It turned out he knew a lot more English than he originally let on. He paid me in cash at the end of each day, as if that was all he could be sure of. Maybe I wouldn’t show up the next day or I’d just completely disappear. He paid me a different amount each time. I guessed he was basing it on how he felt about whatever he earned for the day. He never cheated me so his system worked out fine. I knew that in time he would stop doubting me and I might even get a crack at chilling in the Atlantic Ocean on his big-ass boat.
Eventually he took me on a tour of the world in Chinatown that existed beneath the dark-brown metal doors in the cement ground. These doors, when unlocked, led to a network of basements.
Downstairs from Cho’s, there were tanks and cages filled with live long, black eels, lobsters, crabs, chickens, pigeons, and even cats. A narrow cement underground pathway connected each business on the block to the other. Once we walked past his underground property, we entered the next man’s underground space, where he was storing unmarked boxed merchandise. Cho said, “Stay on my side.” He explained that the merchants on this strip had an honor system not to tamper with each other’s products, and a surefire method of dealing with anyone who violated it. I knew what that meant.
I had already peeped the short, bald, Chinese strongman, his body built like a rhinoceros. In the thick of the winter he came around wearing only a T-shirt as though weather had no effect on him. He entered the shop every Friday surrounded by his deadly silence and collected an envelope from Cho. I didn’t need to see any more than that to know there was some kind of army behind all of these Asian businesses and that the businesses were forced to pay out protection money.
On the way back through the underground tour, Cho pointed out a cement shower stall, located on his property, with a high-powered water hose and adjustable showerhead. He held up a big black bar of soap and said it was the only soap that gets every trace of the fish scent off your hands and body. He said, “My wife hates to smell the fish, but love to eat the fish!” He laughed a rare laugh at his own joke. His laughter evaporated. Then he told me, “This is your locker. Bring your own lock.”
He introduced me to the only cat in the underground who didn’t have a price on her head. She was a black cat with gray eyes named Pussy. I asked him why only this one cat was roaming around freely. He said, “Pussy good.”
I checked it all out. I would bring my own lock. I was big on having a locker, a new stash spot. But I didn’t plan on showering down there. After work every Friday and Saturday, I would just wash up in the upstairs bathroom to keep my face and my hands clean. Then I would shower each time when I got home.
It wasn’t long before an incredibly unique-looking, young, dark-eyed Chinese girl started eyeballing me. She worked on the same side of the block as me, four stores down. I had seen her a couple times on my way in, selling their merchandise: handbags, hats, and umbrellas. She was very pretty, with big pear-shaped dark eyes, high cheekbones, and very long jet-black hair. Sometimes she wore it straight and sleek. Other times she wore it thick and wild. She was always fashionable with a crazy original clothing style. The things she wore were completely different from the items they were selling in her store.
With the Asians in Chinatown, there was a big difference between the parents and their children. The youth were hip-hop style like us. She rocked Nike sneakers, and always had a girls’ style in colors I never seen for sale before. I suspected she was buying from the kids’ sizes because her feet were really small.
She seemed sneaky. I figured she was spending her whole lunch break walking back and forth checking me out. She never came inside the store or bought any fish from Cho. I didn’t know what her interest in me was about. I’d be there in my work boots or work kicks, loading and unloading trucks, sometimes wearing a rubber apron covered with fish scales.
I liked her subtle mannerisms, like the slow way her eyes moved around trying to take a quick look. The way she once bit her lip when she caught me catching her staring. The swift way she walked away and disappeared like one of my two green-eyed Egyptian cats from back home named Kush and Kemet.
Once she held her pretty hand against the store glass, the tips of her fingernails glistening with the thin streak of silver glitter she had painted on.
I liked the crazy color combinations she wore sometimes; shit that everybody knows don’t go together, but she wore them with such style and ease that she made it look like it was the thing to do.
