Long Division Part 8

"I don't reckon they do." She started laughing.

"Well, Coach Stroud didn't want me to buy a watermelon in front of white folks. That's what he said.

"Baby, Coach Stroud was just trying to protect you."

"From what, Grandma?"

"From life, City," she said. "Stroud ain't all the way right, but he just want you to survive. Keep your guard up, because you don't never know."

"Never know what, Grandma?" I was getting anxious and a little mad at the goofy answers Grandma was giving. "How far they go to get you? That's what you said when I got off the bus. But what if I do know how far they'll go? I know. I do!"

Grandma didn't say a word.

"Well," I said, "if someone was tired of hearing about white folks, do you think they should say, 'Forget white folks,' or 'Forget what white folks think'?"

Grandma looked at me harder. "I think the fool probably ought to ask himself why and what it is they want to forget. I ain't forgetting nothing they did to us. Nothing! I spent my whole life forgetting. s.h.i.+t." Grandma started rubbing her wrist really hard. "City, what ain't you telling me?"

"I'm telling you everything," I told her, when her phone rang. I could tell it was Uncle Relle by the way Grandma's face dropped and her eyes starting twitching. Grandma handed me the phone and walked out to give me privacy. She was really good about doing that.

"You did it, li'l n.i.g.g.a," Uncle Relle said over the phone.

"Did what?"

"You made that move."

"What move?"

"You got folks playing what you did on the internet everywhere. Now you 'bout to make that TV money. They ain't tell you?"

"Tell me what?"

"Listen," he said, sounding way too giddy, like Funkmaster Flex. "Don't tell Mama I told you this, but they want you to be on a reality show."

"Who?"

"You, City. Your mother don't want you to do it but we got to find a way to make it work."

"Me?" I asked him. "Why?"

"Because of what you did," he said. "You got over two million hits on YouTube, d.a.m.n near a million views on Worldstar, and it ain't even been 24 hours since it happen. They know that they can make some money off you. I'ma tell you all about it tomorrow. BET and VH1 trying to do a Black Reality Stars of YouTube."

"Stop lying."

"I ain't bulls.h.i.+tting you, baby boy," he said, sounding completely sincere. "They want you, and that corny tall one who won."

"LaVander Peeler?"

"Yeah."

"But he didn't win."

"That's what I say, but don't hate," he said. "Look, I'ma be there tomorrow morning. I gotta record you going through your day. s.h.i.+t might be worth something someday."

"But you don't have a camera."

"City, I got about six phones with cameras. Don't worry 'bout me. Just do you. And don't say nothing to Mama."

"Uncle Relle?"

"What?"

I didn't want to say what I felt but I needed to tell someone. "I don't believe you," I told him. "Bad things are happening to me too fast. You know what I mean? Everything is happening too fast. I'm reading this book called Long Division and there's a character in it from the '80s named City. It's hard..."

"It is what it is," he interrupted me. "f.u.c.k a book. Ain't no one reading no books in 2013 unless you already a star or talking about some d.a.m.n vampires and wolfmen. Like Jigga said, every day a star is born. Not a writer. A star, n.i.g.g.a! Today that star is you."

"Bye, Uncle Relle," I said, not really understanding how much of what he said was truth but knowing Jigga didn't really have anything to do with it. I went out on the porch and looked across Old Morton Road at the Magic Woods. They didn't seem nearly as magical as the woods I'd been reading about in Long Division.

BOOM BOOM BOOM.

Grandma's screen screeched open around 8 p.m. Boom Boom Boom. Grandma looked at me and grinned. I grinned back so she wouldn't feel as stupid as she looked. Boom Boom Boom. After knock number three or six, depending on how you count, Grandma's door opened and, in slow motion, in walked our boy, Ufa D, in a head-to-toe camouflage outfit with two DVD collections under his arms.

Ufa sat his big self on the couch next to Grandma. They half-smiled, touched feet, and tossed goofiness at each other like grown folk did on good cable after they got done doing it.

Ufa looked over at me on the floor and just started laughing his a.s.s off. I would've been more p.i.s.sed but Ufa had a burning sweet tobacco smell about him. The smell had its root in his mouth, but somehow it spread all over his body.

