I tried to bring it all into perspective, telling myself that not all of the people on the continent of Asia were young, so she wasn’t really representing all four billion of them. Not everybody on the continent of Asia was an artist, so she wasn’t really competing with very many. However, my excellent math skills betrayed me. Because my mind had already calculated that one percent of four billion is four hundred million, if even a half of one percent of four billion teen artists competed in the Asian teen art competition then there still were 200 million contestants.
If the contest sponsors did a lousy job and failed to look at all of the artists’ work and just settled on the best out of five thousand teen artists, Akemi still would be considered a phenom, a phenom of international importance and clout.
In falling in love with her honestly, I had not considered her in this way, as a woman who belonged more to the world than to me. As she blew up in significance in my mind, I began to feel local and small, an African boy from thousands of miles away who was just trying to protect and help provide for his mother and sister by building and maintaining a small family business, who also worked in a small fish shop, and fought in a small dojo, and conquered small men like Tafari and Conflict, who were even smaller.
I thought of my father, who was a phenomenon himself, an international phenomenon. I thought of how he saw the whole globe as his backyard and traveled freely around the world with no fear, defeating any circumstances that tried to hold him back and more importantly, propelling himself forward and protecting his interests, his family, and even his culture.
I thought of him as the scientist and builder he was and the great things he built as evidence and testimony to his greatness. I stood trapped in my thoughts, breaking myself down to nothing and then building myself back up again, stronger.
If I am my father’s son and he is a phenom, then I should at least be a small wonder. If she, an artist obsessed with creating and re-creating beautiful finds, found me, then I must at least be beautiful.
If my world is small and hers is so large, then she, who must have seen so very much and traveled so very far, was like a collector of rare jewels, wasn’t she? She tossed the rocks to the ground, sold off the rubies, emeralds, and diamonds and held on to one particular gem, the most authentic, purest, shiniest, most valuable one for only herself to keep. Didn’t she?
Building further, I told myself that I might operate in a small world, but I am not small-minded and I am not a small man.
I thought of my grandfather from Southern Sudan who when I would be standing still in his village would say, “There is no reason to go anywhere else, you are already in the best place in the world and everything that is actually needed in life is already here.”
He would also say that I was “born great,” by origin and blood.
Our relationship was pure. It happened between us and never involved the artificial or official or material elements of this world. It was an energy so powerful, words would have only gotten in the way. It was a collage of smiles, glances, and looks along with an incredible effort to read each other’s thoughts and convey our feelings. It was a mutual admiration and respect of two young souls in awe of one another.
Lastly, I reminded myself that I was not seeing wrong when I looked into Akemi’s eyes. I was not feeling wrong when I was on the other side of her touch, her kiss, our love.
47
RAT
Brooklyn will sober a lover up real quick. I flipped back into focus riding on the subway with the aggressive and weird and wired freaks of New York. I got real clear walking in the Brooklyn streets with the people and prowlers.
I walked over to Bangs’ to collect my shit. She, her daughter, grandmother, and two or three other people were all outside sitting on the stoop. She handed her daughter to her grandmother and took off running down the street to meet me.
I seen two male youths on her steps. I figured they must not mean too much to her, because she wasn’t hiding the fact that she was sprinting over to see me and wrapped her arms around my neck as soon as she got up close.
“Hey!” she screamed.
“What’s happening?” I asked.
“Sorry you can’t come in the house today,” she said.
“Oh yeah. Why?” I asked.
“There’s a rat in there so we all ran outside and locked it in,” she said.
“So now the rat’s gonna live inside, and y’all are gonna live on the streets?” I asked. She laughed.
“Ha ha! No!” she said, all excited. “I ran down to the exterminator’s shop. He wants a hundred dollars to get it out. I got fifty my grandmother got thirty-five but we still fifteen dollars short. And we were gonna use the money to get our power back on.”
“What about them two dudes sitting on your steps?” I asked.
“They’re just friends, neighbors,” she said matter-of-factly.
“Why didn’t you tell them to get the rat out?” I asked her.
“They’re scared of rats. Everybody’s scared of rats. You should of seen my grandmother. She was up on top of the counter with the baby when I got home from school.”
“Alright, no problem,” I told her.
When we got near her stoop, the two cats stood up. One of them gave me the screw face, like he was some kind of tough guy. I figured he probably had a thing for Bangs.
I looked dead at him. Inside I was laughing at these Black American dudes who act all big but got nothing and do nothing. He might as well be wearing some hot pants and a tube top sitting around afraid and useless with the women, I thought, taking one look at him.
If he couldn’t even face down a rat, how could he challenge me? I spent my African summers with my grandfather living in the same realm with the lions.
“Go pay your power bill,” I told Bangs.
“Sure,” she said, seeming to melt and swoon when I spoke to her forcefully.
I walked past them two and pushed the door open, while they stood to the side and watched. Then I closed the door behind me, ’cause fuck them watching me.
