Midnight

by Sister Souljah

  “Don’t worry. Whatever I learn, I’ll teach it to you. You know how we do,” I promised.

  “Whatever. Funny how he picked you for the weapons class. You already walk with your heat. What could be better than that?” Chris asked, still feeling cheated.

  “No, don’t sleep,” Ameer said in a serious tone. “Sensei knows a thousand different ways to kill a man. You never know when you might have to defend yourself using more than your hands and feet, and can’t get to your piece.”

  We stood there, thinking about what Ameer just said.

  “Fuck it. We trust you. You’re on our team, right?” Ameer patted me on the back and laughed. Chris’ tension broke up. I looked at the two of them. I was grateful to have two friends in this foreign country. I thought of how my father’s American friend and former roommate had left us stranded at the airport. I hoped that what we three had was something completely different.

  Ten o’clock that same night, back on my Brooklyn block, the guns was clapping. I moved swiftly to my building, dodging and avoiding, imagining my mother and sister ducked down on the floor the way I taught them to do when they hear gunshots. I was certain that my mother had the blinds closed and curtains drawn by this hour. Hopefully she had on some music and couldn’t hear the symphony of bullets.

  My heart raced as my mind conjured up the image of a stray bullet piercing the innocence and beauty of my Umma or my young sister Naja.

  I got home and showed my face and my love, so they could sleep.

  Two and a half hours later, I was out on the ball court for self, in the thick of the night.

  This time I saw him coming. I kept my eye on him as I dribbled.

  “You fronted.” It was Tyriq, disturbing my peace.

  “I didn’t promise you nothing,” I answered.

  “You could’ve at least came to check it out,” he pushed.

  “It’s your thing. Have fun with it,” I told him.

  “This is your idea of fun, playing by yourself, wasting your skills?”

  “You talk like you’re offering me something more than a game,” I told him.

  “Maybe I am. But you gotta step up first. Friday night at eight P.M. We’ll be at the gym again,” he said.

  • • •

  Friday afternoon my mind was on finishing up at Cho’s. After getting fresh I planned to walk four stores over on this same block to Akemi’s job, to try to meet her people, introduce myself, and acknowledge my friendship with Akemi. I was uncertain about their beliefs and traditions.

  When I stepped outside Cho’s store, Ameer and Redbone was standing right there. I was tight about Ameer bringing her to another place I considered a permanent spot. At the same time, I figured if he showed up here at my job, which he’d only done once before, there must be some kind of emergency. I kept myself open to hear him out and help out however I could.

  “What’s up, man?” I asked him.

  “Hello. How you doing?” she answered instead of him.

  “I don’t know about tonight,” Ameer said. “We was thinking about going to the movies instead of hooping.”

  “Chris too?” I asked, since we all was supposed to meet up at the dojo on Friday nights as usual to hustle up a game in the nearby park.

  “Yeah. We gonna go pick Chris and his girl up and head out.”

  “What you doing up on this side?” I asked him, wondering why he was in Manhattan at three on a Friday afternoon, when he attended Brooklyn Tech High School in Brooklyn.

  “I took the day off. Been hanging out up here with her,” Ameer said with a gleam in his eye.

  “I was planning to head over to that high school with you and Chris tonight at eight. I found out there might be some business to make it worth our while in the basketball tournament they’re having over there,” I said to Ameer, knowing how serious he was about handling business. I purposely left out the name of the high school so Redbone wouldn’t end up showing up there too.

  “Fuck it, then. We can meet up over there for basketball. Afterward we can hit up the late show on Forty Deuce and meet up with the girls. How that sound?” he asked, pressing me to agree. But now I was looking over his shoulder at Akemi, who was walking up the block to see me.

  Redbone, who was constantly staring into my mug, turned around to see what I was looking at.

  “Sounds good,” I told Ameer, agreeing and hoping him and his girl would step off before Akemi stepped up and they got even deeper into my business. But the two of them didn’t move.

  “So we can invite Homegirl, right? She really wanna see you anyway.” Ameer smiled.

