Playing Hard To Get (6 page)

“Hey, girl!” Tamia heard a loud and familiar voice from just outside the door. “Your boss lady in there?”

In poked the head of another demon Tamia dreaded. Only this one was that of a peer.

“Hey, Tamia. You free?”

“Yes, Jones,” Tamia answered wryly. “Come in.”



Tasha couldn’t answer Tamia’s phone call because she was busy thinking about maybe holding one of her daughters in her arms. But they were getting so heavy now, even little Tiara, and she didn’t want to wrinkle the silk shirt she was wearing before Lionel had a chance to see how good she looked.

She was standing in the lobby at Newark Airport, awaiting Lionel’s return from Miami. Around her stood an eager crowd of drivers holding pickup cards with secret names the players had selected, in-the-know fans, a few mistresses (whom she’d identified by their ridiculously long hair weaves), and some of the other wives of Knicks players who’d also made the move to New Jersey in search of suburban sprawl and a small chance of marital bliss.

While Tasha had long separated herself from the drama and backbiting that provided the unstable backbone of the NBA wives’ club, she still knew many of the faces of these women and when she’d arrived at the airport had smiled sociably at them and chatted just long enough to hear the latest gossip.

Naturally short tempered, she hated the fakeness associated with carrying on long conversations with women she considered less than associates, but knew that she had to know what they knew in order to remain an educated NBA wife. An uneducated NBA wife was sure to become a former NBA wife as an ambitious groupie with a ridiculous weave became a mistress with a more ridiculous weave, waiting for another woman’s husband at the airport. There was a long list of critical rules in surviving this hoop dream universe, and something as trivial as not knowing where and how to await the arrival of one’s husband at the airport could lead to a drawn-out and embarrassing demise.

“Look at my girls!” Lionel was the picture of pride, his long, lanky frame crouched down before his family. He kissed a gurgling Tiara, pinched Toni’s cheek, and should’ve stood up to hug his wife, but instead he handed Tasha his shoulder bag and pulled Toni from the twin-seater stroller to play.

To this, Tasha smiled pleasantly. The other husbands were doing the same thing as Lionel, and their wives were looking on adoringly as the men inspected the little ones for boo-boos and gave out kisses. There was no reason to vie for attention. No reason at all. But still, behind the most pleasant of smiles, Tasha was thinking,
Do you not see me standing here? Look at my shirt. Hell, just look at me!
She’d stuffed herself into Spanx so she could fit into Lionel’s favorite jeans, lifted up her sighing breasts and put them into an armorlike bra, and pushed the heavy stroller through the airport in a pair of red devils.
⁸
Someone had better look at her!

“You look nice, baby,” she heard Lionel say. She batted her eyes and looked at him to see that he was speaking to Toni. The little girl couldn’t talk yet, but intelligently responded to her daddy with the one word she’d been practicing: “Dada.”

“You want me to drive?” Lionel asked when they’d finished walking to the car. Tasha was quiet. Her feet were burning from pushing the stroller back across the lot as Lionel carried and played with Toni and she still held the shoulder bag. “What?” Oblivious to her condition, Lionel looked at Tasha’s screwed-up face. “Why are you so quiet?”

Tasha was about to either spit or curse, but the pot of her anger wasn’t fully to a boil yet. While she was annoyed, she still had missed Lionel and a tiny part of her was just happy to be reunited with his scent, a masculine mix of woodsy shaving cream and spicy cologne that never left him but dissipated to nothing whenever he went away.

Lionel stood there looking at her for a second and then put the girls into the car and got behind the steering wheel.

Halfway to the house, he tried speaking again.

“Why do you come meet me, if you know you don’t like it? I can get a driver like some of the other guys.”

Request a driver? Like the other guys? None of those guys were happily married. Not one of them. Their wives were either too busy being too busy for their husbands or too angry being angry about their upcoming divorces. The good, happy wives were team players, pictures of perfection, the trophies the players retrieved happily upon their return home like soldiers back from war. They weren’t too busy or too angry, they were just there—at the airport, at the game, waiting with open arms, their cups running over.

