Long Division

by Kiese Laymon

  “I do get it,” I told her. “I get that I might not be the one for you. In 2013, I’ma be like 42. When I’m 42, you’ll still think my hairline is too crooked and my sweat’ll still stink like gas station toilets.” I looked up and hoped she would interrupt me. She didn’t. “Anyway. You could never love me even if I was the skinniest, smartest boy in the South. I truly know that now.”

  Shalaya Crump finally laughed and looked me right in my mouth. “City, I’ma ask you one more time to stop being so Young and the Restless. Don’t never ever say ‘truly’ around me again. Never!”

  Shalaya Crump was the queen of taking a show or a person, place, or thing and using it like an adjective. No one else in Jackson or Chicago or Melahatchie or TV could do it like her. If she told you not to ever use a word around her, you knew it was a word that should never have come out of your mouth in the first place.

  Shalaya Crump took her eyes off my mouth and started looking at my hips. “Look, City,” she said. “I could love you the way you want me to, really. I could if you found a way to help me change the future in, I don’t know dot-dot-dot a special way.”

  “Dot-dot-dot? I thought you were done with that read-your-punctuation style. You don’t think you played that out last summer?”

  “Just listen. I need to know if you’d come with me, even if we couldn’t ever come back.”

  Shalaya Crump was always saying weird stuff like that and trying to create new slang. One day, she called me on the phone long distance during the school year and said, “City comma I realized today that I hate Ronald Reagan. When I’m president comma I wanna make it so you never have to be in a classroom with more than ten other kids from Head Start all the way through 12th grade. I think I might wanna make it illegal for parents to leave their kids with their grandma in Melahatchie for more than three days at a time if the grandma don’t have cable or good air. What you think?”

  I waited for her to laugh after saying that, since my ma was always sending me to stay with my Mama Lara for weeks at a time. Mama Lara didn’t have good cable or air either, and neither did her grandma, but Shalaya Crump didn’t laugh, so I fake laughed for her and said, “You love you some English and Civics classes, don’t you?” A few seconds later, when no one was saying a word, she started laughing all late into the phone. Only Shalaya Crump could laugh all late into the phone and not care about using up her grandma’s long distance to talk about hating Ronald Reagan. It was stuff like calling me long distance and telling me stuff that didn’t make sense and laughing all late at my jokes that made me think I could tongue kiss Shalaya Crump.

  Anyway, I had a lot of questions about how to change the future and be special to Shalaya Crump, but my Mama Lara drove in front of her trailer right after she said that thing about coming to the future with her. Mama Lara told me that it was time to take the bus back up to Chicago. I left Shalaya Crump that Christmas break without a kiss, a hug, or anything, but I did tell her, “I’m coming back to fly to the future with you for spring break, baby. And when I do, you better love me. Or at least like me a lot.”

  “I already like you a lot,” she told me as I got in the car. “Don’t call me baby no more, though. Just be yourself and come back in March. Please. I need you, City.”

  I promised myself right then and there that I’d never call Shalaya Crump “baby” if it meant that she’d be my girl, and that I’d find a way to be special and change the future when I came back down to Mississippi for spring break. In the meantime, no matter where I was in my dreams, I always found a way to kiss Shalaya Crump. Sometimes I’d be in a blue jungle or a raggedy glass airplane, but there would always be a phone hanging out of a tree or underneath a seat. I’d find a phone and dial 1-4-1-1. When the operator answered, it was always Shalaya Crump and she always gave me the best directions to get to her. Once I got to where she was, every single time we kissed with a little tongue and pressed our fronts together until I woke up sore.

  In real life, between January and March, I thought of all kinds of ways to show Shalaya Crump I was special. I wrote every plan down in this thick college-lined notebook I should have been using to take notes in English class. The notebook was called GAME in bold capital letters. Sometimes I would think I had the perfect plan but after a few days, I knew that whatever GAME I came up with wouldn’t be good enough for her. Then, on the first day back down to Melahatchie for spring break, I got lucky.

  GAME found me…

  CHITLIN CITY.

