Midnight and the Meaning of Love

by Sister Souljah

  Chiasa’s style was unforgiving. When her and Yuka’s raised swords met, she stepped in even closer and thrust Yuka backward. Yuka was propelled by the push but caught herself from falling. She was lighter than Chiasa, although both of them were slim. Yuka danced forward again, her feet moving in a calculated rhythm. She raised her sword to strike Chiasa. Chiasa blocked her sword and moved out of the block faster than Yuka, striking both of Yuka’s wrists in two sharp blows. An elder gasped. Yuka was hurt. One sensei yelled out something in Japanese. Yuka raised her sword again. Her two hands tight on the sword grip, she charged Chiasa, but Chiasa altered her approach and didn’t advance. Chiasa lowered her sword some as Yuka advanced and lunged it into Yuka’s throat, and all the elders stepped in, calling out commands in Japanese. They each raised one hand, which caused the sparring to cease and acknowledged Chiasa had won.

  The match was finished now. The girls still faced one another, holding their form. In a precise movement the girls raised their swords so that they touched. Then they dropped their swords at their waist and both took five steps backward. They both took a deep bow acknowledging each other, both saying, “Arigato gozaimasu.” The politeness seemed important to the Japanese—even in the most heated and hateful exchanges. I was certain that I was not the only one who could feel that the fight between Yuka and Chiasa was more than just a practice or training exercise. It felt intense and personal. It felt deadly.

  Yuka returned to her original position on the floor and Chiasa remained standing. The fellow fighters applauded her now. When the helmets were off and the quiet resumed, Chiasa spoke out some words in Japanese to Yuka. Yuka’s facial expression tightened. The elder spoke some words to Yuka, and it seemed whatever they had been debating was solved. Chiasa bowed again to the elder. Their bowing seemed endless. One bow led to another.

  Soon Chiasa left the room. I stood up from the top bleacher where I was positioned. Yuka’s eyes connected with mine. Her face softened and filled with both surprise and delight. In the one second that it takes for a thought to occur, Yuka snatched back her warm expression and glared at me with the look of having been betrayed. I walked out to meet Chiasa wherever she had gone to. It didn’t matter. I knew from the way they were swinging the swords at each other that I had to choose between them—and of course, easily, I had chosen Chiasa.

  Leaning against the wall opposite the women’s locker room, I waited for her. Twenty minutes passed by before I began to search around. Back in the main dojo, I stuck my head in. She wasn’t there. Yet as all the fighters began to file out to the locker rooms, Yuka was on her knees, a cloth in her hand, wiping the floor. She was cleaning the cleanest and largest dojo floor I had ever seen. The elder who had spoken Japanese to her in a hardened tone was the only adult remaining. I closed the door. I had opened six doors before I located Chiasa behind the seventh. She wore now a black dogi and had donned a red belt, no helmet, no skirt, no sword. My entrance didn’t break her concentration as she fought a girl wearing a black belt. Her sensei stood almost inside the fighting circle as though he was part of the match or maybe he was a caution sign. Their fight ended seconds after my arrival. I wish I had seen it. I sat on an empty bench.

  Just as I believed that she was done for the night, I stood up. As I did, a Japanese youth stood also. He wore a black belt. As I watched, he and Chiasa bowed before one another and struck a stance.

  “Chiasa,” I called her out. The sensei, the fighters, and the guy she was about to fight all shifted their eyes to my direction. Chiasa did not. She kept her eyes on her opponent. Her sensei said something to her. Chiasa answered him back in Japanese. The sensei spoke again and then she spoke again. Her opponent said some words, and then Chiasa said to me, “Come on, are you ready to fight? My opponent has yielded to you.” The sensei watched me intensely, his blank face no longer reading caution. Now he was a green light and behind it was curiosity, anticipation, and fear of the unknown that I could sense and see. I had only called out to Chiasa because I didn’t want her fighting a male fighter. I couldn’t sit by and watch it for sport. Now she wanted to fight me instead of him. No problem, at least I knew I wouldn’t strike or hurt her.

