Long Division (8 page)

Shalaya Crump was really asking me a question, and you know what I was really doing? I was really half listening and half looking at her lips, wondering if they ever got chappy. She had the kind of lips, especially the bottom one, that always looked full of air and shiny, but not too shiny, from all that gloss.

“Well, do you?” she said again.

“Yeah, I think so,” I told her. “You wonder what the future has to do with you if all these new things are happening. Like, everybody knows you’re extremely super bad right now in 1985, right? But if you saw yourself in 1999, would you be like, ‘Oh my goodness. Who is that homely ass girl right there, cleaning the mess out her toes, looking greasy?’ Or maybe things happening in the future would make other people so mad that they would want to make you be invisible.”

“Yeah, yeah, City!” she grabbed my forearm and looked me in the eyes. “That’s exactly what I mean. Kinda. What happens if we disappear in the future?”

It was like the smartest thing I’ve ever said, and it was the first time I’d used the word “extremely” in a sentence, but the sad part was that I didn’t really know what I meant. I just knew it sounded like something Shalaya Crump would want to hear. It was some
GAME
I’d been practicing for two months in my mama’s bedroom mirror. “Hold up, Shalaya Crump. Remember when you said that you would love me? Wait, first—did you mean it?”

“If I said it, I meant it.”

“For real? That’s good. Well, ever since you told me all I needed to do was be special and say something cool about the future, I kinda…”

Shalaya Crump interrupted me. “City, speed that up. Why you gotta be so long division? For real, you don’t have to tell me all the background. The story doesn’t have to go on and on and on.”

“It doesn’t?”

“No,” Shalaya Crump said. “Everything with you is long division. You busy trying to show your all your work. Just get in and get out.”

“But my favorite part of long division was the work,” I told her. Shalaya Crump had thrown my
GAME
completely off. “I hate the answer. I do. We had this conversation already. You said you hated the answer, too.”

“That’s different. I hate the answer because I don’t believe in mastering the smaller steps,” she told me. “They never teach you to like, you know, linger in the smaller steps.”

“Linger? What’s that mean?”

“They just tell you that you gotta master the small steps if you wanna get to the big answer,” she told me. “But I wish we could really pause at each step in long division and talk about it.”

“Pause and do what?”

“Don’t worry about it,” she said. “Just get on with it, City. Please!”

“Okay, well, I wanna linger, too. Remember when I stole those Bibles for you over Christmas?”

“Yeah, I do. We already talked about this.”

“Do you remember what you said to me when I tried to convince you it wasn’t me?”

“I said that I know it’s you because stealing Bibles takes a whole different kind of crazy than Melahatchie crazy.”

“Right! And you said that you liked that I was Chicago or Jackson crazy. That meant that I was crazy enough to go around stealing pleather green Bibles from other folks’ trailers just to impress you. Well, I’m still Chicago or Jackson crazy, baby. Southside! That means I’m crazy enough to fly to the future with you, too…” I acted like my shoes were untied. “But when we land, I wanna know what I get.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, if I flew to 2013 with you, I hope that maybe you’d want to, you know, kiss a nigga.”

“City,” she started laughing. “Why are you calling yourself ‘a nigga’? You don’t even talk like that.”

“Whatever,” I said. “You know, maybe kiss a nigga on the lips! With a little bit of that tongue.”

“City, just talk like yourself! Saying ‘a nigga’ a lot ain’t gonna make me love you.”

“Aw, girl! I wasn’ even tryn’ to make you love me,” I tried to correct myself.

“Yes, you were. Now you doing it again.”

“No, I ain’t.”

You should have heard the way I said, “I wasn’ even tryn’ to make you love me.” I made “wasn’t” and “trying” one syllable each. And I sucked my teeth after I said it and rolled my eyes, too.

“When you first came down here, you didn’t even say ‘a nigga’ a lot,” Shalaya Crump said.

“I said ‘a nigga’ sometimes. Shoot, we say ‘a nigga’ in Chicago and Jackson just as much as y’all say it down here.”

