[Pour champagne on a honeybee]

Phil and I were hanging out at his mom’s store yesterday, shooting the breeze, when two state troopers came in to get gas. One of them starts giving him a hard time about his drive-out tags being a few days overdue. The other asks us where we’re from. When we tell him Murfreesboro, he says, “Oh, ol’ Rutherford County. Gonna have to start speaking Spanish soon, aren’t you?” Phil tells him that he works at a store and already speaks a little bit. The cop, who is black, says, “Well, there’s only one word they need to know! ‘Jail!'” He hyuked a bit and then left as I stared at the floor tiles, coughing up flecks of irony.

***

My grandmother isn’t doing well. She just lays there and can’t really sit up or walk, and can barely talk. I think she’s ready to go.

***

Phil’s sister, Brooke, is really starting to show. She’s this tiny girl with a waify body, but suddenly her gut is big and her breasts are even bigger. She said she pees a lot and used to crave weird foods like pickled okra and ranch dressing, but that she doesn’t really crave stuff anymore. She’s due in December. We’re trying to convince her not to drop out of high school. She’s still got two years to go.

***

Savannah is a miserable place. I can’t imagine living there ever again. Phil and I drove around and tried to entertain a fantasy of what it might be like if we moved back after I graduated: where would he work, where would I work, what would we do for fun, etc. We decided he’d work at Wal-Mart, and that I could work at his mom’s store. The game stopped being fun after that, so we dropped it. I saw a bumper sticker that said, “Speak English or get out!” This coming from someone who probably can’t even read in any language.