“If you saw the tape, then you knew,” I answered.
“No! I didn’t know until the prosecutor told me. I got one-upped! Then I requested the footage to verify exactly what had happened. After weeks of red tape, an authority finally allowed me to view it. This is exactly what I mean when I say that you are working against me,” she said softly, but powerfully proving her point.
“I could have used that tape at your in-house hearing. I could have convinced them not to send you into twenty-three-hour lockup.” Then she paused to stare at me, like she was waiting for me to say a specific something. Straightening herself, she brought her face in towards me and quietly said, “You did good! I saw that your role in that riot was saving the lives of two or three fellow inmates, and moving the weapons out of reach before another violent crime could have been committed with a homemade knife and also with a chair. I will attempt to enter that footage as evidence at your trial to show the jury your active compassion.
“Jordan, you will have to appear before the grand jury. The murder charge in the violent death of Lance Polite will be handed down by the grand jury in court and added to your current cover charges. They are fighting to try you as an adult.” She looked at me to measure if I felt the weight of the bad news.
“A trial date will be set. If you want me to continue to represent you, you will absolutely need to confide in me in great and specific detail. We must prepare for trial.” Her words hit me hard. These were the words she should have said up front. This was the “first worst.” This was the matter that could get me twenty-five to life.
“Jordan, if you want to plead the fifth and remain silent, you are perfectly within your rights to do so. At the murder trial, I can arrange so that you do not even have to testify. I’ll keep you off the stand. But be silent with the court, with the prosecution, but not with me. Anything you say to me is said in confidence, by law—attorney-client privilege. I can’t repeat what you confide in me,” she said, pleading.
“And what do you think?” I asked her.
“I think if you and I don’t work together closely, these guys are going to paint you as a monster, fan the flames of race, the fear of the young black male, and they are going to convince the grand jury, the trial jury, and the public that they need to be protected from you. I think the prosecution, the police, and the politicians are way too confident to be essentially empty-handed in terms of evidence. I think they have the nerve to offer you a plea deal when they have nothing but a fabricated confession that you deny ever having made and they cannot confirm or produce on paper or tape or film. It’s an insult to you. And, it’s a huge insult to me, your attorney!”
“A plea deal?” I repeated.
“Yes, it’s ridiculous, I know.”
“What exactly is it?” I asked calmly.
“The prosecutor says if you confess to manslaughter two, they’ll drop all of the other charges against you and you’ll serve five and a half to seven years. That’s the offer.”
My mind showed me a photo of the Rikers rule book. It was the section on good behavior cutting a third off of a prisoner’s sentence. I heard my second wife’s soft voice saying, “Seven years, that’s too long.” She had said that to me back in my Brooklyn apartment on the same day as the murder. But I calculated that if I copped to five and a half to seven, I could potentially get out in three years, or a little less.
“You’re quiet again,” my attorney said. “Are you actually interested in the plea deal? Why should you confess and accept the plea deal when you have maintained from the beginning that you never confessed to this crime?”
I knew she just wanted to hear everything in my own words, even the things I was sure she already knew the answers to, including my reasons.
“You said you saw the tape of the riot,” I reminded her.
“What’s that got to do with the plea deal?” she asked me swiftly. “Those are two separate matters. One was an in-jail hearing; this trial you’re facing is in the official court of law.”
“Either the authorities at Rikers saw the tape and ignored completely what they saw, or they did not even bother to watch the tape. Still, they tried me and convicted me and placed me in the box for the maximum. Not only me, they ‘boxed’ everybody who was there, no matter what they did and didn’t do. And of course everybody was there. We were all locked in and could not have been anywhere else at the time. They just swept us up and boxed us. That means that in this new trial, which I understand is in a different building and separate courtroom, they could charge me with murder without having any real evidence. You said that yourself. Same as in my jail hearing, they could ignore what is revealed in the courtroom because of politics or fears, the same way the Rikers authorities ignored what they clearly saw on the tape. A jury could convict me of murder, even though they actually had serious doubts about it, no evidence, and like you told me before, they could convict me and then sentence me to twenty-five years to life, or execute me like they did the girl in Ohio. Only thing that we know for sure is they want a culprit and they have me, so I’m that guy. Mathematics say that five and a half to seven years is a better deal for me. If it’s an offer and it’s guaranteed in writing, and if it can’t be altered or taken back and it’s the only guarantee they’re giving concerning the outcome, I’ll take it,” I said.
“You will confess to murder?” she asked me to be sure I understood.
“It’s a ‘forced false confession’ because of the situation,” I explained to her.
“Forced false confession . . . ” she repeated. “You are absolutely correct! You shouldn’t have to confess to murder. No one should be forced to confess. It goes against the whole idea of what the word confession means. A true confession should come from a person’s soul voluntarily. You are brilliant!” she suddenly exclaimed to me. “Young man, you are absolutely right. Even your silence is right! If I’m worth anything as your attorney, I should never allow them to force and fabricate a confession out of you. Nolo contendere!” she said.
“Is that Hebrew?” I asked her.
