[2 of 5 - Group A] Long Division, Book One, pages 50-102 by Kiese Laymon (2013)
Author: Kiese Laymon
Laymon, Kiese. “Book One, Pages 50-102,” Long Division, Scribner Book Company, 2013, 2021.
THICCCC PARTS.
As soon as I stepped off the Greyhound bus in Melahatchie, Grandma hugged my neck, but I was straight zoned out. That Long Division book had me feeling weird, new weird, like I was a character in a book or video game and someone was writing or controlling all the craziness around me.
Grandma interrupted my new weird. “My baby’s still husky,” she said, and kissed both of my jaws. Then she grabbed my shoulders and took a step back. “You look so intelligent. I don’t care what none of them folks say.”
Whenever I went down to Melahatchie, I always felt younger than I was. Mainly, it was because Grandma had really never talked to me or treated me any different between the ages of five and four-teen. I had to trim the hedges, crack open walnuts, and get the okra out of the bottom of the deep freezer now just like I did when I was five years old.
I threw my stuff in the back of her Bonneville and thought about how besides being the thickest grandma in Mississippi, I would have bet my original wave brush that Grandma was probably the thick-est, finest grandma in all of Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, and Louisiana. I’m not saying Grandma was perfect, either, but even the annoying stuff about Grandma, like how she was completely swinging from the scrotum sack of the Lawd, was– well, kinda… thick.
Grandma was probably six feet tall, and every part of her body and face was so thick that nothing looked thick. But her stuff was symmetrical, too. Sometimes you’d see folks with all thick parts, but half of their body weight was all up in their ass or all in that gut, or one of their eyes was way bigger than the other one, or maybe there was too much distance between their eyes and where their hairline started.
For example, my mother had this rounded, thick, mushroom-style nose and she looked like the early version of Weezy on that old Nick at Nite show, The Jeffersons. Mama looked like Weezy, but Mama’s lips were kinda… well, I hate to talk about my own mama like this, but Mama had lips like the white folks on Jersey Shore. There was no thickness or pinkish hang to Mama’s lips. You saw thin poofy lines and you saw teeth. Snake lips, I called the fat beneath her nose. I still don’t know how in the hell that happened to Mama since she came out of the vagina of someone as thick and perfect-looking as Grandma. You wouldn’t even know Grandma was six feet tall or the finest, thickest Grandma in the region until you walked right up on her.
Anyway, of all the different kinds of people in the world, Grandma was the last person I wanted to watch me act a fool at the contest. But I also knew, even though she couldn’t say it, that she was one of the only people who would know what it was like to be up there on that stage and not know if there was a difference between being right and doing wrong.
Grandma had a bag with two pork-chop sandwiches in her hands and her eyes were twitching like a hummingbird while she sat in that driver’s seat.
“Them folks is just evil,” Grandma said. She never mumbled or slurred her sentences and her voice was deep, heavier than cane syrup. “Plain devilish. You hear me?” Grandma thought the man who worked in the bus station restaurant hadn’t given her enough change back on purpose.
“Well, did you tell him how evil he is, Grandma?”
“Naw, City. No telling what that man could’ve put in our food.”
She pulled all the way out of the bus station. “You gotta be careful with them folks if you stay with me the next few days. You hear me?” I nodded. “If you learned anything after messing with them folks on that stage, should be that you don’t never know-” She looked me right in the eye.
“Never know what?” I asked her.
“How far they’ll go to get you.”
Grandma told me that we had to stop by Walmart before we went home. She said Walmart had a sale on her new favorite brand of wig, Wigs4Blax, and that she might as well get the wig today since this was her half-day off.
My grandma had three jobs. She worked as a housekeeper at the Island View Casino. She washed and ironed clothes for three white families in town. And she sold pound cake and fruit salad every other Saturday afternoon.
When we pulled into the lot of the Walmart, a green pickup truck flew past us and damn near knocked the front end off the Bonneville. Grandma stuck out her arm and secured my chest while slamming on the brakes. “Jesus give me strength,” she said. “What in the world is wrong with your children?”
It was the middle of the day, so most folks who worked hard and sweated for a living were still at work. Grandma was getting ready to park next to this orange and gray Cadillac sitting on 22-inch rims.
“Young folks ain’t got nothing better to spend that money on except long cars and crazy tags?”
“What?”
“What a nigga do in the dark will damn sure come to the light somehow.”
“Grandma?”
“Yes, baby?”
“I appreciate how it sounds when you say ‘nigga’ and I’m sorry about acting a fool at the contest.”
“Shhhh.” Grandma said and parked the car. “And leave your little brush in the car. Folks in here likely to steal everything that ain’t nailed down.”
The Melahatchie Walmart was always packed. Always. I never had anything stolen the hundreds of times I’d been in there and folks always looked so happy walking around, especially in the electronics section. I walked with Grandma to the wig section of the store and this old white woman with wrinkly skin, a maroon scarf around her pudgy neck, and her hair in a ball came up on us.
The woman’s name tag said “Louise Ellington.” She had gold for days draped on the outside of her scarf, and on her fingers were the shiniest rings I’d seen in real life. She walked up onto us lightweight fast, with one hand on her hip and the other on her chin.
“Hey. Hellooo here!” she said. “We want y’all to know’ew that today, we’ve got a special on our Wigs4Blax brand.” She pointed to the raggedy-looking wigs on the sale rack. “We sure do’ew.”
I could tell that the lady was from Jackson and had probably worked in the outside malls in Jackson before taking a job at the Melahatchie Walmart. At the outside Jackson malls, all the older white ladies with hair in a ball and penny loafers always said “o” sounding words like “o’ew” sounding words, but in Melahatchie the “o” sounded like “o” no matter who said it.
“So’ew,” she said, “if you buy one of those Gary curl wigs, y’all get a free year subscription to the new Ebony magazine..” She trailed off, and just looked at me. I tried to look away, then look back, but she was still watching. “Y’all got a talkative little devil there, don’t y’all?” she said to Grandma. “Were you the one doing all that talking on TV yesterday?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Grandma said. “My baby does love to talk. Don’t pay him no attention.” She patted me on the back. “Now how much did you say the Gary curl wig was?”
I couldn’t believe Grandma was talking like that in front of that lady. Her voice, her body, everything shrunk. It was like she wasn’t even Grandma anymore. I never heard Grandma say “ma’am” to someone who was younger than her. The rumor was that Grandma actually brought the Jheri (not “Gary”) curl to Melahatchie from Milwaukee back in the early ’80s. Now she was acting like she couldn’t even pronounce it right, all because she was talking in front of a weird-looking white woman who couldn’t even pronounce “so” and “do.”
Grandma and I held hands as we walked back to the Bonneville.
“If Tom Henry coulda seen you raising hell on TV, he woulda swore up and down that he was looking through his red eyes at himself”
“Why?” I asked her.
Grandma started getting comfortable in the driver’s seat chair. I could tell she was about to go into one of her Granddaddy stories. The stories always started different, but every one of them, except the one that ended with him disappearing in Marathon Lake, ended with Granddaddy acting like a demon and destroying something before Grandma intervened.
“I remember one Saturday we got to fighting ’bout money or something like that,” she started. “He was tired of me working all these jobs, you know? Anyway, Tom Henry claimed he was going for a walk to get his mind right. I knew that meant he was ’bout to get that damn stuffed monkey and walk off in them woods across the road from the house.
“Anyway, while he was gone, his friends Cherry and Shank come over here looking for him to go fishing. All three of us, we out there on that porch, you know? ‘Course I ain’t tell Cherry or Shank he was over in them woods with no fake monkey, so I just said he wasn’t nowhere to be found. Soon as I said that, here comes your granddaddy prancing out them woods with that monkey in his hands and one of those shit-eating grins on his face. Tom Henry walks up on the porch and tries to hide the monkey behind his back.
“Cherry says, ‘Tom, what the hell you doing holding on to a ugly little fake monkey off in them woods, man? Ain’t you done outgrown dolls and hide-and-seek?’ Like I told you before, I reckon your granddaddy reacts like a demon when somebody stands on his own porch and calls him crazy. So Tom Henry commenced to beat the clothes off Cherry and Shank. Off! You hear me?” Grandma was laughing hard as she could and smiling ear to ear. “And when the police came, Tom Henry was still beating both of them to the white meat until I calmed him down. He spent two nights in jail for that.”
Grandma got busy when it came to her sentences. With Grandma’s at-home sentences, it was like there was no screen between her mind and your ears. You got all of her, all of her voice. She could destroy anyone in the region in a sentence contest, including LaVander Peeler and me, as long as the judges were fair. I realized then, though, that Grandma’s at-home sentences and her in-the-car sentences were completely opposite of her at-the-mall sentences.
“Hey, Grandma,” I said. “Would you tell that story at the mall in front of that white lady, with the same dynamic sentences?”
“First of all, that wasn’t no story. And I don’t know nothing about no dynamic sentences,” she told me. “That’s the truth. And the truth ain’t got a thing to do with that damn white woman, City.”
“Oh. Okay,” | said, knowing Grandma was lying through her teeth.
THAT WIRELESS.
Grandma and I walked up on the porch of her house. Hurricane Katrina tore up Grandma’s old shotgun house eight years earlier, but within a year, she’d gotten a new shotgun house built in the same spot. The house was raised off the ground about a foot and a half by some cinder blocks. The porch led to the front door, which opened to the living room, and from there, depending on what angle you looked in the house, you could see through the bedroom, the dining room, and the kitchen.
Grandma didn’t have a hall, either, like the houses on TV and in books. Grandma’s house had a living room with an old floor-model big-screen TV, a glass table with some Bibles and photo albums on it, a played-out stereo that only ever played Mahalia Jackson, and my uncle Relle’s sleeping bag right in the middle of the floor. Uncle Relle stayed with Grandma probably four times a week. Anyway, pictures of our family, the ones live and dead, were all over the living room. Walk ten more feet, there was a dining room with a plastic chandelier over a round wooden table. On one side of the table were two big deep freezers full of dead animal parts and food from her garden. On the other side of the table were a washing machine and a basket filled with the white folks’ clothes Grandma washed to make a little more money. Fifteen more feet and there was a tiny kitchen. Four more feet and you were out the back door, under a clothesline, where there was a scary work shed I was never allowed to go in and a chinaberry tree.
I kept looking at Relle’s sleeping bag, wondering when he was coming home. I wanted to know what he thought of what I’d done at the contest the night before. I figured he was going to be the only person in my family who was actually proud of me.
“Grandma, do you get wireless yet?”
“Wireless? Wireless what?”
“Internet!”
“Naw, we ain’t got none of that mess, and you ain’t gonna be hooking up no wireless to my TV.”
“It ain’t got nothing to do with the TV,” I told her. “It’s so people can check their email. What does Uncle Relle do if he wants to check his email?”
“He heads up the road to the library like everybody else, I reckon.”
I wanted to push it more but I didn’t want Grandma getting mad at me. I know Melahatchie was only a bus ride away, but it felt like a time warp. It always felt like it was behind whatever time we were in up in Jackson, but after Hurricane Katrina, it’s like time went fast in reverse instead of just slowing down.
“Why you sweating, City?” Grandma asked me. “Go in the bathroom and wipe your face off.” I turned to open the screen door and half-stepped in the door when Grandma finished her sentence: “… and go get my switch.”
“What?!”
I stared at Grandma’s face, not hardcore like I had the power to shoot liquid heat from my eyes, but more like I had X-ray vision and I was looking at the raggedy spinal cord that held the skull, that held the mouth, that held the tongue that formed those terrible words, go get my switch.
“You remember where it is, don’t you? Go on and get my switch now,” Grandma said. “You can’t be acting a fool like that in front of them folks. You know we can’t have that.”
Man, she said it so calm. Like it was only a whupping. Grandma hadn’t whupped me in two and a half years.
But what could I do?
Nothing except drop my head, walk through the front screen door, through the living room, through the kitchen, out the back screen door, around the side of the house, and under the chinaberry tree. I had just matured to a point where I could get nice with myself in places other than the shower and the bathroom at school, and here I was about to get a beating like a child.
I almost hated this part of the beating way more than the actual beating. The anticipation and fear of all those lashes builds and builds, and then you realize how shameful it is that you’re about to get your ass and back beaten by the same switch you’re about to pick. And the whole time you’re thinking that you don’t wanna mess up on purpose and pick a little thin switch. You also don’t wanna pick one that’s too big to leave welts, because that means Grandma is gonna take her fine ass out there to pick the switch herself. And it didn’t matter how deep in that bush the perfect switch was, Grandma would always find it.
I narrowed my choices to a slender one with a lot of leaves on it, or a big one that wouldn’t wrap around my fat back too well.
Now, I had to hand it to her.
Should I smile or cry?
Grandma was out on the porch scaling the nasty big fish we were going to eat for dinner when I finally made it back.
Should I smile or cry?
I opened the screen door and waited for her to extend her hand.
“Here you go, Grandma.” I acted like I was going to hand the switch to her, but when she reached for it, I dropped it on the ground and took off through the screen door, through the TV room, through the kitchen, and out the back screen door.
And Grandma came flying after me.
I ran on the other side of the clothesline and tried to use one of her yellow fitted sheets as protection. “Boy, put down my damn fitted sheet,” she yelled. “Put it down!”
I threw the yellow fitted sheet on the ground and ran and ran. And Grandma ran and ran, too. Then she stopped by my granddaddy’s work shed, right next to the chinaberry tree. She threw down that wack switch I gave her and then dove right in the bush and pulled out a switch that looked like a six-foot whip with a handle.
I understood right there that I wasn’t simply running away from the greatest whupper in our family. Hell, I was running away from the greatest whupper in the history of Mississippi whuppings.
Grandma started running after me again. When I reached the back of the house, she was in the switch’s reach, but she tried to turn the corner too sharp, and slid into a split.
Damn.
I knew Grandma would no longer just beat me for acting a fool at the contest. In the fourteen years that I’d known Grandma, she’d whupped me about six times, and the crazy thing was how she never looked at me like she wanted to rip the spine out of my back when she was whupping. You could tell that it was just regretful work for her.
Five minutes later, I was sobbing and balled up on the ground like a greasy, burnt-brown cinnamon roll with good waves. To tell you the truth, I felt honored to be whupped by Grandma. And I felt proud that during the entire whupping I never let go of my new brush.
After the beating and bath, Grandma prayed for me while I sat on the bed. Then we ate. I got so full off nasty-looking, good-tasting catfish and fries, sweet iced tea, and thick pound cake that I couldn’t breathe. I helped Grandma do the dishes, then we jumped in her bed to take a little nap before The Bernie Mac Show and Meet the Browns came on. I asked Grandma if it was okay for us to sleep on top of the sheet in our underwear with the fan directly on us.
Even though I was lying there in my underwear, Grandma looked at me in a way that made me feel like I was wearing something top-notch like a leather tuxedo with matching Jordan 6s. And even though my mama had seen me naked way more times, I felt less weird about Grandma seeing me. Grandma had a way of looking at you when you were naked that didn’t make you feel terribly fat and soft. Most other folks, especially my mama, looked at me naked and made me feel like the fattest, softest ninth grader out of all the states in the Southeastern Conference. My mama tried not to look like that, but you could tell that she was trying too hard by the way she kept cutting her eyes away from me and saying stuff like, “We should probably start buying Diet Mountain Dew, Citoyen.”
But with Grandma, whether I was naked or not, she looked at me the same way. To tell you the truth, if Grandma was trying to get the hem right on my slacks, she could have accidentally bumped into my scrotum sack and I wouldn’t have cared because I knew that Grandma wouldn’t have cared. If anybody else bumped into my scrotum sack like that, I’d probably act like I was dead or paralyzed until they left.
Grandma just looked at me without talking for about fifteen seconds. That’s a long time to look at someone who is right in front of you. She smiled real thick and slung her arm across my chest. “Them folks is millions and millions of miles away from here today, you hear me? Million miles away,” she said. “I want you to read the Bible every day you’re here. You trying to get free, but you can’t do it by yourself. We gotta get you to that water, City. That’s why your mama sent you here.”
