“Sensei, please continue with the class,” I called out. But he didn’t and everyone laughed.
Then she turned to Sensei and called out some words in Japanese. Sensei left the room and returned seconds later with a writing pen in his hand. He walked over and handed it to her.
Look how she has him eating out of her hands, I thought to myself. Not to mention I wished I could throw a curtain around her so that no one else could see or stare at her beauty but me.
She started writing on the papers as she walked away. All male eyes positioned on each of her heeled feet moving gracefully across the floor. I wanted to know what she was doing. Although I knew that whatever she was doing, no one could stop her.
She spoke some more to Sensei. He called me over.
“She says that you said all that is needed are two or three witnesses. ‘Well, we have seventeen witnesses instead,’ ” he translated for Akemi.
“It’s true that we do have four men here who are at least eighteen years old,” Sensei pushed.
Ameer was standing in the back with his hands in the air like, “What the fuck is up with you now?” Chris was mesmerized.
I excused myself to the men’s room and performed wudu, the washing that each Muslim must do before making a prayer.
I returned and made a prayer at the front of the room facing east.
I recited Al Fatiha in Arabic:
In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful.
Praise be to Allah, the Lord of the Worlds.
The Beneficent, the Merciful,
Thee do we serve and Thee do we beseech for help.
Guide us on the right path,
The path of those upon whom
Thou has bestowed favors,
Not those upon whom wrath is brought down,
Nor those who go astray.
When I raised up, everyone was standing in complete silence. I pulled the jewels from my inside jacket pocket. I opened the elegant boxes and placed each bangle onto Akemi’s wrist. The diamonds on the right, the gold on her left. For me, this was not any type of game.
“Sensei, Akemi may recite her nikah now if she chooses,” I said. Sensei translated. She chose. She recited her nikah in Japanese. Sensei translated her words into English for the seventeen witnesses, four of whom were adults, in addition to Sensei who was somehow representing Akemi and Akemi’s understanding as a father, guardian, or family advisor would normally do.
Akemi faced me, and began reading the nikah in Japanese from the paper in the gold envelope. She was speaking with no fear, as though no one else was there other than the two of us. Sensei translated the words of the nikah into English for everyone to hear and understand. I recited my acceptance of her giving herself to me in marriage. We signed the agid in the presence of everyone.
Sensei placed his signature on our documents, as did two other adult students whom I knew from regular classes.
I opened the box with the simple gold rings and slid one onto her finger. She placed the second ring onto mine.
She held her arms up for everyone to see. She dropped her wrist down to show off her fingers and the ring. Then she bowed over completely before me. These cats went wild with cheer.
Not your average Islamic ceremony, I knew.
Having already signed her name on all of the documents, she handed Sensei the paperwork, plus some papers from her pocketbook, and said some words to him in their language. The more she spoke to Sensei without my understanding, the more uneasy I became.
She turned to me and folded herself into my embrace. She eased out from me and turned to leave and of course I followed her.
As we exited the dojo, a limousine, double-parked halfway down the block, began driving our way. The driver pulled up and double-parked in front of the dojo. The Asian driver emerged and ran around to open the car door. I told him to get back in the car. I spun her around and looked at her to show my confusion at whatever her plan was.
She placed her hand onto the car door handle. I put my hand over hers; the gold glittered polish on her fingertips looking exquisite against my black skin.
We opened the door and she stepped on the inside of the limo door. Then she turned towards me to show me that she was leaving alone.
She said, “Aishiteru.”
In a move that went against all of my beliefs about public intimacy, I kissed her. She leaned against the warm exterior of the limo and her body relaxed. Her mouth was moist and warm. I saw her eyes roll into her head and then close in pleasure. She gave in to the feeling.
Soon, she pushed my body away gently and said, “Sayonara.” This is a Japanese word that almost everyone knew, or heard or said before. But since I first met Akemi, it is the one word that I never liked to hear her say.
She got in the limo. I closed her door and went to the other side where her driver was. I leaned in towards him knowing that I was intimidating him. He was a small man. He opened his window only enough to hear me out.
“Where are you supposed to take her?” I asked.
“New Jersey,” he answered.
I stood there with my hands on his window, delaying him. All I could think was that I wanted Akemi to stay here with me. I felt a thousand percent possessive over her, same as I did before we recited the nikah, but it was even more pressing to me now.
Instead, I told myself she will be fine and she will make the right choices which are best for both of us. I felt wrong for doubting her in the first place, when it was so completely evident that she is mine, and I am where she wants to be. I pulled away from the driver’s window, tapped the top of his hood, nodded to Akemi, and the driver pulled off.
Nobody was fighting in the dojo. Everybody was at the window watching me. Ameer was in the front now, of course. As I approached the building, the curtain that separated the Ninjitsu world from the Brooklyn streets dropped.
When I entered the dojo they were all seated on the floor there staring at me.
“What?” I asked. Sensei was seated in the middle of them on the floor, which I had never seen him do before. With a playful smile he said, “If at your age you can win over such a lovely young wife who will do anything for you and pledge her love with such open loyalty, then perhaps you should be teaching this class, and I should be back here listening and learning from you.” The class laughed all together.
