Flip Side of the Game

by Tu-Shonda L. Whitaker

  “Whatever.”

  “I’m playing, baby.” He laughed. “But look, do you know that the type of music a person listens to speaks volumes about their personality?”

  “Really? And how do you figure that?”

  “Because if all you listen to is hardcore gansta rap or heavy metal music, then that usually means that your world is somehow surrounded with what they are talking about. Otherwise, why you want to hear about bitches suckin’ dick, niggers gettin’ hit, and somebody killing their mama fifty times a day?”

  “You have a slight point, but I happen to like rap.”

  “Me too, but that’s not all I listen to.”

  “Well, my favorite is jazz,” I said.

  “Jazz?” he asked, surprised. “Something I didn’t know about my baby, huh?

  “That’s right, jazz. See, you learn something new every day.”

  “What do you know about jazz, besides Mr. Will? Do you know anything about the real deal? Like Coltrane, Holiday, Davis, Parker? What do you really know about jazz?”

  “Excuse you, boyfriend, but I do know that jazz is the only original American art form when it comes to music. And not only do I have the CDs by the legends you just named, but I also have a few by Lionel Hamilton, Sarah Vaughn, Nina Simone, and that’s just to name a few, so don’t sleep.”

  “Don’t sleep? You’re something else. So, tell me, Miss Jazz Lady, how long have you wanted to be a hairstylist?”

  “Since I was a little girl. Rowanda used to dream it all the time, so I just felt it was something I needed to become.”

  “My mother died when I was twelve, and I always said if I were a doctor, I could’ve saved her.”

  “Oh,” I said. I felt a little awkward commenting on that, so I left it alone.

  As we headed through the Holland Tunnel, I felt a little sleepy, so I got lost in the world of Will Downing’s music and drifted off for a short nap.

  When I opened my eyes, Taj was rubbing my face and saying, “We’re here, baby.”

  “Where are we?”

  “South Fourteenth Street.”

  “Jersey?”

  “Not just Jersey, Newark, baby girl. Brick City! My family lives in the red house on the corner.”

  When I stepped out of the truck, I noticed instantly that the ghetto has a universal beauty no matter where you go, no matter what river you cross, no matter what train you take. It always has the same tune, the same beat, the same rhythm of the Puerto Rican corner store, the famous Madison Lounge with the storefront Laundromat, and black people everywhere of all shapes and sizes, some singing a poverty tune, some signing a home tune, and some singing a tune with a where-else-is-there-to-go flavor. People all over feel a connection with their ghetto segment of the world, and it’s all love, it’s all good, no matter what hood your ghetto is derived from.

  So, I understood when Taj’s father, who looked identical to his son, was eating a bowl of grits and sitting on the stoop trying to play dominos, and Taj’s brother was kickin’ it with his boys. I could relate to the fiend on the corner, and the middle-aged lady that seemed to be taking up some of Taj’s father’s attention. They were one of many in every neighborhood.

  “Hey, Pop!” Taj said, giving his father a man-to-man hug and a kiss on the cheek. “What’s up?”

  “You, babyboy! How you been?”

  Before Taj could respond, his brother, who bore a strong resemblance to Taj but seemed to be a few years younger, jumped off the crate he was sitting on and gave his brother a pound and then a hug.

  “What’s up, man!” Taj said. “I thought you were in Hampton for school?

  “I transferred to Rutgers, downtown. I wanted to be closer to home. I started missing y’all, man.”

  “All right, as long as you’re still in school. Political science, right?”

  “Yeah, man,” Taj’s brother said. “Political science.”

  A little girl, about five or six years old, came running out the door and hugged Taj around his knees. “Uncle Taj! Uncle Taj!”

  He squeezed her tight and picked her up. “Tae-Tae, do you see this lady over here?”

  “Yes,” she said, blushing.

  “She’s pretty, right?’

  “Mm-hmm,” Taj’s father answered for her.

  Taj blushed and said, “This is Vera, everybody. And Vera, this is everybody.”

  “Humph,” Taj’s father said, giving me a hug. “Boy, you sure got your daddy’s taste. You better be lucky you’re my son, otherwise you’d be going home alone.”

