Midnight and the Meaning of Love

by Sister Souljah

  “So every five minutes—go means ‘five’ in Japan—we just switch partners and talk and get to know the next person a bit more. The idea is that after the go party is over, every girl tells her best friend who she really likes, and the guys tell their male friends. Then the best friend makes the call so the two who really like one another can meet up.” She was finished.

  “Meet up alone?” I asked.

  “Not necessarily. But maybe this time it’s less of a group than before, but the girl and the guy who really like each other are definitely there and the other friends are trying to help them to get together.”

  “Okay” was all I said.

  “Well, Yuka set up the gokan party. When I got there, there was only Yuka, me, and him, and that’s not how a go party is supposed to be. Then Yuka said to him “Chiasa likes you a lot.” I felt embarrassed. But truthfully, I was excited too and grateful to Yuka for saying what I had never clearly said to him. Then Yuka said, ‘I told Chiasa that you and I are dating already, but she insists that you should tell her that personally.’ ” Chiasa frowned and leaned back, her chopsticks loosely held in her fingers.

  “What did the fool say?” I asked Chiasa, referring to the guy that they both liked.

  “He didn’t even look at me. He turned the other way and said, ‘Yuka-san is right. Yuka is my girlfriend.’ So I just drank the glass of water that was in front of me and I left,” Chiasa said. “Later Yuka and all her friends, who just the day before had all been my friends too, gathered around me and watched while Yuka announced, ‘Chiasa is konketsuji.’ They all laughed. Then Yuka shouted, ‘Hafu, don’t you know that Japanese boys will always choose a Japanese girl?’ ”

  “Did you fight her?” I asked.

  “No. Yuka and I had promised one another that we would never fight over boys. So I just walked away. I always keep my promises,” she said solemnly.

  I didn’t know what konketsuji or hafu meant, yet Chiasa’s pronunciation of the words and her tone and expression of disgust made the insult in them clear.

  “ ‘Half a person.’ That’s what hafu means, and konketsuji means, ‘child of unlike things put together.’ For me, Yuka was saying that the part of me that is Japanese from my mother is human. The part of me that is from my African-American father is not.”

  Moments later Chiasa said, “I realized I never loved that boy anyway. I just liked him and was a bit impressed. But I did love Yuka. Anytime I thought about what happened with her, I would be shocked all over again. I cried. My whole body would hurt. It was difficult for me to accept that anyone could be so close to me, talking and laughing with me, sometimes sleeping over and us going out together, then could really have felt hatred for me all along. After a long time I realized that Yuka did not even like the boy at all. She just didn’t want me to like him. She was my best friend and didn’t even want me to be happy.”

  “That boy wasn’t your fate,” I assured her. “If he was, he would have been with you, even now, still. He was a coward. It sounds like he allowed Yuka to control him, instead of being true to himself as a man.”

  I paid for our meal, thanked the waiter, and tipped him. Chiasa opened the billfold, subtracted the tip, and laid it on my side of the table.

  “Japan is a no-tip country,” she said. “Even in a Turkish restaurant, Japanese laws are the same.”

  * * *

  The completely booked Hyatt Hotel welcomed Chiasa and me as she checked in. We were escorted to her reserved room. I carried our belongings. She opened the door. There were two well-dressed beds with crisp white goose-down quilts and a wide window that led to a lighted garden. The lamps were shaded with rice paper and the drawings on the wall were beautiful displays of kanji as Asian art. The curtains were made of white linen. The floors were made of tatami. The bathroom was two steps up and enclosed by thick glass. The faucet and sink and toilet and shower stall were all glistening clean. The air smelled like a very subtle perfume, a clean scent but not antiseptic.

  I wanted and needed to hear the important information that led Chiasa to travel all the way down here to help me locate my wife. But I already knew that right after I heard it and discussed it, I would be up and out of her hotel room for my own sake, for Chiasa’s sake, and to keep true.

