Long Division(9)
I looked at LaVander Peeler and just started brushing my hair. Long front strokes. Short side strokes. “You know we’re from Jackson, right?” I asked her. “Not the coast. Where you from?”
“Oh, we heard about that.” She ignored me and pointed at the brush. “So cute. But there will be no props beyond this point either.” She held out her hand for my brush. “We can’t change the rules just for you, no matter how special you gents are. This might not be the Scripps Spelling Bee, gents, but this is our national competition and we’ve got one shot to do it right. We will be televised live and seen on digital cable by millions of folks around the globe. The eyes of the world are upon Mississippi tonight and we can’t have our special kids up there with brushes, can we?”
“I ain’t giving up my brush,” I told Cindy as LaVander Peeler and I walked into our personal dressing room.
When we got into the room, LaVander Peeler just looked at me and didn’t say a word. He looked and smelled the same, but he wasn’t LaVander Peeler from Hamer any more. LaVander Peeler looked older, madder, glowier, and—I guess—realer than ever. “City, I shall keep it one hundred, as you say. You are embarrassing the fuck out of me,” he said in a tone I’d never heard him use. “This ain’t school no more. You are really blowing it.”
“Blowing what?” I asked him and waited for an answer. He just stood shaking his head side to side. “Why can’t you ever just bust jokes like everybody else at school? Why you gotta be so serious and try so hard to bully people?”
“Me? I don’t bully nobody. You’re the bully.”
“How am I the bully?” I asked him. “And what am I blowing?”
“Everything. You blowing everything, but that’s what I expected.” He started lotioning up his neck. “All things considered, it just would have been nice if you placed in the top ten. I’m winning this shit with or without you, though. I will not lose.”
“Then what?”
“Then I’ma beat them in whatever else they put in my way,” he said. “Everything. All things considered, I will never lose to these people. Ever. They need to know that. When I’m married to Malia Obama and living in the biggest house in their neighborhood, they need to know they will never beat me.”
“Nigga, Malia Obama don’t even know you exist,” I told him. “What is she gonna want with a wack dude with a fucked-up fade, who talks fake-proper all the time?”
“Whatever,” he said. “All things considered, I don’t expect you to understand. These people just need to know.”
“And you winning this competition is gonna show them whatever it is that they need to know?” I asked him. “Fool, forget white people. Why don’t you try to win this for your real people? Because that’s what I’m doing. I’m winning this for all the real chubby poor niggas in Mississippi with tight waves and contentious demeanors.” He looked at me with lightweight awe in his eyes. “You like that sentence, right? And maybe you could win it for all the tall Mississippi niggas with, you know, good breath, and flip phones and messed-up fades that don’t quite fade right. You feel—”
“City,” he cut me off. “You and I both know you shouldn’t even be here. That’s what’s so funny about all of this.” He turned toward me and smirked. “And you know exactly what I mean,” he said. “Think about it. At the school competition, what word did they give you?”
I knew what the word was, but I wasn’t about to say it. There had been three of us in the finals. We were all supposed to get five words. If all of us got every word, our school sent three reps to state. Toni Whitaker was who everyone knew was going to win since she had the highest GPA in the ninth grade and never made less than 100 percent in English. Toni got “coup d’état” for her last word. We’d all heard the word but had no clue how to use it in what the judges called a dynamic sentence. LaVander Peeler got “infanticide” and I got…
“‘Chitterlings,’ City?” LaVander Peeler asked. “‘Chitterlings’? And you had the nerve to brush your hair while getting all country with it. I’ll never forget your dumb ass. You stood up there with no shame, and said, ‘My grandma couldn’t understand why the young siblings from up North refused to eat the wonderful chitterlings upon finding out they came from the magical bowels of a big-eyed hog named Charles.’”
“I was nervous,” I told him. “Wait. I thought I had the hardest word. How many folks know that ‘chitlins’ and ‘chitterlings’ are the same word? You didn’t know, did you?”
“They knew,” he said, “and that’s why they gave you that word. I know you see it. Everybody else does. You get them black words every time the championship is on the line.”
“I do?”
“All things considered, you can spin your sentences fairly well,” he said. “I admit that you’re probably the most exciting contestant in this contest.”
“You think so?” I asked him.
“Yeah,” he said, “’cause your dumb ass will say anything. But you ain’t even on a regional level as far as really spinning these sentences go. They want you here. My daddy and Principal Reeves even said it.” He turned his back to me and started laughing to himself. “I bet these contest people give you ‘hypertension’ for your first word tonight.”