  Taj laughed. “It won’t be the first time, Pop. You see you stole Ms. Betty from me,” Taj said, pointing to the lady sitting on the stoop with Taj’s father.

  “Hold on, now,” Ms. Betty said. “It ain’t like it’s too late to get me back!”

  “Y’all got issues!” Taj’s brother laughed. They all laughed and seemed to be enjoying each other’s company.

  “Come on in the house,” Taj’s father said. When he got up, I saw that he had a shirt that said Rest In Peace Bundles. Out of curiosity, I asked, “Mr. Bennett, who was Bundles?”

  “Oh, baby, he was one of the neighborhood kids that got shot a couple of years back. He grew up with my boys, Taj and Sharief.”

  “Yeah,” Taj said. “I told you about him. Big Stuff. It’s the same person.”

  When I walked into Mr. Bennett’s house, there was a young lady sitting on the couch. She was quite pretty, but she also seemed rather young.

  “Baby,” Taj said, “this is my sister, Samira. My niece’s mother.” She stood up, and I noticed that she was quite short, no more than five foot three. She had blond-colored box braids in her hair, and her skin was a honey-colored complexion. She resembled Taj slightly.

  “How are you? I’ve heard a lot about you,” she said.

  “Really?” I said, surprised.

  “Mm-hmm. My father doesn’t keep any secrets, no matter what my brother thinks. Soon as Taj called and told Daddy that he had found the one, Daddy was right in here telling us every bit of the conversation.”

  The one? I thought. Did Taj really say that? He didn’t seem to flinch when his sister said that. Neither did he seem the least bit embarrassed, although what came out of his mouth was, “You talk sooo much, Samira.” It didn’t seem that he meant that. Instead, it seemed that he felt relieved that somebody had finally lay it on the line.

  “I’m glad that he told your father that,” I said. “It’s wonderful when the feeling is mutual.”

  Taj grabbed me around my waist, and I could feel his heart beating into my shoulder blade. “What’s to eat around here? I’m starving,” he said.

  The kitchen was lined with pictures of Taj, his brother, and his sister when they were children. Taj’s medical degree hung alongside of a picture of his mother.

  “She’s beautiful,” I said to no one in particular, but everybody responded, “Thank you.”

  “What was her name?” I asked.

  “Viola. Viola Jones-Bennett,” Taj’s father said with pride. His girlfriend, Ms. Betty, cut her eyes at him, as if she wanted to watch the way he responded to the question. I could tell she felt uncomfortable, so I figured I would leave the situation alone, and anything else I wanted to know, I would wait until Taj and I were alone.

  “Let me show you my old room,” Taj said, smiling. His room was off from the kitchen and seemed to be virtually unchanged since the late 80s. There was an L.L. Cool J poster on the wall, and Kool Mo-Dee, and Big Daddy Kane album covers on the small schoolhouse desk. There was also a Snoopy Snow Cone machine and a Rubik’s Cube, with all four sides matching.

  “This is where I spent most nights studying for that academic scholarship to Morehouse,” Taj said.

  “Did you get it?” I asked.

  “Did I get it? I had no choice. Pops wasn’t playing that, and I was the oldest, too. I had to be the one to set the example. Sharief and Samira were young when my mother died.”

  “How old were they?”
<
br />   “Five years old.”

  “Oh, so how did that make you feel, when your mother died?” I asked Taj, sitting on his old twin-sized bed with the Papa Smurf sheets.

  “I felt guilty.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I wanted to save her, but I couldn’t.”

  “What did she die from?”

  “Breast cancer.”

  “How could you have saved her?”

  “Because if I had been a doctor, I may have been able to make a difference.”

  “Baby, you were a little boy.”

  “I know, but I felt like I should’ve been a grown man.”

  I could tell that Taj was starting to get choked up, but he was trying to fight it off, so I changed the subject. “I didn’t know you told your father about me. When did you do that?”

  “When I first laid eyes on you.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Quite.”

  “But how would you have known that you loved me?”

  “Because when I saw you, I just knew that you were it, no matter what.”

  Taj laughed and slightly pushed me back on the bed. He lay sideways across me and said, “You ever made love on Smurf sheets?” Before I could answer, he told me he was just teasing.

