Long Division(67)

Good tears.


Troll was steady playing that organ, bringing the dampness like it was going outta style. Grandma, I ain’t going, I think I said. I ain’t going, Grandma.

The semicircle of clapping folks started getting closer to me. There was nowhere for me to go. The sweat was steady gushing out, sloshing around my inner thighs, dripping off my forehead.

I ran over where Troll was and got under the bottom part of her organ. She was pumping the hell out of her feet, and I was right there next to them, breathing hard as a fat asthma victim, trying to ball myself up and go through the bottom of the organ. Troll’s wet music was smacking the hell out of my ears and chest, and she was literally kicking me in the hip, she was pumping it so hard. She had these dry, sand-colored, knee-high stockings that tried to cover the lightened blotches on her old legs.

A hand reached down. It was Grandma. I could tell by the stained silver ring on her pinkie. But part of me figured she was a demon with a hand that looked like Grandma’s and when I looked at her whole body, it would be all splotched up like Troll’s legs.

“That your hand, Grandma?”

She started fanning me, like she would do to her friends after they caught the Holy Ghost. All this chalked-up foundation was dripping off Grandma’s chin like gobs of Tootsie Roll spit.

She was smiling just as big as she could.

“I ain’t dead, Grandma.” I looked at Grandma eyes. “I ain’t dead, am I?

Tell the truth.”

“Naw, baby,” she told me. “You was just free for a little while.” She reached for my hand and helped me get up.

I asked Grandma why she let them hold me under for so long. She claimed that as soon as they dunked my head the third time, I started going into a fit.

I put the plush robe on and stood there thinking and looking at the folks in the semicircle for the first time. Gunn, Shay, MyMy, Coach Stroud, and LaVander Peeler were all there and they were all looking at me like they knew something I didn’t.

This funny-looking oldhead in a robe similar to mine, but a little more old school, was there too. He was in the back of the crowd, pumping his fist, rubbing the sweat off his old bald head, licking his lips, nodding his head side to side, looking at everyone else.

You know what everybody did after about fifteen seconds? Led by that older joker I’d never seen before, they all started cheering. Not clapping or robotically saying amen, but cheering with their whole bodies, with all that loose energy that fourth graders have during recess.

I wondered if what I’d caught was the same Holy Ghost that Lily Mae and them caught every Sunday. I wasn’t trying to catch nothing. I just wanted to live and breathe and keep my heart beating and be free, but maybe that’s what they were doing when they went crazy too.

I doubted it, but I figured everything was possible.


Out in the parking lot of Concord, all the kids crowded around LaVander Peeler and asked him questions about what he did at the contest. The grown folks did something different. They ignored LaVander Peeler and got in a line to shake my hand like I was the newest member of their gang. Finally, I wasn’t worried about waves or sweating or niggardly or stretch marks or Baize Shephard or dashikis or representing my people or feeling so sad.

I’d beaten death, and unlike Jesus, I’d beaten that joker on video. I felt free.





EVERYTHING.


As soon as we pulled into Grandma’s driveway, I jumped out of the Bonneville. “City, where you think you going in such a hurry?” Grandma asked.

“I gotta go get ready to show LaVander Peeler something.”

“Oh, no you don’t. You better take your behind in there and get outta those clean clothes. We leaving in an hour.”

After mashing all my stuff in my backpack, I ran back out to tell Grandma one more thing before I left. “Grandma, if you weren’t my grandma, I’d still want to be down with you,” I told her. “I’m serious. Ufa D is the luckiest oldhead in the Mid-South. The second time I got nice with myself, I imagined getting nice with a younger version of you. I just did. I been wanting to tell you that for a minute. Now that I’m saved, I feel like I can be honest.”

Grandma’s crooked frown broke into a half moon. She brought her bushy brow together, tilted her head to the side, and looked me right in the eyes. “What, Grandma? I’m serious. I’m just saying I love you. Like I for real love you. I don’t just love how you make me feel. I really love you. And until today, you were the only person I knew on earth who really loved me, too.”

“Who else you know loves you today, baby?”

“Jesus,” I told her. “Right now, I feel like Jesus likes me whole lot, too, Grandma.”

Grandma blinked finally, and said, “Problem was that you was always wanting to taste why. You too young and that little bread you got is too soft to understand there ain’t no why but Jesus. Them atheists can say what they want, but Jesus, he the only thang done kept us from killing them folks.” She fixed the strap on my backpack. “Don’t waste another second trying to taste why by yourself, though. Jesus is already in love with you. He been in love with you. That’s what you was feeling at the church just now. I know you ain’t felt nothing like it, have you?”

“Um, naw, Grandma,” I told her. “I never felt something like that before.”