My Life as an Ice Cream Sandwich

by Ibi Zoboi

  “Y’all want Gucci suits or Louis Vuitton suits?” Monique asks.

  “How we gonna pay for Gucci or Louis V? We ain’t got that kinda money!”

  “We’ll pay for it with the prize money!”

  “But we can’t get the prize money until afterward.”

  “That’s if we beat Calvin and them. They swear they’re better than the Breakerz and Rock Steady put together. He said he wants to battle Crazy Legs.”

  Monique turns to Bianca and says, “Well, you’re our only hope, Butter Pecan. You’re better than Calvin even with that knot behind your head. And probably than PJ, too!”

  “Oooh! Bianca and PJ!” Rum Raisin Rhonda sings.

  The rest of the minionettes take their two index fingers and rub them against each other and sing, “Oooh! Bianca and PJ!”

  I want to ask why the ice cream cones are acting funny about somebody named PJ. I want to ask what Bianca could possibly be better at than Calvin. Definitely not building rocket ships. But maybe jumping rope? The only thing I saw Calvin doing in the playground was try to spin on his head and twist and turn his legs all crazy as if trying to break them. Break dancing, they call it. I have so many questions, but I don’t ask any of them.

  * * *

  The 9 Flavas Crew is mean to Lester when we reach Daddy’s block. He’s sitting in front of Daddy’s shop on a plastic crate scratching his neck and forearms as if he’s covered in mosquito bites or something.

  “Y’all little ladies feeling all right?” is all he asks when we walk by.

  “Shut up, Loco Lester!” Rum Raisin Rhonda yells. “Ain’t nobody wanna hear a crazy junkie!”

  “Yeah, shut up, Loco Lester!” Monique repeats.

  “What did he do?” I ask Bianca, but she just kisses her teeth at me.

  “Well, if it isn’t the Nine Flavas,” Daddy says as he steps out of the shop. “I guess y’all got ten now with Ebony and all. What’s your flava, Broomstick?”

  I shake my head, not wanting him to ask any questions or make any jokes about my being any part of this nonsense.

  Two guys who look like they could be Lester’s cousins, with their dirty clothes and messy hair, walk up to him holding big objects in their arms. One has an old radio with broken buttons and missing parts. The other one carries a car’s steering wheel.

  “Look at those junkies,” Monique says. “I swear they will sell you to your own daddy if you’re not careful, Ice Cream Sandwich.”

  Before I even get to ask her what in the world she’s talking about, they all walk away. Only Diane stays behind, standing away from Lester’s cousins. I watch as Daddy pulls dollar bills from his pocket to hand over to Lester’s cousins. They set down the radio and steering wheel inside the shop, and just about run back to wherever they came from.

  “I’m ready to collect my pay, Mr. Julius,” Diane says, holding her hand out. “I watched her all day. Ebony-Grace had a good time!”

  “No I didn’t!” I yell. “I had a no-good, awful, terrible time!”

  Diane shoots me a look that might as well be lasers.

  Daddy chuckles, still without even smiling. “How about we try this again tomorrow, Diane? I’ll owe you twenty by the end of the day, or fifty by the end of the week. Y’all can have a do-over so Broomstick here can really have a good time.”

  I freeze where I’m standing. I’d been a prisoner all along and Daddy planned to keep it that way for the whole week I was supposed to be here? And now, this is what he has planned for me for the whole summer? To follow Diane around as she forces me to be the tenth ice cream flavor?

  “That way, you don’t have to spend all your money in one shot,” Daddy continues. “Save some up for college.”

  Diva Diane turns to me and smiles a mean, warning smile. “Deal,” she says to my daddy.

  CHAPTER

  20

  In Daddy’s kitchen, I wrap the spiraling telephone cord around my body. This cord is not like the one the 9 Flavas were jumping double-Dutch with. This cord really is a portal. With only a round dial and a few numbers, my voice travels through that portal cord to reach Momma or Granddaddy on the other side.

  “Operator, I’d like to make a collect call to the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama,” I say through the receiver.

  A man answers. I ask for my granddaddy—Mr. Jeremiah Granville Freeman, or Jerry if you know him pretty well.

