Midnight and the Meaning of Love

by Souljah, Sister

  I figured the shoes wouldn’t lie to me. Using my penlight, I beamed on the first pair of shoes. It was a men’s pair labeled REGAL. I believed it was a custom-made shoe. There was a second label stitched inside embossed in kanji. I assumed it was Nakamura’s name in kanji letters, their version of a monogram. I’d say the soft leather shoe with the streamlined design and careful stitching was valued at about a thousand American dollars. Obviously they were the shoes that Naoko Nakamura had just eased his feet out of. A cheap pair of black, women’s work shoes. A cheap pair of white, well-worn, clean women’s work shoes. A pair of expensive pink pumps. I moved my light back and forth over those. They were expensive, but not expensive enough to be Akemi’s. Who could these belong to? Then I focused on the black-leather spring Gucci boots, so lovely they got my blood boiling. The bottoms were designed like sandals, but the rings of thick black leather curled around all the way beyond the ankle and up the calves. Imagining my wife’s pretty legs in them moved me. And I knew she had to have dropped at least two thousand American on those. Then there were the men’s high-top Converses seated beside them, a crime in and of itself. Who the fuck wore those? The gardener, I answered myself, trying to calm, calm all the way down.

  With five pairs of shoes counted, the risk in this caper heightened. There was no way to tell where each of the people in the house who owned these shoes slept, or even if they were actually inside or not. I stood thinking quietly. I opened my Jansport, pulled out Akemi’s hundred-thousand-yen heels and switched them with her Guccis. I knew that if she saw the shoes that she had worn in New York with me to a wedding Umma and I had worked at, she would be 100 percent sure that I was here in Tokyo. Further, once she discovered that her Guccis were gone, she would know that I switched them. The Japanese don’t steal, right? So who else could’ve taken them? For now, alerting her that I was here, in Tokyo, would have to be enough for me. I had brought along the perfect clue.

  Angry and tight, I threw my Jansport on my back and walked away along the west side of the house. On the fourth floor, the yellow light still beamed. It was the same color of light that lit up the basement at Cho’s where Akemi and I, newlyweds, first made love. It was the only light on the fourth floor that was on. Looking at it caused me to break my stride and to pause to think for a second. Then my legs started moving again.

  Inside of me, I began to feel more like an animal than a man. An angry animal, a hungry animal, and that fury worked its way through my chest. I left back out through the slot in the bushes. Like a tightrope walker I walked the wall off Naoko’s property and onto his neighbor’s side. I leaped up onto the same tree, the tree of the blessing, and climbed the branch like a gymnast on the parallel bars. I swung my feet up and reached a sturdier branch and used it. I kept climbing until I saw a way down. Then I dropped from the tree onto the neighbor’s barren roof. I sprinted across and jumped twelve feet to land back onto Naoko’s property—the rooftop. A black leopard can climb trees. In a tussel with the mighty lion, we are swift enough to snatch his meal and maneuver up to the high branches, leaving him below with no options but to watch and roar.

  Blood pumping, swiftly I checked it all out. There was a strange bubble in the center of the roof, but I didn’t move toward it. A tilted white tent in one corner began to worry me. Was someone inside? Would Nakamura be strategic enough to station security on the roof? Nah, not likely. If so, how could he sleep through the thump of my jump over here and be considered a real professional security man? I did not approach it, though. Instead I looked over the top and down into the backyard and dropped down onto the terrace, the one positioned next door to the window on the west side with the yellow light.

