by Kiese Laymon
I wanted to beg Shalaya Crump to save Baize’s life and come back to 1985 with me. I wanted to tell her that we could go close the hole, go home, eat sardines together, dig in the dirt, and never travel again. We could do all the stuff we were supposed to do until 1999. Then we could kiss with tongue. And we could act like we were on HBO after dark. And we could get married. And we could have our baby.
Deep down, I knew it couldn’t work like that anymore.
Shalaya Crump didn’t say a word when Baize asked her, “What do you mean?” She seemed stuck in a long, lonely silence that, I figured, only pops up when a parent has to decide whether to save the future in a special way or save the life of the special child they never really knew.
Baize raised her head and asked Shalaya Crump again, “What do you…”
I interrupted Baize and tried to take the attention off Shalaya Crump for a second. “What does dot-dot-dot mean, Baize? You know, like when you write it on your computer, in those rhymes. What does dot-dot-dot mean?”
Baize didn’t say anything, but Shalaya Crump answered. “It’s what you use when someone is about to cut someone else off, right?”
“Naw,” Evan said. “I think it’s just a long pause.”
“Ain’t a period or a semicolon a long pause?” Shalaya Crump asked Evan. “Like long compared to a comma?”
“Maybe,” he said. “You talking about them three periods in a row, I thought?”
Baize started coughing again and squeezed my hand. “If you could be any punctuation, City, what would you be?” It was the first time Baize called me by my real name, and it felt better than anything in my whole life.
“Um, I think I’d be a question mark,” I told her. “Like if I had my own book, I want a cover with shades of maroon and blue and green like this forest right here on the front and back. And in strange places on the cover, I’d want there to be all these different kinds of eyes of people I love on it. And on every page, I’d want there to be one question mark. I wouldn’t even mind if a Klansman was on the cover.”
“But why?” Baize asked. “If every page is blank, ain’t there a question mark kinda understood to be there anyway? Like that book I was reading, Long Division, the last chapter is just blank pages.”
I thought about what she was saying and it made a lot of sense.
“I guess you’re right,” I told her. “What would you be?”
“I’d be an ellipsis.”
“What’s that?”
“That’s the dot-dot-dot you were talking about.” She let go of my hand and sat up while leaning on both of her hands. “The ellipsis always knows something more came before it and something more is coming after it.” Baize started coughing and grabbing her chest. “It’s hard for me to breathe, City.”
I stood up and made sure Long Division was in Baize’s backpack. I had the computer under my arms. “So you’d have pages filled with dot-dot-dot in your book?” I asked her.
“No,” she said. “I’d have a front cover with the words ‘Long Division’ across the top and below ‘Long Division’ would be a blue-black ellipsis. We’d all be inside the book, too, with those other characters already in the book and we’d all fall in love with each other.”
I got everything ready to leave and looked down at all three of them. Evan’s left hand was in Shalaya Crump’s right hand and Baize was nuzzled under Shalaya Crump’s left arm. “Come on, Baize.” “Where we going?”
“We should be going home,” I told her. “We can come back next week.”
She laughed at me as I helped her up. Shalaya Crump and Evan started to get up, too. “Y’all don’t have to get up,” I told them. “We’re fine.”
Evan walked over and hugged my neck. “I’m sorry,” he said in my ear. “I didn’t think it would happen like this.”
“Yeah. Me either,” I said. “I’ll see y’all soon, though. For real.”
Shalaya Crump walked up to me when I was thinking of cussing Evan out and she had these humongous tears in her eyes. “We did it,” I told her. “We changed the future by changing the past.”
“City,” she said. “It wasn’t supposed to hurt. Not like this. But I can make it worth it.”
“That’s how we know we’re changing the future in a special way, though, right?” I asked her. That was the best thing I’d ever said to Shalaya Crump. I didn’t have to think about whether or not it was GAME. All four of us knew that special change, the kind that lasts, hurts.
