Midnight

by Odie Hawkins

  “You lyin’ to me, Bop, you tellin’ me a motherfuckin’ lie ’n you know it! You gonna git over there ’n start fuckin’ them Afric-co women ’n forget all about me.…”

  “Bap? Bap? Bap?!”

  “Huh? Oh.…”

  “Are you asleep?”

  “Nawww, just layin’ here thinkin’.”

  “About what?”

  “Ohh, I don’t know …, about life, about people, different stuff.”

  A rooster crowed somewhere, a double-jointed voice called out to another double-jointed voice.

  “You think a lot, don’t you?”

  “Don’t everybody?”

  They were silent for a few moments, listening to a distant music.

  “Baap?”

  God what a beautiful sound that makes when she says it.

  “Huhnnn?”

  “The other night when I said … no big thing, I didn’t really mean—no big thing.”

  He pulled her into his arms and squeezed her gently.

  “I know you didn’t mean it, baby. I know you didn’t.”

  He had designated Thursday as letter-writing day and started in at 8:15 A.M.

  “Chester L. Simmons, my brother, my brother, my brother …, your letter from the Romanian joint was asskicker.”

  He carefully studied Chester’s envelope to make certain he was spelling Romania correctly.

  “Romania don’t even sound real to me; it sounds like one of those old funky comic countries that you see on late night TV, where all the people are in uniforms and singin’ ’n shit.”

  He paused, completely blank. What the hell do you say to a brother in jail in Romania? Where in the fuck is this place anyway? Something seemed to unlock after the first stuttering page, like he had stepped through a door and all the right words were waiting for him.

  “I know that my Africa is different from your Africa, from what you told me. I didn’t meet no kings and queens, but I did meet a beautiful young sister of Cocrobity who was the Ampoty of Ohenna or something like that. I think we would’ve really hit it off if it hadn’t been for her momma. It’s been a trip on the lady side, Chester, a real trip. I think I’ve seen as many beautiful black women in the last month to last me a lifetime.

  “Yeah, I hooked up with a couple and I may have HIV from one of them, but I’m goin’ to check myself out as soon as we land. I never knew that African women was so fresh, you know what I mean? But hey, you told me about that, you told me how I could get some leg when I couldn’t get no food. Remember?

  “Talking about food, OK? I don’t feel too into Ghana food. Seems like most of the shit is put in a bowl with this fufu and you scoop it out with your right hand. I kind of dug omo tuo. It’s got a lot of them down-home flavors in it. They eat a lot of white bread here too, big chunks of it. The smoked fish looks ugly as hell but it ain’t too bad with a cold brew. So much for food.

  “Except for Cocrobity I really didn’t get around a whole lot. Accra is cool, in places, but I don’t think I would want to live in Accra. With these open drains I could just see me running down the street and breaking my leg. Somebody ought to do something about the drains.

  “Let me tell you something. Yeah, it can do things on your head to realize yourself in a black country run by black people. Like you used (but they have a lot of foreigners here too) to say “travel is broadening.”

  “Check this out; I went to a reception at the American ambassador’s pad. They was bringing in a new man and they invited Fred and Helene, which wasn’t here, so I went instead. I was clean as a broke dick dog—African outfit, eggshell blue with silver pin-stripes. Lots of phoney bullshit talk, lots of phoney-ass types. You know what I mean. But the thang was that I was on the scene, me, Clyde Johnson from the ’hood.

  “I think I must of freaked a few people out. It was kind of nice in a way, like hey I had never been to the ambassador’s pad at home, OK? Lots of different types of people. Europeans from Europe, Chinese, Japanese, English people, even Koreans.”

  He paused to stare at the word he’d written—“Koreans”—and flashed on the painful experiences he and his people were having with this particular group of people in South Central Los Angeles.

  “The Koreans here don’t seem like the ones we know; they seem more like Chinese. Flash! No drugs. Yeah, ain’t that a trip? No drugs. Don’t get me wrong; there is some herb you know, but no rocks, no heroin or ice that I could spot. I know it’s some drugs here, but it ain’t like the states, OK?”