  The darkened window was halfway open; I moved the glass slowly to the left and peered beyond the thin, sheer curtain. There were two girls asleep in one queen-sized bed. The one closest to the window, where I was, was not Akemi. But the one wrapped in the colorful silk robe was. My pulse picked up and began racing, even though I held my perch stiff as a statue. I didn’t have to worry about anyone seeing me from the street as I squatted on the terrace. I already knew that the wall, the bushes, and the tree shielded all views. Still, I didn’t want to linger long. Yet how would I get her attention without arousing the other girl? Forty-five seconds and an idea formed. I remembered how she and I slept in my single bed in my Brooklyn bedroom. She used to think that my body was warm, and she would wrap her leg around me as she slept, her face on my chest, her hand on my balls, her hair brushing against my chin. We breathed together. When I shifted, she glued herself to my back and eased her arm through my arm, her fingertips brushing lightly against my stomach. Akemi, vibing so hard on me, that when I would awaken, she awoke a second after as though she could feel and measure my breathing as she slept. As though she had one pinky finger on my eyelids as we slept to alert her about when I awakened, but she did not, she was just full of feelings—my feelings, her feelings—whether she was sleeping or awake. I guess I could call her a “light sleeper.” I was hoping so. And I could hear the subtle snore of the girl closest to me.

  I pulled out the bottle of Sudanese perfume that I had wrapped in a white washcloth in my backpack. It was the scent that Umma had made and blended only for Akemi and gifted to her at our Walima. I poured a little on my clean white washcloth and tossed it over toward Akemi’s pillow. A powerful potion, the scent filled up the room. It was the same scent that had disguised the natural aroma of our love-making.

  Seconds passed and she shifted her body, her robe falling open. More seconds and she lifted her head. A few more seconds and she sat up. I could hear the scent racing up her nostrils as she inhaled. But she was still.

  Suddenly she pulled her legs around and slipped her feet into her slippers. Slowly she stood. She walked out of the room and into the hall. My only thought was that she went to the ladies’ room. I removed my wool cap and my gloves. I stuffed them in my back pocket. I removed my Jansport and took off my jacket, turning it inside out, and laid it on the floor of the terrace. While hearing her urine trickle softly, slowly, I crouched and waited, balancing my weight on my toes. The faucet sent water gushing down, the rhythm broken only by her fingers washing her fingers, one hand to the other. Her footsteps were completely silent. She reappeared in the bedroom without notice. Her well-curved Asian artist’s eyes peered through the darkness with only a dim moonlight to highlight my silhouette. She stood still, staring. Then she closed her eyes. She reopened them and concentrated. Seconds later, her eyes filled with tears. I didn’t move, didn’t say nothing. Her tears spilled to the floor. She walked toward me slowly, silently, and when she reached me, she punched me in the chest with two limp fists and then laid her head there. I wrapped my arms around her and held her tightly, feeling her figure, five pounds lighter than usual. Her body heated up inside mine and her silent tears soaked through my T-shirt. I knew she wanted to say that I had made her wait too long, but it had been seven thousand miles of separation and it was only with Allah’s grace and my father’s diamonds and advice that I was able to embrace her now.

  I had missed her so much, both my heart and my body ached. Surviving that feeling was only possible by ignoring it. Picking her up into me and standing, I eased both of us outside and onto the terrace. I leaned against the terrace and she leaned against me, pressing her body against mine. Easing her hands beneath my T-shirt, she was feeling me all over, slowly causing me to feel so aroused that all thought and caution disappeared and nothing but emotion and touching remained. I moved my hands beyond the silk of her lovely robe and rested them on her butt, and went down further, feeling the skin on the back of her thighs. Her breathing picked up, and now her slim fingers were easing up my arm and her nipples were poking out through the silk and pressing against my chest. She caressed my muscles and eased to my shoulders and with her perceptive fingertips paused and felt my stitched-up shoulder wound. She inhaled in surprise and withdrew her body from mine by a few inches. Her eyes looked into mine to question w
hat she had felt. I removed my T-shirt to show her and lowered my shoulder to her eye level. She touched it again and looked as though to ask me, Does it hurt? I shook my head no. She licked my wound and pulled the loose stitches out with her teeth. She sucked her tongue as though she enjoyed the taste of it. She touched my fingertips and pulled my hand slightly to show me she wanted us to go back inside.

