Goodbye Cat
1974
I STEPPED OFF THE plane in Baton Rouge and it was sticky and hot, as if announcing what could be expected during the coming months. When I got to Jean Ville, the air was stifling. Even the birds hid in the shadows and refused to sing.
There was no breeze and not a leaf swayed nor a blade of the newly cut grass blew or skipped across the lawn in front of St. Matthew’s Baptist Church on St. Matthews Road a few days later. The church was old, it had been there for one-hundred years, before houses surrounded it or a grocery store had been built on Prescott Street, within walking distance.
The Chickasaw Indian Reservation was connected to the St. Matthew’s Quarters by a footpath that cut through the woods everyone called, “First Bridge.” I stared at the trees behind the church and remembered when I was six and my brother, James, led me deep into those woods and left me to wander deeper and deeper into the thickness until, petrified by the sounds and darkness, a posse of my parents’ friends found me after midnight. An electric pulse ran up my back. I shook it off
It was Friday, May 17, 1974. I had arrived from New York on Tuesday and went directly to Catfish’s house. He died an hour after I told him good-bye.
I stared at the tall, handsome figure who stood next to his dad at the front door of the church, greeting people. He had a white carnation pinned to the lapel of his perfectly fitted dark grey suit. The red and grey striped bow tie made him look sophisticated and grown-up. I couldn’t take my eyes off him as I stepped out of my dad’s car and stood on the sidewalk flanked by my two younger brothers and waited while Daddy parked his Mercedes.
Rodney must have felt my stare because he turned his head and looked at me. A controlled smile spread through his eyes and lifted the lines on either side of his mouth. I had kissed those full lips and had held that gaze while he gently made me his own. I would always be a part of him—my first kiss, first hug, first touch, first lover, first everything.
I swallowed hard.
In that moment, standing in front of that old Negro church between Will and Robby, I realized that Rodney Thibault was not only my first everything, he was my only everything. I stared at him and knew, in my knowing, that no matter how hard I tried, I would never be complete without him in my life. And I’d probably screwed that up by distancing myself, by not telling him how I felt.
It was a revelation that caught me off-guard. I shuttered and popped my knuckles by lacing my fingers together, extending my arms in front of me and pushing my palms outward, a nervous habit Mama had tried to get me to break for years. Rodney caught my unintended gesture and laughed, then he covered his mouth as if to catch himself.
I diverted my gaze to my dad when he walked up to my brothers and me on the sidewalk and led our little group up the steps and shook hands with family members standing on the little porch in the front of the church. I could feel Rodney’s eyes follow me, even while he was greeting other people.
I shook hands with Mr. Thibaut then I was standing in front of Rodney.
Time seemed to stop. He took both of my hands in his and although his palms were sweaty and warm, his touch sent shivers up my arms and I could feel goose bumps form under my long sleeved suit jacket. I breathed in the sweet fragrance of carnations, fresh cut grass in the church yard and gas fumes from the cars that were pulling up and parking in the lot behind Rodney. Most of all I smelled him— the sweat-filled, gas and oil-coated, ivory soap-showered, Tide detergent-washed, masculine scents of Rodney—those smells that could cause chills down my spine and moisture in my panties. And I stared at the hazel, amber, azure eyes that looked directly at me and made me feel like there were no other people for miles around.
When he opened his mouth to say “Susie,” I tasted peppermint and orange soda and remembered the first time he leaned against the car and said, “How you doin’ today?”
“Rodney,” I whispered. He smiled with his entire face, his lips parted and spread under high, lifted cheekbones and the sides of his eyes rose and his eyelashes touched his eyebrows and my eyes traveled from his bow tie to his lips to his cheeks to his eyes to his hairline, then back to his eyes and I stood there like a mannequin, composed but frozen, stymied. I wanted to say something but my voice wouldn’t cooperate and neither did his, so we just stood there, my hands in his, looking at each other and smiling, broadly.
All too soon he released me and my daddy pushed me with his hips and took my place in front of Rodney. I was mildly aware of him shaking hands with my dad and exchanging niceties as I made my way through the rest of the line and into the church.
I watched Rodney throughout the long, loud service. People screamed, cried, laughed, shouted, sang, hummed, and even danced at various times. My brothers were entertained but I couldn’t keep my eyes off the gorgeous being who stood with the pallbearers, focused and purposeful throughout the service.
