When she felt all of me inside of her, she cried out passionately. I kept her crushed beneath the weight of my hard body and thrusted her good until she was breathless and moist and smiling and grateful and calm. I wiped her few tears with my fingers. I knew this was part of it all. She would be fine soon. She and Chiasa would become friends and helpers to one another. I would do whatever it took to make Akemi feel and know for sure that she wasn’t losing anything. She definitely was not losing me.
I knocked on their hotel room door. Chiasa opened it. She looked left and then right. “Where is Akemi?” she asked.
“She’s in my room. She needs a new dress. Can you grab one for me?” I asked. Chiasa looked at me for some seconds. I looked straight back into her. She went to the closet and picked out something for Akemi. She handed it to me.
“Pekko pekko,” she whispered with her hand over her belly.
“Me too, give Akemi twenty minutes more. Then we’ll eat together.”
“I’m so happy,” Chiasa said. “You don’t know how much I missed eating meals with you. Sometimes I was so lonely, I cried. My tears fell into my soup. My miso turned sour.” She laughed. “Then I wouldn’t eat any more of it.” She was searching me with her gray eyes.
She was different, completely unique. She was so excited to have a meal with me. She still had not been kissed, caressed, or gone into. I knew her feelings had to be spreading out inside her. I knew she was making sacrifices for Akemi. Akemi, of course, had made a huge sacrifice for her also. Or perhaps it was all for me.
Watching them laugh in a dim Japanese restaurant where we all three sat on the floor, our legs folded beneath a low Japanese table, was really something. They both looked so beautiful to me. They were both covered, smiling, eating, and enjoying. I of course had no idea what either of them was saying. That was bugged out. I didn’t care, as long as they were both mine. I needed the time to eat three Japanese dinners so the portions could add up to one normal-sized meal. I thought about Billy, the Senegalese, and laughed. Both Chiasa and Akemi stopped talking to each other and wanted to know what I was laughing about.
“Mind your business,” I told them solemnly. Their faces showed the insult, then they broke back into their own laughter.
* * *
Friday morning I got the call. Dong Hwa and I exchanged greetings before he said, “The results are in my hand. Jung Oh is Akemi’s father. Akemi is Korean, one hundred percent Korean blood.” He was solemn, yet he had a trace of real excitement in his voice.
“I understand,” I said. “I’ll explain it to my wife. Please don’t contact her about none of this. I’ll handle it.”
“We would like to come and pick her up from you. We’d like her to meet her father, Jung Oh properly.”
“Not today,” I said. “I’m gonna have a talk with my wife today. Of course we’ll be ready for the ceremony tomorrow for Akemi’s mother.”
“How about tonight then? It would be good if you and Jung Oh could make peace before the ceremony.”
“I’ll think about it. I’ll call you later,” I said.
“Contact me at the university. It’s Friday all over again. So you know my schedule and exactly how to find me.”
“I got it,” I told him. We both hung up.
I called their room. Chiasa picked up. “I need to talk to you,” I told her.
“I need to talk to you too. I have something to show you,” Chiasa said.
“Where’s Akemi?” I asked.
“She’s eating some leftovers from last night. She said she would go on the beach and do a drawing for hire since you and I are both fasting and she is not. She feels guilty about it,” Chiasa revealed.
“She shouldn’t. She should be in good health to have babies. She is already going through enough emotional changes.”
I wouldn’t force Islam on her. It wouldn’t be right. With her mind so cloudy and her emotions so scrambled, it wouldn’t be sincere, and wouldn’t matter.
“Did something happen?” perceptive Chiasa asked.
“Every day something is happening. I’ll come over.”
After Akemi was situated on the boardwalk, the last strip of cement before the sand, Chiasa and I sat down on the steps nearby, where we could all see each other comfortably. Akemi had already begun drawing, although she had no customer. I figured she was creating something to show her skill to a potential customer who might come along. She was at ease with Chiasa in the daytime. It was the nights that she wanted to belong to her.
Wearing my shades that Sudana had gifted me, I told Chiasa, whose eyes were shielded by a floppy hat that couldn’t fit properly over all her thick hair, the story of Akemi’s family. In detail, I gave her all the missing parts that she had not known or discovered along the way. I even told her the truth about Naoko Nakamura, his background and how I had suspected ever since I read the unauthorized biography that he might not be Akemi’s biological father. When I told her about the paternity test results, and that it had all been confirmed this morning, her mouth dropped open. “So fucking crazy,” she said.
“I’ll need you to tell Akemi the entire story.”
“No way. It’s so personal, too touchy. Do you know how the Japanese feel about issues of purity and origin and status?” she asked. “Believe me, they have reminded me enough times that because I am what they call ‘half,’ I am less, and ‘not Japanese.’ ”
“Fuck them,” I said instinctively. “I only care about Akemi. She has to know because it’s the truth and I don’t lie to her. I need you to tell her, explain it in detail. I’ll be right there with you. If I could say it myself, I would.”
“You only care about Akemi, Ryoshi?” Chiasa said, lifting my shades from my eyes.
