Long Division (27 page)

Deacon Big Shank was still in front of me, going on and on, and all of a sudden the truth kicked off its shoes and started clipping its toenails, just lounging in my fat head. The stupid truth was that even though Uncle Relle had killed some people in Afghanistan and LaVander Peeler’s brother had killed a man, no one I’d ever really known had died yet, except for maybe Baize Shephard, and
Long Division
was convincing me that she might not really be dead at all.

If Baize wasn’t dead, the closest anyone I’d known had come to dying was the white man in the work shed. And the scariest thing about it was that even if I had really known someone that died, at that moment, in that hall, death felt like the only thing in the world that you could do
once
. As scary as the contest had been, I knew something like that could happen again. Death, I understood, was the only thing promised, the only thing
that could happen once after you were born. And no one could come back and tell you how it felt.

Or could they?

I figured that must have been the real reason everybody was swinging from Jesus’s sack. I’d paid enough attention to Grandma and Sunday school to know the story of Jesus’s resurrection. I figured that after he arose, with the help of his almighty powerful father, the Lawd, he knew what it was like to die, and probably started spreading his sentences about beating death to the whole town. Folks started following and loving and believing, not just to be saved or whatever, but to hear sentences about what it was like.

I made the decision right there in that hall that I was definitely going to die during my baptism. I just knew it. And after or while I was dying, I’d find some way to come back and save Pot Belly like I said I would, and then I’d tell Grandma and Mama how to beat death so they could be equipped and not be all surprised when it happened to them. And I’d bring special gifts for Shay, MyMy, Gunn, and maybe even LaVander Peeler, who at that point was probably going to have his own TV show on VH1 called “All Thangs Considered,” where his eyes watered up a lot and he said “All things considered” fourteen times an episode.

I felt a push in the back and heard more of Troll’s damp organ. “I
said
, let us have our candidates for baptism.”

The back yard of the church was packed with heads everywhere. Some folks had on church clothes, but most had on work clothes. Just Reverend Cherry, Uncle Relle, and me had robes on.

The people parted and we had to walk through the middle. Gradually, they formed this humongous semicircle. All those eyes were tearing my insides up. Grandma was right there near the front. She was crying and trying to hold in tears when I looked at her. I tried to fake-smile, but I couldn’t. My damn cheek started quivering all fast. Then I saw the water hole in the ground. Reverend Cherry and Uncle Relle were in the water hole, below everybody else and dressed in the same robes I had, except theirs were plush
white instead of plush maroon. Folks stood on both sides just watching and humming the refrain to “Precious Lord.” I walked all the way to the front and saw that Uncle Relle and Reverend Cherry were sitting on the steps of the water hole.

“Brother Relle, is you ready?”

Uncle Relle shook his big head up and down. I wanted to beat him through the ground for agreeing to help with this. I swear I did.

“Wait, y’all.” Everyone looked at me like I was crazy, but I didn’t care. I swear I didn’t. “I want my Grandma to help,” I said. “Doesn’t that make more sense?”

Grandma just stood there smiling and lightweight crying. I loved the smile and all, but it really wasn’t helping me out of my situation. Cherry put his hand on my shoulder.

“Little City,” he got right up on my ear and acted like he was whispering, but he was saying it loud enough, with his drippy deep voice, for everyone to hear. Troll’s playing got even lower and damper.

“Everything need order,” he said. “And order, in this here real communified world, order come from tradition, and it’s always been two men that do the dunking and take you to that other side. Now, it’s the men’s fault in this community that every time we goes to dunk a head, ’tain’t no hair of the birth daddy. And that’s something we gon’ have to take care of, but right now, one of them gots to be me and one gon’ have to be Brother Relle.”

I looked at LaVander Peeler while Cherry was talking and thought about what he said back in Jackson about my mama not being able to keep a man.

“My mama and grandma been doing what daddies supposed to do,” I told him. “Plus, you were there when my granddaddy drowned. Who you trying to fool?”

Uncle Relle was recording it all on his camera phone and smiling big as he could.

“Little City,” Reverend Cherry said. “That’s where your little smart self is wrong. I wasn’t there. My shell was there. Inside that shell was a coward, Little City. Sure was. That shell done filled up with something I ain’t ever knowed was possible.” He kept talking right up on my ear, but he was still looking at the crowd.

“And when you refill a shell with a substance altogether different, the whole thang changes. It was that shell that watched Tom Henry go in and try to save that white boy. That shell knowed Tom Henry was a drunk skunk and didn’t have no faith that Jesus would make a way for him. You see what I mean, Little City?”

I shook my head side to side, but he ignored it. “But now, that shell done become a man with a warm right soul. Big soul. See, look here,” he said. “Real man let his core shine from the inside out and he ain’t got no fear.” He started looking out to the crowd and pointed at his chest. “Real man, Little City, is the Lawd’s no-fear vehicle.”

Everyone started clapping and ‘w’hell’ing and ‘amen’ing.

“And the only thing I can do about what that shell of me already done did when it watched Tom Henry do what he knowed to be right…is save part of Tom Henry right now.”

“What do those sentences even mean, Reverend Cherry?” I asked. Then I whispered, “I’m serious. That sentence doesn’t even make sense.”

Reverend Cherry ignored me and raised both his hands toward the clouds. Folks started clapping. Grandma set it off. Not disjointed claps on top of one another, but really organized claps, with a second between claps. Like this:

Clap
.

Clap
.

Clap
.

What y’all doing?
Everybody else joined in and the claps sped up a little bit.
Clap. Clap. Clap
. It got faster and faster.
ClapClapClapClapClap
. After a while, it started sounding like burning trash, twigs, plastic, and skin, but way louder. Uncle Relle and Reverend Cherry grabbed me on both sides and pulled me to the middle of the pool.