  “Sphincter,” LaVander Peeler’s father said from the driver’s seat. “Use it.”

  “Sphincter,” LaVander Peeler started. “A tightened sphincter can be a sign of—”

  The Astro van started veering over to the side of I-55 and LaVander Peeler Sr. clicked the emergency lights on. “Boy, what I tell you?” He smacked LaVander Peeler right below his heart and grabbed a fistful of Izod. “Don’t matter if you think you know the word. That’s what the white folks think you supposed to do. Don’t be too doggone eager. Act like you got some sense.”

  LaVander Peeler cut his wet eyes to me in the backseat.

  “Don’t worry ’bout that boy,” he told him. “Y’all play too much. This is bigger than both of y’all. I want you to do exactly like them winners.”

  LaVander Peeler Sr. sat back in the driver’s seat and placed his hand on his son’s knee. “Ask for the pronunciation. Ask for the etymology just like the Indians do. Say the word back to them as proper as you can. Say, ‘I am going to use “sphincter” in a sentence now.’ No gon’ or gonna. You are ‘going to’ or you ‘shall.’ And then you say the sentence as slowly as you can. I’m talking about a whole second in between each word, LP.

  “Smile, too. If you wanna talk with the doggone judges, don’t break no verbs. Just say, ‘Well, all things considered,’ then say what you got to say. Toss some composure and thoughtfulness at they ass, too. And hold your doggone head up.” He grabbed LaVander Peeler by the chin and tilted it up. “LP, listen to what I’m telling you. They think you were lucky to get here. Both of y’all.”

  LaVander Peeler Sr. looked at me like I said something wrong.

  “These folks think they so slick, trying to decorate the contest with a little color. You didn’t come here to lose, son,” he said. “You are better and more prepared than all these folks put together because you had to be. Listen to what I’m telling you. This is bigger than you. You understand?”

  LaVander Peeler didn’t answer. I closed Long Division and watched still water flood the gutters of LaVander Peeler’s eyes.

  The trip to the Coliseum took about 20 minutes and all 20 minutes, except for LaVander Peeler Sr. nicely greeting me, was filled with him testing LaVander Peeler and getting mad at every little thing he did wrong. But it wasn’t hateful mean. It really wasn’t. It was loving mean, at least to me. If Mama drove me to the contest, it’s exactly the loving mean I would have wanted her to share with me, just not in front of LaVander Peeler. That would’ve been too shame.

  “You left your brush,” LaVander Peeler Sr. said as I got out of the van. He handed it to me and shook his hand side to side. I told him thank you, and felt sorry that I had to crush his son in front of millions.

  But I also felt something else as I walked into the Coliseum. There was something wrong with Long Division, the book I’d borrowed from Principal Reeves’s office. Even though the book was set in 1985, I didn’t know what to do with the fact that the narrator was black like me, stout like me, in the ninth grade like me, and had the same first name as me. Plus, you hardly ever read books that were written like you actually thought. I had never read the words “chunky vomit” in the first chapter of a book, for example, but when I thought about how I’d most not want to be treated, I thought about “chunky vomit.”

  I’m not saying the City in that book was exactly like me. I hadn’t read enough of Long Division to know for sure. Still, though, I just loved and feared so much about the first chapter of that book. For example, I loved that
someone with the last name “Crump” was in a book. Sounds dumb, but I knew so many Crumps in Mississippi in my real life, but I had never seen one Crump in anything I’d read. And you know what the scariest part of the book was? Near the beginning of the first chapter, the name “Baize Shephard” appeared.

  A girl named Baize Shephard lived right next to my grandma’s house in Melahatchie, Mississippi, and she had gone missing three weeks ago. Folks made it a big deal because she was an honor student and a wannabe rapper. Baize did this rhyme over this Kanye beat about Trayvon Martin and James Anderson called “My Hood to Your Hood,” which got around 18,000 hits. When Obama visited Mississippi after his re-election, he said we needed to treat all our missing children with the same care and vigilance. Ever since then, you’d have a Baize Shephard update every day on the news and my Grandma and her crew started their own country investigation. I understood it could have been coincidence that my name and Baize Shephard’s name were in this book with no author, but it still made me feel strange and lightweight afraid to keep reading, especially since my mind should have been on winning that contest.

