“Kerbo Student in Marching Band”
— The Clarion
A couple of days after the boys got their bottoms warmed, Mr. Folsom paused at my desk and, with a curious inflection, said, “You’ve been called to the principal’s office.” That was it. No explanation. No reassurance. I went in fear and trembling to The Office, imagining myriad crimes of which I might be accused. Imagining, too, the report of the principal’s wide board on my ample bottom. But I had not been brought to be punished. There was only a note, handed to me by the principal’s secretary in a sealed envelope, labeled “Confidential for Miss Handsom.”
I opened it. Inside, on ruled paper, was a note from Miss Chandler.
“Come to my classroom fifth period. Imperative,” was scrawled the urgent if enigmatic command.
Why in the world hadn’t Miss Chandler put her name on the envelope? Why couldn’t she have just passed me the note herself? Or passed it along by the hand of my homeroom teacher? What in the world merited such discretion? I rushed to finish lunch quickly, clenching my note like a passport as I traversed the hall to find Miss Chandler sunk into the Chip-and-Dale chair only recently integrated into her classroom furnishings.
“Cilla! Come in,” Miss Chandler rose heavily.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“I have some good news, Cilla. Exceptional news! Extraordinarily exceptional considering your circumstances.”
I wasn’t sure what she meant by circumstances. Would that refer to my performance in Myron Putnal’s algebra class? Carter Buchanan’s Biology? Miss Chandler’s English? What about P.E., History or Pellicore?
“No, no,” Miss Chandler’s jowls wattled like a turkey’s. “Talkin’ about your tests scores, first of all. The step test? That you took at Kerbo School?”
The step, yes. At our old school. Already Kerbo had acquired the distance of Troy. Miss Chandler shuffled a leaf of papers off her desk.
“I have your scores, Cilla.”
“Did I do bad?”
“No. On the contrary, you did quite well. You scored in the seventieth percentile in language skills, which is remarkable, I would argue, considering. And in math skills, Cilla, you are ranked in the eighty-fifth percentile of students taking this test. That is a terrific score. Pushes you into the seventy-ninth percentile overall.”
But what did that mean? What good would it do me?
“I’ve been talking on the phone with Dr. Clarence Ransom, he’s a professor in the School of Music at Florida State. I’ve told him about your situation. Cilla, if you can demonstrate as much competency with your French horn as you did on the step and finish your academic year with decent grades, I believe you can earn a top-notch scholarship.”
“Scholarship?”
“To college, Cilla. Florida State University.”
“How much of a scholarship?”
“With a job on campus I think it would amount to a full ride. But your horn has to be good. You have to be able to perform.”
“Would I have to march?”
“No. The scholarship isn’t attached to the marching band at all. It’s offered through the School of Music.”
“Music? You can study music in college?”
“You most certainly can.”
The prospect was so alien, so overwhelming, that at first I could not digest it. I almost missed the remainder of Miss Chandler’s excited brief.
“…they want a recording. Something you perform on your instrument. Mr. Pellicore has agreed to arrange that. You listening, Cilla?”
It was a lot to hear.
“Dr. Ransom doesn’t expect perfection. But the scholarship is performance-based. We need to do well enough to get his attention.”
“His attention?”
“I’m hoping you can be invited for an audition, Cilla. A formal audition. This is just the first step.”
To study music? Without marching? It seemed too good to be true.
“But, Cilla, you can’t look too far ahead. You still have obligations to Mr. Pellicore. You can’t quit the Marching Saints.”
“Oh, Lord.”
“You can’t . You accepted Mr. Pellicore’s quid pro quo and you’re going to keep your part of that commitment. It’s the proper thing to do, not just for you, but on behalf of the next Negro coming behind you.”
The next Negro? I don’t suppose I realized until that moment that I was at the center of several ‘firsts’. I was the first black student of any gender to play in the high school band. The first to march on a field that still flew a Confederate flag in its end zone. Friday night would also be the first time I marched before a real audience. The first time any Negro ever marched with the Laureate’s virgin saints.
“Cilla. Cilla, are you hearing me?”
I roused myself. “Yes, ma’am.”
“This is a tremendous opportunity, an exceptional opportunity.”
