Catfish Read online

  I remember being on-guard, at first, and unsure how to begin. And Marianne seemed more afraid than I was, but we had chemistry from the start, almost an inner knowledge and shared history that couldn’t be explained. We laughed when we said the same thing in tandem and were both amazed at how much we thought alike and shared the same disappointments and trials in the world.

  We had differences, too, but those divergences were not about skin color.

  Marianne had a loving home and supportive extended family. Catfish and Tootsie were gentle and kind, never raised their voices and didn’t believe in spankings. Marianne’s younger sisters adored her. If she had a bad day at school, she went home to love and understanding. She didn’t have a dad, but she had Catfish, which was better.

  I went to the Quarters almost every Wednesday afternoon, except on the fourth Wednesday when Mama and her friends played bridge at our house. Sometimes Marianne was there, sometimes not. Sometimes Catfish was happy to see me, sometimes he was too tired to talk. It didn’t matter. I sat on his porch and stared at the cornfields and felt a peace that I didn’t feel anywhere else—not at home, not at school, not at church, nowhere but in the Quarters.

  Marianne and I laughed freely about Catfish and the way he delivered his stories. We usually went to the old barn, sat in the sparse grass and leaned against the outside of the once red building, its paint faded and peeling.

  Marianne eventually told me about the night the KKK came and two white men attacked her.

  “They touched my private parts,” she said. I just listened and felt deep empathy for the her. I thought about how different the Klan acted at our house versus in the Quarters.

  She recounted the horror as if it was something she’d witnessed, something that happened to someone else. She said she was in the outhouse when she heard the commotion. Tootsie and her three smaller daughters were asleep in their cabin and Marianne was in the dark, alone when she heard the noise and smelled burning kerosene. The earth moved so fiercely Marianne thought it would open up and swallow all six shotgun houses, the old slave cabins on Shadowland Plantation.

  “Hurry. Get in here!” Catfish called out of his back door above the noise.

  Marianne watched, frozen in the doorway of the privy as her mom, sisters, aunt and uncles and all her cousins flooded into Catfish’s little house from their own cabins. Tootsie ran barefoot with the baby in her arms. Marianne wanted to call to her for help, but couldn’t get her voice to work any better than her feet.

  “It’s the Klan,” Catfish yelled. “They got fire and they coming fast! Everyone inside.” He didn’t need to repeat himself.

  By the time Marianne recovered her legs and voice, her granddaddy had closed and bolted the door and dozens of men draped in white sheets came rushing into the dirt yard with an urgency and force she had never witnessed in her almost thirteen years on this earth.

  She said that blazes of fire in their hands lit up the night sky and revealed her tall, lithe body standing at the back edge of the yard. When they saw her they whooped and hollered, adding to the thunderous roar of engines and hooves that shook the little outhouse like a ship on a rough sea.

  Marianne didn’t have time to think. She had to hide. She knew she couldn’t make it to her granddaddy’s cabin so she darted across the dirt yard to the nearest house, her Uncle Sam’s. She ran, stooped over, knees bent, head down, then fell to the ground when she reached the back porch and rolled under it. She scooted as far under the porch as she could and lay on her stomach with her arms folded over her head. She tried to block out the noises of the engines and the fiery sky that smelled like burning kerosene, but she couldn’t block the shouts and curses from the dozens of white men on a rampage.

  She smelled something else burning—not the torches, but something like wood on fire. She peeked from under her arms into the back yard. The outhouse was on fire. She’d been there just a minute before. And the clothes that hung on the clothesline were burning, too.

  Oh, God, she thought, please don’t set Uncle Sam’s house on fire. I’ll burn to death under here.

  She trembled all over. She told me that her tears made mud puddles under her face.

  There was only one empty house in the Quarters. It was a one-room shanty in bad shape on the edge of the row of the other cabins, and it was closest to the outhouse, two cabins away from the one where she hid. Marianne watched that shack catch fire. Her Aunt Jesse and Uncle Bo’s house sat next door to it and would go up in flames, too, if someone didn’t get out there and start spraying it with water.