Rodney was Catholic, like me, so I presumed he was uncomfortable in the Baptist church, too—and when he looked at me, we shared a common expression of unrest.
The black station wagon led a long stream of cars up Ferdinand Street, onto Prescott, then west on Gravier Road. When the procession turned left onto South Jefferson Extension towards the Quarters, Daddy turned right towards our house.
“Please stop, Daddy,” I said. “I want to go to the burial.”
“Why are you are so involved in Catfish’s death and burial? You don’t even come home for Christmas, yet you came home for this?”
“It’s complicated. Just let me out here, I’ll walk to the Quarters.”
“I’ll just park in the Dauzat’s yard and we’ll all walk there together. If I park in the Quarters I’ll never get out my car out.” I could tell he was angry, but he seemed resigned. He insisted that he and the boys accompany me to protect me from, ‘those people.’
I wanted to ask Daddy what he meant when he referred to Tootsie and her family as, ‘those people.’ Is that what he called Tootsie, the woman he had been screwing for more than twenty years? The woman he might have a child with. I wanted to ask him why he taught us, his children, to be non-judgmental of Negroes, then he turned around and made comments like ‘those people.’ I wanted to remind him that Tootsie was Catfish’s daughter and that Tootsie was family and had raised his children. I had so many questions for him, for Daddy, but I didn’t ask any of them. I knew he was already angry and I also knew that even the most innocent comment could push him into violence—and what I needed to say to him was not innocent. But I had learned how to walk that tightrope, so I kept my mouth shut.
Catfish was laid to rest in the family cemetery in a pecan grove beside the cane field, near his garden. I couldn’t control the tears that ran down my cheeks when they put him in the ground. I watched Rodney and the others remove their carnations and place them on top of the pine box that held Catfish’s remains and I stood planted in the St. Augustine grass, tears streaming down my face. The crowd moved towards the houses in the Quarters but I held back to speak to Tootsie and Marianne. Marianne helped her mother out of the chair that sat a few feet from the coffin, and when they approached me I took Tootsie’s other hand and the three of us followed the crowd in silence.
I watched Daddy’s back move through the people, shaking hands and introducing my brothers. Politicking, I thought. He’s running for the State Legislature and needs the Negro vote. That’s when I realized why he agreed to come to Catfish’s funeral—votes.
Everyone gathered around picnic tables laden with enough food to feed a small army. Chitlins, gumbo, fried chicken, jambalaya and rice-dressing filled the center of the tables. Salads and desserts were stacked on side tables. People gathered in the back yard and sat in chairs and on the steps of the five back porches that formed a line in front of a large fire. A pig stretched out like Jesus on the cross, was the main event. The cochon de lait was almost done. Men and children gathered to admire the crucified hog that burned at the stake.
Daddy waited for me to catch up with him and the boys, but I was with Marianne and Tootsie. We watched the men turn the pig, drink beer and tell stories. I thought about how many times Catfish sat in one of those iron chairs with torn, green Naugahyde seats and poked a pig with a cane pole while he held the attention of everyone around him with his “yarns.” I felt sad, like a piece of me was missing. I had loved Catfish since I was seven, almost sixteen years.
Daddy and the boys watched me as I walked away from them with Marianne and Tootsie.
I knew all of Tootsie’s family —her sister, Jesse and Jesse’s husband, Bo, and their children; Tootsie’s brothers, Tom and Sam, and their wives and children. All of Catfish’s other grandchildren were younger than Marianne, and I knew all of their names and ages and what grades they were in. I’d had more interaction with Marianne’s sisters and cousins than with my own siblings over the years and I felt more at home in the Quarters than in the big antebellum home on the corner of South Jefferson and Marble Avenue. I wished I could stay in the Quarters and never go back to that empty-feeling house with the blue drapes and carpets and walls that closed in on me.
Tootsie sat at one of the rough-hewn picnic tables. Marianne and I stood behind her, talking, catching up. She looked more mature and even more beautiful than ever, if that was possible. Getting out of Jean Ville and living in Baton Rouge while she was in nursing school for two years had agreed with her. She was self-confident and happy. She even mentioned she was dating someone, although I didn’t have a chance to get the particulars.
