Long Division(84)

“Grandma,” I interrupted her, “I’m gonna miss you. You know that, right? I am. And I’m gonna miss Melahatchie so much. And you ain’t even got to tell me; I already know I can’t say nothing about what happened in that work shed. It didn’t really happen, right? I think I know where Baize Shephard is, Grandma.”

I reached for Grandma’s waist, smashing my head against her chest as she hugged my neck. Her heart was pounding so hard, so fast. The smell of the shed and Pot Belly was still strong on her chest. “You scared, Grandma? We didn’t kill that man, right? Even though you think he killed Granddaddy and Baize Shephard, we didn’t kill him, did we?”

I could feel tears from Grandma’s face dripping onto my head. “Grandma, I have another question.” I pulled away from her so I could see her eyes. “What does Jesus say is the difference between the fiction in your head and the real life you live? You know what I mean? It’s like there’s two of everybody, the one in fiction and the one in real life. But what’s the difference?”

She squeezed my hand tighter and looked me right in the eyes. “Really, it ain’t no difference, City,” she said. “Because unless you use both of them the right way, they just as bad or just as good as you want them to be. But you lead both of them,” she whispered in my ear. “And don’t take no ass-whupping or no disrespect from no one in your own house or your own dreams, you hear me? Do whatever it takes to protect you and yours,” she said. “Especially in your dreams. Especially in your dreams, because you never know who else is watching.”

“Grandma,” I looked behind me at LaVander Peeler, who was looking out of rear window, “that’s what I did at the contest. That’s all I was trying to do. You think I did the wrong thing to protect me and mines today?”

Grandma tapped me on the forehead with my pencil and ignored my question. She told me to read and write when I got bored and needed to make sense of it all. She said I should never show anybody what I wrote, “…unless you really feel like Jesus forgot you and you’re trying to save your own life, or the life of somebody you love.” Then out of nowhere she said, “What I did to protect me and mines was wrong, City. I shoulda gone underground. I knew better.”

“But you were just cleaning up our mess, right? You were doing what Jesus would have done.”

“Naw.” Grandma looked at her hands. “I was cleaning up my own mess. Or I reckon I was punishing that man for his part in some mess that can’t never really be cleaned the right way. I don’t know, City.”

“It can be cleaned, Grandma. That’s the thing.” I wasn’t sure what I meant, but I knew I meant what I was saying. “It’s cleaner than it would be if folks didn’t fight back. We can make it even cleaner.”

“We can make it dirtier, too,” Grandma said and kissed me right on the mouth and reached across me and opened my door. “You should go, City. They gon’ be coming for me directly, so I should probably go to them first. Don’t ever go back in that house or that shed. You understand me?”

In all the years I’d known my grandma, I never imagined her as someone’s sad child. But there she was, looking like some kind of rotten blue loss was swallowing her whole, like she’d just lost 50 contests in a row in front of her parents, the boy she liked, and all the black folks to ever live in the state of Mississippi.

LaVander Peeler and I got out of the car and stood in front of the woods. While Grandma’s Bonneville slow-crawled down the road and all these other cars were blowing their horn and passing her, I put my hand on LaVander Peeler’s shoulder and walked him into the Magic Woods. I remembered where the rusted handle in the ground was. I didn’t have to explain anything to LaVander Peeler. He wanted to come with me.


I reached down and pulled open the hole in the ground. We both looked at each other and walked down the steps. “This wasn’t supposed to happen to us, City.”

“Yeah, it was,” I told him. “Like you always say, all things considered, we didn’t really have no other choice or no other story to tell, so we had to make one.” I waited for him to say something back but he didn’t, so I looked right in his face and said what I should have found a way to say to him after the contest.

“I love you, LaVander Peeler. I do, man, and I don’t care what you say about that homosexual stuff. I know you love me, too. You ain’t even gotta say it. Just treat this like the best video game ever made and act like we just beat the game together.”

LaVander Peeler looked at me, not like I was crazy, but like we just tied for last place in the longest uphill three-legged race in the world. The hole was huge once you got in and so much colder than I expected.

“Should we leave the top open?” I asked him.

LaVander Peeler just stood next to me, ignoring my question and resting his head on my shoulder.

“Listen,” I told him. “You hear something? Sounds like someone breathing.”

“City, all things considered,” he said, “I’m so scared. Can we read that book?”

In that hole, right in that second, I felt as far away from Melahatchie and I felt as close to a real character as I had ever felt. And the craziest thing is that I wasn’t sure if that was a good, bad, or sad thing. With LaVander Peeler’s head on my shoulder, we started rereading Long Division from the beginning, knowing that all we needed to know about how to survive, how to live, and how to love in Mississippi was in our hands. The sentences had always been there