Catfish /Slave Auction
1963
TOOTSIE USED TO TELL me I had goodness in me, but she also accused me of being stubborn and not holding my tongue—which got me in a lot of trouble. And she took up for Will and Robby, my two younger brothers, because she said I was, bossy.
My parents called me, Troublemaker. Maybe they were right. After all, I did cause a lot of trouble. What is it they say? “Small children, small problems—big children ...?” I guess that would describe me, beginning with my relationship with Catfish.
After I gave him the turtle when I was little, Catfish would stop in front of our house in the afternoons on his way home from work if I was in the front yard. He would dance and whistle and, sometimes, play his harmonica. And we would talk across the ditch.
When I was eleven, and we moved to the big house on the corner of South Jefferson and Marble Avenue we were now three long blocks from Gravier Road and the Quarters on the other side. My dream to visit Catfish someday seemed dashed by distance.
The first week after we moved, I stood at the corner, in the blazing South Louisiana heat and humidity, and waited for Catfish. I was afraid he wouldn’t find me at the new house, and I had come to depend on his visits. You could say I loved him like a grandfather but I’m not sure how it feels to love a grandfather, since I’d never had one—but I knew how it felt to love Catfish.
I waved at him as he skipped on the hot pavement under the canopy of moss-draped live oaks.
“Hey, Catfish,” I called out. “Here I am. We moved.”
“Oh, Chere, you’re in the big house now. This the biggest house in Jean Ville.”
“I know. It’s too big. And this yard is a ten-acre park. I was afraid you wouldn’t know where to find me.”
We smiled at each other, his toothy grin caused his huge lips to spread across the entire bottom half of his face and made his whole expression light up.
Most days I waited alone in the expansive front yard that met the pavement seamlessly with no ditch to divide it from the street like the old house. Mama didn’t know I talked with him. She thought he stopped to entertain the neighborhood children, which, to Mama, was what people like Catfish should do for white folks—act like clowns and make fools of themselves. Only I didn’t see him that way. And in the new house, set so far from the street, Mama couldn’t see his tall, dark figure deep in conversation with me.
We chatted like old friends. He taught me how to listen for birds singing and tweeting to each other and to hear the buzzing of bees and butterflies that made harmonic music with other insects like crickets and fireflies. He explained how to inhale deeply to appreciate the wondrous smells of camellias and pecans and fresh-cut grass. He made me see the world as big and beautiful, filled with goodness, something I didn’t know much about inside the walls of the big house.
“How you doin, Missy?” he always asked when he saw me. Or he called me, “Chere,” which sounded like, “Sha,” and meant, “Dear One,” in Cajun French.
“I’m great, Catfish. I got an A in Algebra this week.”
“You a smart girl, you.”
“And you? How was work today?”
“Oh, Missy, we kilt so many hogs at the slaughterhouse today I done loss count. An my ole back feel it, too.”
As I got older and activities after school kept me from meeting Catfish every day, the visits became less frequent and I often wondered whether he would forget me. I tried to wait for him on Fridays, since I didn’t have band practice before the seven o’clock football games in the fall or softball practice before weekend games in the spring.
The fall I turned thirteen, about four months after the Klan visit, I realized I hadn’t seen Catfish in a month or more. I stood on the corner every afternoon after school for two weeks and waited, but Catfish didn’t skip by. I panicked and didn’t know who I could ask about him. I finally decided to ask Tootsie if she knew Catfish, and whether she could find out where he was, if he was alright. I pulled Tootsie aside one Friday afternoon.
That’s when Tootsie told me that Catfish was her daddy. I was shocked.
“Why, in all the years you knew I waited for Catfish and talked to him, you never told me you were his daughter?” I whispered. Tootsie looked down and twisted the bottom of her apron with both hands. Small beads of perspiration gathered on her forehead.
“You know we not supposed to talk about our families on the job, Honey-Chile.” Tootsie whispered, a hint of a sob in her voice. What she meant was that she had to follow what the white women in Jean Ville called, help-code, a set of implied rules the help knew existed, but no one ever talked about. One of those rules was that the hired help didn’t discuss their personal lives with the white children in their care.
