Long Division Part 15

I slumped on the ground away from the TV and just watched the first part of the show about the life and sound and death of Michael Jackson with my head resting on my shoulder. I thought about Shalaya Crump telling me to just be myself. What did that even mean if years in the future, you could look like a totally different person and be dead? There was no way to be yourself and be the same way you were. And even if you did manage to be yourself, one day you were going to die and regret it all anyway. That's what I realized watching the show about Michael Jackson.

"This is real, Baize. This s.h.i.+t is real." I stood there not caring what I looked like. I understood that if Michael Jackson was really dead, it meant that people I knew were dead too. "I gotta find my ma and my Mama Lara. What if they disappeared in some flood just like your parents?"

"Tomorrow, okay? Look," she stood up and took the remote controls from me. "You gotta rest so your legs feel better. Then tomorrow, well..." She paused.

"What?"

"You gotta decide if you go back and help your friend or if you stay and look for your family. I don't care what you do. When the morning comes, I'm jumping back in that hole and getting my computer and my phone back."

"But what if all my family is dead?"

"What if they are?"

"Well," I said, and thought about her question. "I guess if they're dead, I'd want to know and maybe when I go back to my time I can do what I can to stop them from dying."

"But what if you're dead?"

"What do you mean?"

"What if you go looking for your people and you find out that they're alive, but you ain't?"

"Then, well, I guess..." I just didn't know what to say. "Where am I sleeping tonight?"

"On the floor in my room, I guess."

I followed her in the bedroom and then I stopped. "Baize?"

"What?" she turned around and looked me right in the eye.

"Is all of New Edition dead too?"

"New who?"

Baize made a nice little area to sleep on the floor next to her bed. I should have asked to take a shower, but I'd seen when I went in their bathroom earlier that there wasn't a shower. Couldn't understand how they had all the technology to get over 200 channels and make the TV sound like life, but they didn't have technology to make their tub go from the brown of a double-yolk egg to a somewhat regular white.

I sat there on the floor of Baize's room and pulled up the sheet to look under her bed. There were maybe 20 green notebooks piled there, and all kinds of raggedy keyboards, drumsticks, and broken turntables. Surrounding all that stuff were these tiny fingernails.

I grabbed one of the green notebooks and opened it. There were all these sketches of connected circles, and surrounding the circles were these long winding lines of numbers that looked like they were coming out of the circles. I opened another notebook and it was the same thing. Different-shaped circles and long lines of winding numbers.

While I was trying to figure out if Baize was doing some kind of long division in the notebooks, Baize leaned her head over toward me. "If things start to crawl on you, you can just get in the bed with me, long as you stay on your side."

"Wait, what's gonna crawl on me? Fingernails?"

"No, a.s.shole. Roaches."

"Can I ask you something?"

"What?"

"Why are these notebooks filled with circles and numbers?"

"They're not circles," she told me and took the notebook from my hand. "They're holes."

"Holes to where?"

"I don't know. Never mind, Voltron," she said. "Just watch out for the roaches down there."

"Well then, can I just...you know...get up there with you?"

"Don't get it twisted, okay?" she said and moved over. "I'm really not about that acting ho-ish life."

"Whatever that means." I told her and got in the bed. "I been wanting to tell you that the slang y'all use is kinda stale in the future."

Baize put four of her green tablets between us. She told me that I couldn't cross over the tablets without getting punched in the gizzard, and I told her not to worry. It's not hard to explain what I felt about Baize. She had the perfect mix of funk and perfume. And even though she had a Mr. T-style haircut, she was cuter than a cute girl. And she was finer than a fine girl. And she was way smarter than a smart girl. And she was even weirder than the weirdest girls. But she wasn't as good-smelling, as cute, as smart, or as weird as the girl I loved. And even if she was, which she wasn't, I really told myself that if I didn't touch Baize, then maybe, just maybe, Evan and Shalaya Crump weren't touching either.

I wanted to stay up and ask Baize more questions about life in 2013, but the day had beaten me down. A few minutes after my head hit that c.r.a.ppy pillow, I turned away from Baize and was cold knocked out.

Some time during the night, I had one of those dreams where you know you're dreaming. Everything in the woods was a different shade of maroon. Shalaya Crump had my hand in hers and she was pulling me through the woods toward the Freedom School. When we got to the door, everything turned black and white.

"Why you talking weird," I asked her, "like this is a stupid book?"

We walked all the way to the center of the room, into the smell of burning hair and pancakes. When we stood in the room, the sound of one of those TV shows I watched on Baize's TV was surrounding us.

"He's different than you think he is, City."

"Who?"

"This guy." Shalaya Crump pulled out a picture of a white boy I'd seen before on TV. He looked like Ricky's friend on Silver Spoons. "Evan."

"That's not Evan. That boy is way cuter than Evan. Why you using words like 'guy' too? You kissed him, didn't you?"

"No, I didn't, but I want to."

"Wait. This is a dream. I know it's a dream, but you can't really think Evan looks like that? For real. 'Laya, he don't look like that at all. Why couldn't you pull a picture out that looked all sick and gangly and like he's smelling something? You know he's raggedy as a roach, right?"

Shalaya Crump put the picture in her front pocket and put her hands on my shoulder. I'd practiced kissing her enough to know that I was supposed to put my hands on her hips and come in with my eyes closed and my nostrils kinda flared.

"Open your eyes," she said, and kissed me on the left side of my lips, then on my cheek, then on my neck. Everywhere she kissed felt like a trail of rubbing alcohol and smelled like b.u.t.terscotch.

Shalaya Crump was coming back toward my lips. "Do I keep my eyes open?" I asked her. "I ate a banana Laffy Taffy before we got in here. You smell it?"

