My Life as an Ice Cream Sandwich

by Ibi Zoboi

  “That’ll be dope,” Bianca says.

  “Yeah . . . dope,” I say.

  The train is now at Times Square 42nd Street. Daddy gets up and we follow him out of the train and onto another platform that’s way more crowded and smelly. I look back at the train as it zooms out of the subway station. This time, I don’t cover my ears. Maybe this is what it’s like to have the Sonic Boom take over your whole mind and soul. The sounds are normal now. And I had a normal conversation with my best-friend-again, Bianca.

  “Y’all hold hands and follow me,” Daddy says as he pushes through the crowd. “And stay close. Don’t wanna lose nobody.”

  Bianca doesn’t even think twice about taking my hand as we walk up the long staircase together, and out of the subway, and into the brightest, loudest place I’ve ever seen. I don’t even crack a smile at all the flashing lights because this is the capital of No Joke City.

  CHAPTER

  26

  “If you two can’t make up y’all minds on what y’all wanna see in the next two minutes, then we’re outta here.” Daddy stands aside as Bianca and I look up at the movie titles in shining white letters above the movie theater. I only look up because she’s looking up. I made up my mind from way before I even knew we were going to the movies.

  “Ghosts are way better than stupid spaceships,” Bianca says.

  “Hey! And no name-calling,” says Daddy.

  There’s a long line near the ticket booth and I can’t even tell who’s going to see Star Trek or Ghost Busters or Gremlins or Indiana Jones or The Karate Kid. Unless they’re wearing a Star Trek T-shirt like this one blond boy. I’ll make sure to sit next to him in the movie theater.

  “You could see ghosts anytime, but you don’t always see spaceships,” I say.

  “That’s stu—” she starts to say, then glances over at Daddy. “That doesn’t make sense. It’s the other way around. Didn’t a spaceship go to the moon? It was on TV and everything. When’s the last time you saw a ghost on TV?”

  “Poltergeist on the television from my granddaddy’s video-cassette recorder.”

  “Why you gotta brag all the time? Anyway, that wasn’t a ghost, that was a demon.”

  “Ghost, demon. Same thing. But aliens? When’s the last time you saw a Klingon up close, in your face? They’re way better than ghosts!”

  “Y’all got one minute,” Daddy says, with his arms crossed and whistling.

  And with that, I remember who I am and where I am. If he’s King Sirius Julius, then I’m the princess. “I wanna go home,” I say. “I miss my momma, anyway. Daddy, can we call her when we get home? Granddaddy, too.”

  “Oh, you talkin’ crazy, Broomstick. Y’all got me down in Times Square and now you wanna go home? Oh, no.”

  So I win. Daddy makes the decision for us. We’re on the line to see Star Trek III: The Search for Spock because Daddy is my daddy, after all, and he’s the king of this place. He’s taking me to the movies, and Bianca is just tagging along. He wasn’t going to leave, anyway. But I was going to leave if I had to sit through a bunch of crazy people in fake astronaut suits fighting ghosts. That’s just highly illogical. You can’t even see ghosts.

  Bianca and I share a bag of popcorn even though she’s mad at me. Every time I look her way, she rolls her eyes. I don’t care. We’re about to see Uhura and find out how in the world Admiral Kirk is looking for Spock when Spock is already dead.

  “Did you see the Wrath of Khan?” I ask Bianca before the movie.

  “No. I didn’t even see E.T.,” she says.

  “How come?”

  “Abuela doesn’t take me to the movies. The one time I get to go to the movies, I can’t even see what I want.”

  “So you never been to the movies before?”

  “Abuela doesn’t like movies, okay? She likes TV shows instead. She says the seats are cleaner at home.”

  “I guess that’s why you don’t have an imagination location,” I say, stuffing my whole mouth with warm popcorn.

  “A nation what?”

  “One nation under a groove,” I say with my mouth stuffed and thinking of Granddaddy’s funk-music albums.

  “Groove? What groove?” she asks.

  “Bless your heart.”

  “What are you talking about, Ebony?”

