The Other Black Girl(48)
Not quite satisfied that she’d noticed everything worth noticing, she moved on to the next wall in front of which Richard’s desk sat. The few times she’d dared let her eyes stray had suggested that this was his own personal Wall of Fame. Indeed, it was. Faces filled every single frame, some in black-and-white, others in color. Some were silly—a young woman in an evening gown putting bunny ears behind a young man in a tux; four smart-looking men in polos smiling in the middle of a lush, green forest.
It was all unnerving, really, all these body-less pairs of eyes staring down at her, and Nella was ready to walk away, return to her tea and her comfortable therapist’s office chair, when the clouds shifted outside and something flashed in the corner of her eye. Just once. She looked up to see what the mid-afternoon sunlight had caught and noticed a photo framed in bronze, no larger than a postcard.
Nella moved closer so she could make out the three people in the photo. One was a younger, less gaunt version of Richard. Each of his hands was resting on the shoulders of two brown-skinned women, and he was smiling so hard that his eyes were closed—although judging from the bacchanal ruddiness of his cheeks, it was clear he wouldn’t have been looking at the photographer even if they had been open.
The smiling woman in the bright white dress on Richard’s left was clearly Diana Gordon. Nella paused, unsurprised at the resemblance between the Diana Gordon she’d seen in an interview a few months ago, and the Diana Gordon in this photo. Old Diana and young Diana both had permanently smooth skin and dazzling grins.
Then, her eyes shifted to the other Black woman, who was leaning—just a little bit—toward the right. Something was flitting across her face, too, but it wasn’t a smile. And if anyone wanted to believe the woman was smiling, Nella was confident the expression could be attributed to her martini, which she held high in her right hand—not quite in proposal of a toast, but of a declaration. I’m still here, she seemed to be saying, and the way she looked head-on at the camera, unbothered at how apart she seemed from her two companions, confirmed this.
“I see you’ve found your hero,” a voice behind her said.
Nella whirled around. Richard had reentered his office, but instead of returning to his desk, he was standing by the chair she’d been sitting in, the shoulder strap of her overturned tote bag trapped beneath his left polished shoe. It made her nervous, the way he was watching her.
“Happens all the time,” he explained, gesturing toward the photo wall. “So many photos, so many faces. Whenever I have company, I never tire of seeing which one piques whose interest. Everyone has different… tastes.”
“Sorry, I couldn’t help it. I’ve just never seen this photo before, this one of Kendra Rae. And you and Diana.” Nella crept back over to her chair as Richard returned to his.
“That picture is probably worth thousands. Kendra Rae hardly took photos before…” He shrugged. “As I said, that woman wasn’t too big on being the center of attention. I’m glad I was able to get this snapshot, at least. That was taken at Antonio’s the night we celebrated Burning Heart’s debut at number one on the New York Times bestseller list. My gosh, those parties back then were the best.
“Now…” He crossed his legs pointedly at the ankle. “What was I saying before I was so rude? Oh, yes! That we’re here to talk about you. You’re from Connecticut, you said?”
Desperate to do something with her hands, Nella reached for yet another cube of sugar—her third, she realized, hoping he didn’t—and said, “Yes. I’m from Springville. It’s a small town, about a fifteen-minute drive from—”
“New Haven. Yes, I’m familiar with Springville. I got my start at Yale University Press while I was finishing up my senior year at Yale. Great place. So rich in culture. Good food, good theater. And the art, ah…”
“Mmm. Yale’s galleries are incredible.”
Richard perked up at this. “The Center for British Art?”
Nella bobbed her head. “I’ve spent a lot of time there. First when I was in high school, but I like to go back whenever I’m there for the holidays.”
“Oh?” Richard leaned forward in his chair, his eyes practically boggling out of his eternally youthful face. Nella matched his body language with hers. It might have sounded peculiar, but it was in seemingly mundane moments like those—when she told a white man something so basic about herself that made his eyes boggle out of his head—that she felt closest to all the Black people who were Black long before she was: all of the enslaved Black men and women who impressed white people with their reading abilities; all of the Black men and women who became doctors and lawyers and other things people said they couldn’t. Garrett Morgan, Marian Anderson, Diahann Carroll. Barack Obama. Her parents. Anyone who had impressed a white person simply by existing. Which, given the number of times Black people had been lynched and raped and beaten down over the last four hundred years, should have been every Black person.
“It must have been very nice to have all of that New Haven culture at your disposal,” Richard was saying, taking another sip.
“Oh, very.”
“I thought young people didn’t do art galleries these days. Not with the Internet and Instagram and whatnot.”
“I’m a bit of an old soul, I guess you could say.” Feeling emboldened by his approval, even though she really needn’t have, Nella crossed her legs and took her first sip of her Earl Grey. At that point, of course, it was cold—she always managed to miss the narrow drinkability window of tea—but she commented on how much she liked it anyway.