by Ibi Zoboi
If there ever was a time I wanted to be beamed up onto the Uhura and aim for the farthest galaxy, it was now. If I wasn’t so brown, I’d be as red as Mars.
“You better leave her alone, Calvin!” I hear someone say. “Or I’ma mush you in your big fat head!”
Bianca Pluto to the rescue! She stands over Stone-Cold Callous Calvin with her hands on her hips. She’s my friend after all, and I’m sure Daddy didn’t give her another five bucks to come to my defense.
The nefarious minions retreat even as they continue to spout out their No Joke City gibberish. Bianca Pluto just rolls her neck and waves her little finger with every single “don’t mess with my friend” and “you better leave her alone before I bust your head.” I stand there next to her with my arms crossed as the nefarious minions finally retreat. I turn to her and nod.
“Bianca Pluto and E-Grace Starfleet: a united front!” I say.
“Oh, be quiet, Ebony-Grace!” is all Bianca says.
CHAPTER
16
“But that was a good diss, Ebony,” Bianca says. “Calvin’s spent so much time trying to learn head spins, there’s nothing left in that big ol’ peanut.”
So I step closer to Bianca with my head down a little. I have to ease into this, tiptoe quietly so I don’t scare her away. “The nefarious minions haven’t fully surrendered,” I whisper above all the noise. “They’ve only temporarily retreated.”
She moves away from me. “I told you to stop calling them evil onions! And I only stood up for you because Calvin was being mean. Not because he’s an evil onion and you’re a Starfleet and I’m a Pluto or whatever.”
Before I even get a chance to respond, a small crowd of familiar girls walk up behind her: the nefarious minionettes!
They all gather around Diva Diane to kiss her on the cheek and hug her and examine her hair, clothes, and sandals. Bianca does the same, ignoring that I’m standing right next to her.
“Is this from Dapper Dan’s?” one of the girls asks while touching the stripe on Diane’s jacket.
“You know Dapper Dan ain’t gonna make something cheap like this,” Diane says. “Do you see a Gucci or Louis V logo on here? No. And plus, I ain’t got no money to buy Dapper Dan nothing. I’m saving up for college!”
Then, one of them finally notices me. “I heard you’re gonna be staying with your daddy for a while. You’re not going to our school next year, are you?” It’s their leader, Rainbow Dull.
I look around at all their faces and notice that their hair is done up in the same exact style—side ponytails that either hang loose or stick out like doorknobs above their ears. They’re all wearing the same exact clothes, short sets in different colors: blues, pinks, yellows, and greens, like the rainbow. A few even have on mini versions of Diane’s golden trapezoid earrings. Worst of all, Bianca Pluto blends right in with them as if she’s one of the nefarious minionettes with her curly side ponytail and bright yellow outfit.
“She’s not going to school here,” someone answers for me. “She’s from Alabama. She’s too slow to learn all the stuff we’re learning.”
“No. I’ll just be here for the summer,” I say with my hard-candy church voice. “I’m Ebony-Grace, by the way. I don’t think we’ve officially met.” I extend my hand out to Rainbow Dull.
She doesn’t take it. “I’m Monique,” she says, tossing her side ponytail braid over her shoulder. “Mint Chocolate Chip Monique, that is, and we are the Nine Flavas Crew!”
They all pose as if someone is about to pop out of nowhere to take their photo. Some hold one hand on a bent knee and the other on their hip. The others, including Bianca, fold their arms across their chests and fix their mouths as if trying to sniff their upper lips.
“Nine Flavors Crew?” I ask, trying to make sense of why anyone would want to be a flavor.
“Not Nine Flavors,” Mint Chocolate Chip Monique says coming up from her pose but still with her hands on her hips. “It’s flava! You gotta put your whole body into it with some rhythm and soul. You gotta have flava.” She rolls her neck with every word.
Diane places her hand around my shoulder. “Oh, good, Ebony! You get to meet the rest of Bianca’s friends,” she sings. “Nine-F Crew, what it do? What’s going down around town? Y’all look fly! Y’all been practicing?”
