Midnight and the Meaning of Love

by Sister Souljah

  “I’m checking out of here,” I told her.

  “Why?” she asked.

  “This place has no lock on the bedroom doors. When I come and go, my luggage isn’t secure. You walked right in here, so you know what I’m talking about.”

  “You don’t need to leave here,” she said casually. “We Japanese don’t steal.”

  I let off half a laugh. “Nobody Japanese steals?” I repeated, to let her hear how ridiculous she sounded to me.

  “Seriously, I know. I grew up on an American military base. All kinds of stuff got stolen all the time. Eventually, they even had to install cameras in certain areas. But outside of the base, on Japanese territory, no one Japanese steals. I can leave my bicycle or motorcycle or anything, no matter the value. No one Japanese will take it. I promise you. It’s the Japanese way!”

  “I thought you said that you grew up in Tokyo,” I checked her.

  “I did. My mom lives here in Tokyo, and she and my dad had a house on the Yokota Air Base about forty-five minutes from here. Even though the American military bases are located here in Japan, inside the base is considered to be America. So I grew up both ways. That’s why I can speak both languages fluently, no problem.”

  “So are there a lot of Americans living here?” I asked.

  “Not really. The American military personnel and their families never leave the base except when traveling to the airport coming and going. They have their own little world going on in there, plus everything that they think they need. But when we lived there, I left the base every day. Besides, my Japanese family lives in the real Japan.”

  I reached into my pocket and pulled out a small stack of bills. I counted out thirty thousand yen and handed it over to her. She took it easily as though she had expected her pitch to work all along. Immediately she handed me one thousand back. She was giving me my change and at the same time proving both of her points—no stealing, no tips.

  She bowed down completely and eased up, singing, “Arigato, gozaimasu!” I understood that it was her culture to do so, but I said to her, “Don’t do that anymore.”

  She looked at me curiously.

  “You can do it, just don’t do it to me,” I corrected myself.

  “Wakarimashta,” she said, meaning she understood. But I knew she didn’t.

  A woman bowing before me is erotic. When my wife does it, it gets me crazy. But I didn’t want each female I met out here doing it to me. I needed help keeping everything in perspective.

  “Get me a Tokyo phone book from the front desk. They should have one, right?”

  “Business or personal?” she asked swiftly.

  “Personal,” I responded after a pause. She was up and out. Not even three minutes passed before she showed up with a massive book in her hand.

  “Twenty-seven million people in Tokyo. Who do you want to look up?” She was ready.

  “Iwa Ikeda,” I told her. She sat on my bed and opened it up. She moved her fingers across the pages, swiftly scanning the extra-small-sized kanji.

  “I counted about four pages of people last name Ikeda, that’s about four hundred families. But there’s no Iwa. Maybe she’s listed under her husband or father’s name. That would be normal. Do you know it?” She lifted her eyes from the pages to peer at me curiously.

  “Nah, but I have her phone number,” I answered.

  “What?” she followed up.

  “I’m looking for her address. I already have her phone number,” I explained.

  Chiasa stood. Staring, she said, “So why not call her, and ask her where she lives?”

  I pulled Iwa’s phone number from my back pocket and handed it over. Chiasa sat back down and tried to match the phone number to one of the numbers listed in the book. If it matched, she would discover the address printed beside it. I liked that she had a quick mind.

  “Her number is not listed. Her family probably has money,” she said nonchalantly. “Those are the types that would pay extra to keep their information out of the phone book. It’s not usual though.”

  “Do you want to kidnap her?” she asked, too casually. “That costs extra.” She smiled slightly.

  “Nah, I don’t kidnap. If a woman doesn’t belong to me, I don’t touch her,” I assured.

  “What next?”

  “Ginza,” I told her. “I gotta get to Ginza to check something out.”

  “You know Ginza is high-end? Whatever you are buying from there, I can take you somewhere else to get it or something close to it for much, much less.”

