by Ibi Zoboi
I don’t even move when I hear the front door opening wide letting in more of that heavy pounding bass. It makes my heart jump and my inside dance. It’s taken over everything!
“E.G.! You all right?” someone shouts.
I open my eyes to see Uncle Rich again bent over me with his gold chain swinging back and forth. Behind him is another lady friend, not the same one as before. She wears short-shorts like the ones Diane wears, and a tight striped shirt like the one Bianca wears. Her hair is slicked back to show off her gold trapezoid earrings. Again, with those earrings, as if they’re magnetic receptors for the Sonic Boom.
I jump to my feet. My butt is sore, but I look back up those stairs wanting to go for another slide. “I was just trying to save Captain Fleet when the Sonic King trapped me with his Sonic Boom,” I say.
“Is that right?” Uncle Rich asks, putting an arm around his lady friend. “And what planet did you just come back from, E.G.? Lemme guess. Mars? Mercury? Uranus!” He laughs loudly, slapping his knee and pulling in his lady friend even closer. “I always liked that one. Uranus.”
“No, none of those planets,” I say, walking over to Not-Carol to check out her outfit. “I was on Planet Boom Box trying to rescue Captain Fleet from the evil Sonic King and the Funkazoids.”
Not-Carol giggles. “That’s kinda cool, little girl. The Funkazoids? Sounds like a good name for a rap group or dance crew or something.”
I roll my eyes. I wasn’t talking to her in the first place. “No, Carol. The Funkazoids can never be a crew. Crews are heroes. Crews go on adventures. Crews work together for the good of all mankind.”
Uncle Rich laughs, but Not-Carol cocks her head to the side. “Wait a minute, now. Who’s Carol?”
“Go on up, baby. Gotta talk some sense into my niece,” Uncle Rich says to his lady friend.
When she’s at the top of the stairs, Uncle Rich walks closer to me, digs into his pocket, and pulls out a dollar. “Now, this is what we call hush money. I ain’t got much of it, so if you spill the beans again, you gonna owe me double.”
I don’t take it and say, “A dollar’s all you got, Uncle Rich? My granddaddy gives me a whole twenty.”
“Your granddaddy gives you hush money, huh? Now I ain’t got your granddaddy’s kinda money. Nobody here does. So if you know what’s good for you, little girl, you’ll keep your little mouth shut, anyway. Why don’t you go on outside to play with your little friends? That little Puerto Rican girl from downstairs is out there playing double-Dutch. Go on out there and be a little girl and play little girl games?”
“Be a little girl?” I mumble under my breath.
Not-Carol is making her way back down the stairs. “Don’t make me wait too long, Daddy,” she says in a syrupy sweet voice that hurts my ears.
“Daddy?” I say under my breath.
I watch as Uncle Rich goes upstairs with that woman. He pinches the lady’s butt and she squeals, hitting him on the arm. So I yell, “Bye, Carol! Nice meeting you!”
“Who is Carol?” I hear her say.
“Go outside, little girl!” Uncle Rich yells back.
But I don’t go outside because Bianca and the nefarious minionettes are busy playing with those stupid telephone cords. I stand in the doorway and watch as Bianca jumps in, the ropes gliding beneath her feet, her legs moving to the rhythm.
Bip-bip-bip-bip.
The minionettes start singing a song about a boy named Jack and how he’s nimble and quick and jumps over a candlestick. Then they start counting down as if they’re getting ready to launch Bianca into space.
“Ten, nine, eight . . . ”
Bianca does a trick where she jumps over one leg as if it were a rope, too.
“Seven, six, five . . . ”
Another girl is outside the rope getting ready to jump in. I can see a disaster coming, for sure. As a space cadet, I’ve learned to predict outcomes based on mathematical equations using space-time equilibriums. There isn’t any space inside those spinning telephone cords, and there isn’t any time for Bianca to jump out!
“Four, three, two . . . ”
“No!” I yell as loud as I can. “Abort mission, now! I repeat. Abort mission, now!”
I open the door and run down the front stoop to stop the spinning telephone cord in enough time for Bianca to jump out. But instead of grabbing the cord by my hand, it slaps me in the face, gets tangled in my arms and legs, and I trip, landing right on my butt. The pain shoots up my back and goes straight to my head, forcing me to cover my ears because everything about that moment—the Sonic Boom, the spinning rope, the falling on the ground—comes crashing down right over my head. And it hurts.
