Catfish Alley (35 page)

"White folks didn't mix much with colored then,
and Adelle didn't go to the places where they did mix — like the speakeasies or
the dance halls." Grace was quiet for a while, then spoke again.
"Funny thing was, she nursed him when he was dying from emphysema."

I can't believe this! "That can't be! Couldn't
they get someone else? Couldn't she refuse to take care of him?"

"Roxanne, there wasn't anybody else to do it.
Adelle said they were lucky to have one nurse to twenty patients on the night
shift in those days. And she always worked the night shift. What's more, if
she'd refused, she'd have lost her job."

I get mad all over again, remembering that
conversation. The injustice makes me sick inside. I'm having a hard time with
everything I've learned about the lives of the black women I've met. I don't
know what to do with the feelings — guilt, anger, sadness, and even some envy
of their closeness and the way they look out for each other. I try to put it
out of my mind and focus on this party. I realize it's cold in the house and
I'll need to build a fire in the dining room fireplace. Dudley usually did
that. Damn him again for what he did! I wonder if Ola Mae knows how to lay a
fire. I blow my nose and go looking for her.

Ola Mae is up on a stool in the butler's pantry
searching for the punch bowl and cups, and I start digging around in a drawer
trying to find the silver ladle. I start to talk ninety miles an hour about
everything we need to get done, like I always do when I get nervous. I've never
really noticed before, but it hits me today that Ola Mae never has anything to
say. She just says "uh-huh," or "yes'm," or
"no'm," but she never participates in the conversation. I'm realizing
that the reason she doesn't is probably because I've never really wanted to
hear anything she has to say.

As I'm rummaging through the drawer, I glance over at
her knobby old brown knees with her rolled-down stockings just below and say to
them, "Ola Mae, do you go to church?"

I see her knees relax from the strain to reach the top
cabinet. "Ma'am?"

"I said, do you go to church?" I repeat
louder. I think she's getting hard of hearing.

"Why, yes'm, I go to the Missionary Union
Baptist," she says. I can feel her looking down at me, but I keep focused
on the silver drawer.

"Then you know Reverend Daniel Mason?"

"Yes, ma'am." I can tell she's not going to
offer anything without me asking, but then what should I expect? We've never
had a conversation before, other than what needs to be done around the house.
She pulls out the punch bowl and backs down the steps of the stool with the
bowl balanced in one hand. She's watching me now, probably suspicious as to why
I'm asking her questions.

"I was just curious," I say. "I've been
working with Grace Clark, you know, on an African-American tour, and she
introduced me to the reverend. He seems real nice." I finally find the
ladle and turn to find her staring at me, the punch bowl still in her hands,
her mouth open slightly.

"What?" I ask.

She looks away. "I'm going to put this bowl in the
kitchen, and I'll come back for the cups." I see her shaking her head as
she walks toward the kitchen. I decide to follow her.

"I suppose you know Grace Clark, and maybe Adelle
Jackson?"

She sets the bowl down carefully beside the sink and
looks at me. "Yes, ma'am. I've known those ladies all my life. They're
fine women, both of them."

I pick up the freshly pressed tablecloth draped across
the kitchen chairs. "Help me with this, will you?" Ola Mae and I
spread the green linen cloth over the dining room table, and I smile to myself,
thinking about the wreath-making process. At least that will go as planned.
Each of the ladies will bring different items to add to the wreaths. Our
magnolia wreaths have become famous around here. Every year we sell out, long
before Thanksgiving. This year we'll be doubling our production, so we have two
sessions planned.

"Your church will probably be on the tour, you
know," I say as we smooth out the cloth. I rattle on about what I learned
about the history of the church and how nice I think Reverend Mason is.

"Uh-huh," she says.

I'm getting frustrated, realizing she's not willing to
have a conversation with me. I try to put her more at ease. "I'm
interested in your perspective on this.... What do you think about the Pilgrimage
Committee planning an African-American tour?" I'm still busy pulling
napkin rings out of a drawer in the sideboard, and when she doesn't answer, I
assume she's still thinking, so I keep talking. "I
mean
...
is that something you think
you
...
or your friends might be interested
in?" When she still doesn't answer, I look up. She's turned, facing away
from me, and her shoulders are shaking. I realize she's laughing. I'm confused.

"What's so funny?"

"I'm sorry, Miz Reeves," she says. "But
you and I ain't had two words of conversation other than about what you need me
to do around here in the last fifteen years I been working for you, and now you
want to chat me up like I's one of them Junior League ladies. And then you want
to know what I think about the African-American
tour.
...
It just struck me as right comical, that's
all."

"I fail to see why this is so funny, Ola
Mae," I say, feeling defensive. "After all, I'm trying to help the
black community...."

She's laughing harder now — the kind of laughing you do
when you're in church and you know you shouldn't, but you can't stop yourself.
She doesn't make any noise when she laughs, but her eyes are tearing up and her
whole body is shaking. I find myself smiling, even though I'm still upset with
her.

"Would you please stop laughing at me and tell me
why this is so funny?"

She puts her hand over her mouth and pulls her lips
down, trying to stop her laughter, and takes a deep breath. "I just got to
picturing all those white ladies sitting around one of these fine mahogany
dining room tables talking about whether folks should tour our little church
before that big old Catholic cathedral, or maybe after, and I just got tickled.
Then I thought about the way they do up the young white girls in those
hoopskirt dresses for the pilgrimage, and I got to thinking about them asking
some of the young black girls I know to dress up like black folk did back in
the day, and I got tickled by the thought of that, too."

