Long Division

by Kiese Laymon

  “The Klan killed Jews, too.”

  We waited for Evan to say more, but he just held his mouth open, kept both hands on his hips, and kept swallowing his own spit. I grabbed Shalaya Crump by the hand. “Shalaya Crump, we lived our whole life this far with no granddaddies. Think about it. I don’t know if we somehow got stuck in a dumb book or movie. Right now, I feel like we supposed to say, ‘Golly, let’s go save the grandfathers we never knew.’ But like you always say, life ain’t no book. This is real life. In real life, do we really need our granddaddies?”

  Shalaya Crump laughed and actually looked at me like she thought I had a point. Then she looked over at Evan and flicked her gum at his feet and started doing these weird toe-raises. “City’s right,” she said. “We don’t know a thing about having granddaddies. Even if we did, I mean, what happens if we change our future by changing the past? It’s impossible to not change the future if you change the past, right? More would change than just us having granddaddies.”

  Shalaya Crump was always taking the best thing you ever said and then adding something even better to it to make the best thing you ever said sound pretty lame. I understood what she was saying. Even if we saved our granddaddies and Evan’s folks, what if it changed everything and we ended up not being born?

  “Listen,” Evan said, “you’re both right, but I know the future.”

  “So what!” we both said. “We do too.”

  “Then you know that the future has to be changed? Look,” he looked at Shalaya Crump. “I know what happens to both of you.”

  “You do?” Shalaya Crump jumped in.

  “He’s lying, ’Laya.” It was the first time I had ever shortened her name to ’Laya. “How can this goofy white boy know what happens to us or even know the future if he can’t even understand how an answering machine works?”

  Jewish Evan Altshuler ignored my question and got right in her face. She kinda backed up. “I promise if you come back and help me, I’ll tell you what happens to you in the future. Not only that, I can change what happens to you. I know what happens to your parents in the past, too.”

  “You lying?” Shalaya Crump asked him.

  Jewish Evan Altshuler cut his eyes to me, before focusing on Shalaya Crump. “Ain’t much to look at. I know that. Can you listen to me?” He actually grabbed Shalaya Crump’s pinky. “I know so much more than you think I do. I give you my word, Shalayer Crump. Both of you.”

  “Oh God,” Shalaya Crump said and took her pinky back, “Just promise. Don’t say you ‘give your word.’ That’s so Ronald Reagan.”

  “Hell yeah,” I said and fake laughed. “And it’s Shalaya, not Shalayer.”

  I wanted to fight Jewish Evan Altshuler so bad right there, but I could tell by the way Shalaya Crump’s eyes didn’t blink and by the way she was looking at his crusty lip and feeling sorry for it that we were headed to 1964. Shalaya Crump was gonna go back whether I went or not. That was a given as soon as the dude said he could help her find her parents in the past and find herself in the future. And if I didn’t go, I was pretty much admitting that it was okay for her and Jewish Evan Altshuler to start loving each other til the end of time. You think I’m crazy, right? Well, I know that you can’t travel through time with a girl and save folks from the Klan and not kiss them unless you’re slightly deformed or unless you smell like death. And even then, there’s still gonna be some serious grinding going on. Serious grinding.

  Shalaya Crump got in the hole first. Jewish Evan Altshuler followed her. I followed him. Before I closed the door, I looked around at the woods and zeroed in on the Shephard house. “Wait.” I said. “Who is that?”

  I wanted to tell Shalaya Crump that there was a dark outline of someone watching us from the Shephard house window, but she wouldn’t have believed me, since she knew I was the only one of us three that didn’t want to go to 1964.

  “Never mind,” I said. “Don’t worry about it.” I lowered myself under the ground with the laptop computer in my left hand and Long Division in my right hand, and closed my eyes. Then I pulled the door down on all three of us.

  When we pushed open the door to 1964, the air was thin and you couldn’t even see Old Ryle Road because everything was so thick and green. Right in front of us, where the Shephard house used to be, was a building that was only half painted yellow. Evan told Shalaya Crump that we were looking at a Freedom School.

