Midnight

by Odie Hawkins

  Elena Boateng, my woman? Hmmmmm. “Uhhh, Fred, I wouldn’t go so far as to call her that.”

  “What would you call her? Y’all been fuckin’, right?”

  Fred’s words scalded him. It would’ve been all right to talk about the scene together, man to man, but not in front of Helene.

  “Uhh, I think you could say we’ve become tight.”

  Helene Vernon saved him from further explanation with a letter. “I checked the PO box and this is for you.”

  Subconsciously, while waiting for the envelope to be placed in his hand, he asked the silent question: Did they send any money?

  The letter was from Chester L. Simmons, written in a dim cell in a Romanian prison.

  “It’s from Chester.”

  “I saw the return address.”

  Bop stripped the brown envelope off of the three-page letter. “It’s from Chester L. Simmons.”

  The Vernons exchanged knowing looks; it was obvious from Bop’s tone of voice that he was talking about a hero. He started reading the letter aloud without thinking. “Ohhh, sorry; you guys wanna hear this?”

  “Read it, Bop; let’s see what ol’ Chester boy is talking about.”

  “Bop, I hope this letter finds you at the Vernons’ place and that you and they are doing as well as possible. As you can see from the info on the envelope ’n shit, I’m doing time in another kind of joint. A Romanian jail, youngblood, is not to be laughed at. But I’ll deal with that in due time. What happened? Well, let me make it quick ’n dirty. After you got out I got a li’l bit antsy. You know how it is. I didn’t even have anybody to rap with.… I don’t have to try to begin to tell you what a conversation with the average funky chump is like in the joint. So, I decided to ‘absent’ myself.

  “How do you ‘absent’ yourself from prison? Well, you just don’t be there anymore. It ain’t no real big thang. As a matter of fact, I used to ‘absent’ myself as often as I wanted to. I ran into the fuckin’ warden one night, in a Mexican restaurant in Chino, and he asked me whether I was going to be back in for the morning roll call. I told him yes, and I was back there.… bright ’n shinin’ …, but that’s neither here nor there.

  “Like I said, I ‘absented’ myself from Chino immediately after you left. I had been looking at the aftermath of the Soviet Union break-up and the Eastern European breakup, you know? Through East German-West German consolidation and all that Euro-madness. And I got to thinking … hey, there’s got to be an opening over there for a funky chump such as myself who could come up with the right scam.

  “I decided to become the lost-found son of the late Emperor Haile Selassie. I knew that would grant me some entry, you dig? And that’s what I did. I got my number together and swung on into it with all horns blowing.

  “Bucharest

  “It was pure kicks for a hot minute, the whole tamale; they gave me the keys to the palace and I tried to clean it out. Problem was, I tried to do too much too soon. I think the CIA may have been in on the bust, but be that as it may, I’m here and I’ll be here for sixty-two years or something like that. I almost ‘absented’ myself to get down with the niece of the present ruler’s daughter last week, but I decided to cool it for a few months. I’m not hurting or wanting for anything. The Romanians are like Spanish or Italians, which means that jail is not considered separate from society. My woman Iasi brings me everything I want and I find myself wanting less ’n less as I grow older.

  “I hope this reaches you in Ghana and that you didn’t turn ‘nigger-tail’ on me and went back down into the ’hood like a funky chump. I’m writing you in Ghana, care of Fred and Helene, because my base instinct tells me that’s where you oughta be. I almost wrote to your uncle’s pad, but I decided dabi (you should know what that means by now). I’ll write to the blood in Ghana, in the homeland.

  “Yeah, I know what went down in EL-A; that was s’posed to happen. I explained to you about white folks. Remember? In any case, drop me a return kite if you do receive this. If you don’t, well, here’s one more bunch of words in the latter day winds—Me, Chester.”

  Bop didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, finishing the letter. In jail, in Row-mania? He turned to Fred and Helene. “How well did you all know Chester?”

  Helene lit her tenth forbidden cigarette of the day and blew the smoke up into the revolving fan. Fred took a hard sip on his beer and crossed his legs. “We didn’t really know the brother at all, not really.”

