Our FREEDOM T-shirts came from when we were studying the Beats with Mr. D junior year and reading Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. I complained that the main characters are just a bunch of sexist white dudes who get to do whatever they want, and all the women are called girls and get dumped. “Go ahead, rewrite it,” he told us.

So I did. We performed our feminist version for Mr. D’s Beat Café Night. Brooklyn Ra-Ra and Fa-Fa, we called ourselves. We sat on folding chairs, in black felt berets, on our own wild road trip to find America. At the end I got up and gave my last riff:

The road is a licorice whip sliding down my throat

red-bean buns in Sunset Park, watching the sky blush pink.

West, go West, the Beats told us.

What if the road isn’t yours because the guys got there first?

Maybe the road is your head bristling with possibilities,

The America of me

not the Mexican girl left behind in California,

the jazz players of Denver.

We want America too but our mothers say:

Be careful. Watch out. Curb your mouth. Bring in the laundry.

How do you find America when you’ve got dinner to make?

When you can’t kiss that boy under a Red Hook moon?

I am not my mother I am me

How do I find the America that is me?

We got a lot of cheers, some howling, kids punching the air. Mr. D. submitted that and some of my other writing to a contest. I won a scholarship for “literary promise,” which will help pay for Hunter College. Meanwhile, Fatima fought with her parents to go to FIT, the Fashion Institute of Technology, but her father put his foot down and said she was going to Brooklyn College, since it’s closer to home, and she’ll major in something more practical. Still we made promises to meet up in Prospect Park or rove around the city as much as we could.

Our version of free.

We stopped at the corner bodega, dunked our hands in the cooler of chilled water, and grabbed a couple of bottles, ice thudding inside. I walked with a bottle pressed against my neck and crossed the street to the park to watch the cute boys on the basketball court. “Fa-tee-ma!” this guy Jamal called, with his loose, easy smile. “When you hangin’ with me?”

“Never!” she called back.

Ammi always says to me, “Wait for the true one, Rania. Protect your heart.” No worries there. I wouldn’t waste my time on these losers anyway. My eyes are locked on next year and beyond.