The Schooling of Claybird Catts

by Janis Owens

  I thought about asking how she could possibly know that, but poor old Grannie has had a rough time of it since she found out about Sim and his woman, so I went easy on her, just smiled and said, “Cool,” then walked her and Kenneth to the door, told them to have a good time, and Happy Easter.

  I stood at the screen and watched them on their way, was glad Kenneth was there to walk Grannie down the Hill, for she looked kind of bent and frail as they went along, one of her bird-thin hands clutching her purse, the other tight on Kenneth’s arm, not able to see very well in the dusk. I waited till they turned the corner before I shut the door and gathered my tapes and my recorder and came out here to the porch, where finally, after a week’s delay, I have the space and privacy to record the official version of my jinxed little visit to Waycross.

  It’s hard to know where to begin and even harder to tell it straight, because to tell you the truth, I’m feeling a little pinch of guilt over how I treated Sim. I’ve tried to call him every night this week to apologize, have left four or five groveling little messages on his answering machine, but he has so far refused to return my calls. I guess he’s washed his hands of me, that he and Kendra and Keri really and truly hate my total stinking unequivocal guts—or I assume Keri does.

  If I was a girl and had presented my body for the sacrifice to a virtual stranger and had him leave town without a word, I’d be madder than heck—though come to think of it, she might not be mad at all. I mean, I never predicted any of her other reactions, so who can tell? Maybe she never gave it a second thought. Maybe if I saw her tomorrow she’d be smiling and slipping off her shirt again. I just didn’t know and that was the problem I kept coming back to that night, tossing and turning on Sim’s little sofa bed: how this girl was a stranger to me, and if we continued along at the rate we were going, soon I’d be the father of her children, or could be anyway, and I didn’t (still don’t) even know her last name. And there we were, hot at it and on the next date she’d be slipping out of more than her shirt and it’d all be over but the washing up and (for me, anyway) the guilt of the thing.

  I kept wondering: Why was she doing it? How could she make it so easy? Were all girls like that? Was Simon right—was she in love? I hoped not because he was sure right about me, I didn’t love her. Hey, I didn’t even know her—and until she got a little naked there, I wasn’t even the tiniest bit infatuated, which only made it worse. I mean, I didn’t know where Sim came off saying that Kendra was his girl, as in the girl he screws, then just being so straight and good-natured and honest about saying he didn’t love her, because—I don’t know—it just made me madder than hell. He just wasn’t raised to be that kind of cool dude and I don’t care what Mama or Gabe or anybody had done.

  All night that night in Waycross I tossed and turned and thought about Mama and how flipped out she’d be if she knew and how it was really all that idiot Gabe’s fault because until he showed up none of this kind of stuff had gone on. He was the one who’d opened the floodgate with his Yankee ways and his jokes and his cool. Even after Daddy died, we were all right. Mama let me and Missy sleep with her in her big old bed the first few months, we were so scared, while Simon, the Big Man, slept on the floor on a pallet. Back then, there wasn’t any of this nasty talk or cursing or R-rated movies or Sim drinking beer or chasing women. It was just us and Welcome and Grannie, and it was so sweet, why did it have to end?

  That’s the thought that kept me awake all night long, till just before dawn, when I finally drifted off, like two minutes before Sim’s alarm clock went off in the bedroom, as loud and obnoxious as an air horn: WAHHHHHH. So I was wide-awake again, my head pounding like it was wrapped in barbed wire, just lying there listening as Sim took a shower and dressed for work then came to the kitchen and made himself something to eat.

  He must have realized I was awake, for he came over and stood by the bed while he ate a slice of toast, not seeming to notice that I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown, but talking real casually, telling me how much better we’d eat when Kendra moved back in, how she made better biscuits than Mama, that he’d get her to make them tonight for supper, maybe bring Keri by—

  And I said no.

  “Why not?” he asked, finishing the toast and slapping the crumbs from his hands. “You wanna go out?”

  I said no, that wasn’t it, I just didn’t want to see Keri anymore. This apparently wasn’t part of the game plan, for he looked at me with this face of great curiosity, repeated, “Why not?”

