The Other Black Girl

by Zakiya Dalila Harris

  I glanced over his shoulder. His wife, Paula, hands down the most attractive editor at Wagner, was currently surrounded by four different men, two of whom I’d never seen before. The other two—editors who’d barely spoken to me since I’d started at Wagner—flanked her, touching her back far more than anyone should during a polite conversation. “Yes. Sure does look like she needs your help.”

  My sarcasm was loud and clear this time. Ward hurried off, a reckless sense of urgency infecting his stride. I was turning, too, ready for more olives and more alcohol, when a warm hand burned through the silk of my cap sleeve.

  “Hmm. Let me guess—you scared another spouse away.”

  I didn’t have to look back to know it was Diana who had stopped me, but I did, anyway. She had a lopsided grin on her face and a hand on her hip.

  “Guilty as charged,” I murmured. “And yeah, I know, I know, Be on your best behavior, It’s only a few hours, but dammit, Di, they’re all just so… draining. And so damn easy to scare. Every single one of them.” I gestured at the fifty or so people who were milling around the dim lighting of Antonio’s under the guise of celebrating my and Diana’s accomplishment: our first week with a number one New York Times bestseller.

  Diana tousled the wavy bangs of what I called, only in private so as not to embarrass her, her “Donna Summer wig.” Scanning the room, too, she said, “You may be right about that, girl. But can we just take in this view for a minute? I mean, damn! If having all these white people here in this room doesn’t mean we’ve made it, I don’t know what does.”

  I let Diana link her arm in mine and tried to see what she was seeing: the expensive centerpieces overflowing with white roses; the plates of expensive, plump scallops being distributed by waiters who resembled shaving cream models. A smooth jazz quartet in one corner that had started playing “I’m Every Woman” the moment we’d first walked in. An enormous fish tank filled with sapphire-colored water and jewel-colored creatures a few feet away.

  I didn’t really care about the fish tank; I could take or leave the fancy seafood. If I’d had my way—and I never would—I would’ve picked a different venue for this. A different neighborhood, really. Anywhere but the Financial District, a frigid, bloodless neighborhood that held one of the country’s biggest slave markets, once upon a time.

  Whether I thought the party décor was tacky or not, though, Diana was right. We were the women of the evening—the women of the year, people were starting to say, even though Burning Heart had barely been out for a week. We, two Black unknowns, had managed to turn what many predicted would be a minor blip into a book that had the entire country buzzing. The buzz had gotten so loud that we were booked solid with interviews for the next three months. A big weekly magazine had even mentioned they were “strongly considering” putting the two of us on their cover.

  We had a bestseller on our hands, and nobody—not even some random husband who saw no problems with Ben Kingsley winning an Oscar for playing an Indian man—could take that away from me.

  Still.

  “Yes, everything here is incredible. But… I…” I shrugged, trying to find a way to push the words out. “I still haven’t forgotten how so many of these white folks doubted me about Burning Heart.”

  I turned to Diana. The movement broke our arm-chain link, but what I was about to say needed to be said. “Why else do you think Richard let me edit your book instead of him? And gave us so little money to work with? And that measly two-week author tour publicity gave us… every single one of those moves were calculated, Di. They did all that in case it turned out to be a flop. That’s why I had to fight him every step of the way.”

  I wished I could take back the word “flop” immediately. Something strange played out in Diana’s eyes as she studied me, her lips tightly pressed together. Only then did I notice that her burnt-orange lipstick was smudged. I motioned for her to fix it, prepared to ask her if she and Elroy had snuck a little one-on-one time in the coat closet, but Diana spoke again. “Hey—all of that is in the past now. What matters is the book got made, and we’re here.

  “Besides,” she added, pulling a compact mirror from a clutch as white as her white asymmetrical minidress, “you know how it goes. A dozen nos before you get one yes, and that yes is the only one that matters. Everyone else can take their nos and shove them up their perfectly perfumed assholes.”