  Thank God everyone was in her granddad’s cabin on the far end, hopefully out of danger.

  She heard boots stomp on the porch above her and she scooted further under the house, petrified.

  Suddenly she felt a hand grab her ankle and begin to pull, then another gripped the other ankle and she slid quickly out from under the house. The dark night was lit by dozens of torches.

  She screamed and kicked and flayed her arms.

  Within seconds she was caught from behind by two strong arms and she said she could smell the body odor and sweat of the man behind her. His breath smelled like smoke and whiskey and she felt the stubble of a beard bury itself in her neck.

  She screamed and a huge hairy hand clasped over her mouth.

  She tried to kick and claw at the creature behind her when another man in white grabbed her legs and, before she knew what happened, the two men had flipped her in the air and she onto her back on the porch of her Uncle Sam’s cabin, her head hitting the floor hard enough that she blacked out.

  When she came to, she felt someone grabbing the waist of her shorts while the man behind her held her down with his knees on her shoulders, one big hand over her mouth, the other on her chest. Their horrible throaty laughs were mixed with vulgar words about her body that made her sick.

  She tried to yell.

  Marianne said she tried to bite the man who held her down while the man in front of her yanked on her shorts and panties until he had them binding her ankles, hog-tied and helpless.

  She fought hard and they laughed nasty, wet laughs.

  “I’ll never forget what that man said,” she told me. She stared straight ahead, her eyes blank, her mouth a straight line. I smelled fear mixed with Ivory soap come from her as we sat on the ground our bare shoulders touching.

  “We got lucky, Jack. It’s a white bitch!” She said a throaty laugh came from the other man who yelled.

  “I’m gonna get me some of this black ass, even if it looks white.”

  “Save some for me, you pecker wood,” the first man said. She said he spit when he talked and the thick, crusty tobacco-laced saliva sprayed over her and fell on her bare belly.

  The man in front of her was on his knees and he grabbed her down there and squeezed till she screamed and cried and begged him to stop. Then she bit the man’s hand that covered her mouth, hard.

  The man between her legs slapped her across the face, on both sides. Her neck snapped, one way, then the other, like it wouldn’t hold, and her head hung to the side. She felt blood drip from her nose and mouth and everything around her was in a fog.

  When Catfish realized Marianne was not in his cabin, he looked out the window, searching for her. He saw the two men with her on Sam’s porch and opened his back door to run out. Marianne could hear her mother and Aunt Jesse scream, “No, Daddy. They gonna kill you. Whatever they do to Marianne, she’ll get over it. but no one get over dying.”

  Then the man who hit her stood up and pulled off his mask and hat. He had dark curly hair and mean dark eyes. He opened his robe, started to unbuckle his belt, then cursed at the robe that got in his way. Finally he pulled the white sheet over his head.

  Marianne said she screamed and twisted and turned and tried to kick, but her clothes were wrapped around her ankles and the man holding her down put his fist in her mouth, like he was nailing her to the floor with his hand. She told me that his ot
her hand was inside her shirt grabbing at her breasts.

  “I think we got us a virgin, Larry,” the man behind her said.

  Marianne thought she heard her grandfather’s voice again, “That’s my baby out there. I done spent my life, she just beginning hers. Let me go get her.”

  Marianne tried to scream, but it came out like a grunt. The man called Larry let his jeans fall around his boots and Marianne saw his big, white penis spring out and point straight at her before she closed her eyes as tight as she could. She felt him grab her pubic hair with both hands. He pulled her britches all the way off and she felt his knees spread her legs so wide she thought she would rip in half.

  “That white man, he said something awful, something that haunts me every day,” Marianne told me. She was quiet a moment. I didn’t push her.

