Long Division (9 page)

“Okay!” I wiped my eyes and tried to get the boogers out with the same wipe.

“This is 2013, City, and…”

“
What
?”

“Let me finish. I’m scared because, well, I think I’m dead. Can you help me?”

I waited for her to say more, or at least look at me with a goofy grin. But she didn’t. Not at all.

“Shalaya Crump, I want you to show
all
your work now. All of it. I don’t give a damn if you say it’s long division.”

Instead of showing her work, Shalaya Crump took me by the hand and led me to the edge of the woods, where the sticker bushes met the shallow ditch that separated the woods from the Old Ryle Road.

“You can’t talk to anyone, City. I only come out here at night when can’t no one see me,” she said. “I keep trying to find myself.”

I wanted to ask Shalaya Crump all kinds of questions, but across the street, in what should have been Mama Lara’s house, was a girl sitting on the porch with a tiny silver briefcase on her lap. Down the road, I saw that the trailer next door wasn’t even there anymore. The girl on the porch had her head down, except for every now and then when she’d raise it to drink from this huge cold drank. Every time she took a swig, she looked toward the woods. It looked like she was talking to herself and playing with a calculator.

“Where did that person get that big ol’ cold drank from?”

“All the bottles of cold drank are big around here.”

I looked harder at the girl and looked over at Shalaya Crump, hoping she would give me something more than she was giving me. “Well, why is she sitting on Mama Lara’s porch?”

“Does that look like your Mama Lara’s porch, City?”

“Well, kinda. I mean, not really. I mean it does, but it doesn’t. But…” I didn’t know how to say what I wanted to say. Shalaya Crump was right that the place didn’t exactly look like my Mama Lara’s any more. It looked like what my Mama Lara’s place would look like if it had been in a few tornados. It made me feel funny that Shalaya Crump didn’t say anything about how the girl sitting out on the porch, at least from where we were, looked almost just like her except this girl was thicker with way shorter hair, maybe a bigger nose, and boobs that looked like the balled-up fists of a seven-year-old.

“Who is that?” I asked her.

Shalaya Crump didn’t answer, and I got tired of asking her questions she wouldn’t answer. I started across the street toward the girl on the porch.

As I got closer to the porch, I could see that the girl on the porch had a strange haircut like a boy. The hair was the shape of Mr. T’s hair but there was still hair on the sides, and the top was thicker than his.

The girl on the porch closed the tiny silver briefcase and stood up. She placed this book, with the words “Long Division” on the cover, on top of the briefcase. The silver briefcase was one of those weird things you only see on TV. When she stood up, you expected her to say something. Or you expected me to say something, but I didn’t, and she didn’t either. I just looked at her for probably ten whole seconds. Then she finally said, “Excuse you! Who you looking for?”

I walked closer and realized that Shalaya Crump had the same eyes and face shape as this girl on the porch, but this girl was a little lighter than her and she had really long legs, and arms like a penguin. Up close, you could see that this girl’s forehead was one of biggest and greasiest you’ve ever seen in your life.

“You might wanna check yourself, mayne, don’t you think?” the girl said. “You think you can just walk up on folks because you can dress?”

“Um, I can dress?”

“Where you get them Converse at? I like that little hipster white boy thang you got going on.”

“You do? I got these for Christmas.”

“What’s your name?”

I just looked at the girl and thought of the coolest name I’d ever heard. “Voltron,” I told her. “But you can call me T-Ron if you want.” I never told white folks or strangers my real name. But usually I alternated between Bobby, Ronnie, Ricky, and Mike, the names of the dudes in New Edition.

The girl rolled her eyes, then opened up her little briefcase and sat back down. “Okay T-Ron, my name’s Baize. Baize Shephard,” she said before moving the book and opening up the tiny silver briefcase. “Look, mayne, I don’t mind you being on my porch, but you gotta quit looking thirsty like you wanna steal somebody’s rhymes.”

