“He was gone from Vera’s office for a while, right?” Hazel asked. “Like, twenty minutes? Such a long time.”
“I guess that makes two of us who were counting,” Nella murmured. “God, I’m so mortified.”
Hazel shrugged her shoulders. “I felt the chill from my chair the moment he opened her office door. I’m so sorry, girl. From what I heard—”
“Wait.” Nella paused. “So you did hear what happened?”
Hazel shook her head. “Bits and pieces, but not all of it. I was in my own world, handling some stuff for Maisy. But the more important thing here—judging by what I did happen to hear—is you did everything right. Don’t let anybody tell you otherwise.”
Before Nella could bask in these words a moment too long, Vera’s door swung open again. “Nella, are you logged on?”
“I—”
“I sent you something that needed to be addressed immediately half an hour ago, and resent it again just now. Could you please take care of that? Now? Thanks.”
Nella wheeled back over to her own desk as quickly as she could, but her shoelace betrayed her at exactly the same moment, inserting itself into one of the wheels and causing it to stick. The chair was moving at a painful crawl, and Vera was watching, one eyebrow arched. But she didn’t say anything. She simply exhaled and sauntered back into her office, slamming her door louder than she did before.
* * *
The rest of the day passed exactly this way: excruciatingly, soaked with subtext that neither editor nor assistant had the resolve to acknowledge. The “urgent matter” Vera had asked Nella to handle was asking the managing editor if there was still time to include an author’s middle initial in the jacket’s flap copy before the book went to print. The managing editor’s office was a mere ten-second walk away from Vera’s desk.
This, Nella could handle. But for whatever reason, despite her best efforts, every other small thing she did went horribly wrong in some fashion: She forgot to cc the agent on an email to an author; she’d accidentally cut off the important part of a scanned document for Vera.
Nothing she did was right. Or, at least, it didn’t feel right. Was it all in her head—Vera’s frustrations, these tensions, these Colin Franklin demons? Occasionally, she paused her apologizing to wonder if she was simply projecting her own shame. But then Vera would conclude an exchange with all good, her eyes even frostier than her tone, and Nella thought to herself that yes, something had definitely shifted between them.
Meanwhile, inversely, Nella’s relationship with Hazel was beginning to flourish, as though they were two soldiers in the trenches. Hazel worked to keep Nella afloat by distracting her with non-Wagner related things. When Nella responded to one of Vera’s complaints with “Did I do that?! I’m sorry,” Hazel swiftly emailed Nella a Steve Urkel GIF. After lunch, she brought Nella a triple-fudge walnut cookie from the bakery across the street, which happened to be Nella’s favorite. And a few hours later, around three p.m., she sent Nella a link to Curl Central, the “dope hair café” she’d told her about in the elevator.
Curl Central’s home page claimed the store doubled as “an exhaustive mecca for all Black hair matters”—and it wasn’t lying. Curl Central really did cover it all. Not only could you buy scarves there, you could take workshops that taught you how to wrap them in the most intricate of styles. There was even a hair therapist—“Miss Iesha B.”—who, if you went between the hours of five and seven on Thursday evenings, would sit down with you for half an hour and discuss what was ailing your locs. For those who weren’t fortunate enough to live in New York City, or preferred a more solitary hairapy experience, Miss Iesha B. had written a short book that was available online for $9.99.
Whoever owned this store had taken great care to provide smell and texture descriptions of all their hair products, and had found Black models with every kind of curl pattern to showcase the effectiveness of each. It all fascinated Nella, how much time and effort had clearly been put into this website, so she navigated to Curl Central’s About Us page, curious. The café had been founded and owned by Juanita Morejón, an attractive, curvy woman who possessed 3C curls, a clear fondness for crop tops, and an abundance of love for the time she spent growing up in the Dominican Republic with her baby brother, Manny.
Nella paused. Manny? As in… Hazel’s boyfriend?