  My army-green Girbauds were loose-fitting enough. My shoes were already off. I approached. We were both supposed to bow. She bowed. We both struck our stances. I recognized her perfect form—yet somehow it was entertainment to me. She showed me that it was not entertainment for her. Serious-faced, she angled left and made the first strike with her right foot followed by her right hand. I blocked both. She pulled back and moved both her feet and her eyes around looking for a suki. I could tell she wanted me to make a move. I didn’t, just watched her, moved my feet around but held my hands in a defensive position. She lunged forward striking out again with her right hand. When I moved to block she moved her left leg like lightning and kneed me in my stomach. I held her right fist and twisted it and brought it behind her body to immobilize her. Purposely, my grip was not strong or tight. She used her left elbow, a reverse move to strike me strategically against the left side of my jaw. I felt that. She had caught me off guard. I jumped back and looked at her then smiled. She took my smile as an insult, ran up on me, and leaped off the floor into a double flying kick. Instead of blocking, resisting, or striking, I sidestepped and snatched up her body from midair. I threw her over my shoulder then spun her around like a five year old to confuse her vision. I set her down on her feet. As she steadied herself, I took full advantage. Within three seconds I folded Chiasa up and carried her out of the dojo in my arms with zero protest from her sensei and the fighters who she had been intimidating all night. As I moved swiftly past the passive observers with their female champion, no sword-swinging samurais or silent ninja assassins or karate killers emerged to defend her honor.

  I put her down on the ground outside the dojo. Then I sat down beside her. She smiled at me. Naturally, I smiled at her. I loved her spirit. All fire.

  “See, now you respect me,” she said, slowing down her breathing. “And I respect you more,” she added. “Two people can spend weeks together and never develop the respect that two fighters can earn in one match. I know that guys don’t respect girls too much. So I fight to let them know I am Chiasa, a whole woman, not half a person. Treat me right.”

  As we walked back through Yoyogi, all the lampposts switched off. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I was reminded of the complete blackness that enveloped my grandfather’s Southern Sudanese village—when the moon and the stars went on break, as they sometimes do.

  I could smell the scent of pine trees and of the cypress and zelkova and oak all intermingling.

  “I do respect you, Chiasa,” I admitted.

  “Arigato gozaimasu,” she replied softly without bowing down. I was grateful.

  The cicada sang as we moved in silence. I thought about how she was training in so many different fighting styles—kendo, kyudo, and karate. She must have some reason pushing her.

  “Chiasa, which style of fight is your favorite?” I asked.

  “I’m bored with it all. I don’t want the bamboo practice sword. I prefer the blade,” she said softly. I don’t want to aim at a stable bullseye, I want to fire on a live moving target.”

  “The real thing would kill your opponent,” I cautioned her.

  “As long as we both knew that before we fight, that’s fair and square,” she said without laughter.

  * * *

  I left Yoyogi and returned to the Harajuku hostel, where I secured my luggage. Then I worked out hard. As I was moving and training my muscles, my mind was formulating ideas and strategies, storing some in my memory and throwing the rest out. I drank five tall bottles of water when I finished. It’s important to take in enough water during the night to keep your body working properly during the fast of the day. At 1:30 in the morning, I was showered and dressed, wearing my black nylon Nike suit and a black tee and my black uptowns, my gloves in my back pocket. I wanted my hands free, so I rocked a Black Ja
nsport containing the few items I might need.

  I stepped outside the Harajuku hostel expecting shit on the streets to be winding down, but the Harajuku party seemed at a boiling point, with all kinds of kids and kooks and characters milling around and mixing in with the young fashionable crews as well. Was it my imagination, or as I began walking, did a huge chunk of the crowd begin to move in the same direction as me? I was accompanied and followed by about a hundred and fifty youth and preceded by about eighty more, as we all walked and squeezed down the tight Harajuku alleyway to the train station. Feeling like an actor in Thriller, I played the corner as the freaks packed the compartment of what I discovered was the last train for the night.

