Pride

by Ibi Zoboi

IT’S A TRUTH universally acknowledged that when rich people move into the hood, where it’s a little bit broken and a little bit forgotten, the first thing they want to do is clean it up. But it’s not just the junky stuff they’ll get rid of. People can be thrown away too, like last night’s trash left out on sidewalks or pushed to the edge of wherever all broken things go. What those rich people don’t always know is that broken and forgotten neighborhoods were first built out of love.

“It can mean either that marriage is the false notion that love is forever and a woman is left to depend on her husband for financial support, or that two incomes are better than one. Love is abstract. Money is not.”

“Career before family? Como una gringa?” “No, Madrina,” I say. “Not like a white girl! Like . . . a woman! Any woman.”

Every book is a different hood, a different country, a different world. Reading is how I visit places and people and ideas. And when something rings true or if I still have a question, I outline it with a bright yellow highlighter so that it’s lit up in my mind, like a lightbulb or a torch leading the way to somewhere new.

Sometimes love is not enough to keep a community together. There needs to be something more tangible, like fair housing, opportunities, and access to resources. My younger sister, who is a self-proclaimed finance whiz, says it best: Love is abstract. Money is not.

How to Save the Hood If my name was Robin I’d steal the tight corners Where hope meets certainty To form perfectly chiseled bricks Stacked high to make walls Surrounding my Bushwick Sometimes I don’t go to the other side Where Bed-Stuy or Fort Greene Are guarded and armed with coffee mugs And poodles on leashes I don’t see any more homeless pets Like the ones that used to gather In the junkyard on Wyckoff Avenue Beneath the overhead train tracks Like marks on the arms of junkies Who used to stumble down Knickerbocker Boxing the air, fighting the wind Suckerpunching a time When those graffiti-covered walls Used to be background canvases For old ladies in house slippers Pushing squeaky shopping carts Around those tight corners Where hope meets certainty Hope is wishing that corners will Turn into long, unending streets Where all the traffic lights turn green Certainty is knowing that corners Will always be home Where ninety-degree angles Are the constant shapes in our lives Always a sharp turn

If Janae is the sticky sweetness keeping us sisters together, then I’m the hard candy shell, the protector. If anyone wants to get to the Benitez sisters, they’ll have to crack open my heart first.

Love is like my sister, Janae. She is springtime tulips and pastel colors. She is sun rays beaming through windows where dust particles dance and kiss in the light. She is tender kissing scenes on TV, and then afterward practicing on soft pillows at night. She is the warm space between Mama and Papi while they sleep and the bills are paid and the fridge is full. She is made of honey and sugar and summer fruits oozing gooey sweetness and catching bees and flies. Buzzing. Annoying. Like the ones in that house across the street.

“See? That’s the problem. If we treat guys the way they treat us, then we’ll get a bad reputation? That’s messed up.”

Pride Comes before the Fall (Haikus) If I fall in love Will I sink to the bottom And swallow water Make my belly full With hopes of tender kisses Round like the moonlight High over Bushwick Playing Cupid with our hearts I am the archer

Dear Mr. Oliver Otis Howard, I wonder if when we name places after important people, we’ve made them immortal in some way. That their ghosts can linger in corners and halls and dusty dorm rooms to see me writing this letter to some dead white man who probably could never have imagined that I’d exist. Have you heard of the Dominican Republic, Mr. Howard? Or maybe you’ve heard about a slave revolt that happened in a country called Haiti? These are the places that made the people that made me. Those are places that, in 1867, girls like me would not dream of being in somewhere like your university. And this is why I want to come to your school, Mr. Howard. There is more to learn about my old, old self, and black and brown girls like me from hoods all over this country want to take over the world, but there’s something missing in our history books the public schools give us. At least that’s what my papi says, so he makes me read a lot, and that’s where I found out about the Mecca in this book called Between the World and Me and I’m thinking that I need to come here so I can gather these wisdoms found in old, dusty books written by wrinkled brown hands and gather them within the folds of my wide skirt, tuck them into the pockets of my jeans, and take them with me back home to sprinkle all over Bushwick like rain showers, Mr. Howard. Sincerely, ZZ

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.

I don’t need you to fight my battles ’Cause I’ve already won this war Got brothas hollering at me from the corner Then curse me out when they get ignored.

Ah, mija! There you go! Rivers flow. A body of water that remains stagnant is just a cesspool, mi amor! It’s time to move, flow, grow. That is the nature of rivers. That is the nature of love!