Long Division(60)

I looked over at Baize and she was frowning.

“Baize, your first word is ‘abnegations.’”

Baize stepped to the microphone with her fist clenched, looking down at her red, black, green, and yellow hightop Nikes.

“Um, I don’t know how to spell it,” she said. “I thought we were supposed to introduce ourselves.” Baize walked right back to her seat, still frowning. The crowd and the spellers started clapping in spurts. I was clapping loud and hard as hell for her until they called my name.

“Voltron Bailey, from Jackson, Mississippi, we’d like to welcome you. Voltron has been added as an alternate. He is a special wild-card competitor in our Spell-Off. Voltron was born in Melahatchie but moved to Jackson after the storm hit. As a result of all that gang violence, he is back in Melahatchie, where people know how to act. We expect great things from him. Since you didn’t provide us with a bio, Voltron, would you like to say something about yourself?”

“Oh, okay,” I said. “Back home, we…uh, we say that reading, it’s…umm…it’s fun-da-mental. You know, like it’s fun and mental, duh. There’s a lot of violence in Jackson but it ain’t a shark tank. I’m serious. If kids had more programs and our parents had more money, I don’t think it would be that violent at all.” Everyone was quiet. I guess they expected more, but I was done playing a role in this dumb Spell-Off. I needed to go find Shalaya Crump. “I’m sorry, but, um, I have to go home. My stomach hurts. I feel like I’m about to lose my manners, to tell you the truth. Listen though,” I said into the mic. “Be nice to Baize, okay? Let her do her bio like you let me do mine.”

No one said a word, so I looked down at my feet as they slid off that stage, and tried not to imagine the looks on folks’ faces as I headed out the door of what used to be a Freedom School.

I wanted it all to be a dream.


I wasn’t out the door more than 20 seconds before Baize came running after me. When she caught me, we didn’t say a word. We just walked toward the hole. During the first minute of our walk, Baize was quiet and I watched my feet miss most of the thin branches that had fallen in the woods. Every time I stepped an inch from a branch, I thought about how I couldn’t wait to tell Shalaya Crump that I had been on a stage in 2013 talking about stuff I knew nothing about.

During the second minute of our walk, every time we passed an ant bed, I thought of all the folks in 1985 who would have been shamed if they had seen how I represented them. I had looked like a complete fool in front of folks I didn’t even know. I could feel Baize looking at my face too hard while I was thinking. “Don’t worry about it, Voltron,” she said. “How you feel?”

“Why you even asking me that?” I asked her. “I’m fine.”

“I mean, you caught an L,” she said. “No doubt about that. That was a fail and a half back there, but you had your heart in the right place.” She put her hand on my shoulder as we walked. “We should have never come anyway. It was more important that we went back and saved your friend.”

“You didn’t have to come, though. You should have stayed.”

“Naw, I’m good. I just really wanted to say that ‘This is Baize Against the World, not Akeelah and the Bee’ line on stage. I thought they were gonna let me say it in my own voice. I think it could have gone viral.”

It was weird, because up until that point, I hated any folks who were skinnier than me and taller than me and smarter than me and funnier than me and sweated less than me. And I hated folks from different states and folks who had shinier penny loafers and folks who had rounder heads than me, and folks who didn’t like as much tartar sauce and hot sauce on their catfish as me. But right then, I didn’t even hate those folks. I did, however, hate this future—I mean, Klan-hate. After I saved Shalaya Crump, I wanted to do everything I could to come back to the future and make it suffer for helping me embarrass myself.

With all my hate bubbling, we walked to the hole. Out of nowhere, Baize fell to her knees right outside the hole and told me to hold on a second.

“What are you doing?” I asked her.

“What’s it look like?”

“Looks like you praying. But why?”

“The question is, why ain’t you praying,” she said. “My parents and great-grandma told me that every knee must bend, especially when you have no idea what’s gonna happen next. You should probably pray with me.”

I looked down at her. “I pray before I go to bed like two times a week.”

“That’s on you,” she said. “Just give me a minute.”

And with that, Baize brought her hands together, closed her eyes, and actually started praying right outside the hole. After a minute or so, I started breathing heavy wondering how much longer this prayer was going to take. Near the end, she touched my calf and said, “Amen.”

Baize got in the hole first and I followed her. While we were in the hole, deep in the dark, Baize grabbed both of my wrists and made her way down to the palms of my hands.

“Baize.” It was the first time I’d called her by her name. “You were scared to stay back here by yourself, weren’t you?” I asked her. “Your eyes open?”

“Yeah, Voltron. They’re open, and yeah, I was scared to be there alone. Are you scared right now?”