by Kiese Laymon
I walked all the way up to the hole and peeked down in it. Damn. Damn. Damn.
I was in 1964 all by myself.
COMMON TO MAN.
On Sunday morning, Grandma and I got in the Bonneville and headed to Concord Baptist Church at a little past eleven in the morning.
Nothing made sense.
I had found out that there were actually two Long Division books, the one I kept in the house and the one I decided to leave in the work shed with Pot Belly. But the existence of at least two books was less confusing than the words in the books.
Maybe the book wasn’t a book at all, I thought. Maybe the book was the truth. If it was the truth, I had to figure out what it had to do with me. And if Baize wasn’t actually missing, but maybe just time traveling, that meant that Pot Belly hadn’t really hurt her at all.
“City,” Grandma interrupted my thoughts while turning down the radio, “when you get saved, act like you got some sense. You hear me? Whole lotta folks get saved and it take them an entire life before they start living by God’s word. That’s them ol’ deathbed conversioners, them ol’ heathens trying to get to heaven a lifetime too late.”
I told Grandma that the car smelled like something died in the backseat and asked her who she was talking about. She ignored the comment about the smell and said that she wasn’t talking about anyone in particular.
When we made it to the dirt parking lot of Concord Baptist Church, the Bonneville stopped and Grandma swiveled her neck toward me. With her eyes a-twitching and mouth a-moving, almost in slow motion, Grandma said, “Okay now, City. It’s 11:45. We still got time to send you up for altar call. Don’t act a fool up in here.”
Grandma and I walked into this little heated waiting area before you walked all the way into the church. We held hands. “Your hand’s wet as a wash rag, City,” she said. “Don’t be scared.”
“I’m not scared,” I told her.
Believe it or not, I wasn’t lying. I stood there looking through the window at the congregation. Scared was in my mind, but it was way in the back closet. In the front of it was this excited feeling of walking into church and having all those folks treat me like the celebrity I was. Right beneath that feeling was another kind of wonder. I didn’t wonder about what was going to happen as much as I wondered about what the white Jesus above the pulpit was thinking.
I wasn’t sure if the white Jesus who my grandma had been praying to all this time was the same one above the pulpit, but even if he wasn’t, I still wondered what he thought about Concord. I wondered if white Jesus felt jealous about the way the men marched in like penguins, sweaty thighs and armpits wrapped in these black suits shining like armor. Even better were the girls who had their dresses dipping and diving like new fluorescent kites.
Deacon Big Shank, the dude in charge of all the ushers, opened the door to the sanctuary. He always kept one arm behind his back. He one-arm hugged Grandma and shook my hand. Deacon Shank whispered, “We seen you on TV the other night, Little Citizen.”
He couldn’t pronounce my real name so he called me “Little Citizen.” He had called me that ever since I was like seven years old. “Your granddaddy smiling, son.”
I stood in the back looking around the church feeling crazy lost. Uncle Relle was already in the church, filming it all on one of his cell phones. Part of me was still lost in thoughts of Pot Belly while another part of me was lost in the way Mama Troll was playing that organ when a little chirpy black bird flew right past my face.
It looked like there was a whole family of chirpy black birds in a nest up in the top of the church. They’d take turns swooping down during the service. It was cool because they never pecked or shitted on anyone’s head or clothes. They just swooped and chirped throughout the whole service. The only time those birds would stop and chill was when Lily Mae did that Holy Spirit Shake or near the end of Cherry’s sermon when Troll brought back that damp funk on the organ.
Reverend Cherry stood up and said, “Thank ya, choir.” Reverend Cherry paused and looked at the congregation and said, “We are blessed.” Then he breathed all heavy in the microphone, like he was about to stop breathing.
Reverend Cherry’s whole style was thick cane syrup mixed with lightning and lard. It really was. He had that sleepy, slow, dripping voice. Sounded like burning Bubble Wrap was up in his throat. His voice matched his sleepy left eye. You know how people with one sleepy eye look stupid, but smooth and in control at the same time, especially when they blink? That’s how Cherry’s left eye and voice were. Both looked and sounded real different and stupid at first, but you never felt sorry for him, and after hearing and seeing his face a lot of times, you wanted to have a voice and a sleepy eye like his.
