Midnight (7 page)

“My foresight suggested that I look around for more ‘constructive' things to do, and then I met Fred.

“As they say, the rest is history. We had us a quickie marriage and started a trip through Central and South America in a miracle VW bus we called ‘The Space Bug' and wound up in Ghana.

“Prior to that I had taken independent swings through eastern Europe, made a couple of trip to the islands, that sort of thing. Fred made the idea of living in Africa a reality for me. We're both creative people; he likes beer, and I've been known to have a taste of gin in my pineapple juice, after my morning yoga exercises. You know what I mean?

“I think we strike a nice balance, Fred and myself.”

“I don't know why exactly, but I've always wanted to be in an environment where black people were in control. You understand what I mean? It wasn't so much a matter of leaving America to come to a ‘perfect' place or anything like that. You get me? Huh?

“I just happen to feel that the African American, just from the nature of our experience in America, is a natural for being an international black man. You understand me? Being an international black man offers a lot of options; Africa was just one of 'em. We've been damned near everywhere between us, haven't we, sweetheart?

“Ghana opened up like a flower for me way back in 1957, during Nkrumah's time. It seemed like the natural place for me to be at the time.

“I left for a bit and came back with Helene, and we've been here ever since. It's a beautiful place for an artist, the stimulation of being on a land mass this huge, with all the varieties of people, cultures, and stuff, is worth everything.

“I think the only thing that gets to me from time to time is the local beer. I've been known to get outrageously high on this stuff and cuss people out. You understand what I mean? Let's face it; everybody has to blow off a little steam from time to time.

“Bop? How did I see Bop? In 1992 he was one of a steady trickle of young black people who wanted to see where they came from. He came at just the right time. We had exchanged letters, by way of Chester Simmons, a slickass motherfucker who I knew from 1959 or '60. Yeahhh, he came at the right time; Helene and I were making a two-week trip to Kumasi.

“I had been invited to photograph a Festival of Drums, and Helene was going to interview a female warrior chief. What that meant, for a twenty-one-year-old ex-gangbanger from EL-A, is that he would have a nice two-bedroom pad to himself for two weeks. I told him about the lady down the street who specialized in sheet washing.”

4

I freaked out for the first two days after they left. The house suddenly seemed huge, and it seemed that I would be worn out trying to keep shit clean and whatnot
.

The other thing that freaked him out was being in Africa. He sprawled on top of the sheets, too hot to be covered up, saying over and over to himself, “I'm in Africa, I'm in Africa, I'm in Africa.” Subliminal flashes of ancient jungle dreams caused him to wake up sweating. Lions on the prowl, wild dances around a big fire, people dressed in outrageous colors, greasy folks. That's what the magazines had shown.

He smiled and slipped out of bed to get a glass of juice. They had left him stocked to the gills.

“Bop, there's enough fruit, vegetables and whatnot to last you for a month. If you feel the urge for something else, you can get if from one of these women walkin' up 'n down the streets. And if you need any help about anything you can't figure out, go next door to Madam Stella; she'll help you. We'll see you in two weeks.”

He poured himself a glass of ginger drink. They had all kinds of drinks in Africa. Quiet, except for the far-off sound of somebody laughing. The Osu district, Accra, Ghana.

After a few days of wandering around he felt confident going from place to place. He had even discovered the neighborhood joint—the Dew Drop Inn.

The people were just like the people in the Dew Drop Inn on the westside in Chicago, exactly the same except that they spoke Ga. And they seemed to be hip, in a 1970s kind of way. Days after the Vernons had left, he was feeling in tune with the neighborhood. Walk six blocks down that street to get to the high-school jogging track, walk a few blocks that way to the main street, a few blocks the other way to get to the ocean.

He wasn't having any problems getting from place to place, physically; it was the emotional thing that played on him. Passing through the streets made him feel alien, strange; these were people like himself (he saw a lot who were shades darker than himself), brothers and sisters. But they were different. Accra was the capital, people had money, stuff to sell, everybody was selling something to somebody else. Or buying. But they lived in shacks and had drainage ditches running alongside the sidewalks.