“Wait.” I sat up in bed. “That’s messed up. Mama really sent me down here to get whupped and baptized?”
I waited for an answer, but the lids of Grandma’s eyes slowly fell down. Her breathing got all heavy again, and about six seconds later, Grandma was asleep, her thick arm still slung across my chest, protecting me from something she wanted me to believe was millions and millions of miles away.
MYMY, COACH STROUD, AND SOOO SAD.
I grabbed my book and my brush and decided to go out and see if my Melahatchie friends had ever heard of Long Division.
I really only had three Melahatchie friends: Shay, MyMy, and Kincaid. Kincaid lived in the Mela-hatchie projects. Shay lived right down the road a little. MyMy lived in a trailer in the Mexican trailer park right next to Grandma’s house. The only white people in the whole trailer park were MyMy and her mama.
The dirt underneath the Mexican trailer park was like the dirt at a playground, except it was darker and redder and filled with lots of perfect rocks. There were paper-sack-colored flat rocks with three or four deep scrapes, rocks the shape of chicken nuggets, black rocks that looked like charcoal, and dirty white ones with sharp edges.
I walked maybe two steps on that dirt when four limping rat dogs starting howling and running circles around these two women who were working on this broken-down Explorer.
The women saw me looking at them and they stared at me like I had a smushed little foot growing out of my cheek. I didn’t know if they looked at me like that because I had a brush in one hand and Long Division in the other, or if maybe they had seen the contest and heard what I said about those Mexican kids from Arizona.
As soon as I stepped to her door there were MyMy’s beady eyes. She was holding her Magic Slate, and looking crazy as ever. MyMy was ten ears old and she was still in that phase where you find a detail about yourself that’s different than evervone else and vou try to make that one thing “your” thing. Her thing was trying to talk as little as possible, so she always carried this Magic Slate so she could write what she wanted to say. The only time she’d talk was if she was in the woods across the road from her house. She called those woods the Magic Woods.
MyMy’s Magic Slate was the old-school kind with the thin plastic over the top, the kind where you wrote with a little plastic pencil and if you wanted to erase it, you had to pull the plastic up. If you met MyMy, you probablv wouldn’t be surprised that she would communicate through a Magic Slate. Nothing about the girl was regular. Her glasses weren’t even regular glasses. They were these cheap greasy magnifying glasses that let you see every little movement her eyes made. Her eyes seemed to be back farther in her head than normal. And they were blue. But the black part in the middle of MyMy’s blue eyes was big and beady. And even when they looked at you, they kept zooming back and forth way too fast. It made me scared to look at her sometimes. One of the only regular things about her was that she always wore some Saints mesh shorts like the kind I wore to sleep back home.
As soon as MyMy walked down the steps of her trailer, I could tell by the way she held her head that she wanted me to hug her.
I didn’t hug her, though. I just said, “MyMy, did you see me on TV?”
She nodded up and down.
“What did you think?” I asked her. “You can be honest.” MyMy shrugged her shoulders. “What would you have done?”
She pulled out her Magic Slate and wrote, “You and Baize are Fameus.”
“Girl, I know you know how to spell famous,” I told her. “Did you even know Baize?”
MyMy just looked at me and didn’t say a word. Even before Baize Shephard went missing, everyone in Melahatchie talked about her like she was their best friend. Baize was one of those girls who had thousands of friends on Twitter and Facebook, but she wasn’t that close with anyone in Melahatchie except my friend Shay.
MyMy and I were headed to the Magic Woods when we saw these two big green trucks with Confed erate flags in their back windows. They were parked in the middle of the trailer park.
“Mean white men drive them trucks,” MyMy said.
“That ‘not talk’ thing you do, I’m just letting you know it ain’t cute. And how are you gonna call somebody white when you are white as a bleach stain?”
MyMy just laughed and said, “Bleach stain.”
We walked in the opening of the woods as I was rereading the beginning of Long Division. The book described a covered hole in the ground that opened with a rusty handle, and I wanted to get a sense of where it was. MyMy snatched the book from me and opened it to the first page.
“Your name is in this book,” she said.
“I know,” I told her. “Keep reading. Baize up in there, too. You see the name of the second chapter?”
“I don’t want to,” she said and threw the book down. “I don’t like that book.”
“Why? You should read it. It’s not a hard book to read.” She just looked me in the eyes and didn’t say a word. “All the time you been in these woods, MyMy, have you ever seen a rusty handle that leads to a hole in the ground in these woods?”
“Why?”
“Have vou seen one or not?”
“I think so.” she said. “I think it’s over here.”
I followed her and sure enough, hidden by some pine needles, was a rusty brown handle coming out of ground. “Oh shit. You ever pull that handle before?”
MyMy started walking away from me. “I don’t think we should open that.”
“Why?”
“We don’t want to know.”
“Girl, please. Who are you supposed to be? We don’t want to know what?”
“You hear something?” she asked me. I listened harder. We heard some cracked bass and a synthesizer blasting from some tinny speakers.
MyMy snatched my arm and we took off out of the woods and ran back onto Old Morton Road.
Coach Stroud, who let me play on the Melahatchie baseball team in the summer, was driving the ice cream and watermelon truck our way. No matter where you saw Coach Stroud, he always wore a Titans hat turned to the back.
Coach stopped his truck in front of us.
“Hey, Coach!” I said.
“Hey Wide Load,” Coach said while stretching his neck. “How you making it these days? I heard how you lost your mind on TV, but I ain’t been able to watch it on DVR.”
Coach had this lisp that was deep and ringing, more like Biggie’s lisp than Mike Tyson’s. When I was ten, Mama gave me this slightly illiterate book about how all humans come from Africa. The book had pictures in there of the first man and first woman. The first woman didn’t look like anyone I’d ever seen except maybe Michael Jackson, but the first man had a mouth just like Coach Stroud. I’m not saying that I didn’t look lightweight ape around the mouth area, but Coach looked pretty much full ape. That was really one of the best things about him.
“That’s the little white gal you been running ’round with since you got on TV?” Coach asked and stared at MyMy. MyMy walked up looking all hungry and crazy at the pictures of ice cream on the truck.
“I ain’t running around with no white girl. I just got here. People spreading rumors about me running around with white girls?”
“You know how y’all do,” Coach said.
I had no idea what he was talking about. “You still suing the city, Coach?”
“Well, we working on it,” Coach said. He was one of those dudes who always talked about suing somebody and taking the money he won to the casino to play blackjack. “Always doing something to keep a hardworking Black man down. So I gotta handle my business.”
Coach Stroud smiled as he scratched the sack part of his tight red coach pants. Everyone in Mela-hatchie said that Coach Stroud was busting booties with my friend Kincaid, and when you hear that a grown coach and one of your friends are busting booties, it makes you want to run your big ass back into the woods when you see him scratch his sack.
I figured that one of the worst things in the world was to have folks think you bust teenagers’ booties. Nobody would ever look at you the same after that. Even when you’re just doing stuff that everybody else does, like scratching your sack, no one would look at you the same. Coach was a walking “Kindly pause,” and that was fine with me. I just hated that I ever even thought I loved LaVander Peeler. No part of me really wanted to touch his sack, but I knew you couldn’t tell people that you
“Why?”
“We don’t want to know.”
“Girl, please. Who are you supposed to be? We don’t want to know what?”
“You hear something?” she asked me. I listened harder. We heard some cracked bass and a synthesizer blasting from some tinny speakers.
MyMy snatched my arm and we took off out of the woods and ran back onto Old Morton Road.
Coach Stroud, who let me play on the Melahatchie baseball team in the summer, was driving the ice cream and watermelon truck our way. No matter where you saw Coach Stroud, he always wore a Titans hat turned to the back.
Coach stopped his truck in front of us.
“Hey, Coach!” I said.
“Hey Wide Load,” Coach said while stretching his neck. “How you making it these days? I heard how you lost your mind on TV, but I ain’t been able to watch it on DVR.”
Coach had this lisp that was deep and ringing, more like Biggie’s lisp than Mike Tyson’s. When I was ten, Mama gave me this slightly illiterate book about how all humans come from Africa. The book had pictures in there of the first man and first woman. The first woman didn’t look like anyone I’d ever seen except maybe Michael Jackson, but the first man had a mouth just like Coach Stroud. I’m not saying that I didn’t look lightweight ape around the mouth area, but Coach looked pretty much full ape. That was really one of the best things about him.
“That’s the little white gal you been running ’round with since you got on TV?” Coach asked and stared at MyMy. MyMy walked up looking all hungry and crazy at the pictures of ice cream on the truck.
“I ain’t running around with no white girl. I just got here. People spreading rumors about me running around with white girls?”
“You know how y’all do,” Coach said.
I had no idea what he was talking about. “You still suing the city, Coach?”
“Well, we working on it,” Coach said. He was one of those dudes who always talked about suing somebody and taking the money he won to the casino to play blackjack. “Always doing something to keep a hardworking Black man down. So I gotta handle my business.”
Coach Stroud smiled as he scratched the sack part of his tight red coach pants. Everyone in Mela-hatchie said that Coach Stroud was busting booties with my friend Kincaid, and when you hear that a grown coach and one of your friends are busting booties, it makes you want to run your big ass back into the woods when you see him scratch his sack.
I figured that one of the worst things in the world was to have folks think you bust teenagers’ booties. Nobody would ever look at you the same after that. Even when you’re just doing stuff that everybody else does, like scratching your sack, no one would look at you the same. Coach was a walking “Kindly pause,” and that was fine with me. I just hated that I ever even thought I loved LaVander Peeler. No part of me really wanted to touch his sack, but I knew you couldn’t tell people that you loved another boy, because as soon as folks heard the word “love” they would look at me the same way I looked at Coach when he had that sack itch. I wondered, for the first time, what busting booties had to do with love. Once I thought I loved Toni Whitaker and Octavia Whittington, but that was because those girls were the only two real people I thought about when I got nice. They were the people who made my privacy the hardest. As much as I thought I loved LaVander Peeler, I can’t even say that anything about him made my privacy hard. So if it wasn’t love, I just wondered what it really was, and why I felt so much of it when I saw him up on that stage.
Anyway, I was allergic to watermelon, but Grandma seemed so happy when she ate them, so I decided to use the ten dollars Mama gave me for the trip to buy Grandma a gift.
“Coach, lemme get one of them baby watermelons.” Coach just looked at me and started rolling his tongue underneath the inside of his top lip. “Gimme one of them baby watermelons, Coach! Why you looking at me crazy?” He still just looked, steadily rolling his eyes like he would look if you fumbled in practice or acted scared to hit someone or didn’t run a play right.
“Come back here with me, Wide Load.” He walked through his truck. I looked at MyMy and walked back with him. “What you doing, man?” he asked me.
“What you mean, Coach?”
“What I mean?! Wide Load, you worse than them ignorant-ass rappers grabbing hard on them dicks, selling that poison, and calling everybody ‘niggas.’ You don’t eat no watermelon in front of no white folks,” he told me. “I know them folks in Jackson taught you better. Don’t look at me like that, boy. I don’t care if she is just a little white gal. Like I told y’all during the season. Practice makes perfect. You play the game the way you live your life.”
“White folks don’t like watermelon, Coach?”
“Naw, Wide Load. That ain’t it. It’s just some things you just don’t do. I swear before God that I don’t know what’s wrong with y’all little young boys in this generation. Black men like me fought so–“
“Oh Jesus,” I said.
“Now you blaspheming his name? We did our best so y’all could have equal opportunities and some of whatever the white man got. We got a Black president in that White House fighting to stay alive and here y’all go trying hard to act like niggas in front of the white man’s woman.” He stopped and looked at me like he’d just asked me a question. “What if Obama acted like that? You don’t see how they love seeing us do things like fighting and acting a fool on TV and dancing and eating on watermelons?”
“That’s stuff I like to do anyway, Coach,” I told him. “Plus, I like to do other stuff, too.”
“Shhh. Wide Load. Shut the hell up. I’m asking vou how you think that make us feel?”
Coach was waiting for an answer, but you know what’s crazy? I’d never thought of Coach Stroud as being any part of the “us” he was talking about. The only time people talked about Coach Stroud was when they talked about Melahatchie’s biddy ball team. And the only time folks really talked about Melahatchie’s biddy ball team was when they were saying we might not need to be coached by someone who liked to bust booties.
“You ain’t answer me, boy.”
I opened my mouth, but he interrupted me. “It’s like this, Wide Load. I’mo say it to you one more time. White man see you acting a nigga, he liable to think we all still niggas. Niggas are less than white folks in they eyes. Look what they did to that young brother, Trayvon. If they think you less than human, you don’t deserve no respect. Period. You are a smart young man. I know you understand.”
“You done?”
“See, that’s your problem, Wide Load. You play too much. White man see your big ass acting a fool on TV, and he gon’ have a reason to take away the rights we done worked so hard for. Y’all gotta learn how to manage that freedom we got for y’all. You see what I’m saying. Ain’t enough to be free. What you gon’ do with the freedom?”
Coach was pissing me off even more than Principal Reeves when she gave that wack freedom speech. “Coach, you know something?” I was about to call him a half ape, half f-word in too-tight coach pants.
Instead, I said, “You probably should just give me the watermelon before I say something to hurt your feelings,” and went back around to the side of the truck.
He leaned close to me. “You act like a li’l head-buster, but don’t never forget, City, that you got a head, too.” Coach leaned back, blinked a few times, and swallowed some spit. “Here you go, boy. That’ll be six dollars.”
He really had a look in his eyes that told me he wanted to elbow me in the jaw. I thought about how since my friend Kincaid was known as the best young fighter in Melahatchie, there really was no telling how effective Coach Stroud was with his hands, but still I wanted him to know something.
“Coach Stroud.” | looked down at MyMy and thought about not saying this in front of her. “You pissed me off in the back of your truck a few minutes ago, but I guess I really don’t think you be busting Kincaid’s booty. I don’t. I just think he’s too young to have a grown boyfriend or girlfriend. And I thought about calling you an ‘f-word’ back there, too, but then I remembered how you were damn near a ninja,” | told him. “I also kinda remembered that ‘f-word’ sounds like some kind of balled-up monster made of ground-up dookie chunks, razor blades, and rotten muscadines. You ain’t no mon-ster, Coach. Not to me.”
I looked at Coach and I grabbed MyMy’s hand and got a little distance from the truck. “I hear what you saying back there, but can I give you some advice? Fuck white folks,” I told him. “For real! Their eyes ain’t gotta be everywhere you are. Y’all are too old to care about them so much. They can only do as much harm as you let them, and all y’all oldheads are letting them do way too much.”
Saying that made me feel like Satan in a way because I knew that Coach Stroud couldn’t go up in anyone’s house in Melahatchie, including Grandma’s, and tell on me. Everybody in Melahatchie would allow Stroud to walk on their porch. And they’d sit down with him and they’d laugh loud and talk louder about the weather, the Saints, white folks, or some trifling heathen who wasn’t there to defend himself. But I didn’t know of one grown person in Melahatchie who would let him all the way in their house. Not one.
Coach Stroud drove his truck on down the road and MyMy and I were on our way out of the woods when that green truck that was parked in the trailer park drove slowly toward us.
It stopped in front of us. Four men were squeezed into the cab. They were blasting that old Ricky Rozay song, “I’m Not a Star.” One of the dudes had crossed eyes, dimples, red hair, and a potbelly that looked far too old for his face. Something about the mix of the eyes, the dimples, and the potbelly looked so sad to me. I had a baby watermelon in one hand, my brush under my arm, and Long Division in the other hand.
“You the boy who was on TV yesterday?” Sooo Sad asked. “The one with that brush who done all that talking?”
“Yeah, that’s me,” I told him. “My name is City.”
“City?” He looked down at me. “What’s a boy named City doing out here in the country? You got family in New Orleans, don’t you?”
“I don’t believe so. I’m just visiting my grandma,” I told him. “City is just a nickname.”
“I see,” he said. “Let me ask you this. You fast as you is smart?”
“For my size, I’m alright.”