I signaled for Tootsie to follow me. We walked down the long hall that divided the huge antebellum house right down the middle. Three enormous bedrooms and bathrooms were on the left side of the hall, the living, dining, kitchen, breakfast room and parlor on the other. A semi-circular staircase just inside the front door reached upward to a landing where a U-shaped gallery wrapped around three sides of the upstairs with doors on each side that led to more bedrooms, a study, a playroom, a nursery and several bathrooms. The boys’ bedrooms were upstairs, mine was downstairs all the way at the end of the hall near the front door.
Mama was busy in the kitchen at the back of the house, on the other side of the hall. Tootsie and I went into my bedroom, shut the door and sat on the edge of my bed, side by side.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked, again.
“You never axed,” Tootsie said. I was young, but I knew Tootsie’s dilemma. White children should believe they were the only family the help cared about. I had learned this from my older cousin, Charlotte, who lived down the street, next door to our old house. The children were supposed to believe we were the surrogates of our help, loved beyond measure, in competition with no one for their affection.
“You can talk to me about your family. I won’t tell,” I said. Tootsie cried softly. I put my arm over her shoulder and thought how Tootsie knew everything about me, but I knew nothing about this beautiful brown woman who had been a mother to me for almost thirteen years. I felt ashamed, selfish—just like all the other white people in Jean Ville who didn’t think colored people had feelings or lives that counted.
“I’m so sorry, Tootsie. I should have asked you a long time ago. Tell me about them.”
“Well, Catfish, his name Peter Massey and he the best daddy. My Mama died when I’s just about your age and I miss her. Her name was Alabama, can you believe? But everyone called her, Shag.” Tootsie stopped abruptly and began to smooth the lap of her uniform.
“Go on, Toot. Do you have brothers and sisters?
“Yeah. I got me one sister, Jesse, and two brothers, Tom and Sam. They all married with children.”
“Do you have children, Toot? Other than Marianne?”
“Yeah. I have four girls. Mari your age. The others is younger.”
“Wow.” I was speechless, trying to absorb all the new things I was learning about this woman I loved more than anyone. We were silent for a minute. I noticed how her eye lashes clumped together with the wetness of her tears as she stared down at her hands, working the starched white fabric of her apron. My heart twisted and my natural curiosity stirred. I had lots of questions, but the number one question was, “Where’s Catfish?”
“He old now, Honey Chile,” Tootsie said. “He don’t work at the slaughterhouse no more. He stay home and rock in his chair on the porch and watch the children play.”
“Oh,” I had never known anyone who was too old to work. I thought about Catfish and how, to me, he didn’t seem to age. He was always the same, and like Tootsie, someone I could depend on week after week, year after year.
“Do you see him every day?’
“Shore do,” Tootsie said. “I lives in the Quarters with him. I got my own little cabin for me and my girls. We all there together, my brothers and sister and me and all our kids. We live all in the row.”
“The row?”
“Yeah, Honey-chile. The row of cabins used to be slave Quarters at Shadowland.”
“Oh.” I couldn’t picture what she was talking about. “Toot, don’t get me wrong, but you, well, uhm, you and Catfish look different.” I found it baffling that a carmel-colored, pretty woman like Tootsie could be the child of such a dark skinned man.
“That’s common for Negroes,” Tootsie said. “Why, we got so many generations of different bloods in us we don’t know how our children will come out. My Marianne, she can pass for white, and she real pretty, with grey-green eyes. My other girls is my color, sort of cinnamon, ‘cept the baby, Milly, she got a touch of pecan.
Tootsie pulled me close to her big bosoms and stroked my long hair. I called it, auburn, but Mama insisted I was a redhead. The sun streaked it with gold highlights in the summertime, which made it more auburn that red, I thought, but I didn’t argue with Mama. I’d get my mouth washed out with soap.
With my head on Tootsie’s huge bosoms, I realized I couldn’t remember a time in my life when she was not there for me.
“How old was I when you came to work for us, Toot?” I asked.
“Why, you was a baby, maybe three-four months old.” Tootsie paused and thought. “Now don’t you tell Miss Anne I told you none of this.” She paused as if trying to decide whether to go on. “Your daddy, he know Catfish, and he come to the Quarters one day to axe could Catfish butcher him a hog. Your daddy saw me, I was maybe thirteen or fourteen, and he axed could I come help your Mama out. She had a hard time when you was born, James being almost three and all.”