  “Should we go over there?” Shalaya Crump asked him. “What’s the plan?”

  “I reckon our plan is to make sure the Klan in Melahatchie don’t ever kill again,” Jewish Evan Altshuler said. “I can get us some rifles.”

  I looked at Shalaya Crump. “I told you that this white boy is crazy and he gonna get us killed. Didn’t I tell you? You see how he changed up his whole style now that he got us where he want us?”

  “Wait,” Shalaya Crump said. “Hold up. Why didn’t you say something about killing white folks before you got us here?”

  “I didn’t think of it until now.”

  “White folks are the sneakiest people on earth,” Shalaya Crump said in a whispery voice, but loud enough so Evan could hear.

  “I’m not white.”

  “So you’re sneaky because you’re Jewish, then?”

  Jewish Evan Altshuler just started huffing and puffing before finally saying, “Thought you were different, Shalayer Crump.”

  “Different than what? And don’t say my name if you can’t say it right.”

  “Different than anti-semitic,” he said.

  “Anti-septic?” I asked.

  “Anti-semitic. Your li’l girlfriend right here hates her some Jews.”

  “I’m too big to be any boy’s little girlfriend. That’s the first thing,” Shalaya Crump said. “I’m a black woman.”

  “Top to bottom,” I said. “Top to bottom.”

  “You’re a 15-year-old girl,” Evan told her. “Ain’t no woman. Trying to tell me that I’m white when I know I’m Jewish, ain’t you? Reckon I can tell you you’re a girl when you think you’re a woman.”

  Jewish Evan Altshuler kinda had a point there, but I couldn’t agree with him.

  “All I did was ask you if you were sneaky because you’re Jewish,” Shalaya Crump told him. “Anyway, a question can’t be wrong, especially if I ask it.”

  “Is your head on right?” Evan asked. “That’s ’bout the dumbest thing I ever heard. Y’all don’t know nothing about Jews, do you?”

  I expected Shalaya Crump to give him an A+ speech about Jewish people, since she always seemed like she knew at least a little bit about everything. But she didn’t say a word.

  “Evan,” I told him. “You ain’t gotta get so sensitive, homeboy. There’s more stuff to talk about than ‘Jewish’ stuff.” I looked at Shalaya Crump to see if that’s what she wanted me to say. “Right? It’s shade tree to bring us here and expect us to take out white folks for you. It just is. You know what would happen to us if we killed white folks?”

  “Exactly,” she said.

  Evan closed his eyes for damn near fifteen seconds and shook his head side to side. That was the first thing he’d done since we’d been together that really made him seem a lot older than us. “First of all, you got some colored Jews out there, too. Y’all know what these white folks do to Jews, no matter our color, if they find us out over ’cross Highway 49 after dark?” he asked.

  Shalaya Crump and I were quiet.

  “They slaughter us,” he said. “Y’all don’t know a gotdamn thing.”

  “Wait. What did y’all do to get slaughtered?” Shalaya Crump asked him. “And who slaughtered y’all? Ain’t the word ‘slaughtered’ kinda so Chicken Plant?”

  “Six million of us. And one million children. That’s not so Chicken Plant. That’s exactly what happened to my people, Shalaya.”

  “But what else?” she asked him. “Why would white people slaughter other white people for no reason if there was colored folks around for them to slaughter?”

 
“Why you saying ‘colored’ now like him?” I asked her. “You know we don’t talk like that.”

  “Because I don’t just mean black. I’m saying that if there was black people and Indian people and Chinese people and Mexican people around to slaughter, why would white people pick other white people?”

  “Yeah, fool, obviously it’s more than being Jewish,” I told him. “You claim Jewish, right? And look at you. You ain’t slaughtered.”

  “City, you’re really ’bout the most ignorant bastard I ever met.”

  I stepped to him then, but Shalaya Crump grabbed me. “Step out that hole and let me show you how ignorant I can get,” I told him. “I know Jews are white. How about that?”

