Catfish Read online

  “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 t
hin 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.