Page 103 of You've Got a Place Here, Too
“Not justwhatever,Ma,” she says, and I can tell by the heat in her voice that she’s loaded for bear. “Not when we’re talking about a public university, at the mercy of whoever happens to be running this state. And I mean, I know it was purple those years you grew up here, but do I have to remind you howretrogradeFlorida is these days? Electing that evil-ass governor? A man who spewshatefor every kind of marginalized and vulnerable person? Who sees hurricane after hurricane devastating his constituents and still denies climate change is evena thing? Who—”
“Okay, okay—yes, hon, I know.” I’ve noticed another mother on the bus, clearly eavesdropping on us, beaming me aget her togetherglare. “But you know where that man gothiseducation, right? Yale undergrad. And Harvard Law. Two of your top contenders, hmm?”
“Right, and how ’bout Agent Orange went to Penn?” the other mother interjects, and suddenly I find that we’re trading those same knowing grins I resented when I was seventeen.
The Venom Express rounds Palmetto Street, stopping underneath its pretty umbrella of oaks, and on her way off a tall young woman in basketball shorts and Nike slides bends down to Jossy to hand her a flyer. “Trust and believe,” the girl says, in that particular drawl I have missed since leaving North Florida. “We out here fighting that fool every day.” She slips on headphones as she bounces off the bus, and before Jossy folds and slips the paper inside her jeans pocket I spy the wordAlliance,the lettersLGB.My girl is quiet a moment—moved, it seems, by a respectable peer. By the time we’re cruising down Wahnish Way she’s gazing out the window, where the huge bronze statue of a rattler, coiled and ready to strike, sits outside a student services center.
Jossy taps the window as we pass it. “We can take some pictures in front of that later,” she says. “You know, for Grandma. And for your Stories too, if you want.”
“Okay,” I say, hope surging again. Already I’m planning the post: #WeBraggDifferent #HBCUMade #ExcellenceWithCaring #BabyRattler #StrikeStrikeAndStrikeAgain #93TilInfinity…
“But tell me,” Jossy says, smirking. “Why do you even know where DeSatan went to school?”
“Hey, I do my oppo research.”
Jossy giggles and picks up her phone again. This time she turns on selfie mode and starts filming a video. “Opps,Ma. SayI research my opps.”
“I absolutely will not.”
The bus slows, approaching the opposite edge of the Set. We hop off and stroll arm in arm toward the university commons,where the larger group is gathering. A few of the kids are now wearing their T-shirts from the tote bags we got at the welcome ceremony, and on the perimeter, their parents snap discreet photos with their own phones. In the distance, the sound of the band floats in the air—the whole reason me and my girls bothered going to the football games in the first place, dancing in the stands at halftime and then dipping, the drums still shaking our bones on our way out the gates. They’re practicing out of season, Jossy and I have been told, for some secret engagement coming up in Paris. Whatever hip-hop loop the horn section’s blaring now, I couldn’t say, but my baby recognizes it. Beside me I feel her swaying, a gentle tug on my arm. “Okay, so back to this story,” she says as she pulls me toward a trash can to throw away the dregs of her coffee. “Bye-bye, NYU and Kelly Traynor; hello, FAMU and Jeremiah…?”
She’s waiting for me to fill in the blank. There’s nothing left to do, then, but confess.
“Jeremiah Rashad Jarvis,” I say. “Uh-huh.”
“Ooo-ooo-ooh,” she teases, in a sitcom singsong. Then I see it hit her, right there on the red brick. She grips my arm hard, eyes bugging out. “Wait, Dr.J. R.Jarvis? Not the dude who invited us here?”
I give her a wink that saysclever girl.“The dean of students,” I say, scanning the crowd. And there he is to meet us, outside the caf. Right on time and as tall as I remember, and wearing a suit with a paisley pocket square I’ll clown him for later. He hasn’t spotted me yet. I can’t stop grinning.
“Ma!” barks Jossy, mortified.
“Didn’t I mention?” I say, then pluck at the tee that I’m wearing—a favorite amid my alumni gear, the forest green screen-printed with bright orange letters:Famuly Is Forever.
3.