CHAPTER
22
Bianca went all the way to the corner store—a “bodega” she calls it—to buy long tubes of red icees to soothe some of the soreness on my body. There’s one on my head, one on my back, and one on my butt as I lie facedown on Daddy’s beat-up, dusty couch. It smells just like him—car grease, cigarettes, beer, and Johnson & Johnson’s baby powder.
“That’s what you get for trying to make me fall again,” Bianca says as she tries to stop the cold, wet icees from sliding off my head and back. “Boomerang! What goes around comes around.”
“I wasn’t trying to make you fall,” I say. “I was just trying to save you.”
“I don’t need you to save me.”
“Yes, you do. You just don’t know it yet.”
“Why are you so weird? And how come you didn’t grow up already? You still act like you’re nine.”
She doesn’t know what she’s saying. Her mind is gone. The Sonic Boom has taken control. Then I say, “If you’re so grown-up, then what were you doing jumping in that rope then? Is that your day job so you can pay your grown-up bills?”
“We’re playing, but it’s not like how you play. We’re actually doing something, not pretending to be on spaceships and going to other planets or whatever.”
“It’s my imagination . . . ,” I start to say, but I stop. It’s no use. Explaining any of this to her will be like screaming on the other side of a giant blast door. She can’t hear me. She can’t see me. “Bianca, you can go home now.”
“Okay. Adiós!” She gets up from the couch leaving me with my icy red alien receptors all along my back and on my head.
But when Bianca opens the front door, Daddy is on the other side holding out his keys. “Hey, Butter Pecan! I didn’t know you were here hanging out with Broomstick.”
“Hi, Mr. Julius. I was just leaving,” she says.
“Oh, wait a minute, now,” Daddy says, picking up a big, flat cardboard box from the ground and nudging Bianca to come back inside. “Got some pizza for lunch. You can help me and Broomstick finish it off.”
I watch Bianca’s eyes move from the box and then to me and back. “Did you get pepperoni, Mr. Freeman?” She closes the door and follows him into the living room.
“Sure did. And you can bring some to your grandmother if you like.”
“Abuela doesn’t eat pizza,” Bianca says, and walks right past me and into the kitchen with Daddy.
Daddy doesn’t even ask me what’s wrong when he passes. So I slowly get up from the couch, still feeling a little hurt, let the red icees fall to the floor, and sit with my sometimes–best friend at the small kitchen table.
* * *
“Feeling better, Broomstick?” Daddy asks. “I knew a slice or two would get you out of your funk. But you gotta take some of this Robitussin first.”
Momma makes me take Robitussin for everything from a skinned knee to a bellyache. I swallow a spoonful from Daddy even though I wasn’t really sick in the first place. But it’ll make my sore body feel better, for sure.
“I don’t get to eat pizza down in Huntsville,” I say, after letting the syrupy sweetness ease down my throat. I just want to have a regu
lar ol’ conversation. The doors to my imagination location are completely shut for now ’cause I’m glad Bianca stayed. I have to think of normal things to talk about.
“’Cause you don’t have no pizzerias?” she asks, as Daddy puts out plates in front of us.
I shrug. “Maybe we do. I don’t know. Momma likes me to eat food that she makes. Says she knows what’s stirring in it.”
Bianca giggles a little. “I’ll get in trouble if Abuela finds out I’m eating pizza. She says her arroz con habichuelas is better. She doesn’t like wasting money on other people’s food.”
I giggle, too. “Right. Other people’s food might have some mind-controlling poisons that’ll make you start eating your fingers and your hands and your arms, and before you know it, you’ll be eating your friends and your mom and your dad, and whoever put that mind-controlling poison into the food will take over the world because everybody will start eating each other and it’ll be an apocalypse, and Planet Earth will become the new home for the aliens and—”
“Ebony-Grace!”
I jump when Daddy yells my name. Bianca’s eyes are wide, and her mouth hangs open as she stares at me.