  “Huh?”

  “Nawww, we didn’t really know the brother; you know what I mean? When he came through here, he was going a mile a minute.”

  “What I remember most about Chester was the lies he told.”

  Bop perked up. Chester? A liar? Really?

  “Oh yes, my brother; Chester could lie his ass off.”

  “Oh!”

  “Look, lemme run it down to you, Bop, OK? A lot of people run through here.…”

  “Yeahhh, I know; you must’ve had about a hundred people come through while I was here.”

  “That’s the way it’s been since we got here. People come ’n go, but we can never get people to do what they said they was gonna do.”

  “Now, Fred, there’s no need to put that kind of weight on Bop’s head.”

  “Fuck it! Why not! He’s a big boy; he oughta be able to stand the truth by now.”

  Bop recognized from Fred’s slight slur that he was semidrunk. “Go ’head on, man, put it out there; let me hear it.”

  “Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying Chester is a bad dude or anything like that. I’m just saying that he reminds me of at least a couple hundred other people who’ve buzzed in and out of here. They promise to send film back, or underwear or shit we can’t get hold of here too easily. And so far I ain’t seen none of the shit they were supposed to send.

  “Chester spent a week in this house and went away with a list. You hear what I’m sayin’? He left with a list and made a solemn promise that he was gonna send this shit as soon as he got back to the states. Have you seen a polar bear take a shit around here lately?”

  Aside from the talk about Chester, which made him feel a little uneasy, they stimulated him with talk about life in Ghana.

  Fred: “You sometimes get the feeling that Ghana is like a mystery country. I don’t mean mystery in the sense of being spooky or anything like that; you understand what I mean? It has its own special kind of vibes, a feeling that you won’t feel anywhere else. I can’t really put a label on it because I can’t think of one that would fit.

  “All I can tell you is this: I been halfway around the world in both directions, and I’ve never felt the same feeling anywhere else that I’ve felt here. This is the best place in the world, in my mind, to be an international African.”

  Helene: “It would be easy to deal with a whole host of negatives, but who wants to do that? I’d have to agree with Fred about the vibes. It’s here. I think that this is probably the one place in West Africa that African Americans could come to and really feel that they had returned home. It may have something to do with the way people act.”

  “Chester once told me about how people remind him of people on the westside of Chicago.”

  “Shit, it’s true; the niggers here is just like niggers in the states.”

  Bop cringed at the word “niggers,” ’specially in Africa, but he was mindful of the fact that he couldn’t try to correct another man’s language until he got his own shit squared away.

  “Tell us what you feel about being in an environment where black people are in control for a change.”

  “Well, now just a minute, Helene; we know they ain’t completely in control. We still have the usual underground bullshit happening. Sometimes I look around and it seems like the Lebanese own damned near everything.”

  “How do I feel …?”

  “Yeah, how do you feel about being in a country where black men and women fly the airplanes and make up the budget?”

  Bop settled back in his ch
air to think for a few moments. How do I feel? He thought seriously about the question. The people didn’t act the way he thought people should act. There was something a little too humble about them, to his way of thinking. But there was a sweetness about the way they did their daily things that took him in. In addition to everything else, he didn’t fear the streets (roads) at night, and there was no thought of beast-police on the prowl. The rutted roads and the hard work people did under the tropical sun didn’t enchant him, but he loved the way the people looked and moved.

  It was all about the people. How do I feel? “How do I feel? I’d have to say I feel pretty good about being here. That’s how I feel. The problem is, I can’t exactly explain what makes me feel that way.”

  The Vernons exchanged knowing looks and changed the subject. Fred took the lead. “Awright, fuck how you feel. Who is this woman you been fuckin’?”

  He sprawled out on the narrow bed, listening to the dull roar of the ocean and watching Elena brush her hair in the small, dirty, cracked mirror on the opposite side of the room. What was it that Uncle David called women’s asses? Twideutters. Yeahhh, twidcutters. Sister sho’ got a helluva twidcutter on her.

