If you just got here: I'm Terrence Tolliver. I'm 20, from Birmingham, Alabama, and I'm a sophomore at a historically Black university two hours down the road, where I play trumpet in the marching band and major in accounting. My grandmother raised me and my little sister Kiara, who is 16. I work in the library on work-study and send money home every other payday. I started this journal in September 1997 on the downtown library computer, when I was a senior in high school and it was called Senior Year. Why it's called Walk-On now is in the 1998 page.

Sunday, September 26, 1999

Home game yesterday. I marched it. That's two this season in my own spot, and it still hasn't gotten old, and Cedric says if it ever gets old I should quit.

Called home after church today. Grandma answered on the first ring, which means she was sitting by the phone, which means she was waiting on me, which she will deny to the grave. She sounds like herself again. She says the new pill from Monday "makes me feel like a young woman of sixty."

Kiara did Grandma's hair for church this morning, a press and curl, and three church mothers asked who did it. Grandma told them, "My granddaughter. She's got a price list." Kiara charges everybody now except Grandma. She's been at the vocational center half days since August and she has not cut one class. Not one. She says the teacher there talks to them "like we're already grown." I think that might be the whole secret and I wish somebody had told the high school.

Cedric says I have to change the name of this page, because I'm not a walk-on anymore, I'm in the rank. I said it isn't about the band. He said, "Then what's it about, Tolliver?" and I didn't have a good answer standing there with my horn in my hand. So here's the answer, a day late. Nobody gives you the spot first. Nobody gives you the scholarship first. You show up with what you have and you walk on. Mama walked on. Grandma's been walking on with her pressure since 1970. Kiara walked into that vocational center in August like she owned the building. I'm keeping the name.

Doc says returning-member scholarships get decided after Homecoming. Uncle Clarence is driving Grandma and Kiara down for Homecoming. Grandma says she is going to sit in those bleachers "if y'all have to carry me up and carry me down." Somebody is going to have to carry her up and carry her down. I already asked Marlon.

Money order number 17 went out Friday.

Horn up. -- T.

Tuesday, September 21, 1999

Sunday night the hall phone rang at nine-thirty, and I knew before anybody knocked on my door.

It was Kiara. Grandma got dizzy in the choir stand at morning service. She sat down in the middle of the second hymn, which she has never done in her life, and the nurse from the health fair was in the congregation and came right up and checked her pressure, and then Uncle Clarence drove her to the emergency room with Kiara in the back seat holding her pocketbook.

She's all right. I want to write that first, before everything. They kept her a few hours and sent her home, and her doctor saw her Monday morning and changed one of the pills.

What I keep thinking about is Kiara on the phone. She wasn't crying. She had it all written down: what the emergency room doctor said, the name of the new pill, what time the appointment was. She read it to me like a nurse. Then she said, "I got it, Terrence. You stay there." She said "Don't come home" the way she said it in February, except this time it meant the opposite thing.

I didn't go home. I went to practice Monday and marched, and I've called every night since. Tonight Grandma is going to answer and say, "Why do you keep calling? Is something wrong with YOU?"

Sunday, September 12, 1999

Yesterday was the home opener and I marched the halftime show. Not because somebody sprained an ankle. Because it's my spot.

Since I already know what the tunnel sounds like, this time I paid attention to other things. The rookie next to me, Andre, a freshman from Montgomery, was shaking so bad his plume was shaking. I leaned over and said, "Andre. Your horn." He put it up. I almost laughed right there in the tunnel. I have turned into Cedric. It took one year.

We opened with "No Scrubs," went into "Doo Wop (That Thing)," and the drum line did a break in the middle that made the visitors' side sit down. Then we closed with a Kirk Franklin song and the church people in the stands got up, the whole home side on its feet. A lady in a big red hat was waving her program at us like a funeral-home fan. I don't know her. She's my people anyway.

We won, too, 27 to 13, which in the band is what we call the other entertainment.

Called home from the pay phone. "Did you crack it?" "No ma'am." "Good." Then Grandma said, "Your sister wants you," which has never happened in recorded history. Kiara got on and said, "Did you look stupid?" I said no. She said, "Good," exactly like Grandma, and hung up on me.

Tuesday, September 7, 1999

I fell asleep in Dr. Lomax's class Friday. Eight o'clock in the morning, African American Literature, the junior class she signed me into, about twenty minutes into Zora Neale Hurston. Head down on the desk. Gone.

She didn't say anything in class. At the end she said, "Mr. Tolliver. Stay." Everybody filed out looking at me like I was about to be executed.

She asked what my days look like. So I told her. Classes in the morning. Band from four to seven. Library from eight to midnight on Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. Homework after that. A money order every other Friday. She listened to the whole thing without writing anything down, and at the end she said, "Hm."

Today she stopped me in the hall. The English department office needs a student worker. Twelve hours a week, same work-study money, answering the phone and filing, "and when it's quiet you can read, which it usually is." She had already talked to financial aid. She had already talked to the library. I start Monday.

I said thank you. She said, "Don't thank me. Stay awake."

Then she said the other thing, the one I can't put down. "Accounting is a fine thing to do, Mr. Tolliver. Is it a fine thing for you?"

I said it's a steady thing, and somebody in my family needs to have a steady thing. She said, "Hm," and walked off down the hall.

I gave her back Their Eyes Were Watching God on the first day of class, by the way. That's still August. Not a day later. I read it twice and didn't write in it, even though I wanted to, especially near the end where Janie says there are two things everybody has to do for themselves. I copied that part into my own notebook instead.

Sunday, August 29, 1999

Band camp is over and I didn't die. Again.

