Midnight (17 page)

Back down in the subway, we were on the downtown platform waiting for the trains headed to Brooklyn. This worked out for me. I had almost two hours left before I needed to be at the dojo.

As the train jerked, she loosened up her jacket and pointed to her T-shirt. It had the words pratt institute written across it in bold letters. I didn’t know where or what that was. I knew enough to know she was trying to say that’s where she was going.

Staring into her dark eyes, I thought about how I had to teach my mother English, word by word. It’s been years now, and Umma can listen and understand more English than she can actually speak. She still only speaks a few words and sentences in English. I thought to myself that Akemi could probably learn the English language faster than my mother, because my mother didn’t really care for English. Akemi seemed eager to learn. She definitely was not allowing not
knowing the English language to keep her from learning how to travel around the city and go exploring.

I touched her hands. Now her fingernails were painted all of the pastel colors of her scarf. She looked me in my eyes. I said, “Hand.” I held up my hand and repeated the word
hand
one more time. She caught on easily, smiled, and said, “Hand.” For the rest of the ride, we learned each other this way, me touching her hand, fingers, arm, hair, ears, eyes, nose, and even lips, then teaching her the right words to repeat and remember. She would touch me back and recite the right words out loud. I don’t know if she was really learning English. But I knew we were learning each other.

We got off in downtown Brooklyn. It was crazy how in the winter you could go down in the subway in the light of day, and in less than a half an hour, walk up into the dark of night. We ended up over on Willoughby Avenue at Pratt Institute.

There was a bunch of people there, all in a hurry. They were young but seemed older than both me and Akemi.

I noticed a lot of females dressed in varying styles it seemed like they’d made up themselves. Some of that shit worked and some of it looked a fucking mess.

As she led her way to her classroom, I stopped right outside the door. She grabbed my hand and pulled it toward herself as if to say, “Come in.”

I didn’t come. I pulled back and said, “Sayonara,” the word she used the other night in Queens to separate herself from me. She reached out for my hand again, and bowed to me. Her head was down. Then she lifted her eyes up and fixed them on my face. To see her bow to me gave me a crazy heated feeling. I followed her in, knowing I could only stay for a little while.

On one side of the huge class there were chairs with desks attached to them, and a blackboard. On the other side were
a bunch of easels, paints, brushes, and pencils and papers of various sizes and types. I sat at the desk next to hers.

At six o’clock sharp, a young woman who walked with the authority of a teacher entered and stood at the front of the class. She talked some. I wasn’t really listening to her. Instead I was inside my head thinking about how I could go to a school like this, with grown-up people who minded their business and just showed up to learn. I liked the way the class was taking place in the evening and people seemed like they came because they wanted to and not because they were being forced.

I noticed her moving toward me, this slim white woman with brown hair, the teacher. “Are you our model for today?” she asked. “I know I’ve seen your face before,” she said, focusing everyone’s attention on me. I didn’t know what she was talking about or what she even wanted.

“I’m just here for a minute. I’m a friend of Akemi’s. Matter of fact, I’m about to leave right now.” I stood up. Akemi stood up.

The teacher faced Akemi. “It’s okay, Akemi. I understand. He’s a friend of yours. We won’t undress him, then.” The class laughed. Akemi didn’t.

“But I’m sure I’ve seen that face before. It’s a fantastic face, not to mention your body. You should consider modeling.” The teacher reached out to touch my chin. Akemi stepped in between the teacher’s hand and myself. Everybody in the classroom knew what that meant. Some of the students laughed. One of the males said, “Oooh,” and the teacher moved on.

A female rushed through the door, out of breath. “I’m your model for today,” she proclaimed. The teacher looked at her watch and said, “For twenty-five dollars an hour, you should be on time.”

“Sorry,” the girl apologized, went to the other side of the room, and climbed onto the table.

The teacher clapped her hands together and said, “All right, people, let’s set up.” The students all got out of their chairs slowly and into their smocks. Akemi lagged behind a bit. I guess she needed to follow what the other students were doing since she couldn’t understand her teacher’s English words.

