Midnight (10 page)

“How long before he can have it ready?” I asked.

“A couple of days,” he answered.

“I’ll be back to pick them up. Hold ’em for me,” I told him firmly.

“You better come back. Once my father works the iron you gotta pay up in full. You can’t get no deposit money back if you change your mind,” he threatened.

I seen he needed to feel like a boss over me, the customer. I wanted the product so I played along with it.

“Here’s fifty more. Just let him do a good job on it,” I said
calmly. Now that more money was changing hands, I saw the youth’s father paying attention.

Umma, Naja, and I made the Zuhr prayer on the farm right before sunset with the violet sky as our ceiling and the trees as our walls. It felt completely peaceful. The passengers on the bus waited eight extra minutes for us. When we raised from our prayers we could see them watching us through their windows. When we boarded, they all had odd looking expressions on their faces as we walked down the aisle. Maybe they had never seen a family pray before. I don’t know. Thirty minutes into the ride, they loosened up and were back to acting normal, eating apples, playing cards, kids clapping, and an older lady passing around a hat to take up a collection to tip the bus driver. I thought to myself, maybe these people thought that we were strange. It didn’t matter though, because after the prayer, they definitely showed us respect.

What started out as a bother and an obligation turned out to be a great trip. At first Umma and I worried about losing an entire Saturday, which was the biggest workday for her side business. Now we not only got some fresh vegetables and fruits that grew up from the ground and hung down from the trees and were picked by Umma’s hand the way she liked it, I also had a lead on a house for sale.

When I gave the realtor a call that same week, at first he didn’t want to talk to “a kid,” on the telephone. I was twelve. I told him my parents didn’t speak English and that I was translating for them. He switched from being angered to only being a bit impatient. He priced the house at sixty-two thousand dollars. He also offered to sell us the empty plot of land beside it for twenty thousand.

Through Umma Designs, in two years we’d banked twenty-four thousand dollars. We agreed that when we had enough money to walk in and buy a whole house and the
land it sat on, we would disappear from our Brooklyn block quietly. No one would know where we had gone, why, or most important, how.

The
shuriken
turned out sweet. They were curved knives with a fist grip. One graceful swipe at a neck at the right angle and the head comes off.

A problem did come like I knew it would. I didn’t know what it would be or who it would be, but based on my father’s words and lessons, it would happen. His name was Gold Star Tafari. He showed up in the parking lot outside the factory where Umma worked.

A dark cat like me, he seemed about twenty-nine, thirty years old. He had a rough face that you could tell was etched by experience. A medium build, he was about two inches taller than me at thirteen. He had two cuts on his left cheek that looked mean. I always liked scars. They belong on men as a reminder. If you ask a male about his wounds, usually he’ll tell a good, crazy, original, and action-packed story. Once a youth starts collecting scars, it makes him a better fighter, smarter with his moves in his next encounter.

He had locks, long, wild, black ones that he made sure not to organize, just wore naturally. He was the first cat I noticed rocking the Star of David piece on his chain, and clenching a gold toothpick holder between the top and bottom rows of his teeth.

He showed up at the factory suddenly. It was a Monday, a cold winter evening, five
P.M.
to be exact. Already I could see the gray sky that comes before the black. You know how the sun rises late and sets real early in the midwinter season? There was a steady flow of nine-to-five workers getting off
and walking through the parking area like they did at the end of each workday. Most of them didn’t have cars.

He drove up, parked, got out, stood and began looking in my direction. I was checking out the fact that he was wearing a hat made by Umma Designs. It was crocheted with Umma’s special stitching using iced green, black, and gold yarn.

It didn’t even take me ten seconds to run through the orders in my head. It was easy since all Umma’s orders ran through me anyway. I recalled that I sold that hat to a thick Jamaican girl named Shirley. She was easy enough to remember. The first time I met her was on the day of the baby shower. For a long time she never placed an order with Umma Designs. But she would always wave and smile when she saw me.

