The Other Black Girl

by Zakiya Dalila Harris

  “I get that.”

  “And I hate complaining… because really, it was so hard to get a job at Wagner in the first place. I should be thankful.”

  Hazel put her fork down. “Sheesh. What is it? You can tell me. I don’t really have a horse in this race.”

  Nella angled her neck, her eyes full of questions.

  “Not yet, anyway. Hey, I’m not even sure I want to be a book editor,” Hazel added. “I’m still feeling this whole thing out.”

  “Oh.” Still, Nella wasn’t convinced. “You promise you’ll keep this between us?”

  “C’mon. You and I both know we gotta stick together here. And who knows, maybe my outside perspective’ll help.”

  Nella couldn’t argue with that. And so, she told Hazel everything about Shartricia in Needles and Pins. Her disgust, her reservations—she dumped everything she’d been sifting through in her mind right there on the table between them.

  By the time she finished, Hazel had eaten her entire lunch while Nella still had a whole sandwich in front of her. “Sorry,” she said, peeling back the plastic so she could take another bite. “It’s just that every time I talk about it, I get even more frustrated. And I wonder, am I just crazy? Am I overreacting?”

  “Sheeyit. From what you’ve told me about Shartricia, it sounds like you’re right to feel the way you do. I read one of Franklin’s novels for a book club in high school. Illegally Yours, I think it was? The portrayal of the Mexican woman in that is so problematic. I can already imagine your pain.”

  Nella made a face. “I know. Thankfully I wasn’t here when he was writing that one.”

  “And what kind of name is Shartricia, anyway? Sweet lord. Shaniqua wasn’t good enough for the stereotypical Black girl name? Of all places, that was where he really felt the need to get creative?”

  “Girl, preach,” Nella said, snapping her fingers. This was exactly what she needed to hear. “I’m with you on that. But that’s why it really sucks—because I can’t call him out on it.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because he’s just going to think I’m calling him a racist. You know how white people get when they think you’re calling them racists.” Nella sighed, remembering how, shortly after the bout of Diversity Town Halls, she’d overheard a couple of Wagner employees in the kitchen chatting about the idea of being forced to hire nonwhite people. “Let’s just go and do exactly that,” Kevin in digital marketing had said indignantly. “Exactly that. And then let’s watch what Richard does when we start hiring unqualified people here, and things start getting screwed up. I’m sure he’ll change his song then.”

  Kevin’s back had been to Nella, as had been the back of the other unidentifiable white guy he’d been talking to. But even if they had seen her, Nella sensed that neither would have said anything differently. Her colleagues, strangely, had made it clear very early on that they didn’t really see her as a young Black woman, but as a young woman who just happened to be Black—as though her college degree had washed all of the melanin away. In their eyes, she was the exception. She was “qualified.” An Obama of publishing, so to speak.

  Sometimes, she saw this as a blessing. They never really bothered asking her for sensitivity reads, and they rarely asked her about “Black issues”—either because they didn’t want to offend her by doing so, or because they simply didn’t care enough to ask. But other times, she found it almost demeaning, as though accepting Wagner’s job offer had also meant giving up her Black identity.

  “Girl, you’re speaking my truth,” Hazel said, tapping her plate with her fork. “Even when you just subtly imply that a white person is racist—especially a white man—they think it’s the biggest slap in the face ever. They’d rather be called anything other than a racist. They’re ready to fight you on it, tooth and nail.”

  “It’s basically their version of the n-word,” Nella agreed.

  “Which is hilarious, because Black people have been called niggers for years, and they’ve always just had to keep it moving. Always had to just stay walking down the street without complaining. For centuries,” Hazel said, hitting the table with her fist, “we’ve been called niggers, man. And for maybe thirty years, we’ve been calling white people racists—I mean, the word didn’t really mean shit in our English vocabulary until fairly recently, and even now some people still don’t count it as a disqualifier. But suddenly, it’s the end of the fucking world for these people.”

