Long Division(32)

“What happened to your lip, baby?” she asked me.

“I just fell in the woods. Why?”

Grandma went in the house and came back out on the porch with some peroxide and a washcloth. “Don’t ask me why,” she said. “Tell me what happened to your lip, City.”

“Grandma, do white folks like watermelon?”

“I reckon they do.”

“More than black folks?”

“I don’t reckon they do.” She started laughing.

“Well, Coach Stroud didn’t want me to buy a watermelon in front of white folks. That’s what he said.

“Baby, Coach Stroud was just trying to protect you.”

“From what, Grandma?”

“From life, City,” she said. “Stroud ain’t all the way right, but he just want you to survive. Keep your guard up, because you don’t never know.”

“Never know what, Grandma?” I was getting anxious and a little mad at the goofy answers Grandma was giving. “How far they go to get you? That’s what you said when I got off the bus. But what if I do know how far they’ll go? I know. I do!”

Grandma didn’t say a word.

“Well,” I said, “if someone was tired of hearing about white folks, do you think they should say, ‘Forget white folks,’ or ‘Forget what white folks think’?”

Grandma looked at me harder. “I think the fool probably ought to ask himself why and what it is they want to forget. I ain’t forgetting nothing they did to us. Nothing! I spent my whole life forgetting. Shit.” Grandma started rubbing her wrist really hard. “City, what ain’t you telling me?”

“I’m telling you everything,” I told her, when her phone rang. I could tell it was Uncle Relle by the way Grandma’s face dropped and her eyes starting twitching. Grandma handed me the phone and walked out to give me privacy. She was really good about doing that.

“You did it, li’l nigga,” Uncle Relle said over the phone.

“Did what?”

“You made that move.”

“What move?”

“You got folks playing what you did on the internet everywhere. Now you ’bout to make that TV money. They ain’t tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

“Listen,” he said, sounding way too giddy, like Funkmaster Flex. “Don’t tell Mama I told you this, but they want you to be on a reality show.”

“Who?”

“You, City. Your mother don’t want you to do it but we got to find a way to make it work.”

“Me?” I asked him. “Why?”

“Because of what you did,” he said. “You got over two million hits on YouTube, damn near a million views on Worldstar, and it ain’t even been 24 hours since it happen. They know that they can make some money off you. I’ma tell you all about it tomorrow. BET and VH1 trying to do a Black Reality Stars of YouTube.”

“Stop lying.”

“I ain’t bullshitting you, baby boy,” he said, sounding completely sincere. “They want you, and that corny tall one who won.”

“LaVander Peeler?”

“Yeah.”

“But he didn’t win.”

“That’s what I say, but don’t hate,” he said. “Look, I’ma be there tomorrow morning. I gotta record you going through your day. Shit might be worth something someday.”

“But you don’t have a camera.”

“City, I got about six phones with cameras. Don’t worry ’bout me. Just do you. And don’t say nothing to Mama.”

“Uncle Relle?”

“What?”

I didn’t want to say what I felt but I needed to tell someone. “I don’t believe you,” I told him. “Bad things are happening to me too fast. You know what I mean? Everything is happening too fast. I’m reading this book called Long Division and there’s a character in it from the ’80s named City. It’s hard…”

“It is what it is,” he interrupted me. “Fuck a book. Ain’t no one reading no books in 2013 unless you already a star or talking about some damn vampires and wolfmen. Like Jigga said, every day a star is born. Not a writer. A star, nigga! Today that star is you.”

“Bye, Uncle Relle,” I said, not really understanding how much of what he said was truth but knowing Jigga didn’t really have anything to do with it. I went out on the porch and looked across Old Morton Road at the Magic Woods. They didn’t seem nearly as magical as the woods I’d been reading about in Long Division.





BOOM BOOM BOOM.


Grandma’s screen screeched open around 8 p.m. Boom Boom Boom. Grandma looked at me and grinned. I grinned back so she wouldn’t feel as stupid as she looked. Boom Boom Boom. After knock number three or six, depending on how you count, Grandma’s door opened and, in slow motion, in walked our boy, Ufa D, in a head-to-toe camouflage outfit with two DVD collections under his arms.

Ufa sat his big self on the couch next to Grandma. They half-smiled, touched feet, and tossed goofiness at each other like grown folk did on good cable after they got done doing it.

Ufa looked over at me on the floor and just started laughing his ass off. I would’ve been more pissed but Ufa had a burning sweet tobacco smell about him. The smell had its root in his mouth, but somehow it spread all over his body.