by Kiley Reid
Alix bounced Catherine in her arms as she walked into the kitchen and around the table. On her third rotation, she glanced at her computer screen and caught sight of the word Inbox on a tab she hadn’t opened. It was followed by EmiraCTucker@ before it was cut off. Alix slid Catherine into her right arm.
It was just so easy to type his name. After Kell it came right up. It was even easier to find the attachment dated September2015; it was the first and only email they’d ever exchanged. And once it was downloaded, Alix dragged it into a folder marked Spring Blog Posts that she hadn’t used since last spring. Without watching the video, Alix quickly emailed it to herself as well—now she had it twice—and then she erased the email in the Sent folder and logged out of Emira’s email. Alix cleared her browser’s history and put in two new searches before she left the computer—winter toddler crafts and organic teething bars—and then she reached for her phone.
“Hi, Laney, are you busy right now?” Alix sniffed audibly and let her voice shake as she greeted Peter’s co-host. She kissed her daughter’s cheek and continued to bounce her. “Well, I might need your help . . . but can you keep a secret?”
Twenty-two
Under peach neon signs and acrylic palm tree leaves, Emira sat with a plastic tiara on her head in a plunging black dress and sheer black tights. The implication that this was Emira’s “favorite place” only slightly bothered her. Yes, the DJ was lit and played the best reggaeton in her opinion, but much like baking brownies and matinee movie showtimes and boxed wine that you kept in the refrigerator, Emira loved Tropicana 187 because of the low prices (two for ones, ladies’ night specials, three-dollar beers, six-dollar palomas). It wasn’t half as fancy as the places Zara, Josefa, and Shaunie had picked for their birthdays, but the drinks and the night were aggressively sweet.
In a red and squishy booth, Emira’s three friends sat around her in tight dresses and heavy bronzer. The table was covered in piña coladas, fish tacos, pineapple salsa, and pulled jerk chicken. Everything reeked of sugary mai tais and fried coconut shrimp, and every song that came on was another killer. As she opened her last birthday present, a new phone cover to replace her faded and cracked one, Emira unstuck her heel from the floor and said, “Ohmygod, thank you, Z.” She began to rip the packaging open using the side of her black nail.
“Yeah we can’t have you carrying this around anymore.” Zara grabbed Emira’s phone and began to remove the worn, pink rubber casing. “Ohmygod, this thing is so tired and done. It wasn’t doing anything for our brand.”
Zara applied the new, matte-finished gold casing onto Emira’s phone. Emira placed her other gifts into one bag (metallic earbuds and an iTunes gift card from Josefa, two silky “interview shirts” from Shaunie) and announced to the group, “The next round is on me.”
Josefa removed her straw from her lips and dipped her head so hard that her ponytail swung. “Excuse me? Did you just have a stroke?”
Shaunie laughed and wiped the side of her mouth with a napkin. “But Mira, it’s your birthday!”
“Nah, I wanna do this real quick.” Emira got the attention of a waiter and ordered four tequila shots. They arrived with a coppery glaze of sugar and pineapple slices around the rims.
“Okay . . .” Emira watched her girlfriends hold their shots up and lick the excess from their fingers. For a moment, she felt the way she did when Briar saw a picture of a flower, sniffed it, and said, “Delicious,” but she pushed these feelings aside so that she could speak. She sat up and raised her voice above the bass and steel drums.
“Sooo I’ve been a little cranky and like . . . broke these past few months. And I really appreciate you tolerating me. Next year is gonna be different and I’m really thankful for you guys helping me get my shit together. Sefa, thank you for helping me print out my résumé on nice paper.”
“Nice paper, yasss mija.” Josefa snapped her fingers four times.
“Shaunie.” Emira turned to her. “Thank you for emailing me about new jobs. Every day. Multiple times a day . . . can’t wait to unsubscribe.”
“You said you wanted help!”
“And Zara, thanks for helping me write stupid-ass cover letters and making me not sound like an idiot.” Emira leaned into her friend. “And thanks to you ladies . . . I officially have an interview next week.”