  “Come on in here and eat,” Ms. Betty yelled into the room to Taj and me.

  “Dear, what exactly is your name?” Ms. Betty asked.

  “Don’t be so nosy, Betty. That’s why Samira a single parent now, ’cause you were all in the boy’s business. Leave these young folk alone.”

  “I just asked the chile her name.”

  “Vera Wright-Turner,” I said to her with a smile.

  “Beautiful, baby. How ’bout your folks? How is yo’ mama?”

  “Vera was raised by her aunt,” Taj said, cutting in and giving Ms. Betty the eye, like, That’s enough.

  She seemed to quickly catch the hint and she said, “Nothin’ wrong with that. My aunt raised me too, and she did a better job than my mama woulda done.”

  “So, how’s it going at the hospital, son?” Taj’s father asked, sitting at the 50s-style round kitchen table and smiling at me.

  “It’s all right, Pop. A lot of long hours.”

  “Yeah, it’s rough out there. I read in the paper there’s a doctor shortage.”

  “Not really,” Taj said. “More of a nurse shortage.”

  “What you do for a living, baby?” Ms. Betty asked, obviously trying to be slick.

  Before I answered the question, I gave her a brief overview. She was a cocoa complexion, more like Hershey’s chocolate than any other brand. She had auburn-colored hair that wasn’t the best match to her skin tone, but it would do. She had a black woman’s size eighteen hips, and a Southern girl’s twang to her voice. She was standing at the stove, pouring herself a bowl of grits and waiting for a direct answer from me.

  Instead of telling her that I was just a hairstylist, I figured I would give her the whole kit and caboodle. “I own a full service hair and nail salon on the corner of Thirty-third and Park in Manhattan. It’s mostly for black men and women, although we do get a few whites and Latinos. I have prices that are more down to earth than the other salons in the surrounding area, which is why most of my customers will travel from Brooklyn, Queens, and other places to come and get hooked up at Vera’s Hair Creation.”

  “Humph, a hairstylist with her own salon. I’m impressed, and darlin’, you being able to do hair is right up my alley. I been wanting to try those—wait a minute,” she said, stepping away from the stove and peeking down the hallway toward the living room. “Samira, what is those things I wanna try?”

  “Flat twist, Ms. Betty,” Samira answered, seeming somewhat annoyed, as if she had heard that question hundreds of times before.

  “Yeah,” Ms. Betty said, resuming the conversation. “Flat twist. I been wantin’ to try them things, but I been scared they gonna pull my hair out.”

  “They won’t pull your hair out as long as you don’t try combing it out.”

  “What about that gel?”

  “Well, I use a little gel because that’s what makes the flat twist stay together, but you have to sit under the dryer.”

  “Oh, one of them bouffant dryers? I got one of them, chile. Right in the other room.”

  “Okay. Well, I would recommend you going to a salon and getting it done. Not unless you know someone who can do your hair and knows what they’re doing.”

  “My new daughter-in-law.”

  “Oh,” I said to Taj. “Your brother’s married?”

  He shot me a look like, Please, you have just opened a can of worms for yourself. Then I realized it was me she was talking about.

  “Oh, me,” I said, pointing to my chest. “I don’t travel with my hair supplies, Ms. Betty. I’m sorry.”

  “Chile, there is a Mi-Mi’s on just about every corner, with all the hair products you can imagine.”

  I really was outdone with Ms. Betty’s forwardness. Taj seemed a little annoyed, but I could tell that I was under tight scrutiny about the way I was to handle Ms. Betty. She seemed to mean a lot to this entire family, especially since their mother had died, so I was sure that I needed to be careful how I said “I don’t think so” to Ms. Betty.

  Just when the “I” came out, I completed the sentence with, “can do it. I’ll do it.”

  “Here you go,” Taj said, handing me the keys to his Escalade.

  “Taj, I don’t know where I’m going.”

  “I know, baby. Don’t you see Ms. Betty? Ms. Betty loves to ride.”

  “Sho’ do,” Ms. Betty said. “I’ll show you where it’s at. There’s one right on Bergen Street.”

