The Other Black Girl: A Novel

by Zakiya Dalila Harris

  “I wouldn’t think too much about that, Di,” Elroy called. “Those white people can’t even imagine that it’s not yours. And that’s not what they’re there to see, anyway. They’re there to see the brilliant Diana Gordon and the brilliant Kendra Rae Phillips talk about their brilliant—no, the first of what surely will be many brilliant, bestselling—”

  His voice cut out abruptly.

  “El?” I glanced over at the bathroom door, craning my neck to get a look at him. “What is it?”

  He didn’t reply.

  “I know it’s been more than sixty seconds,” I said, unplugging the curling iron, “but I just… I don’t know.” I tried to smile at my reflection in the mirror, but it turned into more of a grimace. “I’m just not feeling this look.”

  I waited. I’d given Elroy an opening to go on another one of his speeches about natural brown girl beauty and how all makeup was really made for white people, so he didn’t know why I bothered so much. But the only thing I heard was the occasional drip-drop of the faulty toilet tank.

  “Baby? Is everything okay?” I grabbed my lipstick, my compact mirror. “Fine, you win. We can get going now,” I said, starting for the door.

  I was beginning to think that maybe he’d left to see about a taxi, since he had always been the practical one. But then I saw that he was still very much in the room, hunched over the foot of his bed.

  “What are you looking at?” I asked him.

  Elroy crumpled up whatever it was that had had his attention over the last few moments and held it behind his back. That worried look had returned. “I’m not going to say it’s nothing, because by now you can obviously see that isn’t the case. But, still… Di…” He exhaled. “It really is nothing. Well, not really. But it will be. In a few days.”

  I eyed him suspiciously. “That looks like a newspaper,” I observed.

  Elroy hesitated, seeming to consider whether it was worth lying or not. “It is that,” he said awkwardly.

  “Let me see it.”

  “I…”

  “We don’t have time for this,” I said.

  He handed it over, facedown—the frustrating equivalent of a child chucking a tennis ball at my head after I’d asked him nicely to hand it over—but I didn’t say anything as I flipped it right side up. Nor did I say anything as my eyes met the black-and-white printed face of the woman with whom I’d been rocketed into the national spotlight over the last three weeks. The woman who had been my best friend for twenty years, since we’d first met in Ms. Abraham’s seventh-grade science class.

  I swallowed, took a breath. “Bestselling Burning Heart Editor: ‘If You White, You Ain’t Right with Me,’ ” I recited clearly, like I was reading a birthday card. I paused for a moment before looking back up at Elroy. “Jesus Christ. What did Kenny do?”

  Elroy tugged at his beard again. He had about as much of an answer as I did. “I don’t know,” he said, “but you’ll probably want to wait until after this event is over to find out.”

  “But what if they ask me questions about it during the Q and A?”

  Elroy shrugged. “I’m not sure people up here read the New York Times, baby. I only read it because of you.” Then he snapped back into action, seizing the pair of black heels I’d left by the floor-length mirror that hung by the front door of our hotel room and handing them to me. “If I were you, I would play dumb for now,” he said. “Plead the Fifth. It’s the best thing you can do for yourself, and for Kenny. Then maybe you can talk some sense into her. Let’s take her out after this is all over in a few hours.”

  I grimaced as he took the paper back from me, placing it at the foot of the bed. “Not ideal, I know. But this ain’t good, Di. That’s all you need to know for now. Kenny done stepped in it. Now you just gotta make sure she didn’t track it all over your living room.”

  I shook my head, woozy from the thought of having to play pretend for a few hours even though I knew Elroy had a point. I needed to pack this worry away and slip on my shoes.

  Just then, the phone rang.

  “Don’t answer it,” Elroy said.

  We stared at each other during the second ring and the third. On the fourth, I lunged for it, pushing Elroy’s hand aside. “It could be Dick,” I insisted, ignoring the way my husband wilted at the sound of this name. I put the receiver up to my ear, and waited.

  And waited.

  “Di,” the voice on the other end finally whispered. “We need to do something. Now.”

