Such a Fun Age(69)
“She’s fine, I’m a nurse!” Zara pulled Emira’s arm harder. “We’ll be right back!”
Emira allowed Josefa and Zara to pull and push her toward the bathroom. She said, “Girl, watch it,” as Zara shoved her and Shaunie into the handicap stall. Josefa locked the door behind them. Emira looked down at her arm and saw that there was no trace of blood. She blinked four times in succession and thought, Woof, I must be faded.
“I don’t see anything.”
“You’re fine.” Josefa pulled out her phone.
“Wait, what?” In Shaunie’s left hand was a Band-Aid and in her right was a travel-sized tube of Neosporin. Zara said, “The fuck are you doing?” Shaunie said, “I thought you said blood?”
Emira stopped all of them with, “K, what is this right now?”
Shaunie returned her first-aid items to her purse. Zara and Josefa exchanged a look that made Emira quite furious. Josefa crossed one arm over her chest.
“Guys, what the fuck?” Emira asked again. “This isn’t cute. Kelley just got here.”
“Okay,” Zara said. “Did you share that video?”
Something fat and round formed at the back of her throat. Emira knew what video Zara was referring to, but she found herself stalling and saying, “What video?”
“Don’t freak out.” Josefa appeared ready to confess but couldn’t look Emira in the eye. She tapped and scrolled with white nails as she spoke. “Someone commented on my photo of you and was like, ‘Is that the black girl from the grocery store video?’ And I was like, ‘What?’ So I Googled black girl grocery store video and . . . this came up.”
Emira snatched Josefa’s phone and her mouth dropped into an impossible O. Through the haze of three and a half drinks, Emira watched herself on the screen, saying to the camera, “Ohmygod, can you step off?” in the poultry section of Market Depot. She couldn’t see Briar, but she could see a little stick of blond hair at the bottom of the frame. The sight of it chipped the side of her heart.
“No no no no no.” Emira found herself backed up against the filthy stall wall covered in stickers and Sharpie and names and numbers. Her eyes and chest immediately felt sober but it was taking her limbs and hips longer to catch up. There was part of her that hadn’t reached How did this happen?! and was still amazed by the technology that put her in this bathroom and on the screen simultaneously. As if from another universe, Emira heard her voice again. Zara had pulled out her phone and was playing the video for Shaunie. “Okay, umm . . .” Shaunie said. “Emira, don’t panic.”
“But there’s no way . . .” Emira whispered. “What is this even? Who has this?!”
“Yeah, what is this site?” Shaunie’s tone implied that this whole situation was actually a prank, that someone was just being very silly. “This doesn’t look like a legit site. Maybe it’s the only one.”
Zara and Josefa exchanged another look that made Emira want to smash the phone into the piles of soggy toilet paper on the floor. “What!” she demanded. Her fingers were shaking now. “Tell me who else has this!”
“Girl, it’s on Twitter,” Josefa said. “So like . . . everyone has it.”
“Excuse me?”
Josefa reached for her phone, went back a page, and returned the screen to Emira. Emira didn’t have a Twitter account, so she tried to swipe left and right. All three of her friends said, “Scroll down.”
There it all was. Black Girl Almost Gets Arrested for Babysitting. Black Girl Destroys Security Guard Who Accuses Her of Kidnapping. Just Another Black Girl Trying To Do Her Job and Getting in Trouble for It. Philadelphia Babysitter Accused of Kidnapping. #BelieveBlackWomen. #AreWeFreeToGo. Sassy Black Woman Lets Security Guard Have It. There was one clip from the video that had been cut and used over and over again with words typed overhead. Beneath captions like When TSA tells me my bag is too big, When they tell me the bathroom is for customers only, When they tell me I can only bring six items into the fitting room, there was Emira yelling, “You’re not even a real cop, so you back up, son!” Emira touched the stall wall and said, “I need to sit down.”
“Ew, no no no no.” Shaunie took her by the elbow. “You can’t sit in here. Just lean against me.” Josefa took her phone out of Emira’s hand and Shaunie blew cool air against her neck.
Everything seemed to blur over with a deep film. Emira was in this disgusting bathroom, but she was also back in the freezer aisle of Market Depot. But she was also in the Chamberlain bathroom where she gave Briar a bath, and then in Briar’s bedroom as she put her down for a nap. “I think I’m gonna be sick,” she said.
Josefa came in close. “Mira, who did this?”
Zara stepped in too. “Who the fuck did you send this to?”
“I don’t . . .” Emira’s lips crushed together. “I’m the only one who has this.”
“Did someone steal your phone?”
Emira shook her head at Josefa. She reached into her crossbody bag and held up her phone in its new gold case; the unmarked plastic made her want to cry. When she glanced at her screen, there were twelve new texts and four missed calls, and the previews of these texts went back and forth between Happy Birthday! and Emira is this you? There was a message from her mother that said, Emira call us ASAP. Another from her sister said, Why aren’t you answering your phone?! Emira placed her head against the wall and inhaled. “Ohmygod.”