The Other Black Girl

by Zakiya Dalila Harris

  I think there’s a book inside you that could

  A light brush skittered across her leg. She yelped and thrashed, noticing a moment too late that it was just Pam, the sweet Chilean woman who cleaned the building afterhours, trying to empty her trash.

  “Oh, Pam,” Nella cried, clutching the woman’s arm. “I am so, so, so sorry!”

  Pam politely removed her hand. “It’s okay, honey,” she said, reaching again for Nella’s trash can. “This place gives me the creeps, too.”

  11

  September 26, 2018

  The main Wagner conference room was abuzz with watercooler chitchat as dozens of employees stocked up at the breakfast bar, then filed into their rightful seats—editors and other upper-level employees at the big stone table; everyone else in the four rows of chairs that faced the big stone table.

  Nella and the other Wagner assistants were posted up in “Assistants Alley,” close enough to take notes on the first marketing meeting of the season, but far enough to zone out undetected. They weren’t quite in the nosebleeds. That was the last row, which was taken—almost out of protest—by the e-books team, an underappreciated department that was never taken as seriously as it should have been, and Leonard, the grumpy cover designer. Nevertheless, Hazel had expressed disapproval of the Assistants Alley seats Sophie had saved for her and Nella when they’d arrived a few minutes earlier. There are seats open up front, she seemed ready to say. But then Sophie had suddenly and very loudly praised Hazel’s updo, leaving Hazel no choice but to accept her third-row seat with a smile.

  Nella was happy she’d been spared from explaining that no assistant had ever sat so close to the stone table. That it just wasn’t done. But that didn’t stop her from wondering, as she took a bite out of her bagel, why it never actually was.

  “So.” Hazel took a bite out her cinnamon raisin mini-bagel, moving forward so she could engage Nella, Sophie, and Gina, a know-it-all assistant publicist, at the same time. “Y’all are coming to my Young, Black ’n’ Lit event tonight, right?”

  A muscle tightened in Nella’s neck. This question felt like it had been directed at her and her alone. She pretended to be interested in testing the functionality of her ballpoint pen.

  It wasn’t that Nella didn’t want to go, because she’d considered it on more than one occasion since receiving the Facebook event invite a couple of days earlier. She’d looked up Young, Black ’n’ Lit, the nonprofit poetry organization that Hazel herself had founded for Black high school students in Harlem, and realized it was exactly the kind of thing that she and Malaika always talked about doing more of—being engaged in the communities in which they lived, partaking in Black extracurriculars.

  She discovered that plenty of other people felt the same way, too, once she’d looked around some more. YBL had approximately fifteen thousand Instagram followers and twenty-two thousand Facebook fans. Since 2012, our mission has been to amplify the voices of teens who have the words, but don’t have the microphone, the main home page read. We aim to promote the next generation of Mayas, Lauryns, and Lucilles.

  Their net went far beyond New York—it extended to Chicago and LA, too, where educators had started YBL chapters in their own communities. Most impressive of all, though, was YBL’s Twitter page, which had nearly thirty thousand followers and a breadth of tweets, sometimes five in a day—interviews with Black writers from all over the country and from all decades; posts dedicated to the birthdays of Black poets, many of whom Nella had never heard of. It was rife with so much rich Black content that Nella could have cozied up on her full-sized bed and settled into it for an hour. Two hours, even.

  But she didn’t have the time these days. Ever since their conversation about The Lie, Vera had been inundating Nella with manuscripts, day after day. She was thinking about which one she should start first when Sophie said, “Wait! Your reading thing’s tonight? I totally forgot. Where is it, again?”

  “It’s at Curl Central. In Bed-Stuy.”

  Gina frowned. Nella practically heard the corners of her mouth turn down. A “what’s hot and what’s not” crystal ball of sorts, the redhead fell into the small but revered category of hardcore publicity employees who heard the name of a place located in the city, then joyfully told you if she deemed it literary enough to hold an author event—whether you wanted to know or not. It was a gift that Nella did not wish for, but it did impress her.

