My Life as an Ice Cream Sandwich

by Ibi Zoboi

  She quickly turns around. “You’ve never been in a basement before?”

  “Yeah, but not one so small,” I say. Then, I lean in to whisper, “I will help you with your rebellion.”

  Bianca steps back. “What?”

  “Your plot to overthrow King Sirius Julius and bring freedom to No Joke City!” I whisper-yell. “What else could be going on down here?”

  She rolls her eyes. “¡Dios mio! Why are you so weird?” she whisper-yells back.

  “But weren’t you just talking about King Sirius Julius, and . . . ,” I start to say, but she’s already turned away from me and makes her way into the room with the laughing kids.

  I take slow, careful steps toward the door. I peek in to see Stone-Cold Calvin’s big ol’ peanut head.

  “You’re welcome to join us,” someone says from behind me, and I jump, putting both my Bracelets of Submission in front of my face.

  A lady is smiling before me, wearing too-red lipstick and too-blue eyeshadow, almost like Momma. “I heard all about you upstairs. It’s okay. You can go in.”

  The hallway is so narrow that I can’t push past the lady to leave the secret headquarters. So before I know it, I’m in a small room filled with tables, chairs, nefarious minions and minionettes, and Bianca Pluto.

  “There goes that weird girl!” someone calls out.

  “Hush now!” Lipstick Lady says.

  “Sister Linda, how come she gets to wear clothes like that to church?” a girl wearing a giant pink ribbon calls out. I don’t recognize her, but still, she’s definitely a minionette. I don’t like her question and I don’t trust her.

  “Wendy, lower your voice,” Sister Linda says.

  “Is that a Superman shirt? Can I wear my Adidas tracksuit next Sunday?” a boy’s voice says.

  “I thought you can’t enter the house of the Lord worshipping another idol,” another girl’s voice says. I can’t spot the minionette who says all this, but my eyes land on Bianca, who doesn’t even look my way.

  The No Joke City gibberish escalates to new heights. There isn’t much room here, so their voices bounce off the walls and ceilings like Ping-Pong balls in zero gravity.

  Sister Linda takes my arm to walk me to a seat, but I pull away from her.

  I was wrong! This isn’t the secret headquarters for the No Joke City rebellion. Bianca Pluto is not overthrowing King Sirius Julius.

  I slowly start to raise my arm to activate my Bracelets of Submission, and Bianca finally sees me. She shakes her head, her eyes pleading. I have no other choice. I will not be taken prisoner.

  “Did everyone bring their bibles?” Sister Linda starts.

  I take one step back. And then another. “Jesus is an astronaut!” I yell. I slowly extend my arms out on each side of me and just like Linda Carter turning into Wonder Woman, I spin right out of that small bible study room as Space Cadet E-Grace Starfleet, zoom through the narrow hallway, and rush up the steep staircase.

  The preacher is at the pulpit leading his tiny congregation in prayer. Everyone has their heads bowed down and eyes closed, thank goodness. So I sprint right out of that Holy Redeemer Church and onto 140th Street until I reach Lenox Avenue. I run down the whole fourteen blocks to 126th Street, passing dozens of grown-ups leading nefarious minions in church clothes.

  Some call out, “Is it a bird, is it a plane? No, it’s Superman!”

  Another one yells, “It’s Jesse Owens’s love child!”

  I zoom past a grandpa who says, “Look at Wilma Rudolph straight outta the Rome Olympics!”

  “No way, it’s Flo-Jo on her way to LA,” says the teenager walking beside him.

  But I am not running down the streets of Harlem. I am flying way up high over it, with the clouds.

  CHAPTER

  13

  “Ebony-Grace, you can’t just run around Harlem like you know the place. You’re a spring chicken, baby girl—only twelve. You don’t know these streets like the other kids yet. These kids—what your momma calls ‘little street urchins’—have seen more hard life than any grown folk down in Alabama. I bet if a dope fiend asks for five dollars, you’ll give it to him. If that same dope fiend asks you to use our bathroom, you’ll let him in. You don’t need to know about that kinda life, baby girl. But you don’t need to be up in them clouds, either. There’s a difference between knowin’ and livin’.”

