by Ibi Zoboi
“You’re a hero, too, Captain E-Grace Starfleet,” he says, walking over to me and putting his arm around my shoulders.
I stop breathing for a long second, and maybe my heart skips a beat, too. Bianca is out with her abuela, and some of the 9 Flavas across the street are not looking in our direction. I breathe in deep and relax under the weight of Pablo’s arm.
“Yeah, okay,” is all I say at first. Then I add, “Captain E-Grace Starfleet and Cadet Pablo Jupiter trekking the stars in space . . . ”
“The final frontier,” we both say together.
“To boldly go where no man . . . or woman has gone before,” Pablo says, deepening his voice.
We both laugh secret laughs. And for a little moment, I have a new friend, and I almost don’t want to go home.
CHAPTER
37
My airplane leaves in the evening and as I wait for Daddy back in the house, I watch the small TV that sits on top of the big one in the living room.
Uncle Richard moved all his stuff out the other day, when he was sure Daddy wasn’t going to be home. Word on the block is that Daddy’s looking for a new tenant, someone who could pay and look out for his baby girl.
But I’m going home.
Just as Daddy is coming down the stairs with his keys clinging and whistling because his face was starting to feel and look better, the telephone rings.
I don’t rush to answer it like I usually do because it didn’t matter if it is Granddaddy calling because I’m going to see him by tonight, at least.
Daddy takes his time getting to the phone. It’s still hard for him to talk.
“Well, we’re just getting ready to head out to the airport. What’s wrong, Gloria?” Daddy says, his voice quieter, less king-like than normal. Then he’s quiet for a long time. “I need you to breathe so I can understand what you’re saying . . . I’m so sorry, Gloria . . . Honey, I’m gonna bring our baby girl down. I’ll bring her home.”
I sit up on the couch and pretend to be watching Raj and Rerun on What’s Happening!! with the volume turned down really low so I can hear what Daddy is saying to Momma on the phone. I don’t answer him until he says my name for the third time even though he’s standing right there and he’s practically shouting.
“Yes, Daddy.”
“Your momma’s on the line for you.”
That kitchen and that telephone and that spiraling cord that used to be a portal could’ve been as far away as Neptune as long as I took to get there. I walk slowly, feeling like something heavy and thick is waiting for me on that phone.
“Ebony, baby?” Momma says, as soon as she heard me breathing on the phone. I don’t say anything. I just breathe. “There’s no other way to go about this. Baby, your granddaddy passed away this morning.”
CHAPTER
38
Daddy’s jaw is really sore from trying to comfort Momma on the phone, so when he calls American Airlines, I do all the talking for him, even though my words come out slow-dripping like molasses.
“One round-trip ticket to Huntsville, Alabama, please,” I say, trying really hard to be polite and sweet, like Momma taught me. “And please change the date for Ebony-Grace Norfleet Freeman’s ticket, too. I’ll be going home later.”
Momma told Daddy that I needed to wait a couple more days before coming down because things were in disarray. Newspaper reporters were calling, neighbors were stopping by with casseroles, and she had to get Granddaddy’s affairs in order. Just ’cause Daddy’s words were slurred from his sore jaw, Momma thought he was hard of hearing, too. So she shouted her words, and I could hear her while sitting at the kitchen table. If the doors to my imagination location weren’t closed from all this sadness, I would’ve thought it was because of my bionic ears. No. Momma was just yelling.
I never knew how quiet it could be inside my thoughts when my imagination location is not there anymore. I can hear more things now. And they’re not as loud as before—there’s no boom-bip-bap-ratatat as it beats out of boom boxes and cars driving by. It becomes like crickets at night on Olde Stone Road in Huntsville. Regular. Normal. As plain as all the broken things on every corner of Harlem.
I don’t argue with Daddy. I don’t argue with Momma. I wait for anyone or anything to move me into the next adventure, one that doesn’t come out of Granddaddy’s stories or even my own imagination. Adventure now is every day, everything; it’s waking up, eating, talking about nothing, watching nothing, and going back to sleep.
