Midnight and the Meaning of Love (17 page)

“Your left shoulder is moving a little slow, my man!” Vega yelled to me. “If you got one good shoulder and one good hand, you better practice shooting with them. Like I told all you players, if you gotta fight or fuck, do it after the game, not before. I need all of you to be in top condition to make me look good!”

After basketball practice, Bangs didn’t show up uninvited like she normally would. Only my eyes did a quick and thorough search. I didn’t move one other muscle or limb to go looking for her. I had dojo tonight and everything in my Thursday schedule was back to back. I left the gym in a pack with the others and headed down the steps to the subway with a few of them. I jumped on the train and headed to the dojo.

* * *

On the street outside the dojo, I could see Ameer. He was coming from one direction and I was coming from the other. Other fighters walked up and pulled up one by one and entered the dojo. I stood waiting for Ameer to reach me. Meanwhile, the Caddy pulled up smoothly. I watched as Ameer seen the Caddy from a distance. Then he dropped back some, and sidestepped and waited for Chris’s father, Reverend Broadman, to pull off. I wondered why.

“What’s up, brother?” Chris gave me a pound.

“I see you got your chauffeur service in full effect,” I kidded him.

“Yeah, I got a ride here, but I gotta get the train home. Tonight
The Cosby Show
is on and my father watches it with my mother and
little brother and sister religiously! I mean nobody can schedule anything when that show is on.”

“
The Cosby Show
?” I repeated.

“C’mon now, I know you heard about it before and seen it too,” Chris said.

“I ain’t seen it,” I assured him.

“Man, there’s a girl on that show I’m gonna marry, Lisa Bonet! Damn, she’s fine. Let’s go in,” Chris said, grabbing my injured arm.

“Ameer’s coming up now.” I pointed.

Two black eyes and a busted lip, that’s what Ameer was hiding.

“What the fuck happened to you?” Chris asked first.

“Who we gotta see?” I asked Ameer seriously. “Whoever did this shit to you, we gotta see him. We could do that tonight. We could do that instead of dojo.” I was running on immediate reaction.

“It ain’t like dat,” Ameer said calmly. I was used to him being the one who’s hyped up and me being the one who’s calm. Now there was a reversal.

“You saying it’s not like that. Your face is saying that it
is
like that,” I told him.

“Let’s just find out what happened first,” Chris said, as he threw his rational thinking in. “If we skip the dojo, we can go get some pizza and see what’s up with all this, you know, come up with a plan.”

“Aight, I’m down,” I told them.

“You’re gonna skip dojo!” Ameer smiled through his mangled face.

“You look like you need to skip it also. Besides my shoulder is a little fucked up. I need to rest it before tomorrow night’s game.”

“What happened to your shoulder?” Chris delved.

“Nah, it’s just a little something. It’s nothing,” I dodged.

“Hold up, we got three minutes before class starts. Let me say something to Sensei since we are all three skipping dojo,” I told them.

“I’m gonna chill out here,” Ameer said. “Me too,” Chris agreed, as though Sensei was our father, who the two of them were afraid to confront, disagree with, or disappoint.

The usual advanced fighters were on the floor waiting for our teacher. I gave my greetings to some of them and pushed off straight to Sensei’s office.

“
Konbonwa
, Sensei,” I greeted him. I pulled the envelope with the
payment that I was supposed to give him at our private lesson out of my back pocket. “You and I got distracted earlier. These are my fees.” I handed him the envelope.

“No, thank you,” he said politely, using his trained hand to push the envelope back toward me. “This money has somehow confused our bond as teacher and student,” Sensei said. I understood what he was getting at, but I didn’t want to enter into some long and deep exchange with him right before he was scheduled to teach and while my friends were outside waiting.

Slowly and clearly, without any disrespect in my tone, I said, “Sensei, I respect you and I am grateful that you have been my teacher. I want to pay as usual and continue our training when I return. I don’t think that simply because I finally won one match between you and me that our bond is any different. And I know that if you wanted to throw your
kunai
this afternoon and stop my heart, you could have. Now please,
accept
my payment.”

