by Kiese Laymon
She handed us two Rocawear button-ups.
I looked at LaVander Peeler. He looked at me. And for the first time, his look asked me what I thought. All I could really think about was what he saw when he looked at me. I know he saw ashy hands and a wave brush. But I knew in that second that he couldn’t hate me. He didn’t have to like me, but he definitely couldn’t hate me when there was so much work for both of us to do in the next three hours. We had to show everyone, including white folks, chubby jokers with tight waves, and skinny jokers with suspect fades, just what was possible.
As we walked out, Cindy told me to be sure to bring my wave brush.
“Nope. I don’t need it,” I said and looked at LaVander Peeler. “My waves are tight as they are going to get. Cindy, you know you are looking at the next two winners of your contest, don’t you?”
“I sure am,” she said.
LaVander Peeler looked at me like I was crazy and started reading a dictionary. “And we are going to do it for us, right, LaVander Peeler?”
LaVander Peeler ignored me, so I reread the first chapter of Long Division until it was time.
When we left our dressing room, we walked into the general prep room where some of the competitors walked around, talking with each other and mouthing sentences. I scanned the room the same way I do when coming into any room where it is obvious most of the people aren’t black and Southern.
Over in the corner were the two white boy twins from Louisiana. They had “Katrina’s Finest” airbrushed in brown block letters on the back of these tight dirty sweatshirts. The twins were outside a huge group of white kids huddled in the corner looking at something. The kids at the back were all on their tippy toes trying to see over the cluster of about 15 kids. You could see that the white kids kept fake yawning, and rocking these half smiles. Between white faces and white shirts, I saw a cheek and a neck that was a little less dark than mine. And to the left of that cheek was a folded forearm that was close to LaVander Peeler’s color. I started to get a terrible déjà vu feeling.
I tapped LaVander Peeler on the shoulder and pointed to the crowd. He walked toward the other contestants, got on his tiptoes, swiveled his head a bit, and started scratching the scalp part of his fade. Then he walked out of the room for almost two whole minutes.
When LaVander Peeler came back in, he looked at me, exhaled, and shook his head again before walking to the other corner of the room and slumping in the corner. I got to rubbing the top of my head with the palm of my hand and followed him.
“What is it?” I asked him. “What happened?”
LaVander Peeler looked up at me, eyelids half covering the brown of his eyes, bottom lip just hanging. “They got us,” he said on volume two, when he’d just spent five minutes talking to me on volume seven.
“Why?” I looked over at the crowd again.
“They got us.”
The Cindy lady came in and told us to get in line. As the crowd broke up, they taped our respective states on the back of our shirts. “LaVander Peeler, look,” I said, and pointed to these two Mexican kids and the tags on their shirts. Both the Mexican boy and girl were really from Arizona, the state where the governor made a rule that Mexican kids couldn’t learn Mexican history in high school and another rule that said you could try to arrest Mexicans as long as you thought they were Mexicans. During one of our Mexican Awareness weeks, Principal Reeves taught us that Arizona was becoming the Mississippi of the Southwest, whatever that meant.
LaVander Peeler got in line as he was told. He didn’t pout or whine. LaVander Peeler’s eyes had that slick mix of shock and shame. I can’t say that he was crying because tears didn’t pour down his face, but I swear that he had more of that same water cradling his red eyeballs than I’d ever seen in the face of someone who wasn’t actually crying.
“Your eyeballs are sweating. Or is that piss?” I asked him, trying to make him laugh. “What’s wrong, man? What did you see?”
LaVander Peeler ignored me. Still water flooded the bottoms of his eyes from the time he got his Mississippi tag until we reached the stage, the crowd, and those white-hot lights.
WORDS, WORDS, WORD.
I sat on the left side of the stage, third seat from the aisle, and LaVander Peeler sat in the same seat on the other side of the stage. At the end of my row was the one Mexican girl. At the end of LaVander Peeler’s was the one Mexican boy. I looked at their names for the first time. Jesse Cruz and Stephanie Cruz were the names on the tags. And the words “Jesse” and “Stephanie” were in quotations.
