Finding Fish

Antwone dedicates his autobiography to his wife LaNette and their daughter. She is described as “funny, smart, passionate, and determined” with a “gorgeous mouth and smile” (359). She is “the prettiest woman [Antwone has] ever seen” (359). She and Antwone meet while he is writing his first screenplay. Though he has sworn off dating, he immediately thinks that LaNette is “nice” (360) and, looking in her eyes, believes she might be the one. The couple marry just over a year later.

Indigo Fisher is Antwone’s daughter. She has the security and love that her father lacked. Named for “Mood Indigo” and the sky in Antwone’s dream of having a family, Indigo represents the fulfilment of Antwone’s dreams. “At two years and three months, Indigo is tall for her age, with my dark, serious eyes and LaNette’s gorgeous mouth and smile.

“A hardworking father of eight” (4), Horace Elkins is Antwone’s grandfather. He is a trusted and respected member of the community and a family man. He has Choctaw ancestry, and his surname is inherited from a slave master of the previous generation. Horace becomes Catholic and educates himself, especially in literature, and gains a doctorate in medicine.

Married to Horace Snr., Emma Elkins is known for caring for other people’s children along with her own nine. She is a strong woman who lays down the law. She is intuitive, cares deeply about her family, and is so affected by the death of her son Eddie Elkins that she prevents the rest of the family from speaking of it, or of speaking ill of Frances, his girlfriend and killer. Her health declines after her son’s death.

The eldest son of Horace and Emma Elkins is still living in Cleveland when Antwone visits for Thanksgiving. He was Minister of Defense for the Black Panthers in Cleveland during the Vietnam protests.

The absent character around whom the family’s variable fortunes revolve, Eddie Elkins is Antwone’s father, to whom the autobiography is dedicated. He is the second oldest son, a talented poet and singer who is both passionate and hotheaded, “mean” and “charming” (8). He is discharged from the armed services. Eddie is nicknamed “Swami” because his dreamy eyes mesmerize the local girls. He has two sons by his girlfriend, Frances, and another, Antwone, by Eva Fisher. He dies at age 23 at Frances’s hands and is buried, along with his poems and letters in Cavalry Cemetery.

Ray is Antwone’s uncle, whom he visits in Chicago prior to returning to Cleveland to visit the rest of the family. The family resemblance stuns them both. In his youth, Ray is known as “Parkwood Bruno” for his pugnacity. Raymond remembers seeing Antwone sitting on the mailbox as a child before they knew they were related. He tells Antwone stories that help him reconnect with his family.

Named after the philosopher, Spinoza is one of the youngest sons of Horace and Emma Elkins. He is described as “ambitious” (8).

The eldest of the Elkins girls, Eda is intelligent and independent. She marries early and works as a nurse in Chicago. She is articulate and educated, especially in literature. She tells Antwone about his father and arranges for Antwone to visit the family for Thanksgiving. She comforts Antwone and dies two years after their meeting.

Ann is the second oldest girl and is described as “kind and warm” (8). She tells Antwone that he shares his sarcastic sense of humor with his late father.

Antwone’s uncle leaves the home of his alcoholic father to join the war in Korea before his mother passes away. He is the oldest of six children with whom he loses touch during the war. When he returns, he takes a construction job with the union. He is considered resourceful by his army peers and described as “down to earth” (342). He is a family friend of the Elkins’.

Antwone’s mother is unable to care for him because at 17, she is “like a child” (44). After her mother dies when she is twelve, Eva herself enters foster care. She gets into a bad crowd and is imprisoned for truancy and other misdemeanors. Eddie Elkins charms her, and she hopes that keeping his child will force him and his family to take care of her. She has a nice singing voice and likes music, naming Antwone after a Fats Domino song. When Antwone meets her as an adult, she is unstable and ashamed after a hard life.

