My Life as an Ice Cream Sandwich

by Ibi Zoboi

  I look around the R2-D2 TV set—on top of the smaller TV, and on the floor around the bigger TV. Nothing. If Daddy doesn’t have a VCR, then what was the point in packing all those videotapes into Momma’s old makeup case? I might as well have left the dolls she packed.

  I fidget with the knobs on the small TV trying to turn it on and find my favorite show when Uncle Richard walks in.

  “Ha! My main gal, EG! Come and give your uncle a high five!”

  I do as he says, slapping his hand so hard that my own hand stings.

  Then he turns around and sticks his hand out behind him. “All right now, from the back.”

  I slap his hand again.

  “To the side.” He bends his knees and sticks out his hand from his hip.

  I slap it again and cover my mouth to hide my smile.

  Uncle Richard looks like a skinnier version of Daddy with a scraggly beard and a gold tooth. He wears a black leather jacket even though it’s as hot as Venus outside, and he smells like a mix of sweat, wet leaves, car grease, and too-strong cologne.

  “What you doing inside, baby girl? It’s a Saturday evening in June. Everybody’s out on the streets. You ain’t seen all them kids?”

  I glance out of the tall and wide windows. Bianca Pluto is on the sidewalk jumping over that long, white telephone cord as it swings around her like the rings of Saturn. Two of the minionettes are at each end turning the rope and keeping their prisoner in check. When they say jump, Bianca Pluto jumps high.

  I shake my head. Poor Bianca Pluto. E-Grace Starfleet will rescue her when she’s good and ready.

  Uncle Richard is not one of the nefarious minions, of course. He’s almost like Granddaddy because he can go into his imagination location with no problem. He’s all right by me. The only thing is, he never sticks around to hear about the Uhura and Captain Fleet and the evil Sonic King.

  “Those kids are all strange, Uncle Richard,” I say.

  He laughs. “Oh, you’re just a little bit country—and a whole lot of strange, too—EG,” he says. “And call me Uncle Rich, you hear? Emphasis on the Rich. Words have power coming out of the mouths of children, ain’t that right? They have the ability to manifest.” He spreads his hands out across the front of his face as if he were making the word manifest magically appear out of nowhere.

  And I see it, too. Manifest. It glitters and chimes like it’s written with gold and silver and a million tiny bells.

  “Manifest,” I whisper.

  “That’s right,” Uncle Rich says as he strides over to the TV set and turns it on. “What you wanna watch?”

  “Star Trek!” I shout. “You got a VCR, Uncle Rich?”

  “Star Trek?” He turns back to me and looks at me all funny. “Oh, I forgot. You’re extra-galactic. I think we just missed Kung Fu on Channel 5. You ever seen Five Deadly Venoms?” Uncle Rich stands back and poses like Bruce Lee and says, “Ha-Ya!”

  “I don’t like Kung Fu, Uncle Rich. It’s too violent!” I say.

  “And Star Trek ain’t? With all those laser guns going off?”

  “Phasers!” I make my hand like a phaser and point it at the top TV, hoping to vaporize it and in its place will be a new VCR. “Pew! Pew!”

  Uncle Richard laughs. “You need to stop watching so much TV, little girl. Ain’t no VCR in this house. But if you really want one, you could ask your daddy. And he could ask Lester to do him a solid. He’s gonna need some cold hard cash for a hot VCR, but if he loves you and wants to keep you here with him . . . ”

  “Keep me here with him?” I ask, looking at him sideways.

  He walks up the stairs without answering me.

  I can’t watch the Star Trek: The Motion Picture—Special Longer Version videotape that’s in the makeup case, so I sink into the couch and tolerate the news, which Momma doesn’t let me watch back home. After a few minutes of an anchorwoman named Sue Simmons (who looks very much like Momma) reporting on all the very bad, terrible, and awful things happening to the good people of No Joke City, Granddaddy’s job’s logo comes up in a little square next to Sue Simmons’s head.

  “NASA!” I whisper-yell. I move closer to the TV—almost kissing the screen, as Momma would say—and listen very carefully to Sue Simmons talk about Granddaddy’s job.