  Akemi arrived. She stopped walking and stood about ten feet away from where we were talking.

  Despite the normal New York crowds, Redbone was picking up on Akemi’s presence. Her eyeballs kept shifting from Akemi to me and back. I didn’t acknowledge nothing either way. I wanted her and Ameer to leave.

  “Yeah, no problem.” Quickly, I agreed to the homegirl situation to get them out of there.

  “All right, tonight then at the high school. I’ll let Chris know,” Ameer said. They bounced. I watched them disappear around the corner. Redbone turned to look back as they turned the bend.

  Akemi had a new haircut. It was now not as long as it usually was, but still more long than short. It was an Egyptian blunt cut with bangs running straight across her forehead, and the rest of every strand of her hair cut straight and lying on her back. It looked beautiful and set off her eyes in a whole new way. She had on brown tights that covered her legs, a short brown crushed-leather jumper dress, with a blouse beneath and gorgeous leather heels with a strap that wrapped around each ankle. The feeling of knowing she was dressing up for me felt good. The idea that anyone passing by could look at her also, didn’t.

  As I approached her, her pretty face went sour. She threw up her hand like she was saying, “Stop.” She turned to leave, took a few steps, turned back facing me, and threw up her hands again as if to say, “Wait right here.” It was bugged out, but I waited.

  She came back up the block with a little girl around my sister’s age or a little younger. I’m thinking, what’s up with this? The little girl skipped up to me, struck a mean pose, one arm folded into the other like me and her were enemies. Akemi spoke some Japanese words to the little girl, pushing out each syllable with more passion than usual. The angry little Asian girl now facing me translated Akemi’s fury.

  “You didn’t introduce me to your friends,” the little girl said. I looked at her, then at Akemi. Akemi’s big pretty eyes curved and then shrank with anger. I paused for a minute and answered.

  “You didn’t even introduce me to your parents,” I told her.

  The little girl translated. Akemi responded to her.

  “My parents are in Japan. Your friends were standing right here between the two of us,” the little girl said with even more attitude than Akemi.

  “Your aunt and uncle and your store are four doors down. You never once invited me inside,” I told her. The little girl translated.

  “That’s different. You and I are young. We have our world. They have their world,” the little girl, now with one hand on her hip, said on behalf of Akemi.

  “So what do you want? Do you want to keep our worlds separate? Or do you want to come all the way into mine and me into yours?” I asked. The little girl’s eyes widened a bit. She seemed surprised by what I was saying. Believe it or not, I was surprised too.

  When she translated my words to Akemi, there was a long pause. So I spoke instead.

  “You can’t have it both ways,” I told her.

  On hearing this translated, Akemi’s anger softened. She looked at me, her eyes watery again, the kind of tears that don’t fall. Softly now she spoke. The little girl interpreted more calmly.

  “How about tomorrow at closing? You can come by my family’s shop and meet everyone. Then maybe you and I can go out together once more?” the little girl asked in a more relaxed tone.

  “Ha
i, ashita,” I said, which means “Yes, tomorrow,” in Japanese. Akemi bowed, just a slight movement of her head. They both smiled. Akemi grabbed the little girl’s hand and they both left.

  Believe me, I wanted to follow Akemi, her legs moving rhythmically, heels clicking on the pavement. I pushed off to Brooklyn though. I had to pick up Umma by five and my little sister also.

  After a hot shower and a family prayer, a delicious meal of Umma’s fish seasoned with a Sudanese hot sauce called shotta, soup, vegetables, salad, and fresh, hot homemade bread felt good in my stomach. Afterward, she served me some strong hot tea spiced perfectly with ginger and cardamom in a porcelain teacup. It raced around my body, warmed my blood, and gave me a complete and settled feeling.

  When I left, Umma was just sitting down to her sewing machine. My sister Naja was reading her book out loud like she tended to do.

  Dressed in my dark-blue Nike sweats, wearing a blue Jansport and a crisp pair of kicks, my hands gripping my basketball, I stepped into the dim hallway of my building and headed out to do one quick Umma Designs hat delivery and then over to the gym.

