When I was little, Granddaddy told me the story of Apollo 13. That mission was supposed to go back to the moon. Since NASA had already landed on the moon, they thought they could go back over and over again—easy as a plane ride from Huntsville to Harlem. But accidents happen. Plans change. An oxygen tank exploded and, thank goodness, the astronauts survived. No one ever thought the moon would be easy again though.
Granddaddy said it was the same year Momma left Alabama to live with her new husband back in Harlem. My daddy. I wasn’t born yet, and Nana was alive and well in that house on Olde Stone Road. That warm April day in 1970, Granddaddy came home sad and disappointed. But the world celebrated when those astronauts landed back down to Earth in three parachutes, all in one piece.
“It was one small step for mankind just a year before, Starfleet, when Apollo 11 made it to the moon safe and sound. Then, all of a sudden, we were ten steps behind. I tell ya, baby girl, you know what I was thinking. Maybe I was responsible for a bolt or screw, one itty-bitty piece in that whole big puzzle called the Space Race,” Granddaddy had said.
That day, Nana had gone out and Granddaddy had the house all to himself. So, he was going to fill it up with music. This was what he did when he was alone. Granddaddy liked his funk music because it was “the new frontier,” he said. New music was like a space shuttle rushing to reach the farthest edge of the galaxy. “You ever hear a sound so outta this world, Starfleet, it could launch you to the moon?” Granddaddy would ask.
The day before the Apollo 13 disaster, the Beatles broke up. Granddaddy had said that there’d be no more John, George, Paul, and Ringo singing “Don’t Let Me Down” and “Let It Be.” It was the end of slow, dripping hopeful music like molasses swirling at the bottom of a glass of sweet tea. So he blasted Sly and the Family Stone instead, with their “Everyday People” and “Dance to the Music.”
“You shoulda seen me, Starfleet. I was getting on down! Groovin’ and movin’. Lettin’ it all hang out without your momma and Nana there. That’s how those astronauts must feel up in the great big sky, higher than high, so close to the moon they could kiss it!” Granddaddy had said.
But I couldn’t shake the thought of how something went wrong. One itty-bitty piece in that whole big puzzle could’ve taken the lives of those astronauts. And that itty-bitty piece was like a bass guitar in a Sly and the Family Stone song or Ringo’s drum set in the Beatles.
The night of the Fourth of July block party, it rained Sonic Booms. Fireworks lit up the skies and no one seemed to be asleep. I curled up in my not-room and covered my ears and dreamed of spaceships and moon landings and galaxies.
Bianca and the ice cream flavors were nowhere around and I had lost Pablo Jupiter in the crowd. I ate a plate of Ms. Fuller’s fried chicken and mac ’n’ cheese all by myself on the stoop while Daddy and his minions tried to figure out what happened to that white envelope. Still, I don’t say anything. As night came close, Daddy stopped playing that boom-boom-bip music with its Planet Boom Box sounds. Some of Granddaddy’s favorite funk and soul music danced all throughout Harlem, making everything sway slowly like leaves in a soft summer breeze. Those songs wrapped around me like Nana’s knit blankets. The Five Stairsteps telling me that things are gonna be easier; Bill Withers singing it’s gonna be a lovely day; and Earth, Wind, and Fire asking about September. And I sure couldn’t wait one more minute to be back in Alabama, in Huntsville, in that house on Olde Stone Road where Granddaddy filled up the empty quiet spaces with stories and that same music—and even Momma, too, with her church gossip over the telephone, Jimmy Swaggart’s songs about Baby Jesus on the television, and the warm smells of biscuits and memories of Nana.