Midnight (12 page)

Could I tell them, “Yeah, you look good to me,” which was the truth, but “You’re a ran-through whore and my moms will never accept you,” which was the truth also. Nah, I couldn’t tell them nothing. So I didn’t. I was known for being quiet and serious and silent.

“I see you always got a book in your pocket. Do you read them or just carry them around?” she asked, smiling, and very confident in herself. Now she had one hand on her hip gripping her little waistline, twisting her little body to make sure I could see the curve of her famous ass, which poked out even when she rocked long skirts.

The fact of the matter was, if I was back home in my grandfather’s African village, at age fourteen I could rightfully be planning to marry, own a piece of land, and start a family. To some people this might sound crazy. I understood it one hundred percent.

I could feel the difference in myself from when I was twelve or even thirteen. At fourteen, I feel stronger. My observations are sharper. I looked at things a bit differently than I did before. In my body I felt a force, a yearning, a hunger.

In my grandfather’s village, they must have understood the human body and mind. They built a village that could stay in step with reality. If at fourteen the natural thing was to feel and become sexual, then at fourteen you could marry and start a family and become responsible and respectable.

In the USA the society was out of pace with the natural development of its young. They made it a shame for a youth to feel and be sexual at fourteen, and looked away while they knew it was happening randomly anyway.

Adults acted surprised and disgusted when teens got pregnant. Then they pressed them to kill their seeds. The laws made it premature and illegal for teens to marry or to even get working papers and become responsible and earn.

I knew because around my way a young teenage girl named Raven got pregnant by a mild-mannered cat named Thomas. Her mother dragged her in tears to the abortion clinic. Three days later Thomas shot and killed his girlfriend’s mother for killing his unborn.

I considered myself a disciplined cat. But under plan USA, even when a youth graduates from high school his parent is still hollering, “Finish your education first.” Next he does four or five years of undergraduate school at some college. Still the adults are hollering, “Secure a good job first then start a family.” No matter how disciplined a youth is,
could he really hold off completely? Could he resist his sexual nature until he’s twenty-three years old? Or is it the American way for the young to abort all the babies they create up until the time they are eligible to marry, have completed their studies, and are qualified to work?

Reality says no. So the block was bursting with chaos. Everybody’s fucking everybody. Nobody’s married. Nobody claims responsibility. Nobody’s respected.

“I gotta go,” I told Heavenly Paradise and pushed off. I could hear her sucking her teeth at me. Even though I knew she would not give up, I just kept it moving. There was more than enough business for me to handle.

Monday through Thursday I play basketball at night after my sister and my moms, along with the majority of people in the hood who don’t want no problems, were in a deep sleep. I like the court better when it’s empty.

Dribbling the ball always releases my tension. Sinking the ball in the hoop makes me feel good about my possibilities.

I dreamed of playing ball blindfolded, getting so familiar with the dimensions of the court and becoming so aware and comfortable that I could just sense the position of the basket and sink the ball, all net. I figured once I could start hitting those three-pointers blindfolded, I could do any fucking thing. But it was just a dream. I’m too smart to close or cover my eyes while I’m out on the Brooklyn streets, even in the neighborhood playground.

After a while, there was an old wino cat who started leaning on the fence watching me play. He used to call me Midnight since I only played late at night. Every now and then he’d bring a drinking partner. They’d stand on the side, drink, and talk shit. It wasn’t long before the name Midnight stuck to me.

One night out, the court was all dark and foggy. Either somebody had busted the street lamp, or it just blew out. Since I could barely see anything, I figured this was my chance to test my senses without having to close my eyes.

This was the same night I met a young cat who stepped right out of the darkness and started speaking to me.

