Catfish Read online

  “I understand.” But I didn’t understand, I just wanted to drop it before it went any further.

  “I’m not sure you do,” he said. Oh, shoots! Here we go, I thought. His voice was rising again. He pulled into the driveway and switched off the ignition, then turned towards me. His face was red. I didn’t know whether he was mad at me, mad at himself or mad at the laws—but he was mad. I started to shake.

  Just then my eight-year-old brother, Robby, came running to the car yelling, “Daddy’s home. Daddy’s home!” I could have kissed him. He climbed into the car through Daddy’s window and sat on his lap. Daddy cradled Robby. Conversation forgotten, I hoped.

  I opened the car door and slipped out with my book, To Kill a Mockingbird. I’d waited a year for my name to get to the top of the library’s list so I could borrow the only copy in Toussaint Parish. I tucked it under my arm and went straight to my room, lay on my bed and tried to read. It was hot, even though the windows were open. The attic fan blew in the hall and made a roaring sound that could disturb the deaf, but it didn’t cool my room when the door was closed. I perspired. It was the trade-off for privacy.

  I thought about what Daddy said about it being against the law to date or marry a colored person. That didn’t make sense. Who would make a law like that?

  I thought about Rodney Thibault. He was a nice boy and he was so handsome, almost beautiful. I didn’t feel like we were that different—or that Marianne and I were different. They were people, and I liked them. And they were nice to me. None of the white girls or boys at my school were nice. My brothers weren’t nice to me, even my parents ran hot and cold. In fact, other than Tootsie, Catfish, Marianne and, now, Rodney Thibault, the only other person who was kind to me was Dr. David Switzer.

  Doctor David and his wife, Erma, lived in the two-story, red brick house directly across South Jefferson Street from our house. They were older than my parents by about ten years and I looked at Dr. David as a grandfather of sorts, seeing as how I’d never had one.

  When we sat on our front porch we had a clear view of the circular concrete driveway and double front doors on the Georgian style home. Our two houses had the only private swimming pools in town, unless you counted the plastic pool the owner of the Pelican Bar was said to have.

  When I was sick, which was pretty often, Dr. David was extra kind to me and I felt like he looked at me a little longer than he needed to, as if he was searching for some secret I might be hiding. I knew I could trust him, but I was afraid to tell anyone, even Dr, David what went on in our house—mostly because, if I said it aloud, I’d be admitting it to myself.

  Daddy was good friends with Dr. David and his brother, Dr. Joseph. The three men played cards, drank pots of coffee laced with whiskey and talked politics. I heard my daddy tell Dr. David that he and Joseph, were the only people in town, besides Ray Thibault, who shared the same views of equality, integration, and abolishment of Jim Crow.

  I thought about how a Jew and four Negroes were the only people I could really trust, the only ones who made me feel normal, accepted, even loved.

  After supper that night I went back to my room to read. I thought about Marianne and wondered what she was doing in that hot cabin. I needed to talk to her about Rodney, get the scoop. Meanwhile I wanted to find out what a Mulatto was.

  Lots of things that had come up over the past few weeks that I knew nothing about—like puberty and masturbation that Marianne talked about, and laws that governed relationships among the races that my dad mentioned. I considered myself above average, intelligence-wise, but there were many things I didn’t know, and I thought that might be what made me different, unaccepted, bullied—my naiveté.

  My best source for information was the public library. It was next door to the Fox Theater, only about five or six blocks from our house, just past Assumption Catholic. I didn’t have to ask twice to go to there, that was one thing Mama encouraged. The walk took about twenty minutes and it was miserably hot, but I walked briskly, with a lilt in my step. I felt free, even if for a couple hours.

  Inside the air-conditioned building with glass windows across the front, I found a table tucked in the back corner and looked through the card catalogues for books and magazines. I was a whiz with the Dewey Decimal System, I’d spent so much time in the school library and this one. That afternoon I pretended to be there to do research for a paper, in advance of high school. Before long I had all sorts of materials spread on the table, opened so no one could read the titles if they walked by. I made notes in the composition book I’d brought along, writing key words with my blue ball point pen, but not making detailed entries in case Mama or Daddy found it.

