Long Division(55)

“That’s nice,” I said. “You don’t mind people calling you that name, though?”

“What name? ‘Bitch?’ Yeah,” she said. “I mind hating-ass bitches calling me ‘bitch.’ But my girls, they could call me ‘bitch’ and I could call them ‘bitch’ and it wouldn’t be a big deal.”

I just looked at her.

“If you called me ‘bitch,’ I’d get you,” she told me. “I’m just keeping it one hundred. Somehow, some way, I’d have to get you, ’cause it’s hard for boys to really love girls anyway, so I can’t really see letting a boy get away with calling nobody a bitch. Mama taught me that a long time ago. And if a boy did love me, knowing how much it hurt…” she started trailing off. “I don’t know what to say. A nigga who loved me wouldn’t call nobody a bitch. But I don’t even like boys like that anyway.”

“Oh,” I said. All I could think about was how Shalaya Crump whupped this boy, Damon Frazier, to his knees for calling me a “yap-mouth bitch” the summer before last. The whole time she was whupping him, she kept saying, “You gonna respect me.” I thought it was weird she would say that after I was the one that Damon was calling a “yap-mouth bitch,” but it was all making a little more sense now.

“Seem like you thought a lot about that word,” I told Baize. “Can I switch subjects? You ever wonder why people smoke with their hands so close to their lips? Like if your fingers were more off your lips, smoking wouldn’t even look right.”

“Then you’d burn your fingers,” she said. “Look Voltron, no offense, you messing up my smoke, though, for real.”

“Oh. My bad. People still say ‘for real’ around here? You know, you talk like you’re way older than thirteen. Sometimes you call me ‘mayne’ and sometimes you call me ‘boy’ and sometimes you call me ‘Voltron.’” Baize inhaled more but actually took her fingers away from her lips a bit. “You know why I think you sound so old to me? Because your TV has every age on it. Every age! Like my TV back home, we get four channels including PBS, and you gotta watch all the commercials because you can’t be flipping a lot or your mama and them claim that’ll break the TV.”

Baize looked like she was listening, but she wasn’t. “Whatever,” she said. “You know what was weird when I went back to the past? I was on this same road in my same hood, but no one cared.”

“Why do you just switch subjects like that? I bet when you watch TV, every time a commercial come on, you get to flipping, don’t you?”

“Shut up. I was tired of talking about music.”

“Wait. You walked around back then?”

“Hell yeah, I walked around.”

“Girl, that was dumb. Why would anyone back there care? You ain’t even born where I’m from.”

“That’s what I’m saying.” She lit another cigarette. “It’s hard to go back because you see that there was a time when people in the same space where you are ain’t even care or think nothing about you. But somehow, I’m still related to those folks. When I went back, I wanted to see what the music was like and to see if I could find my parents.”

“Did you find them?”

“I was scared to look.”

“Where they at now?”

“Dead,” she said. “I mean, I think.”

“Both of them?”

“Dead.”

I had never had someone tell me that both of their parents were dead, and I wasn’t sure what to say. I didn’t want to say something to ruin her high, but since I’d never ruined someone’s high before, I wasn’t sure what kind of stuff could ruin your high.

“Man, having dead parents must be like, um, like having to eat dessert first for the rest of your life and having that dessert be something like, um, pears when everyone around you is eating greasy fried catfish platters and hot peach cobbler, huh?”

That’s all I could come up with.

Baize didn’t say anything. She just kept smoking. “Naw,” she finally said. “Having dead parents ain’t nothing like eating pears.” She blew smoke right in my face. “I only half knew them. They had me when they were young and they died when they were young. But they loved me.”

“You’re still young,” I told her. She just looked at me and didn’t say a word. “They died together?”

“Yep. We had come back from the swings over there at Gaddis Park. And everyone knew that the storm was coming. So me and my little brother was gonna go stay with my cousins and my grandma up in Jackson. So they dropped me off, and went back because… shit, I don’t know why they went back. Never made much sense to me.”

“Then what?”

“Then nothing.” She blew smoke like a professional smoke-blower. “I never saw them again.”

Baize threw what was left of the cigarette on the grass and mashed it with her Nikes. “They got swallowed up by the water, I think. Or the wind.”

“Why don’t you know?”

“I know.”

“How do you know?”

“Because they wouldn’t have left us.” Baize got up, looked down at me, and walked inside the screen door. I followed her. “If I had my computer, I could play one of the songs I made for them.”