“Yeah, but a little bit is normal. Now when you trying too hard to make me like you, you say stuff like ‘hard on a nigga’ or ‘worrying a nigga’ or ‘grinding on a nigga’s nerves.’ I’m not saying that I don’t be laughing when you say it…”

“You do laugh.”

“I know,” she told me. “That’s what I’m saying. But…”

“But what?”

“But that just ain’t who you are. I know you, City,” she told me. “You was all scared of flies and chicken when you first came down here.”

“So. What does that have to do with saying ‘a nigga’ all the time?”

“Nothing, but now, it’s weird. You sucking on your teeth and wanting me to ‘kiss a nigga’?” She started laughing and walking deeper behind some baby sticker bushes. “Just be you. And I’ll just be me.”

I knew I should have said okay, but I always had to have the last word, even with Shalaya Crump. “You know what, Shalaya Crump? You don’t leave enough room for folks to change. I’m serious. You always gotta control everything. How come no one else can change but you? When I first met you, your breath stayed smelling like a pork chop sandwich. For real. You never brushed your teeth. Now you brush your teeth on the regular and chew gum.”

Shalaya Crump was dying laughing but I was just telling the truth.

“Don’t try and laugh it off,” I told her. “You changed so I can change too. And maybe I changed how I talk from listening to you. You ain’t ever think about that?”

“Whatever, boy,” she said and got serious again. “The point is I ain’t giving out no kisses or no tongue like peppermints. I ain’t no gotdamn Candy Girl. Now can you please shut the hell up and let me show you something?”

We stepped into the cold Night Time Woods together. From inside the woods, the purple gray of the road cut through the green just enough that it was the prettiest thing I’d ever seen next to Shalaya Crump’s face. Any other color against that green wouldn’t have been so pretty, but this purple gray and green was more than pretty. This purple green and gray made me know that Shalaya Crump and me were meant to be kissing soon.

I grabbed Shalaya Crump’s hand as soon as we got deep in the woods. In six years of knowing Shalaya Crump, this was the first time I had ever held her whole hand and had her lead me into something. We had held hands before when we were in Sunday school and I tried to tell her that her hands were the sweatiest girl hands in the country. But this time was different. Shalaya Crump held on, and even when I loosened my grip, she held on even tighter. That’s always how you can tell if a girl likes you. If you loosened your grip and she loosened hers, you might as well go play football with your boys or something, because nothing is gonna pop off. Anyway, I felt like we were in our own version of “Thriller.”

“City, I can’t do this by myself anymore. I need you to come with me.”

“Need me to what?”

“To come with me.”

“Where?”

Shalaya Crump knelt down next to this rusty handle that was covered in pine needles and leaves. The handle looked like the
handle of this rusted brown iron Mama Lara used to keep her doors open. When Shalaya Crump pulled the handle, this hole inside the ground opened up. The door to the hole had rusty handles on both sides so someone inside the hole could pull the door shut if they needed to. Inside the hole were these dusty steps that led straight down to red clay. Shalaya Crump stepped half-down in the hole in the ground and looked up at me. All that was left outside the hole was her boobs, her head, and her bony arms. She looked back at me and said, “Please, City. Don’t let me go by myself this time. I need to show someone.”

If anyone else in the world, including my mama or Mama Lara, were boob-deep into a hole in the ground, asking me to follow them, I would have run away and called the police. But standing right there, watching Shalaya Crump want me to help her so bad, made me ask myself when was the next time I could count on Shalaya Crump inviting me anywhere dark, small, and secret with her. I figured the worst thing that could happen is that we could get covered in worms or maybe it would be too hot in the hole and my sack would commence to smelling sour. But worms don’t bite, I told myself, and Shalaya Crump’s underarms were already funky as six recesses.

The hole wasn’t the easiest to get in if you had wide hips, but after a while, I was in. “Now what?” I asked her. “Does my breath stank like stale Miracle Whip?”

