Midnight and the Meaning of Love (16 page)

“Takadanobaba?” I repeated the six syllables.

“It’s a prefecture in Tokyo. You
are
going to Japan, aren’t you?” he asked. Now Sensei was being direct, but I needed time to figure out my strategy before just giving up all of my well-guarded information.

“I’m just gonna give this girl Ikeda-san a call and speak with my wife. Akemi’s just worried because she has been calling me at home and not getting through because my whole family has been working hard, sometimes even two jobs,” I explained.

“I see,” Sensei said with slight suspicion. Ignoring my indirect
denial, Sensei added, “Before you go, let me caution you. Japan is a magical place, completely unique. Many foreigners go there and never want to return to their homes.”

“But you are here in the US, Sensei, and you have not ever mentioned returning home,” I challenged him. My words were true.

“Be sure to read both of those books. In Japan there are more than thirty-five thousand suicides each year. The Japanese people look upon suicide differently than the Americans. I am mentioning this to you because your wife’s voice sounded sad and it became sadder each time that she contacted me.” He gave me a serious stare. For the first time in all my encounters of today, I became afraid. I turned away from the mind search he was conducting on me. Instead I flashed through the pages of one of the books in my hand. I wasn’t reading. It was just a diversion.

“I didn’t leave Japan because it was not magical or unique to me,” Sensei said and then paused. “I didn’t return to Japan because the Japanese way is hard on the Japanese. We are expected to all do the same things the same way, and when one of us is different from the majority, we pay a heavy price, sometimes with our lives. Your wife, in choosing you and coming from the background that she comes from and the place where she was born and raised, has done something extremely different, and I am sure that many of the people closest to her are making her suffer because of it. I hope that you don’t take her life lightly. After meeting and listening to and watching her, it seemed that she did trade it all in for you.”

I lowered my head, an unusual but honest reaction.

“My own brother is one in that huge suicide statistic. He was born mentally challenged.
He was different.
Japan did not open its heart to him. He was isolated and ignored until he decided that death was better than life. I came here to America bringing along everything that is great about Japan with me, and leaving the rest behind.”

Sensei placed his hand on his chest and said solemnly, “In my heart, I have to believe that there is hope for the underdog. Every day I awaken, I want to stand beside the man who is
not
expected to win.”

Without regard to either of our injuries, Sensei led me in an intense one-hour session on “resisting torture,” the separation of the
mind from the physical pains and desire that your body is experiencing during torture. My sensei’s lessons were incredible to me. I could actually feel the warrior within myself strengthening. And despite anything that my Japanese teacher may have believed, I
was
showing him respect my way; by listening intently to
his
instruction, following
his
example, and mastering even the smallest details of
his
techniques.

Standing still on my Brooklyn block, something I don’t ordinarily do, I waited for Naja’s school bus to pull up. Although lots of kids were getting back from school, Naja’s bus was green, not yellow, and stood out because it had “Khadijah’s Islamic School for Girls” displayed on the whole of one side.

“Where’s Ms. Marcy?” Naja asked smiling.

“Your big brother is here instead,” I teased her. “C’mon.” I held her hand and walked her over to the cab waiting on the curb where I had been standing. Umma was inside, the meter was running, and their suitcases were in the trunk.

“Hey, where are we going? Umi Umma!” Naja crawled into the cab and threw her arms around Umma, causing her to push back against her seat. Naja kissed all over Umma’s face as Umma laughed and tried to gently push her off. Naja’s book bag fell onto the cab floor. I closed their door and then jumped into the front seat. The Bangladeshi driver’s experienced eyes surveyed me carefully. Without words he let me observe that I was not supposed to be in his front seat. Without words I remained, pulled some cash out my pocket, and began counting it to calm him down.

I directed him to Umma’s job and instructed him to wait. By then the meter read $19.50 so I peeled off a twenty and handed it to him. “Wait here, I’ll be right back and pay you double. My suitcases are in your trunk, so don’t pull off.” I let him see me looking at his driver’s identification number and photo posted on his dashboard.

“No problem, you are good customer,” he said.

