So, the morning of her interview, Nella erred on the side of caution: Twenty-dollar no-frills flats from Payless that, if necessary, would enable her to chase after a stray train. On her deep-brown legs she’d worn her favorite pair of old black stockings underneath her most conservative blue dress; on her shoulder, a tote bag she’d snagged from the Nation’s booth at the Brooklyn Book Festival the year before—just for a little touch of personality.
Thankfully, the MTA gods were good to her. Her train arrived exactly when the sign said it would, and as it whisked her out of Bay Ridge into Manhattan, she felt comfortable enough to lose herself in an editorial assistant blog she’d been following for years. Forty minutes later, she found herself on the street, just one block away from Wagner. She was waiting for a light to change, mentally patting herself on the back for being almost fifteen minutes early and just all-around interview-ready, when she looked down and nearly screamed. The run in the crotch of her stockings had traversed the length of her leg, all the way down to her ankle.
That had done it. Any confidence she’d felt from the sunshine and the perfectly timed train dispersed. You gotta be twice as good, remember? she’d chided herself. She couldn’t remember who’d said it to her first, or if it had ever been said directly to her at all, but that didn’t stop her from telling herself over and over again that her brown skin meant she needed to be twice as good as the girl with white skin, and that this giant run would do her in.
The twice as good mantra did not go away—not when she reached the front desk and completely blanked on Vera’s last name; not when she went for a hug and Vera went for a handshake at the door; and certainly not when she used the word “literally” three times in two sentences. Therefore, when Vera called a week later to say that she believed Nella would be the perfect addition to Wagner’s editorial team, she’d been stunned. There had to have been another candidate with wholly intact stockings and a firm grasp of the word “literally.” Or, surely, a white Ivy League grad who seemed like he or she had potential to do great things.
But Wagner wanted Nella, and this had delighted her so much that she’d done her finest pajama-twerk as soon as she’d hung up. Then, she’d quit her three food-service jobs in Brooklyn in rapid succession; fewer than two weeks later, she had a new boss, a new desk, and appointments set up for an eye exam, a physical exam, and a much-needed dental cleaning. Goodbye, self-medication of monthlong colds with Emergen-C and Flintstones vitamins. Hello, health insurance.
Now, Nella studied the little zen garden that sat on Vera’s desk just below the window. Her boss never let anyone else touch it, but sometimes, when Nella was having a particularly hard day, she’d sneak in and push the rocks around for a minute or two. Thinking of this brought her peace of mind, as did the memory of her pajama-twerk celebration after she got Vera’s call. To Nella, it hadn’t seemed that “raw and bold and unique” to stan Amiri Baraka or Diana Gordon, but it had apparently worked on Vera then, back when she’d been nothing more than a stranger with a run in her stockings and a Public Ivy on her résumé. Why not try leaning into it again? Why not bring out that “raw and bold” (and Black) person from her interview?
Besides… if she didn’t say anything about Shartricia, who else at Wagner would?
“I’d love to know which specific characters you think need more work,” Vera said, her eyes flicking toward the door, then back again. “I saw some things here and there, too.”
Nella sat up straighter in her chair. “Great! Okay. So, here’s my main issue.” She took a breath. “To be completely honest, I think…”
But any steam she’d gained from the start was deterred when Vera’s eyes flashed to the door a second time. They remained there the third time, glowing with interest. This was enough to quell Nella’s mumbling. She turned, too.
Maisy’s tiny fist was poised mid-knock on Vera’s doorframe. “Sorry, ladies,” she said, even though she didn’t look sorry. “There’s someone I’d like you both to meet.” She stepped all the way into Vera’s office, smoothing her hands up and down her maroon pencil skirt. Nella brightened as she watched the Black girl she’d clocked two weeks earlier, in all her dreadlocked glory, take Maisy’s place in the doorway. “This is Hazel-May McCall, my brilliant new assistant.”