No, they weren't sidewalks. Streets were heavily rutted country roads in the middle of the city, and the “sidewalks” were those escape trails on either side.

One beep meant that a car was easing you behind; two beeps meant that you had been run over. He felt like someone coming from a place that would've fixed all the crumble and decay he saw.

The superior-than-thou attitudes were resolved by reflections of the pictures of the Bronx, Detroit after Halloween Night, Watts, westside Chicago.
What the fuck am I looking down my nose at this shit for? At least they got their own country
. And they were friendly.

If he relaxed his homeboy face for a split second, someone would pop in on him with a smile.

“I'll tell you the lawd's truth, Bop, I have to believe that the Ghanaian is the friendliest motherfucker on the planet. You'll run into a prunehead every now 'n then, but basically they're just naturally cordial.”

The people bustled but there was no sense of hurry; shit stank, fish smelled, a kind of corny barbecue was always in the air.

Fish, beans, rice, bank, fufu.

He listened in vain for the boombox, some funky chump with so many decibels behind him it wasn't even funny. No drug scene. The realization that he hadn't seen a rock-head in three days jolted him.

Wowwww! These people ain't into crack
.

After four days, everybody on the street knew him and he knew everybody. On the fifth day he met Elena Boateng.

Who told him about the German films at the Goethe Institut? Maybe the Vernons had left him with the word
. “They show German films on Thursday night. Some of them are pretty good. You oughta make it.”

Outdoor seating, the film shown on a large screen hung between two palm trees. He took a seat. The whatever it was, was going to be shown at seven
P.M.

He only had to glance around twice to see that this was a place where couples hooked up. He was surprised to see white couples.
Damn, I had forgotten about white people
. In the darkness he studied the black profiles, silhouettes, the pink faces glowing in the dark.

He smiled in the direction of the perfume three seats to his left. The perfume provoked that kind of response. The woman smiled back; he could see the white flash of her teeth in the dark. He turned slowly to face the screen, keeping a careful expression on his face.

He felt suddenly shy. African women were
so
fine. He had spent half a day staring over the wall at the women who passed the house. He had always liked dark women most, and these dark women appealed to him with every gesture. They scratched their asses, dug into their crotches whenever the necessity was felt for, walked as thought their asses felt good to them.

He didn't feel comfortable with women who acted the way loose women acted in the states, but these weren't “loose”; he could sense that.

In Osu, they sat with their legs sprawled open, nursing babies, selling stuff. They walked around with bras on, without bras. He had seen four or five sets of perfect titties already.

Tightening it up with an African woman would mean that you had to know something about Africa. He didn't feel he knew anything about Africa and the thought intimidated him.

He could see her smile at him during the course of the movie. He really couldn't figure out what she found funny. The things they were doing in the movie didn't make sense to him and the subtitles confused him.

She almost gushed when it was over and the lights came on. “Well, what do you think?”

“About what?” Bop felt dumb, his tongue thick. He was reminded of the fact that he hadn't spoken to anybody in a few days. And now he was talking to this ultra-fine African sister with her hair permed, a pair of tight jeans on, dark as a piece of coal.

“About the film.”

“Ohh, the movie, it was all right.”

He couldn't tell from her expression whether she believed what he was saying. He decided to expand his remarks. “Well, what I mean is, I think.… Well, actually, I think this is just about the first German flick I ever saw.”

Bop suddenly felt disoriented, backed up on himself.
Wait a fuckin' minute. What the hell am I doin', standing here trying to talk about a fuckin' German movie in the middle of Africa?

“You're an American, aren't you?”

He stared way past her question. That was the first time in his life anyone had ever asked him
that
question.

“Uhh, yeah, I guess you could say that.”

They straggled out behind the stragglers.

“Don't you go to foreign films in America?”

