Long Division
Authors: Kiese Laymon
BOLDEN
AN
A
GATE IMPRINT
CHICAGO
Copyright © 2013 Kiese Laymon
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without express written permission from the publisher.
The document excerpted on pages 213–214 is from SNCC,
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Papers, 1959-1972
(Sanford, NC: Microfilming Corporation of America, 1982) Reel 67, File 340, Page 1178. The original papers are at the King Library and Archives, The Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change, Atlanta, Georgia.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Laymon, Kiese.
Long division : a novel / Kiese Laymon.
pages cm
ISBN 978-1-57284-718-7 (ebook)
1. Mississippi--Fiction. I. Title.
PS3612.A959L66 2013
813’.6--dc23
2013009054
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Bolden Books is an imprint of Agate Publishing. Agate books are available in bulk at discount prices. For more information, visit
agatepublishing.com
.
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, incidents, and dialogue, except for incidental references to public figures, products, or services, are imaginary and are not intended to refer to any living persons or to disparage any company’s products or services.
“Twice upon a time, there was a boy who died
and lived happily ever after
but that’s another chapter.”
—André Benjamin, “Aquemini”
…
O
NE
S
ENTENCE
.
LaVander Peeler cares too much what white folks think about him. Last quarter, instead of voting for me for ninth-grade CF (Class Favorite), he wrote on the back of his ballot, “All things considered, I shall withhold my CF vote rather than support Toni Whitaker, Jerome Wallace, or the White Homeless Fat Homosexual.” He actually capitalized all five words when he wrote the sentence, too. You would expect more from the only boy at Fannie Lou Hamer Magnet School with blue-black patent leather Adidas and an ellipsis tattoo on the inside of his wrist, wouldn’t you? The tattoo and the shoes are the only reason he gets away with using sentences with “all things considered” and the word “shall” an average of fourteen times a day. LaVander Peeler hates me. Therefore (I know Principal Reeves said that we should never write the “n-word” if white folks might be reading, but…), I hate that wack nigga, too.
My name is City. I’m not white, homeless, or homosexual, but if I’m going to keep it one hundred, I guess you should also know that LaVander Peeler smells so good that sometimes you can’t help but wonder if a small beast farted in your mouth when you’re too close to him. It’s not just me, either. I’ve watched Toni Whitaker, Octavia Whittington, and Jerome Wallace sneak and sniff their own breath around LaVander Peeler, too.
If you actually watched the 2013 Can You Use That Word in a Sentence finals on good cable last night, or if you’ve seen the clip on YouTube, you already know I hate LaVander Peeler and you’re probably wondering about my feelings for that short Mexican girl from Arizona who kicked me in my knee.
The Can You Use That Word in a Sentence contest was started in the spring of 2006 after states in the Deep South, Midwest, and Southwest complained that the Scripps Spelling Bee was geographically biased. Each contestant has two minutes to use a given word in a “dynamic” sentence. The winner of the contest gets $75,000 toward college tuition if they decide to go to college. All three judges in the contest, who are also from the South, Midwest, or Southwest, must agree on a contestant’s “correct sentence usage, appropriateness, and dynamism” for you to advance. New Mexico and Oklahoma
won the last four contests, but this year LaVander Peeler and I were supposed to bring the title to Mississippi.
At Hamer, even though I’m nowhere near the top of my class, I’m known as the best boy writer in the history of our school, and Principal Reeves says LaVander Peeler is the best boy reader in the last five years. Toni Whitaker hates when Principal Reeves gives us props because she’s a better writer than me and a better reader than LaVander Peeler, but she’s not even the best girl reader and writer at Hamer. Octavia Whittington, this girl who blinks once every minute, is even better than Toni at both, but Octavia Whittington has issues with her self-esteem and she doesn’t talk or share her work with anyone until the last day of every quarter, so we don’t count her.
Anyway, LaVander Peeler has way too much space between his eyes and his fade doesn’t really fade right. Nothing really fades into anything, to tell you the truth. Whenever I feel dumb around him I call him “Lavender” or “Fade Don’t Fade.” Whenever I do anything at all, he calls me “White Homeless Fat Homosexual” or “Fat Homosexual” for short because he claims that my house is a rich white lady’s garage, that I’m fatter than Sean Kingston, and that I like to watch boys piss without saying “Kindly pause.”