  “If we was just white, how come…”

  “I don’t know,” I interrupted. “I don’t know what you were gonna say and I don’t know why white folks do half of what y’all do. All we know is that whether you Jewish or not, y’all get off for whatever y’all do to us.” I looked at Shalaya Crump, who looked really proud of me. “That’s all we know. Shit.”

  “I’m trying to tell y’all best I can that y’all are wrong,” he said. “Once they know who we are, we never get off. They killed six million of us and they’re killing us now over here if we don’t act right.”

  “But that’s the point,” Shalaya Crump said. “We ain’t white like you. You can be Jewish and white or you can just be Jewish or you can just be white. Either way, you said it yourself. You gotta not act right to get killed. What do we have to do?”

  “I’m not acting right now,” he said. “That’s all I’m saying.”

  “No matter what, we can’t be killing no white folks,” I told him. “That’s all I’m saying. This is the stupidest conversation I ever heard of. I don’t even know why we talking to you.”

  “Y’all are sorry as hell,” Evan said and looked at both of us. “I’m trying to help you.”

  “That’s something else I don’t understand,” Shalaya Crump said to him. “If six million of your people got slaughtered and you know how time works, why not go back and help them?”

  “If I could, I would, Shalaya.” I really hated hearing him say her name. “I can go travel to three places, the same three as you can. Somebody out there can travel back and help my people, though. Just not me. Or maybe they already did. Maybe it woulda been worse.”

  I looked back and saw Shalaya Crump looking right in Evan’s face again. I figured she was going to say something sweet to him after that heartfelt end of his speech. “You were so right, City,” she said in the most calm, loving, and empty voice I’d ever heard her use. “This is a waste of time. Let’s just go home.”

  After a while, as much as I wanted to hear Shalaya Crump slap the nasty taste out of Evan’s mouth, I started to get lightweight bored. They kept going back and forth even though Shalaya Crump said it was time to go. You can only listen to people call each other sorry and anti-septic for so long before it makes you wanna cut your ears off.

  I hopped all the way out of the hole and started walking toward Old Ryle Road with my laptop computer under my arm and Long Division in my hand. It was weird, because even before you really completely saw Old Ryle Road, you could tell that it wasn’t a road. It was all dirt and rocks and it was a lot thinner than the road in 1985.

  When I reached the edge of the woods, I peeked through at what should have been my grandmother’s house. The house wasn’t there. In its place was a little country-looking store with two cold drank machines and a gas pump. The store had these red letters taped on the door that spelled “The County Co-op.”

  “City,” I heard Shalaya Crump say behind me, “don’t say nothing to no one out there. This ain’t how I wanted to change the future. When you come back, we’re going back home.”

  I ignored Shalaya Crump and stepped all the way into the road. Down the road, all those clean and organized houses and yards made me think of how the future wasn’t gonna do them too many favors. There were probably half the houses and trailers that were there in 1984. Mama Lara’s house was gone but Shalaya Crump’s trailer was still there.

  I knew it wasn’t the right thing to do, but I went across the street to the Co-op to ask people if they’d heard of the Coldsons. If our house wasn’t there, I just wanted to know where we lived. Plus, I had my own plan.

  Evan was stupid to think that we had to kill people. I know I wasn’t supposed to talk to anyone, but my plan was basic. It was to convince my granddaddy to watch out for the Klan if I got a chance.

  That’s it.

  It was that simple. Either my granddaddy would believe me or he wouldn’t, but at least he’d know. All my time coming up with plans in my GAME book helped me know how to get from point A to point B with the least amout of stress.

  While I was peeking in the dusty window of that Co-op, a sorry-sounding “meow” scared the mess outta me. I looked around and there was this skinny black cat with a fat head looking right at me. It had a thick collar around its neck with the words “Red Naval.” You know what’s crazy? I had never ever seen a cat in Melahatchie in my entire life. Never. And I never thought anything about it. There were more limping Dobermans than there were people, but you never saw a cat.

  Anyway, the cat came closer to me and just kept meowing. “I ain’t got no food for you. Is your name ‘Red Naval’ or is that like the name of your owner? What?”

  Meowwww

  The cat came closer and I backed up.

