Catfish Alley (29 page)

"Why, hello there," she
says. "May I help you?"

I'm suddenly very self-conscious of
my dusty, old-fashioned dress and worn shoes. I decide that I'd better make up
for what I lack in appearance by showing some spunk. I set my suitcase down and
extend my hand.

"Hello," I say in my
bravest voice. "I'm Grace Clark. I would like to be a student here."

The beautiful woman smiles again and
a slight look of surprise crosses her face. She motions toward two wicker
chairs on the shady porch. "You look hot and tired, Miss Clark. Please,
have a seat. It's cooler out here on the porch right now than it is
inside." She calls back over her shoulder through the still open door,
"Marjory, could you please bring my guest a glass of iced tea?"

I move to the chair and stand in
front of it, waiting for the woman to join me. I marvel at a colored woman
asking someone to bring something to her. Other than my experience fetching and
carrying for Mama or Grandma, I've never seen a colored woman have someone wait
on her. The woman joins me and sits down.

"Please, sit down, dear. You
look exhausted.

Forgive me, I didn't introduce
myself. I am Dr. Inez Prosser. I am a member of the faculty, in charge of
teacher education."

I'm so overwhelmed I can't speak.
This young woman is the very person I need to see and I've had the good fortune
to meet her even before I got through the doors of the college! I feel Mama and
Grandma watching over me like angels. I do think it's strange that Tougaloo
College would put a doctor in charge of teachers. I didn't even know women
could be doctors. This is all so exciting and very confusing.

"Now, Miss Clark," Dr.
Prosser is asking in a businesslike tone, "have you applied to the college
and been accepted?"

While I'm searching for a way to
answer this question that will not make me look completely incompetent, Marjory
appears with a tall glass of iced tea. I thank her as I take the tea and feel
the cool sweat from the glass on my hands. In my excitement I forgot how hot
and thirsty I was after the long bus ride here, not to mention the ride on the
back of the farmer's wagon the ten miles from Jackson. I try not to gulp all of
the tea down at once. Dr. Prosser is waiting patiently for me to answer. I take
a deep breath, sit up straight, and hold my shoulders back. Grandma always
said, "Start out like you can hold out." I figure I'd better
start out honest with this impressive doctor woman because I
just don't have the energy or the inclination to live a lie.

Roxanne

"So right then and there I poured out my whole
story to Dr. Inez Prosser," Grace says. "You probably didn't know
this, but Inez Prosser was one of the first black women in this country to earn
a doctoral degree."

"No, I didn't know that," I answer. Of course
this is just one of the many things that I don't know about black history. I've
never had any reason to care about black education or anything related to it.
Funny that it's now interesting to me. Because of my friendship with Grace
Clark, I have a sense of what Inez Prosser must have gone through to get as far
as she did academically.

Grace continues. "She was such a kind woman. Of
course, I had shown up without papers or an application. I was so distraught, I
told her that I would do whatever it took just to stay there — mop floors, wash
dishes, anything. Right then and there she called for Marjory and sent her to
the college cafeteria to get Miss Crump."

"Who was Miss Crump?" I ask.

"She was just about the meanest, orneriest woman I
ever met." Grace laughs. "But she saved my life. She gave me a job
that very day in the kitchen. She saved my pride and gave me a chance to earn
my keep."

"And did you get admitted?"

"Yes, I did. Dr. Prosser was so gracious. She took
me under her wing and helped me with everything. She talked me through the
admission process step by step. She made sure I got registered for
classes." Grace pauses and leans forward in her chair. "I would have
done anything to make her proud of me." I can feel the intensity of her
gratitude to Dr. Prosser.

Grace leans back and sighs. "Then one day she
called me into her office. I was terrified. I just knew that I had done
something wrong or someone had come to take me back to Clarksville."

"Why would anyone do that?"

"Oh, it was just a young girl's foolishness to
think that. I was always looking back over my shoulder, thinking someone would
find me out. Someone would tell the world I was just a poor colored girl from
Clarksville and I didn't deserve to get an education. But that's not what she
wanted, of course. She wanted to tell me that she had received a letter from
the Calhouns. They had set up a fund for me."

"A fund?"

"Yes, Dr. Prosser sat there quietly that day,
waiting for understanding to dawn on me, I reckon. I must have seemed
thickheaded, because I remember she said to me, 'Grace, do you know what this
means?' and I said, 'No, ma'am, not really.' 'Your entire education is paid
for,' she said. I'm here to tell you, Roxanne, I could hardly take that in. And
then, I got angry."

"Angry?" I can't imagine why Grace would be
angry when a college education had just been handed to her.

"Yes, you have to remember how young and stubborn
I was. I stormed around Dr. Prosser's office, talking about how this was guilt
money and how I wasn't going to take it and how they couldn't buy my
silence."

"What did Dr. Prosser do?"

"She just sat there, real patient, and let me do
my ranting. Then, when I paused to take a breath — by now I was crying — she
said very quietly, 'Are you done?' I told her I was, and I plopped down in the
chair in front of her desk and buried my head in my hands and just bawled my
eyes out. I missed my mama and my grandma so much. And I missed Zero, and
Junior, and Adelle, too. Even though Dr. Prosser was so kind, I felt so
alone."

Grace shakes her head at the memory. "Dr. Prosser
let me cry for a little bit. Then she told me something I've never
forgotten."

"What was that?" I ask.

"She said, 'Grace, every now and then life brings
us a gift. We don't earn it. We don't work for it. It's just part of the
mystery. Why, that gift is the very origin of your name ... Grace! Take this
gift and use it. Don't let your anger or the mistakes of other people stand in
the way of your dreams!"