I thought to myself that if ever there was a time to bring my Serena Williams sentence game to the nation, this was it. With all that still water in his eyes, LaVander Peeler was in no shape to win, or even compete. I figured he’d miss his first sentence, or maybe he wouldn’t even try, and then he’d have to sit on that stage for two long hours, with drowning red eyeballs, watching me give those fools that work.
“We’d like to welcome you to the Fifth Annual Can You Use That Word in a Sentence National Competition,” the voice behind the light said. “We’re so proud to be coming to you from historic Jackson, Mississippi. The state of Mississippi has loomed large in the history of civil rights and the English language. Maybe our next John Grisham, Richard Wright, Alice Walker, William Faulkner, or Oprah Winfrey is in this contest. The rules of the contest are simple. I will give the contestant a word and he or she will have two minutes to use that word in a dynamic sentence. All three judges must agree upon the correct usage, appropriateness, and dynamism of the sentence. We guarantee you that this year’s contest will be must-see TV.
“Before we begin, we’d like our prayers to go out to the family of Baize Shephard. As you all know, Baize is a young honor-roll student who disappeared a few weeks ago in the woods of Melahatchie, Mississippi. We will be flashing pictures of Baize periodically throughout the night for those of you watching live in your homes. If you have any information that might help in the investigation, please alert your local authorities. Let us take a moment of silence for Baize Shephard.”
“LaVander Peeler,” the announcer resumed, “is our first contestant. I’m sure most of you know that LaVander tied for first place in the state of Mississippi competition with our second contestant, Citoyen Coldson.” Seemed weird that we were going to be first and second. “LaVander Peeler, your first word is ‘lascivious.’”
LaVander Peeler stood up with his balled fists at his side. He stepped to the microphone and looked down at his feet.
“If lascivious photographs of Amber Rose were found on Mr. White’s office computer,” LaVander began, “then the odds are higher than the poverty rate in the Mississippi Delta that Mr. Jay White would still keep his job at the college his great-great-grandfather founded.”
LaVander Peeler walked right back to his seat, fists still clenched. No etymology. No pronunciation. The crowd and the contestants started clapping in spurts, not understanding what had just happened. I was clapping the skin off my hands when they called my name. I stepped to the microphone, pumping my fist and looking at LaVander Peeler, who still had his head tucked in his chest.
“Citoyen, we’d like to welcome you, too.”
“Thanks. My name is City.”
“Your first word, Citoyen, is…‘niggardly.’”
Without uttering a syllable, I ran back to our dressing room and got my brush.
“I just think better with this in my hand,” I told the voice when I got back.
“No problem. ‘Niggardly,’ Citoyen.”
“For real? It’s no problem?” I looked out into the white lights hoping somebody would demand they give me another word—not because I didn’t know how to use it, but because it just didn’t seem right that any kid like me should have to use a word like that, not in front of all those white folks.
“Etymology, please?” I asked him.
“From Old Norse nigla.”
“Nigla? That’s funny. Am I pronouncing the word right? ‘Nigga’d
ly.’ Pronunciation, please.”
“Nig-gard-ly,” he said. “Citoyen, you have 30 more seconds.”
I kept squinting, trying to see out beyond the lights, beyond the stage. “Okay. Y’all have time limits at nationals, huh? I know the word, but it’s just that my insides hurt when you say that word,” I whispered into the mic. “And I wish it didn’t but it does.”
“Is that your sentence, Citoyen?” the voice asked.
I sucked my teeth and sped up my brushing. “You know that ain’t my sentence.”
“Citoyen. You have ten seconds.”
I slowed my brushing down and angled myself toward LaVander Peeler. “Um, okay, I hate LaBander Veeler,” I said.
“Is this your sentence, Citoyen?”
“No. Um, I truly hate LaBander Veeler sometimes more than some of y’all hate President Obama and I wonder if LaBander Veeler should behave like the exceptional African-American boy he was groomed to be in public by his UPS-working father, or the, um, weird, brilliant, niggardly joker he really is when we’re the only ones watching.”
I brought the brush to my waist.
The judges looked at me for about ten seconds without moving before they turned toward each other. The head judge covered the microphone and started whispering to the other judges.