  He carefully placed the ballpoint on the table beside his writing pad and flexed his right hand a few times. Writing was hard work, and he hadn’t done a lot of it in his time. He glanced at the little quarter clock—10:12 A.M. Damn I been writing for two fuckin’ hours. He picked the pen up for a few more paragraphs, but racism triggered another whole page.

  “What do you feel when you don’t feel like some white boy is goin’ to pull the rug out from under your feet? You feel better, that’s what. You know, I was here about a week before I realized something. I realized that I hadn’t saw a squad car, I hadn’t seen nobody get jacked up, and I had only seen maybe ten white people. For the first time in my young life I was not feeling like somebody white was goin’ to be fuckin with me.

  “Lemme tell you a story. There was this woman selling fried yams at the corner, OK? And I bought some and she tried to cheat me. At first I had this weird feeling, you know, like hey, why would she try to cheat me? I couldn’t say ’cause she’s different from me, the thang is that I’m a rich Americano and ’cause I got mo’ money she’s goin’ to try to cheat.

  “I tripped on that—me a rich Americano! But like, hey, to her I am. It made me think about how po’ I used to be in the states ’til I got my thang together. No, Chester, my brother, I’m not doin’ that any mo’, I give it up. I took your advice and decided it was wrong. I don’t want to go into all the steamy details but you know what I mean. I took the money and run.

  “That’s what took me here. I told my Uncle and Aunt I was goin’ to journalism when I return. Think I could be a journalism writer. Hey, I could be anything I want, OK? I went to the Motherland, didn’t I?

  “I’m goin’ back tomorrow, Friday. Write and let me know what you need. The address for my Uncle is my address. I’ll be moving from them when I get back, but that’s it for now.

  “Chester, be cool, later, Bop from the Bricks.”

  No television worth talking about, a bunch of funny named newspapers, nothing he could really focus on. It was all gin and licentious behavior.

  “Bop, you must not think badly of me; I do not come to every man who calls me.”

  “I know you don’t, Patience baby, I know you don’t.” There, in that adobe room with the tin-can roof, listening to the rain and minutes later, the sensual croaking of frogs. They made love silently, slowly. Periodically, unexpectedly, she would gently pull his dick out of her pussy, swab her pussy with a powdered rag, and re-chart the motions. He was stunned the first time she did it.

  “Uhh, Patience, what’s happenin’?”

  “Beg you pardon?”

  “That’s OK, forget it.”

  One rainy night, after they had lusted each other to sleep, he eased out of her slave cabin (“boys quarters”), leaving ten thousand cedis in her limp fist.

  “Why, Gbop? Why?”

  “’Cause I want to, that’s why.” What the hell was ten thousand cedis, about fifteen dollars or something?

  Elena Boateng didn’t need money; she needed sex and she addressed him to her urge.

  “Bap, we should make love more often.”

  “Huh?”

  “Well, you’re leaving and then who will I have to make love with?”

  Damn girl, what’re you, a nympho or something?

  “I hear you, baby, I hear you.”

  The ceiling fans took him off completely, drenched him in softly swirling dreams, never nightmares, always dreams. One soft drenched night, he stared at the ceiling fan un
til he became hypnotized or the dreams came. He couldn’t tell one from the other. Midnight in Accra, the helicopters floating above his head made him think of crazy bees. Where are the police? Where is Uncle David and Aunt Lu? Yeahhh, there they are, floating above the helicopter, munching on fried chicken.

  Color television made everything seem like funny papers, the funny papers, the Watts Riots of 1992. He settled back into his feathery chair, sipping Beck’s and staring at the funny papers. Color television made everything seem like funnies. The liquor store on the northwest corner of the intersection was being looted. It looked funny on color TV.

  Torrance, California. The brilliant sunshine flooded his dream, cast shadows on different places in his mind.… The low stand of mint next to the cactus was a deep green (he had dried some and mixed it with his marijuana a few times), the figs were ripe, the tangerines and oranges were sweetening on the trees. It was a sunny day.