  The man puts me on hold. Another man comes on and says Granddaddy’s whole name to make sure that I was asking for the right person. He asks who is calling. I tell him Cadet E-Grace Starfleet from the Mothership Uhura. He puts me on hold, too.

  “Excuse me, who did you say is calling?” a woman’s voice comes on now.

  “Is this Sally Ride?” I ask.

  “Is this a prank call?” she asks. “Because if it is, I’ll have to hang up.”

  I close the doors to my imagination location so I can be taken seriously, as Momma would say. “I would like to speak to Mr. Jeremiah Granville Freeman, please.”

  “Are you a reporter?”

  “A reporter? No.”

  “An attorney or a detective?”

  “Huh?” I ask. Now, I want to slide through this portal to meet this lady. “What are you talking about, ma’am?”

  It’s quiet and I keep saying hello until someone comes back on the phone. Another man this time.

  “Who did you say is calling, ma’am?”

  I take in a deep breath. “I’m his granddaughter, Ebony-Grace. May I speak with him, please?” I make my voice sound like melted caramel.

  “Ebony, sweetheart. Your grandfather is no longer working here at the space center” is all he says.

  * * *

  The morning before I left Huntsville for Harlem, I had visited Granddaddy’s other office in our house.

  In the wee hours of the morning when Momma was in deep sleep, and this side of the world was as quiet as outer space, I tiptoed into Momma’s room, grabbed the stool from her vanity table, placed it under the attic door in the ceiling, pulled the ladder down, and quietly made my way up to the dusty attic.

  I kept a flashlight behind an old trunk. I flicked on the button and the first thing I saw was a scrapbook sitting on top of an old wooden stool—the one I used to sit on when Nana would plait my hair; the one Momma would sit on when she was a little girl. The years “1964–1968” were written out in Nana’s fancy script. I gently opened the scrapbook expecting to see pictures of Nana, but there was a black-and-white photo of Granddaddy standing in front of the Marshall Space Flight Center. The words “First Day” were written at the bottom.

  I flipped through the pages to see photos of Momma as a little girl about my age with her fancy dresses and hairdo. She hasn’t changed much. There were photos of New York City, and I recognized Harlem in the background. Then the rest of the newspaper clippings, postcards, and even parts of posters were all about Granddaddy. I paused on a photo of a man dressed like an Egyptian from outer space. Red beams spew out from his eyes like lasers. “Sun Ra, Space Is the Place” is spelled out across the top. “The Sonic King,” I’d whispered, and flipped the page.

  I let the flashlight sit on a nearby stool so I could read the newspaper clippings that covered the last bunch of pages in the scrapbook. The date on the first paper was March 14, 1964. I read the headline out loud, “Negro youth to boost first moongoer into space.”

  They say that there’s a good chance that a Negro may be the first man on the moon. But if he isn’t, there’s a good likelihood Negro Collegian scientists will be performing their intricate duties at the launching pad as they wave the moongoer off.

  This article was about Granddaddy’s friends. A year after a group of science students came from Louisiana, Granddaddy came down from City College in Harlem to work at the Marshall Space Flight Center. They were there to “int
egrate,” the newspaper article said.

  I untied the rest of the newspapers and there were more articles about how these Negro engineers were treated in Huntsville when blacks had to live in a separate section of the town from whites. I put the newspapers back into a pile and tied them up again. I didn’t want to read about it. I’d heard enough stories about how Granddaddy had to live twenty-five miles out of town when all the other engineers could just walk to work.

  This was also where Nana’s things were. I crawled over to the far end of the attic, near the tiny window looking out onto Olde Stone Road. I could still smell my nana from here—a mix of mothballs and gardenias. Momma didn’t want her things in plain old cardboard boxes. They were in wicker baskets and covered in the hand-embroidered tablecloths Nana used to make.

  I sat up against the wood paneling where the ceiling meets the wall and let Nana’s scent wrap around me. Then I scooted over to Granddaddy’s telescope and peered into the peephole. The stars were dim now because the morning sun was about to come up. The edge of the Milky Way was too far away, and Planet Boom Box was all folded up into Granddaddy stories and the pictures in my mind—my imagination location.