  She is my wife. During Ramadan, I could go into her only at night. The sun was down and had not signaled a desire to rise yet. Of course, I wanted to follow her, had a strong feeling to push inside her. After only one week of separation from her sweetness, I knew that I couldn’t risk going into her now, she being balm to my heart and comfort to my soul and pure joy to my physical, perhaps the mother to my seed, daughter to my Umma, sister to my sister. If I followed her inside only to have her yanked, ripped, stolen away from me once again, then what? Or maybe she would walk away from me out of some exaggerated loyalty to her father. That would be too much. To open my heart freely without any hesitation, I needed to be sure, as sure as I am that when my head leaves a room, my body comes along with it unquestionably—willingly, automatically, because they belong together. So I asked her the question that had began as a lurking thought eight days ago. I had suppressed it at first, yet the thought kept revisiting me, so much so that I had looked it up and translated it into Japanese for this exact moment.

  “Erabete Ottosan matawa otto, Tokyo matawa New York,” I said slowly. It meant, “Choose father or husband, Tokyo or New York.” Her eyes revealed great surprise at my using her language. She began to whisper to me in return in full, relaxed, fluent Japanese.

  I stared at her, saying nothing and with no response. She paused, her Japanese words growing softer and softer until they were no more. She smiled a bright wide smile, knowing that she was teasing me using her native tongue so sweetly, so seductive is her smile and her use of her language. I had to restrain my own passion, remain solid and say solemnly again, “Erabete! Choose.”

  She lowered her head and then her eyes. Then she raised them back up slowly. “Mayonaka New York City hai!” she said warmly, with no sign of doubt or regret.

  “Today, we meet today at Roppongi station at two,” I told her in English and then in Japanese.

  “Akemi and Mayonaka, two, hai!” she repeated.

  “Yakusoku, promise?” I asked her.

  “Hai! Yakusoku,” she said, meaning, “Yes, I promise.”

  I picked up my knapsack from the terrace floor. I unzipped it and pulled out the book that had been weighing on my mind. It was a gift that I had promised her in our marriage contract, a Holy Quran, written entirely in the Japanese language. I wanted her to understand that I was a serious man, with a serious faith, and that as my wife she and I had to grow together in many ways. It was not okay to me for us to be in different countries growing apart instead of together. It was not okay to me for her to be surrounded by other men, even her father, in place of me. We needed to become of one similar mind and way. Our lovemaking was explosive already and fresh in my memory, in my body, and in my groin. I knew I could have her whole body tingling with powerful movement and pure pleasure. I knew I could make her cum so hard her legs collapsed. That was only seconds away …

  Yet I had to show her that I was more than the “most powerful feeling that she has ever felt.” I am a true believer who would love her forever, protect her with my own life, exchange my life for hers, and disconnect her father’s head from his neck if he ever again interrupted my peace, kidnapped my wife, or threatened my seed to come. She needed to learn the meaning of Ramadan and the mercy it brought alive in the Muslim heart. Because it is this mercy which shielded me from charging down two flights and slaying him in his own home after making sweet love to his cherished daughter, my wife.

  She moved her pretty fingers across the dark-blue, hardcover, engraved Holy Quran. She opened it. She read in Japanese the first page, the first few lines. The sura is called “The Opening” in English. I loved the sound of her speaking. Although it was new to her, she read the lines with feeling. I knew the words in Arabic by heart, so even though I didn’t know them in Japanese, I could still feel their meaning.

  She looked up to me and closed the cover. “Arigato gozaimashta.” She bowed all the way down to me, head toward the floor. I lifted her up until she was standing once again. In this moment I didn’t want to mix it up. She should love me intensely and treat me with great respect. We should serve one another loyally, and fight and struggle through any troubles side by side. Yet she should worship only Allah and so should I. If we both did that, our love would in turn be unbreakable.

  She ducked down to enter back through the window and said only, “Please.” Her robe was lying on each side of her leg, revealing the flesh inside her thighs. The moonlight shone on her pretty toes, still soft and beautiful, still pedicured light lavender with a thin line in dark purple around each border. I stuffed my T-shirt in my Jansport and threw my sweat jacket back on.

  Of course I followed her in. She laid the Quran on her desk silently and walked the eight steps past her sleeping friend or relative. Then we walked down a dark corridor. She stepped into a washroom but did not turn on the light. After moving around a bit and running the water some, she came out.

