Long Division(16)

“Shoot. At least you internet famous now,” she said.

“Is he internet famous, too? LaVander Peeler, I’m talking about.”

“I don’t think so,” she said. “He was too serious to be internet famous.”


I tried to look smooth and real-life famous as Stretch Marks and Sleepy Eyes walked back to their seats. They kept looking back at me and smiling every few minutes. Sleepy Eyes’s smile made me embarrassed for her, but it also made me want to go in that stanky bus bathroom and get nice with myself.

I picked up Long Division and was reading when three white boys who looked like they were in college came from the front to the back of the bus with their camera phones ready.

One of the boys put his phone in his pocket and sat next to me. “Sorry if we’re bothering you, big guy,” he said. “It’s just that was some funny shit you did last night, man. Could I record you saying, ‘The Ron, I hate you more than LaVander Peeler?’”

“I guess I could say that,” I told the boy, and looked up at Sleepy Eyes and Stretch Marks, who were still watching me.

“Cool,” the white boy said. “And if you wouldn’t mind, could you say your name after you tell me you hate me?”

It felt like a weird thing to do, especially given what I had said about white folks at the contest, but as soon as he got his phone ready, I put my internet-famous arm around his neck, looked right into the phone held by his friend, and said, “The Ron, I hate you more than LaVander Peeler. My name is City.”

I kept looking up from Long Division on the way to Melahatchie, but Sleepy Eyes and Stretch Marks didn’t turn around and smile at me for the rest of the trip. Not even once.



…





Baize…


On Old Ryle Road, folks like to bathe, eat, and put on clean clothes before sitting on the porch. When I woke up, I ate a fried-egg-and-cheese sandwich with some old Miracle Whip. Then I sat out on the porch in some faded cutoff jeans and the Magic Johnson Converse Weapons Mama Lara got me for Christmas. I called my grandma “Mama Lara” because everyone else did. Mama Lara said that boys weren’t supposed to call or knock on girls’ doors until they were seniors in high school, so my plan was to wait on the porch all day if I had to until Shalaya Crump came outside. That’s when I’d drop my new GAME on her.

Mama Lara’s husband was a man named Lerthon Coldson. I never knew him. Shalaya Crump’s granddaddy and Lerthon Coldson were best friends way back in the day. They disappeared 21 years ago in 1964 in this place we called the Shephard house. The Shephard house was in the middle of the Night Time Woods, and it was the only real house on Old Ryle Road. Every other house was a trailer or shotgun house lifted off the ground by some cinder blocks. The Shephard house was built right from the ground up, and it had lots of grass that looked like veins growing up all over the house. The house was huge and it was all one level, but it didn’t just look like a box. It looked kinda like a tic-tac-toe board from the outside, with a huge roof in the middle.

Neither Shalaya Crump or me knew our granddaddies, but sometimes we’d wonder about how two grown men could go inside a house one day, then never come back out. That wonder brought us together in a way. But even if our granddaddies didn’t disappear, we still would’ve been close. We’d been friends ever since I could remember having friends.

When Mama Lara came out to talk to me on the porch, she told me how her girlfriends were mad because they got group-rate tickets to see The Price Is Right and she decided at the last minute not to go. Mama Lara claimed she would’ve gone to California with her friends except she didn’t like driving with church folks in close spaces for more than one state. To tell you the truth, she only liked to travel on the weekend because she hated to miss the stories on CBS during the week. Plus if she would have gone, I wouldn’t have been able to come down for break.

While I was out there on that porch, Mama Lara hugged me and held her hands on my hips. “Jesus, my baby boy is a fat little man who is two points away from that honor roll,” she said. “Your granddaddy would not believe how fast you sprouting out.”

I sat there waiting for her to explain what she meant with my arms folded across the top layer on my stomach.

“Oh,” she said. “Unfold your arms. You ain’t gotta cover them fat breasts. What I’m saying is that your mind, your mouth, and your heart finally working right. You finally sprouting out.”

“You making me feel funny saying I got ‘breasts,’ Mama Lara.”

“All I’m saying is that you ready to move,” she said and looked me right in my eyes. “Yeah, you ready in mind, body, and soul.”

I loved Mama Lara more than any person in my family. She had these scars on her face from an accident when she was younger, and she’d do everything possible to cover them up when she left the house. It was cute to me how she was old and cared so much about a few scars on her face. But Mama Lara was also a little on the shady side, to tell you the truth. She was always leaving the house at the strangest times and coming back smelling like outside.

I ignored Mama Lara and looked across the street at Shalaya Crump’s trailer. Shalaya Crump was on spring break just like me, but I knew that she wasn’t going anywhere because her grandma had to work. She had actually never gone anywhere for break. Not once. She blamed it on her parents giving her away to her grandma as soon as she was born. Shalaya Crump never met her real parents, but she thought they would have wanted to at least travel to New Orleans or Alabama if she lived with them. She had only been out of the county one time, and that was for the state science fair finals in Jackson. And even then, her grandma didn’t let her spend the night.