  That made me smile. Very rarely did Diana talk about shoving anything anywhere. When all the girls in middle school started calling her “High-Yellow Di”—not really because of her skin, but because of her good grades, her perfect diction, and her love of I Love Lucy reruns—it was me, not Diana, who’d told them to go fuck themselves. For the most part, everyone had listened; granted, I was pretty sure my punching Geoffrey Harrison out in the fourth grade during a field trip to the Montclair Art Museum had something to do with that.

  I eyed my friend, who was having a hard time standing in one place for more than a few moments. Clearly, she’d helped herself to more than a couple of glasses of wine, which explained the messy lipstick, the “perfumed assholes,” and the fact that she was again linking her arm in mine—this time, more forcefully. “I can’t believe I’m the one telling you this,” she said, “but Kendra Rae Phillips, you need to chill the hell out and take a deep fucking breath.”

  “You know how I hate breathing.”

  “I do. But humor me. C’mon, now. Innnn…”

  I pouted, but did as I was told.

  “Now, out. See? Don’t that feel good? See!” She patted me on the back without waiting for my response. “Hey,” she said, sniffing the air, her naturally turned-up nose twitching like that of a puppy on the prowl. “You smell that?”

  I frowned. “No. What am I supposed to be smelling?”

  Diana beamed. “Money, honey. Not just white folks’ money, neither. You wanna know what I did with the first check I got from Wagner?”

  “I’m guessing the answer isn’t ‘deposited it in the bank.’ ”

  “You guessed right. No, I just put it down on the kitchen table and stared at it for a good long while. Forty minutes, maybe an hour. I kid you not. And when Elroy got home from work and tried to pick up the check and see it, would you believe what I did? I barked at him, honey. I’ve never done that in my life.”

  It was all just too much. We both howled. I mean, really howled. And that was all it took to bring us back to back in the day. We were high schoolers again, getting ready to go roller-skating at the Eight Skate in downtown Newark with the rest of the girls. We were drinking red juice and whatever liquor Imani could sneak from her parents’ stash. Singing Drums keep pounding a rhythm to the brain while either Ola or I pressed Diana’s hair—her real hair—and I was usually the one doing the pressing, because unlike Ola, I knew to quit grooving when I had someone else’s head and a hot piece of metal in my hand. Half-knowing that soon more than just our outfits would have to change.

  We would be splitting up—Diana and Imani would be off to Howard; Ola to Oaxaca, where she would meet a man and start a family and a nonprofit, all in the span of one year. And I’d be off to Harvard, where I… what exactly would I do there? Pick up a man here, drop him off there. I’d miss New Jersey; try—and fail—to love Boston. I’d be pulled deeper into books.

  And I’d be pushed further away from white people.

  This recollection, although not a new one by any means, was sobering enough to chase away any joy a Chaka Khan–playing jazz quartet could bring me. At the same time, I detected a white couple nearby that seemed noticeably concerned by our laughing fit. When I met the man’s eye, they hastily feigned interest in one of the many literary awards that Richard had requested be temporarily affixed to a wall for this swanky affair.

  I didn’t let them off the hook, though. I gave each of them a disdainful up-down, my eyes remaining transfixed upon the string of diamonds around the woman’s fine porcelain neck. Five seconds later, they wandered over to the far side of the room fo
r air.

  “Oh, for God’s sake. Girl.” Diana’s words had no semblance of softness this time, and when she finished rolling her eyes, I knew she was going to say what she’d been trying not to say for quite some time. You’re beyond saving. Or, maybe, You’re bringing me down.

  Instead, she pointed at my drink and ordered me to get another. “Then, once you’ve finished it, meet Richard and me over by the fish tank in five.”

  Hearing my boss’s name killed my buzz for an instant. “Ah, is that it? Richard sent you to summon me? I already said hello when we got here, and I’ll say goodbye and thank you when it’s time to go home. I don’t think I should have to—”

  Diana shook her head. “No, stupid. There’s a guy from the Times here who’s doing a write-up on this and he wants to take a photo of the three of us. Seriously, girl—why do you hate Richard so much? It’s getting kind of old, you know.”

