“You’re handsome enough to get away with murder,” she said. Her words sent a wave of chill through me. I didn’t know why.
“Aunt Tasha!” Chiasa said. She seemed to be stuck just calling out her favorite aunt’s name over and over again.
“Very disarming . . .” Her aunt continued with her study of me. “Charming and ominously cool,” she said, and her talk was without laughter, as though she was somehow analyzing me. It felt strange. She was speaking about my looks, but it felt like she was attempting to peer into my soul. I wasn’t familiar with the word ominous. As soon as she took her attention off from me, I would look it up in the micro-dictionary I sometimes carried in my pocket. I remained calm, wasn’t responding or reacting to her compliments. I was used to being admired by all types of women, although I already had a sense that she was unlike any woman I had ever met before.
“What do you know about this man, Chiasa, other than the fact that he’s pulchritudinous?” she said, adding another word I’d never heard before in any conversation with any human being.
“I know he overtakes me,” Chiasa said. “And whatever I am, he is more,” she added. Aunt Tasha’s jaw dropped and her right arm went up. She rested her hand on her waistline.
“Hmmm, overtakes you,” she repeated. “And what else?”
“He makes me feel so good in every way. And . . . I love him . . .” And then Chiasa began speaking in her Japanese tongue, gesturing with her pretty fingers and eyes.
“What have we always told you about speaking Japanese in our house when you know so well that no one who lives here communicates in that language?”
“I’m sorry, Aunt Tasha, but I couldn’t describe in English words that feeling I wanted you to feel and understand so well. I thought maybe if you listened to the Japanese expressions, even if you did not understand them literally, you could feel their meaning. That’s what we do at home,” Chiasa explained.
“At home?” her aunt repeated.
“Yes, where my husband and our family live.”
“And where is that, because three months ago you lived in Tokyo!”
“Queens, New York,” Chiasa shared.
“Your light is getting hot,” I interjected.
“Pardon me?” Aunt Tasha asked.
“The lamp you have me standing under, the heat is intensifying,” I said. She reached up and switched it off.
“And what do you know about our Chiasa?” she asked me. I smiled.
“Don’t smile at Aunt Tasha!” Chiasa said playfully. “She’s going to think that your smile is the only reason I wanted to marry you.”
“Please take a seat,” Aunt Tasha told me. I sat down in a majestic maroon chair made of thick leather and upholstered expertly. A few thousand was dropped on that chair easy, maybe even ten, I thought to myself as I tried to become comfortable being examined by a forensic psychiatrist in her office, on her turf, playing by her terms.
“Chiasa, you will know best what your husband likes. Please go upstairs and get him something cool to drink.”
“Yes, Aunty,” Chiasa complied. But first, she stooped to remove my Gucci loafers from my feet. “They don’t, but we do,” she whispered to me. I noted that she had already removed her shoes. She set mine at the side entrance. Then she dashed up the stairs and into the house. Now I was left alone with her aunt. She stepped to her doctor’s desk, opened a drawer, and handed me some pages. I didn’t look at what it was, just looked at her, a silent inquiry.
“It’s like a Rubik’s Cube,” she said to me. “See what you can do with it.” She handed me a pen. I looked it over, didn’t feel pressed, and filled it out. Just a bunch of diagrams, math problems, and trick questions, but it didn’t ask me for any of my personal information so I was cool with it. Soon as I was done I stood up and laid it on her desk, where she was seated looking at a magazine.
“Do you know how Chiasa likes her beef prepared?” her aunt asked me strangely, looking up and closing her magazine.
“Chiasa does not eat beef,” I answered, and sat back down in her hot seat.
“Do you know Chiasa’s favorite fruit?”
“An onion, which she eats like it’s an apple,” I said truthfully. Her aunt clapped.
“Do you know Chiasa’s best friend?” She kept quizzing me.
“A horse, called Koinichi,” I answered.
“Do you know Chiasa’s best skill?”
“The sword,” I said easily.
“Do you know what Chiasa hates the most?” she asked me. I leaned forward.