  I could smell the alcohol that she used to carefully wipe my shoulder where the stitches had been. Then with a hot cloth she wiped my face and then my hands lovingly. She stepped back into the washroom again and came out linking her fingers onto my fingers and walking ahead of me into a closet.

  She closed the door behind us and we were in a tight, empty space facing one another. I looked up, only to see the sky. She turned around and placed her hands into the wall and began climbing upwards. Following her, I placed my hands into the indentations also, thinking what a clever design, a ladder made by pockets in the otherwise wooden wall. You place your foot in the lower pocket and your hand in the middle pockets and climb, a pattern that went all the way up until your head hit the top. At the top she pressed a button. A sound like hydraulics on a car lifted the skylight lid. She crawled through and immediately turned to check me, her face so sweet and gentle, and her hair falling onto my hand, which was gripping the last pocket.

  We chilled on the rooftop, completely absorbed with one another, asses on the ground of the roof and backs leaning against the short wall. She knew me well, felt what I felt, and sensed that I would feel more at ease not lying in a bed inside her father’s house, our naked bodies sprawled across the mattress deep in the deepest love. Me, lost in the sweetest pussy, first a target, then a dead man caught off guard at my most vulnerable point.

  The surface of the roof was cold. It must have been sizzling when yesterday’s sun was at its peak. For some few minutes we wasn’t saying shit. Our silence was seduction to me. Talking is sometimes overrated. On a Coltrane cut, called “My Favorite Things,” my father’s choice, the instruments spoke without words or a songstress to interpret or suffocate his horns with the weight of lyrics. Our situation was like those sounds and melodies.

  I pulled her bad-ass Gucci sandal boots out of my Jansport and returned them to her. She looked at me curiously and then laughed a quiet laugh. She slid her little feet into those sandals, lifted one leg to show it off to me, and stood up suddenly. She hiked up her silk robe to show me her style. I was her mesmerized viewer as she danced around slowly. Taking turns kicking each of her legs up high with great grace and ease, she struck a pose. Her body was curved, one hand holding her foot up in the air like a phenomenal flamingo. Instead of applauding, I leaped up and grabbed her around her waist, swinging her around and down gently. Her robe opened completely and her skin glowed in the softened moonlight. She licked my lips once like she was licking an ice cream cone that she really enjoyed, then wiggled loose and began crawling away from me. So nervous that I might not be following her, she would crawl some and look back at me, her eyes shining like a cat’s and not worried about scraping up her pretty knees or s
hoes or nothing. As she crept inside the tilted tent, I caught her ankle and pulled it lightly. I released it easily, knowing that she liked to make love in strange places.

  Facedown and me right behind her, she pushed a tiny switch on a strange little lamp inside a clear jar. As she lay on her side to face me, I reached over and pulled one of the brushes down from her easel. The lamp sent white polka dots swirling around the dark tent. I smiled at her sweet craziness. She smiled, believing, I guess, that I liked her little light. Slowly I began stroking her with the brush, beginning with her face. Her good feeling was revealed as her lips parted with excitement. Her eyes were filled with passion, love for me, and mystery. As I stroked down, her skin was soon covered with tiny goose pimples and her nipples were fully extended. As I tickled her silky hairs below, she inhaled and whispered only one word, “Please.” I ignored her purposely, brushing the inside of her thighs and over her kneecaps and on to her calves. She placed her pretty hand over her pussy and asked me again, “Please, Mayonaka.”

  I don’t know which set of her lips was sweeter. I kissed her mouth gently and naturally the kiss grew more powerful, me sucking her tongue. Akemi licking my neck. Me sucking her neck and her becoming so excited that she snatched my hand and placed it on her pussy, pressing her fingers over mine so I would press her clitoris. One of her legs was cocked up, the weight of her little foot in her pretty sandals resting on her toes.

  I pulled my mouth away from hers and moved it down between her thighs where she wanted it. With my tongue I stroked her clitoris softly and her body wiggled with pure pleasure. As I swirled my tongue around, she began to moan and purr, her whole body beating, pulsating like a heart. And as she came, so did a slight rainfall, more like a mist. She threw her hand back over her head as her wriggling body was calming.