Leon read it three times. Then he passed it to his daughter without a word, and opened the next one.
March 13, 2000. Two years. He carried Tasha on his shoulders the whole length of the parade on Pennsylvania Avenue and let her wave at everybody like she was the Queen of England, and when she spilled her snowball down the back of his neck he laughed. I had forgotten what his laugh sounded like. I had forgotten I married that laugh. Not today.
March 13, 2001. He wanted a drink today. I saw it. We were at Darnell’s cookout and somebody put a cold can in his hand without thinking, and he stood there holding it and looking at it like a man looking down a well. Then he set it on the railing very carefully and went and called Zeke from the kitchen phone. He doesn’t know I saw. Not today.
March 13, 2003. Zeke passed in January. Leon is buying the shop from Mrs. Booker. He sat up all night at the kitchen table with the papers, scared to death, and asked me did I think he could do it. I said yes. I meant it. I almost told him about the locker right then, I don’t know why. Something about how scared he looked. I didn’t. Not today.
March 13, 2005. I don’t know why I keep doing this. Seven years. He is the best man on Pennsylvania Avenue and everybody knows it. Mr. Bell’s wife died and Leon cut his hair every week for free for a year and drove him to the cemetery on Sundays. I think I keep the bag the way you keep a scar. Not because it still hurts. Because you need to remember there was a time you survived something. Not today.
Tasha had stopped reading the ones he handed her. She was holding them against her chest, with the rabbit, and crying silently, her braids falling forward around her face.
March 13, 2008. Tasha turned sixteen and Leon taught her to drive in the Mondawmin Mall parking lot on Sunday mornings for two months and never raised his voice once. Not once. I raised mine. She hit a shopping cart corral and I screamed like a banshee and he just laughed and said, Well, it was in the way. My Lord, that man. Not today. Not ever, maybe. But I’m keeping it anyway. I don’t know who for anymore.