On Turning 17

poetry by Alexandria Wyckoff

I have two rules on my birthday:

1. be grateful when they slice across my knee

2. smile when needles pierce my skin and flood my veins with drugs

I try to convince myself: this is exactly what I wanted this year.

Could I go back to the day I broke my future?

Kick the ball away, this fragile body, built haphazardly, waits for the perfect moment to fall apart like a Jenga tower teeters back and forth.

Don’t lunge against the hardwood floor; that waxy surface, that squeak. My leg takes the momentum, collapses onto itself with a loud, final snap.

There was a moment. I could have walked away.

What Would Khadijah Do?

fiction by Akasha Neely

Fuck six am. Kenya Jenkins plundered her one-bedroom apartment looking for a tiny Spider-man sneaker. Mornings were chaos because she had to take the bus to open at The Bizarre Burger Bazaar where she worked. She opened her refrigerator to grab an energy drink. What the fuck?” she mouthed. A tiny Spider-man sneaker rested on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator. She sighed in defeat, chuckled, and placed it next to its sister on the floor.

Every morning, Kenya placed her daughter Serena’s outfit for the day in the ripped armchair next to the couch where Serena and her grandmother, Rashida Washington slept intertwined in a crochet of skinny limbs and blankets. Root and seed. They were so cute that Kenya almost forgot how much they both worked her last damn nerve somedays. Almost. Kenya placed her mother’s hypertension and heart disease pills in a cup on the coffee table. She set the third alarm on her mother’s cellphone for 7:30. She cleaned the kitchen and the bathroom knowing that it would look worse than Deus Falls after the first crack epidemic in the eighties by the time she got home. She kissed both of her leading ladies on the forehead and left.

After twenty-seven cramped minutes on FTA #3 bus, she arrived at her job already tired and ready to go home. A black Suburban with tinted windows pulled up to the drive-thru window where Kenya was working. She gasped once the window rolled down and the plume of marijuana smoke cleared when Pete, someone she hadn’t seen or thought about in years gave her a twenty-dollar bill.

A Decade Earlier

Fuck six a.m. Kenya Jenkins trudged to the bathroom. This was her second month attending Cardigan Hills high school way up on the northside with all the fancy people. She had gotten accepted into their program for gifted students and transferred from Deus Falls high which was only a few miles from her home on the southside. She flicked a cockroach from the door and ducked as a bigger one went flying over her head.

Inside the shower, the water hotter than the temperature of the surface of the sun, Kenya imagined winning past arguments and brainstormed story ideas. She had just started writing a comic book and novella series about Khadijah, a black superheroine, she would have nuance and not just be arm candy for a male superhero; or a reincarnation of the blaxploitation era. She thought of her backstory: Freshman girl bullied and beaten up gains super powers from drinking the sludgy brown water that flows from faucets in the ghetto. She would have super strength and the ability to set things on fire with her mind. Maybe a few lasers. Never-mind – no lasers. A keen understanding of the universal and intricate human narrative. Khadijah still needed flaws, though. In her imagination, she always had the perfect clapback, the perfect story, and the best character arcs; however, when it came time to put pen to paper, she found herself lacking. Her body seemed to be in want of the skills necessary to translate her Voynich manuscript of thoughts into pragmatic and understandable symbols.

Kenya got dressed and upon exiting the bathroom collided with her mother who was entering the bathroom in her bathrobe.

“Ouch,” Ms. Washington rubbed her forehead and blinked several times. “I always knew you was a hard-headed chile.”

“I got a sneaking suspicion on where I got it from,” Kenya massaged her own throbbing forehead.

“I’m working a double tonight, so I won’t be home when you get back,” Kenya’s mama reached into her pocket and pulled out a handful of loc jewelry. “Your locs are starting to mature,” draped the silver coils over the handful of Kenya’s locs that were separating; she was in the process of free-forming to connect with her ancestors.

“There! Now you look like you’ve just hit a milestone on your journey.”

Kenya left her apartment and she was almost to the bus stop when three young men approached her. Kenya’s pulse quickened; she didn’t want her body to be used as a masturbation toy. The weight of the straight razor she carried in her pocket made her feel more nervous than anything. Would she bitch up if accosted? Khadijah wouldn’t – she would just start slashing.

Khadijah would use her powers of pyrokinesis to burn anyone that dared to run afoul of her. However, she was no Khadijah, as evidenced by her knees quaking with every step that put her closer to the trio of boys, who were looking less like teens and more like hissing vipers.

