Long Division Part 12

"If I could, I would, Shalaya." I really hated hearing him say her name. "I can go travel to three places, the same three as you can. Somebody out there can travel back and help my people, though. Just not me. Or maybe they already did. Maybe it woulda been worse."

I looked back and saw Shalaya Crump looking right in Evan's face again. I figured she was going to say something sweet to him after that heartfelt end of his speech. "You were so right, City," she said in the most calm, loving, and empty voice I'd ever heard her use. "This is a waste of time. Let's just go home."

After a while, as much as I wanted to hear Shalaya Crump slap the nasty taste out of Evan's mouth, I started to get lightweight bored. They kept going back and forth even though Shalaya Crump said it was time to go. You can only listen to people call each other sorry and anti-septic for so long before it makes you wanna cut your ears off.

I hopped all the way out of the hole and started walking toward Old Ryle Road with my laptop computer under my arm and Long Division in my hand. It was weird, because even before you really completely saw Old Ryle Road, you could tell that it wasn't a road. It was all dirt and rocks and it was a lot thinner than the road in 1985.

When I reached the edge of the woods, I peeked through at what should have been my grandmother's house. The house wasn't there. In its place was a little country-looking store with two cold drank machines and a gas pump. The store had these red letters taped on the door that spelled "The County Co-op."

"City," I heard Shalaya Crump say behind me, "don't say nothing to no one out there. This ain't how I wanted to change the future. When you come back, we're going back home."

I ignored Shalaya Crump and stepped all the way into the road. Down the road, all those clean and organized houses and yards made me think of how the future wasn't gonna do them too many favors. There were probably half the houses and trailers that were there in 1984. Mama Lara's house was gone but Shalaya Crump's trailer was still there.

I knew it wasn't the right thing to do, but I went across the street to the Co-op to ask people if they'd heard of the Coldsons. If our house wasn't there, I just wanted to know where we lived. Plus, I had my own plan.

Evan was stupid to think that we had to kill people. I know I wasn't supposed to talk to anyone, but my plan was basic. It was to convince my granddaddy to watch out for the Klan if I got a chance.

That's it.

It was that simple. Either my granddaddy would believe me or he wouldn't, but at least he'd know. All my time coming up with plans in my GAME book helped me know how to get from point A to point B with the least amout of stress.

While I was peeking in the dusty window of that Co-op, a sorry-sounding "meow" scared the mess outta me. I looked around and there was this skinny black cat with a fat head looking right at me. It had a thick collar around its neck with the words "Red Naval." You know what's crazy? I had never ever seen a cat in Melahatchie in my entire life. Never. And I never thought anything about it. There were more limping Dobermans than there were people, but you never saw a cat.

Anyway, the cat came closer to me and just kept meowing. "I ain't got no food for you. Is your name 'Red Naval' or is that like the name of your owner? What?"

Meowwww The cat came closer and I backed up.

Meooowww I put the computer down facing the cat. The cat just walked right around the computer and got even closer to me.

Meeooow "Oh, you talking noise? Don't be mad because you don't understand how to use it." As I was talking, the cat walked off toward the side of the building. Before it turned the corner it meowed louder.

I looked toward the woods and into the Co-op, then walked toward the edge of the building, following the cat. I turned the corner of the Co-op and didn't see the cat anymore. But there were two doors on the side of the Co-op. The first door was closed and it said "WHITES ONLY-KEY IN FRONT." Scratched under the word "front" was the sentence "n.i.g.g.e.r-loving Jews ain't wanted here." I tried to open it but it was locked. The second door, which was cracked opened, said "COLORED." I walked toward the door and was about to poke my head in when the cat came out and meowed again.

"I wish somebody would try and tell me I couldn't do number two in that white bathroom," I told the cat. "I don't play that."

Meoow "I'm serious. If that white folks' bathroom was open, I swear to G.o.d I'd go in there and get to dookying right in that sink."

Meoow "I don't care if it is a white folks' sink. I would be smearing dookie all on the mirror and everything! I ain't from here. I'm from 1985. I don't play that mess."

