Midnight and the Meaning of Love

by Sister Souljah

  In my room, I showered, dressed, prayed, and headed out. By then my wife was seated downstairs in the small Bada Ga lobby. As she saw me approaching, she stood and left. Outside the motel door, dressed now in a minidress over pants, with her hair wrapped nicely and her 100,000 yen heels, she looked up at me and smiled. “Time for eat,” she said in English.

  We walked outdoors feeling familiar with our seaside surroundings. We mingled into the laidback evening beach crowd both relaxed and excited. I had a bunch of necessary Korean vocabulary words marching around my mind, mostly concerning foods. Even though Akemi is fluent, there were some things I had to know for myself. I was working overtime to separate the new Korean words from the recently learned Japanese words, from the well-known English and native Arabic words.

  I knew I had to avoid pork completely and ask questions about noodles and soups that seemed vegetarian being stewed in pork fat or meats. The Koreans called pork “dwaejigogi,” which bugged me out to remember and was even crazier to recite. Chicken was “dakgogi.” The food I was most likely to eat was fish. They called that “saengseonyori.” I had to memorize these words since I hadn’t come up on a Halal food place yet.

  Stick to the sea, I told myself. We ate grilled fish and “heukmi joomeokbap,” which was black rice made with dates, walnuts, and chestnuts. We shared a salad and both bit off of the long red hot chili pepper they laid in a dish on each table, which made our already hot blood boil, and our young hearts catch more feelings.

  Chapter 3

  FOREIGN FAMILY

  We were smarter today than the day before. We took a train most of the way, and a taxi from the train station to Akemi’s grandmother’s apartment. We were both dressed sharply for Akemi’s homecoming, and there was no sense in making her hike hills in her heels, bringing on a sweat. I left the urn in the safe. Akemi had gestured for me not to bring it. I was not certain why, or what she had in mind specifically, but I cooperated.

  I was carrying a nicely threaded cloth shopping bag marked “Shinsegae.” In it were gifts from Umma and me as well as gifts Akemi had wrapped for her family. It was from both of our cultures to present gifts this way when visiting new homes or friends and family.

  There were many families outdoors sitting, talking, children playing in front of the building. It was night, but the place was well lit. As we eased out of the taxi, everyone noticed. In the lobby, teens were speaking joyfully. As we walked through the doors, they stopped talking. This was nothing, I thought. I had entered buildings in East New York and Harlem and Bed-Stuy and Castle Hill and Soundview and Queensbridge, where people were armed with way more than curiosity. As we got off on the eighth floor, there were already two ladies standing in the hallway. Akemi nodded to the two of them and they responded the same way. We rang the bell. I looked behind me; the peephole on the opposite door was blackened. I was sure that Grandpa had his eye glued there, observing.

  When Akemi’s grandmother’s apartment door opened, there were several people seated on the floor. A quick count. Three older men, in around their thirties or forties, another male around maybe twenty, two male teens, two older women in their early thirties, one teen female, and one girl toddler. The aunt was standing, holding the door and welcoming us in. We exchanged greetings in their language as we removed our shoes. Their low-to-the-floor table, much like the Sudanese table, was set with a feast. Each kind of food was set in its own dish. There were twenty-four separate dishes filled with an array of foods including steaming soups and fruits and rice with chestnuts and hot, spicy cabbage, which I had learned that they call kimchee, and sliced radishes, cucumbers, and carrots, boiled eggs, and grilled beef. There was a teapot, teacups, and bottled drinks, as well as a serving dish piled high with fried chicken. There were two big fresh green watermelons. Each place setting had a silver steel pair of chopsticks and a long-handled steel spoon. They all exchanged greetings, Akemi bowing often, except to the two teen boys, who must’ve been younger and who, when introduced, bowed to her. We sat down on the floor and joined them. Akemi was seated beside me and I was seated beside our shopping bag filled with gifts.