Shalaya Crump grabbed my hand with her left hand and grabbed the handle with the other hand. “Don’t let go,” she said, “until I open the door again, okay?” Shalaya Crump pulled the secret door closed and darkness swallowed everything you were supposed to see.

“Your eyes closed, Shalaya?”

“Naw,” she said. “Yours?”

“Yeah.” I kept them closed for about ten seconds and tried to find Shalaya Crump’s hand. “What about now? Your eyes still open?”

“Yeah, City. You should open yours, too.”

“Mine are open now,” I lied. “I ain’t scared of the dark.”

“Okay,” Shalaya Crump said. “Just be yourself when we open it. I need you to be yourself and don’t say a word to anyone.”

Shalaya Crump pushed the secret door open after about seven more seconds. Just like that, the woods were green like the Hulk’s chest instead of green like a lime. It felt hotter when we stepped out of the hole, too. Took a while for my eyes to adjust to the brightness. You could see bigger slithers of dark road from where we were in the woods, like the woods had gone on a diet. The road didn’t seem like a road anymore, either. It looked like a tar-black slab of bacon that was way fatter than it was before we went in.

“What’s wrong with Old Ryle Road?” I asked her.

“It’s new,” she said. She looked at my face, hoping that I’d act like I understood. “This ain’t the same woods we know, City.”

“It ain’t new,” I sucked my teeth. “How could woods be new in like five minutes?” I looked around and saw the Shephard house. Then I turned and looked at Shalaya Crump, who was watching me watch everything around us. “Why you watching me like that?”

Shalaya Crump didn’t answer me. “You smell that?” I asked her and started coughing. The air in the woods was heavier than it had been. I always wanted my mama to get me one of those plastic asthma bottles like some of the white kids on TV, but she said I never needed one. “I think I got asthma, girl. I’m serious.”
She looked at me and forced a fake laugh. “What happened to all the trees? And that house,” I pointed toward the Shephard house. “What happened to it?”

I started running toward what I thought was the Shephard house and Shalaya Crump ran behind me. It was the same shape as the Shephard house but it read “Melahatchie Community Center” on the iron front door.

“City, calm down. Please. You have to be calm. Don’t be so loud. They’re gonna hear us.”

“Who?”

I looked through the woods toward Old Ryle Road and saw a crazy blue Monte Carlo with the most golden wheels I’ve ever seen in my life. The rattling of its license plate was in rhythm with a deep boom that sounded over and over again. It was the craziest, best-sounding boom I’d ever heard in my life.

“You hear that? What is it? Is that some new Run-D.M.C. or Herbie Hancock? Who that?”

“Be quiet, City.”

“How you gonna tell me to be quiet and you got me going in a hole feeling crazy? What’s wrong with you?” I grabbed her by her shoulders.

Shalaya Crump pushed my hands off. “Don’t ever push me.” She looked me in the eyes. “Ever! I don’t care if you feel crazy or not. All we can do is watch, okay? We can’t let them know we’re here. Shhh. Listen.”

We stood there in the middle of what kinda looked the Night Time Woods, looking at what kinda looked like Old Ryle Road. I tried to block out anything other than the sounds of blackbirds chirping and stiff leaves blowing up on our feet and squirrels digging around in trees.

“Yeah, shoatee. Call me,” the voice said from the street. “I’ma keep my phone on!” But there was no one with him. The man was talking to himself.

“Is this a dream?” I asked Shalaya Crump. “Is it? It is, right? Well, I’m ’bout to wake up myself up.” I took out my sweat rag and started trying to pop myself in the middle of the forehead, hoping I would wake myself up.

Shalaya Crump took my rag from me and told me to shut up. I heard more rattling booms coming from another strange truck with all black windows and white hubcaps. I looked at Shalaya Crump and the confusion made me start tearing up right in front of her face. I tried to wipe my eyes with my sweat rag but it was too late. I was so
Young and the Restless
. Shalaya Crump was right.

“City,” she breathed all heavy and acted all weird like she was on a soap opera, “you know how I asked you not to show your work before?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, don’t ask me to show my work when I tell you this, okay?”