I stood there waiting for the cat to meow again, but it didn't. It just stood there looking at me. I realized when I stopped talking all big and bad that a heavy whiff of sad like I'd never felt before was getting closer and closer to my neck. Reading about my family and other black folks not being able to pee in a good bathroom was different than seeing a white folks' bathroom locked and a colored bathroom just open for anything that wanted to come in. It said "colored" on the door, but it might as well have said cats, spiders, possums, c.o.o.ns, and roaches, 'cause it was open to them just like it was open to us.

The cat took me all the way to back of the Co-op, where there was this rusty clothesline with white sheets hanging on it. Right there in the middle was this one scraggly Doberman doing the do to this other fatter Doberman. They weren't making no barks or no moans. They were just doing it like they were the last dogs on Earth.

The cat walked up about a foot from the Dobermans and sat on its hind legs. Then it started looking back and forth at the Dobermans and me. I can't really blame the cat. I'd seen dogs doing it before, but this was different. I would have bet my new computer and book that they wouldn't be doing it like that if they were doing it with any other dogs. You never think of dogs being in love, but those dogs were. They really were.

While I was watching those dogs, as crazy as it sounds, my body started to feel like I was watching Porky's. The Dobermans weren't even that cute as far as dogs go either.

I didn't like how the dogs were making me feel, so I started stomping and yelling, but they kept doing it like no one was screaming. All around the back of the Co-op were these little jagged gray rocks. They were too little to really throw far or hard, but they were good enough to hit a dog in the head if you threw a handful of them.

I c.o.c.ked my arm back and dotted the heads of those Dobermans with gray rocks. The scraggly top Doberman got off the bottom Doberman real slow and they both just looked at me, along with the cat. And I swear the cat licked its paws and actually said in the most smooth voice I'd ever heard in my life, "Wow. You a real fat a.s.shole for that right there. You don't know better than to throw rocks at love?"

"You talk?" I asked the cat. Right then, I wondered if everything I'd experienced in the last day and a half was a dream, or if somehow, some way, I'd gotten trapped in someone else's story.

"Don't even worry about what I do," the cat said. "You should probably get your fat a.s.s to running, though."

I slowly turned the corner and headed back toward the woods to find Shalaya Crump and Jewish Evan Altshuler. When I looked over my shoulder, all three beasts were sprinting at me, led by the cat, whose head looked less fat when he was sprinting.

I took off.

They were getting closer, but I jumped the ditch and landed in the woods. Even though I scratched up my face, my legs, and the computer, I didn't even care. When I got closer to the hole, I wanted to tell Shalaya Crump about the Dobermans and the talking Red Naval cat and the colored bathroom. The closer I got, though, I didn't hear Shalaya Crump and Evan arguing at all. I figured I'd look in the hole and they'd be right there, wrestling or playing Mercy or Thump in a way that would make me wanna throw up.

I walked all the way up to the hole and peeked down in it. d.a.m.n. d.a.m.n. d.a.m.n.

I was in 1964 all by myself.

COMMON TO MAN.

On Sunday morning, Grandma and I got in the Bonneville and headed to Concord Baptist Church at a little past eleven in the morning.

Nothing made sense.

I had found out that there were actually two Long Division books, the one I kept in the house and the one I decided to leave in the work shed with Pot Belly. But the existence of at least two books was less confusing than the words in the books.

Maybe the book wasn't a book at all, I thought. Maybe the book was the truth. If it was the truth, I had to figure out what it had to do with me. And if Baize wasn't actually missing, but maybe just time traveling, that meant that Pot Belly hadn't really hurt her at all.

"City," Grandma interrupted my thoughts while turning down the radio, "when you get saved, act like you got some sense. You hear me? Whole lotta folks get saved and it take them an entire life before they start living by G.o.d's word. That's them ol' deathbed conversioners, them ol' heathens trying to get to heaven a lifetime too late."

I told Grandma that the car smelled like something died in the backseat and asked her who she was talking about. She ignored the comment about the smell and said that she wasn't talking about anyone in particular.

When we made it to the dirt parking lot of Concord Baptist Church, the Bonneville stopped and Grandma swiveled her neck toward me. With her eyes a-twitching and mouth a-moving, almost in slow motion, Grandma said, "Okay now, City. It's 11:45. We still got time to send you up for altar call. Don't act a fool up in here."