The chatter of people, mixed with outbursts of laughter and sobs, overrode the crackle of the fire and the whishing sound when fat from the pig dripped into the fire.
My eyes followed Rodney as he milled around with his cousins and I watched him out of the corner of my eye when he walked away from a group of men and strolled to a pecan tree several yards away from the tables. He was alone. He chewed on a long piece of straw and had one knee bent, the sole of his foot against the tree. His suit coat was flung over his shoulder as he leaned into the shade provided by the fullness of greenery that softly filtered a few rays of sunshine that smiled on Catfish this day. Rodney looked pensive. He had been alone at the church—no date, no girlfriend. If he had a fiancée or a wife, wouldn’t she have been with him?
I told Marianne I’d be back and strolled towards him, talking to people casually as I made my way to the pecan tree. I knew my dad was watching so I tried to seem natural.
Rodney saw my slow, casual approach long before I reached him and we locked eyes for a second over his aunt’s shoulder as I stood listening to a group of women talk. I winked to let him know I wanted him to stay there. He winked back.
By the time I got to him everyone had started moving towards the tables to watch the men spread the roast pig out so they could begin to lift off the quoin and cut the pork in to pieces. The focus on the pig created a diversion for me as I made my way to the pecan tree.
We didn’t touch. I stood in front of him, my back to the crowd, and tried to make small talk. I asked how things were going, when he’d complete finals and what he planned to do after graduation. He told me he hadn’t made a final decision but that his dad had been pressuring him to come home.
“The Toussaint Parish District Attorney offered me a job where I can work my way up to Assistant DA one day,” he told me. If he took the job, it began in August. We started to walk towards the cabins, close enough to hear each other but not touching. Both of us watched the ground as we walked to keep from looking at each other.
“Is that what you want to do? Work as a prosecutor?”
“I’m not sure. I always thought I wanted to practice family law, to help people, especially Negroes who can’t afford an attorney, but I can’t work for free.”
“Do you want to live in Jean Ville?”
“I don’t know. It’s home, and I don’t have offers anywhere else.”
“How are things here?”
“Better, I think. The federal laws are in place to give us equality, but the South is slow to get on board. There are still active Klan activities and local law enforcement turns a blind eye.”
“Oh, how could I ever forget how awful colored people are treated down here. It’s so different up north. You’d think that by 1973 people would have learned to live together and accept one another.”
“It’s better than it was, but it still has a long way to go.”
When I remember that conversation that took place forty-plus years ago, I realize that, even now, we still have a ways to go.
“When do you finish law school?”
“I took my last final Wednesday, the day before I came home for the funeral.”
“Oh, I still have to take finals and complete my thesis. I’m going back Sunday.”
“What then? What will you do after you finish?”
“I have several job offers. I’m also thinking about going to Europe. I’ve saved some money.”
“Oh.”
I wanted to ask him about his personal life, attachments, girlfriends but I knew we couldn’t talk about personal things, not with so many people, and my daddy, around. We split up and milled around with different people. Rodney went to sit with his uncle and cousins at one of the tables. I stopped to talk to Tootsie and Marianne again then went to stand near Daddy and my brothers. I knew Daddy wouldn’t stay to eat with colored people. He talked a good game.
“I’m going to stay a while,” I told him.
“No, you’re coming home with me and the boys.”
“Daddy, please. I feel like I need to be with Tootsie for a little while. I’ll walk home.”
“I don’t like to leave you here with these people.”
“I’ll be fine. It’s the right thing to do.” Daddy looked at me with an expression I knew spelled danger if I didn’t do what he said, but I’d been away too long and I was no longer a child. I refused to let him control me any longer, or maybe I’d forgotten how his temper could flare and what he could do to me when it did.
Before I left the Quarters that afternoon I told Rodney that my flight to New York was on Sunday, the day after tomorrow. He asked if I was flying out of Baton Rouge and I said, yes.
“Can I take you to the airport?” he asked. He still had his 1966 Mustang Fastback, he said and he’d fixed it up, whatever that meant. He said he wanted me to see it.
“Oh, Rod, that would be too risky.”
“How will you get there?”
“I’ll take the bus.” I looked off in the distance. There were still a few people milling around in the Quarters. I could see Marianne hovering, waiting to have some time with me. “I’m going to leave for Baton Rouge in the morning. I’ve overstayed my welcome at home.”