She read Juanita’s bio through to the end, then read it again. She felt uncertain, but she couldn’t put her finger on why. It wasn’t because Hazel hadn’t told her Curl Central was her boyfriend’s sister’s shop, although for someone who seemed so open to sharing everything about her personal life, it was strange that Hazel had chosen to keep that part to herself.
Only after she’d clicked away from Curl Central’s website could she identify the source of the feeling: It was the new knowledge that Hazel’s boyfriend wasn’t white. He was Dominican. Dominican Dominican. As in, he’d been born in the DR and had lived there for ten years before immigrating to New York.
Nella pondered this new piece of information about her new coworker. Even though Hazel dripped Harlem like Spike dripped Brooklyn, something about her had led Nella to presume she’d ended up with a white guy like Owen, too. Perhaps it was the mere fact that Hazel had lived and worked in Boston for a lengthy amount of time, which to Nella meant that she’d attended white-bright parties similar to ones she herself had attended back in high school and college. And now, here Hazel was at Wagner, surrounded by white people once again.
Then again… just because Hazel was capable of navigating white social spheres all the time didn’t mean she wanted to. Nella could appreciate that.
“I’m leaving, Nella.”
When she looked up, Vera was standing above her cubicle, all dressed up and ready to go home. The pinched expression she’d been wearing earlier had relaxed a bit, thankfully, but she still didn’t look altogether forgiving. It was late, after seven p.m., and Nella’s will to work had walked out the door with Hazel about an hour earlier; now, she was elbow-deep in a listicle titled “Ten Celebs You Didn’t Know Were Afro-Dominican.”
Nella clicked out of it with one hand, using the other to wave at her boss. “Is it time to go already? Wow! Have a great night!”
Vera called out a half-hearted you, too, and strode toward the elevators without another word.
Nella sighed for perhaps the thirtieth time that day—except this time, it was a sigh of real relief. Finally, she could leave and go meet Malaika for a drink. Finally, she could vent about the Shartricia explosion with her, and finally, she could relieve the tension she’d been swimming in for almost nine hours. She stood up and started to collect her things, tossing pages she didn’t need the following day and stacking the ones she would.
That was when she saw the small, white envelope sitting in the far corner of her desk. Her name was written neatly across its front, glaring up at her in all caps.
Nella didn’t move at first. She just stared down at it, confused, as something funny tugged at her earlobes. How long had it been sitting there? An hour? The entire day?
Was it a letter from Vera apologizing for today?
She brought the envelope up to her face to assess it more closely. Yes, that was Nella’s name, alright—written in purple pen.
She rolled her shoulders twice, a nervous tic she didn’t know she had. Her bag slithered off her arm onto the floor, but she didn’t move to pick it up. Instead, she squinted at the mysterious thing in her hands once more. She wasn’t sure she could face what was on the inside of the envelope. She felt even less sure she could go on not knowing.
To hell with it.
Nella ran her pinky under the seal, angling her finger to avoid any paper cuts. Inside was an index card no bigger than two-by-three inches, with three damning words typed up in, confusingly, Comic Sans font.
She counted to three, the numbers hard to hear beneath the sound of her heartbeat. Then she inhaled and cast a glance over the tops of the cubicles to see who hadn’t
gone home yet. She wasn’t sure what she expected to see—someone running away in a pointy white hood, or a sadistic trespassing tween who actually thought Comic Sans was cool?—but she did see Donald, Richard’s assistant. Donald, who was too shy to say hello unless he needed something; Donald, who was bobbing his head to music only he could hear, a pair of oversized Bose headphones connecting his round, close-shaven head to a Discman that rested by his left elbow. Donald, who still used a Discman.
There was no way Donald, whose emails were always in eight-point Times New Roman, would ever fuck with Comic Sans—not to intimidate, not even ironically. No one at Wagner would. It didn’t add up.
Nella sank back down into her chair, a sudden chill threading itself down her throat and into her stomach, like she’d swallowed an unhealthy amount of helium. Again, she examined the piece of paper that was in her left hand; then the envelope in her right. She was so lost in thought as to how she could have missed its delivery that she didn’t notice it was now almost eight p.m., and that the rushing air had shifted down from its usual loud hum to the gentle, power-saving whir of the afterhours.
