Catfish Alley (5 page)

"Grace! Thomas!" Mama
hollers. "Y'all get on in here. Breakfast is ready. These biscuits get-tin' cold."

I run from the outhouse toward the
kitchen, trying to twist one of my braids and pull my new dress into place at
the same time. Mama stands in the kitchen doorway and laughs at how excited I
am.

"Calm down, girl. You are going
to wear yourself out before you even get to school. Go over there to the pump
and wash your hands before you come eat. Where's your brother?"

"I don't know, Mama." I
push down on the pump handle and shiver as the cold water pours over my hands.
I rub on the lye soap, rinse off quick, and stop myself just in time from
drying my hands on my clothes. Grandma worked hard on this school dress. I sure
don't want to ruin it before I even get to wear it anywhere. Mama waits at the
back door and folds me into her skirt for a big hug.

"Maybe Tom went hunting,"
I say. "Grandma told him she wanted him to get some squirrel for
supper."

"Maybe so. Lord knows I can't
keep that boy out of the woods. But he knew this was the first day of school.
He better get back here soon, or we'll be having some words."

I climb into my chair at our old
beat-up kitchen table and tie a dishcloth under my chin to protect my new dress
while Mama fills my plate with biscuits, gravy, and sausage and fixes me a cup
of milk coffee. Just as I'm about to eat, Tom comes busting in the back door,
out of breath, carrying three squirrels upside down by the tails.

"Boy, get yourself in here and
eat," Mama says. "School starts in an hour and a half and your sister
is going with you today. Hang those squirrels up out back. Make sure the dog
can't get to them. I'll skin and dress them after breakfast."

"Thanks, Mama." Tom slides
into his chair and takes the plate she hands him. He looks across the table at
me. "You excited about school, Grade?"

My mouth is stuffed full of biscuit,
so I nod and smile big. Today is the first day I get to walk through the pine
woods and over the creek with Tom. The Union School is the same school where
Great-Grandma, Grandma, and

Mama went. I even have shoes.

Just as Tom and I are fixing to
leave, Mama hands each of us a tin bucket that's got fried apple pies wrapped
in wax paper, a piece of the leftover breakfast sausage, and a fat triangle of
corn bread. Grandma Clark meets us as we're going out the back door. She's just
coming in from picking the last of the tomatoes in the garden. A lot of them
are still green, but Grandma'll put them on newspaper in the pantry and they'll
get ripe all the way until Thanksgiving. Grandma hands her basket to Mama and
then pulls us into her soft bosom.

"Y'all make me proud now."

"We will, Grandma," Tom
and I say together.

"Come on, Grace, let's get
going." Tom gives me a little push out the door.

I've never been this far from home
on foot before. I've only been to town in the wagon twice that I can remember.
Tom holds my hand and gives me the older brother speech about how to act at
school. The sun is just starting to come up over the cotton fields when we
reach the woods. I have to walk careful through the underbrush so that I don't
snag my new dress.

It takes us about an hour to get to
Clarksville. It's so exciting to see the town coming to life. People are
outside on the sidewalks sweeping and wagons are being loaded in front of the
feed store. I can even see a big black automobile parked way down the street in
front of a tall building. Tom says it's the white folks' bank. We turn, cross
the railroad tracks, and head for a long low building with a sign hanging over
the wide door.

"There it is, Gracie," Tom
says. "You see that sign up there? It says Union School."

Suddenly, all of the excitement I've
been feeling all morning turns to lead in my stomach. What if I can't do it?
What if I can't learn and I let Mama and Grandma down? Tom must sense how
scared I am, because he puts his arm around me and leads me toward the door.

"Come on. It's going to be fine.
You're going to love it. Look, here's teacher." Tom points to the tallest
colored woman I've ever seen. She looks like an angel. She's wearing a long
blue calico dress with little white buttons down the back. I can see them when
she turns to say hello to the other students piling into the school. Her dress
has a white collar with real lace trim, and at her throat is a round pin with a
picture of a face on it. She has smooth, not kinky, hair that is piled up on
top of her head. As Tom pulls me close to her, I can smell her. She smells like
roses and lemons. She's the most beautiful woman I've ever seen.

Tom plays his part as the man of the
family.

He pushes me in front of him and
grins at the teacher. "Miss Wilson, this is my sister, Grace Clark. She's
just starting today."

Miss Bessie Wilson kneels down,
takes my hand, and all of my worries slip away. I decide right then and there I
will do anything it takes to please this woman.

"Welcome, Grace Clark,"
Miss Wilson says. Her voice reminds me of the gray doves that coo at twilight.
"Are you happy to be going to school with your brother?"

I still can't find my voice, but nod
my head real big and follow Tom and the others into the school. I look around,
trying to see everything, while Tom takes my dinner bucket and lines it up on
the shelf with all the others. The room is wide and bare except for three rows
of desks in the middle and a large desk for the teacher at the front.

My grandma has told me our family
history with this school so many times, but now it all seems so much more real
to me. Grandma came to this school when it was the Freedman's school, the
first colored school opened by the Freedman's Bureau after the War. The Calhoun
family freed Great-Grandma and Great-Grandpa and they stayed on the Calhoun
property to be cotton sharecroppers. Grandma was one of the first children to
go to the school in this building. She says it was a
hospital for the soldiers during the
War.

Grandma always says, "Y'all got
to take this opportunity now and make something of yourselves. Can't nobody
keep you down if you got an education. Don't you worry about what white people
say about you. You just smile and keep on reading. Read every book you can get
your hands on."

