The Other Black Girl: A Novel

by Zakiya Dalila Harris

  Fuck that. White people have been arriving late to the party for centuries, and they still get priority seats.

  But Jesse didn’t say this. He just shrugged. “Oh. Got it.”

  “And you know how it is: probably better for us Black folk to spread out. Be evenly distributed, you know what I mean?”

  She was sure she’d used the perfect amount of sarcasm, had verbally wink-wink-nudge-nudged without actually wink-wink-nudge-nudging. But Jesse was staring at her like she’d suggested they blow up the entire building… while they were still in it.

  Nella swallowed, suddenly aware of the tightening in her throat and the dryness on her tongue. She’d felt more at ease speaking to Richard about the notes than she did at this very moment.

  Richard.

  Just the thought of his name stripped away any chance of her speaking again. Fortuitously, Vera whirled into the room at exactly that moment, pink-cheeked and positively cheery. “Mr. Watson! You’ve arrived! Vera Parini. I hope you found us okay. Can we get you any coffee? Tea? Water?” With this last question, she regarded Nella.

  “I’m good, thank you,” Jesse said, shaking the hand she had stuck in his face. “Donald beat you to it.”

  “Great guy, isn’t he?” Vera asked.

  “Yep. He’s a hoot, too.”

  “A riot,” said Richard, who’d quietly entered the room without Nella noticing. She wrapped her arms around herself, a chill burrowing into her bones as he and Jesse greeted one another. The feeling lessened only when Amy and her new high school intern filed in next. Nella couldn’t remember his name, but he appeared to have a drop of something nonwhite in him, which was why—she imagined—he’d been invited to this high-profile meeting.

  Vera asked about Hazel. Nella shrugged. “She wasn’t at her desk when I walked over here. Maybe she came down with something?”

  Maybe she decided not to come in today. Maybe she’s too busy mixing up new batches of hypnotic hair grease. Maybe she—

  “Haze! Girl, how you doing?” Jesse popped up so fast to give Hazel a fierce embrace that he practically knocked over his chair. “It’s been a minute.”

  “Been too long. I’m great! Better now that we’ve got you here.”

  “Didn’t take too much to do that,” he said, casting an arm toward the chair Nella had turned down. Hazel took it without a second thought as Richard smiled at her from across the table. “Thanks for hooking me up.”

  “Yes, and for hooking us up, too!” Vera said forcefully. “What a great meeting of minds this is going to be.”

  “Indeed!” Amy said, clapping her hands. “Let’s get started, shall we?”

  “Let’s. But first, Jesse, have you met Nella yet?” Richard asked emphatically. “She’s one of our finest assistants here. She has a really sharp eye.”

  Nella swallowed and forced a smile. The warning nature of his tone hadn’t been lost on her. “Thanks, Richard. We did meet, briefly.”

  “Indeed!” Jesse said, beaming. He was practically vibrating now, he seemed so happy. Much happier than he had been ten minutes earlier, Nella noticed, as though a light had just turned on inside of him.

  Nella shook off the thought, trying not to let it faze her from the task at hand: Win Jesse over. Make him want to work with you. Leave Wagner.

  “Jesse, we normally start off these kinds of meetings by telling potential authors a bit about what each of us does here at Wagner,” Amy began, folding her hands in front of her, “but Richard and I spoke earlier, and we think that it’s best that you start us off. Would you like to tell us a little bit about why you’re here today?”

  Jesse nodded and licked his lips in the way that Nella had seen him do countless times onscreen. “Absolutely. As you all may know, I’ve been avoiding the spotlight for the last year or so—everything became too overwhelming. The news, the politics, the tweets—all of it was just too much. It seemed appropriate for me to take a break.”

  “Was there any particular reason you did this?” asked Nella, curious. “Like a breaking point, or anything?”

  “Nell—maybe we should let him finish first. No?”

  When Nella looked over at her boss, she noticed that Vera was smiling a bit too hard.

  “Yes, you’re right,” she said, embarrassed. She averted her eyes to the scribblings on her notepad. “Of course. Sorry.”

