Long Division

by Kiese Laymon

  “They can tell the same thing about you, Voltron,” she told me. “Don’t worry about my time of the month. I came prepared. I just gotta get right with the air here.”

  “Look, don’t make it harder than it has to be,” I told her. “2013 is farther away from 1985. So I’m closer to these folks just based off of time. Plus, look at you. You got that ugly haircut for a girl and that dumb backpack on and folks in the 1960s, they be knowing things?”

  “Okay, for real.” Baize got right in my face even though I was running from her eyes. She grabbed my chin. “No, you did not just say ‘Folks in the ’60s be knowing things?’ Really? It’s like that? You should feel so lucky that someone thinks you’re kinda cute,” she said, “because…”

  “Don’t say that!” I grabbed her by her shoulder blades and shook her. “Don’t ever say I’m cute. You don’t even know cute. My line is crookeder than a Smurf house and I fart in my sleep all night long, and when I smile one of my eyes…see it?” I pointed to my left eye. “It’s a little bit crusty and bloodshot all the time. I think I got permanent pink eye. For real! It’s contagious, too. Don’t—”

  Baize tried to knee me in the privacy but I turned and she got me in the left thigh. In the middle of our tussle we heard twigs breaking and leaves crunching. “Shhh,” I whispered to her. “You hear that?”

  “Don’t tell me to shush,” Baize whispered back. “I only said someone thinks you’re cute. Not me, dummy. Don’t act like I’m trying to get with you. I don’t even roll like that.”

  We were both still, but it was too hard to see if someone was coming because everything was so green and full.

  “Voltron,” she whispered.

  “What?”

  “I think that lady back there was my great-grandma.”

  I started to ask her how she knew when from about ten feet away, we saw someone on the ground crawling toward us. It was Shalaya Crump. I ran over and helped her to her feet. She hugged my neck and held me tight as I’d ever been held for a whole minute without saying a word.

  I let go of the hug, but Shalaya Crump kept squeezing tight. I whispered in her ear not to say my name in front of Baize, but Shalaya Crump was actually crying right there in my arms while looking directly at Baize. It was one of the top two things I never thought would happen. I pulled away from her hug and asked, “What happened to your Jewish friend, Evan?”

  Shalaya Crump tried to talk, but something terrible must have happened. Every time she started to talk, her teeth got to chattering. Baize walked up and started rubbing her back, too. Finally, she got something out. “It’s worse than we think. They…”

  “Who? I don’t understand.”

  “I didn’t know how to turn it on. The mayor…his uncle…if they didn’t stop this Freedom School from being used, the Klan was gonna go after them. They wanted to run them out of Melahatchie.”

  “Why?”

  “I didn’t know…”

  “Know what?”

  “The Klan was going to kill Evan’s family if they didn’t put on sheets. They Jewish and they were gonna help with the schools. They gave Evan a gun. It was Gaddis’s plan.”

  “Who gave Evan a gun?”

  “His brother gave Evan a gun and they told him to shoot me in the shoulder.”

  “I know you scared,” I told her, “but you doing your own long division right now. Just get in and get out like you tell me. Please! I don’t get nothing you’re saying.”

  Baize jumped in. “Wait, who is Evan?”

  “Girl, don’t you see grown folks talking?” I told her. “There’s a guy named Jewish Evan. Go ahead and finish. Damn.”

  “Evan took the gun and he pointed it at me, then he aimed it at his brother’s leg and pulled the trigger but he missed. Then they beat him even harder.”

  “Wait,” I said. “So his family was planning on killing our granddaddies and burning the church? Where’s your granddaddy at?”

  “They made them do it. They ain’t never meant to kill him,” she said. “They only wanted to kill your granddaddy. That’s what they were planning to do when they caught you.”

  “Me?”

  “Yeah.”

  “But they got thrown off with that computer. That’s when Evan came in with that BB gun.”

  “He didn’t really save me,” I said. “You know that, right?” Shalaya Crump didn’t say anything. “You think Evan saved me, don’t you?”

