Long Division

by Kiese Laymon

  “How you been?” she asked me.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked her.

  “You really want to know?”

  “I do, my queen. Tell me what’s on your mind.”

  Shalaya Crump shook her head and said, “Oh God,” before grabbing both of my hands and walking toward the Night Time Woods. The Night Time Woods separated Old Ryle Road from Belhaven Street, where most of the white folks lived in their trailers. Grown folks always told us that no good could come from getting caught in those woods after dark because of this crazy family called the Shephards. I had heard that the Shephard house got burned down a number of times in the 1960s by the Klan. All the Shephards were dead now except for this one old woman people called the Shephard Witch. I had never really seen the Shephard Witch, but I heard she lived in what was left of the nasty church right in the middle of the woods.

  “I’m worried about the future, City.”

  “Oh. That again.” I tried to say it like I was so surprised she was bringing it up. “I ain’t thought about it that much, but you think it’ll be fresh? Like, I wonder if it’s gonna be like moving sidewalks and flying cars. That would make it easier for me to get to my queen so I ain’t trippin’.”

  “No, boy. Please just stop. Like what if there’s this huge flood that kills people? Or if the water in the Gulf turn black? Or if we have a black president and…”

  “A black president?” I asked her. She threw me off with that one. “And black water? And you say I’m crazy?”

  “Just listen, okay? I mean if something you couldn’t believe happened, like we got a black president or a flood swallowed the whole town, you would wanna know how that changed your life, wouldn’t you? Do you even see what I’m saying?”

  Shalaya Crump was really asking me a question, and you know what I was really doing? I was really half listening and half looking at her lips, wondering if they ever got chappy. She had the kind of lips, especially the bottom one, that always looked full of air and shiny, but not too shiny, from all that gloss.

  “Well, do you?” she said again.

  “Yeah, I think so,” I told her. “You wonder what the future has to do with you if all these new things are happening. Like, everybody knows you’re extremely super bad right now in 1985, right? But if you saw yourself in 1999, would you be like, ‘Oh my goodness. Who is that homely ass girl right there, cleaning the mess out her toes, looking greasy?’ Or maybe things happening in the future would make other people so mad that they would want to make you be invisible.”

  “Yeah, yeah, City!” she grabbed my forearm and looked me in the eyes. “That’s exactly what I mean. Kinda. What happens if we disappear in the future?”

  It was like the smartest thing I’ve ever said, and it was the first time I’d used the word “extremely” in a sentence, but the sad part was that I didn’t really know what I meant. I just knew it sounded like something Shalaya Crump would want to hear. It was some GAME I’d been practicing for two months in my mama’s bedroom mirror. “Hold up, Shalaya Crump. Remember when you said that you would love me? Wait, first—did you mean it?”

  “If I said it, I meant it.”

  “For real? That’s good. Well, ever since you told me all I needed to do was be special and say something cool about the future, I kinda…”

  Shalaya Crump interrupted me. “City, speed that up. Why you gotta be so long division? For real, you don’t have to tell me all the background. The story doesn’t have to go on and on and on.”

  “It doesn’t?”

  “No,” Shalaya Crump said. “Everything with you is long division. You busy trying to show your all your work. Just get in and get out.”

  “But my favorite part of long division was the work,” I told her. Shalaya Crump had thrown my GAME completely off. “I hate the answer. I do. We had this conversation already. You said you hated the answer, too.”

  “That’s different. I hate the answer because I don’t believe in mastering the smaller steps,” she told me. “They never teach you to like, you know, linger in the smaller steps.”

  “Linger? What’s that mean?”

  “They just tell you that you gotta master the small steps if you wanna get to the big answer,” she told me. “But I wish we could really pause at each step in long division and talk about it.”

  “Pause and do what?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” she said. “Just get on with it, City. Please!”

  “Okay, well, I wanna linger, too. Remember when I stole those Bibles for you over Christmas?”

  “Yeah, I do. We already talked about this.”

