Her Vuitton knapsack was riding on her back. The burnt orange leather straps brand new, hadn’t darkened yet.
Her pretty neck was out. No jewels on her hands, and she had only the slightest tip of each of her fingernails painted in a sparkling orange polish with the rest of the nails left natural. Her hair was worn in a stylish side slipknot.
As she watched me finish checking out every detail, she smiled. Then we were both smiling and standing still among the busy New York travelers.
She slid her hand into her one odd-shaped front dress pocket and pulled out her used up, worn Japanese map of the New York subway system. She pointed out, using the tip of her nail, the location she wanted us to travel to today.
Her finger landed on the stop for Brooklyn’s Prospect Park. My smile faded away and my mood changed, which she noticed immediately. She slung her knapsack to the front and rifled through it, pulling out another folded paper, handing it to me.
It was a flyer for the Cherry Blossom Festival, a Japanese cultural celebration of the arrival of the first day of spring. The paper boasted Japanese foods, Japanese drummers, and a Japanese Kabuki Theatre group in the Brooklyn park.
I took her map from her and pointed out a different location, Central Park located on Fifty-ninth and Broadway in Manhattan, a park that, from what I knew, every female couldn’t help but love. Taking over, I grabbed her hand and pulled her along. She came easily.
On the train I sat her by the window on the inside of me. She placed her little foot right beside my foot, which looked so much larger than hers in comparison.
My mind drifted from the light and simple, fresh, citrus clean scent of Akemi’s skin to that cold night in the Brooklyn bush at Prospect Park. Clearly, I recalled the image of the bullets rearranging the slow, confident, yet crooked swagger of Gold Star Tafari. The blast brought his bent style to attention before he folded and dropped down.
It was my last memory of what was a gigantic and wondrous park, miles and miles of natural beauty and public peace and privacy that sometimes made it okay to live in Brooklyn. Now there were real reasons why I stayed away from the place.
I had read in a magazine once, while chilling in The Open Mind bookstore, that the police expect and wait for a shooter to return to the scene of a takedown. The author of the article said that the police experts guarantee that guilt will bring every criminal back to the scene of his crime. The writer told a story of a case where a woman was strangled to death inside her suburban home. After the murder, the police on the case would drive through her residential area daily, just knowing that the guilty person would fit the formula and return to the scene.
One day on a random drive down the victim’s block, a young kid came through zigzagging and popping wheelies on his bicycle. The officer driving the police cruiser waved him over. Casually the kid rode over, smiling and innocent. While he chatted with the cop, he rested his left hand on the roof of the cruiser.
“How come you’re not wearing a bicycle helmet?” the officer asked him.
“ ’Cause I’m good on my bike. Didn’t you see me?” Now the kid extended his arms, balancing himself on his bike, his feet on the pedals, yet standing still. He smiled with great confidence.
“I can even do a somersault on this thing! Watch!” The kid rode off and started showing off his miraculous bike tricks.
The cop gave him the thumbs up and his partner even applauded.
Next, they drove straight off to the lab and had the roof of their cruiser, where the kid had inadvertently placed his hand, dusted for fingerprints.
According to the cops, the lab, and the magazine article, the kid was the killer. The jury convicted him and the judge sentenced him to enough years so that no one would recognize him upon his release. He was a popular junior high schooler. The victim was his teacher, who chose to embarrass and expose him in front of his classmates instead of privately encouraging him to do better. Her constant demands for him to conform and comply with her, irritated his gangster.
He would have got away with it. One stupid error, placing one hand on the roof of the police car, got him caught. I learned from reading the details of that article to never return to a scene of a takedown. And I didn’t and wouldn’t. It was easy for me though. I didn’t feel no guilt. There was no crime scene, and Gold Star Tafari was no victim.
I realized from living on my Brooklyn block that boys and even men in America expected and allowed strangers and motherfuckers to threaten, and fuck with, and play with their mothers, sisters, and women. They allowed other men to make false promises, to impregnate them, to make them cry and sometimes to even kick, slap, and beat them. Back where I come from we don’t.
Akemi was staring into my face almost nose to nose, eyes to eyes, and lips to lips. She snapped her fingers to break me out of my spell. Softly she said, “Heeey!”
I came back from the hot spot where my anger is stored, and let her capture my attention once again. She wasn’t the only one who showed up for our date with a plan. I had places to take her, things to show her all mapped out in my mind.
A little while later, her orange fingernail tips were pressed against the glass walls on the 102nd floor of the Empire State Building. Her eyes were looking down on the whole of New York City. Her face was filled with amazement.
We were 1,500 feet in the air. Still, she stood on her tiptoes. When finally her eyes had surveyed enough, she turned back toward me and flashed a natural smile across her face.
Kneeling down, she unbuckled her knapsack. I thought maybe she would pull out a camera like most of us who weren’t born here would. Instead, she stood up holding a pencil and an unlined index card. Her pencil point was already gliding and sketching out something.
