City and Shayla: Into the Future

Author: Taylor and Zanaisiah

Laymon, Kiese. “Book Two, Pages 3-57,” Long Division, Scribner Book Company, 2013, 2021.

Our Exceprt from Book 2, Pages 17-30

“So.What does that have to do with saying ‘a n**ga’ all the time?”

“Nothing, but now, it’s weird.You sucking on your teeth and wanting me to ‘kiss a n**ga’?” She started laughing and walking deeper behind some baby sticker bushes. “Just be you. And I’ll just be me.”

I knew I should have said okay, but I always had to have the last word, even with Shalaya Crump.

“You know what, Shalaya Crump?You don’t leave enough room for folks to change.I’m serious.You always gotta control everything.How come no one else can change but you?When I first met you, your breath stayed smelling like a pork chop sandwich.For real.You never brushed your teeth.Now you brush your teeth on the regular and chew gum.”

Shalaya Crump was dying laughing, but I was just telling the truth.

“Don’t try and laugh it off,” I told her. “You changed so I can change, too.1And maybe I changed how I talk from listening to you.You ain’t ever think about that?”

“Whatever, boy,” she said and got serious again.“ The point is I ain’t giving out no kisses or no tongue like peppermints.I ain’t no gotdamn Candy Girl.Now can you please shut the hell up and let me show you something?”

We stepped into the cold Night Time Woods together.From inside the woods, the purple-gray of the road cut through the green just enough that it was the prettiest thing I’d ever seen next to Shalaya Crump’s face.Any other color against that green wouldn’t have been so pretty, but this purple, gray, and green was more than pretty.This purple, green, and gray made me know that Shalaya Crump and I were meant to be kissing soon.

I grabbed Shalaya Crump’s hand as soon as we got deep in the woods.In six years of knowing Sha-laya Crump, this was the first time I had ever held her whole hand and had her lead me into something.We had held hands before when we were in Sunday school and I tried to tell her that her hands were the sweatiest girl hands in the country.But this time was different.Shalaya Crump held on, and even when I loosened my grip, she held on even tighter.That’s always how you can tell if a girl likes you.If you loosen your grip and she loosens hers, you might as well go play football with your boys or something, because nothing is gonna pop off.Anyway, I felt like we were in our own version of “Thriller.”

“City.I can’t do this by myself anymore.I need you to come with me.”

“Need me to what?”

“To come with me.

“Where?”

Shalaya Crump knelt down next to this rusty handle that was covered in pine needles and leaves.The handle looked like the handle of this rusted brown iron Mama Lara used to keep her doors open.When Shalaya Crump pulled the handle, this hole inside the ground opened up.3The door to the hole had rusty handles on both sides so someone inside the hole could pull the door shut if they needed to.Inside the hole were these dusty steps that led straight down to red clay.Shalaya Crump stepped half-down in the hole in the ground and looked up at me.1All that was left outside the hole were her boobs, her head, and her bony arms.She looked back at me and said, “Please, City.Don’t let me go by myself this time.I need to show someone.”

If anyone else in the world, including my mama or Mama Lara, were boob-deep into a hole in the ground, asking me to follow them, I would have run away and called the police.But standing right there, watching Shalaya Crump want me to help her so bad, made me ask myself when was the next time I could count on Shalaya Crump inviting me anywhere dark, small, and secret with her.I figured the worst thing that could happen is that we could get covered in worms or maybe it would be too hot in the hole and my sack would commence to smelling sour.But worms don’t bite, I told myself, and Shalaya Crump’s underarms were already funky as six recesses.

The hole wasn’t the easiest to get in if you had wide hips, but after a while, I was in.“ Now what?” | asked her.“ Does my breath stank like stale Miracle Whip?”

Shalaya Crump grabbed my hand with her left hand and grabbed the handle with the other hand.“Don’t let go,” she said, “until I open the door again, okay?” Shalaya Crump pulled the secret door closed and darkness swallowed everything you were supposed to see.

“Your eyes closed, Shalaya?”

“Naw,” she said.“ Yours?”

“Yeah.” I kept them closed for about ten seconds.“ What about now?Your eyes still open?”

“Yeah, City.You should open yours, too.”