Tootsie went on to tell me more about her family and about how Mama kept having children so she needed Tootsie more than ever. I tried to listen, but all I could think about was Catfish, and wonder how I could see him now that I knew he would no longer come by my house in the afternoons.
I was more intrigued than ever about the Quarters, no longer afraid to go now that I knew Tootsie lived there. Surely Mama would let me go visit Tootsie.
*
“Absolutely not!” Mama said. “I’d better never catch you near those Quarters.”
“Why?”
“I told you those people will eat you if you go near them.”
“Mama, I’m almost thirteen, too old to believe that story anymore.” She slapped me across the face, blood spurted from my lip. I sucked it in so the blood would seep into my mouth, not on the blue carpet.
“Okay, then, Miss Smarty-Pants, it’s because I said, ‘No,’ and I’m the Mother!”
Being the troublemaker I was, I didn’t take, “No,” for an answer.
Wednesday was “Bridge Day,” when Mama played cards in the afternoon with her three best friends. The ladies took turns hosting and, on this particular Wednesday, the game would be at Mrs. June’s house. When I got home from school that afternoon, Mama was gone and wouldn’t be home until after five.
I changed into shorts and tennis shoes and hurried out the front door and across the front lawns of all the neighbor’s houses, leaving my siblings in Tootsie’s care. Perhaps no one would know I was gone. When I reached our old house, a wave of sadness washed over me. I walked down the driveway onto the blacktop road and stared at the low-slung white, ranch-style home where I had known a degree of childhood peace. I wondered why things had changed so drastically after we moved to the big house. Those thoughts slowed me down and I took a deep breath, to ward off the tears that seemed just under the surface.
Deep breathing helped, and reminded me to enjoy the smells in the air. Catfish would ask me about them. I inhaled roses and hydrangeas and hot tar as I slowed my pace on the steaming pavement. It was a beautiful afternoon, hot and humid, as usual, but tolerable for late September. I listened for the music of birds calling to each other and to the bees as they buzzed near the ground around my ankles, and I made my way across Gravier Road to the Quarters. I felt like I was doing something awful, and a sheet of guilt fell over me. I tried to shake it off by thinking about seeing Catfish, after so many months.
He was asleep in a rocking chair on the back porch of the first cabin in the row, his hat drawn over his eyes. I walked up the three small steps and sat in a straight-backed chair with a green, ripped Naugahyde seat. I didn’t say anything for the longest time, then I decided to wake him.
“Hey, Catfish,” I said, as if it was a normal everyday occurrence for me to be in the Quarters visiting. Catfish pushed his hat back on his head and didn’t acknowledge me at first, didn’t look at me, didn’t speak. He rocked gently in his chair and stared straight ahead out of half-closed eyes. I tried to see what he was looking at—a big, circular, dirt yard, in front of a little garden with a crude fence, an old barn off to the right a hundred yards or so and cane fields as far as I could see. On one side of the cane field were rows of pecan trees, and live oaks were scattered here and there providing shade to the entire space—acres and acres of land.
It had been months since the Klan’s raid and the Quarters looked no worse for the wear, although I didn’t know how it looked before.
I wondered whether Catfish and Tootsie ever discovered why the Klan went to the Quarters the same night they came to our house and, I must admit, I felt a twinge of guilt, that it could be my fault and that maybe my visit this particular day could cause more trouble. Troublemaker.
Sitting on his porch in total silence I thought about it for the first time. Was I the reason?
Catfish finally looked at me. By then I was nervous, questioning whether I should be there, wondering whether I had made a rash decision that I didn’t think through. That’s what usually got me in trouble—barreling into something without thinking of all the consequences. I still do that. Impulsive is what some of my friends call me.
We sat in an uncomfortable silence for a while, both thinking quietly. Catfish was probably thinking the same thing I was—what if my visit caused the Klan to return. We inhaled the smells of the cane fields and the chickens in the yard and the patch of flowers in the little fenced-in garden on the side of his cabin. I could hear myself breathe, in and out. Every now and then I sighed, and exhaled heavily, without realizing it, like I was blowing out all the pain I held inside. Without changing my position I broke the silence.
