Nella took this last interaction as a sign. She texted Malaika to let her know that the mystery person hadn’t shown up yet.
Good!!! Now go the fuck home. Seriously. You’re acting crazy.
Nella stared at Malaika’s words for a few moments, letting them sink in. Crazy. Yes. What was she going to do—fight whoever had been terrorizing her these last few weeks? She remembered C. J.’s bewildered expression when he’d asked her this very question that morning she told him about the notes. She wasn’t thinking logically. Out here, she was a sitting duck. If it was a manipulative monster who’d been sending her notes, wouldn’t she be screwed?
Nella looked around, eyeing the conveyor belt of people next to her. Then she turned and quickly ducked into the restaurant she’d been pacing in front of.
The restaurant’s bright yellow walls and the smell of hamburger meat didn’t especially put her at ease, but she pulled out one of the high stools facing the window anyway and took a seat. To her right, a couple of guys who’d been watching her conspicuously shifted their attention back to their hamburgers and whether or not Rob had heard back from his landlord yet.
Nella sighed and braced herself for at least eight more minutes of this conversation, keeping her eyes trained on the spot where she herself had just been standing.
But it wouldn’t be that long. Less than a minute had passed when she noticed a young Black woman ambling up to the corner of 100th and Broadway. She was tall, close to six feet, and her skin was an unusual shade of copper.
An uncanny bolt of familiarity struck Nella square between the eyes. This was the woman she had been texting. It had to be. It wasn’t just the fact that she’d stopped exactly where Nella had been standing mere moments ago, or that she looked more determined than any of the other people who were milling around her. It was all that, paired with a long, black calf-length coat that hid everything except for two black pant legs and a pair of black Doc Martens. The girl looked like she was on her way to meet Bobby Seale.
She also looked like she could have easily kicked Nella’s ass if she wanted to.
“Hi there, ma’am. How are you today?”
Nella tore her eyes away from the sidewalk. An older white man in an apron was wiping down the empty seat next to her, giving her a big Why haven’t you bought anything yet? grin. “Hi,” she said, after she’d secured her sights once more on the girl outside. “I’m fine, thanks.”
“Just wanted to let you know right now we have a Saturday special going until four p.m.,” he said, “so you’ve got about twenty more minutes until that ends.”
“Thanks. I’m just waiting for a friend. She should be here before then.”
“Of course. Would you like to see a menu in the meantime?”
“I—” Nella glanced over at the sidewalk again to make sure that the girl was still there. Her brain seized with frustration, then relief, when she saw that she was. “Sure,” she said, exhaling.
“Great. I’ll be right back. You order up at the counter when you’re ready.”
The moment he disappeared, she looked through the window again and nearly fell off her stool. The girl had moved farther back onto the sidewalk—away from the street, and closer to Nella. Close enough that, if there weren’t any glass between them, she would have been able to reach out and touch the pink scar that ran along the back of this stranger’s head.
Nella eased forward a bit to get a closer look. This scar, the shape of a small moon… she’d seen it before.
They stayed like this for a little while longer: Nella staring at the back of this stranger’s head; the stranger staring out into the street. Finally, after what felt like forever, the girl pulled out her cell phone. Nella reached for her own phone, expecting to receive an annoyed text. But to her surprise, it stayed quiet.
“Sorry for the delay, ma’am.” The aproned man had suddenly reappeared, a few menus in hand. He placed them in front of Nella so gingerly that it made her heart hurt. “For you.”
Nella tipped her head graciously. Still, she kept her eyes forward, trying to place the scar on the back of this girl’s head, trying to imagine who this person could be talking to. An accomplice? Hazel herself? Reenergized and finally ready for some answers, she descended her stool and strode toward the door. She kept her eyes trained on the scar—until, all of a sudden, the scar was on the move.
Nella paused just inside the doorway of the restaurant, shocked, as she watched the young woman quickly drop her phone into a trash can.
Then, out of nowhere, there was a hand.
A Black hand, attached to what looked like a Black woman, wearing what appeared to be workout clothes.
A Black hand, grabbing the girl’s arm and pulling her from the sidewalk to the street, then, into the backseat of a black sedan.
And then, just like that, the hand, the scar, and the girl were all gone.
Part IV
Diana
October 22, 2018
Locke Hall, Howard University
Washington, DC
For a while, I thought she’d killed herself.
Whether I believed this for her sake or mine, I don’t know. I just know that for months after she disappeared in December of ’83, I had dreams of her doing it wherever she went—off the coast of Connecticut, where Dick was sure she’d gone, or the coast of South Carolina, where she’d always wanted to live. Wherever she’d ended up, it didn’t matter. I imagined water being involved. And I imagined her gone.
My mother would disown me if she heard this, God rest her soul, but I truly believe it would have been easier that way. If she had done it, that would mean she hadn’t seen how much I’ve given up. It would mean she hadn’t read the fluff I’ve been writing, simply because I want to stay not just fed, but well fed. It would mean she hadn’t suffered through that Burning Heart made-for-TV movie that I never should’ve signed off on.
