by Ibi Zoboi
Kamari is now sitting with his hands clasped in his lap, jaw clenched so tight, Mak can see the muscle ticking there.
Could he really have done what Crys said he did? Forced a girl to make such a heavy decision about something going on inside her body?
She’d never say it aloud, but Mak finds it a little hard to believe. This is the same guy who came to her rescue when she got a flat tire in an area she wasn’t familiar with just a week ago. Tess had asked Mak to take her to Trent’s again, so Mak dropped her off, planning to go hang out at Aunt Trish’s until Tess let Mak know she was done.
It was a six-minute drive according to GPS, but four minutes into it, Mak’s car started driving funny. A yellow light glared at her from the dash, and soon, a loud beeping noise took over, like the vehicle itself was panicking.
Looking back, Mak’s not proud of her immediate reaction: she was scared. Mama always rambled on about crack houses and murders and “gangbangers” when she and Mak would cross beneath the bridge that put them in “the ghetto.”
She pulled the car into a bright patch of sunlight in front of a kudzu-swallowed house and locked her doors. Scrambled for her phone and opened her car insurance app so she could request roadside assistance.
Discovered a series of new text messages:
Sup MAKENZIE Lol.
Dis Kamari. Tess put ur number in my phone
(swear I didn’t ask 4 it!)
Just finished the new Magnus Chase. Shit was LIT.
Save my number (if u want 2 that is)
Before Mak realized what she was doing, she’d hit the Call button. She’d known it was Kamari before reading the second message because she’d stolen his number from Tess’s phone when Tess wasn’t looking the night after Kamari and Mak met.
He answered on the first ring. “Hello?”
Mak swallowed and looked out her window. “Hi, Kamari.”
“Makenzie?”
“Yeah.”
“Well damn,” he said.
Mak laughed and the tension went out of her shoulders instantly.
“Umm . . .” Was she really about to do this? “Not to be all damsel in distress, but I’m kinda stranded with a flat tire on your side of town—”
“My side of town? The hell is that supposed to mean?”
“Oh . . .” Crap.
“I’m just fuckin’ with you, Makenzie. Where you at?”
“You’re really awful, you know that?”
He laughed. Which made Mak smile.
“So you gonna tell me your location, or . . .”
“Oh. Yeah, sorry. I’m on Barfield Ave just past Wingate Street?”
“All right. I’ll be there in ten minutes, cool?”
“Mm-hmm! I’ll see you then.”
He hung up.
Mak put her head on the steering wheel and silently freaked out. She wasn’t sure her heart had ever beat that fast. What the hell was she doing, calling this guy? If Crys knew—
There was a knock on the window, and Mak jumped, smacking her knees on the underside of the steering column.
Kamari threw his head back in laughter, and as much as Mak hated him in that moment, seeing him standing there in a tank top and basketball shorts with his rich brown skin gleaming in the sunlight, his muscles displayed in all their glory, and his long locs swinging slightly in the breeze . . . it made her head spin.
Which scared her almost as much as being stranded in the hood.
“I thought you said ten minutes!” Mak yelled as she rolled the window down.
“I was lying!” Kamari laughed some more and pointed over his shoulder. “My house is right down there. I wanted to sneak up on you ’cause you cute as hell when you get all startled and shit. It’s what I remember most from that night we first met.”
“But you almost gave me a heart attack! Twice now.”
“Ah, you’ll be a’ight,” he’d said with a wink. “Pop the trunk.”
Mak did as he asked, then got out to watch him work.
“Need any help?” she asked, more as a courtesy than anything.
“Nah. Wouldn’t want you to drop a lug nut and jump out of your skin when it hits the ground.”
“Shut up.”
“So what brings you to my side of town today?”
“You’re not gonna let that go, are you?”
“Never. Bougie ass.” He looked over his shoulder at Mak and grinned, then turned back to the task at hand. “Beautiful bougie ass, mind you, but still bougie as hell.”
Stung, and feeling a little guilty, Mak took a deep breath. “I’m sorry about how that came out,” she said.
