My Life as an Ice Cream Sandwich

by Ibi Zoboi

  “No, Ice Cream Sandwich!” she yells in my face.

  I step back. “Don’t call me that. That’s not my name.”

  “Well, E-Grace Starfleet is not your name, either. But that’s what you call yourself, and Ice Cream Sandwich is what we call you. It’s your tag, just like we’re the Nine Flavas, and Daisy Castro calls herself Baby Love, and Roxanne Shanté got beef with U.T.F.O. ’cause of that song that really wasn’t about her, and Grandmaster Flash and Afrika Bambaataa . . . they all made up those names, and you think Crazy Legs’s momma call him that? It’s just a name, Ebony. So Bianca Pluto rhymes with show and flow and you know. And it doesn’t mean that I wanna go to Pluto!” She looks at me as if I’m stupid and says this loud enough for her friends—her real friends—to hear.

  “You tell her, Bianca!” one of them shouts.

  She rolls her eyes and walks away from me to be with her friends. I’m left standing there like a lonely planet. I roll my eyes back at her even though she’s not looking at me. But, there’s still a Pablo Jupiter. Jupiter like the planet. Genesis Ten like the Genesis Device. It has to be more than just a name for the boy in the green shirt.

  “I’m coming for you, Pablo Jupiter!” I whisper into the warm No Joke City air and hope that the Sonic Boom’s iridescent sound waves will carry my words to that boy in the green shirt.

  “Where you going?” Monique calls out when I start to walk away. “We need you to be the tenth flava.”

  “I’m not a flavor!” I shout without looking back. “I’m Cadet E-Grace Starfleet of the Mothership Uhura. And I’m about to turn that mother out!”

  “Don’t worry,” I hear someone say. “She’ll come back once she sees that she ain’t got no friends on the block.”

  CHAPTER

  29

  “Broomstick!” Daddy calls out nice and loud from the top of the front stoop of the house. “I’ve been calling you. Hurry up inside.”

  I don’t hurry up. I take my time watching everything on the block because all the cars that used to be parked along the sidewalks are gone now. Instead, two raggedy old cars, including Daddy’s brown Buick, block off each end of the block. A big table is set up in front of one of the broken and abandoned buildings. A red-and-white-checkered tablecloth covers the top as if this block party is gonna be like a church picnic. On top of the tablecloth are plastic plates and cups and paper napkins.

  A shirtless man sits on the edge of the sidewalk with a white plastic bucket between his legs. He’s breaking apart a huge block of ice with an icepick as sweat runs down his forehead. I hope none of it makes it into that bucket of ice.

  The little kids run up and down the street as if they’ve never seen a wide, empty road before. Down in Huntsville, that’s all we see. And we can run as far as the setting sun. Here, they’re only running from one end of the block to the next like hamsters on a wheel.

  There’s a line of people in front of Daddy’s auto shop—some look like Loco Lester’s cousins with dirty clothes and missing teeth; the others look like Daddy’s friends, with the same mustaches and everything. There’s even a small group of ladies who stare at me as I walk up to the shop. I need to get into the junkyard. I need to find Pablo Jupiter and ask him what he knows about the Genesis Device, and maybe, just maybe, I can tell him about the Uhura and the Sonic King and Captain Fleet who’s been held captive by the Sonic Boom.

  “Ebony-Grace, I’m calling you. Now come on in here!” Daddy’s voice makes me jump and I quickly start walking up to the house. But not before I hear all the whispered gibberish from the grown-ups on the line.

  “I hear she’s from Alabama. I thought they train ’em better than that down there.”

  “Mm-hmm. She’s as sassy as they come. Her father needs to spank her one time to set her straight.”

  “You see, her hair ain’t even combed. Got her wearing boys’ clothes.”

  “He need a woman in that house.”

  “Hmph, Richard got enough women coming in and out that house for both of ’em.”

  I turn around to face the line of grown-ups with my hands on my hips and blurt out, “Y’all need to mind your own beeswax!”

  I don’t even wait to see their screwed-up faces as I turn back around and walk up the steps to Daddy.

  “Ebony-Grace! Have you lost your mind? Go on back there and apologize,” Daddy says with his laser-beam eyes glaring down at me.

  “Daddy, they said you need to spank me one time. Where do you keep the switch?” I say, glaring back at him.