“My parents were pretty ambitious,” the new girl said warmly. “Y’all can just call me Hazel. No, please—y’all don’t need to stand!” she added, rushing in vain to meet Vera before she could take one more step away from her wooden desk. She found Nella’s hand next, pumping it so hard that both girls’ pairs of dangly earrings shook violently back and forth.
Face-to-face, Nella could see Hazel had one inch, maybe two, on her. Today, her locs were free of any constraints, sprouting spiritedly from her scalp and pouring down the back of her baby-blue blazer. Nella grew suddenly aware of her own wrinkled gray V-neck T-shirt underneath an even more wrinkled gray sweater. Of her Keds, dirty and basic.
“Welcome to Wagner! I’ve heard such marvelous things about you!” Vera nodded in Maisy’s direction. “You’re working for a great one here.”
Maisy batted a hand in a gesture of Oh, stop it.
“Yes, I know,” said Hazel. “Thank you! I’m so honored to be here at Wagner. I almost can’t believe it’s happening.”
“And we’re excited to have you. Where are you coming from?”
Nella cringed ever so slightly, embarrassed for her boss, and worried that Hazel would be scared away so soon. That question. Oh, how publishing people loved that question. She’d first been asked this by Josh, Wagner’s sales director, at the Keurig. Nella hadn’t known what he’d meant, so she’d mentioned her Connecticut hometown, telling him pretty much everything about it just short of its geographical coordinates. She only understood when Josh said to her, a bit impatiently, “Ah. Interesting. And where in publishing did you last work?”
Nella had looked down at Zora Neale Hurston’s face, printed on the side of a coffee mug her mother had gifted her, and said, Nowhere. “I was in food service,” she’d clarified, and that had been the end of questioning.
But Hazel provided the appropriate prerequisite: a small magazine in Boston. “I lived there for two years and decided to come back here a few months ago. I like New York too much, and I wanted to return to the nonprofit that I started up in Harlem back in the day.”
Maisy nodded with noticeable pride. Nella, in the meantime, marveled at Hazel’s omission of what she presumed was another reason why she’d left Boston: because it was such a shitty, racist city.
“Boston! Such a great college town,” remarked Vera.
“I know,” Hazel said. “But even so, it’s a lot quieter. And cold. I really missed New York’s energy.”
She furrowed her brow, as though a particularly unpleasant corporate memory were washing over her in that very moment. Nella watched her curiously, spotting a small gold stud above Hazel’s left eyebrow, so tiny that it could only be discerned with particular facial expressions such as this one. Had Hazel received nasty emails from her old job’s HR department about her locs? People are starting to complain about the odor coming from your cube, the note might have said. Or maybe something about eyebrow piercings being too unprofessional. Nella had been to Boston only a handful of times, but she’d read enough to know that Hazel probably hadn’t had an easy time.
She could already see Hazel telling her all about it after work, dishing stories over gin and juice, when Vera chimed in, “Yes, it really is quite cold. We think we get snow here. But up there it’s a different animal entirely. Maisy knows all about that. Don’t you, Maze?”
“Ah, that’s right!” said Hazel good-naturedly. She didn’t seem bothered that her use of the word “cold” had been misunderstood. “Weren’t you telling me that you were born and raised in Boston?”
“From diapers to my dissertation,” Maisy chirped. “And my first job was in Boston, too. It’ll always be my home”—she placed a hand on her heart—“but it’s defini
tely not for everybody. The food scene is dreadful. Ver, do you remember that awful awards dinner up in Cambridge?” And with the introduction of this memory, she and Vera were off for about three minutes, going back and forth about every course, sparing not one extravagant detail.
Nella stretched her face into as little of a smile as she could get away with, prepared to exchange a knowing glance with Hazel as they waited for the conversation to circle back. But when she tried to meet the girl’s eye, Hazel didn’t look bored. She was actually smiling and tutting and Ohmygod ing right along with Vera and Maisy. At one point, she contributed a joke of her own and even nudged Maisy with her elbow.
Nella frowned, a little bummed that her glance hadn’t been reciprocated. She was a little surprised, too. She couldn’t remember when she’d first ventured to touch her boss, but it certainly wasn’t her first day, probably not even her first month.
