The Other Black Girl(37)
“Yeah.” Nella was still looking at the picture of Hazel, comparing the all-caps letters in her sign with the all-caps letters on the mysterious envelope she’d received. “Why?”
Malaika reached for her phone again, nearly falling off her chair. “You are so freakin’ familiar,” she said, rapping on Manny’s face with her thumb.
“He is? Rafael, when you have a second, could you please—” Nella gestured to their empty water glasses. Malaika’s near-tumble reminded her that such drinking required hydration, especially on a weeknight.
“I got you two.”
“You’re my first, my last, my everything, bless you,” Malaika called after him, not looking up from the photo. “I know I’ve seen this guy before, somewhere. Do you know what he does?”
“I think he’s an artist or something? He painted this beautiful photo of Zora Neale Hurston and put it on a mug for Hazel for their anniversary.”
Malaika banged the table with her palm. “I knew it! I saw him in Melanin Monthly last year, I think, on one of those ‘artists to watch out for’ lists. He’s, like, the Andy Warhol of our generation. Warhol meets Basquiat. Their words, not mine, I promise.” Malaika unlocked her phone and went into Instagram. Within five seconds she’d pulled up the mosaic of tiny square images that made up Manny’s page. Art + BK, it read—a sparse and cool description, Nella noted, for a profile that had nearly one hundred thousand followers and more than three thousand postings.
She scrolled through the main page. Even as thumbnails, Nella could see that nearly every piece of artwork Manny had posted had been rendered in an understated, refreshing style similar to that of the Zora Neale Hurston artwork she’d seen, placed not only on mugs but on Tshirts and tote bags and pins and magnets.
There wasn’t a single piece that Nella couldn’t see herself buying either for herself or as a gift for someone else—each item was that special. Hazel might have been playing up the fact that she had a boyfriend, Nella observed, zooming in on an incredible impressionistic painting of a purple Althea Gibson, but she had definitely been playing down how impressive said boyfriend actually was.
What else was she hiding?
Nella scrolled through two or three more rows of posts, hoping to find more details about Hazel, then slid the phone back to her friend when she didn’t. “Manny seems pretty cool.”
Malaika left the phone where it was. “Well?”
“Well, what?”
“Do you still think Hazel left that note?”
Nella sighed. She didn’t know what to say. She just knew what she felt: that it was unfair to point fingers at the only Black girl she worked with. The words “bad karma” entered her brain, followed by “crabs in a barrel,” said not by Angela Davis but—this time—by her mother. It was a saying that her father despised, but her mother always held it close, the words as calming as a meditation chant and as practical as a house key. Typically, Nella sided with her father, erring somewhere between nonconfrontational and carefree.
But if there was one thing she was starting to comprehend, it was that these traits were of no use to her in the real world.
* * *
Nella kept her movements as catlike as possible once she finally crawled out of bed, found some pants, and threw on the first clean sweater she could find. She marched into the bathroom to finish the rest, the bright light bulbs above the mirror shocking her nerves into full wakefulness.
On any other day, what she saw in the mirror would have alarmed her: Her hair was all over the place, and not in the cute, I’m too busy working on my career to care way. She’d been so desperate to pass out the night before that she hadn’t braided her curls or even put on a sleep scarf. But she wasted no time eyeing her hair’s shrinkage as she pulled it all back into a small scrunchie, then brushed her teeth and washed her face. Nor did she bother brewing a coffee or preparing some grits. She simply put on her shoes, packed her tote bag, and stepped out into the sticky summer morning.
Something was pulling her toward her cubicle at Wagner. What that something was, she didn’t exactly know. She just knew it had caused her to practically run over the small, confused woman who was taking too long to fish her MetroCard out of her wallet. And when the time came for her to walk through Wagner’s lobby around a quarter to seven, far too early of an arrival for even the most diligent editors, it caused her to trip and nearly fall on her face.
Ever graceful, Nella fell on her hands instead. “Shit!” she spat, inhaling a rancid whiff of the ratty welcome rug before pushing her body up. How humiliating. But how lucky she was that no other Wagner employees had seen her fall or heard her swear so loudly.
Unless…
Nella spun around quickly. She checked for any conspicuous strangers, ones with and without white sheets. Not a soul was in sight but India at the reception desk.
She continued on toward the elevators, fumbling breathlessly for her work ID, ready to explain why she was here so early. But as she drew closer, India’s head didn’t tilt up the way it normally did.
“India. Hey. How’s it going? Did you enjoy the rest of your birthday yesterday?”
India’s eyes darted up from her magazine. She appeared startled by the intrusion. Maybe even a little confused by it. “Oh. Hi, Nella,” she said, with a touch of listlessness. “What’d you say?”