“I waited months before coming because I wasn’t sure.”
Silence.
“Should I leave?”
Silence.
“I had to see you, Cat. I had to see for myself that you’re okay. I’ve been so worried, especially since that night, the raids, you know ...”
Silence.
“If it was because of me, I’m so sorry. I’ll leave and I won’t come back.”
Silence.
“Talk to me Catfish. I feel so guilty.”
“It weren’t your fault, Missy. Everyone knowed I stopped at your house. That’s been going on for years and years. Nobody paid that no mind.”
“Then why?”
“Not sure. Maybe we’ll never know.”
“They came to our house, too.”
“Yeah. Tootsie tole me.”
“That’s what made me think it was my fault.”
“Coincidence.”
We didn’t say any more about the Klan. Neither of us was convinced it was not my fault. I kept thinking about Daddy saying it was because of his relationship with Ray Thibault. But why the Quarters, too? What was the connection?
A beautiful light skinned girl with long, wavy hair, a deep shade of reddish-brown, like the mahogany dining table Mama was so proud of, stepped onto the porch next door. The houses were so close the girl could have almost stepped onto Catfish’s porch from hers. She was tall, at least as tall as me, and she carried a book.
“Are you Marianne?”
“How you know my name? Who’re you?”
“Your mom works for us. She told me about you.” Catfish watched us, inhaling our exchange. He seemed a bit skittish, like he was afraid we might start fighting or something.
“Oh, you must be Susanna Burton,” Marianne said. She almost spat the words, as if they disgusted her. She walked down her steps into the yard.
“Susie.”
We sized each other up. I heard Catfish exhale, quietly. Tootsie had told me that her daughter was distrustful of white people since the Klan’s visit. I knew I was probably a threat to her, that maybe there was some jealousy over Tootsie, even Catfish. I smiled at her. Her stare lightened a little and she took a breath, relaxing some.
“Hey, you girls. Remember me?” Catfish said. He laughed his belly laugh and tugged on his right ear lobe. “Mari, Sweet Baby, this the girl I talks to when I walks home from work. Remember I tole you about her? She the one gave me that turtle that time, remember? She and I been friends a long time. Ain’t that right, Missy?”
“Yeah. That’s right ...”
“You didn’t tell me she was Mr. Burton’s kid,” Marianne said. Again, she spat the words. Staccato.
“I never axed her who was her daddy. Didn’t seem to matter.”
“Well, it does matter. To me,” Marianne pouted and folded her arms across her chest, the book flattened against it, tucked under her chin, but she didn’t move from her spot in the yard.
“I’m so happy to know you, Marianne,” I said. I smiled my best smile and skipped down the three little steps to the back yard, a sea of dirt and dust. I tried to hug Marianne but she hugged herself and turned her head to the side. I tried a handshake, but she wouldn’t let go of herself to extend her hand. In the end I patted her on the back and attempted a conversation.
“You are as pretty as your Mama said. I thought she was just being a proud Mama, you know, one of those who believes all her children are special. But she was right.” Catfish watched. Marianne took a step back, as if I was in her personal space. I took a step forward and put my arm around her shoulder and squeezed it. Marianne looked at me like I fell out of a tree. I ignored the innuendo and sprang back up the steps and into the chair next to Catfish.
“I was worried about you Catfish. When you quit coming by my house I asked Tootsie where you were. She said you retired. You never told me Toot was your daughter.”
“You never axed, Missy,” he said. “I thought you had that figured.”
“What? Just because both of you are colored I’m supposed to know you’re related? That’s like saying I’m related to Billy Boudreaux because he’s white and Cajun,” I attempted a laugh at my own joke. Catfish hesitated, then realized I wasn’t making fun of colored people and he began to chuckle. Then he broke into a hearty laugh. He laughed so hard Marianne and I both started to laugh with him. That broke the ice and Marianne finally walked onto the porch and sat at Catfish’s feet, against the corner post.
“I was going to read you a book this afternoon,” Marianne said. She glanced at me with a look of disdain, as if I messed up her plans. I ignored it.