I watched Baize and Shalaya Crump hug for what felt like ten minutes. Neither of them wanted to let go. But eventually Baize did. “I’ll holler at y’all soon. Wipe away that stank face,” she said. “I understand. I’ll be back.”
I took Baize’s hand and walked toward the hole, away from Shalaya Crump and Evan. I wanted so bad not to turn around and watch them watch us leave.
“Bye,” Shalaya Crump said. “Maybe we’ll see y’all tomorrow. I’m sorry.”
Baize started to turn her head, but I tightened my grip on her hand and pulled her toward the hole.
“Forget tomorrow,” I said loud enough for Shalaya Crump and Evan to hear as we walked off.
When Baize and I got in the hole, I pulled out a book of matches I’d taken from Evan’s brother. There were three matches left in the book. I struck one of the matches and gave it to her. Baize looked at me like we tied for last in the longest uphill three-legged race in the world. We slumped against the sides of the hole and both slid down to the ground. She leaned her head on my right shoulder.
“City?”
“Yeah, Baize.”
Baize buried the left side of her face in my shoulder so I wouldn’t see the tears flooding the gutters of her right eye. All the tears that didn’t fall onto her computer fell into her mouth. “What happens to us now?” she asked. “I’m so tired.”
“Hold your face up.” I looked up toward the top of the hole to keep my tears from falling. “It’s gonna be okay. Open your computer. Let me hear one of your songs.”
Watching Shalaya Crump love Evan smashed my heart, but lying to my daughter about what was about to happen to her made every living thing in my body just quit. I never knew my father, but Mama tried her hardest to be there for me. When we lived in Jackson, being there for me meant leaving me to stay with my grandmother when she couldn’t handle being just a mother. I didn’t hate on Mama or feel bad for myself because at least I had a Mama who cared, unlike Shalaya Crump, who never knew either of her parents. I loved Melahatchie and Shalaya Crump, but every time Mama dropped me off in Melahatchie, a part of me always expected her to never come back.
I wondered if Baize knew what was coming.
The computer made her face glow blue. She played some instrumental and started rapping the lyrics really low. Not your everyday rapper but everyday is haze. Then she stopped and closed the computer and talked to me in the dark. “I guess we can’t go back to 1964 and all just stay together again, huh?”
“Nah,” I told her, “We’re right where we need to be. And your mama, she’s where she needs to be. We’ll come back one day and see her and she can come back and see us.”
“You know I made the high honor roll every quarter since y’all left, right?”
“I figured,” I said. “Hell, I make the honor roll every now and then and I ain’t nearly ’bout sharp as you are.”
Baize fake giggled to herself. “You wanna stay with me for a while when we get home?” she asked and found my hand in the dark. “I just need to take a nap for a few hours. Here,” she went in her backpack and got out Long Division. “I think you should read this while I’m asleep.”
“Why?” I lit a second match.
“It’s just all starting to make sense now.”
“It does?”
“Yep. You’ll see. Read it from the beginning.”
My match started to burn the tips of my swollen fingers too, so I held it with my fingernails and I looked at Baize’s slick face until the match burned all the way down.
I tapped Baize on her leg and let her know that I was about to get up.
“City?”
“Yeah, Baize.”
“I love you.”
“Don’t say that. Not now. Please don’t say that.”
“Why? We took care of each other today, like a father and daughter goon squad are supposed to,” she told me with her voice hollowing out. “I’m just keeping it one hundred. I knew y’all wouldn’t disappear forever.”
“I love you, Baize.”
I turned my face from Baize, closed my eyes, counted to ten by twos, and pushed the door open. Then I climbed all the way out of the hole and, slowly, slowly, slowly, I turned back toward the hole in the ground.
Long Division was in the bottom of the hole, but Baize Shephard was gone. Forever. I made my daughter disappear.
OUR MESS.