  As my eyes moved around the room, sizing up the situation but not aggressively, I wondered who all these people were and I was certain that none of them was Akemi’s Korean grandmother. There was no real elderly woman present. More important, however, were the men in the room, who were therefore in the presence of my wife. The silence was only punctured by the ramblings of the two-year-old girl, yet everyone’s eyes were filled with both curiosity and emotion.

  Akemi’s aunt, who was still standing, began speaking in Korean to everyone gathered and seated there. She began slowly, yet her voice was full and very expressive. As it rose and fell, she began to use her hands. Then her eyes and her hands and her mouth were all talking at the same time. Her talk created a strange feeling in me. I could not understand or translate even one of her words, yet my soul was stirring. It was only eighty or so seconds before tears began to well up in the aunt’s eyes. I had been so focused on her that only then did I realize that even the men’s eyes were coated with moisture. Then the females were all spilling tears, while the males were able to hold their tears back. My wife was weeping and intensely gazing toward her aunt, who I was certain reminded her too much of her mother. Looking more closely at my wife’s eyes, I believed that she somehow was seeing two women standing there, her aunt and her mother.

  Meanwhile, the two-year-old was rocking side to side humming lightly, a kind of background singer-musician to the aunt’s moving storytelling. One of the men stood and went to the aunt’s side, laying his hands on her shoulders and caressing them even as she continued to speak. Then I knew. He was her husband. He wore a crisp, clean, pressed white business shirt, no tie, and quality blue slacks with a rough leather belt and dress socks. His presence must’ve soothed her. As the aunt’s voice wound down, he began speaking.

  His voice was deep and expressive. The manner in which the Korean men maneuvered the musical melodies of their language was different than their women’s yet still captured my ear. His tones revealed a change in the topic, I thought. He began walking his wife to her sitting place at the table. Akemi, her hair covered in a yellow silk scarf, began wiping away her tears with her pretty fingers and newly polished nails. Her gold bangles jingled some. She was the only woman wearing jewelry.

  When the husband sat, he said some more words to all and then was the first to pick up his chopsticks and pull from one of the food dishes. Once he began, everyone began eating. Each woman, including my wife, began skillfully using the chopsticks to choose and pick up bits of food from the serving dishes and place them into a dish for a male. The aunt did for her husband; another woman did for the man seated next to her. Akemi began preparing my dish as well. Yet one older man and the twenty-year-old didn’t have women. They and the two male teens served themselves. The two-year-young girl ran and tumbled and then pushed herself between the aunt and her husband. I assumed then that she was their daughter.

  It was after the food was finished that the seals on the green bottles were opened. The liquid being poured into the glasses was clear, but I believed that it was alcohol. What had been soft talking between sets of people gathered became a much louder group conversation. During the drinks, we handed our gifts to Akemi’s aunt. The two-year-old and two of the teen boys were moving around the apartment doing their own things now, while the adults watched. The aunt unwrapped the gifts as though the paper and even the tape that it was wrapped with were precious. She folded the gift paper nicely into an odd shape and placed it aside before removing the box top and discovering a set of hair combs that Akemi had gifted her. She lifted them from the cotton they lay on, and Akemi began to speak to her aunt softly. The aunt’s tears began to form once again. Then I had doubts about the gift that I had handed her, but it was already lying there on the table for opening. As she opened the second gift, she removed the box top and lifted one of the three books that I had given. She
raised one up and looked at it carefully, examining the front cover and then the back. When she opened the inside flap and saw the photo of the author, Shiori Nakamura, her sister who was known to her as Joo Eun Lee, she cried out in a painful sound. I had thought she would be pleased to have something of her sister’s memory that perhaps she had not discovered or possessed here in Korea, but I was surely wrong. Her husband removed the book from her hands, which held on tightly. He peered into it. Then one of the other men removed it from his hands and he flipped to the photo also. He laid the book down on the table, dropped his head for some seconds, then stood up. The husband stood up and the aunt continued to weep.

