by Ibi Zoboi
“We need that money, sweetheart. For our future. I got five of you to take care of. A building is just a building, in the end.”
“But how could you? Just like that?” I mumble, tears now streaming freely down my cheeks. Papi pulls me close into a hug, but I am stiff in my father’s arms, and angry.
“Well, I had to curse him one or two times, ’cause you know how your papi is. We Benitezes don’t take no crap. He gave me a good price. And that was that.” He looks down at me and holds me tighter. I start to relax and use his good white shirt to wipe away my tears.
“But Papi, where are we gonna go?”
He lets go of me and shakes his head. “I don’t know yet, but we’ll find somewhere. This is what happens in life—you take the good with the bad. This money is good. Us leaving is bad. But we’re taking it because it’s a blessing. You know, like that boy across the street.”
I inhale deep, sniffling, and roll my eyes. “You don’t know anything about the boy across the street, Papi. Now don’t change the subject.”
“No secrets in our house, Zuri. You like him, fine. As long as he likes you too, and most important, he respects you.”
“But he gets to stay, Papi,” I say quietly, and I realize that Darius will no longer be the boy across the street. He’ll still be in Bushwick, and I’ll be . . . somewhere else because the rent is too high in my own hood.
“So. And you get to leave. Him and his family are living somewhere new. They get to have new experiences. And you and your sisters, you’ve been in Bushwick all your lives. I saw that look in Janae’s eyes when she came back from college. Her eyes have seen so much more than me and your mother ever have. And you, sweetheart. You were a lightbulb when you came back from D.C. That is what I want for all of you. And myself too. To think, I spent half my life in that tiny apartment. And now, money has fallen from the sky.”
I don’t like what Papi is saying one bit. He makes sense, but I still don’t like it. “What’s Colin gonna do with the money anyway? He’s only nineteen,” I say. A lump is forming in my throat, but I keep swallowing to keep my tears down.
“According to him, Madrina has been getting offers for years. Someone came to him with a deal he couldn’t refuse. All cash. Look, Zuri, keep your head up, my daughter. I used to be like you, you know—getting pissed at the world when this or that didn’t go my way. But you know what opened up my eyes and my heart? Your mother and five beautiful daughters. The world could fall apart around me, but we are still a family. It doesn’t matter where we go. Bushwick will come with us. Don’t let your pride get in the way of your heart, mija.” He turns to look at me.
With every word he says, the tears start to well up in my eyes again. I keep blinking them back, but my face is wet.
“Hey, mija,” Papi says, holding me by the shoulders so that he can look me straight in the eye. “I knew it would be you to take it the hardest. It’s a lot, Zuri. First Madrina. And now this. But you gotta grow up. It’s a big world out there.”
I can’t help but laugh a little, even as tears roll down my cheeks. “That was corny, Papi.” And then I let it all out. I hang my head low, and the tears fall like rain. I cross my arms.
“No, no, no,” he says. “Not out here, and not like this.”
We’ve walked about ten blocks, and I realize where Papi’s going. He’s headed for the library on Dekalb and Bushwick—our favorite spot. This is where he’d take me when I was little. I’d disappear into the kids’ section, and he’d disappear between any and every aisle of thick books. But it’s Sunday, and we can tell from the tall and wide windows that the lights are off and it’s closed.
The gate leading up to the front steps is wide open, though, so we walk in and sit there.
“You don’t wanna leave that boy?” Papi asks. “Darius?”
“Papi!” I say. “I don’t wanna leave our hood, our building, our home!”
“And that boy,” he says.
Papi knows me through and through. So I hide my face in my hands, not wanting to believe that he’s right. “It’s more than the boy,” I mumble. I look up at him. “Papi, if we could just live on only one floor of his house.”
“It’s not our house and it’s not our life. And who knows? Maybe being here was a tough decision for them too. I mean, it’s not like they fit in, you know? And maybe with that buyout money and all, we’ll be the new rich kids on the block. Entiendes?”
