My Life as an Ice Cream Sandwich

by Ibi Zoboi

  Daddy puts his hand up while shaking his head. “The contest is for only two crews. They got their two crews. Now, wait for the double-Dutch teams. The girls from 127th are headed over here. There’s even a bunch coming down from the Bronx and the East Side. No need to compete with the boys.”

  Just as he says this, the crowd behind us starts to get impatient and they call out, “Genesis Five,” and “Cold-Crush Calvin.”

  Before Diane, Monique, and Bianca start arguing with Daddy again, he gets back on the mic to start the contest. “First up: Genesis Five. We got a request for a song off the Breakin’ soundtrack. Let’s go!”

  The Sonic King ignores the 9 Flavas Crew even as more of them come up to his control boards arguing that they should be the ones battling Genesis Ten and how Calvin and them purposely broke up their crew just to keep the girls out of the contest. But the Sonic King isn’t hearing any of it, neither are the people standing around waiting for the battle to get started.

  The music comes on at full blast and I cover my ears again. We’re all pushed out of the way so the boys can do their thing. I follow Bianca and the ice cream flavors as they stomp down the block and away from the crowd. Bianca is pouting. Monique is cursing so much that if my momma could hear her now, she would wash her mouth out with Octagon soap.

  “That’s not fair!” Bianca blurts out.

  And at the same moment the crowd cheers even louder. I could see Calvin’s legs spinning around like a helicopter’s rotor blades.

  “Why won’t he let you dance like the nefarious—” I start to ask. “I mean, like the boys?”

  “Don’t you know? That’s your father,” Monique says. “He don’t want us doing what the boys do. He just thinks we’re only good at double-Dutch.”

  “We’re good at double-Dutch and breakin’ and rappin’!” Rhonda says. “That’s way more than what Calvin and Pablo could do.”

  “What are they gonna do with that money, anyway?” Monique continues. “They don’t need no Dapper Dan outfits. But we gotta look fly.”

  “And ain’t nothing on that flyer that said an all-girl crew can’t compete at the Apollo Theater. We don’t have to mix in with boys just so they could take us seriously,” Bianca says.

  Her voice cracks, as if her whole soul were about to break apart into a thousand pieces. That’s what happened to one of Granddaddy’s records when I accidentally stepped on it. She sits on the dirty curb, even with its broken glass and garbage, and puts her head down on her knees. A dark cloud hovers over her. Her soulshine—the one that lit up bright when she was break dancing and rapping against Pablo Jupiter—is now dull, dark, and almost gone.

  I sit next to her.

  She scoots away from me.

  “Leave her alone, Ice Cream Sandwich!” Rhonda calls out.

  “That’s my friend!” I call back.

  “Then do something! That’s your father and he’s not being fair!” Monique says. Then, she starts counting off on her fingers and rolling her neck with each word. “You can’t jump double-Dutch. You can’t dance. You can’t rap. The least you could do is get your daddy to let us battle those stupid-head boys!”

  “You can’t tell me what to do!” I yell at her. But after two seconds, I get up and stomp over to the Sonic King. I can hear the ice cream flavors walking behind me and talking over the music.

  “What she think she gonna do?”

  “Nothing. She’s a daddy’s girl.”

  “If she sticks up for us, you think we should make her the tenth flava?”

  “She gotta learn how to dance first.”

  “At least learn to turn a rope.”

  “And jump, too.”

  “And rhyme.”

  “Yep.”

  “Don’t you think that’s asking too much?”

  “She is country, you know.”

  “Well, she’s in Harlem now.”

  “I know that’s right.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  I stop suddenly and the 9 Flavas almost all bump into me. I turn around and look each one in the eye. “Okay,” I say. “I have a plan. If you want me to help, then we have to strategize. We have to take down the king.”

  “Here we go again,” Monique says, crossing her arms and rolling her eyes.

  Bianca sighs. “What king, Ebony?”

  “The Sonic King. He controls all the loud boom-bip-bap-ratatat sounds in the entire galaxy! The meanest, loudest, mind-controllest sound in the whole universe. He sends out a Sonic Boom to the planets and takes over all the aliens’ minds so he could control everything!”