When I grew some more, she would stop and speak to me while I waited for Umma to come downstairs. She had a thick Jamaican accent, which I had to strain to understand, and a bold style. She wore her clothes real tight, revealing how her legs swung back and gave her an unusual stance.

Finally one day she ordered some hats from me. We went back and forth on the price and the exact shade of green she wanted Umma to stitch. I showed her about seven different variations of the color before she agreed. She said the hats were for her fiancé and described him as being “real choosy.” She claimed if she got the color wrong by even a little bit, he wouldn’t wear the hats at all. She joked that she liked my quiet, easygoing style better than his loud demands and wanting everything his way. She shot me a sly look and said she would marry me if my age would just catch up with my body. Her eyes lingered on me to check if I caught her compliment. I just laughed at the time, thought it was funny, a female choosing me and then telling me she would marry me like I had no say-so in it.

The last time I delivered Shirley some hats that she had ordered was the last time I saw her. Umma said she quit the job all of a sudden, a few months before her scheduled wedding. Her coworkers speculated on what happened with her because no one got a chance to say their good-byes or had received a wedding invite or even a friendly call.

I waited and watched the cat as he looked around the parking lot. He never made a move that night. None of the workers stepped up to meet him, to say hi or to catch a ride in his car. He stayed at a distance, just leaning against his car and watching me watching him. When Umma came down we left. He chilled right there.

The next evening he rolled up again at five. It was impossible to miss that pale-yellow Fairmount station wagon that leaned heavier on one side than the other and oddly had wood paneling on the outside of the car. If he was supposed to be incognito, that shit wasn’t working out too well.

The third night he showed up he was still focused in my direction. When Umma came downstairs and joined me, he stopped leaning on his car, stood up straight, and for some reason removed his hat, his locks falling down around his face like a lion’s mane. He shook them one good time and struck a pose like an animal after a mating dance.

“What are you staring at?” Umma asked me.

“Nothing,” I responded, placing my hand behind her elbow and moving us away from his view and on our way.

In my mind I was thinking that this man must be thinking that one day he would show up and I wouldn’t be there. Then he would seize his opportunity to swoop down on my mother. Then I told myself, nah. Why would he be here for Umma? I mean, there were all these women walking through with either really tight or revealing clothing. Why would he be checking out the one woman wearing loose-fitting Islamic dress whose face and body he could not see at all?

On Friday, the fifth day of his strange appearances, he sat in his station wagon and waited for Umma to come downstairs to meet me. He exited his car dressed in a rust Wrangler corduroy suit; brown Clark weavers; a red, yellow, and green belt; and a hat that looked like a beaver tilted sideways. He walked over toward us, his steps sideways like his hat. Purposely I waited eager to find out his intent. I stepped in front of Umma so that she was directly behind me. “Wait one minute, Umma.” I opened my coat so he could see I was holding.

“I-man respect dat,” he said. “Overstand?” he added, smiling ear to ear.

“What you need?” I asked him, unfamiliar with whatever he was saying.

“I-man need fa chat wit she fa a minute,” he said, leaning to the side to try to catch Umma’s eyes and attract her attention. But I was taller than her and she didn’t step out from behind me.

“Talk to me,” I told him. He reached his hand behind him into his back pocket.

I pulled out my joint and held it at my side where no one but him could see it.

“Hold on, wait, mon. I-man a paying customer,” he said, calmly opening the paper he just pulled out from his back pocket. “Why com it always haf a com down to fire power between bretherns?” he asked, but I didn’t flinch.

“I want fer she ta put the Lion of Judah on I-man shirt. I-man know only she can do what I-man want. I-man checks Umma styles mon, wicked!” he said, his smile revealing his slow, sly manner and smoker’s teeth.

“Whatever I-man wants from Umma Designs, I-man needs to talk only to me,” I told him, believing by now his name was I-man. He corrected me, telling me that his name was Gold Star Tafari. He pushed each of his names out like
he was pronouncing something sacred or announcing the arrival of a king. I later figured out that I-man was his way of saying “me,” referring to himself.

