Authors: Kiese Laymon
“Look, I wanna be honest. You know what that is? That’s a computer.”
They didn’t say a word. “A laptop. I can get you three of them, but first, you gotta let me go and you gotta let me take that one with me.”
One of the men stood up after I said my speech and stood over me. “I’m serious. I can get you whatever you want. I’m good at stealing. Computers, telephones, color televisions, tape players, penny loafers, Bibles, tickets to Fresh Fest. I know y’all lackin’ in 1964. Just tell me what you need.”
I held my hand out. “Look, let’s go ahead and shake on it. I’m serious. This book…how about I give you this book, and you let me go?”
The Klansman who slapped me in mouth a second earlier looked at the book and actually reached for it. I pulled it away from him and, without lingering at all, he reared back and hit me in my head so hard that the blood in my mouth tasted like canned spinach. “Nigger,” one of the them said, “you talk too damn much…” I couldn’t hear anything except the crunch of his work boots stomping my legs to mush and the echo of
nigger
.
Everybody I knew, at one point or another, had called someone “nigger,” but I never heard the “er” when we said it to each other. It was just something that all of us said. We didn’t mean it to hurt each other and we didn’t mean it to make someone feel lucky. It was like the only word that meant lucky, cool, and cursed at the
same time. But when that white man behind that sheet called me “nigger,” I heard all the “er” and I knew when he said it, he thought I was not just less than him, but less than a human. Or at least, he was trying to really convince himself.
Either way, it made sense to me in that second, while that white man was stomping my legs into rubber bands, why Mama Lara would whup me so hard when I acted up in front of white folks. In 1985, every little thing we did in front of white folks had to be perfect, according to Mama Lara. And if I acted like I wasn’t perfect around them, Mama Lara would tell me to go get her switch and she’d give me twelve licks. I didn’t know if Mama Lara had ever been beaten by a white man in a sheet. I did know she had walked by the locked white folks’ bathroom, though. She had seen and felt what I was feeling in that Freedom School, whether she’d had her legs stomped to rubber bands or not. I wondered if Jewish Evan Altshuler’s people knew the same feeling.
I was trying so hard not to scream when the door to the school busted open and Jewish Evan Altshuler and Shalaya Crump rushed in. One of the men who had been looking at the computer ran toward Evan. And you know what that boy did? Evan pulled out this long wooden BB gun and just started shooting at the chests of the whole Klan. I figured that the Klansman with the real rifle was gonna shoot us all in the head, but he didn’t reach for it at all.
Shalaya Crump came over near me and helped drag me out of the school. She let me rest a lot of weight on her, but I didn’t wanna put too much weight on her because she’d know how heavy I really was.
“I’m okay,” I told her. “But they got Baize’s computer.”
“We’ll get it later. We gotta get outta here.”
Shalaya Crump didn’t say a word until we got to the hole. I tried to let her get in first but she didn’t want to. “City,” she said, “let me help you.”
I got in the hole and she looked back toward the school. I peeked my head out of the hole and all three of the men had their hoods off, and one of the men was whupping Jewish Evan Altshuler like he was his grandma or something.
“That’s his uncle,” Shalaya Crump said.
“What?”
“It’s hard to explain. They had to do it. He took me to his house and he told me the truth. He showed me.”
I backed away from the mouth of the hole to give her room to get in. “Just come in the hole and tell it to me more when we get home.”
“We can’t leave him, City.”
“Listen to me. I saw a talking cat, Shalaya. For real! And I saw this colored bathroom. We don’t belong in a place like this. We ain’t built for this.” Shalaya Crump looked back toward the school. “Please let’s just go home. Please! I went to 2013 for you just like you asked me. Please.”
I couldn’t see what was happening but I heard Evan screaming and I heard what sounded like wet open palms slamming down on someone’s back. “You’re right,” Shalaya Crump said. “Scoot back and give me room to get in.”