25121“Mine are open now,” I lied.“ I ain’t scared of the dark.”

“Okay,” Shalaya Crump said.“Just be yourself when we open it.I need you to be yourself and don’t say a word to anyone.”

Shalaya Crump pushed the door open after about seven more seconds.Just like that, the woods were green like the Hulk’s chest instead of green like a lime.2It felt hotter when we stepped out of the hole, too.Took a while for my eyes to adjust to the brightness.You could see bigger slithers of dark road from where we were in the woods, like the woods had gone on a diet.The road didn’t seem like a road anymore, either.It looked like a tar-black slab of bacon that was way fatter than it was before we went in.

“What’s wrong with Old Ryle Road?” I asked her.

“It’s new,” she said.She looked at my face, hoping that I’d act like I understood.“ This ain’t the same woods we know, City.”

“It ain’t new.” | sucked my teeth.“ How could woods be new in like five minutes?” | looked around and saw the Shephard house.Then I turned and looked at Shalaya Crump, who was watching me watch everything around us.“ Why you watching me like that?”

Shalaya Crump didn’t answer me.“ You smell that?” I asked her and started coughing.The air in the woods was heavier than it had been.I always wanted my mama to get me one of those plastic asthma bottles like some of the white kids on TV, but she said I never needed one.“ I think I got asthma, girl.I’m serious.” She looked at me and forced a fake laugh.“ What happened to all the trees?And that house.” | pointed toward the Shephard house.“ What happened to it?”

I started running toward what I thought was the Shephard house and Shalaya Crump ran behind me.It was the same shape as the Shephard house but it read MELAHATCHIE COMMUNITY CENTER on the iron front door.2

“City, calm down.Please.You have to be calm.Don’t be so loud.They’re gonna hear us.”

“Who?”

I looked through the woods toward Old Ryle Road and saw a crazy blue Monte Carlo with the most golden wheels I’d ever seen.The rattling of its license plate was in rhythm with a deep boom that sounded over and over again.It was the craziest, best-sounding boom I’d ever heard in my life.

“You hear that?What is it?Is that some new Run-D.M.C. or Herbie Hancock?Who that?”

“Be quiet, City.”

“How you gonna tell me to be quiet and you got me going in a hole feeling crazy?What’s wrong with you?” I grabbed her by her shoulders.

Shalaya Crump pushed my hands off.“ Don’t ever push me.” She looked me in the eyes.“ Ever!I don’t care if you feel crazy or not.All we can do is watch, okay?We can’t let them know we’re here.Shhh.Listen.”

We stood there in the middle of what kinda looked like the Night Time Woods, looking at what kinda looked like Old Ryle Road.I tried to block out anything other than the sounds of blackbirds chirping and stiff leaves blowing up on our feet and squirrels digging around in trees.

“Yeah, shoatee.Call me,” the voice said from the street. “I’ma keep my phone on!” But there was no one with him.The man was talking to himself.

“Is this a dream?” I asked Shalaya Crump.“Is it? It is, right?Well, I’m ’bout to wake myself up.” I took out my sweat rag and started trying to pop myself in the middle of the forehead, hoping I would wake myself up.

Shalaya Crump took my rag from me and told me to shut up.I heard more rattling booms coming from another strange truck with all-black windows and white hubcaps.I looked at Shalaya Crump and the confusion made me start tearing up right in front of her face.I tried to wipe my eyes with my sweat rag but it was too late.I was so Young and the Restless.Shalaya Crump was right.

“City,” she breathed all heavy and acted all weird like she was on a soap opera, “you know how I asked you not to show your work before?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, don’t ask me to show my work when I tell you this, okay?”

“Okay!” I wiped my eyes.

“This is 2013, City, and…

“What?”

“Let me finish.I’m scared because, well, I think I’m dead.6Can you help me?” I waited for her to say more, or at least look at me with a goofy grin.But she didn’t.Not at all.

“Shalaya Crump, I want you to show all your work now.All of it.I don’t give a damn if you say it’s long division.”

Instead of showing her work, Shalaya Crump took me by the hand and led me to the edge of the woods, where the sticker bushes met the shallow ditch that separated the woods from Old Ryle Road.

