Authors: Kiese Laymon
Stephanie stood up, stretched her back, walked right up to my face, kicked me in my kneecap, and said, “Please sit your fat ass down.” She whispered in my ear, “I’m trying to help you out. Seriously. You have no clue how you’re playing yourself right now.”
The buzzer went off again.
I put one hand on top of my belly blubber and started going over the top of my head with the palm of my other hand.
Short, fluid strokes.
“I ain’t playing myself. Shoot. What was I supposed to do?” I said to everyone one more time. “Bet you know my name next time. And I bet you won’t do this to another black boy from Mississippi. Shout out to my Jackson confidants: Toni, Jannay, Octavia, Jerome, and all my country niggas: Shay, Gunn, and even MyMy down in Melahatchie just trying to stay above water. I got y’all. President Obama, you see how they do us down here? You see?”
With that, I walked off, right past my chair, past the Mexican girl who kicked me, directly into the backstage area. Then I turned back around and walked back to the middle of that stage.
“And
fuck white folks!”
I yelled at the light and, for the first time all night, thought about whether my grandma was watching. “My name is City. And if you don’t know, now you know, nigga!”
During the first mile of the walk home, I flipped-flopped looking at the cover of
Long Division
and watching my feet miss most of the huge cracks in the asphalt on Capital Street. Every time I stepped on a crack, I thought of all the folks in Mississippi and the Southern Region who saw the contest live on TV and all the people around the globe who might see it later. The second mile I walked on the sidewalk down North State Street, and every time I missed a crack, I thought of the folks who would hear about what I did on the internet. I figured that everything I did would be sent in Facebook links with messages like, “Jade, clink that link girl. I just can’t.”
Everyone I knew would see what I did. Worst of all, Grandma would see it and be completely embarrassed when she went to church next Sunday. Everyone would look at her and say stuff like, “It’s okay, Sister Coldson. Your grandbaby ain’t know no better.”
I walked in the apartment and sat down on the edge of Mama’s bed. I wondered if Mama made it to the contest or if someone called her cell and told her what happened. Either way, Mama was probably on her way home to give me a legendary back beating. She would cry while doing it, too, I figured, and think she failed. But maybe for a second, I thought, Mama would understand that I was completely stuck on that stage.
One way to curb the back beating I was going to get was to write down my version of what happened. If I wrote about it, Mama would think I learned something from it. The only problem was that Mama took our used laptop to work with her, so I wrote on a blank page in
Long Division
.
If you watched the edited version of the 2011 Can You Use That Word in a Sentence on YouTube last night, you know that I
hate LaVander Peeler and I have a head full of waves that could drown you and your barber. Public Speaking isn’t even in my top eight pleasures, but I still tied for first place in the Fifth Annual State of Mississippi Can You Use That Word in a Sentence contest
.
After writing for about 30 minutes, I went back in the garage and glanced at the clock. It was 8:50. The competition was supposed to be over at 9:00. I didn’t want to but couldn’t help turning on the TV.
One of the Katrina twins was on his way back to his seat and the crowd was doing that under-excited clapping which meant he couldn’t appropriately use the word he was given in a sentence.
“Great try, Patrick,” the voice said. “You’ve represented New Orleans, city of refugees, exquisitely tonight, and you can place no worse than third if our final two contestants get their words right.”
With that, the Mexican girl walked onstage.
“Stephanie,” the voice said, “if you can use this next word correctly in a dynamic sentence and our last finalist misses, you’ll be our new champion. Thank you for blessing our stage with your presence.”
The camera panned the rest of the competitors sitting in the background who were looking either sad and salty or just happy to be there. And sure as shit, there was LaVander Peeler to Stephanie’s right, head still down, fists still balled up.
“Stephanie, your word is ‘cacodoxy.’”
Lord have mercy.
I’d never heard that word before. And when the spelling popped up on screen, I felt terrible for her. Stephanie went through etymology and pronunciation.
