The Other Black Girl(103)
For just a split second, Nella forgot to breathe. “Very cool.”
Hazel cocked her head slightly. Nella could practically see the gears turning in the girl’s head as they turned in her own. What year had Hazel said her grandfather died protesting busing when they were at Nico’s all those months ago? 1961?
And the year of the march… 1963. Her father had quizzed her on such facts when she was a teenager, around the same time he’d given her that copy of Burning Heart.
“My grandmother remarried,” Hazel said, almost instantly. “He’s my stepgrandfather, but the word ‘step’ gets so messy…”
But it was too late. “Yes,” Nella said, nodding satisfactorily. “It’s so admirable that she was able to move on.”
Malaika looked from her friend to the enemy, confused. But Hazel ignored her and continued walking.
Nella exhaled a puff of air she hadn’t realized that she’d been holding in. “So, how many are you expecting tonight?”
“There’ll be seven of us, total.”
“Great. Friends from college, or—?”
“A real mix,” said Hazel. “I know them from all over the place. You know how you pick up friends along the way—at college, different jobs, different places in life… all that.”
“Mmm. It’s really something that you still keep in touch with them all, even after you’ve moved around so much.”
“Yeah, it is. You know, I prefer when the number for these things is a bit lower, at about three,” said Hazel, at last leading them through a prewar awning. “It means everybody can get a little more attention. But when I put out the bait, everybody bit. And speaking of everybody…” She paused in the doorway so she could make an announcement to the women who were already sitting in the yellow-orange glow of the living room. “Ladies, I’d like you to meet Nella and Malaika. Nell, Mal—” She moved out of the way so they could enter the foyer, too. “This is everybody.”
“It’s Malaika,” she said sternly. At the same time, Nella heard a cackle come from the green paisley armchair in the right corner of the room, which was all but swallowing a brown girl with an Elaine Brown–sized afro who had been flipping through a magazine before they walked in. On the floor, a curvier Black girl with skin the color of Nella’s palms rolled her eyes and nudged Juanita, who was sitting behind her on the big sofa, hands in her hair. Juanita just shook her head and continued to grease the girl’s scalp.
Nella bit her lip anxiously. She put up her hand and flicked her wrist in that awkward, beauty pageant way that she always did when she felt out of place and didn’t know what to do with her appendages. “Hi, everybody.”
The girl in the paisley armchair was still snickering when Juanita spoke. “Dang, Hazel. We don’t even get names? Sheesh.”
“She said, ‘There go everybody,’?” the girl on the floor added, before gently pulling away from Juanita so she could stand up and shake Nella’s hand, then Malaika’s. “I’m Ebonee.”
“Kiara,” Elaine Brown’s hair heir said, waving her magazine. That it was an issue of Harper’s didn’t escape Nella, nor did the fact that she had a pen in her hand, as though she were marking it up.
“And you remember Juanita, right?”
“Of course. Good to see you again,” said Nella. Malaika bobbed her head and managed a weak hello.
Hazel looked around the room as Nella and Malaika moved to take seats on the two empty cushions that had been placed on either side of Ebonee. “Where’s Camille?”
“She had to step out,” said Juanita. “Something about having to call her boo because he was getting off work and he likes to talk to her for at least half of his commute home.”
Malaika helped herself to a handful of blue corn tortilla chips that were sitting on what appeared to be a small square IKEA-looking table in the middle of the room—the only piece of furniture, Nella noted with interest, that actually seemed to be from IKEA. Everything else around them looked like it had been owned and cherished for some time. The green-and-beige cushion she’d chosen to sit on was just as squishy as Kiara’s armchair looked, and the artwork on the walls—lots of black figures that were supposed to represent humans in various states of joy painted against miscellaneous bright backdrops—were reminiscent of another time. Between two of these paintings, standing tall at maybe six feet or so, was a dusty yet obstinate money tree plant that had to have been around when Bush was in office. Maybe even the first Bush.
“Camille’s boyfriend gets off work at eight thirty p.m.?” asked Malaika, incredulous, as though she’d known Camille her entire life. “What does he do?”
“He works at an insurance company.” Hazel lowered herself onto the open seat next to Manny’s sister. “But he lives in… where does he live again, Eb?”
“Somewhere out West. Colorado, I think.”
“Doesn’t he live in Montana?” asked Juanita.
Ebonee snorted. “Like I remember. Aren’t they basically the same?”
“He lives in Missoula,” Kiara interjected, flipping a page in her magazine.
Nella nearly choked on her potato chip. “Missoula?”
“Uh-huh. At least, that fine snack she was showing me pictures of on her phone lives in Missoula. And he looked fresh out of a Patagonia ad, so.” Kiara shrugged her bare shoulders, two muscular knobs beneath a periwinkle wifebeater.