Bitch Is the New Black

by Helena Andrews

  How awesome would it’ve been if I replied, “You’re welcome,” and then high-kicked my way out the front door? Too bad I opened that Platinum Student MasterCard senior year.

  Funny, it was a credit card that eventually swiped Jeanne’s job.

  The boss lady decided that working from home wasn’t working for her anymore and wasted no time renting a one-bedroom apartment on Madison Avenue near the Met. The assistants set up shop in what was formerly known as the living room, and She worked out of the bedroom. The day we moved on up, She instructed via “the list” how to orchestrate the placement of furniture, tea bags, dishes, files, Jo Malone candles, topiaries, and books. Turning on the heat somehow got left off. It was past January. We stuffed our office chairs with puffy coats and ham-handed at our keyboards with gloves on for hours before realizing how ridiculous we looked. Adrienne sent me an e-mail about unacceptable working conditions, and we decided to grab breakfast across the street at E.A.T.

  E.A.T. is a fancy acronym for stupidly expensive deli. A plate of scrambled eggs and bacon was like $15. She ate there once in a while but made it a point to complain about the high price of breakfast. When we went, Whoopi Goldberg was waiting two people in front of us on line. Made me think of that line in The Color Purple—“This side last a lil’ while, Ms. Sophia. Heaven last always.” Jeanne said we should use our corporate credit cards for breakfast since (a) we were obviously suffering in unacceptable working conditions, and (b) that basically made this a business expense. Made sense to me. Pass the jelly.

  She lost her shit when she got our bills. We’d been typing all morning with mittens on, which is to say really, really carefully. Wouldn’t anybody with a beating heart have let it slide? It’s not like we bought something that would accrue in value. It was breakfast, for grape jelly’s sakes.

  The next week Jeanne got called into the bedroom office via the phone intercom: “I need you back here. Thanks.” We exchanged a brief glance as she got up to walk through the kitchen and into whatever shit storm She had in store. At two years, she was the veteran of the bunch. None of us were positive this was about eating at E.A.T., but we’d learned never to hope. Jeanne came back into the living room office with a smile so big I thought maybe she’d gotten promoted to like “head assistant” or something.

  “She fired me.”

  “Whaaaa?”

  “Yep.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Finally.”

  If I had been a better twenty-two-year-old, I would have left with her in some valiant display of loyalty. Instead, I watched her go and prayed I wouldn’t be next. Because for all our collective bitching, I still wanted this maniac to think me worthy of another “Great Job!” Really, I just wanted her to look me in the fucking eye. So even after She made me write her a check for $15, I managed to smile through reading this:

  “Received your check for your AmEx charge. Please leave $15.00 cash in my box instead (I will rip up the check). As I explained to you before, if you make any additional personal purchases on the corporate card, you will no longer be able to continue working here. If you are still unclear about this for some reason, you should read page 34 of the office policy that was given to you on Friday.”

  There was something missing at the bottom. I was in a no-thanks land.

  Without Jeanne there to complain to, to commiserate with, it was all I could do to last through lunch. Whatever happened after was anyone’s guess. I stopped trying—because despite all my fuckups, I had been trying. Now if my update was longer than four bullet points, I was having a good day. Messages weren’t purposely forgotten, but they weren’t purposefully written down either. Up until then, I’d made it one of my duties to shout “Hello” as loudly as possible when She walked through the door in order to (1) point out how crappy She was at saying it and (2) maintain my own human decency like how Tom Hanks paints a bloody face on a volleyball in Cast Away. Now whenever She came in, I commenced a staring match between me and my computer screen. It made my eyes hurt, and it was worth it.

  In the end, in the Clue game of my life, it was the HP Inkjet, in the office, with a forgotten résumé, that did me in.

  I’d been working double duty as a production assistant on her television show (I made the mistake of looking for my name in the credits once) and as her unofficial in-house scribe. Whenever someone e-mailed her, asking her expert advice, I was the one who wrote back. It was the only worthy experience of my day, and I stretched a hundred-word reply on the correct pronunciation of “chaise” to take at least two hours. That’s around the time I realized what I wanted to do and started trolling Monster.com for gigs that had “write” in the title. What got me wasn’t the faxing out of my résumé during work hours. Who doesn’t do that? What got me was the copy of my résumé left in the machine overnight.

  Again with the phone intercom. “Helena, can you come back here?” Maybe she wanted to congratulate me for looking for another job. I’d made it perfectly clear that I had an English degree that I planned on using. She even said that this would be a great opportunity for that, since, you know, She was so “well-connected.” In fact, her best friend was the editor of a magazine. I overheard them once talking on the phone, talking about doing their own laundry at a coin-operated ’mat, and figured I was golden. Until I wasn’t. I guess She didn’t think I would ever actually try to make it. That filling my heart with hate every day would be fulfilling.

  She was barefoot once again. I took a seat on the chair facing her without being offered and crossed my legs dramatically, all Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct, trying my hardest to act like I was interrogating her (it works for interviews).