  “It’s all good. Um, anyway—where was I?”

  “You wanting to take a break,” Richard reminded him, quick-firing daggers at Nella out of the corner of his eye.

  “Right. So, I thought I’d take a break. And then I was sitting in the park, not really doing anything, and an idea for a book came to me. A graphic novel, actually.”

  The thought seemed so out of left field that even Raúl, Amy’s intern, sat up in his seat. “A graphic novel?” he asked quizzically.

  Jesse nodded. “A graphic novel.”

  Noticing that no one had reprimanded Raúl for speaking out of turn, Nella said, hopefully, “That sounds great! As in, like, a socially conscious Persepolis kind of thing that shows the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement?”

  The social media mogul blinked at her a couple of times. “No,” he said finally. “Not that.”

  Nella regarded her notepad again, this time reading the terms she’d written down. “Police brutality, maybe. Or bussing, housing projects, healthcare—”

  “I wasn’t thinking about writing about any of those things, either. I want to do something more positive. Something with two main characters who come from different worlds. Different backgrounds. One’s super chill; the other’s, like, super uptight. But they’re brought together for a particular reason—maybe they’re cops? And they teach each other things, despite their differences.”

  “So, let me get this straight. You want to write something like… a graphic novel adaptation of Lethal Weapon.”

  Jesse grinned. “Mel Gibson is kind of my hero.”

  “Really?” Nella asked, too baffled to hide her disappointment.

  Richard cleared his throat. “Nella…”

  “It’s just so strange, that’s all.”

  “What’s wrong with Mel Gibson?” Vera asked, at the same time that Hazel said, “Nella, I don’t think we want to push him into something he doesn’t want to do. Right, Jess?”

  “Thank you,” Jesse said.

  Nella cocked her head. “But, like—are you… are you sure? Is it because you don’t think we have the right tools here at Wagner to help you put into words what you’d really like to write? Because we’re fully equipped to help you write a really hard-hitting, award-winning—”

  “I mean, believe me, we can discuss some political stuff today,” Jesse said, holding up his hands. “But I don’t want that to be the focus of my book.”

  “Oh. Okay.” Nella squinted down at her notepad, unsure of what to make of this. She’d spent the last few weeks imagining what it would be like to actually meet Jesse Watson. She’d flipped through every possible scenario like a deck of tarot cards: snotty diva; Black hippie; total space cadet. But none of these personalities were visible in the person seated in front of her. Jesse seemed washed out. Different. And not just because of his new pair of clear plastic glasses frames, which Nella had never seen him wear in any other photos or videos. He seemed cleaner; tidier. His beard, which she remembered being less reserved and more Rastafarian, was now closely cropped; the tiny twists he used to wear were no longer. His hair now lay flat across his head, smooth and just a little bit shiny. Greased.

  Nella swallowed, suddenly understanding, suddenly aware of that magnetic force that was turning her head toward Hazel. It was the last thing she wanted to do. But she had no choice. She took three slow, deep breaths. Then, she lifted her eyes up from the table to meet Hazel’s. What she saw was exactly what she’d expected: a look of smug, unbridled triumph.

  Nella started to cough, the dryness starting up again. “Um,” she said, standing, “will you all just… excuse me for a moment?
I have to…”

  “Go ahead, Nella,” said Richard.

  Vera was already asking about Jesse’s favorite books as Nella hustled out the door. She paused long enough to hear him say, almost indignantly, “Infinite Jest.”

  There was a whoop of approval. Richard. That was all it took to propel everyone into a feverish frenzy of agreement, the echoes of their high-pitched squawks hounding Nella all the way down the hall.

  * * *

  Nella stared at her reflection in the bathroom mirror above the sink, taking inventory of what stared back at her. The melatonin she’d swallowed the night before left her feeling more rested than she had in weeks. Her blazer worked well with the opal earrings her father had sent her as a congratulations for getting a job at Wagner in the first place. Even her curls were looking extra springy, darting out every which way from her head in an orderly, moisturized fashion.