  “Ice Cream Sandwich!” Rhonda calls out. “Stay off them drugs.”

  “Now is not the time for those silly stories, Ebony,” Bianca says, low enough for the others not to hear. I see sadness in her eyes, like blurry stars behind cloudy Huntsville skies.

  So I step closer to her and ask, “Do you trust me, Bianca Pluto?”

  “No. Not if you’re calling me Bianca Pluto.”

  “I thought that was your rapping name,” I say.

  “It is. When I’m rapping. But when you call me that, I know you’re gonna wanna take me to Mars or something.”

  “I’m gonna distract the king and all the nefarious minions. And when they’re all not looking, the Nine Flavas can start doing their breaking-bones dance,” I say. “It’s like how Admiral Kirk tricked Kruge into going to the Genesis Planet in the movie. Remember?” Without waiting to hear what she thinks, I march up to the crowd, demand that they get out of our way, step over one of the Genesis Tens-now-Fives doing his dance moves on the cardboard, and walk straight up to the Sonic King even as the Sonic Boom pulses so hard, it reaches my bones.

  I inhale, put my hands on my hips, and as regular ol’ Ebony-Grace Norfleet Freeman, I yell, “Daddy, my friends wanna do that breaking-bones dance and win this contest! They need the money to get their outfits made by Dapper Dan for the contest at the Apollo Theater!”

  He only waves me away, holding headphones to his ear and changing the record on his control board. I watch how he places his fingers on the black, shiny round disc, pulls it back, moves it forward a little bit, and pulls it back some more as the sound changes from a screech to a bass to a boom-boom, then back to a bass and a screech over and over again. I can feel the crowd, the block, and maybe even the whole city swaying and rocking to the beat.

  The man in the song sings “Planet Rock” as everybody repeats each word with him. I am so small against this big, big sound. It pounds, swirls, and blows past me in a heavy wave as wide and deep as outer space.

  I turn to see the boys moving their bodies to the beat. Every part of them pops and locks like a machine, like an engine, like a robot. I watch everybody’s faces like a hundred suns gleaming bright. This isn’t like church where my nana’s friends let go of their bodies to make way for the Holy Spirit, as the pastor would say. This isn’t like when Mrs. Headley and Mrs. Turner shimmy their shoulders and throw their heads back and put their hands up in the air saying, “Yes, Lord!” This isn’t because of Momma’s Jesus.

  This breaking-bones dance, this pounding bass, these faces like a hundred suns as they clap and groove and make their bodies move is because of something bigger than this little planet. This sound, this music really did come from another world, and if what that man on the song is saying is right, then this Sonic Boom is really from a place called Planet Rock.

  The Sonic Boom does make you lose all control. And the man talking over the song calls it the Soul Sonic Force.

  One of the cardboard boxes on the ground is empty. Pablo Jupiter and his crew are doing a two-step dance like The Commodores or The Jackson 5, kicking out side to side and clapping their hands to the beat. No one is doing the breaking-bones dance on the cardboard. So I take my chance.

  I look back over at the brown, rectangular cardboard—it’s dirty
and beat-up as if it’d been trampled over by every single person who lives in No Joke City. But it’s for dancing, not for walking over. Then suddenly, the tears and footprints and stains start to morph into whirling black holes, like dark storms on the surface of a far-flung planet. The storms spin to the beat of the music, and in no time at all, the cardboard becomes a giant black void speckled with stars and tiny Milky Ways.

  In the distance is a Planet Boom Box with its beaming radio tower bouncing and spinning to the music. It pulses like a heartbeat and before I even say Planet Boom Box, I spot the Sonic King holding out his scepter toward me as a giant iridescent bubble aims straight for me. It blows up in my face and out comes the loudest mind-controllest sound in the entire galaxy.

  I lose all control and count down to the beat ready to launch: 5, 4, 3 . . .