  Nella sat stock-still, taken aback. Everything Hazel said rang true with what she and Malaika bemoaned after hearing the latest newsflash that yet another politician had been caught doing or saying something racist, but Nella hadn’t expected Hazel to get this passionate. She’d done so well keeping up with Maisy and Vera’s Boston chatter that time they first met, seemed so good at keeping her cool.

  The well-dressed Korean couple sitting at the table beside theirs hadn’t seen the outburst coming, either. Nella noticed they’d stopped speaking to one another and were curiously looking over at them between bites of food.

  Hazel seemed to register the change at the nearby table, too. She unclenched her fingers and breathed out a small sorry.

  “No. It’s fine. Actually, it’s really refreshing,” said Nella. “So… thank you.”

  “My parents are pretty big in their community for social activism,” Hazel added quietly, “and my grandparents were, too. My grandfather actually died in a protest. It’s in my blood, I guess.”

  Nella gasped. “Oh, wow! Hazel, I’m so sorry. When?”

  “1961. He was protesting one of the new busing bills. ‘Excessive police force.’ ” Hazel used air quotes for these last few words.

  Nella’s hands found her cheeks. An amalgamation of Civil Rights Movement footage flashed through her brain in black-and-white, complete with an angry rush of police batons and a soundtrack of somber Negro spirituals. “Wow,” she repeated, at a loss for a better word, even though there were many. She settled on an added “I’m sorry.”

  Hazel shrugged. “Thanks. But I’m here, ain’t I? I don’t think he’d be too sorry about that.”

  Nella nodded and chewed her food. The two women sat in thoughtful silence long enough for the Korean couple to get up and be replaced by a slightly older, vaguely European-looking pair. Meanwhile, the ghost of Hazel’s grandfather hung over their table, daring Nella to say something that carried as much reverence as the words his granddaughter had just said.

  Finally, she swallowed her last bit of sandwich and said, “Maybe I should say something about this book to Colin and Vera. Harder sacrifices have been made, right?”

  Hazel looked up at her. She nodded once, solemnly.

  “The question is, how, without jeopardizing my relationship with Vera? I don’t think either of them would really get it. A Black girl telling one of Wagner’s bestselling authors that his Black character is written a tiny bit racist? C’mon, now. I could get fired.”

  “You think?” Hazel asked, considering it. “Well, maybe. But Vera seems way smarter than that.”

  “She’s smart, but I’m not sure Vera is that… ‘enlightened.’ ”

  “Really?”

  “She came from money,” Nella said.

  “So did you, right?”

  Nella cocked her head, wondering how Hazel had guessed that. She often prided herself on how different she was from her Ivy League, upper-middle-class colleagues—not just in her appearance, but in the ways she moved about the world. Still, Nella knew she had it pretty good, too. Her parents hadn’t been wealthy, but as a child, she hadn’t wanted for anything. They’d lived in a nice house; they’d taken semiannual vacations. She’d attended nice public schools, and it had always been a given that she would attend college. It had also been a given that, if Nella ever really needed financial help, her parents would provide it.

  “My parents were pretty well-off when they had me, I guess. If being middle class counts as well-off. But it’s not the same thing as coming from real money. Ge
nerational money. At least, I don’t think so.”

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you…” Hazel held up a hand. “I just figured since you work at Wagner and the pay is pretty shitty, you must have a little bit of a cushion holding you up some. That’s all.”

  “Not really. I have college debt that I have to pay back on my own,” Nella said, unable to mask the defensiveness that was creeping into her voice and causing her to cross and recross her legs under the table. “And my parents don’t give me money for rent. Not unless it’s an emergency or something.”

  “Right. I’m sorry,” Hazel repeated. “Anyway, all of that is beside the point. What I was getting at is, do you think that just because Vera has money she’s automatically incapable of having any kind of empathy for Black people?”