“Some people do, I guess.”

They wound up standing in the graveled parking lot of the Institut. Beautiful sister, hot-eyed, stacked, African. They stood in place, waiting for something else to be said.

After an awkward thirty seconds Elena Boateng put out her hand for a good-bye handshake.

“Well, it was nice talking to you.”

He slipped into his homeboy slump, his hands plunged into his pockets, as he watched her walk toward a late model Volkswagen. “Uhh, hey, what's your name?”

“Elena, Elena Boateng.”

“Mine is Clyde, Clyde Johnson.”

“Nice to meet you, Clyde.”

She was opening the door of her car, escaping.

“Hey, Elena, I wanna talk some more with you about the movie. Anyplace we could go for a cold brew?”

“A cold brew?”

“A cold beer, you know?”

“Yes, I know a place.”

He looked around, trying to be cool.
The Golden Orchid. Wowwww.… What would the Bricks say if they could see me now? The Golden Orchid, one of the big, swank hotels in town, their table out near the swimming pool
.

Elena Boateng kicked all of his stereotyped notions about African women in the ass. She didn't have a basket on her head, she didn't have a baby on her back, and she was not reluctant to express her opinions.

He had only two problems with her; her off-center Ghanaian accent threw him a bit and the fact that she was square as a brick. A real one.

A well educated sister, he could tell that from her rap, even when she pronounced words (“woids”) in a way (“birds”—“boids”) that he had never (“love”—“lave”) heard them before.

“I'm originally from Kumasi.”

“I'm originally from Chicago.”

Were they fencing for the pussy? He couldn't really tell; her body language and the fact that she had spoken to someone else in a “foreign” language unsettled him a bit.

But she was a square soul, that much was obvious. Kumasi, University of Ghana, Legon, Accra, twenty-five years old, from a “good family,” a something in the Ministry of Culture, a new-breed Ghanaian woman, square as a brick.

They were into their second Guinness stout before he felt comfortable enough to look—“What the fuck do y'all do around here?”

She pushed her glasses up on her nose and glared at him.

“I don't understand your question?”

“I mean, you know, after the movies, what else is happenin'?”

“Oh, there are a number of things to do.…” She began to tick things to do off on her fingers; plays at the University, cultural expressions at Krokobite (that's what it sounded like), excursions to different places.

Bop slumped in his seat, staring at Elena Boateng's lips as she talked, feeling more and more aroused. He thoughtlessly interrupted her monologue on places to go. “How much are the rooms at this hotel?”

She slowly pushed her glasses up on her nose and smiled at him.

What did that mean?

“Oh, the Golden Orchid is quite expensive, something in the range of seventy-five to one hundred dollars.”

Bop smiled. Shit, that wasn't nothing; he could handle it out of his petty cash fund.

Fred and Helene had helped him exchange $2,500 for so many cedis he couldn't even count them. Thousands of cedis. Thousands.

“Were you thinking about staying at the Golden Orchid?”

It was his turn to turn a hard look on her. He felt tempted to say something fresh, like, yeahhh, I was thinking of how sweet it would be for us to get together up in here.

“Uhhh, not really. I was just wondering about the prices.”

They chatted, misunderstanding each other; it had mainly to do with rhythms. Hers was off to him, and his was off to her, but they persisted through another Guinness stout.

Bop felt tight and had to go pee.

“Be right back; don't go nowhere.”

The waiter practically led him by the hand to the “gents.”

He stood at the urinal, watching a slow-motion erection happen.

How long has it been?

From that hour forward, she was like a sexual magnet.
I'm gon' git my first piece o' African pussy
.

He thought about Justine, listening to Elena Boateng promote the inevitable. Justine, mellow woman, why in the fuck did you have to grab that pipe?

“I don't go to the German movies because I like German movies. I go for the pure pleasure of it.”

They were together for the second time in two days. He felt she had put some kind of spell on him until she calmly asked him “Are you using a condom, please?”