“Uh-huh. We’re gonna show you some new moves in the park. But we can’t let Calvin see ’cause he thinks he’s better than us,” Monique says—Mint Chocolate Chip Monique.
The questions are at the tip of my tongue, but I’ve been completely disarmed by this strange proclamation. This is all highly illogical! The nefarious minionettes have claimed to be a crew and they are nine flavors.
I count out each head, and there are definitely nine of them. But they shouldn’t even be allowed to use the word crew. Real crews man spaceships. Real crews launch satellites into space. Real crews lead space missions like the ones on the Columbia and the Challenger. Crews are not supposed to be named after ice cream flavors!
I can’t hold it in much longer, so I blurt out, “Why do you call yourselves Nine Flavors Crew?”
As the crowd of noisy kids leave and I stand here with Diva Diane and this group of girls, I start to feel like an alien on another planet. Even though Bianca just stood up for me with Calvin, she stands away from me with this crew of hers. I keep my arms crossed and head down a little because something in my belly lets me know that Bianca will be a little bit different now.
“’Cause even though we only got nine, we got more flava than Baskin-Robbins,” Monique says, flipping her side ponytail around. All the other girls introduce themselves, saying their names with their matching ice cream flavor.
There’s Rum Raisin Rhonda whose side ponytail is in cornrows and beads; Coconut Collette with her gray eyes; Vanilla Fudge Vanessa who’s chubby and short and is all smiles; Mango Megan is tall with a reddish-brown side Afro puff; Cookies and Cream Christine’s glasses are almost as thick as mine; Strawberry Stacey’s cheeks are so red it looks as if she’s wearing makeup; and Pistachio Paula is so tall, she looks like one of those Harlem Globetrotters.
Finally, my No Joke City best friend, my fellow space cadet on the Uhura, Bianca Pluto, is not an intergalactic astronaut after all. She’s an ice cream flavor! She’s Butter Pecan Bianca.
I love butter, but I hate pecans. I’ve never had butter pecan ice cream, and I never will. And I don’t like this new Bianca.
“Nine flavors?” I whisper to myself again, shaking my head.
“No, it’s flava. Flava! Put your neck into it. Now, say it!” Coconut Collette shouts in my face.
“Flava is not a word!” I shout back.
In an instant, the reality that I’ll be here for a whole summer starts to sink in. And this isn’t like Huntsville where everyone knows that I’m the granddaughter of Jeremiah Granville Norfleet, pioneering aerospace engineer. So of course, I want to be an astronaut when I grow up. Of course, I love Star Trek and Star Wars and comic books just like my granddaddy.
And even though both my daddy and granddaddy wanted Momma to have a baby boy, I’m Ebony-Grace Norfleet Freeman, girl wonder, Sally Ride believer, Nyota Uhura worshipper. Not an ice cream flavor!
“Uh-huh. Flava is too a word ’cause we said so!” Rum Raisin Rhonda says with a voice that sounds like gravel.
“Yep, flava can be a word, like dope and fresh and fly,” Diva Diane says, touching some of the 9 Flavas’ hair and making them turn around to examine their outfits. “Ebony, you should be one of them, too.”
“That’s not gonna work,” Bianca says.
This is the first time I hear her talking about me—not defending me, or making up stories with me, but she’s actually agreeing with what the other girls are saying.
“Since when did you become an ice cream flavor?” I say to her. “I thought you were Bianca Pluto and you like rocket ship
s and outer space just like I do. Remember how we launched a rocket to the moon in the junkyard. Huh, Bianca? Remember?”
“I keep telling you,” she shouts. “I’m not a little kid anymore. I can do more than just build rocket ships out of junk.”
“Yep. She sure can,” Mint Chocolate Chip Monique says.
“Enough with this baby stuff, Ebony,” Diane says. “Can you pop and lock? Can you dance? Rap? Jump double-Dutch? Y’all can be the Ten Flavas just for this summer. Maybe get into some contests or something?”
My eyes are locked in to Bianca’s. I give her the ferocious E-Grace Starfleet stare—a snarl, tight jaws, and squinted eyes. She doesn’t back down either. I want her to say something, anything, but Mint Chocolate Chip Monique pushes her aside and steps to my face.
