Chapter 3 - I'll Be a Home for You

you’re in his dms, i’m praying to bookmarks that he joins cheerleading

JJ

“You’re rejoining Mathletes?” Monique groans, finishing her deadlift set, the plates slamming against the lifting platform. The sweat glitters on her black skin, darker after a summer in Cape Cod. She readjusts her relaxed-hair ponytail and grabs her water bottle from the floor.

“Ms. Foster said it would improve my chances of getting into Columbia.” I change from a front to a middle split.

“I thought … Mathletes … at the same time?” Bryn huffs from the treadmill.

Still in the split, I put my arms on the floor. “The schedule changed this year.”

Monique drops her water bottle. “Do not mention this to my mother. Last year, I was spared the torture of participating when the Mathletes schedule changed last minute.”

I ram my elbows into the floor. Last minute, courtesy of Aang.

“But so cool … you’re rejoining!” Bryn’s short ginger hair is stuck to her sweaty forehead. Her usually pale skin is redder than the time she did a keg stand at Brad’s party.

If only everyone thought it was so cool. I stand up to do heel stretches. I kick up my leg in front of me and catch my foot above my head.

Bryn switches off the treadmill and struts over to me. She compares our foreheads. “You did get taller over the summer!”

I drop the stretch, and my foot hits the ground with a loud thud. “Don’t remind me! Do you think if I crouch, Coach will notice?”

They nod.

“What if I walk around with bent knees?”

Nod.

“If I crawl everywhere?”

Nod.

I plop down on the ground. The cold floor of Monique’s home gym doesn’t help me calm down. They sit next to me.

“It’s not that bad …” Bryn rubs my shoulder.

“Yes, it is,” Monique says. “There’s no one on the team Coach would consider tall enough to be JJ’s backspot.”

“Well then, she’ll have to recruit someone from the girls’ basketball team,” Bryn says. “Or a guy.”

They burst out laughing. There has never been a guy on the team in the history of cheerleading at Blackstock High School.

“Well, actually …” I say quietly.

Their laughter dies off.

“Who did you try to recruit?” Bryn asks.

I play with the scrunchie on my wrist. I haven’t said his name out loud in a year. It comes out scratchy. “Aang.”

Monique winces. “You asked him? Why would he agree? Why would you ask?”

“I was desperate, and he was there?”

“Never a good combination.” Bryn stands up. “My sister learned that the hard way in college.” She goes over to the mini fridge.

“Quieter!” Monique hisses. “My mother might hear you.”

Bryn opens the fridge, throws two Gatorades at us, and keeps searching. “Where are the sugar-free ones? Monique, you’re my best friend, and yet you consistently forget my diabet—”

“Just check the other fridge, you dummy.”

Bryn strolls over to the other side of the gym and looks through the smaller fridge. “Found it!” She takes a gulp and sits back down with us. “For how many yoga retreats your mom does, she really has no chill.”

“Tell her that. I dare you.”

Bryn shakes her head. “She’ll kick me out, and what gym will I go to then? One that I have to pay for?”

Our laughter cuts off at the sharp click of heels outside the gym.

The door opens. “Hello, girls! Enjoying the workout?” Monique’s mom towers over us in her cream power suit. She spots the barbell and frowns, but doesn’t comment on it. Yet. “How was your treadmill time, Brynleigh?”

Bryn grimaces at the use of her full name. “Faster than last week.”

“Good.” Mrs. Washington looks at me, and horror flashes across her face. “JJ, you’ve got taller over the summer! Will Coach let you fly?”

My fingernails dig into the Gatorade bottle. “I’ll do what I can to make it happen.” I’ll sell my soul to a nondenominational devil if I have to.

“Please do. An opportunity like that is not given to us very often.” She glances at Monique, who avoids her gaze and plays with one of many gold necklaces she’s wearing. “Either way, girls, would you like to stay for dinner?”

Bryn and I scramble to our feet.

“Unfortunately, my parents already have dinner planned tonight,” I lie.

“I gotta go to work.” Bryn tells the truth.

I lean down and squeeze Monique’s hand as Bryn whispers that we’ll do a group call before bedtime. Monique sends us a resigned expression as we shout goodbye to Mrs. Washington and run through the door.

“Monique, why do you insist on lifting weights? You should come with me to Pilates …” is the last thing I hear before the gym door shuts.

Bryn and I get into my car, and a short ride later, I drop her off at the hair salon on the town’s main street. I wave at her mom, who shows her new Marley twists off to me from the sidewalk. She kisses her daughter on the cheek, and they walk into the salon, disappearing behind a black fist flag attached to the door.

