Midnight (38 page)

“
Shukran
,” I told him, meaning thank you, in Arabic.

Umma, Akemi, and Naja were patiently waiting for me while Saachi skipped around the entire empty tent still bursting with energy same as if it was midday. I gestured and told them, “One more minute, ladies.” As I walked away to the three-foot-tall vase where I stashed my gun underneath some wood chips earlier; to my surprise and alarm, it wasn’t there. I searched again. I stood up thinking and worrying and reassuring
myself that no one saw me drop it in there and that there would be no reason for anyone to go digging in one of the wedding props either. It didn’t matter though. Either way, my joint was still missing.

Sudana walked over, distracting me at a bad moment. Akemi saw Sudana from across the room. She was walking over toward me as well. Umma and Naja watched. Saachi was singing her version of one of the wedding songs she heard earlier.

“I wrapped this up for you,” Sudana said, handing me a gift.

“It’s okay, Sudana, Umma Designs provided the wedding gifts to the guests. So I don’t need one.” Akemi arrived. We stood there, the three of us.

“Oh, I think you’ll need this. I’m sure I have
what you are looking for
,” Sudana said, her wildcat eyes changing colors right before me. I stared at the nicely wrapped gift box in her opened hand. Akemi stared too.

“I would have held it for you all night if you asked me to,” Sudana said. I took the gift. Now I knew it was my gun.

“Thank you, Sudana, really, and good night,” I said, relieved.

“There is no thank you between us,” she said with a smile. “There is no thank you between friends.” She smiled even more. “And, we three are all
friends
, right?” she asked, then turned towards Akemi. “And, good night, Akemi. Thank you for coming. It was a pleasure to meet you.”

As she walked away, she waved politely, believing that Akemi could not decipher her flirtations. But I knew she was underestimating Akemi.

Out front it was fairly dark. I looked around, my eyes adjusting after having been in the bright lights in the yard.

As soon as the town car pulled around, directly in front of Umma, I opened the door for her. I took her shopping
bags. She got in. As Akemi stooped to get in with her bags, I grabbed her hand discreetly and pulled her towards me. I told Naja and Saachi to get in the car first instead.

I took her shopping bags also, then walking Akemi around to the trunk, I knocked on the trunk door, signaling the driver to open up. As I packed in Umma’s two full shopping bags, I tilted my head in the direction of the Japanese dude standing way across the street, in the dark shadows, underneath a newborn tree with slim branches.

Without words, I was asking her if she recognized him.

Akemi exhaled as she stared off in the Japanese guy’s direction.

By this time I could see that there were three other dudes seated in a black Infiniti sedan parked over there, although I couldn’t make their faces.

She wasn’t saying nothing and for some reason, neither were they. I walked Akemi to our car door, and pushed her inside the car with Umma. I left her shopping bag on the ground. I leaned in through the front passenger window and told the driver to give me five minutes.

I stooped down as if I was tying my shoes and tore the paper from the gift and pulled out my twenty-two. I left the box on the ground, stood up, and tucked my joint in my belt. I walked over there slowly, stopping halfway in the middle of the street, standing on a weird angle not to give them any advantage. I did not know this dude. But from what little I could see, I knew I didn’t like his looks.

In the dark I asked, “What’s up?” There was no wedding welcome or smile on my face or in my tone of voice.

“I came for Akemi,” he answered in a firm emotionless voice that didn’t sound right in my ear.

“Who are you to her?” I asked. Now I had my right hand on my tool.

Their back car window rolled down revealing the profile
of Jiro and Kano, the two Japanese brothers I played basketball with in Jersey.

“It’s us, man. Uncle sent us to pick up Akemi. It’s okay, right? No problem?” He seemed intimidated and was asking in a purposely polite tone with an innocent grin. The other cat under the tree still wasn’t smiling, intimidated or saying nothing.

“Who is he?” I asked Jiro.

“Our elder brother Ichiro,” Kano answered. My tension eased up slowly. I walked over to our car, tapped on the top of the car, and Akemi and Saachi crawled out.

“Your family has come for you two,” I told her.