“Can I see you in Baton Rouge?”
“I’ll call you when I get there, okay?” I didn’t intend to call him. I think he knew that.
I walked towards Marianne and she and I strolled past the cornfields to the barn. She had lots to tell me.
First she told me about her girlfriend.
“I might be in love,” she said. I wanted to be happy for her, but I knew her life would be hard taking that route.
“Why don’t you move up north. You can stay with me.” I watched her think about my offer, then she shook her head side-to-side.
“I could never leave Mama. That’s why I moved back from Baton Rouge after I finished school.” I left it at that. We were quiet for a while, sitting with our backs against the outside of the old barn. I took her hand and she smiled at me and squeezed.
“Rodney told me he’d left his summer open,” she said softly, almost as if she was considering whether to tell me or not. “He said that in the back of his mind, he planned to go to New York to put things to rest between the two of you so he could move on with his life.” I didn’t say anything. I let the words find a place inside me.
“He’s been dating someone,” she whispered. I knew she didn’t want to tell me, but she was being honest and I appreciated it, especially after what I considered the deceit I felt three years before when I discovered the truth about my dad and Tootsie. Then she told me about Annette, and my heart sank. Although I felt Rodney had someone else, hearing it made it real and I was crushed. Marianne told me about how Annette faked a pregnancy to get him to marry her and how he didn’t date her for a year because he said he couldn’t trust her. It made me think about my own pregnancy and how I didn’t tell him.
“His parents were insistent that he get back with Annette, and Jerry is engaged to her best friend—so somehow they got back together about a year ago,” Marianne said. “He told me he’s never had sex with her because he still doesn’t trust her.” I didn’t know what to say or whether to believe her, about not having sex.
“Do you think he’s in love with her?” I asked, then I realized what I said and I wanted to take it back.
“No, I don’t think he loves her, but I think he feels pressured to marry her because of his folks and Jerry and—well, I don’t know, because he feels like it’s time.”
“I don’t want to mess up his life.”
“Today he told me to tell you he’s single. He’s going back to Baton Rouge tomorrow to break it off with Annette. He said everything changed when he saw you at the funeral today. He even told his dad he couldn’t pretend any longer.”
“He told his dad that?”
“Yep. Today at the funeral. He said his dad noticed how the two of you looked at each other. Rodney said he had to be honest with himself and with his dad. He wants to see you, Susie. He asked me to give you his phone number in Baton Rouge in case you don’t have it with you.”
When I left the Quarters I was torn. I wanted to see Rodney, to be with him. I wanted to finally tell him the truth about everything. But it was still dangerous. And he had a chance at a decent life with someone who was more right for him, who would be accepted by his family and friends, who would support him as an up-and-coming lawyer in Jean Ville, the first colored attorney in Toussaint Parish. I didn’t want to take all that from him.
*
“Where is that girl? She should be home by now,” I could hear Daddy yelling when I walked in the front door. They were standing in the hall. Mama shrugged her shoulders and walked to the kitchen. He didn’t see me come in and he went into the master bedroom across the hall from the kitchen, talking at the top of his voice.
The window air conditioners hummed but the house was stifling.
“I knew I shouldn’t have left her with those colored people. There’s no telling what Tootsie and her half-breed girl will tell her. Then there’s the Thibault boy. I don’t like the way he looks at Susie, like he’s not colored and she’s not white. It’s downright disrespectful.
“I have a mind to go find her and drag her home by her hair,” he screamed. I couldn’t hear what Mama said, but I knew she responded.
“Who does she think she is, anyway? She just waltzes into our house like she belongs here—all high fah-luting because she has all those college degrees. Educated women are dangerous. Does she have any idea how badly she can hurt my political chances? She’s too damn selfish to care about me.”
“Who are you talking to Bob?” Mama called out to him.
“Just because I don’t give her money doesn’t mean she can do anything she wants.”
He ranted and raved that I was probably living up there in the north with no morals, screwing every boy I found, making a tramp out of myself, and if that wasn’t enough, he had to witness me come to his town and flirt with a colored boy, right in front of him, in front of the town. He’d be a laughingstock once word spread.
