DADDY: “How’s my baby girl?”
ME: “Good.”
DADDY: “You’re getting high marks in school?”
ME: “Yes.”
DADDY: “How ’bout you come up to the Big Apple and stay with your daddy for a while?”
ME: “No.”
And even now that I’m with him (not for a while, just a week), he still doesn’t have much to say, unlike Granddaddy, who can step in and out of his own imagination location with no problem.
CAPTAIN FLEET: “What have you to report from your mission, Cadet E-Grace?”
E-GRACE: “The Funkazoids have dispersed all throughout the galaxy to retrieve the golden Dog Star . . . ”
CAPTAIN FLEET: “Retrieve the golden Dog Star, huh? Is that right?”
E-GRACE: “Affirmative, Captain.”
CAPTAIN FLEET (AS REGULAR OL’ GRANDDADDY): “Ebony-Grace, are you trying to tell me you want a golden retriever for your birthday?”
E-GRACE: “Affirmative, Granddaddy.”
And I was supposed to get that golden retriever this summer, right before signing up for that new space camp. No matter, because I won’t be staying in Harlem. E-Grace Starfleet won’t be Planet No Joke City’s prisoner forever. I’ll make it back to Huntsville in time for my new puppy and for space camp.
So I try very hard not to smile big and bright as Daddy dials and my heart is beating fast waiting to hear Granddaddy’s version of what’s really happening here in No Joke City.
Daddy has to wait a few seconds for Momma to accept the collect call from New York. Daddy always calls collect because Granddaddy is rich. Still, I’ve heard Momma say Daddy could spare a few dollars just to hear his daughter’s voice. And I’ve heard Daddy say that he’d rather spend those few dollars on me when I get here to live with him for good. With my bionic ears, I hear all sorts of things I’m probably not supposed to.
Bianca is back from the bathroom when Daddy’s thunderous voice seems to make the whole kitchen shake. Bianca jumps, and I cover my mouth to hold in a laugh.
“Gloria! How you feelin’? All right? That’s great . . . Well, she’s here. Safe and sound. And happy, too,” Daddy says, without even smiling or winking or nodding at me to make sure that he’s right about my being happy.
So I rush over to him and try to grab the phone. King Sirius Julius can fool Momma, but he can’t fool me. “Let me speak to her, Daddy!”
“Hold on, Broomstick. That’s rude. Lemme finish talking to your momma.”
I step back with my face twisted into a tight knot, my arms crossed, and I tap my toe on his dirty kitchen floor and listen to him lie to Momma.
“Her flight was fine . . . Yes, she was behaving . . . She was reading her books . . . I’ll sign her up at the Y first thing Monday morning . . . I know a dance school over on 145th . . . I already asked Diane to watch her while I’m at the shop . . . Gonna pay her, too . . . No, I don’t need your money or your daddy’s . . . Street urchins? Gloria, those are good neighborhood kids . . . She’s gonna be just fine and happy . . . ”
When he finally hands me the phone, I step away from him as far as the cord will take me—which is all the way through the narrow hall leading to the foyer. I pull the long white cord as it spirals along the wall like a vortex. This is like the portal the Uhura has to go through when it leaves Andromeda for a whole other galaxy!
Finally, I bring the phone up to my ear and I don’t even wait to hear Momma’s voice before I say, “Where’s Granddaddy?”
“Now, you know better than that, Ebony-Grace!” Momma says. She has a way of yelling without yelling. Her voice is sweet, but her words shout—like cough syrup that’s candy on my tongue, but hot peppers on my sore throat. “Say you’ll stay away from that dirty shop.”
I lick my lips and swallow hard, getting ready to give Momma my very best Funkazoid robot impression: “You. Will. Stay. Away. From. That. Dirty. Shop.”
Bianca, who has followed me into the foyer, lets out a laugh. I move my arm about like Michael Jackson in that old “Dancing Machine” video.
Momma keeps sweet-yelling over the phone, telling me what I should and shouldn’t be doing at Daddy’s house, in his shop, and on “those crazy Harlem streets with those little street urchins.”
Until I yell out again, “Where’s Granddaddy?”
Then, it’s as quiet as outer space. I know better than to yell at Momma. But she’s all the way down in Huntsville and fortunately she knows nothing about teleporting through spiraling portals.
“Little girl,” she says. Now, her voice is like a big round jawbreaker—still sweet, but can make you lose a tooth if you’re not careful. “If I could reach into that phone line and twist your little ear, I would. Now, listen to me, and you listen to me good . . . ”
I don’t listen to her. Her words are just like the No Joke City gibberish. Except it’s more like having a dozen pieces of butterscotch or peppermint candy in my mouth during church and trying to sing “Amazing Grace” with all the other church folks, but it comes out sounding like gobble-gobble. Momma’s words are hard-candy gobble-gobble.
When she’s done and it’s quiet again, I ask, “Can I speak to Granddaddy now?”
“Put your father on the phone, Ebony-Grace,” is all I hear and all I understand.
CHAPTER
5
After such a long trip, I’m expecting a tall pitcher of sweet tea, fried catfish, maybe some grits or black-eyed peas, and a bowl of peach cobbler with vanilla ice cream. That’s how Momma does it after Granddaddy comes back from an engineering conference. But Daddy’s kitchen is dark, hot, and musty, unlike my house down in Huntsville with its brand-new General Electric air conditioner. I can barely make out two plastic plates holding a set of beige squares—Wonder Bread, slices of ham and cheese, and Hellmann’s Mayonnaise. Daddy sets a gallon of milk and two plastic cups in front of us and walks out of the kitchen.
I’m not even on my third bite before Bianca finishes all of her sandwich and pours us both some milk. Even if I did finish my sandwich, I’d still be hungry. Already, I miss Momma’s cooking and Granddaddy’s voice and stories.
But Bianca is almost something like home. The way she just sits here with me as if I’d never left, as if we’re both still nine, pretending to be astronauts. That was when I first gave her the name Bianca Pluto, first officer on the Uhura. We’d been friends ever since we first met when I was five, when Momma and Daddy were trying to make things right again.