Punching the Air

First published in the United States of America by HarperCollins Publishers in 2020

Published simultanously in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2020

Published in this ebook edition in 2020

HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd,

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The HarperCollins Children’s Books website address is

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Copyright © Ibi Zoboi and Yusef Salaam 2020

Illustrations copyright © Omar T. Pasha 2020 (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here)

Cover art by Temi Coker, portrait by Alexis Franklin, photos by Merla, Nickita Vanat, Manekina Serafima, heliopix, COLOA Studio, and wacomka / Shutterstock

Cover design copyright © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020

Cover design, lettering and typography by Jenna Stempel-Lobell

All rights reserved.

Ibi Zoboi and Yusef Salaam assert the moral rights to be identified as the authors of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008422141

Ebook Edition © September 2020 ISBN: 9780008422158

Version: 2020-08-19

For Joseph, and the many lives

you’ve touched with your art, including mine

—I. Z.

For my mother, Sharonne Salaam, my super shero

—Y. S.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Part I

Birth

Old Soul

Courtroom

Character Witness

Gray Suit

Anger Management

White Space

White Space II

The Thinker

Two Mouths

Blank Page

Black Ink

Face Painting

Movie Star

Fan Club

Black Mona Lisa

Picasso Face

Cacophony

The Last Judgment

Counting Game

Knockout Game

Ball Game

Counting Game II

The Scream

The Scream II

Refrain

Blind Justice

Thoughts & Prayers

Slave Ship

Family Portrait

The Watch

Ocean

Clone

Conversations with God

African American

Coming to America

The Entombment

Inferno

Processed

Rights

Books

Booked

Money

New ID

DNA

Middle Passage

Coming to America II

Hope

Part II

America

Auction Block

Lights Out

God, The Artist

Lights On

Wallflower

Sunrise

Pipeline

Conversations with God II

Conversations with God III

Pipeline II

Schooled

Schooled II

Schooled III

Schooled IV

Schooled V

Free Time

Blank Canvas

Lights Out

Cubism

Conversations with God IV

Wallflower II

Conversations with God V

The Open Window

Conversations with God VI

The Bridge in the Rain

Microphone

Hype Man

Conversations with God VII

Meditation

Lights Out

Guernica

Dust

Family Portrait II

Expressionism

Conversations with God VIII

White Space III

Lights Out

The Persistence of Memory

Blind Justice II

Lights On

Schooled VI

Pipeline III

Brotherhood

Brotherhood II

Cubism II

Art School

The Entombment II

Part III

Hope II

Hope III

Lost-and-Found

Booked II

Family Portrait III

Blank Page II

Guernica II

Lockdown

The Entombment III

Saint Peter in Prison

Art School II

Harmony

African American II

Butterflies

DNA II

Conversations with God IX

Lights Out

Blank Canvas II

Lights On

Solitary: The Box

Surrealism

Lights On

Brotherhood III

Brotherhood IV

Brotherhood V

Conversations with God X

Butterflies II

Art School III

Brotherhood VI

Art School IV

American Graffiti

Brotherhood VII

Young Basquiat

The Persistence of Memory II

Meditation II

Brotherhood VIII

American Graffiti II

Young Basquiat II

Father Figure

Brotherhood IX

Wallflower III

Hope IV

Butterflies III

Young Basquiat III

Hope V

A Note from the Authors

Acknowledgments

About the Authors

Books by Ibi Zoboi

About the Publisher

Part I

Birth

Umi gave birth to me

at home

She has a video

and every birthday

she makes me watch

When I was little

I would run away

Umi would laugh and say

Come here, boy

You gotta remember

where you came from!