  “Curl Central. Hm.” Gina’s mouth scrunched up into the left side of her face. After too much thought, she concluded, “We’ve never held anything there before.”

  Hazel laughed. “I didn’t think you had,” she said good-naturedly, but Nella could sense a glimmer of amusement in her eye—the same one she’d had when Maisy had whitesplained Harlem to her. “It’s at a hair café. My boyfriend’s sister’s. It’s her first time hosting a literary salon. She’s got the space for it, so we figured, why not?”

  “ ‘Hair café,’ ” Gina repeated, taking a sip of her coffee as she computed once more. “That’s different.”

  “I’m down, definitely,” said Sophie, practically bubbling over with glee. Sophie had been coming over to Hazel’s desk at least twice a day to chat, and Nella imagined she was psyched at the idea of hanging with Hazel outside of work for a change.

  “Great.” Hazel nodded. She shifted her focus; this time, her eyes really were on Nella.

  “I’ll come, too, if the other thing I have going on cancels,” Gina said, a bit resignedly. “It’ll be nice to scope it out, see if we’d want to host something there in the future.”

  “Sweet! Nella?”

  When Nella looked up, Hazel’s eyes were practically pleading with her. Please, girl, don’t leave me with these white chicks at a Black hair salon. “How about you?”

  “Um…” Nella ran a hand across the back of her neck. She had plans directly after work that evening, and not just the kind of plans she invented when she preferred to go home and stream reruns of A Different World Real plans. She was supposed to be meeting a young, established agent she’d been chasing for months; after that, she and Owen had plans to split a blunt and go see The Blob, one of their favorite bad-but-good sci-fi movies, downtown. They’d purchased tickets for the movie two months earlier, nearly a year in New York City time, and she was still in the doghouse after missing quality family time with his parents. She owed him.

  “C’mon, it’ll be fun! You’ve been meaning to come by Curl Central, right? You should come. You can bring Owen, too.”

  Something about that suggestion felt a bit odd to Nella, but she shrugged it off. “I might be able to make it. I have drinks with an agent scheduled for tonight, but that hopefully won’t go for too long.”

  “Drinks with an agent?” Sophie practically shrieked. “Awesome!”

  “Which agent?” Hazel asked.

  “Lena Jordan.”

  “I’ve been thinking about how I need to meet with agents, but I just don’t know how to find the time in between everything else,” Sophie complained. “You know?”

  Even though Kimberly had yet to return to the office post-surgery, Nella gave her a sympathetic nod. She was relieved by how much their conversation had veered considerably away from Hazel’s poetry reading.

  “Is this your first agent meeting?” Gina asked, her interest in the conversation renewed.

  “Yep. Only took me about two years to get someone to take me seriously enough.”

  “That’s the norm for you guys in editorial, isn’t it? Really, I don’t know how you all manage to hang on for so long,” said Gina. “If I hadn’t gotten promoted to assistant publicist last year, I would have totally gone to a different publishing house.”

  Everyone except Hazel nodded, even though everyone except Hazel knew that the only reason Gina had been promoted so quickly was because someone at the top had died.

  “I can’t believe how long it takes to move up the ladder,” Hazel said, polishing off the last of her bagel. She paused so she could finish
chewing. “But really… it’s sort of case by case, right?”

  “What do you mean?” Nella asked. Maybe Hazel had known that Gina’s previous boss had died peacefully at her Wagner desk. It was, after all, still the talk of the office.

  “Like, it sort of depends on the assistant? Richard was telling me that exceptions are sometimes made. Sometimes. It’s not like I have my hopes up or anything,” she quickly added.

  Sophie’s eyes widened. “He told you that? When?”

  Nella searched the room for Richard and found him, easily, at the head of the meeting table. With his sweeping eye, his high-collared satin persimmon shirt, and faint trace of a smile, he looked more like Macbeth eyeing potential suspects rather than a supportive editor in chief. “Did he say that to you during your welcome tea?” Nella asked, equally thrown by this.