  Chiasa opened her backpack and pulled out a stack of books tied in size order. “These are the books written by Shiori Nakamura,” she said. “While I was in the bookstore, I read one of her poems. So powerful!” Then she pointed out that each book had been wrapped in a beautiful evergreen book cover, with a gold seal that read “Kinokuniya,” the name of the store.

  “Thank you,” I said, moving the stack over to my right and pulling out my pocketknife to cut the string. Just as I picked up one of the books, Chiasa said, “They are all written in Japanese and unavailable in English. I checked.”

  “What about the author Seth Arrington, did you check him out?” I asked her.

  “Looking him up almost made me miss my train. I checked on the shelves first before asking customer service in the Japanese section on the first floor. They could not find anything or even pull up his name as an author. I thought maybe you or I had the name wrong. Then I went upstairs to the seventh floor, the English section. I checked the shelves again and nothing! When I went to the English customer service desk, they actually found his name and told me that the author had only written one book and that the one book he wrote, Never Surrender, was out of print and unavailable in Japan. She said that author had a really short career.”

  “Out of print?” I repeated.

  “She said that means that the book company is not printing any more copies of it. You would have to go to a used book store or something and see if you could find it,” she advised. “Oh, and the lady was like, ‘What do you need this book for? Is it a school assignment? Is it for you or someone else?’ Can you believe her?” Chiasa stared into me for answers.

  “Was she Japanese?” I asked.

  “Of course, everyone at the English section is Japanese! It’s just called the English section because you can buy books written in English on that floor, and all of the other floors are books written strictly in Japanese.

  “Oh and about Akemi’s diary.”

  “I have completed the list for you,” Chiasa said, and handed it to me. “In most cases, Akemi wrote about her friends and family, but she didn’t list their addresses or even refer to their location. It’s a diary, like a daily account of what was happening in her life from right before she left Japan to go and study in New York up until her art show in Manhattan. I believe she probably has a bunch of diaries stashed somewhere else that leads up to this one here.” She held up the diary.

  “It’s not an address book. So I had to read carefully a couple of times and figure out who was who from where. Then I went to the library, right after you caught the train earlier today, and got the directory for Kyoto from the reference desk. I looked up each name that she mentioned in her writing, in the Tokyo directory and then in the Kyoto directory. I know you only wanted the names and addresses and phone numbers of the people Akemi mentioned in her diary as well as the names of the places she went to often in Kyoto. But I think you should listen to what her relationship is to certain people. She writes about all of them, and that will make it faster for us to locate her,” Chiasa said sincerely, and she had my full attention.

  “For example, she writes very affectionately about a woman named Mayu. I put her name on your list. Well later on in her diary when Akemi and her father had a conflict, Mayu took Akemi’s side, although she pretended to support Mr. Nakamura because he is her employer. Anyway, at one point in the diary I found Mayu’s last name—it’s Morita. Then I looked up Mayu Morita’s phone number and her address here in Kyoto. Now, Mayu works at Akemi’s home seven days a week from seven a.m. until seven p.m. as the house manager. Since I now know Mayu-san’s home address, I can go there at say five a.m. and follow her to work. I’ll end up at Akemi’s house, simple!” Chiasa’s st
are was intense and she waited for my reply to her detailed detective work.

  I smiled and said, “Sounds good, but you could’ve just given me Mayu’s address over the telephone and let me check it out.”

  “I could have, but you couldn’t follow Mayu-san at five in the morning and go unnoticed. Mr. Nakamura and his men are already on the lookout for anyone fitting your description. ‘Young, African, male.’ Probably Mr. Nakamura has no idea that you are even here in Kyoto. We should keep it that way,” she argued. It didn’t take too many seconds for me to see her strategy emerging.

  Chiasa was right. I was already imagining that the Kyoto home would be different from the Roppongi house, where security was lax. I expected this location to be Nakamura’s estate, an expensive spread, completely secured and alarmed.

  Chiasa opened Akemi’s diary to further express her point of view. “From the way Akemi tells her story in her diary, she has got about four different sets of friends. She doesn’t mix them together because she said each set has their own mind and ideas and none of them want to be any different than they already are.”