  “Do you remember what you said to me when I tried to convince you it wasn’t me?”

  “I said that I know it’s you because stealing Bibles takes a whole different kind of crazy than Melahatchie crazy.”

  “Right! And you said that you liked that I was Chicago or Jackson crazy. That meant that I was crazy enough to go around stealing pleather green Bibles from other folks’ trailers just to impress you. Well, I’m still Chicago or Jackson crazy, baby. Southside! That means I’m crazy enough to fly to the future with you, too…” I acted like my shoes were untied. “But when we land, I wanna know what I get.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, if I flew to 2013 with you, I hope that maybe you’d want to, you know, kiss a nigga.”

  “City,” she started laughing. “Why are you calling yourself ‘a nigga’? You don’t even talk like that.”

  “Whatever,” I said. “You know, maybe kiss a nigga on the lips! With a little bit of that tongue.”

  “City, just talk like yourself! Saying ‘a nigga’ a lot ain’t gonna make me love you.”

  “Aw, girl! I wasn’ even tryn’ to make you love me,” I tried to correct myself.

  “Yes, you were. Now you doing it again.”

  “No, I ain’t.”

  You should have heard the way I said, “I wasn’ even tryn’ to make you love me.” I made “wasn’t” and “trying” one syllable each. And I sucked my teeth after I said it and rolled my eyes, too.

  “When you first came down here, you didn’t even say ‘a nigga’ a lot,” Shalaya Crump said.

  “I said ‘a nigga’ sometimes. Shoot, we say ‘a nigga’ in Chicago and Jackson just as much as y’all say it down here.”

  “Yeah, but a little bit is normal. Now when you trying too hard to make me like you, you say stuff like ‘hard on a nigga’ or ‘worrying a nigga’ or ‘grinding on a nigga’s nerves.’ I’m not saying that I don’t be laughing when you say it…”

  “You do laugh.”

  “I know,” she told me. “That’s what I’m saying. But…”

  “But what?”

  “But that just ain’t who you are. I know you, City,” she told me. “You was all scared of flies and chicken when you first came down here.”

  “So. What does that have to do with saying ‘a nigga’ all the time?”

  “Nothing, but now, it’s weird. You sucking on your teeth and wanting me to ‘kiss a nigga’?” She started laughing and walking deeper behind some baby sticker bushes. “Just be you. And I’ll just be me.”

  I knew I should have said okay, but I always had to have the last word, even with Shalaya Crump. “You know what, Shalaya Crump? You don’t leave enough room for folks to change. I’m serious. You always gotta control everything. How come no one else can change but you? When I first met you, your breath stayed smelling like a pork chop sandwich. For real. You never brushed your teeth. Now you brush your teeth on the regular and chew gum.”

  Shalaya Crump was dying laughing but I was just telling the truth.

  “Don’t try and laugh it off,” I told her. “You changed so I can change too. And maybe I changed how I talk from listening to you. You ain’t ever think about that?”

  “Whatever, boy,” she said and got serious again. “The point is I ain’t giving out no kisses or no tongue like peppermints. I ain’t no gotdamn Candy Girl. Now can you
please shut the hell up and let me show you something?”

  We stepped into the cold Night Time Woods together. From inside the woods, the purple gray of the road cut through the green just enough that it was the prettiest thing I’d ever seen next to Shalaya Crump’s face. Any other color against that green wouldn’t have been so pretty, but this purple gray and green was more than pretty. This purple green and gray made me know that Shalaya Crump and me were meant to be kissing soon.

  I grabbed Shalaya Crump’s hand as soon as we got deep in the woods. In six years of knowing Shalaya Crump, this was the first time I had ever held her whole hand and had her lead me into something. We had held hands before when we were in Sunday school and I tried to tell her that her hands were the sweatiest girl hands in the country. But this time was different. Shalaya Crump held on, and even when I loosened my grip, she held on even tighter. That’s always how you can tell if a girl likes you. If you loosened your grip and she loosened hers, you might as well go play football with your boys or something, because nothing is gonna pop off. Anyway, I felt like we were in our own version of “Thriller.”