  He loved the way she was built—the firm breasts, the pert nipples, the cinched waist and flanged behind.

  Yeahhh, sister sho’ nuff got a twidcutter on her.

  They were both semi-drunk from four Guinness stouts each and a couple tots of local gin. He took an absent-minded look around the hotel room. The Riviera Hotel, ten thousand a night and it ain’t hittin’ on shit. The bed is too narrow, the crappy furniture looks like it come out of a third-class thrift shop. No soap in the bathroom. A half dirty little towel. Ten thousand cedis, for what?

  Elena turned slowly in the dimly lit room, seeming to measure her movements with the swell of the ocean a hundred yards away.

  Well, at least it’s on the ocean.

  Elena finished brushing her hair, retrieved her glasses from the nightstand beside the narrow bed, and snuggled back under the sheet with him. “So, when do you leave?”

  “Friday, I be leavin’ on Friday.”

  She snuggled up into his armpit and mumbled, “No big deal.”

  Bop felt instantly angry. What the fuck is that supposed to mean?

  “Hey, what’s that s’posed to mean? No big deal?” He felt that she was trying to front him off, to pretend that she wasn’t going to miss him.

  “No big deal,” she repeated and began to gently fondle his dick.

  Wowww …, this is a strange broad.

  “Uhhh, Elena, hold on a minute, baby. You talk like you ain’t gonna miss me ’n shit.”

  She clenched the length of his dick and applied a soft pressure as she spoke. “What difference would it make? You’re leaving.” The logic of her statement stunned him. What was there to say? He pulled her on top of him. “We got four more days before I go; let’s make the most of it.”

  He removed her glasses and placed them on the bedside table. “Yeahhh, we got four more days and nights,” he whispered in her ear as he slowly pushed himself up into her vagina.

  They carefully fitted themselves to each other, artful lovers with hours of practice between them. Oh my God! We ain’t using a rubber, oh my God! “Uhhh, Elena! Elena! hold up a sec, baby.… I got to get a rubber.”

  She pressed his shoulders back to the bed. “There’s no need; I started my period yesterday.”

  He settled back to enjoy the sex act with her before, seconds later, he was overwhelmed by fear. Blood! Oh my God! She’s bleeding AIDS on me. He wanted to push her up off of him and jump into the shower, but her movements and the strange passion she built in him with her soft moans prevented him from doing anything.

  “Ooooohhh my Gawd! You are killing me! Ooooohhh my Gawd! You are killing me. You are killllliinnng me! Oh my Gawd!”

  Patience proved harder to walk away from.

  “Gbop,” that’s the way she spoke his name in the Ga fashion with an exploding “B.”

  “Gbop, you must remember: many are called and few are chosen.”

  She was a village woman and would always be a village woman. She wallowed in her village intelligence but didn’t know how to use a washer and dryer.

  She made him understand the nuances of condom love.

  They were deliriously happy with their discovery of each other. Life would never be the same for either of them. They had overcome barriers to be with each other. She thought the man she worked for was acceptable, and he couldn’t make himself think of what being a maid meant. She was coming from so far down that even being a maid was a step up.

  She quoted proverbs to him by candlelight, back in the “boys quarters.” The intensity of their loving made him feel like he was in another dimension. She stared into his face as though her eyes had melted.

  “Who are we, Gbop? and what made us what we are in this life?”

  As the days passed each person that he had ever exchanged a glance with, smiled at, had a visual familiarity with, became family.

  He walked to the post office, feeling that he was saying good-bye to his family.

  He spent hours in the smaller joints; they seemed to be hippest. Women were coming out of the woodwork on him and he loved it, but he couldn’t really get into it because he was positive he had AIDS. We traded blood. He had almost fainted when he swabbed his dick off and smeared blood onto the half dirty little towel. Blood.

  Have to go to the clinic soon as I get home. HIV positive; I can see it right now, all the Bricks at my funeral, people cryin’ ’n shit.

  He was up early on Wednesday to walk to familiar places. Six blocks down that street to get to the high school jogging track, a few blocks the other way to get to the ocean. He wasn’t having problems going from place to place, physically; it was the emotional thing that played on his head.