“You faster than this man right here?” he asked and pointed to the only boy in the truck, who wore a V-neck shirt with the arms cut off.
“That’s a boy,” I told them. “He ain’t no man.”
“City love to sass, don’t he,” Sooo Sad said to the other men in the truck. “You had plenty of sass yesterday on that TV, didn’t you?”
Sooo Sad whispered something to the round-faced white boy. The kid jumped out the back and stood next to me. The truck was right in front of us.
“Now, we gonna say ‘go,'” Sooo Sad said, “and I want y’all to run after the truck ’til we say ‘stop.””
“Naw, I’m good,” I told the man. “I’m tired of running. I don’t even know y’all like that.” I put the watermelon down and started brushing my waves. “Plus, my wind ain’t that good ’cause I just raced.”
“That’s alright, Chucker. We ain’t going that far.”
“My name is City,” I told him and kept brushing my hair. “You know what? I don’t like the feeling of this situation, so we’re finna go on about our business.”
“Mind if I look at your brush, Situation?”
“Why?”
“Never seen one up close,” he said. “Just wanna look at it.”
“Naw,” I told him. “I’m good.”
“You don’t wanna race. You don’t wanna share your brush. What you wanna do, Situation? Use some sentences. How you practice for something like that?”
“My name is City,” I told him again. “Not no Situation.”
All the men in the truck were laughing so hard at this point. One of them said, “Situation, you wanna use ‘brush’ in a sentence?”
“I can do that,” I told him and started walking toward them. “The next funky-ass white boy to ask me for my brush is going to get knocked out, Deebo-style, and if his friends jump in and try to help, they might get a few licks off, but I’m gonna get my revenge with my Jackson army one way or an-other. Let’s go, MyMy.” I grabbed her hand.
“Here,” the man said, and threw a comb on the ground. “You are so talented, Situation. I’ll let you see mine if you let me see yours.”
The comb wasn’t like the heavy plastic black combs Mama and them used sometimes. It had smaller edges and a thin handle. I reached down to pick it up and hand it to him, when out of nowhere, I felt a heavy foot in the center of my back. My solar plexus smashed into the ground and my lips kissed the asphalt right as my brush popped out of my hand. Then I felt another kick in my ass.
I looked up. One of the men picked up my brush and threw it to Sooo Sad, and they all jumped in the truck. I spit the little rocks, dirt, and blood from my lips and looked at the eyes of the other men in the car. “Use that in a sentence, you nigger son of a b—-,” Sooo Sad yelled. Red dirt started pouring out of the back of that truck and they slowly rolled away. I sat there on the ground, swallowing the taste of rocks. It felt like someone was tickling the back of my tongue with one of those square batteries.
I went in my pockets, grabbed those right-heavy rocks, and tried to break out their back windows. MyMy ran with me. She was beside me throwing rocks. Sooo Sad’s voice was still back there laughing, pointing, teasing, watching me. The young boy that he had called a man was recording it all, too, on a cell phone. “Hey girl, hey,” Sooo Sad yelled as the boy recorded it all. “You best don’t grow to be no nigger-lover. Leave all that alone.”
I turned around in the middle of the road, wiped the dirt off my face, and walked back into the woods. “Move, MyMy,” I told her, and spit a bloody piece of the inside of my bottom lip on some sticker bushes.
My mother had beaten me probably over a hundred times in Jackson, but no man and no white person had ever put their hands on me. Ever. I had lost some battles at school with LaVander Peeler and felt like I had lost on that stage yesterday, but in those situations, I always thought I could fight back. Even if I lost, I knew that the other person or other people fighting me knew that they had been in a fight.
This was completely different.
All I could do after getting my chest smashed into the ground and being called a “nigger” by those white men was hope it all stopped hurting. That was it.
MyMy started trying to wipe the dirt off my face. “Don’t get dirt all on your clothes,” I told her and wiped my face again with my own shirt.
“They called me ‘nigga’ too, City.”
“MyMy, you ain’t no nigga,” I told her. “And don’t say it again.”
“How come?”
“Because it hurts when you say that word.” | turned back toward the road behind us. “And I know it don’t really hurt you when you hear the word.”
“It does hurt me,” she said and kept trying to look me in the face. “I didn’t like it when they said it.”
“It didn’t really hurt you, though. It’s like the word ‘b-. My principal said boys shouldn’t ever say that word because we never have to deal with being treated like a b—-. She’s right, too. Or…
“But you just said it.” MyMy interrupted my thought. “You said ‘b—-.' ”
“I was making a point,” I told her. “Don’t say that word, either. You too young to say words like that.”
“City.” MyMy tugged on my shirt. “What does that word really mean?”
“Which word?”
“Nigga.”
“Damn, girl. Didn’t I just tell you not to say that word? Look. I know that I’m a nigga. I mean… I know I’m Black”–I thought for a few seconds of what Mama told me the word meant when I was in Jackson–“but ‘nigga’ means below human to some folks and it means superhuman to some other folks. Do you even know what I’m saying? And sometimes it means both to the same person at different times. And, I don’t know. I think ‘nigga’ can be like the word ‘bad.’ You know how bad mean a lot of things? And sometimes, ‘bad’ means ‘super good.’ Well, sometimes being called a ‘nigga’ by another person who gets treated like a ‘nigga’ is one of the top seven or eight feelings in the world. And other times, it’s in the top two or three worst feelings. Or, maybe… shoot. I don’t know. I couldn’t even use the word in a sentence, MyMy. Ask someone else. Shoot. I don’t even know.”
“City,” MyMy interrupted me. She kept moving side to side, tearing leaves off little lilac clovers. “I think we can kill them. They made you sound crazy on TV.”
“Naw, girl. We could try to kill a few, but they had rifles in the back of their truck and they were taller than us and they could kill us a lot quicker than we could kill them. Plus, if I kill a white person, they would throw everyone in my family under the jail,” I told her. “Me and you can do bad things, hood-rat things, but we can’t ever kill white folks. How do you not know that?”
We started walking out of the woods when MyMy stopped and looked at me with those crazy eyes. “City, I have a brown thing on my hand. See?” MyMy held out her left hand and showed me a little brown dot in the middle of her palm. Looked like a big freckle. “I wish this thing was white and the rest of me was the color of my birthmark.”
“Don’t be dumb. Just be happy that you are whatever you are,” I told her. “At least the way you are, ain’t nobody kicking you in the back and making you use ‘niggardly’ in a sentence. It’s not that you’re dumb, MyMy, but you’re kinda dumb compared to me. You feel me?”
“City?” MyMy said.
“What?” I could tell she was flipping subjects again.
“I don’t know what n-i-g-g-a is.” MyMy was talking her ass off now. “And you do not know what n-i-g-g-a is, but we can say I’m not n-i-g-g-a and you’re not n-i-g-g-a and Baize is not n-i-g-g-a.”
“MyMy, we can say that if you really want us to, but I’m pretty sure I’m a nigga for life,” I told her. “And you might wanna stop talking about Baize since you didn’t even know her. Because I’m almost positive Baize would tell you that she was a nigga for life, too.” We started walking again. “I swear that white folks need to just shut the hell up sometimes. Y’all make it hard for everybody.”
We started walking out of the woods for the third time. “MyMy, watch out for them sticker bushes,” said.
I had Long Division in my lap when Grandma came out on the porch and asked me what was wrong. I told her that I was sad because I didn’t want to get baptized and I wished she had internet so I could see what people were saying about me.
“What happened to your lip, baby?” she asked me.
“I just fell in the woods. Why?”
Grandma went in the house and came back out on the porch with some peroxide and a washcloth. “Don’t ask me why,” she said. “Tell me what happened to your lip, City.”
“Grandma, do white folks like watermelon?”
“I reckon they do.”
“More than Black folks?”
“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 trving to protect vou.”
“From what, Grandma?”
“From life, City,” she said. “Stroud ain’t all the way right, but he just wants 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. Shit.” 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 nigga,” 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, nigga! 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, damn near a million views on WorldStar, and it ain’t even been twenty-four hours since it happened. 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 bullshitting 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.”
“Don’t hate,” he said. “Look, I’ma be there tomorrow morning. I gotta record you going through your day. Shit 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. White folks so mad, but I don’t know why. 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. “Fuck a book. Ain’t nan nigga reading no books in 2013 unless you already a star or talking about some damn vampires and wolfmen. Like Jigga said, every day a star is born. He ain’t say a writer. A star, nigga! Today, that star is my nephew.”
“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 ass off. I would’ve been more pissed 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 alwas 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 The 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 grass next to the work shed, damn near the back of Grandma’s house, under a magnolia. We walked back and looked in 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 Sooo Sad, 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 sleep 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 shirt.
A little while later, Grandma came into 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 damn Mahalia Jackson song, “How I Got Over.” 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 wemakexxxvideos.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 ass back to the bed, covered my head with our sheets, 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 damn word. I figured my best bet was to fake sleep until Grandma tapped me on the booty. 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 Saturday morning, I was surprised at the shampooed-carpet-and-corn-bread 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. 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 Classic 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 Classic 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 porn 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 vou mean you ‘don’t know’? Who wrote the shit? 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. It’s a lot of dot-dot-dots in that book, too.”
“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 gotdamn book, is it? Unless it’s one of them pamphlets that niggas be calling a book. That shit be embarrassing to me. And even some of them pamphlets be on the internet, City. Now, can you please look up that other shit so we can go? I got a meeting in twenty 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 by over 80,000 people on Facebook. Another clip, the one of me trying to understand the word “niggardly,” had two million hits and was called “City Spells Nig-gardly.” 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 “Chit-terlings Are Chitlins.” Right below that was a still picture of me from a distance, throwing rocks toward Sooo Sad’s truck, called “City, the Nigger, Running.”
Everything that had happened to me the past three days, except the whupping from Grandma and catching her making out, had made it on to the internet.
“City Be Busting Heads” had over 200,000 views and “City, the Big Little Nigger” 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-shirts online with a picture of me brushing my waves with the word “niggardly” with a question mark underneath in deep black.
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 embarrassed like I’d been embarrassed 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 nigga right here. crackers mad city stay keeping it real. flav ain’t got nothing on city. fuck white folks just like he said.” It was posted by someone called “LockNess.”
Beneath that, someone called “CawCuss” commented, “Note to Niggers: Niggardly is a word that has nothing to do with Niggers. Learn to read before complaining Niggers.”
Uncle Relle said we had to go but after reading CawCuss’s comment, I really had to look up “niggardly” 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 laugh-ing. “Why?”
“I’m saying, do you think ‘niggardly’ is, you know, about us?”
“City, you can’t ever put anything past the white man. They knew that word had ‘nigga’ in it. That’s all I’m–“
“But, you know, do you think maybe it just like, happen to have ‘nigga’ 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 “niggardly” in a new document. 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 fuck 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 pissing 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 dared anyone to snatch.
The headline said, “Investigators Have New Lead in Disappearance of Honor Student Baize Shephard.”
I typed “niggardly” 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 glass is way more than empty,” he said. “That’s all I’m saying. Sometimes the glass is way fuller than a motherfucker, even if you can’t see it. You better drink.”
Uncle Relle ran into Alcee Mayes’s trailer and left me in his van. I knew he was thinking I should be happy that millions of people around the world were looking at me and typing my name on the inter-net, but seeing my picture pop up when I googled “niggardly” broke my heart. I just couldn’t figure out how I had become the face of “niggardly” in fewer than three days. If I could have stayed at the library longer, I would have responded to every messed-up comment on YouTube and I would have typed my own response to the fake @MyNamelsCity Twitter feed someone made up.
Instead, I stayed in Uncle Relle’s van and continued reading Long Division, a book that, according to the internet at the Melahatchie local library, didn’t exist at all.
A few minutes after we walked into the house, Grandma pulled the screen door open and whispered something in Uncle Relle’s ear. Next thing I knew, I was in the bedroom and was told not to come out until she or Uncle Relle came to get me.
I pulled out Long Division and wrote in the first blank page I could find:
It was like she wasn’t even Grandma anymore. I never heard my grandma say “ma’am” to someone who was younger than her. And I heard that my grandma brought the Jheri not “Gary” curl to Melahatchie from Milwaukee back in the early ’80s. Now here she was acting like she couldn’t even pronounce “Jheri” right.
Under the revving of box fans and the hum of crickets, I heard about twenty minutes of loud cuss words coming from mashed-up voices. Slowly though, the yelling and cussing slid from the trailer park to the back of Grandma’s house, where the railroad tracks were. And after a while, there were no voices at all.
When Grandma finally came into the house two hours later, she made me sit on the toilet in the bathroom while she took a bath. The suds in the tub were brownish and pink from the dirt and blood on Grandma’s hands. I tried to only look at this little pinkish-brown moat of suds near the back of the tub the whole time she bathed, but I kept catching her long nipples out of the corner of my eye.
We didn’t say one word to each other until I asked her, “What happened today, Grandma?”
“Nothing, City. That man, he gone far away from here.”
“What man? Gone where?”
“Ain’t nothing in that work shed for you, you hear me?”
“Did somebody mess with you? ‘Cause I never seen you just…”
“That man is gone home, I reckon,” Grandma interrupted. “You got to be a special kind of evil to spend your whole life getting more than you deserve, then turn right around and hate on folks for getting half of what you was born into. Just evil.”
“Who is a special kind of evil?” I asked her.
“Listen.” She reached out of the bathtub and her hands touched my knee. “That man, that truck, this day, ain’t none of it even real as you think. Treat it like it never happened, you hear me? You are a smart child, an educated young man. You try to act grown in front of them cameras? Well, grown Black folks forget what they need to forget. That’s what grown Black folks do. Can you do that for Grandma?”
“Yeah, I can do that, Grandma, but you might want to ease up talking to me like this is fifth-grade special ed.”
Grandma’s eyes got to twitching. I looked at the ground, trying my hardest not to get whupped again. “Can you do what I asked you, City?”
“Yeah, Grandma.” | had no choice. “I can do what you asked me.”
“Okay,” Grandma said, and got out of the bathtub. She dried off while I looked at the floor. While she was looking at herself in the mirror, she said, “They always expecting us to forget. I’m tired of forgetting. You and that baby didn’t do nothing to nobody.”
I couldn’t completely understand how Grandma could go from telling me that grown folks forget what they need to saying she was tired of forgetting. I knew not to ask any more questions, but, in a way, it was all starting to make a little more sense.
TENDER BE TESTICLES.
(BOOK ONE, pages 91 – 102)
After all that weirdness with Grandma earlier, I just wanted to run down Old Morton Road and never stop until I was back in our garage in Jackson. Since I didn’t have either the wind or the guts to do that, I called my friend Shay and asked her to come over.
Shay was the junior queen of Melahatchie and raiser of way more hell than a little bit. She walked in Grandma’s yard wearing a pea-green muscle shirt and some Memphis Grizzlies shorts. Usually her Afro puffs were the same size, but today the left one was way bigger than the right.
“I don’t know what you was thinking,” she said, with a voice that came directly from her nose. “Nasal” actually isn’t the word for Shay’s voice. Shay’s nose was damn near wider than her lips, and it stayed clogged up so she only breathed through her mouth. Shay spoke fast, too, but it wasn’t like she said certain words fast. It was more that she moved from word to word fast. “I knew you was crazy,” she said, “but I ain’t know you was that crazy.”
“What you mean?”
“Wow!” she said. “On national TV, too? In front of all them dubs?” Shay called white folks “dubs.” which was short for “W’s.”
“Listen,” I tried to change subjects. “Have you ever heard of this book called Long Division? It’s about Melahatchie.”
“Quit changing subjects, boy,” she said. “If there was a book about Melahatchie, don’t you think I would have heard of it? Is it a book for dubs or a book for us?”
“Us, mostly,” I told her. “But it’s complicated. It’s a book for us and a few dubs, I guess. There’s this one boy and he’s in love with this girl named Shalaya Crump, and they travel through time and find this girl who lives in Melahatchie. The girl’s name is Baize.” Shay looked up at me. “Baize Shephard. You heard of it?”