  “Girl, if you don’t get your scrawny little butt up in here!”

  I rush past him and into the house with my belly growling. I didn’t even have cereal for breakfast, and I’m hoping Daddy is calling me back home for some lunch. He only steps inside for a minute to say, “You got a phone call. Told ’em to call back in five. Stand by the phone.”

  I gasp long and deep, thinking for a minute that Granddaddy called. But I couldn’t be that lucky. I shuffle to the kitchen thinking of what fib I was going to put together for Momma.

  “Oh, and Ebony?” Daddy says before he closes the door. “Don’t try to call your grandfather back. It’ll cost an arm and a leg to call the space center collect.”

  My eyes are wide, and my smile stretches from here to Mars. I hold my breath and count down from twenty. The phone doesn’t ring, so I start all over again. By the third set of twenty and right when I got down to eight, the phone finally rings.

  “Granddaddy!”

  “Starfleet!”

  “Granddaddy, did you see how Spock came back to life? It was the Genesis Device! You think that could work up here in Harlem? You should see it, Granddaddy. Everything’s so broken. Even the kids are broken. They do this breaking-bones dance. Remember when you were trying to show me, Granddaddy? Oh . . . I’m supposed to be Cadet E-Grace Starfleet. At your service, Captain Fleet!”

  Granddaddy chuckles. “You ain’t skipping a beat, huh? Thought you’d move on from all that Uhura stuff by being in those Harlem streets.”

  “Well, last I heard you were under the Sonic King’s control.”

  He laughs hard this time. “Under the Sonic King’s control? I guess you could say that. And this is the one phone call I’m allowed to get. See? I didn’t even call your momma. I called you to see how you’re doing up there.”

  “So tell me what happens, Granddaddy? How does Captain Fleet get from under the control of the Sonic King?”

  “I ain’t up to it right now, Starfleet. Tell me, is your daddy feeding you right? Getting some good greens into those little narrow bones of yours? He can’t just be feeding you Corn Flakes. Tell him you want some biscuits, grits, and bacon. Your momma should come up there.”

  “Granddaddy, I don’t wanna hear about no food!” I almost yell. “These girls, right? I call ’em the nefarious minionettes because they’re all working under the orders of King Sirius Julius over here in No Joke City.”

  “No Joke City?” he says and then chuckles.

  “Uh-huh. ’Cause ain’t nothin’ funny about No Joke City! That’s what you’d say, Granddaddy. Right? Anyway, these girls, they call me Ice Cream Sandwich. And they go by different ice cream flavors. My sometimes-friend, Bianca . . . ”

  “Ebony!” Granddaddy says. “Are you making friends? I hope you’re not doing what you do down here, pushing all those kids away by talking about spaceships and aliens all day. That’s between me and you, Starfleet. Not everybody’s gonna understand our little space adventures.”

  “Little space adventures? We’re saving the galaxy, Captain Fleet! Anyway, this boy, Pablo Jones . . . You think the Genesis Device will work here? You should see all these broken buildings, Granddaddy,” I say, almost running out of breath. I gotta tell him everything before it’s time to go. But the words are coming too fast, and my mouth is moving too slow. I wish I could borrow Diane’s speedy
mouth.

  “Starfleet! All right, now. If you wanna go there with all this Genesis Device stuff, just remember . . . the Prime Directive.”

  “The Prime Directive?”

  “That’s right. The Prime Directive. You can’t be messin’ with what people already got going. You got to leave it the way it is. Respect it. Get to know what it’s all about. That’s the Prime Directive.”

  “But, Granddaddy, the Prime Directive has nothing to do with the people, it’s for aliens.” I pause, and he’s quiet. Then I say, “Ohhh. We can’t interfere with alien cultures on other planets. No Joke City is a whole other planet, and as strange and broke as it is, I can’t change it, right?”

  Granddaddy laughs so hard, he starts coughing.

  “You okay, Granddaddy?”

  “Ebony, Harlem’s been a little broken ever since I was a boy, back when there was no Genesis Device or Prime Directive or even a TV set for me to watch Star Trek. Nobody was going up on spaceships back then, Starfleet. But we all had an imagination location. That’s what I want you to keep tapping into, Ebony. You might change locations, but don’t ever lose your imagination. And that don’t mean you go around talking about spaceships and aliens all day. Imagination locations are not all about outer space. Your own daddy’s got an imagination location with all that boom-boom-bip music going on up there. Ain’t nobody got time for outer space in Harlem, Starfleet. And I sure wasn’t thinking about it when I was a little boy.”