“Well, Chile, I thought I might tell you girls a story.“ He looked thoughtful.
“Okay, Granddaddy. How about you tell us about the slave days, before the Civil War.” She turned to me for the first time, like it was normal for me to be there. “His Granddaddy was a slave until Mr. Lincoln declared all people free.”
“That’s right. My granddaddy, named Samuel Massey. That’s who I named your Uncle Sam for,” Catfish said to Marianne. “Well, my granddaddy was a slave on this very plantation. Lived in this very cabin, yes he did. “
He looked at us, one, then the other. When we didn’t comment, and he was assured he had a captive audience, he went on.
*
Slave Auction
1854
“Well Granddaddy was born to a slave woman on Kent Plantation over in Alexandria, and in those days, that thirty-five miles between Kent and Shadowland was like five hundred miles is today. They didn’t have no cars. They traveled by horse or mule or buggy pulled by an animal. It could take all day to get from Alexandria to Jean Ville.”
“Samuel, my granddaddy, he was taken from his mama, the housekeeper at the Kent Plantation, when he was about ten or so—they didn’t keep track of actual ages in those days—and thought to be big enough to work in the fields. He missed his Mama so bad and grieved for her every day after they were separated. Tears would bunch up in his eyes years later when he told Granny, that was his wife, named Anna-Lee, and later he told his boys,—that be my daddy and them—about the last time he saw his Mama. It was a story he told every year, right around the time of summer when he was taken, a story passed on through the generations by those who either could not write or had no tools to record the history.
“Granddaddy said,
‘She was holding me so tight I couldn’t breathe. I wrapped my arms around her and grabbed both my wrists with the opposite hand. I thought they couldn’t take me from her if I held on tight.’
Then he heard the wheezing of the whip and the snap of the sharp, thin blades of leather, but he said he didn’t feel nothin’. His eyes was closed so tight against the tears behind ‘em that when the foreman swung the long rope and popped it in the air he thought that man just put the fear of the Lord in him.
My grandaddy said he knew what it looked like, that ole whip. He saw it often, in the hand of Mister Reynaud when he rode his horse through the fields and gripped its handle polished like priceless silver.
‘It was several thin strings of twine braided together about three or four feet long with five or six leather strips on the end of it, plaited into a braid and held together with a silver ring. On the other end was a handle, made of whittled wood, smooth and curved to perfectly fit his hand. No one was allowed to touch that cat-o-nine-tales but Mister Reynaud. And it was always in a position to strike.
‘I was still a boy, so I didn’t get whipped, but I knowed it wouldn’t be long fore it was my time, and I thought that day had come. You never want to hear that sound. Never. If you do, you can’t never forget it.’
He said he didn’t feel no pain but he noticed his Mama’s grip around him loosen a bit. Still, he held on to her.
‘She was a skinny little thing, but her arms was strong and she could do the work any man could do, that’s for shore,’ he said.
‘There was lots of hollering, men screaming at them to let go, but no one touched me or Mama or tried to pull us apart. I heard the whip again. This time Mama’s arms almost released me, but I was holding her tight, around her waist, so she didn’t fall. I tried not to open his eyes to look at her, but, after the third wiz of the whip, I made myself glance up and saw the agony in her face. That’s when I knew she was the one Mr. Reynaud’s whip was hitting, not the wind.
‘Now that I’m a daddy, I know that look in her face had more to do with losing me than the whipping she was getting,’ he used to tell us when he tole this story.
At this point my granddaddy would stop and a tear would run down his cheek. He said he knew she woulda just stood there and took it as long as he held on to her. He always stopped here and wiped his eyes. Eventually he would continue.
‘I had to let go,’ he’d say over and over. ‘I just had to. I didn’t have no choice. They’d of killed her, just for disrespecting. I had to let her go. I had to.’
When he released his grip on her she fell to the ground in a heap.
Here, Granddaddy would always stop and look in the distance like he was talking to the trees. It was like none of us was there anymore. He was talking to hisself, I guess.
‘There was blood all over her and I bent down to help her, she wasn’t more an a hundred pounds. That’s when the men grabbed me. They put my arms and legs in chains and attached them to a ring around my neck. Then they sat me in the back of a wagon that moved over rocky, rutted roads all day long. No hat to cover my head, no food, no water and the heat pounding on me.