I bent my head backward, considering the news Dick had just given me. So, Kenny was alive and well this whole time. She’d seen me dilute myself and my career. Even worse, she’d read what I’d told that interviewer in ’84, the year after she vanished: “I’ve known Kendra Rae Phillips as a friend—and sister—for years. And while I love her dearly, I truly believe she has severe mental stability issues. Please forgive my friend for any pain or hurt she has caused you all. All writers matter. All stories matter.”
Dick could’ve been wrong. I should call him back to make sure, I thought. But he’d sounded so sure. I might’ve had it in the back of my mind that Kenny had been dead over the last thirtysomething years, but Dick and I had been trying to track her down. It was only natural that we’d eventually find her.
The question was—now what?
A bell rang through my computer speakers. Imani had sent me an email with the subject line LOL have you seen this?
I opened it, in need of a laugh, and snorted when the page fully loaded: Longtime Editor in Chief of Wagner Books Donates Hefty Chunk of Change to Diversity Initiative. Dick was at it again. He had always been concerned about optics. That was the only reason he’d been so insistent upon keeping an eye out for Kendra Rae all this time. She knew too much. She was a liability.
I studied the photo of Dick and that Lead Conditioner we’d redirected from Cooper’s to Wagner not long ago. The two of them looked pretty cozy, and for a selfish second, I regretted not going up to New York for the event even though Dick had begged me to come. He missed the smell of my skin, he’d told me, but what I really heard him say was, Now that your husband finally left you, we don’t have to hide anymore. That was Dick—seizing any opening he could.
I pulled at one of the dry, tiny coils of hair near my ear as I continued to dissect the picture. Dick’s shirt was unbuttoned a third of the way down in the picture, the way I’d told him he should have it whenever he went to social functions because it made him look less like a yuppie. When I first met Dick in the early eighties, he’d had it buttoned so tight he looked like his head might pop off.
Still, I’d felt a tingle when that yuppie told me he thought Burning Heart was incredible, and I’d practically passed out when he said he believed my book—my book—could change the world. Beneath the table, one of his black and positively expensive shoes had rubbed against my bare ankle.
I hadn’t minded it. I’d only pulled away when he’d added, in between sips of his cognac, However, I think it would be better for both of us if you went with Kendra Rae on this one.
Sensing my discouragement, he’d gone on to say how “in” Black authors were. He’d cited Alex Haley and Alice Walker. “Black everything is in. Look what Michael and Quincy did. So why don’t we put you with a Black editor, too?”
It wasn’t just any Black editor they were going to put me with. It was my very best friend—someone I’d known and trusted for years. Still, I’d been skeptical, because I’d cared about optics, too. That was why I had tried so hard to get Dick to change his mind. It wasn’t anything personal against Kenny; it was just that she’d still been so new to the publishing world. Only three books under her belt, none of whose names I remember now. Why wouldn’t I want to go all the way to the top with someone like Dick, someone who became a legend by thirty and knew all the bells and whistles of publishing? Once I got there, I knew I’d be able to bring Kenny right on up with me.
That wasn’t how it quite happened, though. To my surprise, Dick had been right. Kenny and I were perfectly fine on our own. Not perfectly fine—perfectly incredible. Everything started to come together: the story, the publicity, the positioning. Kenny took Burning Heart and elevated it to new, fantastic heights—heights I hadn’t even imagined when I’d first started writing it back at Howard. “You’re playing the short game with this draft, Di,” Kenny had written in her first set of notes back to me. “You need to be playing the long game. Write for yourself, nobody else. Pull no punches with Evie. Give her more breath.”
I did. And after a few more revisions, we were able to come up with a book that readers devoured. It was hard to find a copy of Burning Heart in any library or bookstore after it came out, and when high schools started banning it for its explicit, occasionally gruesome content—it was the time of Reagan, after all—its comparisons to Native Son caused book clubs to spring up in unexpected places: white suburban homes, but also Black lower- and middle-class homes, too. Apparently, something about two Black women—one light, one dark, both college graduates—had captured the heart of America.
I clicked out of the article and clicked open the latest spreadsheet of young Black women who needed fixing. Teachers at a women’s college in Atlanta, I noticed. The thought was unappealing—women’s colleges were new territory for us, and we didn’t have as much experience working with fortysomethings as we did with twenty- and thirty-year-olds—but if Dick hadn’t told the dean no, I couldn’t, either.
I hit Print, spun my chair around, and glanced out the window, comforted by the mechanical sounds of hidden gears and shifting paper. But rather than the cool, sparkling blue water of the McMillan Reservoir, I saw Kenny the last time I’d seen her: her sickly brown face held in place by flat, glassy eyes. A dull, monotonous voice. The effect was supposed to be a purely temperamental one; Imani had promised me that. But we were both frighteningly optimistic then, I suppose. Neither of us could know it would take her years to fashion a less harsh formula.
A ding signaled a finished print job—the most recent of many. Sometimes, when Dick gave me assignments that seemed particularly difficult, I contemplated getting out. Telling Dick that he’d have to find himself a new connect—something he’d never be able to do because Imani had always been good about keeping her lab affairs on lock. But how could I do that to him? Dick took care of me after Kenny disappeared. He’d connected me with a new publisher so I could have a clean slate. He’d helped me land the talk shows, the television adaptations, the movie deals.
