The Other Black Girl(78)
She made a noise, but she didn’t look up from her notes.
“So,” I said, trying to sound neutral, “Pam says that ever since she left those notes for her, Nella’s been staying late in the office practically every evening. Nella’s apparently been trying to get Jesse Watson to write a book for Wagner. I doubt that’ll happen, but he’s a loose cannon, so who knows what he’s willing to do…”
Lynn motioned for me to get to the point.
“I’m wondering if maybe next week we should finally make contact? Maybe I can pretend to be an up-and-coming writer and try to schedule a meeting with Nella? I doubt she’d take too well to being approached on the train, because she looks flighty as hell, but if we set up the publishing pretext, maybe she’ll—”
“No,” Lynn interrupted.
“Why not?”
“Because ‘I’m pretty sure she’s fine’ isn’t enough. Unless you noticed any other signs that I should know about?”
I shrugged. “Nella’s still dating the white boyfriend. Owen.”
“That means nothing. What if she’s finished already, but he just hasn’t picked up on it yet? A lot of young white men are into OBGs,” Lynn said, making a face.
I bit my lip and started fussing with the scraggly trim of one of the pillows nearest to me. Noticing my silence, Lynn finally peered up at me and asked, hopefully, “Did you see the white boyfriend and Hazel talking at any point last night?”
“For a few minutes. But it looked harmless.”
“Hm. Okay. Let’s go back to Nella and Hazel. Did you hear anything they said?”
“No. But Nella looked like she wanted to strangle her for most of that conversation.” I’d seen it all in bits—all out of the corner of my eye, of course, so as not to be too obvious.
I was still playing with the pillow when something else popped into my mind. “Oh!”
“What?”
“When I was leaving, I saw Hazel hand her something. It looked like hair products, something like that.”
“Did you see her hand things to anyone else?”
“I did. If I’d been close enough to her she probably would’ve handed me one, too.”
“Those were probably just favors promoting her organization. Or the shop.” Lynn sighed as she jotted this down. “Shani, we can’t just assume Nella’s good yet. She’s still at Wagner. She even showed up to Hazel’s event. We’ve seen enough to know that we have to be extra careful, haven’t we? Remember what happened to you at that magazine? And do I need to remind you about my med school program? That OBG is still there reaping all of the benefits from research I did. All the money I wasted on not getting a degree—”
“I know,” I said, gritting my teeth. I knew this speech by heart. “But what I’m saying is… she did that to you five years ago. And here we are. Hiding in the shadows. We still don’t know anything new, Lynn, beyond the fact that they’re wreaking havoc in Hollywood. We don’t know how Black girls are being changed. We only know that they’re selfish monsters who are getting better at putting on award-winning performances.”
“We also know why they’re so good at changing other Black women when they want to,” Lynn added, “which is why we need to stick to keeping her at arm’s length.”
“Look.” I put the pillows aside and sat up some. “Being part of this whole spy thing with you guys has been… an experience. I loved sneaking those notes to Pam—she’s the sweetest woman ever. And I respect what you all are trying to do. I just want to know why I came all the way to New York if we aren’t gonna make any moves on this whole Nella-Hazel situation. I might as well focus on something else. Someone else. Like me. Not Nella, and definitely not Hazel. I don’t even want to be in the same room with her anymore after what she did to me.”
I didn’t mean to make it sound like Lynn and the Resistance hadn’t been doing enough to stop the OBGs. But it must’ve sounded like that, because Lynn said, in a low, cold voice, “I respect that. But there’s more to this Nella situation than you could possibly understand.” Then, she closed her notebook and put it back in the bookcase.
The next day, she asked me to come by Joe’s Barbershop as soon as I got off work. “We need to talk.” Nothing more, nothing less. I agreed.
By the time I’d clocked out of Rise & Grind, waved hello to Joe and his customers, and flown up the creaky back stairs, I’d already gotten it into my head that Lynn was going to tell me that my time in the Resistance was over.
But when I opened the door, I didn’t see Lynn. I saw a woman who, judging by the halo of silvery curls that cascaded down her shoulders, looked much older than the usual demographic that rolled through Joe’s. She was standing in front of the bookshelf with her back to me, looking up at one of the room’s crowded purple-gray walls.
I lingered by the door for a moment, hesitant to interrupt. I’d been captivated by the walls, too, when I first saw them. Each was filled nearly to capacity with photo upon photo of various Black activists—some familiar to me, some unfamiliar. Of the ones I knew, Malcolm X stood out the most; at least 30 percent of the photos plastered all over the walls were of him. Many were black-and-white images that I’d grown up seeing in history books and newspapers, but a few were contemporary renderings of Malcolm X that I couldn’t remember ever seeing before: Malcolm through a pop-art lens, in neon shades of blue and orange; Malcolm through a comic-book superhero lens.