Free Catfish Alley by Lynne Bryant Page B

"After we get done with all of
this running around Clarksville, digging up bones, you and I will have a
lesson. I'll teach you how to make jelly and cathead biscuits. I may even share
my recipes with you."
    "I would like that." I'm surprised by this
realization. "So, where are we going today?"
    Grace stirs sugar into her coffee and gazes out the
wide window of the kitchen eating area at the rain. "We are going to a
very special place today. The Queen City Hotel."
    "Where is that?" I have been in Clarksville
for more than two decades and it still amazes me, the places I've never heard
of. But then, why would I? I don't talk to black people except to give them
instructions on the services I need. Ola Mae has been working for me about
fifteen years now, and I really don't know anything about her or her family.
Today, for some reason, that strikes me as sad. What kinds of stories could Ola
Mae tell?
    "The Queen City Hotel building is on the corner of Fifteenth
Street and Seventh Avenue," Grace says. "Robert Webster built it in
1909, four years before I was born. Robert belonged to the Webster family.
After the Civil War, he got himself a job working at the white hotel as a
waiter. He scrimped and saved for thirty years to build that place."
    "What
do you mean when you say he 'belonged' to the Webster family?" I ask,
deciding to take one more biscuit. I'll have to get on the treadmill again this
afternoon.
    "He
was a slave. Born into slavery and freed by the Webster family after the War.
He was thirteen years old when the War ended. That's when he went to work for
the Gilmores, the white folks who owned the hotel downtown for white people. He
saw what it was like for coloreds to never have a place to stay. They couldn't stay
at the white hotel, you know."
    "Yes,
of course." I guess that just fell out of my mouth, because I can tell
right away it was the wrong thing to say.
    Grace
looks at me with raised eyebrows, as if she's thinking I agree with
segregation. She continues, shaking her head. "White folks did not want to
mix with colored people anywhere. Not the hotels, not the restaurants, not the
stores. If colored people hadn't built these places I'm showing you, they might
as well have stayed in the field and picked cotton the rest of their
lives."
    Once
again, I am at a loss for words. Suddenly, I feel guilty for being white. And
what am I supposed to do with that feeling? The War is over and the blacks got
their rights, so why do we have to dwell on the past? Of course I know about
slavery and segregation. I just choose not to dwell on them. I prefer to
appreciate the beautiful aspects of the Old South, like the gracious lifestyle,
the lovely columned homes, the wide-skirted dresses with corsets and
crinolines, rococo furniture. Capturing and restoring the beauty of the
Southern plantation lifestyle is my specialty. And I've worked damn hard to get
where I am. People flock from all over the country to see that lifestyle
recreated once a year at the annual Clarksville Pilgrimage Tour of Homes.
    This
African-American project is tainting all of that for me and I resent it. Why
did I ever let Louisa Humboldt convince me to do this? I don't need the
Riverview restoration job that badly. How will I ever reconcile the two tours?
People leave the Pilgrimage Tour laughing and smiling and talking in bad
Southern accents. How will people leave this tour? Depressed and feeling
guilty, probably. Maybe this whole tour should have been left to black people
to figure out.
    I
can feel Grace watching me with those calm dark eyes of hers, as if she knows
what I'm thinking. Suddenly, I don't have much of an appetite and I put down my
biscuit. Better to press on, get busy. That always works.
    "Shall
we get going? I can't eat another bite." I rise and clear the dishes.
"How about if I wash these up real quick before we go?"
    Grace
doesn't stop me. She just smiles and pats my shoulder. "Thank you,"
she says. "I'll go powder my nose and get my