As she walked down the two steps in front of her store, she took the sweater off and tied it around her waist. Now her turquoise top was sleeveless, today no bra.
Her hair was pouring out of the back of her bandanna. She kept her hands in her back pockets which made her mango-sized breasts poke out on her petite frame. Her jeans rode the curves of her hips. I pushed myself to concentrate.
We were both kind of frozen there, aware that her uncle was watching us through the glass door. Saachi stood watching us too. She hurried outside bold and unembarrassed at staring into my mouth. I guess she was preparing to record my every word to report back.
“Let’s walk?” I asked Akemi, pointing. She nodded yes and ordered Saachi back into the store. No sooner had the little girl left than she returned with her uncle, who stood outside his store and under the canopy looking in our direction blank-faced and pretending nonchalance.
Saachi kept him company doing cartwheels and flips outside in front of his store, causing the walkers to move out of her way.
“You have paint in your hair,” I told Akemi. She looked at me puzzled. I touched the bottom of her hair and brought it around to her face so she could see the yellow color. She laughed. “Arigato,” she thanked me. “Art,” she explained.
She pulled a paper out of her back pocket, brought it out in front of herself, and unfolded it for me. It was an advertisement, a huge Ferris wheel at an amusement park. She pointed to herself and then pointed towards me. It was easy to see she wanted me to take her there.
“Saturday?” I told her. I held up four fingers. “Four o’clock.” Then I pointed down towards Cho’s to let her know where we should meet.
“Hai!” she said, meaning yes. “Aishiteru,” she said with excitement. There goes that word again, I thought, but didn’t know the meaning.
Her eyes were searching me for emotions. Her uncle’s eyes were searching me for a wrong move.
I started to turn and leave. I paused instead. Sensei’s lesson today had reminded me to use everything within my reach to win.
What was really happening with Akemi and me? It was only the language that made every move so difficult. It was me depending on either her older cousin or younger cousin to translate what was going on inside of their family’s heads and Akemi’s world. Yet I was standing there with this beautiful and creative girl who spoke five different languages easily, in a section of town known as Chinatown, where almost everyone spoke at least one of the five languages that she speaks.
As she stood there waiting on me, a plan was born in my mind. I walked back over to her uncle. I felt her following.
“Konichiwa,” I greeted him. “I want to ask if I can take Akemi to get some ice cream. It’s two blocks over and three blocks down, here in Chinatown,” I explained.
His expression shifted out of his usual blank stare.
“You go now. Akemi has half hour only. Bring her right back,” he said.
“I want ice cream,” Saachi sang. I ignored her.
“No problem, arigato,” I thanked him.
He said something to Akemi in Japanese. She thanked her uncle and followed behind me until we disappeared around the corner.
Once we were out of his eyesight, she bursted in delight.
We walked together silently, our feelings boiling in our hearts.
Since I said we would go for ice cream, we went for ice cream. I took her to this Asian hole-in-the-wall, known for its unusual ice cream flavors like green tea, ginger, pumpkin, black sesame and red bean, or vanilla soy ice with corn flakes and maple syrup drizzled on top.
The place only had six small tables and twelve wooden chairs. Mostly everybody ordered their creams to go. Usually this place was packed, with a line out the door and halfway down the block. That’s how I discovered it in the first place.
It was after lunch time but before dinner and before the after-dinner dessert rush. So the place was kind of empty as I thought it might be. I led Akemi to take a seat while I went to put my plan into action.
“Do you speak Japanese?’ I asked the girl behind the cashier counter.
“No, Chinese,” she answered.
“Would you sit with my girlfriend and me and translate a little bit?” She stood on her tiptoes and looked over at Akemi.
“She’s not Chinese and I’m working,” she said in a neutral voice.
“Ten minutes, ten dollars,” I said. “She speaks Chinese. I want you to just talk for me and nothing else,” I reassured her.
“She is your girlfriend and she cannot understand you?” the Chinese girl asked.
“No, she understands me. She just doesn’t understand English,” I said.
The girl looked confused. I took out my ten-dollar bill and slid it across the counter.
Just as I was about to double my offer to twenty dollars, she said something in Chinese to the second cashier. She stepped from behind her register and walked over to the table where Akemi was watching and waiting for me to return.
Akemi looked surprised and posted up a little towards the girl.
“She is Akemi. Tell her for me that I miss her,” I said, and the girl translated.
Akemi smiled so bright. Then she answered the girl in Chinese.
“Akemi says that she misses you every second.” I felt a heat flow. I was happy and embarrassed. But on the outside I remained cool and steady.
“The other day at your cousin’s house, we came so close,” I said, purposely being vague. The girl translated.
“I was so lonely when you left. I wish it were only you and me, and that it was our house,” Akemi said, bringing her emotions out into the clear.
“Tell her I want to see her after work on Saturday.”
“Akemi says she wants to see you every day.” I broke out in a natural and uncontrollable smile. I dropped my head and rubbed my Caesar cut. I lifted my head and looked at this pretty girl, her eyes so filled with passion and her words so soaked in emotion, I could feel the heat coming off her body.
