Long Division Part 22

I looked as hard as I could into each of his eyes and tried to imagine my grandfather looking in those eyes as he was choking on water, running from death. "You been cross-eyed your whole life?"

"I swear before G.o.d, man, that I ain't do what they say I did. I ain't do it."

"Who did it then?" I asked him.

I wanted to feel more hate, but I figured that being saved and falling in love with Jesus was making me feel what I felt. And what I felt was the feeling you would have when you read a good mystery book and made that big connection a few pages from the end.

"Y'all mad at something more than me," he said. "I ain't do it."

"I don't know why," I told him, "but I don't hate you even if you were there when my granddaddy died. And right now, I don't even hate you for kicking me in my back and calling me a 'n.i.g.g.e.r.' For real."

"He kicked you in your back?" LaVander Peeler asked.

"Yep," I told him. "I already told you that. He kicked me in my back, and then he called me 'n.i.g.g.e.r.' But I don't think he even knows what a 'n.i.g.g.e.r' is." I looked back at Pot Belly. "I just want you to be honest with me. Do you know where Baize Shephard is? Did you kill Baize Shep-"

"No," he said before I could finish her name. "h.e.l.l naw."

"You know where she is?"

"I ain't do it. I don't know nothing about that little girl." "You know who killed her?"

Pot Belly closed his eyes. "You serious?" he asked me. "That story you reading, it said that little girl disappeared, and the man responsible for that disappearing is the man who wrote that story."

"I know what this book said, but it's just a book. I'm asking you where Baize's body is."

"You find the man who wrote that story, look to me like you find that little girl." Pot Belly's voice was cracking and he was sobbing.

"So she is dead, right? I know you didn't do it but I think you know who did."

"You killed that girl," he said through some quivering lips.

"Who?"

"You," he said, as calm as anything I'd heard in days. "You know what you did to that girl, and that's your business."

"How could I kill her? I wasn't even here."

"You did it, man. You did it. You wrote it in your book. Please let me go."

I heard him. I saw him. Whether I believed what he said didn't matter. I saw that he believed it. LaVander Peeler, without a tear in his eye, walked closer to Pot Belly. He got on his knees, wiped off his mouth, got a few inches from Pot Belly's face, and said, "All things considered, I don't believe you can use 'n.i.g.g.e.r' in a sentence."

"What in the devil is wrong with y'all?" Pot Belly asked. "Why are y'all doing this?"

"You can't use it," he said. "All things considered, I bet you can't even spell it, much less use it. Am I wrong?"

"Please," Pot Belly said, "Y'all making this personal. I'm so sad and I just want to go home. I'm sorry for calling you out your name."

"Can you at least spell it?"

"N-I-G-G-E-R," he said.

"That ain't right," LaVander Peeler told him.

"N-I-G-G-E-R," he slowed it down this time.

"Nope," LaVander Peeler said. "All things considered, I don't think that's right."

I got up to pull LaVander Peeler out of Pot Belly's face when he c.o.c.ked his arm back and jabbed Pot Belly in his left eye. Almost in the same motion, Pot Belly reared his head back and b.u.t.ted LaVander Peeler right in the middle of his face. LaVander Peeler grabbed his face with both hands, made these snorting sounds, and wobbled out of the shed.

Even though I was saved, I reckon I react like a demon when a grown white man head-b.u.t.ts LaVander Peeler in the face. I gripped Long Division and started smacking Pot Belly in his face as hard as I could, when, all of a sudden, Grandma burst in the door of the shed breathing loud as h.e.l.l. "What is wrong with you?" she asked me. I didn't say a word. I just handed her Long Division. She wiped blood off the book and handed it back.

Pot Belly was calling Grandma all kinds of "black b.i.t.c.hes" and "n.i.g.g.e.rs" and he kept saying, "I ain't do it! I ain't do it!," when Grandma said to me, "Gimme my keys."

I gave her the keys and watched her pull out the b.u.t.terfly blade. "Leave, City. Both of y'all both go get in the car. And lock the doors!"

Pot Belly's angry yells of "I ain't do it!" slid into screams, which slid into gurgly moans by the time I got to the car. LaVander Peeler was already in the backseat, covering his ears. I'd never heard anything like the moans coming out of that work shed.