“Nah. Nothing to apologize for. Trent told me about that school y’all go to and where y’all live and all that. I know you don’t come across a lotta dudes like me.” He removed the flat tire and set it aside, then hefted the spare into place. “Just hope all this work my ass is putting in is unraveling some of them preconceived notions you got up under all that hair.” He looked back at Mak again, and her eyes dropped to his hands. “I am a son of Hephaestus, after all. Which prolly means I should stay away from you, since your trifling-ass mama cheated on my daddy with half the population of Mount Olympus and earth. Tuh.”
It was the nerdiest, most backhanded compliment Mak had ever gotten, Kamari suggesting that Aphrodite, Greek goddess of love, beauty, and pleasure, was Mak’s mother.
That Mak was a demigod(dess).
Soon he was returning the jack and flat to her trunk, slamming it shut, and dusting his hands off. “Hate to cut this li’l rendezvous short, but I’m officially gonna be late for basketball practice.”
“Crap, I made you late?”
He smiled. The whole world could’ve been ablaze at that moment, but Mak wouldn’t’ve noticed. “Few extra suicides never killed anybody.” And his eyes traced over Mak’s whole face.
She felt like she might be dead.
“So can I get a hug, Makenzie?” he said, spreading his arms.
“Umm. Sure . . .” Mak stepped forward and gasped a little as those arms swept around her waist and lifted her from the ground. She held on to Kamari’s neck as he squeezed her around the middle. Just tight enough to make her feel like the only person in the universe who existed in that moment. She’d never experienced anything like it.
Mak had been involved with boys before, but they were usually really rich, really white, and really only trying to get in her pants—they all wanted to add “banging the Black girl” to their list of unlocked achievements in the pursuit of taking as much as they could from the world.
But this was different. As she floated there in Kamari’s arms, Mak was reminded of how just a few days prior, she and Mama drove past a group of boys, Kamari included, sitting on someone’s porch steps en route to Aunt Trish’s. Said boys were laughing and passing something smokable among themselves. Kamari had waved at Mak, and she’d made the mistake of waving back.
“Girl, don’t you wave at them thugs!” Mama had said. “Got the nerve to be sitting outside smoking marijuana in broad daylight.”
Mak’s mind immediately flashed to a party she went to with Tess in her own neighborhood, and to the neat little lines of white powder she’d seen on the polished marble of a kitchen countertop before they disappeared up the noses of some National Honor Society students via tightly rolled hundred-dollar bills. (“These are the people you need to surround yourself with, Makenzie. They’re going places,” Mama was always saying.)
Yeah, she came from the other side of the proverbial tracks, and her world looked cleaner, shinier, safer, less chaotic . . .
But was it really?
All Mak really knew for sure at that moment was that she’d be fine if Kamari never set her back on the ground.
Of course he had to, though. He was late for basketball practice.
He let her go and started walking away backward. All swaggy and stereotypical. “You should use that number every now and then,” he said. “You know. When you’re on my side of t
own and all.”
And he turned and jogged away.
The whole encounter had her messed up for days. That this boy her mama (and cousin) would’ve never approved of came to her rescue despite the fact that she’d basically insulted him.
The sound of the movie cuts back in as the phone finally stops ringing in the car, and Mak looks from Kamari’s jawline to those massive twiddling thumbs. Could that boy, the one who reads books about Greek mythology to his baby brother, the one Mak has spent the past couple weeks talking to into the wee hours of the night and then texting all day, the one who makes her feel more beautiful and desirable than anybody ever has, and who came to her aid when she needed him. . .
Could he be bad? Could he have done what Crys said he did?
Mak turns to look at him. He’s nibbling on the cuticle of his right thumb.
She takes a deep breath.
“Hey, Kamari?”
“Yeah, Mak?”
He picked a hell of a time to drop the enzie . . .
“Is it true you got a girl pregnant?”
He sighs. Almost like he knew the question was coming. “You really wanna talk about this now?”
