Serena Singh Flips the Script

by Sonya Lalli

  Happy with your current position

  Salary, flexibility, challenges

  “This is the third e-mail this month.” Ainsley sighed, drumming her hands on her thighs. “In tech, these e-mails are common . . . People move around constantly. If you’re happy in a position, then it’s easy to click, delete, and not think about it again. But . . .”

  But. She wasn’t happy. She was going to leave, wasn’t she?

  “I’ve been here with Deborah since the beginning. Seven years of my career, Serena. It’s great. I love it. But I’ve grown . . . complacent. I could do this job with one hand tied behind my back.”

  “So you . . .” I cleared my throat as the words caught. “So,” I tried again, “you want a new challenge?”

  “Well, I don’t know. But maybe at this point in my life, if I’m going to make a change, I should be looking for something that isn’t just about what’s good for me. But what’s good for my . . .” She paused. Now she wasn’t meeting my eye. “My family.”

  Family.

  I recalled what she’d said to me at the poetry night: her father-in-law was pressuring her to quit, to go freelance. Was that why she was mulling over leaving? To make her in-laws happy instead of herself?

  I licked my lips, trying not to pass judgment as I thought about all the times I’d chosen myself over my family. Of course I had. If Mom and Dad had it their way, I would have married Jesse straight out of university, and right now I’d be the mother of three. Cooking saag and makki di roti in one hand, managing the happiness of everyone else around me with the other. Forget the career goals. My own social life or anything of my own. The ambition, even the panic, that made me want more for myself.

  “If Nikesh’s business takes off, I really will need to be around more,” Ainsley said, breaking the silence. “Can’t imagine it will fly with Deborah to work from home full time, eh?”

  It sounded like she was trying to convince me, so I smiled.

  “Don’t listen to me. I’m just having a weird day.” She exited out of the browser and then leaned her head into her hand, facing me. “How are you?”

  I shrugged. Ainsley was becoming a true friend. Dare I say it, my best friend. If she left the agency, it wouldn’t matter that we didn’t spend ten hours a day sitting a few feet away from each other. At least, I wanted to believe that was true.

  21

  My conversation with Ainsley really bummed me out, but I forced myself to block it out and get back to work. I had shit to do. I had a client to win over.

  A big part of my job was helping the account and development teams prepare pitches for new business from prospective clients, which tended to be companies trying to go “green” or launch socially ethical brands or campaigns. Deborah’s agency had been trying to find a beverages company for its client base since the very start, but she’d never been able to get one on board. (I’m not saying it’s because old white men tend to hire young white men who remind them of themselves, although research has shown that’s often the case . . .)

  Anyway, as luck would have it, I got along famously with the owners of a regional beverages conglomerate based out of Richmond, Virginia, whom I’d worked with for years at my old job. Bottled flat and sparkling waters, nonalcoholic ciders, organic colas, juices, hot chocolate, and coffee. They had the whole nine yards, and to be honest, I’d been instrumental in most of their campaigns.

  Several of my clients had followed me to Deborah’s agency without my even having to ask them, but this one was different. It was a big company, and they couldn’t move agencies carelessly. I’d kept in touch with Jerry and Patricia, the wholesome, healthy power couple in their early seventies who had started and built up the business from scratch. Without overstepping, I’d made it clear to them that I wanted their business, and a few weeks ago Jerry had reached out to say he’d like to meet. He wanted “my thoughts” on how I would pivot their existing brand of supermarket tonic waters into a “green” luxury brand.

  He wanted just my thoughts? Yeah, right. He was going to get the full Don Draper Treatment. Or should I say the Serena Singh Treatment.

  Creative Director. Badass Brown Girl. Advertising Ass-Kicker.

