Midnight and the Meaning of Love (77 page)

Standing on an observation deck inside Taejongdae Park, the part that’s open to the public, I felt close to the sky. I was the only one up there at this high altitude early Sunday morning. Reaching here had been another awesome climb up steep and some winding hills on paths built only for the fit and toned. Now I was here. As I glanced down at my sneakers, I saw the incredibly steep drop down into the sea. It was a drop riddled with the jagged edges of massive rocks. Even a professional diver would die here. He’d die because the drop down was too far. He’d die because the rocks were so sharp and random that one of them would detach his head before he even hit the water.

Billions of gallons of water moving: these waters caused my soul to move also. Akemi’s mother, Joo Eun, wrote it right. Everyone was nothing compared to Allah, who created the sky, the thunder and lightning, the oceans and mountains, the waterfalls and the sun and the moon and stars. No president or prime minister or king or diplomat
or general or army could compare. None of them could bring into existence what Allah created. Allah was and is completely overwhelming and above comprehension.

But man was also created by Allah. It seems that man has always wanted to control it all. But who controls man when he becomes too corrupt? Is that the job of the believers?

There was a heavy wind way up high where I stood. Although it was too early for tourists, boats and ships from China and Russia were crossing the waters right before my eyes, their holds filled with cargo. I guess the world could be a sad place for any man who didn’t understand the hustle and how to hustle, or how to get involved and get a piece of the action. A man like that would be the same as a roach—no, an ant, uh-uh, a tick.

Then my personal thoughts came to the surface. What would Chiasa say if she knew that her father was someone who would stick his hands in and try and rearrange someone else’s fate?

I wasn’t as vexed with the general as I was with Nakamura, though. I believe in fathers and fatherhood. If a man can’t or won’t protect his women and daughters, his existence is pointless. At least the general was making himself clear before the marriage, before inking his approval and applying his stamp, before the
agid
and the
nikah
, and before I had gone into his virgin daughter. Because of course once all of that had taken place, there would be absolutely no turning back.

I thought about Akemi, my wife. She was certainly enough. Having Chiasa had nothing to do with Akemi not being enough. It had to do with a separate bond that was created by a circumstance beyond my immediate control. The same way that Chiasa had been given to me in the first place, I was sure that she was mine whether or not my eyes would ever see her again.

Black Sea and me met up. “I got something I want to show you. Maybe I can get your opinion,” he said.

“No problem,” I told him. We hopped on one of those crazy city buses and played the back.

“I want to come to the US,” he said.

“For what reason?” I asked him.

“To make money, hook up with some real movers in hip-hop, dance in some videos.”

“So you’re gonna work in some laboratory during the day and rock your Kangol and Cazals and Adidas at night?”

“De!”
he said, hyped up, which means “yes” in Korean. He pulled a flyer out of his pocket. “I’m throwing a party on this Friday night. Run through?” he invited me.

“I don’t know if I’ll still be around on Friday. I gotta get back to New York.”

“So if I make it out there to New York City, will you show me around to, like, the real spots? Not like the Statue of Liberty and shit like that?”

“I’ll show you around. You decide what’s real and not real for yourself,” I told him.

“Maybe you could be my manager. That would be great. You hook up all my business. Keep ten percent for yourself,” he offered. I just laughed at the thought.

We got off in Seomyeon, which was a section of Busan that was like Shinjuku, where I first stayed in Japan. We moved past a bunch of busy businesses, beer spots, sneaker joints, vendors, and curious cats
playing go on a card table set up on a curb. Eight minutes in, we came up on a record shop. He stopped before heading in.

“Look through the glass,” he told me. I looked.

“What am I looking for?” I asked him.

“A shorty,” he said, imitating my talk from last night at the chicken
galbi
spot. I looked again. There was a shapely eighteen- or nineteen-years-young African girl in there. She was dark like chocolate with almond eyes, rocking one pretty afro puff at the top of her head. Her jeans were tight enough to stop traffic. She was playing a record. She tapped her fingers on the counter, then tapped her foot, and soon her body bounced. She smiled wide and threw her head back and then threw her shoulders into her dance right behind the cash register where she was working.