“No, it’s Latin!” she said excitedly. “I will get your plea deal done in writing. You will not confess to anything or break your silence to explain anything. You will not confess in writing or in speech. I will use United States Supreme Court Case North Carolina versus Alford, 400 U.S. 25. I’ll enter the Alford plea and get the prosecutor and the judge to sign off on it.” She said this aloud but she seemed to be speaking to herself, or working it out in her mind right then and there.
She stood up and began hurriedly packing away her papers and then closing and locking her briefcase. “I guess you were my date for today,” she said. “I’m going to cancel my next appointment. Instead, I’m going to work out this plea deal, and make it even sweeter for you.”
“And I guess you were the answer to my prayers,” I said to her sincerely.
As she left, so did the summer breeze and the light, and her scent and the feeling and the beauty of the feminine.
I was back in my box, calm and cool, alhamdulillah.
23. TRUST • A Reflection
“Should there be secrets between two comrades, between two Muslims, husband and wife, between two ninjas, two friends who share a great love and a rare loyalty?” she asked me softly, speaking slowly and facing the fire. She had a small, quiet fire going in our backyard, as though she were camping in the woods. She was not camping or cooking, though. She was burning the bloody cloth and bandages and each item that had been placed in the trash can in the upstairs bathroom, one by one, including the T-shirt and hoodie I had worn. The nine-foot wall was completed. It was dark out. Other than the stars in the sky and the allure of the crescent moon, we had complete privacy. The night was clear, as often happens after a heavy rain. All had been cleansed.
Her eyes were filled with truth serum. That’s how it seemed. Look into them for more than a second, and her eyes would suck the truth out of my soul. This was our first time in more than twenty-fou
r hours speaking face-to-face and alone. She had been busy and quiet all day as usual, but seemed strange if you knew her well. I know her well. She was waging her silent protest. Her lips were sealed, but her gestures were loud enough for me to feel and hear. It caused me to think hard all day as I carried out the various business tasks I was responsible for. Here’s how it began.
My eyes opened before sunrise. My chest ached from the stab wound inflicted the night before. It felt sore and tight from both the stabbing and the stitches. Instead of a shower, I was thinking, I’d wash my body with a cloth so the stitches didn’t get saturated and loosen. As I moved to turn sideways, I felt something. Akemi’s erotic eyes opened at that exact moment. She looked at me, the way anyone would after first being awakened and needing a few seconds to really see clearly. She felt what I felt, I could tell. We sat up together. She swung aside the summer silk sheets. We looked down together. We looked at each other at the same time. We both looked perplexed. Then she smiled a curious smile.
Our ankles were cuffed together. It was her right leg and my left. Her smile led me to believe that she had done this. Yet it wasn’t her style. She was into complete freedom. She wanted me to be with her because I love her and not because I’m caught in a cage, trapped in a promise, or going through the motions out of guilt or obligation. Even on our wedding day she had said to me, and my sensei had translated, “A beautiful leopard is not beautiful in a cage.” So even though I know Akemi desires for me to be close to her, and glued to her body each night, and even though she falls asleep with her small hand wrapped around my balls, I knew handcuffs were the opposite of her way of love.
There was only one other ninja in our house besides me. That girl downstairs, who’s wicked with the knives and bows and arrows. The one who is trained same as me, but fiercely feminine and immaculately designed like a flawless diamond. That same girl whose love is deeper than the crescent-shaped Marianas Trench, the deepest point in the deepest ocean on Earth. Although I did not understand her reasoning for cuffing us, she did it. I know.
Akemi placed her hand between her thighs. She had to pee. Pregnancy had her peeing more than before. We maneuvered out of the bed, wobbling as we stood cuffed together trying to balance. She laughed. I think she thought I’d cuffed her. Maybe she was enticed by it after all, since if she believed I had done it, it would probably also cause her to believe it was an expression of my love for her.
On the toilet we were side by side. Except, only she was on the actual seat. I was squatting beside her awkwardly, stuffed on an angle atop the bathtub. Her pee came splashing out at first. Then she must have clamped her pussy muscles in nervousness. A second later her pee trickled, stopped, and trickled once more until it dripped and was done. She looked at me. She and I had done all of the intimate things that sexual, sensual husbands and wives have done, yet we had never actually used the toilet together. Maybe we both thought that doing that would fuck up the fantasy a little. For us the fantasy is a constant enticement. So she didn’t do anything more than pee. She held back, and I just hoped that it was not uncomfortable or hurtful to her in any way. Then I peed. In the sink she washed my hands and hers. Then she dried my hands and hers.
In the mirror, she used her fingers to comb her hair. Pregnancy made her hair grow like crazy. It is deep black and long and silky. Her pretty fingers were gathering each strand. Her long fingernails—pregnancy also made them grow—were manicured nicely. On each finger on each hand she had designed a small pyramid, and on top a clear coat of polish. I raised my hands to help her catch her hair and drop it into a slipknot, the way she likes to wear it in the morning. But when I reached, I could feel the ache on my left side and shoulder from the wound and the stitches. So I gave her one hand and she used one hand. Together we dropped the hair into a slipknot. She washed our bodies afterwards. It felt good.
