The Other Black Girl(43)

She was making a beeline straight for Vera’s office.

But before she officially set foot inside, Hazel paused and looked directly at Nella, who expected some kind of What can I do? She called me in! shrug. Some kind of apology.

There was nothing of the sort. Just a cold, hard look. And with that, Hazel swooped into Vera’s office, her notepad held high like a successfully caught wedding bouquet. “Vera! Girl. This Leslie Howard book is so. Freaking. Good. I can’t wait for you to read it.”

Meanwhile, Nella’s head hung lower than a defeated bridesmaid as she shuffled the few remaining feet back to her desk. “You’re sure I’m not interrupting your work?” she heard Hazel say, her words thick with careful self-effacement. “I’d just love to chat with you for a few minutes or so.”

Nella fell into her seat, dejected. She heard Vera’s cheerful come on in loud and clear. She heard her eager, energetic tone—a tone that her boss hadn’t used with her in she didn’t know how long.

And then—finally—she heard the sound of a door closing.





Shani


August 14, 2018

Rise & Grind Café

Midtown, Manhattan

I didn’t recognize her at first. Usually, on days like that one—days when I wondered how the hell I’d gone from working at one of the most respected magazines in media to sweeping straw papers off a café floor in Midtown—the sound of the front door meant nothing to me. The door scraped open, the door scraped closed; a few minutes later, this would happen again. The outcome was always the same: a smile; a nod. Do you have WiFi? What’s your bathroom password? Do you guys take cards?

The day had started off like that. Carelessly, I’d glanced at her once—her striking hair; her high-collared tunic; her flashy gold hoops—and presumed she was yet another New York millennial doing far better at life than I was, and looked back down.

What can I say? She blended in so well. And I was pretty sure she would have continued to, had it not been for her voice—a little husky and a little too flirty with Christopher, my twenty-two-year-old boss. I didn’t recognize the hair, but I recognized the way she flipped it so far back that she almost broke her neck. I recognized the way she giggled and pretended not to know the difference between a latte and a cold brew, even though I’d heard her speak so spiritedly about her knowledge of coffee with all the higher-ups at Cooper’s magazine.

I practically dropped my broom. Yes, this girl looked more like a woman of the world than she did the last time I’d seen her in Boston—more Zara now than her J. Jill style then.

But it was her, alright.

My first instinct was to walk up to her and beat her with my broom. Anybody who did what she did deserved to be bludgeoned by a girl with a broom in a Midtown café.

But I didn’t. Even after what happened in Boston, I still had some pride left. I also had new knowledge: She was frustratingly clever, with artful timing. If I didn’t want to be bested in this new city, I knew I’d have to think three steps ahead. In Boston, my biggest mistake was being three steps behind.

What was it Lynn had said to me on the Red Line? I saw you two last night, you know. Something like that. Of course, I’d ignored her. At first. But she just wouldn’t let up. “I know you don’t know who I am. But I just want to tell you that you’re fucked.”

I’d glanced over at her just a little bit—the amount of glancing you need to do in order to confirm that someone is in fact talking to you, because she wasn’t “Lynn” to me yet; she was just a weird stranger interrupting my morning commute. And when I saw that it was this Black lady who sort of looked like my aunt Krystal—if Aunt Krystal had been brave enough to rock a septum piercing, that is—I asked her to repeat whatever it was she’d just said instead of telling her to leave me the fuck alone.

“I said I saw you two last night. At Pepper’s.”

“How do you know I was at Pepper’s?”

“And from what I overheard,” she’d said, ignoring me, “well… it doesn’t look good for you.”

At that, I’d folded over the corner of the New Yorker story I’d been reading and said the first thing that came to my mind. “Sorry,” I said, after I’d thought I’d gathered enough context clues to make a fair assumption, “but I don’t understand. Are you two dating, or something? Because that’s not what that was last night. We were just getting drinks, hanging out. We work together.”

Lynn had stared at me for a moment. Then she’d laughed, a long, loud laugh that drew the looks of half of the commuters sitting nearby. I’d taken that time to actually give her a once-over, assessing the black headwrap she was wearing on her head and the sunglasses that covered up any hint of an expression.

Now? I’d say I was searching for some sort of confirmation that she was crazy, yet harmless. But at the time, I was also searching for some kind of sign that she was a woman scorned.

“Who are you?” I asked at last. “What do you want from me?”

“I want you to come join us.”

“?‘Us’?” I looked at the jaundiced old man who was peeling a hard-boiled egg in the seat directly behind her. “Is he in your crew, too? Or do you have some more desirable imaginary friends here on the train who I don’t know about?”