Midnight and the Meaning of Love (85 page)

“What about that black eye?” I asked him. He turned and pointed to his girl. “Her little brother did that,” he confessed.

“I guess I got to teach you how to fight,” I told him. “How else will you make it in New York?” He smiled. “You don’t look like a scientist no more!” I joked. “Good for you!” I said. His girl was smiling also.

I got a cab and went back to my wives.

The ceremony was emotional. It was the same as if Joo Eun, who had died years ago, had died just yesterday. It was not only heavy on my wife Akemi, but each person in attendance seemed weighed down with sorrow. I thought about the love that must be inside these people. Even the ones who had not seen Joo Eun since she was fifteen years young, which was sixteen years ago, seemed shocked and overwhelmed. I thought about how I knew more about Joo Eun than many of the people gathered on the ferry where the ashes were scattered in the sea. I thought about how uneasy a person would feel in their soul without knowing the missing pieces to a complicated story about someone they truly loved. I felt for the grandmother, whose posture was solid like a wall but who still shed so many silent tears. She was Joo Eun’s mother. How much had she gone through?

I thought about war. I thought about love. I thought about how the general had said there is no budget for the military. “War is endless.”

Dong Hwa stepped away from the side of his grieving wife and over toward me. His steps were steady but the boat was rocking on the current of the sea. “This is
jeong
you are seeing and hopefully also feeling right now. When we Koreans love, we love forever, no matter what. Our country has been warred on for thousands of years. Our people have been attacked, colonized, ruled by dictators. Our families have been under pressure. There have been many circumstances that have separated one Korean from another. Even though we are separated by space and time, we are still loving that person, and waiting
or fighting or praying for their return. Whenever we are reunited, our love is as though they never left. They are welcomed back into the family and we continue on.”

He thought he was describing a love so thick and intense that it was exclusive to Korean people. Yet I had heard these words from my own father in the past. I had felt that kind of love from him and Umma and my entire family. I walk with that same kind of strong love myself. I didn’t express that to him. I didn’t think this was the time. But I understood what he was saying, the position he was in, the love he had for his own wife as well as his effort to welcome me, while still defending his family from me, just in case I matched a bad image that he may have held in his mind.

The atmosphere moved me to shake hands with Akemi’s Korean father. I even spoke the word
mianhapnida,
an apology for knocking him down to the floor and punching him in his face. I didn’t feel like I lost anything as a man by apologizing to him. It was the difference between having the information and not having the information. If I had known he was her father, I would not have put my hands on him. But since I didn’t know, I did. He wasn’t focused on me. He accepted my apology. His hardened face revealed that he was a man with many worries, the least of them the fight that we had.

Akemi’s young sensuous eyes had seen so much. I knew her feelings and her experiences being born and raised in Japan as a Japanese girl and living and believing it, was an incredible story that only she herself could ever tell precisely and properly, and in her own soft voice and manner. Perhaps she would never tell it opting to put it into a series of detailed drawings instead.

I knew my wife’s heart well. She was standing there on the boat as it rocked on the deep waters still sorting out her love and anger for the only father she had ever known, Naoko Nakamura. I knew that she was surrounded by new faces of blood relatives who love her, yet despite it all, she still loved Naoko. Meanwhile, her eyes were surveying and capturing the image and perhaps even the soul of her true blood father, Jung OH. As I watched my first love, first wife’s emotions churning, I knew I would be here in Busan for days longer than I had ever planned.

* * *

A couple days later Chiasa and Akemi had made their peace. Perhaps Akemi felt connected to her now because of the way that Chiasa took the time to explain so well the missing pieces of Akemi’s life. Maybe it was because Chiasa held her hand and stayed by her side and slept in her bed beside her. Maybe it was because Chiasa and Akemi shared a common native language. Or because Chiasa was doing what Josna might’ve done if she were here. Or maybe it was because Akemi could now see what I already saw in Chiasa.

When Akemi asked to go and stay with Sun Eun and her grandmother for the remaining days before our flight back to the United States, I knew that was her gift to Chiasa. She would allow the inevitable to happen, while surrounding herself with her grandmother’s and aunt’s love.

