A Meeting In The Ladies' Room Read online

  There was a gasp from Dallas. “Oh my God, poor Alyssa.”

  “No shit,” agreed Paul.

  “Alyssa,” continued Elaine, “just sat there like a pillar of concrete. My contact over there told me that she seemed literally incapable of movement or speech. The woman told Alyssa point-blank that she better not ever pull a stunt like that again . . . that there was no such thing as black editing or white editing . . . that Alyssa better hope the book earned out its advance or she was going to be pounding the sidewalk looking for some more black editing to do.”

  “Get the fuck outta here!” Paul exclaimed in disbelief. “Even if that’s what she was thinking, I can’t believe Marlena Rashker would be stupid enough to say it in front of a room full of witnesses.”

  There was a general murmur of agreement.

  “This is really bad,” said Joe, “but there is a silver lining to this cloud.”

  We all wanted to know what on earth it was.

  Joe steepled his fingers and what he said next made perfect sense. “Alyssa Kraft is the only member of the Black Pack who is guaranteed a job for the next hundred years. She won’t be downsized, outsized, or anything else. This stupid woman, whoever she is, just opened the company up to a gigantic racial discrimination lawsuit and the powers that be over there are going to make sure that our Alyssa is kept very happy.”

  “Apparently Alyssa didn’t share your optimism,” Elaine finished triumphantly. “She quit her job the next morning.”

  “Does anyone have her home phone number?” I asked. “This is terrible. We’ve all got to do something.”

  “Like what?” asked Elaine. “She is a grown woman who decided that she would prefer to work elsewhere. She wasn’t fired. I say we all stay out of it.”

  “I agree,” Joe said.

  “Me, too,” Dallas chimed in. “The last thing I need is a bunch of angry white people breathing down my neck.”

  Paul said nothing, and by the look on his face I knew that he agreed with Dallas.

  Elaine cleared her throat. “There is one other thing.”

  A leopard just cannot change its spots. I knew what was coming.

  “There is no way Davina Coolidge is going to sign with them after what happened, so I wouldn’t be stabbing Alyssa in the back if I took a trip to D.C. and met with her, would I?”

  “What time does your flight leave, Elaine?” I asked softly.

  “I’m taking the shuttle first thing Monday morning.” Elaine looked around at our angry faces and her expression became defiant. “Look, this is a business. That is what I learned at Harvard.”

  Even though it was still early, none of us was in the mood to party any longer. Paul tapped a fork on his glass and shouted, “Okay, folks. On that note, I must take my leave. What is my share of the bill?”

  I stood up, too. “Yes, it has been interesting. Good night.”

  The atmosphere was tense and I knew that the rest of the group would break up before I was halfway home.

  We all air-kissed and waved good-bye. I kept a fake smile on my face until Paul and I were out on the sidewalk, and then my emotions got the better of me. Tears slid down my face. “Jesus, what a night! Victor might be taken and now Alyssa is unemployed.”

  Paul gave me a handkerchief. “Jackie, I hope you don’t get mad at me for what I’m about to say, but I’m your best friend and it’s time I came out with it.”

  Paul and I had bonded instantly at a book party a few years before and quickly become almost inseparable. We shared our secrets, dreams, and problems. He had my back and I most definitely had his.

  “Just say what you have to say,” I sniffled.

  “Okay.” He took a deep breath and held my chin up so we were staring into each other’s eyes. “I don’t know how or why it happened, but you are obsessed with Victor Bell and you need professional help.”

  “I’m not mad at you, Paul.”

  He looked relieved. “Good. Now let me help you get a taxi.”

  We walked to the corner of Eighth Avenue and stood there shivering in the frigid air until an empty cab appeared. Paul promised to find Alyssa’s number, kissed me good-bye, and I got in. My thoughts immediately returned to my dream man. Why wasn’t Victor attracted to me? Did he prefer tall women? Light skinned sisters? What could I do that I hadn’t already done to let him know that I wanted him? The questions went round and round in my head, the liquor sent me into a crying jag, and I wept all the way home to Harlem. I should have saved my tears for something more worthwhile—like the two nights I would spend in police custody.