“Rhymes? What kind of rhymes? Girl, what’s wrong with you? Why you keep calling me ‘mayne’?”

“That’s what we say.”

“Who? How do you even spell that?” I asked her. “Just be yourself.”

“You don’t even know me,” the girl said. “And I don’t know you either. Mayne! But I know how you look. And you look like the type to wanna steal somebody’s rhymes off their computer. Can I keep it one hundred?”

“I guess so. What does ‘keep it one hundred’ even mean?”

“One hundred. Like 100 percent. Listen, if you don’t want me to think you jack people, then don’t call yourself T-Ron. That can’t be your real name,” she said.

“Wait—that’s a computer?” I asked her.

“Yeah, what else would it be?”

“I thought it was a silver briefcase. Whatever it is, that thing is cold as a mug.”

“A briefcase?”

“Yeah, for children.”

She laughed loud and hard. “You trying to spit game?” she asked me. “What does that even mean? Show me a child who uses briefcases. I know you’ve heard of a laptop computer.”

“A lab top computer?”

“Lap.
Lap
, mayne. See,” she picked the computer up, held it in the air for a moment, and then placed it back on her lap. “This is a computer and this, see this? This is my lap. Stop fronting. Why you playing stupid? You go to school around here, don’t you?”

“Um, yeah.”

“Then you must’ve gotten one a few years ago with the last of that Katrina money they sent us after all them tornadoes hit us again. Don’t tell me your mama and them sold it on eBay? I was watching this web series,
Confessions of a PTSD
. You heard of it?”

I looked at the book where she’d moved it. I could really see its cover for the first time. On the cover was a husky black boy’s body standing in the middle of a stage. The picture cut off right above his shoulder blades so we couldn’t see his face. His left hand was in his pocket and his right hand was clutching a wave brush. Behind the boy was another, lankier boy with his head down and both of his balled-up fists dangling between his legs. Near the bottom of the cover were the words “YouTube,” “views,” and the number “47,197,508.” At the top of the cover in bold letters were the words “Long Division.”

I was thinking of what to ask her about the book when I heard a man’s voice in conversation behind me. I turned to the road as a taller man with a big brown T-shirt was walking down the street talking to himself.

“How come everyone around here likes to talk to themselves?”

“He’s on the phone,” the girl said. “Why you trippin’?”

“I ain’t slow. I can see he’s talking to himself.”

“Look, you ain’t gonna get loud with me on my own porch. You know that’s Bluetooth. I know it’s played out. They think they styling with the little headsets, just like you think you think you styling with that outfit,” she paused, “and that curly shag. Where you from?”

I looked across Old Ryle Road at Shalaya Crump and motioned for her to come on over. “My friend is over in those woods and I want her to see all this. Is it okay if she comes over and sees Katrina’s computer?”

“No,” she said. “Why didn’t she come with you?”

“No?”

“Your ‘friend,’” she made these quotations marks in the air, “is a girl, right?”

“Unh huh!”

“She’s your girl, right?” “Um, she halfway my girl.”

“Oh, okay,” she said. “Yeah, well, no! I been seein’ that girl sneaking around here for a while. She looks shade tree to me. I went after her the last time I saw her peeking out of those woods.”

“You did?”

“Yep. But she disappeared. I found this, though, after she left,” she said and grabbed the book. “You ever heard of this book?”

I ignored her question and walked over beside her and saw that the computer really wasn’t a tiny briefcase at all. There was a keyboard and a flat TV screen, and on the flat TV screen were all these colorful dizzy images and boxes and words.

I couldn’t blink.

Or breathe.

Or move.

“Don’t think I’m hating on your girlfriend over there, ’cause I’m not. I just saw this strange white boy over in those woods yesterday, too, and I let him use my computer. He was dressed like one of those white children who be getting home-schooled up north. You know, the kind whose parents don’t let them watch TV or eat sweet cereal? Anyway, I gave him some of my daddy’s old clothes.”