Leave Wagner. Now.
She turned the notecard over, just in case she’d missed something. But that was all it said, so she read the words a second time.
And then, a third.
The fourth time she read them, a short, deep guffaw let loose from her belly. She couldn’t help it. It wasn’t one of those confident Olivia Pope laughs. By no means was she thinking, Ha, I’m better than you, you small-minded anonymous racist stranger, you—because this isn’t going to get to me; I’m going to rise from the ashes and write a think piece about this moment and you will rue the day you ever tried to fuck with me.
No. The laugh was more of a simple, resigned chortle. A Ha! Finally. I’ve always known this moment would come. She thought of Colin Franklin with his crumpled cap; of the elderly Black man shot in North Carolina for reaching for his hearing aid. Of Jesse Watson’s words about being seen as an equal to white colleagues: “You may think they’re okay with you, and they’ll make you think that they are. But they really aren’t. They never will be. Your presence only makes them fear their own absence.”
They. Yes, there had always been a they since she’d started working at Wagner, hadn’t there?
Nella exhaled as she slid the note back into the envelope, intent on throwing the entire parcel into her recycling bin and forgetting she’d ever read it. But something stopped her—the cathartic desire to share its existence with someone else, and the inherent need to survive. She’d seen all the movies, watched all the videos about bullying and racism in health class. What Nella had in her clammy fingers, she knew, was evidence.
Shani
July 10, 2018
Joe’s Barbershop
Harlem, New York
“Name.”
I coughed into my fist, my throat suddenly dry although the night was humid as ever. “Shani. Shani Edmonds.”
“Shani Edmonds. Okay. Hi, Shani.”
The guy manning the door took a break from his phone so he could look me up and down. I didn’t mind it so much. I’d done the same to him when I’d stumbled up to the entrance of Joe’s Barbershop a few seconds earlier, studying as much of him as the shadows beneath the building’s awning would allow. I got a decent look, and I’ll say this: I’d never been to Harlem, but he looked exactly as I’d always imagined Black guys in Harlem would look: Tall, dark, and cute. The kind of Black guy that reminded me of one of the many debonair, coiffed men who speckled my grandfather’s collection of army photos. Old school, 1940s, with skin the color of wet sand and a kind smile that suggested he’d much sooner call a woman “brown sugah” than “bitch.”
He didn’t call me either of these things, but he was smiling at what must have been a perplexed look on my face. “You don’t gotta be nervous,” he said, sticking his phone in his back pocket. “We ain’t nothing but family here. The second you come inside… well, you’ll see.”
“ ‘Family’?” About ten yards away, on the corner of 127th and Frederick Douglass, a car revved its engine in vain. I’d spent the forty-five-minute cab ride over here searching the Internet for information about “Lynn Johnson” and “the Resistance,” and like every other time, I came up short. Yet here I was in the middle of the night in a strange new city at a barbershop that was supposed to be closed.
I shifted to my other foot and reshouldered my tote bag, trying to posture confidence I didn’t feel. “That’s cool and all, although I’m not sure what kind of family meets at three o’clock in the morning.”
That got a laugh out of him. “You’ll see exactly what kind in a little bit. Come on in, Shani,” he said, offering a fist for me to dap. “Will.”
I smiled, eager to enter and get into what I hoped was air-conditioning. But before I could set foot inside, a voice shouted at me to hold up. “Will!” a female voice shouted. “How many times have I told you, cuz: Ask the code question first, before you let anybody inside?”
Will groaned and turned to whisper something inaudible into the blackness behind him. I craned my neck, desperate to see who he was talking to, but the lights were completely off in Joe’s.
“Shit,” the voice said, after a moment. “She’s seen your face, too. Knows your name. If she were an OBG this entire operation would be shut down. The Resistance would be made.”