  But everything felt wrong.

  Nella reached for the faucet and began filling her palms up with cool water. Cold showers weren’t normally her thing, but today her clammy forehead found comfort in the splash of the liquid. It felt good the second time, so she did it a third, too. She was reaching for the paper towel dispenser, drops of water still blurring her vision, when she felt something nudge her hip. “I got you.”

  Nella blinked a few times. When she opened them, she was presented with Hazel, wide-eyed and grinning and clutching a bunch of paper towels in her hand.

  Nella looked from the towels to the knowing gleam in Hazel’s eye to the towels again.

  “Take them. Your face is dripping wet, girl.”

  Nella regarded the paper towels warily. “Thanks,” she finally said, taking the paper towels and wiping her face.

  “You’re welcome.” Hazel walked over to the counter and inspected it for wet spots before leaning back against it. “What’s going on, Nell? You seemed really jittery in there.”

  “I’m fine.”

  Hazel gave her a once-over. Nella returned the gesture, noticing Hazel had also decided to pick a blazer for their Jesse meeting—the same powder-blue one that Nella had run her fingers over just the night before.

  “You know… I’ve been looking forward to this meeting for a while. And I know you have, too. That’s the only reason why I can imagine you’re still here.”

  Nella’s body went rigid. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that you wouldn’t have come to work today if you didn’t want to take a stab at Jesse Watson.”

  “What?” Nella asked, feigning ignorance, because of course that had been the plan she and Malaika had come up with the night before: Meet Jesse. Show Jesse everything Nella had on her phone. Then leave Wagner with Jesse, and never look back. “Why wouldn’t I have come to work today?”

  “I think I’m being too nice here. Let me put it this way.” Hazel crossed her arms. “You shouldn’t have come to work today, Nella. You should’ve quit. We don’t need to keep you around anymore.”

  Nella opened her mouth to protest, but Hazel added, “And no, Richard doesn’t really value you. That was bullshit. He was just saying what you wanted to hear. He’s only been keeping you here to keep an eye on you.

  “Plus, now that he knows that you know…”

  “He knows I know what?”

  “Stop it,” Hazel barked. “Don’t play dumb. Don’t act like you don’t know. You were snooping in my bedroom. Do you think I’m that stupid? Seriously—after all this time?” She snorted. “I wanted you to find those files. I wanted you to find them, because I wanted to see what you would do. I wanted to see what choice you would make. And now, here you are.”

  Nella felt humiliated. Her stomach took a trip to her toes as she contemplated her next move. But she didn’t have time to actually make one. Suddenly, Hazel was right up in her face, jabbing a fingernail into her clavicle. The strong, overpowering smell of her cocoa butter hair grease burned Nella’s nostrils. “I know it was a pretty big gamble on my part, because you could have opened your mouth and blabbed about it to Shani. But we handled that.

  “And before you even think about telling anyone,” Hazel snarled, her smooth, buttery-nougat voice shape-shifting into something completely unrecognizable, “nobody would believe you. Everyone would think you’re insane.”

  “And I would agree with them,” Nella shot back, putting a hand to her temple. There were so many things spinning around in her head; there was so much she wanted to know. But she was too stunned to ask anything other than “Did those girls agree to this on their own?”

  Hazel still hadn’t backed off, so Nella could see the tiny twitch of incomprehension work its way into her eyebrow piercing.

  “The girls. The ones on your lists. They all asked to be a part of this—whatever it is?”

  Hazel studied Nella so hard, and so hatefully, that Nella was quite positive she was going to be slapped. But after a long, long second, Hazel blinked. “How sad,” she said thoughtfully.

  “What?”

  Hazel laughed. “How sad that Shani wasn’t able to fill you in.”

  Nella resisted the urge to shield herself as Hazel reached for her purse and pulled out two jars: one bright blue; the other, hot pink.

  Hair grease.

