My Life as an Ice Cream Sandwich

by Ibi Zoboi

  I’m not even on my third bite before Bianca finishes all of her sandwich and pours us both some milk. Even if I did finish my sandwich, I’d still be hungry. Already, I miss Momma’s cooking and Granddaddy’s voice and stories.

  But Bianca is almost something like home. The way she just sits here with me as if I’d never left, as if we’re both still nine, pretending to be astronauts. That was when I first gave her the name Bianca Pluto, first officer on the Uhura. We’d been friends ever since we first met when I was five, when Momma and Daddy were trying to make things right again.

  After Momma and Daddy got divorced, Daddy moved back to Harlem from Huntsville to start his own business—the auto repair shop and junkyard at the corner. I was only four. A year later, Momma and I visited Daddy for the first time, and for that whole summer, we were like a family again. Until we had to leave because Momma said the schools and streets weren’t very good in Harlem.

  When I first met Bianca, Momma had been in this same kitchen—making something really good, I’m sure—when a lady holding a little girl’s hand rang our doorbell. Daddy was standing in the middle of the living room shaking his head at me when he saw what I had done to the telephone. (He once told me it was the fourth phone he’d rented from Ma Bell since I figured out how to unplug a phone cord and turn a screwdriver.) And that’s exactly how Bianca first saw me that day: Phillips screwdriver in my hand, and my legs wrapped in the cord. She pulled away from her abuela to help untangle me.

  She stayed for a long while after that and came back the next day. When she brought her baby doll to share, she didn’t mind that I took the little eyes out just to see what made them open and close. Soon, Bianca was breaking things and putting them back together again with me, too.

  I’m pulling out the ham and cheese to just eat the Wonder Bread when Bianca starts laughing. “Why are you doing that? Abuela would beat your butt for wasting food,” she says.

  “Are you trying to trick me with all that laughing?”

  “Huh?”

  “The Funkazoids chased E-Grace Starfleet all the way to Planet No Joke City! Did you see the signal the Sonic King sent us?” I say, pulling off the crusts from the bread.

  “What signal?”

  “The sound waves! The Sonic Boom!”

  I watch her face—the brown eyes, the curly jet-black hair, the milk mustache. Her shirt is too tight because she’s blossoming, as Momma would say, and I don’t like all the striped colors on it—the pinks, blues, and purples. I’ll make sure to lend her some of my clothes that I sneaked into my suitcase—my NASA, Superman, and Empire Strikes Back T-shirts. Even the new E.T. one that I got from a boy at my old school. I’d traded it for a Transformers T-shirt. I have to hide all these shirts from Momma, who thinks little ladies ought to dress accordingly.

  Bianca just shakes her head as if she doesn’t know what I’m talking about.

  So I try again. “We’re gonna have to stop King Sirius Julius from keeping me as prisoner. You have to help me find the Uhura so we can save Captain Fleet.”

  She shrugs. “You wanna go in the fire hydrant instead? Then we can go dry our clothes in the park. Or maybe we could jump some double-Dutch. When my sneakers are wet and I’m jumping rope, they make a squishy sound and it’s like music when we sing ‘Jack be nimble, Jack be quick . . .’”

  “No, let’s go check out the junkyard instead. Is my old rocket ship still there? The one that made it to the moon? Maybe we can use that to get to the Uhura?”

  My very first summer in Harlem without Momma was when I was nine. Bianca and I spent almost every single day in the junkyard behind Daddy’s shop. I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere out of Daddy’s sight. But Daddy’s sight was always under the hood of a car or on some rusty car parts.

  On one of those days, I sat by the window of Daddy’s brownstone all morning waiting for a giant storm cloud to ease up from New Jersey and Central Park and sit its wide, cloudy butt right over Harlem. When it finally crossed 125th Street, the hot August sun had nothing else to do but back off and mind his own beeswax.

  I pulled away from the window and hurried down three long flights of creaky stairs to the ground-floor apartment. I knocked really hard, three times. Bianca opened the door holding her toolbox and wearing a smile as bright as Venus.