But no one had cared about Tasha’s open arms, and now her pot was boiling over.

“You want to request a driver? Look, I came to the airport because I’m your damn wife, but it seems you forgot that, seeing as how you haven’t paid me any attention.” Tasha turned to look out the window. She was too angry to put on her seat belt. “You hand me your damn bag like I’m some kind of groupie…and then you have the nerve to—”

“Jesus, this is exactly what I didn’t want to happen. When you said you were coming to get me, I knew—” Lionel stopped and looked at his sleeping daughters in the rearview mirror.

“What? You knew what?”

“That you’d get all touchy. You always do this when you come get me from the airport.”

“I always do what?”

“You always—”

“Don’t tell me what I always do.” She cut him off, though she had asked the question. “I’m a grown woman. I know what I do and how I do it.” Tasha’s voice had already been loud and now it was getting louder. “This ain’t even about what I do. It’s about what you don’t do!”

“Can you keep your voice down? You’re going to wake them up.”

“Wake them up?” Tasha turned to Lionel. Her forehead was crowded with angry wrinkles. On her tired, frustrated ears, Lionel’s request sounded more like an accusation. “I take care of
our
daughters all by
myself.
I don’t need you or anyone else to worry about if I wake them up. They wake up when and where I choose. And if I want them up right now, then so be it!”

That must’ve been what Tasha wanted, because they were up, and they were crying, and later that night, when they all got back to the house, she put them to bed alone.



“Salt and Pepa! Finesse and Sequins! Latifah and Monie Love! We’re about to be all of them.” Jones was laughing, but Tamia wasn’t.

She was too busy trying to remember who Finesse and Sequins were while looking at the open door of her office. She’d told Naudia too many times to close the door whenever Jones was in there and come in after ten minutes with an urgent call. Neither of those things had happened.

Jones was the firm’s latest equal opportunity hire. A Howard Law School grad whose supreme understanding of the law was constantly undermined by her lack of an understanding of how to conduct herself in a law office. According to a laughing Charleston one evening over dinner, Jones had the “big/little issue” that many unpolished black females had at the firm—big mouths and little clothes. This sad stereotype stung Tamia’s ears when she’d heard it, but even right now, Jones, whose full name was Da-Asia Moshanique Jones (which she insisted on having put on the nameplate on her office door), was proving him right.

“You know, I’ve been waiting, just waiting for this firm to finally give me a case I can sink my teeth into, something where I can help my people, you know?” Jones said, grinning.

“Know? What do you mean?”

“The case…with Richard Holder—the Freedom Project—us…We’re on it together!” Jones wiggled in her seat happily. Tamia saw wide gold hoop earrings peek out from beneath the mop of wet and wavy curls Jones had braided to her scalp.

“We’re what? Partners? Who told you that? Pelst?” Tamia kicked the inside of her desk.

“Yup! Aren’t you excited? I mean, what are the odds that the only black girls on the team get to work together? I needed a break from those white folks anyway! Always being all nosy. I know my job. How to do what I do and they want to know everything other than that—where I live, who I date, what I eat. Damn. No, I don’t want to eat no damn hummus. I ain’t no bird. Know what I mean?”

“Yes,” Tamia agreed, nervously watching the door. She really did agree with what Jones was saying, but couldn’t understand why she had to be so loud saying it or what made her think it was cool to say it at work in the first place. Luckily, Naudia, who Tamia was sure could now hear Jones’s speech, finally came and closed the door.

“We can do this together and do it right. Blow everyone away. I’m ready. Know what I’m sayin’? Know what I mean?!”

Tamia nodded her head in agreement, but she really didn’t “know what” Jones was “saying.”

