The Other Black Girl(100)
“Bureaucratic bullshit.”
“Yeah, I know. It’s fucked up.”
“Ugh. Weren’t you saying Hazel’s been, like, best friends with the boss, though?” asked Malaika. “They were all buddy-buddy at Curl Central. So bizarre. Do we think they’re…?”
“I’m still not unconvinced his mistress isn’t a Black woman… but Hazel? Ugh, I’m feeling nauseous enough without even discussing that.” Nella sighed as visions from the Needles and Pins cover meeting shuffled across her brain. “Everybody at Wagner’s obsessed with her. Not just him.”
“Well, on the bright side… you’re gonna meet Jesse, and maybe even work on his maybe-book, right? That’s pretty exciting. Even if it does mean you have to collaborate with Hazel. Maybe he’ll even want to discuss that book idea you sent him.”
“Something like that. Although Richard didn’t exactly say that I’d get to work on it. But it is looking pretty promising.”
“Promising,” said Malaika, trying to appear convinced, even though she clearly wasn’t. “Nice. And if it does become your book… you’re still gonna do it, right?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“I do remember a certain person talking about how she was going to quit after a certain author went batshit on her. And how everybody at Wagner seems to be drinking the Kool-Aid. Or should I say Crystal Light?” she self-corrected, finding enough breath to laugh at her own joke.
“True. But now that I have this opportunity, it—”
Isaac clapped his hands. For the first time, the sound of his palms didn’t cause Nella to flinch. She was actually relieved she had more time to think about a response. “Now, planks. Keep those arms straight and those cores engaged!”
“Alright, it’s official,” Nella huffed, relieved that she could stop moving even if it meant more muscle burn. “This guy is a fucking monster.”
“Looking good, guys!” Isaac called.
Beside her, Malaika whispered a faint obscenity, her arms shaking precariously. Thirty seconds later, when she spoke again, they were still planking. “You do have a choice,” she said. “The way I see it, you have two. I think it’s obvious what you should do. Or at least, what you should want to do. Weren’t you thinking about quitting? Don’t you hate this place? You should want to go to the meeting and fuck it all the way up. Tell Jesse about how you dropped his name to Vera centuries ago, but everyone there thought he was too Black to drop him a line. Tell him all about Shartricia and how Hazel’s been stepping all over you to get everyone to like her. And then pull out your boom box, jump up on that conference table, and give everyone the finger to the reeling sounds of ‘Fight the Power.’?”
Malaika had always said that she didn’t mind being a soundboard for Nella and her many Wagner grievances, and for that, Nella was grateful. Owen could only withstand so much talk about microaggressions; his eyes would glaze over after fifteen minutes of conjecture around what this or that unsigned email from Vera meant. Her own boss could be just as frustrating, so Malaika was almost always “here for it,” offering Nella words of wisdom that she considered as good as gold.
Thus, Malaika’s advice about sticking it to the Man shouldn’t have caught Nella by surprise. It was exactly what her friend had been saying since day one, ever since Nella first started complaining about her job: If you’re so unhappy, then fuck all of it. Leave. Every time, Nella would agree that yes, she should leave—and that she would, one day. That she wouldn’t turn into Leonard or Maisy or even Vera. But every time, after she’d laughed over all the different ways she could quit with Malaika, she would say that she hadn’t reached her breaking point. That it hadn’t gotten that bad yet.
But in this instance, Malaika’s advice seemed way off base. The thought of jeopardizing her career by burning all of her bridges at Wagner, after Richard had told her just days earlier that she was close to getting a promotion, seemed downright absurd. It unnerved her so much that she spent the next sixty seconds trying to keep pace with the fiftysomething-year-old woman who was showing everybody up in the row directly in front of them, rather than saying what she felt in her heart: that, Hazel or no Hazel, Shartricia or no Shartricia, she wasn’t ready to give up. There had to be another way.
Malaika appeared to have noticed Nella’s trepidation. Because after the next set of planks, she was clearing her throat so loudly that Nella could hear it over Pitbull. “That was option one,” she clarified, her tone more sober than Nella had heard her friend speak in a while. “But we both know that’s not viable. So, what you really should do is prepare like crazy, then go to that meeting and wow the pants off Jesse Watson and your boss and your boss’s boss. Make Jesse want to work with you and only you. And then, find out if he’s really dating that purple-haired chick who was in his profile picture a few months ago. If not, give him my phone number.”
Nella brightened.
“But really,” Malaika continued, once she’d dug deep enough to find another wind from within, “sit in that meeting and be nice to Jesse. Connect with him. Do it so well that by the time the meeting ends, he’s begging you to work with him. And if it’s not you—if Richard tries to put another editor on it—then Jesse won’t accept a deal with Wagner.”