“We could head to the park right now and hustle something up, but I been mad busy for the past week,” I told both of them.
“We better do that ’cause I ain’t got nothing to put in this week either,” Chris added.
“Yo, the red team is crazy,” Ameer said with emphasis, us three walking.
“That’s your team,” I said.
Chris laughed.
“The coach didn’t show up for practice the other night. So as a team we agreed, ‘Fuck it. Let’s run it anyway.’ ” Ameer began telling his new story from the red team.
“So I told everybody, ‘Let’s just run it the same way we been running it when Coach is here.’ So the Red Hook nigga on the team was like ‘Nah, fuck that.’ I was like ‘Fuck what?’ Because he didn’t have no reason to disagree. He just wanted to disagree and shit. So he said, ‘You ain’t the coach and you ain’t team captain.’ So I told him, ‘We about to vote for team captain tonight after practice like Coach said.’
“So he said, ‘Fuck it, let’s vote right now.’ So this nigga asked, ‘Who don’t want me to be the captain?’ So nobody answered ’cause of how he asked the question. So he said, ‘Good then, I’m the captain.’
“So I said, ‘Wait a minute. That’s not how you take a vote, by asking who don’t want something. We supposed to find out how many people want to be considered to be captain and then vote from among the candidates.’
“He said, ‘Too late, nigga. I’m the captain. Nobody raised their hand up when I asked the question so there you go.’
“I said, ‘Let’s just let the best player on the team be captain and everybody knows that me.’ So this nigga swung on me. I ducked and it was on. We started fighting. The other two niggas from East New York told the rest of the team to chill while we two fought it out. I knew they wasn’t gonna jump in on my side ’cause I didn’t jump in for them two the last time the team had a fight. Now this Red Hook nigga got two long nails on each hand like a bitch. I’m fighting this dude straight up. He fighting me like a motherfucking girl, scratching and scraping me up and shit. When he scratched my face, it wasn’t nothing to me. But when I put my finger on it and drew back the blood yo, I was vexed.
“I hit the motherfucker with my right hook and sent his ass flying all the way back to Red Hook,” Ameer said. We all three cracked up laughing.
“So what happened?” I asked.
“Ameer’s the team captain,” Chris answered.
“Hell yeah,” Ameer said. “And when that nigga got up off the floor, the Red Hook niggas wanted to jump bad together and fight me too. That’s when I set the bet up. I told them, ‘Fuck fighting ’cause y’all ain’t gonna shoot a fair one. Who got some paper?’ I asked them. Everybody had a little paper on them except the motherfucker who I knocked out. He had nothing but dirt in his pocket. So he bounced. I didn’t give a fuck. ‘I’ll play any one of y’all niggas for whatever you got in your pockets,’ I told the rest of them.
“I took ’em on one on one, one by one, made two hundred dollars by the time practice was over. The dude who I fought came busting back through the door almost two hours later talking ’bout he had fifty dollars and a turntable, just like a fucking crackhead! He said he’ll play me for whatever amount I already won. I acted like I was backing down on the bet. He made a whole big rah rah like he was gonna win back all the money for the whole team and take over the captain’s position too,” Ameer bragged.
“So, what happened?” I asked.
“Ameer’s still the team captain,” Chris said with a laugh.
“How you gon’ get it?” I asked.
“Get what?” Ameer asked.
“His turntable,” I said.
“I got it already. That nigga brought it in the gym with him when he came back that same night. No bag, no box, no wires or nothing. Just bare-handed carrying the shit like it was a book or something. When I told him, ‘Pay up the fifty dollars,’ he slapped a leather wallet in my hand and a watch fell out his pocket. I looked through the wallet. It had fifty dollars in it and some white man’s driver’s license. I looked at this fool and realized he just went outside and found somebody who he could beat up and knocked him over the head. I don’t know where he got the turntable from though. I know he stole it ’cause like I said when he first got to practice, he was empty-handed and didn’t have no money,” Ameer said.
“So you seen him since then?” I asked.
“The next night we had practice. The coach showed up this time. At first we was all cooled out like nothing was the matter. Then Coach said, ‘It’s time for y’all to choose a team captain.’
“Then another dude said, ‘Ameer is our captain. We chose him last night.’ Then the nigga who I fought had the fucking audacity to say, ‘Nah, we should do it over ’cause Coach wasn’t here.’ The whole team started arguing. These idiots started running their mouths and snitching on one another. Then the coach squashed everything. He said we ain’t supposed to play each other for money. We supposed to play the other teams for the big money. Coach said, ‘Y’all some two-dollar niggas.’ I said, ‘Nah, I’m a two-hundred-dollar nigga and it’s right here in my pocket.’ ”
We all laughed.
At the park, I hung back while Ameer set up a bet. As I watched him doing all the talking, all I could think was, somebody gonna clap my man. He puts himself out there too quick and easy. He humiliates other cats with his skills. It never mattered much before. But I knew being on the red team with some desperate-type youths and making enemies out of each of them wasn’t gonna end right. I told myself, I needed to watch his back better. There wasn’t nobody else around to hold him down when he was shooting off at the mouth. I was surprised that the kid he fought didn’t show up the next night on some bang bang shit. I didn’t think Ameer ran into the grimy kind of niggas that be on my block, the kind you couldn’t leave half-dead ’cause the shit wouldn’t be finished until there was one or two bodies laying on the ground.
