by Kiese Laymon
“People can mash your heart in your chest, Voltron, while you’re still alive. They can take people from you. That’s something to be afraid of. Stop fronting like you’re ’bout that life, boy.”
I said okay, but I knew people could hurt people way more than Baize would ever know. Shalaya Crump and I had this friend named Rozier. I liked to think about big ol’ JET-centerfold booties for as long as Rozier knew me, and Rozier liked to think about big ol’ boy booties for as long as I knew him. That’s just how he was. The thing about Rozier was that he was the kind of guy who you met and 29 minutes later, you knew he would be better than Eddie Murphy when he grew up. Rozier invented farting out loud in homeroom. He also invented calling people “ol’ blank-blank-blank-ass nigga.” Like if you ate an apple too fast, Rozier would call you an “ol’ eating-apples-like-they-plums-ass nigga,” or if you failed a test, he’d call you an “ol’ watching-Three’s Company-when-you-shoulda-been-studying-ass nigga.”
If you called Rozier a name he didn’t like, Rozier could slap you in the face better than any kid in Melahatchie, except for maybe Shalaya Crump. The summer of ’84, Rozier got jumped by some dudes from Waveland. Rozier had embarrassed one of the dudes in front of his family earlier at the arcade. After the boy called Rozier a faggot, Rozier said he’d never met a boy who smelled like sack and dookie through his church clothes. He called him an “ol’ wiping-your-ass-forward-instead-of-backward-so-the-dookie-get-caked-up-under-your-sack-ass nigga.” He said the boy needed Mr. Miyagi to teach him to correctly “wipe on, wipe off.” Even his friends started laughing, and when the dude got in Rozier’s face, Rozier slapped the boy across his mouth twice with both hands. That’s four slaps right in front of his family. Then he ran.
The boy who got slapped four times got three of his older cock-strong friends to help find Rozier when he was by himself in the Night Time Woods the next day. Rozier slapped the best he could, but they ended up calling him a faggot and beating him down with T-ball bats. They didn’t ever hit him directly in the head, but they crushed his larynx. He was in the woods by himself for a whole day before we found him. Rozier ended up in a coma, and one week later, he was dead. Shalaya Crump and I didn’t speak a word about revenge until the night after the funeral.
That night we planned how we were going to kill the boys, and we planned for the whole rest of the summer. I came up with a good plan, too. But that’s the strange thing about planning to kill boys from Waveland with someone like Shalaya Crump. She had the worst temper of anyone I knew, but she was also the smartest person I knew. At some point, Shalaya Crump realized that we didn’t really want to kill the boys from Waveland.
“We just want them to hurt like we hurt,” she said. Shalaya Crump claimed that in order to hurt the boys, we’d have to “kill some little boy they loved, but not kill them.” And neither of us really had it in us to kill some little Waveland boy we didn’t know. By the end of the summer, all four of the boys involved got sent to juvenile detention centers for five years.
Anyway, I didn’t feel like explaining to Baize how I’d seen Rozier disappear, too, so I just said, “I hear you. You’re right. I should be afraid.”
I opened the door to the hole slowly so we wouldn’t be slapped across the face by the 1964 Klan. I sniffed as I opened the door to the hole and knew we were where we needed to be.
“It’s so dark,” Baize said. She was bent over coughing under a magnolia tree. “Everything is so green here, too. You know why?” I didn’t answer her. I was busy looking around for the Klan. She kept coughing.
“Look,” I told her, “we can’t play in this place the way we could in 2013. We gotta be quiet and we gotta always keep our head up, you hear me?” I was trying to make my nostrils flare and make lines form in my forehead. “You got folks around here who will slap the taste out of your little mouth if they think you did something small, like farted in a way that don’t smell right.”
“You got people like that back in 2013,” she said and kept coughing. “I’m talking about straight goons.” Baize’s nose was bleeding. She wiped it on her shirt. “You okay?” I asked her.
“Yeah, I just feel a little weird.”
