CHAPTER
4

"Hey, hey, hey!" Daddy's voice booms through all the gibberish. "Y'all step away from her. She's fresh from Alabama. She's gonna need her space."

It's only when Daddy pulls my hands away from my ears that I open one eye to recognize Bianca Perez making her way through the crowd. She grabs my other hand, stretches her arm out in front of Pigeon-Chest Boy and all the other kids standing around, and pulls me toward the steps of Daddy's brownstone.

"To the rescue!" I say.

Still, those nefarious minions stand right outside the rusted iron gate, shouting their comments and questions. They're nefarious because they're so rude and mean. Who yells at a stranger like that, as if they'd have no home training, as Momma would say? And they're minions because they're all working under the orders of King Sirius Julius, who wants them to be friends with me. But they have no manners!

"Hey, girl! You wanna go in the fire hydrant?"

"You know how to jump double-Dutch?"

"I bet you she's double-handed. They don't jump double-Dutch Down South."

"She look country. Look at her knees!"

They all laugh and point and I know it's a trick to get me to laugh, too. Then, King Sirius Julius will take me prisoner in Planet No Joke City forever! I can just hear him now, calling my momma and granddaddy to say, "I told you she'd be happy here. Now let her stay with me."

I look around for King Sirius Julius, who's already disappeared up the steps and into the brownstone, leaving me and Bianca Pluto to fend off his nefarious minions. They keep laughing and pointing, but I won't be fooled. No Joke City jokes aren't funny.

Bianca doesn't laugh, either, thank goodness. "¡Déjala sola!" she yells at the nefarious minions. "Why don't you go wash off your funky butts in the fire hydrant?"

More shouting, more questions, and more gibberish. I cover my ears and shut my eyes again, until a deep thumping sound comes from somewhere down the block and reaches my bones. It forces me to stare up at the gray-blue sky and hazy yellow sun. Music. Heavy bass music like the Sonic Boom from Planet Boom Box. I can see the sound waves vibrating across the roofs of the brownstones forming a forcefield around all of Harlem. I stand on the steps and point.

"Look!" I whisper.

Bianca stands next to me and looks up, too. "I don't see nothing," she says.

"The Sonic Boom," I say, really slowly so as not to alarm anything that might be inching closer to where Bianca and I are standing.

"The what boom?" she asks.

"The Sonic Boom, sent by the Sonic King and the Funkazoids from Planet Boom Box!"

Bianca rolls her eyes and sighs. "Calvin has a new boom box. You wanna go watch him break-dance?"

I look at her all crazy because now she's talking nonsense. "Who wants to watch anybody dance when an evil king is sending mind-controlling sound waves over your city?"

"Broomstick!" Daddy shouts from inside the brownstone, and in an instant, the waves disappear. "Ebony-Grace! Come on in here and wash up. We gotta call your mother, and then I got some lunch for you. You can join us, too, Bianca, if your grandmother says it's all right."

Daddy's telephone is at the very edge of the kitchen wall, just like Momma's phone down in Huntsville. Bianca runs to wash her hands in the bathroom as Daddy picks up the receiver to call Momma in Alabama. The long spiraling cord hangs across the black and white kitchen tiles. I watch him turn the phone dial with each number—all eleven of them, starting with 1, then 256. Of course, he knows my Huntsville number by heart because he calls every Saturday morning. Our short conversations have never changed.

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.

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. qZzMFxzlV2UuSyanVob2FbL/xZ6fROmYGpEfFY45e4HKAJuc4MVH2SlF2t0Ln29e