“Yo, I’m sorry about Homegirl and shit,” Ameer apologized after a close game. “I’mma make her pay you for your clothes. You was chillin’ that night. I know they cost you a grip.”
“Get it if you can. But if I have to meet up with her to get it, she can keep it. That’s one girl who can make me catch a bullshit case,” I told him.
“Word to the mother,” Chris said.
“I got a new girl anyway and she got some new friends!” Ameer said.
“No thanks,” I said. Chris laughed knowingly.
Late at night I moved around the apartment quietly. I showered and made my prayers.
My finger pressed play for the voice mail messages. The first message was from her. “Akemi, Aishiteru,” and then all I heard was the click. After listening to four other calls, all of them business, it was that first message, her message that kept playing in my head.
My heart said I would show up to check Akemi at Pratt tomorrow night. My head reminded me that I needed to set limits and not go too far. My body said, “Stop fucking around and go get your girl.” I wanted to see Akemi as soon as possible.
34
REPUTATION
Sensei wasn’t going to catch me off guard today, I decided. I arrived at class five minutes early, eyes peeled and ready to fight. I had already conditioned my mind to understand that Sensei might pose as my enemy and that if he did, I would fight him like any unknown attacker from the streets.
But once I got inside the dojo, Sensei had a card table stacked with hundreds of cards. I tried to switch tracks in my head. I knew he was about to play some kind of mind game. Besides, the lights were off and it seemed like he wasn’t even there. Of course he was. Otherwise how would I have gotten inside of the opened front door of the dojo? I walked around the perimeter slowly, poised for his sneak attack.
As I walked past his closed bathroom door I figured he was just using the bathroom and I was making something out of nothing. I walked over to the light switch. Before I could flip it up he came swooping down and was standing righ
t there in front of me.
“It is a common mistake,” he said in place of a greeting.
“People tend to never look up. A ninja must always look up and in every direction, even beneath his feet.”
I guessed he was hanging there on the ceiling in the dark like a bat. I knew ninjas could do these types of maneuvers, but I also thought it was because they were usually small-sized Asian men. I didn’t see myself as being able to hang on to the ceiling hidden away at six foot one unless he had some way to show and convince me that I could.
“Ohayo, Senseisan,” I said, offering him the Japanese morning greeting.
“Ohayo, gakusei,” he returned the greeting to me the “student.”
“In ancient times armies of warriors had rules of confrontation that they abided by. Most would rather die than break the rules of war as they understood them, and as they were trained to follow them. But this is not the way of the ninja.
“Other warriors pride themselves on confronting their enemy face-to-face and fighting honorably. But this is not a ninja’s honor. A ninja is usually the outnumbered, the underdog, the underestimated. Therefore he must fight in such a way where winning remains a possibility. One of those ways of fighting is invisibility. It will be hard for an enemy to fight what he cannot see and did not foresee. A ninja must be a master of strategy.
“A ninja, unlike the ancient warrior who loved confrontation, open combat, spectators, and ceremonies to cheer him on, always seeks to hide his plan and execute his plan in secrecy whenever possible.
“It is not above a ninja to stab an enemy in his back,” Sensei said in a calm but deadly serious tone. “Or to poison an enemy in such a way that he kills himself with his own hand, by a substance slipped into his drink or food or carefully placed on his personal belongings. Or to set a trap for his enemy after studying his usual movements and habits.”
I listened very carefully, seeing Sensei from an angle I never looked at him from before.
“The object is to win at all costs. The meaning of the word ‘ninja’ is ‘one who remains alive, one who preserves his life, the one who plans and fights and struggles through any circumstance no matter how difficult, and remains standing at its conclusion.’ Therefore, in this complicated world, a true ninja of today’s times would have to be a careful but extremely swift thinker who uses everything within his reach to achieve his goal.”
“A thinker,” I repeated.
“Yes,” he confirmed. “This is why a fool could not be offered this knowledge which I am offering to you. A fool doesn’t think matters through. A fool does not know the difference between his enemies and his friends. So with these skills that I am teaching to you, a fool would destroy everyone, including himself. Your ability to think through situations is what gives you a great advantage and a great civility. You can kill, but you are not eager to kill. You won’t kill your friends or family. But you will kill your enemies and you will be a thousand-percent certain who your enemies are because you have been thinking and watching and observing them all along.”
“But what about a man who makes himself my enemy on the spot, without warning?” I asked.
“This is not probable. In most cases, your enemy has been there all along, just as I was here in this room all along. Your enemy has most likely warned you, through his words or gestures or his energy even. You just failed to recognize the warning signs. You just failed to see him as you failed to see me,” Sensei said calmly.
I didn’t like this word, “failure,” that Sensei had thrown around in my last two weapons sessions. I did not want to be called a failure. I did not want to actually be a failure either.
