Midnight

by Odie Hawkins

  He sat on a bench behind the main house, waiting for Patience, the maid, to finish serving Papa. It took a long time, it seemed to him. She must have a lot of shit to do in a house this big. He felt impatient but didn’t know what to do about it. Or where to go.

  Finally, she returned with bowls of food.… “I have some food for us.”

  She set it up: a low table, two low stools, bowls of fish something, and something that looked like unbaked bread. “Bank. You like banku?”

  “I don’t know.”

  He followed her lead and washed his right hand and started eating with his fingers as though he had been doing it all his life. He liked the taste of the fish but found the banku strangely unsatisfying. It was like eating something that went down before he had a chance to taste it. And it was hard to swallow.

  Patience sat across from him, her legs gapped open, artfully rolling her banku into rounded pods, which she wiped through the fish and barely chewed.

  Maybe you’re just supposed to swallow it.

  Patience wanted to give him some pussy, he could tell that from looking at her, but neither of them felt the compulsion to bring the subject into the open. He felt. He studied the woman across from him. She seemed younger than she looked the first time he met her. Or maybe it was just the light.

  What the hell am I thinking about? Here I am, been over here a half hour and done got every known disease in the world, and I’m thinking about another woman.

  “Uhhh, Patience, thanks for the food. OK?” He pulled a couple of thousand cedis notes out of his pocket and handed them to her. She had a hurt look in her eyes, but it didn’t prevent her from stuffing the money into her bra.

  She walked him to the gate of her master’s house and whispered to him as he eased out. “Don’t worry, Cly-day, everything is gonna be copacetic.”

  “Copacetic?” Where in the hell did she learn a word like that? It sounds like something Lu would say. Or Uncle David. Have to remember to write them.

  Hot evening. He could hear his neighbors’ sounds through the window. He sprawled on his bed wrapped in a towel, sipping a highball glass hall full of gin.

  Ghana, West Africa. He played the sounds on his lips, trying to make it mean something: Ghana, West Africa, Accra. He felt he knew Accra. Go this way to the ocean, go that way to the soccer field, that way to the Dew Drop Inn.

  Have to run up there tonight to see what’s happening. The Vernons didn’t own a television and refused to have a telephone. “People know how to reach us when they want us.”

  There was nothing to do when he wasn’t walking the streets looking for something but to lie around thinking. Wonder what Skateboard, Bone, Big Fool, the Bricks are doing tonight. He suddenly sat up in bed, spilling a little gin on the shit.

  Was that a drum? Was somebody drumming? He couldn’t really tell if it was a drum or somebody’s radio.

  Been here in Africa almost two weeks and this is the first time I’ve heard a drum; the brothers must be slipping.

  He swaggered into the kitchen to pour himself another shot of cold gin. He felt lonely for a few moments, shrugged the feeling off, and sipped his gin on the way back to his bedroom. Africa. Can’t find a decent chili dog nowhere. People carry houses around on their heads. No really hip places to go. And I got AIDS.

  No, I don’t have AIDS. White people. I saw a couple yesterday, struggling past a collection of African faces. Damn …, I’d hate like-a-hell (is that the way Patience says it?) to be a white man in Africa. I think it would be like looking at the Holocast you caused every day.

  He played his head back to see if he could find a white man that he could relate to.

  Five minutes later he was forced to come to the conclusion that he had never had any dealings with any white person that left him feeling good toward him. He was “Bop” to them, and they were a wall of white faces staring in on him.

  “White folks, on a whole, is a bunch o’ dirty dogs, Bop. That’s something you got to understand, if you’re going to survive in this world. Now, hey, don’t get me wrong. There are some good white individuals out there, but like I said, on the whole side, they are a bunch of dirty dogs.

  “Don’t just take my word; study the history of the world.”

  I’m in Ghana, Chester, I’m really in Africa, where we come from. It’s the rainy season and right now it’s hot and humid.

  The drumming was interrupted by the caramel tones of an announcer. Wowww, he sounds like a fuckin’ Englishman.