“You got some money?” The shortest one asked.

“Hey,” an angry and familiar voice. “Get away from my cousin.”

Kenya was surprised to see Derrick. They had grown up together because their mothers were best friends at one point. One day about four or five years ago the Jakes came and took Derrick away. Rumors circulated that he was out and different. She no longer saw the boyish joy of playing It or being able to jump Double Dutch better than most of the girls in their class in his eyes; instead, something primal. Calcified. In. Time.

“I ain’t e’en know dat was you, D. No disrespect, my nigga,” said the short thug as the trio backed away from them. “Got that four and a baby for the low if ya tryna talk later, D?”

Derrick ignored the Lilliputian street pharmacist and handed her a wad of money. “Don’t come back through here for a while cuz some shit bout to go down. These young niggas out here wildin’,” Derrick dumped some loud into a swisher and hastily rolled a blunt. “My squad been posted up in the cut for a minute. Just stay off the block for a while. Niggas wanna scream gang shit until it’s time to start wettin’ mothafuckas then they turn into conscientious objectors.”

Derrick lit his blunt, “Wanna hit this gas?”

“No,” Kenya thought her reply curt and added, “I gotta get to school.” He was making her nervous, and the toaster on his hip wasn’t helping. Had he used it before? She didn’t want to know.

Kenya nodded and hurried to the bus stop a hundred dollars richer; she was torn between making a mental list of art supplies and being concerned about Derrick; he was not the same person anymore. She didn’t think Khadijah could save him. FTA #12 bus arrived five minutes late and just as crowded as usual.

Scanning her fare card was challenging because the driver took off like a greyhound tweaking on Molly after snorting an eight ball. Pushing through the stinky thicket of people standing and holding on to the straps that dangled like canvas vines from the ceiling, Kenya saw a gap between an older man and a girl with purple microbraids.

Diamond had used her purse to save Kenya a seat. The bus was the only chance Kenya got to hear and speak AAVE without judgement until she got home. Cardigan Hills was a culture shock. On her first day at the new school, Kenya answered a question and this girl with freckles and yellow dolphin teeth felt compelled to inform Kenya that she hadn’t pronounced syrup correctly. Kenya stopped raising her hand after that.

“Hey,” Kenya waved.

“Hey,” Diamond looked up from the stack of papers in her lap. “I’m just studying for my audition tonight.”

“Good luck, y’all could damn sure use the money,” Kenya watched three more girls from Deus Falls high school get on the bus.

“Definitely. The doctor said she got gangrene,” Diamond flipped back through her papers to start over.

Kenya nodded and squeezed Diamond’s forearm. The three girls made there way to where Kenya and Diamond were sitting.

“Hey Kenya, girl, we was just talkin’ bout you,” Mary, her former classmate, said.

Kenya raised her shoulders and sank in her seat.

“Remember when Roselyn used to bully you and one day you slapped her, and she stomped you out in front of the whole class? You had footprints e’erwhurr,” Mary said apropos of nothing.

Laughter. Kenya sank.

“Mary, didn’t Roselyn stomp you out cuz of a boy that year, too?” Diamond snapped.

A cacophony of laughter joined the staccato orchestra of squealing brakes and rattling metal. That would’ve been the perfect Khadijah clapback.

“

Look, y’all need to stop bringing up shit from the past. I am delivert now. I am filled with the Spirit,” Mary said clasping her hands together and raising her eyebrows to the sky.

“You’re filled with an ‘ s’ word and it’s definitely not ‘spirit’,” Diamond looked up from her notes again.

“I gotta call Roselyn, later; her little brother just got killed over there on Temperance. He got caught in the crossfire.” Quida said.

“The two-year-old?” Kenya asked.

Quida nodded, “Shit ain’t e’en make the news. Sad.” She exited the bus after it screeched to a halt. The rest of the girls trickled off at different stops. Kenya felt a deep anxiety about Derrick. Another one of her own lost. She saw it in his eyes today. They were supposed to be better than Deus Falls – not succumb to it. Assimilation. Kenya exited at the end of the line and took the train the rest of the way to Cardigan Hills high.

In her math class, Pete Jones, a jewelry-clad, boy who wore his hair in a dark caesar with 360-degree waves, arrived late.

“Nice of you to join us,” said Mr. Albertson.