  “City, I can’t do this by myself anymore. I need you to come with me.”

  “Need me to what?”

  “To come with me.”

  “Where?”

  Shalaya Crump knelt down next to this rusty handle that was covered in pine needles and leaves. The handle looked like the handle of this rusted brown iron Mama Lara used to keep her doors open. When Shalaya Crump pulled the handle, this hole inside the ground opened up. The door to the hole had rusty handles on both sides so someone inside the hole could pull the door shut if they needed to. Inside the hole were these dusty steps that led straight down to red clay. Shalaya Crump stepped half-down in the hole in the ground and looked up at me. All that was left outside the hole was her boobs, her head, and her bony arms. She looked back at me and said, “Please, City. Don’t let me go by myself this time. I need to show someone.”

  If anyone else in the world, including my mama or Mama Lara, were boob-deep into a hole in the ground, asking me to follow them, I would have run away and called the police. But standing right there, watching Shalaya Crump want me to help her so bad, made me ask myself when was the next time I could count on Shalaya Crump inviting me anywhere dark, small, and secret with her. I figured the worst thing that could happen is that we could get covered in worms or maybe it would be too hot in the hole and my sack would commence to smelling sour. But worms don’t bite, I told myself, and Shalaya Crump’s underarms were already funky as six recesses.

  The hole wasn’t the easiest to get in if you had wide hips, but after a while, I was in. “Now what?” I asked her. “Does my breath stank like stale Miracle Whip?”

  Shalaya Crump grabbed my hand with her left hand and grabbed the handle with the other hand. “Don’t let go,” she said, “until I open the door again, okay?” Shalaya Crump pulled the secret door closed and darkness swallowed everything you were supposed to see.

  “Your eyes closed, Shalaya?”

  “Naw,” she said. “Yours?”

  “Yeah.” I kept them closed for about ten seconds and tried to find Shalaya Crump’s hand. “What about now? Your eyes still open?”

  “Yeah, City. You should open yours, too.”

  “Mine are open now,” I lied. “I ain’t scared of the dark.”

  “Okay,” Shalaya Crump said. “Just be yourself when we open it. I need you to be yourself and don’t say a word to anyone.”

  Shalaya Crump pushed the secret door open after about seven more seconds. Just like that, the woods were green like the Hulk’s chest instead of green like a lime. It felt hotter when we stepped out of the hole, too. Took a while for my eyes to adjust to the brightness. You could see bigger slithers of dark road from where we were in the woods, like the woods had gone on a diet. The road didn’t seem like a road anymore, either. It looked like a tar-black slab of bacon that was way fatter than it was before we went in.

  “What’s wrong with Old Ryle Road?” I asked her.

  “It’s new,” she said. She looked at my face, hoping that I’d act like I understood. “This ain’t the same woods we know, City.”

  “It ain’t new,” I sucked my teeth. “How could woods be new in like five minutes?” I looked around and saw the Shephard house. Then I turned and looked at Shalaya Crump, who was watching me watch everything around us. “Why you watching me like that?”

  Shalaya Crump didn’t answer me. “You smell that?” I asked her and started coughing. The air in the woods was heavier than it had been. I always wanted my mama to get me one of those plastic asthma bottles like some of the white kids on TV, but she said I never needed one. “I think I got asthma, girl. I’m serious.” She looked at me and forced a fake laugh. “What happened to all the trees? And that house,” I pointed toward the Shephard house. “What happened to it?”

  I started running toward what I thought was the Shephard house and Shalaya Crump ran behind me. It was the same shape as the Shephard house but it read “Melahatchie Community Center” on the iron front door.

  “City, calm down. Please. You have to be calm. Don’t be so loud. They’re gonna hear us.”

  “Who?”