  “‘Oh, Larry, she likes it!’ he said. I was horrified. I didn’t like it. It hurt like hell. They were so rough, and when the one behind me grabbed my titties and started to pinch them, I screamed. I felt like he would push me through the boards onto the dirt under the porch. I cried and cried, but no one heard me.”

  As she told me her story huge, alligator tears ran freely down her cheeks and pooled under her chin. She twisted a strand of hair that sprung from her temple. I tucked some of Marianne’s mahogany waves behind her ear, then put my arm around her shoulder and tried to look at her, but she turned away and shut her eyes.

  Marianne played with the grass between her crossed legs, but I didn’t turn away. A red bird landed on a low branch of the pecan tree in front of us and began to chirp.

  “Oh, God, I thought. Please don’t let him put that thing inside me. I was terrified. I tried to scream but the other man had his fist in my mouth. He was so strong. I knew if things got any worse, I’d faint. Maybe I did faint because the next thing I knew that man with the big white penis was laying on top of me. He was so heavy I couldn’t breathe and something burned like fire between my legs. I can still feel it—searing and hot.”

  She stopped talking and looked at nothingness. It seemed the red bird stared at her, almost lovingly. I didn’t say anything. I just reached over and took her hand out of her lap and held it. She squeezed my hand and glanced at me through the corner of her eye.

  “You ever done it, Susie?”

  “Done what?”

  “It, you know. Sex”

  “No, I don’t know much about it. What you told me is the most I ever heard.”

  “I think, with the right person, if they aren’t rough, it might be okay.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. I think so.” She was quiet for a while.

  “My Mama wasn’t much older than me when I was born. I think she was fourteen or fifteen.”

  I was so naïve. I didn’t know what Tootise having Marianne at fourteen had to do with sex but I didn’t admit it. I knew I could find the answers in the library, which was my favorite place—that is, before I discovered the Quarters.

  “Finally I heard a truck rev loudly and blow the horn and a man’s voice hollered, ‘Come on, Larry, Jack, we’re leaving,’” Marianne whispered. “‘You going to walk home?’ the man yelled.

  “‘Shucks, Jimbo, I was jus’ starting to have me some fun,’ the man named, Larry said. I think that was when I fainted.”

  She said she fought through a deep fog until she could hear horses galloping towards South Jefferson Extension and, finally, the engines sounded like they were pulling out of the Quarters. She heard another man scream out.

  “Hey, Jack! You and Larry better jump in the back of one of these trucks, or you’ll be spending the night with a bunch of niggers, yeah.” He laughed. “And you get burned up, you.”

  “Shit, man. I didn’t get my turn, me,” the man named Jack said.

  “Get in or get left, you coon-asses,” the man yelled. Larry got off her and pulled his jeans up, held them with one hand while he grabbed his robe, hat and mask with the other.

  The next thing Marianne knew she was in her mother’s lap, on the floor of Catfish’s cabin, rocking back and forth. She had a headache and couldn’t open her right eye and the smell of charred wet wood filled the thin air—everything except her mother’s voice:

  “And if that mocking bird don’t sing, Mama gonna buy you a diamond ring;

  “And if that diamond ring don’t shine, Mama gonna buy you a Valentine...”

  Marianne didn’t say any more about the Klan. She just sat there and let tears wash down her face like a waterfall recently released from its dam. I squeezed her hand again. She squeezed mine back.

  We sat together and held hands for a long time in comfortable silence. My heart broke for her.

  A bell rang.

  “Oh, God!” I said. “How late is it? I’m going to be in so much trouble.”

  I ran out of the Quarters, crossed Gravier Road and cut through all the neighbors’ backyards. I reached the back door of our house just as Mama yelled, ”Susie, it’s time to set the table.”

  I strolled into the kitchen, composed, but hurting inside for my friend.

  “Sorry, Mama, I was in the bathroom.”

  “Well, get a move on. You know your daddy wants supper on the table at six-thirty.”

  “No problem. How was bridge?”