“My business meeting ran long,” Pete said to the laughter of everyone except for Mr. Albertson and Kenya (who was busy drawing cartoon characters). There was a folded-up piece of paper on his desk – he had failed another test. Pete’s mood went from impish to forlorn.

“Damn, my mama gon’ cancel my credit card. My father gon’ take my game away,” Pete lamented. “I just got done with being on punishment, too.” He sucked his teeth.

“You’re missing a linking verb,” said freckle-face girl.

“Link deez nuts,” Pete said.

Mr. Albertson finally managed to quiet the class down after Pete’s clapback.

“ Mr. Jones, I want you and Ms. Shanika? Keisha? Sharknado? Charmander?” he stared blankly for a moment while he tried to remember her name,

(Kenya’s face burned, and she wished that Khadijah would just set the rest of her on fire). “Ms. Jenkins to work together.”

“Are you busy after school? Can you come over?” Pete asked. “My mama will be home. She’s taking a personal day.”

Kenya wanted to say no; but, she remembered her mother was working a double and being home alone was a bad idea today. She subconsciously touched the pocket that contained her straight razor, “Okay, sounds good.” Kenya smiled awkwardly.

Pete lived in a two-story house nestled in the heart of a gated community.

“Y’all rich?” Kenya couldn’t believe how high the ceilings were.

Mrs. Jones, Pete’s mom, snores reverberated from the couch.

“Us? No, we’re, like, upper, middle, middle class. I hate it. I want to live somewhere real like you do in Pleasant Meadows.”

“Why? Everyone where I’m at is tryna get here. I would love to have this.”

“Wasn’t there a quadruple homicide there yesterday?”

“Yeah, and a little boy got thrown from a window on the top floor – it didn’t make the news, though; stuff never makes the news.”

“See, nothing like that ever happens here. I hate living here. We’re the only black family in this neighborhood so every time I walk outside I feel like I’ve got a million eyes on me. Shit, leave my black ass alone.”

“The gaze is something that I don’t think any of us get used to. Besides, living in a shithole doesn’t make you any more black than living in a nice neighborhood with good schools,” Kenya sat down on their second couch (That Pete sure had some nerve to complain).

“I know, but I feel like a pampered puppy. I wanna be a rottweiler,” Pete poorly imitated a dog growl.

Kenya’s ire grew, “I have this friend named Derrick that I grew up with. I don’t recognize him anymore because the streets have taken him and substituted something sinister.

He’s adrift in an ocean of asphalt and guns and I don’t have a fucking life jacket. My friend Diamond’s mama got the sugah and she might lose her foot because she got frostbite on her toes waiting outside for the bus, so she could get to work last winter. If you wanna be real then use your privilege to help black kids that live on the south side in poverty. We don’t have a lot of opportunities.”

“Yeah, my mom says niggas on the southside are too busy smoking blunts and having babies at sixteen to ever do anything with their lives. She says we should just wall up that part of the city with all them niggas in it. My dad actually grew up not too far from you, he says niggas are too lazy to pull themselves up from the gutter.” Kenya took a deep breath and let the avalanche of bullshit ride, “Are you ready?”

Pete was difficult to tutor because of his short attention span. He seemed more interested in trying to talk to her about every other subject besides math (“Do you comb your hair?” “Is your grandmother thirty-five?”). They worked for over an hour, before Kenya decided it was safe to head back.

“Leaving?” Pete’s mom asked (she had woken up fifteen minutes ago).

“I gotta catch the train and the bus.”

“I can’t believe your mother lets a tiny thing like you take public transportation alone. Some parents just don’t care,” she stood up, stared at Kenya’s hair for a second, put on her wig, and grabbed her car keys. “Where do you live?”

“Pleasant Meadows Housing Projects on the southside.”

“Oh well,” she took off her wig, sat down, and turned on the television. “I gotta get dinner started. Pete, walk her to the train-station.”

Kenya and Pete walked down the road toward the train-station. Kenya was impressed with all the well-manicured lawns they were passing. Pretty grass.

“That Mr. Albertson’s a trip, huh?” The awkward silence made Pete’ s question reverberate.

“I like him,” Kenya mumbled.

“I guess he cool,” Pete backtracked.

A siren stopped them in their tracks as a police car pulled up behind them.

Kenya’s heart did a barrel roll.

“Do not fucking move. If you move I will fucking shoot you, I swear to god!”

Two cops rushed them; strong hands put Kenya face down on the sidewalk next to the pretty grass. The officers handcuffed them, went through their pockets –Kenya’s straight razor was confiscated.

