Midnight (61 page)

“Don’t worry, Supastar! I won’t bother you no more,” she said and ran out the gym suddenly and at full speed.

I left to meet Akemi.

On my way to the subway, I thought about what she had to say to me. Since I never lie to myself, I had to admit, she was right. I do like her. But I don’t love her. Bangs is cool, but she’s not enough for me. Sure she was fine in addition to Akemi. But if it were just me and Bangs only, it wouldn’t work. I would never marry her. I would never rearrange my life to take care of her. I would never introduce her to Umma. Or adorn her with Umma’s jewels. Or work hard to get her a place to live. Or expect her to learn my faith, and love and live it. I couldn’t protect her honor, because it was already gone. I wouldn’t want her to be the mother of my children. I wouldn’t give my life for her, or risk my freedom. I couldn’t teach her too much, because she was already too slick, and no woman could roll back from knowing too much or being too slick for the wrong reason, to not knowing and not being slick even for good reasons.

I was attracted to her enthusiasm for me and her comical happiness.

Also, ever since I saw her in the daylight at the pharmacy, and in the candlelight in her bedroom, I was definitely attracted to her body. It took everything I ever knew to keep
off of her that night. I could feel that I was only seconds away from losing my self-control. And I knew that whatever I wanted to get into, she was wide open and down for it. But was it me getting her open? Or was she just open in general?

I couldn’t trust her movements any time I wasn’t seeing her standing in front of my face. I knew she might be doing anything. Now, I didn’t respect her enough either.

I wanted her to stay away from me because, yes, I believed at the right or wrong moment, like any man, I could easily fuck her. But I already knew I would never fuck her without wearing a condom. If she chased me hard, I
would
allow her to be the first to suck my dick, a thought that had already occurred to me and enticed me once but I wasn’t proud of.

I would never suck her pussy, or lick her clitoris. It wasn’t a clean place. It wasn’t my place. It was a public place, like an outdoor bathroom or bus stop.

So she was right, I needed her to stay away from me for my own good, for my own sake. For the protection of the man I am and want to be.

These were the thoughts that rushed into me. But for some reason, I was still angry even though I didn’t know or understand why. Trying to get my head right, I took deep breaths to relax myself.

Bangs said maybe she would talk to someone else on my team. That shit was foul and dangerous. That got me tight. Since I didn’t love her, I was asking myself why did the thought of me knowing that she might start fucking with someone else make me feel so heated? When I thought about someone else touching her why did the thought come along with me seeing myself breaking some nigga’s neck? If I wouldn’t fight for her or risk my freedom, why did I want to merk her uncle? I needed answers from myself.

I was mad at myself for catching feelings for Bangs. It was my fault, I decided. I take responsibility for it. I was
mad at Bangs for being what Umma called “a lesser thing.” I wanted her to be smarter, stronger, better. I wanted her to be so much more, so I could feel all right about caring for her.

If I had to trade Akemi to get Bangs, I’d throw Bangs out of the picture. But my own father had the greatest woman, Umma, and still had two more wives. I never saw his love for Umma decrease or ease up or change in any way except to grow stronger every day.

It seemed to me that real men are collectors of fine women and the possessions of their hearts and not destroyers or deserters. Only a fool would leave a great thing, when you can always keep it or take it along with you.

There are three kinds of men, I realized. There are the non-believers, the make-believers, and the true believers.

The true believers’ feelings are alive and awake. The true believers have hearts that rage. There is no such thing as halfway love for a true believer. When a true believer, a Muslim man, loves a woman, he possesses her completely, guards her with his life. He has high expectations for her, holds her as a treasure, the main ingredient, the spice of life, the wife, the mother.

I had to confess to myself that I do not love Bangs,
but I could love her
. As a true believer, my heart is raging. The more I would have seen her, talked with her, held her baby in my arms, given to her unselfishly, the more she would grow and become a part of my true heart. But then I would be pushed by my same raging heart to murder the man who violated her, to take her as my second wife, to cover up her beauty and charms, to teach her a better way of life, to become the guardian to her daughter.