Tremendous? I didn’t know whether to shout or hide.
“But, Cilla—and this is very important—we can’t go bragging about this. The word will get out, but not from you, do you understand?”
“I wouldn’t never brag, Miss Chandler.”
“It goes beyond the issue of comportment, child. Lots of students in this school would resent anyone getting this kind of opportunity. Much less a Negro. And a girl. So you don’t talk about scholarships or colleges to anyone.”
“No, ma’am.”
“Something else. Keep a record of your grades. Keep every quiz, every test, every piece of homework. Just take ’em home and put ’em in a box. I want to make sure, come semester’s end, that you get what you earned.”
That I earned? “My grades? Can they take them away?”
“Not if we keep everything in the light, Cilla. And I aim to keep a very bright light. That is my job. Your job is to study hard, practice your instrument, and keep your commitments. Don’t give anybody an excuse to pull you down. Remember that a full ride to college is now a real possibility. Stay humble, stay prayerful. Keep your eye on the ball.”
First thing I did on leaving Miss Chandler, of course, was to corral Joe Billy in the hall and give him the news.
“College, can you ’magine?! And I wouldn’t have to march! Whatchu think?”
“Beats hell out of stringing tobacco,” Joe Billy agreed, but not with enthusiasm.
“Joe Billy, aint, aren’t you excited for me?”
“I am, Cilla. It’s just—”
“Just what?”
“We got kicked off the team. Me and Pudding and Chicken.”
“Off the football team?”
“They fired Coach Newton, too.”
“Who? Who did?”
“The hell you think? Garner Hewitt watn’t about to have niggers playing on the same field as his blond-headed boy.”
“Joe Billy. But—? Does that mean you cain’t be excited for me?”
“I’m ’cited. Just ain’t showin’ is all.”
The bell rang. Joe Billy seemed disinclined to elaborate regarding his enthusiasm for my opportunity.
“See you this afternoon, then,” I said.
He shook his head. “Got to make a run to Jacksonville. ’Nother Jimmy wantin’ hisself a guitar.”
“When you back? When I see you?”
The press of students filling the hall pushed him downstream.
“Sometime.”
And before I could reply he slid sideways along the wall and down the hall. A lump started crowding out the glad place that had been in my heart, in my stomach.
“Hell with you, then!” I called out to the startled aspect of students nearby. “To hell with you, Joe Billy!”
I didn’t see Joe Billy the remainder of that week, not at school or in his lofty apartment. I was pressed with obligations of tests and homework at the time, and had other distractions at home. Corrie Jean had acquired some kind of croup. I was up two, sometimes three times a night, rubbing liniment on her chest.
“Fug me,” Mama crooned gratefully.
Come Friday morning I was dog tired. By Friday afternoon I was nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. That night, I knew, a thousand people would be watching me, seeking in my performance evidence for conclusions already reached or justified. Waiting for that nigger girl to go marching on their field.
“Settle down, Cilla,” Pellicore jerked me to earth sometime around fourth period before addressing the rest of the band.
“Remember to check your uniforms early. Go over your instruments, your music. Check with your section leaders if you have questions.”
“When you want us to be back here, Mr. Pellicore?”
“ In the hall by six o’clock.”
We got out of school around three-thirty. Grandma and Mama would not have supper before six. I decided to remain in the band hall. Juanita brought me a soda and banana and a tuna fish sandwich. We shared a meal quietly.
“You’ll do fine,” she patted me on the arm. “Just follow the trombones. And if you make a mistake, don’t worry about it. Everybody does. Just don’t stop. Get back and pick it up.”
I would hear that advice many times in my career, and would freely give it to other nervous musicians.
“You make a mistake, don’t stop. Keep going.”
I remember performing with an opera orchestra in Milan in the late seventies for a performance of The Marriage of Figaro . I was not a featured player, then, but I was at principal on my instrument. Act iv of that opera can be a challenge, Mozart’s music tumbling from one number to another in keeping with the activity on stage, revelations, switched identities, a piercing of disguise, an apology. It is a pall-mall piece of storytelling in music, an operatic denouement of Beaumarchais’ play.