He sucked a stream of air between his perfect teeth. “ ‘Made?’ ‘Code questions?’ This all just feels so—”
“How many times do I have to tell you I don’t care what it feels like to you? I’m in charge of making sure we’re not found, asshole. So just ask her the code question so we can get this shit moving.”
That put a wrench in Will’s amusement. When he finally regarded me again, the softness in his eyes had given way to irritation. “An asteroid is spiraling toward Earth, threatening to destroy all Black folk except for one,” he said flatly. “This lucky motherfucker is either Stacey Dash or Ben Carson. Who do you choose to save?”
Shit. That was the code question? I shook my head and yanked at my sweat-soaked bra strap. “How much time you got?”
“C’mon, just think. What’s your gut saying?”
“My gut’s saying you can’t ask me that question when it’s three—” I checked my watch, annoyed. I hadn’t snuck out of my aunt’s place in Queens in the middle of the night just to play secret clubhouse with a stranger; I didn’t care how cute he was. “Three ten in the morning. I’m hot. Is that you, Lynn?” I called into the space behind him. “I’m here, just like we planned. I left Boston. Why are you making me do all this?”
The voice didn’t reply. Just Will. “I wouldn’t do all that. Probably better if you just answer the question.”
“There are too many logistics for me to think about, though. I can’t just—”
“You see?!” Will cried, his voice thick with vindication as he spun around to appeal to the person behind him. But when the voice didn’t speak, he shrugged, readjusted his sock cap, and grumbled to me, “It’s mandatory.”
Sighing, I tried to weigh who was worse. It was hard to parse out an answer with that rusty car engine still sputtering on and on in the background, but after a moment, I was able to gather my thoughts.
“Ben,” I finally said. “They’re both awful—and he’s said some pretty idiotic things—but at least he can save somebody’s life. I guess.”
“Fair.” Will chuckled, once again chilled out. He turned. “Okay?”
There was a pause.
“Yeah,” the voice said. “Okay.”
My feet started to move forward before my heart had time to go back into flutter mode. “No lights until we’re upstairs,” I heard the woman say, this time louder, more relaxed. “But for now, you should be good with this.”
A flashlight flickered on a few feet ahead of me. “Lynn?” I called again, blinking at the beam of light.
“We talk upstairs. Just c’mon. Follow me.”
/>
I shivered and did as I was told, even as I realized someone—Will, probably—had put his hands on my shoulders to guide me. Everything was dark, pitch-black dark, so I let him pull me forward, straining my eyes to detect chains hanging from the ceiling, or suspicious swaths of dried meat lining the baseboards—anything that would confirm that I was foolish to be there.
But I didn’t need to see to know that. It was more than just foolish. It was crazy.
How did that saying go? Nobody looks for missing little Black girls?
“C’mon, Shani,” Will whispered, his words interrupting my worries, the warmth of his breath in my ear reminding me that I was arm in arm with an attractive man in a strange, cold barbershop at three o’clock in the morning. A kind-lipped Harlemite who smelled heavily of Dial soap and Listerine.
I let him lead me slowly behind the shadow that was lighting our way. “By the way,” he added, his tone suggesting he often took delight in saying what he was about to say, “the correct answer to my question was you don’t save either of them. Use this asteroid as a chance to start over. But pretty much no one ever gets that right, so you’re good.”
7
August 30, 2018
Nella opened her eyes, glanced over at the alarm clock, and moaned. It was only five a.m.; her eyes had closed around one.
She turned to face Owen, noticed how rapt with sleep he was, and promptly returned to her other side, envious. But the flip just made her stomach feel worse. So did remembering how many drinks she’d had the night before… and the reason she’d drunk so much in the first place.
The words “Leave Wagner” worked their way up and down Nella’s brain, stretching wider and wider and echoing louder and louder until her subconscious started playing them back to her in different genres: country, rap, polka, and then—perhaps the cruelest of all—big band. It got so bad that at about three minutes after five, she got out of bed so she could get herself as “together” as she possibly could.
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