It’s a twenty-minute drive until I reach my home. I turn into the cul-de-sac, where trees line the street at perfect intervals from each other. I park in our driveway and walk the cobbled path to the front door, each side of the lawn overgrown with grass, which makes us enemy number one of the neighborhood’s homeowners association. I should convince Dad to cut the grass, but no matter how much this lawn marks our house as not from here, I cannot bring myself to decimate the pink and purple wildflowers sprouting from the ground. They should stop running their nature like the military over here.

I open the door.

“Józia!” my mom shouts, as always, using the shorthand of my Polish name.

She’s home already? That’s out of the ordinary, especially since she performed a surgery all the way in Boston today. Huh. I didn’t actually lie to Monique’s mom.

I take off my shoes and walk past the cabinets in the corridor overflowing with Nollywood DVDs, Polish ceramics, and medical textbooks signed either with Mom’s name, Małgorzata Wyróżnicka, or Dad’s name, Ibinabo Johnson.

I squeeze through the half-open kitchen door. You can’t push it all the way out because Stachu, the anatomically accurate skeleton, is hanging around in the corner. The light-yellow cabinets appear orange, owing to the sunset light streaming through the windows.

“Patrz, co kupiłam dzisiaj!”1 Mom points to the pan, pushing her brown hair off her face. Her green eyes are exhausted, but there’s a sparkle fighting its way through. “Pierogi w polskim sklepie w Bostonie!”2

I regard the pan suspiciously. I’m not in the mood for dumplings straight from the Polish shop in Boston. “Is there any other food?”

Mom narrows her eyes. “Why are you speaking English?”

“Because we should keep practicing. We’re getting better at the accent.”

She sighs, mindlessly wiping her buttery hands on her navy blazer. “Okay, but just for a bit. My brain’s killing me more than usual. I can’t speak English for too long.”

I squeeze her arm. “Go shower and put on pajamas.”

When my dad comes back from his hospital, already in a tracksuit, we sit down for dinner, with him choosing the music. The dining room—which has a wooden table surrounded by several shipping boxes we still haven’t unpacked—fills with the baritone of Burna Boy singing in a mix of English, Yoruba, and Nigerian Pidgin.

I understand only the English parts, and my dad speaks Kalabari, not Yoruba, so most of the lyrics are a mystery to us. But my dad hears his home in the music, and the pressure that his nursing patients put on him releases from his shoulders.

I wait as they say their prayers, one in Polish, one in Kalabari, more out of a habit their parents instilled in them than belief in a higher power.

Pierogi are exceptional. They’re golden, pan-seared, coated in butter, topped with bacon and caramelized onions. When I bite into one and the salty cooked pork melts in my mouth, it’s like a Sunday dinner at my grandma’s. They could not taste more like being back in Poland.

I push my plate away after eating one. I’ve lost my appetite.

“Ibi, have you talked to any of your old friends in Poland recently?” My dad shoves an entire dumpling into his mouth. As always, he uses a nickname of my Nigerian name.

I shake my head—my usual response when he asks this question. I didn’t have any friends. I had classmates, gymnastics teammates, and kids whose parents were friends with my mom.

“I talked to Karolina’s mom two days ago. Turns out Karolina’s also planning to do medicine. You should reach out to her.” My mom cuts a pieroga in half before bringing it to her mouth.

On my last day in Polish school, Karolina asked if I was going back to Africa. She knew for a fact that I had never set foot on the continent. “Sure, I’ll do it soon,” I lie. I look down at my knee bouncing under the table. “Right now, I’m focusing on holding on to the flyer’s position on the team.”

“Oh, cheerleading! That reminds me … can you check if Nationals aren’t on the same day as Niedziela Palmowa?” Mom asks.

My head whips up. “Why?”

“I want us to bless palmę this year.”

Ugh. Since she came back from visiting Poland last month, she’s gotten into cultural things she never used to do there. It’s the end of August, and she’s already planning Palm Sunday. That’s in March. And a Christian holiday. She hasn’t been to church by choice since graduating from medical school.

Unfortunately, I already know the two events won’t overlap because Nationals are on a Friday. I clench my jaw. “Sure, I’ll check the dates soon.”

“I also have your painkillers in my bag. I got you a prescription for the stronger ones.”

My jaw relaxes, and the irritation goes away. “Thanks, Mom.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to go to a gynecologist again? Especially after your last period?”

I shake my head. They’ll repeat the same unhelpful things that make me want to cry. I change the topic. “How was work today?”

“Oh, there’s something you’ll like!” Mom perks up. “We removed a tumor near Broca’s area, and you know what that means.”