“Peace, God,” he hollered out. Right off I knew he was a Five Percenter, like DeQuan, Superior, Conflict, Heavenly, and a bunch of people living and dying around my way. They believed that “the Black man is God.” So they addressed black boys and men as “God,” and the Black girls and women were called “Earth.” Some of them claimed to have something to do with Islam. Some of them didn’t. It didn’t matter to me what they said or called themselves. I kept my eyes on them. It doesn’t matter what anyone says, just give them a little bit of time and they’ll prove who they are and what they really believe by how they’re living day to day. Over time I learned to deal with them like they was just another group of people who were not all the way true or serious. I didn’t lock horns with them though. I didn’t waste my time tryna knock them. I moved around them and kept my own beliefs, pace, and flow.

“Yeah, you nice with it,” he added. “You should come play on the team.”

Now, I could see the outline of his body, but not the details of his face. Yet I could tell from his voice that he wasn’t from my block. I checked the distance between him and my guns that I had stashed on the side. I told myself I messed up. This guy caught me slipping. If he wanted to do me something, it would be my bad all the way. But it wasn’t his angle.

“I’m Tyriq. And you?” he asked. Instinctively, I told him, “Midnight.”

He wanted me to come up to the school and play on his team. I told him I couldn’t because I was busy and didn’t have time for everyday after-school practices and a coach running my life.

“Nah, God,” he said. “This is not the school team. We just rent their court and sometimes their gym. You know, like intramural.” I didn’t know what
intramural
meant so I just stayed quiet. He explained that this team was just
“the best young ballers in Brooklyn, competing against one another in a tournament.” He said it didn’t matter if I wasn’t a “schoolboy.” He gave me the info on the meeting spot, time, and place and went on his way. I dribbled the ball while I watched him walking away.

My side hustles kept me moving in and out of all types of situations.

We ride together, Umma and I, still. After I get Umma to her workplace, I am free to handle business, homeschool work, or whatever is necessary.

On early Friday and Saturday mornings, I always head to Chinatown, located in lower Manhattan, where I have a part-time job in a fish market owned by a Chinaman named Cho. I caught the job one day while shopping for fresh fish for my mother to cook. She didn’t care how far I had to go to find fresh food that she would feel good about cooking. She often said that the local markets were selling Brooklyn Blacks old, expired, and sometimes even rotten food. While searching for a proper fish market, she taught me how to pull the fish gills back and check for the dark-red color to be sure that a fish is fresh. A fading pink meant it was not fresh. If the gills were cut out and the fish was cut into pieces or filleted and flaking, it meant it was old fish and the grocer was trying to get over. If the eyeballs of the fish were bloated or expanded in any way or cloudy, this meant the fish was old. “Flip it over,” my mother would say to me in Arabic. “You must check both sides and both fish eyes for freshness.”

The Chinaman had fish so fresh that some of them were still alive. He’d stick his hand in a huge tank and yank it out. On the scale the snapper would still be breathing.

When I discovered this particular fish shop, I noticed the Chinaman had a picture on a side wall of himself at the helm
of a real pretty red, thirty-six-foot, Reinell fishing boat out on the deep waters of the ocean. I asked him if the boat was his. He pretended not to hear me or understand. They were good at ignoring. I followed up and asked him if he was hiring. He told me the price of my seafood order, accepted my money, and moved right on to his next customer.

I was still interested. I had a thing for boats, ever since I accompanied my father on a business trip in a bad-ass yacht named
Al Salamah
, cruising across the Red Sea on the invite of a Saudi Arabian prince.

In the Sudan, even traveling up the Nile on a felucca was an adventure. It was just the feeling and the freedom that moving across the waters created within me.

Besides, the Chinaman had a crazy knife collection. I liked the way he wielded them, slicing the fish so precisely and easily.

My father taught me that language should never be the thing that separates one group of people from another. It’s easy to pick up a language if you just learn how to listen. He also taught me that people will treat you better when you take time to learn their greetings and customs.

Soon enough, I picked up a Chinese language book for a few dollars from a used bookstore. Easily I learned how to introduce myself in Chinese, and of course the Chinese word for boat,
chuan
.

I headed back to the fish store the next week, took my time introducing myself in Chinese, and asked if he had work. I did get a smile, but nothing else from the quiet, hardworking Chinaman, who seemed to only talk and only understand the language of numbers. I placed my order, paid, and bounced.