  The radio was tuned down a few minutes later, leaving a relative quiet. He sipped his gin meditatively. Africa was quiet. During the first nights after his arrival he had listened for the roar of lions and the whooping screams of hyenas. He had checked Wild Wild Africa out a few times and that’s what he had seen. The Vernons laughed till tears came to their eyes when he informed them that some animals must’ve made a kill the night before.

  “Mummm, you must be dreaming about Tarzan ’n stuff. The only wild animals you gon’ see in Accra is us. Here, drink some of this akpeteshie, it’ll clear up your mind.”

  “But I heard animals growling ’n stuff.”

  “Bop, it must’ve been stray dogs. Trust me, I killed the last lion on the block the week before you came.… Hah hah hah hah.…”

  Fred and Helene Vernon were super people, like Uncle David and Aunt Lulu. Damn …, got to drop them a card or something.

  Justine. He clenched his eyes shut, trying to remember what she looked like before she hit the pipe. Fine coffee-and-cream-colored sister. She would fit right in over here, except for the pipe. The pipe dulled her eyes, shoved inches off her hip line, made her pert breasts sag.

  I’m sorry, Justine, I really am. If I had known you were gonna get caught, I never would’ve let you have any. The guilt nagged him. Who you tryin’ to fool? Ain’t never been a sucker who could smoke crack and not get hooked.

  And I gave it to her.

  He started dressing without giving it much thought. Justine was enough to drive him out of the house.

  The Dew Drop Inn seemed to be the likely place to go.

  The Dew Drop was alive! Ghanaian style. The bald-headed dude singing into the poorly milked mike was impersonating Ray Charles in Ga; the little rubber looking Indian guy who owned the place was going around counting noses and laughing at everybody; gorgeous African batiks were parading around; people were behaving like folks from the near westside of Chicago.

  He took a seat in the darkest corner and checked out the action. I wonder if Elena comes to the Dew Drop?

  The thought of her caused his spirit to droop. The woman who had given him AIDS.

  He signaled for a beer.

  It was hard to pin the set down. The music was from the 50s, 60s, 70s; the people were mostly upper-crusted. He could tell from the way they talked. People in the streets seemed to have softer voices. I wonder if Patience the maid ever comes here.

  He settled back in his seat trying to figure out what made those Africans different from the black people at home.

  They’re gentler, less rowdy. He smiled at the young brother sitting at the bar, trying to pretend he was in a dope-fiend nod while the band played something by Charley Parker, “Night In Tunisia,” like a piece of country and western music.

  “We’re hipper.” Probably crazier too. People wandered through the group as they played, following the original trail that was there before the group came to occupy the space. The musicians took themselves seriously and the audience was equally serious. There were times when it seemed that the audience and/or the musicians had spaced out on each other.

  Bop enjoyed the interplay of the people at the bar and at the tables around him. The women all looked like Ebony magazine models, uniformly dark, except for the yellow colored woman with the big ass who kept going back across the dance-band space.

  The Bricks would really dig this. He could see Skateboard, Bone, Fool, and the rest right next to him, loaded on good weed (no crack for them) and Old English
800, rappin’

  No rap. Wowww! I ain’t heard no rap in two weeks. All the music he heard sounded like some kind of reggae. He hadn’t really decided whether he liked it or not. Yeahhh, they would dig this scene. The rubber looking Indian guy was approaching him, laughing.

  “Ahh hah hah, you caun’t hide away frrrom us over herrree in the corner; we’re goink to have the dancing contest, you must join.”

  A dance contest? I thought this was some kind of jazz joint.

  Bop nodded politely and stood up to leave. It wouldn’t be cool to win a dance contest in a jazz joint. Something was off about that.

  Darkness filled with black silhouettes stepping confidently past craters in the road. Damn! why don’t they fix these fuckin’ streets?

