”

  I sat on the edge of the bed and read the words made of painstaking letters that squiggled and curved and dropped below the lines. I knew this was his last attempt at writing and that his aged hands strained to form the sentences.

  Suzanah,

  I tried to make some more stories for you so when you come back I can remember what to tell you. I know you gonna come back. I hope these help your book.

  I missed you.

  Love, Cat.

  I held the tablet to my chest and wrapped both arms around it and myself, bent forward and cried so hard I began to cough and shake. How could I have stayed away from him for three years? Did he understand, in death, that I was avoiding my own family, not him? Actually I was avoiding myself. I was running from the truth. I left because it was easier than staying—easier than standing up to the status quo that said white people could not love colored people. I’d been a coward.

  But Catfish was a hero. The stories he told me and the ones he left me to discover and imagine on my own were rich with history and truth that he wanted told.

  I stood and looked in the mirror hanging between Kennedy and King, two men who declared truths. Kennedy said we should not wait to see what our country would do for us, but what we could do for our country and King said that all men are equal. My eyes were swollen and red and there was a deep gash across my right cheekbone. Blood was poring out. I found a hanky in the top drawer of the chest and pressed it to my face. I sat on Catfish’s bed and thought about how I could make Catfish proud of me.

  I would begin immediately to write these stories for Catfish and for my country, and I wouldn’t stop until they were printed in national magazines where Catfish’s legacy would show people the injustice of slavery and the after effects we carried on through unwritten rules, Jim Crow, the Ku Klux Klan.

  But I couldn’t do that if I was not an example of how to undo the sins of the past and set a new course for equability and tolerance.

  I had to take stance. I would admit I loved a colored boy and show everyone, including my family, that a person’s skin color does not determine his worth. I sobbed as I made these revelations.

  The larger question was how to live this truth without endangering Rodney and his family, and Tootsie, Marianne and their family. It was quiet as I sat in Catfish’s bedroom pondering these dilemmas.

  I no longer heard voices outside the cabin, so I crept through the sitting room into the kitchen and peeked out the window. Everyone was gone. I looked around Catfish’s kitchen. I’d been in it a couple times, but I’d never been alone in his house, and never with the sadness I felt so heavy in my belly.

  His kitchen was so like him, plain and uncomplicated. There was a white enamel sink with a chrome faucet that was extended about eighteen inches up before it hooked downward. I could see him filling tall pots of water. My mind went back to the day I gave him the turtle.

  “I’m gonna boil it till I know it’s dead, then I’m gonna break the shell, me. It’s the meat inside that’s good, yeah.”

  I stepped onto the porch and fell into Catfish’s rocker holding the handkerchief over the gash on my face. I needed to be near Catfish so I could think. I couldn’t go back to my house. I’d left one suitcase but I had my overnight bag with my personal items and a change of clothes. And I’d had the pre
sence of mind to grab my purse that had my bus, airline tickets, and cash tucked inside.

  I felt the cut and swelling on my cheekbone and wondered whether I’d have a black eye in the morning. It was amazing that, after all this time I was still surprised when Daddy hit me. I knew he was angry and I should have been more prepared, I thought. Then I remembered that I struck back, that I left him bleeding and in pain. I grinned.

  I was so enveloped in my thoughts that I didn’t hear or see Marianne walk up the steps and sit in the straight-back chair I normally occupied when Catfish was alive. Marianne didn’t say anything and I don’t know how long she sat there before I noticed.

  I could tell she was curious, but I wasn’t ready to talk just yet. I rocked and thought of Catfish and all the times he sat in this chair and told me stories and the times I caught him sleeping, his mouth opened, a slight drool forming in the corner.

  I thought how Catfish was the catalyst for all the good things that had happened in my life—peaceful, loving visits and shared stories, a best girlfriend I came to know and love more than my own siblings, and Rodney who I would never have never known, really known, had we not had the Quarters and Catfish’s quiet protection. I had learned the real meaning of family and love and acceptance through Catfish. I owed him so much.

