by Ibi Zoboi
Sage joins the students on the stage to take questions from the audience. “Now keep your questions to just questions,” she says into the mic. “No comments or reciting your application essay.”
The audience laughs, but I don’t. I’d be the one to recite my essay as a spoken-word piece if it would increase my chances of getting in.
I keep raising my hand, but Sage doesn’t call on me. So I stand up and raise my hand high. I hear whispers around me, but I don’t care.
“Yes,” Sage says, finally noticing me. “With the afro.”
A girl standing in the aisle with a mic passes it over to me. As soon as I take it, my stomach sinks, but I swallow back my fear. “Hi,” I say, clearing my throat. “How can I get a scholarship to Howard?”
Everybody shifts in their seat, and some even giggle. My voice echoes, and my whole body goes warm. Still, I hold my head high and wait for an answer as the girl takes the mic away.
“Howard University reviews applications on a case-by-case basis. You can ask your guidance counselor for help. We look forward to hearing from you,” one of the students on the stage responds.
It’s an answer I already knew, but I sit back down and tell myself that I won’t stop asking questions until I get in. I don’t care how I look.
When Professor Bello begins her lecture, I take out my notebook to write down everything she says. Her words fill my ears, the students fill my eyes, and I have the overwhelming sense that I belong here. I imagine myself in this place, getting dressed for class, walking with my new friends to the dining hall, joining the poetry club. I sigh big and feel my body swell with hope about this new beginning. The professor keeps talking and I keep dreaming and I begin to write a letter to the founder.
Dear Mr. Oliver Otis Howard,
I wonder if when we name places
after important people, we’ve made them
immortal in some way. That their ghosts
can linger in corners and halls and dusty
dorm rooms to see me writing this letter
to some dead white man who probably could
never have imagined that I’d exist. Have you
heard of the Dominican Republic, Mr. Howard?
Or maybe you’ve heard about a slave revolt
that happened in a country called Haiti? These are the
places that made the people that made me. Those are
places that, in 1867, girls like me would not dream of being
in somewhere like your university. And this is why I want to
come to your school, Mr. Howard. There is more to learn
about my old, old self, and black and brown girls like me
from hoods all over this country want to take over the world,
but there’s something missing
in our history books the public schools give us.
At least that’s what my papi says,
so he makes me read a lot, and that’s where I found out
about the Mecca in this book called
Between the World and Me
and I’m thinking that I need to come here so I can gather
these wisdoms found in old, dusty books written by
wrinkled brown hands and gather them within the folds
of my wide skirt, tuck them into the pockets of my jeans,
and take them with me back home to sprinkle all over
Bushwick like rain showers, Mr. Howard.
Sincerely,
ZZ
Fifteen
“HI, I’M SONIA,” a girl says as she reaches for my hand to shake. We walk up the auditorium stairs and into the hallway. I see that she’s about my height and my age. “Thank you for that question. Just about everybody up in here is trying to get a scholarship.”
“Really? Oh,” I say. “I’m Zuri, by the way.”
We head out into the yard.
“Yes, really. You know how many people get in and can’t pay? Some can’t even finish,” Sonia says.
“I hope that doesn’t happen to me,” I say. Fear settles in my belly like one of Mama’s heavy meals.
“Well, you just gotta play your cards right. Get them grades up, and extracurricular activities are your ticket. Where you from, anyway?”
When she says this, I immediately think of my poems. I hope that’s something that’ll set me apart. I’m willing to use any skills I have to get into the school of my dreams. “Bushwick,” I say. I rep hard for my hood wherever I go.
Sonia scrunches up her face.
“It’s in Brooklyn,” I add.
“Oh. Why didn’t you just say Brooklyn?”
“’Cause Brooklyn is not Bushwick” is all I say.
“Oh, that’s really cool. If you’re from Brooklyn, then you probably liked Professor Bello’s lecture.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I thought people from Brooklyn are extra woke or whatever. And besides, Professor Bello is from Brooklyn, or that’s what I read in her bio. Bed-Stuy do or die, or something like that.”
“Really?” I feel my whole soul light up when she says this.
“Yeah, really. You should really try to get to know her. She runs an open mic at Busboys and Poets.”
We were walking toward the exit of the campus, but I stop dead in my tracks. “What did you just say?”
“An open mic at Busboys and Poets . . . it’s a bookstore that’s really close to here, if you want to check it out.”
“How do you know all this?” I ask. The Brooklyn in me is not ready to trust this girl all the way.
“I’m from D.C., so I know all about Howard.”
“Thanks, Sonia,” I say with a genuine smile. If she’s from around here, then she must be keeping it real with me.
“Nice meeting you, Zuri,” she says. “Maybe I’ll see you back here for freshman orientation.”
I smile. “I hope so.”
We wave goodbye to each other, and suddenly, a giant bubble of hope begins to well up inside me. I might just have a chance at this school.
“Busboys and Poets,” I say out loud, and start to make my way off campus. I have just enough time to head over there before I need to catch my bus back to New York.