Umma embroidered a gold Lion of Judah on the back of his deep-blue denim shirt, with all of the detail and power presented on the picture that he had handed to me that night outside the factory.

When I called him to let him know his shirt was ready, he offered to meet Umma at her job. I told him forcefully that he should not return there since his business was only with me. He chuckled.

We met. I gave him the shirt wrapped in our packaging. He paid. I gave him a receipt. After I thanked him for his business I turned to leave.

“Hold on,” he said. He tore open the package right in front of me. He held the denim shirt up, then laid it down on the wrapping paper and ran his thick, rough, ashy hands over the hand-embroidered designs and shouted, “Wicked! Selassie-I.” I could tell that was some kind of vote of approval. I nodded and asked him, “You good?”

He answered, “Umma is good!” I started feeling tight. So I left.

Less than twenty-four hours later his deep voice and strange talk cut through on our voice mail. “I-man wants . . .”

Umma embroidered a Lion of Judah on the pant leg of his jeans. I charged him double what he paid for the embroidery on his shirt. We met at a vegetarian spot called The Green Onion on Nostrand Avenue in Brooklyn. He paid for the package. I gave him the receipt, thanked him, and left.

His next voice mail was directed at Umma. It was crazy hearing his voice saying her name, “Umma.” Umma was the name that only our family called her. Even though her business was named Umma Designs, her first name is actually
Sana. “I-man wanna thank you personally, Umma. I-man has a special project jus fa you, Umma,” he said.

I played his message three times. I never allowed Umma to hear it, of course. But now I was thinking of this cat as some real threat, a nutcase who knew where my mother worked and didn’t mind taking the time to come up to her job looking around and waiting for her. I waited to return his call. I had to let my anger pass.

When I called Gold Star Tafari back, he said he needed to have Umma come over personally to do some measurements for some custom-designed curtains for his apartment.

He was pushing it. I knew he wanted to get my mother inside his apartment, within his reach and control. By now I could tell that he would try anything. He was always calm, though, which fucked with me even more.

So I played his game. I made an appointment for Umma to take the measurements and took his home address. I was glad to know where he lived. Even though he did not know where we lived, he already knew too much about my family, I thought. He lived in Brooklyn, in the corner building at the end of the block directly across the street from Prospect Park on Ocean Avenue and Parkside, over there down by the playgrounds.

When I knocked he pulled his door open slowly. I could hear the metal pole dragging against a metal slide as the door opened. It was an old-school police lock where a metal pole leans against the closed door making it impossible for anyone to enter without the pole being removed. Even if someone was successful in breaking into an apartment with one of these locks, the noise that the metal made would expose the intruder instantly.

When I stepped inside the dim living room, I could see his huge candles burning. I heard his soft music playing reggae sounds, Bob Marley’s voice. “I don’t want to wait in vain for your love . . .”

I could tell that this was a typical approach for him. His thick cylinder candles were burnt down more than halfway. There was already three inches’ worth of hardened wax stuck around their bottoms.

His big fucking welcome smile evaporated when he realized it was me, not Umma, and that she wasn’t even with me. I acted like he did, calm and casual. I walked in with the tape measure draped around my neck. I had disregarded his instructions the way he disregarded mine.

“Turn on the lights so I can get your measurements right,” I told him.

After taking the measurements and ignoring his screw face I quoted a price for the curtains that I thought would permanently end his relationship with Umma Designs.

“Three thousand dollars,” I quoted him for the white burlap drapes he wanted with the brocade borders and the Lion of Judah embroidered on each section.

“I-rie,” he said. But I didn’t know what that meant. So I started explaining and breaking down to him why my price was so high.

“Five hundred covers only the material and supplies. It’s handmade. The material you want is heavy and expensive. The embroidery process will take much longer than usual.”

“No problem, my youth,” he said. “I-rie.” Which I now knew meant something like “Okay,” or “That’s cool.”

He left his living room space and walked into some back room. I was standing there in disbelief that he was gonna pay out the ridiculous price I only came up with to get rid of him for good.