The Nine

Chapter 8.1: Tara

The burial was sad; I shed a few tears and leaned on my brother's shoulder as Mr. Jay was lowered into a hole in the ground. It began to rain soon after the burial was over and Ezra rushed me to his sleek new black pickup truck. I climbed in the passenger and he started it up.

Ezra drove us back to the barbershop that he happened to own. At just twenty-four, my brother was doing real good for himself. He met a nice-enough girl named Simone in high school and they had a three-year-old son together, Ezra Jr. That kid was my everything, but he was also a handful. I had to babysit him for the rest of the evening while his parents worked.

The rain was pouring down as I climbed out of his vehicle and went inside the little black barber shop. Inside were the five barbers, Dom, Joe, Lonnie, Slime, and Dre. Three of them were cutting hair, one was preoccupied watching the music video features on the multiple TV screens Ezra had mounted on the walls, and four of them were, surprisingly, talking about The Nine. I put on a little smirk as I heard the phrase "Tara fine ass" come out of Dre's mouth. I found it cute how they all had legitimate crushes on me, and even more so how they all tried to downplay it by objectifying me.

I also found it cute how Ezra flipped his wig whenever my name just so happened to pop up in one of their conversations.

He cleared his throat as we shuffled past the few people waiting on a cut. He stood with his arm around my waist as, one by one, all the barbers turned to face us. He was glaring at all of em.

"Oh, what's good bossman?" Dre asked, taken slightly aback. Lonnie was snickering in his corner; so was the boy he was lining up.

"See you brought ya twin witcha," Joe observed. My brother and I did look a lot alike; we both had the same facial features and that same long hair. His curls were looser and silkier than mine though. We both had our long hair tied back in ponytails at the moment.

His hair was the butt of many of the barbers' jokes, I was sure. I had heard Dom make the joke, "How you call yourself cutting nigga hair with hair like that?" maybe a million times. Daddy had always pressured him to cut it lower and Ezra also got an earful in school for it, whether it was compliments from the girls or snide comments from his teachers.

Ezra was a very creative, kind sort of person, but if he had any authority over you, any at all, he made a point to exercise it. I had gotten my fair share before I hit twenty, his employees got theirs, and so did EJ.

"Y'all get back to working, these lights don't keep themselves on." He said in his even tenor.

His employees laughed and did as they were told.

"Where's EJ?" I asked Ezra as he loosened his grip from around me. He was such a protective brother, which I appreciated because I knew these men were absolute dogs, but I was upset with because I enjoyed a pair of admiring eyes.

"He's in the back," He told me. I went down the aisle to go get him. As I walked, with my only intention honestly being getting my nephew and taking him home with me, I attracted many sets of eyes. All of the men were admiring me - admiring, not undressing. I appreciated that. Men treated me like a prize, not like a piece of meat. Sure, many might have wanted me as a quick lay, but most of the men in the building would've been satisfied to carry my bags as I went shopping.

It's a shame none of them would ever get the opportunity.

I walked in the back of the shop, a bundle of very small rooms designated for employees only to the right and a public restroom to the left. I heard EJ's cute little laughter in the furthest room to the back and walked in.

The room was small and grey, just like pretty much everything else in the barber shop. It was a lounge room: there was a mini fridge in two of the corners and yet another small flat screen mounted to the wall. EJ was sitting his little three foot tall self in a fold out chair glued to Disney channel.