  “What’s a dope fiend, Daddy?” I ask, when King Sirius Julius finally stops his lecture to take a breath.

  “Proves my point, Broomstick,” he continues. “Don’t give Lester five dollars if he ever asks for it. And never, ever let him into the house.”

  I shrug because I don’t have any problems with Lester, other than the fact that he smells funny.

  I’m sitting on the creaky hardwood floors of my bedroom with my arms crossed and my legs stretched out in front of me. A stack of ten comic books sits next to my bare feet. I’ve already read them twice, even while a low-level Sonic Boom invades King Sirius Julius’s lair and music pumps throughout every corner of the brownstone.

  I can’t really tell if King Sirius Julius is raising his voice so that I can hear him over the music, or if he’s really mad at me. His words dip and dive around the rhythm, bass, and singing like a spaceship dodging meteors.

  At least this is the music Granddaddy likes, too, and not the other sounds made up of hard beats and computer noise that gets down into your bones and makes you lose your God-loving mind!

  Still, I knew King Sirius Julius was trying to control my mind when he put Al Green’s “Love and Happiness” on the record player. He was trying to make me love Harlem, to make me happy, even as he stands yelling over me for running away from the Holy Redeemer Church and Señora Luz and Bianca.

  King Sirius Julius takes in a long breath, places both his hands on his hips, and says, “Folks are already talking, saying that I should’ve left you with your momma, that I ain’t got no business raising a girl out here with the shop and all. But I wasn’t gonna stand by and watch all that stuff going on with Jerry and how it must be affecting you. I’m your father, and it’s my job to protect you. But I’m not gonna fight you to do so, baby girl.”

  “What’s the stuff going on with Jerry?” I ask without hesitating.

  He sighs again, deeper this time, and King Sirius Julius melts off Daddy. His shoulders relax and his arms hang by his sides as if I’d defeated him with that single question.

  “Come on,” he says, motioning for me to get up from the floor and follow him down the stairs.

  He still doesn’t turn down Al Green and his mind-melding rhythms as he dials 1 . . . 2 . . . 5 . . . 6 . . . The number seems longer than before and I don’t hear Daddy announce his whole name to the operator—Julius Freeman—to place the collect call.

  In just a few seconds, he starts with “Gloria.” Not hello or good afternoon or with a long string of names asking if so-and-so is well, and if a prayer for this-and-that has been answered by the Lord. This is how all conversations start on Sundays down home in Huntsville. But here in Harlem, Daddy gets straight to the point.

  “You gotta let her talk to her grandfather,” he says.

  My heart skips a beat and I hold my breath. If there could ever be a time to smile in No Joke City, it’s right now, even though this isn’t a joke by far. I step closer to Daddy ready to take the phone and finally hear my granddaddy’s voice after a whole month.

  * * *

  Granddaddy had not come to my elementary school graduation. Ever since last Christmas, he and I’d been preparing for that very day, which would be when I’d announce to the world my secret identity as Space Cadet E-Grace Starfleet. Granddaddy had said it was time to open the giant doors of my imagination location to the world. I didn’t have to pretend to like church dresses or ballet class or etiquette lessons anymore. I wouldn’t have to whisper anymore. I could be m
yself—inside and out.

  He had a closet full of his blue NASA suits. Granddaddy called them flight suits and Momma called them coveralls, but I called them space suits. They’re the same ones that Sally Ride wore when she boarded the Space Shuttle Orbital Flight STS-7 Challenger in June last year—the very first American lady on the crew of a spacecraft. When me and Granddaddy watched the launch on TV, he repeated in his very own way what all the reporters had been asking her: “How is she gonna get to her woman parts?”

  Guion Bluford wore the same spacesuit when he boarded the Space Shuttle Orbital Flight STS-8 Challenger last August—the very first spaceflight to take place at night and the very first black man on a space mission. Granddaddy had joked, “Of course, they need a black man to guide them through the dark!”

  I opened up the door to Granddaddy’s closet in the back of his office. I counted five blue space suits, each with the patch of the American flag on the left arm. I grabbed one and tried to sniff out the smell of jet fuel, zero-gravity nothingness, and maybe even outer space. But it just smelled like Granddaddy and his cigarette smoke.