And then the moans stopped.

Pa.s.sing Tests...

I couldn't tell where I was because the air was as thin as it had been in 1964 and the forest was only a little less lime green than it had been in 2013. Before heading to the Freedom School, I looked across the road where the Co-op and Mama Lara's house were. There were sidewalks where the ditches were and lots of black folks and Mexican folks of all ages walking down the sidewalks talking and laughing out loud. Across the road were these cool-looking trailers on wheels. Each trailer had a different shape and a huge garden in the front yard. Down the road was a huge grocery store called Shephard's Co-op.

I looked toward the Community Center and there was a woman out in front. She motioned for me to come in the building, then disappeared in the door.

The building had changed. It wasn't a church and it wasn't a community center. It was actually a museum. At least that's what the sign said. It read, "The Lerthon Coldson Civil Rights Museum." It made me kind of mad that the museum was named after a grimy drunk dude who called a girl "baby," but I figured lots of museums were named for part-time losers.

In the middle of the room were two desks that were bolted to the ground. All around the walls of the room were gla.s.s cases holding sheets, rifles, and books, between doors that went to other rooms. The bird's nest at the top was still there, too.

I walked right to the middle of the room and sat in one of the desks. On the desk was a sheet of paper. It looked like a test that had already been taken. It didn't make sense to me, though, because the name on the test was mine and it was actually written in my handwriting. Only the year was blank.

Name City Coldson Year _____ True/False -Underline one 1. Desperation will make a villain out of you.

True/False 2. Only fools would not travel through time and change their past if they could.

True/False 3. You were brought to this country with the expectation of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

True/False 4. If you push yourself hard in the direction of freedom, compa.s.sion, and excellence, you will recover.

True/False 5. Loving someone and loving how someone makes you feel are the same thing.

True/False 6. Only those who can read, write, and love can move back or forward through time.

True/False 7. There are undergrounds to the past and future for every human being on earth.

True/False 8. If you haven't read or written or listened to something at least three times, you have never really read, written, or listened.

True/False 9. Past, present, and future exist within you and you change them by changing the way you live your life.

True/False 10. You are special.

True/False *Bonus*

11. You are innocent.

True/False Score: 80% I put the test back on the desk. When did I even take this test? It was super annoying to see a test you don't remember taking, but it was even more annoying when you missed some of the answers and whoever was grading the test didn't tell you which you missed. I knew there were more important questions on the test, but right that second I wanted the answer to the easiest one. And the easiest one to me, right there, was, "Loving someone and loving how someone makes you feel are the same thing."

Mama Lara walked out from one of the rooms while I was thinking. She looked exactly like she looked back in 1985.

"You're a witch, ain't you?" I asked her. "You watched it all happen, didn't you, just like the sky? Please just tell me what's going on. Is any of this real?"

"Do I look like a witch to you? Even after all you been through today, does my baby still believe in witches and magic?"

I didn't answer her question. All I said was, "I'm not a baby." I held my head right there in that desk and tried to listen to my heartbeat. "I don't understand, Mama Lara. If we changed the future, how come I'm still here? How come you look the same in 2013 that you did in 1985? Say something. Why would my mama and daddy still have me if we changed the future? It just doesn't make sense."

Mama Lara had what looked like Baize's laptop computer in her hand.

"Where'd you get that from?" I asked her.

"People disappear, City," she said, ignoring my question. "We live, we wonder, we love, we lie, and we disappear. Close the book."

"Are you for real? That's it?"

"And sometimes we appear again if we're loved," she said. "Accept it. Which answer did you get wrong on the test? I know you know."

"I don't even know when I took that test, Mama Lara," I told her. "I'm not trying to be disrespectful. I'm just so tired."

"The test ain't going nowhere," she said. "When you're ready to find out what you got wrong, you will. Close the book."

"Close the book? Then what? Then can Baize come back? Is that Baize's computer?" I asked her again. "Is she here somewhere?"

"Take it," she handed me the computer. "You're so close."

"I know she's here. I can feel her. Where is she?" I asked.

"Wait." I looked up from the computer. "Is Shalaya Crump the governor of Mississippi, or is she like the president or something?" Mama Lara just looked at me. "How old is she now?" I did the math in my head. "d.a.m.n near 65? I bet she's still fine as all outdoors, though. Did she marry that dude, Evan?"

