Long Division(31)



My mother had beaten me probably over a hundred times in Jackson, but no man and no white person had ever put their hands on me. Ever. I had lost some battles at school with LaVander Peeler and felt like I had lost on that stage a few days earlier, but in those situations, I always thought I could fight back. Even if I lost, I knew that the other person or other people fighting me knew that they had been in a fight.

This was completely different.

All I could do after getting my chest smashed into the ground and being called a “nigger” by those white men was hope it all stopped hurting. That was it.

MyMy started trying to wipe the dirt off my face. “Don’t get dirt all on your clothes,” I told her and wiped my face again with my own shirt.

“They called me ‘nigga’ too, City.”

“MyMy, you ain’t no nigga,” I told her. “And don’t say it again.”

“How come?”

“Because it hurts when you say that word.” I turned back toward the road behind us. “And I know it doesn’t really hurt you when you hear the word. You feel me? It’s because no one can treat you like a nigga.”

“It does hurt me,” she said and kept trying to look me in the face. “I didn’t like it when they said it.”

“It didn’t really hurt you, though. It’s like the word ‘bitch.’ My principal said boys shouldn’t ever say that word because we never have to deal with being treated like a bitch. She’s right, too. Or…” I started thinking about how I treated that Mexican girl at the contest. The only bad word I knew to call Mexicans was “spic.” Really, I should have just called Stephanie a “spic bitch” because that’s how I treated her and that’s how I wanted her to feel.

“But you just said it,” MyMy interrupted my thought. “You said ‘bitch.’”

“I was making a point,” I told her. “Don’t say that word either. You too young to say words like that.”

“City,” MyMy tugged on my shirt. “What does that word really mean?”

“Which word?”

“‘Nigga.’”

“Damn, girl. Didn’t I just tell you not to say that word? Look. I know that I’m a nigga. I mean…I know I’m black and—” I thought for a few seconds of what Mama told me the word meant when I was in Jackson— “but ‘nigga’ means below human to some folks and it means superhuman to some other folks. Do you even know what I’m saying? And sometimes it means both to the same person at different times. And, I don’t know. I think ‘nigga’ can be like the word ‘bad.’ You know how bad mean a lot of things? And sometimes, ‘bad’ means ‘super good.’ Well, sometimes being called a ‘nigga’ by another person who gets treated like a ‘nigga’ is one of the top seven or eight feelings in the world. And other times, it’s in the top two or three worst feelings. Or, maybe…shoot. I don’t know. I couldn’t even use the word in a sentence, MyMy. Ask someone else. Shoot. I don’t even know.”

“City,” MyMy interrupted me. She kept moving side to side, tearing leaves off of little lilac clovers. “I think we can kill them. They made you sound crazy on TV.”

“Naw, girl. We could try to kill a few, but they had rifles in the back of their truck and they were taller than us and they could kill us a lot quicker than we could kill them. Plus, if I kill a white person, they would throw everyone in my family under the jail,” I told her. “Me and you can do bad things, hood-rat things, but we can’t ever kill white folks. How do you not know that?”

We started walking out of the woods when MyMy stopped and looked at me with those crazy eyes. “City, I have a brown thing on my hand. See?” MyMy held out her left hand and showed me a little brown dot in the middle of her palm. Looked like a big freckle. “I wish this thing was white and the rest of me was the color of my birthmark.”

“Don’t be dumb. Just be happy that you are whatever you are,” I told her. “At least the way you are, ain’t nobody kicking you in the back and making you use ‘niggardly’ in a sentence. It’s not that you’re dumb, MyMy, but you’re kinda dumb compared to me. You feel me?”

“City?” MyMy said.

“What?” I could tell she was flipping subjects again.

“I don’t know what n-i-g-g-a is,” MyMy was talking her ass off now. “And you do not know what n-i-g-g-a is, but we can say I’m not n-i-g-g-a and you’re not n-i-g-g-a and Baize is not n-i-g-g-a.”

“MyMy, we can say that if you really want us to, but I’m pretty sure I’m a nigga for life,” I told her. “And you might wanna stop talking about Baize since you didn’t even know her. Because I’m almost positive Baize would tell you that she was a nigga for life, too.” We started walking again. “I swear that white folks need to just shut the hell up sometimes. Y’all make it hard for everybody.”

We started walking out of the woods. “MyMy, watch out for them sticker bushes,” I said.


I had Long Division in my lap when Grandma came out on the porch and asked me what was wrong. I told her that I was sad because I didn’t want to get baptized and I wished she had internet so I could see what people were saying about me.

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