"Shush," she told me. "Let's just do what we want."

"What if Evan finds out?" I asked her.

"I'm gonna tell my guy," she said.

"Me too," I said.

Shalaya Crump pulled me even closer and took my bottom lip between her lips. Every feeling in my body sprinted between my wide hips. And for just about ten seconds, all those feelings screamed and tried to blow out these candles I didn't even know were lit. After ten seconds of blowing hard as they could, the feelings ran from my hips back to my feet, my toes, my knees, my eyeb.a.l.l.s, and wherever else they came...

When I woke up, Baize was standing up looking at me like I was straight crazy.

"What?" I asked her.

"Nothing, Voltron," she said. "I just read more of that book while you were sleeping this morning."

"So."

"So nothing," she said. "Let's just go."

We had to get up early enough that Baize's great-grandma wouldn't see that I was in the house. She said her great-grandma got off work at eight and went to her second job from nine to two. The plan was to head back to 1964, get Baize's stuff, save Shalaya Crump, and never ever jump back in the hole again.

Baize was running around the house getting everything ready, so she really didn't have time to talk to me about what had happened the night before. I waited out on the porch. When she finally came through the door, she had on a backpack and had a little carry case and a brush in her hand.

"What you doing with all the mess? This ain't no vacation. We gotta go!"

"It's a diva thing, Voltron. You wouldn't understand."

"What does that even mean?"

"Means that you should mind your stanky business, and let this brush touch your beady beads." She handed me the wave brush. "If I wanna go outta town looking fresh, that's on me. If you wanna go outta town looking like the number-one driver on the nappy-head truck, that's on you. n.i.g.g.as from the '80s gotta do what n.i.g.g.as from the '80s do."

"It's just that we ain't going out of town," I told her. "I bet you brought money, too, didn't you?"

"Like I said, you wouldn't understand. If I had some money, I would've brought all of it." I stood there shaking my head. "Wanna be useful and carry my book for me?" She handed me Long Division.

We walked across the road into the woods and headed toward what used to be the Shephard house-what Evan had called the Freedom School. It now had a sign that read "Melahatchie Community Center." Baize introduced me to a Mexican-looking man named Oscar who had a mullet and a yellow short-sleeve s.h.i.+rt. Oscar held out his hands and gave me some dap. Baize said he worked security at her school, and that he was deaf.

I whispered in her ear, "You know deaf Mexicans?"

Baize ignored me and started throwing sign language with the dude.

After a while, we walked down the hall. "What did you just say to that Mexican dude?" I asked her.

"Don't call him 'that Mexican dude.' His name is Oscar. Please don't tell me that you're one of those n.i.g.g.as who stay hating on Mexicans."

"I don't know any Mexicans," I told her. "They seem like they work hard."

She shook her head. "Dude, just be quiet for a few minutes, okay? I didn't ask you if they worked hard. h.e.l.l, some of them don't work hard, just like some of us don't work hard. Don't you get tired of being such a hater?"

I ignored her question and looked around the center. "So is anyone you know gonna be in the contest with you? This reminds me of that first chapter in Long Division, where the main character..."

"Say his name."

"I think his name was City."

"If you read the first chapter, you know his name was City."

"Yeah, well I only read the first chapter, so I don't know what happens, but City and that other dude compete in some kind of contest, right?"

"Right. But that was a crazy contest. This is just a basic real-life county spelling bee. I hope you know how to act around white folks."

"Girl, I lived in Jackson my whole life until we moved last year."

"So what," she said. "Jackson is way blacker than Melahatchie, dummy. You stay catching L's, don't you?"

"L's?"

"Losses!"

"I feel like I've done all this before," I told Baize. I wasn't lying. Something about the words, the temperature, and the sound of what I thought was about to happen felt like it had all happened before.

"You haven't done this before," she told me. "You just read something like it before, or maybe you had a dream about it."

While we walked down the hall, we had to shake hands with people. Well, Baize did. I had her dictionary in one hand and brushed my hair with the other. Soon as someone put their hand out for a shake, woman or man, girl or boy, I'd make a fist while gripping my book. I'd never seen that many white people on Old Ryle Road before, and I was surprised that all the white folks we pa.s.sed knew to give me a pound. I knew it was the future, but white folks in 2013 acted way more familiar with you than white folks in 1985.

"We've been waiting for you, Baize," said this white lady named Cynthia. "Who is your friend?" She took both of our dictionaries and said that there were no aids allowed beyond this point. Baize said hold on, looked up two more words, and gave it to her.

"This is my friend, Voltron."

"Voltron what?" the lady asked. "Did you compete in the prelims? I don't remember seeing your name."

"Voltron Bailey," I told the lady. "I was out of town during prelims."

"He's from Jackson," Baize told the lady.

"West side." "Well, bless your heart."

"Yes ma'am. Well, he was born and raised in Melahatchie, but he went up to Jackson after the storm. He's just back here visiting for the week because of all that gang violence up there. You know how it is."

"Why'd he say he was outta town, then?" she asked Baize. "Is his mind right, Baize?"

"Yes, ma'am. His mind is fine. He's one of the best spellers in Jackson. He won eighth place in the Jackson Spell-Off last year, didn't you, Voltron?"

"Yeah, I umm, I made that Spell-Off tap out."

Baize put her hand on my shoulder and whispered in my ear, "Go 'head and chill with the ad-libs, Voltron. I'm working something here."

The lady took off down the hall. She kept looking back, though, saying, "Don't leave. I'll be right back."

"Why you lie to that lady?" I asked Baize while we walked into the room.

"Because now I know she'll let you spell."

"Why? I don't even want to spell."

"Because these folks think Jackson is a shark tank and you're a black boy and they want to save you before you turn into a shark."