I stood there dazed by the whole last hour of my life.
“Loosen up, man, you got the girl!” Ameer said. They all laughed again.
Still thinking of Akemi, I asked Sensei, “What did she tell you?” He smiled.
“Perhaps you’d better get a professional translator to translate the events of this day for you.”
“Sumimasen, Senseisan,” I said, apologizing to him for the disrespect I caused him to feel by getting someone other than him to translate my marriage documents into Japanese.
“Very well,” Sensei said. “She said, ‘I love you. You are my husband now and I am your wife, nobody can change that.’ She also said that neither a beautiful bird, nor a beautiful leopard, is beautiful in a cage; no one can change that either.”
“She’s deep,” Chris said.
“She probably heard that somewhere in a rhyme,” Ameer said.
I wasn’t saying anything, just thoughts racing through my mind, my heart and my body throbbing equally.
“Do you know the meaning of her name?” Sensei asked, always in the teaching position.
“Her name, Akemi, means, ‘Bright Beauty.’ ”
“Midnight and the Bright Beauty,” Chris recited out loud.
Ameer laughed. Some students laughed too, but Sensei did not. I could see he knew now the weight of my heart and the seriousness of this matter.
He continued, “The last thing that your Akemi said was, ‘I have to leave now. I have to go back to wipe the tears from my father’s eyes.’ ”
“I don’t care if it takes you all night. Now that your undercover identity has been compromised, I want you to sit here
and tell us what the fuck was going on. Don’t leave out no details. You might as well sit here and talk to us since you’re fourteen, you just got married, and ain’t on your honeymoon,” Ameer said, smiling.
Chris seemed speechless with fascination. It was just the three of us now.
“Chris, you wasn’t even with us two on Saturday night after the party. I’m telling you, this man here has two wives and one newborn! At least, that’s all we know about so far,” he joked.
Ameer was now standing on his feet animating like he was in a play in front of a packed theatre. “Now, your man did all of this without giving up one word or one shred of evidence. I’m so fucking impressed right now! We all friends here, just give up your secrets,” he begged.
“Your ninja wife is the one who blew up your spot by showing up to the dojo. That was your only mistake, the one thing that you weren’t in control of! I’m surprised you even let her know where the dojo was at,” Ameer performed. I had to laugh at that one.
“I didn’t. She took the paper from my house,” I admitted, thinking back to when she was walking around my bedroom, rummaging through my stuff. Then I relaxed a little.
“I’ll only tell you two this: Akemi is my girl, my wife, that’s it. Bangs, she has love for me, but I can’t rock with her. Her daughter is not my daughter. That’s all I’m gonna say.”
“Akemi, I mean your wife, she’s beautiful,” Chris said. For the first time, another man commenting on my woman sounded sincere. There was no offense in his compliment. No wrong intention.
“I admire you, man, for real. We been busy playing. You been busy growing up,” Chris said so seriously. Then he looked like he went into his own head and began reflecting on something.
“Who is she? Where did you meet her? Is this marriage even legal?” Ameer challenged.
“Our parents have given their permission,” I said, holding up the envelope containing all of the signatures including the form signed by Akemi’s father. “And our marriage is legal in the eyes of Allah.” That silenced him.
“Even the Sudanese bride returns home to her family after the signing of the agid. She doesn’t go right away to her husband,” Umma said, soothing me. She was sitting in the middle of her bed, her bare feet still beautifully painted with pretty henna patterns. Her lamp lit up her excited eyes as I recounted the story of my and Akemi’s vows.
“The Sudanese wedding takes seven days or more. Do you know that after the huge ceremony for Fawzi’s wedding, the entire family reconvened two days later for his walima?”
“Walima?” I asked. I was seated on the floor with my back up against the wall.
“It is the family breakfast feast where the families celebrate the proof of virginity of the new wife. It is also a prayer breakfast in hope that Allah will bless the newly married couple with new life.”
“How does the family have proof of the virginity?” I asked, feeling naive.
“When you go into a new bride, if she is virgin, there will be blood. It will not be a shower of blood, which occurs in the woman’s monthly flow. Females vary, but there must be some blood coming from her ‘below’ on the first night of intimacy. The husband will know how it feels, how it is and how it looks. He will take time to see the blood. When the husband is sure and feels that his bride has not been entered into by any other man, he is happy. So the families are happy. No one feels cheated. Everyone celebrates!”
I already knew there would be no walima between our two families. Yet, I felt a heavy Sudanese kind of pride that there would be blood coming from “below,” not a hand-me-down girl or someone else’s leftovers or an abandoned or passed around piece.
In my bedroom, I kept turning her words over in my head. “I have to go back to wipe the tears from my father’s eyes.”
Not back to Japan, my heart pleaded. The driver said New Jersey. She must be saying that her father has come here to the U.S. and is keeping up in the New Jersey home of his brother. Either way, I had to admit to myself, that this was the first time, since we arrived to America, that I really trusted any female outside of Umma. Now, after careful thought and observation, I felt within my heart that I trusted Akemi too. Even when I could not see her with my own two eyes standing before me, I trusted that she was good and true, and doing only the right things.