  “Nah, I’m not going shopping.” I pulled the address out of my pocket and handed it to her. She held it with both hands and studied it like it was a riddle. She handed the paper back to me and said casually, “That’s easy.”

  “I gotta move out of here first. I gotta move my luggage to a place where I can lock it up,” I told her as I began repacking the few items that I had left out of my duffel.

  “I see you don’t trust anyone,” she said. “My aunt Tasha says that a person who cannot trust anyone always ends up trusting the wrong people.”

  I thought about her statement. It seemed like a tricky phrase that someone who wanted to be trusted made up for their own advantage. I moved it out of my mind and finished packing.

  “Do you have a camera?” Chiasa asked out of the blue.

  “Why?”

  “Because what type of tourist wouldn’t have a camera?” she asked.

  “I don’t need it for now.”

  “Bring it. It’s better to have something useful then to not have it.” She smiled.

  I pulled the movie camera out of my bag. I paused for a second, then looked up at Chiasa and thought, This female is a sharp one. She had probably searched my bag already when she was in my room uninvited and alone. She asked me if I had a camera, but I was guessing that she already knew the answer and was on to the next stage of her plan, whatever that was. But I had too much on my mind to try and figure her out. In one hour she had been more useful than anyone or anything else.

  * * *

  As we left the room, I noticed Chiasa’s jacket lying on my bed. “You forgot your jacket,” I told her, after forcing her to understand that she could not carry even one of my bags.

  She answered, “I’m leaving my jacket here.”

  “Why? I’m not coming back here,” I told her.

  “I just want to show you something,” she said, “you’ll see.”

  We walked out, leaving her jacket behind. She returned the phone book to the front desk as we exited. Outside the hostel and into the warmth, I saw her put something small on top of the cement post beside the hostel door.

  I looked up into a white sky and crimson sun.

  “I know, our sun is really bright, right?” she asked. I didn’t answer her, though my eyes were squinted enough for her to already know what I thought.

  “Here in Tokyo, the sun rises real early, but it also sets real early. But I don’t live my life by the sun. I’ll move around in the daylight or in the moonlight, just the same,” Chiasa said with ease.

  She took some steps out into the street and flagged down a taxi. “Don’t touch the door,” she said suddenly, and the taxi door opened automatically. She leaned in and spoke Japanese to the driver. The trunk opened automatically. I put my luggage inside and shut it. I jumped in the back beside her. We were off.

  “Enjoy the ride,” she said to me, while looking out the window in the opposite direction. “This is the only time that we will take a taxi. It’s too expensive. But since you had to have your luggage …”

  Shinjuku in the early morning daylight was like a fascinating amusement park with its one million still and blinking and blaring lights turned off and its best rides shut down. Now it was just a place where hundreds of people were walking and riding through just as a means to get somewhere else.

  When the wheels of the cleanest, most well-kept taxi that I had ever rode in turned off the main road, Shinjuku easily seemed like a suburb or a vill
age. I saw a Japanese mother of three riding a bicycle with a baby seat in the front and another two seats behind her holding two happy, silent babies chilling. I saw other Japanese women dressed in business skirt suits and moderate-heeled shoes and stockings, carrying pocketbooks, purses, or briefcases in their baskets, watching and weaving through traffic while holding a compact mirror and applying lipstick at the same time.

  We pulled up steep hills and coasted down the slopes of narrow streets and hugged curbs around corners. My eyes were like hungry beasts scanning it all, leery of missing one alley or alcove or outstanding piece of architecture. Everything was so completely new that I neglected using the map I had in my back pocket, not wanting to overlook the real thing while checking for printed data on the paper. I can’t lie. It was a busy yet strangely peaceful place. The men in suits moved in packs, all seeming neither happy nor sad to be headed to work. Laboring men wore stylish jumpsuits—all baggy, nothing tight—and quality work boots. Teens traveled in troops, all moving slow in identical uniforms, boys separate from the girls. Motorcycle riders eased by with little effort in the continuous flow of light traffic. People pimping pamphlets and coupons were setting up their distribution and promotion schemes, offering every walker an invitation to spend money at some place of business.

