In that broken mirror
Two faces I never knew
CHAPTER FOUR
Brinton inched up her rolling chair. The lip ofLandmark’s black lacquered conference table cut into her belly as she summoned the strength to do the seemingly impossible. Annoyingly, her mom and Shay were right: she needed to stop languishing and turn things around.
Between floors fifteen and twenty on the office elevator, she had cemented her grand plan to beg Rich for another shot at a cover story, even if it killed her. Which, honestly, it might.
Inside the all-glass conference room in Midtown, she watched her co-workers awkwardly pretend not to glare back at her. After the Grammys, Brinton learned about the office pool betting that she’d quit before the end of the year. The prize was up to a thousand dollars, which was offensive. She was worth at least twice as much. As Rich sat across from her, looking more than a little bored, she could guess how he had wagered.
Rich was in his early 40s and wore his short black hair perpetually tucked into a baseball cap. A Pittsburgh native,he considered himself a man of the people. Although, he wore limited-edition Jordans and dated influencers with names like Maddi and Ali and Charli.
Brinton met Rich through a Columbia University alumni mixer five years ago. He liked her portfolio from freelancing at a few Black women’s lifestyle websites and took a chance on her when a music writer position opened up on staff. She assumed he had only hired her to assuage his guilt of being a rich white guy with upward mobility. Probably because there hadn’t been another Black person on staff in over five years. She had checked.
Rich, already on the offensive, adjusted the bill of his orange Supreme hat. “Are you happy here?”
A foolish question for someone who’d told her she wasn’t quite ready for a cover story, day after day, for four years.
“I could be,” she offered, “but I feel like you’ve pushed me into a box.”
He clasped his hands, unwilling to cede. “What kind of box?”
“Um, a Black Box, so to speak?”
At some point during herLandmarktenure, her colleagues had assumed she was the resident Black-spert. That meant doing sensitivity reads (i.e.: re-writing) on other people’s work to fill gaps for articles featuring Black artists she hadn’t already been assigned.
Of course, African-American artists didn’t getLandmarkcovers nearly as frequently as their white counterparts, a fact no one did anything about despite public outcry that spiked on social media every few years.
Ironically, on the rare occasion thatLandmarkelevated a Black artist to a cover story, Brinton wasn’t assigned those stories. Her value, it seemed, was adding telltale seasoning to staff photos the social media team posted toLandmark’s channels.
She’d become the hot sauce of workplace diversity.
Her stomach clenched. “I noticed a pattern with how you’ve assigned my stories and?—”
His thin lips curled. “It’s because you’re so dialed into the culture.”
Rich emphasized the wordculture, as if doing her a favor. As if she liked being reduced to a catchphrase.
Being the spokesperson for all Black people who had ever lived was exhausting. She had whiplash from the code-switching. Brittle bones from contorting into the version of herself that earned her colleagues’ acknowledgement.
“Look, you know I consider myself an ally,” Rich added lightly.
Brinton’s right eye twitched.
“And I think you should see this as a strength. I’m actually jealous.”
Because she was theBlack-spert. She opened her mouth again, but he cut her off.
“Brinton, I like you. I gave you a break over the whole Grammys thing. But I called you in here because you haven’t pitched a banger since. And what you’ve written for the website isn’t driving traffic.”
“I know, Rich, but?—”
He shook his head. “Media publishing has gone to shit—everyone’s facing layoffs. My bosses are asking who I can let go. I don’t want it to be you, but you haven’t given me anything to work with.”
She was proud of her recent articles: a PSA on the underrated genius of Tracy Chapman’s “Fast Car”; a review ofTitles Ruin Everything, Drake’s poetry collection so petty it could have doubled as Regina George’sBurn Book; and a think piece exploring SZA’s unlikely parallels with Princess Diana after channeling the late royal in herSOSalbum artwork.
The latter was the most trafficked article onLandmark’s website at the time, and it was the reason Rich gave her the Grammys red carpet opportunity in the first place.
