Slay: Chapters 1–2

I smile, glancing up for a second to watch where I’m going as throngs of students pour from classrooms and navigate around me.

I look up to see her and my sister, Steph, walking toward me in their matching pink T-shirts with the Greek letters for Beta Beta Psi, a collective of the eight most outspoken, unapologetic, woke feminists at Jefferson Academy. Leave it to my parents to transfer us to a high school that prepares its students for college so thoroughly, they claim to have the most robust high school Greek life program in the country.

We used to talk about Usher and Fresh Prince, and boys in our class, and babysit her little brother, Wyatt. But now Steph is president of Beta Beta, and Harper is VP, and as royalty of the most feminist high school sorority in the country, Harper acts like she has to talk about polarizing stuff all the time.

“I was thinking about changing my hair. Something fun and new, but, like, with bohemian vibes. There’s one style I really want to get, but I need to ask you about it first.”

Is she allowed to get dreadlocks? She’s asking permission to wear a hairstyle that’s been debated by people of many races for years and years as to whether it’s appropriating Black culture.

She’s the only person I know who can rock a pixie like that, and since she stands about a foot taller than me with a long, willowy frame, it fits her.

Between Wyatt as chief editor for the school newspaper even though he’s only a junior, and Steph, also a junior, as president of Beta Beta Psi, I feel like my college applications could have been so much more resplendent than they were when I submitted them.

I can’t complain about it, though—there’s something sexy about a strong, stoic boy who reads a lot.

But he only reads books by Black men, Black women who edify Black men, and white men who reinforce his non-race-related philosophies, leaving me to keep my Cline and Le Guin to myself.

To him, video games may be a distraction from becoming great, but I meant for it to do the exact opposite: to showcase how awesome we are as Black people, how multifaceted, resilient, and colorful we are.

I reach our little gray house at the end of the cul-de-sac that caps Newberg Lane.

She calls Malcolm a Hotep, which, in her mind, is a brotha who claims he’s for Black power, when he’s really for Black male power, homophobia, misogyny, and other regressive ideologies.

It’s a Battle card, since “Do I look like Boo-Boo the Fool?” is a rhetorical question that essentially translates to “I wasn’t born yesterday.”

It’s a challenge to say something else and see what happens, and so are raised eyebrows, which is why the card features an artistic rendition of my mom’s.

Steph and I have our frugality in common, although mine is mostly based on the fact that I use every last dime I can find to maintain the game.

I know she's avoiding the word “ghetto,” after Steph’s lecture to the family last week about how “ghetto” is just a derogatory code word for innovative.

“I just don’t want those kids at Jefferson ostracizing you and your sister.”

I roll my eyes at the willful ignorance and glance at the clock.

When Reddit first launched, it was so secretive that Redditors in real life used to ask the highly conspicuous question “When does the narwhal bacon?” but I like our version better. It’s more covert.

When Reddit first launched, it was so secretive that Redditors in real life used to ask the highly conspicuous question “When does the narwhal bacon?” but I like our version better. It’s more covert.

I spot dashikis, Mursi lip plates, otjize clay, Ulwaluko blankets, Marley twists, Michael Jackson’s glove, and a man in a purple cape twice as tall as me in the front row who’s trying a little too hard to be Prince.

I extend my hand toward the Western Gate as a cacophony of cheers and boos melds into an uproar.

PrestoBox lifts an amorphous lump from under their cloak and waves it up at me.

Zama taps the Twist-Out card first, and her hair grows into two monstrous ropes as thick in diameter as Thanksgiving dinner plates, ropes that deal no damage but can render the opponent immobile if they catch them.

I listen to the ensuing silence until I’m sure she’s gone, and then I focus back in on the match.

Round one is ending in a tie. The crowd is roaring as the imminence of round two sinks in.

She just has the base-model face. But sometimes, if she’s feeling spunky, she’ll don the Princess Mononoke mask—the red and white one with the brown eyes.

I asked Holly if she’d ever actually read anything by MLK, like really read it, because if she had read MLK, she’d know he wasn’t the patron saint of complacency like she was insinuating, and that he made it clear that there’s a time and a place for revolt.

I asked Holly if she’d ever actually read anything by MLK, like really read it, because if she had read MLK, she’d know he wasn’t the patron saint of complacency like she was insinuating, and that he made it clear that there’s a time and a place for revolt.

Mom’s eyebrows are at work again, rising up as if to say, I taught you better than this, but she’s also struggling to stifle a laugh as she changes the subject.

I think I’m both nervous and excited at the same time, but both those emotions feel like nausea and heart palpitations, so it’s hard to tell.

I want to be around people who understand me and don’t expect me to answer asinine questions every day.

Zama was wielding Twist-Out like she’d used it hundreds of times, and pairing it with the Gabby Douglas was a stroke of genius. Nobody wants to fight an Olympic gymnast wielding sentient hair.

People in Kenya may not identify with a good ol’-fashioned Tennessee barbecue, and people in the US may not understand the nuances of an Ulwaluko ceremony, and when you have to memorize six cards in ten seconds, the less you have to google, the better.

We are a diaspora. We span hundreds of shades, religions, traditions, and cultural nuances. If you don’t understand what some of these cards mean, blame the slave trade.

“Never mind,” she says airily, reaching for another pin.

And then I got to thinking how racist the word ‘Ebonics’ is. Well, maybe not racist, but marginalizing! Otherizing!

But somehow, we need our own language. Asking that it be called something dignified like ‘African American Vernacular English’ is the least that can be done.

I have a finite amount of energy, none of which I intend to spend on debating what to call the framework of Black American colloquialisms.

I care more about erasing the stigmas around how some of us speak.