On the day we’re finally ready to fly back to Huntsville, I spend most of my time roaming around the brownstone. There’s no radio tower, Planet Boom Box, or a Sonic King. I just flip through Daddy’s records, staring at the ladies with shiny dresses and red lipstick or the men posing with their friends and their instruments. The TV is off, and even though the streets are as loud as they usually are, there’s a dark cloud hanging over me that seems to block all of it out. My bags are packed and there’s nothing left to do, nothing left to say, nothing left to imagine.
So I step out onto the stoop, then the sidewalk, and my legs take me over to Daddy’s shop, where one of his friends is gonna take care of business while he’s away.
“Sorry about your granddaddy, little girl,” the man says, as I walk straight through the auto repair shop and out into the junkyard. I inhale deep as I stare out at all the mess. There are a few more tires than there were before. The whole fireplace sits atop a refrigerator lying on its side. I blink a few times to see if my mind will play some trick on me and turn that fireplace into a launching pad, but after a few seconds, it’s still a broken fireplace ripped from somebody’s living room.
“Broomstick?” I hear Daddy say.
I turn around to him standing in the doorway leading into the junkyard. I get ready to leave, but he nods and walks away leaving me to continue with whatever I was doing.
But after a short second, Bianca comes in. Her eyes are fixed on me as if she’s expecting me to be broken somehow. She doesn’t come too close at first, so we just stare at each other.
Then Monique comes out, and Rhonda, Collette, Vanessa, Stacey, Christine, Paula, and Megan. The whole 9-F Crew steps into the junkyard and they look so strange with all their bright colors against the dull browns and grays of the junkyard.
“What do y’all want? I’m sorry about the money. About everything” is the first thing I say, as I kick the tip of my shoe against a lonely brick on the ground.
“We heard about your granddaddy,” Monique says.
“Yeah, my nana died last summer and I cried for a week,” Rhonda says.
“Sorry about your grandpa, Ebony-Grace,” Bianca says. “And I brought everybody here to say sorry.”
I look up at Bianca, whose curly hair is out of its usual side ponytail. “Why?” I ask her.
She’s quiet for a moment then she smiles a little. “Because the needs of my amiga outweigh the needs of my crew sometimes.”
“Yeah, sometimes!” Monique adds. “You two are Ebony and Ivory all right. Always have to be in perfect harmony!”
Then Rhonda starts singing the song at the top of her lungs, “Ebony and Ivory—”
“Shut up, Rhonda!” two of the 9 Flavas shout.
And everybody laughs, except for me and Bianca. She’s still looking at me as if she wanted me to say something.
“Sorry, too,” I mumble and look up at her. Maybe I see her soulglow a little bit, as if this little moment had made her happier than anything. Or maybe, it’s my soulglow reflecting off her.
Daddy calls me in from the auto repair shop and scolds the girls for being there. “That’s enough now. You all don’t belong here. I don’t want your mothers coming over here to see their daughters hanging out in a junkyard. You all are young ladies now.”
“But you let the boys play in here, Mr. Freeman,” Bianca says.
I smile big and bri
ght on the inside. “Yeah, Daddy,” I say. “If the boys can play in the junkyard, then we can play in here, too.”
Bianca looks back at me with a smile that I think says “Thank you.”
* * *
Daddy brings me a peanut butter sandwich on a plastic plate and a cup of milk as I sit on the couch watching Sue Simmons on the news. It’s raining outside, and some of the kids on the block dance in it as if it were a waterfall on Fantasy Island.
Sue Simmons still looks like Momma. And the news about all the no-good, awful, terrible things that happen in New York City is the same as it was yesterday and the day before. Once, I made sure not to even blink so I wouldn’t miss if Daddy and Uncle Richard’s fight made it onto the news. But that was just a small fight compared to the no-good, awful, even more terrible things that happen in Harlem.
