My Life as an Ice Cream Sandwich

by Ibi Zoboi

  Daddy’s words swim around the room as if it’s zero-gravity in here. I don’t pull them down and take them in. They’re his words, not mine. I don’t want them. So I nod, pretending that I understand.

  “Why don’t we start over fresh?” he says. “Fourth of July is around the corner. I got a little money saved up. I’ll close the shop Friday, and take you and Bianca to the movies. How ’bout that?”

  Daddy’s words all fall to the floor, now, shattering like glass. I don’t remember anything he said before the word movies. Nothing else matters anymore because this is the summer of Star Trek III: The Search for Spock. I jump onto Daddy’s lap, even with my long arms and legs, and hug him tight. “Thank you, Daddy,” I say.

  CHAPTER

  24

  It’s finally Friday, and Daddy, Bianca, and I are walking down 125th Street. Daddy couldn’t take everybody to the movies, thank goodness, but he asked Señora Luz’s permission to take Bianca, and Señora Luz almost kissed him for giving her the afternoon off.

  “You two are all y’all got on this block,” Daddy says as he walks with us to the train. “Bianca, you look out for Ebony. And, Ebony, once you learn the lay of the land here, you’ll look out for Bianca.”

  I try to stay normal and regular. I’m real quiet as Bianca walks beside me, and I keep my eyes on all the normal and regular things happening in Harlem. On almost every block, a fire hydrant spews out white foamy water, and perfectly normal kids jump in and out, screaming and laughing. In front of one of the boarded-up brownstones is a wide cardboard, and another small group of perfectly normal kids slide down the cardboard-covered steps as if it were part of a regular ol’ jungle gym. A big regular radio sits on top of a broken car blasting normal heavy-bass music that seems to make the whole city vibrate. Some perfectly normal kids dance to it like robots. Others are spinning on their heads on another piece of cardboard and they look as if they’re breaking their bones—break dancing. Perfectly normal.

  I’ve never seen so much cardboard, broken glass bottles, old tires, torn mattresses, and messy colorful letters on crumbling walls in my life. This is normal. This is regular ol’ Harlem. I just let my normal eyes rest on everything, watching, and not letting anything slip through the closed doors of my imagination location. And I don’t say a word to Bianca, either. She’s regular and used to all of this normal.

  I do notice some things: Every other man in the neighborhood knows my daddy. They call him by different names.

  “My main man, Julius!”

  “What’s going down around town, Jules?”

  “DJ Jule Thief! When’s the next block party?”

  “Freeman! You think you could free this man by lending me a few bucks?”

  Some of the men ignore Bianca and me, but one says, “These two yours? You get around town, Jules. Got you a Puerto Rican one and black one.”

  “No way, man! Just one of them’s mine,” Daddy responds. “Can’t you tell?”

  “Sure can. Put a mustache on her and you won’t even know the difference!”

  I don’t let myself think that Daddy is the king here, but some men who look just like Lester—scratching their arms and necks and wearing dirty clothes—run toward Daddy offering to sell him all kinds of junk: a fancy doorknob, a pair of old leather shoes, a gold watch, and even a carton of milk.

  “Word on the street is your kid’s momma walked out on you and left you to raise a girl-child by yourself,” the man says with missing teeth and only a narrow patch of hair left on his head. “Could use some milk, ain’t that right?”

  “Come by the shop tomorrow” is all Daddy says, without buying that junk.

  We reach the long overhead train tracks that run along Park Avenue. I smile to myself thinking of the many ways a flying train can be a spaceship, a giant meteor racing through the galaxy, or a robotic weapon against the Sonic Boom. But I press my lips tight forcing myself not to say a word. I have to try with all my might not to blurt out something . . . crazy.

  “I see you looking up, but we’re not going on that train, Broomstick,” Daddy says. “That takes you up north. We’re going downtown.”

  He pats my head as he and Bianca start going down the steps that seem to lead to the very center of the earth. I stand at the top of the stairs, not moving one inch. Daddy’s already at the bottom when he realizes that I’m not behind him. He sighs and shakes his head.

