Nella scoffed. “Well, I don’t want it.”
“But you do. I know you, Nella.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I do. I get it.”
Nella knew those three words and that earnest stare that Hazel was giving her were all simply fluff. A ploy. But when she tried to wrestle away this lilt of Black-girl solidarity, she felt a pounding in the front of her brain, like she was trying to drive a car up a brick wall, ramming into this same wall over and over and over again.
“You think you’re above what I do. But I see that drive you have,” Hazel continued, adamant. “Everything I did, I did because I have that drive, too. I always have. Look at yourself, Nella. You know it’s true.”
Nella refused to regard herself in the mirror. “We’re not the same,” she said, glaring at Hazel. “I have convictions. I speak out. I don’t ostracize other Black people. You’re just an—” Nella stopped herself, not because she wasn’t comfortable saying it to the girl’s face, but because that ramming feeling had returned—except this time, the car that had been repeatedly backing up and moving forward had transformed into a tractor trailer. It hurt so much that everything in her line of vision turned a bright, blinding shade of red.
“Just a what?” Hazel asked, a grin in her voice. “An ‘Uncle Tom’?”
Nella put a hand to her head, trying desperately to collect her thoughts. It didn’t work. “Your words. Not mine,” she said hazily.
“Sometimes we have to be in order to get what we want. Shit. Look.” She gestured abstractedly at the white tiled wall that Nella was now using to keep herself upright, but it was clear that she was also casting a hand at all of the time that had passed Nella by without so much as a promotion. All this time without her own title to edit. All this time, just to be surpassed by a cooler, shinier, and seemingly Blacker version in a matter of months.
“You’ve been working so hard for so long,” Hazel continued. “Don’t you want to just lean in? Make it easier?” She started rummaging in the black purse slung over her shoulder.
“I’m not…” The pain in Nella’s head was getting worse now; she could hear every thump of every artery pumping blood into her brain, louder than a bass drum. But even though she could feel the blood moving, pulsing around in her veins, something felt wrong. Standing upright felt wrong. She suddenly became very aware of how far away the ground felt—too far away, really, for her to feel comfortable collapsing on it. “I… I can’t…”
Hazel extended her hand. It seemed to take ages for it to land on Nella’s shoulder, but when it finally did it felt as though it were burning through to her marrow. “You can. Stop fighting the tide, Nella. Once you stop fighting—once you let this wave wash over you—you’ll see. It’ll wash over you so quickly, you won’t even feel it. You won’t feel the pain, the white supremacy. You’ll read those articles, watch the police footage, then go to work the next morning without feeling like another part of you has died. That heavy anvil of genetic trauma that’s been strapped to your ankle for all these years… gone. You’ll swim to the top and be free. You’ll be you. This is Black Girl Magic in its purest form.
“Just tell me yes. That’s all you have to do.”
Gasping for air, Nella mouthed a silent no.
“Don’t you want to be successful, too, Nella? Don’t you want to swim free?”
Yes, a voice inside of her said. But this woman’s voice sounded too tiny, too muffled, to be Angela’s. When was the last time she’d heard Angela’s voice, anyway?
“I…”
“Just a yes. That’s all I need. Just a yes, and it’ll stop. I promise.”
“Yes,” Nella finally whispered. “Yes.”
She felt weary to the bone, as though someone had picked her up and wrung her out from bottom to top. Even still, she felt better the moment the air finished traveling through her two top front teeth.
“Good.” Hazel cocked her head at Nella. “Now, don’t you feel so much better?”
Nella surrendered a small nod. She felt vulnerable, like she’d just gotten her first Pap smear and didn’t know how invasive it would feel.
“Wait,” said Nella, just now playing back the words that Hazel had said a minute earlier. “What did you mean before by ‘You’ve been using this stuff since Curl Central’?”
“I gave you that jar of Smooth’d Out at the YBL reading a month ago, and you’ve been using it. I mean… isn’t that why you apologized to Colin Franklin? You’ve already been converted.”