  Walking to the green room in the Coliseum was crazy, just like Uncle Relle said it would be. Grown white folks were looking at us like we were giving out $400 shopping sprees at the new Super Target by Northpark Mall, and LaVander Peeler was eating it up, saying “All things considered” and moving his hands too much when he talked.

  When we got to the green room, a lanky woman with an aqua fanny pack around her waist and the name “Cindy” on her left breast came up to us.

  “We’ve heard so much about you two and your ordeal with Hurricane Katrina. And good Lord, all that oil y’all had to deal with on the coast,” she said. “It was God’s will that you’re here with us and we’re gonna take great care of you. Eat all the fruit salad and cornbread y’all want before the event. Get good and full.”

  I looked at LaVander Peeler and just started brushing my hair. Long front strokes. Short side strokes. “You know we’re from Jackson, right?” I asked her. “Not the coast. Where you from?”

  “Oh, we heard about that.” She ignored me and pointed at the brush. “So cute. But there will be no props beyond this point either.” She held out her hand for my brush. “We can’t change the rules just for you, no matter how special you gents are. This might not be the Scripps Spelling Bee, gents, but this is our national competition and we’ve got one shot to do it right. We will be televised live and seen on digital cable by millions of folks around the globe. The eyes of the world are upon Mississippi tonight and we can’t have our special kids up there with brushes, can we?”

  “I ain’t giving up my brush,” I told Cindy as LaVander Peeler and I walked into our personal dressing room.

  When we got into the room, LaVander Peeler just looked at me and didn’t say a word. He looked and smelled the same, but he wasn’t LaVander Peeler from Hamer any more. LaVander Peeler looked older, madder, glowier, and—I guess—realer than ever. “City, I shall keep it one hundred, as you say. You are embarrassing the fuck out of me,” he said in a tone I’d never heard him use. “This ain’t school no more. You are really blowing it.”

  “Blowing what?” I asked him and waited for an answer. He just stood shaking his head side to side. “Why can’t you ever just bust jokes like everybody else at school? Why you gotta be so serious and try so hard to bully people?”

  “Me? I don’t bully nobody. You’re the bully.”

  “How am I the bully?” I asked him. “And what am I blowing?”

  “Everything. You blowing everything, but that’s what I expected.” He started lotioning up his neck. “All things considered, it just would have been nice if you placed in the top ten. I’m winning this shit with or without you, though. I will not lose.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then I’ma beat them in whatever else they put in my way,” he said. “Everything. All things considered, I will never lose to these people. Ever. They need to know that. When I’m married to Malia Obama and living in the biggest house in their neighborhood, they need to know they will never beat me.”

  “Nigga, Malia Obama don’t even know you exist,” I told him. “What is she gonna want with a wack dude with a fucked-up fade, who talks fake-proper all the time?”

  “Whatever,” he said. “All things considered, I don’t expect you to understand. These people just need to know.”

  “And you winning this competition is gonna show them whatever it is that they need to know?” I asked him. “Fool, forget white people. Why don’t you try to win this for your real people? Because that’s what I’m doing. I’m winning this for all the real chubby poor niggas in Mississippi with tight waves and contentious demeanors.” He looked at me with lightweight awe in his eyes. “You like that sentence, right? And maybe you could win it for all the tall Mississippi niggas with, you know, good breath, and flip phones and messed-up fades that don’t quite fade right. You feel—”

  “City,” he cut me off. “You and I both know you shouldn’t even be here. That’s what’s so funny about all of this.” He turned toward me and smirked. “And you know exactly what I mean,” he said. “Think about it. At the school competition, what word did they give you?”