On a snow-filled winter afternoon, she was cashmere down in a cashmere tam, scarf, sweater dress, and even cashmere sweater stockings. Her dark-brown leather boots wrapped tight around her calves and climbed high up her leg, stopping just above her knee. She looked high quality, soft, and warm. I could tell that she got at least some of her clothes from the Benetton shop in the Village. I had seen a few pieces she wore on display in their window. No matter what she wore though, she was always styling unlike anyone else, very original with her clever accessories, sometimes strange hats, selected scarves, driving gloves, or a rough leather belt with an unusual buckle, or just a wicked, odd-shaped handbag looking fresh and clean and chilling no matter what the weather or season.
On a fog-filled rainy day once, she still showed up to check me. She was beneath a beautiful wooden, crimson Chinese umbrella. She was wearing assorted shades of red beautifully woven and crocheted into a wicked patterned poncho. Her colors were so brilliant that day that they cut through the cloudiness and made her light up and stand out from everyone else who, because of the weather, all looked like black or gray globs no matter who they were or what they had on.
She didn’t say nothing when she came around peeking. I could tell she was older than me and I wondered if she ever considered that I was just fourteen.
One afternoon when business was slow, I pointed her out to Cho. She was wearing burlap Gucci shorts in the freezing winter, with heavy wool tights covering her legs, a rough-ass leather belt with the Gucci interlocking g’s, butter Tims, and a wool Apple Jack hat that matched her stockings. Cho quickly informed me that she was Japanese, not Chinese. He said there was a big difference between the two. He said he had only seen her around the block for less than six months. He said he didn’t know her or her people. “They’re renters,” he said. From the way he said it, his tone, I sensed that he had a problem with whichever Chinaman took it upon himself to rent a store in Chinatown to the “Japs.” I didn’t ask him about her again.
It was early December the first time I saw her looking. By the time the New Year and then February rolled around, I had never heard her speak even one word. But by that time, at home I caught myself picturing her in my mind. I wondered if she spoke English or only Japanese. I already knew how to introduce myself in Japanese. I learned it at the dojo from my Sensei. I told myself I would walk over and meet her one of these days.
She beat me to it and showed up along with her Japanese girlfriend, lounging outside Cho’s store five minutes before I was scheduled to get off. I had washed up in the bathroom and came out and found the two of them standing there. I gave Cho a pound. He shot me a look. I walked right out past the two girls. They followed me.
Out of Cho’s sight, I stopped walking and turned toward them. The girlfriend giggled. The pretty one stared. I said calmly, “Hajime mashite.” The one who liked me covered her mouth with her hand in shock at my using a Japanese greeting. The other one started speaking fast, fluent Japanese to me.
“Nah, chill, that’s all I know. Speak English,” I told them.
“Sorry,” her friend said. “Her name is Akemi.” She pointed at the pretty one.
“Can’t she tell me that?” I asked.
“She speaks no English,” her friend answered. “She’s only been here for a few months. Her first time to America.”
“Oh,” I said.
Akemi spoke in Japanese to her friend.
“She wants to know if she can touch your skin,” her friend translated.
I stood there smiling ab
out how bugged out her first request and this scenario was. I was definitely not the only Black guy in Chinatown. In fact, there were Black people shopping and passing through all day every day. Akemi spoke again in Japanese.
“She said you are so beautiful.” The other girl giggled. Akemi blushed.
“How old is she?” I asked her friend.
“She is sixteen,” her friend answered. Then she asked, “How old are you?”
“Fourteen,” I said, clocking their reactions. They spoke to each other. Akemi looked a little disappointed.
“She says you are so tall for fourteen,” her friend translated.
“Tell her I said it’s easy for me to be taller than her.” Akemi’s smile returned. They stood there glancing at each other like they were trying to read each other’s mind, then glancing back at me. I didn’t know where to move with this. I was telling myself, I’m good at getting money, fighting, and guns, but virgin with the girls.
