Catfish Alley by Lynne Bryant Read Free Book Online Page B

favorite." Grace turns to me. "Addie makes the best coconut
cake in Mississippi."
    "Many
more of these Tuesday mornings and I'm going to be as big as the side of a
barn!" I say. "I've had more good food since I've been meeting with
you than I've had in years."
    "Addie's
grandmother created this recipe. She worked for Mr. A. W. Spencer over there on
College Street. This was his favorite cake."
    I
put my fork down. "Arvis Spencer, the bank president?"
    "No,
his daddy, A. W. Spencer the First," Adelle says. "She was his cook
and housekeeper."
    I
feel as though I've stepped back into Mama's world. I never imagined myself
having cake and coffee with black service people — or their relatives. Growing
up, they were Mama's only friends. I feel a pang of guilt again, remembering
her response when I asked her why she was so friendly with blacks.
    "You
think you better than these people I work with? You think you better than me?
You just look out that you don't reach too far, Chere. You might think you can
be somebody else, leave behind your family and your roots, but you can't. You
as Cajun as your daddy and me and you might as well get proud of it."
    But
I didn't get proud of it. I did everything in my power to erase it. I kept
going to the Stanleys' with Mama all through high school. When I was a junior,
we lost Daddy to emphysema. I still remember the rattle of his breathing coming
from their tiny bedroom in our house on the bayou. That's the way Mama and I
knew he was still alive at the end of the day when we'd come back home. We
could hear him waging his battle for oxygen when we walked in the back door.
    One
day when we returned, the house was quiet. All we could hear was the regular
puff of his oxygen tank. We both froze. I followed Mama into the room and we
found him sitting there in their bed. He was wearing a cap and a camouflage
jacket. His boots were on and still wet. In spite of Mama's insistence that he
stay in bed, we knew he had been out on his pirogue for one last ride.
    That
was the only time I remember Mama not going to work. Daddy died on Wednesday,
we buried him on Friday, and Mama was back to work by Saturday morning. And I
was there with her. By this point I had gotten close enough to Mrs. Stanley
that she had started to let me help her with her restoration projects. She had
done everything she could to Oak Grove, and now she and Mr. Stanley had bought
a second plantation home, also on the River Road, to restore.
    Mrs.
Stanley helped me understand that it could undermine a woman's ambition to
reveal her poor background. Men could use childhood poverty to show how they
had risen out of their humble beginnings and made something of themselves, but
"Not so for a woman," said Mrs. Stanley, smoking her long thin
cigarette. "A woman can't afford to reveal her flaws. They will always be
held against her. She will always be classified as trying to be more than she
is. A woman should never expose her soft underbelly."
    Mrs.
Stanley encouraged me to apply for a history scholarship based on my interest
in home restoration. I was shocked when I got a full ride to Mississippi
University for Women.
    When
I left the bayou for Clarksville, to attend the W, I was determined to keep my
family background a secret. I kept a cool distance from the other girls and
made sure no one ever got to know me very well. I disappeared in the summers to
go back home and work as many hours for Mrs. Stanley as I could to save money
and help Mama. When Mama died my senior year in college, I went home for her
funeral, gave my brothers my key to the house, and turned my back on the bayou
for good. I got an apprenticeship with the Clarksville Historical Society
working on an antebellum home restoration and a Civil War museum and began to
create a history for myself based on Mr. and Mrs. Stanley. Before I realized
it, in my mind, they became my parents.
    My
family tree might be invented, but everyone around here believes it. And I've
learned the hard