“Noooo, Citoyen,” he finally said. “We are so, so sorry. That is not the correct, appropriate, or dynamic usage of ‘niggardly’ in a sentence. An example of correct, dynamic usage would be, Perspiration covered the children who stared incessantly at the woman in the head wrap since she insisted on being so niggardly with the succulent plums and melons. Please have a seat.”
I started brushing the skin on my forearm, then pointed my brush toward the light.
That’s all I could see.
I walked toward my seat, then turned around and headed back to the microphone. “I mean, even if I used the word right, I still would’ve lost. You see that, don’t you?” The buzzer went off again. I threw my brush toward the light and the buzzer kept going off. “That’s messed up, man,” I told them. “What was I supposed to do?” I saw Cindy offstage to the right, motioning for me to sit down.
“Forget you, Cindy! Look at LaVander Peeler over there crying. I hate that dude. Naw, I mean really hate. I be sitting at home sometimes praying that someone will sew his butt hole tight so he could almost die from being so backed up. I’m serious, but look at him over there with tears in his eyes, looking crazy as hell on TV. It don’t make no sense.
“Now look at them Mexicans.” The buzzer went off again. I turned around and looked at the Mexican girl on my row. “You think it’s hard for y’all in Arizona? Look at us. Look at us. They do us like this in our own state. Ain’t nothing these white folks can do to make you feel like me and LaVander Peeler feel right now. They scared of y’all taking their jobs. They scared of us becoming Obama. I mean, do y’all even call yourself Mexican? Ain’t this a competition for Americans? Peep how they made slots for Mexicans but you don’t see no slots for no Africans or no Indians. Where the Indian and African players at? Shit.”
Stephanie stood up, stretched her back, walked right up to my face, kicked me in my kneecap, and said, “Please sit your fat ass down.” She whispered in my ear, “I’m trying to help you out. Seriously. You have no clue how you’re playing yourself right now.”
The buzzer went off again.
I put one hand on top of my belly blubber and started going over the top of my head with the palm of my other hand.
Short, fluid strokes.
“I ain’t playing myself. Shoot. What was I supposed to do?” I said to everyone one more time. “Bet you know my name next time. And I bet you won’t do this to another black boy from Mississippi. Shout out to my Jackson confidants: Toni, Jannay, Octavia, Jerome, and all my country niggas: Shay, Gunn, and even MyMy down in Melahatchie just trying to stay above water. I got y’all. President Obama, you see how they do us down here? You see?”
With that, I walked off, right past my chair, past the Mexican girl who kicked me, directly into the backstage area. Then I turned back around and walked back to the middle of that stage.
“And fuck white folks!” I yelled at the light and, for the first time all night, thought about whether my grandma was watching. “My name is City. And if you don’t know, now you know, nigga!”
CLICK THAT.
During the first mile of the walk home, I flipped-flopped looking at the cover of Long Division and watching my feet miss most of the huge cracks in the asphalt on Capital Street. Every time I stepped on a crack, I thought of all the folks in Mississippi and the Southern Region who saw the contest live on TV and all the people around the globe who might see it later. The second mile I walked on the sidewalk down North State Street, and every time I missed a crack, I thought of the folks who would hear about what I did on the internet. I figured that everything I did would be sent in Facebook links with messages like, “Jade, clink that link girl. I just can’t.”
Everyone I knew would see what I did. Worst of all, Grandma would see it and be completely embarrassed when she went to church next Sunday. Everyone would look at her and say stuff like, “It’s okay, Sister Coldson. Your grandbaby ain’t know no better.”
I walked in the apartment and sat down on the edge of Mama’s bed. I wondered if Mama made it to the contest or if someone called her cell and told her what happened. Either way, Mama was probably on her way home to give me a legendary back beating. She would cry while doing it, too, I figured, and think she failed. But maybe for a second, I thought, Mama would understand that I was completely stuck on that stage.
One way to curb the back beating I was going to get was to write down my version of what happened. If I wrote about it, Mama would think I learned something from it. The only problem was that Mama took our used laptop to work with her, so I wrote on a blank page in Long Division.