  “But what about Sputnik One, Granddaddy? That was when you were a teenager.”

  “The Russians sent that satellite up in space. It had nothing to do with a Negro boy like me up in Harlem.”

  “But you wanted to be an astronaut.”

  “No, I didn’t. I wanted to build cars, Ebony. I learned how to fix ’em first and became real good at it. Wasn’t thinking about no outer space till I got to Marshall, baby. All this planning and math and engineering work that went into rockets . . . It wasn’t something I saw on TV. And just because we were a few Negroes working down here at the space center, black folks thought we were gonna make it to the moon. No siree! We were just the nuts-and-bolts guys, not the ones they were sending into orbit. And they let us know that as soon as we walked in—no astronaut pipe dreams for us! And I didn’t even think that a black man could make it to the moon until Nichelle Nichols showed up on Star Trek as Uhura.” He chuckles again. “Fine as she was. Boy, I sure wish that was me and not that playa Captain Kirk!”

  “Granddaddy!”

  “Sorry, baby. Point is, my dreams of making it onto a spaceship were as real as Sun Ra’s Arkestra with all those outer space costumes and sounds. Sun Ra wanted us to know how outer space sounds, feels, and even looks. But these are just stories, baby. Like Star Trek and comic books. Like the stuff my own nana used to tell me when I was a little boy—her Brer Rabbit and Brer Fox stories from ’Bama. We had some good times on the Uhura. But you’re in Harlem now. Got plenty of stuff happening out there on those streets to keep your imagination location wide-open. Don’t go trying to change anything, okay? Remember the Prime Directive, Starfleet.”

  I twirl my finger around the spiraling telephone cord over and over again. “What about the cadet and her captain? And the evil Sonic King with the loudest, baddest, mind-controllest sound in the entire galaxy? And the Mothership Uhura?”

  “They’re still there, Ebony. Right in your imagination location. And that’s where they should stay. You tuck ’em in for a little while so you can do what you gotta do in this real world. You think I go around talking about the Uhura and the Sonic King at the space center? No sir. Go on, now. Next time I see you, I want you to teach me that breaking-bones dance. Don’t care if I lose my mind so long as I can shake my behind!” He laughs and coughs, laughs and coughs some more.

  “Cadet E-Grace to Captain Fleet. Do you copy?” I say real quiet, remembering that the real Captain Fleet is unconscious under the Sonic King’s radio tower. The real Captain Fleet wouldn’t tell me to “go on now.”

  “Copy, Cadet. Now I wired some money to your father and he should get it today. I wanna see you before the summer’s out. Your momma was against it. But it’s my money, and you’re my only grandbaby. Tell Julius to get you a round-trip ticket to Huntsville. Stay the weekend, then go back to your daddy soon after. Your mother won’t admit that she wants to see you, too. Would rather keep you away from me.” Granddaddy coughs again. “Anyway. I’ll see you in a bit, Starfleet. Live long and prosper. Go on now.”

  “Granddaddy?”

  There’s a click and then the sound of the dial tone, like the sound of the great black void—empty and forever. I hold the receiver to my ear until that other sound comes on—the one like a robot duck. Then I hang up.

  I jump when I turn to see Daddy sitting at the kitchen table eating from a paper plate. He licks his fingers before he says, “You should run out there and get a plate from Ms. Fuller across the street. She put her whole soul into this food. And get an extra heap of ’tato salad for your daddy.”

  “I’m going back home. Granddaddy wired you some money. So you can wire me back to Huntsville, too,” I say, as plain and cold as ice water.

  “You’re not getting wired to anywhere,” he says in between bites of his chicken leg. “Your momma don’t want you down there just yet. Says she needs you to stay till she’s good and ready. Makes no sense for you to go down for just a weekend.”

  “Why not? My granddaddy say I could come, and it’s his money,” I whine. “And his house!”

  “Well, he ain’t the one gonna be lookin’ out for you when you’re down there. Your momma is. And if she says she ain’t ready, then she ain’t ready. I don’t care how much money your grandfather sends.” He says this like the mean king that he’s supposed to be.