46
THE WHITE ZONE
Early Tuesday morning we made prayer. I took the train ride in with Umma as usual. I asked her if she had known that “Umma Designs” needed to pay taxes to the American government. She looked at me strangely and said, “I go to work every day at the factory. When they pay me, they have already deducted the money for taxes from my paycheck. That’s what I pay them.”
At 10:00 A.M., I was at the lawyer’s office.
“Saul Slerzberg’s home is his to sell. He is debt-free as far as liens against his home are concerned. His deed is old, I can update it for you with his consent. Also, I would advise you to spend the money and have the home inspected before your mom agrees to the sale or signs anything,” the lawyer said.
“Mr. Slerzberg has already said that if anything’s broke, we should just fix it,” I informed her. “It’s an ‘as is’ deal.”
“Well, usually, if something is not right with the house, and the inspector confirms this fact after his inspection, you can negotiate to have the amount it will cost you for the house repairs deducted from the overall selling price of the house.”
“That’s not happening here. Eighty thousand for this guy is the magic number. We’ve looked at a lot of properties. The ones that Umma likes are out of our price range. This place is the only one so far that is in the right location for work and school, at the right price. Mr. Slerzberg is an old guy. He wants to get out of New York quick,” I said.
“Yes, maybe too quickly. Maybe you’ll sign these papers and hand over your money and he will leave so fast your head spins. Then you find out your house is wired all wrong and is a fire hazard. Or, your air-conditioning doesn’t work and it’s June! Or God forbid the plumbing is jammed and the plumber wants five thousand to lay new pipes, meanwhile your toilets are backed up and the whole house stinks!”
“Slow down,” I told her. “Easy, I understand. We’ll get the inspections.”
“Sorry,” she said, slowing down and content that she seemed to have won her argument and made her point.
“I want to ask you a couple of questions about taxes,” I said, leaning forward in my chair on the opposite side of her desk.
“You’re wearing a ring today,” she observed. “On your married finger . . .”
After completing my business with the lawyer, I headed to the Museum of Modern Art. I wanted to see the place where Akemi would have her exhibit. I wanted to have an idea what she was involved in, and thought just maybe she would be over there too.
The museum was situated in what I refer to as a “White zone.” I never take my guns into White zones. I stash ’em before and pick ’em up later. White zones are closed-in areas where it is guaranteed that there will be metal detectors, security, and constant police patrols. White zones are areas where I already know there won’t be many Black people, where I will be an obvious standout and automatic suspect. It is very easy to get picked up in a White zone, because the authorities are all the time wondering what the fuck you are doing there and what the fuck do you want?
The museum was a nice-looking, well-kept, oddly shaped facility where it was clear that millions of dollars were being spent to keep the lights on, the thick glass windows shining, the turnstiles and security desk operating, the huge bookstore in the lobby stacked with an inventory of thousands of intriguing items, and the pictures and displays mounted, framed, and lit up.
At the museum entrance, before the security desk, there were seven metal easels on which thick boards were mounted, advertising the upcoming exhibit and exhibitors. “Seven Continents, Seven Geniuses, Seven Youths,” the display was titled.
Underneath the board for Asia was a huge
black-and-white photograph of my wife, Akemi Nakamura. The caption beneath her photo read, “As Soon As She Sees You, You’re Captured.”
Looking at her picture, I could see that it was taken before we met. Her ears were not pierced in the photo. I looked at the way her thick black hair, black eyes, and full lips were pulling me. I wondered if they were pulling everyone else also.
Their description of Akemi read:
Sixteen-year-old Akemi Nakamura is the Japanese-born artist who swept our art competition and best represents the artistic talents of the youth of Asia. She has mastered the unique style of combining pencils, markers, and paints together on one surface. Her original artwork also contains numerous creative surprises that make it stand out from the work of her peers.
Her greatest talent, however, is her photographic memory.
She despises drawing or painting using mounted objects or models. It is believed that she can look at her subject once, close her eyes, and then open them and bring it to life on her canvas in great detail by memory. She is a unique talent unlike any artist the world has known. Her eyes are more precise than a camera. This is why we say “As soon as she sees you, you are captured.”
Behind me now were three or four people, also taking a look, but not a glance, because they didn’t leave right away. They stared instead.
An attendant in matching pants and vest approached the gathering crowd that was beginning to block the museum entrance.
“Welcome to the Museum of Modern Art. This exhibit will be featured on Saturday, May third, here at the MoMA and will be on display for three months up until August third. A reception will be held in our auditorium welcoming these seven young artists who have poured their hearts out onto canvas for your viewing and enjoyment. Will you be joining us in the museum today?” she asked, pointing towards the desk where the entrance fees were being collected.
I stepped to the side, away from the group and towards their attractive bookstore.
I was looking around and not looking all at once. I was thinking about the phrase, “Seven Geniuses, Seven Continents.” I was wondering if I really ever thought of Akemi as a genius. I thought of how I had lived my life in America preferring to be anonymous, yet had somehow attracted and married a female who was selected to represent a continent of almost four billion people, with India and China having more than one billion souls each.