The Last Black Unicorn(5)

Tiffany: “What do you mean ‘getting close to my people.’?”

Grandma: “Girl, you Jewish.”

Tiffany: “No, I’m not. I’m a Jehovah Witness.”

Grandma: “No, you not a Jehovah Witness. You’re Jewish. Jehovah’s Witness is a religion. Your people is Jewish.”

She was talking about my father. He is actually Jewish. My father’s from Eritrea, which is right next to Ethiopia. There are actually a lot of Jews in the Horn of Africa, and even though he was black, he was still Jewish.

Tiffany: “My people?”

Grandma: “You’re Jewish. Your people. You know, you need to know about your other side of the family. Your daddy’s side.”

Tiffany: “Well, why don’t I even know my daddy?”

Grandma: “?’Cause he made some mistakes and he had to get on. He sent money though. All them dance classes I got you when you was a little girl and gymnastics classes you took when you was a little girl. That was from your dad. He would send me money and I would put you in the classes.”

Man, no one ever told me that. That was crazy to me, that my daddy had been sending money and stuff.

Grandma: “We calling that man.”

Tiffany: “I don’t want to call that man. He want me to get on the bar and show my mitzvah.”

Grandma: “What are you talking about child?”

Tiffany: “You know, showing my mitzvah! I don’t want to be no stripper, Grandma!”

Grandma: “Oh Lord, child please.”

I had thought “Bar Mitzvah” meant you get on the bar and show your mitzvah—you know, like your cootchie. Because the way he was talking to me, I was creeped out, and that’s what I thought he meant.

She called that man and she drove me all the way to this man’s office, at his house. It wasn’t no damn office. He was only eighteen. He’s just running this little DJ company out of his mama’s house. He set his room up, and the name of his company was Enterprise Entertainment, because he was into Star Trek. He had painted the whole room black, and it had glow-in-the-dark stars all over it. He had a futon that he called his couch and a little desk.

His name was Tim. We called him DJ Timbo. Me and my grandma were sitting there on his futon as he explained the ins and outs of Bar Mitzvahs. He had started with his uncle (DJ’ing at a company called Hart to Hart) when he was twelve, and then he split off and started his own company.

He wanted me to be his first employee at his company. He thought we could do well.

Grandma: “You think that a little black girl is going to do okay at a Bar Mitzvah, baby? You think that she can work at a Bar Mitzvah?”

DJ Timbo: “I definitely think so. She has the energy. She has a great smile. Great personality. I think she can do it.”

Grandma: “You want it, baby?”

Tiffany: “Yeah.”

Grandma: “How much you going to pay my baby?”

DJ Timbo: “I’m going to give her $40 a party.”

Grandma: “You want to make $40 a party?”

Tiffany: “Sounds good to me.”

Then he started booking me for parties. I’ll never forget the very first party I did. I got to work it with the brother of DJ Timbo, Thomas Ian Nicholas. He was in the movie Rookie of the Year. He was working the party too, so I was like, “Oh my.”

He was dancing with me, and he was like, “This is how you got to do it.”

I was like, “Boy, this kid is sure trying to be helpful to me. He must think I’m hot.”

At the end of the party, I asked him for his number. He told me I was a weirdo, and he didn’t give it to me. I had been too aggressive.

Anyway, afterwards, DJ Timbo wrote me a letter and mailed it to me. Like, physical mail. It said I was horrible. He said that I needed to not be following one kid around the whole time, especially one that’s also working the party. I had to be more dedicated, more focused. You have to keep your eyes on the whole party, and all that stuff. It was a serious rundown of everything I did wrong. He wrote:

“And here’s your $40. If you think you can do it, give me a call back, and if you don’t think you can handle it, don’t call me.”

As soon as I read that, I called him:

Tiffany: “Man, I can do all of this and then some. Boy please, when is the next party?”

The next party, I was pumped up. Dancing with everybody. Dancing with the old people. Dancing with the young people. Getting all the people to follow me. Doing all my routines and stuff. I was doing stuff that I did on the football field for the games. At the Bar Mitzvahs, I was doing waves and all kind of stuff. I killed it. And that was my weekend work for like, ten years after that.

After two years, I ended up becoming one of the MCs. I started making like $200 a party, $300 a party on the weekends. For a teenager, that’s dope.

? ? ?

The only downside to the Bar Mitzvahs was that I killed a man once.

I’m not even kidding.

At this point, I was about twenty. I had been doing Bar Mitzvahs for four years, and I was good by then. I would do a Bar Mitzvah right.

This one was up in the Valley. I was dancing, getting the crowd hyped, and I saw an old man over there, just looking mopey. It’s my job to get everyone hyped, so I danced over to him.

Tiffany: “Come on, you want to dance with me?”