  “Bop, you got to remember now, we’re talking about a place that was devastated by the colonialists; the English were like locusts on Ghana. When you go to these so-called ‘Third World’ countries, you have get into the history of their previous status in the world. It’s hard to go from slavery to freedom, economically.

  “We know something about that because of being in here, in the joint. And in America.”

  “Take me to the Golden Orchid.”

  It was so easy to live when you had enough money. He felt the roll of thousand cedis notes in his front pocket.

  The Golden Orchid, to be on the scene. “How do you do? I’m Marvin Shadpole from San Francisco. My wife and those other people over there, those characters, would like to have you join our party.”

  White people in Africa, asking Clyde “Bop” Johnson, to join their party. He edged forward on his seat for a moment before resisting the temptation to fuck their party up.

  He could see the whole thing from across the pool; a rowdy bunch of white folks, some of the women with braided shit in their hair and outlandish colored clothes on.

  “Sorry, pal, I was just leaving.”

  I wasn’t fuckin’ white girls in the states, I sho’ in hell ain’t gon’ come over here and start doin’ it.

  Where else do they go for something to do around here?

  Another taxi to—“Where do you go to have fun around here?

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “That’s OK, take me to Osu.”

  The sun was taking the tightness out of his curl, and it had discovered a deeper fire in his skin. He sprawled on the sand in front of the Riviera Hotel, a warm Guinness stout by his side. It was easy to drink a lot in Ghana; all you had to do was signal somebody to bring you a drink.

  He studied the people laughing around near him; most of them wore street clothes of some sort—pants, a dress. And they only went into the water a little ways. A couple of swarthy looking Europeans were a mile out at sea, swimming to the horizon.

  “Africans everywhere are respectful of the ocean, not afraid, just respectful of Yemoya.”

  “Awww c’mon, Chester, gimme a break, man. Who is this Yemooya? Is he any kin to this Obatala you were tellin’ me about?”

  “In a way, they’re all related, but we won’t get into that now. The thing to remember is that the collective racial psyche of the African, at home and abroad, is not into defying the ocean. Check it out when you get to Ghana.”

  Ghana: this is one of the places that our ancestors were taken from. He finished off his third stout and felt very sober. This is one of the places our people were taken from, sold. He sat up and crossed his legs in front of him. This is one of the places our people were taken from, sold.

  He looked to his right at the murky outlines of a slave trading post. He looked to his left at a slave trading post. The wind whipping the waves made a low, moaning sound. He could hear people screaming and moaning and groaning.…

  “Some of our people over there sold some of us, Bop, just the way people been doin’ it since time started. It ain’t no black thang, ’specially. They had white folks selling each other too, right around this time. Some people say the actual name for an enslaved person came from the Europeans who enslaved some of their own people and called them ‘Slavs.’

  “Philosophically speaking, I guess it might be considered a human thang. Whenever, whoever finds himself holdin’ the upper end of the stick is goin’ to try to take advantage of the funky chump holdin’ the lower end. That’s the way it’s been done down through history.”

  Bop felt like crying. He hadn’t given himself over to the idea of crying in a long time. He sat there, feeling sad, not knowing how to relieve it, a Brick. He wanted to run up the beach and shout. He slumped back on his elbows. Shit! They wouldn’t understand what I was talking about anyway! Or would they?

  He looked at the women with their manicured hairdos and artificially bleached faces and felt depressed.

  “Why not? People do it in America. Amazonian Indians watch old Elvis Presley movies. Come on, Bop, this is a new age. People shouldn’t be required to behave the way their ancestors behaved; that’s old and dead. People are new all the time; we’re born every day. We have to begin to live our lives this way. A lot depends on it. Do you have condoms.”

  It was time to leave the beach; he didn’t want to be seen in swimming trunks with a hard on.

  5

  The invitation was addressed to Fred and Helene Vernon, an invitation to attend a reception for the new ambassador at the American Embassy. “And please bring your guest; we’d love to have him.”

