Midnight (11 page)

I looked around his little bachelor pad. Behind where I was standing, on the wall, was a five-foot-long horizontal fluorescent poster of the silhouette of a naked black woman lying down on her side. She had wide hips, a small waist, and titties the size of honeydew melons. It was just the outline
of a female body. She had no skin, no eyes or nose or mouth even. But she did have two afros, one big and one small. He had ashtrays everywhere, filled with cigarette butts and reefer seeds and roaches. Gold beads hung in each doorway dividing one room from the other. His lamps sat on top of old Guinness stout crates instead of tables. His extensive hat collection lined one of the walls, each hanging on its own nail. There were no family photos or even a sign of a woman’s scent or touch. There were no heels or dresses or bangles or perfumes or fresh-cut flowers. I thought to myself that he probably erases every trace of each woman after he uses her.

I imagined that this was his second apartment. Somehow I felt he had a bunch of random girls and random babies, people who he had abandoned. But I did not know for sure. I decided maybe I should stop being so tight and talk to this cat for a minute. At least I could be smart enough to collect some more information on him.

He came back holding a machete. He was using it to cut slices off an apple he began eating. The blade was long and sharp enough to sever his entire hand with one wrong motion.

I seen everything he did was slick and subtle.

There was no fear in my heart. I was holding enough weapons on me to slice him up in pieces smaller than that apple he was eating.

He watched to see if I would react in any way to his blade. I didn’t blink.

“One thousand five hundred dollars for the deposit,” I told him dryly and calmly. He laughed a little, placed his knife and apple on his heavy wooden table right next to two decks of playing cards, a pile of chew sticks, and a half-empty bottle of white rum. He kept his eyes on me as he slid his hand into his right pocket, pulling out a wad of dirty bills. He counted out loud in his version of the English language.
Seemed like he had a dramatic and different way of pronouncing every English word,
tree
instead of
three
and so on. I took the cash deposit he handed over to me.

“Thank you. I’ll give you a call as soon as your curtains are ready.”

“Ya want fa sit don ere? Ya look tense, mon, seckle ya self. You want fa blow some trees?” he asked.

“What?” I said.

“Hold on.” Barefooted, he left again. He came back with two big spliffs burning, both of them in his mouth.

“Try and com down, na.” He offered me one, which he now held pinched between his thumb and index finger, smiling at me like I was his new friend.

“Nah, I’m good,” I told him, rejecting his weed.

“When I-man curtains complete we celebrate seen.” He laughed. As he began smoking both spliffs, I left.

I didn’t know what his occupation or business was. But I was starting to form a picture in my mind.

Umma was excited about earning the money for the curtains and moving closer to our financial goals. I should have been happy too, but I was heated.

“Do you know this man?” I asked her with an even and respectful tone.

“No.”

“You never met him before?” I double checked.

“No. Is there some problem? If there is a problem we don’t have to do business with him,” she answered.

“No problem, Umma. I just want to make sure he talks business with me and doesn’t talk to you at all,” I said. “I don’t want him going anywhere near your job.”

“Of course,” she said gently.

One late night on the basketball court alone, I thought about how uneasy I felt about this guy because he knew where my mother worked. Whether I dropped him as a client or not,
he would still always know exactly where to go to get at her. I also knew that what he really wanted was hidden behind his constant requests for sewing services.

Weeks later when I spoke to Gold on the phone to set up the curtain delivery, his intensity toward my mother had only increased. He requested that I bring her with me to his place because the curtains had to get hung. He tried to keep me from hanging the curtains myself by insulting my manhood. “Ya know dat’s woman’s work . . .”

I fired back, “Umma Designs is only contracted to make your drapes. The product is ready and in perfect condition. You or your woman can hang the drapes.”

He chuckled. “I-rie,” he said.

Gold Star Tafari didn’t have my money ready when I knocked at his door at the agreed-upon time. That was the first indication that this transaction wasn’t about to flow right.

“Come in, na,” he said, releasing the doorknob from his grip so that the heavy door pressed against me and the iron bar dragged against the metal as I carried in the well-packaged drapes.

