The Other Black Girl(6)
Okay, so maybe Nella had found this last detail both vexing and endearing. But everything else about Shartricia’s character felt icky—especially her voice, which read as a cross between that of a freed slave and a Tyler Perry character down on her luck. Still, even with all these thoughts swirling in her head, Nella didn’t know how exactly to express any of them to the white woman who was sitting in front of her, asking what she thought. The white woman who just happened to be her boss and Colin’s editor.
“I think this book is very… timely,” Nella said, opting for the buzzword that everyone at Wagner liked to hear. “Timely” meant coverage on NPR and Good Morning America. It meant “adding something new to the conversation,” which was what Colin Franklin always sought to achieve in his long list of ripped-from-the-headlines books that included a murderous sister wife, a deadly school shooting, and a sexy serial killer.
Vera nodded eagerly, her light brown bangs undulating above gleaming gray eyes. “Timely. You’re right. He refuses to shy away from the hardest parts of the opioid epidemic.” She jotted down one or two words on the yellow notepad that sat just beneath her elbows and then tapped her pen on her cheek the way Nella had seen her do in countless meetings. “And do you feel like anything in the novel didn’t particularly land the way it should have?”
Nella examined Vera’s expression carefully, searching for what Vera wanted her to say. The last time Nella had critiqued a book that her boss favored—six months earlier—Vera had dipped her head and told her that her feedback had been spot-on. But then, when it came time for Nella to overnight the marked-up pages along to the author, she happened to notice her comments on the last few pages hadn’t made it in. She flipped through the first chapter and hadn’t seen any of her comments on those pages, either.
It hadn’t bothered Nella too much at the time. She’d planned to bring it up at their checkin. But that talk had failed, and now Nella was left wondering what her true purpose as Vera’s assistant was. If Vera didn’t trust her opinion, then Nella would never be more than just an “assistant”; if she didn’t become more than just an “assistant,” she’d never become an editor. It was a dream she’d been nursing for ten years, ever since she decided to join the newspaper staff during her junior year of high school. She loved sliding words and paragraphs around in a game of literary Tetris. The act of editing soothed her, and while she’d be the first to admit she had an inclination toward Black writers yearning for a space to tell Black stories, she’d happily edit just about anything thrown her way. She was excited by the prospect of being able to make a living off editing, and the idea of having a say in what people were reading and perhaps—in the future—what people would write? That was monumental.
Not too long after Vera called the diversity meetings “extracurricular,” dashing Nella’s hopes for a promotion anytime soon, Nella met up with Malaika at their favorite Mexican spot. Enchiladas usually salved her wounds, but Nella spent a good minute and a half staring at her plate before finally positing the question that she and Malaika always asked one another when they’d been slighted: “Do we think it’s a race thing? This no-promotion thing?”
“Maybe.” Malaika had swept up the near-empty bottle of habanero hot sauce and shaken it all over her plate for the third time, smacking the bottom to get every last drop into her side of guac. Then, unsatisfied, she’d leaned over and swiped a bottle from the table next to them. The white couple sitting there looked befuddled, but said nothing—they hadn’t been using it, anyway—and they even offered a cheerful you’re welcome when she thanked them and handed it back.
Such a gesture more or less summed up this brazen person whom Nella had come to befriend a few summers earlier at a karaoke bar in the Village. The two had first met when she asked Malaika to jump on a mic at the last minute to help her rap through “Shoop,” since Nella’s original Pepa had been sick from one too many Bloody Marys at brunch. They’d been best friends ever since, constantly comparing notes on online dating disappointments and homegrown hair care regimens (like Nella, Malaika’s curls were also 4C, although she’d been natural since day one, and therefore had a fro-mane that rivaled Pam Grier in her heyday).
Their most vital notes of all, though, came from comparing Black Female Experiences. They had remarkably different backgrounds—Nella had been raised in a mostly white suburb of New Haven, while Malaika had grown up in Atlanta around a whole mess of Black people. But they’d had zero problems finding common ground. Nella believed this had something to do with the fact that they’d both been raised on Black ’90s sitcoms and smooth jams from a very young age.
Malaika had also been her own kind of Oreo for much of her life, which was why she’d taken a bite out of her torta and said, in her best Dr. Phil twang, “Maybe Vera also sees you as competition. Maybe she feels that fully accepting you will somehow validate the secret fear she has that every woman under the age of thirty is out to get her job. Maybe… she’s jealous.”
At this, Nella had given her a skeptical look. “You obviously haven’t met this woman. Or me. I wear Keds to work. Keds. Not even the fancy kind. The basics.”
Malaika had swatted this away. “Well, that’s your own fault, but hey—lemme ask you this. Do you see any other white assistants getting promoted that have been there for less time than you?”