“Anyway, what was I saying?” Maisy said finally. “Hazel, Nella here will be an amazing resource for all of your questions. You should totally pick her brain.”
“We call her the author whisperer,” Vera added, even though Nella had never been called this a single day in her life. “Whenever a diva is freaking out, Nella just lays on that charm of hers and it’s all good.”
“Aw, nah.” Nella chuckled. Fake-humble was the MO at Wagner, after all. “I don’t know about all that. But yes, ask me anything. I’ll be just right across the aisle.”
Hazel flicked her locs over her shoulder, a cheeky smile spreading across her face. “Careful what you say! I’ll probably be bothering you all the time. I know magazines, but books are a complete mystery to me.”
Had the new girl really just admitted that in front of her boss? That’s pretty ballsy of her, Nella thought, remembering how much she’d downplayed her own inexperience in publishing when she first started. But an explanation for this came to her almost immediately: Entry-level assistants are liked way more when their bosses think they’re blank slates. “It’ll be no bother at all,” she said. “Really!”
Hazel’s head tilted to the side just so, like it was being gently tugged by an invisible string, like she was just so happy to know Nella was in her corner that she couldn’t keep her head straight. “I’m so glad to hear that.”
Maisy bowed her head in gratitude. “Great! And Vera, before we go: Do you know if Bridget is here today? I would love to swing by her office and introduce Hazel before we grab lunch.”
“I heard Stevie playing through the wall earlier, so…”
Both women made faces at one another. “Ah. I’ll take my chances. We’ll let you get back to it. So sorry, again, for interrupting!”
“Oh my god, Maze, don’t even worry about it!” Vera waved her off and sat back down in her chair, her hands already returning to the couple of scrawled notes on Colin Franklin’s latest novel. “And Hazel—again, it’s so nice to meet you. We’re thrilled to have you on board.”
“Yes! Welcome!” Nella added cheerily, and after a few half waves, four became two again.
Nella sat back down, feeling readier than ever to delve into her Shartricia feedback. Meeting Hazel had poofed away her apprehension, renewed her sense of purpose. But when she started to speak, she noticed something disconcerting had come over her boss’s face. After a few wordless seconds, Vera put her pen down and said, a bit grumpily, “Jeez Louise. I’m always ready to take a break from work after I talk to Maisy. She’s that exhausting.”
Nella shrugged. It was startling whenever her boss treated her like a confidante.
“Now, where were we?”
“Colin Franklin. Needles and Pins.”
“Yes. Yes, so you were saying—”
Vera was interrupted again, this time by Stevie Nicks. Bridget, an associate editor with an affinity for the singer, was definitely in the office that day, and had apparently been in a good enough mood to open her office door when Maisy knocked. Nella and Vera listened as Maisy shouted out the name of her new assistant, and then as Hazel shouted it even louder. Nella was shutting Vera’s door when Maisy yelled Hazel’s name a third time, adding, rather helpfully, “Like the nut!”
Vera sighed. “Thank you. Ugh. Someone really needs to do something about that,” she complained, even though they both knew very well that the last person who’d asked Bridget to turn down her music had suffered a rough couple of months with HR, because Bridget happened to be the granddaughter of one of Wagner’s first authors—who in turn happened to be a golf buddy of Richard’s. This explained why she’d scored her own office at such a relatively junior level, a decision of Richard’s that had uniquely pissed off both upper- and lower-level employees.
Nella eased back into her chair and squared her shoulders. She waited an appropriate amount of time before saying, firmly, “So. Needles and Pins. I’m going be candid here: One of the characters really didn’t—”
“Listen, Nella…” Vera rubbed her temples and exhaled. “I think Colin will be coming into the office soon, maybe next week. How about you just share your thoughts with both of us then? That way we can take his response to your critique into account when we prepare our offer for Needles and Pins.”
