After awkward and stunted good-byes inside the Chamberlain house, Emira had all those feelings of leaving a movie theater and realizing that it was dark outside and that it had been for some time. The snow crunched underneath her feet as she stood next to Kelley and waited for their Uber. In a pink T-shirt and white bedtime leggings, Briar waved from Peter’s arms at the top of the stoop. Emira waved back and mouthed, Bye, pickle. Inside the Uber, Kelley and Emira didn’t speak.
Kelley stared out the window and rubbed his chin. As the silence settled in, Kelley started to remind Emira of the type of person on the train who cussed out loud when there was a delay. There was always that one passenger who seemed to believe that the train had been delayed only for them, as if no one else was inconvenienced and late. And as time went on, they became angrier at the fact that they couldn’t speak to a manager, rather than bothered by the delay itself. The car rolled along in the glittery snow, and for the first time since they’d been dating, Emira felt that Kelley was acting particularly white.
Before they reached his apartment, Kelley told the driver that he could stop on the block before his street. He said to Emira, “I need one last drink,” and reached to open the car door.
Emira followed Kelley into the kind of bar that Shaunie would have been tickled by, particularly at nine p.m. on Thanksgiving Day. There were three white men with gray and black beards seated in the center of the dimly lit bar, and a vacant pool table in a wood-paneled back room. One man was eating alone—chicken and something green—as he kept his eyes on the TV screen attached to the wall above the cash register. On the long wall opposite were pictures of John Wayne, Pennsylvania license plates, and other sepia-colored cowboys. Emira could hear low folk music, and just above it, a referee from the large television screen blowing a whistle and throwing a yellow flag. She took her coat off and hung it up next to a longhorn skull mounted on the wall.
On top of a bar stool, Kelley ordered a beer. Emira declined. She wanted to go back to his apartment and back to Kelley’s bed because the idea of laughing away the awkwardness of the evening still didn’t seem completely far-fetched. It wasn’t that Emira wasn’t bothered by the night’s disclosure, but—she thought this as Kelley kicked one boot up on the footrest and kept the other balanced on the soiled floor—at the end of the day, what could she, or anyone, really do about the situation? High school was a long time ago, even for someone you’ve slept with. In college, when Emira learned that she’d once slept with her current boyfriend’s new roommate, Shaunie had gasped and said, “What are you gonna do?” Emira had laughed and said, “Probably just keep living my life.” Josefa had said, “Amen.”
So Emira stayed standing, which put them at eye level, a dynamic she loved. She put her hands behind her back and hooked her fingers together, knowing she had one shot to turn this night around. In an attempt that was dumb but still charmingly dadlike, Emira said, “At least the food was good?”
Kelley’s face stayed the same.
“Emira, I’m not trying to be dramatic . . . but there’s no way you can keep working for Alex.”
Emira couldn’t help but laugh. She waited for his face to break, but when it didn’t, she placed her hands against the side of the bar. “Okay, Kelley, come on. Yeah, that was extremely awkward and it’s pretty weird and gross that you used to date my boss, but that was high school. You expect me to quit my job over it?”
“This isn’t just . . . thank you, sorry.” Kelley said this as the bartender dropped off his beer. Kelley reached back for his wallet. “This isn’t just an ex-girlfriend. Alex Murphy is . . . she’s more than just a loss-of-innocence moment. She’s a bad person.”
“But I don’t work for Alex Murphy.” Emira took her purse off her shoulder and hung it on a hook underneath the bar. “I work for Mrs. Chamberlain. And you’re acting like you guys still talk or something.”
The idea of Kelley still hung up on Mrs. Chamberlain was slightly entertaining. Mrs. Chamberlain—at her core—was such a mom. She said things like Look at Mama when I’m talking to you, and, Just one more bite, lovey. She bought nonfiction books and used the dust jacket as a bookmark. She ordered diapers in bulk, and when she thought she was alone, she put her headphones on and laughed out loud as she watched clips from The Ellen Show on her iPad. Emira could recognize the fact that Kelley and Mrs. Chamberlain were only a year apart in age, but not to the extent that it put them in the same league of parenthood. Kelley owned nice things, but owning a baby was next level. Emira tried to keep her voice even as she said, “I don’t understand why you care so much.”
“I don’t care so much. Okay, listen . . .” Kelley sipped the top layer of his beer and bent his head lower to speak to her. “Emira . . . the fact that Alex sent you to a grocery store with her kid at eleven p.m. makes a lot more sense now. You’re not the first black woman Alex has hired to work for her family, and you probably won’t be the last.”
“Okay . . . ?” Emira sat down. She didn’t mean to sound flippant, but she doubted that Kelley could really tell her anything she didn’t already know. Emira had met several “Mrs. Chamberlains” before. They were all rich and overly nice and particularly lovely to the people who served them. Emira knew that Mrs. Chamberlain wanted a friendship, but she also knew that Mrs. Chamberlain would never display the same efforts of kindness with her friends as she did with Emira: “accidentally” ordering two salads and offering one to Emira, or sending her home with a bag filled with frozen dinners and soups. It wasn’t that Emira didn’t understand the racially charged history that Kelley was alluding to, but she couldn’t help but think that if she weren’t working for this Mrs. Chamberlain, she’d probably be working for another one.
Kelley laced his fingers in his lap. “I didn’t tell you this before because . . . I don’t know. We were just dating and I didn’t want you to think I was trying to be woke or whatever, but in high school . . . Alex used to live in a legit mansion. It was insane. Some shitty stuff happened where she wrote me a letter that got into the wrong hands, and this group of kids found out about where she lived. They tried to go swimming at her house because it was honestly a country club, but Alex called the cops. And this black kid named Robbie, who I’m still friends with, ended up getting arrested. He lost his scholarship. He had to go to community college for a year. She completely altered the course of his life.”
Emira bit the side of her nail. “You were there when this happened?”
“Yeah, we were dating. Until this went down,” Kelley said. “I told her not to call the police. Like—come on, a bunch of black kids on the property and a white girl calls the cops? It was obvious what would happen, but she tried to make it seem like she was protecting the black housekeeper her family employed.” Kelley stopped and took another sip of his beer. “She acted like she was so embarrassed of her wealth, but now she’s still living the same way she did then, and she’s still hiring black women to take care of her family. And I was an idiot at the time. I thought like—Oh sweet, your house has a movie theater and this woman makes you whatever dinner you want. But looking back, it was super creepy. Alex hung all over this woman and acted like they were best friends. This woman even did her hair before school. Alex completely gets off on either having black people work for her or calling the cops on them. I can’t . . . Emira, you can’t be one of her people.”