  Ms. Betty reminded me of Aunt Cookie, but with a little more ghetto poise. She was slick, where Aunt Cookie lay it all on the line. I was certain that if these two met, they wouldn’t like each other. Aunt Cookie didn’t care for women she thought always had an underlying meaning to anything they said.

  When we drove down Clinton Place and cut over a side street to hit Bergen, I answered all of Ms. Betty’s questions with a yes or no, including the one she asked about Taj and me living together. She was nosy as hell, and from what I could tell, she was nosy on an ongoing basis.

  “How long have you and Mr. Bennett been together?” I asked, right after she had grilled me with the same question.

  “For thirty-five years really. Off and on, but after his wife died, we got together all the way.”

  “All the way?” I said, giving her the same, Yes, I’m all in your business look that she was giving to me. “That’s interesting,” I said, but I was thinking, You’re an old-ass ho, Betty. Taj is only thirty-two.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” she insisted, “but things happen.”

  “Oh, Ms. Betty, I understand.” That you was creeping with Viola Bennett’s man. Oh, I understand quite well.

  When we arrived at the beauty supply place, it wasn’t much different than the ones in New York. All the people in there were Chinese, with the exception of the fake-ass black security guard standing at the door.

  When Ms. Betty and I returned, Taj, his father, and his brother were sitting at the kitchen table playing a game of Spades.

  “My book!” Taj’s brother yelled when I walked in the kitchen and placed my hand on Taj’s shoulder. Taj then tilted his head to the side and kissed my hand.

  “You get what you needed, baby?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Come on, Vera!” Ms. Betty yelled, excited. “Let’s get this started!”

  I could feel Taj watching me as I washed Ms. Betty’s hair, like he was thinking about when we first met. When I looked over my shoulder, Taj was peeking over his hand of cards and staring at me with a serious look—not one of anger, more like one of appreciation and love. In an effort to break the monotony of the stare, I winked my eye. He winked back and returned to his card game by saying, “Y’all know whoever has the deuce of spades gets the kitty! Don’t even t
ry it.”

  For once in my life, at that very moment, I felt loved—and not just loved, but I felt in love. Here was a man that cared about how I felt, what I thought, the simple things that I had always longed for. There he sat at the kitchen table with his father and brother, laughing and joking, dealing out cards, and making me feel like the queen of hearts, all at the same time.

  Miss Betty’s hair needed a touch-up like you wouldn’t believe, but she wouldn’t hear of it. I tried to explain to her that the flat twist were not going to last for a long time as long as her roots were hit, but she wouldn’t hear of it.

  “My girlfriend Maxine does my relaxers.”

  “I understand that, Ms. Betty, but your roots really need to be touched up.”

  “Vera,” Taj’s sister Samira said, with her daughter Tae-Tae sitting between her legs, “don’t argue with Ms. Betty. She has to learn the hard way.”

  “This is my head!” Ms. Betty snapped at Samira. She snapped more like this was an old and ongoing argument, and not one that just started over a flip comment.

  “It’s okay, Samira. You’re right, Ms. Betty. I’ll do my best.”

  When I was done, Ms. Betty had flat twists going around in a circle all over her head, and a blonde ponytail (at her insistence) swinging on the side. Ghetto fabulous is what she requested. She wanted to be old and young at the same time, and although I hooked up her hair and she was wearing the hell outta this hairstyle, she still resembled an old-ass Shanaynay.

  “You got it goin’ on, Miss Betty!” Taj said. “My baby certainly hooked you up!”

  Quite frankly, I was embarrassed, as this was not my best work. Had she allowed me to choose a style for her, I probably would have given her three goddess braids or twisted her hair into a bun.

  “Baby,” Taj said, tight-lipped as Ms. Betty walked over to show off her hair to Mr. Bennett, “what the hell did you do to Ms. Betty’s hair? I’ve never seen you do a hairstyle like that.”

  “That’s what she wanted,” I responded, tight-lipped. “What was I supposed to do?”

  “I don’t know, baby, but as soon as Ms. Betty step foot on Fabyan and Hawthorne, I’ma have to get Sharief or Samira to defend you, because all the people headed up to Valley Fair will be asking who in the hell left the gate open!”