  “Shush. The movie’s starting.”

  I don’t sit up in my seat until I see her name appear on the screen: Nichelle Nichols. “Daddy, that’s her,” I lean over and whisper. “That’s Uhura’s real name.”

  “I know who that is, Ebony,” Daddy mumbles, sliding down into his seat and leaning his head back. I’ll nudge him if he takes a nap. He has to stay awake so I can talk to him about the movie later.

  Uhura’s real name fades from the screen but not from my mind. Nichelle Neptune, I’d call her. Nichelle Nebula. Or Nichelle, the noble Nubian queen, as Granddaddy would say. But Nyota Uhura is way better. Nyota means “star.” Uhura means “freedom.” Free star. As free as a star in outer space.

  “Admiral Morrow looks like you, Daddy. And he’s commander of Starfleet.” I lean over to whisper into his ear again. Daddy’s not sleeping after all. He’s watching the movie just like I am. “His mustache is thick like yours. You can’t even see his lips move.”

  He shushes me just as Spock—after being dead, born again as a baby, a boy, then an old man—finally recognizes Admiral Kirk, and reminds him that they’re still friends, even though he can’t remember anything about all their missions together. Just like Bianca. I glance over at her as she sits with her face all screwed up, not even looking up at the screen. She’s picking at the bottom of the popcorn bag and spitting out the kernels against the back of the seat in front of her.

  It’s as if I’m between Admiral Morrow, who didn’t even want Captain Kirk to return to the Genesis Planet, and Spock, the half human–half Vulcan, who can’t remember anything about the spaceship or the friendship.

  Then I remember the Genesis Device was first created in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. (I’ve watched it dozens of times on Granddaddy’s Betamax machine.) The Genesis Device can make anything dead, anything broken, come back to life again. It can make everything old new again. Like Spock dying, coming back to life, and growing up to be himself again on the Genesis Planet.

  “Can the Genesis Device help the starving children in Ethiopia?” I’d asked Granddaddy the last time we watched Star Trek II. Earlier that evening, Momma yelled at me for not finishing my meat loaf. She’d said there are starving children in Africa, and I believed her because the white lady with big blond hair was always talking about sponsoring poor children in Third World countries on her commercials.

  Granddaddy only chuckled and patted my head.

  Maybe everything here in No Joke City—and everything down in Huntsville, too—can be born again.

  “I must have your thoughts. May I join your mind?” I ask Bianca as we walk out of the movie theater with Daddy.

  “I know where you got that from, Ebony-Grace,” Bianca says, yawning. “Spock’s father wanted to find him through Captain Kirk’s brain. I’m not Captain Kirk and you’re not Spock. And you can’t mind meld.”

  She says this while rolling her eyes and neck as if everything about No Joke City never left her and followed her into that movie theater, even as she watched all of outer space stretch out in front of her and she could just touch it with her index finger.

  When I’m watching movies on the VCR with Granddaddy, everything about Huntsville, Alabama, and the sixth grade and my little house on Olde Stone Road, and even my being Momma’s only child melts away like ice cubes in sweet tea in July. The screen pulls me in, and I forget about everything and everyone around me. Except for Granddaddy. But Granddaddy wasn’t with me this time, and I was left with King Sirius Julius and Butter Pecan Bianca. More like bitter pecan with her face all screwed up lik
e that.

  “Hey, daddy!” a woman says with a syrupy sweet voice as we walk down 42nd Street. “Those your little girls?” She’s super tall with even taller high heels, a short sparkling skirt, and enough makeup to make her look like Bozo the Clown.

  Daddy takes both our hands and speeds up toward the train station.

  “Why don’t you come over and tuck me in after you take them home, daddy?” the woman says.

  “No thanks, ma’am” is all Daddy says.

  Bianca giggles. I only look back at the tall woman who smiles, winks, and waves at me as we walk away. Then I say, “Lady, he’s my daddy!”

  The lady laughs. “Ain’t nobody trying to take your daddy from you, little girl. I just know he gotta whole lot more love to spread around, that’s all, sugar.”