She held her hands behind her back. Then she started tugging on her ponytail and tapping her left foot on the front of her right foot. She stood still with her hands right on her hips and started looking up at the ceiling.
“Fifteen seconds, Stephanie.”
“You people really do think you’re slick,” she said loud enough so we could hear it, and started her sentence. “
The man behind the desk is not only annoying, he also suffers from keen halitosis and severe cacodoxy, causing him to make my brother and me put our names in some quotations.”
The buzzer sounded. “No, Stephanie, I’m sorry. ‘Cacodoxy,’ a noun, is an erroneous doctrine, like ‘Up with hope and down with dope.’”
“Are you serious?” she asked without leaving immediately. “You won’t even use it in a sentence?” She sat down with her arms folded tight against her tummy, and you could see her mouth the words “That was so fucked up” before tucking her head into her chest.
Work
, I thought.
She gave them that work!
“Our last competitor is, surprise, surprise, LaVander Peeler,” the voice said.
LaVander Peeler walked up to the microphone the same way he had before his first word, “lascivious.” “You can do it,” I said to the screen. “I’m sorry I left you.”
“Seems like a lifelong dream might actually come true for this special young man,” the voice said. “LaVander Peeler, if you use the next word correctly, Mississippi will be proud to call you our National Can You Use That Word in a Sentence champion. LaVander Peeler, your final word is…”
LaVander Peeler raised his head and looked right into the light.
“…‘chitterlings.’”
In the background, Stephanie shot her head up, too. LaVander Peeler didn’t blink at all. Again, he asked for no etymology. He balled his fists tighter and watched the light. I could not believe what was happening. “Don’t do it,” I said to the screen. But I wasn’t sure what it was I didn’t want him to do. And neither was LaVander Peeler.
He opened his lips slightly and stood there in front of the light. Watching his parted lips shaking made me think I understood what LaVander Peeler was feeling and doing on that stage. Since the first day I met LaVander Peeler in eighth grade, he made it clear that he would always
consider all things
—including ways of being an exceptional African American, ways of winning all contests, and ways of using language to shield him from being just another black boy. Considering all things prepared him to
win the regional contests, but it didn’t prepare him for what it would feel like to not be given a chance to really lose. I didn’t get it until that second. It wasn’t at all that we were there just for decoration, like LaVander Peeler Sr. said. LaVander Peeler and I, or LaVander Peeler or I, were there to
win the contest
. They’d already decided before the contest even began that one of us needed to win. The only way they could feel good about themselves was if they let us win against the Mexican kids, because they didn’t believe any of us could really compete. Yeah, we were all decoration in a way. But it was like LaVander Peeler, specifically, was being thrown a surprise birthday party by a group of white people who didn’t know his real name or when his birthday actually was.
Maybe LaVander Peeler thought I understood we were all being given an unearned birthday party, and that I did what I did on stage to show other chubby black Mississippi boys with contentious demeanors that dignity and pride and keeping it one hundred were more important than being decoration.
But it wasn’t.
That’s what I realized, looking at LaVander Peeler shaking on that stage. In order to be the first Mississippi black boy with a head full of waves to win a national contest in anything, you had to actually
win
—not make a speech about why the contest wasn’t fair after you lost.
“‘Chitterlings,’” he began. LaVander Peeler paused again and looked behind him, then hard to his right, then turned hard to his left. He looked back into the light, tears finally streaming down his face, and said, “
Citoyen’s grandmother couldn’t understand why the young sibling from up north refused to eat the wonderful chitterlings upon finding out they came from the bowels of a big-eyed hog named Charles
.”
No bell went off for a good eight seconds. Then, out of nowhere, balloons fell from the top of the stage. Popguns went off! That “Harlem Shake” song played. Blizzards of confetti fell in front of the eye of the camera as Cindy and two of the judges walked onstage with their hands over their heads.
The voice behind the light screamed, “LaVander Peeler, you have done the unbelievable! Times are a-changing and you, you exceptional young Mississippian, are a symbol of the American Progress. The past is the past and today can be tomorrow. LaVander Peeler, do you have anything to say?