“She can’t be one of us. She don’t have no flava. She’s just a plain ol’ ice cream sandwich! Chocolate on the outside, vanilla on the inside,” she says.
“But chocolate and vanilla are flavors!” I say to her face. I put my fists on my hips and stick out my chest like I’m Superman ready to take flight. “And who wants to be a flavor, anyway! I’d rather be an astronaut, a space cadet, a hero saving the planet, stupid face!”
“Oh, so you like outer space?” asks Monique. “That’s why they call you Ebony? Ebony means ‘black.’ And you’re so black, you look like outer space. You can’t be no astronaut in space, ’cause no one would find you. You would just blend with all that black. Yep. That’s your new name. Outer Space Ebony-Grace, ’cause you’re so doggone black!”
Everyone standing around lets out a blend of “oohs” and “oh snaps” and “she dissed you!”
Slowly, I retreat, even though I’m still standing there in Monique’s face. This is like an enemy attack on the Uhura. Captain Fleet and I toss about on the spaceship, and all the lights blink and go out, and it’s dark and we lose power. “Status report!” the captain shouts.
I’m okay, I tell myself. I’m okay.
Monique doesn’t move from my face and I don’t either, even as the other girls giggle and repeat every word she’s said to me.
You’re so black, you look like outer space, echoes in my mind. I look around at this crew, some with high-yella and redbone and Indian-in-my-family hair, as my mother would say. And I don’t even need a mirror to let me know that I’ve stayed out in the sun for too long, as Momma and all the church ladies down in Huntsville would also say. I don’t mind looking like outer space, at all. But I don’t say that.
I’m the first to step back and look away. “I wanna go home, now,” I whisper to Diane.
“Go home?” she says really loud. “Child, please. Your daddy said I have to watch you till five o’clock, and I already told you that you’re not messing with my ten bucks. But don’t worry, Ebony. I’m gonna help you get some flava.”
Diane puts her arm around my shoulders as she walks me into this Marcus Garvey Park along with the 9 Flavas Crew. Bianca has blended with the other girls and I can’t tell them apart anymore. If having some flava makes me like everyone else here, then I’d rather be an ice cream sandwich any day. But an ice cream made up of all the things in the Milky Way: lots of stars and planets and moons and suns that make me black like outer space. I’d be a whole galaxy all to myself.
Inside the park are swings and monkey bars and other kids running about as if the Sonic Boom had already taken over their minds. To the left are basketball courts where a whole bunch of tall, skinny boys dribble and shoot. To the right are two tall concrete walls with colorful, bubbly words scribbled all over them. Another group of kids bounce a small blue ball against it as if they’re playing tennis with the dancing letters that spell out jumbled and mumbled things I can’t even read.
At the other end of the playground, I spot Stone-Cold Calvin’s big peanut head with the other nefarious minions. A giant radio sits up on an overturned metal trash can, and a bunch of flattened cardboard boxes cover the ground.
I don’t dare step deeper into the park because a low, iridescent wave forms right above the park, making everything sway back and forth as if it’s all sitting in a giant bowl of Jell-O.
“The Sonic Boom!” I whisper.
I can hear it this time, loud and clear. It pulses and makes everything under its control dance.
“Are you coming, girl?” Diane asks. She doesn’t wait for me to answer and grabs my hand trying to pull me.
I pull my hand away from hers.
“Oh, no you don’t,” Diane says. “This is why I don’t baby-sit toddlers. I am not leaving you here by yourself. Come on now. You gotta see the Nine-F Crew beat the other girls in double-Dutch, and breakdance with Calvin and them. Maybe you can learn a thing or two.”
“I said, I want to go home!” I shout.
I don’t mean to sound like a baby, but this is where the doors to my imagination location slowly swing open on their own. It’s as if there’s a broken lock or a stuck doorknob that doesn’t quite twist the right way to make sure that door stays shut. A little breeze, an offbeat sound, or a vision of something strange will make everything open up like slow-parting clouds. Nothing is real, everything is strange. Everything is deep space and far-flung planets and otherworldly beings.