  I returned home with another new book, Ship of Fools, by Katherine Anne Porter. The librarian recommended it when I turned in To Kill a Mockingbird and told her I was too mature for Nancy Drew mysteries. More importantly, I’d learned about interracial relations, called miscegenation, and about Mulattoes and how they had one or more white parents or grandparents. I was shocked that the laws said if a person had only a few drops of Negro blood, they were Negro. What if there was a Negro great-great grandfather somewhere in the past, but all the grandparents and parents were white? Where did that put the child. It not only seemed unjust, it seemed stupid.

  Chapter Five

  The Hayloft

  1964

  I WENT TO THE Quarters the following Wednesday after school and told Marianne about my visit to the library.

  “What’d you get?” She twisted a strand of hair in front of her ear that fell out of the barrette holding up the mahogany locks.

  “I didn’t get anything, but I read everything I could find about sex. I even saw pictures. I actually know what a girl’s private parts looks like, inside and out. I can’t see my own, but I saw one in a book.”

  “What else did you see?”

  “A picture of a man’s penis, and diagrams of the inside of a woman’s body and what happens when that stuff comes out of the man and goes inside her. It’s called sperm, and there are tons of them and they swim. If a woman has an egg somewhere in her, the sperms will find it, fertilize it and make a baby. It’s fascinating!”

  “Really? I thought I knew all about sex but I didn’t know that.” Marianne paused. “I’ll bet I know something you didn’t read about in those books.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “I know what it feels like.” Marianne said.

  “You know what, what it feels like?”

  “I know what it feels like to have what they call an orgasm. That’s sex, but it’s not about having babies.” I didn’t say anything—I was trying to figure out what she meant. I’d missed that in the books.

  “I can show you how to do it, if you want me to,” Marianne said.

  “Show me what?”

  “How to have an orgasm.”

  “I don’t think so. I’ll figure it out myself if I want to,” I said. I thought for a minute. Maybe she’s talking about masturbation. I’d read about that, but I didn’t mention it.

  “Okay.” We were both quiet. Marianne reached over and took my hand. I gave hers a slight squeeze and smiled at the sky. There was a warm breeze from the cane fields that blew a sweet, green fragrance around us. We watched robins pecking the ground near the garden. When I finally spoke, what I said seemed like the last thing Marianne expected.

  “I met your cousin, Rodney.” Marianne gasped, dropped my hand, hesitated, then took a deep breath. She curled her hand towards her face and began to work the cuticles of her fingers with her thumb. I could tell it surprised her but she didn’t want me to know anything shocked her. She was good at making people believe she was tough and didn’t have feelings, but I knew better. After all, she was my best friend.

  “Where’d you meet him?” She emphasized, him, as if it was a bad word.

  “At his dad’s gas station. I was there with my dad.”

  “Oh, then you weren’t alone with him?”
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  “Sort of. I mean he came to my window while Daddy was in the office with Mr. Thibault and we talked.”

  “You and Rodney talked?”

  “Yes.”

  “What? What are you thinking? What is he thinking?”

  “What do you mean? We just talked.”

  “You can’t talk to Rodney. You’ll get him killed!” I was so surprised by the passion and anger in her voice that I was speechless.

  “You need to listen to me Susie Burton,” she turned to me, her eyes on fire, mouth twitching.

  “You’re jealous,” I said, and I started to laugh. She jumped up and stood in front of me, her legs spread, feet planted, like she was ready to fight.

  “Jealous? You’re crazy. You just don’t understand, do you?”

  “Understand what? What’s the matter?”

  “You’ll get him killed. That’s what’s the matter.”