  As I moved through the network of underground tunnels that lies beneath Roppongi, I was not alone. There were many foreign men in motion, as well as Japanese men still suited up from work and groups of girls who I’d guess were from fourteen to twenty-five years young. The crowds were not loud or rowdy. Everyone seemed focused on getting to a specific destination uninterrupted. I was noticing now that every Tokyo prefecture had its own personality. In fact, as you climbed up the endless stacks of stairs from the train to the outdoors, you could not find anything similar to the last stop that you came from. Each location would be completely new and unique.

  There were no wives, mothers, or children in Roppongi night-life. For four blocks to the north and four blocks to the south and four blocks to the east and four blocks to the west were all nightclubs, hostess bars, and restaurants. As I moved in the night breeze, I blended right in, which made me feel some ease.

  “Bro-da!” an African voice called out to me. “Check it out. We have what you are looking for. You are looking for girl, yes?” he said oddly.

  He was six-eight, towering over me, a more massive giant in the land of little people. Dressed in a not-too-cheap suit, he extended his hand. “Come now,” he said. “Club is free, drinks cost money, girls are very friendly. What you like? Japanese girl, Russian girl, Swedish girl, American girl? You choose.”

  “I’m good,” I told him. “Ramadan Kareem,” I added solemnly. Ramadan Kareem is a Muslim greeting offered to Muslims around the world at the start of the Ramadan fast. I could tell this man was from Nigeria. I also knew from flipping through my atlas and maps that they had almost 150 million people in their West African nation, most of them Muslim. By offering him the holiday greeting, I could move him out of my path and maybe off of his corrupt purpose.

  It backfired and piqued his curiosity instead. “I am Olatunde the Nigerian,” he said as he extended his hand, announcing himself as though he were his nation’s representative. “But here in Japan, friends call me Ola.” When I didn’t move or grasp or shake his hand, he took one step forward and looked down on me.

  Brooklyn don’t break from no next man’s menacing stare. That’s hood basic 101. I stepped to his left to move beyond him and caught a glimpse of a four-foot-tall Japanese girl in eight-inch heels, the top of her head still barely above the Nigerian’s Pierre Cardin belt. From behind him she handed me a party card invite advertising the club that she was standing in front of. He turned and spoke harsh Japanese to her. She stepped all the way back to the club entrance.

  “Tell Ola, what is your business here? You are in Roppongi for Ramadan. Surely you did not come here to pray in the land with no God.” He smiled a smile of satisfaction with himself.

  “I’m good,” I told him again and stepped to his right, bypassing him. Before I was six steps away, I heard his rhyme begin again. “My friend, club is free, drinks cost money, girls are very friendly.” As I checked the late, late night, early morning scene, this appeared to be the formula, an array of Nigerians fishing for any men to come trick a pile of cash on some doe-eyed female wearing an evening gown, nightgown, or miniskirt. And there seemed to be no shortage of takers.

  When I reached the outer boundary of Roppongi Hills, the party scenes subsided and the lights were not glaring. The residential section was separate from the chaos of the clubs. I put my gloves and wool hat on, believing that if I could move swiftly through the shadows, I would go unnoticed. There were not many people out. I mainly saw closed boutiques, craft shops, and minimarkets. The houses behind them were woven in and up and on the various hills and slopes and narrow paths. The hour of the night, the trees and gardens made my invisibility possible. I walked nonchalantly past the front of Akemi’s father’s house without moving my head to inspect it. To reach the backyard, I would have to walk past the front, uphill, make a right, and then another. So I did.

  There were two fifteen-foot-tall walls that ran down both sides of the street behind Akemi’s house. At the top of the walls were bushes, and no matter left or right, all you could see was wall and bushes. But her neighbor had a tree with a sturdy trunk and heavy branches and leaves that shielded the house from street-level onlookers. The tree extended into the sky. It was now the second day of Ramadan, and I considered that tree my second blessing.