  I am as quiet as ’Bama skies. Only for a little bit. “He’s my granddaddy. If he say he wanna see me, then he has the right to,” I say, just as quietly.

  Daddy finishes chewing his food, wipes his mouth with a napkin, leans back in his chair, and glares at me with eyes I’ve never really seen before. “And I’m your daddy. If I say you ain’t going nowhere, then I have the right to.”

  Something heavy sinks deep in my belly. Not food. Nothing good, really. Maybe lost spacecraft swallowed by a black hole. Maybe the sun being swallowed by the horizon. It makes my soul dull. Nothing shines right now. I try to say something but even my words are in my father’s prison. But Daddy keeps on talking as if he didn’t just put a padlock on a door and locked me in a cold, dark room.

  “Go on out there and get you a plate. Ms. Fuller knows who you are. She’s Diane’s grandmother. There’s some music, some kids, some food. You’ll be fine.” He finishes his meal, throws the paper plate and bones into the trash, washes his hands in the sink, and leaves the kitchen.

  It’s not until then that I realize how hot it is. The heat presses down on me, and I wipe the sweat off my forehead. This isn’t like ’Bama heat. It’s bigger, louder even. It’s not like a warm, steady breath. It shouts, even in this small, dark, dusty kitchen. Maybe this Harlem heat is the Sonic Boom’s hot breath, like exhaust fumes from rocket ships.

  “Come on, Broomstick. Don’t make me tell you again. Get on out.”

  Reluctantly, I follow Daddy out of the brownstone. There’s a white envelope sticking out of his back pocket. As he walks to the front door, the envelope rides up until it finally slips out without him noticing. He leaves out the front door without looking back, so I rush over to pick it up. Inside is a slip that says “Western Union.” I’ve seen the commercials on TV. It’s the fastest way to send money.

  I open the envelope wider and see cash. Six fifty-dollar bills! I know it’s the money Granddaddy sent for my airplane tickets to Huntsville—the airplane tickets that Daddy said he wasn’t going to buy. I fold the envelope and tuck it deep into my jeans pocket and make sure it doesn’t crawl o
ut the way it did from Daddy’s pocket.

  By the time we’re outside, I realize that Granddaddy was talking all that gibberish because of the Sonic Boom. It’s taken over his mind! If I forget about the Uhura, then I’ll forget all about Captain Fleet, and he’ll just be stuck there under Planet Boom Box’s radio tower forever. And I won’t even be Cadet E-Grace Starfleet anymore because there won’t even be a Uhura or a Planet Boom Box or a Sonic King. That whole universe beyond Andromeda will just explode into nothing.

  But then I remember how, in the movie, Spock became friends with Admiral Kirk again. Kirk went back to save his friend, and because of that, Spock started remembering. “I’m coming for you, Captain Fleet!” I yell out into the street with all the kids running around and multiplying like Tribbles.

  “Ebony-Grace!” Daddy snaps. “You’re gonna have to stop that nonsense. You see all these kids out here? Go play with them. Leave your imaginary friend alone.”

  I follow him. “I need to go with you into the shop,” I say.

  “What for?” he asks.

  “I need to build a rocket ship and launch it into space.”

  “I need you to stay out here. Shop ain’t no place for kids today. And you need to build yourself a crew instead. Go and make some friends.”

  I look ahead at the entrance to the shop where there’s even a longer line now, and see one of the minions running in. “But what about Calvin and them? I know they’re in the junkyard.”

  “All right then,” he says, turning to me and looking down. “You wanna get smart? The junkyard is no place for young ladies. Now, where’s Bianca and her little double-Dutch crew? Go play with them. I can’t deal with this right now, Broomstick. Got every Tom, Dick, and Harry up in here trying to sell what little they could find. It’s the Fourth of July, they got the day off, and everybody’s trying to make rent this month. Gotta let them down easy. You don’t wanna be around for that.”

  I glance at the line of people—some with bags packed with stuff, others holding in their arms old books, clothes, car parts, and there’s even a pair of boys I’ve never seen before hauling a whole fireplace. “Daddy, I want that fireplace,” I say as he starts to walk away, but he doesn’t hear me. I wonder if it could actually hold a fire even if it’s not attached to a wall. I could lay it on its back and use it as a launching pad.