Grandma and I walked into this little heated waiting area before you walked all the way into the church. We held hands. "Your hand's wet as a wash rag, City," she said. "Don't be scared."

"I'm not scared," I told her.

Believe it or not, I wasn't lying. I stood there looking through the window at the congregation. Scared was in my mind, but it was way in the back closet. In the front of it was this excited feeling of walking into church and having all those folks treat me like the celebrity I was. Right beneath that feeling was another kind of wonder. I didn't wonder about what was going to happen as much as I wondered about what the white Jesus above the pulpit was thinking.

I wasn't sure if the white Jesus who my grandma had been praying to all this time was the same one above the pulpit, but even if he wasn't, I still wondered what he thought about Concord. I wondered if white Jesus felt jealous about the way the men marched in like penguins, sweaty thighs and armpits wrapped in these black suits s.h.i.+ning like armor. Even better were the girls who had their dresses dipping and diving like new fluorescent kites.

Deacon Big Shank, the dude in charge of all the ushers, opened the door to the sanctuary. He always kept one arm behind his back. He one-arm hugged Grandma and shook my hand. Deacon Shank whispered, "We seen you on TV the other night, Little Citizen."

He couldn't p.r.o.nounce my real name so he called me "Little Citizen." He had called me that ever since I was like seven years old. "Your granddaddy smiling, son."

I stood in the back looking around the church feeling crazy lost. Uncle Relle was already in the church, filming it all on one of his cell phones. Part of me was still lost in thoughts of Pot Belly while another part of me was lost in the way Mama Troll was playing that organ when a little chirpy black bird flew right past my face.

It looked like there was a whole family of chirpy black birds in a nest up in the top of the church. They'd take turns swooping down during the service. It was cool because they never pecked or s.h.i.+tted on anyone's head or clothes. They just swooped and chirped throughout the whole service. The only time those birds would stop and chill was when Lily Mae did that Holy Spirit Shake or near the end of Cherry's sermon when Troll brought back that damp funk on the organ.

Reverend Cherry stood up and said, "Thank ya, choir." Reverend Cherry paused and looked at the congregation and said, "We are blessed." Then he breathed all heavy in the microphone, like he was about to stop breathing.

Reverend Cherry's whole style was thick cane syrup mixed with lightning and lard. It really was. He had that sleepy, slow, dripping voice. Sounded like burning Bubble Wrap was up in his throat. His voice matched his sleepy left eye. You know how people with one sleepy eye look stupid, but smooth and in control at the same time, especially when they blink? That's how Cherry's left eye and voice were. Both looked and sounded real different and stupid at first, but you never felt sorry for him, and after hearing and seeing his face a lot of times, you wanted to have a voice and a sleepy eye like his.

His voice wasn't all slow so that you thought his bread wasn't done. It was slow on purpose, the slow where he was always in control of the next word that oozed out of his mouth. The thing that really made Cherry so special, and so d.a.m.n strange, was that the old joker never said "uhhmm" or "uhh" or "I mean" or anything like that. Never. Not even when he was sweating and grabbing his sacks and spitting on folk and doing the death-breaths during his sermon.

I was sitting there fanning Grandma when Reverend Cherry made eye contact with me.

"Sister Coldson, could you send your grandbaby, City, up here to read the gospels for the church? Everybody in here already knows that City let them folks get him into a n.i.g.g.ardly predicament a few days ago." The congregation clapped and amen'ed. "When you seen the video, didn't it remind you how we been missing him at Sunday school? Didn't it, church?"

Cherry tucked his chins into his neck, held the Bible under his arm like a football, and inched toward me. He didn't blink one time and he didn't look at anyone in the whole church but me. I tried looking down but Grandma elbowed me in my rib cage.

I d.a.m.n sure didn't want to, but I stepped to the cone-looking microphone and read anyway.

The congregation wasn't smiling like I wished they would've, so I kept reading. "No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; -" I never really knew how you were supposed to pause at those semicolons. I always thought I read through them too fast, but Mama wasn't there to correct me so it was okay. "- but G.o.d is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to hear it."