Mak shifts her focus through the windshield to the massive movie screen. “I know it’s none of my business, but—”
“Yeah, I did.”
She freezes. Blinks. “Huh?”
“I did get a girl pregnant. My ex-girl.”
“Oh.” A part of Mak hoped he’d tell her everything Crys said was untrue. But if that part of the story was accurate . . . “Did you really force her to . . . take care of things?”
He shakes his head. “I wondered if that was the shit Crystal told you. Thought maybe it wasn’t since you let me get at you, but . . .” Now he sighs. “It was complicated, Makenzie.”
Mak doesn’t respond.
“I wanted her to keep him—or her, I guess. Raise the baby together. My dad ain’t never done shit for me, and I didn’t wanna be like him, you know? I was ready to man up.” He looks out his window.
Mak clears her throat. “So what happened?”
“She . . . well, her folks weren’t real happy, as I’m sure you can imagine. And then when she started getting sick to her stomach every day and it hit her that, like, her whole life was gonna change . . .” Now a defeated shrug. “Can’t say I blame her. And we couldn’t recover from it, so we broke up.”
Mak opens her mouth to respond, but nothing comes out.
“Don’t nobody know that though,” he says. “When it got out that she’d been pregnant and had an abortion, somebody assumed I’d made her do it, and she didn’t correct them. So then that got around.”
“And you never told anybody what really happened?”
His eyes narrow for a second. “Nah. I already had a rep and she clearly wanted to save face. So now most girls at my school think I’m an asshole and stay away from me.” Shrugs again. “Which means I stay focused on school and ball. I been scouted by a few D-Two schools, so we’ll see what happens.”
“Who was that girl you were with when I saw you the night I was with Crystal?”
His eyebrows furrow. “Huh?”
“You had your arm around a girl as you crossed the street.”
“Oh.” He sucks his teeth and waves his hand. “That’s my homegirl Dasia. We known each other since we was five. She don’t even like dudes.”
“Ah. Okay.”
They fall silent, and one of the characters on-screen says something about cauliflower. What the hell even movie are they parked in front of?
“So I guess you hate me now, knowin’ I really did get a girl pregnant?”
Mak thinks for a moment. About cauliflower. Which she likes even though Tess and Crys both think it’s gross. One of the few things they have in common, those two. “No, actually,” she says, “I don’t hate you.”
He looks at her then. “You know, I was wrong about you,” he says.
“Huh?”
“I knew who you were when I got in your car that one night. I been seeing you around since we was little kids, Crystal’s prissy li’l cousin, who clearly had money ’cause her mama drove a Jag.”
“Oh, so you lied then.”
“Yep,” he says without hesitation. Though he won’t look her in the eye. “I was nervous. Girls like you don’t usually mess with dudes like me.”
Mak doesn’t reply.
“I thought you would be kinda judgy and standoffish. I shot my shot ’cause avoiding a beautiful woman sitting in my homeboy’s driveway with a book in hand seemed straight-up wasteful.”
Mak laughs.
“But you really surprised me,” Kamari continues. “You have this . . . openness about you. Shit’s dope.”
Kamari turns to Mak and grins, and her carefully constructed world unravels. She looks at his face. His hair. His big brown hands clasped in his lap. His nerdy T-shirt (this one has Yoda on it).
She slides closer and smiles. “You’re pretty dope, too, son of Hephaestus.” And then she leans in for another kiss.
The (R)Evolution of Nigeria Jones
Ibi Zoboi
I’ve been waiting for this night my whole life. Maybe even before I was born. My father, Dr. Kofi Sankofa Jones, tells his followers that we choose our lives while we’re in the spirit world. We choose the time and place to be born. We choose our family and parents. And therefore, we choose our race. So, according to him and everybody else in the Movement, I begged to be Black.
But I swear on all my African ancestors that I didn’t ask to be this Black.
I’m the only daughter of a Black nationalist revolutionary freedom fighter. At least that’s what my father calls himself. This afternoon, there’ll be about three hundred of his followers gathered in the First African Presbyterian Church. He’s presenting his final lecture, called “There Is No Table,” before he serves time at a correctional facility.