  “No he don’t!” I say, but the lady is too far away now to hear me.

  Daddy is looking over at me when he says, “Rule number one for walking out here in these streets, Broomstick: You don’t have to argue with crazy. And there’s a whole lotta crazy out here, and before you know it, you’ll be one of them. Ain’t that right, Bianca?”

  “That’s right, Mr. Freeman,” Bianca says. “Or all that crazy will snatch you up and put you in the back of a van.”

  “Is Uncle Rich crazy, Daddy?” I ask. “’Cause that lady looked like one of his lady friends he brought over to the house today.”

  “Is that right?” Daddy slows down. “But don’t let me hear you tattle-telling one more time. You can’t be putting your uncle’s business out in the streets like that.”

  I didn’t mean to, really. I’m just tired of Daddy and everybody else calling other people crazy ’cause that’s exactly what they say about me—crazy. My stories about the Uhura and Planet Boom Box—crazy. How I want to be the very first kid in outer space—crazy. So, crazy Uncle Rich and that crazy winking lady are perfectly fine. Nobody told Gene Roddenberry that he was crazy when he wanted to make a TV show about people in outer space, on a spaceship, and visiting other planets and aliens. And nobody told Nichelle Nichols that it was crazy to play a black lady on a spaceship in the far future.

  I look up and out at everything in this crazy city—all the neon lights, the people sleeping on the sidewalk, the man wearing a dirty business suit and dancing by himself, the boy carrying a giant radio on his shoulder, and even all the fancy ladies who smile too much and talk to every single man who passes them. There isn’t a single tree or shrub or blade of grass pushing its way out of slabs of concrete on the ground. The only thing alive here is all that electricity—blinking lights, zooming cars, and dancing ladies in sparkling dresses. And it’s all crazy. Ain’t nothing funny about No Joke City, all right. I’m starting to like it here.

  I smile a little because there are no nefarious minions around to see me. Except for Bianca. But she’s not smiling. She’s not looking up. She looks down as if trying to not step on any sidewalk cracks. The cracks here are wide, as if they’re fault lines in the earth. The concrete crumbles around them as if the Sonic Boom itself had made all of Times Square rumble and jumble. So we’re astronauts again, avoiding giant moon craters.

  I take her hand when we’re about to cross the street.

  “You think something like that would work here?” she asks quietly. “The Genesis Device?”

  My heart lights up. My soul glows. I smile big and bright. “You were watching after all!” I squeal.

  “Well, I couldn’t help it,” she says. “It was right there in my face.”

  When we reach the other corner and start to head down into the belly of the Atomic Sonic Boom again, I say, “I definitely think the Genesis Device can work here.”

  CHAPTER

  27

  “Genesis is life from lifelessness.” That’s what Dr. Carol Marcus said in Star Trek II when she explained what the Genesis Device was. She also said a lot about reorganizing matter on a subatomic level, but the main thing was the Genesis Device could make dead places live. But the Genesis Device can only work somewhere or on something that is already dead. Nothing can be alive or have the potential for life before it’s activated. We’re gonna need a Genesis Device in the future when humans destroy everything with their Sonic Boom. It won’t be another big war or King Kong or Godzilla or the Soviets that will destroy Planet Earth and our whole galaxy. It’ll be the loudest, baddest sound in the entire universe!

  That’s what I’m thinking a few days after the movie on the Fourth of July, when it’s not even high noon and already the heavy bass creeps through my bedroom window and pounds on my head, screams in my ear, and just about picks me up out of bed with its iridescent sound-wave hands. I look out my window to see that all the cars are gone. Even the broken ones that used to sit in front of Daddy’s shop. And people are walking in the middle of the street likes it’s nothing at all.

  I want to open the window and stick out my head the way I’ve seen so many other people here do. Instead, I press my forehead against the glass and try to see down toward the front of Daddy’s brownstone. And there she is. Bianca. I spot the tip of her white sneakers and the top of her head. I can tell from up here that her hair is done up in a side ponytail.

  “Hey, Ice Cream Sandwich!” someone yells out so loud I can still hear it over the bass of the music—the Sonic Boom—and through the closed window.

