Josephine fades from view for a few years, presumably to pursue her medical training, at Chicago’s lauded James B. Herrick School of Medicine. On her popular social media platform, collectively called Dr.Jojobee, she discusses topics that “patients are afraid to ask.” She also often divulges information about her own path into medicine and asserts that, without her full-ride scholarship, she would “never have been able to afford a medical education.” She encourages premedical students from low socioeconomic backgrounds to “keep [your] head down, work hard. Go to office hours. Time for leisure will come later.”
What she fails to divulge is from whence her scholarship came.
In 2012, the year before Josephine’s matriculation to medical school, En Garde makes an uncharacteristically large donation to the order of $4 million to James B. Herrick School of Medicine.
“Our scholarship programs are by and large funded by the generous donations of individuals who prefer to remain anonymous,” William Laurier, the Dean of Students at Herrick School of Medicine, states. “It’s not atypical for them to specify a group of students they would like to support. However, donations cannot be directed toward particular students. To maintain the integrity of our selection process, they also in no way affect our admissions decisions.”
It’s an assertion that would be more plausible if the Adelman family had a habit of supporting higher education. As it stands, the donation to Herrick remains the only significant contribution that Nest, Knydus’ charity branch, has made to an undergraduate or graduate institution. Herrick School of Medicine has a 3.9% acceptance rate, one of the lowest in the country. Josephine Boateng is admitted with a 3.7GPA, significantly lower than the class average.
The Adelman family immediately sees a return on their investment. In 2012, Josephine Boateng posts to her popular Instagram a video of Renata Kovalenko helping take down her braids. It goes viral, with viewers commenting on both Renata’s deftness and her cultural competence. She is, per several commenters, “invited to the cookout,” a term meant to imply inclusion into the Black community.
Within three years, Knydus Engineering successfully rebrands itself as a great valuer of diversity.Forbesmagazine recognizes the company as one of the “Ten Best Places for Black Programmers to Work.” Knydus Engineering hires Amancia Patterson, a Jamaican American wunderkind whose résumé includes executive positions at Dell and Hulu, as chief operating officer; she appears on theLana Porter Showmonths later to talk about her experience as the “only Black woman at the table.” Aaron Jackson settles with Paul Adelman to the tune of $700,000, and his public assault is forgotten.
Which begs the question: By associating their family with a poor young Black woman, did Renata Kovalenko pull off the most successful PR move in recent history? Did Josephine Boateng reject America’s Most Eligible Bachelor, or did she simply renege on a decade-long agreement to be the Black Best Friend to a family that gave her the financial backings to pursue her dreams?
At the end of the article was a photograph: a young, round-faced Jo standing between Renata and Ezra, Ezra’s arm around her waist, Renata’s over her shoulders. Mal stared at it for a long time before recognizing it as the picture Renata had framed on her desk. He felt like someone had knocked the breath out of him. The article had managed to do worse than all the previous ones had; stripped Jo of her agency, denied her efforts, presented her as someone willing to sell her likeness to a corporate devil. In it, she wasn’t so much a duplicitous succubus as she was a creature of ambition.
“Wow. You really do care about her,” Dahlia observed whenhe looked up from his screen. She leaned back against the coffee counter with folded arms, looking down at him from under thick falsies. “I’ll be honest, when she told me you confessed your love after the first hit, I was worried you might just be messing with her. But you seem pretty sincere.”
Mal couldn’t muster the energy to be embarrassed.
“Of course,” Mal said. He dropped his head into his hands. “What about you? You’re her roommate. I’ve had a few of those in my day, and I don’t think any one of them would drop everything to plan an intervention for me.”
Dahlia quirked an eyebrow, then knocked back her coffee like a shot and pulled out the stool across from him.