“Anyone who tries to stick their hand in someone’s else love story and change the direction of her fate.” I was quoting my wife. Aunt Tasha was taken aback by that point. I could see how her eyes widened a bit and she leaned forward.
“Even you did not know that one, did you?” I asked her calmly. She cleared her throat and did not answer my question. Yet, she continued questioning me.
“What does Chiasa fear the most?” she asked, growing more serious.
“Boredom,” I said.
“Who does Chiasa love the most?” she asked.
“Her father,” I said.
“What does Chiasa like the most?”
“It wouldn’t be right for me to answer you truthfully about that,” I said solemnly. And just the thought about the answer caused movement in me. Aunt Tasha gave me a half smile and said, “Is that so?” Her eyebrow lifted the same way my second wife’s eyebrow lifts when she is thinking too hard about a complicated matter or surprised about something.
“One thing I see that is different from what I suspected is . . .” Aunt Tasha began, “Is that you are more deeply in love with our Chiasa than any of us would have imagined. It is not anything that you said to me right here and now. It’s not even your responses to my inquiries. I could see it in your eyes even through my upstairs window and immediately thereafter, through my side-door peephole. We thought you had stolen only her heart, and that perhaps she had lost her mind and her way because of it. But I see that the two of you are thoroughly and deeply invested into each other. That’s one huge plus on your side. And believe me, our family does not hand out stars easily.” I didn’t know what she meant by that.
“Is your husband home?” I asked her. “I’d feel more comfortable if I could greet him first.”
“Clementine is on his way. He will be here shortly. And, you are right, perhaps I should save all of my questions and share each of my observations when our whole family is here for dinner. That would be better for you than repeating yourself to each of us separately,” she said.
Chiasa walked down the stairs like a quiet feline, with a glass of pineapple juice in her hand. She looked at me, looked at her aunt, and then back at me.
“How would you like to be addressed? What should we call you?” Aunt Tasha asked me, breaking the awkward silence and almost pretending that she had not already asked me a series of personal questions.
“Midnight!” Chiasa said in an exasperated voice. “Let’s start with that. He’s comfortable with that name,” Chiasa said, before I said my true name. My wife set the pineapple juice down on a coaster on the marble tabletop beside me. She unfolded a warmed cloth and wiped my hands clean with it, then handed me the glass. “Enjoy,” she said softly.
I would do whatever Chiasa suggested. She never called me Midnight. When she first met me she discovered my true name. She had seen it on my passport as we both processed through customs, coming off the same flight. Yet she chose to call me by a Japanese name that she felt described me the way that she saw me. That name is Ryoshi, and in Japanese, the Kanji for that name means “the hunter.” She must have had a reason to introduce me to her Japanese grandfather back then as “Ryoshi, the Hunter,” and for introducing me now as Midnight. She and I are both ninjas, so I would go along with her lead with her family. I know she is smart and swift.
“Midnight it is,” Aunt Tasha said. “An unusual name for a prodigious young man.” That marked the third word I
would need to look up—ominous, pulchritudinous, and now prodigious. I made a mental note of all three.
“Show him around the house, Chiasa, so that he can make himself at home until your cousins and uncle arrive for dinner on time, I hope.”
“Do you want me to?” Chiasa asked me.
“I’m gonna chill right here until your uncle arrives. That’s the best thing for me to do,” I said.
Aunt Tasha smiled, and stood up and excused herself. Chiasa walked over to me and sat down in my lap. Leaning her body against me, her face close to mine, she said softly, “Aunt Tasha is good. I know she asks a lot of questions, but she means well.” She kissed my face.
“You want to get loved up in your aunt’s office?” I was looking at her.
“You want the truth?” she asked me, smiling. We both laughed.
Her aunt’s library was across from her office on the same floor, where she also had two “consultation rooms” for her psychiatry private practice.
“Your aunt brings mentally ill patients into the same house where her family lives?” I asked Chiasa.