I did it again. I didn’t mean to. I shrink in my seat and put my head down on the table. My butt is still sore. It throbs against the chair, and I wish it was some sort of signal from Captain Fleet letting me know that I’ll be beamed up onto the Uhura real soon.
But there is no Uhura. Everything is under the control of the Sonic Boom, including me.
“Now, would you stop talking crazy so you don’t scare your little friend away?” Daddy says, as he places a warm, gooey slice of pizza on my plate. “Your mother warned me about this, told me not to entertain these outrageous stories of yours.”
Daddy walks out of the kitchen to sit in front of the TV set in the living room. I sit up, and without looking over at her, I can tell Bianca is almost finished with her slice of pizza. Slowly, I pick at the pepperoni and cheese, and nibble on the crust. I’m still working on my first slice when Bianca picks up a second, and then a third.
“What’s the matter? Your abuela doesn’t feed you enough roots and parachutes?” I finally ask.
“Roots and parachutes? No. Arroz con habichuelas!”
“Whatever. My momma was right. You little street urchins ain’t got no home training. Your grandmomma don’t feed you right,” I say, sighing before I bite into the pizza. I’m doing good. I’m making normal conversation again.
“What? Excuse you?” Bianca stands, puts her hands on her hips, and rolls her neck just like the minionettes.
I pop my eyes out at her. “You’re practically eating the whole box of pizza by yourself.”
“You are so stupid! My abuela does too feed me right. I just like pizza, that’s all. And what about you? Your momma makes you wear boys’ clothes? And you’re just a five-year-old in a twelve-year-old’s body with those stupid baby games.”
“Baby games?” I watch her as she takes another bite of my daddy’s pizza. Pizza that he paid good money for. And she’s sitting on my daddy’s chair, in my daddy’s kitchen, and she even lives in my daddy’s house. So I grab that pizza right from her mouth and right from her hands. “If you’re gonna be rude, than you might as well not eat my daddy’s pizza!”
“Give it back to me,” she squeals. Her voice is like a whistle when she yells.
She grabs the slice, and I grab it back from her. “Like I told you, you need to get out of my daddy’s house if you’re gonna be calling me a baby!”
“You called me a street onion!”
“No, I didn’t!”
“Yes, you did!”
“Hey, hey, hey!” Daddy comes rushing into the kitchen. “Y’all gots to be kidding me!”
I’m squeezing half of the pizza slice in my hand and the cheese, sauce, and pepperoni are oozing through my fingers as if I’d just dug into Mars’s red-hot soil. Bianca’s hands are dirty, too, and she doesn’t let go. We’re both holding on to that pizza as if it were the last slice on Earth. I grind my teeth, scrunch my face, and try to use the Force like Darth Vader does to throw a nearby toaster at her.
“Both of you, put that pizza down!”
We don’t move. We’re staring so hard at each other that laser beams might as well be shooting out of our eyes.
“Let go of that food! Both of you!” Daddy yells even louder than before.
We let the slice drop down onto the table. Bianca just stares at her hands while I wipe mine on my shirt and jeans. Momma would give me a hard licking for doing that, but I don’t care. She’s not here. But I still want to go home.
I get up from the kitchen table, run out and up the stairs to my not-room. I plop down on my not-bed and bury my face in my not-pillow, and let out a loud and long not-cry.
CHAPTER
23
“Hey, now,” Daddy says as he sits at the edge of my not-bed. “You are one spoiled little girl, you know that? You’re acting out ’cause your mother ain’t here. And she is mean, let me tell you that right now. Your momma would pop you one time if she saw how you were acting today.”
My head is turned away from him, and I stare at the flaking white paint on the wall. Everything about Daddy’s house is a little bit chipped and a whole lotta dusty.
“Ebony-Grace, I’m talking to you. If I gotta convince your mother for you to stay up here with me, then you’re gonna have to start acting right.”
I turn to my back and stare up at the high ceiling. There’s even more chipping white paint up there, and if I’m not careful, it will all come falling down on me like a meteor shower. That would be outta sight!
“You were running your mouth downstairs with Bianca, talking about eating your mother and father. Now, where in the world did you get those crazy ideas, huh?” Daddy asks. “Say something, baby girl.”
I search my brain for words—normal words. Sentences that have nothing to do with outer space or aliens or the Uhura—crazy ideas. “Uncle Rich had two different lady friends in the house. One after the other,” I say, as plain as Wonder Bread.