I plop down into a dining room chair, exasperated.
"I
know ...
I know ... you're right. This is exactly what Rita Baldwin said. By the way, do
you know Rita, too? I've invited her today."

I stop counting out napkin rings and look up at Ola
Mae. She's shaking her head. "Okay, what is it now? You can't believe I
invited a black woman to the Junior League meeting, right?"

Ola Mae nods. "Things are sure getting more and
more peculiar around here, Miz Reeves."

"It's all so complicated. I'm trying to do this
right, and every time I turn around, I feel like I'm stepping on someone's
toes. Louisa Humboldt is all fired up about this tour, but she's from
Connecticut and has no clue what the other women on the committee, like Elsie
Spencer and Dottie Lollar, are saying. And then there's the black women, who
seem to think I'm just doing this out of some self-serving need to get another
star in my crown or something...."

Ola Mae just stands there. I can feel her uncertainty
about how to handle me. "Miz Reeves, what you expect? You doing something
that's gonna upset the way things been around here. People don't take to that
too easy. Black folks don't want to be no charity cases, and white folks don't
want to face the fact that black folks' history ain't pleasant to look at. So
you done got yourself caught up in the middle."

"So what do you think I should do, call the whole
thing off?"

Ola Mae doesn't respond as she heads back to the
butler's pantry. I follow like a dog on her heels. She remains silent for a
while as she pulls punch cups off the shelf and hands them to me. Finally she
stops., climbs down off her stool, and looks me dead in the eye. "No'm, I
don't think you should call it off. If Grace Clark and Adelle Jackson is behind
this thing, then that's enough for me. I don't know Mrs. Baldwin very well, but
she seems like a real nice lady. I got to admit, she's different from most of
the black women around here. I don't think she's going to put up with much from
your white ladies' club." She stops, contemplates again, and continues.
"Yes'm, you need to see it through. There's gonna be black folks and white
folks alike don't like what you doing, but hell with
them ...
I think you need
to finish what you started and then step back and see what happens."

I stare at the punch cups, thinking how I wish I had
those pretty antique Waterford crystal ones that Louisa has; then my next
thought is how spoiled and shallow I've become.
Good grief!

"I guess you're right. I have a feeling I won't be
elected director of the pilgrimage again anyway, if Elsie Spencer has anything
to do with it. So, I won't have to deal with this anymore after this
year."

"And would that be such a bad thing?"

I think about that question for a minute and realize
that maybe it wouldn't. I'm actually relieved. How surprising! I really don't
care if I'm director or
not ...
I feel a burst of affection for Ola Mae and give her shoulders an affectionate
squeeze. She almost drops the punch cup she's holding.

"Hold on, now. Let's don't get carried away,"
she says.

Now I'm embarrassed and I pull away. "We'd better
get moving. The ladies will be here in two hours and we haven't even started
the rest of the food."

Del Tanner

I probably had a little too much to drink last night,
but driving to work this morning I tell myself I had to do something to calm my
nerves. I feel like a cat in a room full of rocking chairs. Between trying to
save the lumberyard, keeping Alice off my back about building a new house, and
all that business with Daddy in the back of my mind all the time, I don't even
want to get out of bed in the morning. Every time the phone rings, I jump,
thinking it might be that banker calling to turn me down. When I took them
papers to him last week, he was nice enough. Made me wait longer than a
businessman should have to wait, but said he'd get back to me about the loan in
a couple of weeks.

Talking to Alice about Daddy ain't done no good,
either. I don't think she wants to hear it. Hell, I don't want to know it, but
now that I do, ain't nothing can change that. I think back over our
conversation when I showed her the postcard.

"You don't know that your daddy hung that man,
Del," she said.

"Alice, he's sitting there right in front of that
dead boy's feet, big as you please, smiling like he's done got a trophy!"

"He was young then — twenty or twenty-one years old.
Maybe he just jumped in the picture. You know how young men are. They're always
posing and such."

"Then why did he get that postcard, and why did it
have his name on it?"

"I have no idea, but I'll tell you this, Del
Tanner. You'd better let this thing go and stop nosing around. Folks around
here don't want to talk about those old days. The black people got what they
want now, so you don't need to go stirring things up. Your luck, one of these
educated black folks around here, who's always hollering about equality, will
get hold of this story and you'll be ruined. Not all your customers are white,
you know. Those people won't stop at anything. They'll have some NAACP lawyer
down here trying to put you in jail."

"Now you're being ridiculous," I told her. But
maybe she's right. I probably should leave the past alone. I should burn the
damn postcard and those Klan robes, too. I'll be damned if I know why I can't
let this thing go.

My mind is as foggy as the weather today. There's such
a thick mist hanging over the lumberyard, I can barely make out the office
building when I turn into the lot. I'm here earlier than usual, but I couldn't
sleep. I'm still having those hellish dreams. Just this morning I woke up in a
cold sweat from dreaming that old black schoolteacher named Grace Clark was
putting a rope around my neck and laughing. As I'm lying there, trying to go
back to sleep, I start wondering, were there other lynchings? How many niggers
did Daddy kill? Did he burn their houses? Rape their women? I finally had to go
on and get up. I made myself some strong black coffee and came to work.