  It’s Mint Chocolate Chip Monique standing across the street holding on to those stupid telephone-cord ropes. She’s wearing a side ponytail, too.

  “We need you to do something,” she yells, motioning for me to come down.

  “Good, you’re finally up,” Daddy says, startling me. He’s standing in the doorway, wearing a clean T-shirt and clean blue jeans with a crease as sharp as Granddaddy’s slacks after Momma irons them. “Block party’s today. Make no sense for you to be up in the house. Get on out there and help, play, do whatever you want, Broomstick.”

  “I don’t feel well,” I say real softly.

  It’s not quite a fib. I couldn’t sleep with all that racket outside last night. The Sonic Boom must’ve descended from outer space, passed the sun and moon, and passed the clouds to land right here on 126th Street. It pounded out of radios, cars, from opened windows, and shouting voices.

  If there was a Planet Sleep, it would be full of warrior sheep fighting against the Sonic King and his Sonic Boom for some peace and quiet in the galaxy. The Sonic King won last night, but still, I slept anyway, tossing and turning and covering my ears with my blanket and pillow even though it was as hot as Venus.

  “Ice Cream Sandwich, you coming down?” Monique yells again. I look back out the window to see three more of the 9 Flavas gathered around her. I swear they’re like Tribbles—multiplying in just seconds.

  “Go on,” Daddy says. “You’ll feel better once you get outside.” He starts to walk away.

  “I’ll feel better once I speak to Granddaddy,” I say.

  He freezes where he’s standing. Then he turns to me. “Oh, I get it,” he says. “You’re homesick.”

  I take in a deep breath. “Finally,” I say. “Yes, Daddy. Can I please speak to my grandfather? I wanna tell him about the movie. He probably ain’t, I mean, hasn’t seen it yet.”

  This time, I’m not even trying to make my voice sound like hard candy. It just comes out that way. Maybe this homesickness, as Daddy calls it, is really the Sonic Boom making me all gooey like caramel or molasses. Not hard anymore—melted and sticky. And I wonder about the Uhura up there near Planet Boom Box. Maybe it’s melting, too, under all those radioactive sonic waves. And the Sonic King will absorb it all into Planet Boom Box’s atmosphere. And the Sonic Boom, with all its power from the melted Uhura, will become more powerful than ever.

  I have to warn Granddaddy!

  “You’re still young, Broomstick. You’ll get over it. And besides, ain’t nothing that a little fresh Harlem air and some exercise can
’t fix. Go play with Bianca and them, and before you know it, you’ll forget all about Huntsville.” And then he walks away.

  When I finally get downstairs, Uncle Rich is on the telephone talking to one of his lady friends. I can tell by the way he leans into the receiver and whispers and smiles and strokes the spiraling cord as if it were long, curly hair.

  “When you gonna be done with the phone, Uncle Rich?” I ask while standing in the kitchen’s doorway.

  He puts his lady friend on hold and looks at me with red and watery eyes. “Oh, you must be paying the phone bill around here now.”

  He turns back to his sweet whispers and chuckling. I stand there and wait. I need to call Granddaddy again. Surely he’s back home now ’cause it’s the Fourth of July. But Uncle Rich never lets up, not even when the buzzer rings. I ignore it.

  “Uncle Rich, I have to call my granddaddy. I have to tell him something very important!”

  He shoots me a look, but still, I don’t move away. The buzzer goes off again. Bianca’s face is peeking through the curtained window in the door.

  “Best to run along now and open the door for your little friend,” he says.

  I don’t move one inch. The bell buzzes and buzzes. Bianca can wait. Uncle Rich can wait. But my granddaddy can’t.

  Finally, Uncle Rich hangs up the telephone and stares down at me with needle eyes. So I put my hands on my hips and stare back at him.

  “Are you waiting for your other lady friend to call? Or else I need to talk to my granddaddy right now,” I say.

  Uncle Rich shakes his head and steps aside. “Julius was right. That grandfather of yours done spoiled you down there.”