Glad that the attention was now off me, I turned to leave. I looked at Akemi, who was standing in front of a cubby putting on her smock. I pointed at the clock on the wall to signal and let her know I had to go.

As I started to walk out, the girl model who had rushed in late, standing now on the table, casually pulled off her sweater and revealed her flesh, her neck and shoulders, her bare titties that went from white to pale pink, to pink, only to be topped off with purple nipples. What a creation, shaped so exquisitely! My eyes then rode down between her breasts and onto her soft flat stomach, then sank into her darkened belly button.

All I knew was I wasn’t leaving no more. My legs weren’t moving.

Swiftly she untied her wraparound denim skirt. There were no panties on that pussy, just a bush of sandy blond hair.

The teacher began instructing the model on how to pose properly. As the model tried to get herself into a position that pleased the teacher, she turned slowly, showing everyone her bare back and butt. She bent over, the crease in her behind widened some. Then she kneeled and eventually squatted, cocking her legs open, a slight scent escaping and awakening my always precise sense of smell.

The students, eight males and ten females, whose backs were all to me, faced their easels and the model. Nobody was saying nothing. They took her nudeness like for them it was an everyday thing.

Now the teacher was back on my case.

“You’re welcome to stay,” she said to me sarcastically, with a sly smile and her arms folded across her chest. The students turned toward my direction and began laughing once again.

Akemi, with her brush in her hand, just watched me closely with no judgment, simply observing my every move and maybe trying to read my thoughts. The intensity of her eyes unfroze my feet. Swiftly, I left.

In the cold breeze I broke out in a hot sweat. This was the first time I ever saw a completely naked woman up close and in real life, in all of her details.

There was no doubt that I felt what I saw. I started thinking crazy thoughts, like how come a girl can have straight hair on her head and nappy hair on her pussy, or red hair on her head and a blond bush between her thighs? And if this is how good a white girl looked naked, with a small, soft-looking white behind, then what did the Black females whose hips were wider, breasts more juicy, asses more bigger, look like fully exposed?

I kept seeing images of the gap between the girl’s legs when I looked at her from the back. Every time I thought about it, I would never see the model’s face or even remember what her face looked like or the shape of her nose or color of her eyes. I just kept seeing her body parts, one by one, like a slide show in my mind.

Before the dojo I dipped into the arcade. I played a few games of Street Fighter to try to get my mind back in the right position. There was no way I would be able to concentrate otherwise.

The whole scene back there reminded me of something Umma once said, concerning why me and Naja were not allowed to have a television in our Brooklyn apartment. She said, “No outsiders should control what my children see. Once you show a child certain things, you can never snatch
that image back.” I remember thinking that she was being too strict. Now I at least understood what she meant.

Luckily, when I was thirteen, after the fast of Ramadan, she brought me a television as a present during the Eid. She said, “There is nothing in this box that isn’t happening right in front of you on these streets. You are becoming a man now. I have to believe that your father and I have raised you to separate yourself from evil.” Naja, on the other hand, was still not allowed to watch. She was only five then.

“Your sandwich is in the bag,” Ameer said, handing me what I knew was my joint. I put it in my gym bag and locked it in a locker in the dojo.

After our training, me, Chris, and Ameer hooked up. As we chilled in the back of the dojo, Sensei rolled up and asked me to step inside his office. Chris and Ameer looked surprised. Sensei had never singled one of us out before. If one of us fucked up, we were all expected to hear about it.

“It’s your time now. I know you are ready,” Sensei said calmly. He was standing behind his desk. His seven swords hung one beneath the other, mounted on the wall behind him. His deadly hands and knuckles gripped the edge of his desk. I wasn’t sure what he was getting at. I knew not to interrupt whatever it was he had to say.

“Your weapons training will begin next week,” he continued, searching for my reaction.

