Long Division(12)

“For real? It’s no problem?” I looked out into the white lights hoping somebody would demand they give me another word—not because I didn’t know how to use it, but because it just didn’t seem right that any kid like me should have to use a word like that, not in front of all those white folks.

“Etymology, please?” I asked him.

“From Old Norse nigla.”

“Nigla? That’s funny. Am I pronouncing the word right? ‘Nigga’dly.’ Pronunciation, please.”

“Niggard-ly,” he said. “Citoyen, you have 30 more seconds.”

I kept squinting, trying to see out beyond the lights, beyond the stage. “Okay. Y’all have time limits at nationals, huh? I know the word, but it’s just that my insides hurt when you say that word,” I whispered into the mic. “And I wish it didn’t but it does.”

“Is that your sentence, Citoyen?” the voice asked.

I sucked my teeth and sped up my brushing. “You know that ain’t my sentence.”

“Citoyen. You have ten seconds.”

I slowed my brushing down and angled myself toward LaVander Peeler. “Um, okay, I hate LaBander Veeler,” I said.

“Is this your sentence, Citoyen?”

“No. Um, I truly hate LaBander Veeler sometimes more than some of y’all hate President Obama and I wonder if LaBander Veeler should behave like the exceptional African-American boy he was groomed to be in public by his UPS-working father, or the, um, weird, brilliant, niggardly joker he really is when we’re the only ones watching.”

I brought the brush to my waist.

The judges looked at me for about ten seconds without moving before they turned toward each other. The head judge covered the microphone and started whispering to the other judges.

“Noooo, Citoyen,” he finally said. “We are so, so sorry. That is not the correct, appropriate, or dynamic usage of ‘niggardly’ in a sentence. An example of correct, dynamic usage would be, Perspiration covered the children who stared incessantly at the woman in the head wrap since she insisted on being so niggardly with the succulent plums and melons. Please have a seat.”

I started brushing the skin on my forearm, then pointed my brush toward the light.

That’s all I could see.

I walked toward my seat, then turned around and headed back to the microphone. “I mean, even if I used the word right, I still would’ve lost. You see that, don’t you?” The buzzer went off again. I threw my brush toward the light and the buzzer kept going off. “That’s messed up, man,” I told them. “What was I supposed to do?” I saw Cindy offstage to the right, motioning for me to sit down.

“Forget you, Cindy! Look at LaVander Peeler over there crying. I hate that dude. Naw, I mean really hate. I be sitting at home sometimes praying that someone will sew his butt hole tight so he could almost die from being so backed up. I’m serious, but look at him over there with tears in his eyes, looking crazy as hell on TV. It don’t make no sense.

“Now look at them Mexicans.” The buzzer went off again. I turned around and looked at the Mexican girl on my row. “You think it’s hard for y’all in Arizona? Look at us. Look at us. They do us like this in our own state. Ain’t nothing these white folks can do to make you feel like me and LaVander Peeler feel right now. They scared of y’all taking their jobs. They scared of us becoming Obama. I mean, do y’all even call yourself Mexican? Ain’t this a competition for Americans? Peep how they made slots for Mexicans but you don’t see no slots for no Africans or no Indians. Where the Indian and African players at? Shit.”

Stephanie stood up, stretched her back, walked right up to my face, kicked me in my kneecap, and said, “Please sit your fat ass down.” She whispered in my ear, “I’m trying to help you out. Seriously. You have no clue how you’re playing yourself right now.”

The buzzer went off again.

I put one hand on top of my belly blubber and started going over the top of my head with the palm of my other hand.

Short, fluid strokes.

“I ain’t playing myself. Shoot. What was I supposed to do?” I said to everyone one more time. “Bet you know my name next time. And I bet you won’t do this to another black boy from Mississippi. Shout out to my Jackson confidants: Toni, Jannay, Octavia, Jerome, and all my country niggas: Shay, Gunn, and even MyMy down in Melahatchie just trying to stay above water. I got y’all. President Obama, you see how they do us down here? You see?”

With that, I walked off, right past my chair, past the Mexican girl who kicked me, directly into the backstage area. Then I turned back around and walked back to the middle of that stage.

“And fuck white folks!” I yelled at the light and, for the first time all night, thought about whether my grandma was watching. “My name is City. And if you don’t know, now you know, nigga!”





CLICK THAT.


During the first mile of the walk home, I flipped-flopped looking at the cover of Long Division and watching my feet miss most of the huge cracks in the asphalt on Capital Street. Every time I stepped on a crack, I thought of all the folks in Mississippi and the Southern Region who saw the contest live on TV and all the people around the globe who might see it later. The second mile I walked on the sidewalk down North State Street, and every time I missed a crack, I thought of the folks who would hear about what I did on the internet. I figured that everything I did would be sent in Facebook links with messages like, “Jade, clink that link girl. I just can’t.”