“Where do you want these?” I asked. He gave no response and left the room, disappearing behind the gold beads. I sat the package down on his couch and remained standing.

Instantly I noticed three piles of neatly stacked cash on his heavy wooden table. I stayed where I was standing because I sensed a setup and didn’t want to be accused of touching his paper. There was a bag of weed beside his money stacks, at least a pound of it. And there was a weed cloud hanging over the wooden table.

He returned barefooted with his jeans on and his shirt open. He had a scar running down from his chest to his stomach as though somebody tried to split him open once. Not a doctor. It was a raggedy scar ripped with vengeance and passion.

“What good is da curtains dem, witout da couch ta match. I-man need a new covering for me chairs dem. Same material. Lion of Judah on each one of dem, overstand?” he said, pointing toward his couch and chairs.

“Nah. She can’t do it,” I said, tired of the game he was playing and not giving a fuck about the extra money a new deal with him could bring.

“Be reasonable, na cha!” he said, lighting a cigarette. He took a long pull. Releasing the smoke he asked, “Ya hava girlfriend?”

I didn’t respond ’cause it wasn’t about business. He continued, “Woman is a good ting, my youth. Like a sweet potato.”

“Fifteen hundred is what you owe me right now. We can discuss the upholstery some other time,” I told him, fighting to remain calm and professional.

“Lookova de so,” he said, pointing at a crate on the floor next to the couch. I looked with my eyes but didn’t break my stance.

“Your money is dere, chek-n-see,” he said. Then he sat down at his table across the room. I walked over and looked down into the crate. There was an envelope inside.

“You want me to take that envelope?” I asked him to double check that there was no trap, no mistake.

“Go on, na,” he said.

So I picked up the envelope. I could tell there was more than money in it. So I opened it up right there in his face. There was cash, a heap of ones, fives, tens, and twenties. His bills were crumpled and dirty as usual. There were also some photos.

I pulled the photos out. “You must’ve made a mistake. You got some pictures in here,” I told him, extending my arm to return them.

“I-man neva make no mistakes,” he said. “Look pon da pictures,” he said.

I flipped them over and took a look. There were five pictures, all of them of Umma. Each one prettier than the last. She was dressed up and beautiful. Her smile was radiant. Her hair was exposed, as well as her shapely body and elegant face, natural and just incredible.

An anger so strong built up in me, from my toes to my head. It was like a wave from the ocean, gaining a deadly and unstoppable momentum. A wave with a powerful undercurrent and dangerous riptides. It kept me from thinking straight, like I normally would do.

I was trained to control my anger. Yet my training seemed to be failing me now. I stood, boiling yet frozen in that same spot, remembering a line from a book my Sensei once gave me called
The Art of War
. The line was “War is deception.”

I kept saying the line over and over again in my head to calm myself down.

“I-man wanna make Umma, I-man’s wife. Dis ting is a serious ting, mon. What I-man hafta do to make ya see I-man serious? Whatcha need star? Is it money, eh? I-man has good ’n plenty money.” He pushed a stack of bills forward on the wooden table. I was still calming myself down. I didn’t say nothing.

“Cha! Ya want mora?” he asked and pushed the second stack of bills forward.

“It’s not possible,” I said politely.

“Noting is impossible. Everyting have a price seen,” he said, pushing the third stack forward. “Look around. Me trade fa any ting ya see ina ere.” Then he threw his bag of weed over at me like it wasn’t nothing. It fell to the floor by my feet.

“Mr. Tafari, I have the fifteen hundred here in the envelope. That’s the balance. That makes three thousand. Now we’re straight. Umma is not for sale. Do you need a receipt?” I asked him without exposing any emotions.

He banged the table with his fist, finally losing his cool.

“Me naw want no blood-clot receipt. Give I and I back feme pictures dem and go.”

“How much do you want for the pictures?” I asked him calmly, throwing his style back the same way he threw it out there.

He gave me a deadly look. For the first time he had no smile and no chuckle and his temper was brewing. He wouldn’t answer me.

Evil looks didn’t mean shit to me, so I left with the fifteen hundred and the photos. There was nothing chasing me but a chorus of his curses. I left him throwing a tantrum that could have been recorded on top of some rough-ass Jamaican sound system beats.