Shay rolled her eyes at me and told me to shut my lying ass up without even opening her mouth. Every time I saw Shay, it was like seeing someone you haven’t seen in forever, and it was like seeing a star of a good show and it was like seeing someone you wanted to see every day. Shay never acted too excited to see me ever since I told her this secret when we were playing The Secret Game. The first time I had a wet dream, she was there–in the dream, I mean–and I told her that, and I also told her what we were doing with our hands and mouths.
We jumped the creek and went into this little path leading into the Magic Woods. After stomping through the woods and trying to dodge sticker bushes, we ended up in this dusty opening between pine trees and tree stumps. We were about fifty feet from the Melahatchie Community Center.
Shay walked deeper in the woods. “Keep talking,” she said. “I’m listening.” She wasn’t really listen-ing. I heard all kinds of sticks and leaves breaking before she came out with this huge stick. Right in the same spot where Shay found hers, I found the perfect stick. Not really perfect, but perfect if I was gonna be fighting her with the stick she had.
I was always scared to hit Shay’s stick hard unless she hit my hand or my stomach with her stick. Sometimes you could hold your stick out and the person you were playing against would swing wildly at yours and theirs would get stuck in the dusty-ass ground, or the soft mud if it had been raining. It would be stuck just long enough so you had the perfect angle to smash that joker. If you did that technique to Shay, she got so mad that she’d quit or catch fade with her praying-mantis technique.
“I didn’t know what else to do,” I told her.
“When?”
“At that contest.” I told her. “I swear I wanted to win it for all these people. Like vou and Kincaid and fat boys with waves like me, too.” She started laughing. “You laughing, but I’m serious. I wanted to win it for all of us.”
“You messed up before beginning, then,” she said. “You should’ve been trying to win it for you. We wanted you to win, but if you ain’t win, we would’ve been happy just ’cause you were in it. You didn’t have to shout out Melahatchie like that either. You made us look like scrubs.” She paused and looked like she was thinking of what to say. “I just feel as though you should’ve just sat down when you got it wrong. But whatever. That’s you. Come on and play, City,” she said. Shay hated if you held your stick away from hers. “Play, boy!”
“I am a playboy, ain’t I?”
“More like a gay boy,” she said and started laughing.
“Why you call me a gay boy? I ain’t gay.”
I swung my stick and tagged the mess out of hers, but it didn’t break.
My hand bones were vibrating. “Dang, I hit that mug hard, too.”
We were both happy as hell to see a stick that hard. It’s hard to explain. The stick was a monument in itself and we just stood there smiling in the stick’s direction for about fourteen seconds. Then, guess what I started thinking about? I started thinking about my mother. I wondered if she was in our garage missing me and if she had any clue what was happening in Melahatchie.
“Does this feel like dejà vu to you?”
Shay sucked on her teeth. “Boy,” she said, “Quit trying to switch subjects, talking about déjà vu. Naw, this don’t feel like déià vu.”
Shay started laughing and walked deeper behind some baby sticker bushes. “Come over here.”
“For what?”
Time slowed down, I swear it did. When Shay walked her Afro-puffed self over in front of me, the sun coming through the woods hit her face perfectly. She had the color and the shine of a brand-new genuine leather football. Shay rarely sweated, so the Vaseline all over her face and shoulders never dripped. It just stuck to her and made whatever was surrounding her look dull and blurry.
Shay took the pointing finger of her left hand, and joined it with her thumb, making the symbol that white folks on dumb television commercials used to say that everything is okay. Then she took her middle finger and her index finger of her right hand and pushed them in and out of the hole made by her left-hand fingers.
I wasn’t as scared as you probably think I was. I just didn’t know what to do. Shay walked over to me and grabbed my hips. “Stand right there and just put your back against the tree.”
“I can’t.” I told her. “My grandma ain’t in the mood for me to come back smelling like outside. I ain’t lying.” Shay just stood in front of me with her hands on her hips.
“Alright, City. Stop talking. Just put your arms behind your back and hold your body off from the tree. Okay?”
It was weird. My fatness wouldn’t let me hold myself up like I wanted to. Plus, my lower back and arms started aching, too. All I was thinking about was if Shay was gonna think my belly button was deformed. I had a regular innie-style belly button that she’d never seen, but from what I’d seen, all the kids in Melahatchie had walnut sized belly buttons.
Shay told me to take my pants off. I did it and let my pants hang around my ankles.
“What’s wrong?” I asked her as she was looking at my stuff.
“Nothing,” she said. “Nothing at all. Close your eyes.”
Sounded like a weird thing to say to someone, but I did it anyway.
“They closed?” she asked. “Don’t be peeking, boy. You a virgin?”
“I ain’t no virgin,” I told her with my eyes closed and my penis getting harder and harder. “I did it once with this girl named Octavia. We recorded it on her stepdaddy’s iPad. But look, I think we should probably get a condom from my uncle Relle if we really trying to get nice. You feel me? You don’t want to be pregnant in high school and I don’t even know how child support works if I have a baby mama before I’m technically even allowed to work. Maybe we should think about this.”
“I can pay my own bills,” I heard Shay say before I heard the sound of a camera phone and..
Swinnnchhhh.
The pain in my testicles moved through my lower body and into my chest and head. I couldn’t talk. I was on my hands and knees, just fiending for air. I looked up to see what had happened. A blurry Shay had grabbed her broken-off piece of tree and recorded herself whipping me in my naked testicles.
I just crouched over the leaves, damn near choking as Shay took pictures of me. She was dying laughing, too.
I got off my knees, pulled my pants up, grabbed Shay’s shoulders, threw her to the pine-needled ground, and jumped on her. Her phone fell out of her hands. I felt crazy being on top of her like that. I mean, I thought about how no one had probably ever had the nerve or the skills to push Shay down like that.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” I asked her. “You can’t just go around whupping people in they sack whenever you get ready.” I was still all in her eyes. “You know how tender the testicles be? That stuff hurt.” | felt goofy saying “testicles” and “tender” to her.
“It’s called ‘skin-sacks,'” Shay told me. “And it’s all one word, with a hyphen.”
“Wait.” | started laughing. “What? That’s the dumbest thing I heard in a long time. ‘Skin-sacks’? Who said it’s called ‘skin-sacks,’ with a hyphen?”
“My brother, Alcee. He said it’s two sacks and it’s covered in skin, so it’s skin-sacks.”
“But the skin is the sack,” I told her. “And there ain’t two sacks. There’s two nuts in one sack.”
“My brother said it’s called ‘skin-sacks,’ so it’s called ‘skin-sacks.' ”
“Well, first of all,” I told her, “Alcee Mayes is my uncle Relle’s weed man and my uncle said he’s steady overcharging him for an ounce, so I don’t believe nothing Alcee Mayes say.”
When I had her down on the ground and was yelling at her, that was the first time I noticed that Shay had on that little pea-green muscle shirt, so I could see the little hairs under her arms. I had negative hair under my arms, not even minor hair bumps. I was looking in her big eyes and squeezing on her shoulders softly, and I’ll be damned if my penis didn’t start getting harder and harder. It made me too embarrassed, so I gave her one more good push in the shoulders and I got off her.
“My bad, City.”
“What?” I asked.
“My bad. I wasn’t trying to hurt you. Me and Baize made a bet about who could make a boy do that first. I won’t show the pictures to no one but her,” she said. “I promise.”
“Where you think she went? Baize, I’m talking about. The newspaper said they got a lead in the investigation.”
Shay picked up some pine needles and walked toward the road. “The paper don’t know shit!” she yelled and came back toward me.
“Maybe something else happened to her.”
“You met Baize before, City.” Shay looked me right in the face. “Whoever took Baize either hurt her or killed her before they took her. Or maybe they knew.”
“Knew what?”
“Never mind. You think that girl would let somebody just take her? We would’ve heard about it.”
“Wait,” I told her. The craziest thought in the world entered my head. “You think that white man knew whatever it is you talking about? You think he took Baize?”
“You mean the one in your grandma’s shed?” Shay asked me. “Probably. Or you know what? That girl could be around here just trying to get her mind right.”
“Ain’t no white man in my grandma shed,” I told her. “How you know about a white man in my grandma shed?”
“Wow.” she said. “You worse than Rick James. Is it a white man off in there or not? Folks say they saw Baize walk off in these woods one day a few weeks ago with a computer.”
“A computer?”
“That laptop computer she always be messing with.”
“Did anyone find the computer?”
“The white man in your shed.” Shay changed the subject. “Didn’t he kick you in your back yesterday?”
“Wait. Can we talk more about Baize?”
I was expecting a little more quality heartfelt sharing between us, but Shay walked off toward the bushes again. “Where you going?” I asked.
“Kincaid told me that your grandma’s preacher, Reverend Cherry, got a carload of pictures of skanks from Waveland doing it.”
“So?”
“So, that’s where I’m going. He hid the pictures in his beat-up car, the one he always letting Deacon Big Shank drive,” Shay said.
I thought for a second about what would be the point of stealing naked pictures that belonged to my grandma’s preacher, especially with a girl who had just hit me in my skin-sacks with a stick.
Then it clicked.
If I stole the pictures and showed them to Grandma, there would be no way she’d let me get baptized by a preacher who kept that kind of nastiness in one of his cars.
“Can we take a picture of the pictures in the car with your phone?” | asked her.
“Yeah,” she said, and came back from around the bushes. “Don’t ask a whole lotta questions, though. You coming or not?”
Shay started texting someone as we walked toward Reverend Cherry’s house.
Reverend Cherry lived about three minutes from Grandma’s, on the other side of the woods. He lived right next to my friend Kincaid.
“Hey, scown,” Kincaid said to me as we walked in the yard. “What you doing?” Kincaid was fourteen, but his deep voice made him sound a good four or five years older. “Heard you went crazy yesterday.”
“I did, kinda.”
“They say it’s on WorldStar and everything. Heard you had fools calling you master, and the Shogun of Jackson.”
“Yeah, I guess,” I told him. “Sometimes you gotta let fools know, you feel me?”
Shay looked at me and shook her head. She was being strange and quiet but Kincaid was steady nodding and chewing on a toothpick. The best thing about Kincaid was that even if he heard you did something huge like embarrass yourself on national TV and the internet, he’d focus on the fighting you did instead. He loved saying the word “titties” and he loved anything that had to do with fighting. He’d been telling people he was going to be a professional UFC fighter ever since he was six. It was funny at first, but most folks in Melahatchie would be surprised if he didn’t end up fighting for money. He’d beaten almost every boy’s ass I knew in Melahatchie. Everybody he beat claimed that they lost ’cause they didn’t want to “get close to no real-life f-word.”
Kincaid’s grandma put him in a kung fu class downtown for his twelfth birthday present. Coach Stroud taught that kung fu class for a while until parents complained that he was too touchy. Soon as Coach Stroud quit, Kincaid quit, too. He said he quit because he wanted to chop people in the throat and throw ninja stars, but the new white teacher from Biloxi wanted folks to stretch their legs in yoga poses and work on soft punches to the solar plexus. Behind Kincaid’s back, everyone said he quit because his boyfriend, Coach Stroud, didn’t want him learning from a new teacher.
Before he quit, though, Coach Stroud gave Kincaid one of those white karate suits. And Kincaid wore that suit with his own black leather belt at least three times a week during the summer.
“Y’all came to get them titties, scown?” Kincaid asked, like he was ready for nakedness. “The car right over here.”
We walked about twenty yards down the road and we were right next to the car. Kincaid was looking funny, like he was laughing or something.
“What you laughing at, Kincaid?” I asked him.
“You know I always be laughing, scown,” Kincaid said. “Go ahead and get them Waveland titties.”
“Y’all ain’t coming with me?” I asked them.
“Naw, that’s your preacher’s car, scown,” Kincaid said. “Plus, ain’t no room for three people up in there.”
I went up to the car and looked around to make sure that no one was coming down the road then. “Close the door behind you, scown,” I heard Kincaid say.
Soon as I got in, I saw a picture hanging out of the glove compartment. Shay didn’t tell me that there were pictures in the glove compartment. I figured that if what was under the seat was anything like what I saw in the glove compartment, we were in for the freakiest naked pictures we’d ever seen.
Dangling there was a shiny, slick picture with a creased breast down the middle of it. I unfolded it and saw this whole dark breast that was full and hanging. The picture cut the woman off at the neck and the waist but the breast hung just right, midway down her stomach, and the dark part around the nipple-I didn’t really know what that part was called- was damn near bigger than my cheeks. It was the first time I’d seen just breasts cut off from a woman’s face and even though the breasts were nice, it was wack to just see breasts and no face. But that was the first time I realized that seeing breasts of any kind was like eating pancakes. Even the nastiest pancake in the world was always better than the best stack of toast you could imagine. Still, I hoped the woman who owned the breasts wanted her head cut off from the picture. If not, it was one of the meanest things I could imagine doing to someone.
“I see titties,” I yelled. “Waveland titties ain’t no joke.”
“Go ahead and bring them Waveland titties out then, scown,” Kincaid yelled from way across the street. “Check the glove compartment and under all the seats too. Get all the titties you can.”
I reached under the seat to see if there were any other pictures under there. There were about five issues of King magazine.
“Shay,” I yelled and peeked over the dashboard. “Bring me your phone.”
“Oh. Shay said she gon’ be right back,” Kincaid yelled from way across the street. “She gone! Go ahead and get all them titties, scown.”
“I told you I’m getting the titties, man. Damn,” I yelled back. “I don’t know why you faking like you love some titties anyway,” I said under my breath.
I was about to raise up when I heard a weird noise coming from the glove compartment. I hadn’t looked all the way in the compartment, but I hoped there would be at least ten more naked pictures up in there. I stretched out and pulled the compartment open with my right hand. All I saw was a map of Melahatchie. I pushed the map to the side to see what else was in there.
Wasps. Big wasps.
I jumped out the window of the passenger side of the car and the wasps stung me all upside the head.
Kincaid was across the street just laughing his ass off, recording it on Shay’s cell phone.
I did it for y’all, I thought as I ran home. I did it all for y’all.
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It’s totally worth stopping to appreciate the way the author uses language in this paragraph ‘cause they’re painting a vivid picture of the narrator’s experience. They conjure up images of feeling weird and uncomfortable as soon as he steps off the Greyhound bus and gives us insight into why the narrator is feeling like he’s in a “video game.” The metaphorical language used to describe his emotional reaction to being in a new place gives us a better understanding of how he’s feeling and what his situation is. For example, they write, “That Long Division book had me feeling weird, new weird, like I was a character in a book or video game and someone was writing or controlling all the craziness around me.” That sentence does a great job of putting us in his shoes and helping us understand his perspective.
To get immersed in the words, try re-reading the paragraph and imagining that you are the one feeling these same feelings of being in a different environment with different people and different surroundings. Think about how it would feel to be in the Grandmother’s arms but still feeling strange and out of place. Think about why you would be so confused and surprised when your Grandmother code-switches and how his situation would be different to someone else’s who is a lot more familiar with the new culture and environment. Ask yourself why being in a new place can be so disorientating and how it can cause us to feel out of control and insignificant.
By exploring the text more deeply and allowing yourself to go beyond the words and think about what it means for you, you can develop a deeper understanding of how it feels to experience the unfamiliar and the importance of cherishing relationships in times of difficulty.
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Main Character Syndrome is an unofficial mental condition in which a person identifies themselves as the protagonist in their own life story, the language here connects to that very condition.
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The language used here has a connection
to the unofficial mental disorder known as
“Main Character Syndrome,” in which a
person views themselves as the main
character in their own life tale.
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The more I read the book the more I realize that its themes and insights are highly relevant to modern-day times. The book serves as a powerful reminder of the ongoing struggles faced by marginalized communities and the importance of listening to and amplifying diverse voices.
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Though this may seem as a main character syndrome I still kinda get the feeling that this is what he just actually feels like and that it may not be main character syndrome.
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I don’t know why, but I just now realized the City is actually chubby. At first, I thought Lavander was just calling him fat to be a troll.
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I also did not know that he was more on the heavy side, I thought Lavender was just over exaggerating
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I do not know the connection between a grandparent and their grandchildren, but throughout my experience of having grandparents it seems that there is an unspoken, and unconditional love present, no matter what they do.