  “It’s time,” I whispered. “Come on, we gotta hurry!”

  We ran next door to the shop where cars were lined up with hoods open in the front yard. Past the broken cars was the glass door to the shop, left wide-open to let out the heat and all the car grease smells. Daddy was in front of the counter talking to one of the mechanics.

  I grabbed Bianca’s hand and raced to the back of the shop where the huge rolling gate was halfway up so we could just run straight into the junkyard.

  We’d already set up a blue tarp in the middle of the yard where scrap metal, car parts, broken appliances, and even pieces of a staircase from someone’s building were stacked up along the gate. To the far right of the yard was an old supermarket refrigerator where Bianca and I kept our supplies.

  Albert, the shop’s guard dog, was at my legs, wagging his tail, when I opened the refrigerator door and reached down for my toolbox. I petted the old Lab just as thunder ripped through the sky. Albert whined and headed for cover beneath a car door. Bianca and I started setting up on top of the old blue tarp. She pulled out two empty soda bottles, a broken toilet plunger, a wrench, a pair of scissors, goggles, and a whistle.

  “What’s the whistle for?” I asked.

  “For when our rocket ship breaks the sound barrier,” Bianca said. “But wait. Did you bring earmuffs?”

  “It’s not gonna even reach Mach one, Bianca. We gotta get it out of the junkyard, and then out of Harlem first,” I said, shaking my head. I pulled out my supplies—aluminum foil, duct tape, three PVC pipes, and a pack of Granddaddy’s seltzer tablets all the way from Huntsville.

  I hummed the theme music from Star Trek. “Space, the final frontier,” I said, deepening my voice as I gathered all my materials in front of me.

  “To boldly go where no muchacha has gone before,” Bianca added. “You think it’ll get to the Bronx? Maybe land on the Grand Concourse? I can call my Tío Jorge to catch it for us.” Bianca held a pipe to her eye and looked up toward the sky.

  “Who cares about the Bronx when you can get to Jupiter and Saturn and beyond?” I said.

  I placed the toolbox next to Bianca and looked around the junkyard for any nosy bystanders, like the boys from down the block who used the junkyard for kickball games. But thank goodness the storm had chased them all into their apartments. They’re not into rockets, anyway.

  I glanced up at the dark gray sky—perfect for launching so we wouldn’t go blind from staring at the sun. Plus, when the storm clouds hung so low, it looked as if outer space were close enough for us to just tiptoe and touch. Harlem only got quiet during thunderstorms—no one would be outside getting their hot-combed dos, Jheri curls, and white Adidas all messed up. So it sounded as if the whole universe could hear our countdown.

  Another roar of thunder made all of Harlem tremble and a single raindrop landed on my nose. “Let’s hurry!” I yelled to Bianca.

  CHAPTER

  6

  When we’re done with our lunches, Bianca and I head out to Daddy’s shop. I look up at a faded red-and-blue sign that used to say FREEMAN’S AUTO REPAIR. Now it just reads MAN’S AU PAIR. The shadows of the missing letters are like ghosts, and maybe we need to call the Ghost Busters to get those missing letters back! The red is now a dull pink and the blue is more gray, as if it’d been way more than three years since I last saw that sign.

  A rolling thunderclap makes my insides drop and I quickly look toward the aboveground train tracks at the end of the block. But there’s no train.

  I look all up and down the street. The brownstones are lined up next to one another like soldi
ers—broken, raggedy soldiers. Some are now boarded up with padlocked chains hanging in front of wooden slats instead of doors. A few brownstones have missing windowpanes and even steps. A giant cardboard box surrounded by shopping carts sits in front of one of the buildings.

  Suddenly, the Soul Train comes speeding down the aboveground tracks at the end of the block—with a roll and a thunder, and a thunder and a roll. My eyes almost pop right out of my head and I take a gulp of that No Joke City air. “The SOOOOUUUUL train!” I sing.

  Then I quickly cover my mouth because a smile, then a laugh, and then a boogie-down dance is starting to take over my whole body, my whole soul—almost like the ladies who catch the Holy Ghost in Momma’s church.