  “Don’t be so melodramatic, Mari.” She walked away towards the cane field. I jumped up and followed. “Wait. Don’t be mad,” I called after her, but she just kept walking. When I caught up with her I touched her shoulder and she turned towards me abruptly.

  “Listen White Girl! You can’t talk to a colored boy. Never! Get it?” I froze. She’d never talked to me that way. Her expression had hatred written all over it, like the first time we met and she looked like she wanted to kill me. I took a deep breath. I could feel tears begin to pool and tried to stop them. My best, my only friend, I thought. This can’t be happening.

  Marianne looked at the ground where she was making circles with the toe of her tennis shoe. It stirred up a small cloud of dust around her foot. I watched the ground where her shoe began to dig a small hole, then the hole got bigger. I don’t know how long we stood like that. Eventually she stopped digging and pushed the dirt back into the hole with the side of her shoe, then stamped it down. Finally she looked at me. I was crying.

  “Look. I didn’t mean to yell at you. It’s just that I don’t think you understand the kind of danger you could cause Rodney, his family, us.”

  “I’m sorry, Mari. I didn’t mean anything by it. I just think he’s a nice guy. And it doesn’t hurt that he’s so handsome.”

  “That’s what I mean. You can’t talk like that. You can’t even think like that.”

  “Well, if I can’t talk to you about him, who can I talk to.” That seemed to get her attention. She took a deep breath.

  She begged me not to mention Rodney to anyone and I promised I wouldn’t. But I needed to talk about him. She kept telling me how dangerous it was and that I should put him out of my mind.

  What is it about being a teenager and having someone tell you not to do something that makes you want to do it more? When I think back on that day I feel like Marianne’s reaction made Rodney seem even more intriguing. She kept saying, “He’s colored.”

  “I don’t think of him as colored, Marianne. I don’t think of you as colored or me as white.”

  “What colors do you think we are then?”

  “No color. Maybe the color of glass? “

  “Glass?”

  “Or air? I’m not sure. I just think of us as two thirteen-year-old girls, that’s all.“

  “And Rodney?”

  “He’s gorgeous.”

  “Oh, no, Susie!” Marianne screamed. “You can’t say that about a colored boy. It’s hopeless.”

  “I’m not saying anything about wanting to be with him. I’m just saying I think he’s very handsome. What do colored girls think of him?”

  “Well, the girls at school think he’s amazing, good-looking, sexy. They go gah-gah over him. Funny thing, Rodney is pretty shy, but around girls, he has the big head. He’ll go out with any girl who’ll put out for him, and there are lots of them who will.”

  “Put out?”

  “Yeah. Have sex with him.”

  “He has sex with girls?”

  “Grow up, Susie.” She looked at me like I was a little girl and she was the wise one. “You need to leave this alone. You understand, don’t you? You don’t need to think about how handsome he is. He’s colored.”

  I told her what my daddy said about being friends with colored people and she got really mad.

  “That’s the stupidest, most two-faced thing I ever heard. He can have colored friends but you can’t? How do you feel about that?”

  “You know how I feel about it, I’m here, aren’t I?”

  “Yeah.” The bell rang once. I jumped up and ran.

  That evening Rodney went to the Quarters. Marianne told me about it the following week. She said she told him I’d been there but he’d missed me. When he asked her when I was coming back, she snapped at him.

  “Why do you care, Rodney? She’s my friend.” She said she acted like I’d never told her that we’d met, but he kept asking her things about me.

  “Are you sweet on her?” Marianne asked.

  “No, of course not. She’s white.”

  “Good thing. Keep it that way.” She knew what could happen to Rodney and her experience with the KKK made her even more afraid for him. She also knew my daddy would kill me if he found out I was friends with any colored people, especially a boy.

  “Her dad and my dad are friends. They have coffee together almost every morning.”

  “He’s a hypocrite, her father. Watch out for him.” Marianne told Rodney what I told her about my dad saying a white person should not make the decision to have a Negro friend until he was grown and that, really, women couldn’t be friends with coloreds. Poor Rodney was surprised because, at that time, he had misguided notions about my dad.

