The Other Black Girl(63)

I don’t know why you are, either, I’d thought on my first listen, pretty peeved, because you’re the unhinged wackadoo who contacted me. The only person I ever contacted was Trace. She was my lifeline, the vein connecting me to my money, my family, the life I had before. Everyone else, it was better to avoid—my ex-colleagues, the few friends I had left over from Harvard.

I’d even left Diana behind, although that part was easier than it should’ve been. Honestly, I thought she’d at least offer a hollow apology to Trace for leaving me out on the vine to wither all those years ago. For making me feel like I was no longer welcome. For trying to change me.

Shoot, don’t get me wrong—I know the timing of what I said wasn’t perfect. But it didn’t give her the right to try to do what she did.

I listened as the girl rambled on a little while longer, waiting. And then it came: the reason why I hadn’t been able to think straight all day.

Wagner.

Hearing it for the fourth time didn’t make it any easier. It all came surging back: the decades I spent running away from his name; the threats on my life; the Black parents who wrote telling me I’d no longer be seen as a role model in their households. Years had passed since I’d changed my hair, found a new job, and settled into a small town in upstate New York where folks didn’t particularly feel like bothering their new Black neighbor… all to get away from that name. But then I got that voice mail from that Lynn girl saying something about Wagner and the work her “team” was doing. And now here Wagner was again, invading my life.

What were the chances these two messages weren’t connected? That this girl wasn’t one of Lynn’s people, sent by Lynn to force my hand?

I downed the rest of my glass, refilled it, then hit Play again, then again, until I pieced together a hazy picture: This anonymous caller worked for Vera Parini, a mousy waif of a white woman who’d been just a humble Wagner editorial assistant when I’d met her. And now Lynn—or one of her people—had given this poor girl my number. Probably hoping that she’d get me to come back to the city.

Sighing, I let my eyes rest upon the blues and golds of the Jacob Lawrence print my father had sent me just weeks before he passed. His funeral had fallen on a beautiful day, one considerably warm for March, and had been so full that my mother had to turn people away. At least, that’s what Trace had told me.

I didn’t go.

“But it’s Dad,” Trace had implored the week before he was put to rest. Through the phone I’d felt her pulling on my arm the way she did when we were children and she wanted my attention. “You can hide your face. Wear a wig. Anything. Just don’t make me do this alone, Kenny.”

I’d sucked my teeth. “They’ve been watching everyone at home just to see if I come back. They’ll figure it out.”

To anyone else—almost anyone else—I would have sounded like a lunatic. But Trace was my own flesh and blood, my best friend. She had to understand. She saw me in those final days before I left. She saw the change, too. There was no other logical reason for all of those years she spent helping me remain out of sight from Richard, from Diana, from all of it.

I feel like I’m going insane… My life is a mess…

My phone had gone black but I kept staring at it anyway as my insides changed their tune. Suddenly, I wished she hadn’t blocked her number. I wanted the girl to call back, tell me more. Her panic wasn’t that evergreen twentysomething self-centeredness of a life not going according to plan, I realized. Clearly, whatever this girl was experiencing ran down to the bone.

I leaned back in my chair, painfully aware of the battle between fear and compassion that was chipping away at my senses. That I even felt the tug-of-war surprised me; for so long, I’d let my desire to remain hidden dictate where I lived, where I shopped, whom I spoke to. When Lynn contacted me about all of her big theories about Wagner, and her even bigger ask, I’d told her in no uncertain terms that I wasn’t interested in returning to the city. It’d be crazy to risk it all now. I’ve finally found peace.

But had I, really? Seventy wasn’t far off, and here I was, living all by myself. I had only a few friends—acquaintances—and I was two weeks late sending notes to my client. Today’s excuse? I’d gotten too wine-drunk on a weekday all by myself.

As much as I wanted to ignore it, my cracks weren’t just showing—they were dominating. Whatever fragments of me that were left were poking hopelessly out of this lost girl’s soliloquy.

I moved my wineglass so I could slide my laptop over and log in to Trace’s Facebook account, which she let me use whenever I was feeling particularly lonely. I didn’t know the name of the caller, but I did know whom she worked for, and whom she might work with: someone named Owen, and Hazel. But when I typed their names into the search bar, both yielded far too many results for me to comb through.

I pinched the bridge of my nose. After some deliberation, I pulled up Google and searched “Hazel” and “Wagner Books” together, expecting another avalanche of results. But halfway down the page was a link to a Facebook event hosted by a young woman named Hazel-May McCall. That very same evening, Hazel-May McCall’s organization would be holding a reading at a Black hair salon in Brooklyn.

Among the confirmed attendees: Richard Wagner.

And the cosponsor of this event? Wagner Books.