“Domo arigato gozaimasu, Sensei,”
I responded in my very limited Japanese, thanking him very much in the respectful way that we were taught to speak to an elder, teacher, and master. I was showing no emotion, but was very excited inside. Learning the Asian-styled weapons is what had drawn me here in the first place. But Sensei’s
stringent standards and expectations were high and had kept him from teaching us weapons for the past seven long years.

I felt good that he thought we were now prepared. We had all trained so hard. Over the years, me and Ameer had never missed a practice. Chris missed practice every now and then because his father is a reverend who sometimes made demands on Chris’ time.

“Just you,” Sensei said as if he could read my thoughts. “My other two students are not ready yet.” His words hit me hard. I stood still, weighing Sensei’s words in my mind.

“Chris is still a follower. Ameer is a strong fighter, but he has a lot of work to do on his discipline,” Sensei judged.

I thought about how in all of these years, us three never allowed anyone to say anything fucked up about each other without a fight. I was trying to accept that this conversation and criticism of my two best friends was not meant to be an attack on them that required my loyalty, or my foot to the face or head of the man who was my teacher.

Sensei and I had a few rough times like this one before. Sometimes we disagreed. When I first joined up, he taught us how the Japanese bow as a matter of respect. But I did not bow. It is against my beliefs. For the first two years, Sensei was bitter and sore because he felt I was being arrogant and stubborn. Four more years later, he realized that I had no personal disrespect toward him or his culture, but I had loyalty to my beliefs and the lessons of my father.

“When you were a very young man the first time you walked in here, you asked to see my sword. What did I tell you then?” Sensei asked.

Remembering clearly, I answered. “You said that a sword is not something you can just see and hold or play with. You said the sword was an extension of a fighter’s spirit. You said that when you draw your sword, it must be used. You said
that every man must think before he draws his weapon. To draw it, is to decide on death.”

“Very good,” Sensei said. “And for this reason, I have chosen to train you in weapons. I have watched you. You retain information that others forget. You have developed very nicely. I know that you have become a great fighter and independent thinker. I know that you are not a predator and will not abuse the knowledge that I will offer to you. You now show the discipline, the focus, and have the mind to become a great defender and protector of life.”

After a long pause in which Sensei sat down and began looking at one of the many papers on his desk, he said to me, without looking into my eyes, “You do not have to decide anything here tonight. If you want to train in weapons, come next week on Tuesday at twelve noon. Your friends will be in school. Hopefully you will be here with me, one on one.”

“Hai, arigato gozaimasu, Senseisan,”
I responded even more respectfully.

Outside, curiosity kept Chris and Ameer waiting on me.

“What happened? What did Sensei say?” Chris asked. Ameer waited intensely.

“Sensei said he is ready to train me in weapons,” I admitted solemnly and truthfully. There was just silence. I knew they felt tight about it.

“Don’t worry. Whatever I learn, I’ll teach it to you. You know how we do,” I promised.

“Whatever. Funny how he picked you for the weapons class. You already walk with your heat. What could be better than that?” Chris asked, still feeling cheated.

“No, don’t sleep,” Ameer said in a serious tone. “Sensei knows a thousand different ways to kill a man. You never know when you might have to defend yourself using more than your hands and feet, and can’t get to your piece.”

We stood there, thinking about what Ameer just said.

“Fuck it. We trust you. You’re on our team, right?” Ameer patted me on the back and laughed. Chris’ tension broke up. I looked at the two of them. I was grateful to have two friends in this foreign country. I thought of how my father’s American friend and former roommate had left us stranded at the airport. I hoped that what we three had was something completely different.

Ten o’clock that same night, back on my Brooklyn block, the guns was clapping. I moved swiftly to my building, dodging and avoiding, imagining my mother and sister ducked down on the floor the way I taught them to do when they hear gunshots. I was certain that my mother had the blinds closed and curtains drawn by this hour. Hopefully she had on some music and couldn’t hear the symphony of bullets.

My heart raced as my mind conjured up the image of a stray bullet piercing the innocence and beauty of my Umma or my young sister Naja.

I got home and showed my face and my love, so they could sleep.