“That’s not what I meant. I meant if it is a situation of being concerned about how the Japanese think about purity, or how the Koreans feel about blood, I don’t care about their prejudices. I care about how all of this affects Akemi,” I clarified.
“I thought—” Chiasa began, and then I interrupted her.
“Sometimes don’t think. Sometimes only feel.
“Sorry, Ryoshi, I’ll do it. I understand. I’ll do whatever you want me to do, really. That’s how I feel,” she said softly. She sounded true.
“That part about her mother being Korean and pretending to be Japanese just to save Akemi—explosive.” Chiasa exhaled.
“My mind is already beginning to assemble the right words to say it all the best way, the softest way, in Japanese. You know, for Akemi to be able to save face.”
“What did you want to show me?” I reminded her. “Oh, it’s in my pocket. I won’t pull it out right now,” she said, evading.
“What is it? Tell me,” I pushed.
“It’s a newspaper article about the attack on Nakamura’s top security chief at the Shilla.”
I smiled. “What do they say?” I asked.
“No suspects,” she said. “They just have a bunch of theories. It seems Nakamura has enough enemies that it’s become too confusing for them.”
“Why did you have a slingshot and a rock on you at a banquet?”
“I told you I always carry one,” she said.
“Even when you’re wearing a cocktail dress?”
“Hai!” she said instinctively.
“Where did you stash it?” I asked her.
She touched her breasts and smiled coyly.
“Then I won’t ask where you hid the ammunition,” I said. She was giving me forbidden urges in the daylight hours in the presence of my first wife.
“Did you know that Nakamura would show up there?” I asked.
“No way,” she said. “I was on the balcony watching you and daddy. I was watching to see if you two were making friends. I was so overwhelmed, seeing you two talking and so excited that you actually married me. Then I saw Makoto. You know I have perfect vision.” Chiasa said. I wanted to hug her. I didn’t.
* * *
At 3:00 we three went back to the h
otel. I called them both into my room.
“Anyaseyo,” I told them to sit. I had learned that Korean phrase from Professor Dong Hwa. Akemi sat first, Chiasa followed. I sat behind Akemi and pulled her close inside my legs. Her back was to me. Her face was toward Chiasa. I pulled her shoulders back, so that she would relax on my chest. I gave Chiasa the signal, and slowly and softly in raspy Japanese she told Akemi the long story, a story that took just as long as it took Umma to tell me the story of her and my father’s marriage.
Chiasa was beautiful and gentle, a problem solver, not a problem. She used her eyes and her voice and some sheets of paper with random kanji that she wrote while revealing it all. It was a tragic story, but Chiasa’s voice still soothed and aroused me. Perhaps because I did not know the meaning of the words.
When Chiasa finished, she asked me, “Ryoshi, can we make the prayer and have some water?” Of course I agreed. Chiasa said something to Akemi in Japanese. Akemi was still in a sad daze.
The sun had set. I washed my nose, mouth, and face, hands, and feet first. Chiasa followed. We said the prayer together, as Akemi lay on the bed.
I phoned Dong Hwa and told him that we should meet tomorrow at the ceremony. He gave me all the information. I wrote it down in my pocket-sized notebook.
I left and got takeout and carried it back to my room for the three of us.
Later that same night I grabbed Akemi up and took her to my bed. Chiasa had already gone back to their room. After the crazy night of being kidnapped and dropped into a “war game,” Akemi had licked my wounds. Now I would lick hers, and rock her into a deep and comfortable sleep.
* * *
At 11:00 p.m. I went out. “Where are you going?” Chiasa asked me when I knocked on her room door and asked her to stay with Akemi while I headed out.
“I’ll be back,” I told her.
Chapter 24
CHINGOO
“I took a taxi to Busan University to the address printed on the flyer. When I had picked up the takeout, I had hit up Black Sea. I told him I would come through, for him to be on point and to make sure that I didn’t have any trouble with the campus police, or any police for that matter.
When my taxi pulled up, someone was there to greet me.
“Anyong!” he said. “For Black Sea, right?” He took me straight into the building where the party was happening.
The lights were dimmed but not off like in a Brooklyn party. The place was packed and the sound system was right. They were booming music. It was “Licensed to Ill” by the Beastie Boys. Although a few girls were dancing with girls, nobody had to tell these Korean cats to dance with the girls. They were on the floor and most of the couples had rhythm. They didn’t ride the female bodies like Brooklyn, but they came up close enough to feel the attraction and spit their game, whatever it was. Across the room I could see Black Sea in the DJ booth politicking like he wanted to influence the DJ to spin the records he chose. His man was behind him holding a crate of vinyl.
I walked past Sarang, the black Korean girl from the record shop. She was leaning on the wall alone. She saw me and called out, “Manager.” I kept it moving. I don’t talk to other men’s women. They wouldn’t have a chance to talk to mine.
In the booth I gave Black Sea a pound; we embraced. It was strange to see how happy my showing up at his jam made him appear to be.