“You can’t talk to anyone, City.I only come out here at night when can’t no one see me,” she said.“ I keep trying to find myself.”

I wanted to ask Shalaya Crump all kinds of questions, but across the street, in what should have been Mama Lara’s house, was a girl sitting on the porch with a tiny silver briefcase on her lap.1Down the road, I saw that the trailer next door wasn’t even there anymore.The girl on the porch had her head down, except for every now and then when she’d raise it to drink from this huge cold drank.Every time she took a swig, she looked toward the woods.It looked like she was talking to herself and playing with a calculator.

“Where did that person get that big ol’ cold drank from?”

“All the bottles of cold drank are big around here.”

I looked harder at the girl and looked over at Shalaya Crump, hoping she would give me something more than she was giving me.“ Well, why is she sitting on Mama Lara’s porch?”

“Does that look like your Mama Lara’s porch, City?”

“Well, kinda.I mean, not really.I mean it does, but it doesn’t.But…” I didn’t know how to say what I wanted to say.Shalaya Crump was right that the place didn’t exactly look like my Mama Lara’s any more.It looked like what my Mama Lara’s place would look like if it had been in a few tornadoes.It made me feel funny that Shalaya Crump didn’t say anything about how the girl sitting out on the porch, at least from where we were, looked almost just like her, except this girl was thicker with way shorter hair, maybe a bigger nose, and boobs that looked like the balled-up fists of a seven-year-old.

“Who is that?” | asked her.

Shalaya Crump didn’t answer, and I got tired of asking her questions she wouldn’t answer.I started across the street toward the girl on the porch.

As I got closer to the porch, I could see that the girl on the porch had a strange haircut like a boy.The hair was the shape of Mr. T’s hair but there was still hair on the sides, and the top was thicker than his.

The girl on the porch closed the tiny silver briefcase and stood up.She placed this book, with the words “Long Division” on the cover, on top of the briefcase.The silver briefcase was one of those weird things you only see on TV.When she stood up, I expected her to say something.Or she expected me to say something, but I didn’t, and she didn’t either.I just looked at her for probably ten whole seconds.

Then she finally said, “Excuse you!Who you looking for?”

I walked closer and realized that Shalaya Crump had the same eyes and face shape as this girl on the porch, but this girl was a little lighter than her and she had really long legs and arms like a penguin.Up close, you could see that this girl’s forehead was one of the biggest and greasiest you’ve ever seen in your life.

“You might wanna check yourself, mayne, don’t you think?” the girl said.“ You think you can just walk up on folks because you can dress?”

“Um, I can dress?

“Where you get them Converse at?I like that little hipster white boy thang you got going on.”

“You do?I got these for Christmas.”

“What’s your name?”

I just looked at the girl and thought of the coolest name I’d ever heard.“ Voltron,” I told her.“ But you can call me T-Ron if you want.” | never told white folks or strangers my real name.But usually I alternated between Bobby, Ronnie, Ricky, and Mike, the names of some of the dudes in New Edition.

The girl rolled her eyes, then opened up her little briefcase and sat back down.“Okay T-Ron, my name’s Baize.Baize Shephard,” she said before moving the book and opening up the tiny silver brief-case.“ Look, mayne, I don’t mind you being on my porch, but you gotta quit looking thirsty like you wanna steal somebody’s rhymes.”

“Rhymes?What kind of rhymes?Girl, what’s wrong with you?Why you keep calling me ‘mayne’?”

“That’s what we say.”

“Who?How do you even spell that?” I asked her.

“You don’t even know me,” the girl said.“ And I don’t know you either.Mayne!But I know how you look.And you look like the type to wanna steal somebody’s rhymes off their computer.Can I keep it one hundred?”

“I guess so.What does ‘keep it one hundred’ even mean?”

“One hundred.Like one hundred percent.Listen, if you don’t want me to think you jack people, then don’t call yourself T-Ron.That can’t be your real name,” she said.

“Wait–that’s a computer?” I asked her.

“Yeah, what else would it be?”

” thought it was a silver briefcase.Whatever it is, that thing is cold as a mug.”

“A briefcase?”

“Yeah, for children.”