You miss a measure as I did in that kind of run and you can throw off an entire orchestra. But the only thing you can do is keep playing. The singers can’t stop, the conductor can’t stop, the musicians absolutely cannot stop, but the audience can stop, can be lurched to a halt dead in their seats which is the last thing in the world you want them to be.
So you just keep going. You pick it up as though you never missed a beat. But on this one occasion I paused, I tried to correct a mistake, God knows why. I knew better. And so at the end of the performance the conductor cornered me in the pit.
“YOU LOST AN ENTIRE MEASURE!”
“Yes. Sorry.”
“WHO THE HELL MADE YOU FIRST CHAIR?!”
I stared at him coldly.
“Probably the same asshole made you conductor.”
Before I left the house I called my agent and told her to get me another orchestra. In life as well as in art you learn quickly that when you make a mistake the worst thing you can do is stop.
Juanita Land and I had the band hall to ourselves and I was a bundle of nerves. I seem always to either have too much time on my hands or too little. That day I had roughly two hours to kill between the end of school and preparations for my first, momentous appearance on a high school football field. Two hours to kill and no idea what to do with myself.
After our short meal Juanita had a suggestion.
“Let’s take a look at your uniform.”
Earlier that week we had been given our uniforms; red wool with white leather epaulets and trim, Prussian hats with fake horse-hair plumes and genuine leather visors that Pellicore had us shine with shoe polish. They were stored, all the band’s uniforms, in a classroom just off the auditorium. It was a nice smelling room, a mixture of leather and mothballs and wool. Damp and cool, too, like a basement.
The band’s uniforms hung on hangers from a long steel pipe that ran sagging at intervals the length of the room. A litter of harnesses, instrument cases and spare parts crowded the floor.
“Here’s yours,” Juanita had to get on tiptoe to reach my accoutrement.
I had the largest jacket on the rack except Rodney’s, who was nearly three inches taller than six feet. I already knew that the trousers fit me perfectly, plenty of room, fire-engine red with a gray, Confederate stripe straight down the side. The jacket was all right, too, except in the arms. I felt like a yokel with half my forearm sticking out to reach my two-toned hands. Felt like a vaudeville player. In blackface.
“Got mine,” Juanita sang out, fishing her own uniform off the jerry-rigged rack. She paused a moment to fuss over her jacket’s brass buttons, bright as dimes with Brasso, the set of the collar. A very masculine collar.
“What do you think?”
“Looks nice,” I replied.
“Think I’ll try it on,” Juanita declared. “Watch the door.”
But before I could take a step to bar that entrance her T-shirt came up over her head and there she was tiny and white and naked from the waist up. No bra. Her breasts were perfectly firm and small as pears. The chill in the cloakroom had her nipples hard.
“Cold in here!” she shivered coyly, and something still unfamiliar lurched in my loins. A contraction. A flutter.
“How do I look?”
“Fine,” I said through thick lips.
“Well, then,” suddenly she was all brisk and ponytails. “Let’s be sure we put these back where we found ’em or Pellicore will have a hissy.”
It wasn’t too long afterward that other students started dropping in. Pretty soon the band hall was a mayhem of teenagers scrambling to find their ensembles of uniform and instrument and music. Pellicore arrived to center the maelstrom that from then on I would find churning every Friday. It took what seemed to me a completely unorganized hour for the band to get uniforms and instruments and music and line up section by section beside the chinaberry out back. Section leaders strolled through the gathered ranks in military inspection. Rodney tapped me briefly on the shoulder.
“Chinstrap, Cilla.”
“Oops.”
I snugged my chinstrap secure. Glanced over to Juanita. She was already in posture with her flute, straight and serene as an elf. Jade eyes caged straight ahead.
We marched to snares toward the bleachers. Ralph-stepped up to our assigned places on those aluminum tiers. The air was so sharp, that evening. A concession stand situated along a Gulf-born breeze wafted aromas of popcorn and hotdogs. The field, just cut, was heavy with evening dew. That special smell of cut grass. That Friday night smell. Even the bleachers’ metal seats were damp with humidity.