Mr. Pickett is Antwone’s foster father. Away from his pulpit, he is a quiet man, whom Antwone respects and who likes Antwone. Mr. Pickett occasionally gives Antwone a nickel or a pat on the head but never smiles, and it transpires that he does not even know Antwone’s name. Unlike Horace Elkins, he is a “wannabe” doctor. He successfully treats Antwone for eczema, though the treatment is painful. At his wife’s prompting, he administers whippings to the children as punishment. He is deferential to the white people in the neighborhood, having internalized the racism that is part of the heritage of colonialism. He has a large family, and his dwindling congregation and advancing years prompt him and his wife to return to the South, leaving Antwone uncared for.

Antwone’s abusive foster mother inflicts years of pain on him and his foster siblings. Antwone reflects later in life that her enslavement and maltreatment of the children was probably motivated by her own subjugation, but he condemns her cruel behavior. Though keen to appear virtuous, she is deeply hypocritical and manipulative. She treats the children like slaves and, like a slave master, seeks to weaken them by undermining their confidence in themselves. She verbally and physically abuses all the foster children and often leaves them both emotionally and literally starving. She is described as an “alien leader” (36) and a “witch” (220).

The kind of the Picketts’ daughters, Mercy gives Antwone a Christmas present, his social services allowance, and a place to stay while he is homeless. She is living with her foster sister Flo in Bedford Heights when Antwone returns to Cleveland from Pennsylvania where he finished high school.

The cruel Pickett sister, Lizzie is unkind to Antwone and “hates” him. While Mrs. Pickett is away down south, the children are left with Lizzie and her children. She lets Antwone spend three days in agony when he breaks his elbow before her father finally takes him to hospital. She also steals Antwone’s record collection.

After moving into the Picketts’ household after his marriage falls apart, Brother is not unkind to the boys and laughs with them, though he fails to protect them from Mrs. Pickett’s cruelty. He later commits suicide.

Brother to Flo, Dwight is a year older than Antwone, intelligent and knowledgeable. Antwone believes that Dwight could have been a “senator or a congressman or a CEO, if someone had only loved him and given him the right encouragement” (139). Dwight frequently fights with Antwone, who is favored by Mr. Pickett, Mercy, and Keith, and he runs away to be with his mother. When she cannot look after him, he lives secretly in the basement before leaving to live at Boys Town, a home for adolescent boys that precipitates a life of crime and incarceration.

The youngest foster child is attractive, has lighter skin than Antwone, and is treated better by Mrs. Pickett, causing Antwone to see himself as inferior to Keith. Antwone defends Keith from Dwight’s jealousy, gaining his trust. Like Antwone, Keith experiences sexual abuse while living at the Picketts’, though Mrs. Pickett does discover this. Antwone helps Keith make the transition back to living with his mother.

Flo is Antwone’s foster sister and Dwight’s biological sister. She is the first of the children to understand that they are fostered. When she and Antwone are reunited after years apart, she is living with Mercy, the Picketts’ kind daughter, single, and working at the Job Corps.

Willenda is a neighbor who babysits the foster children and sexually molests Antwone until he is 10 years old.

Antwone’s elementary school teacher is the closest thing to a mother that Antwone “would ever know” (138) and a teacher “in the truest and best sense of the word” (131). She is described as an “angel” (131) and as “fair” (132), a quality for which Antwone will later be praised during his work as a prison warden. She and her husband Milton offer Antwone good parental care that he will later replicate in his marriage to LaNette. Mrs. Profit encourages Antwone, offering him constructive criticism, and creates a sense of equality among the students. She suspects Antwone’s familial problems. Mrs. Profit introduces the children to classical music and the civil rights movement. Under her tutelage, Antwone’s self-esteem and grades improve. Antwone writes in his autobiography that he is grateful to her for believing in his “potential, even when there was little outward indication of it” (367).

Antwone falls for Freda after her family moves into Parkwood, a few blocks from the Picketts’. She is described as pretty, though less so than her sister Mona, and as “petite and coy, yet tough” and “a real girl next door” (179). Antwone dreams about her for years, and after returning to Cleveland from his time in Pennsylvania finishing high school, he takes her to a Dramatics concert. At this time, Antwone’s high school crush still lives with her sister.