  2

  ROSA WITH THE CROOKED NOSE

  Paul’s older brother, Richard, had recently opened a soul food restaurant around the corner from my apartment. Paul spent a lot of time helping out there on the weekends when he wasn’t sprawled out on my sofa, watching TV and reading manuscripts. He called me the next morning.

  “Hello,” I croaked.

  “Jackie, your voice sounds like fingernails rasping on sandpaper. Do you have a hangover?”

  “Aargh.”

  “I’ll come up after the breakfast rush and take care of you, okay?”

  “I need water. What time is it?”

  “Ten o’clock.”

  “Okay.”

  I live in a one-bedroom apartment on 111th Street in Harlem. When you enter my place, you are in the living room. There is a tweed sofa set against the long wall with a wood coffee table in front of it and matching tables on each side that hold my two kitschy Coca-Cola lamps. I have a computer hutch on another wall where my laptop sits and a bookcase in a corner that holds about fifty books.

  There is a short hallway on the right. The walk-in kitchen and my bathroom are on the left.

  Straight ahead is my bedroom, which holds a platform bed with built-in night tables and two pull-out drawers underneath. I have a framed picture of my boss, Annabelle Murray, and me with our arms around Denzel Washington on one night table. The photo was taken at the National Book Awards three years ago. He was kind and gracious about posing with us, although he did turn down Annabelle’s offer of three million dollars in exchange for a totally candid autobiography.

  A television with a built-in VCR sits on a stand with wheels slightly to the left of my bed.

  There is a picture of Mama on one living room wall. Otherwise, the walls in my apartment are bare.

  I hung up and stumbled into the bathroom, so thirsty that I cupped my hands and drank from the faucet in the sink before washing my face. My face in the mirror almost made me gag. The eyes were swollen from crying and black eyeliner had run down onto my cheeks. The effect was that of a tragic clown.

  After swallowing two aspirins and enduring a cold shower, I felt human enough to check my messages. Mama had called. She wanted to know when I was coming to see her. I dialed her back.

  “Hi, Mama, how are you?”

  “Okay. Are you coming downtown today?”

  “I can’t, Mama. I have to work.”

  “At your boss’s apartment again?”

  “Yeah. I have to be there at two o’clock.”

  “Why can’t you come see me when you leave there?”

  “Because Craig Murray’s bad writing gets on my last nerve and after three hours of him, I won’t be good company for anyone.”

  “Oh.”

  The “Oh” was so sad.

  “I’ll tell you what. Why don’t I come over tomorrow and spend the night at your house?”

  She perked up immediately. “All right. I’ll make stewed chicken, dumplings, and collard greens. We’ll have a real old-fashioned Sunday dinner.”

  “It sounds wonderful, Mama.”

  “How is Paul?”

  “Fine, Mama. I saw him last night.”

  “Tell him I said hello.”

  “Okay.”

  “Is your boss paying you extra money for helping her husband?”

  Mama had asked me this before. “No, but she really appreciates it and she has said that s
omething real sweet lies ahead for me. I’m hoping it’s a promotion to executive editor.”

  “Real sweet, huh? What if she just gives you a box of chocolates?” Mama laughed heartily at her own joke.

  “I’ll wring her scrawny neck,” I answered with a chuckle that made my head hurt even more. “Do you need me to bring you anything tomorrow?”

  “Some oranges and grapes would be nice.”

  “Okay. I love you, Mama.”

  “I love you too, honey.”

  I had just lotioned myself up and slipped into jeans, sneakers, and a navy blue turtleneck sweater when Paul arrived. He was carrying two bags of food, which I snatched from his hands before he had locked my front door behind him.

  What is there to say about Paul? He is average-looking—tall, light-skinned, and stocky with close-cropped, wavy hair. Aside from his brother Richard, he had no family. His mother died when he was ten and the boys had never known their father. Paul and his brother had grown up in the foster care system.

  He followed me into the kitchen and watched as I tore into the cartons.