  “Because I don’t,” I said with a shrug, not having much left to say about it. I mean, one more date and we’d be making babies and I just didn’t want to chance it.

  Sim really didn’t get it, though. He just stood there perfectly still, obviously at a loss for words, finally said: “But you’ve gone out with her two days in a row, Clay. You can’t just drop her like that. Kendra says she really likes you.”

  “Oh,” I said, “I see. What’s the matter, will Kendra cut off your biscuits if I don’t screw her sister?”

  I don’t even know why I said it. It just came out of my mouth, unbidden. Before I could take it back, before I could even blink, Sim was up on that bed, knees first, gripping me by my shirtfront, his face about two inches from my nose, and he was not smiling.

  “What makes you think you can talk to me that way?” he whispered in this low, level voice that brought a sudden metallic taste to my mouth, a surge of heart-thumping adrenaline, thinking we were about to go at it. That he was going to reach back and slap me and I’d grab hold and pull him down and we’d roll off the bed and get in a few good licks before we came to our senses and everything would be released, and let me tell you, I could have handled something like that. It would have suited me fine.

  It’s not that I was that mad or anything, I just wanted to fight. To get it out in the open, to scream it all out: Daddy and Mama and Granddaddy Sims and Gabe and all the things that had landed on us like hornets in such a short time. Things that had changed us, had ripped the veil, had torn us apart, that could be released into the wind with a few good solid licks and a lot of nasty names and heart pounding, and I tell you what, I was ready for it, except he didn’t make the move.

  We were too—I don’t know—too cool for that. All he did was let go of my shirtfront with this little jerk of disgust, then went to the kitchen and must have called someone. I could hear his voice on the phone, saying, “—no, don’t bother with her or Grannie or Gabe, just tell Aunt Candace to call me there, at Sanger, have ’em page me on the floor. Yeah, I’m sick of it. They can send him to Dosier for all I care. No, I’ll tell you later, I’m running late. Yeah. Love you, too. Bye.”

  This last really got to me, for I realized he was talking to Missy, and they loved each other, and it was like the full-blooded 100 percent USDA Catts children were double-teaming me. I could feel this awful weenie feeling creeping up my chest, closing my throat, making me wish I could apologize to him, take it back. You know, tell Sim to bring on the girls, eat them biscuits, yank them shirts, but it was too late.

  He was finished with me, slamming out of the kitchen and leaving for work without even saying good bye, leaving me to lie there on the couch and stare straight at the ceiling for four hours, like I was paralyzed or something. I could have moved if I wanted to, it’s just that sometimes when I get overwhelmed by something, I just sit there and can’t motivate enough interest to even move a muscle. After I do it awhile, it just builds and builds, till I’m like a breathing mannequin.

  That’s the way it was that morning till the phone rang around lunch, Simon calling to say that he’d have to come and take me home after work because no one else could get away. He told me to pack my stuff and meet him in the parking lot at five-thirty, and I knew as soon as I saw him that this would be a silent drive home because his face was still blank and seething, not even looking at me as I piled my stuff in the bed of the truck. It was clearly too late for apologies, so I just climbed in the jumpseat and made myself
comfortable, using my canvas case for a pillow and stretching out, his face, if possible, even stiffer as he watched me in the rearview mirror.

  I had closed my eyes in preparation for a going-home nap when he started the ignition, commenting aside in this voice of just profound disgust: “You know, Clay, sometimes I’m real relieved you’re nothing but my half brother, you know that?”

  It was such an awful thing to say that I actually couldn’t believe my ears. I actually sat up and looked at him over the seat, said: “What?”

  But he wouldn’t repeat it, just shrugged and turned up the radio while I kept at it, leaning up on the seat, asking: “Sim? What did you say?” Though I was reasonably sure I’d heard him correctly the first time and just had this kind of masochistic need to hear it again, though he wouldn’t cooperate.

  “Nothing,” he snapped. “Just shut up and leave me alone.”

  So I had no choice but to lie back down, though I knew what I’d heard, and let me tell you, I would have much rather had a cut mouth or a black eye or a cracked rib, because it was like he’d reached down and punched my soul, bruised it, the need to cry so close I could feel it there at the back of my throat, unshed tears, copper tasting and bitter.