Akemi looked at me as if she wanted to stay with me. But I was sending her back home. That’s how it goes. She belonged to her family unless I step up as a man the way the groom did today, and take her away properly. And when a man takes a woman for his wife properly, no man can come take her anywhere or even speak a word to her without the husband’s permission.

Akemi reached in and hugged Umma. “Sayonara,” she said softly and smiled with regret. Umma kissed Akemi’s cheek through the window. I handed her the shopping bag. Saachi ran over to her cousin’s car skipping happily, shouting, “Good night, Naja! Next time I won’t cheat! I promise!”

The elder brother snatched the
hijab
off of Saachi’s head as though a simple piece of cloth could turn her Muslim.

Akemi walked over and extended her hand forward toward him and he handed the
hijab
to her. Akemi folded it nicely and placed it with everything else she had collected. She waved good night to me. She got in the car. The elder brother jumped in the driver’s seat and sped off.

As I got into the front seat of our car, Mr. Ghazzali and Sudana stood watching in the distance on the grass. I adjusted my frame of mind and gave them a second good night.

In the car, I told the driver to take us to The Palace Hotel in Manhattan. He responded, “No problem,” then pulled off slowly. I knew if I had announced our Brooklyn address instead, he would’ve been making excuses just to keep from traveling into the area.

The clock on his dashboard read 12:49
A.M.
Naja wasted no time nodding off up against Umma. Umma rested her head on the headrest, her eyes closed but not asleep.

“You did an incredible job, Umma,” I complimented her. She smiled with her head still tilted.

“I got a business card from the wedding photographer. I convinced him to take some close-ups of the clothes you designed. I gave him a thirty-five-dollar deposit. He said we can pick up the photos next week. I set it up so you can use the pictures as samples of your work for your new clients. After tonight, you’ll definitely have some new clients,” I assured her.

She opened her eyes finally and took a good long look at me. I could tell she wasn’t thinking about her business at the moment. But she also knew I wasn’t ready to talk about Akemi right then. My mother is smart and sweet. So, she let the topic go, and just said, “
inshallah,
” in response to the possibilities of the new business ventures.

At The Palace Hotel we didn’t get settled in until around 3:10
A.M.
I didn’t see a possible way for Umma to awaken for work at 5:00
A.M.
as she usually would.

When I phoned downstairs for our wake-up call, Umma said, “Tomorrow, no work, no school.” I was surprised, because since we arrived in the U.S. and she began working, she had never missed one day of work. Even I had not missed one day of work at my part-time job at Cho’s.

“I am working the night shift starting tomorrow, 4:00
P.M.
until midnight, Tuesday through Saturday. I arranged this in advance, switched shifts with my Lebanese coworker. Only for one week,” she said, drifting off to sleep.

From the floor where I laid, I answered, “No problem. I’ll take you every afternoon and pick you up every midnight.”

“
Alhumdilallah
,” she said softly, meaning praise Allah.

The next afternoon, Umma and Naja were still sleeping. I stepped around the hotel room quietly, washed up, and dressed.

At the front desk, I checked us out and off of Fawzi’s father’s tab. I asked the front desk clerk the price of one additional night’s stay.

“It will cost two hundred and seventy-five dollars per night for our single room,” he answered. “Three hundred for the double like the one you checked out of.”

“Are these your lowest available prices?” I asked.

“Absolutely,” he responded. “Our rooms range from two hundred seventy-five up to five thousand per night for the penthouse,
this week
,” he emphasized. He seemed to get an extreme charge out of reciting the fees. It was like he enjoyed crushing the customer who couldn’t afford it. I was sure that he couldn’t afford a room in this hotel where he worked either.

I went into my pocket and pulled out my personal money and laid it on the counter to check back into the same double room at my own expense.

I knew it was only one night and not an investment that offered any financial return. However, I found myself feeling fucked up about possibly having to wake my family and rush them back onto our Brooklyn block. The thought of returning home made my muscles tighten. I felt Umma deserved so much more after the immense job she had just completed. And, if she took a day off, along with Naja, I would help them to relax and feel good and be happy, my treat.