  Woww, I got an invite to go to the American Embassy, Woww.…

  He stared at himself in the three-piece African outfit he had bought for the ambassador’s thang. It was so easy to get what you wanted if you had money. A trip downtown to feel out of place with the swarms of Ghanaian shoppers and peddlers. Brothers and sisters here will sell anything.

  A three-piece outfit, the kind he had seen African diplomats on TV wear. Eggshell blue with silver pin-stripes, sixteen thousand. He sipped a cold gin and wandered about the house, slipping glances at himself as he passed the mirrors in the front room and in the hallway.

  The people on Troas Street smiled and waved at him as he strolled up the street, looking for a taxi. He felt warm inside, a nice buzz warming his belly, filled with three straight neat gins and an ice-cold Guinness stout.

  Mrs. Stella, his next-door neighbor had gushed all over him. “Ahhhh, you must have a photo taken of yourself. Please, wait a moment. I’ll take one of you.”

  Twenty minutes later he had been photographed with Mrs. Stella’s son and daughter, two people that he knew casually from strolling the street, Mrs. Stella herself, and the lady across the street who had been attracted by the excitement.

  “The American Embassy.”

  “The American Embassy?”

  “Right, the American Embassy.”

  Damn, wonder where Elena is, with her crazy sexy ass? Haven’t seen her in what, a day and a half? He stared out at the Osu evening scene—women carrying everything possible on their heads, men walking hand in hand as they discussed the latest soccer matches, small children doing the same things their parents were doing.

  The American Embassy. Big Time Bullshit happening. Bop felt a bit awkward trying to pull four hundred cedis out of the pocket beneath the robe covering his pants.

  He felt high enough and outrageous enough to want to get into the reception line.

  If we got this many white people in line, there must be something good at the end. He shook the tall, pale, fuzzy-eyed guy’s hand and kept on moving into the interior of the American Embassy before he realized that he had shaken hands with the new American ambassador.

  Ten yards beyond the receiving line, he found himself on a huge terrace, mingling with hundreds of people. Despite the fact that they were multi-culture, there seemed to be a common bond uniting them. A fuckin’ bunch o’ phonies.…

  He wandered from group to group, monitoring conversations.…

  “Yes, of course, but cawn’t you see that the problem of our situation rests in the under-development of our resources …?”

  “Hah hah hah.�
� One of the things you must understand is this: the Ghanaian masses are a patient, long-suffering bunch, but once they decide to move as a collective unit, things happen.”

  “I could appreciate that capability if they made a greater effort to be on time.”

  Bop made his way through the conversations to one of the six bar tables fringing the terrace. He was momentarily dazzled by the selections offered. Scotch, gin, rum, bourbon, vermouth, wine, beers (he didn’t recognize the brands they had icing in a number 10 tub).…

  “What is your pleasure, sah?” The sound of the “sah” threw him back into his night in England for a moment.

  “Uhhh, let me have a gin.”

  “Gin ’n tonic, sah?”

  “Nawww, just gimme a triple shot of gin.”

  “Yessah.”

  Wish y’all had some Beck’s. Or some herb. He took his triple shot of gin and strolled away from the table. Wonder who’s holding the bag here?

  The sound of music on the outer fringe of the bullshit drew him, tipsy from three earlier gins and a Guinness, reinforced by a late triple shot. Wonder if they got some Old English up in here? The thought made him smile as he slowly edged himself toward the sound of the music. Nawww, they wouldn ’t have none of that shit here.

  Saxophone up front, a drummer with six drums, a bass player, a man playing double gang, and another one working a chekere to the bone. The group was cookin’ but no one seemed to be paying attention.

  Bop was transfixed by the intricacy of the music. The drummer was a whole group by himself.…

  Wowwww.… These motherfuckers is bad.

  He looked around at the multi-cultured heads bobbing, at the people holding their drinks at the port arm position. They oughta be dancin’ instead of standing around talkin’ big-time bullshit to each other.

  “That’s really a dyno-mite group, isn’t it?” Bop turned to stare at the youngish, owl-faced looking man at his side. Who is this punk?