Everyone else up here had cameras—small ones, Kodak disposables, expensive Nikons, various-sized lenses, even zoom lenses. Akemi didn’t seem to care for photography, I thought. She seemed to prefer capturing the details of what she felt and saw with her handmade, hand-drawn, or hand-painted pictures. I was impressed now that I saw her creating with a pencil her own styled postcards.
Giving her space and time, I stepped back, pulling my book out of my jacket pocket and picking up reading where I left off last.
Instinctively, I leaped up when I noticed a man aiming his lens at Akemi’s face. By the time he pressed and clicked, he had nothing but a photo of my palm print.
“Jesus Christ! You messed up my shot.” He grimaced.
“Keep it moving,” I warned him quietly. “She’s my girl, no photos.” I blocked his view while using my peripheral to keep track of the Empire State security guard fidgeting on my left side.
“Let me ask her,” the tall white guy photographer in the ball-buster dirty jeans pushed. Before anything else could be said or done, Akemi screamed out, “Iie nooo!” She gave him a flash of that spicy anger she gave me the other week outside of Cho’s store.
Her shriek bought security over. All of the tourists stared our way. Immediately Akemi extended her arm and pointed out the white guy.
The security guard told the photographer, “The young lady said no. Leave her alone.”
Pissed, the photographer repositioned himself to click photos of something that couldn’t holla back.
On the elevator ride down, she stood behind me in the corner. I was the wall between her and the people packed and pressed into one another in the limited space.
On the ground floor, we both stepped into the same triangle of the revolving door.
Outside, we could breathe more easily.
Suddenly, the photographer reappeared.
“Listen, friend,” he said, extending his hand, his business card dangling from his fingers. “You got me wrong. I’m willing to pay you for her photos. She’s a beautiful girl and I work for—”
I grabbed Akemi and we disappeared into the crowded New York City streets. I wondered to myself why no man in this country understood how to pull himself back when it came to women. I was sure now that many men
would be murdered easily because of this problem that they saw as being nothing. An image of me poking one of the blades of my kunei into that photographer’s temple flashed before me. I was glad that in this instance, I had the opportunity to walk away.
Music surrounded Central Park. I could hear some African drumming coming from inside, the beats grabbing my attention and arousing my soul. With a closer listen, it sounded like the rhythms of someone lost. Every tap on the skins sounded like a question. I could tell that the drummer was an amateur, but still, every drumbeat is telling, saying, or showing something.
Outside the park there were sounds battling one another; radios, speakers, amplifiers, break-dancers, rollerbladers, roller skaters, musical gymnasts, silver-skinned human robots, people, monkeys, birds, you name it.
We willingly walked in and up the winding paths that seemed to turn everyone inside the park into characters and scenery from a colorful and elaborate children’s pop-up storybook, the kind I purchased for Naja a couple of years ago.
Stinking horses trotted by dragging Cinderella carts loaded down with ripped-off tourists. The animals looked exhausted, unable to see to their left or their right. They only expressed themselves by dropping huge funky fucking piles of shit everywhere they went.
But the newly leafed and budded crab apple trees, maple and elm trees, and even cherry blossoms, along with the makeshift waterfalls and fountains, made it into a paradise.
Watching Akemi, I could tell that this park had the magic that cast a spell on females.
Seeing a set of swings, she took off running and jumped right on. Her legs lifted her higher and higher. Her eyes were shut. Her mouth dropped open. Her head tipped back. She leaned backward and was soaring.
Like an acrobat she suddenly stood up on the silver swing seat, pumping her legs and flying higher. In midair she jumped off and landed right on me. I seen she liked to live dangerously. What if, in a split second, I had moved? Luckily I didn’t. She wrapped her legs around my waist and laid her breast pressed against my chest. Now her head lay on my shoulders. Her slipknot came loose and her hair brushed against my neck and fell onto my back. I carried her up the hill and down again, feeling and knowing only one thing. I had fucked around and fell in love.
By the Central Park Loeb Boathouse, I paid for a rowboat ride. Rowing on the fifteen feet of man-made lake water, I knew this was not the yacht named Salaamah or a felucca. It wasn’t the Atlantic or the Pacific Ocean. In fact it was not a river or a sea and definitely not the Nile. But I was rowing and she was lying on her side, her shoes kicked off, her legs hanging off the side of the boat, each toe a different shade of orange in her strange and colorful toe tights.
She was listening to jazz music on an old five-inch transistor radio she pulled out of her magician’s knapsack of endless Akemi stuff. As her music played softly, I noticed that the peculiarly shaped lake was surrounded by the most beautiful willow trees.
I rowed us past the other seven or eight boats to a secluded spot sheltered by the willows and near a muddy incline. When she felt the boat stop she sat up, clicked off her radio, went back into her magic bag, and pulled out what it took me a few seconds to figure out was a mini cassette tape recorder.
She stepped over and sat facing me as the boat rocked a little. She pressed record, then said softly, “Please.”
I sat idle for about ten seconds before I said anything. I wasn’t no poet.
My mind started pushing together a rhyme. I wasn’t no rapper either.
I leaned in to be close enough to her little device. Slowly I said,
Akemi is a girl I met in New York City,
She’s from Japan and she looks real pretty.
But more than that, she’s talented and smart.
