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Books. Change. Lives.
Copyright © 2021 by Lọlá Ákínmádé Åkerström
Cover and internal design © 2021 by Sourcebooks
Cover design and illustration by Kimberly Glyder
Internal design by Ashley Holstrom/Sourcebooks
Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
All brand names and product names used in this book are trademarks, registered trademarks, or trade names of their respective holders. Sourcebooks is not associated with any product or vendor in this book.
Published by Sourcebooks Landmark, an imprint of Sourcebooks
P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410
(630) 961-3900
sourcebooks.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Akinmade-Akerström, Lola, author.
Title: In every mirror she’s Black / Lọlá Ákínmádé Åkerström.
Description: Naperville, Illinois : Sourcebooks Landmark, [2021]
Identifiers: LCCN 2020053738 (print) | LCCN 2020053739 (ebook) | (hardcover) | (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Women, Black--Fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3601.K55 I5 2021 (print) | LCC PS3601.K55 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020053738
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020053739
Contents
Front Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Part One
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Part Two
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Part Three
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Part Four
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
You Are Never Alone
Author’s Note
Reading Group Guide
A Conversation with the Author
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Back Cover
Please be advised, this novel discusses issues of sexual assault and suicide. For helpful resources, please refer to the back matter of the book.
To anyone who has ever felt unappreciated, uninvited, or invisible…
Your voice is more powerful than you think.
You are allowed to exist without explanation.
Never let the world convince you that your struggles are invalid.
Part One
One
KẸMI
America had decimated Kemi’s love life.
It had shredded her dignity and tossed its slivers into the air, cackling like a hyena. Relegated to picking up questionable prospects, Kemi was tired of wearing her invisible armor. A two-ton defense system that screamed to the world she didn’t need a man.
She couldn’t carry that weight anymore.
Lately, her dating life read like a dossier of shame. First, there was that one memorable dinner with Deepak.
“I think I told you I’m a software developer, right?” Deepak began to overdose on his own voice twenty minutes in. Kemi simply glared at him. She figured his name-dropping his career the sixth time wasn’t worth a verbal response. The rest of the evening, Deepak intermittently punctuated his monologues with his love for “Black booty.”
Then there was the silent date with Earl, a white accountant from Ohio, who summoned visions of a serial killer. Earl kept staring into nothingness past her face. Each time he tried glancing her way, his hawk eyes floated down her cleavage then darted back to the intriguing void beyond her.
She wasn’t sure if he was shy or scheming.
And how could she forget the Jamaican real estate agent, Devan, whose gaze kept trailing every white woman who sauntered past their table while professing unflinching love for the sisters?
America had stretched Kemi’s limits and run her resolve through an involuntary boot camp. According to every dating survey she had ever read, she—a Black African woman—was the least desirable relationship prospect, alongside Asian men.
Those surveys said first choice was someone else.
This verdict chipped away at Kemi, carving and presenting a weaker version of herself that received every suitor through a skeptical lens of paranoia. Yet, like a glutton for punishment, she kept going back to the app that faithfully failed her with precision.
“Don’t worry, my dear.” Her mother’s drawl would float abruptly into her stream of consciousness whenever she found herself swiping faces left or right on her iPhone.
Then it would taper off into a miniature sermon, followed by a reprimand. “God’s time is the best. Go to church! Stop wasting your time! Don’t let the devil tempt you unnecessarily, sọ gbọ? Are you listening?”
Her mother’s tenderness was always delivered with a healthy backhand of realism. Kemi would automatically nod at each passing statement, knowing full well her mother was on the phone and couldn’t see her.
Frankly, she was tired of nodding during family discussions, in executive boardrooms, and on boring dates. She was tired of being the archetypical Strong Black Woman, impervious to vulnerability. Pretending she didn’t need a man’s touch for years had lost its luster.
She was lonely.
* * *
“Seriously? How do you do it, guurl?” Connor’s Boston Irish accent cut through her concentration like a grating radio frequency. “You are one remarkable woman!”
She didn’t look up at him. Whenever Connor launched into faux urban speak, Kemi averted her eyes to spare his dignity. She had been reviewing the latest brand layouts an advertising agency had sent over. With eyebrows furrowed and forehead resting on her fingers, she scanned the copy, cringing at language that showed a single point of view had been responsible for the global campaign meant to cut across diverse views.