  The National Aeronautics and Space Administration announces some of its mission specialists for both the 1985 and 1986 space shuttle crews. The flights are mission 51-D scheduled for launch in February 1985 and 61-D, forecasted for January 1986.

  Images of the space center pop up on the screen and I step back to get a good look at Granddaddy whenever he shows up. But that news is not coming out of the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville. The astronauts and rocket-ship people on the screen are all from the John F. Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The other space center, as Granddaddy would say, while rolling his eyes.

  Mission 51-D is to be the twenty-first space shuttle operation on the ninth flight of the orbiter Challenger. While mission 61-D will be the fourth Spacelab flight and will focus on experiments in the field for its seven days in space. It will be the ninth flight of the orbiter Columbia.

  I inhale deep and shake my head. “But, Mrs. Sue Simmons,” I say to the TV screen, “the Uhura has already made it way past Mars and Jupiter and Pluto and out of the whole galaxy. I know it’s a top secret space mission and all, but you got these people thinking that the moon is as far as we got.”

  Sue Simmons can’t hear me, so I start to fidget with the wire hanger above the TV so that it can get a good signal from my imagination location. The images on the screen wave, morph, and fizzle like soda pop. And soon, a wide shot of the great and wonderful expanse of outer space shows up on the screen.

  CHAPTER

  8

  I use a Jedi mind trick to sneak past the Funkazoids standing guard and make my way into the empty kitchen where our lunch plates are still on the table. Momma won’t be able to see how I didn’t clean up after myself, and Daddy doesn’t seem to care.

  I grab the telephone and dial home while whispering every single number like it’s a countdown . . . 2 . . . 5 . . . 6 . . . The operator quickly comes on because Daddy can’t make long-distance calls. So I ask for a collect call to Mr. Jeremiah Granville Norfleet. When the operator says, “Hold please,” after I repeat several times that this call is from E-Grace Starfleet, lieutenant on the Mothership Uhura, I pull the receiver all the way into an empty nook between the refrigerator and the sink.

  But Momma picks up the phone, and before the operator asks if she will accept a collect call from E-Grace Starfleet in New York City, I gasp, rush to the phone on the wall while almost tripping on the cord, and quickly hang up the receiver.

  I need to speak with Granddaddy! I have to tell him about the Sonic Boom I saw hanging over Harlem. I have to know what I gotta do to rescue Captain Fleet. I have to ask about the space missions and why they go from 51-D to 61-D without missions 52 to 60 and A to Z in between.

  But instead I just go back to the television set and watch Sue Simmons, who’s still talking about no-good, terrible, and awful things. I hope that there’ll be news coming out of the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Maybe then I’ll be able to see Granddaddy, and if I press my forehead against the screen, we’ll mind meld and he’ll be able to read my thoughts.

  After Al Roker’s forecast of a heat wave headed to No Joke City (which, of course, is really the Sonic Boom!), I switch to channel 7 for World News Tonight with Peter Jennings. Now, it’s about the no-good, terrible, and awful things happening in the galaxy.

  By sunset, I leave the TV on while the theme song to Diff’rent Strokes begins, and climb the stairs to the third floor of Daddy’s brownstone and the special bedroom that he’s been saving for me all these years. It’s not fancy like my bedroom back home in Huntsville with its canopy bed and white furniture.


  Daddy keeps the tall windows wide-open. “Don’t you lean too far out, you hear?” he says.

  I nod even though he can’t see me standing against the wall way on the other side of the room. “Why don’t you close those windows, Daddy?”

  “Aww, you afraid of heights, Broomstick? It’ll be hot as hell if I don’t let in some cool breeze.”

  But it’s not just a cool breeze. What’s coming through the windows is not the sound of whispering leaves on oak trees, singing cicadas, the squeak-squeak of Granddaddy’s rocking chair on the porch, or Momma’s soft humming. It’s the sound of old roaring cars, wailing sirens, crashing glass bottles, and cursing—way too much cursing—that’s easing up through the windows and crawling into my ears like the Ceti eels in Wrath of Khan.

  Daddy takes one look at me and how I’m still pressed against the wall like a scaredy-cat, pulls down the windows, and says, “All right, Broomstick. I know you’re not used to all this noise. And you probably don’t mind all this heat, anyway.”