I laugh a little again. And Papi places his arm around my shoulders and I lean in to him. He kisses my forehead, and his beard grazes my skin. I have always thought of Bushwick as home, but in that moment, I realize that home is where the people I love are, wherever that is.
Twenty-Eight
AS MY SISTERS begin packing, I spend as much time at the library on Bushwick Avenue as I possibly can. I sit in corners, at tables, on dirty couches, and on the front steps, getting lost in the pages of books. But most important, I work on my essay for Howard University.
College is the one true thing I can hold on to. It’s going to happen no matter what. But I can either stay here in Brooklyn and go to a community college, or one of the City University schools, or go away. And the only option I’ve given myself for going away is Howard. I have to make this happen for myself. If I get in, then I’ll know that people like me have a say in how our lives turn out. Even if we’re thrown away by people with more money, we can always climb our way out of the messiness and the brokenness of our lives.
Because the thing about sharp corners is, the right turns can bring you back home.
I print out my five-hundred-word essay just as the security guard announces that it’s five minutes till closing. I don’t write a poem after all, but poetry has helped me get my feelings out. My broken words helped me make sense of everything, so that when I pieced them back together in an essay, my truth was clearer.
I place everything in a folder on my thumb drive with all my other application materials for early acceptance. But before I close it, I start a new document and get some last words out.
Pride
by Zuri Benitez
We were not supposed to be proud. We were not supposed to love these things so hard: the chipping paint, the missing floorboards, the gas stove we have to light with matches, the cracks in the windows, the moldy bathroom tiles, the mice and the roaches.
But I’ve never known anything else. These broken things all spell home to me.
They are like the many worn sheets and blankets Mama and Papi brought with them from their childhood. They are older than us, and there are stories lodged in their cracks and crevices, their stains and their tears. And if I listen closely enough, I can hear the whispers of the ones who came before us. They’ve left these holes for us to fill.
Ambulance sirens at night put me to sleep. Cars honking and neighbors cursing at each other let me know that love lives here. We care enough to be angry and impatient. Sometimes I wonder . . . if my neighborhood ever floods or breaks in half, and someone throws me, only me, a lifeboat or a lifeline, will I take it and leave everyone and everything behind?
This college is a lifeboat and a lifeline.
But my neighborhood is not flooding or splitting in half. It’s being cleaned up and wiped out. It’s being polished and erased. So where do I reach back and pull out memories as if they’ve been safely tucked away into a trunk or an attic like the people on TV who have enough time and too much space? Where do I call home? Where can I place a layer of brick to use as my platform, and hold my head up high to raise my voice and my fist?
Sometimes love is not enough to keep a community together. There needs to be something more tangible, like fair housing, opportunities, and access to resources. Lifeboats and lifelines are not supposed to just be a way for us to get out. They should be ways to let us stay in and survive. And thrive.
I pause in my typing and look up. All around me, a slight breeze brushes past the back of my neck, and my whole body tingles. It’s not like Darius’s touch at all. It’s more lik
e a presence of something or someone on another side of this reality. And that’s when I know for sure that all of Madrina’s stories about los antepasados are as real as breath. She is still as real as breath. She is love. She is with me. Me, daughter of Ochún.
Twenty-Nine
WE DON’T KNOW how to move. We don’t know how to pack up our lives into small, medium, and large cardboard boxes.
Mama wants to keep every single thing: baby clothes, our drawings from kindergarten, our cheap Barbie doll knockoffs.
Papi wants to throw out everything. And he does it. But behind Mama’s back, so that each time she thinks a box is full and ready to be taped closed, she goes off somewhere and comes back only to find it half empty again. And the last few days have shown me what our family is really made of: we are our memories, our love, and our things.
It’s the last day before Janae goes back up to Syracuse. She’s taking a box of her favorite things with her, afraid that Papi will throw them out. Me, Nae-nae, Marisol, and the twins are squeezed together on the front stoop. We used to all fit on one step, with our thin thighs and shoulders touching. Then, on two steps.