I crouched and made more room for Shalaya Crump. It was the first time I’d been in the hole by myself and I’m not sure why but it seemed bigger and colder than before. I was crouched for a good ten seconds, but Shalaya Crump didn’t get in so I stood up. “Come on, Shalaya. Let’s go.”
She looked me right in the face. “I’m sorry, City,” she said. “It’s for the best.”
Shalaya Crump slammed the door to the hole shut.
I pushed open the door of the hole slowly. Before my eyes could adjust to the light, a pine cone bounced right off my forehead. “I knew you’d be back. Gimme my damn computer, and my book!”
It was Baize.
“Where am I?”
“You know where you are.” She snatched
Long Division
from my hands. “I want my computer, too! And my damn phone.”
“Oh, I didn’t take a phone. I only borrowed your computer.” Baize was wearing the same outfit she’d had on when I saw her before, but with different shoes. She had on these red, black, green, and yellow hightop Nikes.
“Where they at, Voltron? I’m serious.”
“Umm.” I was trying to decide whether to lie or not. “One of my friends has the phone and someone else has the computer.” I looked at her face and, more than anything, I just wanted her to hug me. Sounds crazy, but after getting your legs stomped to dust by white dudes in sheets, you kinda want someone black to touch you in a way that’s soft. “Okay, look, I’m gonna tell you everything.”
Baize picked up another pine cone and threw it right at my head. “I don’t want to know everything,” she told me. “I don’t even want to know
anything
from you. I just want my computer back.” She picked up another pine cone and stared at it. “When was the last time knowing everything about something ended up good for you?”
I didn’t know how to answer her question, so I got out of the hole and told Baize how my friend had showed me the hole a few
days earlier and took me from 1985 to 2013. I told her about meeting a white boy who said he could take us back to 1964. And I told her that I needed to go back and help my friend get back home alive.
You know what she said after I explained it to her?
“I believe you. I still really need my computer back, though. All my rhymes are in there. And I need it for the Spell-Off.”
“You do?” I stood up and tried stretching out my knees. “Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why are all your rhymes in there?”
“Because it’s my computer.”
“Oh. I’m saying why do you need a computer for a Spell-Off?”
“Because I wanna look at some Spell-Off clips on YouTube. I got this perfect introduction and I wanna make sure they let us introduce ourselves. It’s so dope.”
“Oh. I don’t really know what you talking about. One more question? Well…uh, why do you believe me?”
“Because I know people can disappear.”
“Wait. What?”
“Never mind. Let’s go.”
Baize said that I could come stay at her house until the morning, when her great-grandmother got off work. I told her that I didn’t need to stay that long. Before I limped into her house, she told me to sit down on her porch. My legs were killing me. I just wanted to eat something and come up with a plan to save Shalaya Crump.
“Just tell me,” she said. “Is it us or is it the hole that sends us back in time?”
“You know about the hole?”
“I saw you jump in that hole after you stole my computer,” she told me. “And I got in the hole myself the next day.”
Part of me thought it was just Evan and Shalaya Crump who could time travel. But if Shalaya Crump could time travel and Evan could time travel and I could time travel, and now Baize could time travel, I figured it must be the hole.
“I ain’t gonna lie to you,” I told her. “I think it’s the hole. Can we go inside? I’m hungry.”
Baize’s house and porch were so raggedy that I didn’t really wanna walk in. Super nasty houses always made me itch even if nothing was crawling on me. The TV in their living room looked like it belonged in Richie Rich’s house, though. It was nearly as tall as me.
“Why your TV so big and nice but your house is kinda, you know…”
“To’ up from the flo’ up?” she said, and started grinning.
“Yeah, how do you…” I paused to try to get my words right. “How much is a TV like that? Like $2,000?”
“More like $35 a month.”
Baize sat in the one chair in the living room and I sat on the floor. She turned on the TV with one of the three remotes.
Before the TV came on, all these lights went from red to green. When it finally came on, a new version of
Soul Train
was on, and it was the sound as much as the screen that I couldn’t understand.
