Long Division(18)

“Okay, well, I wanna linger, too. Remember when I stole those Bibles for you over Christmas?”

“Yeah, I do. We already talked about this.”

“Do you remember what you said to me when I tried to convince you it wasn’t me?”

“I said that I know it’s you because stealing Bibles takes a whole different kind of crazy than Melahatchie crazy.”

“Right! And you said that you liked that I was Chicago or Jackson crazy. That meant that I was crazy enough to go around stealing pleather green Bibles from other folks’ trailers just to impress you. Well, I’m still Chicago or Jackson crazy, baby. Southside! That means I’m crazy enough to fly to the future with you, too…” I acted like my shoes were untied. “But when we land, I wanna know what I get.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, if I flew to 2013 with you, I hope that maybe you’d want to, you know, kiss a nigga.”

“City,” she started laughing. “Why are you calling yourself ‘a nigga’? You don’t even talk like that.”

“Whatever,” I said. “You know, maybe kiss a nigga on the lips! With a little bit of that tongue.”

“City, just talk like yourself! Saying ‘a nigga’ a lot ain’t gonna make me love you.”

“Aw, girl! I wasn’ even tryn’ to make you love me,” I tried to correct myself.

“Yes, you were. Now you doing it again.”

“No, I ain’t.”

You should have heard the way I said, “I wasn’ even tryn’ to make you love me.” I made “wasn’t” and “trying” one syllable each. And I sucked my teeth after I said it and rolled my eyes, too.

“When you first came down here, you didn’t even say ‘a nigga’ a lot,” Shalaya Crump said.

“I said ‘a nigga’ sometimes. Shoot, we say ‘a nigga’ in Chicago and Jackson just as much as y’all say it down here.”

“Yeah, but a little bit is normal. Now when you trying too hard to make me like you, you say stuff like ‘hard on a nigga’ or ‘worrying a nigga’ or ‘grinding on a nigga’s nerves.’ I’m not saying that I don’t be laughing when you say it…”

“You do laugh.”

“I know,” she told me. “That’s what I’m saying. But…”

“But what?”

“But that just ain’t who you are. I know you, City,” she told me. “You was all scared of flies and chicken when you first came down here.”

“So. What does that have to do with saying ‘a nigga’ all the time?”

“Nothing, but now, it’s weird. You sucking on your teeth and wanting me to ‘kiss a nigga’?” She started laughing and walking deeper behind some baby sticker bushes. “Just be you. And I’ll just be me.”

I knew I should have said okay, but I always had to have the last word, even with Shalaya Crump. “You know what, Shalaya Crump? You don’t leave enough room for folks to change. I’m serious. You always gotta control everything. How come no one else can change but you? When I first met you, your breath stayed smelling like a pork chop sandwich. For real. You never brushed your teeth. Now you brush your teeth on the regular and chew gum.”

Shalaya Crump was dying laughing but I was just telling the truth.

“Don’t try and laugh it off,” I told her. “You changed so I can change too. And maybe I changed how I talk from listening to you. You ain’t ever think about that?”

“Whatever, boy,” she said and got serious again. “The point is I ain’t giving out no kisses or no tongue like peppermints. I ain’t no gotdamn Candy Girl. Now can you please shut the hell up and let me show you something?”

We stepped into the cold Night Time Woods together. From inside the woods, the purple gray of the road cut through the green just enough that it was the prettiest thing I’d ever seen next to Shalaya Crump’s face. Any other color against that green wouldn’t have been so pretty, but this purple gray and green was more than pretty. This purple green and gray made me know that Shalaya Crump and me were meant to be kissing soon.

I grabbed Shalaya Crump’s hand as soon as we got deep in the woods. In six years of knowing Shalaya Crump, this was the first time I had ever held her whole hand and had her lead me into something. We had held hands before when we were in Sunday school and I tried to tell her that her hands were the sweatiest girl hands in the country. But this time was different. Shalaya Crump held on, and even when I loosened my grip, she held on even tighter. That’s always how you can tell if a girl likes you. If you loosened your grip and she loosened hers, you might as well go play football with your boys or something, because nothing is gonna pop off. Anyway, I felt like we were in our own version of “Thriller.”

“City, I can’t do this by myself anymore. I need you to come with me.”

“Need me to what?”

“To come with me.”

“Where?”

Shalaya Crump knelt down next to this rusty handle that was covered in pine needles and leaves. The handle looked like the handle of this rusted brown iron Mama Lara used to keep her doors open. When Shalaya Crump pulled the handle, this hole inside the ground opened up. The door to the hole had rusty handles on both sides so someone inside the hole could pull the door shut if they needed to. Inside the hole were these dusty steps that led straight down to red clay. Shalaya Crump stepped half-down in the hole in the ground and looked up at me. All that was left outside the hole was her boobs, her head, and her bony arms. She looked back at me and said, “Please, City. Don’t let me go by myself this time. I need to show someone.”