She laughed loud and hard.“ You trying to spit game?” she asked me.“ What does that even mean?Show me a child who uses a briefcase.I know you’ve heard of a laptop computer.”

“A lab top computer?”

“Lap.Lap, mayne.See.” She picked the computer up, held it in the air for a moment, and then placed it back on her lap.“ This is a computer and this, see this?This is my lap.Stop fronting.Why you playing stupid?You go to school around here, don’t you?”

“Um, yeah.”

“Then you must’ve gotten one a few years ago with FEMA money they sent us after all them tornadoes hit us again.Don’t tell me your mama and them sold it on eBay?I was watching this web series, Confessions of a PTSD Survivor.You heard of it?”

I looked down and I could really see the book’s cover for the first time.On the black cover were a keyboard, half a brush, a Klan hood, some blue flowers, and three dots beneath the word “division.” I was thinking of what to ask her about the book when I heard a man’s voice in conversation behind me.

1 turned toward the road as a taller man wearing a big brown T-shirt walked down the street, talking to himself.

“How come everyone around here likes to talk to themselves?”

“He on the phone,” the girl said.“ Why you trippin’?”

“I can see he’s talking to himself.”

“Look, you ain’t gonna get loud with me on my own porch.You know that’s Bluetooth.I know it’s played out.They think they styling with the little headsets, just like you think you styling with that outfit.” She paused.“ And that curly shag.Where you from?”

I looked across Old Ryle Road at Shalaya Crump and motioned for her to come on over.“ My friend is over in those woods and I want her to see all this.Is it okay if she comes over and sees FEMA’s computer?”

“No,” she said.“ Why didn’t she come with you?”

“No?”

“Your ‘friend'”–she made these quotations marks in the air–“is a girl, right?”

“Unh huh!”

“She’s your girl, right?”

“Um, she halfway my girl.”

“Oh, okay,” she said.“ Yeah, well, no!I been seein’ a motley-looking girl sneaking around here for a while.She looks shade tree to me.I went after her the last time I saw her peeking out of those woods.”

“You did?”

“Yep.But she disappeared.I found this, though, after she left,” she said and grabbed the book.“ You ever heard of this book?”

I ignored her question and walked over beside her and saw that the computer really wasn’t a tiny briefcase at all.There was a keyboard and a flat TV screen, and on the flat TV screen were all these colorful, dizzy images and boxes and words.

I couldn’t blink.

Or breathe.

Or move.

“Don’t think I’m hating on your girlfriend over there, ’cause I’m not.I just saw this strange white boy over in those woods yesterday, too, and I let him use my computer.He was dressed like one of those white children who be getting homeschooled up north.You know, the kind whose parents don’t let them watch TV or eat sweet cereal?Anyway, I gave him some of my daddy’s old clothes.”

“Wait, what?” I asked.I heard her but I didn’t really hear her.All I could do was watch and listen to my heartbeat as the girl moved her fingers across the letters.

“Yeah, he told me he was looking for more clothes that matched the time.”

“Matched the time?”

“I told him to go downtown to the Salvation Army.” While she was talking, she pushed something below the little square thing on the computer and in a second, the screen flipped on to what looked like the front page of a newspaper.The headline on the newspaper was “The Obamas Get Another Family Dog Just in Time for the Election Cycle.”

“Who is that?”

“Who is who?The dog?I don’t think they named it yet.”

“Not the dog.The man and the woman and those girls.Who are they?And how come you can watch TV on your computer?”

“Stop playing.You think the oldest one cute?All the boys in my class stay falling out over that girl.

I looked at the bigger girl.“ I mean, yeah, she’s kinda cute, but who are these folks?”

“Dumbness, we cared about funky dogs when the president was white.Why we can’t make a big deal about dogs when the president is Black?”

“That’s the president?”

“Oh my god, dumbness.I just can’t.”

“And this is a computer and a TV and a newspaper all on that screen?”

“Yes, boy.”

“And what is that?”

I pointed to a little rectangle on the side of the newspaper where someone named @UAintNoStunna815 wrote @SMH you goin to that Spell-Off #yoassdumberthanyoulook and someone named @YeahTheyReal601 wrote TTYL LOL cute herb on my porch #hatingaintahabit.

“Twitter,” the girl said, “but that ain’t none of your business.”