  She ignored me and kept talking. “They got the computer and they said that if I didn’t bring back something to turn it back on in the next hour, they were gonna beat him even harder. If they give the power cord to the Klan, they think the Klan will leave them alone or they could sell it for enough money to start over in another place.”

  “What? That’s the dumbest mess I ever heard in my life. Are you serious? What’s wrong with these folks? This is the stupidest place I’ve ever heard of in my life. I hate this ol’ backwards-ass place. Don’t you feel like this is someone else’s story?”

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “I don’t know what I mean. It’s just that this ain’t our story. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this.”

  Baize walked up between us. “The computer ran out of juice. That’s all.” She went in her backpack and pulled out this weird-looking long cord with a big square head. “This cord right here is what they need.”

  I kept asking Shalaya Crump questions when Baize interrupted again. “Wait. Do you have my phone, the little thing Voltron stole?”

  “Why do you call him Voltron?” Shalaya Crump asked.

  Shalaya Crump and Baize stood there looking at each other. I said, “What y’all looking at? Why y’all staring at each other like that? Damn. Talk.”

  They moved their eyes back to each other. While Baize was looking at Shalaya Crump’s feet, Shalaya Crump was looking at Baize’s forehead. Then they locked into each other’s face. And you know what Baize said? “You’re hotter than I thought you’d be, up close.” She really said it. “Seriously, you must work out.”

  “Just pushups and crunches,” Shalaya Crump said, and went in her pocket and pulled out Baize’s phone. She handed it to her and Baize flipped it open and pushed a few buttons.

  “You think that school thing has some electric outlets in it?” Baize asked. “If you can get those people to bring my computer back, I got an idea. Y’all are killing me with all this drama.”

  While we were walking, I thought about how I wanted to tell Shalaya Crump about all that Baize and I had experienced. I wanted to tell her about watching a huge TV and eating dinner and shaming myself at that Spell-Off. But after she said all that about fighting off the Klan and almost getting shot in the shoulder and meeting Jewish folks who were forced to act like they were in the Klan, my time together with Baize in 2013 looked super lame. It really did. You really never know what other folks are doing when you think you’re having the craziest experience of your life. Plus, I thought that if I would have just gotten back in the hole earlier, I would have experienced that crazy time with Shalaya Crump and Evan, instead of making a fool of myself in 2013.

  I was thinking of something to say when we heard Pow! Pow! Pow!

  The smell of gasoline was everywhere when we walked into the Freedom School. Lerthon Coldson was slumped face down on the desk.

  Baize didn’t scream, but she kept gasping and coughing. Shalaya Crump held Baize’s hand and I don’t even know why but I went toward Lerthon.

  “Don’t touch him!” Baize said. “It’s a crime scene.” I looked at Baize like her bread wasn’t all the way done. “I’m serious. If you get your DNA in it, or compromise the crime scene, the police could blame you.”

  I had no idea what she was talking about, but I wasn’t about to walk up and touch Lerthon at all. I had never been one of those people who loved blood. A lot of my friends in Chicago and Melahatchie would split open baby birds or throw puppies into cracked ceilings. I always fought them after they did it because it
seemed like the meanest thing to do, especially to something that would never really hurt you that much. This was different, though. Right in front of us was a man who wasn’t alive any more. And the fact that this dead man was related to me didn’t even matter. What mattered is that he was alive and smiling and lying through his teeth ten minutes earlier, and now he’d never be alive or smiling or lying again.

  Baize was actually sitting down in the corner coughing into her shirt. And Shalaya Crump was watching me watch the body.

  “We never should have done this,” I said really low to Shalaya Crump. “I wish someone would’ve told me not to follow you. We never should have done this. I wish I woulda stayed my fat ass at home. Now everything is messed up. I did this for you. I stole Bibles for you. Went to the future for you. Followed some white boy for you. Made a fool of myself in 2013 for you. You know that, right?”

  Shalaya Crump and Baize had their eyes closed. “Open y’all damn eyes. Look!” The voice that was coming out of my body was mine, but it was a voice I’d never heard.