A slow-moving wooziness began to creep in. Nella tried to steady herself by placing a hand on the sink, straining to recall when she’d used Smooth’d Out on her own. Then she remembered that pea-sized bit she’d applied here in Wagner’s ladies’ room, and how much she hadn’t liked it. She’d much preferred the way Brown Buttah had melted into her roots. Ironically, she’d found Smooth’d Out a bit too clumpy; it had left specks of white in her hairline that she couldn’t massage out no matter how much she tried. Brown Buttah smelled better, too: Subtle. Less sharp, less chemical.
These thoughts must have been dancing across Nella’s face. Because a victorious grin was settling across Hazel’s.
“Wait. You haven’t been using it, have you?” She laughed. “Whoo-hoo-hoo! The fight is in Nella Rogers, after all. How thrilling.”
“I… no. I’m still—”
“Face it, Nell. You gave up on your convictions a long time ago,” Hazel whispered. She pointed at Nella’s reflection in the mirror. “Look at yourself, and think about it. Have you really been yourself over the last couple of months?”
This time, Nella did venture to see what was staring back at her in the mirror. What she saw was someone who hadn’t checked Facebook in weeks—a feat that wasn’t too unusual. But she also saw a girl who couldn’t remember the last time she’d shared a link on Twitter about any Black issues. It’d been weeks. Months, maybe. She saw a girl who’d declined her boyfriend’s proposal to go see a documentary about wrongful incarceration at BAM, citing too much work as an excuse.
She moved away from the wall, approaching the sink once more. A closer look at herself revealed someone who barely saw her best friend anymore, and the few times she did, they talked about her job—not about the video of the Puerto Rican teenager who’d been shot in the face eight times by a shop owner who’d wrongfully accused him of stealing; not about that Fortune 500 CEO who’d been outed just the week before after it was revealed he’d worn blackface to a party while Obama had still been in office. Just her job.
But perhaps the most telling thing she saw—the nail in her coffin of irresponsible Blackness—was a girl who hadn’t sent Kendra Rae Phillips one iota of proof that Hazel and Richard Wagner were up to foul play, even though she had all of the evidence at her fingertips. Even though, she suspected, she held the key to freeing Kendra Rae from hiding.
Nella looked over at Hazel. She was still staring at her expectantly through slitted eyes, as though she were seeing all of the things Nella was seeing.
“I don’t know,” Nella whimpered, wiping away a tear.
At this, Hazel knitted her eyebrows together in pity. Her mien possessed not just a sadness, but a knowledge that she could rescue Nella from the hole she’d found herself in, if only she were allowed to. Shivering, Nella held her gaze right back. She should have been thinking about herself—What was she going to do? Who was she going to be?—but instead, she was thinking about the years Hazel had spent doing what she’d been doing. Had Hazel chosen to convert herself, or had she been manipulated the way that she’d manipulated Nella?
She didn’t remember asking this out loud, but she must have, because Hazel was nodding confidently. “I was an Involuntary, too. Why do you think they pulled me out of Boston and assigned me to you, Nell? We’re alike, I said. I know you. You wanted to get along to get along, just like I did. Even when I publicly annihilated you, you didn’t crack. They told me you were tough and smart, and I saw that. I see it now, too. You unde
rstand where I’m coming from. You hear me. I can tell.”
It was difficult to decide whether the confidence that had always emanated off Hazel was manufactured, something that the Smooth’d Out had instilled within her. Or if it was a push she’d always had within, from the day she’d first learned that it would not be enough for her to simply go to college, get good grades, and get the interview. That it wouldn’t be enough to simply show up to work; to simply wear the right clothes. You had to wear the right mentality. You had to live the mentality. Be everyone’s best friend. Be sassy. Be confident, but also be deferential. Be spiritual, but also be down-to-earth. Be woke, but still keep some of that sleep in your eyes, too.
“Breathe in, Nell,” Hazel cooed. “Breathe in.”
Nella nodded. She hadn’t taken a breath in some time.
“Good, good. Now take this. It’ll be helpful for when you start at a new publishing house.”
