The Other Black Girl(35)
“Harassment?” Malaika scoffed. “Do you hear yourself right now?”
“It happened years ago, and Richard apparently put Colin through the ringer when the tabloids got ahold of it. Colin’s been on his best behavior ever since. Kind of.”
Malaika sighed. “Okay. Maybe not him. But what about Vera?”
Nella almost spilled her drink on herself. “You can’t think—?”
“Well, you haven’t told me anything yet, but I’d imagine Vera was pretty mad about the Colin thing.”
“Yeah, but… it would be so obvious if she did something like that. Vera’s not that stupid, or petty.”
Malaika delivered her favorite Are you being for real look. “I’ve watched Lifetime Movie Network. I know how power-hungry white women operate. They do whatever it takes to claw their way to the top, all sneaky and shit. And once they’re at the top, you bet their asses they’re gonna do anything they can to keep their place there. Steal a baby, cut up somebody’s dog. Sneaky things.”
“You mean some of them. Not all of them. Also,” Nella added, even as an image of a distraught Vera standing above her with a box cutter and some packing tape flashed through her mind, “if Vera really wanted to fire me, she would have just fired me already. She’s been at Wagner long enough to have the clout.”
Malaika snorted. “You know and I know that it’s not that simple.” She picked up the envelope again and reread the note aloud the way she would have read a Dr. Seuss book. “?‘Leave Wagner. Now.’ If this isn’t a hate crime, I don’t know what is.”
“It would have been a hate crime if it had said, ‘Leave Wagner now, nigger.’?”
“Oh… but it’s there.”
Nella reached for the paper. “It is?”
“No, it’s not there, literally. But it’s there. Look, girl,” she continued when Nella rolled her eyes. “You are Black. The fact that you’re Black colors every single thing anyone ever says to you—pun intended,” she added, before Nella could. “Whether they admit it or not.”
“I know what you mean. And you’re sort of right. But—”
“And with that anonymous article that was published last month—the one about the Black girl working in a white space—didn’t you say that your BFF Sophie accused you of writing it?” Malaika gasped, clutching her chest. “What if they think you wrote it and they’re trying to get you out?”
“I said they’re pretty nuts. I didn’t say they were the literary KGB.”
“I mean… maybe not, but remember when Vera told you to chill out on all the I’m Black and I’m Proud ruckus you were starting?”
“Yeah. But that was different. And I plan on starting that ruckus back up again, by the way,” Nella added, even though the thought of trying to resuscitate Wagner’s Diversity Town Halls sounded just as appealing as sticking her hair into the nearest burning tea candle. “It’s just… I’ve never had something like this happen before, you know? I know I’m definitely gonna sound like one of those crazy people in denial when I say this—”
“Yes, that is your usual style.”
“—but during my time at Wagner, I’ve never had anyone be pointedly racist toward me. At least, nothing beyond, like, microaggressions. Trust me, you’d know by now.”
Nella hadn’t been just bullshitting to make herself feel better. It had been the truth. Ask her how much it pained her to be the only Black person in the room, and the answer varied depending on the day. It pained her to have to blacksplain cultural moments to people who didn’t understand them, like the seriousness of Kanye’s mental breakdown or the significance of seeing Black women wearing protective scarves in Girls Trip. And no, Nella had not read every Notable Black Book with gusto (she’d started The Bluest Eye at least five different times and had never gotten past the first chapter), so she could not speak to how this or that upcoming Black writer compared with Toni Morrison in her prime.
But Nella would be lying if she didn’t admit that deep down, a small piece of her was proud of how utterly different, dare she say radical, her world viewpoint felt from the homogenous throes of Wagner Books. No, from all publishing. She may have been unsuccessful at getting her colleagues to hire people outside of their usual demographics, but she had at least gotten her foot in the door. She’d made people think about race, even if they didn’t realize they were thinking about it, by simply being present at meetings, or being friendly in the kitchen.
And, even deeper down—thousands of feet past this last thought, swimming around in the depths of a place one might call “pride”—was Nella’s suspicion that many of her coworkers at Wagner, Vera included, looked upon her with a sort of reverence. With awe. Imagine how much harder she must’ve had to fight to get here, she imagined them saying to one another behind closed doors when they considered the Ivy League names and publishing internships that were missing from her résumé. She didn’t come from a long line of people in the book business. She’d had a much harder time elbowing her way into the fray than most; this went without saying.
“Even if it is true that nobody has ever committed any pointedly racist act against you there, ever,” said Malaika, cutting into Nella’s thoughts, “let’s talk facts. Fact one: You’re Black. Fact two: You’re Black. Fact three: How many white people do you think have gotten a note like this at Wagner? Or ever? These are facts, my friend. Straight-up facts.”