My heart fills up and I feel a tightness in my throat,
thinking of the Grace Clark I've grown so fond of as a young woman struggling
with her pride and anger. And, I realize, I'm confused. She finds out she's
half white, yet feels that's the very thing about her that somehow betrays her
people. Given that I'm constantly looking over my shoulder, wondering who will
find me out, I'm at a loss to understand this. I promise myself that, soon, I'm
going to talk to Grace about my background. Just not today. "Did you take
the money?"

"I did. I was able to earn my bachelor's degree at
Tougaloo College with the fund the Calhouns set up for me."

"I guess you quit your job in the kitchen?"
"Oh, no." Grace frowns. "I told you, Gladys Crump saved my life.
I worked for her in that kitchen until the day I graduated."

Billy Webster

As I push through the glass doors of the Pineview Nursing
Home, I realize I still have that stupid grin on my face. I need to get myself
together before I see Gran. She will start firing questions from the minute I
step into the room. I don't know why I'm worried. Yes, I've enjoyed getting to
know Daniel Mason. Yes, it was fun having dinner with him and then seeing him
in his element at the Harvest Festival. That was a trip! I haven't been to a
small-town church social event in decades. Yes, he's intelligent, witty,
good-looking — sexy. But! He's a preacher and he lives in Mississippi, and I
don't. I won't ... can't?

Gran is in her chair, all dressed up, looking like a
spider waiting for a fly. I can tell she's ready to spin her web around me and
pull me in. Suddenly feeling trapped, I rush over to the window.

"Good morning, Gran. It's a little stuffy in here,
don't you think?" I ask, opening the window with a view of the bird feeder
outside. "Look at all those birds. You must enjoy watching them at the
feeder —"

Gran interrupts my nervous chatter. "Belinda Louise
Webster," she says, "get over here and give your old grandmother a
kiss."

I walk obediently over to her and bend to kiss her
cheek. As I'm pulling away, she grasps my hand. "Tell me how things went
at the Queen City with Brother Daniel," she says.

Of course I'm not surprised she would ask this. I've
prepared my answers carefully. I don't want to get her hopes up and then see
her disappointed.

"Okay, okay! Just let me sit down first," I
say, breaking her grip on my hand so that I can pull up a chair near her. I
drop my purse on the floor and slouch into the chair, stretching my legs out in
front of me. "Doesn't that breeze coming in the window feel nice?" I
close my eyes, remembering why the fall is my favorite time of year down South.

Gran will have none of it. "Girl, I'm old as
Methuselah and I don't have time to wait around for you to talk about the
weather! Now, get on with it! What happened with you and the preacher?"

I sit up, having been put on notice. "Well, Gran,
I think it went all right ... He was very interested in the place ... has some
ideas...." Gran can tell I'm hedging.

"What kind of ideas?"

I sigh. This is the part I feel so uncertain about.
Might as well get it over with. "He wants to get the bank involved, get
some estimates ... on the work it would take to ... you know ... restore the
hotel. He thinks it would make a great community center." I watch
carefully for her response.

Gran nods and doesn't look surprised. "And what
did you say to that?"

"I told him that I supposed getting a couple of
estimates wouldn't hurt. He says there's a contractor who's a member of the
congregation who might do an estimate, and then he wants to involve some of the
teenagers at the church to help do the work. There's also Jack Baldwin, who
works at the bank."

Gran chuckles. "I reckon he got real excited over
that old hotel, didn't he?"

For a moment, I forget to hide my feelings from Gran.
"He did, Gran. You should have seen him. He was like a little boy with a
new model car. He had all of these ideas and he talked about them all through
dinner...." I'm remembering how animated Daniel was as we talked over
catfish and hush puppies.

"So you had dinner with him, did you? What
happened after that?" She has a wicked look in her eye as she winks at me.

"Gran!" I say, with my best attempt at
sounding dignified. "Don't be ridiculous! We just had dinner and talked
about the hotel and ... well ... maybe a few other things, but anyway ...
that's it. I told him that we would allow him to look into what the repairs would
involve. You do agree with that, right?" I'm trying to steer the
conversation back to the hotel.

Gran nods her head. "I reckon it won't hurt, but
it sounds like a big job to me. Does he really think it could be ready by next
spring?"

"Well, maybe not completed, but at least well
under way. He told me yesterday that he'd already made arrangements with the
contractor to take a look at it."

Gran doesn't miss a beat. "Hold on a minute. You
talked to him yesterday?"

"Well, yes. I dropped by the Harvest Festival for
a little while and —"

Gran interrupts me. "You? You, Miss Big City Girl,
went to the Harvest Festival down at the church?" Gran's laugh is
infectious.

"Baby girl, you must be in love!"

I feel the blush climbing my throat and I'm laughing
along with her in spite of myself. "That's silly," I say, strangely
exhilarated. "Of course I'm not in love after one dinner at the Catfish
Cabin and one Harvest Festival ... but, okay, I admit it, I haven't met a man
as appealing and as handsome as Daniel Mason in a long time." I sigh and
get up to search in Gran's tiny refrigerator for one of the diet sodas she
always keeps there for me.

I look at Gran as I wander back to my chair; her
expression is serious. "You know what they say, darlin', about a good man
being hard to find."

"You're telling me! But why here?" I realize
I probably sound like a whiney little girl. "My life is in Chicago. I love
you, Gran, and please don't take this wrong, but I could never see myself
living in Mississippi again."