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Off the bat, you can clearly tell City’s grandmother has so much love for City. In the previous chapter, City believed that he had disappointed his grandmother worse than everyone else, and his grandmother’s friends at church would apologize on his behalf. However, when meeting with his grandmother, she shows empathy and support for her grandchild.
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Some places will always have a certain feeling/emotion attached to it and that feeling brings him closer to his grandma
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I think this whole paragraph acknowledges City’s thoughts and emotions toward staying with his grandma. I’ve noticed throughout this chapter that he tends to reminisce about things that happened in the past here. This reflects family history because he shows his tie to Melahatchie.
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I think the reason behind him feeling younger was because of the comfort Melahatchie brought. This is similar to what I feel like when I’m back in Eritrea ( my mother land).
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Kiese uses family history to build around the fact that City’s Grandma loves her child so much that she can’t see City past the age of 5-14. What this tells us beneath the surface is that Grandma had to take care of City back when he was so young, building that connection between them.
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This a connection I can make to my own grandparents because this is exactly how I feel when I’m with them. It’s like you never grew up for them and they still see you as their little baby. It’s funny but so heartwarming at the same time because you feel really loved and cared for.
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Kiese cites family history to support the idea that City’s grandmother is so devoted to her grandson that she won’t let him to grow older than five to fourteen. Under the surface, this indicates that Grandma had to look after City when he was a young child, forging their relationship.
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A lot of the things that he says are questionable and you have to really think deeply into what he says so you know the intent of what he is saying
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Why is he thinking like this?
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I realized that City has a tendency to say some very questionable things. He’s almost always aware of what he says, but still says it anyway.
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This sentence is important because it conveys how the narrator holds his grandmother in high regard. He not only admires her physical stature, but also the qualities of her character that make her stand out and be the person he loves. By using the terms “thickest” and “finest” along with the references to the four states conveys to the readers, the narrator’s appreciation for his grandmother.
Background information is needed to understand the text more deeply including the history of the region and the role of grandmothers in a traditional southern family. Additionally, readers need to understand the importance of an automobile to the narrator’s family and the significance of situations such as “stuff” being thrown into the back of his grandmother’s Bonneville.
Rereading this text and reflecting on it will allow the reader to further understand the narrator and the emotions surrounding this moment. Pay particular attention to how his admiration and love for his grandmother portrays a larger idea of southern culture and the warmth and appreciation that families can share.
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Most readers would marvel at City’s affection for Grandma and the connection he seems to feel: for the text implies that he regards her with admiration and reverence, as well as intense love and gratitude. He clearly values her deeply, as a motherly figure and a source of guidance. This emphasizes the theme of the importance of showing affection and appreciation for our elders, who have so much to offer in love, support, and life experience. We should invite other readers to re-read the text and take notice of the immense love that City has for his Grandma, and the importance of our elders in our lives, as this is a powerful and universal message that the writer has beautifully portrayed.
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I discovered that City frequently says things that are quite dubious. He almost always thinks before he speaks, but he still speaks regardless
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This is too funny because why would he ever make this observation clear, lol.
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WHATT, LOL. City going into detail about how some people look is just so crazy and I would say unnecessary to specify.
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At the same time, we should be wary of how the people are portrayed in this text. Rather than simply being accepted as people with different appearances, they could be objectified and engaging in wrongly placed stereotypes.
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This is very unnecessary I don’t understand why he had to talk about his mom like that, and making fun of her nose is crazy. He’s saying some weird things like why is he talking about his grandma being thick?
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It makes me feel uneasy because that could just be his family dynamic and I don’t want to pry into it.
We need to consider how this text is affecting our understanding of the situation. What assumptions, if any, are we making about his family and what kind of relationship he has with them? How could we express our feelings or opinions in a way that is respectful, yet honest?
Let me know what you think and if you have any ideas to further our discussion.
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What does he mean by his grandma being thick but not thick at the same time?
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It’s sad but funny how City described his own mother, and compared her to her white counterparts. I feel like if she heard that she would take offense that her son says she lacks black features.
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why does he focus on people’s appearance so much? Is it supposed to mean something or is he just trying to compare how beautiful his grandma is to other people?
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He lowkey ate his mom up because of how thin her lips are and compared it to white people. Outrageous 😭.
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This is actually very funny. Made me chuckle.
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the compare between his mom lips and white people is wild, kinda funny too.
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City’s lamenting on mom not looking on as good as her mother adopts a common issue in overall class system of beauty standards today in America. Women of beauty should obviously pass down their beauty to their children. When it doesn’t happen, it is often frowned upon, such as the case with what City is doing here. The role of Gender Identity as a theme here is presented in the prospect that Women should look just as beautiful as their predecessor.
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Laymon uses City’s experiences and observations to comment on the intersection of gender and race, and the ways in which society often marginalizes individuals who do not conform to traditional norms of masculinity and heterosexuality.
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City is humorously comparing his mother’s lips to that of white people and making the assumptions that it’s odd that his mom didn’t come out as attractive as he thinks his grandma is.
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I think this is an example of gender in this book because of how city points out “womanly” traits that his gramma is showing.
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City’s complaining that her mother does not look as lovely as her mother has become a regular problem in America’s current class system of beauty standards. Obviously, beautiful women should pass on their attractiveness to their offspring. When it doesn’t, it is frequently looked down upon, which is the case with what City is doing in this instance.
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I like the comparison between City and his grandmother. I can interpret that both him and his grandmother are outspoken and speak for themselves.
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She’d done so much to get there – hustling for tips, dodging around the practical details of providing for her kids – and I had so much admiration for her courage and will. She was confident that if she could just trust her instincts, no matter how hard the stakes, she could get through it. That never-ending cycle of fear and faith drove her to do something different up there.
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I love how he compares things in order for the reader to understand how she sounds at the moment
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My mother frequently tells me not to be nasty or judgmental towards those who cook our meals because they have the capacity to tamper with the food, so I can connect to City’s grandmother’s method.
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I think that this was really relatable because when it comes to my food I try not to get smart even if they are disrespectful because I’m scared that they will put anything in my food
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I understand City’s grandma for this because my mom always says this to me. She doesn’t say mean thins to the person who makes the food because they could do something to the food. This sentence has satire to it.
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What is City’s grandmom trying to tell him? Is she warning him about something?
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What message is City’s grandmother trying to convey?
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What is his grandmom attempting to tell him?
Does she have a message for him?
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is this part foreshadowing what meant happen later on as he stays with his grandmother.
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City’s grandma seems very supportive and protective of him.
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A Grandmother, typically in their 50’s-70’s is working 3 jobs serving other people? I think what Laymon is trying to communicate with this brief description is that “the work never stops.” This goes in tandem with the role of class and race. An assumingly low-class women is forced to work 3 other jobs to keep her afloat. Alternatively, the “three white families” rubbed me the wrong way. I think why Laymon elaborated on that is some sort of small connection to slavery.
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This sentence is important because it describes the environment and setting of the text; it sets the stage for what is to come. The specific details of the car provide the background information that the text is taking place in an urban setting.
“Grandma was in for a show”
This sentence is important because it foreshadows the events to come, piquing the reader’s curiosity. It implies that the reader is about to witness something dramatic, which allows the reader to better contextualize and understand the text.
“Rims spinning, they stayed motionless as the beat began to roll, a solid four to the floor "
This sentence is important because it establishes the basis for what will follow; it is an introduction to the lyrical content of the text and provides an audio backdrop for the story.
Finally, the following sentence captures the essence of the text:
“The street lit up with life and fire”
This sentence is important because it encapsulates the vibrancy of the setting; it conveys that the street has come alive and is full of energy.
These quotes from the text demonstrate the importance of understanding the urban environment in which it is set. By understanding this setting and the musical backdrop, it will enable the reader to appreciate the energy of the text and gain insight into what is taking place.
Take a second look at the text and see what else you can find. Look for the details, the life and fire that bring the street to life!
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See what else this text has to offer.
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Is this might be to taken literally because if I’m reading it correctly it quite funny.
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It’s written as a joke but has truth behind it
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This sentence implies that no matter how hard you try to hide from it, your actions will always come to the surface and you will be held accountable for them. It’s a reminder to be mindful of what you do, as any misdeeds or injustices you commit may come back to haunt you.
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This sentence is important to this paragraph because it alludes to the consequences and repercussions of what we do in secret coming to the surface eventually.
“Don’t let your hand touch the one who is already hurt when they need help” This sentence calls attention to how we must be mindful when helping those in need. We must take care to not make their situation worse in our attempt to help.
“Justice for those taken advantage of must be fought for” is a reminder that those who are taken advantage of or oppressed often don’t have resources to protect themselves. It’s important that justice is achieved and those who are taken advantage of can be protected.
“Be a truly brave warrior on the frontline of right and wrong” serves as a call to action. We must stand up for those who can’t stand up for themselves and fight for our own sense of justice. We must be brave and recognize when we must fight for the right thing.
Overall, the text is an important reminder that power dynamics can create situations of oppression and mistreatment. It calls attention to the privileges we have and encourages us to take action to help those in need and to ensure justice is achieved.
To gain a more in depth understanding of this text, re-read it and consider the implications of the message. Reflect on the actions that can be taken to ensure justice and to support those who are oppressed and taken advantage of.
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This anecdote demonstrates a distrust of people living in poverty, and unfortunately reflects a certain attitude that pervades American culture, which is that poverty is mostly a matter of personal irresponsibility or lack of effort. This attitude can have long-term negative consequences that lead to poverty continuing to be seen as something people deserve, instead of something that people should be able to rise out of.
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In this setting, Laymon uses humor to
critique the usual American low-income
communities and their casual tendency to
take anything that might be useful to them.
If this phrase were to be understood more
deeply, it might also suggest that America’s
most vulnerable individuals are forced to
steal because the country has failed them
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This, in my opinion, accurately describes black culture. showing the connection between the products that young Black people use. Like the brush, which refers to the waves that have become popular among black or colored people and involve black kids carrying around brushes wherever they go.
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Laymon utilizes satire in this context to criticize the typical low-income communities of America and their nonchalant nature to steal anything that could be of use of to them. In deeper understanding of this quote, it could also describe how America has failed its most disadvantaged citizens and thus they have to resort to stealing.
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This quote blends humor with the sad reality of the discrimination that black people must endure everywhere they go, including being accused of stealing or being watched because they might pose a threat.
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I created this image based off the grandmother shopping in Walmart with City.
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The phrase is a common southern phrase used to indicate agreement, often with a hint of warmth and familiarity. It is used to express shared understanding and connection throughout the South. The phrase is important for understanding the tone of the conversation between the women, conveying the respect and familiarity between them.
The phrase “Good mornin’” is also used to show a common pleasantness. This phrase is often used to express a positive connection between the people involved in the conversation. Understanding this phrase is also important for accurately understanding the tone of the conversation.
Finally, the phrase “Might I” is an old-fashioned form of politeness and politeness that is often seen throughout Southern literature. This form of politeness denotes an underlying respect and care between the people involved in the conversation.
All three of these phrases illustrate the tone of the conversation between the two women and provide valuable context that would be important to understand in order to better understand the text.
To further understand this text, it is important to know the cultural and historical context in which it is set. Knowing the social conventions of Southern culture can help to understand why the women are talking in this particular way, as well as to appreciate the nuances of the interactions between them.
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Take a closer look at the text and see if you can uncover any more details that could add to your understanding. Cast your gaze over the text to uncover any more of the subtleties of the conversation between the two women. What else can you discover? Share your findings in the comments!
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Taking note of Grandma’s change of attitude in front of white woman. City’s introspection suggests that Grandma is cautious around her white counterparts and is willing to be subservient in demeanor to get by without hassles.
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As City reflects on his observation of his grandma’s attitude shift in front of the white woman, he notices a certain wariness and caution in her demeanor. It seems that Grandma is aware of the power dynamics at play in the situation and is taking steps to avoid any potential incidents. She may feel the need to act subserviently in the presence of her white colleagues in order to navigate the situation safely. This shift in behavior highlights the ongoing impact of systemic racism and the pressures faced by marginalized communities in navigating unequal power structures.
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I think that his grandma’s attitude is either because she was worried about the way white people would react which is why she told him to keep his brush in the car just to avoid any incident. Or it could possibly be that she’s proud of him and doesn’t want him to feel guilty or bad for standing up for himself but I think the change in grandma’s behavior is a result of what happened on TV.
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Grandma City’s attitude has changed, and she now insists on being cautious among white people and avoiding any type of conflict.
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This is a form of “code-switching” when someone of a certain race switches how they talk or act to appease another race or feel like they fit in
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This demonstrates how Grandma was forced to modify the way she interacted with white people, almost as if they held authority over her. I believe Grandma changed the way she spoke to the white woman because of what she might have said if she had continued to use her regular voice, which could have put them in danger.
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is also a term called code-switching many of us do rather when we are talking to different classes of people
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We might ask ourselves why the grandmother is acting this way—are gender roles and expectations playing a role in her behaviour? Is she trying to maintain certain gender norms, or is she afraid of the consequences of breaking them? What other factors might be at play here? Let’s reread the text and look at it through a Gender/Feminist Critical Lens to further explore these questions and gain a better understanding of how gender roles and expectations are influencing the grandmother’s behaviour.
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We need to consider how this text reinforces or undermines stereotypes relating to gender roles, objectification, and differences. How does the author’s description of Grandma’s behavior reflect society’s expectations of femininity and respectability? Is the objectification of Grandma present in the text, and if so, how does it impact our understanding of gender in this story? Alternatively, does this text challenge those stereotypes in any way? Let’s re-read the text and look more closely at Grandma’s experience in order to discuss and unpack these questions.
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We might wonder why the grandma is not so confident when talking to the woman in the text. Is it because she views the woman differently due to her race? Is it because Grandma feels like she needs to downplay her intelligence and accomplishments to fit into how the woman might view her? Could it be because the woman is a representation of male authority, and Grandma feels intimidated? To an outsider, it could be easy to make assumptions why Grandma is behaving this way, however, it is important to dig deeper and examine the text from a gender/feminist perspective to better understand the nuances of the text and the power dynamics at play. Does Grandma feel that by talking to this woman, she has to prove her worth and how she fits into the gender/social roles in society? How does Grandma’s behavior reinforce or challenge traditional definitions of femininity and masculinity? In what ways does Grandma’s behavior reflect what is expected of her as a woman? Let us reread the text and consider these questions to further uncover the gender roles and dynamics in the text.
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It seems like the text we are looking at is challenging stereotypes of both men and women and questioning the way different genders – specifically, Grandma and the white woman – interact with each other and with the language they use. We can ask ourselves why Grandma felt the need to change her tone and attitude while talking in front of the white woman – why would Grandma feel the need to act differently depending on her audience? What might this say about our society’s expectations and assumptions of different genders interacting with each other? We can also look at the knowledge Grandma has about the Jheri curl, examining whether it is a sign of her wisdom or objectification. Are we seeing an example of difference being celebrated and respected, or are we seeing an example of a power struggle between genders? How is this language and interaction reinforcing or reshaping our understanding of gender roles and stereotypes?
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We might wonder: How did the presence of this white woman affect Grandma’s self-expression and sense of worth? What has been Grandma’s relationship with white people in the past, and how did it shape how she responded in this situation? Does the narrator understand the power dynamics of this scene, and what are they? In what ways does the text explore societal ideas and gender roles? How are gender and racial identity intertwined within this text?
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We can ask why Grandma called a woman who was younger than her “ma’am,” and use this as a starting point for understanding gender roles and power dynamics in this text. By understanding the difference between Grandma’s behavior towards other women of her age from younger women, we can explore how gender stereotypes, objectification, and language shape how people present themselves and interact with each other. Let’s reread this text and explore how Grandma’s interactions with the white woman challenge or reinforce definitions of masculinity/femininity.