  Nella stared at the girl, wondering where her lunch companion’s Black Panther spirit had gone. She’d moved from channeling her inner Baraka to her inner Barack—from confrontational to compassionate—in less than sixty seconds. The change was befuddling, and suddenly Nella wasn’t certain which Hazel she was talking to. “Maybe Vera’s not incapable,” she admitted, “but I do imagine the privilege of money plus the privilege of white skin makes it far less likely.”

  Hazel shrugged. “I don’t know. I know I’m new, but of all of them, Vera just seems so… I don’t know. Approachable? At least, she seems way more down than Maisy.”

  “Eh. Maybe. Still feels like there are some pretty obvious boundaries keeping us from having a straight-up conversation most of the time.”

  “The fact that she’s your boss… yeah. That’s a given. I’d just thought maybe Vera was one of the good ones. I don’t know, maybe that’s crazy to say.”

  One of the good ones. One of the most dangerous phrases to ever exist in the English language, Nella’s mother always liked to say, and Nella had grown to agree with her. She could accept the idea of allies—people who “got it.” She’d decided Owen was one of these people a couple of weeks after they’d met online and started dating. Nothing in particular had moved her in this direction. It wasn’t really because he “didn’t see race” or that he knew all the lyrics to Al Green’s “Love and Happiness,” because, respectively, he did and he didn’t (although he did a pretty great imitation of Al Green’s ad-libs). But she refused to call even her boyfriend “one of the good ones,” because such consistency, such innocence, was quite nearly impossible from one human.

  Nella had expected her new cube neighbor, who hailed from one of the country’s greatest and richest Black meccas, to feel the same way. Hadn’t Hazel spent her last few years working with white people in Boston?

  But then, she considered how warm of a welcome Vera had given Hazel on her first day. And how kind Vera could be one-on-one—when she was willing to let her guard down; when she was willing to let herself wilt just a tiny bit. There was a chance, Nella realized, that she was being a bit too hard on her boss. Perhaps, for Hazel’s sake, she should ease up a little.

  “You’re right, though,” she conceded. “Vera’s no Maisy.”

  The two Black girls sat in silence again, staring outside the window at the passersby milling around Midtown. It was a particularly warm day, and it was clear that many tourists who were out and about didn’t know what to do with the ninety-five degrees they’d been given. Nella herself regretted not looking at the forecast before putting on a high-collared blouse that morning, noting the little bit of moisture that still remained between her armpits from their three-block walk forty minutes earlier.

  Hazel, on the other hand, had looked completely at ease in the sunshine. She’d dressed smartly in a blush-pink halter top, which she’d revealed only after they’d taken their first steps away from the office and she felt comfortable removing her modest button-up sweater.

  Nella fanned herself a few times in anticipation of going back out in the heat.

  “We should probably head back,” she said at last, crumpling up her garbage with one hand.

  “Probably a good idea. Given all the things I’ve already screwed up so far for Maisy, I’m not sure I’ve earned the right to have full hour-long lunches yet,” Hazel joked. “Hey, one last thing, though.”

  “What?” Nella was already poised to walk over to the trash can, her bag looped over her shoulder.

  “My two cents, for what it’s worth: Whether Vera’s down or not, I think you should say something to her. She’ll thank you for it. And isn’t it better to give her a chance to fix it now, rather than be that one person of color who just let it slip right by, under her nose? Remember how much flak that Kendall Jenner Pepsi commercial got because no one spoke up?”

  Nella did, of course. She and Malaika had text-dissected it to death immediately after they’d each seen it, wondering about the Black people who’d played a part in making the commercial happen. It was highly likely that there weren’t any Black decision-makers at Pepsi, which explained its inception. But what about the Black people who hadn’t been in the drawing room, but had been a part of getting the commercial made? That chance Black person who’d maybe helped find the shooting site, or held a camera, or styled some hair? Surely some Black people had to have been nearby; some might have even watched the ad bloom from a germ of an idea into a full-fledged campaign. Had something felt a bit wrong, a bit off to the hypothetical Black camera guy as he watched Kendall Jenner rip off her wig through the lens? Or had he been pummeled so frequently by the industry that he hadn’t seen anything wrong with it?