“For the next three days think only of Chiasa,” Chiasa said. “Can you do that for me?”

“It’s Ramadan, you and I have to think of Allah.”

“Okay, after sunset can you think only of me, as my wedding gift?”

“That’s easy.”

“Is it?” she asked.

“I think about you all the time anyway, and I did from when we first met.”

“You did?”

“When I saw you asleep on the plane, I thought to myself,
She is like a blue diamond.
”

Chiasa was smiling. “A blue diamond,” she repeated softly.

“Yeah, if someone ran up on a blue diamond, they’d stare at it for a while. Then somehow, even if their eyes moved away for a second, they would look right back at it again and again.”

“Is it just about how I look?” she asked me.

“Nah, but that’s a part of it, no doubt. If I looked over in that plane seat and saw a female who couldn’t fit in the chair, with a face of a monster and feet like a kangaroo, I doubt we’d be standing here together like this.”

She laughed at my joke and then said, “But what if she was a really nice girl?” We both laughed.

She had to know that I loved her mind and the way she expressed her thoughts. She had to know that I loved her courage, her heart and her soul.

“I liked that you were so pretty but that it seemed like you had no idea that you were.”

“Oh, I see,” she said, thinking. “In Japan, people don’t treat me as though I’m pretty or special in any way. At least, not in a good way,” she said.

“That’s good. I like that. They made it better for me. When I take you back to Brooklyn, there won’t be a cloth that could cover and conceal you enough to hide your beauty from the hood niggas. Maybe I’ll get you one of those joints from Afghanistan,” I said with a serious face, but I was joking.

“You mean …,” she said slowly.

“Yeah, like dat. It goes over your entire body and there is a small screen for you to see out and for no one to see in.” I gestured.

“You don’t scare me, Ryoshi.” She smiled. “I love my
zukin
. If I can wear the face garment of a ninja, I can wear an
abaya
or
hijab
easily.”

“Who taught you those words?” I asked her, smiling.

“The woman in the mosque who helped me learn how to wrap my hair said the proper name for the head covering was
hijab
. I liked the sound of that word, so I remembered it. My father showed me once how women in Afghanistan dress. He said I should never be like them,” she said softly.

“Are you like them now?” I asked her.

“Even back then, I thought those women were beautiful and special. I didn’t say it to Daddy.” She paused. “My father means well.”

“We’re not talking about him. We are thinking only of Chiasa,” I reminded her.

“Aunt Tasha said something like what you said a moment ago.”

“Here we go, what did the infamous Aunt Tasha say now?” I played.

“She said that I wouldn’t survive a second in Harlem without the street hustlers eating me up.” Chiasa was looking into me, for my reaction.

“Hmm … that might be the first thing Aunt Tasha said that was true,” I joked.

“That’s not
the only thing
, Ryoshi! Aunt Tasha is so good,” Chiasa defended and pleaded.

“What does Aunt Tasha know about some street hustlers?” I asked.

“She lives on Strivers’ Row!” Chiasa said, as though that should tell me something.

“Strivers’ Row?” I repeated.

“In Harlem! You know it, don’t you?”

“Nah,” I said truthfully.

“What kind of New Yorker wouldn’t know Strivers’ Row? Aunt Tasha talks about the history of it all the time.”

“So when you visit Aunt Tasha, what happens?” I asked. My chest felt tight.

“What do you mean, what happens? Nothing! She just loves, loves, loves me. She has four sons and no daughter. She’s my father’s sister! So, she treats me as her daughter.”

“What happens about the street hustlers who she said would eat you if they saw you?” I pushed.

“I don’t get to visit Aunt Tasha often. When I do, I can’t stay there for long. I always have a really busy schedule with martial arts, ninja camp, tutors, school, and work …” she said.

“What about when you do visit Aunt Tasha?”

“Oh, that can’t happen. That’s why she never lets me out. She keeps me in the house with her and we have our own world in there. When we go out, she takes me to really cool places and teaches me things. She never lets me sit on the stoop, like you New Yorkers call it,” Chiasa explained.