“Those Northerners might be open to mixed relations but Susie doesn’t need to come to my town and humiliate me this way. Not now when I’m in a tight political race! I’ll teach her to stick with her own.”
“Are you talking to yourself, Bob?” Mama called from the kitchen.
“Come here, Honey. We need to talk.” Mama went into the bedroom with little Al following.
“Fix me another drink, would you Honey?”
I sneaked into the front bedroom and shut the door quietly. I gathered my things and stacked my suitcase, overnight bag and purse near the door in case I needed to make a fast getaway.
Sissy was happy to have me home. She was twelve and didn’t mind sharing her space. She and I lay across the bed talking and laughing. Sissy had all the things a twelve-year-old could want in a room, a French Provincial tester bed, a desk and vanity, cork boards where she hung her pictures and ribbons, a trophy case for her awards, a closet full of the latest fashions. I remembered growing up in that room. There were no mementos, no pictures, no ribbons or certificates or trophies when I was there. Oh, I won lots of stuff, but I never showed my awards or displayed them. I kept them in cardboard boxes in the attic. All I had in that big blue bedroom as an adolescent and a teenager was a desk with a stack of books and lots of paper and pens.
Daddy stormed in the room from the short hall that connected it to the master.
“Get out, Sissy. I need to talk to your sister.”
“Oh, Daddy, please. Susie’s leaving tomorrow. Please let me have some time with her.”
“Get out, Honey. Now.” Sissy backed out of the room with a scared look on her face. I stood up and faced him.
“Who do you think you are?” He yelled.
“I’m not sure why you’re angry with me. What have I done?”
“You humiliated me in front of a hundred voters, that’s what you did!”
“Daddy, you can think what you want, but I didn’t do anything of the sort. If you need an excuse to berate me, try something else. I’m innocent here.”
“Don’t you tell me what to do.”
“If you hit me, I’ll go to the police this time. I won’t take your abuse any longer. I’m an adult. I’m on my own now.”
“You are in my house, you impudent little bitch.” He slapped me so hard I fell against the footboard of the bed and slid to a seated position on the floor. He was on top of me before I knew what happened. He started to kick and slap me.
Then, on impulse, I caught one of his feet with both my hands and threw his leg in the air with all my might. He staggered backwards, lost his balance and almost fell on his back but managed to remain upright. By the time he got his bearings, I was on my feet with my hand on the doorknob. He got there just in time to slam it shut with his size twelve foot as I tried to pull it open. Then he hit me with his fist. I staggered backwards and my hand automatically covered my cheekbone. I felt a strange darkness come over me and all the fear and anger and hate I’d felt for years bubbled to the top of my brain.
My leg flew up and I sucker-kicked him in the balls, hard.
“You little bitch!” He bent over in agony. I moved in closer and, like a runner taking off from a starting block, I pushed off my back foot and aimed my knee at his face before he lifted it, and hit him, hard. There was a loud crunch when it connected with his forehead and he toppled backwards onto the thick blue carpet. Blood spurted from above his eye.
“It’s your turn to bleed on this disgusting carpet,” I said. I grabbed my purse and overnight bag and ran out the room, through the front door and down the sidewalk while he yelled after me.
“You have no place to go in this town, you tramp. Everyone will believe me, not you.”
The feeling of triumph didn’t hit me until I was on the street between our house and Dr. David’s. I smiled and felt a glow inside. Those self-defense classes came in handy. Wow! That felt good. I turned to look at the house from the pavement.
Daddy stumbled onto the front porch, bent over, holding his crotch, blood from his forehead dripping into his already swelling right eye.
He called to me as I ran barefoot on the black top road. There were no cars going either way, no one in their yards, no witnesses anywhere.
“I’ll get you, you little tramp. You can’t hide from me,” he yelled. ‘Come back here you ungrateful slut. Take your medicine.”
Dr. David Switzer opened his front door and walked briskly towards the road. He stopped at the edge of his yard and glared across South Jefferson Street at Daddy, who stood on his porch, holding his crotch, his head bleeding. I turned to look at the two men in the face off, then started to run towards the Quarters. I heard them yelling.
“What the hell, Bob?”
“It’s Susie. That little bitch ran away from me.”
“Maybe you should be grateful. At her age, she doesn’t have to take it anymore. She should call the sheriff.”
“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 presence 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.