Long Division(68)

“I know. But now, see, you gotta fall in love with him by your actions. Show him you love him by acting as you know he would act. Jesus has seen parts of you that you ain’t even know was alive. And even if you was the biggest, baddest nigga in the world, he done seen the wonder and goodness you capable of. I’m just telling you what I know, baby. Jesus is in love with you, City. Let yourself fall all the way in love with him and everything’ll be awright.”

I stood there wondering about what Jesus told Grandma about that white man in the shed. I felt closer to Jesus after baptism, but I didn’t really know how he or anyone else could be in love with me. I thought about how I looked, how I’d felt the past few days, how I’d acted. I really didn’t know what I’d done to make Jesus fall in love with me, but I was damn sure ready to start reaping the benefits of that love.

Grandma interrupted my thought. She told me she was going to run down to Troll’s for a little while to handle some business. She handed me the keys and told me to put my stuff in the car when I came back.

This was too good to be true.

I wouldn’t have to come up with some crazy plan to steal the keys if I wanted to get to Pot Belly.

“Hurry up, City. We gotta get you and that Peeler child on that bus before two o’clock.”

LaVander Peeler walked in the bedroom while I was writing in my book. He told me Uncle Relle had dropped him off and claimed he had to run some errands. “Your uncle should stop doing so many drugs.”

“You’re right about that,” I told him. “He should.”

“Those two straggly-looking girls, the black one and the white one, and that homosexual boy in the karate suit told me to tell you bye.”

“Okay,” I said. “You ready to see what’s in that work shed?


LaVander Peeler and I could smell what was left of Pot Belly’s funk from outside the shed. Couldn’t decide if breathing in through my mouth or nose was better, so I alternated.

I opened the door and there he was. Unlike the other times I’d been in the shed, this time Pot Belly was facing me when I opened the door. Immediately, he started squirming, making loud muffled sounds, begging me with his crossed eyes to let him go.

“I told you I was coming back to save you today, didn’t I? But first, you gotta do something, okay?” He nodded up and down. “This is my friend, LaVander Peeler. You said you saw me at the contest so you probably saw him too, right?”

Pot Belly nodded his head.

LaVander Peeler wasn’t blinking at all. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. “I told you, LaVander Peeler. You can’t tell nobody at school about him, though, okay?” LaVander Peeler’s eyes were big as I’d ever seen them. “You see where it says ‘So sad …’ on the floor? He wrote that with his finger.”

I plopped my knees down on the sawdust of the shed and looked at the chains on Pot Belly’s legs. “I think both of y’all should read this whole book when you get a chance. It’s really short and it’s more of a young-adult book for adults, so even if you aren’t the best reader in the world, you can still get a lot out of it. I know this is corny but I wanna read these last chapters out loud with y’all, okay?”

It was one of the corniest sentences I’d ever said, but with LaVander Peeler standing above me and Pot Belly chained on the floor of the work shed, I read the end of Long Division.



…





Yes Indeedy…


The lady came closer and looked right in our eyes. “Ma’am, we’re not from around here,” Baize said. “We were just looking for one of our friends. What exactly is supposed to happen in this school?”

The lady looked at both of us for almost a minute without saying anything.

“Both of y’all look familiar to me,” she finally said. “Sound like both of y’all been educated somewhere, too, with all them questions. Charlie Cobb and them just mailed this down here to us who fixing to help with the teaching. Cobb say children ain’t educated if they ain’t been taught to question.” The lady handed Baize and me two stapled sheets of paper with some typing on them.

“What’s this?” Baized asked her.

“Read it,” she told her. “You tell me.”

SNCC’S NOTES ON TEACHING IN MISSISSIPPI

Dear Teacher,

This is the situation. You will be teaching young people who have lived in Mississippi all their lives. That means that they have been deprived of a decent education from first grade through high school. It means that they have been denied the right to question. The purpose of the Freedom School is to help them begin to question. They will be different, but they will have in common the scars of the system. Some will be cynical. Some will be distrustful. All of them will have a serious lack of preparation, but all of them will have knowledge far beyond their years. This knowledge is the knowledge of how to survive in a society that is out to destroy you. They will demand that you be honest…


Baize flipped the page and kept reading, but I stopped. I just watched as Baize’s round red eyes moved over the page. Just like Shalaya Crump, you could see her read sentences over if they were too short or too long.

The lady in front of us started explaining what was happening in that school while Baize was still reading. “These SNCC folks think our children ain’t got no more sense than God give a light-head possum. I reckon they got they heart in the right place. My thang is what’s the use in having a school if we ain’t giving the students no tests? Everybody need a test, don’t you think? We gotta work on that. Yes indeedy.”