“Allah hafiz,”
I said, a small sign to him that we are all Muslims and he should simply do his job and act honorably with us.

I told Naja to get out so we would both walk Umma inside. There was no way I would leave her sitting and waiting in the cab while I escorted Umma.

“Oh man, I thought we were all going out to eat or to do something fun. This is Umma’s job again!” she complained softly.

* * *

“Pop the trunk,” I told the driver when Naja and I arrived at Mr. Ghazzali’s house in the Bronx. “Come out, Naja.”

“Suitcases? Okay, what’s going on?” she asked me.

“You’ll see,” I told her. Then, before I could knock on the fence or ring the bell, Sudana opened it, all smiles as if she didn’t have one problem in the world.

“
Salaam alaikum
, Sudana! You told me to come back soon and visit you. I wasn’t planning on it, but I guess I am here,” Naja said playfully.

“Don’t you like my house? I made sure I got here early just so I could see you,” Sudana said to Naja.

“Me or my brother?” Naja asked smartly.

“Both of you!” Sudana embraced it.

“Is your father home?” I asked her.

“Laysa,”
Sudana said, meaning no. “Everybody in my house is either at work or school.”

“Aight, so I’ll put these suitcases downstairs and then I’ll leave. I got the key,” I told Sudana.

“Leave?” Naja said, surprised.

“Sudana has agreed to watch you while I’m out and while Umma is at work,” I explained.

“Then what are the suitcases for?” Naja pushed.

“When I get back tonight, I’ll explain everything to you, okay?”

Naja nodded yes but pouted also.

I opened the side door to the basement apartment and brought the suitcases inside. Sudana and Naja both followed me instead of going in the front door and remaining upstairs in the house, which is what I expected them to do.

“Aren’t you two going upstairs?” I asked.

“Yes, I’ll take Naja up. I cooked something for her. I know you’re hungry after school and all, right?” Sudana asked Naja.

“Yep, long as it’s good!” Naja answered.

“Tell Sudana thank you,” I corrected Naja. “You already know that it’s good because Sudana cooked it.”

Sudana’s smile lit up the dim basement. Her hazel eyes sparkled like pretty marbles or glow-in-the-dark trinkets.

“C’mon, let’s go up,” I told them. Sudana followed me. Naja followed Sudana.

Outside in the warm air I watched them go in the front door. Sudana turned toward me and asked, “Can you come inside for a minute?”

“Since your father is not here, I’ll just leave now,” I told her with certainty.

“It’s important, just for three minutes,” Sudana said, and then made the kind of face that older people make when they don’t want to speak freely in front of a child.

So I said, “Okay, three minutes and then I gotta go.”

Inside, Sudana whisked Naja away into a back room, the kitchen, I guessed. I heard the plates and cups clinking and then heard a television come on, a loud commercial blaring out before Sudana must’ve lowered the volume. I heard Naja’s little hands clapping because she is never allowed to watch television when we are in our Brooklyn apartment.

Sudana emerged alone. “Would you take off your shirt, please?” she requested.

“What?”

“Take it off. I need to see something,” she said with a straight face.

“Nah. I’m out,” I told her.

“On the back of your shirt there is a small spot of blood. It seemed fresh and I want to see your wound,” she said as though she were a medical professional. “I can take care of it for you. I’m going to become a doctor in the future, and my sister, Basima, is already in medical school and training to become a doctor also, so I know well how to treat a wound. Please, sit down and let me look at it.”

“Not in your father’s house,” I denied her.

“Okay then, we’ll step downstairs to your apartment. It is yours for the month, right?” she said, smiling politely, not like a come-on
but as if she were already a nurse. She left the room and returned with a medical bag. I figured it had to be Basima’s bag.

“It will be quick, I promise. Oh, but it does depend on how bad it is. If it is something I cannot handle, I’ll send you to straight to the hospital.”

“It’s not that serious,” I assured her. “I’m definitely not going to the hospital.”

“Follow me,” she said. She opened the door that led to the basement apartment and went down six steps. She turned around facing me and said, “You can sit here on the step so we can hear Naja if she calls us or comes.” Sudana flipped a switch and a bright light shined down on the stairs. She was standing over me and I was seated.