Save me, Grandma
, I said, I think.
Please save me. LaVander Peeler!

They just stared and clapped. The claps were all on top of one another and I couldn’t hear Troll or anything. All I heard were claps and Reverend Cherry.

Ouch
. I told them.
Quit
. I looked down at the Lord’s rusted tears around my shoulders. I should have been cold, but I wasn’t. I knew what was next.

Reverend Cherry and Uncle Relle crossed my arms across my chest, in the shape of an X. “In the name of the father,” Reverend Cherry boomed, “we shall deliver this vivacious child to a land of the Lord’s tears, majesty, and freedom! He will be one of your greatest soldiers, Lord.”

My head flew back. One dunk
.

“And in the name of the son, we invite him home. Free him from his anger!”

My head flew back again. Two dunks
.

“And with the Holy Ghost, we anoint this hyper baby in your tears, the Lord’s tears, and let them tears rid him of all the physical worries of his life. He need nothing anymore, for his soul is now and forever with You, Lord. We sacrifice his shell and pray for blessings of his soul. Keep him safe from Your children!”

My head flew back again. Three dunks
.

The third dunk felt way longer than the other two. I opened my eyes and saw all these blurred squiggles floating around. I wasn’t drowning yet, but water was making its way into my mouth and it tasted like rusty rocks. I couldn’t believe how nasty Jesus’s tears tasted. I started choking and my heart began beating the hell out of my chest, so I reached both of my hands between Reverend Cherry’s and Uncle Relle’s legs and pulled hard as I could on their soggy skin-sacks like they were cow titties.

As soon as they let go, I came up moaning, fiending for breath. My heart didn’t slow down. It sped up, got ignited by that hot energy, and started screaming to the rest of my insides. It really did. Then my body followed my heart. It ran toward the semicircle of people. They got closer together and kept clapping. I ran back toward the water. I didn’t know what I was doing.

I just wanted to be free.

Uncle Relle grabbed the hood of my robe. I slid out of the robe and kept running, swinging, and screaming.

I saw formless shades of liquid brown that looked like a bowl of mashed oatmeal, peanut butter, chocolate chips, burnt butter, and cane syrup. And after a while, I could see regular stuff again. I saw Uncle Relle wobble to his cell phone.

I ain’t going
. I said.
I ain’t going
.

Reverend Cherry was after me, too. I ran back by the pool and grabbed Uncle Relle by the nubs and pushed him in the way. I think I was still yelling and screaming. I looked over at Grandma and LaVander Peeler and they were both smiling, but Grandma was crying, too.

Good tears.

Troll was steady playing that organ, bringing the dampness like it was going outta style.
Grandma, I ain’t going
, I think I said.
I ain’t going, Grandma
.

The semicircle of clapping folks started getting closer to me. There was nowhere for me to go. The sweat was steady gushing out, sloshing around my inner thighs, dripping off my forehead.

I ran over where Troll was and got under the bottom part of her organ. She was pumping the hell out of her feet, and I was right there next to them, breathing hard as a fat asthma victim, trying to ball myself up and go through the bottom of the organ. Troll’s wet music was smacking the hell out of my ears and chest, and she was literally kicking me in the hip, she was pumping it so hard. She had these dry, sand-colored, knee-high stockings that tried to cover the lightened blotches on her old legs.

A hand reached down. It was Grandma. I could tell by the stained silver ring on her pinkie. But part of me figured she was a demon with a hand that looked like Grandma’s and when I looked at her whole body, it would be all splotched up like Troll’s legs.

“That your hand, Grandma?”

She started fanning me, like she would do to her friends after they caught the Holy Ghost. All this chalked-up foundation was dripping off Grandma’s chin like gobs of Tootsie Roll spit.

She was smiling just as big as she could.

“I ain’t dead, Grandma.” I looked at Grandma eyes. “I ain’t dead, am I?

Tell the truth.”

“Naw, baby,” she told me. “You was just free for a little while.” She reached for my hand and helped me get up.

I asked Grandma why she let them hold me under for so long. She claimed that as soon as they dunked my head the third time, I started going into a fit.

I put the plush robe on and stood there thinking and looking at the folks in the semicircle for the first time. Gunn, Shay, MyMy, Coach Stroud, and LaVander Peeler were all there and they were all looking at me like they knew something I didn’t.

This funny-looking oldhead in a robe similar to mine, but a little more old school, was there too. He was in the back of the crowd, pumping his fist, rubbing the sweat off his old bald head, licking his lips, nodding his head side to side, looking at everyone else.

You know what everybody did after about fifteen seconds? Led by that older joker I’d never seen before, they all started cheering. Not clapping or robotically saying amen, but cheering with their whole bodies, with all that loose energy that fourth graders have during recess.

I wondered if what I’d caught was the same Holy Ghost that Lily Mae and them caught every Sunday. I wasn’t trying to catch nothing. I just wanted to live and breathe and keep my heart beating and be free, but maybe that’s what they were doing when they went crazy too.

I doubted it, but I figured everything was possible.

Out in the parking lot of Concord, all the kids crowded around LaVander Peeler and asked him questions about what he did at the contest. The grown folks did something different. They ignored LaVander Peeler and got in a line to shake my hand like I was the newest member of their gang. Finally, I wasn’t worried about waves or sweating or niggardly or stretch marks or Baize Shephard or dashikis or representing my people or feeling
so sad
.

I’d beaten death, and unlike Jesus, I’d beaten that joker on video. I felt free.

As soon as we pulled into Grandma’s driveway, I jumped out of the Bonneville. “City, where you think you going in such a hurry?” Grandma asked.

“I gotta go get ready to show LaVander Peeler something.”

“Oh, no you don’t. You better take your behind in there and get outta those clean clothes. We leaving in an hour.”