“Touché,” she said. “Honestly, I probably like her more than she likes me.” She sighed, dropping heavily onto the stool. “We met online, you know. I was in the middle of a nasty divorce. At the last minute, my ex-husband pulled money out of his ass for a lawyer and started asking for alimony and... all of a sudden I didn’t have money for rent, let alone to move. Would you know that that woman justsentit to me?” She laughed mirthlessly. “Didn’t even flinch. Didn’t even tell me she was going to do it. Just wired me $5K, no questions asked, and when I tried to refuse, she told me ‘not to be dramatic.’ ‘Do you want to keep living with that piece of shit?’ she’d said. I didn’t. It was done. A week later I was moving in with her.”
Mal snorted. He’d gathered that about Jo: that she was not always nice, but frequently kind.
“You know, I had this big group of friends back home before moving to Chicago,” Dahlia continued. “When things started going south for me, they disappeared. Not a single one of them would’ve sent me money. They couldn’t even offer me a couchto crash on when my ex started bringing his new girlfriend over. Lots of thoughts and prayers, with no substance. And here’s this girl who I haven’t even met in real life, throwing me a life raft just because.” Dahlia ground her chin into the heel of her hand. “She’s a special person, you know. Like, who does that? I paid her back, but I feel like she wouldn’t have pushed me to. It was like... she couldn’t help but help me.”
“I know,” Mal said quietly. His fingers tangled on themselves, and he remembered how, not long ago, Jo’s had curled between his, how they’d settled into the grooves like they belonged there. How effectively she blasted away his moments of self-doubt.
“So,” Dahlia said. “What’s the game plan?”
The game plan was simple. They drew up shifts: Dahlia covered most days, Mal most evenings. She sent an email to Jo’s therapist seeking guidance; he stopped by the grocery store to stock her empty pantry. Jo seemed to be subsisting on Ritz Crackers and dry ramen noodle packages, and so they split meal prep too: Dahlia handling lunch, Mal dinner.
“Don’t make me regret this,” Dahlia said, dropping her spare key fob into Mal’s palm. To her credit, she’d taken a picture of his driver’s license and his license plate as collateral—Just in case this is an elaborate attempt at burglary.
One thing they didn’t agree on was the talking thing. Dahlia might have found it weird, how Mal puttered around her apartment and made himself at home while she was gone, his conversations with Jo that were really with thin air. He liked to imagine that Jo was listening, that the shift of movement he heard through her door was her turning over with amusement.
“I’m making the tortellini I told you about,” he announced to no one as he mixed together the cheese filling. “Brought overmy stand mixer and everything. I know you don’t cook, but you should get one.”
Then, as he passed dough through the pasta attachment: “My dad used to color it with natural ingredients, back in the day. The blue tortellini was my favorite. He used purple cabbage for that, added baking soda to it. I used to think it was magic. I thought about making it today, but I figured I shouldn’t feed someone blue food without their consent.”
As he cut the dough into strips, added the cheese fillings: “We skipped over a lot of the basics while getting to know each other, you know. Like, what’s your favorite color? I’ll guess. Orange? Or is that just that you look good in it? What are your favorite foods? What type of music do you like to listen to? I know what you like to read. Can’t say I’m surprised to see James Baldwin in your bookshelves... but Octavia Butler? Didn’t know you were a sci-fi girl. Which is your favorite Butler? Everyone talks aboutKindred, and I see you’ve gotParable of the Sower, but I’m a big fan of theXenogenesis Trilogy, actually...”
Finally, as he lowered the folded tortellini into the boiling water: “You know, my dad’s family had a soul food restaurant, back in the day. He was supposed to take it over. He never went to culinary school, but he could make everything on the menu and then some. And then he met my mom, and he realized that if he wanted to be with her, he had to leave his small town. My grandpa understood, but my grandma was so pissed off that she didn’t speak to him for a year. But my dad did it anyway. He was always brave in that way.”
Mal left the tray by her door, with a side salad (“Don’t be too impressed, this one’s from a bag,” he qualified.) and a glass ofwater, and then stretched out onto her couch and turned up his music (Frank Ocean’s “Ivy”) just loud enough for her to hear.
“I’m going to attempt to start my second book now,” he said. “You can come out and join me, if you want.”
She didn’t. When he looked up from his computer, the tray was gone, spirited away like an offering.
That was okay, Mal thought. He would be back tomorrow to try again.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