Second year is different. You know where the water fountain is. You know Cedric's voice before he opens his mouth. What's new is that this year I wasn't fighting for a spot in the band. I was fighting for a spot in the rank. Four of us going for three open trumpet spots. Doc and Cedric watched us for two weeks, every set, every turn. On the last Thursday they had each of us march the opener alone, one at a time, down the field with the whole section sitting on the hill watching.

Friday night the list went up outside the band room. Tolliver. Fourth rank.

Nobody made a speech. Cedric (senior, section leader, still the loudest man in Alabama) came by our room at eleven at night, stood in the doorway, and said, "Your horn didn't sag one time this week, Tolliver. I'm almost disappointed." Then he left. Marlon is my roommate again this year, and he looked up from his chemistry and said, "Was that a compliment?" I told him that's the biggest compliment Cedric knows how to give.

Saturday, August 14, 1999

Last night at home. Uncle Clarence drives me down at six tomorrow morning. This year I'm packed in one duffel and the trunk instead of two duffels and the trunk, because I learned you don't need all that. You need more socks and less of everything else.

Before I leave, I made Grandma a pill chart. Poster board from the drugstore, the days of the week across the top, two rows: MORNING (the water pill) and NIGHT (the little white one), and a box for a check mark. It's on the refrigerator under the church calendar magnet. Kiara's job is to check that Grandma checks. Grandma says she is a grown woman and does not need a chart. She has not missed one check mark in eleven days.

The two pills together run about thirty dollars a month. Medicare doesn't pay for pills. I didn't know that until this summer, and I bet most people don't know it until it's their grandma. So the money order goes from forty to fifty this year. I didn't ask. I told.

Kiara was mad at me all afternoon for no reason at all, and then at supper she put the last piece of chicken on my plate without saying anything. That's how we do it in this family.

Dr. Lomax's book is packed in my trumpet case, where I can't forget it.

Sunday, August 1, 1999

Pastor Pettway preached on Isaiah 40:31 this morning. I'm putting the whole verse here because I want to keep it: "But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint."

He took his time getting to the end of it. He said everybody wants the eagle part. Everybody wants to mount up. He said some of y'all are running so hard you forgot what you were running to. Then he stopped and wiped his face with his handkerchief and got real quiet, and said, "But some of you, the Lord is not asking you to fly this season. He's not asking you to run. He's asking you to walk, and not faint. And walking is not less. Walking is how most of us ever got anywhere."

Grandma said "WELL!" so loud the baby in the pew in front of us woke up.

I know he didn't write that sermon for me. He's got four hundred people. But I sat there in my good shirt with money order stubs in my wallet and my horn in the closet at home, and I felt like he'd been reading this page. (He hasn't. Pastor Pettway types with one finger.)

On the church steps afterward Grandma held on to my arm longer than she needed to. She said, "You hear that?" I said yes ma'am. She said, "Walk on, then."

Saturday, July 17, 1999

Kiara got her letter: she's IN the cosmetology program at the vocational center for eleventh grade. Half the day at the high school, half the day at the center. She read it on the porch, read it again, said "Well, that's that" exactly like Grandma, and went inside to call everybody she has ever met.

To celebrate, I bought her a ledger. A real one, green cover, columns, from the office supply store. She looked at it like I'd bought her a math book. Then I sat down on the back porch and set it up with her. Date. Customer (first names only, she insisted, "for privacy," she's been watching too much TV). Service. Price. Products. Time. And at the bottom of each week: what you made per hour.

Remember in April she was making about two dollars an hour. She raised her prices in May. This week, counting the braids she did for two sisters down the street for the church revival, she made five dollars and sixty cents an hour. She did the division herself. I didn't touch the calculator. That's more than minimum wage. It's less than me at the register. She pointed out that she doesn't have to wear a name tag.

I'm an accounting major and my sister is my first client. She doesn't pay me either.

Saturday, July 3, 1999

Grandma finally went to the doctor Wednesday. I kept after her until she went just to make me hush. I took the day off from the store and rode the bus with her, because she said she'd go by herself, and I know what by herself means. By herself means she gets to the corner and remembers she has a cake to make.

The doctor is a young woman with braids who called her Mrs. Gaines instead of Mother Gaines, and Grandma let her. The doctor said Grandma's pressure is high enough that it's not something to be playing with anymore. Grandma said, "I've had pressure since 1970." The doctor said, "Yes ma'am. And it's had you since 1970, too." Grandma looked at her a long time. Then she laughed. I have never in my life seen anybody win an argument with Grandma in under a minute.

So: two pills now, every day. Less salt. No more ham hock in the greens; smoked turkey instead. Grandma says that is not greens, that is a lie with greens in it.

Walking out to the bus stop she said, "Don't you tell anybody at church." Which is why I'm telling the Internet instead. Hi, Internet. Don't tell anybody at church.

Friday, June 25, 1999

My spring grades came. Grandma opened them, because anything with this address on it is hers, and put them on the refrigerator next to Kiara's report card:

Principles of Accounting I - B
U.S. History - B
Statistics - B
English 102 - A
Symphonic Band - A

That's a 3.3. No C. Grandma didn't move the magnet over anything this time. She moved it the other way, off to the side, so you can see the whole thing.

At the store, "College boy" has turned into "Professor." Mr. Oglesby calls me Professor. The Tuesday senior-discount ladies call me Professor. One of them asked me what I'm a professor of, and I said groceries, ma'am.

Also, I've read Dr. Lomax's book twice now. The green ink in the margins argues with the book sometimes. In one place she wrote YES in capitals, and in another place she wrote "No, Zora." I didn't know you could argue with a book and still love it. I think that might be what she's trying to teach me. I'll let you know.

-- T.