His voice wasn’t all slow so that you thought his bread wasn’t done. It was slow on purpose, the slow where he was always in control of the next word that oozed out of his mouth. The thing that really made Cherry so special, and so damn strange, was that the old joker never said “uhhmm” or “uhh” or “I mean” or anything like that. Never. Not even when he was sweating and grabbing his sacks and spitting on folk and doing the death-breaths during his sermon.
I was sitting there fanning Grandma when Reverend Cherry made eye contact with me.
“Sister Coldson, could you send your grandbaby, City, up here to read the gospels for the church? Everybody in here already knows that City let them folks get him into a niggardly predicament a few days ago.” The congregation clapped and amen’ed. “When you seen the video, didn’t it remind you how we been missing him at Sunday school? Didn’t it, church?”
Cherry tucked his chins into his neck, held the Bible under his arm like a football, and inched toward me. He didn’t blink one time and he didn’t look at anyone in the whole church but me. I tried looking down but Grandma elbowed me in my rib cage.
I damn sure didn’t want to, but I stepped to the cone-looking microphone and read anyway.
The congregation wasn’t smiling like I wished they would’ve, so I kept reading. “No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; —” I never really knew how you were supposed to pause at those semicolons. I always thought I read through them too fast, but Mama wasn’t there to correct me so it was okay. “— but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to hear it.”
Cherry took the Bible from me and closed it. Then, even though he was talking to me, he walked over by the microphone, looked at the congregation again, and said all slow, “Thank you, City.”
I hated when people said thank you just so people other than the person being thanked could hear it. I stood there beside Cherry. He had his paw on my shoulder. I looked at Grandma. She was looking so proud.
“Awright. Amen. Little City’ll be entering God’s army soon, ain’t you?” I just looked at him. Didn’t nod or nothing. “Thank you, City. Go ahead and sit your smart self down.” He pushed me in my back.
“I hope y’all listen to what City just read,” Cherry said. “The Lord say that you ain’t run up on no temptation no different from nobody else. Listen to what he sayeth. He sayeth it’s a million different folks in this world. Black. White. Oriental. Indian. Jews. Womens. Mexican. Whatever. Mens. Gay Fruities. Whatever you is, you got the same temptations as the next man and as all men that done come before you. But ain’t but one way to escape them temptation, is it?”
Everybody started saying “Yeah” and “Only one way, chile.”
Cherry kept going. I was into it, I think, because I had read it. “And the same voice, that Lord’s voice, makes the escape possible if you, what?”
Silence. Pews started squeaking and wrists were popping from all the fanning.
When folk didn’t know what to say, they said, “W’hell.” When he asked questions—I’m not even lying—Grandma was the only one in the church who could answer his dumb questions right every time.
“H
ear it, Cherry,” Grandma said. “Lord say you got to hear it.”
“That’s right, Sista Coldson. Y’all hear what Sista Coldson said? You got to hear it, church. You ready? I don’t thank y’all ready to hear it. Y’all ready to listen? Y’all ready to hear it, not just for yourself but for our baby, Baize Shephard? We gotta hear it for the babies who ain’t here to hear it for themselves. Y’all ready?”
The church roared “Yeah” and “We ready, Rev.”
“Church, somebody in here, if it wasn’t today, maybe it was last Sunday or the Sunday ’fore last or maybe even a Sunday last year sometime, but whenever it was, you woke up and said to yourself, ‘Self, I sho’ do want to do the right thing.’
“Naw, lemme tell y’all another way,” he said. “You woke up and say to yourself, ‘Self, I need to go to church.’ Then you thought about that comfortable bed, that box fan blowing that good air on your face. You wanted to come to church. You say you wanted to come to church. Then, that voice crept up in that right ear and said, ‘You need to go to church. It will help you. It will help the community of God. Go ahead and get your wretched tail on up.’ But temptation was already up in that left ear and it made that head get real heavy, didn’t it?”