“That’s you?” I asked him.

“I want. I wish,” he said.

“So what’s stopping you?” I asked him. “Are you afraid of girls like them Japanese boys?” I knew that would get him tight.

“I’m not afraid of her. It’s my father, my mother, my whole family. They would kill me. Worse than that, they would disown me.”

“So what are you gonna do?” I asked him.

“That’s why I’m asking for your opinion.”

“Have you said anything to her?” I asked him.

“Anyo!”
he denied it strongly, like a man accused of some crime. “I just go in there every couple of days and buy records from her. If she’s not here, I leave and don’t buy until she comes back.”

“How serious are you about her?” I asked.

“I brought you all the way over here to see her,” he said. “I haven’t brought none of my boys over here to see her. Not once.”

“That’s a bus trip, that’s nothing,” I told him. “Would you fight for her?”

“Fight?” he said, like he didn’t know that for men, fighting was automatic.

“I’m a dancer, not a fighter.
You
look like a fighter!” he said.

“Yeah, I was your manager. Now I’m your security,” I joked. “Would you marry her?”

“Marry her!” he said, like he never heard of that concept before. “I just want to …”

“Play with her?” I asked him.

“I didn’t say that,” he said.

“If you want to find out your true feeling for a girl, just ask yourself,
What am I willing to do for her? Would I fight for her? Would I work hard for her? Would I kill for her? Would I marry her?
If you think about it, and the answer to all those questions that you asked yourself is no, she ain’t the right one,” I explained. He fell silent.

“If you couldn’t even imagine her as your wife, that means you’re setting up to disrespect her,” I said. He listened as though he was really considering my words.

“It’s not like that,” he said. “In Korea, nobody marries so young. We have to go to school forever, and then the military. Then we have to get a great job. Then when we are like twenty-seven or twenty-eight, our families start pushing us to marry someone who they think is best.”

“So what are we doing over here then? If you can’t imagine yourself marrying her?”

“If I did, we would have to move to China or something. No one around here would accept us,” he said. “There’s nothing more important to Koreans than blood.”

“Blood?” I repeated.

“Yeah, blood, don’t ask. What you and your wife did—that was bold. I want to be strong like that, but I would never want to lose my family.”

“Forget her then,” I told him, testing him.

“I don’t want to forget her. She’s the real one I like.”

“If you don’t fight with your fists, and you’re afraid of telling your family your true heart, and you’re scared of standing alone while doing something that you think is right, why should this girl even want you?” I tried to be real with him. I liked him but hated cowards. “Come back after you man up and after your feelings grow strong enough for you to confront your parents. Until then, just come and stare at her through the window.”

“What if I let my feelings grow and I get stronger and when I come back, she already has someone else? I should just at least find out if she already has a man, right?” he asked me.

“Yeah, find out,” I told him. “Wait, why this girl?” I asked him. I was hoping it wasn’t just how nice her butt fit into those jeans. I
thought that wouldn’t be a good fight or trade-off for any man. It wasn’t enough.

“Look at her. I love her personality. All of her feelings just show up. It’s like she is enjoying life more than everyone,” he said, and it sounded true.

“Does she speak Korean?”

“She speaks English and Korean. Her mother is Korean,” he said.

“And her father?” I asked.

“I don’t know, probably a military man. They got a bad reputation. They never stay around for their family. That’s why this girl who I like would be considered low status in Korea. You’re probably thinking it’s only because she’s black. But it’s more than that. In Korea, if you don’t have a mother and father married into a hardworking family, you are the same as trash.”

“Do you think she’s trash?” I checked.

“Anyo!”
he denied it.

“Okay, let’s go in,” I told him. “Here, wear this.” I gave him my fitted. He smiled like it was a magic hat. “Never wear this bootleg shit. I pointed out the shape of his hat and the string running across it. “Get New Era fitted hats. Gimmie that.” I took his and trashed it. “That’s the same as trash!” I told him.

