A Little Change of Face

“We black folks like to do this just to confuse y’all,” T.B. was fond of saying, “keep you on your toes, make you think we’re going to steal your silverware—something fun like that.”

“Gee, thanks, but you’re a fun girl,” I was fond of saying in return.

And then T.B. would laugh that rich beautiful laugh that I loved so well, the one that was like a swirling whirlpool made up of chocolate and which my skinny-assed Britney Spears self could never duplicate, not in a million years.

Now that you know just about everything else about T.B. worth knowing—that she was nice, smart and a Times-toting intellectual—you’re probably wondering how she came by the name of T.B. Had someone in her family been hooked up to an iron lung machine a few generations back? Was it perhaps short for “Too Bad,” as in “it’s too bad for you, but I’ve already got someone else I’m doing regular-like”? No, it was neither as tragic as the former nor as rude as the latter.

T.B., quite simply, stood for Token Black.

When I’d first been introduced to her by Pam, I’d returned her warm handshake, responding, “T.B.? Oh, right. If my name was Terebinthia Butterworth, I suppose I’d just go by my initials, too.”

“That’s not what T.B.’s for.”

“No?”

“It’s for Token Black.”

Since we were at a party at Pam’s—it was amazing how many big parties Pam threw, given how few people she liked and how few liked her—where the current population consisted of approximately twenty-nine white men and women plus her, it wasn’t all that difficult to guess where she might be going with this.

“Under the present circumstances, I can see what you mean.”

“No, you can’t.”

“Excuse me?”

“You may think you see what I mean—Pam told me all about those liberal tendencies of yours—but you don’t.”

I know it was wrong of me to take offense at someone else’s accurate assessment of the limitations on my experience of such things, but—what can I say?—I was offended anyway.

I puffed up: “Well, actually…” And I proceeded to tell her about my preteen best girlfriend, the one who came before Best Girlfriend, the one who was black, and about how once her sister had taken us and a carload of her friends—nine of us total, only one other white—to see a movie on the Fairfield/Bridgeport line, and how the movie theater was an every-seat-taken affair and the movie was a comedy and the only two whites in the whole theater were me and that other girl, and how downright spooked I’d felt when I’d been forced to recognize the truth: that some of the things we thought were funny were not perceived by those around us that way, at all, and that some of the things the majority found funny made me feel just a little intimidated. “So, you see—”

T.B. had the chutzpah to yawn in my face without making any real attempt to cover her mouth. “Oh, yeah, right,” she said, when she’d yawned long enough to stop my self-conscious flow of words. “Y’all had one minority experience and now you know what it’s all about.”

“I wasn’t saying that. What I was saying—”

“Look. Try taking your one lousy little experience and multiplying it by just about every day of your life. I didn’t go to no movie once and have that happen. I am the movies, baby, and TV, too.” T.B. shifted into street talk.

“Gee, you don’t look like a movie.”

“Well, I is. I’s the judge and the pediatrician and the prosecutor and—”

“Well—” I stopped her “—you is actually the prosecutor.”

She started to smile at me, and then made herself stop.

“I’s the local color, I’s the next-door neighbor, I’s the best friend who gets killed so the star can get angry—” dramatic pause “—I’s expendable.”

“Naw,” I said.

“Naw?”

“Ain’t I sayin’ it right?”

“Naw.”

I shrugged. Well, I couldn’t hear any difference between us.

“If I ain’t expendable, then what am I then?”

“You’s the glue. Without you, they ain’t no story.”

“No shit?”

“Naw shit.”

“If you stop imitatin’ me—” she smiled “—I’ll let you be my friend.”

“If you forgive me when I can’t help myself or I just do it, anyway, I’ll take you up on it.”

“Well, I guess we’ll just have to wait ’n’ see how often you do it.”

“Hey,” I said, serious again and feeling foolish, but more serious about anything than I’d felt in years maybe. “I’m sorry.”

And I could tell I didn’t really need to explain, but she pressed me, anyway, her voice soft. “For what, baby?”

“For everything I had no part in creating, for everything I’ll never change.”

Still soft: “Me too, baby.” Then much brighter: “But you know what?”

I shook my head.

“At least it’ll give you and I something other than the usual ‘being-a-woman-these-days-sucks-because-the-hemlines-are-too-high’ bullshit to talk about.”

“True.”

“Now, then. See her? See that one over there?” And she pointed her finger at the woman I would later come to learn was Delta from the Delta.

“You mean the one the men all seem to notice a lot?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“You mean the one with the hair teased so high it practically touches the ceiling?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“The one with the too-tight capris and the fuchsia chiffon scarf and the really big…”

“…acres of Tara? Mmm-hmm. That’s be her.”