Cherry took the Bible from me and closed it. Then, even though he was talking to me, he walked over by the microphone, looked at the congregation again, and said all slow, "Thank you, City."

I hated when people said thank you just so people other than the person being thanked could hear it. I stood there beside Cherry. He had his paw on my shoulder. I looked at Grandma. She was looking so proud.

"Awright. Amen. Little City'll be entering G.o.d's army soon, ain't you?" I just looked at him. Didn't nod or nothing. "Thank you, City. Go ahead and sit your smart self down." He pushed me in my back.

"I hope y'all listen to what City just read," Cherry said. "The Lord say that you ain't run up on no temptation no different from n.o.body else. Listen to what he sayeth. He sayeth it's a million different folks in this world. Black. White. Oriental. Indian. Jews. Womens. Mexican. Whatever. Mens. Gay Fruities. Whatever you is, you got the same temptations as the next man and as all men that done come before you. But ain't but one way to escape them temptation, is it?"

Everybody started saying "Yeah" and "Only one way, chile."

Cherry kept going. I was into it, I think, because I had read it. "And the same voice, that Lord's voice, makes the escape possible if you, what?"

Silence. Pews started squeaking and wrists were popping from all the fanning.

When folk didn't know what to say, they said, "W'h.e.l.l." When he asked questions-I'm not even lying-Grandma was the only one in the church who could answer his dumb questions right every time.

"Hear it, Cherry," Grandma said. "Lord say you got to hear it."

"That's right, Sista Coldson. Y'all hear what Sista Coldson said? You got to hear it, church. You ready? I don't thank y'all ready to hear it. Y'all ready to listen? Y'all ready to hear it, not just for yourself but for our baby, Baize Shephard? We gotta hear it for the babies who ain't here to hear it for themselves. Y'all ready?"

The church roared "Yeah" and "We ready, Rev."

"Church, somebody in here, if it wasn't today, maybe it was last Sunday or the Sunday 'fore last or maybe even a Sunday last year sometime, but whenever it was, you woke up and said to yourself, 'Self, I sho' do want to do the right thing.'

"Naw, lemme tell y'all another way," he said. "You woke up and say to yourself, 'Self, I need to go to church.' Then you thought about that comfortable bed, that box fan blowing that good air on your face. You wanted to come to church. You say you wanted to come to church. Then, that voice crept up in that right ear and said, 'You need to go to church. It will help you. It will help the community of G.o.d. Go ahead and get your wretched tail on up.' But temptation was already up in that left ear and it made that head get real heavy, didn't it?"

People were laughing their a.s.s off now. I wanted to elbow myself in the head for laughing, too.

"All that temptation made that head so heavy," he said, "like a watermelon, or a sack of sweet potatoes. Then it fell back on that pillow. Bam! And you said, 'I'm tired' or 'I'm sick. Uhh. I'mo come next week. Next week.' Only thing is..." Reverend Cherry slowed down a bit "...next week wasn't promised. Next week ain't never promised. All we got is the moment and yesterday. Tomorrow ain't guaranteed. We know that better than any of these folks."

Reverend Cherry sped up again. "But you wanted to come to church, you claim. You knew what was right and you wanted to do that. Church, Lord don't deal in no wants. Lord coulda carried you to church that day, but that ain't his way. Lord give us the power to make sense of all this noise around us. Lord give us a way to slow down the noise and see everything that's in it. Lord give us a way to recollect this chaos. And the Lord deal in what is. Lord give you the ability to do the right thing. Lord tell you what to do when you standing in front of a sea of white folks and they want you to act a fool. Ain't that right, Li'l City?"

He looked right at me and started yelling.

"Open up your ears! 'Lot of us got our arms open and stretched out to the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit because that's the pose we thank He want to see, but our ears ain't open. We are steady posing, but who we thank we faking out? You can't fake out Jesus. He unfakable, City! Them folks got you joking and jiving, acting like you ain't got good sense, but the Lord ain't going nowhere.

"Jesus speaketh in many tongues, but he always speaketh so you can understand. Always find you, no matter where you at. I say always! You might hear it in a deep voice. Somebody else might hear it in a little light voice. He might sang to you. He might throw it at you in sign language or maybe even one of them ol' rap songs."