  10

  September 14, 2018

  “So, I printed out the five email replies from Sam Lewis about the five proposed cover options for Crystal Soul. This one on top is the last note I have from Sam, dated from Tuesday.” Nella sifted through the pages in her lap, tracing her finger across the body of the email. The ex–rock musician had sent her more than five emails, one of which contained nothing except an expletive for its subject line. But for the purposes of this conversation, these other replies didn’t exist. “He told me on the phone this morning that he didn’t like this layout as much as he liked the second one, but he did like it more than the fourth one.”

  “ ‘Five’? Wow. Okay. Enough.” Vera had asked Nella to print everything out in hi-res on glossy paper and bring it into her office, but that hadn’t stopped her from opening each of the attachments Nella had emailed her and scrolling through them slowly.

  Nella stared at the five printed covers, silently bemoaning how much ink had been wasted not with just this task, but with every single task she’d ever been asked to complete at Wagner. Nine times out of ten, the pieces of paper would end up in the garbage. How much money had she had a hand in throwing away over the last two years? Enough to pay back her college loans? Enough to buy grown-lady shoes? “And I’m not sure if you remember, but the last time we spoke to Leonard I’m pretty sure he said, ‘I’m not doing any new cover designs for Crystal Soul.’ So. Do we think he’s being serious?”

  “Yes. The man cornered me in the elevator last week and I’m still traumatized from it.”

  The mental image was just too good: five-foot-three Leonard in his trademark red-and-blue checkered shirt with a golf pencil behind his ear; five-foot-eight Vera in all black, glowering down at him. Nella had to swallow a chuckle. “That sounds terrible. I’m sorry.”

  “It was. You didn’t forward him Sam’s emails, did you? Please tell me you—”

  “Definitely not. Nope. No. I reworded every single thing.”

  “Great.” Vera sighed, massaging her temple. “You’re so good at that. Thanks. But anyway, bottom line is, we’re going to have to work to get Sam to pick from one of the ones he has already. That or outsource, which we can’t afford to do. Not enough money in the budget for that.”

  “Right. That’s what I figured. Here’s what I think—and let me know if this sounds crazy, and I hope you don’t mind me making this suggestion—but I think we should really try to push the second cover Leonard drew up.”

  Vera said nothing, but the look in her eye didn’t say stop talking, so Nella ahemed before continuing on.

  “Because it fits more with the covers from Sam’s last two books, and Sam’s response to that one seemed a lot milder.” It’s got a real smell to it, he’d said over the phone, although what kind, he hadn’t specified. Nevertheless, Nella had taken this as something of a positive appraisal. “Does that sound good?”

  “What?” Vera asked. Her computer had dinged and she’d turned to see what had caused it.

  “Pushing for the second cover? The one with the stars. Maybe Leonard can change the font size or something so that it’s technically a ‘new’ version, and we can send that to Sam? Is that okay?”

  “Yes! Wait. No.” Vera held out a hand, her eyes still fixed on her screen. “Can you just hand it to me, please?”

  Nella leaned forward and handed her the top page. She swallowed and said, with as little meekness as possible, “If you want, I’d be happy to run over to Leonard’s desk and tell him that
we should maybe take some of what was on the fifth cover and sort of meld it into the second one instead. Because Richard was a big fan of five, right?”

  Vera stared at her screen for another thirty seconds, as though Nella hadn’t just offered to stick her neck into the cage of an underfed lion. Nella seized upon this distraction, surveying her boss’s office without her noticing. She peeked at Vera’s collection of pens and pencils for the millionth time that week—no colors but black. The clear plastic box of stationery sitting next to the zen garden was a new addition to Vera’s desk, but those were expensive and fancy, definitely not what Nella had received. Briefly, she imagined the perpetrator standing in the Papyrus store, shrouded in black, deliberating over which blank card would best convey their racist little message.

  It had been a while since Nella had really felt like laughing, but she had to hold in a gasp when Vera turned to register the image Nella had handed her and said, “No, sorry—not this. Can you hand me the printout of the very first cover, please? I can’t remember what it looks like.”