  “That’s not the Soul Train,” Bianca says. “That’s the Harlem Line!”

  “Well, my daddy says it’s the same thing,” I say, uncovering my mouth and watching the very last car of the train speed past our block.

  “Nuh-uh,” Bianca says, rolling her neck.

  “Uh-huh,” I say.

  She shakes her head. Then I whisper, “Well, it’s the Sonic Boom! The Sonic Boom is destroying everything!”

  Down the block is an empty lot where some of the kids who’d been in the fire hydrant are playing. I can’t tell from where I’m standing, but they’re jumping on something wide, square, and springy—a mattress maybe. Who would bring a mattress out into an open lot?

  “Let’s go over there,” Bianca says, grabbing my hand.

  I quickly let go. “The junkyard is better!”

  “I’m not going to that junkyard. It’s dirty and junky. Calvin and them are in the lot.”

  “You mean to tell me that that’s not dirty and junky, too?” I say, pointing to the lot with big, metal trash bins that Daddy said were oil drums, old tires, and torn mattress. And, of course, the nefarious minions. I’ve never seen this much trash in Huntsville. The garbageman comes down Olde Stone Road twice a week, and it’s Granddaddy’s job to put our metal bin out on the sidewalk. But no one ever, ever puts trash on the street. And surely, there’s nothing funny about that. No Joke City, all right!

  Someone shouts Bianca’s name and we both turn to see another group of nefarious minions—all girls wearing short-shorts, too small and too colorful T-shirts, and each one holding onto a long white telephone cord. They walk across the street to where Bianca and I are standing.

  I can tell right away there’s a leader—a girl with two long, swinging ponytails wearing a Rainbow Brite T-shirt. “Is this your friend from Alabama that you were talking about?” Rainbow Dull starts to say even before she reaches the sidewalk. She and her minionettes keep their eyes on me, and my pleated skirt, lace socks, Mary Jane shoes, and stupid curls. I wish I had changed into an appropriate E-Grace Starfleet uniform before braving the streets of No Joke City.

  Bianca nods. “This is Ebony.”

  “So you two are Ebony and Ivory singing together in perfect harmony?” Rainbow Dull asks. “What happened to PJ, Bianca?”

  What a stupid thing to say, even though I know it’s from that Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney song that Momma likes. So I ask, “Who’s PJ?”

  “Her boyfriend!”

  “No, he’s not!” Bianca shouts.

  The nefarious minionettes giggle. Another ploy, as Captain Fleet would say, to get me to smile, giggle, or laugh, too. I furrow my brows even deeper this time, and stare at each one of them, narrowing my eyes, tightening my jaw, and clenching my fists.

  “You look like you wanna punch somebody!” Rainbow Dull says, and an avalanche of No Joke City gibberish pours out of everyone’s mouth like shooting lasers from a spaceship.

  “You wanna fight?”

  “Why is she so weird?”

  “Why does she have on church clothes?”

  “Lemme hear you talk country.”

  “They don’t know how to fight Down South.”

  I block their laser-beam gibberish by throwing up my arms like Wonder Woman with her Bracelets of Submission. “Pew! Pew!” I say with each swing of my arms.

  “What is wrong with your friend?” one of the minionettes asks.

  “Ebony, stop acting weird!” Bianca says.

  But her words are laser shots and I block them, too. “Pew! Pew!”

  “Stop it!” Bianca yells through clenched teeth.

  But I have to protect myself. And her. “They’ve got you, too, Bianca Pluto! Save yourself! Block the gibberish laser beams with your Bracelets of Submission!”

  She grabs both my arms to stop me, but I pull them away.

  “I’m not gonna let you take me prisoner!” I yell over the laughing minionettes.

  “What are you talking about?” Bianca yells back. “You know what . . . Never mind.”

  She reaches into a tiny pocket in front of her striped shirt and pulls out a small folded green paper that opens up into a clean, crisp five-dollar bill, and she smacks it over the bony part of my chest. “Your daddy gave me five bucks to be your friend.”