I jumped off my knees with I made my daughter disappear still ringing and dusted myself off. Then I looked right in Pot Belly’s crossed red eyes. “Is Baize dead?” I asked him. “How come the last chapter of this book is like 20 blank pages? Look.” I showed both of them the empty pages at the end.
LaVander Peeler wouldn’t touch the book and Pot Belly wouldn’t nod yes or no to my question. “Is Baize really gone?” I got close to Pot Belly’s mouth.
“Don’t do it, City,” LaVander Peeler told me.
I ignored him and pulled the rag out anyway. Pot Belly did this spitting thing before saying, “I ain’t do it, man. I ain’t do it.”
I moved down by his legs and started trying to find a little key that looked like it fit the lock. “Is Baize Shephard dead?” I asked him again. “Is that what ‘disappear’ means?”
“Your grandmother took me down to Lake Marathon,” he said, ignoring my question. “When we get out the car, she had some folks waiting for us.”
“But is Baize really gone?”
“Some beat me. But most, they just watched.”
I looked at LaVander Peeler. Pot Belly’s story sounded too made up, even more made up than everything that had happened the past few days.
“I told them I’m already saved,” he said. “Every time I say that, they beat me in my face until your grandmother made them stop and say something about a man named…” his voice trailed off for a bit. “…Tom Henry, they said his name was.”
“That’s my granddaddy.”
I could see Pot Belly feeling the grit on his teeth with his tongue. “Wait, were you there when my granddaddy died too?” He looked down. “Please just tell me.”
“That’s what I’m saying. I ain’t do it. I don’t even know no Tom Henry. The folks at the lake,” he started talking slower than before, “they said Tom Henry was the one who saved me from drowning back in the day.”
“Wait. You’re the white boy my granddaddy died trying to save?” I asked him.
“Please let me go, man. They blaming me for stuff I ain’t do.”
“You kicked me in my back and called me out my name,” I told him.
“I did that,” he said. “And I’m sorry. But I don’t know nothing ’bout that little girl. And I don’t know nothing ’bout no Tom Henry. They blaming me for everything wrong, but I ain’t do it.”
I looked as hard as I could into each of his eyes and tried to imagine my grandfather looking in those eyes as he was choking on water, running from death. “You been cross-eyed your whole life?”
“I swear before God, man, that I ain’t do what they say I did. I ain’t do it.”
“Who did it then?” I asked him.
I wanted to feel more hate, but I figured that being saved and falling in love with Jesus was making me feel what I felt. And what I felt was the feeling you would have when you read a good mystery book and made that big connection a few pages from the end.
“Y’all mad at something more than me,” he said. “I ain’t do it.”
“I don’t know why,” I told him, “but I don’t hate you even if you were there when my granddaddy died. And right now, I don’t even hate you for kicking me in my back and calling me a ‘nigger.’ For real.”
“He kicked you in your back?” LaVander Peeler asked.
“Yep,” I told him. “I already told you that. He kicked me in my back, and then he called me ‘nigger.’ But I don’t think he even knows what a ‘nigger’ is.” I looked back at Pot Belly. “I just want you to be honest with me. Do you know where Baize Shephard is? Did you kill Baize Shep—”
“No,” he said before I could finish her name. “Hell naw.”
“You know where she is?”
“I ain’t do it. I don’t know nothing about that little girl.” “You know who killed her?”
Pot Belly closed his eyes. “You serious?” he asked me. “That story you reading, it said that little girl disappeared, and the man responsible for that disappearing is the man who wrote that story.”
“I know what this book said, but it’s just a book. I’m asking you where Baize’s body is.”
“You find the man who wrote that story, look to me like you find that little girl.” Pot Belly’s voice was cracking and he was sobbing.
“So she is dead, right? I know you didn’t do it but I think you know who did.”
“You killed that girl,” he said through some quivering lips.
“Who?”
“You,” he said, as calm as anything I’d heard in days. “You know what you did to that girl, and that’s your business.”