  I walked over and saw the blood dripping from the desk to the floor. I let some of it drip on my Weapons, because that’s what I knew they would do in a dumb book.

  “You came back so Evan could tell you what happens to you in the future, right? Did he tell you?” Shalaya Crump just looked at me. “Did he? Because I know.” Shalaya Crump stepped toward me. “I know what happens, what really happens. What all did he tell you in between getting his ass kicked? Did he tell you that we get married? Me and you.”

  “Please don’t start mess now, City,” she said. “Why you gotta be so two days before yesterday?”

  “I ain’t so two days before nothing! You always telling me not to start something, Shalaya Crump. Always talking about I’m so ‘yesterday’ or I’m so ‘long division’ or I’m so ‘Young and Restless.’ You ain’t never said I’m so foolish, though.” I stopped to think about what I’d just said to Shalaya Crump. It was the best five sentences I’d ever said to her and I hadn’t even practiced them in the mirror. This wasn’t even GAME. “That’s what I am, though. I’m so gotdamn foolish for wanting you to love me like I love you.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “I can say what I want. I love you. I do. That’s why I ask you everything under the sun except if you ever had a boyfriend. Because if you’d ever had one, even if it was way before me, it woulda broke my heart.”

  “You never told me that,” Shalaya Crump said.

  “So what. I shouldn’t have to. You shut that door on me. If you had come back with me, none of this would have happened,” I told her. “None of it.”

  “I was trying to protect you,” she said. “You were hurt and I knew you needed to go home. And I…I think I need to be here.”

  “Why? Just say it.”

  “I believed Evan when he told me he knew where I was in the future. I believed him when he told me he could tell me who my parents are. I wanted to know what happens to them and me on the other end. I know you hate me for this, City, but I really want to change the future.” Shalaya Crump got closer to me in a way that would have made me so happy in 1985. “I just wanted to change it so bad that I didn’t care. And to change it I just had to know what happened.”

  “Oh. Okay,” I said. I kept finding the body of my granddaddy out of the corner of my eye, no matter which way I tried to look. It made me sadder and madder. “You just wanted to know? Well, I want you to know, too. Baize, tell her who your parents are.”

  Baize sounded like she was whimpering, but I figured it was just that her nose was stuffed. “Why? Don’t yell at me.”

  “Just tell her.”

  “Tell me what?” Shalaya asked.

  “City Coldson is…was my father’s name…my mother’s name… was…Shalaya Crump-Coldson.”

  “Who?” I said. “Say it louder.”

  “Shalaya Crump-Coldson was her name.”

  “Was?” Shalaya Crump said.

  “Tell her what happens to your parents, Baize. And stop crying.”

  Baize wiped her eyes and opened her phone. She pushed a few buttons and looked at something in the phone that made her close her eyes super tight. “These are my parents,” she said. “These were…umm…” I couldn’t tell if she was having a hard time talking because she was sick or because she was sad.

  Shalaya Crump and I looked at the picture. She had long shiny braids in the picture and dark patches under her eyes, but she was even more beautiful as a grown woman than she was as a kid. Her cheeks looked like they were about to burst open and knock her glasses off her face she was smiling so hard. A gold locket with an “SC” charm hung around the middle of her neck and I was behind her smiling ear to ear, kissing her cheek. All my hair was gone and I had a strange kind of goatee that made my face look less fat than it was. Both of our eyes were so shiny, too.

  “That’s us,” I told her. “We disappear, Shalaya Crump. You couldn’t find you in 2013 because there is no you. You’re dead in 2013. And so am I. We disappear in 2005.”

  I wanted to just slump to the floor and cry, but what I said sounded so crazy, I didn’t even know how to slump to the floor right after saying it. Not when directly in front of us was a dead relative with a hole the size of a Coke can in his back. I just wanted to go home to 1985 and slump by myself in the year that I knew the most about.

  Maybe we all did.

