I watch them walk, hand in hand, and I wonder if I will ever have that. Imani has always had someone to love and be loved by. Always a boy flirting with her, asking her for her number. Her first kiss was when we were in the sixth grade. I remember because I was the one on lookout duty, had to make sure no teachers were walking by. The two of them had snuck off around the back of the school building while we were outside for recess. Don’t tell, Imani said afterward.
I never did.
I want to strike up a conversation with Tye, but I don’t know what to say, so I go to the generic question I always ask when there’s too much silence. “What are you thinking about?” I ask.
“Naming your program.”
“What?”
“I’m trying to think of a good name. I’m pretty good at brainstorming this kind of stuff.” Whenever Tye’s shoulder brushes against mine, I feel an ocean flood my heart. I’d much rather talk about something more interesting. Something true. But he keeps going. “So, what if the name is a reference to the time you spend together. Like if it’s an hour, it can be called the Sugar Hill Arts and Crafts Hour,” Tye says. “But that’s too simple. We can do better than that. That’s just the first one off the dome.”
“I like that idea,” I play along. “What about Sugar Hill Art Studio?”
“That’s better, but let’s keep thinking,” he says. “Maybe instead of art studio, you call it open studio since you do more than art in that space. Don’t you do yoga and storytelling too?”
Oh yeah. I forgot I said that. He knows my fake program better than I do.
“I like that. What about, the Open Studio at Sugar Hill Residence?” I say.
“Perfect,” Tye says. Then he asks me for my phone. I give it to him. “I want to come check it out. Here’s my number. Text me and let me know when it’s okay to drop by.”
And just like that I have a name for my pretend volunteer program and I’m a vegetarian. And I have the phone number of the cutest guy—and maybe the nicest—I’ve ever met.
I’m not sure how or if I can keep this new me up. But I sure am going to try.
4 SECRETS ABOUT IMANI THAT I’VE NEVER TOLD
1.That Imani kissed a boy in the sixth grade at the back of the school building between the trash bins and the rusted desks that had been tossed out.
2.That Imani snuck out of the house once to meet up with Asher and came back just as the sun was waking up, just before Aunt Ebony knocked on her bedroom door to say, Rise, shine.
3.That sometimes Imani uses Inspire Harlem events as an excuse to spend time with Asher. Sometimes the days end earlier than she admits, sometimes the special project she’s working on is him.
4.That the day after she kissed the boy in the sixth grade, he tried to kiss me. I wouldn’t let him. But I wanted to. I wanted to be wanted. Wanted to know what it felt like to be Imani for a day.
4
BLUE PLAYLIST, TRACK 1
Summer Hips
Spoken Voice: The primary function of the hip joint is to support the weight of the body in both still and active postures.
Verse 1
Sun is out, strobe light, sidewalk dance floors.
Cars driving by blasting music. Let’s dance.
Move your hips, glide, slide anywhere, everywhere.
Everywhere, anywhere
being free, doin’ me.
Wearin’ what I want to wear.
Big body on display. This skin I’m in, so free, so me.
Hips hypnotizing, hips mesmerizing.
All this me walking down the street.
Chorus
These hips sweet.
These hips wild.
These hips steady me, carry me,
hold all my history.
Verse 2
These hips ground me when I march the streets mourning bodies who look like me. Killed, terrorized blatantly.
You see this Black girl dancin’, think I’m sexy.
You see this Black girl dancin’, think it’s for you, not me.
But this dance a celebration of my story, my glory.
Chorus 2x
These hips sweet.
These hips wild.
These hips steady me, carry me,
hold all my history.
These hips sweet.
These hips wild.
These hips steady me, carry me,
hold all my history.
These hips free.
These hips free.
I can’t prove it, but I think New Yorkers are happiest in the summer. We aren’t bundled up, walking fast, fast, fast to get out of the cold, so people actually say hello, look you in the eyes, and ask how you’re doing. Music hangs off the clouds, hovering above my head. Sometimes it’s R&B, sometimes hip-hop. Sometimes, it’s merengue, Afro beats, reggae, or soca. Depending on the neighborhood you are walking through, you accidently walk into a family BBQ or a neighborhood street festival. This is July, hotter than June but not as humid as August. Now that school has been out for a full week, it really feels like I am on a break, and I am ready to make every day count.
Today, I am visiting Grandma. She’s lived at Sugar Hill Senior Living for a year now. She didn’t want to move here at first, but once we came and did a walk-through she saw that it was just an apartment complex where all the residents were her age. It wasn’t a place where we were throwing her away, forgetting about her. Instead, she’d still have her independence, just with less space to have to look after and no more brownstone stairs to climb. I think about how old Grandma is now, how it is not just about the number but the way she looks, the way she moves. She looks older, moves slower, and doesn’t call us over for her last-minute family dinners as much as she used to. I miss the days when she’d call saying, “I cooked too much food—come on over and fix a plate.” I miss the days when she’d call me over to teach me how to make one of her recipes, how she’d say, “I’m cooking pepper pot soup tomorrow. You want to learn how to make it?”
I think about how much longer she’ll be living here on earth, not because she is sick or anything, but just because of common sense and math. She is eighty-four, so that means she has fewer years to be alive. That’s just the truth, that’s just math. Whenever I say this to Imani, she says I am being morbid and that I shouldn’t think about that. But I think she’s in denial and when Grandma really does die, Imani’s going to wish she had thought about it more, that she had prepared herself.
I walk down the hallway toward Grandma’s apartment, and the closer I get I hear mento music. Grandma must be cleaning. She always plays mento when she is washing dishes or straightening up. I knock on the door.
Grandma opens the door, gives me her Grandma-hug, and ushers me in. “Haven’t seen none of you in a while,” Grandma says. I see the broom leaning in the corner against the wall. Yeah, she was cleaning. “You talk to your momma lately?” Grandma wastes no time getting to the topic she wants to talk about. She doesn’t ask how I’m doing, or how the weather is today—not even if I’d like something to drink. “You only have one momma, Nala. Just one.”
“I know,” I say. I step inside, take off my shoes, and sit on her sofa. It is covered in a slipcover hiding how old it really is. Aunt Liz offered to buy her a new one and she refused—it still holds you up, don’t it?—she said. And so Aunt Liz bought her this floral slipcover instead.