Saturday, June 5, 1999

Home for the summer. Back at the store on Third Avenue, except now I'm a cashier instead of a bagger, $5.75 an hour. Mr. Oglesby, the manager, shook my hand and said "College boy," and I can't tell if it was a compliment. The old ladies who come in on Tuesdays for the senior discount all want to know my grades. Birmingham is a small town when you're standing at a register.

Kiara's report card came. No F's. Two C's, three B's, and an A in typing. She put it on the refrigerator herself, right on top of the church calendar, and didn't say one word about it, just walked away. I stood there and read it twice. Grandma came in and saw me reading it and said, "Leave it alone. Don't make a thing out of it or she'll stop." So I'm making a thing out of it here, where she can't see it.

One thing. Last Sunday the church had the health fair in the fellowship hall and the nurse took Grandma's blood pressure and didn't like it. Told her to go see her doctor. Grandma says, "I've had pressure since 1970, I know my pressure." I made her promise to go. She promised the way she promises, which is a promise with the back door open.

Thursday, May 6, 1999

Finals week. I'm writing this instead of studying for Accounting, which tells you everything.

Dr. Lomax gave back our final portfolios today. When she handed me mine she said, "Stay a minute." Everybody else left. She said she teaches African American Literature in the fall, it's a junior class, but she'll sign me in if I want it. Then she asked what I do besides band. I said work. She said "Where?" I said the library, twelve hours, and sometimes more at home in the summer. She said, "Hm." That "hm" again. Then she gave me her own copy of Their Eyes Were Watching God, with her notes in the margins in green ink, and said, "Bring it back in August. Not a day later."

Doc had the spring meeting with everybody about next year. Scholarships for returning members get decided in the fall. He said to me, in front of the whole trumpet section, "Tolliver, we'll look at you." Cedric punched me in the arm so hard I have a bruise. That's "maybe." Maybe is more than I had last year.

Money for the year, for the record: I sent home fifteen money orders at forty dollars each. Six hundred dollars even. Kiara told me Grandma bought her school shoes in January with one of them. Good. That's what it's for.

Wednesday, April 21, 1999

I don't know what to say about Colorado. Yesterday the whole dorm lounge just stood there watching the TV, nobody sitting down, nobody talking. Those kids looked like kids at any school. Kids at my high school. Kiara's school. I called home last night just to hear Kiara say "What do you want?" in that voice. She did. I said nothing, just checking. She said "You're so weird," and I said I know.

But also, before that, the school had called Grandma last week because Kiara cut fifth and sixth period twice. So tonight I called back and asked her about it. And for once she didn't hang up. We talked for an hour and I used up the whole calling card.

Here's what I found out. She wants to do hair. Not "someday," now. She does her friends' hair on the back porch, braids and presses, and she's good, and she's been charging. She says school is "just sitting." So I did what an accounting major does and asked her what she charges and what the products cost, and we figured out on the phone that she's been making about two dollars an hour. She was outraged. It was the best conversation we've had in a year.

I told her they have cosmetology at the vocational center in eleventh grade, but you have to pass tenth grade to get there. She said she'd go to fifth and sixth period if I stop "acting like Grandma on the phone." Deal. I don't even know what I was doing that was like Grandma. Probably everything.

Thursday, March 18, 1999

We had to write an essay about a place. I wrote about Grandma's kitchen at five o'clock in the morning: the radio on low to the gospel station, the percolator, her humming something that isn't quite a song, and her Bible open on the table next to the grits pot. How she reads a verse while she stirs. How I used to lie in bed and listen and know that everything was going to be all right because the kitchen was going.

I got it back today with no grade on it. Just "See me" in green ink. I thought I was in trouble. I thought she thought I copied it from somewhere.

I went to her office. She has more books than the third floor of the library where I work and I'd know. She said, "Where did you learn to write like this?" I said I didn't know, I just write every week. I didn't tell her about this page. She asked what my major was. I said accounting. She said, "Hm." That's all. "Hm." Then she gave me an A and said to keep writing.

That "hm" has been following me around all week.

Also, I turned 20 on the 9th. Marlon and the trumpet section bought a cake at the grocery store and had them write on it "HAPPY BIRTHDAY TOLLIVER YOUR HORN IS SAGGING." It took up the whole cake. I'm keeping the plastic trumpet that was on top.

Monday, March 1, 1999

I took the Greyhound home Friday after rehearsal and came back yesterday. It's a long way to go for one conversation but it was the right conversation.

Saturday night Kiara and me sat on the front steps after Grandma went to bed. The streetlight was buzzing. I asked her about the fight. She said the girl said something about Mama. I asked what, and she wouldn't say, and I didn't make her.

Then she said, "You left." Just like that. "You left and now it's just me and Grandma, and Grandma's tired, Terrence. She's asleep by seven-thirty. I do the dishes. I read her the mail because she can't find her glasses. I call the light company." Then she said she didn't mean it. I told her she did mean it and she's right. I did leave. I'd do it again, and I'd still be sorry.

We sat there a long time. She put her head on my shoulder for about four seconds and then said "Your jacket smells like a bus," which it did.

Sunday morning Grandma made breakfast and said, to nobody in particular, "Somebody had to go first." Kiara looked at her plate. I looked at mine. I don't know if that fixed anything. I wrote most of this on the bus.

Friday, February 12, 1999

The Senate let the President off today. The whole lounge was watching and half the people cheered and half didn't care and Marlon said "Can we watch something else now, it's been a YEAR."

I couldn't care about any of it because Wednesday night Grandma called the hall phone, which she never does because it costs, and the girl who answered came and banged on my door. Kiara got suspended for three days for fighting at school. Grandma's voice sounded small. I've never heard Grandma sound small.

Kiara wouldn't come to the phone. I could hear the TV in the background and I knew she was right there in the living room, not coming.

I'm two hours away. I'm sitting in a computer lab typing this on a Friday night instead of out with the section, because I don't know what else to do with my hands. I'm going home next weekend if I can scrape up the bus fare.

Monday, January 18, 1999 -- King Day

We marched in the King Day parade this morning, the whole band, rookies and alternates and everybody, because a parade doesn't have a rank to be left out of. It was cold. Your lips stick to the mouthpiece when it's cold. Still. People on the curb had their babies up on their shoulders, and there were old men in the crowd standing at attention when we went by. I thought about what Grandma says about marching: "Some people marched so you could march." I kept my horn up the whole route.

New semester. In the spring the marching band turns into the symphonic band and we play sitting down, which my knees are thanking God for. Also: Principles of Accounting I, U.S. History, Statistics, and English 102 with Dr. Lomax. She is small, with gray locks and reading glasses on a chain, and the first thing she said to us was, "I don't want to read what you think I want to hear. I've read that already. Write me something I haven't read." Half the class dropped by Friday. I'm staying.

Stamps went up to 33 cents, so every money order envelope I have with a 32-cent stamp on it needs a penny stamp now. It's a penny. It feels personal.

-- T.