  The dinner popped up like a playing card. He was sitting there (was it New Mexico or Mescalero, Mexico?) with six Native American men, eating small, delicately filigreed pancakes. The pancakes were good, but that wasn’t the spice of the dream; the spice was the pancake syrup. There was something about the syrup that got him high with each bite.

  “Hey, y’all what is this?”

  “This is Indian food, shut up ’n eat.”

  “Twenty-one years old and you ain’t done shit with your life but fuck it up.…”

  “Dave, don’t talk to the boy like that, he.…”

  “It’s OK, Aunt Lu; he’s right. I need to hear this. Go ’head, Unc, tell it like it is.”

  The prop wash from the fan back-flushed a wake of warm air over his body, made him shiver deliriously.

  “Bop, couple thangs you got to understand. Most people are just milling around like sheep, waiting for someone to lead them somewhere. They’re natural followers, most people.”

  “Awww c’mon, Chester, I don’t believe that.”

  How long was a dream supposed to last?

  “Ain’t no tellin’; there’s a dude in cell block E who says he’s been dreaming continuously for the past three years, dreamin’ con-tinously.…”

  Aunt Lulu, Uncle David, dream people. They flicked deserted chicken bones down onto/into his dream, scattering simple logic with barbecue bones.

  “If you want to get somewhere or do something, the first thing you have to do is git up off your ass and move!”

  The smell of food invaded his dream. “Eat Succotash.” Catfish dinners. Chester L. Simmons and his nutritional lectures.

  “Now just look at these idiots, Bop; they’re pumping iron like it’s going outta style. Look at BoBo over there, got muscles between his thumbs and forefingers, but he’ll probably drop dead from a heart attack, eating all the grease he eats. I’ve seen the fool smear lard on white bread.”

  “Chester, what’s this big thing you got with food, man? A hamburger is a fuckin’ hamburger!”

  “That’s what you think, youngblood; pull some of that ghetto snot out of your ears ’n listen up. I got a little-brother-place in my heart for you ’cause I don’t really mink you’re dumb as the rest of these funky chumps.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “It means that I don’t think you want to spend most of your life in the slams.”

  “Like you?”

  “Yeahhh, be cruel, youngblood, if you wanna be, yeahhh, like me.”

  “Sorry, man, I didn’t mean.…”

  “Hey, ain’t no thang.”

  “OK, go ’head, rap to me.”

  Daily, with practically nothing to do but talk and pump a little iron, Chester rapped/lectured and Bop began to listen.

  “Most of the brothers and the Mexicans up in here is half crazy from the shit they’ve been loading their systems up with for years. I don’t feel qualified to talk too much about our Latino friends, but I know what we been eatin’ since 1619 is fuuuucccked up.”

  The prop wash sweltered, back spun, crystallized.…

  Chester L. Simmons, ex-con man, ex-pimp, ex-ex-ex, managed to convince Clyde Johnson, aka “Bop Daddy,” that there was a racist plot behind the pushing of sugar, grease, drugs, and assorted chemicals into the African-American communities across the United States.

  “What’s this shit with ‘fast foods’ in our communities?! It’s like we don’t have time to sit down ’n eat. Most of us ain’t got nothin’ but time; we ain’t got no jobs to rush to. Isn’t that interesting? The white boy is dead on the go, phone in the car, phone on the field, ready to go, but you don’t see him grabbing those killer burgers and loading up on junk food.

  “We spend the same money he spends, buying synthetic shit that don’t do nothing but make you have a cravin’.… Check it out, youngblood. Put enough sugar in your tank and it won’t run. You’ll think it’s running, but that’s just an illusion.

  My mother, my father, all of the sweet people in my life—you dirty rotten son of a bitch! I hate you Chester—I love you Chester—I hate you.… Godammit!

  “Everything they push in our communities—Afro-African, Afro-Cuban, Afro-Indo-German, Brazilian, Colombian, you get the point. You got to, it’s a dream, OK?

  “Everything they push in our communities is sweet. I think it’s a clever way to get us to swallow some of the bitterest shit the world has ever known. I had a couple funky chumps try to lay some sweet gin on me. You believe that?”