  “This stuff is everything,” Hazel said. Her movements suddenly had a certain showman quality to them; it was as though someone had picked up a remote and switched her channel from Bravo to the Home Shopping Network. Which was strange, since Nella could still feel her nail on her clavicle. “Let’s call these… social lubricants. You remember this one, right? Smooth’d Out? Of course, you’ve been using this stuff since Curl Central… but not enough, I don’t think. Luckily, I applied a lot of it to your hair last night. Looking good today, by the way.” She winked.

  Nella eyed it curiously, but didn’t reach for it.

  “And this pink one—Kink Free—actually, maybe I’ll just give this to you. You only use a dab of this one. Just a dab. This one helps you hold on to your essence. Your Blackness. It’s optional—not all the girls worry as much about using it—but it’s good to have in situations like this Jesse meeting.”

  “Slow down,” Nella said, finding her voice at last. “ ‘Social lubricants’?”

  “Yep. The contents within these jars are clutch,” Hazel was saying. “They’ll make you more amenable when it comes to working for and with white folks. But the best part is that they’ll preclude any guilt you may feel from doing so. You won’t feel like you’re compromising anything. No ‘selling out.’ No ‘public versus private’ disposition.

  “It’s gonna numb your ventromedial prefrontal cortex. But it’ll also help you to do more with your time than you’ve ever been able to do before. Don’t stress! You won’t feel the numbing too much. Could be worse, too—I heard the original formula itched like a motherfucker and turned you into a babbling idiot.”

  “None of this makes any sense,” said Nella bluntly.

  “I was able to curry favor more quickly at work in a couple of weeks than most people—Black or not—are able to do in one year. That way, I didn’t need to spend all of my time going the extra mile when I wasn’t at work. And I’ve still been able to run YBL.”

  “But even if that somehow all comes from a hair product—you’re still compromising who you are,” Nella pointed out weakly. At the same time, though, she was thinking about how she wasn’t even sure who she was. There were so many things she never had enough energy for—so many social interactions she’d gotten so incredibly wrong—because Wagner had sucked her dry of her confidence and her sense of self.

  “What’s the difference if you don’t know who you are? What’s that saying—‘if a tree falls in a forest, but you’re not around to see it, does it count?’ Something like that.”

  “ ‘What’s the difference’?” Nella laughed. “You’re kidding, right? Your grandfather—”

  She stopped herself when Hazel tittered, but pressed on. “Anyone older than us would be disappointed to kno
w that you exist. That something like this exists.”

  “No. They’d be envious. Think how much further they could’ve gotten, Nella. Not having to feel all the pain…”

  “You never answered my question about Camille and Ebonee and them. Whether or not they really know what’s happening.”

  “Ebonee would’ve been an intern at the Paris Review for another year, maybe two. She needed this. So she does. A few others know, too. But a lot were referred to Dick, who then refers them to me—and a few other Black girls—to fix. As time passes, though, they start to love it. Believe me.”

  “So that’s a no. You don’t think that’s just a tiny bit fucked up? Changing these girls without their consent? Their… sober consent?” Nella asked, for lack of a better word.

  Hazel shrugged. “What they don’t know won’t hurt them.”

  “What they don’t know will hurt all the Black people who aren’t doing what you do. And it’ll hurt the rest of the world, too, if everyone starts thinking that we’re all happy compliant mammies who ask ‘how high’ when we’re told to—”

  “They already believe we’re all ‘Strong Black Women,’ though,” Hazel interrupted. “If they’re going to believe that stereotype, and if we’re going to continue to feed them that stereotype, then we might as well—”

  But Nella did the interrupting this time. “How can we truly fix any of those stereotypes—those problems—if we’re not truly feeling all of the real things the world is throwing at us? Who are we as a people if we’re not… if we’re not…”

  Hazel was giving Nella another once-over, but this time it was clear she didn’t like what she was hearing. “If we’re not what, Nella? Suffering? Is that what you want? To feel overextended? To feel worn down by every microaggression you experience in the office, and every injustice you see on the news? Are those the kinds of things that make you feel like you?

  “What I’m offering you here,” Hazel said, “is an opportunity to be a part of something that will allow you to let go, and go further.”