She was still mad at Connor for insisting she review it once more, even though she’d been adamant it was a waste of time. He’d simply waved her out of his office, saying if anyone could bake brownies out of shit, it was Kemi.
“What?” Kemi half asked, still reading the crap copy.
“I sa
id,” he dragged on, “you are one remarkable woman, Kemi. Congratulations!” He fully stepped into her corner office with its panoramic glass windows that mentally separated her from cubicle life. It physically didn’t, but Kemi needed it to.
She wanted him to leave her space. He pressed on. “You won National Marketing Executive of the Year! Again! Congratulations!” A grin spread across his lightly freckled face. He folded his muscular arms across his chest, shirt sleeves rolled up to the elbows.
She responded with a deep breath and then, “Thanks, Connor,” tapering off into a smile.
“Well, thank the awards committee! We can’t go public yet with the news because it is embargoed until early May, but we should celebrate early. I’ll get Rita to fix a cake and some champagne,” he added.
“Thanks, but really, I don’t want to make a fuss about it. It’s a huge honor but—”
He cut her off. “Well, we’re gonna make a fuss about it, about you, so on Friday, Rita will get the cake and champagne, okay?”
She smiled again, deeply this time, revealing equally deep dimples. That was when she caught it. Again. The naked look in his eyes. That split-second linger that revealed her boss wanted her.
She turned sharply away from him and back to the copy she was struggling to fix. “Thanks again, Connor,” she said, hurrying him along so he would leave. She felt his looming presence before Connor turned to go with pounding feet. Kemi glanced up in time to catch that familiar gait she’d been seeing almost every week for the last four years. The swagger that screamed to everyone it met that he ran the place, even if he didn’t actually own the company.
She couldn’t stay at Andersen & Associates any longer.
Thoughts of resigning swam in her head daily. They swan-dived in on Mondays whenever Connor rounded the team up for meetings. They did laps on Tuesdays whenever he circled her, walking a tightrope between flirting and bossing. They surfaced for air on Wednesdays whenever he was out of the office on client runs. And they continued with butterfly strokes into the weekend when she tried to bury them.
Though she had finally settled into her executive role and had turned a few key client portfolios from red ink into black, Connor McDonough’s look reminded her that she was still a specimen to be sampled and tested. Or rather, tasted. He was already married to his first choice, yet he wanted to try her like cheese on toothpicks handed out to passersby at a farmers market.
He had no intention of making a purchase. He was one of those men who wanted to steal into the fridge at night to binge while everyone was asleep, only to return to their diets—their wives—come morning.
Connor had tried to hide his leering over the years unsuccessfully. He classed everything Kemi did as “remarkable” even though she was just doing her job, his mediocre way of worming himself closer to her through empty flattery.
She picked up loose sheets of horrendous copy from her desk and started ripping them, one after the other. Shredding and shredding and letting the pieces float like confetti about her desk and office with a view of Capitol Hill far away, framed by light-pink cherry blossoms.
Like cold water to the face of a drunk, the high-pitched buzz of her desk phone interrupted her paper-ripping parade, followed by the high-pitched voice of her personal assistant, Nicole.
“Ms. Adeyemi?”
“Yes?”
“There’s an Ingrid John Hansen on line one from Sweden. Should I put her through?”
She’d never heard the name before, but Kemi was also used to Nicole butchering names. She received the transfer from her assistant.
“Kemi Adeyemi,” she introduced herself.
“Kemi, I am Ingrid Johansson from von Lundin Marketing based in Stockholm,” came a distinct melodic lilt that seemed on the verge of bursting into show tunes.
Recognition rushed in at the mention of “von Lundin,” the international firm currently mired in a global scandal that probably started with lazy, poorly researched copy similar to the one she’d just ripped into confetti.
Ingrid continued before Kemi could respond.
“I am honored to get this opportunity to speak directly to you. I am head of global talent management, and we have just created a brand-new top management position that will report directly to our CEO, Johan von Lundin. Although he prefers to be called Jonny,” she poured out in a single breath. Rather, “Yonny” in Ingrid’s accent. “We have created the position of global diversity and inclusion director, and we think you are perfect for the job.”
Kemi let Ingrid’s words sink in. She was being headhunted directly by one of the largest marketing agencies in the world.
The words “How did you find me?” stumbled out inelegantly. She couldn’t take them back. Of course she was easy to find.
“We follow the National Marketing Awards closely, and we know you won Marketing Executive of the Year last year. You have worked with major brands, and we know you have been involved in some of their most diverse campaigns. We need your talent and expertise.”