We went in. I played the back and watched while frontin’ like I was checking out the music selection. It didn’t take too long for me to notice that Black Sea was frozen by the counter fidgeting with the hat, wearing it straight, then moving it around on different angles. I didn’t have a lot of time. I went up front.

“Have you see him in here before?” I asked her.

She looked up and smiled. “Many times,” she said.

“He wants to hang a flyer up on your wall. He’s having a party on Friday night. You must’ve heard about it?”

“A flyer, a party, where?” she asked. “Let me see it.” Black Sea pulled the flyer out and opened it. He said he wasn’t afraid of this girl, but I could see clearly how nervous he was. He handed it to her without pushing out one word.

“He’s a break dancer. Let me introduce you. His name is Black Sea.”

“Black Sea,” she repeated soft and suspiciously. “And you are?” she asked.

“I’m his manager. How about the flyer?” I asked.

“I have to ask my supervisor, but he’s not in right now.”

“My man can’t wait too long. He’ll be moving to the United States to perform,” I said.

“Oh really.” She smiled, impressed.

“If you can give him your name and number, he can call you and check on the flyer situation tomorrow,” I told her and handed her a pen from my pocket.

She looked at me suspiciously. Then she wrote her name and number on a piece of paper, and just as she got ready to slide it across the counter, I said “Black Sea, this is Sarang.”

“Love,” he said. She smiled. I was confused. But I walked away and left him to work the rest out on his own.

I waited outside with my back on the window. When I checked, they were in there talking. She was still smiling, so that was a good sign. Three minutes in and she was changing the record, he was showing her one of his moves, and she was dancing while watching him dance. She tried to learn his move and show him something too, until some customers lined up.

“Her name means ‘Love,’ ” Black Sea said when he came out, beaming like a bum in the bakery. “She’s studying at Busan University of Foreign Studies. She plans to be a lawyer. I got her number. Man, you are my
chingoo.
You know what that means?” he asked me.

“Nah.”

“You are my friend. I don’t know what that means in America. But in Korea, a
chingoo
is a friend and friendship is for life. You and me got
jeong
,” he added.

“What is that,
jeong
?” I asked, remembering that the professor had brought that word up the other night.

“It’s an unbreakable bond. It’s a loyalty and a trust that you can expect and depend on for life. It means no matter where you may go in the world, and no matter where I am or what distance or troubles might be separating us for the moment or even for a very long time, we remain friends for life. Koreans have
jeong
with our friends, our brothers and sisters, our parents, and our wives and children.” He was speaking on it passionately. As we walked through the streets, I could
tell from his tone that he meant it. I thought about Chris and Ameer. They are my true friends. Still, we never had a talk between us openly the way that Black Sea was relating to me after knowing me for only two or three days.

For the rest of the afternoon I hung with him while he shopped for some kicks and jeans and shirts. He wanted to buy the exact ones that I had on. Before we each went our own way, we exchanged addresses and all of our information. Since he had opened up to me, I felt obligated to let him know he probably wouldn’t be seeing me until either he came to the States or I returned to Busan. He was the only person I had ever written out my Queens address for besides my lawyer.

“Yo, hold up,” I called him back. “What does
gongpay
mean?”

He frowned. “Who told you that? Did someone call you that?”

I didn’t explain. I just wanted him to answer.

“It means ‘gangster,’ ” he told me.

“We’ll go get gas while Akemi collects her things,” Dong Hwa said when I met him behind Bada Ga where he pulled up.

I opened the door and extended my hand to help my wife step out of the van. She was wearing a new dress, at least it was one that I had never seen. It was soft like taffeta, a deep, rich green, with tiny pleats and wide sleeves shaped like the calla lily flower. The pleats ran all the way down the dress, which was cut at her calf. She was wearing comfortable, casual espadrilles on her pretty feet. Her hair was wrapped in a sea-green silk scarf. Her diamonds still threw light, even in the dark.