And so I tear my eyes away from the ballroom and focus on her—on my Zenny-bug, who is beautiful and who also looks like she’s a combination of angry and amused and annoyed and…pitying, maybe?
I take a deep breath, trying to harness my fury, because it’s not directed at her and I don’t want her to think for a second that it is. “Zenny, they were saying—”
“I know.”
“They were acting like you—”
“I know, Sean. I know.”
But how can she tell me that she knows and still act like she doesn’t want to pour boiling oil over everyone in that cursed ballroom? “Zenny, they were acting like that because you’re—” and here I falter, because I’m still so angry, and saying the bald truth out loud feels like having a nest of hornets in my mouth. “Because—”
“Because I’m black,” she says. “They assumed I was working the event because I’m black. They saw me, a black woman, in what they think of as ‘their’ space, and to them it was a logical assumption that I was the help.”
“But…that’s shitty,” I protest.
“I know.”
“Because why wouldn’t a black woman belong in there? Why is it more likely that you were a server than that you legitimately belonged there?”
“I know, Sean. You don’t have to tell me.”
“And that part about you belonging only after they realized who your dad was!” I fume, barely even listening to her now, so lost in my own anger. “That almost makes it worse, like, oh, now it’s okay because we’ve vetted your parents?”
“Sean,” Zenny says, holding up a hand. The first edge of bitter impatience lines her voice. “Please. I know all of this.”
“But,” I splutter, “then why are you so calm right now? How can you live with it?”
This strikes a nerve; I see it in the copper flash of her eyes. “This is my life, Sean. I deal with this every fucking day. What am I supposed to do? Not live? Not go anywhere ever? Not talk to anyone ever?”
“But then why aren’t you angry?” I demand.
“Because I can’t get angry!” Zenny bursts out, her words loud and shaking with frustration. And then, clearing her throat and glancing around the empty hallway, she says again, “I can’t get angry. If I get angry, then I’m the Angry Black Woman. If I admit to having my feelings hurt, then I’m being too sensitive. If I ask for people to treat me thoughtfully, then I’m being aggressive. If I joke back, then I’m being impertinent or sassy. If I cry, then I’m hyperemotional. If I don’t react at all, I’m intimidating or cold. Do you see? There’s not a way I can react where I win. I can’t win.”
Her words gouge at me, at the space in my heart that’s cracked open just for her in the last week and they also gouge at my mind, where my admittedly flawed concepts of fairness live. I hurt for her, I want to bleed for her, I want to fix it—
I want to fix it
I want to fix it
I want to fix it
“Okay,” I say. “But I can get angry—let me go back in there and—”
“Sean,” she says sharply. “Stop. If you go back in there and do anything else, the headline is not going to be ‘Noble Sean Bell Heroically Defends Young Woman.’ It’s still going to be ‘Black Girl Causes Scene.’”
“But—”
“It will reflect back on me. And,” she adds in a defeated tone, “it will reflect back onto my parents. I can’t risk that. I can’t risk their standing and their livelihoods just so that you feel better. Please tell me you understand this.”
And all at once, I feel like seventeen emotions are collapsing in on me. Rage and righteousness and concern for her and the need to protect her and—ugh, defensiveness. Shame. I don’t like admitting them to myself; they’re such gross feelings to have right now, when all of me should be focused on Zenny, but they’re there.
And I realize those flashes of shame and defensiveness are there because I’m just as guilty as Sophia or Hayley. Maybe not tonight, maybe not in the exact same ways, but I’m still guilty. Of assumptions and careless words. Of unkindness and disrespect. Not once ever in my entire life have I been put in a position like Zenny was tonight—a position that she’s put in every day—and with deep, ugly regret, I recognize times that I’ve been on the other side of it. The times when I’ve been the garbage goose person, the one casually spraying a room with my entitlement.
I’m not innocent of harm and the thought is painful.
“Zenny, I’ve—I think I’ve done shitty stuff like this too.” I want to reach for her but I don’t let myself. I don’t deserve it. “I mean, I know I have.”
“I’d be surprised if you hadn’t,” Zenny says. “You’re a straight, cisgendered white man from the Midwest.”
“I—” I stop, because I still feel a swell of defensiveness, because I can’t help those things, I can’t change them—but in light of what just happened in the ballroom, I can’t deny that they’ve given me blinders, that they’ve shaped how I see the world, and probably not for the better.
“Even good people can do or say racist things. Even white boys with an actual, literal, black best friend.” She cracks a small smile as she says the last part, and I huff out a self-deprecating breath.
“It’s stupid of me. I always knew Elijah was black, that you were black. It’s not like I didn’t know, but it never seemed like something different, not when we had so much in common. I just never thought outside myself enough to consider what it might mean for you…”
“It’s okay,” she says, and she takes my hand. “I mean, not okay like I’m absolving anything, but okay like…you’re learning. And learning is good.”
I search her lovely face, which looks sad and tired and still all the lovelier for those things. “How can you want to hold my hand after all this? How can you want to touch me?”
She puts her hands on my chest, and then slides her arms around my waist in a full hug. I can’t stop myself; I crush her tight against me, bury my face in the crown of her hair. “I’m sure there’s something smart and insightful I could say about human interactions within the locus of marginalizing social constructs, but I can’t think of it right now,” she says into my chest. She tightens her slender arms around me. “All I can think of is that I still trust you. I still like you. I still want you.”
That doesn’t change reality, but I’m willing to navigate it with you.
That’s what she said the night we discussed us and what an us would look like, and here we are. Navigating. I thought it would be only about our age, about our shared connection with Elijah, but here it is about something else entirely.
I remind her of what she said, and I can feel her smile into my chest.
“You’ve missed your calling as a prophet,” I say, and she sighs against me. Not a sad sigh or a happy sigh. Just a sigh.
“It doesn’t take being a prophet to know these things will happen,” she says.
Which stirs me up all over again. “I want to build a tower around you, and then build a castle around that tower, and then dig a moat around that castle, and then I want to guard you like a dragon. Burn anyone who tries to hurt you into ash and then scorch those ashes a second time.”