As she slept, I glanced at her, my Umma. I wanted to give her something. I found myself asking myself, “What can you give a woman who has already experienced a tremendous love?”

Later, on the midtown Manhattan streets, Naja and I searched high and low for a bathing suit suitable for a little girl. Almost everything in the hotel shops were for grown American women. Three blocks over and eleven blocks down and across, we found one right style and price.

Naja didn’t mind the long walk. She was just excited to the extreme from all of the celebrations, new acquaintances, and also having her brother to herself, as Umma relaxed in privacy at the hotel.

We had the hotel pool to ourselves and I taught her how to swim that one afternoon. She wasn’t afraid of the water, so she caught on easily. I knew that for her to really become comfortable and good at it, she would need some daily or weekly practice. These were the kind of things I wanted to be able to offer my sister. It wasn’t about the cost. But, it mattered what kind of program I would put her into, who was running it and what kind of kids participated. I wanted to keep her ways pure.

“Did you know that Umma can dance?” Naja asked me when we finished swimming and were on the elevator riding up.

“Oh yeah?” I responded, wondering.

“At the
hennana
she danced for the ladies. She taught Maha how to dance for her new husband Fawzi. I watched her. I couldn’t believe it was Mommy,” she said. “And the clothes she wore. You should have seen. She wore a bra with silver glitter. It shined. She had a necklace around her belly and a jewel right here.” Naja stuck her finger in her own belly button through her towel and swimsuit.

“Did the ladies tell you to tell everybody what went on at their private ladies’ party?”

“Nope,” she answered. “But I never saw Umma have that much fun before. All of the ladies were clapping for her, us little girls too. There were five of us,” she said. “I saw the bride naked. Umma massaged her skin in oils, even her feet. I wanted to do her hair, but they wouldn’t let me. I hope that when I get married, there will be so many friends there to treat me so special and help out.”

“You’re still telling all of the ladies’ secrets,” I scolded her.

“But, I’m telling you. You said there were no secrets between me, you, and Umma.”

As we walked down the hallway towards our room, Naja stopped telling her story of the
hennana
party, which made me believe she knew from the start that she wasn’t supposed to be telling in the first place.

In the room Umma was still in her pink satin pajamas, her hair out and down her back, and feet exposed. It was strange to see my mother from a different angle, the one that Naja was trying to show me. I always knew that she was so beautiful. I always had the privilege to observe that. But since we lived back home in Africa, seeing her in love with my father and playful with him and he with her, I had not thought of her as more than a mother. And a mother is as close to a supreme being as a human can be. So to imagine her hips swinging and swaying, hypnotizing the younger ladies with her charms, was a foreign thought.

We showered and made afternoon prayer together, the three of us.

Umma changed into a pale yellow dress and a startling yellow thobe, no
hijab
or
niqab
today, yet still covered of course. She wore a two-inch-heeled brown leather shoe and matching bag. I could tell she was feeling good, relieved, and free.

I took them out for pasta at a nice Italian restaurant. The food was so enjoyable but there is always the problem of the Italian men’s hostility towards the African male and fascination
and lust for the African women. I turned down the table they offered. I sat Umma in the corner table sitting opposite her to block their view.

Our server was captivated by the designs on Umma’s hands. I thought to myself there will be two more months of this unwanted attention. That’s how long Umma said the henna would last.

“It’s so nice out,” Umma remarked. “We should take advantage of this week and find ourselves a house,” she said.

I pulled the folded portion of the newspaper out of my pocket. “I circled the ones that are in our price range,” I said, laying the newspaper on a free space on the table.

“Did you know that the land and the house could be two separate prices? And there are still the property taxes to pay?” I asked her.

She smiled. “It’s okay. We are not buying the kind of property and house that Fawzi purchased in Westchester. We are looking for something small. A small piece of land, with a decent sized backyard for Naja to play in, a fence of course, and three bedrooms. One bedroom is for me, and the other bedroom is for Naja. The third bedroom will be where I get my sewing work done and keep my supplies, like an office.” She paused and sipped from her water glass. But then, she didn’t say anything.