Ufa always brought one episode of The Dukes of Hazzard and one episode of Dallas over to Grandma's on Friday nights. Ufa and Grandma realized a year ago that you could buy the box sets of old shows at Walmart. Ever since then, Friday was Dallas and Dukes of Hazzard night just like I guess it was for them way back in the 1980s. After bringing in the box sets, they would go back out to his truck and get the fried fish or chicken platters and cold drank that he left there.

When folks came to Grandma's house, they parked in this little rocky sand patch to the right of the porch. But Ufa D went way past the patch and parked on the gra.s.s next to the work shed, d.a.m.n near in the back of Grandma's house, under a magnolia. We walked back and looked in the back of his orangey-red pickup. On top of lots of dry pine needles and lots of long stalks of sugar cane were three big burlap sacks filled with orange drank, donuts, fried chicken parts, and potato logs from Jr. Food Mart. Even though my chest still hurt from what happened earlier with Pot Belly, and even though my insides felt super sour, I couldn't wait to eat as much greasy food as soon as possible. For a second, I thought about this skinny speaker they brought to Hamer to talk mainly to the girls in my grade. This skinny dude kept talking about how black girls loved to eat their feelings when things were sad for them. I acted like I wasn't paying attention, but I really wanted to ask that skinny dude so many questions. Anyway, I wondered if I was trying to eat my feelings after what had happened to me over the past two days.

By the time we got in the house, I didn't wonder about anything except how much greasy food I could force down my mouth in the shortest amount of time. If I was eating my feelings, it felt so good while it was happening.

I was hours into a chicken-fat-and-orange-drank-induced coma when Grandma tapped me on the booty.

"Get up, baby," she said. "Time to go to bed."

I waddled back into Grandma's bedroom and lumped myself into her bed. I still had chicken crumbs and cold drank stains all over my s.h.i.+rt.

A little while later, Grandma came in our room. She took off her clothes and put on her gown, but kept on her wig. As long as I knew Grandma, before she went to bed, she'd turn on that d.a.m.n Mahalia Jackson song, "Precious Lord." Then she'd start humming and writing in a tablet. Usually, I'd be in the bed reading some book or something and Grandma would be on the floor humming.

"I'll be right back," she said.

I was in that bed for about four minutes thinking about all kinds of stuff, and then I heard the screen door open.

I kept listening for the door to close. I didn't hear anything else except the chunky buzz of bullfrogs. I tiptoed over to the door of our bedroom, put my greasy hands on the edge of the door, and peeked around the corner.

Layers of Grandma's booty were spilling over the fingers of Ufa's paws. And Grandma had her arm wrapped around him, too. Their arms made a long, off-center X on the side of their bodies.

All I could think about was Grandma's hand behind Ufa's back, probably cupping his tobacco-smelling booty, too. It's one thing to think of your Grandma's booty being cupped, but when you think of her cupping someone else's booty it makes your insides rot and tangle, especially if that someone is probably married and named Ufa D. It makes you think that the person who fed you and talked to you and listened to you and laughed with you and bathed you when you were young was really some super freak you didn't even know.

Ufa's head was to the side and he and Grandma were standing in the doorway, kissing and hunching like some young white fools on wemakex.x.xvideos.com. Ufa had his hat off so I could see his face and raggedy eyebrows pretty good. As soon as I saw the white of his eyes, I ran my a.s.s back to the bed, covered my head with the covers, and faced the fan in Grandma's window.

The screen door closed and Grandma stomped back into the bedroom.

"City, you meddling in grown-folk business again, ain't you?" I didn't say a d.a.m.n word. I figured my best bet was to fake sleep until Grandma tapped me on the booty.

"I know you woke," she said.

I didn't move an inch. Didn't shake. Didn't even smile like I usually did when I fake slept. Even with my greasy head under the covers, I felt the heat of Grandma coming near me. I thought she was going to try to kiss me, so I made sure my face was tucked tight. But even under the covers, I could still smell Ufa on her.

I needed to throw up.

"Know that I love you, baby," Grandma said, rubbing my back with her fingertips. "You gotta wake up early to go to the library with Relle. G'night."

