Catfish Alley (32 page)

When I come to, what I notice first
is the stink of catfish guts. I realize I'm lying beside a trash can in the
alley near Jones's Cafe, and everything that happened comes to me in a rush. I
still smell Ray Tanner's rancid sweat on my body, but worse, I feel the shame
of what he's done to me between my legs. I raise myself up to look around, and
the pain that shoots through my head almost makes me faint again. I reach up to
touch my forehead and I know, even in the dark, that what I feel is blood. I
have to get myself home.

I rise slowly to test my legs.
Dragging my suitcase, I start down the alley, forcing myself to focus on Mama
and Papa. They're sitting by the fire right now. Mama is exhausted from decorating
and cooking all day, making the house perfect for me, preparing my favorite
foods. I reach the end of the alley and furtively cross the street. No one can
see me like this. It's too shameful.

Think about Mama and Papa, I say to
myself again. Papa will say they're working me too hard at Tuskegee. Mama will
look at my calloused hands and kiss them. She'll rub them with Vaseline and
make me wear cotton gloves to bed. I stop and duck behind a big hydrangea bush,
the rattle of its dried blossoms sounding loud in the winter stillness. Is
someone coming? Was that footsteps? The blood from the cut is running into my
eyes, so I reach up with the end of my cape to wipe it away. Two more alleys
and I'll almost be home.

My legs are refusing to move and my
suitcase feels like it's full of bricks. A dog barks from the yard across the
street. I have to move before anyone wakes up. Zero ... I'll think about
Zero
...
My legs move slowly, my feet dragging in the dirt of the alley.

Zero, who's followed in Papa's
footsteps ever since the day Clarence Jones and Junior brought him to the house
all bloodied
up ... it
was Ray Tanner who beat him up. This
thought stops me dead in my tracks. Zero can never know about
this
...
I have to keep it a secret ... have to come up with a
story
... I
feel
the despair and the dirtiness closing in on me again and I push myself forward.
Think about Zero — he'll make a wonderful doctor and we'll come back here and
get married. Mama and Papa will dote on our children. I'm almost there. I can
see our front door, but I need to go around to the
back
...
I'm too dirty for the front door. Mama will have cleaned the rugs....

I drag myself up the back steps.
Home ... the blood is in my eyes again. I drop the suitcase and crawl toward
the door. I don't have the strength to stand anymore. I can only bring my hand
up to scratch at the door. Before things go black again I notice that I've left
blood on the white door.

Mama is screaming. I hear her
calling for Papa. I tell myself, Quiet, just stay quiet. Don't tell them
anything. The shame would kill them.

"It's all right now, baby,
Mama's got you, Mama's got you," Mama is saying. She pulls my head into
her lap. I feel the tears running into my ears as Papa bursts out of the back
door. I'll be safe now. Papa will protect me.

"Anna Lee," he says to
Mama in the low, calm voice he gets in an emergency, "go to my exam room
and get the table ready."

Papa scoops me up like a hurt puppy
and Mama rushes off to follow his instructions. "Hang on, sweet girl, hang
on," he says in my ear.

Quiet, I remind myself. Stay quiet.
The exam table is ice cold. I have no control over the shaking of my body and
my teeth are rattling together so hard, the pain in my head is almost
unbearable. Mama covers me with a blanket and tries to warm me with her body,
but Papa sends her to the anteroom for supplies to stitch up my forehead.
Stitches? I wonder how deep the cut is. Papa is pressing his hands into my legs
and arms. I know he's checking for broken bones, but his touch makes me shake harder,
and I want to scream. But I'm locked into my mind and my body, and words won't
come. I won't let them. Not yet.

"Can you tell me what happened,
Adelle? Who did this to you?" Papa is asking.

I flinch when Papa wipes the blood
from the cut across my forehead. For a second the crazy thought occurs to me
that I'll have to style my hair differently to hide the scar. Will

Zero like it that way? Will he still
want me?

"This is a clean cut,"
Papa says. I close my eyes again. "This was done with a sharp knife."

Mama is at my side, and I grip her
hand tight as Papa finishes cleaning and stitching the wound and covers it with
clean white gauze. I can tell how helpless she feels as she says over and over,
"My baby, my sweet baby." I open my eyes to look at her and she is
studying me, even as she tries to soothe me. Her eyes are roving over my dirty
uniform. Somehow she knows. I feel it. How can she tell? Is it Ray Tanner's
stink? Do I look different?

When Papa finishes with the
dressing, Mama looks at him, as they stand opposite each other over my body.
"Albert," she says, her voice stern. "I want you to bring Adelle
upstairs to her room. I'll help her out of these muddy clothes." She
smiles at me, but I can see her fear. She lets go of my hand and blots the
tears out of my eyes with her handkerchief. "I'll get you cleaned up,
baby. Don't you worry." She must know.

"But I need to do a more
thorough examination," Papa insists. Worry creases his face into deep
lines. But Mama won't have it.

"Albert, I need for you to
bring Adelle upstairs," she repeats. "She needs me to take care of
her right now."

I pray Papa will give in. I can't
stand the thought of being touched any more. Every part of my body feels like
it's bruised. I just want to be in my bed and pull the covers over my head.
Papa doesn't argue. He lifts me into his arms again and follows Mama upstairs
to my room. He lays me gently on the same bed I've slept in all my life. But
everything's different now and I feel like a stranger in my own room.