  Thin girls glided up hills without huffing or puffing. They remained seated and unstressed, pedaling in an unbroken rhythm on their bikes the same as if they were on flat land. Old people were energetic and agile, not swollen like sausages or withered like raisins or defeated with diabetes or crippled by arthritis. Their clothes fit and matched, were clean and pressed.

  Any newcomer could tell that someone somewhere loved the seniors enough to help them maintain. I looked away once to check on Chiasa. She was facing front and sitting quietly. I liked that she was comfortable with silence. I liked that she was smart enough to let me become familiar with my surroundings uninterrupted.

  * * *

  We soon reached a wooded area that was blocked off by a long, heavy chain held up by two metal poles. Chiasa and the driver spoke some in their language. The driver swerved and entered what seemed to be a restricted area that led us into a paradise-like park with trees of every size and height and flowers of every color blossoming and spilling out to the service roads.

  “Where are we?” I questioned her.

  “Home,” Chiasa said calmly. I checked the meter and paid the driver, laying the bills in a rectangular dish that he tapped lightly. There was no bulletproof glass to protect him from me or from being choked or murdered by angry passengers. No little metal slot to drop the money in that you couldn’t snatch back. No divider between the civilized and the suspicious and dangerous public customers like there is in Brooklyn, New York. Wearing his spotless white gloves, he picked up the dish and laid my change back in it with my receipt.

  “Arigato gozaimasu,” he said to me and Chiasa both. My door and the trunk opened simultaneously, automatically.

  “Whose home is this?” I asked.

  “My grandfather’s. I mentioned him to you. Actually he’s a retired park ranger. This is Yoyogi Park. Follow the stone path.”

  I followed her. “Why are we here?” I asked her.

  “You need someplace secure to leave your luggage. That’s what you said. That’s why we are here.”

  “Hold up. You can just take me to a new hostel. I have a list of them in the area.”

  “But you already paid for two nights’ stay at Shinjuku Uchi,” she answered.

  “How would you know?” I asked, a swift reaction.

  “I talked to Jun-san when I arrived at your place this morning. He was working the front desk.”

  I’m not slow, I told myself, but she is speeding. I knew I had to shake off whatever kind of fog my mind was in and watch her moves closely. Like my sensei would say, “You have to make your mind light. If the mind is too heavy, you’ve lost your use of intuition and instinct, which every fighter needs.”

  She led us up to a house and then walked past it. We were entering what I assumed was their yard. But actually the whole park appeared to be their yard, because hers was the only house in the area. I thought about her grandfather, “the park ranger.” Where was he? Does a park ranger carry a gun? I asked myself. “What about your grandfather?”

  “He’s not home.”

  “How do you know?” I followed up.

  “Because his bike isn’t out front. He’s gone somewhere.”

  “How were you going to introduce me to him when you don’t even know my name?” I asked her, and she stopped walking, her back to me. She turned around with a calm and blank face. “I know your name. I told you I was not asleep on the plane. But you told your name to Yuka first. I don’t like her and I refuse to use anything after she has already used it.” Chiasa folded her arms in front of her. “I decided to call you something different, but I have only narrowed it down to three choices so far. I’m still deciding,” she said, as though she could assign me a name.

  I had to smile naturally. “You think you can give me a name? You think it’s that easy?”

  “Since you gave Yuka your fake name, and gave a different name to the Shinjuku hostel, I figured it was that easy.” She stared back at me. I marked the date and location down in my mind; “the first time I ever been checked by a girl.” She turned back around and continued to walk toward two sheds, one made of metal, the other made of brick. She slid her hand into her left front pocket and pulled out some keys. She unlocked a heavy padlock on the brick shed and gently opened it up.

