Midnight and the Meaning of Love

  “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.

  Chapter 12

  THE CURTAIN

  “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.

  Inside her room, she smiled to see that I had already packed her stuff. None of it was professional or gift-wrapped and ribboned like when Mayu, her Japanese house manager, had packed it, but it was folded as neatly as clothes and shirts are folded and stacked at the Polo store, the way I handled my clothes.

  I had fantasized about her as I packed her belongings. It wasn’t the predictable items like her little panties and bras or nightwear that I had made love to her in. It was her high heels, shoes, sandals, and boots.

  “Mayonaka Chiasa talk?” Akemi asked out of the blue.

  “No,” I answered her truthfully.

  She was searching me with her eyes.

  “Come here,” I told her. She came. I held her in my arms. The fabric of her dress felt nice against my skin. She laid her head against my chest.

  Then I asked her. “Akemi likes Chiasa, yes or no?”

  She pulled back only enough for us to face one another. “Hai, Akemi like,” she said. “Akemi, Chiasa see,” she added after a pause.

  “Akemi wants to see Chiasa?” I asked, gesturing “to see” with my finger pointing at her eyes.

  “Hai,” she said softly, without a
smile.

  “Akemi, Mayonaka fly home.” I motioned a plane flying through air. “To New York this week.”

  She smiled and jumped on the bed. She stood up on the mattress to pull down her curtain. I stepped up to help her. When my hands were in the air bringing the rod down so she could reach the cloth, she turned and faced me and asked, “Mayonaka Chiasa likes?” She pulled the curtain off the rod and held it. I put the rod down and laid it on the mattress so we could put the Bada Ga’s curtain back on it.

  “Mayonaka”—I put my hand on her heart—“loves Akemi.” “Mayonaka”—I put my hand on my heart—“loves Chiasa,” I showed and told her.

  Without three seconds passing, three tears spilled out from Akemi’s left eye.

  “Mayonaka loves Akemi. Akemi ichiban in Mayonaka’s heart.” Then I said what Dong Hwa’s son had taught me the night before in Korean, “Mayonaka loves Akemi forever. Mayonaka will never leave Akemi alone. If Mayonaka goes anywhere, he will always come home to you.” I kissed her face beneath the eye where her three tears fell. I did not ever want to hurt her. I wanted the two of us to always talk truth to one another. War and business were separate. I would conceal those things from her, for her. In matters of the mind or heart, however, I wanted the two of us to always be true.

  I said that I would always be in love with Akemi, and I meant it. I also believed that I had shown it. I had traveled seven thousand miles to get her, climbed five miles of mountain and walked five miles of forest and three miles of field. I had risked my life and my freedom for Akemi Nakamura, and I always would.

  The thing was, Chiasa had risked her life and freedom for Akemi too, and that moved me. Chiasa had come up with Akemi’s grandmother’s address in the Hidaka Mountains. Chiasa had saved Akemi’s passport and made it possible for us to be here in Korea as well as to move on to the United States without legal risk. Without Chiasa, Akemi and I may not have ever gotten back to one another safely. I knew that without saying it aloud. That mattered a lot. Although these were surely not the only reasons that I also loved Chiasa, they were reasons that gave my connection to Chiasa much more weight than a crush on a bad-ass pretty girl. Chiasa, I believed, was not offensive to Akemi and my love. Chiasa was an asset that made all of us strong, and having more than one wife was my culture and was within the boundaries that Allah has drawn for all believers in our faith, Islam.

  Chapter 13

  THE CAUTIOUS PROFESSOR

  “It would have been nice to drive to Seoul in the daylight, but I had to finish some work in order to prepare my assistant for tomorrow’s class that I will be missing,” Professor Dong Hwa said.

  “It’s no problem,” I told him. We were riding in his wife’s mini-van, but the professor was driving.

  “You only think that it’s no problem because you have never seen the beauty of the historic Nakdong River or our rice fields or our bridges.”

  “I saw the beautiful bridges over Busan, and I saw many rice fields in Japan,” I added just to throw him off, the way he tried to do me at times.

  “That’s not the same thing,” he said at a lower volume than everything else he had announced proudly.

  The professor booked two rooms at the Hyundai Suites located in Seoul. He warned me that it wasn’t a tourist area, but he chose it because it was large enough for his family even though they were only planning on an overnight stay, it had the kitchen, washer and dryer, and other items a normal family needs to be organized. I gave him $150 up front. I assured him whatever Akemi and I needed, I would pay for. We had arrived around midnight, so everyone was preparing to rest.

  “Can we talk downstairs in the lobby?” the professor asked me.

  “Akemi, I’ll be right back.” I told her.

  She was figuring out the television remote. “Hai,” she said, turning and looking into me as she always would.

  “About tomorrow,” he said cautiously, when we were alone, seated in the hotel lobby.

  “What about it?” I asked.

  “I’d like to take things one step at a time. I’d like for Sun Eun and I to see Akemi’s grandmother alone first. We think it’d be better if Sun Eun tells her mother about Joo Eun and her ashes.”