Now Layla sits on the step below, with her head resting on my right knee as I cornrow her hair. She digs into a small bag of sunflower seeds and spits out the shells on the ground next to the stoop. One lands on Marisol’s arm, and she smacks Layla’s knee. That would usually turn into an argument, but today, we all know that we don’t want to spend this last moment arguing.
It’s unusually quiet for a Saturday afternoon, but part of me wonders if the whole block is a little sad that we’re leaving. Charlise has already left for Duke, so she’s not here to crack jokes and cheer us up a bit. People have come in and out of our building, saying their goodbyes to Mama and Papi, and paying their final respects to Madrina’s basement. And maybe this quiet, sunny, warm Saturday afternoon is a long, heavy sigh. And that’s exactly what I do as I finish Layla’s final braid. In that same moment, the front door to the Darcys’ house opens up, and I pretend not to notice, even as all my sisters turn to watch my reaction.
But it’s Ainsley who walks out of the building, not Darius.
Ainsley comes over to us the same way Darius usually does, with his hands in his pockets and his shoulders slightly hunched over. But he doesn’t share the same hard jawline as Darius. His smile is crooked, his eyes are bright, and his fresh haircut makes him look kind of nerdy. A cute kind of nerdy. In that moment, I realize that Ainsley just might be perfect for my sister Janae.
We all pretend to not be paying him any mind: I brush back Layla’s edges, Kayla investigates a sunflower seed, Marisol reads her Suze Orman book, and Janae pretends to be on the phone. But she’s not a good actress, because she’s trying too hard to keep it cool.
“Hey,” Ainsley says to Janae, or all of us. He faces Janae, but he doesn’t know which one of us to look at.
“Hey,” Janae says back.
“Let’s go up to the roof,” I say. “It’s too hot down here.”
“Nuh-uh! It’s hotter on the roof ’cause we’re closer to the sun!” Layla says without budging.
And I pinch her arm. “Let’s go,” I say through clenched teeth.
Marisol shakes her head and rolls her eyes at Janae, but she’s the first one up the stairs with me and the twins behind her.
“Why we gotta be the ones to leave?” Kayla nags. “We should have that Darcy boy let us stay in his house with that air conditioner if he wants to talk to Janae.”
“That’s a good idea,” Marisol adds as she opens the door leading up the roof. “It’ll be like charging money. One hour with Janae costs one hour of going through that big ol’ fridge of theirs.”
Papi opens the door to the apartment to check in on us. He has on a mask and gloves while he and Mama clear out the dust from behind the furniture. They wanted us out of the way because we talk and argue too much. He wanted Mama out of the way too, but she got hip to his game of throwing things out behind her back.
“Please, nobody fall, okay?” he says through the mask.
“Madrina’s watching over us,” I say to him with a smile.
His eyes smile and he shakes his head. Something is a little different about my father now. He’s a little happier, a little lighter. This move will be good for him.
On the roof, my sisters ease toward the edge, trying to eavesdrop on Janae and Ainsley’s conversation. But I keep looking at the house across the street, wondering if Darius is looking over at us too.
“He’s leaving,” Layla says. Then she calls out, “Bye, Ainsley!”
I see him wave back from across the street, and I glance at the Darcys’ roof again, wondering if Darius was watching it all go down too.
In no time, Janae joins us with a big smile on her face.
“He offered to drive me up to school,” she says with a soft, sweet voice.
“What?” I ask, walking over to her.
“His school, Cornell, is about an hour away from Syracuse. So we can go up together. I’ll have to squeeze my stuff into his back seat, but . . .” She’s grinning hard, clasping her hands, and almost standing on her tippy-toes as if she’s a rocket ship about to be launched to the moon. She’s about to straight-up burst with happiness.
So I hug her. “Take it slow, okay?” I whisper.
“Z, I have a really good feeling about this,” she says, inhaling deep.
“Janae and Ainsley, sitting in a tree!” Kayla starts singing as she pulls out the blue tarp for all of us to sit on.
“K-I-S-S-I-N-G!” Layla adds. “First comes love, then comes marriage . . .”