She’d chase me around

that small apartment

and I’d cover my eyes and

pretend to be gagging

That’s nasty, Mama, I’d say

That’s life, Amal

You have to respect it

she’d say

Umi was in this inflatable pool

in the middle of our living room

with the midwife next to her

My father was holding the camera

She was taking deep fire breaths

eyes closed tight, not even screaming

almost praying

Then the midwife plunged

both her hands into the pool

And then

there I was rising out of water

Squirming little brown thing

barely crying

big eyes wide

as if I’d already done this before

as if I’d already been here before

Umi says

I was born with an

old, old soul

Old Soul

The thing about being born

with an old soul

is that

an old soul can’t tell you

all the things you weren’t supposed to do

all the things that went wrong

all the things that will make it right again

The thing about having an old soul

is that

no one can see that it’s there

hunched over with wrinkly brown skin

thick gray hair, deep cloudy eyes

that have already seen the past, present, and future

all balled up into a small universe

right here, right now

in this courtroom

Courtroom

I know the courtroom ain’t

the set of a music video, ain’t

Coachella or the BET Awards, ain’t

MTV, VH1, or the Grammys

But still

there’s an audience

of fans, experts, and judges

Eyes watching through filtered screens

seeing every lie, reading every made-up word

like a black hoodie counts as a mask

like some shit I do with my fingers

counts as gang signs

like a few fights counts as uncontrollable rage

like failing three classes

counts as being dumb as fuck

like everything that I am, that I’ve ever been

counts as being

guilty

Character Witness

We’re in the courtroom

to hear the jury’s verdict

after only a few hours of

deliberation

and Ms. Rinaldi, my art teacher

was a character witness

It was the first time

she saw me

in a suit and tie

like the one I was supposed to wear

to the art opening at the museum

Or the one I was supposed to wear

to my first solo show in the school’s gym

The suit I was supposed to wear

to prom, to my cousin’s graduation

to mosque with Umi

is the suit I wear to my first trial

It’s as if this event in my life

was something that was

supposed to happen all along

Gray Suit

Umi told me to wear a gray suit

becauseoptics

But that gray didn’t make me any less black

My white lawyer didn’t make me any less black

And words can paint black-and-white pictures, too

Maybe ideas have their own eyes

separating black from white as if the world

is some old, old TV show

Maybe ideas segregate like in the days of

Dr. King, and no matter how many marches

or Twitter hashtags or Justice for So-and-So

our mind’s eyes and our eyes’ minds

see the world as they want to

Everything already illustrated

in black and white

Anger Management

Did you ever see Amal get angry?

the prosecutor asked Ms. Rinaldi

It’s the most important question in my trial

Am I angryAm I violentAm I—

Objection, Clyde said

Sustained, the judge said

Did Amal ever display emotions that were—

Yes, Ms. Rinaldi said

That’s why I work so hard with Amal

To channel his anger into his art

And I know, I know

that right then and there

she didn’t even have to look my way

because she won’t see me

She’s never seen me

She only sees my paintings and drawings

as if me and what I create

are two different worlds

There’s a stone in my throat

and a brick on my chest

White Space

In art class

Ms. Rinaldi had said that

the white space on the page

is also part of our illustration

The white space on the page

also tells a story, is part of the big picture

I didn’t get what she was saying at first

Then she showed us this painting

An optical illusion, she called it

There was a white face

with eyes, a nose, and a mouth

against a black background

But when I looked sideways

or backward or upside down

there was a black face with

eyes, nose, and a mouth

against a white background

And it was wild how my eyes

played tricks on me like that

but it was my mind that

made sense of it all

It’s wild how our minds

can play tricks on us like that

White Space II

There were more witnesses

from East Hills

than from my side of the hood

of the tracks

of the border

of that invisible line

we weren’t supposed to cross

The couple who just moved in with the baby

who said

We tried so hard to build community

The kindergarten teacher who said

I’ve always been good to those

neighborhood kids

And the college kid who

recorded the whole thing

and said

I knew something was gonna go down

so I just picked up my phone

To call the police? Clyde asked

Nah, for social, the kid said

It was like a mob

an ambush

So I went live

And no, I’ve never seen them before

Then when Clyde asked

How long have you been in the neighborhood?

Just the weekend, visiting friends

the college kid said

I didn’t think it would blow up like this

That video made you pretty famous, huh?