  Granddaddy is not an astronaut; he’s an engineer, and he doesn’t think he’ll ever make it to outer space. “That’s your dream, baby girl, not mine,” he’d said to me once. “Not anymore, that is.” He’s one of the nuts-and-bolts guys. There’d be no space shuttles without him and his work buddies Uncle Morgan, Uncle Charles, and Uncle James. There’d be no race part of the space race. There’d be no Columbia or Challenger, and not even the aeronautics part of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration because there’d be no one to screw in the nuts and bolts.

  I pulled out one of the suits and ran my finger along the circular NASA logo. I traced each of the letters as I whispered the whole words that make up the acronym. National. Aeronautics. Space. Administration. Above the logo is a big, black rectangle with Granddaddy’s name on it in white letters: Jeremiah.

  On the right side of the suit, is the NASA 25th Anniversary commemorative logo where the red letters against the white patch look like they’ve been drawn by aliens, and the number twenty-five in red and blue separated by a small white star. Below the logo are the years 1958–1983. Aliens are older than NASA. The whole universe is older than NASA. Momma, Daddy, and Granddaddy are all older than NASA, too. Even the Uhura, Planet Boom Box, the Sonic King, and the Sonic Boom are older than NASA.

  Then I trace the triangular gold trimming on the Space Shuttle patch right below that logo. So many patches. And if Granddaddy was planning on letting me wear one of his space suits to my sixth grade graduation, then everyone would know that I was already an astronaut; that I’d been to outer space, out of the galaxy, beyond Andromeda, and back.

  No one would call me weird, crazy, or that I ain’t got no home training.

  One of the space suits didn’t have Granddaddy’s name patch on it, so I quickly pulled it off the hanger and put it on over my skirt and blouse. The skirt bunched up around my waist when I tried to zip up the space suit. It was loose, but it was perfect. There was enough room for me to fight off the evil Funkazoids if I had to.

  I stepped away from the closet, aimed my right fist, and pretended to shoot my phaser gun at the walls, the ceiling, and the door. Pew! Pew! Pew!

  There were footsteps headed straight for Granddaddy’s office, and I was ready for those Funkazoids. The door slowly opened, and . . . Pew! Pew!

  “Ebony-Grace Norfleet Freeman, you take that off right now!” Momma shouted. Her face was wound up into a knot.

  I couldn’t take Granddaddy’s space suit off fast enough for her. So she rushed over and just about yanked it off me. She smoothed down my skirt and my hair and looked at me with her scrunched up face and said, “Don’t you go meddling in your grandfather’s things.”

  “Yes, Momma,” I said. A stone was forming in my throat. I swallowed it back down so Momma wouldn’t see me cry about wearing one of my grandfather’s flight suits.

  “I’ve got a closet full of pretty dresses, and for the life of me, I can’t understand why you don’t go meddling in there!” she’d said.

  I hung my head real low because Momma’s closet is the last place on earth I’d want to be.

  On the days leading up to my sixth grade graduation and dance, I had to listen to all the girls in my class talk about how they were going to coordinate their dresses. The only colors allowed were pink, yellow, sky blue, and lavender. And most of the girls were wearing their Easter dresses.

  So the day before my graduation, Momma thought she was doing me a big favor by surprising me with a whole new dress since we weren’t like the other families. We could afford a new dress, she’d said.

  “Ebony-Grace, baby,” Momma said with a big smile, holding up a brown paper shopping bag. “I managed to find something at the Heart of Huntsville Mall, but I can’t wait for the new Madison Square Mall to open up this summer.”

  “The new space camp is opening up this summer, too, Momma,” I had said without thinking.

  Her smile disappeared for a quick second and she shot me a look that might as well have been a phaser blast. Her smile returned when she pulled out a frilly lavender dress that looked like a birthday cake.

  The words, “No, Momma,” spilled out of my mouth as easy as breath.

  “What do you mean ‘no,’ little girl? It’s your special day and you’re becoming a young woman now. Junior high school is right around the corner. And before you know it, it’ll be time for high school. All the girls in your class are going to look so pretty. Why should you be any different?”