I wished Joe Billy could be in the stands, to see me. He was installed with Chicken Swamp and Pudding in the colored section. The rope that delineated the formal pen into which black spectators were herded had been taken down, but even Joe Billy could be influenced by local mores to keep his appointed place. Miss Chandler, however, rejected any such restriction. I was amazed to see my Kerbo teacher fixed like a boulder in the midst of the bleachers, her gaze, it seemed to me, fixed on the ostracized students at the end of the field.
I felt like a fly on a plate. In a few minutes I would be the only person of color on the Hornets’ white-lined field. It would be I—not Pudding, not Chicken, nor Joe Billy—who would be the first black student that whites would see in uniform. Was that a cause for resentment among my classmates? Or jealousy? Was Joe Billy jealous of my sudden achievement, or the opportunity at Florida State?
These concerns and others already in play threatened to disrupt the concentration I would need to do my business, tempting my eyes to stray from the monotonous music Pellicore required. It was simple music; nevertheless I was worried I would screw up, that with the first step onto the field I would freeze. And then our director stood up with his baton.
“Instruments!”
The brass of my horn crushing into my ribs.
“Fight Song. One. Two. One, two, three…”
A percussion of wind and brass split the summer air, the heaving air. lhs’s students accompanied our rousing fight-song with homegrown lyrics.
“You bring the whiskey, I’ll bring the rye/We’ll get together at Lafayette High/Send the seventh graders out for gin/And don’t let a sober eighth-grader in…”
That innocent and trivial variation was followed by other antics, other rituals and I began to relax. I felt secure on the sidelines, in the band. There was no marching required here.
Kickoff came and I found myself cheering as if I had been in this high school forever.
“AIN’T THIS GREAT?” Rodney Morgan offered a genuine grin.
I nodded. “YES!”
Before any time at all had passed Cody Hewitt had quarterbacked the LHS Hornets to one first down, two interceptions and a two-touchdown deficit. Not auspicious for an athlete looking for a ride at Florida State.
And then it was halftime.
“PLACES!”
Our drum major and section leaders scrambling off the stands.
“PLACES, PEOPLE!”
My lungs started to heave like I’d swum the river. I rushed to find my spot of ground in a blind panic.
Dress and cover.
“First impressions, people!” Mr. Pellicore strutted before us like Napoleon. “I want those instruments snapped up on the beat. Step out with a full stride, brisk tempo, full and confident. “Miss Handsom—!”
Pellicore’s fading dome suddenly thrust into my face.
“Yes, sir!”
“Find your ground! Keep your mind on your business!”
“Yes, sir.”
“Remember follow your section leader and if you make a mistake—”
“Don’t stop, yes, sir, I won’t.”
“All right, then. Here we go. Drum Major!”
I felt scrambled like a chicken with his head cut off. I needed to find Rodney Morgan.
“HERE, CILLA!”
I heard laughter from the stands. There were people looking, I knew, as I scrambled to my choreographed location. That big, awkward black girl in a redcoat uniform. I found my place finally, but my knees began to lock. About that time a sharp elbow got jammed into the cage of my ribs.
“Flex your knees,” Juanita commanded. “Flex ’em.”
“I’m scared!” I wailed as I tried to comply.
“Everybody’s scared. But you are not alone out here, Cilla. We are a band. All of us. Just follow Rodney.”
Her ponytail tossed with the bob of her head.
“Here we go,” our section leader hefted his trombone.
Then the rap, rap, rap of a snare drum.
A public-address system cursed with feedback echoed over the field. A garland of girls twirled batons out front, like slave women sent to precede the arrival of royalty. I dressed and covered on my section leader. The chalk lines gridding the field had already compromised the shine of my black leather shoes. I located the Drum Major centered before us, our general on the field. Ryan Tunney was our major domo, our metronome, the brother of the man who would later bury Joe Billy.
He raised his silver staff.
Three quick blasts on a silver whistle.
We were on the field.
Ball players talk about how scared they are until that first hit, that first contact with an opposing player. You endure that initial jarring collision, players will say, and generally things settle down. Marching in a band is similar. It’s a rack of nerves until you get on the field, until you make that first beat, execute that first left or right face. Then a thousand separate gears go into play requiring such coordination and concentration that you don’t have time to be scared.