  “No, no. Actually, I’ve been meaning to tell you guys…” Hazel leaned forward in her seat; again, she seemed to be addressing only Nella. “I invited Richard to an event we had a couple of weeks ago for donors who’ve supported YBL, just to see if he’d be interested in donating some money. And he bit! He’ll be coming to my event tonight, too.”

  “That’s great!” Sophie exclaimed, tugging at her braid. “We really need more young Black people in this industry. We were literally just talking about how weird it is that it took so long to get another Black assistant here at Wagner. Right, Gina?”

  Gina grew very interested in her cuticles. “Yeah, I think I remember that conversation.”

  “Like, Hazel is so smart. And you are, too, Nella,” Sophie added. She shook her head. “It just… it sucks how white it is here.” For perhaps the tenth time, she cited the op-ed that had run in BookCenter a few months ago. This time she even said the author’s full name—a new touch, Nella noticed. “Black people just really need to be given the chance. Period. Just because we don’t see them in these spaces doesn’t mean they can’t thrive here. Right?”

  Gina seemed to understand why “they” had been such an improper word for Sophie to use, because she shrank deeper into her seat. Hazel eyed Sophie, looking bemused.

  Amy Davidson, the head of the marketing team, saved them all. “One more minute, everyone, and then we’ll get started,” she called out. A third of the room, including Gina and Sophie, scattered to top off their coffees and grab just one or two more bagels.

  “It’s really awesome that you run an organization for young Black female writers,” said Nella, looking over at Hazel. “I would have totally loved to be a part of something like that when I was in high school.”

  “Thanks! A few girls from my old high school are reading tonight, so I’m extra hyped. Half of the food and drink proceeds are going to the group’s members, by the way.”

  “Sweet.”

  “The girls are really dope, too,” Hazel added, gazing into the distance. “And they’re so, so talented.”

  “I bet.” Nella took another bite out of her bagel so she didn’t have to say anything else. It tasted a little like onion and a little like a flavor she hadn’t asked for. “And Richard is really coming tonight?”

  Hazel bobbed her head and looked to the front of the room, where Richard was sitting. “You know, I thought he was pretty intense at first. But he actually can be really, really chill. I think I broke him in with all of my tea knowledge. Manny’s obsession really came in handy for once,” she joked.

  “Richard is definitely a character,” Nella agreed. She looked at the front table, too, but the tall, balding man who’d been occupying the seat in front of her had returned from the coffee station, obstructing her view. She sighed, a touch of grumpiness creeping into her spine. She hadn’t intended on going to Hazel’s reading. She couldn’t bail on Owen again. But now that Nella knew Richard would be there, and that exceptions might be made for promotions, she couldn’t ignore it.

  Nella made a mental note to email Lena Jordan about moving their drinks up to five thirty instead of six thirty. It wasn’t ideal—it had taken her months to pin down this meeting—but it had to be done. Besides, how awful would it look if one of Wagner’s only Black employees wasn’t supporting another’s endeavors?

  Amy swiftly clapped her hands to get everybody’s attention. By the time her palms met a third time, a hush fit for a wake drifted throughout the room of two dozen people.

  “Now that everyone’s settled,” Amy said, slipping off her crimson-tinted glasses, “I think we should get started.” She flipped her purplish-gray hair over her shoulders, then grabbed the wire-framed reading glasses that were always not far from the crook of her left elbow.

  Legend had it that Amy’s tinted lenses, which she donned everywhere except meetings that required her to sit at the head of the table, had been prescribed by an optician when she was in her twenties. But Nella was almost positive that they were a bit of a power play. Hell, every person who’d been at Wagner for as long as Amy had—thirty-two years, in her case—had some sort of quirk that would have been inexcusable for someone new to the business. Or for any person of color. And when compared with other quirks, Amy’s wasn’t the strangest. Talking to her without seeing her eyes wasn’t as bad as talking to Alexander while he was also talking to someone in his Bluetooth earpiece, or talking to Oliver, a veteran editor who peppered every conversation with quotes from authors he’d worked with.