  I wasn’t going to tuck away those stories just because I was leaving Huntsville for a little while. I was going to make them bigger, louder, brighter. Those stories would just fill up my head until they rolled out of my eyes and covered every inch of my thoughts. It would be everything I talked about and everything I saw. My imagination location would be as real to me as the air I breathed.

  That morning, it was still dark enough for me to see the dulling stars. And the sky was big enough to hold Granddaddy’s many stories of the Uhura and the not-so-final frontier. I pushed the telescope away and scooted over to the ladder. By the time I made it down, Momma was standing there with her arms crossed. Her hair was tied up in a scarf and her silky, flowery robe was on inside out. Momma didn’t look like Momma when she didn’t have on her makeup. Her eyes were smaller, almost like those dulling stars. Her lips were turned down at the corners, and her cheeks were sunken in—but that was because she was fixing her mouth to say something to me.

  “What’d I tell you about messing with your grandfather’s things?” she said with her hard-candy voice. “You’re too nosy, Ebony, meddling in grown-folk’s business. That’s why you need to spend a few days with your father. Learn how to mind the business of becoming a decent young lady. Now, enough with this outer space nonsense. Leave that telescope alone. Ain’t nothing out there for you to see but the Lord.”

  CHAPTER

  21

  An alarm sounds, and it’s like a farting elephant. There’s been an attack on the Uhura!

  I quickly get up out of bed, my head still fuzzy and my body wobbly, and turn about every which way trying to remember where I am. The cool wooden floors squeak under my bare feet, and the tall white walls feel as if they’re spinning and inching closer to where I’m standing, almost squeezing me in. I’m not home in my own bedroom in Huntsville, for sure.

  This is Daddy’s house, and I’m in the bedroom he’s set aside for me. My bedroom for now. I stand still when the alarm sounds again and realize that I’m now acclimated. This will be home for the whole summer.

  The alarm buzzes a third time—it rolls and waves throughout the whole brownstone.

  “Mr. Freeman, where’s Ebony-Grace?” a girl’s voice calls from outside. “I’m here to start my shift.” Buzz-roll-buzz. Buzz-roll-buzz. “Mr. Freeman!”

  I rub my eyes and shake my head hard to force myself into the present. It’s morning. I’m in Harlem. No. It’s No Joke City, and Queen Diva Diane is outside ready to take me as her prisoner again for the day.

  I hear Daddy’s bedroom door squeak open and it sounds like an old yawning dog. “Aw, come on, Diane. Ease up on that buzzer now!” Daddy’s bare feet stomp down the stairs.

  I can still hear Diane’s big mouth at the front door three stories down. “I didn’t get paid yesterday, Mr. Freeman. And you said if I watch her for the whole week, I’ll get fifty bucks!”

  “Broomstick!” Daddy’s voice roars up the stairs. “Diane’s here. Time to get up!”

  I jump right back into bed and slip under the covers. Daddy calls my name again, and I squeeze my eyes shut when I hear him coming back up the steps.

  He’s standing right above me when I start fake-snoring really loudly.

  “Broomstick? Aw, come on. I know you didn’t sleep through all that noise. Your little country ears ain’t used to all this racket. Wake up now.”

  Slowly, I open my eyes and moan. I roll over to my other side and moan even louder. I curl into myself like a baby and hold my belly and moan some more.

  “What’s wrong with you, Broomstick?”

  “I don’t feel so good, Daddy,” I say, making my voice sound like sandpaper.

  He steps out of my bedroom, stands at the top of the stairs, and yells, “Diane, what’d you feed my baby girl yesterday?”

  “Oh no. Lemme guess. She’s sick?” Diane yells back. “Don’t you put that on me, Mr. Freeman. My job was to watch her, not spoon-feed her. Do I still get my twenty bucks for yesterday and today?”

  I don’t care if she gets her twenty bucks or not, I need her to go away so I can be free. “Daddy, my belly really, really hurts,” I whine.

  Daddy exhales and rushes down the stairs. I sit up in bed and press my ear toward the window.

