Long Division(8)

GAME found me…





CHITLIN CITY.


“Sphincter,” LaVander Peeler’s father said from the driver’s seat. “Use it.”

“Sphincter,” LaVander Peeler started. “A tightened sphincter can be a sign of—”

The Astro van started veering over to the side of I-55 and LaVander Peeler Sr. clicked the emergency lights on. “Boy, what I tell you?” He smacked LaVander Peeler right below his heart and grabbed a fistful of Izod. “Don’t matter if you think you know the word. That’s what the white folks think you supposed to do. Don’t be too doggone eager. Act like you got some sense.”

LaVander Peeler cut his wet eyes to me in the backseat.

“Don’t worry ’bout that boy,” he told him. “Y’all play too much. This is bigger than both of y’all. I want you to do exactly like them winners.”

LaVander Peeler Sr. sat back in the driver’s seat and placed his hand on his son’s knee. “Ask for the pronunciation. Ask for the etymology just like the Indians do. Say the word back to them as proper as you can. Say, ‘I am going to use “sphincter” in a sentence now.’ No gon’ or gonna. You are ‘going to’ or you ‘shall.’ And then you say the sentence as slowly as you can. I’m talking about a whole second in between each word, LP.

“Smile, too. If you wanna talk with the doggone judges, don’t break no verbs. Just say, ‘Well, all things considered,’ then say what you got to say. Toss some composure and thoughtfulness at they ass, too. And hold your doggone head up.” He grabbed LaVander Peeler by the chin and tilted it up. “LP, listen to what I’m telling you. They think you were lucky to get here. Both of y’all.”

LaVander Peeler Sr. looked at me like I said something wrong.

“These folks think they so slick, trying to decorate the contest with a little color. You didn’t come here to lose, son,” he said. “You are better and more prepared than all these folks put together because you had to be. Listen to what I’m telling you. This is bigger than you. You understand?”

LaVander Peeler didn’t answer. I closed Long Division and watched still water flood the gutters of LaVander Peeler’s eyes.

The trip to the Coliseum took about 20 minutes and all 20 minutes, except for LaVander Peeler Sr. nicely greeting me, was filled with him testing LaVander Peeler and getting mad at every little thing he did wrong. But it wasn’t hateful mean. It really wasn’t. It was loving mean, at least to me. If Mama drove me to the contest, it’s exactly the loving mean I would have wanted her to share with me, just not in front of LaVander Peeler. That would’ve been too shame.

“You left your brush,” LaVander Peeler Sr. said as I got out of the van. He handed it to me and shook his hand side to side. I told him thank you, and felt sorry that I had to crush his son in front of millions.

But I also felt something else as I walked into the Coliseum. There was something wrong with Long Division, the book I’d borrowed from Principal Reeves’s office. Even though the book was set in 1985, I didn’t know what to do with the fact that the narrator was black like me, stout like me, in the ninth grade like me, and had the same first name as me. Plus, you hardly ever read books that were written like you actually thought. I had never read the words “chunky vomit” in the first chapter of a book, for example, but when I thought about how I’d most not want to be treated, I thought about “chunky vomit.”

I’m not saying the City in that book was exactly like me. I hadn’t read enough of Long Division to know for sure. Still, though, I just loved and feared so much about the first chapter of that book. For example, I loved that someone with the last name “Crump” was in a book. Sounds dumb, but I knew so many Crumps in Mississippi in my real life, but I had never seen one Crump in anything I’d read. And you know what the scariest part of the book was? Near the beginning of the first chapter, the name “Baize Shephard” appeared.

A girl named Baize Shephard lived right next to my grandma’s house in Melahatchie, Mississippi, and she had gone missing three weeks ago. Folks made it a big deal because she was an honor student and a wannabe rapper. Baize did this rhyme over this Kanye beat about Trayvon Martin and James Anderson called “My Hood to Your Hood,” which got around 18,000 hits. When Obama visited Mississippi after his re-election, he said we needed to treat all our missing children with the same care and vigilance. Ever since then, you’d have a Baize Shephard update every day on the news and my Grandma and her crew started their own country investigation. I understood it could have been coincidence that my name and Baize Shephard’s name were in this book with no author, but it still made me feel strange and lightweight afraid to keep reading, especially since my mind should have been on winning that contest.


Walking to the green room in the Coliseum was crazy, just like Uncle Relle said it would be. Grown white folks were looking at us like we were giving out $400 shopping sprees at the new Super Target by Northpark Mall, and LaVander Peeler was eating it up, saying “All things considered” and moving his hands too much when he talked.

When we got to the green room, a lanky woman with an aqua fanny pack around her waist and the name “Cindy” on her left breast came up to us.

“We’ve heard so much about you two and your ordeal with Hurricane Katrina. And good Lord, all that oil y’all had to deal with on the coast,” she said. “It was God’s will that you’re here with us and we’re gonna take great care of you. Eat all the fruit salad and cornbread y’all want before the event. Get good and full.”