  “I was looking in the fax machine last night and found this,” She said with such dinner-theater emphasis on the word this that I almost let out a gasp when she flipped over the wayward copy of my résumé lying facedown on the coffee table. Is She for real? My résumé? I thought She’d printed out all the orange-alert e-mails I’d sent to Adrienne and Gina about how “fucking psycho” She was.

  “Okaaaaay.” To keep my face looking serious, I stared at the space between her eyebrows. “You do know that I want to write, right?” Ending a declarative sentence with the mocking inflection of a question. Perfect. I was handling this like a Law and Order extra.

  “This is unacceptable, Helena. You won’t be able to continue working for us. We’re going to have to ask you to leave.” It was the first time She acknowledged her many personalities. And for the first time in six months, I felt like she might have actually gotten a glimpse of me.

  “That’s fine,” I replied, faster than I thought professional, but I couldn’t help it. I’se free nah! “Do I have to stay all day, or can I leave now?” She looked away. Her wild curls wilted.

  Still pinching my deserted résumé, She mumbled something about finishing up anything outstanding on my list. My eyes were still rolling when I sat back down at my desk, ready to write my final update. It only took ten minutes and two spell checks to come up with this:

  Dear She,

  I believe that all working relationships should end with an evaluation. I would like to say that I enjoyed my experience here, but sadly I cannot. Your complete lack of managerial skills and overall menacing demeanor are key factors in my displeasure here at your company.

  To send blatantly rude e-mails and end them with a mocking “thanks” is not only rather childish, but totally unbefitting of a senior manager. On a personal note, to enter a room and offer a rather weak and mumbled “hello” and to communicate entirely by e-mail in a rather small office are behaviors indicative of one who does not value sociable relationships with his/ her employees, which is clearly distinctive of this office and totally antithetical to a congenial work environment.

  Lastly, to treat your employees with not only a nonchalant manner, but actual disdain, is offensive and the foremost reason this office has an alarmingly high employee turnover rate. I say these things because I believe you should cultiva
te the qualities that are befitting of a true leader in order to have a successful business and life.

  I am pleased to be moving forward to a position where my talents are not only properly utilized but appreciated. I sincerely hope that you find the necessary characteristics to enjoy normal business relations with your employees and colleagues, who for the most part are severely dissatisfied with your simply mean behavior.

  I hope this helps,

  Helena Andrews

  Bad. Ass. The guts to read it aloud to her face would have been nice, but I settled for the grammar skills. In reality I didn’t have another job lined up, but there was no reason for her to know that. The letter was my first grown-up resignation. Once the send button was fired, including a few names in the BCC field, I made a beeline for the front door and never looked back—that is, until Jeanne decided to call me two years later with news.

  The trip down trauma lane didn’t take long at all. I’d snapped out of it by the time I got to the magazine section, scanning the titles for Elle Décor. I could’ve just skipped through the pages right then and there and gotten it over with, all dirty like. But I didn’t want randos around when I saw whatever it was Jeanne wanted me to see. This was a private moment. I bought my copy and ran to a storefront across the street.

  Page 149, please tell me something good, or at the very least something so depraved it makes me smile. And there She was. Her hand was on her hip, and the other was resting “naturally” against the fireplace in her living room. Gone was the desk with my water-glass stain. She had on a heavily bejeweled tank dress, probably from Bendel’s. Her biceps were as muscular as I remembered. I could even tell without my glasses that her fingernails had been manicured—French—and She was wearing that nude lip gloss. She looked like your mom’s cool younger sister visiting from the big city for the weekend. Why couldn’t things have worked out between us? I like the big city. I like weekends.

  But one of these things was not like the other. Something was…missing. Oh, fuck! Where her hair should’ve been, there was…nothing. Not a hat or hijab. She was bald as the day she was born, if, in fact, she had been.

  I stared at that image for the devil knows how long, wishing it wasn’t true and glad that it was. I closed the magazine and carefully slipped it back into my purse. There was a brief moment of silence before I called everyone who knew what She’d put me through, feeling a twinge of shame each time I phoned another friend but forcing it down. “One word. Four syllables. Alopecia.” The more times I said it, the more sadistic I started to sound, sort of like She did when the couch pillows weren’t karate-chopped just so. Her hair was gone, sure, but maybe it was my moral fiber that was receding. Maybe that’s what Jeanne wanted me to see.

  So in the end end, the for-real end, the no-more-sequels end—it was the hair that got me.

  Seven

  CHASING MICHELLE

  There’s something terribly frightening about being the only black person at a political newspaper when there’s a black guy running for president. Or should I say freeing? Whatever F word you choose, I was most likely fucked.

  It was like the Christmas story on steroids: a random act of birth had suddenly bestowed upon me a type of divine wisdom. Running low on Frankincense and myrrh, melanin would have to do. “You should totally be out on the trail right now,” a colleague would say.

  “Why, because I’m black?”

  “Well, yeah.”

  “I’ll take it.”

  I finally felt special—or maybe I didn’t, finally. Either way, I knew covering Hillary’s pantsuits wouldn’t get me on someone’s masthead. So when my bosses at Politico needed someone to go down south to get the “black perspective” on then-Sen. Barack Obama’s possible primary win, I ditched the “who gives a fuck” act and started packing.