  I worked late that evening, declining Ainsley’s invite to walk home with her, and by the next morning, I was as ready as I’d ever be. I’d planned on hitching a ride with one of my colleagues in Accounts and Development, but at the last moment Deborah said she’d like to join in on the meeting and offered me a ride. I swallowed, hard, following her to her Tesla in the parking garage. She’d never come to a pitch with me before, and it made me realize how important this meeting was.

  If I could win over Jerry and Patricia’s tonic water, a fraction of their portfolio, maybe we could win over their whole business.

  Deborah could probably tell I was nervous, so we didn’t speak much during the drive, keeping the conversation to things like the weather, her grandchildren, the availability of charging stations for electric cars. The company’s local office was across the Potomac in Arlington, and we arrived in good time, a few minutes before our colleagues in Accounts and Development, who had taken a separate car.

  We set up presentation materials and the slide deck in the boardroom, and I took my place at the head of the table, my shoulders pulled back. My game face on. And I was ready when they walked in the room.

  “Serena!” Jerry bellowed, pushing through the glass door.

  “Jerry,” I said, standing up. “It’s been too long.”

  Jerry was a jovial man. Tall, balding, and a bit of a belly, although not quite as big as the last time I saw him. He told me that Patricia was in New York for one of her philanthropic projects that he “couldn’t keep track of,” and then I introduced him to Deborah and the rest of my team, and he introduced us to his marketing directors, one of whom—Kriti—I’d met several times before.

  “Should we get to it?” I asked, after we’d all taken a seat. I grabbed the flicker off the podium and breathed in deep, twice, before turning around to face everyone.

  “I—”

  “Serena, I’m gonna have to stop you right there.”

  I closed my mouth, confused, and looked over at Jerry. He was about fifteen feet away from me at the exact opposite end of the boardroom table. His hands were locked together on the table. His prominent forehead was shinier than usual, and even from here I could tell that he was blushing.

  Fuck. Had I screwed it up already? They hadn’t even heard my pitch yet.

  “I really, really like the roughs you’ve sent through. Exactly what I pictured, but . . .”

  But? My stomach knotted, and I forced myself not to glance at Deborah for validation.

  “—but I was talking to Patricia on the phone last night, and apparently there’re already a few luxury tonics out there!”

  “Yes, yes, there are . . .” I reached for my portfolio. “I sent you a competition brief in last week’s—”

  “Well, I must have missed it. I thought we were going to be the first ones to market!” Jerry threw his hands up in the air, his signature move. “Kriti, did you know?”

  Kriti smiled and nodded. “I did. Serena sent the brief . . .”

  “Shucks. How did I miss it?”

  I could tell Kriti was trying not to laugh, so I looked straight ahead at Jerry and cleared my throat. This was salvageable. I could still do this.

  “Jerry, at the end of the day, it won’t matter that you’re not the first to market. There’s space for another luxury tonic. For yours.” With my flicker, I switched to the first slide. “We’re going to take your existing tonic and rebrand it as the first socially conscious—”

  “No,” Jerry said, interrupting me. “I’m not going to sink any more money into tonic. Who even drinks gin and tonics anymore? Kriti, whose idea was it?”

  “Yours, Jerry.”

  “Chri
st.”

  Kriti and her colleagues chuckled softly while I tried to keep my lips from trembling. It was over already, and I hadn’t even gotten to the meat of my pitch. I closed my folder, thinking of all the teams’ good work getting flushed down the drain.

  My ego.

  I didn’t have the courage to look over at Deborah and my colleagues in accounts. We had put a lot of time and effort into this pitch. Surely, they’d be gutted. I was gutted.

  “Well,” I said after a moment, meeting his gaze. “It was great to see you, anyway, Jerry. Should we go grab an early lunch?”

  “Now hold your horses,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “We’re not done here.”

  I did my best to hold my hopes in check as I sat down in my chair.

  “Kriti and I were having a real interesting conversation on the drive up from Richmond this morning,” he said, looking over at his colleague. “Weren’t we?”

  “We were, Jerry.”

