The Other Black Girl(97)
Malaika ignored this. “I just think you should be careful, that’s all,” she said. “What if these people who’ve been watching you are on the bad side? What if it’s someone who’s in this class right now?”
Nella glanced around the gym again, her eyes falling on the convulsing man at the front of the room. “I doubt it. And we don’t know which side is the bad side,” she reminded her.
“All I’m saying is, you need to take everything this new person is texting you with a pound of salt. Why is she suddenly telling you all of this stuff now? Why wouldn’t these people have said something before, instead of sending you these cryptic notes?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t able to ask her,” Nella admitted, irritated by Malaika’s questions. She was confused enough by the worries bubbling in her own head without having to add Malaika’s to the brew. “But I feel like I’m finally starting to get somewhere here. Can’t we agree that’s a good thing?”
“But were you able to find anything about pink crescent scars online? Because it sounds a lot like a cult,” Malaika pressed, but then she must have finally heard herself, because she quickly added, “Okay, okay, fine. It’s a good thing. I’m just worried about you, that’s all. And I don’t appreciate these people fucking with my best friend.”
Nella felt a pang that was so sharp and so shameful that it had to have been that of guilt rather than a charley horse. The weirdness that had arisen between her and Vera since Hazel’s arrival was really taking a hit on Nella’s personal life, and the worst part of it all was that she’d barely noticed how much of an impact it had had on Malaika—not until now, when Nella had no work emails to entrap her, no new manuscripts to distract her. These days, Nella barely had time to see anybody anymore; she felt an ongoing obligation to say no to all non-work-related activities and yes to all the work she could be doing instead—because there was always work to be done. So much work, in fact, that she would sometimes get so tied up that she’d forget to say anything at all in response to Malaika’s texts.
Then there was Owen, with whom Nella hadn’t spent any meaningful time in weeks. The dinners they did eat in tandem often consisted of her turning pages over takeout Chinese or Indian or Thai as Owen scrolled through his phone, reading email after email. Nella hadn’t thought he’d noticed. Earlier in their relationship, she was the one who’d had to fight for his attention—the one who’d had to wrench his cell phone or the newspaper out of his hands as she’d set the table. Owen had always been an avid reader; this had attracted her to him in the first place, and once his startup really began to take off a few months after they started dating, this quality stepped up considerably. “You know social justice doesn’t take breaks for dinner,” he’d joked after she’d picked up his tablet, hurled it onto the couch across the room, and asked him to grab a couple of beers from the fridge.
Owen hadn’t done this when Nella had gone into aggressive assistant mode. He’d let her read her manuscripts in peace during their meals, had said no worries when she’d decided to forego an episode of The Sopranos because she had to finish something for Vera. He’d even forgiven her for missing family time with his moms. But Owen wasn’t dense. He was good at reading the room—another quality Nella had admired in him—and the week prior, as he’d popped the greasy plastic cover off the basil fried rice one evening, he was finally ready to say something about it.
“It’s the new girl, isn’t it?” he’d asked, rather plainly.
Nella had already impolitely started in on the steamed bok choy, had already even more impolitely opened up her tablet so she could continue reading the contemporized, queer reinterpretation of Lord of the Flies that Vera had asked her to take a look at that evening. It had been as good as the agent had promised it would be, maybe even better, so she couldn’t help but feel the tiniest bit ruffled when Owen pulled her out of it.
“I’m not sure what you mean,” Nella had said, reaching her fork out so she could snag a rogue green bean that had fallen onto the table. She’d skipped lunch that day—again—and rued the notion of any vegetable getting left behind.
“What I mean is, you’re busting your ass at work because of the new girl. Am I right?” Owen finally handed her the container of fried rice and started to push his food around his plate with his plastic fork.
It was an act that produced a loud, scratchy sound that Nella could feel in her gut. But instead of calling him out for it, she’d just clenched her teeth and spooned rice onto her own plate, waiting for the scraping noise to cease.
“Hazel has nothing to do with any of this. I’ve just realized I’ve been slacking. I’ve gotten too comfortable in my position at Wagner, and I really need to step it up.”
“Bullshit. Come on. This new Black girl’s gotchu shook.”
She’d had to keep herself from smiling. “First of all, you can’t use my own people’s slang against me,” she’d joked. “And second of all, Hazel isn’t new anymore, not really. She’s been at Wagner for three months.”
“Didn’t you say that you felt like ‘the new girl’ for the first six?”
“That was different. I was the only Black girl then. The only Black person,” she’d corrected herself, “never mind the only Black girl.”