  14

  RECRUITERS

  Late by half an hour or so, I came up on the backside of the high school, surprised. The entire parking lot was filled with cars. I knew something out of the ordinary had to be going down because the cars were mostly expensive, wearing a fresh wash and wax. Even the tires glistened with Armor All.

  The crazy shit was how nobody parked within the yellow lines that outlined each space. Instead, people were parked however the fuck they wanted to. The kitted-up BMWs, Jeep Wranglers, Audis, Camaros, Saabs, and motorbikes, both Kawasakis and the dirt bikes, looked impressive.

  Under the spotlight beaming from the lamppost, parked sideways, was the whip that caught my eye and made my jaw drop. It was the only Porsche parked on the lot. The color of the exterior was buttermilk. I walked closer to check it out. The interior was cream colored. The seats were soft buttery leather with gold piping. It was brand-new, the 959 PSK, which I knew from reading the car mags was so exclusive that Porsche only made two hundred of them to sell around the entire world. My face was pressed almost to the glass, and the dashboard of the Porsche was so pretty and high tech it looked like a small private plane instead of a car. The wooden stick shift was waxed, not even one smudge or fingerprint to stain it, as if no one even drove it here. The speedometer went up to three hundred miles per hour.

  I imagined myself in this high-powered, high-speed monster hugging a mountain road in Morocco doing 120 mph. I laughed, thinking I probably needed a fucking pilot’s license to drive this machine.

  On closer inspection, I saw the monogrammed insignia embossed into the driver’s headrest. RS were the initials. This car had such a clean look, no junky attachments, lime-green fog lights, or press-on letters on the outside like I had seen some gaudy players do. As I stood up and stepped back, I thought to myself, If I had the money to do it, this is exactly how I would do it. It was deep to me, how you could always tell one man from another by his style. And it was rare for a man to break from doing a version of the exact same thing as every other man, and instead do something original of an even higher quality; something smarter, and better.

  When a piece of light hits a real piece of gold, it glistens for less than one second of time. I caught the flash of genuine gold, a small but life-size pair of dark, solid-gold baby shoes, dangling from a six-inch, solid-gold link chain, hanging from the rearview mirror.

  I was always on point about gold and jewels and their true content and value. My father consistently selected the best of everything and pointed out and kept away from the junk.

  I was impressed with this dark-colored, twenty-four-karat gold and the craftsmanship of the shoes even down to the detail of the gold shoelaces. I had seen all kind of pendants and pieces, good and bad, but I had never seen a man mount baby shoes on a chain.

  Somehow I knew for sure this ride belonged to a man. There were no feminine things to give it away, napkins, purses, lipsticks, hairpins, small pieces of wrapped candy, not even diapers or a baby seat.

  Parked next to a cherry Beemer M3 with two hairy cloth dice on the dashboard, the style and build of the Porsche blew every other whip off the lot.

  Music and loud talking was coming from the front of the school building. When I wound my way around there, I ran into hundreds of people standing in loose formed lines and tightly drawn circles, waiting. Bass lines and beats, do-rags, corn rolls, and bouncing balls, thick bodies, titties, and tight clothes—the niggas was out.

  I pushed my way through the dark crowd looking for Ameer and Chris. As more people arrived I figured I better get my position on the line and wait to find my boys once we got inside the gym and into the light.

  Tyriq had said, “basketball tryouts,” but this looked like an organized and advertised basketball game was about to take place with some professional and well-known ballers and their devoted fans.

  Easily I could’ve bounced, but because of me, my friends were out here somewhere in the mix. And besides, money was in the air. I could feel it.

  Somebody rolled up blasting Just-Ice’s joint “Cold Gettin’ Dumb.” The crowd jerked, excited from the beat. People started pushing and pressed up against one another.

  Six big bouncer-type giants finally threw open the three gym doors and everybody tried to bum-rush Brooklyn style. The big dudes formed a wall and made everybody “Back up! Back up!” They made people walk in one by one. I was clocking their procedure real close. I needed to know if they was conducting a search or not. Or if they had handheld metal detectors or what.