  The man on the song raps over the beat, “So twist and turn, then you let your body slide and glide / You got the body rock and pop, bounce and pounce . . . ”

  I hop right onto the cardboard, that becomes the galaxy, and I fall and fall and fall like Luke Skywalker falling through those giant shafts after fighting with his own daddy, Darth Vader, in Cloud City. Every time I think I land on something, I keep falling again. Atmospheric pressure pulls and pushes me in different directions as my arms and legs flail about and the Sonic Boom keeps pounding its mind-controlling beat into my ears and throughout my body. Still, I don’t scream. I have to be strong so I can help the 9 Flavas. I’m coming for you, Bianca Pluto! Then, finally, I land on the surface of Planet Boom Box.

  I am a meteor spinning toward Planet Earth.

  I am R2-D2 and C-3PO moving about like hands on a clock—tick-tick-tick-tock.

  I bend my arms and bop my head and pop and lock my bones like Michael’s dancing machine and they don’t even break. I let the groove take over my whole soul and ride on Planet Boom Box until it reaches the end of the galaxy. This Sonic Boom is what the spinning universe sounds like.

  But it comes to a stop and everything is like it was in the very beginning—quiet, like floating in zero gravity.

  “Come on, Broomstick,” the Sonic King says over the microphone. “You can’t just come in and bust up the contest like that!”

  Everyone is booing me. The nefarious minions are shouting in my face, telling me to get out of the way. Their gibberish words are like laser beams attacking the Uhura. I can’t even activate the deflector shields because I’m out of breath and my heart is racing.

  “That’s not what you were supposed to do, Ebony-Grace!” Monique shouts.

  “You can’t dance, Ice Cream Sandwich!” says Rhonda.

  “You messed up the whole contest!” Vanessa yells.

  “Why’d you do that for, Ebony?” Bianca asks, stepping closer. “We were supposed to dance. You didn’t even practice. Why do you always want attention?”

  “It was a distraction. You were supposed to jump in and do your moves!” I say.

  Bianca clenches her fists and tightens her jaw as if she’s ready to punch me.

  “Hey now!” Daddy says. “Y’all take that somewhere else. Everybody’s over here having a good time. Now don’t mess that up, girls.”

  I watch as Bianca stomps away and the rest of her friends roll their eyes at me, stick out their tongues, or don’t even look my way.

  Everything continues to swirl around me as if I’m invisible, as if I’m an alien.

  “All right, y’all. I think we gotta tie,” Daddy says on the mic. “We gotta fifty-fifty split between the Genesis Five and Cold-Crush Calvin and the Fresh Four!”

  Everyone claps and cheers. I look toward where the 9 Flavas are standing at the edge of the crowd near the red-and-white-checkered food table. I can’t hear their words as they pout and point with anger spread across all their faces. Bianca sits on the curb again with her chin in her hands. She glances at me and shakes her head. I look down at my feet.

  “Beam me up, Captain Fleet,” I whisper against the blasting music again. This time, a robotic voice sings “Jam On it” and it sounds as if the Sonic King’s Funkazoids are making fun of me from the control boards.

  “That’s not fair,” someone says as they brush past me. It’s Pablo Jupiter, pouting and looking back at Calvin and them as if they’d just betrayed him. He walks toward Daddy’s auto repair shop.

  I look back at Bianca again, who isn’t even looking my way. Then back at Pablo Jupiter who is walking away. So, like I’m being pulled by a tractor beam, I follow the boy who has the wide and tall doors to his imagination location flung open to let in all the dancing stars and bouncing planets and soaring rocket ships.

  CHAPTER

  31

  “Hold up, now,” I say, chasing after Pablo. “What happened over there? Didn’t you all win?” His face is sweaty and he looks meaner than when I first met him. He doesn’t say anything as we both head over to Daddy’s shop where some men are sitting around a small table playing a card game.

  “You ever been to the junkyard?” I ask as I try to keep up with his furious pace.

  His face calms. “Yeah. That’s where we practice.”

  “So you know there’s enough junk to build new stuff. Maybe a . . . Genesis Device.”

  We reach the shop and he turns to look at me. “I really wanted to battle Bianca Pluto. She’s good. It wasn’t fair that Calvin took over the whole contest.”

  “So why didn’t you stop him?”