  “I done forgot you’ve never took the subway before,” he says. His voice echoes as if it were coming from a whole other galaxy. He walks back up and extends a hand out to me.

  Bianca is covering her laugh, so I don’t take Daddy’s hand and walk down the stairs on my own. I stop midway because I can hear the loud boom rolling from that place at the bottom of the steps. I can feel the ground moving beneath my feet. It’s just a sound, I tell myself. But sonic means “sound.” And “boom” is exactly how it sounds.

  “It’s the Sonic Boom!” I blurt out.

  “It’s the train coming,” Daddy says. “Don’t start none of this nonsense now. It ain’t a game down here, so you better act right. And we gotta catch the movie in time.”

  And that’s the only thing to make me walk into the belly of the Sonic Boom. Down in the subway, there’s a rolling, screeching sound, as if it were getting ready to make that boom-bip-blap-ratatatat music—like how the minionettes rock back and forth before jumping into the ropes. Bright lights shine on all those dirty tile-covered walls, but they’re not bright enough to light the corners and faraway places that look like the end of all existence, as Momma would say—and that’s called hell.

  A big sign says that this is 125th Street. There’s a little square house with wide windows in the middle of this underground place, and in it is a man in a blue uniform. Maybe he’s the king of this place. No. There is no king. This is the subway. This is normal. We’re going to see Star Trek III and that’s when I can let the doors to my imagination location swing wide-open. For now, I lock them shut, stand against them, and hope that not even a little breeze—like the one blowing in from somewhere deeper in the subway—comes knocking them down.

  “I got a token, Mr. Freeman,” Bianca says, her first words since leaving our block.

  “You keep it and crawl under that turnstile like every other kid,” Daddy says.

  Huge black gates separate the man in the small square house from the rest of the subway. We have railroads and train stations, too, down in Alabama, but they’re outside and not underground. On the other side of the black gates and spinning metal bars called the turnstile is the train platform. Bianca runs onto the train platform as if riding an iron dragon deep under this already heavy city with its tall buildings and a million cars is the most normal thing in the universe.

  Daddy motions for me to crawl under the spinning metal bars, too. This is not a portal. This is not a wormhole. This is the subway, I tell myself.

  And it smells terrible. If Momma were here, she’d spray some perfume onto her kerchief and cover her nose with it.

  “What an incredible smell you’ve discovered!” I say, just like Han Solo in Star Wars.

  But Daddy just shakes his head at me, and I watch him put a bronze coin into a tiny slot next to the turnstile. He pushes through and it makes another strange sound like clinging chains. Ching-ching-ching-ching. Other than that, it’s quiet now, and I turn to look down onto the train tracks. This is the ultimate void, the dark abyss, home of ugly aliens like the Klingons. Or maybe it’s the meeting place for the nefarious minions. I was wrong about the church basement. This is where they all plot to take over the world. And here I am standing with their king, ready to plunge into this evil lair. I can’t help it. Everything is as plain as the sun, the moon, and the stars.

  This is another planet!

  CHAPTER

  25

  “I’ve been taking the subway since I was a baby!” Bianca brags.
<
br />   “So,” I say, keeping my eyes on every scribble on the walls, every chewed-up piece of gum on the platform, and every drop of dirty water dripping from the tall ceiling.

  “So, you’ve never been in the subway before,” she says. Bianca has a smirk on her face. Here she is going to the movies with me and my daddy, and she’s acting like she’s the princess of this place. I should’ve thrown that slice of pizza on the dirty floor when I had the chance. I should’ve told Daddy not to take her with us.

  “How do you get to the city in Alabama?” Bianca continues. “Monique says you walk on dirt roads. Barefoot.”

  “No we don’t! My granddaddy has a brand-new Cadillac!” I yell, and my voice becomes a million other voices repeating every single word a million times. I’m sure there’s a million tiny nefarious minions hidden behind every crack in this subway making fun of me.