  I don’t tell him that I’m not used to this heat. Granddaddy’s house has a General Electric air conditioner in every room, especially mine. Maybe when I leave here, I’ll have the Huntsville post office deliver to Daddy one of our air conditioners. And one of our JVC VCRs, too. That way, he could record his Saturday afternoon Kung Fu and Bruce Lee movies and watch them whenever he wants.

  I think of all my videocassettes back in my room in Huntsville. I’ve got shows like Battlestar Galactica and The Powers of Matthew Star I taped off TV and then there’s all the videocassettes Granddaddy ordered from the Columbia House catalog. It was hard to decide which ones to bring. But they won’t do me any good now.

  When I’m undressed and all cleaned up for the night, Daddy sits on the edge of my bed—a bed he’s had ever since I last came to visit him. He had tried to convince Momma to let me stay and got the bed and dresser and small desk to prove to her that he could take care of me.

  “Broomstick,” he says, looking at the closed windows and not at me. “You tell me if everything’s been all right at home down in Huntsville.”

  I don’t say anything because I can’t tell if it’s a question or a comment.

  “I don’t want you to keep any secrets from your momma or your pops,” he continues, rubbing his hands together. He had cleaned up and didn’t smell like car grease anymore, thank goodness.

  “Or Granddaddy,” I say, yawning out the words. Sleep is pulling at my eyes.

  “I don’t want you keeping secrets for your grandfather, either.”

  These last words pull me out of that sleep-wake place. “Huh?”

  “You heard me, baby girl. Don’t you keep his secrets from me or your momma.”

  I shift to my side to get a better look at his face. “Daddy, you wanna come on the Uhura with us?” I ask. That must be the only secret he’s talking about. And it’s not a secret at all. Momma knows about the Uhura and our outer-space missions, but she chooses to close off her imagination location.

  “The what?”

  “The Uhura!” I sit up in the bed, rubbing the sleep from my eyes. “You know the nice brown lady on the Starship Enterprise? She’s actually named after Granddaddy’s spaceship since she’s from the future and all, and we’re in the present. Uhura means ‘freedom.’”

  Daddy takes a deep breath and hangs his head down really low. “So this is what your momma was talking about? All these crazy stories about spaceships and planets with Jerry?”

  It’s the first time I’ve heard Daddy call Granddaddy by his nickname. Jerry is short for “Jeremiah,” and only his friends from the space center and the other grandpas in our town and church call him Jerry. Not even Momma calls him Jerry ’cause that’s her own daddy.

  “But, it’s . . . ,” I start to say. “Never mind.” As soon as he said “crazy stories,” I should have known that there was no hope. He sounds just like Momma, and just like my neighbors and the kids in my neighborhood in Huntsville who don’t like to venture into their imagination locations. Daddy is my daddy, all right, but he’s also king of No Joke City, sighing heavy and hanging his head down as if it were the end of Planet Earth. He is King Sirius Julius, for sure.

  I turn over in my bed to let him know that I’m done talking about this.

  “And you stay away from that Lester, you hear? If he come asking for a dollar or even a nickel, you get away from him as fast as you can.”

  “Okay, Daddy,” I say, not caring about why I need to stay away from this Lester.

  “And your Uncle Rich, too, ’cause he’s a wheeling and dealing schemer, you hear, baby girl? He’ll sell you the shoes on your own feet if you let him.”

  I don’t answer him because Uncle Rich has never tried to sell me anything. He didn’t even make me pay for all those high and low fives.

  He gets up from my bed, but before he takes a step, I turn over and ask, “Daddy, why’d you pay Bianca to be my friend?”

  He laughs without even smiling. “Oh, I just gave her five bucks so you two can go to the store and get yourselves some candy. You don’t know your way around just yet, so I let Bianca hold the money, is all. Ain’t nobody paying anybody to be your friend. You can make friends here all on your own, ain’t that right, Broomstick? You got Harlem in your blood. This is my home. Your grandfather was born here. Your people got roots here. So why wouldn’t you be able to make friends? Them ‘little street urchins,’ as your momma likes to put it, could be your cousins.”