When they got here—he didn’t know till later it was Jean Ville— they put him on a block in the middle of town. He was only a boy.
‘I missed my Mama and my home, the only place I’d ever known. The Man at Kent House was mean, but I was safe with Mama. I didn’t know what would happen to me away from her. And what about Mama? Would she be all right? If she died it would be my fault cause I wouldn’t let her go of her,
He heard men calling out numbers and, after some time, he was put in another wagon, turned out to be Mr. Van’s. The men who took him away from his Mama, got the chains off him and he waited for new ones, but they didn’t come. Mr. Van went around the back of the wagon with a scooper of water and axed Granddaddy did he want some. He was thirsty. It was dusty and hot. His mouth was so dry he couldn’t answer. He just nodded and Mr. Van handed him that scoop and put a bucket full of clear, fresh water next to him. Next thing he knowed they was going somewhere in that wagon and the man driving didn’t put no chains on him or take the bucket or the scoop back. That was the first clue he had he’d been bought by a good man.
He cried hisself to sleep every night, but during the day he was too busy to think about his Mama and Kent Plantation. There was some other slaves here back then— old George and a kind woman named, Bessie, who took sympathy on him.
Granddaddy didn’t know where Kent Plantation was or how far. He didn’t see his Mama for twenty years. By that time he was married and they had Sammy. That was my daddy. He was about three, and she was pregnant with their second, Catfish said.
“Whew! I tired now. You girls run along, You done wore me out.”
“Wait, Catfish, you didn’t finish the story. What happened? You said he saw his Mama again?”
“Yeah, Missy, but I too tired to tell you the rest. I’ll tell you more next time you come around.”
That was the best invitation I was going to get, so I took it. I was happy he wanted me to come back.
“Okay, Cat,”
*
Catfish seemed different at his own house, rocking on his own porch. I know he was surprised to see me, but I think he was happy, once everyone settled down. He looked old and worn out, and that worried me, but I acted like he was just the same ole’ Catfish who’d danced and chatted with me so often over the past six years.
I tried to take it all in—the Quarters. There were five little wood houses with back porches that almost touched each other, in a semi-circle around a fire pit in the center of the yard. It looked like there had been six cabins at one time—there was a pile of burnt rubble at the far end of the row. I figured that was where the charred smell that hung in the air came from.
Between the porches and the fire pit was dirt, and beyond the fire pit was more dirt that led to a small garden with a path on one side. From Catfish’s back porch, past the fire pit and the dirt yard, past the garden with sticks that stood vertically in rows, past the pecan grove with straight lines of trees that looked like huge umbrellas with only slithers of sunlight on the ground beneath them, I could see the cane fields that went on for miles.
I didn’t go inside his cabin, but from the outside I could tell that none of the houses had more than three rooms, some only two. It looked like, when they added a room, they added to the front of the cabins, where there were no porches, only a set of steps that led to a door and faced South Jefferson Street Extension. The cabins were practically hidden behind more pecan trees and huge live oaks that formed a dense canopy for at least 100-yards to the narrow street.
I was amazed at how close the five houses were to each other. Someone could sit on each of the five back porches and have conversations with the people on the other porches, never raising their voices. Except for the two houses on either end, there wasn’t enough room on the sides of the cabins to add a room, unless new rooms connected the houses together.
Catfish told me the cabins were called, “Shotgun houses.”
“They came up with that name during slave days because the plantation owners said you could shoot a shotgun through the front door and the buckshot could kill a varmint in the back yard. We don’t waste no space on halls. One room goes into the next.” But he didn’t invite me to go inside to confirm his story.
I walked home that afternoon thinking about the story Catfish told. I wanted to write it down before I forgot all the details. It was hard to believe people were treated that way, bought and sold like property, taken from their families, whipped, deprived of water and food. I thought about Mr. Van, who was a kind slave owner, but he still bought and sold people like they were cattle. What did that say about him?
Looking back I realize that was the beginning of my desire to be a writer. It all started with Catfish’s story. It caused something of a metamorphosis inside me, a revolution of sorts, about the way Negroes were treated. Through the years I would become outraged that nothing really changed, even as laws said they did. I made it my life’s mission to make people see what a travesty this was.