I was starting to feel a little weird too, but not in my body. It was more in my head. I guess there were all kinds of ways to say it, but the easiest way was that I liked Baize more and more the longer we were together. And she liked me, too. It didn’t hit me until we got out of the hole that instead of just wanting to get her computer back, maybe she really just wanted to come back with me. I didn’t want to like her too much, though, because of Shalaya Crump. I could never like her as much as I liked Shalaya Crump, but still, if I liked Baize too much, I knew Shalaya Crump would be able to tell, and then everything would be ruined.
“Get all that sickness out of you,” I told her. “They got these Red Naval cats around here. And those things will come after you and start talking if you don’t watch it. And these folks here, they don’t even dress like real people.” I picked up a few acorns and tossed them at the base of tree. “All you can see is their eyes, and if you joke with them, they love to make you suffer.”
“That’s better than it is back home, where them goons look just like you. I’m serious. Female goons get to hating on you, too. The most basic of bitches wanna fight you for being glamorous and focused.”
“Did you really just say that?” I asked her. “Hard head makes a soft glamorous ass. You gonna be begging to get stomped out by a female goon after the Klan get ahold of you and throw you up in that colored bathroom with one of them Red Naval cats.” I threw an acorn at her forehead. “You laughing now, but when they start choking you out, don’t say I didn’t tell you.”
“Damn, Voltron,” she said, “can you not hate for like the next five minutes? Damn!”
We walked toward the Freedom School and peeked in the window. There was this slim, light-skinned lady talking to a tired, greasy-looking black man. The lady was walking around pointing and yelling and holding some paper with her back to us. The man was facing her, sitting at a desk and laughing.
“Who are those people?” Baize asked me.
“I don’t know. Be quiet.” I looked harder. “Is something wrong with that lady’s face?…I can’t tell. Just stay behind me.”
We decided to go in the Freedom School, since the people looked nice enough. They didn’t look rich at all, but the hair on both of their heads was so shaped up and neat that I started brushing my own hair.
“Whose babies y’all is?” the lady turned around and asked when we opened the door. I’m not sure how to describe her face, but the skin beneath her eyes and all over her forehead looked like it had been burned really bad and it was maybe just starting to heal. The craziest thing was that her eyes looked normal and they were huge and shiny.
“We ain’t babies,” I told her. I looked at Baize and she looked back at me.
“I’m City and Shalaya’s baby,” Baize said, stepping forward. “But I stay with my great-grandmama.”
I dropped Long Division.
AND A WAY.
After reading the craziest chapters yet of Long Division and sitting there with Pot Belly, I started to understand the sad that he was feeling. There were some red, green, yellow, white, or orange sprinkles in the sad I felt, but mostly, the sad was all just layers and layers of the thickest blue you’d ever seen in your life. Whenever I’d come close to feeling that blue before, I’d pick scabs, or I’d turn off the light and get nice with myself, or I’d come up with a plan about how to get some shine in homeroom at Hamer, or I’d troll the internet with the screen name Megatroneezy, or I’d post something inspirational or something extremely ratchet on Facebook, or I’d eat bowls of off-brand Lucky Charms until I got severe bubble guts. For some reason, I didn’t want to do any of that since I had lost at the contest.
I started thinking about Grandma, Uncle Relle, LaVander Peeler, Baize Shephard, and Mama. And when I really thought about all of them, I just felt so m
uch bluer than ever. Yeah, all those folks tried to mask their different blues, but after the praying, smoking, rapping, thinking, drinking, and running, there just seemed to be nothing else left but blue rooms with people who were really even lonelier and bluer than Octavia Whittington, the bluest girl I ever knew.
Octavia Whittington was the light-skinned girl at Hamer with ashy elbows and the bad self-esteem. Octavia almost transferred from Hamer after her adopted parents said, “Fannie Lou Hamer doesn’t provide an environment conducive to Octavia’s depressive condition.” At one of those parent-teacher-student meetings, I remember LaVander Peeler Sr. saying that he was offended that another parent would try to bring that “doggone language of depression” into our school. He didn’t say it as plain as he wanted, because a decent number of students were at the meeting, but I do remember him saying loud and clear, “Those other folks might do it that way, but how are we any better than them if we start drugging the doggone feelings out of our kids.”