Once she changed the way she was living, and I went into Bangs, me, this true believer, she would become mine forever, and anyone who tried to hurt her, or seize her from me, I’d
sever his head from his neck. And this is my gangster. This is my problem.

I couldn’t give a girl who wasn’t
steady
that much love or that much power over me.

As in Islam, any woman who is not mine by birth or blood relation or oath of marriage is a woman I need to separate myself from, is a woman whose body I didn’t want to see, a woman who I should turn away from and lower my gaze.

Make-believers are men who pretend that they have a belief in life. They lure women with their pretense and trappings. They make-believe that they are Muslims, Christians, Jews, or any other faith. They make-believe that they are strong. They make-believe that they are capable of love. They make-believe that they are part of a family unit. They make-believe that they are protecting you. They make-believe that they are real men.

Non-believers are men and women who don’t have to do anything. They have no limits, no boundaries, and no expectations, none for themselves and none for you either. Non-believers are the sons of a painful pair of parents who are either dead in the body, meaning they are absent or deceased, or dead in the mind, meaning they are present, but their ignorance only makes their presence worse. The mothers of the non-believers are prettied-up mindless whores, the uneducated ones and the well-spoken educated ones too. The non-believers have no chance of real love, real family, or real life. Still they are here outnumbering us all.

Meeting Bangs taught me all of that, brought all these thoughts to mind. Umma says every woman who a man allows himself to interact with leaves her trace on him, good or bad. I am grateful to Bangs for these lessons, most of all to know the truth about myself as a man, and to be loyal and true to it.

The warm vibe outside of the MoMA and the general feeling of the streets of Manhattan was completely different from the vibe of the Brooklyn hoods. When you are moving in the streets of Midtown Manhattan, there’s no bullshit. It’s strictly a money-earning thing. Everybody moving in every direction is focused heavily on making money. Every tall building is packed with people making money. Everybody moving in Midtown Manhattan is either making money or delivering messages and packages for people who are making money. Tourists pouring in and out of every groove are spending money, helping Manhattan make more money. Police and security agencies and armored trucks are daring anyone to fuck with the flow of the money.

I met Akemi and we walked in the warm Manhattan air, just enjoying the night.

Back in Brooklyn, the ambulances lit up the night. The police cars prowled, not to serve and protect the people, but to patrol and control them. My block was a crime scene, again.

“First Conflict, then Heavenly,” some teenage girl standing outside watching said.

“DeQuan killed her. Dere he go,” the girl pointed. I saw the back of DeQuan’s head through the rear window of the police cruiser where he was seated, and of course cuffed. It was one of those real bad moments, when your eyes see
something, and your mind understands, but your heart won’t accept it as true.

It could have easily been me trapped in the back of the police cruiser, about to be hauled off and dumped where they dump young black and Latino men who do anything . . . criminal.

I had Akemi’s hand in mine. She was standing behind me pressed against my back. She didn’t want to know.

I looked over to the building where my mother and sister were inside. I prayed. I was wondering if it was cool to go inside the building now, or if the police were still in there, roaming.

“They gon’ bring out the rest of them too. You watch and see. I heard them when they busted through DeQuan’s door. That’s my floor, I know,” the girl reported.

So I stood still, holding my wife.

DeSean 16, DeRon 17, DeJean 20, and DeMon 22, they all came out in a line, each with a private police escort, hands cuffed tightly behind their backs. Cops came pouring out of the building like excited ants, carrying twenty-four-year-young DeQuan’s tagged-up guns, boxes of money, and seized bags of weed. It was enough artillery for him to take over a small country.

A whole company of brothers who stuck together for at least the past seven years that I been here. Actually, it was much longer than that. They were here and organized before I arrived. Now, they are all found out and taken down because of a simple wrong choice of a female with an influential body and a mean-ass walk, I thought to myself.