  “Are those her words?” I asked Chiasa.

  “Exactly,” she answered. “So powerful, right? You know, near the end of her diary, on the corner of one page, she had scribbled,

  They were flesh without nerves, veins without blood, bodies without heart, these Japanese men.

  * * *

  “It made my body shake, her words, so true,” Chiasa said. I didn’t say nothing, so Chiasa continued reporting.

  “There is one girl that Akemi is really extremely close with. She isn’t part of any of the four sets, and when Akemi spends time with her, it’s usually just the two of them. This girl is from Nepal. She’s two years older than Akemi and she attends Kyoto Seika University. I put her name on your list also. It’s Josna, but Akemi calls her Jo. If everything else fails, based on the story Akemi writes about her life, if you find Jo, she’ll lead you directly to Akemi. This girl named Josna knows all Akemi’s secrets.”

  “Secrets,” I repeated, but not for an explanation or response. I had catalogued the two names in my mind permanently, Mayu Morita and Josna, aka Jo.

  “Any last name for Josna?” I asked, while searching the list in my hand.

  “No, sorry. She didn’t write it.”

  “What about this person named Himawari?” I asked, noticing that she was the third person listed after Mayu and Josna.

  “She’s Japanese and Akemi’s friend. They have some kind of girls-only club that meets at a location nearby their high school, but there’s no exact address. From the way Akemi describes it I don’t know if it’s a house or apartment or what. Akemi mentioned Himawari six or seven times, and the rest of the girls only briefly.

  Now, if we divide up the lists, we should definitely be able to locate Akemi tomorrow,” Chiasa said confidently. “I’ll follow Mayu in the early morning. That might be it. But if not, I’ll check the first three places and you can check the last three places,” she said taking charge during the silence of my thoughts.

  “Inshallah,” I said, still trapped in my thoughts and measuring out my next moves.

  “What?” Chiasa asked.

  “What?” I responded.

  “Insha what?” she asked.

  “It means ‘God willing.’ If Allah wants us to be successful, we will be,” I explained.

  “First you said God, then you said Allah. Which one is it?” Chiasa asked.

  “Allah is God. Allah is Arabic for God in English,” I explained. “Sometimes English-speaking people get tight or scared or crazy when they hear Muslims say Allah.”

  “Allah or God, hmm? The two words sound so different from one another,” Chiasa said. “Allah sounds softer and nicer,” she continued. “I’ll say Allah because it sounds better to me.” She turned away from me, then turned around and looked back. “And you’re right. My aunt Tasha would probably faint if she heard me say ‘Allah’! She goes to church every Sunday, and when I visit her in New York, I have to go too.” Chiasa smiled.

  “There’s only one God. So Aunt Tasha could chill,” I told her. Then I got up to leave.

  “Are you leaving?” Chiasa asked.

  “I have to,” I said.

  “There are two beds,” Chiasa pointed out.

  “Yeah, two beds and one room,” I told her.

  “They have breakfast downstairs beginning at sunrise. We are on the same block as Akemi’s high school. I checked it all out on the map. This is a strategic location,” she said.

  “I’ll meet you downstairs for breakfast at five a.m.,” I responded. “Then we’ll head out. I’ll take the high school and the first three places on the list. You take Mayu’s house and the last three places on the list. Let’s meet back here afterward and compare notes. Hopefully Akemi will be with me when I get back here.” I meant it.

  “Here, you need to show this key at breakfast.” Chiasa handed it to me.

  “Do you have one for yourself?” I asked.

  “Hai!” She smiled.

  I left. I had seen the small Holy Quran in Chiasa’s backpack pocket. I’m sure she had just bought it from the bookstore today. I liked that she didn’t pull it out and show it to me, like it was some kind of prop to win points. I believed that she bought it out of a real curiosity and with a true intention.