People were laughing their ass off now. I wanted to elbow myself in the head for laughing, too.
“All that temptation made that head so heavy,” he said, “like a watermelon, or a sack of sweet potatoes. Then it fell back on that pillow. Bam! And you said, ‘I’m tired’ or ‘I’m sick. Uhh. I’mo come next week. Next week.’ Only thing is…” Reverend Cherry slowed down a bit “…next week wasn’t promised. Next week ain’t never promised. All we got is the moment and yesterday. Tomorrow ain’t guaranteed. We know that better than any of these folks.”
Reverend Cherry sped up again. “But you wanted to come to church, you claim. You knew what was right and you wanted to do that. Church, Lord don’t deal in no wants. Lord coulda carried you to church that day, but that ain’t his way. Lord give us the power to make sense of all this noise around us. Lord give us a way to slow down the noise and see everything that’s in it. Lord give us a way to recollect this chaos. And the Lord deal in what is. Lord give you the ability to do the right thing. Lord tell you what to do when you standing in front of a sea of white folks and they want you to act a fool. Ain’t that right, Li’l City?”
He looked right at me and started yelling.
“Open up your ears! ’Lot of us got our arms open and stretched out to the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit because that’s the pose we thank He want to see, but our ears ain’t open. We are steady posing, but who we thank we faking out? You can’t fake out Jesus. He unfakable, City! Them folks got you joking and jiving, acting like you ain’t got good sense, but the Lord ain’t going nowhere.
“Jesus speaketh in many tongues, but he always speaketh so you can understand. Always find you, no matter where you at. I say always! You might hear it in a deep voice. Somebody else might hear it in a little light voice. He might sang to you. He might throw it at you in sign language or maybe even one of them ol’ rap songs.”
The church was loud as hell, half laughs, half amens. Lots of claps. Then silence, no squeaks in the benches, no wrist-popping, just Cherry’s voice and Troll’s wet quilt.
“Or his voice might sound like mines do right here, right now.” Cherry slowed down. “Whatever it is, open up your ears. It’s there. He tried to tell us where our baby, Baize Shephard, was. But we ain’t listen. We ain’t wanna seem crazy!”
“I ain’t crazy,” a voice shouted.
“Who out there ready to open they ears to the right voice? Who out there ain’t crazy? Who ready to save our babies so that Baize and the rest of our children won’t be lost in vain?”
“Right here, Rev. I hear it,” another voice shouted. “Right here, praise Jesus!”
“Come on up here, if you ready to open your ears,” Rev said. “Can’t open them ears, without opening them heavy heads and hearts. This ain’t no sometimes thang. Sho ain’t. This a life thang. This here is a Lord thang! Come on up here if you ready to be part of this Lord thang. Come up here if you tired of faking out the Lord.”
“I’m ready for this Lord thing,” my voice shouted. I was standing up, clapping like a seal. I swear I didn’t remember telling my voice, my hands, or my legs to move. “I love your sentence style, Rev,” my voice yelled again. “I knew better.”
“Come up here then, City,” Reverend told me. “If you really ready to give that life and soul to Jesus, come on up here. This ain’t no sometimes thang, City.”
Grandma pushed me up there, but she didn’t have to. I hoped that four or five folks who Grandma called heathens would come up to the front of the church with me.
“Wait, Reverend Cherry.” I didn’t know if Cherry could hear me but I spoke to him anyway. “I just said you had smoove sentence styles. I’m really not trying to be all about that Lord life, though.”
No one could hear me on top of all that mess. Finally, Ren and Ray-gord, the two grandsons of Deacon Harper known for having good hair, came up there with me.