Would you like to thank your state, your governor, Jesus Christ, or your family for this blessing?”
“…
who entered the kitchen like a monster and asked,”
LaVander Peeler said, “‘
Why are y’all eating all my children?’”
The music completely faded out and the balloons and confetti stopped coming down. Cindy held the trophy right next to LaVander Peeler and he said it all again:
“Citoyen’s grandmother couldn’t understand why the young sibling from up north refused to eat the wonderful chitterlings upon finding out they came from the bowels of a big-eyed hog named Charles who entered the kitchen like a monster and asked, ‘Why are y’all eating all my children?’”
he said. “I’m saying that ‘chitterlings’ are the children of hogs. All things considered, I’m saying it literally, too, not metaphorically. Chitterlings are the children of hogs.”
“But you already used it correctly, LaVander Peeler,” the voice said. “And you did it quite dynamically, I might add.”
“All things considered, I’m saying that chitterlings are the children of hogs.” With that, he closed his teary eyes and tucked his head into his chest. The crowd gasped. And I did, too.
But now what was going to happen? Would there be a three-way tie? Would the three finalists have to spell again? Cindy slyly did the glide offstage with the trophy. LaVander Peeler went and sat back in his seat. The camera stopped focusing on LaVander Peeler and instead just panned all the competitors.
Then out of the left side of my screen, LaVander Sr. marched out and yanked his son by the crease of the elbow off that stage. A few seconds later, a woman I assumed was Stephanie’s grandma came up onstage and started pointing at Stephanie and telling her to get up and go. Eventually, Stephanie got up on her own, with her arms still folded, her head still tucked in her chest, looking at the ground. She walked off the stage, but not before she threw a finger sign right at the camera.
A few seconds later, the voice behind the light walked right across the front of the camera and onto the stage. The voice bent and whispered something in the ear of the twin from New Orleans who was also in the finals. A few seconds later, one of the twins was holding LaVander Peeler’s trophy over his head with one hand, and the other twin joined him with both of
their backs to the crowd. The twins let everyone know that as crazy as the night had been, the trophy was definitely in the hands of its rightful owners, Katrina’s Finest.
I turned the television off and sat on the floor of the garage with one of Mama’s old brushes. I wanted to get nice with myself at the thought of something I knew. But there was too much I didn’t know, like when Mama was coming home, how hard I’d get my back beat, if LaVander Peeler would be my best friend now, how folks would talk to us all around Jackson, what made me say those things to the Mexican brother and sister, and how LaVander Peeler collected the courage to go from Fade Don’t Fade to that adolescent black superhero on stage.
I knew I could never ever hate LaVander Peeler again after that night. And crazy as it sounds, that was enough to make me feel good about throwing the brush under the bed, getting nice with myself like a true champ, and writing my story until Mama came home to tell me why what I did was wrong for me, wrong for black people yet to be born, and wrong for the globe. Mama would tell me this, I figured, while crying and giving me the legendary back beating of my life.
And after the back beating, I’d tell her not to cry. I’d tell her that I understood why I deserved the welts on my arms and back. And when she was quiet and gently rubbing the welts up and down, I’d turn around and say, “Mama, all things considered, I feel like I love LaVander Peeler.”
But when Mama finally came home, none of what I thought would happen really happened. I didn’t get beaten. Mama didn’t even tell me what I did wrong. Quiet as it’s kept, she barely said a word to me. She just folded up in her bed and kept crying on the phone to my grandma, saying, “I’m so sorry, Mama. I’m so, so sorry.” And since Mama didn’t whup my back, I didn’t tell her I felt like I loved LaVander Peeler, not just because it might make her remember that she didn’t whup my back, but because I didn’t actually know what I meant. I didn’t think my body wanted to kiss or even grind up on LaVander Peeler. But I also knew that no one on earth could make me happier or sadder than that boy either.