  Akemi looked surprised and unknowing. She looked at me and then she stood also. I got up, uncertain of the mounting situation. Akemi helped her aunt to her feet. Suddenly, the man who still held the book stepped over to my wife and placed his hands on her shoulders and began to caress her. I pushed him hard, and he was propelled backward and fell to the floor, causing everyone else to gasp. Silence fell. I looked down on him. “Keep your hands off of my wife,” I told him in English as he lay there. He got back to his feet and faced me. Immediately, the husband of the aunt stepped between us. The husband said firmly, jamgganmanyo. The other man began speaking in Korean boldly, his angry voice escalating. The two teenage boys emerged from the back room and froze in place when they saw and sensed the conflict. I pulled Akemi behind me.

  “Say whatever you want, but keep your hands in your pockets,” I told him in English. The twenty-year-old stepped to the angry man’s side. Now the husband, the angry man, the twenty-year-old, and the two male teens were all on one side facing off with me. It wouldn’t be nothing for me to break all of them, I knew. And the man who had touched my wife was still mouthing off. The husband said to me in English, “Let’s go outside.”

  “No problem, all men outside,” I said, and that was my one condition. Either me and Akemi would leave from here together right then, which would cut their ties from her, which I knew they didn’t want to happen, or all the men had to exit the apartment together. This was my Sudanese way. I would not leave my wife in a room unattended in the presence of these men, whose role and relationship I did not know.

  The husband began speaking to the Korean males gathered. Only the angered man argued back, but in muted tones. He stormed out the apartment door suddenly, and all the men stepped into their shoes, picked up his and then followed him. I turned to Akemi and said calmly, “Stay here.” I went out last behind them; they were piled up right outside the apartment door waiting impatiently. As we began to move, I heard the door locks turn in the apartment across from theirs, and then the door was pulled opened enough for someone to see out, but not enough for me to see in.

  The angry man mumbled in his language all the way down on the elevator.

  As we moved through the lobby, everyone watched us. Outside the building, they watched some more. I walked behind them, following purposely and aside from the fact that I didn’t know where they were headed. As we stood at the top of the steep hill facing down, the husband stepped down first and each of us followed. I suspected that the husband was trying to lessen the fire in the other guy, with a slow walk downhill with a welcomed breeze blowing in our faces underneath a beautiful, deep blue-black sky lit up with stars and constellations. He needs to cool the fuck down, I thought to myself. It would be in his interest to do so.

  Standing on level ground after walking down three steep hills, we were facing a parked police car with its headlights off and two officers seated inside. One officer called out some words to the husband.

  I checked to see if he was the same cop from yesterday, but he was not. The husband stopped and answered him, his responses sounding upbeat and calm. The cops seemed satisfied at whatever he was telling and didn’t make no moves. This made me get a speck of respect for the husband. He didn’t start squealing to the police about there being a problem. He didn’t play his trump card of me being the only foreigner and the only black man in their streets. Instead he kept it moving and led us on a sharp turn down a curved side street. In the face of the police, even the angry man was silent. Maybe he had something to hide, or some reason to distrust or fear the police, I thought to myself.

  In the middle of the block the husband stopped and ducked into a plastic tent where other men were gathered, some standing, some seated. As I eased in, I saw it was an outdoor bar with no walls—a drinking spot. The husband said some words to the two male teens and sent them back out. I could see them waiting on the outside of the thick, clear plastic tent. From their interaction I decided he was their father. So in my mind I put together that Akemi’s aunt had a husband, two teen sons, and one two-years-young daughter.

  “Ahjumma!” the husband called out. A woman rushed out, listened to his order, and returned with more green bottles of drink and a set of tiny glasses.

  “Anya!” he said to the men. They sat, but the angry man wouldn’t. I was watching his hands. They were heavy and rough, his skin thick on both sides. The hands of a worker, I thought. His chest was broad and his clothes were common, unlike those of the husband, who was definitely a professional, behind-the-desk type.

