“HI, I’M SONIA,” a girl says as she reaches for my hand to shake. We walk up the auditorium stairs and into the hallway. I see that she’s about my height and my age. “Thank you for that question. Just about everybody up in here is trying to get a scholarship.”
“Really? Oh,” I say. “I’m Zuri, by the way.”
We head out into the yard.
“Yes, really. You know how many people get in and can’t pay? Some can’t even finish,” Sonia says.
“I hope that doesn’t happen to me,” I say. Fear settles in my belly like one of Mama’s heavy meals.
“Well, you just gotta play your cards right. Get them grades up, and extracurricular activities are your ticket. Where you from, anyway?”
When she says this, I immediately think of my poems. I hope that’s something that’ll set me apart. I’m willing to use any skills I have to get into the school of my dreams. “Bushwick,” I say. I rep hard for my hood wherever I go.
Sonia scrunches up her face.
“It’s in Brooklyn,” I add.
“Oh. Why didn’t you just say Brooklyn?”
“’Cause Brooklyn is not Bushwick” is all I say.
“Oh, that’s really cool. If you’re from Brooklyn, then you probably liked Professor Bello’s lecture.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I thought people from Brooklyn are extra woke or whatever. And besides, Professor Bello is from Brooklyn, or that’s what I read in her bio. Bed-Stuy do or die, or something like that.”
“Really?” I feel my whole soul light up when she says this.
“Yeah, really. You should really try to get to know her. She runs an open mic at Busboys and Poets.”
We were walking toward the exit of the campus, but I stop dead in my tracks. “What did you just say?”
“An open mic at Busboys and Poets . . . it’s a bookstore that’s really close to here, if you want to check it out.”
“How do you know all this?” I ask. The Brooklyn in me is not ready to trust this girl all the way.
“I’m from D.C., so I know all about Howard.”
“Thanks, Sonia,” I say with a genuine smile. If she’s from around here, then she must be keeping it real with me.
“Nice meeting you, Zuri,” she says. “Maybe I’ll see you back here for freshman orientation.”
I smile. “I hope so.”
We wave goodbye to each other, and suddenly, a giant bubble of hope begins to well up inside me. I might just have a chance at this school.
“Busboys and Poets,” I say out loud, and start to make my way off campus. I have just enough time to head over there before I need to catch my bus back to New York.
I walk out onto Georgia Avenue and take in the scenery: the shinier-than-usual cars, the well-dressed people, the wide, clean buildings. This part of D.C. is kind of like Brooklyn, but not Bushwick or Bed-Stuy, where everything looks old, used, and tired. Here, it looks as if people care—as if they’re always expecting company, so everything has to look presentable for strangers.
I use my phone to find Busboys and Poets, and I step inside knowing that writers and poets come here to get their words right, to think big thoughts about the world, and to have deep talks like the ones Papi and his homies have on the stoop.
I’m drawn to the nonfiction shelf, where I try to find the thickest book of them all, no matter what it’s about. It’s a big book of art, so I hold it close to my chest, put my bag down, crouch down on a stepstool near the corner, and get lost in its pages. Mama texts me, and I send her a photo of the bookstore so she knows I’m safe and in a place I love. Layla sends me a silly meme, and I text her back a smiley face. I see that Warren has finally responded to my texts with a photo of him hanging out on my block, and I smile. Charlise sends me a pic of her and Colin, but I roll my eyes and I ignore it.
I pull out three more books; one of them is a poetry collection by Langston Hughes, and I read in his bio that this place is named for him because he was a busboy and a poet. I swim in his words until a voice talks over a microphone somewhere in another part of the restaurant. “Good afternoon, and welcome to Busboys and Poets!” he says. A few voices cheer.
My belly twists and my heart races, because time has slipped from me. I dig into my bag for my phone and see that it’s five o’clock already. My bus leaves at seven. I’ll need to get to the station in an hour, but I still have time to see what all this noise is about. I follow the voice that says he’ll be inviting poets up to the stage in just a few minutes and advises anyone who wants to sign up to do so now, before they close the list.
My belly knots again, because his words are a command. There’s no one here who knows me. There’s no one from the hood who’ll spread a rumor about me getting on the mic to spit some corny rhyme about love or the hood or my sisters. The last time I shared my poems in public was for the after-school performance in June, and even that was only for the kids who had taken that poetry class.
“Thank you all for coming out,” the man continues. “We’ll be featuring some local teen poets who were part of the Poetry Out Loud summer workshops. So give ’em a round of applause, y’all.”
I walk to a separate part of the bookstore, where there’s a restaurant, a small stage, and a black man wearing a bow tie. I only stand there and watch the people. It’s mostly teens, all right. And I almost think of backing out. Strangers or not, and whether it’s D.C. or Bushwick, I know kids my age can be brutal. Still, I’m drawn to the mic.
“But first let’s get some of you young people to bless this mic,” the man says.
There’s a girl standing by the stage holding a clipboard. There’s a short line, about five teenagers who walk up to her and sign up for the open mic. So I’m the sixth. Some people stare at me, I stare back. Others glance—I ignore them.
I write ZZ on a line, and I take a seat in a corner in the back of the room. A waitress comes to take my order. I have fourteen dollars left after I paid to get to the Howard campus, so I just ask for water.
Those few minutes before my name gets called go by like honey dripping from a spoon. And after each poet goes up, who are all just okay, the man finally calls my name. My heart doesn’t race, my palms are not sweaty. I’m as cool as a snow cone.
The clapping is what gets me up from off my seat and adds the rhythm to my slow walk toward the small stage, up the short flight of steps, behind the microphone, and into the limelight. I begin to speak.
Girls in the Hood
Step onto my block
and walk these jagged
broken streets
and sidewalk cracks
like rickety bridges across our backs
to the ends of rainbows
reflecting off broken glass
where the pot of gold
is way on the other side
of this world.
So we hood girls
shout our pain
into the megaphone wind
hoping that it will carry
our dreams
to sky-scraping rooftops
with radio towers
broadcasting our tongue clicking,
smack talking, neck rolling
hip swaying, finger snapping sass through telephone-wire
jump ropes while we skip to the beat
of our own songs and count out
the seconds, minutes, hours, days
until we break past these invisible walls
where glass ceilings are so high,
we only look up and never scratch the surface with airbrushed and gel-tipped manicured nails hoping that maybe
the stars will reach down
instead and want to touch us too.
My pulse races, and I can hear everyone start clapping. I can feel that my words have earned me respect. Just like when Papi sits with his homies on the stoop to predict a politician’s next move, theorize some foreign country’s strategy, or know who’s about to have beef with who on the block weeks before something goes down. He drops knowledge just as he’s slapping down a set of cards or a domino onto a table, and his homies can’t do anything but bow down to his greatness and keep their mouths shut.