When Uncle Relle and I walked into the library Sat.u.r.day morning, I was surprised at the shampooed-carpet-and-cornbread smell of the place, especially since the floor was linoleum. Looking at all the slightly wack books in the library made me grab Long Division tighter. I hadn't been in a real library for so long and this one didn't really feel real either. It was more like a mobile home with a lot of bookshelves in it. Every bookshelf in the library was its own section. You had your colorful kids' books section, your Bible section, your John Grisham and William Faulkner sections, and then you had a Cla.s.sic section filled with books that were thick, dark, and spinach-green and had that rich gluey smell.

I was too old for the kids' books and to tell you the truth, all the Bible stuff I'd heard didn't seem interesting for too long. For less than two pages, you'd get something interesting about naked Adam and Eve eating on apple cores and grabbing snakes by the throat, and then three hundred pages later, you'd get some boring stuff about jokers named Isaac and Ham. But the Bible was better than those other spinach-colored Cla.s.sic books that spent most of their time flossing with long sentences about pastures and fake sunsets and white dudes named Spencer. I didn't hate on spinach, fake sunsets, or white dudes named Spencer, but you could just tell that whoever wrote the sentences in those books never imagined they'd be read by Grandma, Uncle Relle, LaVander Peeler, my cousins, or anyone I'd ever met.

If you didn't want to read books at the Melahatchie library, you could read magazines or get in line for one of their two computers. The only problem was that the computers were usually used by dusty oldheads sneaking looks at big-booty p.o.r.n sites.

I sat down at one of the computers and saw that someone had been googling "long division."

"Can you come here?" I asked Uncle Relle.

There was nothing about the book I'd been reading for the past two days, so I typed a sentence from Long Division and googled it: I still have no proof that I ever made Shalaya Crump feel anything other than guilty for leaving me with Baize Shephard.

There was still nothing on the screen that had to do with the book.

"What you doing copying sentences out of that book?" Uncle Relle said. "Thought you wanted to find out about yourself. You messing around?"

"You think it's possible to have a book and not have it appear anywhere on the internet?" I asked Uncle Relle.

"Who wrote the book?"

"I don't know."

"What you mean you 'don't know'? Who wrote the s.h.i.+t? Look up his last name."

"For real," I told him. "I don't know who wrote it. It could have been a boy or a girl."

"Well," he sat next to me and poked me in the chest with his nubs. "If it ain't no author, it ain't no gotd.a.m.n book, is it? Unless it's one of them pamphlets that n.i.g.g.as be calling a book. That s.h.i.+t be embarra.s.sing to me. And even some of them pamphlets be on the internet, City. Now, can you please look up that other s.h.i.+t so we can go? I got a meeting in 20 minutes."

I knew Uncle Relle didn't have a meeting, but I went to YouTube and typed, "City, Can You Use That Word in a Sentence" anyway. The YouTube clip of my speech already had four million hits. It was called "The Wave Brush Rant." It had been linked to by over 80,000 people on Facebook. Another clip, the one of me trying to understand the word "n.i.g.g.ardly," had two million hits and was called "City Spells n.i.g.g.ardly." The clip of me telling that white boy on the bus that I hated him only had 24,000 hits. On the right side you could see LaVander Peeler's link, too. His only had 300,000 hits and it was called "Chitterlings are Chitlins." Right below that was a still picture of me from a distance throwing rocks toward Pot Belly's truck called "City, the n.i.g.g.e.r, running."

Everything that had happened to me the past three days, except the whupping from Grandma and catching her making out, had made it onto the internet.

"City Be Busting Heads" had over 200,000 views and "City, the n.i.g.g.e.r" had 90,000 in less than a day.

Uncle Relle showed me how someone had added the T-Pain voice coder to my voice when I was talking to the Mexicans from Arizona. Folks were selling T-s.h.i.+rts online with a picture of me brus.h.i.+ng my waves and underneath, in deep black, was the word "n.i.g.g.ardly" with a question mark.

