My Life as an Ice Cream Sandwich

by Ibi Zoboi

  “Was everything all right with the Uhura? Those buttons and lights working out okay?”

  “Pop, please stop,” Momma said. “No more comic book stories. Ebony will need to start focusing on her schoolwork.” She smoothed down one of my braids as I took a bite from my sandwich. “Junior high school is gonna be real hard and she’ll have to start studying now and keep her head out of all that nonsense space stuff.”

  Granddaddy chuckled. I could see the chewed sandwich in his mouth. The little gray hairs on his mustache curled over his lips and his eyes squinted just like mine when I smiled.

  “Well, outer space is what keeps me grounded, ain’t that right, Starfleet?” Granddaddy said.

  “Outer space is not stopping those newspapers from saying not-so-nice things, Pop,” Momma said.

  And with that, the low-hanging dark clouds spread from just being over Granddaddy’s head, to being over mine and Momma’s head, and maybe our little spot outside of MSFC, and maybe all over Huntsville, too.

  “The newspapers can say whatever they want, Gloria,” Granddaddy said. “Fact is, me and Huntsville newspapers got a long, long history. Ain’t that right, Starfleet?”

  I only nod and take tiny bites from my sandwich. Momma and the other grown-ups keep secrets or speak in code. But Granddaddy is as plain as day. Our stories about the Uhura are more real than any of the hush-hush gossip.

  “Listen to me now, Ebony-Grace.” Granddaddy sets down his sandwich, takes a sip of his sweet tea, and faces me. Granddaddy talks to me. He tells me the truth even when Momma and the others around me hide their secrets behind their whispers. “Those same newspapers didn’t bother me none when I first moved down here from Harlem when your momma was a lil’ baby. Moving back to the South from New York was unheard of. They called us uppity Negroes down here just ’cause we knew a little bit about that fast life up in Harlem and we were engineers working for NASA.”

  I just nodded. I never liked when Granddaddy talked about when he first moved down to Huntsville and how he was treated. Instead, I asked, “You think they’ll ever let a kid go into space, Granddaddy?”

  “I don’t see why not. And I’ll make sure you’re the first one in line.”

  Momma was glaring at me. Her red lips were pursed tight. “That’s it, young lady!” she whisper-shouted. “And, Pop, you got bigger things to worry about now, don’t you?”

  Granddaddy looked down as if the weight of the concrete clouds were pushing down on his head. At the end of our lunch, I gave him a super big hug.

  “I’ll see you later at the control boards, Cadet Starfleet,” he whispered into my ear. Then he stood upright, pulled up his pants, puffed out his chest like he usually did when he’s about to announce something he’s really proud of, and said, “We’re working on plans for the next Spacelab mission.”

  I gasped. This was my chance. “Maybe I’ll get to go on that mission!” I said.

  “No, ma’am! I’ve got galaxies for you to conquer on the Uhura, young lady! Spacelab missions are small potatoes.”

  I stepped back away from Granddaddy and gave him another cadet salute without even looking Momma’s way. I could still feel her piercing eyes.

  * * *

  Later that evening when Granddaddy came home, we went off by ourselves to his study and listened to Daddy’s cassette tape from Harlem with the volume turned down real low ’cause Momma didn’t like me listening to strange music.

  “Your momma’s gospel music ain’t sonic nothing,” Granddaddy joked. “It’s the slow, humdrum rotation of the planets around the sun. Can’t even hear it move your soul.”

  But Momma’s soul would move, all right. Even I could see that. In church, while cooking in the kitchen, or while sitting on the porch, she’d close her eyes, lean her head back and wave her hand from side to side to praise the Lord.

  “But, Granddaddy, Momma lost her mind, too, with all that singing,” I’d said.

  “She didn’t lose her mind, Starfleet. She put it aside for a bit and let Jesus take over,” said Granddaddy.

  There was no talk of Jesus or the Lord on Daddy’s cassette tape, “Fresh from the Boom Box.” Granddaddy carefully placed it into his stereo (not a boom box ’cause it was tall, had a turntable, and a radio dial, and you couldn’t move it anywhere else). We listened closely as some guy talked over these beats that sounded like a big ol’ party in outer space where the stars and planets would boogie on down.