LaVander Peeler invented saying “Kindly pause” in the bathroom last year at the end of eighth grade. If you were pissing and another dude just walked in the bathroom and you wondered who was walking in the bathroom, or if you walked in the bathroom and just looked a little bit toward a dude already at a urinal, you had to say “Kindly pause.” If I sound tight, it’s because I used to love going to the bathroom at Hamer. They just renovated the bathrooms for the first time in fifteen years and these rectangular tiles behind the urinal are now this deep dark blue that make you know that falling down and floating up are the same thing, even if you have severe bubble guts or constipation.
Nowadays, you can never get lost in anything because you’re too busy trying to keep your neck straight. Plus, it’s annoying because dudes say “Kindly pause” as soon as they walk in the bathroom. And if one dude starts it, you have to keep saying it until you have both feet completely out of the bathroom.
But I don’t say “Kindly pause” and it’s not because I think I’m slightly homosexual. I just don’t want to use some wack catchphrase created by
LaVander Peeler, and folks don’t give me a hard time for it because I’ve got the best waves of anyone in the history of Hamer. I’m also the second-best rebounder in the school and a two-time reigning CW (Class Wittiest). Toni said I could win the SWDGF (Student Who Don’t Give a Fuck) every year if we voted on that, too, but no one’s created that yet. Anyway, it helps that everybody in the whole school hates LaVander Peeler at least a little bit, even the teachers, our janitor, and Principal Reeves.
When LaVander Peeler and I tied at the state contest, the cameras showed us walking off the stage in slow motion. I felt like Lil Wayne getting out of a limo, steady strolling into the backdoor of hell. In the backdrop of us walking were old images of folks in New Orleans, knee deep in toxic water. Those pictures shifted to shots of Trayvon Martin in a loose football uniform, then oil off the coast drowning ignorant ducks. Then they finally replayed that footage of James Anderson being run over by those white boys over off Ellis Avenue. The last shots were black-and-whites of dusty-looking teenagers from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee holding up picket signs that said “Freedom Schools Now” and “Black is not a vice. Nor is segregation a virtue.”
The next day at school, after lunch, LaVander Peeler, me, and half the ninth graders including Toni Whitaker, Jerome Wallace, and strange Octavia Whittington walked out to the middle of the basketball court where the new Mexican seventh graders like to play soccer. There are eight Mexican students at Hamer and they all started school this semester. Principal Reeves tried to make them feel accepted by having a taco/burrito lunch option three times a week and a Mexican Awareness Week twice each quarter. After the second quarter, it made most of us respect their Mexican struggle but it didn’t do much for helping us really distinguish names from faces. We still call all five of the boys “Sergio” at least twice a quarter.
Anyway, everyone formed a circle around LaVander Peeler and me, like they did every day after lunch, and LaVander Peeler tried to snatch my heart out of my chest with his sentences.
“All things considered, Fat Homosexual,” LaVander Peeler started, “This is just a sample of the ass-whupping you shall be getting tonight at the contest.”
He cleared his throat.
“African Americans are generally a lot more ignorant than white Americans, and if you’re an African-American boy and you beat not only African-American girls but white American boys and white American girls, who are, all things considered, less ignorant than you by nature—in something like making sentences, in a white American state like Mississippi—you are, all things considered, a special African-American boy destined for riches, unless you’re a homeless white fat homosexual African-American boy with mommy issues, and City, you are indeed the white fat homosexual African-American boy with mommy issues who I shall beat like a knock-kneed slave tonight at the nationals.” Then he got closer to me and whispered, “One sentence, Homosexual. I shall not be fucked with.”
LaVander Peeler backed up and looked at the crowd, some of whom were pumping their fists, covering their mouths, and laughing to themselves. Then he kissed the ellipsis tattoo on his wrist and pointed toward the sky. I took out my brush and got to brushing the waves on the back of my head.
It’s true that LaVander Peeler has mastered the comma, the dash, and the long “if-then” sentence. I’m not saying he’s better than me, though. We just have different sentence styles. I don’t think he understands what the sentences he uses really mean. He’s always praising white people in his sentences, but then he’ll turn around and call me “white” in the same sentence like it’s a diss. And I’m not trying to hate, but all his sentences could be shorter and more dynamic, too.
The whole school year, even before we went to the state finals, LaVander Peeler tried to intimidate me by using long sentences like that in the middle of the basketball court after lunch, but Grandma and Uncle Relle told me that winning any championship takes mental warfare and a gigantic sack. Uncle Relle was the type of uncle who, when he wasn’t sleeping at some desperate woman’s house and eating up all her Moon Pies, was in jail or sleeping in a red X-Men sleeping bag at my grandma’s house.