“After the IKON fiasco, right?” Kemi didn’t want to bring it up, but she had to. IKON was an international Swedish clothing brand marketed by von Lundin, and one of their advertising campaigns would, no doubt, be used as a case study in future advertising curriculums across universities worldwide as a prime example of what not to do.
It was something along the lines of using “Leave your color at the door, we don’t need it” while promoting a series of blouses and dresses fashioned in delicate, bone-white lace. It riled Swedish society, all the way from minorities in its upper echelons to newly arrived immigrants, and had caught the attention of international press quick to jump on the country’s integration issues. That copy should never have left von Lundin’s pitching stage. Unless that team was indeed lacking in diversity and the reason why Ingrid was currently quiet on the other line. The phone call reeked of damage control.
“Y-Yes,” Ingrid continued after a two-second silence. “It was an unfortunate incident, but it also showed us how much we need to diversify our top management. We need strong voices at the table, and we want you, Kemi,” she continued. “We need you here in Sweden.”
“Thank you for the offer, Ms. Johansson, but my life is here in the States.” Kemi looked down at her watch. Ten fifteen on Monday morning and her week was already off to an intriguing start.
“I understand, and I’m sure Andersen is lucky to have such a remarkable talent, but I would love you to please consider a meeting with us.”
Remarkable. There was that word again.
“I can’t fly to Stockholm.”
“Oh, no,” Ingrid sang. “Jonny will come to you.”
BRITTANY-RAE
Brittany-Rae Johnson was born to first-generation immigrants who fled Jamaica and settled in the muggy warmth of Atlanta, Georgia, for no clear reasons explained to her. While she was growing up as their sole child, reminders of her Jamaican roots were found at Uncle Dajuan’s house three streets away whenever they visited him on weekends for curried goat and her parents switched into patois.
“Jamaica boring!” she’d often hear him joke as they dug into reminders of home off their Sunday plates.
“Boring?” she’d start her futile argument. “People go there for their honeymoon.”
“Mi point exactly,” he’d reply while cracking into bones. “Dem go for lovey-dovey, make babies, smoke ganja, and come back to dem real life. Boring!” He’d finish off by licking his fingers one by one. One man’s paradise…
Her parents had struggled financially up until both their retirements. That wasn’t going to be her own destiny, if she could help it.
So, when Samuel Beaufount had floated into her life riding on his wings of fame and wealth, Brittany clung to him like a backhoe digging her out of Patois, goat, and ganja.
She had dreamed of going to fashion sch
ool to become a designer, envisioning sketching outlines, poring over fabrics, and launching her own line on catwalks in Paris and London. But Beaufount had derailed her and thrust her down the path of modeling.
Fifteen years ago, his air of self-importance had walked into Brittany’s textile design class way before the man himself did. As the legendary designer behind Beaufount—upscale men’s brand and go-to choice for metrosexuals who enjoyed pink shirts and turquoise trousers—he was going to be their guest lecturer for the term. This was his way of giving back to the next generation of designers, per the press release put out by his company.
His presence therefore demanded their rapt attention. He stood much taller and broader than they’d all seen on TV. Mindless bantering among the students died down the second Beaufount strolled into their class. He glided in wearing a pink pin-striped shirt encased in a green tartan suit, topped off with a green polka-dotted bow tie, his platinum hairdo slicked off his face.
His brown gaze swept over each student, wordlessly accepting or rejecting them. It landed on Brittany, and he followed its pull, planting himself in front of her desk, the class waiting with bated breath. He peered down at her for seconds, which stretched on for an eternity in Brittany’s mind, as he singled her out. Once she’d peeled off her initial feeling of dread, another emotion had bubbled up within Brittany. Beaufount had made her feel like the most exquisite creature he’d ever seen.
“You shouldn’t be in here,” he finally said with a deep baritone that belied his flamboyant exterior. “You should be modeling.”
Barely a week later, Beaufount became her manager. The first time he backed her into a corner had only been two weeks after that initial standoff in her textile class.
Beaufount remained the unrelenting weight bearing down on her slender, five-foot-eleven-inch frame. She still hadn’t talked to anyone about it besides a therapist she saw maybe once a month whenever she slunk into self-shaming.
Even her best friend, Tanesha, hadn’t been privy to any of it, and Tanesha had been sitting right next to her when she had become Beaufount’s pet project.
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