I walk out onto Georgia Avenue and take in the scenery: the shinier-than-usual cars, the well-dressed people, the wide, clean buildings. This part of D.C. is kind of like Brooklyn, but not Bushwick or Bed-Stuy, where everything looks old, used, and tired. Here, it looks as if people care—as if they’re always expecting company, so everything has to look presentable for strangers.
I use my phone to find Busboys and Poets, and I step inside knowing that writers and poets come here to get their words right, to think big thoughts about the world, and to have deep talks like the ones Papi and his homies have on the stoop.
I’m drawn to the nonfiction shelf, where I try to find the thickest book of them all, no matter what it’s about. It’s a big book of art, so I hold it close to my chest, put my bag down, crouch down on a stepstool near the corner, and get lost in its pages. Mama texts me, and I send her a photo of the bookstore so she knows I’m safe and in a place I love. Layla sends me a silly meme, and I text her back a smiley face. I see that Warren has finally responded to my texts with a photo of him hanging out on my block, and I smile. Charlise sends me a pic of her and Colin, but I roll my eyes and I ignore it.
I pull out three more books; one of them is a poetry collection by Langston Hughes, and I read in his bio that this place is named for him because he was a busboy and a poet. I swim in his words until a voice talks over a microphone somewhere in another part of the restaurant. “Good afternoon, and welcome to Busboys and Poets!” he says. A few voices cheer.
My belly twists and my heart races, because time has slipped from me. I dig into my bag for my phone and see that it’s five o’clock already. My bus leaves at seven. I’ll need to get to the station in an hour, but I still have time to see what all this noise is about. I follow the voice that says he�
��ll be inviting poets up to the stage in just a few minutes and advises anyone who wants to sign up to do so now, before they close the list.
My belly knots again, because his words are a command. There’s no one here who knows me. There’s no one from the hood who’ll spread a rumor about me getting on the mic to spit some corny rhyme about love or the hood or my sisters. The last time I shared my poems in public was for the after-school performance in June, and even that was only for the kids who had taken that poetry class.
“Thank you all for coming out,” the man continues. “We’ll be featuring some local teen poets who were part of the Poetry Out Loud summer workshops. So give ’em a round of applause, y’all.”
I walk to a separate part of the bookstore, where there’s a restaurant, a small stage, and a black man wearing a bow tie. I only stand there and watch the people. It’s mostly teens, all right. And I almost think of backing out. Strangers or not, and whether it’s D.C. or Bushwick, I know kids my age can be brutal. Still, I’m drawn to the mic.
“But first let’s get some of you young people to bless this mic,” the man says.
There’s a girl standing by the stage holding a clipboard. There’s a short line, about five teenagers who walk up to her and sign up for the open mic. So I’m the sixth. Some people stare at me, I stare back. Others glance—I ignore them.
I write ZZ on a line, and I take a seat in a corner in the back of the room. A waitress comes to take my order. I have fourteen dollars left after I paid to get to the Howard campus, so I just ask for water.
Those few minutes before my name gets called go by like honey dripping from a spoon. And after each poet goes up, who are all just okay, the man finally calls my name. My heart doesn’t race, my palms are not sweaty. I’m as cool as a snow cone.
The clapping is what gets me up from off my seat and adds the rhythm to my slow walk toward the small stage, up the short flight of steps, behind the microphone, and into the limelight. I begin to speak.
Girls in the Hood
Step onto my block
and walk these jagged
broken streets
and sidewalk cracks
like rickety bridges across our backs
to the ends of rainbows
reflecting off broken glass
where the pot of gold
is way on the other side
of this world.
So we hood girls
shout our pain
into the megaphone wind
hoping that it will carry
our dreams
to sky-scraping rooftops
with radio towers
broadcasting our tongue clicking,
smack talking, neck rolling
hip swaying, finger snapping
sass through telephone-wire
jump ropes while we skip to the beat
of our own songs and count out
the seconds, minutes, hours, days
until we break past these invisible walls
where glass ceilings are so high,
we only look up and never scratch the surface
with airbrushed and gel-tipped manicured nails
hoping that maybe
the stars will reach down
instead and want to touch us too.
My pulse races, and I can hear everyone start clapping. I can feel that my words have earned me respect. Just like when Papi sits with his homies on the stoop to predict a politician’s next move, theorize some foreign country’s strategy, or know who’s about to have beef with who on the block weeks before something goes down. He drops knowledge just as he’s slapping down a set of cards or a domino onto a table, and his homies can’t do anything but bow down to his greatness and keep their mouths shut.
And I’m sure that’s what everybody does as they applaud and cheer. That’s when I know that this place can be an extension of my block too, like home.
I let myself get showered with applause and cheers before I open my eyes again. And when I do, they land on a familiar face. That’s when my stomach sinks. My breath quickens, and I’m frozen there on the stage even as the audience stops applauding and the man calls for the next poet to come up.
Darius Darcy is looking directly at me.
Sixteen
THE WORDS WHAT the hell is he doing here? play over and over in my mind. He’s just standing there in the back of the room with his hands in his tight pants pockets. The late-afternoon sunlight shines on the side of his face, making him almost glow. We both have lights shining down on us as if we’re the only ones in here.