If you watched the edited version of the 2011 Can You Use That Word in a Sentence on YouTube last night, you know that I hate LaVander Peeler and I have a head full of waves that could drown you and your barber. Public Speaking isn’t even in my top eight pleasures, but I still tied for first place in the Fifth Annual State of Mississippi Can You Use That Word in a Sentence contest.
After writing for about 30 minutes, I went back in the garage and glanced at the clock. It was 8:50. The competition was supposed to be over at 9:00. I didn’t want to but couldn’t help turning on the TV.
One of the Katrina twins was on his way back to his seat and the crowd was doing that under-excited clapping which meant he couldn’t appropriately use the word he was given in a sentence.
“Great try, Patrick,” the voice said. “You’ve represented New Orleans, city of refugees, exquisitely tonight, and you can place no worse than third if our final two contestants get their words right.”
With that, the Mexican girl walked onstage.
“Stephanie,” the voice said, “if you can use this next word correctly in a dynamic sentence and our last finalist misses, you’ll be our new champion. Thank you for blessing our stage with your presence.”
The camera panned the rest of the competitors sitting in the background who were looking either sad and salty or just happy to be there. And sure as shit, there was LaVander Peeler to Stephanie’s right, head still down, fists still balled up.
“Stephanie, your word is ‘cacodoxy.’”
Lord have mercy.
I’d never heard that word before. And when the spelling popped up on screen, I felt terrible for her. Stephanie went through etymology and pronunciation.
She held her hands behind her back. Then she started tugging on her ponytail and tapping her left foot on the front of her right foot. She stood still with her hands right on her hips and started looking up at the ceiling.
“Fifteen seconds, Stephanie.”
“You people really do think you’re slick,” she said loud enough so we could hear it, and started her sentence. “The man behind the desk is n
ot only annoying, he also suffers from keen halitosis and severe cacodoxy, causing him to make my brother and me put our names in some quotations.”
The buzzer sounded. “No, Stephanie, I’m sorry. ‘Cacodoxy,’ a noun, is an erroneous doctrine, like ‘Up with hope and down with dope.’”
“Are you serious?” she asked without leaving immediately. “You won’t even use it in a sentence?” She sat down with her arms folded tight against her tummy, and you could see her mouth the words “That was so fucked up” before tucking her head into her chest.
Work, I thought. She gave them that work!
“Our last competitor is, surprise, surprise, LaVander Peeler,” the voice said.
LaVander Peeler walked up to the microphone the same way he had before his first word, “lascivious.” “You can do it,” I said to the screen. “I’m sorry I left you.”
“Seems like a lifelong dream might actually come true for this special young man,” the voice said. “LaVander Peeler, if you use the next word correctly, Mississippi will be proud to call you our National Can You Use That Word in a Sentence champion. LaVander Peeler, your final word is…”
LaVander Peeler raised his head and looked right into the light.
“…‘chitterlings.’”
In the background, Stephanie shot her head up, too. LaVander Peeler didn’t blink at all. Again, he asked for no etymology. He balled his fists tighter and watched the light. I could not believe what was happening. “Don’t do it,” I said to the screen. But I wasn’t sure what it was I didn’t want him to do. And neither was LaVander Peeler.
He opened his lips slightly and stood there in front of the light. Watching his parted lips shaking made me think I understood what LaVander Peeler was feeling and doing on that stage. Since the first day I met LaVander Peeler in eighth grade, he made it clear that he would always consider all things—including ways of being an exceptional African American, ways of winning all contests, and ways of using language to shield him from being just another black boy. Considering all things prepared him to win the regional contests, but it didn’t prepare him for what it would feel like to not be given a chance to really lose. I didn’t get it until that second. It wasn’t at all that we were there just for decoration, like LaVander Peeler Sr. said. LaVander Peeler and I, or LaVander Peeler or I, were there to win the contest. They’d already decided before the contest even began that one of us needed to win. The only way they could feel good about themselves was if they let us win against the Mexican kids, because they didn’t believe any of us could really compete. Yeah, we were all decoration in a way. But it was like LaVander Peeler, specifically, was being thrown a surprise birthday party by a group of white people who didn’t know his real name or when his birthday actually was.