  “Chonin Mayonaka midah,” I introduced myself, and then held my hand out to the husband to remind him that they had all introduced themselves to my wife in Korean but not to me.

  “Sorry, I’m Kim Dong Hwa, your wife’s uncle by marriage. He is my brother Che Hwa, but he doesn’t speak English. He is my friend Jang Jung Oh, no English,” he said introducing the angry guy. I extended my hand to him. He knocked it away with his right and grabbed a bottle from the table behind him and took a swipe at my head. I leaned left and punched with my right and broke either his nose or his blood vessels. He ignored his blood, didn’t wipe it or chase it, and took the punch like his head was made from steel and had been slammed with force many times before. He lunged at me. I was quick, dodged, and pushed the flimsy table toward him. Everyone seated behind where I was standing scattered instantly. I grabbed a set of steel chopsticks from the table and held them like shuriken. When he came at me again, I would poke them in his lungs or kidneys or just gouge out his eyes. But he didn’t charge again. He picked up a wooden crate and hurled it at my head instead. As the ahjumma woman yelled and complained, I blocked it with my right arm and a piece of wood broke off as the crate crashed to the floor. The twenty- year-old and Dong Hwa and Che Hwa tried to subdue the angry guy, but he slung them off and they fell to the floor. That caused the two teens, who had been posted outside the tent, to rush in toward the angry guy. I knew they were about to be tossed through the air. They were lightweight and obviously untrained, with hands that looked like they had been served their entire lives and had never labored for nothing.

  Instead of them attacking the man who had just tossed their father and uncle, they got down on their knees before him and in begging tones asked him to stop. The twenty-year-old came over to me and held his hand out to relieve me of the chopsticks. I kept my eyes on the angry guy, who was giving way to the two begging teen boys. Just then the angry guy bent over to help Dong Hwa and Che Hwa stand back up. When Dong Hwa accepted his hand, I laid the chopsticks down on the table.

  Akemi’s uncle Dong Hwa began cleaning off his formerly white shirt and standing up the crates and setting the lady’s bar back in order. She stood off in the distance, watching as though she had seen this type of thing more than a few times. Dong Hwa pulled out his wallet and walked over some won and handed it to the woman, which seemed to satisfy her. She handed him some napkins for his friend’s bloody face. I could see that in personality Dong Hwa was like my best friend Chris, the type to smooth out conflicts and work hard to avert a crisis or a murder. He set his guys up with drinks and pointed his sons back outside. I wasn’t sure if they were keeping watch or being thrown out because of their ages.

  Then Dong Hwa walked my way and said in English, “You have some things in common with Jung Oh and Jung Oh has some thin
gs in common with you.” I heard him but it didn’t mean nothing to me. I still had my eye on Jung Oh, who sat throwing back drinks from a glass so tiny I wondered why he didn’t just drink straight from the bottle or dump it all in one mug. I knew that the more he drank, the better it was for me. He was already strong and slow; once he became drunk, he would lose his balance, and no matter how much confidence he had, he would be defeated.

  “Anya,” Dong Hwa said, pointing toward the chair. I pulled the chair around so my view was toward Jung Oh in case he made any more sudden moves. I sat.

  “Even though we have gotten off to a bad start, we all have reasons to be friends,” Dong Hwa said.

  “I’m not here to make friends, but I want to keep it respectful. Akemi is my wife. I’m here in Busan to meet Akemi’s grandmother and to return Ms. Joo Eun Lee’s ashes to her. The sooner the better. My wife’s grandmother is your mother-in-law, is that right?” I asked him.

  “Yes, she is,” he said solemnly.

  “Then if you can arrange for us to meet her, Akemi and I can be on our way back to the United States,” I said, observing Jung Oh’s boiling energy, as he turned back to look my way.

  “Help me out here,” Dong Hwa said to me quietly, with pleading eyes. “My friend there does not know that Akemi’s mother is dead.”