“You showed up,” he said, smiling. “Man, I appreciate that,” he said, before introducing me as his “chingoo” to all of his friends I hadn’t met yet. I smiled to myself, wondering if in translation that was the same thing as Ameer calling me “my nigga” or Chris calling me “Brother!”
The DJ reached back in time and threw on some break beats. Black Sea gathered up his crew as different ones of them started stepping out from the crowds where they had been camouflaged. All the regular partygoers cleared out to make room for Black Sea and his boys to perform. I could tell they had made a name for themselves as the dance floor was now theirs and the crowd around them began to swell. The DJ threw on some electric funk, Hashim’s “Al Naafyish.” Black Sea’s crew went to work transforming into dancers dressed like homeboys but whose bodies had five times more joints than the average human. He was dancing for his girl. I understood.
She let him rock for a while before the beat lifted her feet from the floor and teleported her over to her man. She struck a pose and her powerful body started moving in ways it didn’t seem like her tight jeans would allow. Her whole body pulsating, now, she wowed the whole room easily. She was the only African-Korean female, wasn’t shy, and had more rhythm than the whole place combined. She spun on her black Converses with the silver laces, twisting her body. When she stopped spinning, her legs were interlocked like a New York pretzel. When she released them she went into a move that finished with a headstand more daring than Yoga with ten times the hype. She was all smiles. The fellas all bigged her up, which led them to bigging Black Sea up. The Korean girls whispered in each other’s ears and watched with no option to do anything else besides to be amazed.
Kurtis Blow’s “Super Sperm” and the Fat Boys, Grand Master Flash, Spoonie Gee, and the Sugarhill Gang all got some burn before I got ready to break out.
“You’re not playing with her are you?” I asked Black Sea when it was just me and him standing there.
“Nah,” he said borrowing from my way of talking. I’m not! Yakusoku! ” he said, like “ I swear.”
I only stayed for an hour and a half. I didn’t mess with any girlies, not even the one or two trying to mess with me. Black Sea accompanied me out of the party, which wasn’t over yet. His girl followed him into the light. When we got outside the door, I saw his bruises.
“What happened?” I asked him.
“Oh, nothing,” he said.
“It looks like something,” I said.
“You said I would have to fight for love. This right here is from Abojee,” he said, meaning he got pounded on by his father.
“You introduced her to your parents?”
“Yes.” He smiled.
“What about that black eye?” I asked him. He turned and pointed to his girl. “Her little brother did that,” he confessed.
“I guess I got to teach you how to fight,” I told him. “How else will you make it in New York?” He smiled. “You don’t look like a scientist no more!” I joked. “Good for you!” I said. His girl was smiling also.
I got a cab and went back to my wives.
Chapter 25
REST IN PEACE
The ceremony was emotional. It was the same as if Joo Eun, who had died years ago, had died just yesterday. It was not only heavy on my wife Akemi, but each person in attendance seemed weighed down with sorrow. I thought about the love that must be inside these people. Even the ones who had not seen Joo Eun since she was fifteen years young, which was sixteen years ago, seemed shocked and overwhelmed. I thought about how I knew more about Joo Eun than many of the people gathered on the ferry where the ashes were scattered in the sea. I thought about how uneasy a person would feel in their soul without knowing the missing pieces to a complicated story about someone they truly loved. I felt for the grandmother, whose posture was solid like a wall but who still shed so many silent tears. She was Joo Eun’s mother. How much had she gone through?
I thought about war. I thought about love. I thought about how the general had said there is no budget for the military. “War is endless.”
Dong Hwa stepped away from the side of his grieving wife and over toward me. His steps were steady but the boat was rocking on the current of the sea. “This is jeong you are seeing and hopefully also feeling right now. When we Koreans love, we love forever, no matter what. Our country has been warred on for thousands of years. Our people have been attacked, colonized, ruled by dictators. Our families have been under pressure. There have been many circumstances that have separated one Korean from another. Even though we are separated by space and time, we are still loving that person, and waiting or fighting or
praying for their return. Whenever we are reunited, our love is as though they never left. They are welcomed back into the family and we continue on.”
He thought he was describing a love so thick and intense that it was exclusive to Korean people. Yet I had heard these words from my own father in the past. I had felt that kind of love from him and Umma and my entire family. I walk with that same kind of strong love myself. I didn’t express that to him. I didn’t think this was the time. But I understood what he was saying, the position he was in, the love he had for his own wife as well as his effort to welcome me, while still defending his family from me, just in case I matched a bad image that he may have held in his mind.
The atmosphere moved me to shake hands with Akemi’s Korean father. I even spoke the word mianhapnida, an apology for knocking him down to the floor and punching him in his face. I didn’t feel like I lost anything as a man by apologizing to him. It was the difference between having the information and not having the information. If I had known he was her father, I would not have put my hands on him. But since I didn’t know, I did. He wasn’t focused on me. He accepted my apology. His hardened face revealed that he was a man with many worries, the least of them the fight that we had.
Midnight and the Meaning of Love Page 63