We only had three formations to choreograph. I found my spot in the “H” of lhs, that was easy enough. Pellicore placed me at the hub of a wheel for the “Oklahoma” feature. No problem with dress and cover from there. I was, however, slightly out of step on the final march of saints—
“Cilla. On me,” Rodney commanded loudly and I recovered.
When the Saints/Go Marching In/Oh, when the Saints go marching in…
Then we peeled off the field in compact ranks and that was it, my first performance before a large and hostile audience. I retired from the field with my eyes searching the bleachers for Miss Chandler.
“We’re not done yet, people,” Pellicore herded us to our sideline seats. “Keep moving.”
We were filtering off the gridiron and milling toward our seats in the bleachers when the players of both teams galloped out of their lockers. I was still on the sideline trailing the trombones and trumpets when Cody Hewitt stepped directly into my path.
His uniform was damp and stained from a halftime of troubles, a handsome, angry surfer-boy in pads and helmet. I could not avoid him; I was crowded by other band members within the length of his arms.
“Bitch,” he challenged me.
I think it was only at that moment I fully realized that there would always be a Cody Hewitt in my life, and people like him. That for those people nothing I accomplished would count for shit. No trophy would ever come untarnished. Miss Chandler came down from her seat in the bleachers afterwards.
“What did he say to you?”
“Who?”
“You know who.”
“Nothing.”
“Don’t listen to that boy, Cilla,” she seized my arm. “You looked wonderful out there. You did us proud!”
“I did?”
“Yes. Now go on. Enjoy yourself. Have some fun.”
For a moment I thought I actually could enjoy myself. After all, you can’t find better camaraderie at any football game than among members of a band. Those kids were funny and fun-loving. They were smart and sassy and obnoxious. But they were not colored. It quickly became apparent that my white companions had plans for the night that could not include me, boys and girls drifting off in twos and threes to some destination communicated as if by telepathy.
Rodney did bring me a coke before he left with his girlfriend. That was nice. And Juanita squealed over and over how well I’d done. How proud she was of me. I didn’t feel abandoned by them, nor even by the other departing Saints. It was my Kerbo companions who deserted me that night. Who did not come to me in the stands or at the end of the game to tell me how perfectly I hubbed my wheel on the football field. How well I played “Oklahoma”.
“You need a ride home, Cilla?” Juanita asked when we’d hung our uniforms.
“Yes,” I admitted. “Please. If you don’ mind.”
I had already gotten into her truck when I saw Joe Billy’s two-toned ’56 pull up, Joe Billy himself slumped low, in the posture now associated with gang-bangers. Pudding and Chicken crowded in the back seat.
“’S’matter, Cilla? Too good for yo friends?”
“Got that kind of attitude you ain’ no frenna mine,” I snapped back.
Give Pudding credit for intervening. “Cilla, he din’ mean nuthin’.”
“Sure he did.”
“Naw, he din’. He proud of you, girl. We all proud. You looked good out there.”
“You did, Cilla,” this from Chicken. “Now, come on and go wit us.”
“‘Wit’ you where?”
“Live Oak. Mama’s Store. Man there playin’s got one of Joe Billy’s guitars.”
“Guitar?” Juanita perked up. “JayBee plays the guitar?”
“You’re welcome to come,” Joe Billy offered politely, though all of us knew Mr. Land’s daughter could not possibly accept.
“No, thank you,” Juanita tossed her ponytail over her shoulder. “Got somebody I’m ’sposed to meet. Says he’s got plans.”
Juanita winked at me. “Can’t imagine what.”
I waved goodbye to Mr. Land’s daughter before dropping into the seat made available beside Joe Billy.
“I’m gonna have me some friends, Joe Billy,” I declared without a hint of deference.
He ran his hand over the arc of the steering wheel.
“He knows, Cilla,” Pudding said. “It’s just hard, is all.”
Things loosened up on the way to Mama’s. Chicken Swamp started things off with a six-pack.
“I’m gone dance tonight!” he yelled, spraying beer all over the back seat.
And, of course we had music.
“Put on the radio,” Chicken yelled. “Let’s hear some rock and got-damn roll!”