  I didn’t try to sleep then, just leaned against the window, watching the night fall on the endless peach groves and small towns and orange dirt roads of south Georgia, Sim not stopping once, not even for gas, much less supper, both of us kind of groggy when we came to a final stop, not at Aunt Candace’s, but Grannie’s. I gathered my stuff without a word and followed Sim inside, where he wouldn’t even let the door shut before he was running his mouth to Grannie, telling her in an aggrieved voice: “Well, here he is, and it’s almost eight and I won’t get back to Waycross till eleven, and I have to be up at five.”

  Grannie, who was standing at the stove in one of the sleeveless cotton housedresses she bought by the dozen at the Dollar Store, ignored his fussing and hugged us in our turn. “Well, thank you, baby,” she told him. “Sit down and eat before you get on the road, won’t take but a minute.”

  Some of my hurt and meanness and general confusion and perplexity was immediately cleared by the prospect of real honest-to-goodness food, making me run to the bathroom and pee and wash my hands in preparation for a Big Feed. When I got to the table, even Sim looked slightly more human as Grannie went back and forth to the kitchen, laying out dish after dish of macaroni and cheese (her version, with three cheeses and big fat noodles and sour cream) and fried chicken and potato salad (two of them, because I liked mine cold, Sim liked it warm) and real home-brewed, white-sugared, ice-cold Lipton tea, the quality of which I’ve never seen equaled outside my grandmother’s kitchen.

  “You two go on and eat,” she told us, as if such an order was necessary. “The biscuits are ready, I just need to pull ’em out of the oven.”

  I’d already been dipping into the dishes, filling my plate while they were still en route from the kitchen, so I was able to take my seat quickly, was busy stripping my first drumstick when I realized Sim was facing me across the table with a look of mild reproach. “Aren’t you going to say the Blessing?” he asked.

  In reply, I just chewed and stared, and after a moment, he dropped his eyes and reeled off a lightning-fast God-is-Great, though I didn’t so much as blink, just kept chewing and staring, thinking: Boy, what a shit you are.

  When he finished the amen, he started eating, but wouldn’t look at me again, and with Grannie there, hot-handing biscuits to a plate, looking so relieved and plain happy to see us, I began to see that I had a definite edge here, the upper hand. I mean, old Sim might be the Cool Dude, the Big Man up in Waycross, with his beer and his women, but back here in Florida he was at the mercy of my evilest whim.

  And with that nasty, cutting little remark about us being half brothers in mind, I began to play with him a little, like a cat tapping a mouse with a leisurely, fur-covered paw.

  “So, Sim, are those biscuits any good?” I asked him with a bland, innocent face when Grannie finally finished her labors and sat down at the table. “You think they’ll make the grade?”

  “What’s wrong with the biscuits?” she interjected, though Sim was quick to answer.

  “They’re fine. They’re good.” Though if I squinted, I could see a faint pink begin to creep up into his cheeks that filled me with this sudden, massive enjoyment.

  “Oh,” I said. “Well, I thought you might not like these Florida biscuits. Not after all the Georgia biscuits you been eating.”

  His face held a definite flush now, little spots of color beginning to flame his cheekbones, though Grannie didn’t notice, just poured herself a glass of tea, commented: “I don’t like Georgia biscuits. Cathead biscuits. Too doughy.” Then, to Sim, “How’s Sanger doing, baby? Is the addition coming along like Sam wanted?” (They were building a new showroom.)

  “Yes ma’am,” Sim answered, clearly relieved at the turn of conversation and taking it on with a vengeance, telling her with a lot of gusto: “It’s real nice. I met the interior decorator, Deanna something-or-another, from Atlanta. She’s real nice—I think you’ll like her—”

  “Well, did Sam let you have that couch?” Grannie continued. “The sleeper sofa you wanted for your living room?”

  “Yes ma’am,” Simon repeated, his eyes still a little nervous, jumping from his plate to Grannie’s hairline to the table and back again in these fast little circuits. “It’s some of the new stuff, looks real nice, with, ah, tufted arms and all—a lot better built that the old stuff.”