  “Who’s that king you said he was working for?” he asks.

  I smile. “King Sirius Julius. But it turns out that he’s really the Sonic King.” I turn to point to my daddy who has on his headphones now and is switching a record on his control boards. “He controls everything. He won’t even let me save Captain Fleet.”

  “You think Bianca will let me join their crew?” he asks.

  I turn back to look at the 9 Flavas. They’ve walked over to Calvin and them now, and they look like they’re arguing. Diane is trying to break it up, but Monique and Rhonda are the angriest of them all. They point and roll their necks in Calvin’s face. “I don’t think they’re gonna want you in their crew, Pablo Jupiter. Why don’t we form our own crew?”

  “You can’t dance, Ebony-Grace,” he says, as plain as Granddaddy’s Saltine crackers.

  “No,” I say. “Not that kinda crew. A real crew on a space mission. We need to get outta here, Pablo Jupiter. Either we build another spacecraft, or . . . plant a Genesis Device on Planet . . . Junkyard! Yeah, that’s it. Planet Junkyard!” I smile because I’ve just created a whole new adventure in just a few seconds exactly like how Granddaddy would.

  Pablo thinks for a second. Then he says, “Is there any room for break dancing on the spacecraft?”

  “Only if it’s to defeat the Sonic King,” I say. “You’ll make him think you’re break-dancing, but it’ll only be to trick him so you could take out his shield generator and destroy his warp drive.”

  I motion for him to follow me into the shop where it almost feels like an oven. The lights are turned off in the small space and it smells of engine oil, rusted metal, and sweat.

  “Julius ain’t got no cash in the shop, so y’all ain’t gonna find nothing in there,” a man shouts into the shop from outside.

  As he says this, I tap my pocket to make sure Granddaddy’s cash is still there. I won’t need any of Daddy’s money anyway.

  We head straight for a narrow door at the back of the shop where Daddy throws all the broken, junky stuff he buys from people. I look for that fireplace those two boys were trying to sell him, but instead I spot the old refrigerator that’s been there since I was nine. A pile of car doors are stacked against the rusty tin gate that separates the yard from the next building’s yard, which has overgrown trees and shrubs making it look almost like Alabama.

  “Everything here is dead. It could use a Genesis Device,” I say.

 
“No way,” Pablo says. “Everything here is still alive. People who don’t know always say these neighborhoods are dead, but we’re still here, still living. You know what I mean?”

  “That’s not really living, then, if everything around you is broken. Even the music is broken, and everybody does this breaking-bones dance.”

  “Nuh-uh. There’s nothing broken about breakin’,” he says, and starts to dance like a robot. “We just fix it up and it becomes something new and different. Nobody dances like this where you’re from? I know they do the Electric Boogaloo in California.”

  “I’m from a different planet, remember?”

  “But even the planet you’re from gots to have music,” he says, still moving about like a robot.

  I think of Granddaddy’s funk music: James Brown, George Clinton’s Parliament-Funkadelic; his soul music: Al Green and Curtis Mayfield; his jazz: Sun Ra and Miles Davis; and even his disco: Donna Summers and the BeeGees. None of them sound like the Sonic Boom. None of them are from a place called Planet Rock with its electric bass and voices that sound like they’re coming from another dimension.

  I spot an old record player in the far corner of the junkyard. It’s the kind with a wooden base and horn that looks like a brass flower. I’d have to climb over a motorcycle, a rusty bathtub, and a chipping wooden door to get to it. Before I could come up with a strategy, Pablo was already ahead of me trying to get to it. He lugs it over his head as he leaps over all the junk to bring the record player back to me.

  We meet in the middle of the junkyard where he places the chipped and rusted record player on the ground with the broken glass and small car parts. We both crouch down to examine it.

  Pablo is standing now, stepping away from the old record player as if he’s about to leave the junkyard any second.

  I stand, too, so I can say this to his face. “This is not what a planet is supposed to look like, and this is not what a yard is supposed to look like. All these people bringing their junk to the Sonic King with their torn clothes and missing teeth and all he gives them back is even more broken music.”