Janae sits down on the tarp first, rests her chin in her hand, and with a big smile says, “Go on.”
“No, stop!” I say. “Don’t go on. No love, no marriage, and no baby, Janae! Okay, maybe a little bit of love. But no marriage and no baby.”
“It’s just a song!” she says, laughing.
I roll my eyes at her as we all squeeze onto the tarp one last time. I put my arm around Janae, and Marisol on the other side of me. We all squeeze in tight, resting our heads on each other’s shoulders as the late summer sun sets over Bushwick. The orange sky seems to stretch farther than it ever has. We stay quiet, even the chatty twins, saying our goodbyes like silent prayers.
Each of my sisters leaves one by one, leaving me and Janae to ourselves for the rest of the night. A full moon is out tonight, and this moment feels just as full—almost pregnant. Like our new life is about to be born as we move to Canarsie.
Ainsley is the first thing Janae brings up when we’re finally alone.
“Fine, okay, I do think you two make a cute couple,” I say, sighing.
“You and Darius look good together too,” she says, leaning her head on my shoulder.
“I don’t care if we look good together. I care if he’s a good person or not.”
“Well, is he?”
I look across the street. I close my eyes for a minute to see if I can feel Darius watching us from his roof. Madrina always said that love connects two people in ways that we can’t even see, but we feel it. I shake that thought from my head and open my eyes, because this isn’t love. Not yet, anyway. So I say to Janae, “I don’t know. We’ll see.”
“Well, how long are you giving him? A few days, months, years? A lifetime?”
“How long did you give Ainsley?”
“Long enough for him to come to his senses.”
“What if he never did? What if he never said a word to you before you left for Syracuse?”
She inhales deep and waits a long minute before she answers my question. “He would’ve. If not today, then I would’ve seen him again. Even if it took a few more months. Or years. I just . . . knew.”
Madrina would know.
It’s the middle of the night and our bedroom is almost emptied out, with only a few open boxes left. Our mattresses had to be wrapped in plastic and stacked in the living room for the movers in the morning. So we lie on blanke
ts. But I can’t sleep.
I sneak down to Madrina’s apartment, where the door is unlocked and it’s completely empty, but her scent still lingers in the air—cigar and sage smoke, Florida water, incense, and cheap perfume. These smells are even stronger as I make my way down to the basement.
This is no longer Madrina’s temple for Ochún. It’s as if everything has been poured out into a flowing river.
But Madrina’s chair is still there. Stripped of its white fabric and yellow cushion, it’s more like a skeleton of itself. I sit in it and fold my hands over my belly, just like Madrina used to. I lean my head back and close my eyes to hear her voice one last time.
Ah, mija! There you go! Rivers flow. A body of water that remains stagnant is just a cesspool, mi amor! It’s time to move, flow, grow. That is the nature of rivers. That is the nature of love!
Thirty
EVERYONE IS DOWNSTAIRS waiting for the moving truck to pull off, and I’m the last to take a tour of the place before I say goodbye forever. I finger a layer of dust on my bedroom windowsill. Our apartment looks way bigger without all the furniture and stuff. And much more broken too. There’re cracks in the walls, mold, chipping paint—this crowded apartment probably wasn’t good for our health.
The kitchen looks even smaller, though. I can’t believe that Mama has cooked all those meals, enough to feed a whole block, in that tiny kitchen. The stove and countertops have been scrubbed clean, and I wonder if it will all be torn away to make room for a bigger kitchen like the one at Darius’s house.
I take another look at the whole apartment, inhale deeply, step outside, and close the door.
I did not want to cry, but the tears burst out of me like a newly opened fire hydrant in the summer. I hug myself and press my head against the closed door. All of me, everything I’ve ever known and loved, was once behind that door. I feel as if I’ve stepped outside my own body, and I’m leaving it behind.
“Zuri?” Someone says my name quietly.
I sniff and try to hold back my tears, but I can’t. I don’t turn around to see who it is, but I know the voice. I don’t dare move.