If the Sonic Boom is as clear as day high above this playground in this city, then I have to believe it’s there and danger is not too far behind.
This is where Granddaddy’s stories are not just stories anymore.
CHAPTER
17
The very first time Granddaddy introduced me to Planet Boom Box, the Sonic King, and the Funkazoids was the day I got a special delivery all the way from Harlem. Daddy had sent me a cassette tape labeled, “Fresh from the Boom Box.”
Earlier that day, Momma and I had visited Granddaddy at the Marshall Space Flight Center and brought him lunch and a thermos of sweet tea. As we walked from the parking lot to the center’s outdoor seating area, most of Granddaddy’s friends from work recognized me.
“If it isn’t little Ebony-Grace, astronaut in the making,” Uncle Lawrence said when he saw me and Momma. I gave him a sharp E-Grace Starfleet salute, even though he didn’t know anything about me and Granddaddy’s stories.
“You’re quite the celebrity around here, Starfleet,” Granddaddy said when he came out to meet us for lunch. He bent down to give me a kiss on my forehead.
I saluted him instead. “Cadet E-Grace Starfleet reporting for service,” I said.
“Shhh! Not here, Cadet Starfleet. This is the last place we want anybody to find out about our secret mission,” Granddaddy said with a laugh.
Other men walked in and out of the space center building. Some said hi to Granddaddy, others nodded, and some didn’t even say a word.
“You two and these secret missions,” Momma said. “And you better not try to launch any of your rocket ships in your father’s shop again when you get to New York in June.”
“It wasn’t the shop. It was the junkyard,” I corrected her.
There were no rockets at MSFC. Only a lot of thinking and talking and computing and building rocket parts. That’s Granddaddy’s job as an engineer. He wants me to be an engineer, too. That’s why he taught me math when I was just a toddler, read me engineering books before I started kindergarten, showed me how to launch a rocket with seltzer tablets and soda bottles, introduced me to Star Trek and Star Wars, and told me stories about space heroes from his old comic books.
But we didn’t like those space heroes with their blue eyes and slick hair. That’s why I had to become E-Grace Starfleet, space cadet hero! Besides, he had a huge crush on Lieutenant Uhura, so that’s why our top secret spaceship is named after her, or she after it, since she’s from the future.
Momma, Granddaddy, and I walked over to a set of picnic tables at a nearby lawn next to the space center.
“You’re going up there on that Planet Boom Bo
x?” Granddaddy joked. “All that boom and bip and crack going on up there. Seen it on TV, Starfleet. Boys are spinning on their heads like they’re losing their minds! And some of them are!”
If Harlem was a boom box, then that Alabama quiet was like a pair of headphones blocking out the music booming all the way from Daddy’s house on 126th Street. In Huntsville, everything was muffled—all those voices making up stories about Granddaddy—the chirping church ladies’ whispers and mumbles and hush-hush gossip making a low-hanging concrete cloud over Granddaddy’s head.
To block out those murmuring whispers, I’d spent the day before in the attic reading Granddaddy’s old comic books and magazines. Inside those pages was a world of high-flying rocket ships, giant aliens, and heroes saving the world from disaster. Just like Cadet E-Grace and Captain Fleet on the Uhura.
And when I wanted to board the Uhura, to boldly go where no girl has gone before, I’d be beamed up by Captain Fleet. In no time, I was at the control boards helping ease the giant spaceship toward the edge of the Milky Way, toward a whole other galaxy in search of intelligence to protect our planet from ultimate destruction. That was super top secret, of course!
“Ground control to Cadet E-Grace! Ground control to Cadet E-Grace!” Granddaddy’s voice had snapped me right out of the stars and pulled me back down through Alabama’s wide blue skies. The air was hot and thick, like having my head inside a space helmet.
“Well, did your rocket make it into orbit?” Granddaddy asked, as he pulled out the egg sandwich I’d made for him. He asked this every time he’d see me go off into my imagination location—I stared into space as if everything around me had morphed into a whole other world.
“Not this time,” I said, because I wasn’t in another world. I was still right down there in Alabama thinking of Granddaddy.
He tried to smile and sound like his usual self, but his soulglow was a little dim.