Daddy keeps me safe. He doesn’t let any of it get to me. That’s what he said to Momma.
I never got to say goodbye to Granddaddy. I push down everything that would make me cry, make me mad, and just stare at Sue Simmons as she announces a special message from the president of the United States, Mr. Ronald Reagan.
Daddy comes with his tuna sandwich plate to sit down beside me.
The movie star who used to play a cowboy hero in movies, Granddaddy told me, is the president, and he comes on the TV screen all serious. For a minute, I don’t care, but then I see an image of one of the space shuttles. I set my plate down on the floor and sit up on the couch to hear every word.
Today I’m directing NASA to begin a search in all of our elementary and secondary schools, and to choose as the first citizen passenger in the history of our space program, one of America’s finest: a teacher.
The screen shows an astronaut in outer space floating near a space shuttle. A teacher in space. I don’t know what to make of that idea. What would a teacher do as part of a space shuttle crew?
CHAPTER
39
I’m not alone on the plane this time. Daddy is sitting next to me snoring like a junkyard dog. I press my face against the plane’s window and look out at the concrete clouds. The sun is setting behind them and the whirling mix of colors look as if all the planets in the galaxy were dancing together at a block party.
The airplane doesn’t push past the gray, blue, and orange colors to reach the giant, endless black sky called outer space. So I take control. I close my eyes, press my back against the seat, and pretend the plane is at an angle, its nose aiming high for the stars and planets and the very edge of our galaxy. I extend my arms out and press button after button, manning the control boards as the plane crashes through the concrete sky and becomes the Mothership Uhura. Once we’ve made the jump to hyperspace (no throwing up this time), I engage the autopilot. Then I sit up straight in my chair and summon my best captain’s voice.
“Captain’s log, stardate 08.31.1984. The Uhura’s mission to rescue Captain Fleet has come to an end. Unfortunately, we have neither rescued the captain nor defeated the Sonic King. The battle damage to this spacecraft will be repaired soon enough, but I cannot say when her crew will be recovered—”
Suddenly, the plane hits some turbulence and I open my eyes. Out the window is nothing but endless blackness. Blackness beyond night that goes on forever. I can’t take my eyes away from it, can’t help wonder what it’s all about. So I keep my eyes open.
“And yet I wonder if the mission wasn’t a success after all.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Daddy is awake and listening to me, and some of the other passengers glance in my direction, but I don’t care. There’s no reason to sneak around, no reason for secrets. Uhura means “freedom” and this captain does what she wants!
“Maybe this was never really a rescue mission. Maybe the purpose of this mission was for Space Cadet E-Grace Starfleet to become Captain Starfleet.
“I’ve changed, and maybe that was the point. Granddaddy is gone now, so that makes me feel different. But that ol’ Captain Fleet is alive and well in my imagination location, same as ever. I can visit him anytime. And he’s not in any kind of trouble out there in the big, wide universe.
“Maybe the Genesis Device can change how a captain sees a new planet, not the other way around. Maybe the captain thinks the planet is all broken and dirty, but she’ll have to follow the Prime Directive: Don’t go trying to change things up. Maybe the aliens like it just the way it is. A captain has to change her mind to see a place with new eyes. She has to wonder what it’s all about. That’s the only change that needs to happen, whatever’s going on in her imagination location.”
Next to me, I can see Daddy smiling. He’s shaking his head, too, but there’s definitely a smile on his face.
“That’s what the teacher in space is gonna have to do. No sense in trying to teach aliens new ways. They’ve got their own way of doing things. So, I’ll definitely have to be the first student in space to let that shuttle crew know about the Prime Directive and the Genesis Device. Besides, ain’t that many kids out there who can call themselves captains. And they’ll have to meet the Sonic King in Planet Boom Box. The whole Planet Earth has to know about the loudest, baddest, mind-controllest sound in the entire galaxy: the Sonic Boom!”