In just a couple of months, she stole my heart.
But Akemi remains a mystery to me.
She hides me from her family.
But the feelings she has for me she can’t hide.
Every time I see her, it’s all in her eyes.
I smiled, surprised at myself. When she realized I wouldn’t continue, she clicked her recorder off.
In the park there were bridges with tunnels and caves beneath them, dark ones filled with nature and small creatures. We walked through one of the tunnels together. Because of the immediate switch from sunlight to darkness, all I could see in there was a silhouette of Akemi. She stopped walking midway. We were alone for a moment. Still we could both see some more walkers approaching, less than one minute away.
I could feel her hand reach up to the opening of my shirt. Her fingers began sliding across my collarbone. She moved them slowly across the width of it before she withdrew them. Then I felt both of her hands in mine. I didn’t return her touches, which felt so good to me. I felt like if I started touching her, I wouldn’t and couldn’t stop. I was brought up not to be intimate in public. Yet I felt mad intimate within myself.
Another couple entered the tunnel. Akemi stepped away from me. I heard her click on her recorder. I never saw anyone do it before, but I guessed she was recording the sounds of nature. I could hear the frogs and crickets myself.
Southern Grandfather, my father’s father, trained me to sit still for hours and listen to the sounds of the wilderness. Me and him weren’t recording with any device except for our ears. He taught me to listen so carefully that I could hear the buzz of a mosquito, the ruffling of grass, and even the winding of a serpent.
Seated up high in the park on a rock, me and Akemi played a crazy game of charades together. How else could we do it? We couldn’t talk. She would draw a quick, simple picture of what she liked. Then she handed me a card to draw what I liked. We communicated through these pictures. Only thing was, she was a great artist. I was not.
When I drew two fists on the paper to let her know I am a fighter, she looked unsure. I stood up and struck a stance and did some quick moves just for her. She clapped and smiled, delighted. I drew a basketball to let her know I like to hoop. I drew a book, then pulled my real book out and handed it to her to let her know I like to read. Last, I drew my version of a picture of her and flung it at her. She grabbed for it. Her face revealed that I was the worst artist of all time. She didn’t get it. I pointed to her and said, “I like you.”
She smiled and laughed. She held my drawing beside her face to show me how ridiculously off it was. Afterward she tried to slide my ugly drawing into her knapsack but I took it away from her and put it in my back pocket. I saw that she thought everything belonged to her.
On her turn, she tried to show me about herself. She pulled out her little radio and turned it on. Suddenly, she began to dance while still sitting.
“You like music,” I guessed. What else could she be telling me?
“Hai!” she answered. She started moving around again.
“You like to dance,” I called out like I was competing on a game show.
“Hai!” She laughed. Then she jumped up and started moving her arms in a controlled motion, her fingers closed and cupped.
“You’re a swimmer,” I said. She didn’t answer. Maybe I said it in a way she couldn’t get it. “Swim,” I said, using just the one word and gesturing.
“Hai!” She smiled. Then she dropped back down, took off her backpack, and handed it to me. Next thing I knew, she was positioning her body like a yoga guru. She struck a pose and shouted in her softest voice, “Hanymansana!” It looked wicked. Her legs were in a full split and her arms were extended like a graceful ballerina, one hand pointed to the sky. She didn’t seem to care one bit that she was wearing a dress.
In an instant, she flowed out of this amazing position, right into another one. “Firefly!” she said. Both of her hands were on the rock holding her body up in the air and her toes pointed out. Her dress crept up her thighs. She flowed out of that pose and in her last exhibition she twisted herself up and said softly, “Scorpion,” in her sensual accent. I looked at her. She was even more strange to me now and even more beautiful.
Some Ghanaians recruited me into a game of soccer on the field. I wasn’t gonna play, I was into something else right then. Akemi tried to encourage me by playing and pushing me with her body then her hands to go ahead. So I agreed.
She watched intensely from the sidelines along with some females who were there with the Ghanaians. I caught her eyes moving across the field with me. I felt good that she wasn’t one of these girls with wandering eyes.
This was actually the first game of soccer I had played since arriving in America. It took a lot more coordination than basketball. After I warmed up, I played a good game. My eyes and my feet are quick anyway.
Watching the West Africans move with such passion and enthusiasm, I got into it. It was easy to look into one or two of their faces and to imagine I was seeing my father and his friends. More than that, it was relaxing to burn off the energy that had me exploding before I ran into them.
Coming off the field after the game, I didn’t see Akemi. I gave the players a pound and a couple of them my Umma Designs business cards.
I walked around slowly. I stopped, figuring she wouldn’t have wandered off this far. Then I heard her laugh. I followed the direction of her voice and saw her enjoying watching me look for her as she sat comfortably in a tree.
Why bother tryna figure out how she got up there or why? I stood below her and she came leaping down into my arms. She placed her nose against my neck, sniffing the scent of my sweat.
We both used our hands to brush each other off. I pulled a leaf and a couple of bits of bark off her. I even took some particles off her pretty stockings. So nicely dressed when we first started out, we were both looking like we had a mad and crazy good time.
Midnight Page 20