“She used to, not anymore. But people with mental illnesses are not all serial killers,” Chiasa defended.
“All you need is one serial killer in the house. If you let one in, it won’t matter that all of the rest of her patients are very nice crazy people.”
“Oh stop!” She hit me. “If one of her patients was a serial killer, Aunt Tasha would know it! She’s really a smart lady. You saw all of her degrees.”
“A lawyer and a doctor,” I said. “And a forensic psychiatrist. Something big must have motivated her. Do you think she read all of the books in this library?” We were standing in the center of the room and each wall was covered from floor to ceiling with books neatly organized. Not paperback novels, mostly hard-covered thousand-page textbooks, and all was nonfiction.
“Yes, most of them. But some of them she probably just skimmed through and highlighted the important parts, like when you are studying for an exam,” Chiasa explained. At that moment, I thought about how all of my exams had been in real-life challenges, in becoming strong, in dealing with these streets I walk on and travel through each day and night, in protecting Umma and Naja, in building and expanding our family business, and in maintaining my women and training my body. I read books, had always been a big reader since I was real young. However, I had never read books like the ones on her shelf. I had never even seen titles like the long scientific titles I was scanning now. Since leaving the Sudan, I had not been a formal student in a formal school. I had not obtained any certificates of completion or graduation in America.
I heard a truck pull up in the driveway.
“What are you thinking about?” Chiasa asked.
“Just checking it out,” I said.
“Chee!” a male voice yelled out from upstairs. “We all here,” he called out, sounding anxious. I could hear several sets of keys jingling.
Clementine Xavier Moody stood six foot one in height and had his four sons lined up in a row to meet me in what appeared to be their large living room. His wife, Aunt Tasha, wasn’t in the lineup. She was leaning on the wall next to the fireplace behind the men, like an owl on its branch, observing, learning, and controlling all at once. I walked up the stairs from her office first. Chiasa was close behind me. I didn’t like that I was in my socks and her uncle and his sons were all standing in their shoes indoors.
I walked past the sons directly to her uncle and introduced myself.
“Good evening, Mr. Moody, I’m Midnight.” I shook his hand.
“My husband!” Chiasa burst out. The men all laughed tight laughs.
“Welcome, son,” Mr. Moody said to me.
“He’s Dr. Moody,” Chiasa said. “Or Uncle Clem!” she corrected herself. “And these are my cousins: Junior, Marcus, Martin, and Xavier.” I gave each of them a pound. They were Harlem dudes. The oldest one, Junior, was sizing me up. I took him to be about twenty-four or twenty-five. The youngest seemed about seventeen. Each of them was in good shape. The cat Marcus looked like he might be a boxer. I could see it in his physique and posture. I was in my Brooklyn stance, my martial arts frame of mind, just scheming out if I had to fight each one of them for any reason.
“Brooklyn, right?” Marcus asked me.
“You know,” I said quietly.
“What’s this kind of talk?” Aunt Tasha had intercepted the male mood. “I had some good help with dinner; let’s all wash our hands and sit at the table like civilized folk,” she issued her subtle order.
The dinner spread was a feast: peanut soup, salad, choices of steak or chicken or jumbo shrimp. There were plenty of sides—green beans, okra, macaroni and cheese, mashed potatoes, and stewed tomatoes. Biscuits were piled high, and gravy was available in a sterling silver server at each end of the table.
Dr. Moody sat at the head of the table and his wife at the opposite end. There were three seats on each side between them. I sat on one side next to Dr. Moody. His eldest son, Junior, sat across from me. Chiasa sat beside me and the other brothers fell in wherever they fit.
“Bless the table please, honey,” Aunt Tasha said. Dr. Moody and his wife bowed their heads. Dr. Moody began the prayer. His sons watched me and I watched them. Chiasa nudged me. We both said, “Bismillah” over our food together at the same time.
“What does that mean, Chee?” Marcus asked my wife.
“ ‘In the name of Allah,’ ” I answered him.
“So Chee, are you really a Muslim now?”
