Long Division(50)

No one could hear me on top of all that mess. Finally, Ren and Ray-gord, the two grandsons of Deacon Harper known for having good hair, came up there with me.

Reverend Cherry looked at the deacons on the right and the ushers in the back and said, “Raise your right hand, sons. Tomorrow, at our First Monday Baptism, do you give yourself to the Lord? Are you ready to be saved by right? Tomorrow in the holy waters of heaven, do you…”

I looked at Grandma before glaring up at white Jesus again. I wondered if any folks in the church knew about the cross-eyed white man in Grandma’s work shed. I wondered what they would think about my grandma’s relationship with the Lord and with right if they really knew. If they ever found out, maybe two of them would talk smack about my grandma, but I figured that everyone in the church had been treated like a visitor on their own road, in their own town, in their own state, in their own country. It wasn’t really complicated at all, but I’d never understood it until right then in that church. When you and everyone you like and everyone who really likes you is treated like a pitiful nigger, or like a disposable nigger, or like some terrorizing nigger, over and over again, in your own home, in your own state, in your own country, and the folks who treat you like a nigger are pretty much left alone, of course you start having fantasies about doing whatever you can—not just to get back at white folks, and not just to stop the pain, but to do something that I didn’t understand yet, something a million times worse than acting a fool in front of millions at a contest.

One sentence.

That one sentence had the potential to be the greatest sentence I’d ever thought of, and I wished LaVander Peeler was there to hear it and help me figure out what the last part actually meant.

“Ahhhhhhhhhhmen!”

Everyone dropped hands and we made our way out of the church. I walked out feeling that my First Monday Baptism might be the last thing I ever experienced. Whether it was because I was going to die during the baptism or because I was going to be some wack holy dude I never imagined being, I didn’t know how I could live another day as myself after that baptism. Either way, I figured I needed to go home and write a will on the blank pages in Long Division. If I did die, I wanted to give something to all the folks I was leaving behind.





A WILL.


1. I leave my Pine wave brush to LaVander Peeler.

2. I leave my XL mesh shorts to Shay.

3. I leave my grown-folks books to Shay and Gunn and a few of my illiterate kids’ books to MyMy.

4. I leave my cell phone to my grandma because she needs one even though they don’t ever get decent reception down here.

5. I leave my essays to Mama.

6. I leave my vintage Walter Payton jerseys to LaVander Peeler.

7. I leave my notebook to Grandma because she taught me how to read.

8. I leave my Obama Loves the South T-shirt to Shay.

9. I want to leave my spot on that TV show to Grandma too. She’d be better than I ever would be. And if Grandma won’t do it, I leave it to that Mexican girl from Arizona, the one who I should not have dissed.

10. I leave my password to my email, Twitter, and Facebook to my Uncle Relle. It’s W-H-O-S-T-A-N-K.

In the middle of my will in Long Division, I smelled Pot Belly and got that feeling that someone was looking at me. I turned around and there was Uncle Relle filming me with one of his cell phones.

“Oh hey, Uncle Relle. You smell funny.”

“Funny how,” he said, and he put one of his hands in his pockets. “Don’t worry about how I smell, City. Keep doing you, like I ain’t even here.”

“It’s hard to do me when I know you’re trying to tape me doing me,” I told him.

“Well, you better get good at acting like you’re doing you in the future. The reality TV shit, it’s about acting like the camera ain’t there. You can’t be looking all in the camera and making faces.” Uncle Relle turned his phone camera off and put it in some leather case he kept on his belt. “It’s a few basics that I think you haven’t really ingratiated yourself to.”

“You mean gravitated to?”

“Just listen, City. Close that gotdamn book.”

I closed my book and braced myself for another one of Uncle Relle’s speeches.

“This writing thing, it ain’t like that hip hop shit, City. For li’l niggas like you,” he told me, “this writing thing is like a gotdamn porta potty. It’s one li’l nigga at a time, shitting in the toilet, funking up the little space he get. And you shit a regular shit or a classic shit. Either way,” he said. “City, you gotta shit classic, then get your black ass on off the pot.” He actually grabbed my hand. “You probably think I’m hyping you just for the money. It ain’t just about the money. It’s really not. It’s about doing whatever it takes for you to have your voice heard. So I don’t know what you’re writing in that book you always carrying around, but it better be classic because you ain’t gonna get no two times to get it right, you hear me?”

“I hear you.”

Uncle Relle put Grandma’s keys on the stove next to all this German chocolate cake she’d made. He told me he had some phone calls to make so he was about to walk down the road and try to find a signal. That was his way of saying he was going to buy some more weed from Alcee Mayes.