“I won’t accept any more money from you. If you really do return after a week’s time, we will continue.” He nodded his head but still seemed doubtful. I grabbed him up and gave him a first-time hug. I knew this was not his tradition.

“Thank you, Sensei,” I said sincerely. I was good to go as long as he wasn’t trying to cut me off for what I thought wasn’t a good-enough reason.

“Three things before you leave, one, never carry a firearm to an airport,” Sensei said evenly.

“I would never,” I assured him, as though that couldn’t apply to me.

“Two, even though you say that you are not traveling to Japan, if you do find yourself there, never purchase a gun. It is not like New York. If you are captured with a gun, they
will
put you in their prison
forever
.” He stared hard at me to push his point.

“Three, if there is any complication between you and Naoko Nakamura, and he refuses to allow his daughter to return to the United States, let her choose whether to leave or remain in the country. If she chooses to leave, let her leave the country of her own will on her own two feet.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Don’t put yourself in a position where any authority could accuse
you of kidnapping or any other kind of crime that carries a severe penalty. If you do,
you
will pay the price for
every foreigner
.”

“Pay the price for every foreigner?” I asked.

“The Japanese as a people have always distrusted foreigners. Don’t give them any excuse to snatch your freedom from you.”

“Sensei, I understand,” I told him.

“Here, take this …” Sensei opened his top desk drawer. Before he could hand me anything else, I put up my hand for him to stop.

“Sensei, you have given me more than enough, too much,” I protested. He ignored me and pushed a ring across his desk where I was standing. The ring was not made of gold. It was shaped for a man’s finger and made from pearl. On the top surface was a wicked black insignia made from onyx. It looked powerful on the white pearl. On second look and second thought, I could tell that the ring must belong to Sensei, because the size of it was definitely for him. I looked down at my own big hand.

Sensei, watching me intently, said, “Wear it on any finger. Just be certain to display it. In Japan, and in many Asian places, this ring will win you favors that otherwise would be forbidden. Possessing it may allow the impossible to happen. It may even save your life.”

I listened, but I didn’t believe in charms and material items that supposedly have superpowers, although the ring was nice-looking. I knew I could not refuse him, without causing further insult. I accepted it and thanked him. Sensei said,
“Sayonara.”

Sayonara.
It was the word I hated most coming from my wife’s lips. I paused and felt a chill. Sensei walked toward the class with a slight limp.

“Ameer and Chris are with me. They will both miss class tonight also.”

“Of course,” Sensei said. “They are your friends. Let them bid you farewell.”

* * *

We walked away toward our regular pizza spot. At a newsstand Chris tossed a dollar for some cheap children’s sunglasses. “Here, put these on,” he joked Ameer.

“Fuck it. It’s about to be dark. I don’t need ’em,” Ameer said, but then he put them on just to go along with Chris’s joke. “At least you
picked the right color, red!” Ameer cheered, fucked up but still thinking about his ball team. I was silent and thinking on how both me and Ameer would be playing tomorrow night’s Hustlers League games with injuries, a slight handicap.

With a large, hot cheese pizza pie at the center of our table and two Cokes and one water, we each grabbed a slice and dropped it down onto the too-thin white paper plates. Chris grabbed the salt and I grabbed the crushed red pepper and Ameer grabbed the garlic. Instinctively, I whispered
“Allah, la ilaha illallah muhammadur rasulullah”
over my slice before I bit into it.

“So why are you hesitating to do something about your situation?” I asked Ameer. “Or is it that you already took care of it? If you already took care of it, you don’t have to speak on it. But if you let somebody do all that shit to you, they’ll feel crazy confident and come back and finish you off if you don’t get ’em back first,” I warned him.

“Does the cat that did that to you live on your block or is he on your team? Is he somebody you gonna come across again and again?” Chris asked Ameer.

“It’s somebody who I have to see, no doubt,” Ameer confirmed, being vague.

“Oh, shit,” Chris muttered.

“Who is it?” I asked, pushing for the details.

“It was my pops,” Ameer said, and then smiled, his busted lips split and discolored.

“No way, I don’t believe that. What happened?” Chris asked.