  I grab the five before it falls to ground and look at it. “Five bucks? To be my friend?” I say, almost whispering.

  “I’m gonna need at least twenty bucks just to put up with all this loca!” Bianca says.

  The minionettes laugh even louder and harder. One of them takes her index finger and swirls it around near her temple. A mind-controlling trick! So I shut my eyes and cover my ears. I should’ve known that Bianca Pluto had already been taken prisoner. I have to save myself first, then I can save her.

  E-Grace Starfleet will not fall under the hypnotic spell of the Sonic Boom!

  I let the minionettes walk away with Bianca Pluto.

  “If you can hear me, Bianca Pluto, make sure to use your secret spying senses to get all the information you need from the nefarious minions to defeat the evil Sonic King, the Funkazoids, and the Sonic Boom!” I shout into the steamy No Joke City air and hope that it reaches Bianca Pluto’s bionic ears in time.

  But she only looks back from the crowd of nefarious minionettes, shaking her head and rolling her eyes.

  I throw up my left arm with the invisible Bracelet of Submission one more time just in case the minionettes have secretly sent a gibberish laser beam my way. “Pew!”

  I’ve crushed them!

  CHAPTER

  7

  Daddy’s brownstone—66 East 126th Street between Madison and Park Avenues—has four whole floors. Well, half-floors compared to my big house down in Huntsville with its wraparound porch, giant rooms, chandeliers, and backyard wider than Daddy’s shop and the nefarious minions’ lot put together.

  Bianca and her grandmother live on the ground floor, where there’s a door leading to the tiny backyard that’s not even big enough for me to stretch my arms and spin around like an asteroid.

  On the first floor is the kitchen at the end of a long, narrow hallway. There’s a small dining room whose walls are lined with books and records. One of those records is faced out on its shelf. On the cover, three people wearing strange clothes are crouched down, posing. I quickly grab the album and stare at the picture because of their outfits. They’re all wearing white space suits! There’s a lady in the middle with white high-heel boots aiming a phaser straight at me. The two men on each side of her are either wearing their space glasses over their eyes or on top of their heads. One of them looks like Daddy himself! I’ve never seen them before in any of the Star Trek shows or even in Star Wars, but from the looks of it, they’re definitely space heroes.

  I read the words on the album’s cover out loud. “Warp Nine. Light-Years Away.”

  A chill travels up my spine and my skin crawls. Warp 9, as in the absolute fastest the USS Enterprise can travel. And light-years, as in beyond the galaxy, beyond Andromeda, where Planet Boom Box exists at the edge of our entire existence. And this must be where these people are from. Surely, King Si
rius Julius has had contact with the Sonic King. They’re in cahoots!

  I quickly start to look for other clues that King Sirius Julius has allies out there in the universe. I pull out another album to see a bunch of guys around Daddy’s age posing in weird clothes. They call themselves the Sugarhill Gang and they’re supposed to be the 8th Wonder.

  I hold both albums beneath my arms and search around the house for more signs.

  In Daddy’s living room is a large green velvet couch. A big, old TV set with dusty wooden side panels is pushed up against the corner. Another smaller TV sits on top of it. It has a wire hanger that sticks out behind it like bunny rabbit ears. Back home, once the antenna on our TV didn’t work and the shows became fuzzy and staticky, Granddaddy just bought a new TV. I like Daddy’s TV set better, though. It looks like an alien robot. Almost like R2-D2, but square and less funny. That gives me an idea. I tuck the two braids sticking out on each side of my head into their bobos so they look like Princess Leia’s round buns.

  “R2-D2, where are you?” I hear someone say with a robotic voice in my imagination location.

  So I quickly look for an opening on R2-D2, just like when Princess Leia recorded her hologram message to Obi Wan Kenobi. What if I could record a message asking for help for my own granddaddy?

  “You must see that this message is delivered safely to my grandfather, who is held prisoner on Planet Boom Box,” I say. “This is our most desperate hour.”

  But there isn’t an opening for me to slide in a VHS tape.