  Why does my head ache the way it does sometimes? It’s not a migraine thing; I checked that out. Why must I creep from place to place? No, the dreams don’t seem to bear tall standing; I must lower myself. Chester mastered the dream in three of my minds.…

  “Hey, I ain’t got nothin’ against eatin’ meat. It’s what you’re eating in the meat that fucks me up. There’s got to be some pretty powerful chemical they’re using to blow a damn cow up to edible size in four months. Or is it three?

  “And, hey, don’t get me wrong, I’m not one of those funky chumps who believes that vegetables don’t scream ’n cry when we cut and kill them too. It’s just a matter of biology. I’d rather kill a tomato or a carrot, which doesn’t have a heart like mine, or a liver, or a dick, than slaughter a cow.”

  Chester was the man who made him understand that white bread wasn’t really wonderful and that he ought to pay the Motherland a visit.

  Bop felt himself staggering awake, feeling disoriented. Am I really in Africa? No, my dream takes place here, my nightmare somewhere else. That’s for Rodney King, Benny Powell, Clarence Chance, La Tasha Harlins, the racist pre-New Year’s sweeps through the project to arrest the brothers the racist police thought would fire their pistols on New Year’s, for flooding South Central EL-A with “crack,” for making men lie on the ground (their initiation into manhood-humiliation?), for no jobs, for hopelessness, for the secret promotion of gang warfare between the races (within the races) by the Los Angeles Police Department, a fascist government unto itself, for sheer racism.

  The fan ground to a stop, the Ghanaians had had enough. It was time to reflect. Bop laughed out loud.…

  Wowwwwwwwww.…

  7

  He had come to the conclusion that the way the L.A.P.D. allowed the thing to happen was a set-up. Once the fires the down I’m gonna be in Ghana, West Africa, and when the revenge season comes in, I’m gonna be in Ghana, West Africa.

  “What you must understand, Bop, is that most of the funky chumps on most U.S. police departments are regimented cowboys with John Wayne-type mentalities. They may lie about, but they’re really trained to see things in black and/or white, and they relish that training, like Dobermans.”

  “They’re not like the lifers who’re serving time with us in here. They’re hundred-yard-dash men, there for the quick glory. A lot of them think they’re in the Marines, that’s why they say shit like, ‘We’re in the front line against crime.’”

  It was raining again. He was beginning to like the sound of it, and the chorus of strange frogs that made a sound lik
e croaking trombones.

  Patience hipped him to it on his next visit to her quarters. “The frogs sound like frogs. How do they sound in America?”

  “You don’t hear ’em.”

  She found it odd that frogs didn’t croak in his country the way they croaked in her country.

  He sprawled on her mattress on the stone floor, watching her prepare herself for him. She had taken her “baff.”

  “Gbop, have you had your baff?”

  He had never met a cleaner woman in his life. No matter what hour the tyrant she worked for let her off, she took her “baff.”

  The tyrant that she called “Papa” was as close to a slave master as he would ever know.

  “Patience, what’re your hours?”

  “I heat water at 4:30 A.M.”

  “OK, so that’s when you begin. What time does your workday end?”

  Her blank expression said it all. Papa called her with two buzzes of a buzzer inside her room. She was subject to be called at any time.

  He was beginning to love the love-preparation ritual. After the “baff,” a self-body massage with various kinds of oils and creams, a scraping of the heels with a shard of glass, a liberal dusting of the underarms, breasts, and crotch with scented powders.

  “Patience, what do those beads around your hips mean?”

  “All girls have these.”

  “But what do they mean?”

  Hesitant pause.… “Men like to play with them.”

  She sprawled onto the mattress beside him, fragrant, warm, experienced. Her obvious expertise bothered him a bit. He didn’t have a clue as to whether he was “ringing her chimes” or not, but she was certainly ringing him. Their soft foreplay wound into hard lovemaking.

  The buzzer sounded twice and she shook him off her body like a dog shaking water off its coat.

  “Papa!”

  He watched her scurry to pull on a gingham house dress and to knot a kerchief on her head.

  “I’m coming,” she whispered as she scurried out of the door, leaving him literally quivering with anticipation.