The church was loud as h.e.l.l, half laughs, half amens. Lots of claps. Then silence, no squeaks in the benches, no wrist-popping, just Cherry's voice and Troll's wet quilt.

"Or his voice might sound like mines do right here, right now." Cherry slowed down. "Whatever it is, open up your ears. It's there. He tried to tell us where our baby, Baize Shephard, was. But we ain't listen. We ain't wanna seem crazy!"

"I ain't crazy," a voice shouted.

"Who out there ready to open they ears to the right voice? Who out there ain't crazy? Who ready to save our babies so that Baize and the rest of our children won't be lost in vain?"

"Right here, Rev. I hear it," another voice shouted. "Right here, praise Jesus!"

"Come on up here, if you ready to open your ears," Rev said. "Can't open them ears, without opening them heavy heads and hearts. This ain't no sometimes thang. Sho ain't. This a life thang. This here is a Lord thang! Come on up here if you ready to be part of this Lord thang. Come up here if you tired of faking out the Lord."

"I'm ready for this Lord thing," my voice shouted. I was standing up, clapping like a seal. I swear I didn't remember telling my voice, my hands, or my legs to move. "I love your sentence style, Rev," my voice yelled again. "I knew better."

"Come up here then, City," Reverend told me. "If you really ready to give that life and soul to Jesus, come on up here. This ain't no sometimes thang, City."

Grandma pushed me up there, but she didn't have to. I hoped that four or five folks who Grandma called heathens would come up to the front of the church with me.

"Wait, Reverend Cherry." I didn't know if Cherry could hear me but I spoke to him anyway. "I just said you had smoove sentence styles. I'm really not trying to be all about that Lord life, though."

No one could hear me on top of all that mess. Finally, Ren and Ray-gord, the two grandsons of Deacon Harper known for having good hair, came up there with me.

Reverend Cherry looked at the deacons on the right and the ushers in the back and said, "Raise your right hand, sons. Tomorrow, at our First Monday Baptism, do you give yourself to the Lord? Are you ready to be saved by right? Tomorrow in the holy waters of heaven, do you..."

I looked at Grandma before glaring up at white Jesus again. I wondered if any folks in the church knew about the cross-eyed white man in Grandma's work shed. I wondered what they would think about my grandma's relations.h.i.+p with the Lord and with right if they really knew. If they ever found out, maybe two of them would talk smack about my grandma, but I figured that everyone in the church had been treated like a visitor on their own road, in their own town, in their own state, in their own country. It wasn't really complicated at all, but I'd never understood it until right then in that church. When you and everyone you like and everyone who really likes you is treated like a pitiful n.i.g.g.e.r, or like a disposable n.i.g.g.e.r, or like some terrorizing n.i.g.g.e.r, over and over again, in your own home, in your own state, in your own country, and the folks who treat you like a n.i.g.g.e.r are pretty much left alone, of course you start having fantasies about doing whatever you can-not just to get back at white folks, and not just to stop the pain, but to do something that I didn't understand yet, something a million times worse than acting a fool in front of millions at a contest.

One sentence.

That one sentence had the potential to be the greatest sentence I'd ever thought of, and I wished LaVander Peeler was there to hear it and help me figure out what the last part actually meant.

"Ahhhhhhhhhhmen!"

Everyone dropped hands and we made our way out of the church. I walked out feeling that my First Monday Baptism might be the last thing I ever experienced. Whether it was because I was going to die during the baptism or because I was going to be some wack holy dude I never imagined being, I didn't know how I could live another day as myself after that baptism. Either way, I figured I needed to go home and write a will on the blank pages in Long Division. If I did die, I wanted to give something to all the folks I was leaving behind.

A WILL.

1. I leave my Pine wave brush to LaVander Peeler.

2. I leave my XL mesh shorts to Shay.

3. I leave my grown-folks books to Shay and Gunn and a few of my illiterate kids' books to MyMy.

4. I leave my cell phone to my grandma because she needs one even though they don't ever get decent reception down here.

5. I leave my essays to Mama.

6. I leave my vintage Walter Payton jerseys to LaVander Peeler.