Someone comes over to touch my arm, and I finally look away and step down from the stage. I almost don’t know where to go, but then I remember I left my bag on the chair and I have to head over to where Darius is standing. I recognize one of the girls he’s with. Carrie. This is not how I expected my afternoon to go. At all. And Darius just watched me perform? Oh, hell no.
“Small world, huh?” is the first thing Darius says.
“Too small,” I say as I grab my bag without looking directly at him. “Way too small.”
“So small, I’m starting to feel claustrophobic,” Carrie says while shifting in her seat. There’s an empty chair at their table that has Darius’s bag hanging over the back, but I don’t sit down.
“Wow, you all know each other?” the other girl asks. She looks familiar too, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen her. Then I realize that she has the same square jawline as Darius. “Hi, I’m Georgia, and that poem was really good! Girls in the hood. I like that!”
“Zuri” is all I say, pretending to be uninterested because she really looks like Darius and I remember her name from when we were talking about that band at Maria Hernandez Park. She must be his little sister. The third Darcy kid.
Then Darius adds, “And guess what—Zuri lives across the street from us back in Bushwick.”
Georgia gasps. “Oh my god! Wow! What a coincidence! What are you doing in D.C.? You go to Howard?” She sounds like her brothers—not her voice, but her words. No New York twang, no slang, nothing. She pronounces her words perfectly. She enunciates.
“No, I don’t go to Howard. Yet. I’m a senior at Bushwick High. I’m just touring the campus for the day.”
“Cool,” she says.
Carrie doesn’t say a word to me. She just smiles a fake smile and messes with her iced latte or whatever she’s drinking. Another teen poet gets on the mic and yells so loud that I want to cover my ears.
“You’re the last person I expected to run into here.” Darius bends down a bit so that I can hear him. This is the first time I’m seeing him in jeans, I realize, but I don’t stare too long. Our bodies are almost touching, boxed in by the chairs.
I nod, thinking about what Warren just told me about the Darcys. How Darius is shady, and I’m sure his sister is the same. But why does this D.C. Darius seem nicer than the one back in Bushwick? He’s smiling more. His eyes are softer. His whole body language is more laid-back and chill.
“We’ve been wanting to get out of here to get some real food. Wanna come with?” he asks.
“Come with? No, thanks. I kinda wanna see the other poets,” I say.
“No you don’t. Trust me. You’re ten times better than they are,” he says, grinning.
“Totally. I can only take a little bit of that spoken-word stuff,” Georgia says. “But you . . . you were amazing!”
I only smile because I see Carrie rolling her eyes. She catches me watching her, then flips her long straight hair over her shoulder.
“Thank you,” I say to Georgia while keeping my eyes on Carrie.
“You still want those chili dogs, Darius?” Georgia asks.
“Heck yeah!” Darius says. He gently touches my arm. “I’m sure you didn’t get a chance to go to Ben’s Chili Bowl,” he says. “You should really try it. It’s good.”
And I laugh. “Heck yeah?” I repeat, laughing. No one else is. Clearly they don’t get how corny Darius sounds saying
Heck yeah. “You eat chili dogs?”
“Let me guess,” Darius says. “You thought those hors d’oeuvres at our party are what we eat for dinner every night?”
I shake my head and try very hard not to laugh again. “No, I didn’t think that at all.”
“Yes, you did, Zuri,” he says. “And do you eat those fried pork chunks for dinner every night?”
“No, of course not,” I say, and let out another laugh because he’s right. And I was wrong. For the first time since meeting him, since hating him, I hear him laugh, too.
Georgia smiles while looking at her brother, then at me, then back at her brother. All the while, Carrie is dead serious.
We leave Busboys and Poets and walk around the corner to a place called Ben’s Chili Bowl. It looks like it’s been there since forever, but the surrounding buildings have been scrubbed clean and polished. It’s a short red-and-white building that has giant yellow signs with red lettering and pictures of a hot dog and a hamburger. Inside feels like my Brooklyn—the familiar black women behind the counter wearing hairnets, plastic gloves, and warm smiles; the smell of food feels like a big hug from Madrina; and smooth R&B playing in the background makes everything seem as if it’s swaying to the music. Whatever they serve here, both Papi and Mama would love this place. I imagine taking them here when they visit me on campus.
I stand back against the wall while Darius orders for his sister, then Carrie, and then he turns to me.
“No, thanks,” I quickly say.
“You sure?” Georgia asks. “’Cause nobody from New York turns down anything from Ben’s Chili Bowl.”
I shake my head no even though I’m hungry as hell. I don’t want to hang out with them longer than I have to. After a few minutes of waiting for the food, small talk, and watching Carrie try to shut me out by making sure she gets in between me and Darius every chance she gets, we end up sitting in a booth in the back. I sit next to Georgia while Carrie sits next to Darius, of course. I want to blurt out that I don’t want her man, but it would be a waste of my breath at this point.
“My brothers told me that our new neighborhood is really loud. Good thing we have central air to keep out all that noise,” Georgia says in between spoonfuls of her chili.