  It turned out they wasn’t. I knew then there would be a gym full of guns, which was probably for the best. When everybody is packing, people are better at holding their positions, cautious of the consequences. Chaos usually breaks out when only one crazy cop or backward nigga is armed and the rest of the people are sitting ducks at his mercy.

  Walking in, I heard dudes on the line talking about how they got “callbacks” from the first tryouts and how tonight was the final cut. I put two and two together and understood what was up.

  Inside, the majority of the people filled in the bleachers situated on either side of the gym. Everybody who planned to ball remained on the gym floor. That made about two hundred teenage boys on the floor, no bullshit. I spotted Ameer and Chris. They was way up the line. I was all the way in the back. I stayed in position, knowing that to join or cut the line up front was to draw attention to myself and set it off.

  Tyriq appeared in sweats with a whistle and a couple of big guys standing at his sides.

  “Line up for layups,” he shouted.

  These youth must’ve known and respected him because they did exactly what he said. One by one they took it to the hoops while the girls and some mothers jumped up and danced to celebrate this one or that one’s skills.

  In the back, still waiting my turn, I was scanning the crazy crowd. I was bugging on how in this hot-ass gym, there was groups of overdressed types in the bleachers, one in a full-length rabbit fur wearing sunglasses at night and indoors. Another one was wearing a full-length mink with a matching mink hat. It was winter outside but summer in the gym, yet nobody wanted to take off or check their coats.

  A couple of grown-up cats playing the corners, dressed in suits and hard shoes, were watching us closely like they were professional recruiters. But these were Black cats from the hood who, if pushed, could probably get on the court and play a decent game themselves, not the official recruiter types.

  When ballers would miss the layup, lose control of the ball, or show sloppy style, Tyriq’s big side niggas would sit them down on the floor and out of the way. By the time I got up I figured I better just dunk it. Nobody would remember the last player of a group of over a hundred.

  I caught a little reaction from the crowd.

  After layups, we were tested on our jumpers, then our three-point shots. A lot of these cats were good but even som
e of the good ones were choking under the pressure of performance, the crowd, and the critique. The long line was thinning out as dudes got sidelined by Tyriq’s men. Ameer and Chris were still standing. I wasn’t surprised.

  With the three-point shots, they let us shoot the rock till we missed one. If you missed on your first shot, they gave you one last chance.

  I don’t know what was feeding me. I wasn’t sure that I could get paid from this shit, but I was trying my best. Maybe it was the crowd, faces plastered with one-hundred-percent approval and a joy so real they leaped out of their seats. For once, it wasn’t hatred, stress, and put-downs. Black youths were actually cheering for one another.

  I hit eighteen three-pointers before I missed one. It was easy for me. A real challenge would have been shooting the rock with my eyes closed. But that wasn’t required.

  When I finally missed on shot number nineteen, Tyriq put his left hand in the air. “A’ight, a’ight,” he said, blowing his whistle and waving the spectators who had moved down onto the court back up into the bleachers.

  Just then, I noticed Ameer’s father chilling alone in the cut behind a group of men and up against the wall, looking serious and concentrating real hard.

  After the whistle, we got divided into teams. Nothing was thought out, just the first five in the line on one team and the second five on the line on the next team and so on. Each pair of teams was told to run a ten-minute, full-court game. Tyriq had the stopwatch. The game was over when a team scored ten points or when ten minutes passed and the whistle was blown, whatever came first.

  Some of the suited money cats who were casually standing and sitting around the bleachers earlier were now standing around the perimeter of the court reacting to the rebounding, the handling, the flying, the masterful dribbling and passing so slick that for seconds the ball seemed lost somewhere. They seemed like a group of gamblers at a race track or at OTB waiting for the results to come in.

  For me this was a crazy experiment. Just as we got wound up, it was all over. “It’s a wrap,” Tyriq announced. The ball players who were still standing, blood was pumping and hearts were still racing. Our eyes were wide open as we stayed on the floor staring at one another and wondering what was next. My sweat was flowing into my blue terry-cloth headband.