  Outside the Hyatt, as I descended the hill, the thought dropped into my mind: I know now what Chiasa switched. She had straightened out her hair. It appeared much thinner and longer now. It gave her a different look. Her new look was nice. Her old look was very nice too.

  * * *

  After breakfast in the Hyatt dining area, a light meal and eight glasses of water (I wouldn’t let her drink any fruit juice. “The natural sugar will just make you more thirsty and hungry,” I explained to her.)

  Chiasa left and moved into action.

  I used my hotel key to access her room alone. Stripped down to my boxers and T-shirt, which I still wore from the night before, I unpacked my clippers from their heavy packaging. The bathroom mirror, which was divided into thirds, was perfect. I pulled up the left and right sides of the mirror so I could see the sides and back of my own head. I mapped out my plan in my mind. I switched the clippers on. When I heard them buzzing, I got busy, slowly. Without anyone or anything to disturb me, and the Do Not Disturb sign on the door, my hands were steady for my first real attempt at barbering my own head.

  When I felt good about the job I had done and had checked my head out thoroughly, I switched them off and used the edger to make my cut look professional. I eased out of my T-shirt with the coils of hair clinging everywhere. I balled it up and tossed it in the miniature garbage can. I checked out my shoulder. Ever since Akemi licked my wound, it had healed and disappeared. It was easy for me to believe that her saliva was salve, maybe because I wanted to. Thinking about her got me distracted. When I refocused, it sped me up. I wanted to get to the schoolyard before the students arrived so I could search each one as they climbed up, my eyes looking for only my wife.

  After a high-powered, soothing shower, I cracked open a new pair of Fruit of the Looms, a new pair of kicks, some blue Girbaud cargos, and a deep-blue Polo shirt. I changed my mind and put all that shit away and chose something better, also all fresh and crispy. I picked up my mess and then reached for my camera to use as a prop. Within seconds I realized that Chiasa had already taken it. In fact, it seemed like it had been hers since I first arrived in Tokyo. My binoculars would have to do. I dropped them around my neck and checked to make sure I had my shades. I turned off the digital Do Not Disturb sign and turned on the Make Up the Room sign.

  In the hotel lobby I grabbed a free newspaper, folded it over, and wore it in my back pocket.

  Outside the parade of felines was about to jump off. I hurried up the three or four hills and posted at the top. On purpose, I behaved like a tourist. Through my binoculars I scanned faces, focusing on this one and that one and refocusing on all the rest.
After a while I flipped my aim down toward arriving shoes. It might sound crazy, but it would be faster and easier to identify her by her footwear. However, I kept coming up with penny loafers, mediocre pumps, flat and high-heeled sandals, as well as Converses and New Balances. My wife wasn’t in the mix. Soon the gates of the high school were drawn open to allow the students to enter. I posted on the side of the wall and watched the females who were streaming in from the Princess Line buses. An hour later, when the guards closed the iron gates, I moved. I walked around the perimeter of the high school toward the sides and the back, where I had not gone before. There were sports fields of every kind behind the black iron fence of spears. On the back side there was a basketball court. On my left, there was another full basketball court. This one was not locked behind an iron fence. It was wide open. So in my mind, it had to be part of the Kyoto Women’s College, where everything was unlocked and accessible and females flowed in and out. I stood still, thinking.

  It was hard to believe how expertly the Japanese mind their business. In Brooklyn I spent many hours considering how to move around uninterrupted by unwelcome assholes who jocked and harassed. Here it was the opposite. Each person is ignored so well, it’s bordering on insult. As I searched for my wife in the early morning sun that had just begun its slow boil, no one greeted me. No cop asked me, “What are you doing around here?” No teacher or professor said, “May I help you?” No student questioned, “Are you looking for someone here at the all-girls school?” No one offered to give me directions or show me around. I didn’t run up on anyone African, American, Latino, Indian, or even European. They were uniformly Japanese.

  As I descended the hills, when I entered any of the small places of business, no one trembled or jerked. No attendant followed me up and down the isles. It was as though I was free and safe and invisible. It felt extremely peculiar to me.