  “Lots of great plans to talk about in today’s marketing meeting,” Amy continued, shuffling her papers in front of her. “We’re going to start with Vera’s two fall titles: one from Kitty Kruegler; the other from Colin Franklin. Any preference on which of your authors we start with, Ver?”

  “Yes, actually. I’ve got one,” Nella heard Richard say. “Let’s start with Colin.”

  “Might as well start with the cash cow, right?” Josh, ever the seconder, agreed. He’d managed to get to the meeting room early, and was separated from Richard only by Alexander—a notable feat.

  Everyone laughed and nodded their heads eagerly. Nella jotted down this small joke—not the cash cow comment, but the level of confidence with which everyone at Wagner still beheld Colin Franklin. She knew it would please him the next time she and Vera sat down to give him a sales update, especially since numbers from his last few books had been fairly mediocre—and had been since 2009, actually, which was when the lead actress in the film adaptation of Not My Priest had sued Colin for harassment in the months following its premiere.

  Who would agree to play Shartricia if his new book were adapted into a movie? No one famous, she assumed. More likely an unknown, looking for her big break. And maybe this would be it for her. Maybe the movie would blow up, lead to better roles, and she’d become an achiever of “firsts” that one would have thought another Black actress had already achieved. She’d go from acting to talk-show hosting, become the next Black Ellen—Blellen?—and then, after a few years, she’d go on to start her own Black women–run film company. Billions of dollars; millions of followers; EGOT status; a household name across the world. And once it was all said and done, perhaps nobody would remember the Shartricia role that had made it all possible.

  Maybe.

  But probably not. Black people wouldn’t forget. Not people like Nella; not anyone else who spent more than a few moments thinking or talking about Black representation in the media.

  She shook her head, again considering the apology that Vera had asked her to make, again wondering what the media would think about Colin’s new book when it dropped… and how helpless she felt about all of it. Maybe she should have tried harder to get through to him during that meeting in Vera’s office.

  “What’s most impressive of all about this book, though,” Vera was saying, “is that Colin has been particularly proactive in his quest to get deep inside the minds of his characters. And I think what he has here is going to ring so true with readers in these damaged communities, too. Because those are the folks whom these books are truly for. The people out in rural Ohio, and all the other rural areas in the United
States.”

  “But do they even read?” Sophie whispered into Gina’s ear, a bit too loudly. Gina covered her silent laughter with a hand.

  Amy cut into Vera’s spiel. “I think that all sounds fabulous, Vera. I read this book and I have to say that it really is something else. It’s a true departure, if you don’t mind me saying, from what Colin has worked on in the past. The family scenes all really hit me. So hard, so deeply.”

  Amy paused, then, which meant the woman had closed her eyes the way she often did in the middle of speaking, to emphasize her point. Nella felt her own eyelids grow heavy, which wasn’t an unusual response to Amy’s yoga voice. “After I finished the manuscript I called my younger son up at Yale, and told him I loved him for making the choices that he made. And for the choices he didn’t make.”

  The balding man sitting in front of Nella nodded his head in agreement.

  “I do have just one question, though.”

  Another pause. Nella wondered if Amy was about to ask everyone to drop into downward-facing dog.

  “I do wonder about audience, and how we’re going to get this book into the hands of people in those ravaged communities.”

  Sophie reached over and squeezed Gina’s thigh, victorious.

  “I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to be that heartless old witch and ask everyone here at this table, as much as it pains me—do these people that Colin is writing about buy books? Or are they more focused on simply buying more opioids?”

  Nella flinched. Hearing the phrase “these people” in reference to a mostly white group of people was strangely satisfying. She wondered if Hazel felt the same way, but she was seated too far to the left to show up in Nella’s periphery.

  “I think that’s a fair question to ask,” Josh said. “And I also wonder—and I’ll happily be the warlock to your witch, Amy”—a few overly generous chuckles—“do we think the public has had enough of this story line? The opioid epidemic has come and… well, it hasn’t gone, exactly, but frankly, it doesn’t feel like the news cycle cares as much about it as it once did. This means that we’ll really need to think hard about how we market this one.”