  “You can put your luggage in here. This is my storage and the other is my grandfather’s,” she said. I paused.

  “And since you don’t trust anyone, I know that includes me, so after you put your things inside, I’ll give you the key until you take your stuff back out.” She was dangling the keys between two pretty fingers with clear, unpolished nails. I stepped into her brick shed. She reached her arm past me and flipped on the switch. Now her shed had lights. I was inside as she stood outside, so confident in what she was doing that her back was to me.

  It was a fort of ammunitions. There was a large gun lying against the wall, but I wasn’t familiar with the brand. Then my mind skipped ahead. She wanted me to see all this for a reason, I told myself. “Chiasa,” I called her. She turned and faced me. I pointed out the gun with no words or hands, only my eyes.

  “Just a tranquilizer gun. You know in Japan, we have some wild-life. Seriously, we have bears,” she said with a half smile. “I got it from my grandfather. I borrowed it,” she said casually.

  “Yeah,” I acknowledged. “What about that? I saw you with that at the airport.” I pointed.

  “It’s a kyudo bow.” She turned toward me and stepped in and blocked the only entrance to the shed.

  “Kyudo?” I asked.

  “You know, like a bows and arrows kind of thing.” She positioned her arms and hands as though she were aiming and shooting one. However, the bow in her shed was the largest I had ever seen. She stepped up and unzipped the case, revealing the dynamic weapon. As quickly as she showed it, she zipped it back up.

  * * *

  I put my duffel bag up against the wall, right below some handcuffs that hung on a nail and across from some old nunchucks, also lodged on the wall. Beside several stacked storage boxes were a few pairs of mountain boots of different styles. On a nail were some rain ponchos. On the floor was about thirty feet of coiled colorful climbing rope. In addition to a well-used industrial-sized flashlight, there was a megaphone. When I saw some walkie-talkies, I stepped closer to them. “We can use them,” she said excitedly. The rest of the items Chiasa had in there were all inside cases. There were three long cases made of a thick blue cloth with wicked white kanji painted on. There was only a flap and blue string tying down the tips of the cloth cases.

  Chiasa and her kyudo bow and two arrows.

  “My swords,” Chiasa said. “Old ones.”

  I looked at my watch and
saw that it was 10:15 a.m. “Let’s go,” I told her, stepping forward so that she would step out. I pulled the door closed, noticing that it swung out and in like an American door, instead of sliding sideways. I padlocked it and dropped the key into my pocket.

  “My father built that for me. My grandfather’s metal shed was always here. But when I came here to stay with him, my father built this one.” She was speaking softly, more like she was talking to herself or moving with a memory. I remained silent, deciding right then and there that she was the first gift of Ramadan on the first day of the fast. She was my sentinel, which Sensei said every ninja on a mission should have.

  When we reached the front of her house, she said, “Chotto matte.” She bent down and removed her kicks and placed them together on the corner of the step. She entered her house, leaving me standing outside. I liked that she didn’t ask me inside while her grandfather was not home.

  But I didn’t like her clothing change. Chiasa emerged wearing a dark blue miniskirt, a light blue blouse, and socks, and carrying penny loafers.

  “Why the change?” I asked.

  “Everybody knows that a girl in a school uniform can get anything she wants in Japan. So you should just look at this as my costume. You’ll see,” she said, without flirtation. As she kneeled to put on her shoes, I felt uneasy. She had a book bag, the strap resting on one shoulder and pressing across her breast and down to her opposite hip, where the bag rode. She had a second strap crisscrossing the same way. She pulled it off and over her head and handed it to me. She opened her book bag and pulled out a box.

  “Welcome to Japan,” she said, handing me the items. The army green canteen was filled with liquid. I opened the box. It was filled with perfectly sliced and neatly arranged fruits. “You must be hungry. You didn’t eat,” she said, smiling.