  “About tonic water?” one of their other colleagues asked, and Kriti shook her head.

  “This doesn’t leave the room,” Jerry said, eyeing his team. “We have to finalize the paperwork before we announce the deal, but you’re looking at the new owner of The Fifth Ingredient.”

  There was a hush of excitement from their side of the room, although all of us from DC had no idea what for. A moment later, Kriti explained.

  “The Fifth Ingredient is really making waves in the local craft beer scene. They have five products—the sour is my favorite—and the kid who owns it likes the idea of a big check that will fund his lifetime vacation to Bali.”

  The room laughed, and I joined in, struggling to remain still in my seat.

  “We’re going to have to redo the labels so it aligns with the rest of our brands, but we’ll keep the name,” Kriti continued. “It’s already known as a premium organic beer without a carbon footprint.”

  “Really?” I asked.

  Kriti and Jerry took turns filling in the room on their plans to increase production and set up regional distribution centers.

  Finally, they both turned to look at me, smiling. “So, what do you think?”

  They told me their projected advertising budget, and my jaw dropped.

  “I think it’s . . . a great opportunity.”

  “Well, it’s your opportunity if you want it,” Kriti said, “We need somebody smart.”

  “And fast,” Jerry added. “Can you get us on track for a Christmas launch? Reckon you better hightail it down to Richmond for a couple weeks and spend some time with product development.”

  Christmas? This was fucking huge, and they needed the work done, like, yesterday.

  “Patricia and I have been talking about our sustainability goals with the board, and we’d like the whole company to cut all water wastage and have a zero-carbon footprint in the near future,” Jerry said, locking eyes with me. “I’m thinking The Fifth Ingredient will be a bit of a trial run.”

  A trial run for your company, or a trial run for me?

  “Are you up to it?” he asked.

  I hesitated just for a moment. Designing a campaign from scratch and launching a new product that would impress Jerry and Patricia enough to hire me for their whole business, on an impossible deadline, would be the biggest professional challenge of my career.

  “Jerry.” I narrowed my eyes. “Of course I’m up to it.”

  * * *

  “Great work today,” Deborah said on the drive back to the office. I smiled. She wasn’t overzealous with her praise, so when she said something like that, I knew she meant it.

  We were at a red light, and she turned to look at me, pulling her sunglasses slightly down the bridge of her nose. “I hope you didn’t feel ambushed.”

  “By Jerry?”

  “No. By me.” The light turned green, and Deborah glanced back to the road. The window was open, and the air rushing in was blowing her Diane Keaton gray hair wildly across her face. “I didn’t think you needed a babysitter. I probably shouldn’t have come.”

  “Not at all.” I shrugged. “This is your company.”

  “It’s all very exciting. It’s been a while since I’ve felt the thrill.” She paused. “Letting go of creative control is . . . well, it’s harder than I thought it would be.”

  I didn’t know what to say. Her words surprised me, and for a few moments, we sat side by side in silence. I’d been so obsessed with proving myself to her and my team that I hadn’t even considered that she was going through a difficult time transitioning away from being the company’s creative face, taking a backseat to, well, me.

  “The Fifth Ingredient is going to be a crash campaign. And it sounds like you’re going to need to spend some time in Richmond.”

  I nodded, unsure what she was getting at.

  “Would you like me to take point on a few existing accounts? Just for a while.” Deborah glanced at me quickly. “I’m not trying to step on your toes. You’d be doing me a favor, really. I would love to get my feet wet again.”

  “Sure . . .” I said, even though I wasn’t. Did she think I wasn’t capable? Did she think I wasn’t ready to handle what was coming?

  Out of nowhere, Deborah swerved out of traffic and pulled into a bus lane. The car in park, she turned to me, sliding off her sunglasses.

  “Listen, Serena. I’m not going to think you’re a ‘pussy’ if you accept help. Got it?”

  I nodded, uncomfortable with her word choice.