It’s over thirty miles to Live Oak. We had a run of Dionne Warwick and The Beatles and the Mamas and Papas so that by the time we got to Mama’s everybody had held everybody’s hand, everybody had walked on by, and we were all looking forward to dancing in the street, which, of course, was why we were going to Live Oak in the first place. You see, you couldn’t dance, at least not legally, inside Laureate’s city limits. Dancing of any kind was forbidden first of all by canon—
Do you know why Baptists never fuck standing up? the tired joke went.
No, why?
’Cause somebody might think they’re dancing.
—and then by statute. The Laureate City Council initiated the statute, kowtowing to local clergy shortly after Elvis Presley thrust his pelvis on The Ed Sullivan Show . They passed an ordinance that made it illegal to “simulate sexual gyration” inside the city limits.
Mama Snipes was free from canonic, statutory and most sexual repressions. Mama had a jukebox inside what was actually a garage that looked out onto the parking lot of an old Texaco gas station. The garage and attached house was what Mama called her store, one of the few places black teens could get a coke or hamburger and dance.
In the bay, where the lifts used to be, was where you danced. Mama would just roll up those big doors, put on a fan and some music and let it rock. There were maybe twenty couples dancing at Mama’s when we pulled up that evening, with as many singles milling around. A live band was setting up beside a pair of Fender amps, but the Wurlitzer was filled with quarters. I could hear Little Anthony.
“Come on, now,” JayBee pocketed the keys. “Let’s see can you dance.”
Dancing is a lot easier than marching, especially with a little beer to go along. Maybe some weed. It was the first time I smelled marijuana. Smelled like dry weeds burning.
“Want some?” Joe Billy cupped a joint in his hand.
“Is it like cigarettes?”
“Naw. Makes you feel light. Goofy. Take a hit. Hard. Hold it.”
I tried and when I did it felt like somebody shoved a poker down my throat. Seconds later I was coughing like a coal miner. And then a kind of fog seemed to clear.
“Daaaaammmmn.”
Joe Billy grinned. “Yeah.”
Let me go on record to say that Joe Billy was one outa-sight dancer. He could twist, he could frug, he could Bosa the goddamned Nova. He could alligator, jerk, or shimmy and he could mash your sweet, sweet potatoes all night long.
I gave myself up to the music and alcohol and grass. Let the cool evening air wash over. “I don’t give a shit if syrup goes to a dollar a sop,” I declared.
Spreading my arms to heaven as if I were in a revival. Joe Billy sliding inside. I leaned on him heavily, content to follow along or be dragged.
Then I began to notice the other couples dancing.
There was this one girl, in particular, a black girl near us, who had a narrow waist, like Juanita’s, a white haltertop over tight jeans. Processed hair, all straight and nice. When she moved I could see the muscles in her back working. See her hair spilling down that long, long spine.
She looked like a gypsy out there. Like Jezebel. Like one of those sirens my boyfriend put on his guitars. I was dancing with Joe Billy, but I could not take my eyes off the anonymous siren alongside. I began to move my legs the way she moved. And my hips. My pelvis.
Let you backboooooone slip.
My shirt began to stick to my skin and I was hot. I was hot, Mama. I gathered up my top and tied it off in a knot.
“Lawd God O’Mighty!”
Someone shouted.
“Look at that tall girl dance!”
It wasn’t too long before Joe Billy was telling Pudding and Chicken they were going to have to find their own ride home.
“For somebody never danced before, you sure let the dogs out,” Joe Billy declared as he let me in his car.
All trace of color bled from the scenery on our way back to Laureate. A full moon fluttered in and out of autumn clouds to paint the road in a chiaroscuro of light and shadow.
“That girl next to us? At Mama’s?” Joe Billy broke the silence. “The one with the top?”
“Mmm hmm,” I could see her still.
“Her boyfriend checking you out.”
“Her boyfriend?”
That was unexpected.
“Checkin’ me out?”w“Thought I’s gone have to kick his butt,” Joe Billy assured me and slipped a hand off the steering wheel.
“Be nice, now,” I said. “Be nice.”
“Oh, I will,” he promised.
I coupled with Joe Billy once again that night in his rude loft. But I had Mama’s and the cloakroom between my legs, that black, nubile dancer, and Juanita.