  “I won, as usual,” she said. “Ten-cents. We’re high rollers!” She laughed. That was a good sign—Mama had a good bridge day and had no interest in my after school whereabouts. Whew!

  I cleaned the kitchen and mopped the floor after supper and thought about Marianne. She didn’t look colored, except for her lips, which were larger than most white people’s, but not overly large, not like Catfish’s—more like Tootsie’s. The two of us looked so different—me with bluish eyes, reddish hair and pale skin, so white that the sun caused my face to turn pinkish red. Marianne was beautiful, with dark hair, grey-green eyes and olive skin that glistened in the sun and had just a hint of Indian blood. We were both tall and thin, with long legs and small, firm breasts, just beginning to bud out and need a bra. Her thin, perfect nose was not wide like Catfish’s, and actually seemed a little pugged at the tip.

  I pictured Marianne with her long, brown hair, not black or kinky, it fell in soft waves down her back. She wore the sides pulled up in a barrette and a few wavy tendrils sprung out around her oval-shaped face. Her eyes were different, beautiful, almost inviting. I thought they held a hidden meaning. Thick, brown eyebrows framed her eyes with long, dark lashes, like fans, that seemed to protect them from the glare. It was the look in her eyes that was striking and gave her a mysterious, intriguing quality. Against her olive skin, the green-grey color turned almost violet in the sunlight and the colors danced and caught reflections that bounced into the air, like prisms. They were eyes that said Marianne was smiling, even when she wasn’t.

  I had always wondered what books meant when they described a person as, sensuous. Knowing Marianne, I thought, at that time in my life, I might understand. She seemed fearless, a person who would accept a dare, someone who would try anything, once. To me, someone who didn’t have much to smile about, Marianne was intriguing. In fact, you might say I was taken with her.

  The best thing about Marianne was that she seemed to like me and want to be with me. This was a first for me, a real girlfriend.

  That sweet thought was interrupted by a cloud, a sense of danger because I knew I had to keep our friendship a secret. I shuttered when I thought about what might happen if my parents found out.

  I was young for my grade. I had started first grade at five, then I skipped sixth grade, because I was so far ahead of the others—maybe because I was such an avid reader, my escape. I also liked to write—poetry and fictional stories about girls my age whose daddies loved them and mothers were attentive. My characters always had lots of friends, they were popular and happy. There wasn’t much conflict.

  That summer I was preparing to go to high school, even though I was not quite thirteen. Yik
es! The kids in my class would be at least fifteen. On the one hand I was too young to ride around in cars, or have boyfriends or listen to music by the Beatles, the latest rage from England that all the girls talked about. Teen magazines like Seventeen or Cosmopolitan were taboo for me and the Twist was considered a vulgar dance by the Church—if I got caught practicing the moves, I’d be grounded, or worse. On the other hand, Mama expected me to behave like a fifteen year old.

  “You need to grow up and start acting like the girls in your grade,” Mama said.

  “But the girls in my class are two years older and I can’t do the things they do, listen to the music they like, read teen magazines, learn the newest dances. They think I’m a baby.”

  “You have to act like you are their age because you are in the same grade. You can’t use being ‘younger’ as an excuse. That’s what’s wrong with you, Susanna Christine, you always have an excuse.”

  Excuses? So I was a troublemaker who made excuses. I’d have to work on that.

  One day, while Tootsie brushed my hair I asked her why girls didn’t like me.

  “Marianne likes you,” Tootsie said.

  “And I like her, but why don’t white girls like me.”

  “They’s just jealous, honey-chile. Look at yourself in the mirror.”

  “I can’t change the way I look. I was born this way. What can I do?”

  “Well, they’s jealous because you smart and talented, too.”

  “I feel trapped. Trapped in this body, trapped in this mind, trapped in this face. I just want to be normal. I don’t want to be different.”

  “My Marianne feel the same way. She don’t have no colored girl fiends. She have the same problems like you. They jealous of her.”