  Meooowww

  I put the computer down facing the cat. The cat just walked right around the computer and got even closer to me.

  Meeooow

  “Oh, you talking noise? Don’t be mad because you don’t understand how to use it.” As I was talking, the cat walked off toward the side of the building. Before it turned the corner it meowed louder.

  I looked toward the woods and into the Co-op, then walked toward the edge of the building, following the cat. I turned the corner of the Co-op and didn’t see the cat anymore. But there were two doors on the side of the Co-op. The first door was closed and it said “WHITES ONLY—KEY IN FRONT.” Scratched under the word “front” was the sentence “Nigger-loving Jews ain’t wanted here.” I tried to open it but it was locked. The second door, which was cracked opened, said “COLORED.” I walked toward the door and was about to poke my head in when the cat came out and meowed again.

  “I wish somebody would try and tell me I couldn’t do number two in that white bathroom,” I told the cat. “I don’t play that.”

  Meoow

  “I’m serious. If that white folks’ bathroom was open, I swear to God I’d go in there and get to dookying right in that sink.”

  Meoow

  “I don’t care if it is a white folks’ sink. I would be smearing dookie all on the mirror and everything! I ain’t from here. I’m from 1985. I don’t play that mess.”

  I stood there waiting for the cat to meow again, but it didn’t. It just stood there looking at me. I realized when I stopped talking all big and bad that a heavy whiff of sad like I’d never felt before was getting closer and closer to my neck. Reading about my family and other black folks not being able to pee in a good bathroom was different than seeing a white folks’ bathroom locked and a colored bathroom just open for anything that wanted to come in. It said “colored” on the door, but it might as well have said cats, spiders, possums, coons, and roaches, ’cause it was open to them just like it was open to us.

  The cat took me all the way to back of the Co-op, where there was this rusty clothesline with white sheets hanging on it. Right there in the middle was this one scraggly Doberman doing the do to this other fatter Doberman. They weren’t making no barks or no moans. They were just doing it like they were the last dogs on Earth.

  The cat walked up about a foot from the Dobermans and sat on its hind legs. Then it started looking back and forth at the Dobermans and me. I can’t really blame the cat. I’d seen dogs doing it before, but this was different. I would have bet my
new computer and book that they wouldn’t be doing it like that if they were doing it with any other dogs. You never think of dogs being in love, but those dogs were. They really were.

  While I was watching those dogs, as crazy as it sounds, my body started to feel like I was watching Porky’s. The Dobermans weren’t even that cute as far as dogs go either.

  I didn’t like how the dogs were making me feel, so I started stomping and yelling, but they kept doing it like no one was screaming. All around the back of the Co-op were these little jagged gray rocks. They were too little to really throw far or hard, but they were good enough to hit a dog in the head if you threw a handful of them.

  I cocked my arm back and dotted the heads of those Dobermans with gray rocks. The scraggly top Doberman got off the bottom Doberman real slow and they both just looked at me, along with the cat. And I swear the cat licked its paws and actually said in the most smooth voice I’d ever heard in my life, “Wow. You a real fat asshole for that right there. You don’t know better than to throw rocks at love?”

  “You talk?” I asked the cat. Right then, I wondered if everything I’d experienced in the last day and a half was a dream, or if somehow, some way, I’d gotten trapped in someone else’s story.

  “Don’t even worry about what I do,” the cat said. “You should probably get your fat ass to running, though.”

  I slowly turned the corner and headed back toward the woods to find Shalaya Crump and Jewish Evan Altshuler. When I looked over my shoulder, all three beasts were sprinting at me, led by the cat, whose head looked less fat when he was sprinting.

  I took off.

  They were getting closer, but I jumped the ditch and landed in the woods. Even though I scratched up my face, my legs, and the computer, I didn’t even care. When I got closer to the hole, I wanted to tell Shalaya Crump about the Dobermans and the talking Red Naval cat and the colored bathroom. The closer I got, though, I didn’t hear Shalaya Crump and Evan arguing at all. I figured I’d look in the hole and they’d be right there, wrestling or playing Mercy or Thump in a way that would make me wanna throw up.