I’m in the back of the church as the Young Warriors, the teen boys of the Movement, place pamphlets onto the pews. I’m holding a stack of those pamphlets in my hand that showcases my dope graphic design skills with the Movement’s logo—an M in the middle of a black silhouette of Africa—but no one ever notices that. They read about the Movement’s history and my father’s bio. Dr. Kofi Sankofa Jones is the great-grandson of Garveyites and his father was a Black Panther. He had me write that up. He never mentions my grandmother—a strict Baptist who’s been trying to get me out of the Movement since the day my mother died four years ago.
We’re not Christian, but the Movement rented this church for the lecture. My father says that as liberated Black people, we’re not supposed to believe in a white Jesus, a white god, or any white savior. Still, it’s the only place that would host us because they believe half the stuff my father says.
I’m wearing a pair of Chuck Taylors along with my usual ankle-length denim skirt deconstructed from an old pair of jeans from a thrift store. My feet hurt from standing all day. This morning, I spent four hours in front of the Old Navy on Chestnut Street handing out flyers for this lecture to any Black person walking by. My best friend, Kamau, was with me, but he stood on the opposite corner. We get more recruits that way.
I could hear him from across the street reciting his spiel with a big, bright smile. “Do you know who you are, brother? Do you know your history?” He made eye contact and stepped closer to the stranger. “Well, history is our story, and Dr. Kofi Sankofa Jones will tell it like it is!”
His hype is way more convincing than mine. Not one person took a flyer from me. A man who recognized me even blurted out, “Your daddy needs to pay his taxes, Nigeria Jones!”
I shift my weight from one foot to the other to ease some of the soreness just as someone touches my shoulder. It’s Kamau, and he’s wearing his signature Young Warriors custom-made red dashiki and black pants. “Geri, I put your bag under the blue minivan in the parking lot,” he whispers.
“Is the book in there?” I ask.
“The Great Ga
tsby,” he says.
“Jeans and a wig?”
“Shredded at the thighs just like you wanted and blond ombré!”
“Ombré?” I whisper-yell, turning my whole body to him. “I didn’t ask for all of that, Kamau.”
“Trust me. It’ll look good on you,” he says.
“Fine. Then did you pack deodorant? And not the chemical-free stuff we usually wear, ’cause I’ll be sweating like a hog under that wig.”
“Even better. Antiperspirant. The kind that gives you cancer,” he says with his eyes moving about, making sure no one is watching us.
That joke stings, but I don’t tell him.
When Kamau is around the Young Warriors, his whole body changes from when he’s around me. He raises his chin, pokes out his chest, and tightens his fists like the rest of those boys. He’s supposed to be a warrior for his people—that’s why his parents named him Kamau, meaning “silent warrior” in Kikuyu. I’m the only one who knows that Kamau is a lover, not a fighter.
My father named me Nigeria because it’s the richest country in Africa. I guess his dream for me is to be like an oil-rich country on a third-world continent. But trying to jack poor people for all their paper is the last thing on my mind. Unlike my father.
“Thank you,” I say, looking around as well. It’s no big deal that we’re talking to each other. But it’s a big deal that Kamau is helping me plan my one-night escape.
“Awww! Nigeria and Kamau!” Mama Afua sings as she approaches us. She’s the eldest member, who, at sixty-two, knows how many times the Movement has tried and failed to be a sovereign people like the Amish, or the folks down in Texas, but Black and with more sense. “Geri, don’t you worry. You know we’ve got your back while your father’s away. And Kamau will take care of you. How long until the wedding? Y’all turn eighteen in a few months, right?”
Kamau puts his arm around my shoulders, pulls me in, and kisses my forehead. I wrap my arms around his thin torso. We’re supposed to be boyfriend and girlfriend.
“You’ll be the first on our guest list, Mama Afua,” Kamau jokes, and I pinch his side.