I took it as a sign. As a rule, I never ignore Allah’s signs, I catch them the first time around because who knows if Allah will warn you twice.

Now the power equation in the building would shift,
again.
Now a fucked-up place, that was better off
with
DeQuan than without him, would become even more fucked up. Now a new nigga would jump in Conflict’s spot. A new whore would dress up and pretend to be Heaven, and a new nigga would find a way to get guns to the hood, where cannons stay cocked and loaded, with a thousand reasons to shoot.

I had to get my people out.

Upstairs Umma and Naja were as usual in a different world. Umma was fast at work on the orders I gave her this afternoon when I picked her up from work. Naja was in bed, sleeping.

Akemi sat in the living room watching and fascinated with Umma’s fingers moving with precision and speed, with her knitting needles this time. Eventually, she pulled out her sketch pad and began drawing something with her own intensity.

In my room, I packed my coins in the paper coin cases. When I finally finished, my personal savings from years of delivery tips and nine months at Cho’s was six thousand dollars and sixty cents.

I don’t know why, but behind my closed bedroom door, I started packing up my most valuable personal belongings too. From the back of my closet, I pulled out the one quality suitcase I carried when I arrived in America.

I got it packed and put it back. Then I was on the floor doing my repetitions.

Tuesday I went to see Mr. Slerzberg personally after all my females were straight. On the way to his door, I yanked the FOR SALE sign out of his lawn. I rang the bell.

“Good morning, Mr. Slerzberg. How are you?” I went through the formalities.

“Can we talk business?” I asked him. He came out on the porch this time, instead of inviting me in. He was still dressed in his pajamas and robe.

“I have your money. What do you say we sign contracts on Thursday, and you move out within the next week or so?”

“You have the money?” he asked me as though he needed to hear it twice.

“All of it,” I confirmed.

“Two weeks is impossible. This house is filled with a lifetime’s worth of stuff,” he said passionately. I couldn’t tell him what I knew from what I saw inside of his home, that it was all junk. So I tried another approach.

“Mr. Slerzberg, this isn’t the only house in the world. But it is the house
my mother
wants. So what can I do to help you get to Florida faster? That is where you want to be, right?” I was trying to entice him with his own dreams and wishes.

“You know it’s where I want to be but I was just telling Beth that maybe we should wait because it’s warm here in New York right now. It feels nice. It’s ninety degrees in Palm Coast, Florida, phew,” he said, pulling his robe like he needed air. “And it’s ninety-five in Miami!”

“But they have casinos and air-conditioning down there. Listen, I know you love all of the stuff you have packed up in your house. I can get some nice professional guys from a respectable licensed and bonded company to come right away and move all of your stuff wherever you want them to take it.” I looked him in his eyes.

“Sounds expensive,” he said, catching on. I knew what he required.

“I’ll pay it. I’ll set it up and pay it. You move out in two weeks. How’s that sound?” I asked him through a strained smile.

“Any time you’re paying it sounds good to me,” he said, laughing. “But I choose the moving company and you pay them,” he said.

We shook on it. He agreed to get himself prepared and show up to my lawyer’s office this Thursday at 6:00
P.M.

She got mad when she pulled the Bergdorf Goodman shopping bag from out of the back of the closet in our bedroom. True, the bag was a little bit wrinkled, but the gift that she had given to me was still in there in perfect condition. It was a large box with a thick silver ribbon wrapped around all four sides, topped off with a big silver bow.

She grabbed the bag by mistake when she was reaching for something else. When she realized what it was, she got disappointed and dropped it on the bedroom floor and began softly telling me off in Japanese for not having opened her gift to me.

I laughed at her. It was my first reaction. It was hard for me to get angry at my pretty wife who didn’t even know how to scream the right way. She was cute pushing her words out forcefully. Her voice was barely above her usual seductive whispers. It was humorous to me having to guess at what she was saying. Besides, this was our first married argument.