  A boom.

  A bip.

  A bop.

  The words flew out of the speakers of Granddaddy’s stereo and floated around the room like fireflies—glowing and sparkling just the same. There was a story and the story made music.

  Hip and hop and stop.

  Beat and feet.

  Bang, boogie, and bang.

  Stop, rock, and bop.

  Pop the pop.

  On and on,

  To the break of dawn.

  “Granddaddy, what are they saying?” I asked. I moved as close to the speakers as I possibly could to let the words and rhythm and beats reach that part of my imagination location where everything makes perfect sense.

  “Huh. Gibberish,” was all Granddaddy said. “Gibberish and noise. That’s not music, Starfleet. I bet they’re not even playing instruments. Nothing that sounds like that can come out of a guitar or a piano or even a drum set.”

  Granddaddy quickly stopped the cassette tape. A weird quiet filled the room as if there’d been a giant bubble of sound and everything popped leaving nothing but thick, hushed air. I didn’t tell Granddaddy that I wanted more of Daddy’s music from Harlem. I wanted to take apart the words like the buttons and wires on a radio. I wanted to put them back together with the music like a puzzle so it could all make sense—the “break” with the beat, the “clap” with the bap, the “move” with the groove.

  But instead, I said, “That’s right, Granddaddy. Gibberish and noise.”

  * * *

  Granddaddy’s bedtime stories have always been about spaceships and aliens and planets and galaxies, even though Momma kept saying, “Pop, there’s only one thing out there and it’s our Heavenly Father.”

  Granddaddy would lean in and whisper, “That’s the name of a spaceship—Heavenly Father.”

  I didn’t do a good job of hiding my laugh from Momma.

  That night, it was time to check up on the Uhura. Granddaddy always started the mission with “Uhura to Cadet E-Grace Starfleet! Uhura to Cadet E-Grace Starfleet!”

  And I always responded, “Beam me up, Captain Fleet!”

  Then, Granddaddy started his story—a brand-new one filled with new words and new worlds.

  “Starfleet, lemme tell you about Planet Boom Box, the evil Sonic King, and his Funkazoids . . . ”

  CHAPTER

  18

  Pluto is the ninth planet from the sun. It’s the farthest and coldest—ice cold, just like the way Bianca is treating me. If there are nine planets in the solar system, then the 9 Flavas represent each one—Mercury, being the closest to the sun, is hot like fire and mean like Monique. I’d call her Monique Mercury ’cause she’s so doggone mean.

  But as I stood there in the middle of the park arguing with Diva Diane about whether I should just run home and have her lose ten bucks for not babysitting me until five o’clock, Monique comes over to take my hand and pulls me into the playground.

  “Come on, Outer Space Ebony-Grace,” she says. “You gotta turn the rope for us.”

  I thought she didn’t like me. She’s Mercurial Monique—mean one minute and nice the next.

  Bianca comes over and hands me the two ends of the long telephone cord.

  “Hey!” I protest. “This is for telephones!”

  “Well, what y’all use down in ’Bama? Twine?” Monique says. She grabs my right hand and wraps the end of the cord arou
nd my index finger. Then she does the same with my other hand.

  “Close both your hands, and you gotta keep the rope around your fingers so it doesn’t slip. Okay, Ebony?” Bianca says.

  “It’s E-Grace Starfleet to you, Bianca Pluto,” I say, without thinking first.

  “Escúchame. You wanna be one of the Nine Flavas, then you gotta show and prove,” she says, rolling her neck and eyes. “Like this.” She turns her arms around at the elbow like she’s swatting flies.

  “She’s gonna be double-handed!” Rum Raisin Rhonda shouts.

  “No she’s not!” Bianca shouts back. Then she says to me, “I’ve seen you with a screwdriver, Ebony. How you twist and turn it . . . A double-Dutch rope is just like that. The screwdriver has to fit into the—”

  “The groove,” I say. “The screwdriver has to fit into the groove.”

  “Fit into the groove,” she repeats.