Most importantly, he’d funded the whole thing. Once I got him to believe it would work.
“I know, I know,” I’d said into the phone that winter night in 1983, keeping one ear attuned to Elroy’s snores in the next room. “The whole thing sounds unlikely.”
“More like impossible. What Kendra Rae needs to do is just suck it up. Apologize for what she said and be grateful for what we’ve all been able to achieve here so that we can get back to business as usual. I’ve got four—no, five authors who’ve told me they’re holding on to their work until Kendra Rae gets with the program. One of them is Black, too, you may be interested to know.”
“But Kenny’s not going to say she’s sorry,” I’d said, not taking the bait. I hadn’t wanted to know who the sellout author was. “She’d literally do anything else on this earth instead of say sorry, even if it means being blackballed from the entire industry. We both know that. And we both know where she’s coming from, right? You’ve said it yourself how suffocating this place can be. If you were in her shoes—”
“I wouldn’t be. I’d never shit where I eat, and it serves the damn bitch right.”
“Jesus, Dick. She’s been getting death threats. Everybody’s been putting her through the ringer, and—”
“Oh, she’s being put through the ringer? After all the crap she told people about the ‘frigid racial climate’ here, you think she’s the one being put through the ringer?”
This was why I’d approached him about this topic over the phone: I knew just the mention of her name would set him off, and I knew that his explosion would make me want to hit him, hard. It wasn’t that he didn’t have empathy. No. It was that he used it as a weapon whenever it benefited him. I knew this firsthand.
But could I judge him for that? Just because I’d spent so many of those days whispering into his neck about how guilty I felt leaving Kenny to fend for herself didn’t excuse me from the fact that I had. I hadn’t spoken out against her, but I hadn’t defended her, either, because I’d known it was in everyone’s best interest not to get involved.
“Alright,” Dick said. “If she’s not going to apologize, then you know what you need to do.”
“We’ve been over this. I’m not denouncing her, either.”
“Why not?”
“That’d never work. Some Black people will see me as a traitor and they won’t buy my book if I do that. Look,” I’d said practically, “do you want to end the media circus or not?”
I’d imagined Dick sticking his pinky in his ear and giving it a little turn, a tick I’d never gotten used to, not even after watching him come so many different ways, so many times, with the most inscrutable of expressions.
“Fine,” he’d finally said, after a long, drawn-out pause. “What the hell do you want to do?”
I’d proceeded to tell him how I’d recently returned to Newark and run into Imani, a childhood friend I’d also attended Howard with, in the freezer aisle of Wegmans. How I’d asked her what she’d been up to since the two of us had fallen out of touch after graduating, and she’d told me that she’d recently received her PhD in chemistry from George Washington University. She’d started working at a cosmetics company just a few months earlier.
That had been her dream, and her parents’ dream for her, back when we’d talked future plans on Kenny’s stoop. I was so proud of her. So proud. I congratulated her on it all, and she congratulated me, too, on Burning Heart—my own professed stoop dream.
I’d started to cry then. Right there in the freezer aisle.
Then, I’d handed her an article about the Kenny controversy. It was news to Imani, but not extraordinary news. And here I was thinking that the science world had all the problems, she’d said.
And then—after looking down the aisle to make sure we were alone—she’d told me all about the pet project she’d started working on afterhours. A project that could make the lives of Black women all over the country just a little bit easier.
“But I don’t get why any Black person would want to do that,” Dick had said. “Isn’t Black Pride still in?”
“ ‘Waves of racism’? Sounds like something—”
“Kendra Rae would say. Yeah. I know.” I was beginning to regret bringing this up to Dick. I was about to tell him to forget it when he took a deep breath and slowly released it.
“And this is supposed to fix everything?” he asked softly.
“That’s my hope.”
“Hm. I don’t know, Di… that’s a tall order for a chemical that might not work. On one of the most stubborn women to walk this earth, especially,” Dick had added, his voice cloaked in bitterness. But I knew I had him. I’d have the check in hand within a week; maybe sooner, if Elroy ended up going to visit his folks like he’d been planning to.
“I’m not saying I want her shucking and jiving. I’m just going to help her chill out a bit, that’s all,” I’d whispered. “Help her find her footing again. Trust me—she’s better relaxed than uptight.”
Relaxed. Help her. That’s what I’d told Imani I wanted to do, too. That’s what I’d planned on doing all along. Smooth Kenny’s kinks out for a little, just long enough to make everyone happy so that everything could go back to normal. We’d play the long game, just as Kenny had told me to do. We’d eventually shoot to the top, maybe create our own imprint. Maybe even our own Black publishing house. I owed Kenny that much.
But then she’d disappeared. A few weeks later, Dick told me about a friend of a friend who was having some problems with a Black writer who was spreading rumors about his white boss at a magazine in Tulsa. A few days after that, a Black adjunct professor at Wash U claimed she’d been called the n-word multiple times at a Christmas party. I refused both of Dick’s asks, only to learn later that both of these individuals had been fired and left unemployed, with families to feed and no one to hire them.
The Other Black Girl: A Novel Page 28