“This is crazy,” I said in a low tone to myself but did not want the girl to translate.
“Tell her I want to marry her,” I said in a heated rush. But the translator did not translate.
“You cannot ask her in this way, in this place. Where is the ring?” the Chinese girl challenged.
“I don’t have one on me, but I can get one,” I said.
“Well get it first, then come back. I will say it so nice for you two while you put the ring on her finger.”
I sat there motionless for a moment. Akemi was looking at us like, “What are you two saying?”
“Please ask Akemi if her family is against us being together.” The girl translated my question.
“Akemi says, ‘No one can stop the force of nature.’ ”
“Tell her that in my religion, there is an oath of marriage that we must take before we can be together.” The girl translated.
“Akemi says, ‘Like you, your religion is so beautiful. So what are you waiting for?’ ”
Blown away, I sat still for some seconds.
I tried to remember every question I had been wanting to ask, and every word I had been wanting to say to Akemi. The Chinese translator looked drawn into our love story and mesmerized too. She was waiting patiently along with Akemi, for my next words or question.
“Ask her when is her birthday?” I said, and the girl translated.
“Akemi says, ‘She was born on December 31st.’ ”
“Tell her I was born on July 27th.” The girl translated for me.
“Akemi says, ‘She is sorry. She knows that you are younger. She wishes that you and she were born on the same day at the same time, but she is sixteen years old, and she is one and a half years older than you. She hopes you do not mind.’ ”
“Ask her if she has any other boyfriend. Or if she has been with any other male before, in the past?” I said.
“You can’t ask her that,” the Chinese girl raised her voice.
“Ask
her,” I repeated. The girl cast her eyes down as she asked the question more softly than the other words she had spoken. She listened intensely to Akemi’s response. Akemi spoke softly and slowly as if every word she chose was special and serious.
“Akemi says: ‘The first time I saw your face, I knew I belonged to you. It is the first time I felt what I have never felt, and still feel. The first time we kissed was my very first kiss. I was feeling that you would feel that in my hunger and in my touch. The first time that we make love will be the first time that anyone has made love to me, although you have already made love to me in my dreams.’ ” The Chinese girl loosened the top button of her uniform and wiped some new perspiration from her forehead. I leaned back and let Akemi’s poetry soak into me.
Akemi sat looking directly into my eyes as if the translator was not even in the room with us. I went into my pocket and pulled out my small notebook where I kept information for Umma Designs. I opened it to a clean page and told the Chinese girl to ask Akemi to write down the address of her father in Japan.
After Akemi heard my request she hesitated. The mention of her father was the only thing that she seemed unsure of.
Suddenly, she picked up my pen. As Akemi’s pretty fingers glided across the small sheet of paper, writing out her father’s address, I thought of how I had fought many men in my lifetime, but I never felt as strong a challenge to my manhood as her placing her life into my hands so willingly. Being close to her was like being underneath a natural and powerful waterfall. There is no way to resist the current of the water pouring down from every angle and forcing humans and even the hugest animals to move with its flow.
“Tell her to leave everything to me. I’ll need some time. But I will still meet her on Saturday at 4:00 P.M. after work.” The girl translated.
Akemi answered, “Hai!” Meaning yes.
I thanked the girl for helping my life. I gave her a ten-dollar tip.
“Aren’t you two going to have some ice cream?” she asked me.
“Maybe some other time,” I said, not wanting to get her back to work late. As we turned to go, I asked, “One more thing, will you ask Akemi what ‘aishiteru’ means?”
“Aishiteru?” the Chinese girl repeated.
I told her, “Yes. Aishiteru.”
The Chinese girl translated my question to Akemi.
Akemi answered her.
“Akemi says, ‘Aishiteru means, I love you.’ ”
As we walked back to her family store, I could feel my heart beating in my eardrums. I could feel her heart beating in the palms of her hands.
In a love daze I bounced back to my Brooklyn block to scoop up Naja. Even though Ms. Marcy was all set up to babysit, I preferred to have Naja with either me or Umma before the sun went down each evening.
Naja knew how to sit quietly and be calm. Besides, this little schedule change would only last for one week, small sacrifice from me.
“I like the way you fly,” Naja said to me after watching us train on Thursday night at the dojo.
“Do you think girls can fly like that too?” she asked.
“Anyone who trains to fight can learn to ‘fly’ as you call it, male or female,” I answered. After a pause I added, “like the girls who do gymnastics, they can ‘fly’ too right?”
“I’ve never seen them,” she said, unconvinced.
“Well then, I better find out where they are and take you to see them,” I offered. “Would you like that?”
“Definitely!” she said.
“But I don’t want you to fight,” I cautioned her. “I’ll fight for you. I promised. And when you grow up, inshallah, your husband will fight to protect and provide for you.”
“But what if you’re not there when it’s time for me to fight? And what if I’m not married yet?” she asked.
“You are never left alone,” I reminded her. “Someone who cares for you is always watching over you,” I said.
“But it’s not the same thing. No one can fly like you, except your friends,” she said, like she had thought about it and was so sure.