“Yes,” Chiasa said confidently.
“Where did you meet our Chiasa?” Aunt Tasha asked me.
“In the sky,” was all I said. Chiasa smiled.
“On a flight to Japan,” Chiasa explained.
“Were you part of the martial arts tournament Chee was in?” Xavier asked.
“Nah,” I said. “I wasn’t.”
“What was your business in Japan?” Her uncle questioned me with a seriousness that went deeper than the seriousness that was already in the air. Chiasa’s knee nudged me. She did not want us to start off by telling her family about my first wife, which was the only reason that I had traveled to Japan. She had requested that we get over the first few steps, which included meeting them, letting them get accustomed to the fact that we were married teens, and that she, who spent all of her time in America with her African-American Christian family, was now a Muslim. “That would be enough for the first visit,” she had said. I told Chiasa, “I won’t lie about Akemi. She is my first wife. But I can agree to not volunteer any information about her on our first visit. Afterwards, they’re just going to have to accept her, or we will have to separate from them.” Chiasa said, “I know, but it would be better for us all to be together as family and friends than to be separate. And on our next visit I will definitely invite Akemi and hope that she will come along.” I agreed.
“I have a vending business that started in Japan,” I said to Dr. Moody, avoiding a lie by stating a truth.
“Is that right. Why Japan?” he asked.
“Their vending machines are built superior and they distribute a greater variety of products through vending than here in America.”
“So did your ticket happen to lead you to the seat right next to our Chiasa on the flight?” Aunt Tasha asked.
“No. She was seated up front in a different section with all of the females from her martial arts team,” I said. I could feel that these people wanted and were fully prepared to press and squeeze me for the details.
“So don’t tease us! Tell us how you first met. What did you say? What did she say?”
“I didn’t say anything to her. She didn’t say anything to me. But when I looked at her, I thought I saw Jannat in her eyes.”
“Jannat?” Xavier repeated.
“Heaven,” Chiasa translated softly. “It means ‘heaven’ in Arabic.” Now they each stared at me. Aunt Tasha leaned back and exclaimed, “Oh my sweet Jesus!” Marcus looked at me
like he wanted to go a few bare-knuckled, bare-fisted rounds with me. I was game.
“Dr. Moody, what’s your business?” I asked him. Everyone turned even more quiet. I really wanted to know. I also was bent on changing the direction of the questioning and moving myself out of the focus.
“I’m a consultant,” he said. Now he was being vague and secretive, same as me.
“What does a consultant do?” I pressed him. I really didn’t know.
“Well, son, if you get a good education and study hard and master one or two areas of knowledge, you can become an expert. Once you reach a high level of expertise, instead of a standard or even an administrative job, major corporations, public and private business entities will come to you to license your expertise for a period of time. Depending on how good you are, you can set your fees at an astronomically high rate and charge these companies for your time, instead of being a salaried worker who’s part of the daily nine-to-five rat race.” He dipped his biscuit in his gravy and added, “And then you can afford all of this,” waving one hand in the air as though to say that’s why he can afford four sons, a wife, plenty of gravy, and a beautiful home. I also caught his unspoken questions to me. I believed he was inferring, “Can you afford our Chiasa? What kind of an education do you have? Are you an expert in anything? Can you house our Chiasa? Can you afford to finance children when you are so young and not yet fully established?” I caught it all.
“Are you a student?” Aunt Tasha asked me.
“I’m a businessman—vending, textiles, import and export,” I said confidently.
“That’s a good way to put it.” Marcus laughed and his brothers snickered.
“Legal business exclusively,” I said. It shut them down for a second. “How about you?” I reversed it.
“I’m at West Point Military Academy. September starts my senior year. My brother Junior graduated from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute with his master’s. He’s a chemical engineer with the Dow Chemical Corporation. Martin here just graduated from Princeton. He’s about to head off to Georgetown Law School come September. And my little bro Xavier is planning to follow in Chee’s footsteps and become a pilot.” He looked at me like he thought he had just dropped a bomb on my head.