  I remembered how Catfish opened one eye just a sliver when I got here Tuesday night.

  “Missy, you came,” he said. His breathy voice was almost non-existent. I held his hand.

  “Of course I came. Where else would I be, but with my surrogate grandfather?” He smiled and closed his eyes.

  “I’m glad to see you, Missy,” he said.

  I sat there with his hand in mine and told him stories, for a change. I told him about school and New York City and the job offers and how I was going to write our book. That’s what I called it, “Our Book.” He grinned when I said it. Tootsie came in and asked if she could sit with him for a while. I kissed him on the cheek, then on the forehead where I rested my lips a little longer and breathed in his mushroomy odor and something that smelled almost like old, wet leaves.

  That was the last time I heard his voice, the last time I touched him.

  Catfish was the gentle soul who taught me, by example, that not all daddies were mean and angry, not all daddies beat their daughters. Until I knew Catfish, I thought the way my daddy treated me was normal, that every daughter was disciplined that way, that it was how a Daddy showed he loved his little girl, how he taught her right from wrong, for her own good.

  “Now Mama, she’d make us bring her a switch from the bush and tell us to dance while she switched our legs,” Tootsie told me. “But Daddy, no he never raised his voice, much less his hand to us.”

  I was jealous—jealous of Tootsie and jealous of Marianne. When I confessed my envy to Marianne a few years before, she’d laughed.

  “Yeah, you can be jealous of colored folks cause you White,” she said. “No Klan gonna come after you because they think you say the wrong thing, forget to say, “Sir,” or “Ma’am,” or use a tone of voice they find offensive. You don’t know what you talking about when you say you wish you were in my family, a colored family.”

  “You’re right. I’m sorry, Mari, I don’t get it,” I said. I paused and thought a minute, then I whispered, almost like I didn’t really want her to hear me.

  “If being white means waking up in a hospital room and not knowing how you got there, or having your family act like nothing happened to you even when you had a broken arm and black eyes, then I guess you’d want to be white, wouldn’t you?” She didn’t answer and I didn’t continue.

  I wondered how she felt now that we were older, more mature.

  Chapter Twenty

  Love?

  1974

  I FINALLY LOOKED AT Marianne who was sitting next to me on Catfish’s porch, waiting to be noticed. She gasped when she saw my face.

  “Oh, God, Susie, what happened?” Catfish’s handkerchief was soaked in blood and no longer helped to stop the flow. My hand was filled with red fluid and my white silk blouse was streaked scarlet. “That gash on your cheek is huge and your eye is turning black.”

  “I’m okay. I’ve been worse.”

  “You need stitches, Susie,” she said. “Let me take you to the emergency room.”

  I was so ashamed my chin fell to my chest and I heaved deeply. Marianne put her arm around my shoulder. We sat there for a several minutes until I realized I was bleeding all over Marianne’s beautiful black suit and sat up straight. I thought about the last time I had been in the Quarters before this trip, the day my daddy showed up at Tootsie’s house. I had questions, unfinished business with Tootsie. This was as good a time as any, since I didn’t think I’d be back for a long, long time, if ever.

  “Where’s your Mama?” I asked.

  “She’s in the house.”

  “I want to talk to her, privately.”

  “Okay. I’ll go get her. Then will you let me take you to the hospital?” I looked at my friend, my very best friend, perhaps, my sister.

  “Marianne, does she know I saw him come here?”

  “I didn’t tell her. We don’t talk about him, ever!” Marianne looked at the cornfields, a hallow stare.

  “Mari, look at me.” Marianne turned to me, tears pooling in her big, hazel eyes.

  “Do you think he’s your father?”

  “I hope not. I don’t want him to be my father. I hate him.” She walked down the steps.

  “Wait, Mari.” Marianne stopped but didn’t turn around. “Would it really be so bad? I mean, that we might be ... ?” Marianne paused, but she didn’t turn around. Finally she continued walking and went into her house next door.