  Grannie, whose new sofa sleeper had already developed an ominous sag in the middle, was kind enough to let this pass without comment, just asked: “Well, is your apartment nice? Does the landlord know you’re leaving in August? Did he let you sign a short lease?”

  At the mention of the new apartment, Sim chanced a little glance at me, though I held my peace, just sat there and buttered a biscuit and returned the glance with an innocent, solicitous look of interest, letting him prove what a hypocrite he was with the words of his own mouth.

  “Yeah, it worked out all right,” he allowed, then got up to look in the refrigerator for pepper sauce, hoping to put Grannie off the track.

  But she hadn’t seen much of him since Christmas, and was truly interested in every little detail of his life, continuing in perfect innocence when he sat back down: “Well, good for you. Gabriel thought they might stick you for the lease when you left for school. You know he got sued—sued in court—for breaking that lease in New York—had to pay out a pretty penny—”

  “Why did you rent an apartment in Waycross, Sim?” I broke in to ask, making his face congeal into perfect immobility, not a twitch, except for the blood beating in his temples as Grannie tried to step in and offer an explanation.

  “It was too much driving back and forth, wasn’t it, baby? It was wearing you out?”

  That must have been the official line he’d fed Mama to get her to fork over the cash for the deposit, though Sim didn’t jump in and agree, just watched me across the table, acknowledging the challenge with no reaction at all.

  “No,” he finally answered in a voice a heck of a lot weenier than his cool words back in Georgia. “I needed the, ah, room. I got a roommate.”

  “A roommate?” Grannie exclaimed, amazed that some little part of his life had escaped her eagle eye. “How come you to get a roommate, shug? Is it cheaper? Does he work at Sanger?”

  Well, it was time for old Simbo Catts to stand and deliver, though he didn’t too much relish the job, just chewed his lip thoughtfully a moment, then answered with the particular stiffness of a man in a dream. “No, it’s not anybody from Sanger,” he said. “It’s a girl, a woman, named Sondra.”

  “Sondra Cole?” Grannie breathed, and at the slip of the tongue, Simon went even redder.

  “Not Son—Kendra. Kendra Poyner. She’s a girl—a woman—I met in Waycross.”

  Oddly enough, Grannie didn’t look too moved by this extr
aordinary confession, just sat there and chewed quietly, her eyes not really stunned or excited, but only faintly worried. “Well, baby,” she began after a moment, “d’you think that’s a good idea? Living with a woman?”

  At her complete lack of hysteria, of accusation, Sim’s whole body loosened, his face taking on a kind of evangelical persuasiveness, assuring her in a fast little voice: “It’s fine, Grannie—it’s working out great. We talked a lot about it before we moved in together—she knows I’m leaving in August, it’s no big deal.”

  Grannie just chewed reflectively, and I could feel my heart beginning to beat hard in my chest while I waited for her response that came after a long silence. “Well, I hope you know what you’re doing, baby,” she said, “because, I don’t know, shug—it may sound all right, but one of these nights you’re gone git mighty lonely and this woman might start looking real good, real good in a bad way, and baby, it’ll be a temptation, I can tell you that.”

  She was so sincere, so truly clueless, that it was really kind of horrible.

  I suddenly wanted to end it there, to jump to my feet, take Sim aside to the kitchen, and tell him to lie or laugh it off as a joke, anything but tell her the truth because she wasn’t goofing around. Grannie didn’t goof around about stuff like that. She’s a hard-shell, hardhead Baptist, and not the beer-drinking variety, either, but the storytelling, Sunday-school, His-eye-is-on-the-sparrow kind, and it was like a crime against humanity when Simon answered her in a mild little voice: “We are already. Living together, I mean.” Grannie just looked at him, still didn’t seem to get it, and he tried to clarify it without being vulgar, “Like man and wife.”

  Well, she got it that time, she got it with a bullet, her eyes widening, though she tried to hide her surprise, wiping her mouth with her napkin and fooling around for her fork before she looked back at him, asked in a small voice: “Why don’t you marry her, Sim?”