  As I climbed, gripping the bark with my gloves and my kicks, I cleared my mind of what-ifs and focused. I leaped from a branch onto the top of the wall. When I landed, my body brushed hard against the bushes, tiny little thorns sticking me enough to cause me to straighten up and balance and be mindful. I duckwalked across to Akemi’s side, and when I got there, I attempted to see through the bushes into her yard, but the bushes were too dense. I considered clipping and clearing through the bushes, and crawling through the clearing, but didn’t because although I might be successful in getting in that way, the next morning the gardener or any curious person would have just the evidence needed to confirm that someone had intruded on the property. Turning sideways, with my back now to the bushes and face to the wall, I pushed through the three-inch space between the wall and the bushes. The prickles scraped against my sweat jacket and pants and wool hat and socks and boots but not enough to pierce my skin or cause my blood to flow.

  Her yard was darker than the streets, and all the house lights were off. No dog—had there been one, he would’ve begun barking minutes ago when he smelled the unfamiliar scent of my presence even as I climbed the neighbor’s tree. Surveying, I counted four floors to the sturdy cement home, which resembled the best-built Brooklyn brownstones in its quality and the way it was carefully constructed. The top floors had cement terraces. With no fire escapes, there was no ladder or means of climbing up or down from them.

  I began to walk in calculated steps. The grass crunched beneath my feet. Fortunately, the hum of a nearby generator should have made the sounds undetectable. I walked around the perimeter carefully, and up to the east side of the house. It was all good until I reached the eastern corner that led to the front. I heard a click and then some sort of motor started up. I saw a high beam approaching from the distance, and the heavy black iron gate that sealed off the front of their house began to open slowly. I eased back, pressing my body against the house on the dark side, so as not to be exposed by the increasing light. Adrenaline released in me, and swiftly I walked backward to the backyard and crossed over to the west side of the house, where I could escape the light and still see into the front. My jaw was tight and I began taking deep breaths to overcome my anger. I didn’t appreciate Nakamura creating a circumstance where I had to creep like a thief. But fuck it, he had. The car eased onto the property but the bright headlights prevented me from seeing details. The gate remained open, so I was sure that there were at least two passengers inside, one who intended to leave. Otherwise the gate would’ve closed behind them.

  The driver’s door opened. A suited man leaped out and rushed around to the back passenger-seat door. He opened it and stood patiently like an employee. The passenger took his time, like an employer accustomed to being served would do.

  When Nakamura finally emerged, the driver went into a series of bows to him and then ran around to the trunk. Nakamura followed, and now the trunk shielded my view of them both, and any possible view they could’ve had of me. I took a couple of s
teps back to a darkened ground-level window and tested it to see if it would slide open. I was surprised when it did. I left it open by about only two centimeters, enough to stick my gloved fingers back in if I needed to.

  More confident now that I had a definite way inside of the house, I walked toward the backyard again to shield my presence and wait. As I moved, I happened to look up. “Always look up,” my sensei had taught me. When I did, I saw for the first time that on the fourth floor of the west side of the building was a yellow light left on in an otherwise completely darkened house. Then I knew.

  I heard the front door of the house opening. The car was moving now, and I heard the sound of rocks beneath the tires. Then the ignition switched off, and the glare of the lights deaded. The car door opened and closed. I could tell by the sequence of sounds that the car had only been parked. The iron gate had not closed yet. Suddenly I heard the sound of another car starting. The sound of the engine was a dead giveaway that it was a lower-quality vehicle. It moved, the sound of the car getting further and further away. The front door of the house shut as the iron gate also began closing. Then the sound of the second car was no more.

  Carefully, I walked to the front again, using the west side of the house. The Japanese Bentley was parked against the house at the front. The gleaming blackness of the exterior was glossier than the blackness of the night. I drew closer to look at it. The interior was “pretty,” like Chiasa had said. The thick wool seats were piped out in thick leather, the seams solid and the inside incredible with granite fixtures, which would normally be used in a house. My stare into the car was broken only by the light switched on in the house on the ground floor on the front eastern side. I dropped down beside the car but did not touch it. I looked up. Another light came on then, on the second floor.

  Believing that Nakamura was now upstairs, I duckwalked over to the front door of their house. I had observed that the Japanese normally left their shoes lined up right outside their house door before switching immediately into house slippers. Aside from Nakamura and possibly his daughter, who else could live here? A housemaid, or butler, or some security personnel? Yet if there were any security personnel on their property, they were doing a poor job.