“Take it off. I won’t look at you as a man. I will look at you only as a patient.”

I didn’t believe her.
Women are all emotion
, I thought to myself, recalling my father’s lessons. Yet I found myself cooperating with her anyway. I reminded myself that last time she had put me to sleep using some strange technique and pressing down on the center of my head with her two fingers.

I pulled off my shirt. She saw my gun. I moved it out from my waist and laid it down on the stairs beside me, facing the wall. When my chest and shoulder and back were bare, Sudana looked at me like a woman looks at a man. I could feel her heart softening. I could see it also in her eyes. She caught herself and redirected her energy. She began unwrapping the cut from my duel with Sensei. When she saw the whole thing, she suddenly made a sound,
sssssss
, sucking the air in through her teeth, as though the wound was worse than she expected, and as if she felt my pain also. The sound she made with her mouth made me feel something that I was trying not to feel. She opened her medical bag and used her free hand to begin searching through the items inside.

“Wait one minute,” she said. “I’ll be right back.”

She returned with a needle and a cigarette lighter and some hefty thread. “You need stitches,” she said confidently. She set herself up on the stairs.

She cleaned my wound first. The cold alcohol against my warm skin and her light touch and gentle rub with the clean cotton felt way better than when I had wrapped the wound myself. She flicked on the
lighter and burned the tip of the needle until it turned black. Then she swiped the thread with alcohol and threaded her now sterilized sewing needle.

“This is going to hurt a little but help a lot,” she said softly, standing so close to me that I could feel her body heat separate from the warmth of the atmosphere. She stood so close that I could see the texture of her pretty lips and smell her seductive Sudanese scent. She pierced my skin with the needle, and it pinched but wasn’t nothing to me really.

“I gave you ten stitches. You really only needed eight, but just to be sure. When you leave on your trip, Akemi can take your stitches out. I can write her a note and tell her exactly how to do it. Or maybe she knows how to do it already?” Sudana said, smiling. She was a subtle and seductive teenaged female. I understood all her hidden messages even though I never acknowledged them. Looking up at her, I broke out in my first genuine smile of my day.

“So handsome,” Sudana whispered. “Please don’t smile at me.” She packed up her medical bag quickly. The second she had it all organized, she brushed by me, climbing the six stairs and flicking off the light as she moved up.

“Put your shirt back on,” she gently ordered me.

“I’m sorry,” she apologized while my back was toward her.

“For what?” I asked her without turning around.

“I tried, but I ended up looking at you as a man, not as a patient,” she said softly. Switching to Arabic, she added, “Now I can never take back what I’ve seen and what I felt, and I don’t even want to.” Our language, in this situation, seated in the dark staircase of her home, aroused me.

I threw my shirt on swiftly and stood right up. “Sudana,” I called her back. “I’m gonna lock this door from the inside and go down here to make my prayer. I’ll leave from out the side exit, okay?”

She nodded knowingly. As Muslim, we needed prayer to keep our minds right and our actions also.

“When I ring your bell, meet me outside so you can lock your fence. Oh, and thank you, for healing me,” I told her. She smiled and moved her eyes away.

When I pressed her bell, she came to the door alone. She handed me a man’s shirt without looking at me. “It’s my older brother’s shirt.
You can wear it for now since you have that blood spot on the back of your shirt still.”

“Thanks, but I’m good. I’ll take care of it,” I said.

Outside in the sunlight she seemed embarrassed to look at me, even though now she had seen much more of me than she was ever supposed to. So I didn’t stare at her either. I shifted my eyes and said, “I’ll see you. I mean, I’ll see your family tonight when I bring my Umma.”

On my way to practice I picked up a new shirt and white tee from a random shop. I stuffed my old shirt with the blood spot in my back pocket and just rocked it like that. I wasn’t about to leave my clothes at any woman’s house who was not my wife from here on in. In my mind I pictured crazy-ass Bangs taking my hoodie to some zany fortune-teller and started laughing, even though I was alone.