  “Yeah, Ice Cream Sandwich, fit into the groove,” Mint Chocolate Chip Monique calls out. “Make your moves! Show and prove!”

  Rum Raisin Rhonda is at the other end of the telephone-cord jump rope. She starts to turn. One hand over, one hand under. Over. Under. Over. Under. The rope kisses the concrete ground in a steady rhythm. Bip, bip, bip, bip. I follow the sound and keep my eye on the rope.

  “You’re doing good, Outer Space Ebony-Grace,” Rum Raisin Rhonda shouts. “You’re not so bad.”

  This is like all the times I watched Granddaddy’s records spin beneath the needle on the turntable. The needle follows the record like the Uhura circling Saturn’s rings—round and round and round. And music rises from those rings the way it rises from the telephone cord.

  “If Butter Pecan is gonna jump in and do the Up Rock in the rope, then y’all gotta turn slower,” Monique says. “We’re doing something fresh and we gotta get it right.”

  Bianca is getting ready to jump, doing that same dance that Diva Diane did. And maybe, this turning and turning is a vortex that will swallow her whole and teleport her right up onto the Uhura.

  So I turn faster and faster, and plan my exit strategy to join Bianca once she blinks out from between those telephone cords.

  Bip-bip-bip-bip.

  “That’s too fast!” Rum Raisin Rhonda yells.

  But I keep turning. I count down in my head: 10, 9, 8 . . .

  BipBipBipBip.

  “Slow down! You’re messing up the rhythm!”

  I don’t listen to Rhonda. As soon as Bianca jumps in, I turn with all my might. I am an engine and both my arms are liquid nitrogen and oxygen pumping fire-hot fuel into a rocket.

  Bipbipbipbip.

  Bianca screams. The speeding cords get caught in both her legs, and she falls to the ground hitting her head really hard on the concrete.

  Only the bip stops. Not the boom-boom from the radio in the distance. Not the nefarious minions’ gibberish from across the playground. Not the dancing No Joke City air. And not the screams of the 9 Flavas Crew who all rush to Bianca and surround her like the universe contracting—the whole galaxy coming together as if a single planet were the magnet.

  And then, in just a few seconds, they expand again into one big bang, and out comes their words in a torrent of shooting stars, asteroids, and meteor showers that will surely break the Uhura, or even Planet Earth, into a billion tiny pieces.

  “What did you do, Ice Cream Sandwich?”

  “What’s wrong with you?”

  “You can’t even turn a rope right?”

  “You didn’t show and prove and you messed up all our moves!”

  “You did that on purpose!”

  “We thought Bianca was your friend!”

  I let the jump rope slide out of my hands as they all surround me, and I surrender because this is the moment that they might just take me prisoner because no portal opens up, no captain beams me up.

  CHAPTER

  19

  The Sonic Boom is here! It’s in full effect, and at full force! My damage report for Captain Fleet would be bad. Shields are at less than ten percent. All systems in the critical range!

  Bianca is okay. I am not.

  When we leave the park, the sound wave in the sky is bigger and thicker like a storm cloud. I keep glancing over at Bianca to see if she looks up and notices it, too.

  It used to be that way, the last time I was in Harlem back when we were nine. I would point to the sky or the distant horizon and see a quickly approaching meteor, an alien spaceship, or a strange light meant to lure us in and swallow us into another dimension. I didn’t have to explain what I saw. I would see a color, and Bianca would add a shape. I would see eyes, and Bianca would add hair and arms and legs. But now there are no doors or windows or any openings to her imagination location. There isn’t even a location. Or an imagination.

  I walk behind Diane and the 9 Flavas Crew. Bianca holds a red freeze pop behind her head. The long plastic tube makes her look like an alien—as if the freeze pop is a long red tentacle meant to connect her thoughts to her mothership.

  The other 9 Flavas eat their icees—holding the tubes to their lips and sucking out all the sweet, syrupy juice that comes in all different colors. I don’t have an icee.

  “We needed two people on the rope, two people jumping, and six people to dance outside the rope,” Monique explains to the rest of the girls. “That’s why we made her turn. We were just trying it out.”