  There was no arguing with Momma about this.

  But still, I was keeping hope alive thinking that Granddaddy would roll up one of those space suits into a bag and take it with him to my graduation. And since Momma would be sitting in the audience as all the sixth graders lined up backstage to walk down the aisle to Billy Foster’s very bad alto sax rendition of Pomp and Circumstance, I’d have enough time to change out of that ugly lavender birthday-cake dress and slip into the E-Grace Starfleet space suit.

  That morning I had done everything I was supposed to—sat still while Momma pressed and curled my hair near the kitchen stove as Granddaddy read his newspaper and ate his oatmeal. The phone was ringing off the hook with Momma’s friends asking if she had an extra hot comb or a pair of stockings or some sponge rollers for their daughter’s big day. Momma was friends with the mothers of the girls in my class. I wasn’t friends with those girls.

  I was polite and obedient to Momma as she laid out the lavender birthday-cake dress, white stockings, and white patent leather shoes on my bed because Granddaddy, with his short, gray Afro and clean-shaven face, had smiled and winked at me as he made his way into his office after breakfast.

  That smile and wink was a secret, was a promise. I was sure.

  I’d been announcing to my not-friends that I’ll be revealing a very special surprise during graduation. I practically begged that everyone keep their eyes on me.

  But the ceremony came and went, and there was no bag with a space suit. No NASA patches. No announcing to the world that I am Cadet E-Grace Starfleet. I didn’t even get to show off my granddaddy, Jeremiah Norfleet, NASA Marshall Space Flight Center employee, who was supposed to be the first black man on the moon.

  So I did what I always do during church or any one of Momma’s fancy formal affairs: I folded up my imagination location into a tiny square and tucked it into one of my thick braids, or into my small pocketbook, or inside the fold of one of my frilly socks.

  Even at the dance after the ceremony, as Michael Jackson’s “Billy Jean” and “Beat It” played, and the boys tried to moonwalk across the gymnasium; and the girls pretended to be Donna Summer while working hard for the money; and the parents chitchatted, I sat in a corner, quiet and still, waiting for the whole thing to be over. The music was the stuff I’d hear on the radio, what Momma,
with giant rollers in her hair, would dance to in the kitchen when she was tired of listening to Mahalia Jackson and Shirley Caesar sing from the bottom of their bellies about heaven and Jesus. Once I’d seen her shimmying her shoulders and whispering, “What a Feeling!”

  The only time I got up was to get some snacks way on the other side of the gym. A big, round bowl of fruit punch sat in the middle of the snack table. I filled up a plastic cup and covered my paper plate with Cheese Doodles, Ritz crackers, vanilla wafers, and a thick slice of somebody’s grandmomma’s Lane cake. I went back to the line of empty folding chairs in the back of the gym and sat on the one closest to the corner. I placed my punch on the floor and my plate of snacks on my lap, not caring that I’ll get crumbs all over that stupid lavender dress. Then one of Granddaddy’s favorite songs came on—Lionel Richie singing “All Night Long.” Even the teachers snapped their fingers. I started to tap my toes, too, but I placed my hand over my knee and forced my body to disobey that rhythm. Instead of dancing, I took a big bite out of the slice of Lane cake and chewed slowly, staring down at my plate and not at those spinning planets in that big, wide, lonely galaxy called school.

  After graduation and the dance, Granddaddy was waiting for us back home. As he sat on his rocking chair on the porch sipping sweet tea, it looked as if he had dark, thick gray concrete clouds hanging over his head. He wore one of his many dark gray church suits, which made his light gray hair look white. Beads of sweat dotted his forehead and his dark brown skin seemed to shine in the late afternoon sun. He didn’t even hug me and say congratulations. He didn’t even tell me any stories about the Uhura—no Planet Boom Box threatening to take over the galaxy and no evil Funkazoids and their Sonic King. His imagination location was completely blank, like that stray rock we discovered just beyond Jupiter and thought it was a new planet. He was just a regular ol’ grandpa.

  But I’d been hearing the whispers and gossip with my bionic ears for weeks.