  The professor was being careful and considerate to me. I think he was also wary of my reactions, after the situation between me and the guy who claimed to be Akemi’s father. I liked that he was cautious. He needed to respect my marriage the same way I respected his.

  “No problem,” I told him gently.

  “What time do you want me and Akemi to come?” I asked him.

  “Okay, so now we’re on step two,” he said, sounding like the professor he was.

  “I’d like Akemi’s grandmother to meet Akemi alone.”

  “You mean for her grandmother to meet with her first before meeting me, Akemi’s husband? I must be step three?”

  “Yes, and I do want her to meet you of course. You and Akemi are married. Here in Korea marriage is sacred and serious,” he said, trying to calm me. I had noticed though that he didn’t mention when I would actually be introduced to the grandmother.

  “When?” I asked.

  “Let’s check her schedule and see how it goes tomorrow. We really don’t know what’s gonna happen.” He said that thing again, about not knowing what’s gonna happen. Meanwhile, I was reflecting on what Black Sea had told me about Koreans and blood. If Sun Eun had fainted when she saw me, could the grandmother go some steps further and catch a heart attack?

  “No problem. I have some things I want to check out in Seoul,” I told him.

  “Really, what?” he asked. He was so eager to know everything, but no one can know everything!

  “Itaewon,” I said, remembering that the brother named Ali from Iran had told me that I could find an Islamic community in Itaewon that included an Islamic center and halal foods, a mosque, and related products.

  “Itaewon,” the professor repeated, like he knew something I should know. “Watch your wallet carefully when you’re over there.”

  “Are you still planning to leave late tonight to return to Busan?” I asked him.

  “We’ll see what happens,” he said again.

  I was feeling worried for my wife and for his mother-in-law. It seemed like Dong Hwa and his wife were bracing themselves, like people waiting on a storm that may or may not come at all.

  Akemi and I went walking in Seoul, into the late night. Our nights were precious to us, especially since I knew now that I would not see her tomorrow once her family matters got rolling. We ate at a fried chicken joint, and there were many to choose from. They rocked until 2 a.m. after other food places were closed. Fried chicken and beer and watermelon—Koreans had that in common with Africans. There were slight differences. Their fried chicken came with sides of cubes of white radishes. On second thought, fried chicken, beer, and watermelon, break dancing, hip-hop, haircuts, and the urge to chill in the right fashions—young Koreans had all these things in common with American blacks.

  In the shower and steam together, kissing Akemi felt warm and moist. She had her eyes closed and her hair was soaked through. Her fingers were still exploring my cuts. I didn’t stop her from licking each one. I wanted to thank her, for her love and her passion. I moved her back up against the hot wet wall and ran my fingers down the front of her body. In the squatting position with water sprinkling over my head and flowing over her body, I spread her pussy lips and sucked her clitoris. It had been a while since I made her cum this way. It always drove her crazy. As I swirled my tongue around the most sensitive area, her legs collapsed and she gushed all over.

  Later I dried her hair for her and even gave her a braid. “Naisho,” I told her, meaning “secret” in Japanese. She should never tell anyone that Mayonaka, the black leopard, braided her hair.

  We went to sleep the same way we did in my Brooklyn projects, and in Osaka and in Busan by the sea—naked, her breast against my back, her arm beneath my arm and her pretty fingers wrapped around my balls. br />
  * * *

  Right before sunrise I peeled myself from my wife. I had to shower away our syrups and prepare to be clean and focused for the prayer. After Fajr prayer, I was exhausted. I went back to sleep in a separate bed thanks to Professor Dong Hwa, who registered me and Akemi for double beds instead of a king-size. I respected the cat, but from time to time I had to laugh at him. I considered that some people think for whatever strange reason that sex is dirty. The Quran encourages that a man should go into his wife. The boundary in our Quran is not around how a man and woman make love and babies and pleasure for one another. The boundaries are that a woman and a man must be married. Once the nikah is performed, enjoy one another.

  “Sayonara,” Akemi said before she left to go next door to join Sun Eun. Why didn’t she know I hated that word whenever it came from her lips?

  Chapter 14

  PANIC

  At 11:00 a.m. Korea time I called Umma. Naja picked up. “Oh boy, who is this? I don’t even know you anymore,” she said.

  “Don’t say that. What are you doing in Umma’s room this late?” I asked her.

  “She let me sleep in here with her for three nights already,” Naja said, as though she was winning some points.

  “What’s been happening?” I asked her.

  “Panic died,” she said, as though I should already know and she was mad that I didn’t.

  “Who?”

  “Panic, my frog,” she said, sounding frustrated with me.

  “Oh, what happened to him?” I asked, trying to sympathize with her.

  “Well, there are a few theories,” she said, sounding like a little scientist. Our father is a scientist, so it wasn’t too out of reach.

  “Tell me, I’m listening,” I said.

  “Oh, I don’t want to talk about it right now.”

  “How’s Umma?” I asked the most important question.

  “Well, she’s getting prettier every day. That’s what everyone around here says.”

  My chest tightened. “Everybody like who?” I asked my sister.