He left some recordings of his own on my voice mail. Again he sounded as though he was speaking directly to Umma. He left twelve messages to be exact, over a one-week period of time.

He showed up at Umma’s job one Friday at four
P.M.
, one hour earlier than she usually got off work. But I anticipated his plan and had been waiting for Umma each day of that week beginning at three
P.M.
and sitting until five, just in case.

I realized that I was the one who had influenced Umma to attend her coworker’s baby shower. I was the one who had encouraged her to dress up in her most elegant way. I was the one who made her feel like it was all right for her to shine, to let down her hair, to relax and enjoy herself and show the potential female clients the true secret of Sudanese beauty. I was the one who slipped the expensive heels on her feet. I was the one who pushed her to reveal her incredible talents. I now realized that this was the only way that Gold Star Tafari got his hands on the photographs of Umma’s exquisiteness.

Putting the pieces together, I remembered Shirley was at the baby shower that day. She must have snapped those photos. Gold was wearing one of the hats I sold to Shirley. That’s probably how he got his hands on those photos. He probably glanced at the photos casually and never revealed the depth of his lust to Shirley, his fiancée. That’s when he began to put together his plan to bypass and deceive Shirley and capture my Umma.

Setting up in the woods of Prospect Park seven nights later was easy. In the bushes, wearing all black on a black night, no one could see my black face, my black gloves over my black hands, or my black gun. I screwed on my black silencer, paid for with a portion of the cash from Gold’s envelope.

I waited three hours in the cold. Only my thoughts kept me heated. When Gold Star Tafari walked around the corner at 1:06
A.M.
after parking his yellow station wagon, I clapped him up nice. The Lion of Judah got took down by the Leopard of Sudan.

War is deception, I thought to myself. No sense in being sloppy. Think through shit, control your anger, make a tight plan, and execute it.

“You seem so serious. How come?” It was a female from around my way breaking my concentration when I paused for five seconds on the block to organize my thoughts. It wasn’t just any female. Her name was Heavenly Paradise, aka Heaven On Earth. She was famous for her light-brown eyes and mean-ass walk. Boys battled one another for her with their fists and their finances. She always ended up with either the strongest or richest. You could always tell who was getting it by the gold pendant she wore around her neck. They all gave her either their gold nameplate or their pendant to rock. I heard that even when she broke up with them, she never gave it back. Dudes knew they had to pay to play, try to cut their losses, and charge the rest to the game.

In the streets everybody knew she was Conflict’s woman these days. He sported her like her pussy was brand new and kept her real close. She was wearing his pendant, a fourteen-karat gold dagger. Everybody knew Conflict was Superior’s younger brother. Superior was the most infamous hustler in my area by now. Conflict was his blood brother and right-hand man.

I didn’t call this girl over. So I didn’t know what she was tryna do by approaching me on the block in front of everybody. I did know that all the males out here sweated her hard. But Conflict had her on lock.

I didn’t sweat her at all. She was somebody else’s piece and
I respected that. Besides I never messed with another man’s women, money, or property.

Ever since I won the pull-up contest that DeQuan sponsored on the block, Heavenly Paradise set her eyes on me and she wasn’t used to getting turned down.

Now that I’m fourteen, my voice is deep, accent long gone. I chill every day in the most wanted styles. My kicks are fresh. I keep money in my pocket. I’m closing in on six feet one. My body is cut like what. Girls think I did it for them. I did it for war.

Now I can’t keep these females off of me. The more I show them nothing—no interest at all, the harder they come for me. Shit got crazy.

What could I tell them seriously? Could I tell them, “I was born Muslim and we don’t believe in dating or sex before marriage”? I was not the kind of Muslim they were used to seeing or being or hearing about. Like the ones who were born Christian in America who suddenly change their name to something Islamic sounding, and other than playing Islamic dress-up, they don’t do anything that a Muslim is supposed to do. Or the ones just make believing that they’re Muslims, who fuck all the women, never marry them, abandon all the babies, and talk a lot of shit that don’t add up to nothing.