On the kitchen table, Uncle Terrences phone started to ring, and Tasha put her hands on her hips, because the state barber board was calling about Grandpas shop, the one whose license has been in my name since 2022.
For years Uncle Terrence ran Johnsons Barbershop like it was his and used me for free haircuts. This time the truth came from a routine inspection, because Mr. Dukes asked to see the license.
My grandfather transferred the shops license into my name in 2022, the year before he died, so the barbershop he ran on Farish Street for forty-five years was legally mine all along, and Uncle Terrence had been collecting the chair rent from a shop that belonged to me.
The copy of the shops license was in my barber bag, my name on it where everyone assumed Terrences would be. Mr. Dukes, the inspector, a retired barber whose hair my grandfather cut for twenty years, told me my granddaddy always said Id have the shop one day, and then he helped me understand what had been happening.
Tasha dropped Grandpas Andis clippers in the trash compactor and told me to cut with that, that I would never have my own chair. She did not know the board was already calling Uncle Terrence about the chair I already owned, forty-five years of them.
Tasha said the shop was Terrences. No, maam, I told her. It is not. And Uncle Terrences phone rang.
I did not stay. I drove to a friends, and at nine the next morning I passed my state board exam with my spare clippers, because Tasha could compact a pair of clippers but not eleven years of my grandfather teaching me to cut.
I am a licensed barber now, and the shop on Farish Street is legally mine, the way Grandpa set it up in 2022. Uncle Terrence is answering to the board for the rent he collected on my shop, on paper, where you will never have your own chair does not help him.
I did not put my uncle out. Grandpa would not have wanted the shop to close, and Terrence can cut hair. He rents a chair from me now, and pays it to the right name, and the shop keeps going the way it has since before I was born.
Your granddaddy told me youd have this shop one day, Mr. Dukes said. Grandpa was right, and he made it legal in 2022 so no one could take it. And Tasha went quiet before the phone finished ringing, because my grandfather protected my chair from the grave, one license transfer at a time.