"Now, Albert, you go and get
Adelle some medicine that will help her sleep. I'm going to wash her off and
get her into a nightgown," Mama says, taking charge. "Oh, and light
that heater. It's cold in this room."

I close my eyes and feel myself
moving far away, moving to a place deep inside myself where no one can touch
me.

Roxanne

The warm feeling of companionship I was experiencing
before Adelle told her story is gone. All I can feel now is cold, sick anger. I
want to hit something, or someone. Del Tanner's face comes to mind as I
remember his gold-toothed snarl and the words he said that day Grace and I
visited him a month ago.
"My lumberyard is not going to
be part of some trumped-up African-American tour."
I
wonder
if Del Tanner knows that his father raped Adelle. Do men like that talk about such
things to their sons? Brag about them?

I wonder if this hatred and violence toward black
people is something inherited. Would Del Tanner be the same way today if there
was no possibility of being prosecuted? I had been thinking that I'd approach
him again about his warehouse being on the tour, since it did once house the
original Union School for black children. I was hoping maybe he'd soften,
reconsider letting us include it. But I can't imagine having anything more to
do with him now. How could I stand to be in the same room with him, knowing
what his father did? Knowing Del himself probably would have condoned it.

Everyone in the room has gone silent. Adelle's face is
expressionless. It's as if she's frozen. Grace is holding her hand and they're
staring off in the same direction. It's like they're looking into the same pool
of memories. Mattie takes a long sip of her drink and shakes her head. Billy is
blotting tears with a tissue. She's the first to speak.

"I hope somebody nailed that asshole's dick to a
tree," she says. Startled by her Dutburst, we all turn to look at her.
Personally, I agree with her. She's just expressed what I would say if I used
that kind of language. I don't understand the expressions on Grace's and Adelle's
faces, though. Adelle clears her throat.

"I'm so sorry for ruining this fine afternoon with
that terrible story. I never should have dragged all that up," Adelle
says.

"No, no," Billy says. "Please, don't
apologize, Miss Addie...."

"I don't like to hear them, but I reckon those
stories have to be told," says Mattie, setting her glass down with a
thump. "We have to remember."

I'm wondering why you would need to remember something
as horrible as that. What good could that possibly do?

"It's true," says Grace. "You can't let
that stay inside you and fester."

"I suppose you're going to tell me that he was
never prosecuted, that there was never anything done," says Billy, a
bitter edge to her voice.

Grace and Adelle look at each other. Adelle looks down
at her hands. Mattie looks up at me. Why is she looking at me that way?
Suddenly, I'm very conscious of being white. I feel like I represent the enemy,
and I want to crawl under my chair. Why am I feeling this way? I'm just as
angry at Ray Tanner as they are!

"Baby girl," Mattie says, turning toward

Billy, "you know things were different back
then."

Billy sighs and reaches up to rub her eyes. "I
know, I know you always say that...." "It was my fault," says
Adelle. "What the hell are you talking about?" Mattie asks.
"That white man raped you, Addie! Have you lost your mind?"

"What I mean
is ...
I refused to say
who did it."

"You're kidding," I say. This falls out of my
mouth before I can stop it. And I had been doing so well at staying quiet until
now.

"She had her reasons," says Grace. "I
don't remember much about those days right after it happened," Adelle
says. "I'll never forget them," Grace responds.

December 1931

Grace

From the minute I got the message
from Mrs. Jackson yesterday, I've been in a panic to get to Adelle. Miss Crump
released me from work early and Dr. Prosser herself helped me pack and drove me
to the bus station. I got off the bus in Clarksville today and came straight to
the Jacksons' house. Dr. Jackson answers the door looking exhausted and worried.
"She won't speak to us, Grade," he says as he hugs me close. I can
hear the anguish in his voice.

I look up as Mrs. Jackson rushes
down the stairs to embrace me. "I'm so glad you've come, Grace," she
says. I notice she looks tired, too, and older somehow.

"How is she?" I ask,
taking off my coat and hat and hanging them on the hall tree.

"She won't eat anything. I've
tried to coax her with all of her favorite foods, but she just sips a little
tea or water and pushes the food away," Mrs. Jackson says as she takes me
by the arm and we mount the stairs. "Every time I touch her, she trembles
all over...."

"Anna Lee," Dr. Jackson
calls, "I'm going out to check on Maylou Johnson. Her rheumatism is acting
up again, but I'll be right back."

"All right, Albert," she
calls over her shoulder.

"And I might check in town
again to see if anybody's heard anything," he says, just before closing
the door behind him.

"He's been beside himself since
we found her on the back doorstep," Mrs. Jackson whispers. "He'll
only leave for a little while at a time, and then he's right back here, pacing
outside her door. She won't even let him come in the room. He just so
desperately wants to do something, to find out who did this to her, but she
won't talk to us. I'm hoping she'll talk to you."

Mrs. Jackson and I enter Addie's
room quietly. The curtains are drawn and the room is dim in the late-afternoon
winter light. I can see the glow of the gas heater and smell Addie's favorite
tomato soup from the tray near the bed. Addie is lying on her side with her
knees drawn up toward her chest, facing away from the door. I walk around the
bed and pull up a chair beside her. Mrs. Jackson hovers behind me. In the
shadowy light I can see the bandage across Addie's forehead and a dark bruise on
her cheek.

"Addie," I say softly,
clasping my hands together in my lap and leaning forward. Even though she's
taller than me, she looks so thin and fragile right now. I want to wrap her up
in my arms and hold her tight, but after what Mrs. Jackson said, I'm careful
not to touch her.