Mama Lara stood there smiling with her hands folded across her chest. Honestly, I didn't know what it took to be a good president or governor, but I knew Shalaya Crump had it. I knew it from the first day I met her. In her own way, she was as compa.s.sionate and thoughtful as a girl could be, but her mind was stronger than yours and no one could ever really break her heart. You could sprain her heart, and her heart would bruise a lot, but it could never ever be broken. Never. I figured that there were probably 27 people like that in the world at one time and they were the only people who should be running for president of anything that mattered.

With all the windows in the museum open, and the lightning bugs outside winking like it was going out of style, I looked at Mama Lara. "So this is it?" I said loud enough so she could hear me.

"No," Mama Lara said. "This ain't it. You know how movement works now. You know how love and change work. And you know that sometimes, just sometimes, when folks disappear, they come back, don't they?"

"I hear you, Mama Lara, but you don't get it. Right now, all that goofy talk don't help me. I just need something to hold on to. I need to know what's gonna happen tomorrow. Don't you see what I'm saying? If you can't help me get Baize back, can you just stop talking for the rest of the day? You ain't got no stories to watch on TV? Please just stop talking."

"Think about what I'm asking you, City," she said and sat in the desk next to me. "The book is open. Close it and get to work. How else do people disappear?"

I looked down at the desk and thought about everything I'd experienced in the last few days and, I guess, the last 50 years.

"Water," I told her.

"What else?"

"Um, fire?"

"What else?"

"The wind...and um, words?"

"Who uses words to make folks disappear?"

"People."

"And who makes people disappear?"

"Um, people make people disappear," I told her.

"That's it," she said. "And everything that makes people disappear can make people what?"

"Reappear?"

"It's all in your hands now. They're waiting for you."

I sat there in the desk looking at my actual hands and thinking about water, fire, wind, words, and people. Both sides of my hands looked so worn, so b.l.o.o.d.y and smudged and ashy. From typing on a laptop computer, to brus.h.i.+ng my hair at the Spell-Off, to tying the hands of a fake Klansman, to reading the first chapter of Long Division, to holding my daughter's hand, my hands had done things I'd never imagined wanting them to do.

I wanted to walk out of that museum ready to explore, knowing that I'd done new things with my hands and new things with my imagination. Maybe I could find Shalaya Crump and Evan tomorrow, I thought. There was so much I wanted to explore. But before I could go forward, I had to go back under.

Again.

So I grabbed the computer, told Mama Lara thank you, and headed back toward the hole. I loved the slice of the new Mississippi that I'd seen and I respected Shalaya Crump's decision to stay and fight for us, but I needed Baize back. I didn't care if it was right to anyone else but my daughter and me.

When I got in the hole, I opened the computer. A revised version of the paragraph I'd written when I first took Baize's computer back to 1985 was on the screen: I didn't have a girlfriend halfway through ninth grade and it wasn't because the whole high school heard Princ.i.p.al Jankins whispering to his wife, Ms. Dawsin-Jankins, that my hairline was crooked like the top of a Smurf house. I never had a girlfriend because the last time I saw Shalaya Crump, she told me she could love me if I helped her change the future dot-dot-dot in a special way.

I reread it. And I wondered. And I wandered. And I wrote. And I reread that. And I wrote more. And I erased some lies. And I wrote more. And I erased some truth. And I thought about Honors English teachers and librarians. And I forgot about them. And I thought about what people like Shalaya, Baize, Evan, and me needed to read in school to prepare to fight, love, and disappear. And I forgot about that. And I wrote more. And the more I wrote and erased, the more I felt Baize and other characters slowly-word by word, maybe even sense by sense-coming back.

Meow That fat-head black cat, with the "Red Naval" collar around its neck, appeared and started meowing right outside the hole. I grabbed the cat and brought it down in the hole with me. "Don't call me an a.s.shole, okay?" I told it. "You were right last time, but still...I ain't in the mood for that. Man, I lost my daughter and my half-wife and now I'm stuck in 2013. You hear me? Ain't you supposed to be old and dead?"

The cat licked its paws and pawed at something in the shadows of the hole.