  My eyes caught her lipstick, newly reapplied. “Where’s Elroy?” I asked pointedly. “Is he here yet?”

  But Diana pretended not to hear. “So, he’s a yuppie who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Okay, fine. So, he took some convincing. But he is not representative of every single white man you’ve ever met. I mean, come on. Have you ever seen another white man do all of this for a couple of Black women nobody has ever heard of?

  “Plus, remember what I’ve always said,” Diana added, trying unsuccessfully to whisper in my ear. “We use them until we don’t need to use them no longer. Plain and simple.”

  Plain and simple. Of course she’d say that. How many white men, really, had Diana been forced to stomach in her everyday life? She’d gotten her bachelor’s at Howard, her PhD at Howard, and she had stayed there to teach. The white gatekeepers hadn’t been shoved in her face nearly as much as they’d been shoved in mine. At a historically Black college, Diana had been granted the blessed gift of tunnel vision. She’d been blessed with the ability to forget white people existed, if only for a little while.

  I had been blessed with being smothered by them.

  Diana never understood that, though, and there was no way I could ever tell her this. Not point-blank. Because it would mean telling her she’d been right when we were sitting on my stoop in ’68, holding all of our acceptance letters in our hands. That attending any place that wasn’t Howard or Hampton was a mistake. That I hadn’t been as strong as I’d thought I would be.

  No, Diana would never stop trying to convince me to lay off on trying to sabotage this night. So I put on a happy face and backed away toward the bar. “I’ll have two more drinks,” I said, “and I’ll meet you guys in ten.”

  “With a smile?”

  I held up my empty glass. “With a big fucking smile.”

  6

  August 29, 2018

  It was no surprise Nella’s day ended on a bad note. After all, it started off on one.

  To be fair, that was Nella’s fault. Anybody with half the will to be employed knew that stepping on the toes and fingers of one of Wagner’s bestselling authors, then showing up to work forty-five minutes late the following day, was downright reckless.

  Nevertheless—out of fear, mostly—Nella spent too much of the morning trying to convince herself to get out of bed, and even more of the morning allowing Owen to convince her that no, her decision to be upfront with Vera and Colin had not been a bad one.

  In fact, he found the whole situation hilarious.

  “The image of him dabbing his eyes with that soggy, expensive-ass hat… it’s just… it’s just too good,” he said, laughing.

  Nella finally slid out of bed and started rifling through her drawers for something to wear. “But you should have seen their faces, baby.”

  “I didn’t need to. I’ve seen white guilt enough to know what it looks like.”

  Nella couldn’t help herself. “In the bathroom mirror, you mean?”

  “After we watched Twelve Years a Slave, I mean,” said Owen, without missing a beat. “It only lasted a few seconds, though, and then it went down the drain with the hand soap.”

  Nella jumped up and down in order to get her freshly lotioned leg into her favorite pair of jeans. “That was fast! Remind me to make you watch the entire Roots miniseries next February,” she teased, nearly teetering headfirst into her dresser.

  Owen had groaned and rolled over on his side, even though they both knew he had no qualms about watching Roots—or reading it, for that matter, if that proposition had also been on the table. He was more than happy to be inundated with “Black Thangs,” as Nella called them, either through the Black literature and film canons, or straight from Nella herself as she recapped her day-to-day feelings—which was the case on the morning after the Colin Incident. Owen was always ready to discuss the latest hot-button issue circulating on Twitter: blackface, underrepresentation, police shootings of unarmed Black men and women. But it was because he was never too eager—he didn’t feel the need to call all of the things racist all of the time, like a few of the white men she’d dated and known before him—that made Nella trust him the most. He had nothing to prove; he was perfectly content that his worldview, established thirty years earlier by a lesbian couple in Denver and glued in place by a daily viewing of Democracy Now!, had set him on the right course.

  Such bedrock had also enabled Owen to blaze a path of his own—one that allowed him to be his own boss at a startup company called App-terschool Learning. Nella knew little about this startup, besides that it had to do with mentorship and connecting underprivileged teens. She also knew that it permitted Owen to leave their Bay Ridge apartment whenever he felt like it and work from home when he didn’t—a luxury she wished she had more often than not.