“How could I kill her? I wasn’t even here.”
“You did it, man. You did it. You wrote it in your book. Please let me go.”
I heard him. I saw him. Whether I believed what he said didn’t matter. I saw that he believed it. LaVander Peeler, without a tear in his eye, walked closer to Pot Belly. He got on his knees, wiped off his mouth, got a few inches from Pot Belly’s face, and said, “All things considered, I don’t believe you can use ‘nigger’ in a sentence.”
“What in the devil is wrong with y’all?” Pot Belly asked. “Why are y’all doing this?”
“You can’t use it,” he said. “All things considered, I bet you can’t even spell it, much less use it. Am I wrong?”
“Please,” Pot Belly said, “Y’all making this personal. I’m so sad and I just want to go home. I’m sorry for calling you out your name.”
“Can you at least spell it?”
“N-I-G-G-E-R,” he said.
“That ain’t right,” LaVander Peeler told him.
“N-I-G-G-E-R,” he slowed it down this time.
“Nope,” LaVander Peeler said. “All things considered, I don’t think that’s right.”
I got up to pull LaVander Peeler out of Pot Belly’s face when he cocked his arm back and jabbed Pot Belly in his left eye. Almost in the same motion, Pot Belly reared his head back and butted LaVander Peeler right in the middle of his face. LaVander Peeler grabbed his face with both hands, made these snorting sounds, and wobbled out of the shed.
Even though I was saved, I reckon I react like a demon when a grown white man head-butts LaVander Peeler in the face. I gripped Long Division and started smacking Pot Belly in his face as hard as I could, when, all of a sudden, Grandma burst in the door of the shed breathing loud as hell. “What is wrong with you?” she asked me. I didn’t say a word. I just handed her Long Division. She wiped blood off the book and handed it back.
Pot Belly was calling Grandma all kinds of “black bitches” and “niggers” and he kept saying, “I ain’t do it! I ain’t do it!,” when Grandma said to me, “Gimme my keys.”
I gave her the keys and watched her pull out the butterfly blade. “Leave, City. Both of y’all both go get in the car. And lock the doors!”
Pot Belly’s angry yells of “I ain’t do it!” slid into screams, which slid into gurgly moans by the time I got to the car. LaVander Peeler was already in the backseat, covering his ears. I’d never heard anything like the moans coming out of that work shed.
And then the moans stopped.
…
Passing Tests…
I couldn’t tell where I was because the air was as thin as it had been in 1964 and the forest was only a little less lime green than it had been in 2013. Before heading to the Freedom School, I looked across the road where the Co-op and Mama Lara’s house were. There were sidewalks where the ditches were and lots of black folks and Mexican folks of all ages walking down the sidewalks talking and laughing out loud. Across the road were these cool-looking trailers on wheels. Each trailer had a different shape and a huge garden in the front yard. Down the road was a huge grocery store called Shephard’s Co-op.
I looked toward the Community Center and there was a woman out in front. She motioned for me to come in the building, then disappeared in the door.
The building had changed. It wasn’t a church and it wasn’t a community center. It was actually a museum. At least that’s what the sign said. It read, “The Lerthon Coldson Civil Rights Museum.” It made me kind of mad that the museum was named after a grimy drunk dude who called a girl “baby,” but I figured lots of museums were named for part-time losers.
In the middle of the room were two desks that were bolted to the ground. All around the walls of the room were glass cases holding sheets, rifles, and books, between doors that went to other rooms. The bird’s nest at the top was still there, too.
I walked right to the middle of the room and sat in one of the desks. On the desk was a sheet of paper. It looked like a test that had already been taken. It didn’t make sense to me, though, because the name on the test was mine and it was actually written in my handwriting. Only the year was blank.
Name City Coldson Year _____ True/False —Underline one
1. Desperation will make a villain out of you.
True/False
2. Only fools would not travel through time and change their past if they could.
True/False