Soul Train
on that TV sounded like life. You know how in life, there’s hardly ever just that one sound you’re listening for? Like even when I imagined Shalaya Crump telling me she loved me, I imagined hearing the wind whistling and a few different car horns behind us and maybe a freight train miles away and definitely some
barking dogs. That’s how the sound was on that TV. You could hear people moving their feet and snapping their fingers and it sounded like the
Soul Train
line was happening in your room. If everything you saw in real life had the best light behind it, and was polished super shiny, that’s how
Soul Train
looked on that TV.
Baize gave me the remote and told me that she was gonna make something to eat. “Even if we had a lot of money, we wouldn’t waste it on the outside of our house. That could be gone in a second if another storm came. You want oriental ramen or chicken ramen with your french fries and butter beans?”
“What’s ramen?”
“Noodles, boy. Y’all don’t even have ramen in the ’80s?”
Baize walked through the other room into the kitchen.
The first thing I did with the remote was check how many channels the TV had. When I pushed below 1, the TV went to channel 1,975. Back in my time, we’d watch TV and say “Ain’t nothing on.” I didn’t know how anyone could ever say “Ain’t nothing on” in 2013.
The Flintstones
was on. Basketball was on. Soap operas were on. Andy Griffith was on.
The Cosby Show
and
Good Times
were on. And PBS shows that looked exactly the same as they looked in 1985 were on.
And on more channels than you could imagine, there were black women with real JET-centerfold booties yelling and fighting each other.
Baize came back in the room and just sat on the floor next to me.
“What?” I asked her.
“What, what?” she asked me. “Don’t ‘what’ me in my house.”
“Why you sitting next to me so close?” She didn’t answer, but her hip was touching my left hand. So I moved it and asked, “Is the ramen ready?”
“Almost. I warmed up the biscuits to go with the butter beans and french fries.”
“Okay.” I kept changing the channels. “What happened to real actors and comedians? On all these stations, you see people you would see at the mall fighting. And when did McDonald’s start using black folks on their commercials?”
“I don’t even know, Voltron,” she said. “That’s a good question.” I could tell she wasn’t really listening to me. “Um, do you wanna smoke?”
“Smoke what? Aren’t you like twelve?” I asked her. “I’m good. You ain’t never heard of ‘Just Say No?’”
“Wow,” she said. “I’m thirteen. You should have your own reality show. Keep doing you, Voltron. I’m smoking before I eat.”
Baize walked back toward the kitchen and I just sat there in front of that TV. I hated Baize for smoking without me even though I didn’t want to smoke. After a few minutes I got really curious, though. I had seen plenty of folks smoke weed and cigarettes, but I’d never seen a girl younger than me smoke.
I walked toward the kitchen and saw that there was a screen door. Sitting on the step on the other side of the screen was Baize. And she had a square in her mouth. Right in front of her was the area where I had seen those two Dobermans doing it. And next to that was a huge, grimy work shed.
“You ever wonder what happened before you in the same place you’re standing now?” I asked her. “Like, I saw this talking cat right around the corner.”
I looked at her and waited for her to ask me to explain myself. “Look,” she said, “let’s talk, but don’t be coming out here messing up my high. Don’t say nothing to me about how I shouldn’t smoke, either. I’m thick and I’m extra and I smoke. Leave me alone.”
“You’re extra what?”
“Just extra.” She took a puff and exhaled it.
“If you ask any girl in Melahatchie about me, they’ll be like, ‘Baize, that bitch is extra,’ especially after my song blew up on YouTube. It’s a compliment. I know myself.”
“That’s nice,” I said. “You don’t mind people calling you that name, though?”
“What name? ‘Bitch?’ Yeah,” she said. “I mind hating-ass bitches calling me ‘bitch.’ But my girls, they could call me ‘bitch’ and I could call them ‘bitch’ and it wouldn’t be a big deal.”