  “Even when I was seven, eight, Mr. Burton shook my hand a treated me like an equal,” he told Marianne. “And he was the first white man who told me I should look him in the eye when he spoke to me.”

  “He’s two-faced, I told you. If he makes you feel like that—it’s not true. He doesn’t see you as an equal or special. He sees you as a common N____r, believe me. I know!”

  Rodney knew better than to push his luck with Marianne. If there was something she wanted to share with him, she would, otherwise no amount of probing would make her.

  “She’s really beautiful,” he said. “That red hair and scattered freckles. And the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen, like the Caribbean.”

  “What do you know about the Caribbean?”

  “I’ve seen pictures.” He laughed and drew an oval in the air, indicating the sea.

  “You ARE sweet on her! You’re as crazy as she is!” She said she wanted to scratch him, to knock some sense into him but when she looked at him she knew it was too late. “He was already hooked on you,” she told me later.

  “What do you mean, ‘you’re as crazy as she is?’”

  “She said, ‘He’s gorgeous!’”

  “She said that about me?” Rodney wanted to know more about what I said, but Marianne told him to forget it. He said he couldn’t forget it and he wouldn’t let it go. So she screamed at him.

  “Forget it. She’s white, Rodney. WHITE!”

  “I know, Mari. I’m well aware. I just want to know what she’s like, I mean, what kind of person is she?”

  Marianne said she told him I was just about the best person she’d ever known. That made me blush and feel a mixture of pride and embarrassment. She said she told him she didn’t know how I got to be that way, being raised the way I was. She said he wanted to know more but she wouldn’t say anything further. She said it made Rodney angry, and that he turned and walked toward the cane field, away from her, like he needed space, like he needed to think without being badgered, but she followed him.

  “What did ya’ll do in the barn?” Rodney asked. Marianne said he avoided looking at her. He walked past her through the rows of cane, taller than himself. Marianne said she followed him, chewing on her cane and stopping to look at each stalk he pulled down as if she was helping him to find the ideal one.

  �
�Nothing much,” Marianne told him. She said he walked slowly through the first row of cane, pulling stalks down a foot or two as if looking for the perfect piece to cut. He probably didn’t even look at the cane, she said. More than likely, he looked through it, through the stalks, through the rows, through the fields.

  “I wanted to show her what you showed me last year about sex,” Marianne said. “She chickened out, but I won’t give up.” Marianne told me she said that to make him look at her, to stop ignoring her. She said it worked, that Rodney turned around abruptly and faced her and that it surprised her, even frightened her a bit, even though she wanted it to happen, but that she shrugged her shoulders to make him think she didn’t care, wasn’t afraid. That’s how she was, tough as nails on the outside, a mess inside.

  “You’re a girl, Mari. You should want to have sex with boys, not girls!” Rodney told her. I’m sure he was incredulous, furious as he tasted the sweetness of the cane and the orange soda he had on his way to the Quarters. Marianne probably stared at him with a steady gaze, expressionless, like her soul was dead. He would look into her grey, green eyes and see darkness, despair, uncertainty and want to hug her like a big brother, to tell her everything would be alright, but he didn’t know if it would be alright, whatever IT was.

  “I hate boys, men, all males, since those white men, well, you know,” Marianne told him, barely above a whisper. I can see her trying to hold back tears, being brave, putting on a front, embarrassed that he, a boy witnessed her vulnerability. I’d seen her do that before when she was trying to hide hurt feelings.

  Rodney probably spoke softly, like a dad would speak to his hurting child, he was kind that way. Marianne didn’t have a dad, she was the strength of her family, the oldest, the first. Her sisters had a dad, but she was her own dad.

  “You’ll get over it.” Rodney looked down at her, but I’m sure she looked away so he didn’t see her thick eyelashes clump together from her tears. “Not all men are pigs like those cowards who wear masks while they do their dirty work.”