We don't dare let Grandma down. Mama
went to school here, too. She made it through high school before she had Tom.
Tom and I want to make it all the way through high school, too.

Tom calls me and motions toward a
desk at the front of the room. "You sit here on account of you being a
first-grader. I'm a third-grader, so I sit two rows back. You'll be close to
teacher, so she can help you a lot."

He makes sure I'm settled into the
desk before he hurries back to greet a boy I don't recognize. This boy is
dressed in the finest clothes I've ever seen on a colored boy. He and Tom start
to whisper and push each other, making eyes at the girls who are huddled in a
group in the back of the room, whispering.

I jump when Miss Wilson taps on the
desk with her ruler. "Class, come to order now."

Everyone quickly settles down. It
gets so quiet I can hear my heart beat.

"We have a new pupil
today," teacher says, "Miss Grace Clark. She will be starting first
grade. Stand up and say hello, Grace."

This is terrifying. I stand and nod,
and stare at everybody's feet. I notice that Tom and I, along with the boy Tom
was talking to and one other girl, are the only ones besides teacher who are
wearing shoes. I think that I must be pretty lucky to have shoes for school.
I'm so distracted by all those dusty feet, I don't hear Miss Wilson tell me to
sit down. Miss Wilson nudges my shoulder.

"Grace? You may sit down
now."

Everyone laughs and I still can't
look up so I plunk myself into my desk, fold my hands, and wait to see what
will happen next. It's not what I expect. From the back of the room, there's a
loud scream. I turn around just in time to see a big old green bullfrog jump
from the desk of one of the prettiest girls in the group I was watching
earlier. Tom and his friend have their heads down on their desks turned toward
each other, and they're trying to keep from laughing.

"What in the world?" Miss
Wilson says. She still hasn't seen the frog. He's sitting on the sill of the
only window in the room. He looks like he's saying, "Let me out, please,
let me out."

"It was a big old bullfrog in
my desk, Miss Wilson. When I opened my desk to get my pencil, it jumped out at
me. I'm sorry I screamed." The pretty girl looks worried, like she thinks
teacher might blame her for the frog being there.

All of a sudden I remember hearing
an odd sound coming from Tom's lunch bucket this morning. And he was carrying
it awful careful-like. Maybe he was hunting for more than squirrels this
morning. He's sitting up straight now, still smirking around the mouth. No one
else moves. From the window, the frog lets out a loud croak. That's when
giggles spread across the room. Miss Wilson stops them with one look. She walks
real slow back to where Tom is sitting. I don't know how Miss Wilson knows it
was Tom, but she does.

"Thomas Clark, would you
accompany me over to the window, please."

"Yes'm."

I can tell he's trying to look
humble, but he still has that smirk twitching at the corners of his mouth. Tom
follows Miss Wilson to the window, and when her back is to him, he turns
around, raises his eyebrows, and gives his friend a big grin. At least that
other boy has the good sense not to smile back.

Teacher gets to the window where
that frog is just sitting there and says, "Thomas, would you please
retrieve the frog and carry him to the front of the room."

Tom looks like he's not quite sure
what "retrieve" means, but he goes ahead and picks up the frog. It
squirms and croaks and tries to wiggle free.

"You want me to take him
outside, teacher?"

"Oh, no, Thomas. Since he has
decided to visit our classroom today, I want you to make him feel right at
home. So you just hold him tight while you write your numbers on the
blackboard."

Miss Bessie Wilson is a smart
teacher. She knows the trouble Tom will get into with Mama when that frog pees
on his only school shirt is worse than any punishment she could dole out. Poor
Tom stands at the chalkboard, holding that squirming, long-legged, croaking
frog under his arm, and writes his numbers. When he gets to fifty, teacher lets
him stop. She walks to the left side of the board, where Tom started with
number one. I am really proud of myself, because I recognize the first ten of
those numbers. Mama's been teaching me at the kitchen table at night.

Miss Wilson points with a long stick
to the number one. "Thomas, what number have you left out that comes
before this number?"

Poor Tom wrestles with the frog, and
the class tries to stifle another round of giggles as he looks down at the
stream of yellow on his shirt. "Um, there ain't
no ...
I mean there isn't
a number before one."

"That is correct, Mr. Clark.
And how do we symbolize that amount?"

More wrestling. Finally, Tom shoves
the frog under his arm, and writes a big zero on the board in front of the one.
"It's a zero, Miss Wilson."

"That is correct. And do you
know what zero means, Mr. Clark?"

"Yes'm, zero means none."
Tom looks like he's fixing to cry when that frog adds some brown to the yellow
streaks on his shirt. The girls in the back of the room are making disgusted
noises. I am mortified. What is he going to tell Mama? How long is teacher
going to make him hold that frog?

Miss Wilson gets right up in Tom's
face and peers down at him over her glasses. "Please remember this, Thomas
Clark. Zero is how much tolerance I have for your antics. Do you understand
me?"

"Yes'm."

"And another thing ..."
She pauses and Tom and the frog squirm some more. "Zero is how much
progress you will make in your life if you continue to make a joke of this
school and everything we have worked to provide for you."

"Yes'm."

"Now, go put that poor creature
outside and
get back to your desk."

By
the time I finish my story about my first day at the Union School, Roxanne has
long since finished her pie and coffee. She sits staring at me, seemingly
asking for more.