  “Oh, sure. Here.” She handed Vera the first cover.

  “No—thanks, but I want to see the very first cover Leonard proposed, side by side with these five.”

  “Absolutely,” Nella said, although she didn’t know what “very first cover” Vera was referring to. She remembered Leonard making five covers, not six. She hastened to stand, picking apart her brain for a memory she knew didn’t exist. “Of course. I can try to print that for you right now. I have a quick meeting downstairs with production I have to run to, but I can—”

  “That’s alright, just leave it for me this afternoon, please, when you get a minute.” Nella exhaled as Vera folded her hands matter-of-factly. “What the man really needs is an ultimatum. Leonard has been overworked as it is these days, and Sam should understand by now that we’ve got some pretty qualified folks here.”

  Nella had nodded. She’d known all of this—or at least, a small part of her knew—but putting her foot down with Sam hadn’t ultimately felt like her decision to make. What if it had backfired in the same way the Colin Franklin meeting had? After all, the air was still thick with remnants of the Colin Incident, given Vera’s tone and fickle eye contact.

  Nella watched Vera return to her screen and started to leave. But before she crossed the doorway, she pivoted and said, offhandedly, “There was one more thing I wanted to mention.”

  “Yes?” said Vera into her computer.

  I’ve been getting these notes from some stranger telling me to leave work. They’ve been freaking me out.

  But she couldn’t do it. “I just finished reading The Lie.”

  Vera’s chair sounded like it was going to fall apart from how quickly she spun around. The radiance coming off her smile was mesmerizing. “That’s great! And? What do you think? You loved it, right?”

  “Well… I missed my subway stop for real while I was reading it, so if that’s any indicator…” Nella trailed off, her eyes wide from mock awe. The Lie was fine, nothing she deemed worth figuring out comps for, but Vera didn’t need to know she felt that way. “Want me to send you my report?”

  Vera nodded. “Please! That’d be great. I’m really thinking of making an offer on it. I can’t believe I forgot to send it to you—Hazel shared it, I assume?”

  There it was: an apology. Kind of. “She did. It’s nothing. Really.”

  “Goodness, I’m so embarrassed.” Vera paused, clutching at her neck. “Hey… since you were able to get to that one so quickly, any chance you’d be able to read another one by tomorrow? I’ll send it to you right now, promise. Steeled Heart. It’s really, really good. It’s Pride and Prejudice meets I, Robot.”

  Nella nodded and said that of course she could, even as she remembered that she and Owen had plans to meet his moms, who were visiting from Denver, at the High Line that very evening. She turned to leave, praying the book was short, when Vera called out, “Nella? One more quick thing.”

  “Yes?”

  “I know I haven’t really been present lately. And I know you must be thinking it’s in regards to the… Colin situation.” Her voice was low and measured.

  Nella clicked her pen open and closed awkwardly, staring at Vera from the doorway.

  “And maybe it is about that, a little. I’m not sure. Things have just gotten really crazy… I’m just feeling like I’m busier than I’ve ever been… anyway, this is my own inadequate way of saying that I apologize if I made you uncomfortable at all. In any way. I asked you for your opinion, and I’m glad you gave it.”

  Nella smiled. “It’s all good. I’m sorry, too, that it all happened the way it did.”

  “Great.” Vera let out a deep breath. “I’m so glad we could clear the air. I’ve been talking to Colin almost every day, getting a sense of how he’s feeling about things, and I will say that I think he feels pretty bad about the way everything happened, too.”

  “He does?”

  “He does. But I do think…” Vera squeezed one set of fingers with the other. “I do think that it’s not a bad idea to apologize to him again. Just a small apology. And then, tabula rasa.”

  Nella stopped clicking her pen.

  “What do you think about that idea?”

  I think I already apologized to him before he left the office, four times. “I have to say… I may need to think on it,” Nella said, realizing how hollow her voice sounded. “Respectfully, that is. I’d kind of thought we’d moved past it by now.”