After his words, Sensei taught me how to “size up” a room whenever I entered it. He had me search the back room of the dojo. At first, I thought it was useless. Other than the card table and chair, which had never been in the room before, the room was empty. But rather than fail, I took a much, much closer look.
After an hour, I discovered the secrets of the construction of the room. I found the door in the ceiling that Sensei dropped through. I found an unmarked exit that appeared to be a smooth wall. I found a floorboard in the corner that when pressed at the right point, led to a downstairs closet I never knew existed after seven years in the dojo.
“Is there anything else?” Sensei questioned me. I had been observing and searching an empty room for more than an hour. Other than the dummy and items Sensei had stored in his closet, I was certain I located everything.
“Do you think your enemy will give you the luxury of time to search his place?”
“Of course not,” I responded.
“Then you must become more swift with your observations.” Sensei pulled something from below the silver card table. It was daytime and the lights were bright but I could not see what he was maneuvering. He tossed it. “You would have been dead.” His concealed mock shuriken hit my chest and fell to the floor.
When I checked underneath the card table, there were two real knives taped beneath it. There was no way to see them without crawling directly under the table.
I guess I was becoming more aware and alert than ever before. As I was being trained, I began to look at every item in the room no matter how small it was. I began to think of how each item could be converted into a weapon or a defense.
Of course I noticed Sensei’s rope hanging on the wall, but that was too obvious. I am certain he left it out there purposely to encourage and challenge me. He did well because I planned to tie him up to a chair as he did me. But I would have to work on my technique and execute it when he least expected it.
The second two hours of weapons class had me tight. After a strenuous workout, Sensei ordered me to take a seat at the card table. He instructed me to build a house from the hundreds of cards he had there.
My mind and heart was already sped up from the morning challenges. I did not want to slow myself all the way down to build a house of cards. Besides, I didn’t want to be an artist or architect. I am a fighter and a businessman.
I sat there staring at the cards.
“Do not leave, until you have utilized every card, and built a house which is standing,” Sensei instructed me. Then he walked out of the training area into another room, probably his private office.
Even bricks are held together by cement, I thought to myself. How would I build a house of cards, no glue, no nothing?
It took a half-hour for me sitting there to move beyond my anger.
Sensei was right when he said, “Anger blocks success, because anger shuts down a person’s thoughts, which paralyzes a person’s skills.” I could’ve got up and left. I didn’t. I picked up two cards to see how I could lean one against the other and make them both be standing when I removed my hands.
Four hours later, I was still there, stuck in weapons training with no food, no water, and no break for six hours total. I had to block out the sounds of the fighters in the main room of the dojo.
I put the last card on my four-story structure, hoping it wouldn’t cause the entire roof to cave in. There had been two thousand cards in total.
I eased my chair away from the table slowly and carefully. I walked out of the room to let Sensei know I had completed the task. I was ready to go.
Sensei walked back into the back room where he trained me. He stood looking at the house of cards from a distance. He asked me, “What does this house symbolize?”
Tired, I wanted to respond by saying, “I don’t know.” But I didn’t want to fail or cause this session to drag on. So I thought about it instead.
“Effort,” I responded.
“Okay,” he said, seeming to want me to use more words in my explanation.
“Discipline,” I added.
“I see,” he said apparently not satisfied yet.
“Patience and respect,” I tried to add more words to my tired explanation. He just grunted instead of using any words to let me know if I had gotten it right.
“Hard work takes carefu
l effort,” I said.
“It could be,” he said moving towards the table to take a closer look.
As he got to the table, his leg bumped the edge and the whole two thousand card house collapsed.
He turned to me and said, “The house symbolizes your reputation. It takes forever to build a good one. It takes a second to blow it all away.”
35
MY HEART
On the train, I wondered if Allah only talked to me. Or was Allah speaking to every man, planting thoughts and requirements and boundaries inside of his heart and head? If he was talking to every man, how come there was no evidence of this fact in each man’s actions? If Allah was speaking only to me, or even only to a handful of men, why was I, and the few of them, if they existed, chosen to be and do so much more than the others? Why was Allah’s standard so high?
Maybe I was bugging, light-headed because I was hungry.
After a pizza slice, I arrived at City Hall, the building with what seemed like hundreds of offices. There was someone in charge of every question anyone could ever ask. I just had to figure out how to get one of the workers there to listen first, give me a straight answer second, and get up off of their asses to do what they get paid to do, third.
I collected the one hundred questions Umma and I would need to study to accomplish receiving our citizenship papers. Since we had already completed every other part of the process and had lived in the country the required amount of time, we could come down to City Hall on any Monday or Wednesday with our green cards and paperwork, get on line, and get this entire process finished by answering some questions correctly and reciting some shit that we needed to memorize. Then we would be citizens of the United States.
I finished up early so I headed over to Akemi’s family store instead. She was outside standing under the canopy, selling their accessories.
Akemi smiled. She was back to wearing her jeans and kicks, standing much shorter than when she rocked her heels. She wore a turquoise colored top and a matching turquoise sweater.
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