I sit here today and wonder whether anything has really changed in the almost half-century since my first visit to the Quarters when I was not quite thirteen years old.
*
I tried to make friends with the girls in my class at Assumption Catholic where my brothers and I went to Elementary School. No one seemed to like me. I was bullied, criticized and some of the girls from the country tried to beat me up—and they succeeded every now and then. I learned to run, fast, and became a track star in high school, which I attribute to the mean girls who chased me every day. I never understood what I did to make them dislike me, and the harder I tried to please them, the worse they treated me.
“You should just go somewhere and die,” Megan Dauzat said.
“Yeah,” Melanie Gremillion said. “You just take up space. No one likes you, anyway.”
There were lots of incidents. One girl held my head in the toilet and flushed. They chased me, and if the caught me, they’d throw me on the ground and beat me up. They wouldn’t invite me to parties or to their houses for what people today call, play dates; and if I invited them, they’d laugh, or accept and not show up.
The nuns sided with my classmates and alternately singled me out or ignored me. Sister Adrian pulled me down the hall by the ear. Sister Celeste told the class I peed on the bathroom floor. When I asked why, the only straight answer I ever got was, “We were told to put you in your place and keep you there!” Now I understand it was Mama’s way of making sure I didn’t become conceited—or, at least, that’s what she told me years later when she said, “I did it for your own good, Susanna Christine.”
I was in seventh grade when everything came to a head at Assumption Catholic.
A new family moved to Jean Ville when I was in seventh grade, the first Hispanic family in town. They had seven children, five were school age. The Martinez kids came to Assumption on “scholarships” and the eldest, Randy, was in my seventh grade class. He was fifteen, I was barely eleven. Randy didn’t speak much English and couldn’t read or write, but he set his sights on me from the first day. He was big and had whiskers and the other boys were no match for his strength or his pernicious plans. He bullied Jeffrey Marks out of his desk directly behind me and Randy began a series of malicious flirtations that kept me in constant trouble, while he was never blamed. He played with my long hair, shot spitballs at me, popped the back of my training bra and tried to raise my skirt. He wouldn’t leave me along. Each time he was caught, I was punished for, “leading him on,” and Randy got off Scott-free. When I told Mama about the new boy and how he badgered me and got me I trouble she told me I was, “leading him on,” too. I didn’t know what that meant.
One day when the bell rang after recess to signal it was time to return to the classroom, I stood at end of the line of girls and waited for Sister Clement to emerge from the building to lead us up the steps from the dirt yard. It was hot and dusty and I needed to stop at the water fountain inside, so I was fidgety. I was usually second from last in line because Katie Gagnard was the tallest girl, I was next to tallest. Katie was home sick that day so I was at the end of the line.
Randy ran up behind me without warning and scooped me up like a man would carry his bride across the threshold. In one fluid motion he ran towards the hedges that separated the schoolyard from a ditch and formed a boundary between Assumption and the Gaspard’s house next door. He threw me over the hedges into the trench, then dove over the bushes to land on top of me. I rolled away just in time and I guess he landed in the ditch. I got to my feet, ran through the shrubbery, up the back steps and into the classroom, unaware that I was disheveled with leaves and grass in my hair, my skirt hiked up and dirt smeared across my face, arms and legs. Randy was right behind me, laughing. Looking back I can see how it must have seemed to Sister Clement who, before I could open my mouth to explain, pointed to the door and sent me to Sister Adrian’s office.
Sister Adrian took one look at me, bruised and dirty, and called me a, “whore,” and a “slut,” and sent me home, after a sound whipping.
“And don’t come back to Assumption,” the nun screamed. “We are done with the likes of you. You are a disgrace to our school and our students.”
When I got home, Mama was changing the baby and Tootsie was hanging clothes on the line outside.
“What are you doing home so early?” Mama asked without looking at me.
“What’s a whore?” I asked. She turned her head and lifted an eyebrows which caused a crease to form on her forehead. She slapped me across the face.
“Don’t you ever say words like that young lady! Where did you hear such vulgarity?”
“Sister Adrian. That’s what she called me when she sent me home and told me never to go back to Assumption. She also called me a, ‘slut.’”