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From a Social Power/Marxist perspective, let’s break down the text to better understand it. It seems to be suggesting an idea of a class difference between Grandma and the white woman by the way Grandma suddenly shifts her speech, behaviour, and even her posture when the woman is present. We could ask ourselves: How are class and power differences being expressed in this text? How does Grandma’s tone of voice and body language reflect her opinion of the woman and her ideas of respect? How do the characters’ class backgrounds, and their comparisons to each other, inform their interactions? Can this text be seen as an example of how language can be used to express social power and identity? Finally, how has the author structured the text to address or reinforce class conflict?
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We might interpret Grandma’s use of the word ’ma’am’ as a sign of respect towards the younger woman but also recognizing the power dynamics in the situation. Grandma’s use of ’ma’am’ could be a way for her to show deference to the unequal power dynamics, even if the younger woman likely was not familiar with what ’ma’am’ means. From a Social Power/Marxist perspective, this text suggests that there is a clear class struggle and power imbalances between the white woman and Grandma. The language and behavior used by both characters reflects the class struggle between them, as Grandma is forced to act a certain way due to the power the white woman has over her. How does this text illustrate the use of language as a way of exercising power amongst different social classes? How does Grandma’s attitude towards the power imbalance relate to the traditional view of class dynamics between the white woman and Grandma? How does the different economic background of the characters influence their behavior in the text? Please reread this text with the Social Power/Marxist Critical Lens in mind, and write a response to these questions.
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Non credevo che la nonna stesse parlando in quel modo di fronte a quella signora. La sua voce, il suo corpo, tutto si era rimpicciolito. Era come se non fosse nemmeno più la nonna. Non avevo mai sentito la nonna dire “signora” a qualcuno più giovane di lei. La voce diceva che la nonna aveva portato il Jheri (non “Gary”) curl a Melahatchie da Milwaukee all’inizio degli anni ’80. Ora stava recitando come se non riuscisse nemmeno a pronunciarlo bene, tutto solo perché stava parlando di fronte a una bizzarra donna bianca che non poteva nemmeno pronunciare “così” e “fare”.
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We’ve got to ask why Grandma is acting so subservient to the woman who is younger and speaking a different language. What is being said about the power dynamics in this text? Why does the author draw attention to the language barrier between the two characters, and can it be viewed through a gender lens? How does the author use the description of the Jheri (not “Gary”) curl to enforce the gender roles in the story? Why is Grandma so compliant to this “weird-looking” white woman and what can we learn from that? Let’s reread the text and explore these questions in our reply.
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I feel like every black person can relate to both, city and his grandmom. To most of us code switching comes natural.No one really had to “teach” us. It was just something we knew how to do and when to do it. When Citys grandmom was talk to the white lady,city noticed that she was talking funny or “shrunk.” I think that that speaks a lot of volume to how society is. Some people feel that they have to become a different person or “shrink” themselves to be respected or to not be seen as a threat.
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This part in the story shows how the grandma was compelled to change her interactions with white people, as if they were in charge of her. Grandma may have put them in danger if she had continued to speak to the white woman in her normal voice.
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This sentence suggests that the narrator is surprised and confused by the change of behavior in the grandmother and implies that her behavior was out of character. This could suggest that the grandmother has been through some kind of trauma or experience, and this unfamiliar behavior indicates a shift in her attitude.
The narrator mentions the grandmother “brought the Jheri (not “Gary”) curl to Melahatchie from Milwaukee back in the early ’80s”. Jheri curls are a hairstyle that was popular in the 1980s among African-American women, including in Milwaukee. This suggests that the grandmother is knowledgeable about and familiar with the fashion of the time, and her familiarity is further evidence of her normality prior to the change.
The narrator also notes that the grandmother is pronouncing Jheri incorrectly – with an ‘h’. This implies that the grandmother may not be fully aware of the situation, and has replaced the word with one more similar to how it may have originally been pronounced.
The narrator implies that the situation is strange and confusing, and invites the reader to observe the events for themselves and ponder the meaning behind the grandmother’s change in behavior. Re-reading the text may provide a greater understanding of the events and pull at questions concerning why the grandmother is acting in such a way, and what kind of experience could have caused such a drastic change.
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City’s grandmom’s attitude change insists that she tries to be careful around white people to ignore any sort of confrontation
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City observes that Grandma’s behavior towards white people has become more cautious, and she actively tries to avoid any kind of conflict with them. This shift in attitude could be due to her past experiences or the societal norms of the time, but it is clear that Grandma is trying to navigate a complex social landscape to protect herself and her family. City may not fully understand the reasons behind his grandmother’s actions, but he recognizes the importance of being aware of these dynamics when interacting with people from different backgrounds.
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I think that this is a good example of code-switching and City witnesses what it is first hand. On most occasions, in the black community code switching is a tool used to make communicating with people outside of their culture easier and safer. Code switching especially during his grandmother’s younger days was an important survival tactic used so black people could better blend into the world around them.
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I wonder if there is a reason to why the grandma approach white people with such caution or tries to not get involved with them.
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Who is Tom Henry?
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Who is Tom?
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It’s interesting how the sentence uses Tom Henry’s red eyes to emphasize his emotional state and how he might perceive the situation. This sentence also highlights the power of media and how it can shape perceptions and influence people’s behavior. It raises questions about the relationship between the person raising hell and Tom Henry, and what kind of impact their behavior might have on others.
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Furthermore, this sentence suggests that the emotional response Tom Henry had was one of alarm, apprehension, and unease.
Background knowledge that would be important for understanding this text include an understanding of media’s influence, the power of emotion in making decisions, the effects of others’ behavior, and the complexities of relationships. With these points in mind, re-read the text to explore on a deeper level the implications of what the sentence says and any other elements that might be implied.
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The line “acting like a demon and destroying something before Grandma intervened” invoked a sense of senseless destruction. A Drunken rage is just like that, acting demonically honest and destroying things while you’re at it.
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connects to trauma and thoughts of someone else
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It seems that city grandmom is always telling him stories about his grandfather. But from reading this I’m getting that city didn’t know him? But I’m not sure let me keep reading.
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I wonder who Tom Henry is and if his character has anything significance to City or any of his ancestors? And what is the importance of the stuffed monkey? I find it odd that two grown men are in the woods together carrying around a stuffed animal?
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The speaker anticipates the retrieval of the stuffed monkey, as it is implied that someone is going to walk off into the woods across the road from the house to get it. The use of informal language and slang, such as “damn” and “’bout to,” adds a sense of familiarity and authenticity to the narrative.
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By having the speaker’s story end with the reclamation of the stuffed monkey, the reader is left with a sense of hope and fulfillment.
This text narrates a story of a speaker reminiscing on a fond memory of retrieving a beloved stuffed monkey from the woods as a child. This story is likely set in a rural area, referenced as the “woods across the road from the house,” describing a typical neighborhood dynamic for many rural dwellers. The speaker’s emotions towards the event are empathetic as they refer to the monkey as their “beloved” stuffed toy and recall it with fondness.
Sentence 1: “I was about to go into those woods and get my beloved stuffed monkey back.”
This sentence is significant as it is the trigger of the speaker’s nostalgic narrative. It implies the speaker’s commitment to reclaim the lost toy, giving the reader a sense of hope and assurance.
Sentence 2: “Damn it had been so long since I had seen it.”
This sentence is important as it adds anticipation to the story, as the time spent apart from the toy has been lengthy. It also reveals the speaker’s emotions towards the toy, and serves to illustrate the sense of loss felt in its absence.
Sentence 3: “My heart was pounding as I walked through those thick trees.”
This sentence serves to add a sense of suspense to the story. It paints a vivid image of the speaker walking through the woods, allowing the reader to visualize the event. It also portrays the lasting emotional connection between the speaker and the toy.
Sentence 4: “Finally there it was, my stuffed monkey, I had found it.”
This sentence is important as it ties the story together and provides a sense of completion for the reader. After the anticipation of the speaker to retrieve the toy, the reader experiences a sense of joy and satisfaction through this revelation.
The background information that is important for understanding this text more deeply is the setting of the story. It appears to be set in a rural area, where one is able to stand facing a house and an adjacent dense forest. Further, the diction used reinforces the example of rural living; language such as “damn” and ”’bout to" is utilized to give the narrative a sense of familiarity and authenticity.
Now that you have the background knowledge, revisit the text to add any more that you see within it. What further insights can you gain from the narrative?
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The speaker conceals the truth about the fake monkey to avoid potential conflict with Cherry and Shank, which suggests a desire for self-preservation and a reluctance to get involved in drama.
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I wonder what is the significance of the monkey to Tom Henry. And why did he take it into the woods?
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I think this identifies some similarities between City and his grandma. This realizations helps us understand his relationship with her and what they have in common.
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1. “It was like we both had to deal with everyone but each other.” – This sentence reveals how City and his grandma are similar in that they both know how to handle people but have difficulty interacting with one another.
2. “We had something to talk about but it mostly wasn’t about us.” – This sentence paints a picture of how City and his grandma can talk, but the topics of their conversation don’t involve their personal lives.
3. “We both smiled, but somehow it didn’t transfer.” – This sentence shows how City and his grandma share a feeling of contentment, but doesn’t quite reach its full potential when expressed between them.
In order to understand this text more deeply, the background knowledge important to note is the relationship between City and his grandmother. City and his grandmother have a strong bond, but it is often filled with underlying tensions and a distance that keeps them from expressing their true feelings. They are both mature adults, with an understanding of how to handle people and how to interact in conversations, but something keeps them from engaging with each other. This text reflects the struggles City may be having in trying to express his feelings with his grandmother.
Finally, I invite you to re-read the text and to consider any additional points or questions that come up as you revisit it. Are there any other examples of similarities between City and his grandmother? What else does this text tell us about their relationship?
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This connects to my previous comment about city noticing his grandmom’s code-switching
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The speaker challenges stereotypes by suggesting that storytelling can transcend race and cultural barriers, reminding us that sharing our experiences can help challenge biases perpetuated by mainstream media.
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As a kid you hear so many different stories from elders. Some may be a lie, but they get defensive when you call them out on it.
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As a child, it’s common to be told stories by elders about their experiences and adventures. While some of these stories may be true, others may be exaggerated or even completely fabricated. However, when you try to challenge the validity of their stories, you may find that they become defensive and protective of their tales. It can be challenging to navigate these situations, as you want to show respect for your elders while also maintaining a healthy skepticism towards the stories they tell.
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I like the way his grandma responds to his weird question, I think that he’s trying to get comfortable with the thing he did that he wanted to see if his grandma would react the same way as him.
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Why would the grandma feel the need to lie to him. Was it because she was ashamed about it and knew it was wrong but also felt like unfortunately that’s the way it was?
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Hurricanes are included in social issues due to the health risks that are associated with them. Hurricane Katrina was a tremendous and very popular hurricane that lost many people there homes. I like how Kiese includes this into his writing.
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this paragraph is extremely detailed to the point where I can imagine myself in the room. He even described the number of feet and where things are located in the room.
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I really like how the author vividly describes the setting of Grandma’s house, painting a picture in the reader’s mind of the unique and unconventional household. The use of specific details, such as the old floor-model big-screen TV, the deep freezers full of dead animal parts and the washing machine where Grandma would wash the white folks’ clothes to make extra money, give the reader a sense of the character and personality of Grandma and her home. It’s also interesting how the author contrasts this with the traditional idea of a house with a hall, which adds to the authenticity and originality of the story.
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Channeling yet another common stereotype, Laymon elaborates on how the common grandparent household has all the enriching history and glorious imagery you can imagine within their house. The walls, floors, and decorations that is housed within holds a story to be told. The first thing you have to do is simply ask your grandmother, why is it there?
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uncle relle relies on grandma and needs her?
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This sentence provides a brief description of the dining room with a plastic chandelier hanging over a round wooden table, creating a vivid image in the reader’s mind. The use of sensory details such as the materials of the furniture and the lighting fixture adds to the overall atmosphere of the scene.
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The way City describes his grandparent is quite different that what my experience is like t my grandparents house, which point me off because he trying to generalize one type for all grandparents.
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This description of city grandmom’s house reminds me of the houses my mom describes the house/trailers to look at when she was down in South Carolina when she was a little girl.
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The narrator’s longing for approval from his uncle Relle is palpable in this sentence, as he eagerly waits for him to return and hear about his success at the contest. The mention of Relle being the only one in the family who would be proud of him suggests a strained relationship with the rest of his relatives, adding a layer of complexity to the narrator’s desire for acceptance.
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I find this sentence so funny because she’s just so old, in a good way. Like it’s wireless and she says hook up.
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Grandma is acting like my grandpop. He don’t want nobody touching his firestick just like she don’t want City messing up her tv.
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This quote describes the relationship between the narrator and their grandmother as one which mirrors the relationship between her and her grandfather. The protagonist’s grandmother has adopted his grandfather’s behaviour of protecting her belongings from external influence, thus allowing the narrator to connect with her on a deeper level. Important background knowledge for understanding this text is the concept of cultural transmission within families; the idea that one generation of a family will learn and pass on behaviours, traditions, and values to the next generation, which are often modeled after the behaviour of the previous one. This is evident in the text, as the narrator’s grandmother appears to have adopted her husband’s behaviour as her own. Additionally, this text also brings out the idea that understanding how our relationships are affected by our family’s history can help us gain insight into our own sense of identity and self.
Through this text, the author invites the reader to re-examine the relationships in their lives and to think more deeply about the influence that family members can have on the way we think and behave. It also encourages readers to reflect on how our own history and experiences shape the people we have become today. Through a closer examination of this text, the reader can uncover a deeper layer of insight and uncover additional ideas about the transmission of culture within families. So, I invite you to further explore this text and gain more understanding of the power of heritage, family, and its impact on our lives.
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You can take your fancy technology and get off my lawn!" It’s a funny and charming way to express resistance to change and a preference for the old-fashioned way of doing things
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My grandparents in Puerto Rico also don’t own wifi, she has a house phone and a little outdated cell phone that she never uses and doesn’t even try to understand. She just likes it that way and I think older people just really hate how technology has taken over that they refuse to participate in any action of it.
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My grandparents in Jamaica are the same way
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. Anytime I’m visiting them, there’s vegetable soup on the stove.
Vegetable soup is a popular dish across many cultures worldwide. This traditional soup, often cooked by grandparents, is an easy and nourishing meal that can be enjoyed by people of all ages. Its ingredients can vary depending on the region, however the main components of the soup typically include a mix of vegetables and broth. This soup is often thought of as comforting and provides a sense of home wherever it is made.
VEgetable soup is known around the world for its versatility, its simplicity, and its ability to evoke a sense of comfort and home. It is commonly cooked by grandparents to provide a warm and nourishing meal for their families, and its ingredients and flavors vary depending on cultural preference. No matter where it’s made, vegetable soup is a popular dish that can easily bring people together to share a meal.
In conclusion, vegetable soup is a traditional dish that is popular worldwide. It is cooked with love by many grandparents, and provides a sense of comfort and home with its flavorful mix of vegetables and broth. Now reread the text with this summary in mind. Is there anything you would add to this summary? Please let me know what you are thinking about the text in your reply.
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The nonchalant way in which she delivers the statement is striking, especially considering that she has only physically disciplined him a few times before. It is surprising that City does not put up any resistance, given the severity of the punishment. Personally, I find it hard to relate to this as I would have probably run all around the house and done everything in my power to avoid getting hit with a switch.
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She says this so casually. Given the fact that she’s only whooped him a couple of times, I am surprised that he doesn’t resist at all. That’s actually not relatable at all cause I would’ve run all the way around the house and not gotten that switch.
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This quote implies that the speaker, who is the narrator of the text, has witnessed the protagonist being whipped on multiple occasions, and this has become normal to the speaker. Furthermore, the narrator is surprised by the lack of resistance from the protagonist, suggesting the protagonist has a stronger tolerance for pain than the average person. This is important background knowledge as it provides insight into the relationship between the narrator and the protagonist, as well as the protagonist’s attitude towards consequences.
The next sentence suggests that the speaker would not be as accepting of his whipping as the protagonist, which implies that the protagonist has a different attitude towards it. This suggests that the protagonist is more resilient and accepting of the beating than the narrator.