I don’t know if she saw my age as an opportunity to switch things around and take control over me. She stepped in and touched my hand. Her off-white skin and clean unpainted fingernails today stroked me until an unfamiliar sensation ran up my arm and into my chest.
She moved her fingertips into my palms and that felt even better. She said some words to me in Japanese. Her soft, musical tone of voice got me hard. My mind was steady telling my body to calm down.
She whispered something to her friend. Then her friend said to me, “She hopes maybe sometimes you and her could go out for a walk and talk together, like friends.”
I nodded yes and said, “Okay.” I was thinking the three of us must be going out together. Otherwise me and Akemi couldn’t talk about shit.
“Are you coming?” I asked her friend.
“I can only come if you guys go tomorrow. I’m just here visiting Akemi. I don’t live in New York. On Sunday I’m going back home,” she said.
“Okay, tomorrow. I’ll come by the umbrella stand around four,” I told her friend. She looked surprised that I knew where Akemi worked, as though she’d thought this whole thing just started when she showed up. I knew then that she had no idea how long Akemi had been checking me out.
“Oh, then you know where Akemi works.” She laughed.
“I’ve seen her around,” I said coolly. Then they spoke their language to each other.
“Don’t come by the shop. Meet us at the bakery on Doyer. Do you know it?” her friend asked.
“Yeah, it’s across from the movie theatre. Cool.” I watched as they turned and walked away.
Walking to the subway, I thought about Akemi’s powerful dark eyes. The curve and structure of her face was so striking. Seeing her up close for the first time, I realized she was even more beautiful, with her small nose and thick, pretty, Black-girl lips.
I guess it was the unknown that drew out my interest in her. The fact that she had staked me out for three months without ever speaking one word was sweet to me. The fact that each time I saw her, she was either alone or working. I couldn’t just look at her and feel like I instantly knew everything about her the way I could with the females who lived on my block. They were either very loud and pushy, or quiet but completely predictable either way. Everyone around our way knew which guys had already ran through ’em. They all had copycat styles, crazy attitudes, and ways of talking.
Akemi’s style was vibrant and unique, especially compared to some of the very plain-looking Asian females I seen coming and going in Chinatown. After one face-to-face meeting, she already had me feeling like I was on some type of adventure.
After replaying our encounter in my head, I realized her friend never asked me my name. That works out better for me, I told myself. Since I’ve been living here, I discovered that Americans are either too impatient or too stupid to pronounce a name if it isn’t common to them like Bob, Dave, or Jack.
When my mother first took me up to school to get me registered, the people escorted us to meet my new teacher and classmates. When we got to the right room number, I handed the teacher my registration card. My name was clearly printed across the top of the paper. The teacher looked at it and announced, “Welcome. Please introduce yourself to the class.” I told them my full name—my first name, my father’s first name, and my grandfather’s first name, which is customary in my home country. They all started roaring with laughter. One fat boy even spilled out of his chair and onto the floor. One girl, black-skinned like me, started shouting, “Unga Bunga!” My mother tapped my shoulder and we both turned and left.
At the time my mother could not speak anything except Arabic. When we got away from the school, she asked me to tell her exactly what happened back there in that classroom without leaving one word out. I told her the short simple story, which really had nothing to it. On the train she sat silently for some seconds. Then she said, “America, the land of the fatherless children.”
We never returned to any public school. My mother said nothing good could come out of a school where praying is forbidden. She had me keep up my studies at home. This included math, science, English, Arabic, and the Quran. At first I was on a tight at-home study schedule. Over the years my mother rewarded my discipline by allowing me to freestyle. I read all kinds of books, some from the public library, some purchased at The Open Mind bookstore. I even used to watch people on the buses and trains reading. I would check the title of the book a person was holding and if they looked really into it, I would check out that same title for myself.
So when anyone in this country asks me my name, I tell them whatever comes to mind. Sometimes it’s a short version of one of my five true names. Sometimes it’s a name that has the same letters as one of my names but all mixed up to spell something else. Sometimes it’s a nickname or just the name I want a certain person to call me.