  “Well, we’re gonna have to pick somebody different ’cause she’s worse than double-handed. She’s trying to kill us with that rope!” Rum Raisin Rhonda turns around to look at me and rolls her eyes.

  I keep my head down.

  We stop in front of a small store on 125th Street. The words on the window read DAPPER DAN’S LADIES & GENTLEMEN BOUTIQUE. Behind it are fancy fur coats and colorful leather jackets and bags with designs like the ones I see on Momma’s favorite TV show, Dynasty. Momma doesn’t know that I watch her watching that show. And she doesn’t know that I listen when she talks about it to her church lady friends—all that lying, cheating, and sinning, she says. Momma would like this store.

  All the 9 Flavas and Diva Diane rush to the store’s window. Everybody points and squeals and jumps up and down, spilling out their No Joke City gibberish while they stare at all the fancy things.

  “I want the one with the fly velvet stripe on the sleeve!”

  “That’s my fur coat! I’m gonna wear it in July!”

  “Diane, you should wear that Gucci jogging suit on your first day of college!”

  While they’re all piled around the mannequins in the window, I spot a big colorful poster and step closer to read the words.

  Again with these crews, I thought. Rock? Steady? Momma’s Aretha Franklin album pops up in my head. She doesn’t dance to it, but Granddaddy usually does a two-step, holds out his hand for me to slap, and repeats with the song, “What it is! What it is!”

  So that’s exactly what I say out loud while pointing to the flyer. “What it is, what it is?”

  Diva Diane is the first to read the whole thing. “Get outta town!” she squeals. “Look, y’all. The Rock Steady Crew will be right here at the Apollo, and there’s a contest!”

  And don’t they know Apollo was a space mission, not a theater?

  The 9 Flavas Crew almost knocks me down to get a better look at the flyer. At the same time, a group of men walk into Dapper Dan’s Boutique wearing the shiniest, biggest, heaviest jewelry I’ve ever seen. They wear matching jackets and pants that almost makes them look like a real crew getting ready to handle some serious business. One of their jackets is so shiny, they look like one of guys from that album cover—Warp 9. Maybe that’s them. Maybe they’re a real space crew come to save me from these nefarious minionettes! But they walk right past. Diane spots them and turns around putting her hand on her hip. She acts funny and smiles too bright.

 
But Monique pushes past her to get a better look at this crew.

  “Ooh, y’all look fly!” she says, reaching out to touch one of the guys’ pants. “Did Dapper Dan make them?”

  One of the men nod and only half smiles.

  “Does Dapper Dan make space-flight suits?” I ask no one in particular.

  But Bianca rolls her eyes and shakes her head at me.

  So I ease toward her, and say, “Hey. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.”

  “Yes, you did!” she says. Her melted icee is now a tube of what looks like red Kool-Aid. “I never, ever fall when I jump into the rope. I’m real good. You were just jealous.”

  “But I never even seen you jump. How could I be jealous?”

  “You’re just mad ’cause I won’t play those stupid games with you anymore.”

  “No, I’m not! I’m just—”

  “Yes, you are!” she almost shouts. “Nobody cares about space, Ebony-Grace. And no, Dapper Dan doesn’t make space-flight suits. He makes fly suits. Gucci suits. MCM suits. Louis Vuitton suits. Fendi suits. Church suits. This is Harlem, not another planet!”

  “You can say that again,” Monique says and comes over to pull Bianca away. “Let’s get Dapper Dan to make our outfits for the contest!”

  And they all cheer with their gibberish.

  “I know that’s right!”

  “We gonna be fly and outta sight!”

  “Dope and funky fresh!”

  “Best dressed to impress!”

  I step back away from the boutique. I close my eyes and cover my ears, but it’s no use. The Sonic Boom pours out of every single crack and corner of No Joke City. It pounds out of radios sitting on tall boys’ shoulders as they walk by. It beats out of cars with shiny wheels and all their windows rolled down. It even oozes out of Dapper Dan’s Boutique with the fancy coats and bags and colorful jackets. It mixes with the boom-bip-ratatatat of the No Joke City gibberish. I drop my hands and open my eyes again.