  This was big shit. At last I’d see some return on my grad-school investment. Once I got to the Times, the previous year I’d spent mastering journalism at Northwestern felt like a setup to this highly sophisticated field study of the overeducated black female in the bull pen. I lived and died by the phone. Some days I got over myself by timing how fast I could pass out newspapers, shuffle through faxes, and sort bins of mail. The scene that follows is real. The characters therein are not actors, but actual people:

  The main phone line at the news desk rings. The caller ID shows a three-digit number. The assistant knows it’s in-house but answers the phone with the standard company greeting, anyway. She’s a consummate professional. Whatever that means.

  NEWS ASSISTANT: Times?! [it’s both invitation and edict]

  A1 REPORTER: HelenaBritanyaPolly?

  ASSISTANT [all too used to the tripled moniker]: Helena. What can I do you for?

  REPORTER [serious tone]: I seem to have found myself in italics.

  ASSISTANT [bemused]: Whaaaaa?

  REPORTER: Suddenly everything I type is in italics, and I can’t get out.

  ASSISTANT [still trying to maintain professional decorum]: Well, how did you get in?

  REPORTER: No idea.

  ASSISTANT [sighs, thinking about the amount she owes in loans]: Control. I.

  What I needed to control was my work rage—a swirling typhoon that sucked whatever front-page hopes I had down to my gut, threatening to explode out the business end. The “in case of idiocy” affirmation went like this: (deep inhale) (slow exhale) ramen noodles, plastic forks, Ivy League, master’s degree, NYT, ramen noodles, plastic forks…Mentally fast-forwarding through all the boring stuff in order to one day get to the good parts helped some. The speech I’d give at a prestigious podium would undoubtedly mention Frances. Once that got old, I’d already gotten a few stories in the paper—even wrote five hundred words on Muslim women being cool with the whole hijab thing for the A section. Eventually, five stories in fourteen months would forever spoil me for the title of assistant and earn me a job at the Politico covering political news (yuck) in Virginia (yuck yuck).

  Fine, the joke was on me—“Wait, I thought you wanted to do arts and culture stuff? Do you even know where the Capitol is, dude?”—but I planned to make the most of it. During one of his cigarette breaks, Mr. Leary, a reporter from the Times who actually knew my name, gave me some advice: “Kid, you always gotta look two jobs ahead.” I loved it when he called me kid. It was so…authentic. He’d given me a pocket-sized can of pepper spray after I’d been mugged for the second time walking home from the bureau late at night. He made me promise only to whip it out if I seriously planned on using it; otherwise the suspect in question could always use it against me. He also said it didn’t work on “Latinos,” but I forgave him that. Two jobs from now, I’d parlay covering history into covering Hollywood, where I wouldn’t need no stinking pepper spray.

  In short, screwing this Barack thing up would mean a lifetime (e.g., another year) of watching grainy reruns of the un-funny version of Saved by the Bell that is the legislative branch of the U.S. government, with Harry Reid as the cantankerous but lovable Mr. Belding. If you can picture Mr. Belding better than you can majority leader Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.), then like me, you should never be in possession of a congressional press pass.

  But there was one snag on my red carpet to the Pulitzers. It was becoming increasingly impossible to disguise my violent allergic reaction to the phrases “on the Hill,” “in session,” “staffer profile,” “pushing the envelope,” and “pulling back the curtain.” “I hate everyone” became my new “Good morning.” How could I convince the bosses I avoided at Chipotle that I could be a chip off the old block?

  There was a new features editor. Over coffee, I convinced him that someone needed to go to South Carolina, and that that someone could only be me. I never actually pulled the race card per se, but I’d never cut it in two with a pair of scissors in front of unsuspecting diners either. We got into logistics after I got the official go-ahead—like where I was going to stay, how I was going to get around Columbia, and who the hell I was going to talk to. They wanted “reax
” from regular folks, who couldn’t be hard to find.

  During the Friday plane ride, my idle thoughts got some exercise jumping ahead to Monday morning in the office, when the story would be front page, be on Drudge, and then get bandied between boxes of blowhard foursquare on cable. I do this a lot—sneak into advanced screenings of my life. But the trailers for Helena Does South Carolina were totally misleading. Instead of an intellectual thriller, this thing would turn out to be a romantic tragedy.

  It started with an old man loitering in a “garage.”

  The plan was simple—grab a handful of the pulsating masses of black people brimming on southern streets and get them to say something profound. Also, I can’t drive—as in don’t know how. Frommer’s was moderately helpful in finding me a “car service” to get me to my hotel. At the airport, a balding white guy in a leather bomber jacket was flashing a sign that read “Andrews.” We were surprised to see each other. He sounded black on the phone, and I could tell he assumed I wasn’t.

  “Whatchu heah foh,” he asked, lifting my carry-on into the back of his “cab”—a black Lincoln-like town car with a laptop where the meter should have been. Littered with yellowing newspapers and what I assumed were conspiracy theorist manifestos, the entire front seat looked as if it belonged to either someone just too busy to make it to the recycling center or a deranged psycho killer.