I remember the standing ovation he got, even from Mama, who was usually too busy to come to those meetings. I don’t know why, but I always felt sorry for Octavia after that. Yeah, she always stayed alone, and her eyes looked crazy as hell because she only blinked once every minute, but if there was any kind of pill or drank that could make Octavia love living, I really think she should have been allowed to take it at school, especially if other folks at school were chasing the blue away by getting nice with themselves in the bathroom and dissing the hell out of each other with long sentences.
I pulled out a pen from my pocket and finished writing my will on the last page I’d read in Long Division.
11. I leave my favorite pen to this white man in the shed because he needs to write an apology to Grandma and maybe even to Baize. That would make him not feel so sad.
12. I leave this copy of Long Division to LaVander Peeler.
13. I leave the other copy to share between Grandma, Shay, Baize, and this white man in the shed if he decides to apologize.
14. I don’t want to die yet but I don’t want to feel this kind of blue ever again. So sad ain’t no joke.
WEARING BLOUSES NOW.
I was two hours and twenty minutes from my baptism and Grandma was already at work on Monday morning. She planned on meeting Uncle Relle and me at the church on her lunch break. To tell you the truth, Grandma left the house heated. First, she hated that she had agreed to make me wear this dashiki that my mama had left in her closet. I hated it, too. It was bright yellow with brown half moons and full red sun splotches all over it. She said that Mama had always wanted me baptized in the thing, but she was pissed when Mama called her and told her she wouldn’t be able to make it to Melahatchie. I could tell the dashiki was too big when Grandma handed it to me. When I put it on, the damn thing came all the way down past my navel, all the way past my thighs, and damn near touched my kneecaps. Plus, the neck part was too wide, so you could see the suit coat, vest, and tie underneath. I needed a shape-up, too, and there wasn’t one wave in my head since that white dude had taken my brush.
Uncle Relle came out on the porch while I was stewing in shame. He had a crazy smile on his face. “Anything you want to say to people before your big day?” he asked with one of his little phones in my face.
“Naw, not really. I’m good. I just hate my outfit.”
He laughed and said, “That shit looks real fucked up, but you good! Anyone you wish could be here to see you go through this day?”
I just looked at him. Couldn’t believe Uncle Relle was using the word “wish.” Wasn’t his style. “Naw, Uncle Relle. I’m good.”
“I’ll be right back in like ten minutes.”
I asked him where he was going, but he ignored me and jumped in his van.
Ten minutes later, Uncle Relle was pulling back into the driveway and someone else was in the passenger seat with him. Uncle Relle got out, walked around the passenger side, and opened the door. In what felt like slow motion, a patent leather blue-black Adidas hit the gravel.
I knew those Adidas.
Uncle Relle focused his camera phone on LaVander Peeler’s face as he got out of the van. As soon as I saw him, I thought about how stupid I looked in that damn dashiki. The LaVander Peeler I knew before the contest would have ethered me in one epic sentence for that outfit, but I wasn’t sure how much of that LaVander Peeler was left since he’d gone through that hell at the Coliseum. Plus, I hated that MyMy and Shay couldn’t meet him.
“What up, LaVander?” I tried to be real cool when he walked up on the porch. “What you doing here?”
He looked at my hands. “Where’s your brush?”
“Oh.” I used my left hand to go over my hair. “Long story.”
“You straight up wearing blouses now?” he asked me.
“Oh,” I tried to get my lie straight. “This is the new thing they wearing down here. But it’s not a blouse.”
“What is it then?” he asked, and just stood there reminding me of the old LaVander Peeler. I was deep into thinking of all the ways I could blame LaVander Peeler when one of those crazy things happened where we both looked up at Uncle Relle hoping he would turn that camera off so we could say what we really needed to say.