Zara and Josefa together said, “Ayyeee!” Shaunie appeared overjoyed at this news and also devastated that both of her hands weren’t available for clapping. “Ohmygod, yay! Emira, that’s amazing!”
“Okay, okay, that’s it, though. No more work talk.” Emira held her drink up. The girls followed suit.
“To Mira being all professional and shit in 2016,” Zara said. “Cheers, bisshhh. Happy birthday.”
Emira touched her chest as she tipped the glass back. Josefa pulled out her phone and said, “Mira, smile.” Emira pursed her lips. “Oh, that’s cute.” Josefa examined it. “That’s real cute. I’m posting this.”
Earlier that day, when Emira returned to drop Briar at home, she didn’t give Mrs. Chamberlain the fifteen dollars remaining in her jacket pocket. She’d spent $6.50 on a movie ticket for herself (Briar’s ticket ended up being free), five dollars on a small popcorn, and then $2.25 on a red velvet cupcake. She and Briar split the treat sitting across from each other in a bakery filled with white people and pictures of vintage chickens framed on the walls.
“Hey, B. Guess what?” Emira said in between two licks of frosting. “It’s my birthday today.”
Briar seemed both charmed and unsurprised by this information. “Okay. Then you . . . you a big girl now.”
“I am a big girl.”
“Good job, Mira.”
Emira said, “Thank you.”
Emira had done a good job. That week, she’d spent her days giving Briar the time of her life, taking her to new places (she was fairly certain that Briar had never even heard of a mall), and teaching her what the words curious, alarm, and dimple meant. At night, she Googled childcare and administrative positions, sent out six résumés, and dropped off two more. Emira’s upcoming interview was for a full-time childcare manager position at Body World Fitness down in Point Breeze. She didn’t mention to her friends that the pay was shitty, four dollars an hour less than she was making now. And she didn’t mention the quick onset of depression she’d felt when she dropped her résumé off at the colorful but faded room that smelled of sanitizer and spit-up. (One of the workers there, a girl a few years younger than Emira, had run to catch up with a mom and son, saying, “He forgot his cup!” while laughing. There was something about the way she trotted and held the dirty sippy cup that made Emira surprisingly sad.) But when she got the call back later that day, she said she was very interested in the job and would love to come in for an interview next week. Emira couldn’t wait to tell Kelley. Kelley who’d sent flowers to her apartment that morning, who texted happy birthday at midnight the night before, who was working late but would arrive later for drinks and dancing.
After dinner, the girls made their way to the windowless bar downstairs. Shaunie’s friends from Sony piled in, a few of Josefa’s classmates stopped by, some girls they all went to Temple with came through, and none of Zara’s co-workers showed up. When Emira told Zara she was welcome to invite them, Zara had said, “Ew, no. I work with them—please. But tell Kelley to bring that guy with the fade.”
Kelley did bring the guy with the fade and two others. Emira was three drinks deep and sitting atop a bar stool when he walked in. It all seemed extremely funny and miraculous. I have a boyfriend? On my birthday? And he’s white? Oops! Okay! Kelley inched through a crowd of bodies, and while still sideways, he looked at her and said, “Hey, pretty.”
Emira grinned into their kiss. “It’s my birthday.”
“Oh, for real? That’s crazy. Happy birthday,” Kelley said casually. “How was . . . how are you? How was work?”
“Good.” Emira set her empty glass on the bar and swiveled back around to face him. “We saw a movie. And then we saw another movie. And then we got a cupcake.”
“Two movies?” Kelley said this with the goofy trepidation of a father who worried that someone was having too much fun.
“The theater was empty and we just talked the whole time.” It had been so special. Briar looked unusually tiny in the movie theater seat. When the previews started, she’d covered both her ears and looked to Emira as if she’d forgotten to lock the front door. But she eased into it quickly, and halfway into the first film, she patted Emira’s thigh and whispered, “I sit here with you now shhh.”
“Is that why you didn’t call me back, miss?”
“Oh, my bad.” Emira touched her neck. “Sorry, I try not to have my phone out when I’m with her. And then I was in a rush to get out of there and get to Shaunie’s . . . ohmygod, which reminds me”—Emira felt it in her chattiness that she was drunk, but she couldn’t help herself from telling him immediately—“your high school sweetheart was back on her bullshit today.”