  I sat in Catfish’s rocker and waited. I missed him deeply. The emptiness was visceral, like a stabbing sensation in my stomach and a burning in my gut. Tears ran down my cheeks and the saltiness burned where it pooled in the gash across the side of my face. I didn’t care. If I listened carefully, maybe I could almost hear his voice in the clouds.

  Tootsie came up the steps with two glasses of sweet tea and a bag of ice.

  “What you doing here?” she asked. She handed me the tea and the ice pack.

  “Daddy.” That’s all I said. She understood.

  “Mari said put this ice pack on that cheek.” I took the ice and put it over the blood soaked handkerchief and drank a long sip of tea then put the glass on the floor.

  “This was the only place I knew I could come,” I said. Tootsie sat in the chair next to me. We both looked out at the cane fields.

  “You always welcome here.” She said it so softly—I almost didn’t hear her.

  “Except when he’s here, right?”

  “What you mean?” She sat up straight and looked at me. I stared at the sky. I couldn’t look at Tootsie.

  “Daddy. When he comes to see you.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t act dumb, Tootsie. I saw him here with you.” Tootsie looked down and put her face in her hands. She started to cry.

  “I’m sorry, Miss Susie,” she said. Tootsie never called me, “Miss,” what was that about? “I don’t have no choice. All these years. When it first started I was young, and I didn’t know he was married. Then I got pregnant and he tole me he had a wife and a chile and another one on the way. He say he help me financial-like. And he kept coming around and he gave me money from time to time.” She put her face in her hands and sobbed. I could feel her pain. I’d felt it too, from him.

  “Then when you was born he axed me to work for your Mama. He said you need protection. You was just a baby and your Mama wanted you dead.” She looked at me. “I’m sorry to tell you that about your own mama, but, well, that’s why I stayed all those years. I was only fifteen when I went to help her out, and I had a new baby myself. I needed the work and I worried that woman would kill her baby girl.”

  I listened and saw Tootsie’s pain, her shame, her b
ondage. I’m not sure why her revelation about Mama wanting to kill me wasn’t a shock—it didn’t even stir me. I guess I was thinking more about Daddy and how it felt to be under his control, like Tootsie. I didn’t want to keep questioning Tootsie, I wanted to leave her alone, I’d already pushed her pretty far—but I couldn’t stop myself from asking about Marianne. I had nursed my curiosity for three years. It was choking me.

  “Is she his? Marianne. Is she my sister?”

  “Please don’t tell her. She hate him.”

  “I hate him, too, but she needs to know who her father is, Tootsie. Does he know, does Daddy know about Marianne?”

  “I guess he do. We never talk about it.”

  “Do you mean that son-of-a-bitch knows that Marianne is his child and he doesn’t acknowledge her?” Tootsie hung her head and shook it softly, wringing her hands in her lap.

  “She’s my sister and I’m not allowed to be here? He can come here, sleep with you, make mulatto babies and forbid me to visit?” Tootsie didn’t answer, nor did she look at me.

  “Tootsie, you need to stop this nonsense.”

  “I know. I tole him so many times to stop coming around, but he wait a month or so, and start up again. I’m afraid of him. I see what he do to you.”

  “You should be afraid. He’s dangerous. If he hurts you, no one will believe you. He’s Bob Burton. Mayor Bob Burton, soon to be Senator.” Tootsie didn’t look up. I could hear her quiet sobs.

  “Tootsie are you the one?”

  “Huh?” She raised her head out of her hands and sat back as if she’d been shocked.

  “You know what I’m asking. Did you tell Daddy that I came here? About me and Rodney?” She began to sob and couldn’t talk. She tried but she swallowed her words and heaved so hard I thought she’d stop breathing. I wanted to stop badgering her, but, heck, here I was with a gash across my face because she probably told him about my visits to the Quarters and about Rodney. I sat there and listened to her hysteria and felt no compassion. She was as bad as my mother.