“I like Aunt Tasha,” I told her. “Am I gonna have to beat down all four of her sons?” I tested.

Chiasa laughed. “I already thought of that,” Chiasa quick like lightning said. “Aunt Tasha is a church lady and she is gonna absolutely flip or faint or both when she sees the changes in me and listens to my new words and thoughts and beliefs. But I decided, once they all see how serious I am, and how I am studying the Quran first before taking a
shahada
and how much I love you, really really a lot, they will accept you and me and respect our way.”

I looked at my woman, my wife, so beautiful all the way through the skin and flesh and bone and into her soul.

“How come you never kissed me?” she asked softly. Her mood changing.

I smiled. “You really want to know?”

“Hai!”
she said.

“I knew that if I started kissing you, I wouldn’t be able to stop myself. I might even lose my mind while I’m inside of you. So when I do kiss you, I gotta take you someplace where it’s good and safe and alright for me to lose my mind and to give you my whole self. ’Cause you’re Chiasa, a whole woman, not a half, right?” I said quoting her. Her eyes widened, then melted.

“Besides, a smart man has to think carefully before he touches you. You’re a little dangerous.” I teased her.

“Dangerous?” She asked.

“Yeah you like to play with knives and your father plays with guns. A man has to ask himself, ‘Is Chiasa worth my life?’ Then a man might decide that some other girl is much easier to deal with.”

“But you’re not that kind of man, Ryoshi.” She said swiftly and at the same time seemed to just be realizing that I was actually saying that she is worth my life and any confrontation that loving her might bring to me.

“My father, that night when he saw my ring and the gold bangles that you placed on my wrist, he just stared. I waited for him to say something, but he didn’t. Later that night he called my grandfather. They had a long talk. Grandfather told my father that he had already known that the ‘tall, dark, and handsome boy’ had ‘captured Chiasa’s heart.’ Grandfather assured daddy that ‘the boy has a fearless soul and would take our Chiasa away.’”

“Your father told you about his conversation with your grandfather?” I asked Chiasa.

“No, my grandfather told me about their conversation. I called him right after he and daddy talked. Daddy left out and I called grandfather.” Quick and clever Chiasa admitted.

“Early the next morning, my father called my mother. I knew what that meant.” She said in a serious but soft tone.

“What did it mean?” I followed.

“Well, the two of them never speak to one another, sadly. If they do speak on occasions it’s usually to blame one another concerning who was responsible for something Chiasa had done. ‘That happened on your watch,’ sometimes my father would say to
okasan.
Or, my mom would blame daddy for, ‘Not seeing your daughter as often as you should, then spoiling her terribly when you do.’ ” Chiasa gave a quick nervous laugh.

“So whose fault is it?” I asked Chiasa. “Me and you, whose to blame that we are together?” I asked her.

“It’s not a fault. It’s fate and it’s a fact.” She said solidly.

“I’d like to thank your mother. I want to meet her and thank her.” I said calmly.

“For what?!” Chiasa said pushing me playfully.

“First I want to thank her because she brought you into the world. I want to thank her for forcing you to do ballet.”

“Ballet!” Chiasa raised her voice.

“Of course, ballet made your legs so pretty.” I said calmly. She lowered her eyes.

“I want to thank her for your eyes and those long lashes, for your small waist, and for her not knowing how to comb you hair.” I said. Chiasa fell over with laughter.

“Seriously, your hair is wild and you’re wild. But you’re pure and I like all of it.”

We sailed in a hired yacht cruiser with two white sails and one wide wicked red sail in between, to an almost-deserted island called Somaemuldo. “The Lady in Red,” was the name of the pretty vessel. It wasn’t expensive. It was a short trip across the South Sea from Haeundae Beach in Busan. Korea has hundreds of tiny islands. I knew they must all have something unique going on. There had to be something attracting and pulling people to them. Whenever I went running on the beach, I saw the boats flowing back and forth.

I had asked a fisherman on the pier, “Where can I take my girl to make her love me more?”