The college kid laughed

and all I wanted to do was

drag him off that witness stand

But that would’ve looked bad

Really bad

The Thinker

I replay everybody’s testimonies

in my head

like a song on loop

Their words and what they thought

to be their truth

were like a scalpel

shaping me into

the monster

they want me to be

I’m supposed to be

like a statue

in this courtroom

Chiseled bronze

perfectly frozen in time

like some god

stripped of his power

or a fallen angel

cast into this hell

And every lie

they say about me

every stone

they throw at me

is supposed to bounce off

like tiny pellets

Here I have to be bulletproof

Two Mouths

What happens if I’m found guilty? I ask Clyde

before the deliberation

He taps his pen on his yellow notepad

as if beating out the rhythm to some rhyme

some party anthem for whenfor when

he wins this case

And I want so bad

to grab that pen and notepad

and draw me a victory

a whole scene with dancing shapes

and hard lines turned to joy

That’s not going to happen, he says

Umi said English requires two mouths to speak

and four ears to understand

Clyde spoke with two mouths

One for me and one for the court

Blank Page

Mr. Clyde Richter, my defense attorney

is supposed to save my life

is supposed to create reasonable doubt

is supposed to let that judge and jury know

the truth

But he is part of the white space

on my page

where the charcoal and ink

only graze the edges of his world

of Ms. Rinaldi’s world

of Jeremy Mathis’s world

the white boy whose entire life

is a whole blank page of

this sketchbook

where this story begins

Black Ink

So

I am ink

He is paper

I am pencil

He is notebook

I am text

He is screen

I am paint

He is canvas

I am man

He is boy

I am criminal

He is victim

I am alive

He is almost dead

I am black

He is white

Face Painting

Ms. Rinaldi left the courtroom

after the prosecutor showed pictures

of Jeremy Mathis’s face after the fight

In school, she said I had talent, a gift

She said my lines were soft

my subjects were tender

She said I had a lot of beauty

inside me waiting to bloom

My art teacher of all people should know

I could never make a painting

with the colors of mangled flesh

of broken bone, of bruised skin

out of someone’s face

Movie Star

The people who know me

really know me

are not the ones

the judge and jury want to hear from

It’s as if they wanted to hear a story about

some other kid

It’s as if they wanted to watch a movie about

some other kid

The prosecutor, with his fancy words

his hard evidence

wrote the script, directed the scene

cast just the right actor

to play this kid from the hood

who beat up a white kid really bad

so bad

that he can’t wake up

to tell the truth

Fan Club

And the truth is

nothing else matters except this moment

right now

when I get to turn around to

look into Umi’s eyes

to remind herto remind me

that she believes me

And I want Grandma to know that

I’m goodI’m good

on the inside

Uncle Rashon knew what went down

even before he saw the news

even before he saw the video

even before he saw the picture of Jeremy Mathis’s face

He tried to tell meHe tried to tell me

not to go over to East Hills

My cousins Shay and Dionne tell me

even without saying a word

We got your back, ’MatWe got your back

The other faces are

from the blockfrom the hood

from my schoolfrom my past

I don’t know if they’re watching

this movie with the boy who is playing me

or the real me in this real life

But still, they’re hereThey’re here

My best friend Lucas

ghosted me

ever since this whole shit went down

Black Mona Lisa

My umi’s face is

the most beautiful in the world

Skin

like sleeping in on snow days

beneath thick blankets

black

Smile

like an eighty-degree

summer day in April

bright

Eyes

like long subway rides

looking out windows watching

nothing and everything go by in the dark

and letting my thoughts swim

deep

Picasso Face

My face must be

the ugliest in the world

MonsterPredatorAnimal

You walk on two legs, not four, Umi said

And since that night

I haven’t heard anyone call me boy like she does

call me little man

Alwaysman

born full-grown, full-bearded

full of a life not even lived yet

as if

I’ve never toddled along the sofa

like in the videos on Umi’s phone

I’ve never eaten mashed-up food and

spit up and babbled with a mouth full of pink gums

I’ve never cried for a teddy bear or

laughed at Elmo on Sesame Street

I’ve never worn mismatched shoes

and splashed in a puddle

I’ve never hidden from thunder and fireworks

and angry shouts and gunshots and sirens

as if

I’ve never been afraid of monsters and

predators and animals and

my own face

Cacophony

The judge takes his seat

on the bench and lets us know

that the jury has reached a verdict

And I can hear everyone behind me

shifting in their seats

whispering

mumbling

crying

as if they know

They already know

Order! the judge shouts

and bangs his gavel

But all I hear is chaos

All I know is chaos

The disorder of things, places

and people that have no end

no aim, no destiny, no Allah

Godless like hell

Umi tells me to pray, head bowed

submitting to that higher power who

holds the puppet strings

And sometimes I feel like a toy soldier

and I want to beat my chest

to check my bulletproof vest

in this made-up war

like some rap battle

with no mic, no beat, no sound

It’s so quiet now

I hold my own hands

My leg is shaking

My heart is a drum

My body—

I wish I could float into the air

I wish I could disappear