  I knew what the word was, but I wasn’t about to say it. There had been three of us in the finals. We were all supposed to get five words. If all of us got every word, our school sent three reps to state. Toni Whitaker was who everyone knew was going to win since she had the highest GPA in the ninth grade and never made less than 100 percent in English. Toni got “coup d’état” for her last word. We’d all heard the word but had no clue how to use it in what the judges called a dynamic sentence. LaVander Peeler got “infanticide” and I got…

  “‘Chitterlings,’ City?” LaVander Peeler asked. “‘Chitterlings’? And you had the nerve to brush your hair while getting all country with it. I’ll never forget your dumb ass. You stood up there with no shame, and said, ‘My grandma couldn’t understand why the young siblings from up North refused to eat the wonderful chitterlings upon finding out they came from the magical bowels of a big-eyed hog named Charles.’”

  “I was nervous,” I told him. “Wait. I thought I had the hardest word. How many folks know that ‘chitlins’ and ‘chitterlings’ are the same word? You didn’t know, did you?”

  “They knew,” he said, “and that’s why they gave you that word. I know you see it. Everybody else does. You get them black words every time the championship is on the line.”

  “I do?”

  “All things considered, you can spin your sentences fairly well,” he said. “I admit that you’re probably the most exciting contestant in this contest.”

  “You think so?” I asked him.

  “Yeah,” he said, “’cause your dumb ass will say anything. But you ain’t even on a regional level as far as really spinning these sentences go. They want you here. My daddy and Principal Reeves even said it.” He turned his back to me and started laughing to himself. “I bet these contest people give you ‘hypertension’ for your first word tonight.”

  “‘Hypertension’? That’s a black word?” That’s all I could come up with.

  “Exactly. It’s so simple and black,” he said. “Just like your dumb ass. And, by the way, only simple black people get ‘hypertension’ and compared to ‘capriciously,’ they might as well have given you something easy like ‘homosexual,’ because that’s a compound word, too. And, all things considered, that’s what you are: white homeless fat homosexual City who is going to get hypertension after he loses this competition to LaVander K. Peeler.”

  “‘Homosexual’ is a compound word?” I asked him. “What’s the K stand for?”

  LaVander Peeler started laughing and humming the beat to the Piggly Wiggly commercial. I put my brush down on my bag and gently went over the top of my head with the palm of my hand. Mama and Uncle Relle had never said anything to me about getting black words or about how the people at the c
ompetition wanted me there. I couldn’t understand why they needed me if they already had LaVander Peeler.

  It didn’t make sense.

  “Let me ask you one more question, LaVander. Let’s say you’re right. Why would they need me if they already got you?”

  LaVander Peeler looked at me like I was crazy. “What’s wrong with you? They think it’s all about them, not us. They feel good about themselves just by having us in the contest. But they’re in for a surprise.”

  “Why?”

  “Because, like I said, this exceptional African American is not letting these white folks win this contest. They messed up when they let me in. Come along if you want to. All things considered, I have to get my clothes on and start focusing.”

  LaVander Peeler went over on his knees in the corner with his arms stretched out. Then he acted like I wasn’t even in the room by stripping out of his clothes and into his outfit for nationals. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do, where I was supposed to look. I glanced up once and saw him butt-booty naked, pulling up his boxers. I didn’t get why he brought a change of boxers for the contest. Maybe he was always changing his boxers in the bathroom of Hamer. Maybe changing his boxers at strange times, not just saying “All things considered,” was really the weirdest thing about LaVander Peeler.

  I didn’t want to tell you this, but I think I should. LaVander Peeler’s pubic hair was some of the nappiest I’d ever seen in my life. It looked like a black cabbage patch of tight balled-up cabbages. The truth is that LaVander Peeler was skinnier than me by a good 34 pounds, just like every other boy in my grade, but his sack was much rounder, wrinklier, and old-looking, too. I think I had plenty width on him in the privacy area, but I couldn’t be sure.

  I really couldn’t.

  We were both in there writing words on paper and practicing asking for the Latinate when Cindy came in without knocking. “Gents, turns out you’re right. City, you can have your brush with you as long as you want. My boss understands cultural difference and wants to make you as comfortable as possible. This is going to be a global experience. So you should wear these, too.”