“But, why do I have to leave?” Nella heard herself whimper.
Hazel shrugged. “Because there can only be one of us per office. One per office guarantees maximum results, obviously.” She pulled at one of her loose locs. “Now, where was I? Oh, yes. I also recommend using these greases for a week or two before your first day. It’ll take a little bit of time to really settle in. Especially since you haven’t been using it,” she added.
Nella must have hummed some tune of assent, because Hazel had clapped her hands once and was now bowing her head, Amy-style. Unrestrained satisfaction danced across her face. “It won’t be an easy transition… although it won’t be as bad as it could be, either. But we should really get back to the meeting.” Hazel smiled, a throwback to the Hazel she was when they’d first met. “We’ll talk more after. Does that sound good? Maybe we can even ask Jesse to give you some pointers, too.”
Jesse.
I’ve already won this one, Hazel had all but said just minutes earlier, at the table. And there’s nothing you can do about it. Nella had thought it meant what she’d already suspected: that there was no way the social media mogul would pick any other editor over Hazel. His shiny scalp, his sweet new demeanor. He was gone.
But he’d seemed happier. He’d even seemed… freer.
When was the last time Nella had felt free? Really, truly, wholly free? She couldn’t remember. Was it when she chopped off all her relaxed hair? When she moved to Brooklyn? When she graduated from college and realized she never had to return to the South again?
No. It was none of these times.
As Nella regarded herself in the mirror one last time, she realized—with great despair—that the answer was never.
Epilogue
January 2019
Scope Magazine
Portland, Oregon
What does this mean for the rest of us? For those of us who are fighting fair, showing up first, and clocking out last? For those of us who are doing the heavy lifting, providing domestic and/or emotional labor, armed with nothing but our dignity?
It means, my sisters, we must stay focused. We must come together. And we must continue to resist.
I hit Save and leaned back in my chair. It looked good—not just the last paragraph, but all of it. I’d scraped out my soul and grafted it to every sentence of this article over the last few days. Finally, it felt ready for fresh eyes.
I opened a new email, eyeing first the clock, then the dark patch of glass above Gwen’s door. I still had time to send this OBG piece to her and take a short reading break before researching my next article. Or, I imagined, my fingers flying across the keyboard, Gwen will prioritize this piece and reassign that basic coffee bean article to some other newbie. As long as Gwen came in during the next hour, I’d have edits by four, we’d do another round or two of revisions by six, Ralph in legal would review my evidence, and once we got the okay, it’d be online by five a.m. the next morning—just in time for East Coast commuters in need of reading material to gobble it down on their way to work.
I grinned as I attached the file to the email in a couple of smooth clicks. Black Twitter would go crazy when this got out. The NAACP would probably hold a press conference; CNN, a primetime special. Jesse Watson would have a field day; this was probably enough to pull him out of his hiatus. And every workplace in America would go into crisis mode. For a while, maybe years, Black people wouldn’t know which Black people to trust. It would be hard. But things would right themselves out in time. And in the meantime, maybe my career would really right itself. No more newbie shit, no more having to prove myself. After this article went viral, I’d be a household name, go on all sorts of television shows and podcasts, and—
A household name. Shit.
My cursor lingered over the Send button, a slow, steady sense of impending world annihilation rolling into my wrist. Once I hit Send, there would be no turning back. It would all be out there, whether Gwen decided to publish it or not: Screenshots of conversations; a log of Nella sightings. Photos, even—a selfie I’d posted to my Instagram story just seconds before Eva hugged me goodbye at Pepper’s, cropped to fit next to the photo I’d taken of her at Rise & Grind. A point-by-point account of how I’d been able to slip away from the entire OBG mess without either side, Lynn or Hazel, knowing where I’d gone. The piece was thoroughly seasoned with undeniable evidence that was supposed to stay hidden because, as Lynn often reminded us, “Premature sharing is risky. We need to have absolute, definite proof. Otherwise they’ll think we’re delusional.”