At our Brooklyn apartment that evening, I showered and got fresh dressed. My mother had her merchandise wrapped. She and my sister and I all ate dinner together. Afterward, I packed my backpack and left to do the Umma Designs product deliveries.
As soon as I finished, I headed straight over to the dojo to meet my mans Ameer and Chris. Ameer lives in the East New York projects. Chris is from Flatbush and lives in a brownstone. We all the same age. We all first met each other at the dojo on tryout day seven years back. I was surprised. They was the only boys who showed up with their fathers. I showed up for self.
While most students had class once weekly, the three of us trained side by side, three nights a week in Ninjitsu. Despite being from completely separate neighborhoods, we became best friends.
I think we all chose this martial arts school for similar reasons. It was authentic. Our teacher was actually from Japan, where the art form originated. He taught us things that were important to our survival and didn’t feed us a lot of bullshit. I admired that Sensei was a quiet man but very deadly. He made it clear to each of us who survived his tryouts that he trained level-headed boys to become killers in the name of self defense and, at the highest level, to become ninjas. He told us in his presentation that “the difference between a samurai warrior and a ninja, is a samurai is trained to carry out orders, while a ninja is trained to think for himself, master flexibility, execute, and finish off his enemy.”
When I went to join up, there were about thirty-five kids who showed up and were interested in trying out. After Sensei gave his no-nonsense introduction and the explanation of Ninjitsu, some of their mothers grabbed their sons’ little hands, rushed out the door, and never returned.
He had my full attention when he explained that unlike karate and other martial arts forms, his students did not compete in tournaments. He said fighters who train for tournaments become comfortable with predictable boundaries, limiting rules, particular styles, and planned scenarios. “In the streets,” he said, “there is no courtesy or choreography. An enemy will do any- and everything and a ninja must not be locked into one particular style. He must always be flexible and prepared for the unexpected.”
He assured the students who took the training seriously that if we practiced hard and advanced, we would even be afforded the elite opportunity to learn weaponry. He told us to forget about belts—white belts, yellow belts, orange belts, red belts, black belts. They had no real meaning. When you become a master, the Sensei and the student will both know and acknowledge. He said that only a fool would advertise his skills. It is much better to move quietly and be unrecognized by your opponent.
Sensei promised we would learn the points on the human body that were easy to attack and difficult to defend. He told us that to finish off your opponent, there were several tidy techniques beyond the barrel of a gun.
Sensei’s students traveled from throughout the five boroughs to get his training. We were all drawn to Asian culture, the weapons, and fighting skills.
Up until this point, Chris and Ameer, who were always talking about girls, had never mentioned Asian women. I’m sure they would be surprised if I told them I would meet up with two Asian girls tomorrow. Usually, the three of us could speak about anything. But I already knew I would not tell them about Akemi.
Deliveries completed, I was walking up the busy Brooklyn block on Friday night headed for the dojo. I was checking my left side, my right side, and even using the eyes in back of my head. But I was looking in the wrong direction when Ameer leaped out from where he was crouched down in between two beat-up old cars. He attacked me. He used the handles from my own backpack to choke me. I ran my moves on him, using an elbow to the head causing him to loosen his grip. I took advantage and made him fall backward. He broke his fall and charged forward. I was already in my stance ready for his next attack.
This young kid rolled up talking about, “Oh shit, oh shit!” He appointed himself fight promoter and a small crowd gathered around, charged up to watch me and Ameer kill each other. That time I struck first. There was a series of blows, strikes, and kicks. I got in a few and blocked some. He got in one real good shot to my chin. As abruptly as it all started, we stopped. Ameer came down from mid-air and we just started walking. The crowd booed. They didn’t know this is how we normally do. We had them all psyched. As usual, we argued all the way to the dojo about which one of us actually won this encounter.