“I told you not to say those words!” I just looked at her. What words? I wondered.
“You must have done something awful,” Mama yelled.
“I’m not sure what I did. That new boy, Randy, threw me in the bushes and I got away. Then Sister Clement sent me to the office and Sister Adrian whipped me and called me those words.”
“What did you do to make that boy come after you?”
“Nothing, I swear. I was just standing in line ...”
“Don’t swear and don’t lie to me!” She slapped me again. This time I felt my lip split and I tasted blood. “I know better. You are boy-crazy! Go to your room. Wait till your daddy gets home!”
When Daddy got home he came to my room, didn’t ask questions.
My hero rode in on a big horse and galloped over me, using a lasso, leather with a belt buckle on the end, to whip me into shape. I made myself into a haystack, tight and round to hide, but the horse took bits out of me and left holes that oozed from the inside out. The light was like sunshine blazing down so hot I began to sweat and a whoosh of urine ran out from under me. The sun fell from the sky and everything went dark and flat as I slid under the protection of my bed and slept, the dust ruffle around the bottom making me feel walled in and safe. The hardwood floor smelled like wax and ammonia and moisture crept up my lumpy stack of bones by osmosis. There was a small glow from the lamp beside my bed, and when I opened my eyes I could see where the holes had sprouted red liquid that pooled on the floor and smeared my face and hands.
On my knees I crawled across the hall to the bathroom and pulled myself up by hanging on the lavatory. The blood was coming from a cut on my butt where the buckle must have landed. I tried to clean it with a wash cloth and cold water, then someone began to bang on the bathroom door.
“What’s all the noise?” Mama yelled. I opened the door and stood on one foot, hobbling on the other, holding onto the doorknob. She gasped and shoved me back into the bathroom, followed me in and closed the door.
“Sit on the toilet,” she said and she lowered the lid. I sat on the open wound on my butt. She started to wash my face with soap and water and became exasperated, then filled the bathtub halfway and told me to get in.
“Wash yourself with soap, Susanna, and shampoo your hair,” she said. “Then get some clean pajamas on and go to bed.” I did as she said, but it wasn’t easy. I couldn’t sleep, I kept waiting for the horses to return and stampede through my room. I felt tiny and vulnerable.
In the morning Tootsie brought me aspirin and soup at lunch and I tried to sleep off and on. Daddy came in my room that evening. I was afraid so I cowered in the bed, my neck against the headboard, legs stretched out in front of me. He gently pushed my legs over and sat on the edge of the bed next to my butt, facing me.
“Are you okay, Pretty Girl?” he asked. He put his hand on my cheek and stroked it. Tears streamed down my face. I nodded. Daddy took his handkerchief out of his back pocket and wiped my eyes, cheeks and neck, then he handed it to me. I blew my nose.
“I need to explain what’s going to happen. You will not return to Assumption. There are only a few weeks left in this school year and Sister Adrian has agreed to give you a report card for the full year, all A’s, of course. Your mother will get you registered at the public school and you’ll go there next year.”
“But Daddy,” I started to cry again. “Next year is eighth grade. I won’t get to graduate.”
“You’ll graduate from the public school.”
“What about Will and Robby? Will they come with me?”
“No. Will has two more years and Robby four, and you’ll be in high school in one year, so it’s no use to move them.”
“But the nuns ...”
“I know. But I promised your grandmother I’d make sure you all got a Catholic education. Assumption only goes through eighth grade, so you would have to go to public school in ninth grade, anyway.”
“But I don’t know anyone.” I couldn’t stop crying. I was confused and felt betrayed but I didn’t understand why, at the time. And I was sick and humiliated and Daddy acted like everything was normal, that I wasn’t recovering from a brutal spanking. It was confusing to an eleven-year-old.
“Just think how much better it’ll be. When you start high school, you’ll already know all the kids in public school. Now, don’t cry anymore. It’s going to be alright.”
I knew it wouldn’t be alright, but at least Daddy wasn’t mad at me anymore, and it didn’t look like I was going to be punished for getting kicked out of school. Anyway, I didn’t have to go to school the last three weeks. That was something. I didn’t hear another word he said.