“Uncle Rich had . . . Are you tattle-telling on your uncle, Ebony? That’s grown-folk’s business. You stay outta that. Now, how ’bout your granddaddy? How many lady friends did he have in the house, huh?”
“That’s grown-folk’s business, Daddy. I stay outta that,” I say. I close my eyes, letting those normal words and normal thoughts bounce along the chipped-walls and swim around my not-imagination location.
Daddy chuckles and gets up from my bed. He pulls up his jeans even though they weren’t slipping and walks around my bedroom as if trying to search the walls for the next thing to say to me. He finally stops in front of my bed with his hands on his hips and looks down at me with needle eyes.
So I sit up cross-legged and rest my chin in both my hands, waiting for him to yell at me.
“I’m gonna have to put you on punishment. Ground you or something,” he says. “But I ain’t about spanking kids.” He’s not yelling.
“‘Or something’ would be best, Daddy,” I say, remembering how I got a spanking from Momma for trying to use her Conair hair dryer as a launching pad for my soda-bottle rocket ship.
Daddy chuckles again. He sits back down and looks at me. “You’re gonna have to get some of that nonsense out of your head, Broomstick. You’re gonna have to learn how to get along with the kids on the block and be normal. Now, you can wear what you want as long as you’re all covered up, but I’m not gonna have you disrespecting me in my own house. Am I making myself clear, young lady?”
I take my hands away from my chin and rest them on my lap. “Daddy, I’m not being disrespectful . . . I’m just trying to be . . . ” The rest of the words are stuck in my throat. They’re begging to come out, but they form a ball right there. They want me to cry like a big baby. So I swallow them back.
“T
rying to be what, baby girl?”
I can’t hold it back. It comes tumbling out of my throat, slipping out of my mouth like a meteorite. “Regular and normal,” I cry. I clench my fists and tighten my jaw trying to keep it in.
“Oh, Broomstick.” Daddy sighs, pulling me in and holding me like I’m a big baby. “You don’t wanna be regular. You wanna be dynamite. You wanna be outta sight. Just . . . not outta space.”
“I wanna be extra-galactic,” I say through tears.
“I know, I know, baby girl,” he says, kissing my forehead. “You need to come back down to earth, that’s all. The people ain’t up there in the galaxy. They’re down here on this planet, out on these streets. I don’t care what your grandfather told you—and I blame him for all this—but you ain’t no astronaut, Broomstick. You ever seen a black woman in space, huh? And that Uhura lady . . . she ain’t real. She’s an actress. And her name is Nichelle. I know plenty of Nichelles, but not no Uhura. And your name is Ebony-Grace Norfleet Freeman, not no cadet or captain of anything. And soon, you’ll be a normal young lady. You can’t be walking around Harlem pretending to be Wonder Woman or Superman, and running from church and everything.”
I pull away from Daddy. “I wanna go home” is all I say.
Daddy’s quiet for a long moment—biting his bottom lip, inhaling deep. And then he says: “You can’t go home. Your mother’s busy helping your grandfather out. It’s too much of a mess down there. I know you miss your momma and all, but if she wants to see you, she got the money to pay for a plane ticket.”
“So I’m here forever?” My voice cracks. I let the tears run down my face and drip onto my lap.
“You’re home, Ebony,” Daddy says. “It wasn’t my idea to raise you in the South. I don’t care what kinda job or how much money your grandfather has. The South will always be the South. Now, Harlem is where it’s at. This is the heart of the city. Not Wall Street where all the money is, or Times Square where all the shining lights are. We got soul, over here. We got music. And way back in your granddaddy’s day, we had books and words and jazz. We had revolution. And we still got all of that, despite what you see on the surface. We got talent, baby girl, talent mixed in with a lot of hopes and dreams. The world is at your fingertips up here in the Big Apple. You can take the train and go wherever you want. Now, don’t get me wrong, you gotta be tough. And that’s exactly how I want you to be—strong—like them girls out there. They don’t take no kinda mess. Besides, there’s more opportunities here, more jobs, more ways to start your own business. And more room to dream big. And what they say is true: You make it here, you can make it anywhere.”