  I furrow my brows at the thought of that, and shake my head hard to let go of any ideas that I might be related to any of those nefarious minions.

  He reaches down to pat my head, then walks out of my bedroom that’s really not my bedroom, because I’m only here for a week, and not a minute or a second or a millisecond longer.

  CHAPTER

  9

  The next morning Daddy’s still in bed and the whole house seems to still be asleep. But I woke up on my own. Right away, I washed the stupid press ’n’ curl out of my hair. My Afro was a soft, round moon around my head. I found four rubber bands that I used to make four pigtails that stand up like antennas. (Granddaddy tells me that when I use my imagination location, the very ends of my pigtails light up like fireflies. Momma just frowns and looks for her hot comb.) Then, I put on my Superman T-shirt and matching shorts set (it’s for boys so Granddaddy bought it for me and Momma doesn’t like it one bit). The stiff, ironed-on S feels like the burlap potato sacks Momma keeps in the kitchen, and the whole outfit will make me sweat like a hog because of all that polyester, as Momma says. But I don’t care. I’m Superman. So, I fly down the stairs and make myself a bowl of cornflakes with milk. There’s no one around to see the little smile on my face or the spring in my step. My soulglow, as Granddaddy calls it.

  I let this soulglow take over my body from my kinky hair down to my funky toes because today is the day that I will save Captain Fleet from the clutches of the Sonic King, and save Bianca Pluto from the spell of the nefarious minionettes!

  I’m standing in the doorway, staring out at the broken, raggedy brownstone soldiers lined up along the street. I glance down the block. The nefarious minions are gone. The minionettes are not jumping rope. Only an old man strolls by pushing a cart full of plastic bags. He nods at me and tips his dusty black hat.

  Then, I look up at the clear blue sky. Yesterday’s Sonic Boom has dispersed and I wonder if it’s Captain Fleet’s doing from behind the Sonic King’s prison walls.

  “Why are you up so early, Broomstick?” Daddy asks from inside the house.

  His voice makes me jump and I step back in and shut the door. “Where is everybody?” I ask.

  “It’s Sunday,” he says, coming down the last few steps wearing a dingy T-shirt and cut-off blue jeans. I get my knobby knees from my daddy, but not his hairy legs, thank goodness. “Things slow down in the city on Sundays. It almost feels li
ke Alabama.” He comes over and puts his arm around my shoulders to pull me into the living room. “Almost like Alabama. Now, look here, Broomstick. I got some work to do so why don’t you go watch some TV, have some more cereal, and take it easy for a while? Get acclimated to your new home.”

  He walks away on the word home and I want him to take it back. This is not my new home, and I will not get acclimated. He disappears into the kitchen and I race to the front door and into that cool Sunday morning No Joke City air.

  I take a moment to make sure none of the nefarious minions are watching me. But the coast isn’t completely clear. A lady and two boys walk by. The kids stare at me and I stare back. I take a few steps down the stairs. They look familiar. But they’re both wearing disguises that make it hard for me to tell if they are indeed the nefarious minions: long pants, white shirts, and neckties. The older one sticks his tongue out at me and I immediately recognize him as the Pigeon-Chest boy! I stick my tongue out at him, too, extra long, putting my whole face into it. “I will crush you!” I call out.

  He keeps looking back and making ugly faces at me, until he almost trips and his momma pulls his ear telling him to hurry.

  I stand on the steps waiting for any other nefarious minions to come out of their hiding places wearing shirt-and-tie disguises. A lady walks by with a wide church hat and waves.

  “You must be Julius’s girl,” she says, stopping right outside the rusty black iron gate. “I’ll come by later to drop off a plate from church, if you like?”

  I only nod.

  She smiles and walks away, thank goodness.

  Finally, the coast is clear. If I remember correctly, there’s a secret portal beneath the stoop that leads to Bianca Pluto’s lair. I head down to it and look around for a doorbell. There isn’t one, but before I get to knocking really hard, the door opens and a woman wearing a hat just as fancy as that other lady’s opens the door.

  She gasps, smiles big and wide, and reaches for my face. I step back before she even lays a finger on me.