  “Hey!” Daddy yells, and both me and Bianca jump a little. “Y’all want me to turn right back around so I could send you off to bed, Ebony-Grace?” Daddy’s voice is thunder, is a launching space shuttle, is the Big Bang down here in the subway. “Try me. Not gonna keep being nice.”

  So I shut my mouth for the whole time, even as a train comes slithering through the tunnel roaring like a dragon. Bright, colorful letters and words dance along its sides as it eases into the station louder than anything I’ve ever heard in my life. This is the mother of the Atomic Sonic Boom—the place where that boom-bip-ratatatat music is born and then learns how to walk, talk, and run loud and free in the world. And it sounds messy, like Daddy’s junkyard, like the streets in Harlem.

  I surrender. The doors to my imagination location are wide-open now because the writing’s on the train: Blast Off, No Limit, Pump Up the Volume. And the best one of them all in big, bubbly, sparkling letters is the word BOOM stretched out in so many Os that it takes up the whole side of the train’s car. Tiny dynamite bombs dance all around it, and if that isn’t a sign as clear as the Alabama skies, then I don’t know what is.

  So I cover my ears, and Bianca does, too, as the train comes to a stop. It screams as sharp as a needle, and I press my hands against the sides of my head and purse my lips tight, trying to block out any way that the Sonic Boom might sneak in and take over my mind. Bianca and I look at each other again and she smiles. But this ain’t funny. This is the dark, crusty belly button of No Joke City and I’m not gonna smile one teensy-weensy bit.

  “Keep your eyes and ears open, Ebony,” Daddy says as we take a seat on the train. My eyes are open, but not my ears.

  He pulls my hand away, and Bianca has already put hers down on her lap.

  There’s also writing on the train’s seats and walls—some too small and too strange for me to read. I spot the words R.I.P. Michael Stewart written in big, red letters on the empty seat next to me. Other people take seats near us or stand against the sliding doors even though a sign above their head says not to lean against the doors. None of these people say a word to Daddy. No one seems to know him down here in the subway.

  “If anybody stares at you, you stare right back,” Daddy continues.

  I can hardly hear him over the baby Atomic Sonic Boom. The train rattles through the tunnel as if it were the machine that puts together all the nuts and bolts of the loudest sounds in the universe.

  Rattle-rattle. Rock-rock. Screech-screech. Rumble-rumble. Roll.

  “Don’t let nobody know that you’re from Down South so they don’t think you’re country and rob the shoes from right off your feet,” Daddy says.

  I look down at my used-to-be-white sneakers. “Who’d want to take these shoes, Daddy?” I ask as loud as I could.

  Rattle-rattle. Rock-rock. Screech-screech. Rumble-rumble. Roll.

  “You don’t have to talk so loud,” Daddy says. “I can hear you just fine. And it don’t matter about the sneakers, really. There’s always somebody down here who don’t have a pot to piss in, so a pair of sneakers can get them two bucks.”

  Rattle-rattle. Rock-rock. Screech-screech. Rumble-rumble. Roll.

  The train pulls into another subway station called Fifty-Ninth Street, Columbus Circle. The doors slide open as more people come into the train. The doors close again.

  Rattle-rattle. Rock-rock. Screech-screech. Rumble-rumble. Roll.

  There’s nothing but blackness outside those windows, and I remember what Granddaddy always tells me about all that black in outer space: Astroblack, Ebony-Grace. Like Sun Ra says: You belong to it and it belongs to you. But outer-space black is not like Alabama-without-electricity black. And this subway black is definitely not like outer-space black. But I can’t help to want to reach out to it and touch it; see if it will yank my hand right out of this train car and pull me up into that blackness and let me swim in it. Maybe this blackness down here belongs to me, too.

  But unlike quiet outer space, it’s loud. The train screeches. I cover my ears. Bianca moves from the other side of Daddy to come sit next to me. She takes my hands away from my ears.

  “You gotta get used to it,” she says.

  “No, I don’t,” I say, putting my hands back over my ears, but then Daddy moves them away and stares me down with those laser-beam eyes.