Class for Classy Ladies

Being a unique individual is admirable, but being an undisputed ignoramus is unacceptable. To avoid being identified as the latter in any classy situation that requires class action, it’s necessary for every classy girl to know…how to act. Yes, we love Macy Gray, but some situations call for her to comb the dome, and while Mary J. Blige is our girl, even she had the good sense to get those tattoos covered up. Bluntly, unless you ARE prepared to be locked out and led away, don’t confuse being yourself with being unprepared. It just might make the difference between making your dream a reality, or going back to bed for a lifetime of nightmares.

25 Classy-Girl Rules of Class Action

1. Know when and where to wear flip-flops. Never to work. Always to the beach.

2. Don’t talk on cell phones at the dinner table, in a church, or on the train.

3. Never get too drunk or too full. Know when to back away from the table or bar.

4. Don’t pop your gum or blow bubbles—unless you’re playing a stripper in a movie.

5. Wipe your sweat off the gym equipment after use.

6. Know who the baby’s daddy is…. And if you don’t, avoid going on
Maury
to find out.

7. Don’t hand the checkout girl your credit card when you know you’ve reached your limit…and follow it up with another card that will be declined.

8. Don’t get tattoos on any part of your body that might sag after menopause, or usually requires jewelry—the neck.

9. Own a nice set of matching luggage—never travel with plastic bags.

10. Have a bank account—stay out of the check-cashing place.

11. Don’t get loud at work or with your boss; if it’s that bad, quit.

12. Don’t wear anything to the office that requires choreographed movement, a thong, a strapless bra, no bra, or pasties.

13. Avoid wearing too much perfume or makeup that bleeds onto your teeth or clothing.

14. Don’t litter.

15. Don’t wear platform shoes to work, unless the job includes a stage.

16. Don’t kiss and tell, or leave video footage of the encounter—Eve and Fantasia discovered this the hard way.

17. Don’t sit down at a dinner table if you can’t afford the 20 percent tip.

18. Don’t leave traces of baby powder, deodorant, hair gel, or body oil on your body at any time—rub it in, or get it off.

19. Don’t have more than two colors on your fingernails at one time, or try too hard to match the polish to your outfit.

20. Don’t have fingernails that are longer than your fingers and/or a bar of soap.

21. Don’t have sex with anyone for any reason other than having sex—intimate relations don’t lead to marital relationships.

22. Always know the way home and have a way to get there.

23. Perform community service.

24. Don’t discuss personal matters at work. No one needs to know about your breakup.

25. Don’t wear your cell phone earpiece unless you are engaging in a conversation and not sitting near someone who can hear it.

“It’s like this woman wants me dead, or worse, fired,” Tamia complained, walking behind Charleston as they entered the Blue Note, one of the city’s oldest and most respected jazz clubs. Nathaniel, Charleston’s college roommate and fraternity brother, who’d never completed a day’s work on anyone’s payroll since they’d graduated, was celebrating the release of his first jazz album and invited the pair out for a toast with his latest dinner date, Ava.

“You can’t take Phaedra that personally. She wants everyone dead…and fired. Being on top is what drives her.” Charleston was giving his comfy grin and looking at Tamia like she was an insect. He’d dated a lot of beautiful women, but Tamia, with her long, thick hair and classic beauty, was among the top ten. Plus, he always reasoned, she had a good upbringing and brains. He always loved pretty girls, but wanted the one on his arm to be the triple threat that made them the perfect pair. Tamia, he thought, even with her naive ways, fit the bill. “Look, you want me to be honest?”

“Yes.”

“The case is a dog. And your partner is even worse. You can’t win even if you win.”

“What do you mean?” Tamia stopped him.

“It’s nigger work. The two black women at the firm, one who’s up for partner soon and another who won’t make it three years, get the nigger case to keep them nigger busy. Basically, if you lose, they’ll say they can’t give you the bigger cases because you messed this one up, and, Lord, if you win…” He paused.

“What?” Tamia’s chest tightened.