  “I didn’t know what you were in the mood for, so there are four different meals. Fried chicken and waffles. Grits, bacon, and biscuits. Fried catfish and grits. Bacon, eggs, and toast.”

  “This is wonderful, Paul, but . . .”

  “But the smell is making you feel queasy all of a sudden and you’re wishing for some tea and dry toast instead, am I right?”

  I gave him a grateful smile. “What would I do without you?”

  “You’ll never have to find out.” He opened the refrigerator door and packed the food neatly onto the shelves. “You also won’t have to cook for a week. Go lie down.”

  I threw myself across the bed, wishing that there was some way I could get out of going to see Annabelle and Craig on my day off. Sleep had overtaken me again when Paul woke me up. The tea and toast were on my nightstand.

  His light brown eyes watched me intently as I bit a piece of the toast. “Jackie, the only reason you got so drunk is because you were disappointed that Victor didn’t show up. You really need to think about what I said last night.”

  My face creased into a frown.

  “You’ve been torturing yourself over this guy for the past year.”

  “I’m going to end this torture by calling Victor and inviting him over.”

  Paul’s eyebrows went up. “For what?”

  “Toe-curling sex, followed by lots of cuddling. What else?”

  “Very funny.” He gave me an odd look and then said, “Guess who asked me out?”

  “The waitress with the crooked nose who used to work for Richard?”

  “Her name is Rosa and her nose is not crooked.”

  The girl’s nose was definitely bent but I wasn’t going to argue the point. Now that I’d consumed the tea and toast it was time for Paul to leave so I could get some more sleep before heading downtown to the Murrays’.

  Once I’d been in the restaurant and watched as Rosa hung on Paul’s every word. Her eyes followed him around the restaurant with such naked admiration that he had started showing off—barking orders to the lone waitress so loudly that Helen Keller could have heard him and moving tables like a busboy to show off his muscles.

  Unfortunately, Rosa had to quit when she lost the woman who babysat her two children, but Paul told me that she had pressed her number into his hand before leaving.

  “It’s really nice to meet a woman who is working so hard to better herself. She wants to go to college and study the restaurant business.”

  “Miss Rosa wants to study the Paul Dodson business so he can marry her and she won’t need college,” I corrected him. “I watched her. She was looking at you with gold in her eyes.”

  “Baloney. I’m fine as hell and she wants me,” Paul said, pointing at his chest.

  “Really? Boy, has she run a number on your head. Soon, you’ll be telling me there isn’t anything you won’t do for dear, dear Rosa.”

  Paul stood and picked up my dirty dishes. “That won’t happen but there is nothing I won’t do for my dear, dear Jackie.” He paused on the way to the kitchen. “So, should I go out with her?”

  “Sure, have fun.”

  Paul had had a crush on me for the past three years and I had always pretended not to know it so I didn’t have to hurt his feelings. He wasn’t my type, and if the issue was ever pulled from beneath the surface of our friendship, I would have to tell him the truth. He would flee in pain and humiliation. I loved having him in my life too much to let that happen. We were on dangerous ground.

  He looked disappointed. “Fine. Do you need anything else?”

  “No, go on back to the restaurant and let me get some more sleep. I’m due at my boss’s house in two hours.”

  At the door, Paul fished around in his pocket and came up with a slip of paper. “Here is Alyssa’s number.”

  He left without another word.

  I never did go back to sleep. After Paul left, I rehearsed three different speeches to recite when Victor answered his phone. Then I got scared. If he rejected me voice to voice, I wouldn’t be able to handle it. It seemed better to proposition him via computer.

  Before I could lose my nerve, I composed an e-mail that said:

  Hi, Handsome,

  Sorry you missed the Black Pack meeting last night. I was looking forward to seeing you. Suppose we both skip next Friday’s gathering and get together alone at my place. I’ll wear something sheer and pour Dom Perignon into real crystal glasses while we . . . er . . . talk.

  And then I clicked the SEND button.

