by Kiley Reid
For weeks, Alex had been thinking of Kelley and mostly just wondering, How could he do this? As it happened, all this time, he actually hadn’t.
But what did it matter now? The damage had been done. No matter what, students would call her names all summer, and Robbie’s admission wouldn’t be regranted. For a moment, Alex wondered if she should pull the letters out from her bra, or if they carried some dirt or muck that would make her skin break out. But once again, she looked over her shoulder and saw that no one was there. Alex was alone, and the one thing she still had was the freedom to follow the narrative that suited her best.
It would never be a relief to know that a locker malfunction was to blame for her demise, rather than Kelley Copeland himself. Believing that Kelley was the starting point of her adversity would always be easier than believing she’d simply slipped through an unlucky crack. This choice to believe otherwise, to pretend there weren’t coffee-colored letters pressed into her chest, would keep her close to him, even if staying close to Kelley meant holding a grudge for something that he never did. And all summer long, as Alex rolled silverware and received lousy tips, it was easier doing it while mad at Kelley, rather than having no relation to him at all.
And by the time Alex moved to New York, it was like she didn’t have to pretend.
Kelley was the guy who ruined her senior year, much in the same way that her name was spelled A-l-i-x.
Twenty-eight
It would be unfair to say that Emira Tucker stopped babysitting. She worked the front desk of the Green Party office but only for a total of five weeks. During a fund-raising event, Emira was refilling a large carafe of coffee when she saw a little boy place a handful of goldfish on a flimsy paper plate. “Hey,” Emira said to him. “How about we put those in a cup instead?” This child belonged to the regional director of the U.S. Census Bureau, a six-foot-tall woman named Paula Christi, who watched on from afar. Paula hired Emira as an administrative assistant, and Emira proceeded to spend the majority of her twenty-sixth year in meeting rooms and black SUVs.
Emira booked Paula’s appointments and ordered her lunches and stood backstage at panels and speeches. But she also rubbed the backs of Paula and other middle-aged adults as they cried and swore in private (she handed them tissues and told them it was okay). While her own news segment on WNFT was the gateway to the highest-paying position of her life (eighteen dollars an hour—she also received free lunch), Emira later found it funny that she once considered her four-minute segment on Philadelphia local news “a big deal.” The interview cut just after Zara announced Yeah, das right! And aside from a few YouTube compilations of Local News Interviews Gone Wrong, no one Emira’s age saw it. Not even Shaunie or Josefa; Emira made Zara swear.
Three days before Emira turned twenty-eight, her boss called her into her office. Emira sat down across from her and opened up her notebook, ready to take instructions or a lunch order, but Paula told her to put it away.
“You’ve been here for almost two years, yes?” Paula confirmed. After Emira nodded, she added, “When are you planning on leaving?”
Emira blinked three times and smiled. “Leaving?” she asked. Something Emira appreciated about Paula was her directness, but in moments like this, Emira was both grateful and afraid, because Paula always meant what she said. Emira squinted and asked, “Am I getting fired right now?”
“God, no. But Emira,” she said, “I’ve never had an assistant who wanted to continue being my assistant for more than two years. Basically, if you stayed on for much longer, it would mean I’m doing something wrong.”
Emira sat back and laughed. “Okay, well . . .” She looked at Paula’s desk and a picture of her family. “I can’t believe I’m saying this . . . but I actually think I’m okay.”
Maybe she wasn’t by her girlfriends’ standards (Shaunie was engaged, Josefa was teaching at Drexel, Zara made enough money to get a two-bedroom apartment and pay rent for both her and her little sister), but Emira really was doing okay. She’d gone to Mexico for Zara’s birthday, all five days. She’d stuck to her New Year’s resolution to make her bed every day. She had a savings account, which she dipped into often, but not so much that it didn’t exist. And she’d added two new recipes to her dinner circulation, both of which were Crock-Pot meals, but still. Emira also liked Paula and her kid. Her boss was fairly rude to everyone except for her, and Emira went to work feeling paid and protected.
But Paula seemed disappointed in Emira’s contentment. “Good bosses shouldn’t make you happy in a job that they wouldn’t want to do themselves,” she said. “It’s my job to make you so miserable that you’re forced into finding something that brings you joy, and then I help you seal the deal. So . . . your goal for the next year is to learn how to properly hate your job, and find something else that you wouldn’t hate doing. Got it?”
Emira said, “Got it,” and went back to her desk. She would stay on as Paula’s assistant until Paula retired.
It would take Emira four more years to receive Shaunie’s starting salary of $52K, but Emira came to know the rare relief of having a boss who was so consumed with her assistant’s success that she was never derailed by the idea of being Emira’s friend. That day, after she walked out of Paula’s office, Emira went back to her desk and clicked an open window on her computer. She clicked Add to Cart and Check Out on a loveseat for her apartment, upon which she and Zara would spend an entire weekend painting their nails and watching two seasons of America’s Next Top Model.