  These were people like himself (he saw a lot who were shades darker than himself), brothers and sisters. But they were different. These brothers here are from different tribes ’n shit. He had managed to find out, the hard way, that the men with the slashes on their cheeks were mostly northerners. Jumping into a taxi one day he joked about the deep gashes on each of the man’s cheeks.

  “What happened, pal, cut yourself shaving?”

  The driver thought it was an absurd joke and laughed at it, and then explained why his marks were there. “All of us didn’t cut ourselves shaving in my village. These marks identify us as members of the same clan.”

  “Oh!”

  He felt a weird nostalgia hugging the drainage ditches as he strolled along the rutted country roads in the heart of the city.

  He tried to cultivate the Accra-Ghanaian disdain for cars and trucks that beeped-squawked once and then passed so close that he felt they were running up his leg. The Vernons seemed to be watching him from a distance. They had reached that hip place in life that allowed them the freedom to grant other people freedom.

  Fred’s favorite greeting—“What’s happenin’?”—was grated out in the morning and at odd times of the day, but it wasn’t a requirement that Bop had to tell him exactly what was “happenin’.”

  It was an option, an invitation. Sometimes he took it and spent a quick hour trying to explain what was happenin’. There were other times when he didn’t feel capable of explaining what was “happenin’.”

  Helene did her morning yoga, edited short stories, prepared articles, baked chocolate chip cookies, made herself available for his random, philosophical comments about Ghana. “It’s like, you know, it’s like everything is crumbling and funky. I’m not trying to talk down about nothin’.”

  “I know what you’re sayin’.”

  “Yeahhh, old and crumblin’ and funky. You know that street that runs straight to the back of the market?”

  “Lokko Road.”

  “Yeah, that’s the one. I was walkin’ through there earlier today and it was crazy ’cause I had this sudden feelin’ like I was walkin’ through all the black neighbor
hoods in the world. Sound crazy, don’t it?”

  “Not to me.”

  “I mean, it was a thang like, like three or four people passed me on this real funky road in three-piece suits, carrying briefcases even, and right beside them was some other people walking in flipflops or no shoes at all. And they were moving with this kind of straight-ahead step that never seems to rush. And the colors of the people. I saw a woman who looked like her face was the color of charcoal.”

  “I’ve seen those colored people. Makes it easier to understand why the Greeks labeled Africans ‘people with burned faces.’”

  “Oh, I didn’t know that.”

  “But go on; this is interesting.”

  “Yeahhh, it was like I was seein’ all kinds of black people all at once; I saw members of my family even. That always trips me out when I see people who look like Aunt Lulu or Uncle David. Or Skateboard, Bone, and a few other Bricks that I need to kick it with. No drugs goin’ around.”

  He felt Helene was saying something slick when she said, “Are you disappointed?”

  “About not seein’ any dope?”

  “Yes. We know all about the crack epidemic in the states.”

  “Epidemic?”

  “Well, you could say ‘plague,’ if you wanted to be completely correct.”

  “Uhhh, no, I’m not disappointed.”

  There was something about the most casual chit-chat with Helene that made him feel as though she was telling him stuff he didn’t know.

  He packed his bags on Wednesday afternoon and stuffed ten crisp one-hundred-dollar bills into an airmail envelope for Fred and Helene.

  Beautiful people.

  “Wha’s happenin’?”

  “Nothin’ too much. Looks it’s windin’ down for me.”

  “Gettin’ ready to get back down into the pit, huh?”

  “Yeah, I guess you could call it that.”

  Wednesday night he lay in a dingy hotel room with Elena, thinking about Justine. Beautiful sister. I’m gonna have to go back there and get her ass in gear; I can’t let her go down like that.

  “So, I mean, hey, like what’s happenin’, mister man? I know you gettin’ ready to go off to Afric-co ’n shit, but you could’ve called me; I mean after all I’m s’posed to be the woman in yo’ life, ain’t that what you lied ’n told me last month?”