By six o’clock, the sun relents. Jossy heads off with the other prospects to the Essential Theatre, for a special production ofTwo Trains Running,and I dash back to our hotel room in Railroad Square to freshen up before meeting Jeremiah for dinner. I’ve packed a dress that makes me feel happy and free, in a bold yellow Viola Davis would slay. The worst wrinkles steam out during my shower, but when I zip up the dress and study myself in the harsh bathroom light, I know there’s no hiding these thirty pounds I’ve gained. I pin up my hair, then dab vanilla-scented oil behind each ear, on either side of my neck, at the places where I feel the thump of my pulse.
My phone vibrates; the group chat has voted.Ruby Woo it is,I text them back,but whew chile, I don’t think I can do them heels.
In the Lyft, inspecting the pedicure inside my cutest flat sandals, I replay my reunion with Jeremiah. Why should I feel so self-conscious right now, I wonder, when both of us have visibly aged? Grays spring out at my temples, sure, but they also salt his goatee, and the locs I helped him start freshman year are long gone. “Hey, Mr. Clean,” I’d crowed when he’d bent down to hug me, for the first time in literal decades. We’d swayed and laughed through it like the elders do, as Jossy made silly faces behind his back.
The car drops me in front of another admin building on campus I don’t recognize. Jeremiah, still in his suit, meets me in the lobby and hugs me again—not as long or as tight as the first time, but it’s nice enough that my eyes instinctively close. “You look great,” he says.
“Just tryna keep up with you.”
“In fact, I’d say you almost too fancy for Tallahassee, but we got…whatchamacallits now. Gastropubs!”
“But do y’all have farm-to-table, though?” I say, squinting.
He rolls his eyes and laughs. “Come check out my office?”
Inside, it’s all chrome and new-carpet smell, closed for the day and quiet except for the hum of computers and a copy machine in the middle of some complex collating job. He drapes his suit jacket and tie across the back of his desk chair, and changes into a pair of black-and-white Vans he might’ve worn back in the day. While he returns a few phone calls—summer-term students he’s helping push through to the fall, I gather, and who, I can tell, are lucky to have him as their champion—I look around at the photos he’s hung: There’s Jeremiah in ceremonial regalia at commencement, a group of fresh graduates tossing up peace signs around him. Jeremiah on the cover of the alumni magazine in 2017, the year he got promoted to this job. Jeremiah on break back in Jacksonville, grinning outside Kona between his eight-year-old sons. Their neon-green helmets make them look like Marvin the Martian times two. Between Jeremiah’s calls, I exclaim over the photo—how cute the twins are, how crazy it is that Kona’s still open—but mostly I’m quiet moving down the gallery wall. My girls on the group chat will make me confess it: I’m scanning, too, for evidence of a woman, anyone who might be special to Jeremiah these days. Finding nothing, I’m not sure if I should feel happy or sad.
But I almost gasp when I spy a shot I’ve kept too, marked at the bottom right corner with the same orange digits:05 18 1997. Otherwise known as the day I left town. There’s a whole crew of us at the Tallahassee airport—Black kids crowding the gate, back in the time you could do such a thing. In the middle Jeremiahhas one arm thrown over my shoulders, and in his free hand he holds up the unauthorized culture zine I launched at FAMU sophomore year—one issue of which scored me a crack, finally, at New York, via an assistant gig at a real magazine. I am twenty-one years old in the photo. Wonky TWA on my head, bulging backpack at my feet. “Awww, look at baby rock star Ma!” Jossy squealed when she spied it for the first time, flipping through one of my old scrapbooks in prep for this visit. I understand what it is that she saw: my grin and my bright, shining eyes, my friends who’ve gathered to hype me up. But whenever I’ve allowed myself to muse over it lately, sipping wine late at night after Jossy’s gone to bed, all I see on my face is what happened the night before. The thrill of it mixed with the melancholy…Despite the crowd of people in it, this photo, to me, is strangely intimate. Much too special for public display. And now I worry Jeremiah sees it differently. That to him I was, and always will be, just the homie.
“Can you believe,” I hear him say behind me now, “that we were ever this young?”
“Tuh.Nothing in that backpack but some clothes and a copy ofSister Outsider.”