Lynn had had a point. But she wasn’t why I didn’t immediately hit Send. Kendra Rae was. She was the one who’d talked one of them into letting me go. If you let us be, then we let you be, she’d promised. Everything stays quiet. I owed it to her to keep my mouth shut and wait for further instruction.
But that had been three months ago. Where was she?
I closed my eyes. A lot could happen in three months. For Kendra Rae, a lot had happened in less time than that. When I last saw her, she seemed ready to pull away from Lynn’s mission. “It’s too late to stop Diana,” she’d said, after our Uber driver had asked me which airline he should be looking for. “She’s been compromised for far too long, and I just don’t see the Resistance getting ahead of this anymore. Pandora’s box done been busted wide open.”
“We’ll show the world what’s flown out of it, then,” I said. “You were lying to the OBGs about keeping quiet. Weren’t you?”
“No,” Kendra Rae had said. “Well… not really. We do need to keep quiet for a little while. Let this unfold. We’ll keep an eye on the Hazels of the country, watch them rise to the top of their fields. Once that’s happened… we’ll cut these OBGs off from their supply.”
It sounded too obvious. Too easy. “Really? What does Lynn think?”
“Lynn isn’t a part of this plan,” Kendra Rae said firmly. “She could have done more sooner to prevent Nella from going under, but she didn’t.”
I wasn’t sure I agreed with that. I’d shifted uncomfortably in my seat as we entered the exit that would take us to Departures, an ascending plane visible through the dirty glass window. “Cut them off how, if Diana’s compromised? And there’s no way Richard Wagner is going to—”
“I know someone else. Just trust me.”
“But Lynn…”
Lynn was going to leave you there, she’d said, and speaking candidly, I wouldn’t have blamed her. What you did was stupid.
My eyes popped open and found the email. I tapped my finger lightly on the mouse. Clicking Send could blow it all open. It could get us some real detectives so that we wouldn’t have to keep playing Carmen Sandiego. This could close the book on everything.
Or it could open a new chapter—one involving me. This article could spoil not just whatever Kendra Rae was supposedly planning, but my fresh start, too. Was I really going to jeopardize my new job, my new life, for something that wasn’t 100 percent guaranteed to work? Was I really going to take orders from someone who didn’t have my best interests at heart, again?
&nb
sp; My weight shifted into my index finger—by my own doing or by divine intervention, I didn’t know. But it didn’t matter.
The message was out.
And it felt good. Damn good. Speeding-down-an-empty-highway-blasting-TLC-with-my-windows-down good.
I’d just opened a search browser and typed in Hazel’s name to confirm that she was still in New York and still working at Wagner when I heard the familiar ping of an email notification: Delivery Status Notification Failure.
“What?” I murmured, rechecking the email address. I’d responded to an enthusiastic note that Gwen had sent in response to my pitch just a few days earlier: Whoa! Wild. Be ready to provide a few more materials for cross-reference, but I 100000.00% believe this happened to you. (#BelieveBlackWomen!) Can’t wait to see what you do with it. xo.
I lifted my chin once more. Gwen’s light was still off. She hadn’t slipped in soundlessly, the way she sometimes did when she wasn’t ready to speak to anybody yet. I was considering other reasons she might have been held up when Reagan, a sprightly woman with dermal piercings in her right cheek, cruised by. Looking from me to Gwen’s office, she yelped, delighted, “You haven’t heard! Have you?”
When Gwen had taken me around to meet everyone a few months earlier, Reagan had given me a vise-grip hug and squealed, “Finally! It’s about time we changed our image.” She seemed even more thrilled now than she had then.
“Heard what?” I asked, chewing on the inside of my cheek.
“River told me this morning that Gwen got a crazy opportunity from one of those brainy magazines to study the effect of mass food hysteria upon the American public,” Reagan explained haughtily, as though she herself had been presented the opportunity. “You saw the article about that murder in Alabama over a fried chicken sandwich, right?”
A flare of heat wound up my lower back and wrapped around my neck. “What? When?”
“Hard to say; I get all the sandwich casualties mixed up. I think the Alabama one happened in—”
The Other Black Girl: A Novel Page 35