Kelley nodded and placed both his hands in his front pockets. “Yeah, I wanna talk about that, and a lot of other things, but this may not be the place . . .”
“Oh no, I can tell you,” Emira said. “It was just super awkward. I came in and she was like, ‘I just wanna tell you that I don’t mind you dating Kelley at all.’” Emira made her voice soft and urgent when imitating Mrs. Chamberlain. “I was like, ‘Ummm, I didn’t ask you but okay.’ She tried to tell me that you were trouble in high school and I was like, ‘First of all, that was so long ago. And second, I’m about to interview somewhere else so let’s not get into this.’”
“Wait, what?” Kelley stopped her. “You’re interviewing somewhere else?”
“I forgot to tell you!” Emira raised her hands up by her cheeks. “I have an interview on Monday!”
Emira tried to sound more excited than she felt. But it seemed worth it to add a little excitement when Kelley said, “No way! Emira, that’s great!”
“It’s a daycare managing position and I might not even get it. But yeah, it’s got benefits and everything.”
“Oh geez, I forgot. You’re twenty-six today.” Kelley touched both of her shoulders as if they might break any second. “Should we get you a helmet for while you’re uninsured?”
She shoved him. “Imma be fine. I got like, thirty days or something.”
“Hey, congrats,” he told her. “And you’re only just starting to look, so this is really great . . .” Kelley’s mouth hung open with something else he wanted to say, and Emira thought, Yeah, I more than like you too. “Hey, don’t go home with your girls tonight. Stay with me.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I have some stuff to tell you later, but not now.”
“Good stuff?”
“Umm . . .” Kelley poked out his lips in a way that delighted and gutted her. He raised his eyebrows and said, “Interesting stuff . . . ? But it’s your birthday. Lemme buy you a drink.”
Minutes later, Zara, Josefa, and Shaunie descended on Kelley with hiiiii’s and side hugs. Zara pointed to the gold-cased phone in Emira’s hand and said, “Did you see that I upgraded your girl?” Kelley laughed and said, “Damn. So much better.” Emira said, “You guys are rude,” and Zara matched her expression and said, “Sorry that we care about you.”
“Kelley, Mira is blowin’ up my Insta right now.” Josefa’s phone was still in front of her face. “She just got one hundred and fifty likes in like two hours.”
“Okay, that’s what we should have gotten you for your birthday,” Shaunie said. “An Instagram account.”
Zara said, “What kinda cheap-ass present is that?”
“It’s a thoughtful present for memories.”
“Literally no one uses it for memories.”
“Hey, this round is on me,” Kelley announced to the group. He asked for any requests and Zara and Shaunie shouted, “Champagne!”
“You’ll drink champagne, right?” Shaunie asked Emira. “It’s your birthday, you don’t have a choice.”
Emira didn’t have a choice, but Josefa declined. Without looking up, she said, “Imma skip this round,” and kept scrolling in her phone.
Shaunie insisted on taking a picture of Emira and Kelley squished in next to the bar top. Then she filmed an anticlimactic bottle popping from a bored bartender and the equal distribution into three glasses. Josefa called over, “Z, come here real quick,” and Zara took her champagne and moved down the bar.
“This was so nice. Thank you, Kelley,” Shaunie said. “Have you met my boyfriend? He’s coming tonight and you need to meet him.”
“Have I met him? I don’t think so, I’d love to.”
Emira mouthed, No, you would not, behind Shaunie’s head, but then Zara grabbed her arm and said, “Emira, you’re bleeding!”
Emira said, “What?” and Shaunie said, “Oh no!”
Josefa squared her face with Emira’s and said, “Let’s go to the bathroom right now and take care of it.”
Kelley, opening up a tab with the bartender, bent his head back at them. “Are you okay?”
“She’s fine, I’m a nurse!” Zara pulled Emira’s arm harder. “We’ll be right back!”