This second sentence also gives the audience insight into the protagonist’s attitude towards the punishment he is receiving. It reveals that he is resilient and accepting of it, rather than struggling against it as the narrator expects. This is an important piece of background knowledge as it highlights the differences in the characters and provides insight into the protagonist’s emotional state.
Finally, the last sentence of the quote provides insight into how the protagonist reacts differently than the speaker. This is important to understand the relationship between the two and how the protagonist’s feelings towards the punishment differ from the narrator’s.
To further understand this text, it is important to go back and re-read the paragraph in its entirety. As you read, pay attention to the emotion and attitude portrayed by the protagonist and how it differs from the narrator’s. Doing this will help to gain a deeper understanding of the characters and their relationships, as well as how trauma can affect their attitudes towards pain. Re-reading the text will also help you to uncover any further insight it may provide into the characters.
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This sentence describes the speaker’s intense gaze at their Grandma’s face, using vivid imagery to convey their emotions. The mention of X-ray vision and the raggedy spinal cord adds a sense of grotesque detail to the description, emphasizing the speaker’s anger and resentment towards their Grandma. The use of colloquial language, such as “go get my switch,” conveys the speaker’s familiarity with the situation and adds to the overall tone of the passage.
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In order to understand this text more deeply, it is important to have information about the speaker’s relationship with their Grandma; the speaker’s likely history of physical abuse; the context of rural poverty in the 1950s; and the culture and language of the Deep Southern United States. Re-reading this text is a great way to explore deeper the emotions experienced by the speaker and to draw further connections between different elements of the passage.
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I giggled a little at this because its like he’s probably grown now thinking about his granny use to get him when he was younger
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.
This sentence is important as it tells us of the speaker’s relation with his granny and how he remembers her fondly even though he has grown. Background information important to understand this text is that the speaker has a close bond with his granny, and he remembers the care she showed him when he was younger.
He would bring out the broom and all hell would break loose.
This sentence is important as it gives us insight into how the speaker’s granny reacted when he got into mischief. Background information that is important to understand this text is that the speaker’s granny was a disciplinarian and had a strict attitude when her grandson misbehaved.
She was also a great cook and she would never get out of the kitchen.
This sentence is important as it describes the speaker’s granny’s cooking skill and her commitment to it. Background information important to understand this text is that the speaker’s granny was an experienced cook who spent a lot of time in the kitchen.
I would sit and watch her make the most amazing dishes.
This sentence is important as it illustrates the deep bond between the speaker and his granny. Background knowledge important to understand this text is that the speaker regards his granny as a role model and he had a strong admiration for her.
By carefully examining this text, you can gain an understanding of the close relationship between the speaker and his granny, and the fondness the speaker still holds for her despite their age gap. Re-reading this paragraph will give you an even deeper insight into the relationship between the two and the feeling of nostalgia that the speaker experiences when he remembers her.
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It’s funny because since he’s older now he probably believed he could get away with it. However, earlier he made it known that his grandma treats him like a child still and well I guess that comes with its consequences, lolll.
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Sentence 1: “My grandma still treats me like I’m 5 years old.”
This sentence provides context of the plot: the protagonist is an adult but they are being treated like a child by their grandmother.
Sentence 2: “However, I’ve been trying to dodge chores and get away with it.”
This sentence implies that the protagonist is trying to avoid work and deceive their grandmother in some way.
Sentence 3: “She caught me though and gotta remind her I’m not a kid anymore hahahaha.”
This sentence further emphasizes that the protagonist is no longer a child, but their grandmother still treats them as if they are.
Sentence 4: “I’m 26!!”
This sentence emphasizes the extent to which the protagonist has grown up yet is still treated as if they are a child.
Background information: This text deals with themes of aging and maturity. The protagonist is making a joke at their own expense about how their grandmother still treats them as if they were a child despite the fact that they have grown up. It is likely that the protagonist is feeling embarrassed that they were caught and exposed for trying to deceive their grandmother. This situation highlights the complexities of family dynamics and the evolution of relationships with age.
This text invites us to contemplate our own relationships with family and how they have changed with age. Re-reading this text might bring to light new perspectives and feelings about our own experiences.
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I definitely relate to his emotions and feelings right now
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I can relate to the moment you know you’re about to get punished and you’re nervous
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Yoooo that’s crazy lol why did he do that to her? shows that he doesn’t think
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This is a primal example of the encapsulating trauma and fear that goes into beating your child. They may just up an run away from you and try to defend themselves. This line briefly encapsulates the effect of what a Family History of beating your child can do, it makes them more rebellious in nature as opposed to the intended effect of setting them straight.
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That was a bold move from City
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Being able to visually see City and his Grandma running around like Tom and Jerry. He was really trying to get away from it, but we all know that never is the case.
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The tone of the passage suggests a playful and possibly mischievous atmosphere, as the narrator and Grandma seem to be engaged in some sort of game or activity that involves running and switching. The imagery of the chinaberry tree and work shed provide a sense of setting and add to the overall ambiance of the scene.
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This statement highlights the Longstanding family history of whuppings within City’s family. The practice of whupping, which has been used as a form of discipline for generations, has not only failed to bring about the desired change or tutelage, but has also perpetuated a cycle of violence and trauma. Despite enduring numerous whuppings during his childhood, City continues to be subjected to this form of punishment, which suggests that the cycle may continue into future generations. This portrayal underscores the need for a critical examination of the use of physical discipline as a means of teaching and the need for alternative forms of discipline that prioritize the wellbeing and autonomy of children.
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I agree, I feel like as if the city is persistently exposed to this mode of punishment, indicating that the pattern may perpetuate for future generations.
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I found it funny that he still had to mention how good his waves looked.
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The simile! Omg his comments just be too funnyyy
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WHY?
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That was funny and a good use of imagery because I can picture him looking like that after he got a beating.
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I think that he felt honored because he knew he did something wrong and being beaten up made him feel less of a guilt but it was funny the way he described the way he got beaten up but still kept his good looking waves.
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Even though Grandma had to beat City to teach him a lesson after she snapped on live tv,she still shows him care/concern to balance out the tough love.
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Despite the fact that Grandma had to resort to physical discipline to teach City a lesson after her outburst on live television, it’s worth noting that she also demonstrates care and concern towards him. She understands the importance of balancing tough love with compassion, and makes an effort to show City that she loves him and only wants the best for him. For instance, after the incident, she took the time to explain to City why his behavior was unacceptable and how it could have serious consequences. She also made sure that he was okay physically and emotionally, and continued to offer him guidance and support throughout the aftermath of the incident. It’s clear that Grandma’s love for City is unwavering, even in moments of discipline and correction.
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It’s important to note that Grandma also shows care and concern for City, despite the fact that she had to use physical punishment to teach him a lesson following her rage on public television. She makes an effort to demonstrate her love for City and her desire for nothing but the best for him because she recognizes the value of striking a balance between stern love and compassion. For instance, she took the time to explain to City what was wrong with his action and how it would have detrimental effects after the encounter. Additionally, she checked on his physical and emotional well-being and gave him advice and support throughout the duration of the incident’s aftereffects.
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Earlier on I wondered why City’s mom decided to send him to his grandmother’s after what happened at the competition. But now I know it was because his grandmother serves as another authority figure in his life, a tougher version of his mom. I this is a more modern take on gender roles in a family. Usually fathers are seen as tough and authoritative, and the parent to more likely provide discipline.
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I actually think this is a wonderful description. I like how City compares how he feels under the gaze of his mother and his grandmother. I think since she whoops him on more “special” occasions, he doesn’t view or describe her whoopings as an average kid would
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This sentence captures the comforting and accepting nature of the speaker’s grandmother. Her gaze provides a sense of comfort and reassurance, and the speaker feels accepted despite their perceived flaws. This is a reminder of the importance of unconditional love and acceptance, especially from those closest to us.
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After confirmation that City is on the overweight side, there is some connotation of Masculinity that City’s mom desires out of her son. In an environment such as Mississippi, it is clear that City’s mom wants City to appear to be more stronger and must support himself as a man. To be a man, he needs to look the part as well. This plays in the role of Gender conformity in the context that City’s mom wants her son to be a true man.
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This statement highlights the harmful impact of societal expectations of masculinity and body image on young Black boys like City. City’s mother, who subscribes to these expectations, shows an unhealthy preoccupation with his body weight and appears to believe that losing weight will make him more “manly”. This type of attitude reinforces harmful gender norms and can contribute to body image issues and low self-esteem in young boys. By alluding to buying diet drinks to nudge City into losing weight, City’s mother is perpetuating a culture of body shaming and reinforcing the idea that one’s worth is tied to their appearance. This portrayal exemplifies the need for a critical examination of societal expectations of masculinity and body image and for promoting body positivity and self-acceptance regardless of one’s gender or appearance.
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Looking back at what Citoyen had felt about his mom, I think this is very understandable for a mother to want her son to appear more healthier and to be strong in order for him to grow stronger. Therefore, I believe that the mother was only trying to protect her son from being the target of bullying and from receiving these looks from sick people.
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You can tell that the grandmother is a southern religious woman who truly wants the best for her family. Even though City may not like how she handled the situation it still had a good meaning. It’s kind of crazy that his mom did send him down there to get prayed for and whooped.
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Shoutout to Grandmother’s, first thing I want to say.
This line speaks to me in such as special way. The theme of Gender Identity is used here in contextualizing just how much women could care for their children from even impossible odds. A grandmother feeling the need to shield and protect her grandchild from the dangers of the world millions of miles away speaks to the inherent responsibility grandmother’s have in guiding their grandchildren through the world
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Keywords:
Protection: Actions taken to keep someone or something from being harmed or damaged.
Guardian: Someone with the legal responsibility to care for and make decisions on behalf of another person.
Heavy: Having more substance than usual; thick.
Arm: The part of the body between the shoulder and the wrist, used for support and movement.
Believe: Take to be true; accept the statement of.
Rereading the text, I noticed that Grandma was protecting the narrator from something by keeping her arm slung across his chest, heavy and thick. Through her actions, it becomes clear that Grandma was serving as a guardian, and the narrator believes that her protection is strong enough to protect him from whatever it was he feared.
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It intresting that when its mentioning friends before that it talks about how books are being used and after that in mentions all girls, sowing that the love of books is mainly held by woman
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very descriptive
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Interesting way of comparing dirt of playground to the Mexican trailer park dirt.
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I wouldn’t be surprise if it was because of the contest
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It seems odd that City of all people is hesitant or reluctant to show affection. He must be going through a lot.
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Thousands of “Followers” but you have only 1 true friend.
One good friend is worth a thousand Instagram followers.
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I think that was funny how he described how white she is by comparing her to bleach stains. In my country, we say “From how white you are I thought you were a ghost”
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Is the book Long Division in the text a book City’s and the other characters’ lives?
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I like how the coach asked about City well being unlike his mom who thought that the only way to fix this was to get him whupped and baptized which I think for him to get cleaned from his sins even though what he did shouldn’t be seen as a sin but instead standing up for himself and expressing how he felt.
“baptism serves as a constant reminder that we now have a clean conscience before God because Jesus cleaned us of our sin.”
https://newspring.cc/articles/why-baptism-is-a-big-deal).
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It seems that almost everyone in the east coast has heard of City’s incident, this can be a combination of television and social media influence.
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I think these parts is connecting to this genealogy and how all humans had come from Africa and how he compared the first man’s mouth to coach stroud.
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City strikes again with his humorous way of talking about people. But he also talks about a common stereotype that black people are or look like “monkeys”. I feel like nowadays it’s another insult or phrase that the black community has reclaimed to crack jokes at one another.
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I think Coach Stroud is your typical old head. He talks A LOT, up to the point where all you can contribute to the conversation is one word. Some of his words are very insightful, but other times, it borders problematic.
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Coach Stroud’s description here draws a lining of satire to describe the unreasonable and depraved actions of the hard-working low class and their desperate to do anything to accumulate more wealth. In this case, it’s Coach Stroud suing anyone he possibly can to get money.
On the flip side of this satire analysis, it also cites the cycle of poverty. Coach Stroud assumingly takes his winnings and wastes it on casino gambling, emphasizing that typical low-class people stay in the low-class due to their management of money overall.
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Characteristics of the lower class brought on by the description of Coach Stroud indicate stereotypes. Stereotypes such as, that the lower class will do about anything to get more money faster. Inevitably, spending it in the wrong places and returning back to their economic state.
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I thought it was funny how City finally uses “Kindly pause”, when before he hated the phrase because LaVander created it.
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This is what I was referring to when I said, “borderline problematic.” It’s not like he’s outwardly prejudiced, but as society changes, some of the ideas that people harbored, slowly become more outdated. Although “kindly pause” isn’t very problematic, he does have ignorant qualities that would make you side-eye him.
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weren’t
playing kickball, not when everyone else was.
From a reader-response perspective, this sentence is significant because it calls attention to an important social concept: the pressure to conform. By recognizing this truth—that even when people do things that everyone else is doing, people may not look at them the same way—the author suggests that there can be consequences for straying from societal norms. This begs the question: how does being unwilling or unable to conform to social expectations impact relationships and feelings of belonging? Reading this text could encourage us to reflect on our own experiences of conformity and ask how our decisions in this area shape our lives.
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I hear this ALL the time, phrased exactly like this. It’s so funny, because more likely than not, nobody is personally trying to keep him down. The phrase is true, but it probably doesn’t apply if he’s using it like this lol.
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I knew what the general phrasing meant, but didn’t know the exact definition of the phrase itself. Don’t
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I’m full aware of the common food stereotypes surround black people, and the fact that City, an overweight high-schooler, is allergic to a stereotypical meal is funny. This is irony at its finest.
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Keep in mind that Coach Stroud is refering to MyMy, a 10 YEAR OLD shy white girl. Coach is jumping the gun here in assuming that MyMy represents the racist, biased white people and plays into the satire of how just looking a certain way, such as being white, is enough for your own image to be painted to other people.
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I really hate how the older generation like to compare their experience in live with the new generation, it is obvious that the new generation life is going to different because the times are changing.
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I like the contrast between City and The coach may be a strange character, however he is really trying to stick out for him, especially since his time on tv. On the other hand, City is clueless and believes everything is ok, even after telling white people on national television to f off. I do not believe City knows the dangers he truly put himself in. This reminds me of when Nikole Hannah-Jones spoke about telling her children not to play a certain way, because they might attract certain attraction.
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This obviously connects to gender, I also believe that this connects to history and age because a lot of times older people say they think something is wrong with our generation, especially after we do things they don’t agree with.
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For some reason, the older generations love to compare how they were to how we are today. They have to understand that things change and that change is good.
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Passing down the idea that black people have to act a certain way to be accepted in society and aren’t allowed to make mistakes is unrealistic and the reason behind doing this is to please others.
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Reading this gave the impersonation that us black people have to act or speak a certain way to be accepted in todays society. We are restricted and limited to the things we do and us, and are judged if we do anything other than what people expect from us.
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Looking back to 2013 and comparing it to the 2012 shooting of Trayvon Martin feels way more contemporary when you look at this angle. This story takes place 1 year after Trayvon Martin was killed, so of course people like Coach Stroud will be lecturing City on how to not act like a fool infront of white people. It makes so much more sense now!!!!!
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I’m so tired of people seeing one person’s actions and generalizing an entire race. This is so ignorant to assume that an entire race of people act the same just from one person’s actions as if we are all the same person.
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Trayvon Martin was an unarmed 17-year-old African-American high school student who was fatally shot in Sanford, Florida in 2012. His death sparked several national protests, as well as a national debate over Stand Your Ground laws and racial profiling by law enforcement.
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It’s heartbreaking. We can’t ignore this kind of injustice, it has to change. How can we understand this text and use it to help us fight for justice? Let’s discuss ways that we can be part of the change and create a better world. What do you think, [Name]?
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City’s response is immature but then again he’s a child he’s not thinking about it with the same mindset the coach is. He’s annoyed because he’s seeing this as “another speech from a grown person”.
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I think City’s reaction to this speech is how typical children would react. “This new generation,” and whatnot. Kids get SO tired of hearing it because it paints a picture that the younger generation is blowing what the older generation worked hard for, which is not true.