  3

  ALL ABOUT MOMS

  Hell’s Kitchen is a nickname for the area in Manhattan that stretches north from 34th Street to 59th Street and west from Eighth Avenue to the Hudson River. This is where I was born and raised. The funny thing is that I never heard the term “Hell’s Kitchen” until I was a grown woman sitting in a job interview. The interviewer noted my address and said, “Hmmm, a Hell’s Kitchen girl.”

  We called our neighborhood “Clinton.”

  It really doesn’t matter what your community is called if you’re poor. The people of Clinton were poor whites, poor Puerto Ricans, and a smattering of poor Blacks, which included me and Mama.

  To be poor in an area where there is need and want spreading around you for miles in each direction is one thing, but to grow up poor in Clinton was another because we could see and smell the riches wafting over from Broadway, Sixth Avenue, Fifth Avenue, and Park Avenue. Some of our neighbors would sit on the stoop and talk about moving east when their ship came in, but Mama didn’t. She never believed that a ship would come in for her and refused to waste time thinking about it.

  Mama didn’t like her lot in life but she accepted it calmly. In fact, she still lived in the same apartment that I’d grown up in. Mama refused to come stay with me, preferring to stick to familiar ground where she was the woman in charge. It made my chest tighten up every time I entered the shabby building.

  As for me, I decided early on that no ship was going to pull up in front of the Radio City Station post office across the street from our tenement, so I would have to swim out to sea and jump on the first vessel that came into view. It took a series of dead-end secretarial jobs following college for me to land in the right industry. But once I was bitten by the publishing bug, I worked very hard, changed companies twice for career advancement, and finally got the position I wanted.

  How I went from book editor to accused murderer is the stuff TV miniseries are made of. I’ve had a lot of time over the past few months to ponder this journey and the media has used up a lot of ink trying to dissect it.

  I was born Jacqueline Naomi Blue, only surviving child (the first one, a boy, was stillborn) of Quincy and Mozelle Blue, in St. Clare’s Hospital right down the street from the tenement. A year after my birth, Daddy ran off with Mama’s best friend and we never heard from him again.

  Mama raised me to keep my legs closed
, my mouth shut, and to never betray a friend. She had come to New York from Memphis, Tennessee, and even though her family begged her to come home after Daddy left, she just couldn’t. Apparently they had told her he was a no-good creep and she’d be sorry for running off with him. Since her parents had died long ago, Mama figured that nothing was left for her back in Memphis but three sisters who were waiting with mouths chock-full of I-told-you-sos.

  She was only twenty years old when I was born but sorrow, bitterness, and shock have a way of aging a woman so that by the time Mama was thirty, she looked forty. She and I lived a pretty solitary life. She worked as a cashier for Met Supermarket from the time Daddy left until they tore the store down three years ago. I’ve been supporting her since then and I don’t mind at all.

  Mama has a picture of herself taken in Memphis about two years before Daddy came through town and swept her off her feet. Her eyes are glowing with hope, her hair swept up in an elaborate roll, the lips parted, showing perfect teeth.

  She is still beautiful but the hope for her own life has been replaced by the pride she feels in my accomplishment.

  Mama never told me that we were poor. It took a brief childhood friendship to teach me that.

  There was one white girl in my fifth-grade class who was not poor. Her name was Mandy and she, too, lived in a single-parent household. Mandy’s mother acted in TV commercials and received alimony and child support from Mandy’s father, whose occupation I never knew. When Mandy invited me over to her house, which was on 55th Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenue, I had to beg Mama to let me go. I understand now that Mama was trying to protect me from the sting of racism. After my visit, I naturally invited Mandy back to play at our house. Her mother wouldn’t hear of it and our friendship ended soon after.

  Their place was huge. Until then, I had never seen an apartment with more than one bathroom. The ceilings were so high that I couldn’t figure out how Mandy’s mother changed the light-bulb. There was thick carpeting on the floors instead of cracked linoleum, pictures in heavy frames on the walls, and floor-to-ceiling bookcases, which held important looking volumes. But it was the air in that living space that made the greatest impression on me. Or rather, what was not in the air. There were no clouds of disappointment, anxiety, desperation, or bitterness in that air and I breathed deeply, trying to fill my lungs with it.