  “Does he say that word still, Iain?”

  I shrugged. For an adman, my old boss Iain had used a lot of derogatory words in the office.

  “What a fucker.” She gripped the steering wheel. “Do you know, when I worked with him in the nineties, he used to call me the ‘office geisha.’”

  I gasped.

  “Notwithstanding the fact that I’m Korean, not Japanese, yes, the implication was that our director had brought me on to ‘please’ the clients.”

  “I’m so sorry, Deborah. I can’t believe it.” I shook my head, enraged. “You know what? I can believe it.”

  I closed my eyes, trying to imagine myself in Deborah’s shoes. She’d been in the business decades longer than I had and had to put up with way more crap from clients and bosses, sexism and racism. And she’d made it. She’d cracked the glass and made it easier for women like me to break through.

  It still hadn’t been easy. I wanted to break down and cry thinking about the worst days. Still, I’d never asked for help.

  Not at home. Not at work. Not ever.

  I’d gritted my teeth and lost sleep to prove to everyone I could make it on my own. That I was good enough without them.

  “The word ‘help’ wasn’t in my vocabulary when I was your age, either,” Deborah said, as if reading my mind. A horn sounded behind us. There was a bus pulling in, the driver gesturing angrily for us to get out of his way.

  Could I really do my best at The Fifth Ingredient if I still had all our other clients to attend to? All of our existing and forthcoming creative campaigns to manage?

  I couldn’t, so a few minutes later I said, “I do need your help.”

  Deborah nodded without responding. She must have known how hard it was for me to admit.

  22

  SANDEEP

  Serena?” Sandeep peered up from the gardening bed. “What are you doing home? Are you sick?”

  “I decided to take the afternoon off.” Serena waved from the bottom of the driveway. She was wearing a business suit, much like the one Detective Olivia Benson from Law & Order would wear, except Serena had a bright top underneath, the color of saffron. She looked radiant.

  “We didn’t really have time to talk at Natasha’s gender reveal.”

  Sandeep nodded, brushing the dirt from her leggings as she stood up from the ground. The party was weeks ago now,
and all the unpleasantness she’d felt toward her younger daughter for excluding her had evaporated for that day, particularly when it was revealed that Sandeep would be blessed with a grandson.

  She’d enjoy doting on a young man, which wasn’t to say she hadn’t relished having two little girls to raise. In fact, daughters were what she had preferred. She despised that in their village, the birth of boys had been celebrated and the arrival of girls mourned. As a young child, Sandeep heard stories about how her papaji refused to hold her for months, angry about something over which neither she nor her mother had any control. Luckily, attitudes had changed a bit by the time Serena was born. Luckily, her husband, Veer, would never have done such a thing.

  “What did you think?” Serena asked. “Of the gender reveal.”

  “It is an exciting custom,” she said in English.

  Serena stared at her blankly.

  “Truly, beti. I had a lovely time at the party. Natasha’s new mother is a very welcoming woman.”

  “You are her mother . . .”

  Sandeep knew that. She’d misspoken, but perhaps there was some truth to the blunder. After marriage, Sandeep had gone to live with her in-laws. They were a traditional family, and if she and Veer hadn’t later moved to America, they would have stayed there and looked after his parents until they had passed. She would have belonged to them. Mistakenly, Sandeep had assumed that Natasha’s choice to marry a gora meant that she wouldn’t lose her.

  But here in America, you lost your daughters differently.

  “I know you’re hurt she’s excluding you, Mom,” Serena said. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  The sun was fierce today. Her dupatta had fallen off her head, and she pulled it back up for the shade as she looked at their house. The roof needed work, and yes, the windowsills flaked paint like a snow cloud, but it was their house. Their property. A family home where all of them, including Ms. Fancy Pants Natasha, belonged.

  So, no, Sandeep didn’t want to talk about it. She wanted Natasha to respect her elders and humbly understand where she came from.