March 13, 2012. His daddy died in Georgia. We drove down. At the repast his cousins were drinking whiskey out of red cups in the backyard and somebody poured one and held it out to him and said, For your daddy, Leon, come on now, for your daddy. He looked at it a long time. Then he said, My daddy drank enough for both of us. And he went inside and washed every dish in that house. Fourteen years. Not today.
March 13, 2014. Our baby married Andre Whitaker at this church on Saturday and Leon cried harder than she did. He tried to hide it behind the program. Andre had three glasses of champagne at the reception and then a fourth, and he had a look on his face I know. Lord, let me be wrong. Not today.
March 13, 2016. Jayden is three months old and has his granddaddy’s ears, God help him. Andre came to the christening late and smelling like peppermint gum. I know what peppermint gum is for. I chewed enough of it for Leon in 1996. Not today. Not for me. But I am starting to understand who I’ve been keeping it for.
March 13, 2017. Tuesday night I came down the basement stairs for my meeting and Andre Whitaker was standing in the hallway in front of the Step Group door with his hands in his pockets, trying to decide. He saw me. I saw him. Neither one of us said a word. Then he went in, and I went into mine, and afterward we stood out by the side door in the cold, and I told him everything. Everything I never told Leon. He cried. I cried. We have an understanding now, that boy and me. Not today.
March 13, 2018. Andre has one year. He gave me his chip to keep for him. He said he didn’t trust himself with it yet, isn’t that the strangest thing. It’s in here now. I gave him a copy of the key. I told him the rules. He agreed to every one of them. He said, Mama Loretta, why are you doing this for me? I said, I’m not doing it for you, baby. I’m doing it for her. And for you. And for a man who doesn’t know yet that he is going to have to help you someday. Not today.
Leon set that one down and looked into the bottom of the bag again. He had missed it the first time. In the corner, under the folded overalls, was a small brass-colored coin. He picked it up. Stamped into it, inside a triangle inside a circle, were the words TO THINE OWN SELF BE TRUE and, in the center, a Roman numeral I. He held it next to the medallion he took out of his own pocket. They were nearly the same size. His said XXV around the rim—he had not bothered to get a new one in years—and was worn so smooth that the words had almost gone.
March 13, 2020. The church is closed for the virus. Odessa let me in the side door anyway with a mask on. Twenty-two years. Leon is cutting hair in our backyard for the old men who can’t get out, in a mask and gloves, six feet apart from everybody, with an extension cord running out of the kitchen window. He charges them nothing. He says somebody ought to make them feel like somebody. Not today.