  “Look, these things happen, Diane. She can’t come outside with you, but she’ll be all right by tomorrow. I can’t pay you for work you didn’t even do,” Daddy says.

  “Well, Mr. Freeman. My auntie said her car still sounds like it got a bad cough after she paid you for that not-so-new muffler you put in,” Diane says.

  Then I don’t hear anything.

  “Thank you, Mr. Freeman,” Diane squeals. “See you tomorrow.”

  I rush to the window to see if Daddy really did give her money when she didn’t even work for it, and I catch Diane looking up. Our eyes meet. She smiles and waves.

  “Feel better, Ebony-Grace. Too bad you’ll be missing out on practicing with the Nine-F Crew.”

  I pull away from the window. Who said I wanted to practice with the ice cream flavors anyway, with their stupid moves and their stupid rope and their stupid outfits? And I refuse to call them a crew.

  Daddy comes back upstairs. “I just paid Diane for babysitting you today, Ebony.” His voice is different and he doesn’t call me Broomstick. “Now, if your momma calls, tell her . . . No. Just don’t pick up the phone. And don’t go calling Huntsville, either. Just . . . lay low, okay. I gotta get to the shop. You know where the bathroom is, and there’s some cereal, bread, and cheese downstairs. If you ain’t feeling right, just ease up on the cheese, okay? I’ll come back later with some Robitussin. I ain’t got none in the house.”

  I remember to make a sick face and hold my stomach as he talks. He believes me! This whole playing-sick thing wouldn’t fly with Momma at all. I never tried it with Granddaddy—never had to. When the door is closed, I stand upright, hands at my sides, ready to salute a captain, any captain. So I turn toward the window and salute the wide blue sky. “At your service, Captain Fleet!” I say loud and clear.

  * * *

  I quietly put on my Return of the Jedi T-shirt and a pair of acid-washed jeans that I begged Granddaddy to buy me because Momma said dungarees aren’t ladylike. Then I wait to hear Daddy leave the house to walk over to the shop. When I’m sure that all is clear, I swing open the bedroom door because Daddy’s brownstone is now a radio tower atop the highest peak on Planet Boom Box!

  “All systems go!” I shout.

  The stairs leading down to the first floor become a bunch of radioactive bars that will send shock waves up to my brain if I’m not careful. I gently step onto each wire to avoid being electrocuted.

  “Cadet E-Grace Starfleet to
Captain Fleet,” I whisper into my communicator. “I’m here at the Sonic King’s radio tower. Do you copy, Captain Fleet. Do you copy?”

  “Copy, E.T.! I mean . . . E.G.”

  I jump and look all around because the voice comes from out of nowhere. Then, someone pokes his head out from the bottom of the stairs, giggling. It’s Uncle Rich.

  “You’ve got one heck of an imagination, little girl,” he says.

  A woman wearing a fancy silver dress tiptoes out of Uncle Rich’s bedroom holding a pair of silver high heels in her hand. She smiles and winks at me before she comes down the steps. “Well, this here is Carol. And she was a figment of your imagination location. Okay?”

  I nod and smile, then they both quietly leave out the front door. And finally, the house is all mine! “I’m coming for you, Captain Fleet!” I yell out to the walls, and ceiling, and dusty old furniture, and maybe even that stuffy No Joke City air.

  I’m easing down the radio tower trying to get to Captain Fleet when a loud booming sound almost makes the whole planet shake. I don’t have to move closer to the first floor window and look up at the sky to know that it’s the Sonic Boom. The Sonic King will have it no other way. He’s set on taking control of the whole universe with that booming sound of his. I don’t even bother covering my ears.

  Ever since I first walked into Daddy’s house, I’ve imagined sliding down all these stairs as if it were a ventilation shaft in a space station. So I sit my butt on one of those steps. I’ve already been electrocuted by the radioactive bars, so I let my body slide down each step with a bump and another bump while I squeal, “Wheeee!” until I reach the very last step. I let my body fall back, and pretend to be unconscious. My body’s been electrocuted and the Sonic Boom has taken over my soul. I’ve lost all control.