Long Division(11)

When LaVander Peeler came back in, he looked at me, exhaled, and shook his head again before walking to the other corner of the room and slumping in the corner. I got to rubbing the top of my head with the palm of my hand and followed him.

“What is it?” I asked him. “What happened?”

LaVander Peeler looked up at me, eyelids half covering the brown of his eyes, bottom lip just hanging. “They got us,” he said on volume two, when he’d just spent five minutes talking to me on volume seven.

“Why?” I looked over at the crowd again.

“They got us.”

The Cindy lady came in and told us to get in line. As the crowd broke up, they taped our respective states on the back of our shirts. “LaVander Peeler, look,” I said, and pointed to these two Mexican kids and the tags on their shirts. Both the Mexican boy and girl were really from Arizona, the state where the governor made a rule that Mexican kids couldn’t learn Mexican history in high school and another rule that said you could try to arrest Mexicans as long as you thought they were Mexicans. During one of our Mexican Awareness weeks, Principal Reeves taught us that Arizona was becoming the Mississippi of the Southwest, whatever that meant.

LaVander Peeler got in line as he was told. He didn’t pout or whine. LaVander Peeler’s eyes had that slick mix of shock and shame. I can’t say that he was crying because tears didn’t pour down his face, but I swear that he had more of that same water cradling his red eyeballs than I’d ever seen in the face of someone who wasn’t actually crying.

“Your eyeballs are sweating. Or is that piss?” I asked him, trying to make him laugh. “What’s wrong, man? What did you see?”

LaVander Peeler ignored me. Still water flooded the bottoms of his eyes from the time he got his Mississippi tag until we reached the stage, the crowd, and those white-hot lights.





WORDS, WORDS, WORD.


I sat on the left side of the stage, third seat from the aisle, and LaVander Peeler sat in the same seat on the other side of the stage. At the end of my row was the one Mexican girl. At the end of LaVander Peeler’s was the one Mexican boy. I looked at their names for the first time. Jesse Cruz and Stephanie Cruz were the names on the tags. And the words “Jesse” and “Stephanie” were in quotations.

I thought to myself that if ever there was a time to bring my Serena Williams sentence game to the nation, this was it. With all that still water in his eyes, LaVander Peeler was in no shape to win, or even compete. I figured he’d miss his first sentence, or maybe he wouldn’t even try, and then he’d have to sit on that stage for two long hours, with drowning red eyeballs, watching me give those fools that work.

“We’d like to welcome you to the Fifth Annual Can You Use That Word in a Sentence National Competition,” the voice behind the light said. “We’re so proud to be coming to you from historic Jackson, Mississippi. The state of Mississippi has loomed large in the history of civil rights and the English language. Maybe our next John Grisham, Richard Wright, Alice Walker, William Faulkner, or Oprah Winfrey is in this contest. The rules of the contest are simple. I will give the contestant a word and he or she will have two minutes to use that word in a dynamic sentence. All three judges must agree upon the correct usage, appropriateness, and dynamism of the sentence. We guarantee you that this year’s contest will be must-see TV.

“Before we begin, we’d like our prayers to go out to the family of Baize Shephard. As you all know, Baize is a young honor-roll student who disappeared a few weeks ago in the woods of Melahatchie, Mississippi. We will be flashing pictures of Baize periodically throughout the night for those of you watching live in your homes. If you have any information that might help in the investigation, please alert your local authorities. Let us take a moment of silence for Baize Shephard.”


“LaVander Peeler,” the announcer resumed, “is our first contestant. I’m sure most of you know that LaVander tied for first place in the state of Mississippi competition with our second contestant, Citoyen Coldson.” Seemed weird that we were going to be first and second. “LaVander Peeler, your first word is ‘lascivious.’”

LaVander Peeler stood up with his balled fists at his side. He stepped to the microphone and looked down at his feet.

“If lascivious photographs of Amber Rose were found on Mr. White’s office computer,” LaVander began, “then the odds are higher than the poverty rate in the Mississippi Delta that Mr. Jay White would still keep his job at the college his great-great-grandfather founded.”

LaVander Peeler walked right back to his seat, fists still clenched. No etymology. No pronunciation. The crowd and the contestants started clapping in spurts, not understanding what had just happened. I was clapping the skin off my hands when they called my name. I stepped to the microphone, pumping my fist and looking at LaVander Peeler, who still had his head tucked in his chest.

“Citoyen, we’d like to welcome you, too.”

“Thanks. My name is City.”

“Your first word, Citoyen, is…‘niggardly.’”

Without uttering a syllable, I ran back to our dressing room and got my brush.

“I just think better with this in my hand,” I told the voice when I got back.

“No problem. ‘Niggardly,’ Citoyen.”