  “But seriously, Nell,” Owen said, still lying on his side, his voice muffled by the bedding. “You’re going to be fine. It’s all going to be fine. This will all blow over in, like, five days.”

  “That’s easy for you to say.” Nella paused, her stick of deodorant poised mid-application, and waited for Owen to flip over and look back at her. She hadn’t intended for her words to come out as loaded as they did, but they had, and now it was too late to deny what was weighing them down: the fact that Owen was a white cis male who would never have many of the conversations she did, unless they ended up having children one day. What she’d really been trying to say, simply, was that he would never be able to understand the bizarre world of publishing the way she did. The gang of characters at Wagner was incredibly peculiar, but on the whole, their actions and subtle microaggressions seemed harmless to an outsider. Shucks, I’ve seen worse behavior in other office environments, Owen would more or less say, then cite a disgruntled employee of his own who’d peed in several Disney character thermoses and left them in an old boss’s office overnight.

  Nella’s colleagues at Wagner weren’t sociopaths. They all knew where one was and was not supposed to pee. But that didn’t make being around them any less stressful. Once you were in close quarters with them each day—once you’d spent more than a year making catatonic small talk around sputtering Keurigs and mottled bathroom sinks and Printer Row, grinning and bearing it while you learned about their new summer homes and their latest European vacations and wondered why you were still making fewer than twenty dollars an hour; once you got used to the fact that almost every time you came into contact with an unknown Black person in your place of work, this person was most likely going to ask you to sign for a package, or offer to fix your computer—it started to grate on you. So much so that, at least once a month, you got up from your desk, sauntered over to the ladies’ room, shut yourself in a stall, and asked yourself, Why am I still here?

  At last, after twenty minutes of dragging her feet, Nella finally finished getting ready. Owen kissed her lightly from his side of the bed and told her everything was going to be fine. But the effect of his words lasted as long as the sensation from his lips, and as Nella got on the Manhattan-bound R train, she had a feeling it was going to be a breakdown-in-the-bathr
oom-stall kind of day.

  The feeling intensified nearly an hour later, as she took a deep breath and waited for the revolving doors to spill her out into the lobby, wavering only when she waved a quick hello to India, the cheery, mocha-skinned receptionist who’d sat at the front desk from six to eleven every weekday morning ever since Nella had first started at Wagner. “Loving that scarf today, India,” she said as brightly as she could manage, pulling out her Wagner identification card.

  India reached up and touched the silky blue and gold scarf, as if to remind herself which one she’d worn that day. “Thanks, girl!” she said, her smile genuine, even though Nella almost always said the same thing about her scarves or earrings or newest hairstyle. Nella’s compliments, of course, were always grounded in truth; today, the fabric, a striking collage of blue and gold geometric shapes, was arranged almost too stunningly for an office in Midtown, wrapped ceremoniously and tied up in two equal-sized bows that sat on the top of India’s head. But Nella also made sure that her one-liners took exactly the right amount of time to get her from the lobby to the elevator bank without having to slow her step. It was part of her morning routine, the same way she fixed grits in the morning, or made her way down two-thirds of the train platform so that she wouldn’t have to walk far once she got off at her stop in Manhattan.

  “It is a great scarf, isn’t it?”

  Nella turned around to hear who’d agreed with her. It was Hazel, of course, who was suddenly right behind her, a stack of manuscript pages in her right hand. The inaugural navy-blue Wagner tote bag she’d been given on her first day dangled from her wrist, swinging precariously back and forth.

  “What’s going on, ladies? By the way, India,” said Hazel, reaching into her tote for what Nella presumed was her ID but was actually a brown paper bag, “I went to that African fabric store in Queens I was telling you about last week. And… look!”

  India reached across her desk to accept Hazel’s offering, a vulnerable, almost greedy vigor in her movements. Nella hadn’t seen the woman betray this much emotion in the two years she’d known her.