“Okay, good point. I will train you to defend yourself in certain ways,” I said.
“When then? When does my training begin?” she pressed.
“On Sunday, family day,” I promised.
She made a frustrated face and huffed, “Always only on a Sunday.”
We met Umma at her job ten minutes before midnight just to be sure.
On the train ride, I showed her the one hundred questions we needed to study to pass the test for our citizenship papers. I translated the information and pointed out how easy the test would be, simple questions like who was the first United States president, and who is the current United States president, and little things to recite and facts to remember.
“Don’t worry, we’ll study together,” I assured her.
“And I’ll test you every day,” Naja said in her sleepy voice.
At 1:30 A.M. in our little Sudan, I confided in Umma as always.
“I have something else to recite,” I said to Umma. She sat waiting for me to explain.
“The nikah. I would like to take Akemi as my wife,” I said solemnly.
“Does she agree?” Umma asked.
“She does.”
“Mubarak!” Umma said, meaning “Congratulations!”
She got up from the living room floor where we were sitting and disappeared into her bedroom.
She emerged holding her silk scarf in her hands, the one she wore on the last night that our entire family was together in the Sudan.
Sitting down, she untied the scarf bundle, revealing the contents I knew were inside, her treasured and exquisite jewels, the ones she was wearing on her last night of seeing my father.
With the jewels in close view, glistening under Umma’s night lamp, the seriousness of my taking a wife sunk in even further. It was deeper than Akemi’s beauty and charm and intelligence and creativity and passion. If my mother sat poised to part with those items which my father selected and purchased specifically with Umma, his first wife and love of his life, in mind, then this was a huge responsibility and a very warm acceptance of Akemi into the fold of our family.
“Give her these,” Umma said as she separated the jewels that she would give away from the ones that she would keep to herself.
As I watched her pretty fingers maneuvering, I saw the uniqueness of each of her bangles, the engravings and designs, the careful attention to details, the specially selected charms that dangled from a particular one of them, the clear princess diamonds and trillions as they sparkled.
“I cannot separate you from your jewels, Umma.”
“Oh, you can give yourself to Akemi. She can give herself to you. Yet I cannot give her some jewels, when you are worth so much more?” She sat waiting for an answer. I didn’t say one word.
“I can be moderate, then. I’ll gift her four diamond bangles, four gold bangles, and my pair of earrings.” She re-arranged the jewels to match her words.
I looked at her beautiful enthusiasm. Umma was big-hearted. Her jewels were worth even more than the jewels that Fawzi purchased for his new wife. And, of Umma’s chest of jewels that were left back in the Sudan, these pieces were the only ones she had with her here in America.
My father did not have to go through India to acquire authentic gold and clear diamonds. They were pure and original in Africa, buried in the soil, drifting in the waters, mined and sold in our shops.
“The bangles yes, but not four of each. Two diamond, two gold, and you keep these earrings for yourself. I’ll purchase some earrings for Akemi myself,” I told her.
“You keep the bangles and the earrings for her. Use your money to purchase a ring for her finger,” Umma insisted.
“You keep your earrings,” I said solemnly as we went back and forth over what were “pieces of my father.” Or at least, pieces of our memories of him, her deep love and my awesome admiration.
I had seen Umma refuse to pawn these s
ame earrings once before when we were in Egypt. An Arab offered her ten thousand pounds for them, when they were actually worth fifty thousand pounds. I saw my mother pick them up from the counter, pleased that the Arab was unfair in his business. This way, she could keep the earrings for herself as my father had always intended for her to do.
“How about this ring?” I asked, selecting something much more modest.
“This is small enough to fit Naja’s finger,” Umma said. “But, it is not suitable as a wedding ring.”
“I know, but if you don’t mind, I’ll take it,” I said.
“And what of Akemi’s uncle and family?” Umma asked.
I thought for some time before answering. I recalled Akemi not exactly answering this same question earlier this afternoon in the ice cream store when I asked her.
“They may not agree,” I said truthfully. “But she will agree,” I said confidently.
“If I could speak any of their languages, I would go and talk with them. It is better when families have agreement, but as a woman I can tell you that Akemi will follow her man. As a Muslim, I can tell you that you and she are both of age. She agrees and you agree, recite the nikah, three witnesses and Allah agrees.” Umma crushed her hands together lightly, a gesture which meant, “and it is done.”
As an afterthought Umma said, “And if the nikah were not recited and the marriage left undone, the love and desire would still be there. A child would come and the adults would be guilty of forbidding and breaking what would have been a complete family, as Allah requires.”
Umma left and returned with her Holy Quran and her calendar. We both looked at the dates on the page of this month, and selected Saturday, April 26th, as the evening Akemi and I would recite the nikah and be married.
Umma smiled, her slim finger resting on the calendar date. “This is sixteen days from now. You can use this time to prepare yourself. Inshallah we will find a good house to buy at least to begin the process of moving away from this place. In this time you will become an American citizen, which may work out better for Akemi as well. But son, do not go into her until the nikah is recited and the wedding is complete.”
“I plan to see Akemi tomorrow. I promised to take her out,” I admitted.