  “Why are you so mean? You used to be nice,” she says.

  I shrug. “I’m still nice. You’re the one who acts all different when those minionettes—I mean, girls—come around.”

  “They’re my friends. And when you leave, they’ll still be my friends.”

  “Good” is all I say.

  As I stare out into the darkness through the window in front of us, another train comes speeding past it and I push back into my seat thinking that we’re going to crash and everything will explode! I gasp. The train is a whirl of black and silver and bright, bubbly color. Then it slows down and I can read the words: R.I.P. Michael Stewart.

  I quickly look down at the seat again to see those same words there.

  Bianca gasps, too. “Do you see that?”

  “Who’s Michael Stewart?” I call out, and Daddy puts his finger over his lips and shushes me.

  “That’s the A train going back to Harlem,” Bianca says. “Mike Stewart was tagging the L train when the police got him.”

  “Bianca!” Daddy whisper-yells, puts his finger over his lips again, and shakes his head.

  “Police? Tag?” I ask and uncover my ears and look around for the kind of tags that comes with all the new clothes Momma likes to buy from JCPenney. And there weren’t any police around on this train, either.

  “The police killed Michael Stewart ’cause he was tagging trains,” Bianca whispers.

  “Why was he running after trains?” I figured it out. He was chasing a train, like a game of freeze tag.

  Bianca looks at me funny, and I turn away. I said the wrong thing.

  “No, not like the game,” she says. “Like graffiti.”

  I glance at her and wait for more.

  “Tagging is when you put your name or your crew’s name on a train or on a wall for everybody to see. But mean ol’ Mayor Koch wants the police to arrest anybody caught tagging. Michael Stewart was caught on the L train, and they beat him up, then he died.”

  Bianca’s words sit heavy in my mind. I remember hearing this story on the news down in Huntsville and Momma had said, “I hope your daddy’s not up there spray painting on cars. They could do it on trains, next thing you know, they’ll be all over cars, too.”

  I ask Bianca, “Did . . . King Sirius, I mean, my daddy know him? Michael Stewart?”

  “Maybe. Mr. Julius knows everybody. Maybe he’ll take us to those art places downtown. If you could tag a train, what would you put on it?”

  “What do you mean by ‘tag’?” I ask, still thinking about the game. I imagine myself chasing a train through the subway. I’d get tired real quick. I can’t even run a relay without my glasses flying off my face an
d my heart feeling like it’s gonna leap out of my chest.

  “Graffiti. Those bright words on the train. What would you put? I would tag my Nine-F Crew name, Butter Pecan. And draw a giant ice cream cone with little pecans all over and a bright yellow square on top. That’ll be the butter.” She motions her hand in the air as if she were drawing something with an invisible paintbrush, but she makes a shushing sound. “You should put Ice Cream Sandwich and draw one, too.”

  “No. I’d put . . . Cadet E-Grace Starfleet, and draw a spaceship called the Uhura.” I do as she does, pretending to paint my name into the train’s cool air.

  “That would be funky fresh,” Bianca says with a wide smile. “And then you’d make it look like outer space with stars and planets. I don’t think I ever seen that kinda tag. All I see is cartoons. But yours would be so fly! And then, you could do it in secret and all the guys wouldn’t know that it’s girls doing all those tags.”

  I stare at Bianca wide-eyed. “Can we really do that? Tag a train?”

  “I don’t wanna do graffiti. I wanna break-dance and I wanna rap. I wanna be the best B-girl MC in Harlem. No. In the entire city. That way, I can be in movies like the Rock Steady Crew and be famous. Watch, I’m gonna beat Calvin in that contest.”

  I can see Bianca’s soulglow. She likes talking about stuff like this, break dancing and graffiti. Not outer space, not NASA, but breaking-bones dancing and colorful, bubbly words on walls and trains. So I say, “I wanna be the first kid to go to outer space. If those Russians can send a dog into space—his name was Laika—then NASA can send a kid. You know, to remember all the cool stuff for the future.”