  I looked through the woods toward Old Ryle Road and saw a crazy blue Monte Carlo with the most golden wheels I’ve ever seen in my life. The rattling of its license plate was in rhythm with a deep boom that sounded over and over again. It was the craziest, best-sounding boom I’d ever heard in my life.

  “You hear that? What is it? Is that some new Run-D.M.C. or Herbie Hancock? Who that?”

  “Be quiet, City.”

  “How you gonna tell me to be quiet and you got me going in a hole feeling crazy? What’s wrong with you?” I grabbed her by her shoulders.

  Shalaya Crump pushed my hands off. “Don’t ever push me.” She looked me in the eyes. “Ever! I don’t care if you feel crazy or not. All we can do is watch, okay? We can’t let them know we’re here. Shhh. Listen.”

  We stood there in the middle of what kinda looked the Night Time Woods, looking at what kinda looked like Old Ryle Road. I tried to block out anything other than the sounds of blackbirds chirping and stiff leaves blowing up on our feet and squirrels digging around in trees.

  “Yeah, shoatee. Call me,” the voice said from the street. “I’ma keep my phone on!” But there was no one with him. The man was talking to himself.

  “Is this a dream?” I asked Shalaya Crump. “Is it? It is, right? Well, I’m ’bout to wake up myself up.” I took out my sweat rag and started trying to pop myself in the middle of the forehead, hoping I would wake myself up.

  Shalaya Crump took my rag from me and told me to shut up. I heard more rattling booms coming from another strange truck with all black windows and white hubcaps. I looked at Shalaya Crump and the confusion made me start tearing up right in front of her face. I tried to wipe my eyes with my sweat rag but it was too late. I was so Young and the Restless. Shalaya Crump was right.

  “City,” she breathed all heavy and acted all weird like she was on a soap opera, “you know how I asked you not to show your work before?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, don’t ask me to show my work when I tell you this, okay?”

  “Okay!” I wiped my eyes and tried to get the boogers out with the same wipe.

  “This is 2013, City, and…”

  “What?”

  “Let me finish. I’m scared because, well, I think I’m dead. Can you help me?”

  I waited for her to say more, or at least look at me with a goofy grin. But she didn’t. Not at all.

  “Shalaya Crump, I want you to show all your work now. All of it. I don’t give a damn if you say it’s long division.”

  Instead of showing her work, Shalaya Crump took me by the hand and led me to the edge of the woods, where the sticker bushes met the shallow ditch that separated the woods from the Old Ryle Road.

  “You can’t talk to anyone, Cit
y. I only come out here at night when can’t no one see me,” she said. “I keep trying to find myself.”

  I wanted to ask Shalaya Crump all kinds of questions, but across the street, in what should have been Mama Lara’s house, was a girl sitting on the porch with a tiny silver briefcase on her lap. Down the road, I saw that the trailer next door wasn’t even there anymore. The girl on the porch had her head down, except for every now and then when she’d raise it to drink from this huge cold drank. Every time she took a swig, she looked toward the woods. It looked like she was talking to herself and playing with a calculator.

  “Where did that person get that big ol’ cold drank from?”

  “All the bottles of cold drank are big around here.”

  I looked harder at the girl and looked over at Shalaya Crump, hoping she would give me something more than she was giving me. “Well, why is she sitting on Mama Lara’s porch?”

  “Does that look like your Mama Lara’s porch, City?”

  “Well, kinda. I mean, not really. I mean it does, but it doesn’t. But…” I didn’t know how to say what I wanted to say. Shalaya Crump was right that the place didn’t exactly look like my Mama Lara’s any more. It looked like what my Mama Lara’s place would look like if it had been in a few tornados. It made me feel funny that Shalaya Crump didn’t say anything about how the girl sitting out on the porch, at least from where we were, looked almost just like her except this girl was thicker with way shorter hair, maybe a bigger nose, and boobs that looked like the balled-up fists of a seven-year-old.

  “Who is that?” I asked her.

  Shalaya Crump didn’t answer, and I got tired of asking her questions she wouldn’t answer. I started across the street toward the girl on the porch.