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This sentence is important in this paragraph because it stresses the idea that everyone has a head and so no one should act too superior or above anyone else. It establishes a sense of equality among people.
In order to understand this text more deeply, it is important to have some background knowledge about the theme of equality and how acts of superiority can detract from that. It can also be helpful to understand basic expressions such as “li’l head-buster”, which suggests someone who takes pleasure in a position of superiority by possibly belittling others.
Now that you have some background information, re-read the text and analyze it to determine the deeper meaning behind the line: “You act like a li’l head-buster, but don’t never forget, City, that you got a head, too.” Does the author want to remind us of the importance of understanding each other’s perspectives and treating each other equally? What does this line say about the power of equality? Take some time to read through the text again and add your own insights into it.
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This sentence is important as it provides insight into the tone and message of this text. It suggests that despite the interpersonal conflict between two characters, the speaker is acting as a mentor, reminding the other character that they too have the capacity to hurt people and that it is important to take responsibility for one’s actions.
Contextually, “li’l head-buster” means someone who acts aggressively towards another person, thus implying that the other character is being overly confrontational towards the speaker.
In order to gain a better understanding of the text, it is important to be aware of the interpersonal dynamics between the two characters, as well as their respective motivations and backgrounds. Additionally, the text can be read in the context of a larger social environment, as there may be subtle commentary being made regarding power dynamics and societal issues.
To gain an even deeper understanding of this text, I invite you to re-read it to find any further nuances and themes. See if you can identify any other relevant background information that can lead to better understanding this quote.
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I feel that this advise can be used in a more general context because the more power you give to someone, the more control and impact the will have on your life.
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This sentence highlights the contrast between urban and rural areas and suggests that the protagonist’s name, City, is more common in urban settings. The question also hints at the idea of family connections and roots, as the speaker assumes that City must have family in New Orleans.
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This line has two meanings, the first one being the literal meaning in which he doesn’t want to run, but consider everything he has been through up until this point. He’s tired of running in the same way he is tired of running away from America’s norms of racism. Such as the case when he confronted this issue during the competition.
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Why do they keep calling him out his name? This is going to start more unnecessary problems. If I was City I would feel very uncomfortable considering this is a grown man.
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Does this man not have better things to do than harass a child? How bored could you be?
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Why are they starting a problem out of nothing? They are clearly bored.
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This actually so terrifying and very real and there’s not much City can do to stop them. He’s outnumbered and these are older man. It’s probably terrifying for him and he’s strong for not immediately breaking down. He’s strong, but he shouldn’t have to be. No black person should endure this. AND HE’S like 15! So sad
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The realistic brutality of this scene raced a lot of questions and thoughts in my mind, although one thought caught my attention the most. Considering gender in the text, if City were a girl in this scenario, would this interaction be worse?
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https://twitter.com/DailyLoud/status/1650618527060033536?s=20
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It’s remarkable how prevalent cell phone cameras have become in our daily lives. This young boy’s decision to record the situation not only allows for potential evidence in case anything goes wrong, but it also showcases the power of technology to capture and share moments that might have gone unnoticed or forgotten otherwise. It’s a testament to how much our world has changed in the past few decades and how much influence these small devices can have on shaping our experiences.
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This is so funny because she says it so casually. I actually appreciate the fact that City uses this as a teaching moment instead of a moment to formally scold her. She’s ignorant of the word but willing to learn the power behind it
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This 45-second TikTok video begins with a slow-motion close-up of a young woman walking down the street followed by a wider shot of the woman contrasted against a backdrop of urban city life. As the viewer is drawn in, she stops and stares into the camera, her gaze lingering and captivating to the point that the background music gradually crescendos—all in the first three seconds.
The video then transitions to a shaky, handheld point-of-view shot walking alongside her that follows her as she narrates her story. As she addresses the hurt that a person of color can feel when someone not of the same race says the ‘n-word’, background visuals illustrate micro-aggressions such as subtle gazes and whispers.
Throughout the video, alternating camera filters, split-screens, and text overlays create an even more vivid story. Toward the end, the video fade into a grainy black-and-white filter as the background beat comes to an end and she turns to stare away from the camera, narrator’s commentary ringing true—“because it hurts when you say that word”.
The video leaves the viewer feeling moved and unsettled, ultimately asking ‘why do some people use this word?’ in a thought-provoking yet creative way.
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I actually did not expect her to actually say the word. Caught me by surprise, but I like that it wasn’t taken THAT seriously. It’s more satirical.
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I must admit, I was also caught off guard when Grandma actually said the word on live TV. However, I appreciate that the situation wasn’t taken too seriously, and instead was presented in a more satirical light. It shows that the incident was not intended to be offensive or hurtful, but rather a moment of humor that could be enjoyed by viewers. Additionally, the fact that Grandma was able to make light of the situation and not take herself too seriously adds to her likability and relatability as a character. It’s important to be able to laugh at ourselves and not always take things too seriously, and Grandma’s portrayal in this moment reflects that sentiment.
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The fact that the subject wasn’t treated too seriously and was instead depicted in a more sarcastic manner, though, is something I admire. It demonstrates that the occurrence was not meant to be unpleasant or disrespectful but rather a humorous moment that viewers might appreciate.
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I have to say that when Grandma actually
pronounced the term on live television, I was
also taken aback. The fact that the subject
wasn’t treated too seriously and was instead
depicted in a more sarcastic manner, though,
is something I admire. It demonstrates that the
occurrence was not meant to be unpleasant or
disrespectful but rather to be amusing for the
audience. It also makes Grandma more
likable and relatable as a character because
she was able to laugh about the circumstance
and not take herself too seriously. Grandma’s
portrayal in this scene exemplifies the need to
have a sense of humor and to not always take
ourselves too seriously.
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She just keeps saying it. And it’s so funny, especially City’s reaction in the following sentence. It’s a great way to mix satire and race and inequality.
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The author expresses their admiration for the way the subject was portrayed in a sarcastic manner, indicating that the depiction was not meant to be taken seriously or viewed as disrespectful. Rather, the humorous approach was intended to be appreciated by the audience as a light-hearted moment.
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The author describes a humorous moment in which a character repeatedly says something, resulting in a comedic reaction from another character. The author notes that this moment effectively blends satire, race, and inequality, providing an entertaining yet thought-provoking commentary on social issues.
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The n-word, being a word commonly used by African-Americans, can be both bad and good as depicted by societal norms.
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The topic of the “n-word” is complex for the African American community because of its history as a term of dehumanization and oppression. The word has been used as a tool of white supremacy to degrade and demean black individuals throughout history, and its usage is often associated with violence and hatred. Many African Americans view the word as a deeply hurtful and offensive reminder of the systemic racism and discrimination that they have faced.
However, the use of the word has also been reclaimed by some within the African American community, particularly in the context of hip hop culture. Some view the word as a way to reclaim their power and assert their cultural identity in the face of oppression. This has led to a debate within the African American community about the appropriateness of using the word, particularly in mixed company or around non-black individuals.
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The paragraph highlights the complexities and multiple valid uses of the n-word, which is commonly used by African-Americans. The author notes that societal norms portray the word as both negative and positive, indicating that its interpretation can vary based on context and perspective.
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The paragraph highlights the complexities and multiple valid uses of the n-word, which is commonly used by African-Americans. The author notes that societal norms portray the word as both negative and positive, indicating that its interpretation can vary based on context and perspective.
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Why we do this: Extracting keywords from texts can help us read with more understanding by helping us to condense and clarify the main points in the text, as well as the deeper meanings behind it.
Keyword: Offensive – causing offence to people, usually through language
Keyword: Nigga – an offensive term for a black person
Keyword: Identity – who a person is, or their sense of self
Your turn: Now reread the text and let me know what you are thinking about the text, using the keywords in your reply. Are there any consequences to using the term “nigga”, or any other term that is considered offensive? Is the attitude portrayed in the text indicative of the wider feelings towards race and identity?
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The author expresses appreciation for the helpful perspective provided in the previous statement regarding the complexities of the n-word. The author, being an African living in America, acknowledges that navigating the usage of the word can be challenging due to its complex history and varied interpretations.
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Thinking of a bigger backdrop to this entire event, Emmett Till was a slightly overweight black boy, same as City.
Emmett Till’s classmate Richard Heard recalled Till being known as a funny guy. This doesn’t need more explanation as City is a funny guy..Emmett Till’s death was basically initiated by “offending” someone, City offended the white men by insulting them.
Emmett Till was savagely beaten and degraded before his death. City was also beaten and called the n-word, but he wasn’t killed.
There may be some other connections that I’m not seeing but I hope someone else could pick up on another parallel.
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Under the Jail in this context means for a person to be executed at a jailsite, and not being cared enough to have a proper burial and thus “buried” under the jail.
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Bye MyMy, she done said the word more than most of the black people in the book lol.
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Even though it traumatized him, Kiese does a great job by highlighting his curiosity instead of having him reveal this traumatic event to his grandmother. He could be embarrassed, or maybe he doesn’t want to relive/talk about the situation.
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i admire the effective handling of a traumatic event in the character’s life. Despite the event traumatizing the character, the author notes that Laymon does a great job of highlighting the character’s curiosity rather than having him reveal the traumatic event to his grandmother. The author suggests that the character’s reluctance to talk about the situation may be due to feelings of embarrassment or a desire not to relive the experience.
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The text does not directly connect to any social or political movements, but it does allude to stereotypical conceptions of race that have a long history in the United States of America. The stereotype that African Americans were particularly fond of watermelon has roots in Southern agriculture and enforced racial hierarchies, and by extension it perpetuates the notion that African Americans were intellectually and culturally inferior (Simpson, 2014).
Textual evidence of this is provided in the grandchild’s question, “Grandma, do white folks like watermelon?” The grandchild is positioning the perception of watermelon as a symbol of separate racial identities, further indicating the prevalence of this stereotype.
Simpson, S. (2014). The History and Impacts of African-American Stereotypes. ThoughtCo. https://www.thoughtco.com/african-american-stereotypes-454486
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The fact that City’s grandma called City Baby hits this theme home altogether. Grandmother’s perpetually see their grandchildren as their own children, hence the use of the word “baby.” This amounts Kiese Laymon thematically telling us that Women identity themselves as the parent that sees their children as their baby no matter who happens to them.
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Does surviving life to them mean fighting ?
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I find this funny because in a lot of novels, there’s always that one character that speaks in somewhat riddles, and the character always gets confused. City is one of the characters that I see actually shows there very upset about this. Other characters tend to ponder about what they were told.
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I find the situation in the text to be humorous, as it involves a character who speaks in riddles and another character who becomes upset by this rather than simply pondering about what they were told, as is common in many novels. The author notes that City stands out from other characters in this regard, as he appears to genuinely struggle with the cryptic language being used by the other character.
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I did not even expect a reality show to be incorporated into the book. I wonder how the reality show is going to change the book.
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Uncle Relle’s comment here hits home a key sentiment surrounding the culture of books that is a combination of current technologies and the type of life the lower-class is living nowadays. Lower-Class people are working hard to get themselves out of that class. Any reading could be looked down upon since it may be perceived as a waste of time.
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I understand Uncle Relle’s opinion that individuals who belong to a lower socioeconomic class do not engage in reading as a leisure activity due to the financial constraints that prevent them from affording books or other reading materials. Consequently, according to Uncle Relle’s perspective, reading is considered a luxury that is exclusive to those who have the necessary resources to access literary materials.
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highlights a key sentiment expressed by Uncle Relle regarding the culture of books, which relates to the intersection of current technologies and the struggles faced by lower-class individuals in modern society. Uncle Relle suggests that reading and intellectual pursuits may be looked down upon by those striving to escape poverty, who may view them as a waste of time or a distraction from the practicalities of survival. The author notes that this sentiment reflects the complex challenges faced by individuals from marginalized communities in accessing education and pursuing intellectual interests, and underscores the importance of creating more equitable opportunities for learning and personal growth.
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City is literally on the floor, at his lowest level, and someone is laughing at him. He’s the bigger man because I would be more pissed than he is.
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First time reading about anything remotely sexual in a reading. It has the kind of causal fairness to it.
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It could be the writer is hinting that the only thing that seemed real and tangible in the library would be something that would directly relate back to him, like a book about his life. This could be leading to an exploration of his thoughts and feelings about his life. Let’s re-read the text and look out for other choices the writer has made and predict where the text could be leading us.
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I’m really starting to question the book. Who wrote this book? is it someone that knows City well? how could this person predict what would happen?
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I wonder why they named it that. Like wave brush? I guess that was his most notable quality and they used it as the title. I’m confused as to why they didn’t use his name because I know they said it during the competition.
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Well, the rich woman could find herself in an unlikely predicament after going shopping for the latest fashion trends. Perhaps she finds a designer item that she loves but it’s out of budget. Desperate to get the item, she decides to enter a local competition to win it. After a lot of hard work and dedication, she wins the competition — to her surprise! But then, she soon realizes that the competition wasn’t what it seemed and winners were merely chosen at random. In the end, she learns an important lesson about shopping and how it’s not wise to throw money around recklessly.
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Youtube was literally a lawless land back in 2013, you could get away with saying anything like this with no repercussions of your account in mind.
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Kiese Laymon drops this bombshell of a News Headline and just follows it up by changing the subject back.
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Grandma raises the topic of a particular racial group’s generational advantage and expresses concern over the injustice of individuals who possess such advantages displaying animosity towards those who are struggling to achieve even half of the former’s affluence. I have to agree with grandma on this note, it is nothing short of evil to hold such stance.
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Why would City tell Shay he had a wet dream about her?
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His loyalty is obvious and even if he isn’t here, Kincaid will always have a place in Hart’s heart.
Kevin Hart is an actor and comedian who reflects on his loyalty to his friend and handler, Kincaid. Kincaid has been with Hart since they met and has been loyal and true. Even when Hart achieved fame and success, Kincaid still had his back and shared in Hart’s triumphs. Hart observed that Kincaid was rarely seen speaking in public, but was an important reason for Hart’s success. Kincaid was Hart’s rock and stability, looking past any of Hart’s missteps and focusing on his triumphs.
Kevin Hart wants to remind everyone about the dedication and loyalty that Kincaid provided to him. No matter where Hart ends up, Kincaid will always have a place in his heart as a true friend and supporter.
Now reread the text with this summary in mind. Think about the message of loyalty and friendship that was presented in this story. Is there anything that you would add to this summary? Please let me know your thoughts on the text in your reply.
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In this text, the narrator is describing an experience of looking at a picture of a woman where only the woman’s bare breasts are visible. The narrator finds this ‘wack’ as they had never seen just breasts in a picture before, but even though the breasts in the picture were nice, the narrator felt uncomfortable with how the woman’s face had been cut off. The narrator also compares breasts to pancakes, saying that even the nastiest pancake is better than the best toast, thus emphasizing the delight that was found in seeing breasts. The narrator then reflects on whether the woman in the picture would have wanted her face to be cut off and how taking this picture of her and only her breasts was a cruel act.
In this text, the narrator is reflecting on their experience of seeing a woman’s breasts in a picture where the woman’s face has been cut off. The narrator compares seeing breasts to eating pancakes, and reflects on the cruelties of someone taking such a picture of the woman. Now reread the text with this summary in mind. Is there anything you would add to this summary? Please let me know what you are thinking about the text in your reply.
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I think they would set him up and then he will be blamed for that. I don’t think City could trust them.
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These sentences show that the protagonist is taking an action to open a compartment which may suggest that they are searching for something. This could indicate that the protagonist is trying to find something, or that they could be attempting to discover more information. The background information important to understanding this text includes the purpose of the protagonist’s search, the context of where they are, and the events that have lead up to this moment.
Inviting you to step back into the text and explore deeper, can you interpret the protagonist’s action and what could be motivating them to search for something? What kind of connection could they be searching for? Comment below with your thoughts and analysis.
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I suppose he won’t have anymore Melahatchie friends after this incident.
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this is a surprise I didn’t expect this to happen but there was someone hints
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