My Life as an Ice Cream Sandwich: Chapters 17–24

In Huntsville, everything was muffled—all those voices making up stories about Granddaddy—the chirping church ladies’ whispers and mumbles and hush-hush gossip making a low-hanging concrete cloud over Granddaddy’s head.

In no time, I was at the control boards helping ease the giant spaceship toward the edge of the Milky Way, toward a whole other galaxy in search of intelligence to protect our planet from ultimate destruction. That was super top secret, of course!

Moving back to the South from New York was unheard of. They called us uppity Negroes down here just ’cause we knew a little bit about that fast life up in Harlem and we were engineers working for NASA.

“Your momma’s gospel music ain’t sonic nothing,” Granddaddy joked. “It’s the slow, humdrum rotation of the planets around the sun. Can’t even hear it move your soul.”

If boom, bip, bap, click, and ratatatat were aliens,
they’d be amplified, magnified, sanctified,
and funktified. Ha!

So the Funkazoids gathered around the
Sonic King as his royal court.
And at the end of the Sonic King’s giant
golden scepter was the
loudest, the baddest, the mind-controllest
Sonic Boom in the entire galaxy.

The Sonic Boom will seal your doom.

Captain, I’m not registering. You are being highly illogical.

Resistance is futile.

I thought she didn’t like me. She’s Mercurial Monique—mean one minute and nice the next.

“Hey!” I protest. “This is for telephones!”
“Well, what y’all use down in ’Bama? Twine?” Monique says.

Only the bip stops. Not the boom-boom from the radio in the distance. Not the nefarious minions’ gibberish from across the playground. Not the dancing No Joke City air. And not the screams of the 9 Flavas Crew who all rush to Bianca and surround her like the universe contracting—the whole galaxy coming together as if a single planet were the magnet.

My damage report for Captain Fleet would be bad. Shields are at less than ten percent. All systems in the critical range!

Bianca holds a red freeze pop behind her head. The long plastic tube makes her look like an alien—as if the freeze pop is a long red tentacle meant to connect her thoughts to her mothership.

At the same time, a group of men walk into Dapper Dan’s Boutique wearing the shiniest, biggest, heaviest jewelry I’ve ever seen.

In the wee hours of the morning when Momma was in deep sleep, and this side of the world was as quiet as outer space, I tiptoed into Momma’s room, grabbed the stool from her vanity table, placed it under the attic door in the ceiling, pulled the ladder down, and quietly made my way up to the dusty attic.

I flicked on the button and the first thing I saw was a scrapbook sitting on top of an old wooden stool—the one I used to sit on when Nana would plait my hair; the one Momma would sit on when she was a little girl.

They say that there’s a good chance that a Negro may be the first man on the moon. But if he isn’t, there’s a good likelihood Negro Collegian scientists will be performing their intricate duties at the launching pad as they wave the moongoer off.

A year after a group of science students came from Louisiana, Granddaddy came down from City College in Harlem to work at the Marshall Space Flight Center. They were there to “integrate,” the newspaper article said.

Momma didn’t want her things in plain old cardboard boxes. They were in wicker baskets and covered in the hand-embroidered tablecloths Nana used to make.

Momma didn’t want her things in plain old cardboard boxes. They were in wicker baskets and covered in the hand-embroidered tablecloths Nana used to make.

“You’re too nosy, Ebony, meddling in grown-folk’s business. That’s why you need to spend a few days with your father. Learn how to mind the business of becoming a decent young lady. Now, enough with this outer space nonsense. Leave that telescope alone. Ain’t nothing out there for you to see but the Lord.”

“Broomstick? Aw, come on. I know you didn’t sleep through all that noise. Your little country ears ain’t used to all this racket. Wake up now.”

I quietly put on my Return of the Jedi T-shirt and a pair of acid-washed jeans that I begged Granddaddy to buy me because Momma said dungarees aren’t ladylike.

“Well, this here is Carol. And she was a figment of your imagination location. Okay?”

I yell out to the walls, and ceiling, and dusty old furniture, and maybe even that stuffy No Joke City air.

Captain Fleet, I've been beamed onto Planet Boom Box and the Uhura is out of commission, sir.

Ever since I first walked into Daddy’s house, I’ve imagined sliding down all these stairs as if it were a ventilation shaft in a space station.

As a space cadet, I’ve learned to predict outcomes based on mathematical equations using space-time equilibriums.

Bianca went all the way to the corner store—a “bodega” she calls it—to buy long tubes of red icees to soothe some of the soreness on my body.

“Right. Other people’s food might have some mind-controlling poisons that’ll make you start eating your fingers and your hands and your arms, and before you know it, you’ll be eating your friends and your mom and your dad, and whoever put that mind-controlling poison into the food will take over the world because everybody will start eating each other and it’ll be an apocalypse, and Planet Earth will become the new home for the aliens and—”

“Now, would you stop talking crazy so you don’t scare your little friend away?” Daddy says, as he places a warm, gooey slice of pizza on my plate. “Your mother warned me about this, told me not to entertain these outrageous stories of yours.”

“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.

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

This is the ultimate void, the dark abyss, home of ugly aliens like the Klingons.