Emira allowed Josefa and Zara to pull and push her toward the bathroom. She said, “Girl, watch it,” as Zara shoved her and Shaunie into the handicap stall. Josefa locked the door behind them. Emira looked down at her arm and saw that there was no trace of blood. She blinked four times in succession and thought, Woof, I must be faded.
“I don’t see anything.”
“You’re fine.” Josefa pulled out her phone.
“Wait, what?” In Shaunie’s left hand was a Band-Aid and in her right was a travel-sized tube of Neosporin. Zara said, “The fuck are you doing?” Shaunie said, “I thought you said blood?”
Emira stopped all of them with, “K, what is this right now?”
Shaunie returned her first-aid items to her purse. Zara and Josefa exchanged a look that made Emira quite furious. Josefa crossed one arm over her chest.
“Guys, what the fuck?” Emira asked again. “This isn’t cute. Kelley just got here.”
“Okay,” Zara said. “Did you share that video?”
Something fat and round formed at the back of her throat. Emira knew what video Zara was referring to, but she found herself stalling and saying, “What video?”
“Don’t freak out.” Josefa appeared ready to confess but couldn’t look Emira in the eye. She tapped and scrolled with white nails as she spoke. “Someone commented on my photo of you and was like, ‘Is that the black girl from the grocery store video?’ And I was like, ‘What?’ So I Googled black girl grocery store video and . . . this came up.”
Emira snatched Josefa’s phone and her mouth dropped into an impossible O. Through the haze of three and a half drinks, Emira watched herself on the screen, saying to the camera, “Ohmygod, can you step off?” in the poultry section of Market Depot. She couldn’t see Briar, but she could see a little stick of blond hair at the bottom of the frame. The sight of it chipped the side of her heart.
“No no no no no.” Emira found herself backed up against the filthy stall wall covered in stickers and Sharpie and names and numbers. Her eyes and chest immediately felt sober but it was taking her limbs and hips longer to catch up. There was part of her that hadn’t reached How did this happen?! and was still amazed by the technology that put her in this bathroom and on the screen simultaneously. As if from another universe, Emira heard her voice again. Zara had pulled out her phone and was playing the video for Shaunie. “Okay, umm . . .” Shaunie said. “Emira, don’t panic.”
“But there’s no way . . .” Emira whispered. “What is this even? Who has this?!”
“Yeah, what is this site?”
Shaunie’s tone implied that this whole situation was actually a prank, that someone was just being very silly. “This doesn’t look like a legit site. Maybe it’s the only one.”
Zara and Josefa exchanged another look that made Emira want to smash the phone into the piles of soggy toilet paper on the floor. “What!” she demanded. Her fingers were shaking now. “Tell me who else has this!”
“Girl, it’s on Twitter,” Josefa said. “So like . . . everyone has it.”
“Excuse me?”
Josefa reached for her phone, went back a page, and returned the screen to Emira. Emira didn’t have a Twitter account, so she tried to swipe left and right. All three of her friends said, “Scroll down.”
There it all was. Black Girl Almost Gets Arrested for Babysitting. Black Girl Destroys Security Guard Who Accuses Her of Kidnapping. Just Another Black Girl Trying To Do Her Job and Getting in Trouble for It. Philadelphia Babysitter Accused of Kidnapping. #BelieveBlackWomen. #AreWeFreeToGo. Sassy Black Woman Lets Security Guard Have It. There was one clip from the video that had been cut and used over and over again with words typed overhead. Beneath captions like When TSA tells me my bag is too big, When they tell me the bathroom is for customers only, When they tell me I can only bring six items into the fitting room, there was Emira yelling, “You’re not even a real cop, so you back up, son!” Emira touched the stall wall and said, “I need to sit down.”
“Ew, no no no no.” Shaunie took her by the elbow. “You can’t sit in here. Just lean against me.” Josefa took her phone out of Emira’s hand and Shaunie blew cool air against her neck.
Everything seemed to blur over with a deep film. Emira was in this disgusting bathroom, but she was also back in the freezer aisle of Market Depot. But she was also in the Chamberlain bathroom where she gave Briar a bath, and then in Briar’s bedroom as she put her down for a nap. “I think I’m gonna be sick,” she said.