In our closet we stood side by side. “Up,” she said. I lifted her by her waist. The cuffs crept up and buried into my calf. She was as high as the cuffs would allow her to go. From the shelf, she grabbed a T-shirt for me to wear and a tee for herself. She put mine on me carefully. She put hers on herself. She didn’t need a boost to get my sweats. They were placed on the hangers after she or Umma or Chiasa washed them. She handed them to me. Then we both laughed at the realization that it would be impossible for me to put on any boxers or basketball shorts or pants ’cause of the cuffs. With my right hand I chose a throwback miniskirt from her single days and gave it to her. She couldn’t wear it outside unless she rocked jeans beneath it, but she could pull it over her head to put it on and wear it comfortably in our house.
In the hallway, we walked right into Umma, hijabbed up, dressed and ready to make the before-sunrise Fajr prayer. My Umi looked at me. Her eyes were questioning why my lower body was naked beneath only a bath towel that my first wife had wrapped around my waist. Then Umma’s eyes dropped down to my feet. “E’ W’Allah!” she said, finally observing the cuffs and the awkward way Akemi and I were standing stuck together. In Arabic, she began her questioning. Of course I never said what I knew, that Chiasa had done it. When Umma asked how I would make prayer like that, I invited her to make the prayer without me this time, and told her I was going downstairs to find the key for the lock. Instead of praying in the living room, she went back to her bedroom to make the prayer.
Now we were all three seated in the living room, Umma, Akemi, and I. Chiasa and Naja weren’t home. We didn’t panic, just waited. My second wife had been taking my little sister out for an early morning run every day, as though we lived in a harmless and safe city. Other than chasing Chiasa around a few blocks that surrounded our house, I didn’t jog. Black men and running in the streets of New York wasn’t it. Men know that. When the trigger-happy head hunters, also known as the NYPD, see any young black man running, they convict him in seconds of armed robbery in their minds and start gunning. To know that is not fear. It’s common sense.
Chiasa pushed through the door full energy and then stopped short upon seeing Umma. “A salaam alaikum,” she said to Umma, and “Ohayou gozaimasu,” to Akemi, and nothing to me. Naja followed her in. Chiasa walked away and directly into her first-floor bedroom and closed the door behind her.
“I told you she was waham,” Naja said to Umma and me in Arabic. Umma laughed. I listened. When Naja then saw that Akemi and my ankles were cuffed together, she laughed and said, “Yep! She got all that crazy stuff from The Spy Store last week.”
“The Spy Store?” I repeated.
“Yep, I didn’t even know that spies had a place to go to buy those kinds of things. And if they are spies, why does the store sign say Spy Store, like it’s not supposed to be a secret? And the place is right next to other stores, so anyone can see you walk in there. So if you are supposed to be a secret agent or something, everybody is gonna know!” Naja said, shrugging her little shoulders. Umma looked at me.
“Your wife bought a whole bunch of sneaky stuff in there. She bought those handcuffs you and Akemi are wearing on your ankles and she bought a pen that writes but is really a tape recorder. And she must really want to record something, because she bought a second tape recorder that fits into the palm of her hand. Wait till you see her watch. Don’t worry about asking her what time it is, ’cause that thing is really a camera! I know because the man in the store was teaching her how everything worked and, you know, they just acted like I wasn’t standing right there listening. Then, at the cashier she bought like six more little sneaky things,” Naja reported in Arabic. “One was a dog whistle. What did she buy that for? Only dogs and cats could hear it and we don’t have any pets here. I asked her. She said she has really good hearing and could adjust the whistle slightly so that she could hear it like the cats and dogs do.
I looked at Akemi. She was always fascinated when Umma, Naja, and I were having a long convo in the Arabic language. She would be watching our lips and tongues and teeth and swooning over the melody of our language. Aside from that, Akemi is not dumb. I’m s
ure that even if she didn’t catch one word of our Arabic, she did catch that Naja was repeatedly calling Chiasa’s name out as she explained her after-school trip to the Spy Store.
Chiasa dashed out of her bedroom holding a towel, washcloth, and her small straw basket of girl’s stuff and her clothes in her arms. In the downstairs bathroom, she closed the door behind herself.
“And that’s not all . . .” Naja continued.
“You are going to be late for school. Go upstairs and shower and dress for the prayer,” Umma said to her.
“Can I just tell you one more thing?” Naja asked politely, but I knew she was about to launch into some more mud-slinging.
“Make it quick,” Umma told her.
“You know my brother’s second wife has been following me to school four days a week, for two weeks? Well, yesterday she caused some trouble in the school. Chiasa asked this one Nigerian girl, and another girl from Somalia and the third one from Russia, how they could recite their prayers in Arabic without knowing how to speak Arabic at all. So they each told her that they are required to learn to recite the prayers and pronounce the Arabic words even though they do not understand them. Then your second wife told them, ‘The meaning of the Arabic words is so much more important than reciting something that you don’t know or understand. Reciting without understanding would have no meaning in your hearts or in your mind or soul,’ ” Naja mimicked. Umma’s eyes widened.