“Wait.And people here talk on phones with no hands?”

“Voltron!” It was weird because even though my name wasn’t Voltron, it made my insides tingly to hear her call me by what she thought was my name.“ Why are you acting like you stuck in the ’90s?”

“What year is this?” I asked her.“ Be for real.”

“2013, crackhead.You got that new swine flu?”

A voice from inside the house interrupted my good feelings.“ Baize, come on in here and set this table.We got to practice them words for that spell-off.”

“That’s my great-grandma.” Baize looked down at my hips.“ She want me to come in and study for the spelling bee tomorrow.It’s over in the community center.You going?Want me to ask her if you can eat with us?I ain’t gonna lie to you; her cooking is wack, but she getting better at frying some catfish.”

As the screen door slammed shut, I got closer to the laptop.Right next to the computer and Long Division was this little black thing that looked like some kind of special calculator.If it wasn’t sitting next to that computer, I would have been super interested in it, but it was kinda boring compared to that laptop.

I didn’t know what to focus on when I looked at the computer–the machine carrying the pictures and the words, or the pictures and the words themselves.I had never felt anything like that before.I just wanted to talk to someone who would also understand none of what I was seeing and all of what I was feeling.And that someone was across the road peeking her slow/fast-blinking eyes through green and orange and brown trees.

I picked the laptop computer up with my two hands scooped underneath like it was a tray, placed Long Division on top of it, and looked toward the hole.Then I thought about how happy Shalaya Crump would be if I brought her a calculator from 2013.So I put the calculator in my mouth, jumped off the porch, and sprinted back to the woods.

When I reached her, I gave Shalaya Crump the calculator and we both ran to the hole.Shalaya Crump got in first and I followed her.With just my head outside the door, I could see Baize sprinting toward us.She was screaming and cussing, talking about, “Naw.Naw.I know you didn’t.”

It was too late, though.The secret door was closed.The computer, Long Division, the calculator, Shalaya Crump, and I were in it and we were somewhere in time.

When the door opened up, you couldn’t see Old Ryle Road at all, but you could see the fuzzy glow of the streetlight.Shalaya Crump was next to me, breathing louder than I’d ever heard her breathe.I had never even seen her tired in all the years I’d known her, not even during push-up contests.Shalaya Crump actually had the best wind of anyone I’d ever met.

“Look at this.” | angled the screen toward her so she could see the pictures and the newspaper and the Black president, but the screen was blank except for little shapes along the bottom.“ That girl, she told me this is called a laptop computer from FEMA.I don’t know why it ain’t working.I swear when I was on the porch there was all this stuff on the screen.And look at this book.That girl said it’s the weirdest book she ever read.”

Shalaya Crump simply turned and walked off.“ I’m going home, City,” she said.

“Wait.Why?Why’d you stay in the woods?You talked to that girl before?She said she’s seen you before.She’s like a fatter version of you with a nappy Mohawk, but not really…”

“You like her, don’t you?”

“Like who?”

“I know you do.”

“That girl? Baize?” For some reason, I thought Shalaya Crump was really asking me if I liked the girl, as in spit-some-GAME like, so I thought about it and told her exactly what I thought.

“I don’t like her like that, but she didn’t get on my nerves like a lot of girls do, either. She had these big circle earrings and there was something strange about how she talked.It’s like her tongue was too fat.She kept talking about rhymes and ‘one hundred’ too much.Her face was bumpy, too, especially on her forehead.And then she claimed she liked how I dressed.No girl ever told me that.She looked like you, except her hair was way shorter, but I already told you that.Maybe I liked her, but not that much.I think she knows more than I know and I guess I think I know more than her about other stuff, too.I liked that she had a laptop computer more than I liked her.You know what I’m trying to say?”

“Bye, City.”

Shalava Crump walked off in front of me out of the woods.I followed her down Old Ryle Road talking the entire time about the girl and the laptop computer and asking her, did we really just jump to 2013?We must have looked crazy to anyone who saw us.

When I got in front of Mama Lara’s house, I said bye to Shalaya Crump, but she just went to her trailer without saying a word to me.I would have cared if it were any other day.

DMU Timestamp: January 23, 2025 13:46

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