  While we were looking at each other’s eyes and trying to avoid looking at Lerthon Coldson’s dead body, two Klansmen appeared and slowly made their way into the room. These two weren’t as big as the ones who beat me down. They didn’t have glasses on either. The taller Klansman had a rifle that was as tall as me in one hand and Baize’s computer in the other hand. The smaller one had a can of gasoline that you could tell was nearly empty by the sloshing sound it made.

  “Look,” Baize jumped in front of them and said in the direction of the bigger one, “we know how to work the computer. Can we show you?”

  The Klansmen just stood there not saying a word, moving their heads side to side. “Did one of you shoot him?” I asked. “That’s my granddaddy. He shouldn’t have done what he did, but did you have to shoot him?” They just stood there looking at me. “What if someone shot your granddaddy? Look here, man. We in the middle of some family drama, you know what I mean? I ain’t even lying. Can’t y’all just let us go? We won’t tell nobody.”

  Baize walked slowly toward the men with her bag. She looked at us, then tried to take a deep breath and couldn’t so she bent at the waist and coughed into her shirt. I grabbed for her but she walked off and looked at me in a way she hadn’t looked before.

  “Hold up. You want the cord, right?” she said to the Klansmen. “What’s the use in having the cord if you can’t use the thing? Look.”

  Baize plugged the computer up and typed a few things on the screen. “Okay, come here.” Music came from the computer. “Walk right in front of the screen and see what happens.” Baize did something that made the computer screen turn into a TV screen, and whatever was in front of the computer ended up on the screen. The bigger Klansman looked down at the screen and saw himself. “I can show you how to work it,” she said.

  Just like before when all the words I typed on the screen were famous, whoever walked in front of the computer looked famous on the screen, too.

  The bigger Klansman handed the gun to the smaller one. He walked in front of the computer and started moving his arms like he was an Egyptian. If the past day hadn’t been filled with more craziness than a little bit, this would have been the craziest thing I’d ever seen in my life. Baize knelt down and pushed a button that made these twinkle sounds come from the computer. A voice from the computer whispered, “…1, 2, 3, uh.”

  It wasn’t loud overall, but the specific sounds in it were louder than anything I’d ever heard. It really sounded like something from the future. Not the 2000s, either—more like the 3000s. Baize actually stood up and started dancing in front of the com
puter screen as best she could. You could tell it took a lot for her to actually move because she was getting so weak. She started dancing near me and said, “When I give you the sign, clothesline the big one.”

  I said okay and kept watching her dance. I couldn’t believe I was watching her dance on a TV screen with Klansmen in the background and a dead man slumped over a desk with a bloody hole in his back in 1964.

  After a while, though, Baize had all of us, including the two Klansmen, dancing in front of the screen and trying to move in front of each other to see who could look the most famous. Baize made us form a version of a really tight Soul Train line. Two of us danced on the side and one person jammed in the middle going toward the camera.

  I started it off by doing a robot into the Pee-wee Herman, and then I mixed it with a Prince move, where I looked at the camera and licked in between my fingers right in front of the computer.

  Then Baize came through trying to do some dance where she acted like she was hammering really fast with her whole body. She was so sick and so weak, though, that it looked like she was doing it in slow motion. Her nose was bleeding a little bit the whole time, too. She broke the hammering thing off into some hard locking, too. Boom! Bam! Lock! Lock! Then she acted like she was riding a bike side to side, and she ended it doing this dance I saw Doug E. Fresh do.

  Next came Shalaya Crump, who tried to do a back glide into a moonwalk and a Michael Jackson spin, and then she got right up on the camera and started prepping. She put both hands in the air and worked them back and forth in sync with her long neck. Those other years didn’t have nothing on 1985.

  Finally, the bigger Klansman stood in the middle. He asked for the rifle back from the smaller one and just stood there posing, with his hands folded up like he was on top of a mountain. At this point, the voice in the song started chanting something about a Polaroid picture: “Shake it…” The bigger Klansman didn’t move at all until he handed the rifle back off to the smaller Klansman and broke down into this mean twist, super close to the ground. When he was right up on the computer checking himself out, the dude copied Baize and did the Doug E. Fresh dance, too.