Surprisingly, he told us we’d be leaving soon and walked in the house.
“Why are you at my grandma’s house?” I asked him again.
“My father told me I had to come.”
“But why?”
“You doing that show your uncle told me about?” he asked me. “That seems like something you would wanna do. They say we could make over a million dollars each if we do it. All things considered, only a fool could turn down that money.”
“Yeah, I guess that’s true,” I said. “But I feel different after being here for a few days. That contest or that show ain’t nothing compared to what I been through this weekend.”
He just looked at my feet, shook his head, and said, “…”
“What?” I asked him.
“Nothing, City. It’s just, you always think you’ve been through something harder than somebody else.”
“Follow me,” I told him and walked behind the house. I pointed to the work shed. “Be quiet, okay? Just listen.”
We were still as could be. Then there was thump from the shed. Then another one.
“What’s that noise?” LaVander Peeler asked.
“A white man and this book. You heard of a book called Long Division?”
“No. Should I?”
“It’s the realest book I’ve ever read in my life, man.”
“The most real?”
“It’s the most real book ever, man. For real, it’s about tomorrow and yesterday and the magic of love. I’m serious. A version of me is in the book and Baize Shephard is in there, too. You might be in there, too. I haven’t finished it so I don’t know.”
“All things considered,” he said. “I believe you.”
We started walking back to the porch. I was leading the way. I realized it was the first time that LaVander Peeler had ever followed me anywhere. When we were under Grandma’s cottonwood tree, LaVander Peeler tapped me on the shoulder. I turned around with my fists balled up.
“City, why’d they do that to us?” he asked me. “My father just told me that the difference between me and President Obama is that President Obama never took his eyes off the prize. President Obama was clutch when they did things to him they’d never done to another president. He didn’t cry or cause a scene. He was always perfect when it was most important.”
“But you were perfect,” I told him. “You know what I mean? You were better than them. You were better than me. You coulda won that whole thing. For real.” He just looked at me. “I mean, if they gave you a real chance, you coulda won. You know that.” He started tearing up again so I put my hand on the top of his back. “You know I hate you, right?”
“I know that,” he said.
“But I can’t even lie to you, man. You’re the smartest person I e
ver met in my life, other than my grandma.”
“But I didn’t win, City.” He was grimacing and gritting his teeth like someone was giving him a shot in his neck. “All things considered, the point was to win, to beat them.”
“You weren’t running for president,” I told him. “Look, I’ma show you this white man after church, okay? It’ll make you feel better about yourself when we free him. Say something.”
LaVander Peeler wouldn’t say a word.
“You gotta promise that you won’t let me drown at this baptism, though. I have a weird feeling about it. Wait. Can I ask you a question?”
“If you want to.”
“What did you see before the contest that made your eyes water up? It’s like you knew what was gonna happen before it happened.”
LaVander started scratching his chin and looking at my chappy lips. “I don’t want to say.”
“Why not? It’s over now. Just tell me.”
He looked up and over at Grandma’s chinaberry tree. “I heard the woman who ran everything tell someone on her headset…” He started trailing off.
“Tell someone what?”
“She told someone to change the final order and let the tall one beat the Mexican girl because the fat one was going to be difficult.”
“Wait.” I thought about what LaVander Peeler said. “So does that mean that they were—”
“City, all things considered,” he interrupted me and wiped his nose. “If you don’t know what that mean, you really are dumbest, fattest homosexual on earth.”
CANCELLATION.
Uncle Relle, LaVander Peeler, and I met Grandma two blocks from the church. The sun was beaming and the grills of Cadillacs, Impalas, and Bonnevilles made the usually dusty Ryle Boulevard look like a conveyor belt of cubic zirconia. Grandma commenced to rubbing gobs of Vaseline all over my forehead. She said I didn’t need to look tired and ashy on the most important Monday of my life. Then she kept saying not to be scared, that Jesus would make sure everything would be okay if I just believed.