I look over at Daddy and wink at him. If his block in Harlem knows him as DJ Jule Thief, then I know him as the Sonic King disguised as King Sirius Julius. And right there in Harlem is the Planet Boom Box where the Sonic Boom lives. I didn’t go messing with any of it. I followed General Order Number One: The Prime Directive. I didn’t take down the king and I didn’t destroy the planet. If that doesn’t make me a darn good captain, then I don’t know what does.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book took a long time to write, and there wasn’t a moment when I was recreating the world of 1984 Harlem through Ebony-Grace’s imagination location that I didn’t have a smile on my face. This story brought me so much joy, and many people shared my enthusiasm and appreciation for science-fiction, early hip-hop, being twelve, and old New York.
I am grateful to photographer extraordinaire, Jamel Shabazz, for documenting little known parts of American history: the imaginative Black children of 1980s New York. What we dreamed up ultimately changed the world. Thank you for allowing us to see ourselves in the books A Time Before Crack and Back in the Days.
A captain’s salute to the incomparable Nichelle Nichols and her role as Lieutenant Nyota Uhura on Star Trek. Your presence in the future, among the stars, meant the universe to us.
I am grateful to Rita Williams-Garcia’s One Crazy Summer and the Gainther Sisters series for reminding me of the beauty, humor, innocence, and playfulness of Black girlhood. These books allowed me to reach back and step into child-sized shoes. I remembered myself.
Of course, my own children do the daily work of forcing me to reckon with all things teen and preteen. Bahati, thank you for your beautiful, pitch-perfect voice while reading Ebony-Grace’s words. She was that much more real because of you. Abadai, it’s my hope that you become an editor one day, given all the editorial work I put you through. Thank you for your keen insight into plot and characterization and for always keeping it one hundred. Zuberi, thank you for reading all the way to the end and having lots of questions. That is all.
To my dear husband, Joseph, an unwavering cheerleader: if books could have a sound engineer, I’d give you this very important job. Thank you for sharing your love of music and early hip-hop, and lending your voice to daddy, granddaddy, uncle, and even the Sonic King himself. They are that much more real because of you. And a huge thank you for that very first sketch of Ebony-Grace. You are indeed the co-creator of this very special girl.
Thank you to Frank Morrison and Anthony Piper for rendering Ebony-Grace and her worlds.
Ammi-Joan Paquette, thank you so much for seeing the potential of this story when it was just a seed of an idea. You get me and that means a lot to me.
An
drew Karre, I could not have asked for a more wise, thorough, enthusiastic, and patient editor. The process of bringing this story to life was definitely a mind meld. Thank you for being so deeply invested in, not just this story, but in Harlem, its people, its history, its music, the characters, and even all those old Star Trek and Star Wars movies. It was clear that you cared so much about this book, and as a result, it made the writing that much easier.
Thanks to my Penguin team: Julie Strauss-Gabel, Melissa Faulner, Natalie Vielkind, Lindsay Boggs, Kristin Boyle, Carmela Iaria, Felicia Frazier, and many others. I am so grateful for all the behind-the-scenes work and love that went into this book.
Lastly, to my dear friends Helen, Talana, and Ahmed, who shared all those old New York stories with me. Yes, all those questions were for this book. Your memories are so special and sacred—the carrying double-Dutch ropes in your bags, the partying with hip-hop legends before they were stars, the music, the clothes, the style . . . The world has no idea, and they need to know. I love you for supporting me in countless ways.
It wasn’t a village that made this book. It was a block—from the corner store to the rooftops, and even the hidden stars. We made this sonic boom of a book. You too, reader. Thank you, all!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ibi Zoboi is the author of two novels for young adults, Pride and American Street, a finalist for the National Book Award. She also edited the anthology Black Enough. She holds an MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Born in Haiti and raised in New York City, she now lives with her family in New Jersey.
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