“Where were you between ten and eleven?” they asked.

“Fourth grade, nigga!” Kenya was unable to hold back her vitriol. She paid for it with a sharp kick to her ribs. Where was Khadijah when she needed her?

“Keep your bitch in line,” one cop said. There was dull thud followed by a sharp yelp from Pete.

“It’s not them.”

As quickly as it happened, they were un-handcuffed, and the police sped off. Pete climbed shakily to his feet. “That was scary. I thought we were going to get arrested,” Pete said softly. Braille patches of gooseflesh had formed on his arms.

“At least you landed in the grass,” Kenya touched her scraped knees.

That night while Kenya and her mother searched for a show to watch on Netflix, Kenya was struck with a sudden urge to ask a question that had been bothering her for hours, “Mama, what class are we?”

“

Girl, we ain’t even in the building.”

Kenya didn’t quite understand the answer, but her mother was often cryptic. She decided not to worry about it and contented herself with playing with one of Ms. Washington’s neatly manicured locs.

Kenya worked with Pete almost daily that schoolyear and he managed to pass math – with a “C-.”

“‘Fourth grade, nigga!’” Pete exclaimed.

Kenya giggled at Pete’s perfect imitation of the ghetto twang she had at fourteen. “Hey, at least you landed in the grass, okay?”

“Rebecca, this is Kenya, Kenya, this is Rebecca.” He gestured to his frecklefaced passenger then back to Kenya.

Kenya waved as she handed Pete the greasy brown paper bag.

“

What are you doing working here?” Pete asked. “I would have thought you would have ended up a doctor or something? Did you ever make that comic book?”

“A doctor? me?” Kenya laughed. It was a nice fantasy, but her and her mother couldn’t even afford community college at the moment. “Khadijah was just a fantasy of mine. Can’t eat by telling stories all day. It would be nice, though.”

“You were so smart, you definitely got me through algebra freshman year, Mr. Albertson was on that bullshit,” Pete laughed.

“I liked him,” she shrugged. “I work here, and I work at the comic book store in the mall on Andre. I got a five-year-old to take care of.”

“I was a Yeti,” Pete pointed at the ring on his finger from the prestigious college up north. “My parents weren’t too happy with me at first: I kept snorting coke, drinking, fucking bitches, and failing classes,” he paused for a second in thought, “usually in that order, too.”

“They paid for you?” Kenya’s voice raised an octave; though, in retrospect, she wasn’t sure why this shocked her.

“Yeah, the whole way, too bad I’m not using the degree.”

“What’s the degree in?”

“Criminal Justice.”

“Oh, what do you do?”

“I rap,” he gave her his phone. “Check out some of my freestyles. My rap name is Assault Peter.”

“That’s… interesting,” Kenya said as she looked through his information page. “It says here you’re from Pleasant Meadows? You’re from Cardigan Hills.”

“

I know, but, you know how it is, it’s just music at the end of the day. Besides, somebody’s gotta tell the story of the poor ghetto youth across the country and get rich off of it. Plus, I grew up in their world I know how to navigate it better than a kid from the ghetto would,” he pocketed his phone. “It was nice seeing you. Don’t forget to add me on Instagram!” He pulled off.

Hell, what would Khadijah do? Kenya just shook her head, laughed to herself, and went to the next order.

poetry by Abigail Pak

It’s February. I switch the phone to my other hand as I walk around my neighborhood, trying to convince a friend that I hadn’t thought about dying for a while, when I see the lizard laying on the sidewalk. It’s dead. I guess that’s important to know.

With its soft belly and tucked in head, I can’t tell how it died except for a missing foot.

And I’ve seen more gruesome things— a gutless bird, an eyeless calf, half of a runover pronghorn—but after my dog died two years ago, the ones that look like they’re sleeping haunt me the longest.

The voice speaks in my ear about talking to someone as I bend down, setting the lizard into the wet grass with a half-broken twig.

At some point, I think I stop listening, looking up to clouds the color of silverfish I find smashed in boxes after sitting in the garage over the summers, listening to waxwings fly by, noticing, for the first time, how cold my hands are. I forgive my hands for being hands.

I walk back home and the couple next door with the poorly trained dog has just pulled into their driveway, unloading groceries.

He weaves between them like a mosquito in June, with a tail as fluid as kite streamers, and not once do they notice how beautiful he moves.