The following week I showed up in my flannel work shirt, jeans, and Tims, with my fish scaler in my hand. I told him in English that I would work the first day for free. Somehow he understood that! I caught the job.

Every Friday and Saturday from 7
A.M.
until 3
P.M.
I worked doing everything: unloading fish from the truck, dropping the live ones into tanks, placing fresh and frozen fish on ice, or scaling then chopping off fish heads and splitting fish bellies open and gutting them.

Chinatown for me was an amazing place that sometimes reminded me of my capital city of Khartoum back home in the Sudan, where my father had an executive business apartment separate from our estate. Chinatown was all about buying and selling any- and everything from Chinese herbs to dried-out chicken feet and snake tails, snake oil, clothing, jewels, or restaurant equipment. Every inch of space and property was fully used, nothing wasted, including fish eyeballs and fish heads. I observed short and slim Chinamen making a business out of only two feet of space. For ten hours they would stand on that small spot they had rented and sell whatever they had to offer.

A lot of Chinatown was about language and letters and codes. They spoke a different language, used a different system of letters, and sometimes hung up signs and prices that no one else but the Chinese people could read and understand. On the low they even had separate prices for the Chinese. I watched Cho switch up the numbers when his own kind came around. I wasn’t mad at it though. I thought it was cool and the same thing any group of people would do for theirselves and their people if they had any sense.

Cho warmed up to me, I believe, because I always showed up on time, made no excuses, and worked hard at anything he asked me to do. This was how it was supposed to be, I thought to myself. He asked no questions about who gave me permission to work, my age, or schooling. He didn’t request working papers or social security numbers or nothing. We just got down to getting what needed to be done, done.

It turned out he knew a lot more English than he originally let on. He paid me in cash at the end of each day, as if that was all he could be sure of. Maybe I wouldn’t show up the next day or I’d just completely disappear. He paid me a different amount each time. I guessed he was basing it on how he felt about whatever he earned for the day. He never cheated me so his system worked out fine. I knew that in time he would stop doubting me and I might even get a crack at chilling in the Atlantic Ocean on his big-ass boat.

Eventually he took me on a tour of the world in Chinatown that existed beneath the dark-brown metal doors in the cement ground. These doors, when unlocked, led to a network of basements.

Downstairs from Cho’s, there were tanks and cages filled with live long, black eels, lobsters, crabs, chickens, pigeons, and even cats. A narrow cement underground pathway connected each business on the block to the other. Once we walked past his underground property, we entered the next man’s underground space, where he was storing unmarked boxed merchandise. Cho said, “Stay on my side.” He explained that the merchants on this strip had an honor system not to tamper with each other’s products, and a surefire method of dealing with anyone who violated it. I knew what that meant.

I had already peeped the short, bald, Chinese strongman, his body built like a rhinoceros. In the thick of the winter he came around wearing only a T-shirt as though weather had no effect on him. He entered the shop every Friday surrounded by his deadly silence and collected an envelope from Cho. I didn’t need to see any more than that to know there was some kind of army behind all of these Asian businesses and that the businesses were forced to pay out protection money.

On the way back through the underground tour, Cho
pointed out a cement shower stall, located on his property, with a high-powered water hose and adjustable showerhead. He held up a big black bar of soap and said it was the only soap that gets every trace of the fish scent off your hands and body. He said, “My wife hates to smell the fish, but love to eat the fish!” He laughed a rare laugh at his own joke. His laughter evaporated. Then he told me, “This is your locker. Bring your own lock.”

He introduced me to the only cat in the underground who didn’t have a price on her head. She was a black cat with gray eyes named Pussy. I asked him why only this one cat was roaming around freely. He said, “Pussy good.”

I checked it all out. I would bring my own lock. I was big on having a locker, a new stash spot. But I didn’t plan on showering down there. After work every Friday and Saturday, I would just wash up in the upstairs bathroom to keep my face and my hands clean. Then I would shower each time when I got home.