First thing I did was open all the closed bedroom and room doors inside of the house, ending up on the second floor for the first time. The second-floor rooms were same as the ones downstairs—lifeless, dingy, and antique. The last room on the left corner had a bare mattress with a men’s pair of pants on top. I stepped in and took a look. There was an empty bottle of Wild Irish Rose turned over on the floor. On the other side of the mattress, in a small space, there was a ripped condom wrapper on the floor. I took a double take. Everything else in this house was old and dusty as if this place was set back in time, but this scene in here, I knew wasn’t from two or five or twenty years ago. It could’ve been left there twenty minutes ago or two or five days back.
I stood quietly in the middle of the hallway up there for fifteen minutes. I didn’t hear one sound. Then I walked down to the first floor and stood quietly for fifteen more. I could hear the rat now. It was running around in the grandmother’s room.
I pulled out my kunei knives, entered her room, shifted some furniture around, and waited. I was excited at having a live target for my practice. I became completely silent and waited some more.
I saw Granny had a box of Fig Newtons on her night table. I pulled one cookie out, crumbled it up, and tossed it around her floor.
I stood in one spot for eighteen more minutes before the rat made his appearance. I saw him. He was big and black like he been living large, an uninvited guest, terrifying the girls and the old lady, with no competition or threat of being shut down.
Now he fucked around and got fat, greedy, sloppy, and slow. He made a run for the cookie crumbs. On my second toss, my kunei went right through him and lodged his body up against the dank beige wall. His blood splattered like a small kid’s finger painting, adding the only color this room had.
I left him there for a minute while I went to the other room to collect my gun and our shirts. I came across the box of condoms she tossed at me in
the alley a couple of weeks ago. Instinctively I counted them again. Thirteen.
In the kitchen I grabbed a brown paper bag. I went back into Granny’s and grabbed my kunei out of his belly. His tail was frozen stiff in an action pose. I used the brown bag to pick him up. Then I dropped him inside and folded it down. A little bit of his blood soaked through the paper bag but not enough to make it rip open.
In the bathroom, I washed my hands with hot water and soap. The house was still quiet. None of the tough guys had entered to help out or just out of plain boldness or curiosity.
Then I heard someone entering through the front door. The footsteps were heavier than a woman’s footsteps. I came out of the bathroom and stood on an angle to see who it was.
He was a grown, older man. I didn’t want to move and scare him. I didn’t expect him. There was no way he could have expected me to be inside of this house either. But on closer look, he appeared unstable, maybe even drunk.
“Hold up,” I called out to him.
“Who the fuck are you?” he asked as though this was his house.
“Exterminator,” I answered, holding up the bloody bag.
“Oh shit,” he said. “Glad to see you. I hope they don’t owe you no money.”
“Nah, I did it as a favor.”
“C’mon, man, nobody does no favors.” He laughed two quick times and then sobered up.
“I don’t have no money. Want a quick drink?” He pulled a bottle out his coat pocket.
“Nah, I’m good,” I told him.
“Where’s Tiffany and the baby?” he asked, looking around.
“Who wants to know?” I reversed it on him.
“Oh, you the exterminator and the security?” He chuckled.
“Something like that.” I didn’t chuckle.
“This is my mother’s house,” he said with authority. “Where’s she at?” he asked.
“My bad, both of them should be right back.”
“Your bad, you right,” he said, swigging from his bottle. “Excuse me, you said you didn’t want none. So stop staring. You gon’ jinx me and make me drop it, staring like that. Then you gon’ owe me money. I don’t do favors,” he warned.
“I’m finished. So I’m out,” I told him. I kept my eyes on him while I went back and grabbed me and Ameer’s shirts and left.
Outside I called her. “Bangs!” She came running down the street. Her grandmother must’ve heard me call out too. She came right out of the apartment across the street carrying the baby.
“He’s finished,” I told them, holding up the bag.
“Boy, you’re a godsend. Thank you so much. You the only one of them I know who comes around and does something good. You can come back any time. You’re always welcomed in my house,” the grandmother said, relieved.
“Where you going?” Bangs asked. I could see the craving in her eyes.
“I gotta go bury this sucker,” I said. “Afterwards I got basketball practice.”
“When you coming back to check me, friend?” She smiled.
“Don’t believe a man could only be friends with you, Bangs. It ain’t happening.”
“So what does that mean?” she asked.
“You asked me not to talk to you about her,” I answered sincerely.
“Oh, her again.” She rolled her eyes.
“Just take good care of your daughter. She’s the best thing you have,” I said to her.
“That’s right,” her grandmother shouted out her agreement. I kissed the baby and told her grandmother and her, “Your son and your uncle is waiting inside of your house.” Bangs rolled her eyes and said, “You kissing the baby, but you should be kissing me, Supastar!”
48
NAJA
When I reached back to my area of Brooklyn later that night, the first thing I did was press the voice mail message button. The first voice there was Akemi. She was soft-spoken, expressing musical and very relaxed Japanese so casually, as if I could understand one word.