“Wait, what?” I asked. I heard her but I didn’t really hear her. All I could do was watch and listen to my heartbeat as the girl moved her fingers across the letters.

“Yeah, he told me he was looking for more clothes that matched the time.”

“Matched the time?”

“I told him to go downtown to the Salvation Army.” While she was talking, she pushed something below the little square thing on the computer and in a second, the screen flipped on to what looked like the front page of a newspaper. The headline on the newspaper was “The Obamas Get Another Family Dog Just in Time for the Election Cycle.”

“Who is that?”

“Who is who? The dog? I don’t think they named it yet.”

“Not the dog. The man and the woman and those girls. Who are they? And how come you can watch TV on your computer?”

“Stop playing. You think the oldest one cute? All the boys in my class stay falling out over that girl.”

I looked at the bigger girl. “I mean, yeah, she’s kinda cute but who are these folks?”

“Dumbness, we cared about funky dogs when the president was white. Why we can’t make a big deal about dogs when the president is black?”

“That’s the president?”

“Oh my god, dumbness. I just can’t.”

“And this is a computer and a TV and a newspaper all on that screen?”

“Yes, boy.”

“And what is that?”

I pointed to a little rectangle on the side of the newspaper where someone named
@UAintNoStunna815
wrote
@SMH you goin to that Spell-Off #yoassdumberthanyoulook
and someone named
@YeahTheyReal601
wrote
TTYL LOL cute herb on my porch #hat-ingaintahabit
.

“Twitter,” the girl said, “but that ain’t none of your business.”

“Wait. And people here talk on phones with no hands?”

“Voltron!” It was weird because even though my name wasn’t Voltron, it made my insides tingly to hear her call me by what she thought was my name. “Why are you acting like you stuck in the ’90s?”

“What year is this?” I asked her. “Be for real.”

“2013, crackhead. You got that new swine flu?”

A voice from inside the house interrupted my good feelings. “Baize, come on in here and set this table. We got to practice them words for that Spell-Off.”

“That’s my great-grandma.” Baize looked down at my hips. “She want me to come in and study for the spelling bee tomorrow. It’s over in the community center. You going? Want me to ask her if you can eat with us? I ain’t gonna lie to you; her cooking is wack, but she getting better at frying some catfish.”

As the screen door slammed closed, I got closer to the laptop. Right next to the computer and
Long Division
was this little black thing that looked like some kind of special calculator. If it wasn’t sitting next to that computer, I would have been super interested in it, but it was kinda boring compared to that laptop computer.

I didn’t know what to focus on when I looked at the computer—the machine carrying the pictures and the words, or the pictures and the words themselves. I had never felt anything like that before. I just wanted to talk to someone who would also understand none of what I was seeing and all of what I was feeling. And that someone was across the road peeking her slow/fast-blinking eyes through green and orange and brown trees.

I picked the laptop computer up with my two hands scooped underneath like it was a tray, placed
Long Division
on top of it, and looked toward the hole. Then I thought about how happy Shalaya Crump would be if I brought her a calculator from 2013. So I put the calculator in my mouth, jumped off the porch, and sprinted back to the woods.

When I reached her, I gave Shalaya Crump the calculator and we both ran toward to the hole. Shalaya Crump got in first and I followed her. With just my head outside the door, I could see Baize sprinting toward us. She was screaming and cussing, talking about, “Naw. Naw. I know you didn’t.”

It was too late, though. The secret door was closed. The computer,
Long Division
, the calculator, Shalaya Crump, and me were in it and we were headed back to 1985.

When the door opened up, you couldn’t see Old Ryle Road at all, but you could see the fuzzy glow of the streetlight. Shalaya
Crump was next to me breathing louder than I’d ever heard her breathe. I had never even seen her tired in all the years I knew her, not even during push-up contests. Shalaya Crump actually had the best wind of anyone I’d ever met.