“Awake craniotomy!” My knee finally stops bouncing. “The patient was conscious and had to talk during the operation. That’s so cool!”

“That is not the best part! He was a former gymnast and was explaining all the tumbling moves.” She chews on her dumpling. “And I was constantly saying, yes, my daughter can do this, yes, my daughter can do that.” She laughs. “I fink he was very impressed with your skills.”

“Thanks, Mom.” I giggle. “But remember it’s think. You said fink. Like Polish f with your tongue at the back of your mouth.” I exaggerate the tongue movement. “But it should be the th sound with your tongue between your front teeth. Think.”

“Fink,” she repeats after me, but she still sounds Polish. She didn’t try as hard as I did when we moved here two years ago. Until she realized that softening her accent made people listen to her more at the hospital.

“That sounds like a much better day than I had.” My dad steals my leftover pierogi. “They made us give a patient the more expensive antibiotic, which I think”—he winks at me—“was unnecessary, but what will you do?” He switches to Polish to complain about the hospital management in America while my mom steals his stolen pierogi.

Antibiotics are the topic of the conversation for the rest of dinner, with Polish sometimes interrupted by an English medical word. The rest of my pierogi disappear into my parents’ mouths.

After dinner, we move to the kitchen. My mom scrapes the plates, I wash them, and my dad dries them with a towel. Burna Boy is replaced by Seal singing about a rose.

“Why do we have to wash the dishes by hand? The dishwasher is right there.” We don’t get to eat dinner together often, so I take any chance I can get to bring up the banned appliance.

“The dishwasher is for special occasions.” Mom hands me the last plate.

I scrub. “What’s a special occasion?” I hand Dad the wet plate.

“When we have guests.” He dries the plate.

“Two years in this country, and we’ve never had any guests.” Thankfully.

“Exactly. If guests appeared, it’d be a special occasion.” My dad puts the last plate in the cupboard and yawns. “Time for sleep.”

It’s eight o’clock, but my parents are early sleepers and even earlier risers. Being a neurosurgeon and a critical care nurse will do that to you.

I make myself a PB&J sandwich with proper bread and go upstairs to my room, where the walls are covered in photos, American high school movie posters, and the best pop album covers. I flop down in my pink swivel chair and kick my feet up onto my desk.

My phone pings. I check my messages, but it’s not Monique and Bryn.

It’s my grandma.

Przyjeżdżasz na następne wakacje?3

My stomach churns.

I skipped Poland this summer. I skipped Poland last summer. But now she’s already asking about next year. She’ll be devastated when I say I won’t come again. But twelve months is plenty of time to produce valid excuses.

I wonder what excuses my dad uses. He left Nigeria thirty years ago and has never gone back. I’ve never actually asked why. It can’t be the same reason I don’t want to go to Poland. He wouldn’t stick out like a sore thumb in Nigeria.

Chewing on my sandwich, I stare at the NYC collage above my desk. The Empire State Building. The Statue of Liberty. A subway entrance. And in the middle of it all … the Columbia cheerleading team, doing a pyramid. I glued my photo on top of the formation.

My hand squashes the bread.

Everything has to go according to the plan.

High school cheerleader. Ivy League acceptance. New York, the cultural melting pot to disappear into.

I would have done medicine anyway, but there’s something so distinctly American about saying, “I’m on the pre-med track,” and that’s a bonus. And it all starts with being a flyer—the pinnacle of the American high school experience.

I turn my swivel chair toward my closet. I stand up and go rummaging through all my worn-out cheerleading shoes and Nike Pro shorts. I catch sight of my dusty Felix, Net i Nika book collection. I purse my lips and ignore the Polish books.

I finally spot what I’m looking for.

Two bookmarks I made with Remy’s help, each made from a dried pink flower glued to a piece of cardboard. It was the last thing we did together, at the beginning of sophomore year, before I forced him to let me go. He didn’t want to, and he didn’t understand why he had to. But what was I supposed to tell him? That his best friend shifted the Mathletes schedule by an hour to conflict with cheerleading? That he didn’t tell me about it, leaving me to stare at an empty classroom in confusion? That when I went to his house to confront him about it, he told me I was a vapid girl desperate for popularity?

I sit back at my desk. I don’t particularly see how we can survive this year without killing each other if we’re in two extracurriculars together. On the other hand, I don’t see how I can endure a whole year without being a flyer.

I clutch the bookmarks and do my own version of a prayer. Aang, if by any chance you have lost your mind, please join cheerleading.

1 Look what I bought today!

2 Pierogi at a Polish shop in Boston!

3 Will you come next summer?