After her news segment, Emira didn’t hear from Kelley for six whole days. She told herself that she and he were too different, that they drank too much when they were together, that she didn’t know why she tried to date a white guy who lived in Fishtown anyway. Technically, Kelley had won. Emira very publicly stuck it to Mrs. Chamberlain with a remix of his breakup line, which, despite her paraphrasing, she thought he could use as an opening line if he decided to try calling her one more time. But when he did finally contact her, one week after she quit, it was a clunky and trite text of encouragement that Emira did not enjoy.
Emira. Holy shit. I just saw your clip from the news.
I know things are weird right now, but I’m so proud of you.
I always knew you could do it.
Despite being more broke than she’d ever been in her life, and still grieving the loss of Briar Chamberlain, this complimentary sentiment promptly made it final: there was no way that she and Kelley would ever recover from the acknowledgment that he’d been right about Mrs. Chamberlain. Forming a relationship again would somehow dictate that he could be right about everything else, when really, he had a lot to learn. Emira never texted him again. His name in her phone remained Don’t Answer.
Emira did see Kelley again, but he didn’t see her. On a Saturday summer morning, when Emira was twenty-eight years old, she went with Shaunie to a farmer’s market at Clyde Park. The girls got separated when Shaunie spotted a truck with kittens for adoption, and Emira roamed the produce tables, taking in the smells and looking for her friend. For a moment, Emira thought she spotted the back of Shaunie. But she quickly realized that it couldn’t have been Shaunie, because this person was holding Kelley Copeland’s hand. Next to a table of soy candles and bottled honey, Kelley stood next to a light-skinned black woman with fresh coils of dark hair. She turned and Emira took her in. There were gladiator sandals on her feet, a small gold septum ring in her nose, and a basket hanging on her arm filled with root vegetables and essential oils.
“Babe, gimme two seconds,” she said, touching Kelley’s arm. “I’m gonna see if I can sign up to sell my shea butter here next week. Can you hold this real quick?”
Emira watched her hand Kelley a smoothie. When he accepted it he grinned and said, “Okay, miss.”
In another lifetime, Emira would have texted Mrs. Chamberlain to let her know she’d run into Kelley. She would have typed, You won’t believe who I s
aw, and Mrs. Chamberlain would have texted back, Tell me everything. Because even though Kelley been right about her, Alix had been right about him too. If things had gone differently, Emira would have also texted Mrs. Chamberlain a picture of her new couch, and Mrs. Chamberlain would have been ecstatic. Sometimes Emira thought that if she’d learned how to say Mrs. Chamberlain’s first name, that maybe she would have calmed down a bit. But they hadn’t gone differently. And like Emira, Mrs. Chamberlain was a grown human person with choices and decisions, and the funds to order sushi at least two times a week. Emira would think of Mrs. Chamberlain many times on election night, and pray that she had enough room in her heart for both a devastating failure and her firstborn child.
That same year, four months after she spotted Kelley, Emira walked to pick up a bridesmaid dress for what would become Shaunie’s first wedding. It was three days till Halloween, but it was a weekend, and children walked the sidewalks in costumes and masks, pillowcases and buckets in their hands. There was a carnival in Rittenhouse Square, and along a brick ledge that bordered the sidewalk sat mini-pumpkins that had been decorated by what looked to be mini-hands. They were covered in glitter paint and feathers, and they were drying in the sun. Down at the far end of the four-foot-tall ledge, five-year-old Briar was dressed as a hamburger, reaching up on her tiptoes, and struggling to reach a pumpkin doused in green.
Emira whispered, “Fuck,” and willed herself to keep walking.
“Mama? Mama, can you get mine for me?”
“Just a second, Bri,” Mrs. Chamberlain said. At the other side of the sidewalk, wearing an expensive beanie, a khaki trench coat, and booties that had tassels on the backs, Mrs. Chamberlain was squatting in front of two-year-old Catherine. “This zipper is stuck, isn’t it?” she said. Catherine yawned and licked a sucker.
Emira watched Briar come down off her tiptoes and take a look around. Behind her, two black nannies were pushing strollers with sleeping babies inside. Emira watched Briar go straight up to one, lift her hand, and pat the closest woman’s thigh. “Excuse me, nice lady?” she asked. “Can you please help me reach my pumpkin?”
The nanny seemed greatly amused, as if she hadn’t been called nice lady in years. She said, “Sure, which one is yours?” Emira wished that she’d walked up a little faster, that Briar could have called her the same name, that she could have talked to Briar without Mrs. Chamberlain, just one more time. And then she felt her heart crush even further into her stomach as Briar pointed up at a bright green pumpkin and said, “It’s dis one.”
Emira held her breath as she put her head down and walked around the nannies, Briar, Mrs. Chamberlain, and Catherine. She heard Briar tell the woman thank you, and Mrs. Chamberlain laugh and apologize for her daughter.
* * *
—
Deep into her thirties, Emira would wrestle with what to take from her time at the Chamberlain house. Some days she carried the sweet relief that Briar would learn to become a self-sufficient person. And some days, Emira would carry the dread that if Briar ever struggled to find herself, she’d probably just hire someone to do it for her.
Acknowledgments
My family, Ron, Jayne, and Sirandon Reid, have been a longtime source of support and encouragement. From Goosebumps to graduate school, thank you for keeping books in my hands, and allowing me to keep my bedroom door closed.