I turned the volume down on the computer so only I could hear the sound and I pushed play on the video from the contest. I'd made YouTube videos before but they always had other people in them and really none of the videos I'd made were just about me. But this was so different. For example, when I was going off on that stage at the contest, on the computer, I looked like I wanted to kill that Mexican girl from Arizona when really I didn't even know her. I was just desperate to find something to make them feel pain and be sad and embarra.s.sed like I'd been embarra.s.sed on national TV. But when I saw the video, there were so many white kids around that I could have said mean things about and I didn't say hardly anything directly to them. Also, I never thought I was super cute but I didn't realize how much my thighs rubbed together and how the back of my head was bigger than every other head in all the videos. Even though I felt all of that strange stuff, I can't even lie: the thing I still felt the most was famous.

The first comment under the contest clip was, "dis my n.i.g.g.a right here. crackers mad city stay keeping it real. flav ain't got nothing on city. f.u.c.k white folks just like he said." It was posted by someone called "LockNess."

Beneath that, someone called "CawCuss" commented, "Note to n.i.g.g.e.rs: n.i.g.g.ardly is a word that has nothing to do with n.i.g.g.e.rs. Learn to read before complaining n.i.g.g.e.rs."

Uncle Relle said we had to go but after reading CawCuss's comment, I really had to look up "n.i.g.g.ardly" and see what it actually meant.

"Uncle Relle, did you see a tape of the contest?" I asked him.

"Yeah, I watched your part 'bout a hundred times." He put his hand on my head and started laughing. "Why?"

"I'm saying, do you think 'n.i.g.g.ardly' is, you know, about us?"

"City, you can't ever put anything past the white man. They knew that word had 'n.i.g.g.a' in it. That's all I'm-"

"But, you know, do you think maybe it just like, happen to have 'n.i.g.g.a' in it and anyone would have gotten that word?"

Uncle Relle actually paused and took his hand off my shoulder. He bent down and started twirling the threads that were coming out of his hem with his nubs, then looked back at me. "Look," he said, "they knew what they was doing. You shouldn't have had nothing to do with that word if you were on TV. That's all I know. Look how they did your friend. Let's get out of here."

"Naw," I told him. "Hold on."

Uncle Relle watched me open Microsoft Word on the computer and type "n.i.g.g.ardly" in a new doc.u.ment. I highlighted it and dragged the mouse to Tools where the thesaurus was. Before clicking on Thesaurus, I just held my finger there and imagined what I'd see.

"If you gon' click it, click it," Uncle Relle said. "What you wasting drama for? You supposed to save all this drama for the show."

I looked right at Uncle Relle and begged him to shut the f.u.c.k up without even moving my lips.

"Ungenerous (adv.)" is what popped up under "meanings." Under "synonyms" were the words "stingy" and "meager" and "miserable" and "miserly" and "measly." Under "antonyms" was the word "generous."

The actual definitions confused me even more.

"Come on, City," Uncle Relle told me. "We gotta get it moving."

Uncle Relle was p.i.s.sing me off. I looked at him in a way I'd never looked before. And he did something I'd only seen him do with Grandma. He looked down at his fingers, picked up a folded newspaper that was right between the computers, and said, "Okay, favorite nephew. Just hurry up."

In a huge color photo on the cover of the paper was a picture of Baize Shephard. The photo must have been one of those yearbook pictures, because Baize had a look on her face I'd never imagined her having in real life. The left side of her mouth was smiling and the right side had a little bit of her tongue sticking out. I figured the photographer probably told her not to make faces and she did the goofiest face she could get away with. Plus, she had this thick fake rope chain around her neck that she always wore.

The headline said, "Investigators Have New Lead in Disappearance of Honor Student, Baize Shephard."

I typed "n.i.g.g.ardly" in the Google finder and clicked on the mouse.

Uncle Relle didn't say a word to me the first five minutes of the ride home.

"Look, City," he said as he pulled in the driveway of Alcee Mayes, his weed man, "just 'cause you the face of..."

"The face of what?" I asked him.

Uncle Relle looked down. "Sometimes the gla.s.s is way more than empty," he said. "That's all I'm saying. Sometimes the gla.s.s is way fuller than a motherf.u.c.ker, even if you can't see it. You better drink."