  Nella and Malaika couldn’t decide which was worse: knowing and not acting on it, or not knowing at all. But Malaika’s own position was that she would have kept quiet. If the pay was good enough—and it was—she didn’t see the point in blowing up her own spot. It was the twenty-first century, after all. If white people couldn’t navigate politically correct waters on their own, that was their own problem.

  Nella had sent a row of side-eye emojis to Malaika in response to this, and nothing more. She hadn’t yet found herself in such a situation at Wagner, one in which she had to choose between going along with the machine or sticking a foot in its gears.

  Not until now.

  Hazel was carefully studying Nella, clearly trying to decipher whether she would voice the apprehension that was written all over her face. When she didn’t, Hazel slowly eased up out of her seat. But before she went to dispose of her trash, she leaned forward and placed a fist on the table between them. She didn’t bang on it as she had before, but the agita from earlier had returned to her timbre. “I know it’s scary. But remember your thesis? Just think about it. You know as well as I do how hard it is for a Black female writer to find a Black female editor in this industry. And how special it is when it happens. How else are we going to make that happen again? We have to make it easier for Black people who decide they want to work in publishing after us, right?

  “Right?” she repeated when Nella didn’t part her lips soon enough.

  Nella nodded fervently. “Yes! Yes. Right.”

  “We need to break down some of these barriers for them,” Hazel declared.

  Nella stood. She felt energized; she felt liberated. She felt ready to go to a rally—or, ready, at least, to grow some Black-bone. “You’re so right, Hazel!”

  “Damn straight! That’s what I like to hear, sis.” Hazel gave Nella a hug no longer than the length of a dap before grabbing her things. “Hey, this was so fun! Can we do this again soon?”

  Nella nodded, prepared to joke that if they got lunch too many times, their white coworkers might start to worry. But Hazel was already several feet ahead of her, too far away to hear her joke, so she swallowed it whole.

  5

  August 28, 2018

  Nella held the cup up to the light for the third time and turned it around. It didn’t feel quite right, so she set it down and added a pinch more Sugar in the Raw before shaking in two and a half drops of almond milk.

  She was contemplating whether that half drop was suitable when Shannon
from publicity entered the kitchen, an empty Pyrex container in hand. She eyed Nella with the same wariness Nella was using on the cup.

  “You’re working entirely too hard for this time of the summer,” Shannon observed on her way to the sink. “You don’t have an author coming in now, do you?”

  “I do.”

  “Rude. It’s the last week of August! Doesn’t Vera normally go to her vacation home in—where is it?”

  “Nantucket,” Nella said, unflappably focused. “But she drove back to the city last night. Cut her trip short.”

  Shannon let out a low whistle. “Vera did that? Wait,” she said suddenly, seeming to finally notice that Nella hadn’t once looked up from her task. “Are those ice cubes in there?”

  “They are indeed.”

  “Which means that drink is for…?”

  “Yep. It’s for Colin Franklin.”

  The sound of glass striking metal finally broke Nella’s intense concentration. Shannon had blanched and she was peering in the direction of the elevator bank as though Colin himself might suddenly appear. “Oh. Shoot. Today is Tuesday,” she whispered, turning on her heel and walking in the other direction. “I completely forgot he was coming in. Seriously, who comes in the last week of August?! If he asks—”

  “You’re in meetings all day.”

  “You’re the best.”

  “You’re welcome,” said Nella, envious she couldn’t proffer the same excuse. With a sigh, she opened the Ziploc bag Colin had asked her to hold on to at the beginning of the year and poured its mysterious contents on top of the coffee. She needed to keep her spirits up, but it was hard as she watched the black powder dissolve into the liquid, turning everything an unseemly shade of gray. Colin was due any moment now, and she could already feel Shartricia’s presence lurking nearby, watching, waiting to see if Nella was going to save her.

  Colin and Vera were giggling at something on Vera’s phone when Nella entered Vera’s office five minutes later. She set the coffee down in front of Colin, hand-crushed ice cubes and all.