  “Well, respectfully, Nella, I’d have to say that your apology was a little…” Vera wobbled her head from side to side. “ ‘I’m sorry you thought I called you a racist’ is a little bit like saying ‘I’m sorry you thought I ran over your puppy with my SUV.’ It’s… a bit empty. You know what I mean?”

  Do you know what you mean? “I’ll do some serious thinking about it,” Nella repeated.

  Vera said that she understood, although something in her last word turned down a bit.

  Nella looked away. She realized she was crossing her arms, so she uncrossed them. “I can give him a call, I guess.”

  “Actually, it may be better to do it via email? He’s in California now, doing film stuff for his last book. But hey, send me an email of it first, just so I can look it over?”

  An apology over email was exactly what Nella didn’t want to do. She preferred to do it verbally, partly because she wasn’t sure how to word it, and she imagined hearing Colin’s tone on the phone might help. But she also felt that it was something her mother would have found a way to resist. Never let your boss have anything in writing, she always said.

  An image of Colin printing out her email and putting it up on his refrigerator for all his guests to see, all while wearing the multi-fabric cap, flashed through Nella’s mind. But she could wear poker faces, too. “Got it. Will do,” she said brightly.

  She held this brightness in her face all the way to the bathroom. It was only when she’d latched the stall door that she let herself break.

  * * *

  Nella had to work hard to convince herself she was alone in the office later that evening. It was almost nine p.m., and she hadn’t seen a coworker pass by her desk since seven…

  But what was that whistling sound she’d heard at the end of the hall?

  She paused her music and peered around. There was no whistling. No sounds. They were all in her dizzy, dizzy head. But those notes that had appeared in her bag and on her desk hadn’t been all in her head. They were as real as the two hundred pages of Steeled Heart that she still had left to read. And if the person who’d sent these very real notes was indeed a coworker, they knew by now they’d have to be extra sneaky if they wanted to slip her note number three.

  Still, a week had passed since she’d gotten anything else.

  Nella collapsed into her seat and went back to finding a GIF to send to Owen. She wanted one that said I’m still in the office but I’m sorry and I love you and please say hi to your parents for me
, but the best she could do was a clip from a messy dating show she’d roped him into watching a few times. She pressed Send and hoped it’d get a laugh. Then she went back to the book Vera had asked her to read, scowling at how many pages she still had left: hundred ninety-nine.

  The read was slow going. The author had tried and failed to blend nineteenth-century ideals with modern-day tech speak. But Nella preferred pushing through the clunky robot dialogue over writing the Colin apology. Both tasks needed to be finished before she left the office, but the latter was so utterly demoralizing that she couldn’t bear to start it. And whenever she did finally finish everything, she’d have to ride the train home knowing that she’d missed hanging out with Owen and his parents, and what would she have to show for it? Comments on a shitty book, and an apology to a shitty writer?

  The more Nella thought about it, the angrier it made her. It made her so angry that after a few frustrating minutes of not absorbing anything she was reading, she went to YouTube and searched “Jesse Watson + apologize for what.” Since the office was empty—even Donald had gone home already—she didn’t bother putting her headphones in. She sat back in her chair, put her feet up on her cluttered desk, and turned the volume all the way up.

  “Tell me, please, what on god’s green earth do you want from us? ‘I’m sorry my skin’s so black, my hair’s so thick’? ‘I’m sorry you’ve been killing my people for generations—gen-er-a-tions, people—and the Black people you haven’t killed, you’ve left financially debilitated, without any wealth to pass along to their children’? ‘I’m sorry you brought my ancestors over on those ships and forced me to live with your people’?”

  Nella watched it twice, relishing in the way Jesse’s indignance radiated off her cubicle walls. Then she created a new file and started to type.

  Dear Jesse Watson,

  I’m sure you get many notes like these, every single day, and I’m sure that right now you’d rather do anything than read an unsolicited email from someone who wants something from you. But before you delete this, I want to assure you: I don’t want anything from you. I want something for you. For all of the young Black readers out there who don’t feel like the book industry sees them.