Nella wasn’t sure what made her queasier, the fact that she’d have to speak with Colin in person about her feelings without flying them by Vera first, or the fact that Vera already seemed so set on buying this book. “Um… okay. I just wonder if maybe you and I should talk about it, um, first—just maybe the—um—weaknesses, or…”
“Yeah, yeah, we’ll just tell Colin in person,” Vera said, now fully closing her eyes. “It’s just, I can’t focus now with… with this.” She gestured at the wall through which the fiery riff of “Edge of Seventeen” was blaring.
“Good god, this place sometimes,” Vera continued. “Is it me, or are they putting something weird in our water?”
* * *
Vera was right. There was something in the water at Wagner. But Vera had had a hand in that. She and pretty much all of the higher-ups at Wagner who earned livable incomes—they were all messing with the water, making it difficult and sometimes impossible for smaller fish like Nella to survive. Lurking beneath many of the friendly seeming meetings was an environment of pettiness and power plays; cold shoulders and closed-door conversations.
The most fascinating part was that they all thought everyone else was crazy. At least, that’s what Yang, the girl who’d been assisting Maisy when Nella had first started at Wagner, had intimated to her. Yang had taken on the noble task of not only training her on editorial procedures, but also giving her the scoop about all of her new coworkers—whom to watch out for at holiday parties, whom to avoid in the elevator, whom to get coffee with. All the important intel.
Yang had been an incredibly helpful guide, and as a first-generation Chinese American, she’d also been the only other POC Nella had ever gotten to work with at Wagner. Together, they made cracks about how hard it must be for everyone to tell them apart and rolled their eyes at the higher-ups constantly walking outsiders through their side of the office—purposely, they half-joked, to showcase the company’s diversity.
It all came to an end six months later, when Yang quit to go get her PhD. Three days after Yang’s last day at Wagner, another shooting of yet another unarmed Black man—this time, an elderly one—went viral. He had been pulled over by a white police officer hours before sunrise in rural North Carolina. Minutes later, he was dead, and hours later, the world was on fire. Numerous reports said he’d been reaching to turn up his hearing aid. One day after Nella watched Jesse Watson’s livid response to the shooting blow up on Twitter, Richard Wagner sent out a company-wide email announcing an upcoming series of Diversity Town Halls.
Very rarely did the editor in chief of Wagner Books send emails to his employees; he either popped into your office unexpectedly or sent you a note handwritten in impeccable cursive. The very existence of this email was thrilling, and its contents were so promising that Nella had printed out the email an
d thumbtacked it up in her cube. The news of the shooting had outraged the country and it had particularly outraged her, too—not only because the man had been hard of hearing and in his seventies, but also because he’d borne a subtle resemblance to a grandfather she’d never met. It was comforting to know, then, that all Wagner employees had received a directive to start talking to each other about the major elephant in the room.
But there was just one problem: No one really knew what the elephant was. Or where the elephant was. Or if there was even an elephant at all. The definition of “diversity at Wagner” managed to mystify all of Nella’s colleagues, and Natalie from HR and the British moderator she’d brought in as a “neutral party” spent the first hour of the first town hall trying to pinpoint what they were really supposed to be talking about. “Do we mean diverse employees or diverse books?” asked Alexander, one of Wagner’s most literal editors. “Or do we mean diverse authors?” “Didn’t we publish this book by that Black writer just last year?” others asked. And so on.
Their confusion was understandable enough, and Nella did her best to rein everyone back in toward the task at hand with her own small “objective” observations. But she couldn’t bring herself to say that maybe higher-level employees shouldn’t primarily hire people with Ivy League degrees or personal connections, because her own résumé had been boosted by an editor friend of one of her professors at the University of Virginia. And the zinger she really wanted to deliver—Yes, we just published “that Black writer” last year, but that writer, along with the last six Black people we’ve published here at Wagner, was not a Black American, he was from an African country, and while that’s definitely an example of diversity, it’s also really not—wouldn’t work, either. It would only unleash a whole new slew of gradations that Nella didn’t even feel comfortable grappling with on her own yet, let alone with her white employers.
The Other Black Girl: A Novel Page 3