I smiled, and imagined I got the gist of her talk. “I am still here with you. Everything is as good as could be expected. I’m working hard. I hope to see you soon.” She was turning me into a very patient man.
Naja wasn’t patient. When I went into her room to check on her, she posted me up. She was awake, sitting in her bed when she should have been lying down asleep.
“You missed family day on Sunday. Will you miss it next Sunday too?” she asked.
“I’m sorry, Naja. It was an emergency. I had to go and check on a friend,” I apologized, referring to the trip to Chris’ church.
“But you told me that these people are not our friends,” she said, puzzled.
“I told you that the people in this building and this neighborhood are not our friends. I said the little girls in your school are your friends.”
“What about Shayla and Kimmie?” she asked. “They don’t go to my school.”
“Who?”
“The two who were riding my bike with me the other day,” she continued.
“It’s hard to tell if they are your friends because you have only played with them once. Besides, you won’t really know if they are friends until they get their own bikes.”
“Why?” she asked.
“Because sometimes people pretend to be your friend when you have something that they want to use,” I told her, feeling bad about poisoning her view of life but knowing that she could not remain naive forever.
“Oh. Well, what was the point of buying me the bike if you don’t let me outside to ride it and don’t take me outside to ride it ’cause you’re never home?” she asked.
“Maybe I’ll take you somewhere special soon, where you can ride your bicycle without worrying,” I told her.
“Well, if you would have given me my fight training like you said you would, I could ride my bike right here in front of the building,” she said, calling me out.
I stood up thinking to myself that the more females a man is related to, and the more females a man knows, the harder it is for him to divide himself up and give them each what they need while protecting them all at the same time.
“What’s that smell?” I asked her, looking around her bedroom.
“What smell?” she said casually. “I don’t smell anything,” she said.
But I knew there was something because my sense of smell is excellent, and Umma’s use of fragrance is incredible. There was something in Naja’s room alerting my sense of smell and interfering with Umma’s fragrances, which was usually the scent that dominated our apartment.
I walked around Naja’s room checking. When I slid her closet door open, it was impossible not to see the sparkling eyes of a baby kitten as she sat inside of Naja’s house slipper.
I closed the closet door, leaving a small space for air. I turned around and acted like I had not seen the kitten. I wanted to see how Naja would handle this situation.
“Do you keep secrets from your family?” I asked her.
“Do you keep secrets from your family?” she turned the question around on me.
“No,” I answered her.
“Are you sure?” she asked.
“We’re not talking about me. We are talking about you,” I said.
“I don’t if you don’t,” she said, speaking too smart for her seven years.
“Naja, I am your elder brother. It is my job to care for you. It is not your job to take care of me. So quit playing and tell me your secret before it turns into a lie.”
“I have not lied to you,” she said.
“Have you lied to Umma?” I asked.
“No,” she answered. “There is just something I did not say. That’s not lying, is it?” she asked, flashing her innocent and childish grin.
“It’s not lying yet. I’ll give you a chance. You can tell me now before your secret turns into a lie,” I said calmly.
“I found the kitten outside. I saw it in the bushes in front of Ms. Marcy’s window. She likes kittens too. So, she let me run ou
tside and get it. I put it in my book bag and now it’s in my closet. I fell in love with the kitten but I knew Umma wouldn’t let me keep it because she even told me once before, no pets until we get a new house and a backyard for them to stay in.”
“So does that make it okay to bring the kitten here anyway just because you want to, because you feel like it?” I asked her.
“No, but I thought Umma wouldn’t understand,” she said.
“You thought Umma wouldn’t agree,” I corrected her.
“You’re right,” she admitted. “But she’s so cute, isn’t she? Her name is Wish.”
“You should just talk truthfully to Umma. When you hide something, it is the same as saying that you understand that it is wrong. It is the same as lying. The truth is better than a lie,” I added almost automatically, repeating the words I heard Umma say to me for so many years.
I also told her, “You should not have given the cat a name until you are sure you can keep it. To give something a name, and to say the name over and over again, is to grow closer to it. That’s what our father taught me.” I didn’t confide to Naja that I learned this lesson when our father was teaching me how to slaughter a sheep. That was the year I stopped naming animals that we intended to eat.
Maybe she felt something from me because as those memories occurred, she begged, “Tell me a new story about our father. Your stories are so good.” She smiled and sank down into her bed.
I sat on the floor beside her and spoke quietly.
Umma’s sewing machine was humming, still I wanted to be sure not to raise my voice enough for her to hear me telling aloud the stories that would stir emotion inside of her. The stories that she already knew so well.
“Do you want to change your name, because this is the time to do it,” the clerk at City Hall told me after Umma and I were granted our citizenship. “A lot of foreigners who become citizens of the United States opt to have simpler names that we can pronounce easily here in America, like Joseph or Robert or Theodore or Benjamin.”