“Word up!” Ameer said. “I came back from school today and Pops was waiting for me outside right at the bench. Soon as he saw me, he threw the gloves at me and said, ‘Let’s go.’ ” Ameer looked as though he was reliving it. “I wasn’t scared and shit. You know a young nigga be wanting to kick his father’s ass from time to time. We just never get a real opportunity, but we wish we could, right?”

Chris looked puzzled. Then he broke out and laughed a short, nervous laugh. “True, I wish I could take a swipe at my father some time, but I know it’s impossible,” Chris said sincerely.

“Nothing’s impossible,” Ameer assured him.

“So what happened?” I asked, pushing further.

“So we went down to the basement in my projects and shit and
I was thinking like, I didn’t want to use the gloves.
I’m not no fucking boxer.
I wanted to use our bare hands. But my pops said, ‘Keep the gloves on, raise your fists up. You not gonna use the karate I paid for, on me!’ Ameer imitated his father’s cool old hustler’s voice. We all laughed some.

“So we start boxing. That’s my pop’s thing, so he’s getting the better of me. Then he started feeling himself and pulled his gloves off and just laid into me. Next thing I know, he started punching me in the face, raw hands and all. I tried to block his jabs and swings, you know, and restrain him and control him, but it was like the old nigga was having flashbacks or something of some dude who had done him dirty in the past! I mean
I’m his son, right
, but he is really trying to crush me. I got some good shots off on him too, but I wasn’t trying to lay him out. I wasn’t trying to finish him off. I know I could’ve if I threw my heart into it. I
wanted
to punch him in the face a few times but not
injure
him or
kill
him. I mean we both gotta live in the same house together, right?”

Ameer might as well been performing in a play. That’s how he told a story. He made anybody wish they was there. He used all of his talking skills, gestures, and energy to make you feel like you
was
there. Chris was amazed and entertained. I, on the other hand, didn’t deal with it like that.

I could not imagine actually fighting my father. I definitely couldn’t imagine trying with any real intent to punch my father in the face, scar him, whip him, or even to win. I mean my father taught me various fight moves when I was real young, but the way Ameer’s face looked, this was no joke. It was real difficult to get my mind around the idea that his father tried to do him something extra dirty-dirty.

“So what happened?” I pushed Ameer to finish telling his story.

“Afterward we both went upstairs like it wasn’t nothing. When my mother got home, she went off! My father told her, ‘Stop with the drama already. You know boys fight. Your son had a fight in school and obviously he lost this one time. It happens.’ ”

“What did your mother say after that?” Chris asked.

“She asked me if I had a fight at school. I told her, ‘Yeah, but don’t worry about it. You should see the other guy!’ ” Chris and Ameer laughed again.

After some seconds I asked, “But what was his reason? Why did your father want to attack you like that?”

“Oh, ’cause I fucked his little girlfriend,” Ameer said casually.

“The girl I saw at your apartment yesterday?”

“Not the girl Dana, who was on the bench with me when you rolled up.”

“I know, the one that was sitting on your bed.”

“Yeah, her,” Ameer confirmed.

“I thought you said she was one of your girls,” I reminded him.

“Nah, she was really looking for my father and I knew it and my pops knew it too. I just didn’t want my mother to get arrested over her. You know my mother’s smart. She wasn’t just gonna believe right off the top that the girl was there looking for me and not my pops. She already didn’t trust the girl from something before. That’s why my moms told me to take the girl to my room. That way if the girl was there looking for my pops, my pops would reveal himself by the way he acted.”

“Did he reveal himself in front of your moms?” Chris asked.

“Nah, you saw how cool he was when he came back home, right?” Ameer directed his question at me, since I was there with him yesterday.

“Yeah, right” was all I said.

“Well, the girl was in my room and she was tight at my father, so she was coming on to me. So I fucked her. My headboard was banging against the wall of my parents’ bedroom and the whole nine. The whole time I’m fucking her, I’m covering for my father and hoping that it’s convincing my mother that she was really my girl, and it did. The next morning Moms was all cooled out. I bumped into my pops in the bathroom and he didn’t say nothing rude or nothing. Later when I got home though, he was just laying and waiting for me with the gloves.”