Reverend Cherry looked at the deacons on the right and the ushers in the back and said, “Raise your right hand, sons. Tomorrow, at our First Monday Baptism, do you give yourself to the Lord? Are you ready to be saved by right? Tomorrow in the holy waters of heaven, do you…”
I looked at Grandma before glaring up at white Jesus again. I wondered if any folks in the church knew about the cross-eyed white man in Grandma’s work shed. I wondered what they would think about my grandma’s relationship with the Lord and with right if they really knew. If they ever found out, maybe two of them would talk smack about my grandma, but I figured that everyone in the church had been treated like a visitor on their own road, in their own town, in their own state, in their own country. It wasn’t really complicated at all, but I’d never understood it until right then in that church. When you and everyone you like and everyone who really likes you is treated like a pitiful nigger, or like a disposable nigger, or like some terrorizing nigger, over and over again, in your own home, in your own state, in your own country, and the folks who treat you like a nigger are pretty much left alone, of course you start having fantasies about doing whatever you can—not just to get back at white folks, and not just to stop the pain, but to do something that I didn’t understand yet, something a million times worse than acting a fool in front of millions at a contest.
One sentence.
That one sentence had the potential to be the greatest sentence I’d ever thought of, and I wished LaVander Peeler was there to hear it and help me figure out what the last part actually meant.
“Ahhhhhhhhhhmen!”
Everyone dropped hands and we made our way out of the church. I walked out feeling that my First Monday Baptism might be the last thing I ever experienced. Whether it was because I was going to die during the baptism or because I was going to be some wack holy dude I never imagined being, I didn’t know how I could live another day as myself after that baptism. Either way, I figured I needed to go home and write a will on the blank pages in Long Division. If I did die, I wanted to give something to all the folks I was leaving behind.
A WILL.
1. I leave my Pine wave brush to LaVander Peeler.
2. I leave my XL mesh shorts to Shay.
3. I leave my grown-folks books to Shay and Gunn and a few of my illiterate kids’ books to MyMy.
4. I leave my cell phone to my grandma because she needs one even though they don’t ever get decent reception down here.
5. I leave my essays to Mama.
6. I leave my vintage Walter Payton jerseys to LaVander Peeler.
7. I leave my notebook to Grandma because she taught me how to read.
8. I leave my Obama Loves the South T-shirt to Shay.
9. I want to leave my spot on that TV show to Grandma too. She’d be better than I ever would be. And if Grandma won’t do it, I leave it to that Mexican girl f
rom Arizona, the one who I should not have dissed.
10. I leave my password to my email, Twitter, and Facebook to my Uncle Relle. It’s W-H-O-S-T-A-N-K.
In the middle of my will in Long Division, I smelled Pot Belly and got that feeling that someone was looking at me. I turned around and there was Uncle Relle filming me with one of his cell phones.
“Oh hey, Uncle Relle. You smell funny.”
“Funny how,” he said, and he put one of his hands in his pockets. “Don’t worry about how I smell, City. Keep doing you, like I ain’t even here.”
“It’s hard to do me when I know you’re trying to tape me doing me,” I told him.
“Well, you better get good at acting like you’re doing you in the future. The reality TV shit, it’s about acting like the camera ain’t there. You can’t be looking all in the camera and making faces.” Uncle Relle turned his phone camera off and put it in some leather case he kept on his belt. “It’s a few basics that I think you haven’t really ingratiated yourself to.”
“You mean gravitated to?”
“Just listen, City. Close that gotdamn book.”
I closed my book and braced myself for another one of Uncle Relle’s speeches.
“This writing thing, it ain’t like that hip hop shit, City. For li’l niggas like you,” he told me, “this writing thing is like a gotdamn porta potty. It’s one li’l nigga at a time, shitting in the toilet, funking up the little space he get. And you shit a regular shit or a classic shit. Either way,” he said. “City, you gotta shit classic, then get your black ass on off the pot.” He actually grabbed my hand. “You probably think I’m hyping you just for the money. It ain’t just about the money. It’s really not. It’s about doing whatever it takes for you to have your voice heard. So I don’t know what you’re writing in that book you always carrying around, but it better be classic because you ain’t gonna get no two times to get it right, you hear me?”
“I hear you.”