This novel came into being because of the razor-sharp eye and finishing power of my tireless agent, Claudia Ballard. Claudia, it has been a complete honor to see this project through with you, and it is a daily relief to be on your team. I’m so glad I met you first.
My editor, Sally Kim, inspires in me very cliché but nonetheless true sentiments such as You’re the one! and It was you all along! Sally, I’m indebted to your dedication to every line of this book, your effortless congeniality, and your faithfully calming email response time.
WME and Putnam are filled with wonderful people who unabashedly geek out over characters and plots, and continue to make my life easier every day. The biggest thanks to this unparalleled team, including Alexis Welby, Ashley McClay, Emily Mlynek, Brennin Cummings, Jordan Aaronson, and Nishtha Patel. Elena Hershey and Ashley Hewlett, please never leave me. Anthony Ramondo and Christopher Lin, thank you immensely for clothing this novel so beautifully. Sylvie Rabineau, thank you for championing this book and advocating so smoothly on my behalf. Gaby Mongelli and Jessie Chasan-Taber, I adore working with you and I just think you’re both so great.
I crafted the first chapters of this book in Arsaga’s coffee shop in Fayetteville, Arkansas (the one on Church and Center), and I couldn’t ask for a sunnier, quieter, more judgement-free zone. I completed this book at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop by means of the most remarkable gift a writer can receive: inspired stretches of space and time. Thank you to the Truman Capote Foundation for granting me stability as I found my way through the snow and these pages. And thank you to two incredible professors, Paul Harding and Jess Walter, who continue to guide me toward the truth of my obsessions. It’s a comfort to have your voices in my head, even when I am not in workshop.
Rachel Sherman’s work in Uneasy Street: Anxieties of Affluence was a brilliant source of inspiration, not just for this novel, but for how I walk through life. Thank you for capturing a complicated human experience, for leading with empathy in your studies, and for leaning into the uncomfortableness of American capital. I’m so pleased to have your name bookend this novel.
Part of writing is often finding part-time jobs. I’ve been so fortunate to have bosses who were first to acknowledge that my position was a means to an end, as well as lovely coworkers who made the hours go by quicker. A huge thank-you to Ingrid Fetell Lee, Ty Tashiro, Sarah Cisneros, Meg Brossman, and a whole slew of people at IDEO New York. Thank you, Lindsey Peers, for being a great boss at the best job I’ve ever had. You facilitated a space where I learned to problem-solve like never before, and you developed in me a lasting appreciation for the mirth of being a child on your birthday. So many thanks to all the mothers who trusted me with their children, particularly Lauren Flink, Jean Newcomb, Kalpana David, Mary Minard, Karen Bergreen, and Ali Curtis.
Sue and Chuck Rosenberg were always enthusiastic readers, great email writers, and endlessly flexible.
Ted Thompson’s notes on the first fifty pages were spot-on and honest. More importantly, they were kind enough to make me start over.
Deb West and Jan Zenisek kept me organized, and were always keen to celebrate the little moments.
My goal at Iowa was to find readers who I would keep far past graduation. This resulted in Melissa Mogollon, who spent hours in my living room ironing out backstory in exchange for Nodo sandwiches, and Isabel Henderson, who went line by line and downloaded the MTV channel so we could forget about writing. And in addition to letting me camp out in her kitchen for hours (“Am I being a bad host? Do you need more club soda?”) Claire Lombardo supplied detailed track changes that I went back to when I was feeling low. I’m so appreciative of this feedback and these friendships. You are somehow even more than the reason I came. (Claire, I’ll text you in five minutes.)
This novel also came to be by the support and humor of wonderful friends, and their unspoken agreement of mercy to forget the years of rough writing that preceded this one. I am so thankful for the friendships of those who believed in my writing even when I didn’t. So many thanks to Mary Walters, Njoki Gitahi, Caleb Way, Karin Soukup, Loren Blackman, Darryl Gerlak, Holly Jones, and Alycia Davis.
The teams at the Hillman Grad Network and Sight Unseen Pictures challenge and excite me every day. So many thanks go to Lena Waithe, for her warmth as a teacher, quickness as a writer, and her incredible ability to shine while holding the door open for others. To Rachel Jacobs, for her ability to see outside of a story, her generous and undying patience, and all the times she answered texts and emails when she shouldn’t have. And to Rishi Rajani for his attention
to detail, his commitment to the spirit of this novel, and for the most genuine use of exclamation points I have ever encountered.
Christina DiGiacomo has read everything I have ever written and jumped up and down with me when a full-time job became available. I’m quite pleased that we decided to be best friends back in 2001.
And then, lastly, there’s Nathan Rosenberg. Nate, it is an absolute privilege to call you my family. Maybe the best thing I’ve ever done was click Send.
About the Author
Kiley Reid earned her MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she was awarded the Truman Capote Fellowship and taught undergraduate creative writing workshops with a focus on race and class. Her short stories have been featured in Ploughshares, December, New South, and Lumina. Reid lives in Philadelphia.
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