The next day at the office is colored by fantasies of what I can do if I go to Seoul, combined with worry about being out of the office for a week, even if it’s on business. I have a feeling, almost like dread, that if I leave, something will go wrong.
I look up from my screen and notice my water glass is empty. Better get something to drink before I start to shrivel.
The kitchen at Yesterly and Havings is all chrome and glass, a high-design contrast to the country club elegance that fills the rest of the office. A small hall leads from the open seating to a recessed snack area custom-made to catch the loud and unwary.
Or the uncaring like Brittany, whose voice drifts out as I step unseen into the space.
“I don’t understand,” she says. “I’ve tried to make it clear so she knows it’s okay to be Chinese, that it’s the same as being like us. I don’t see color, anyway.”
“You’re trying, and that’s what’s important.” This is Meredith speaking.
“I’m doing my best, but it’s so hard to tell what she’s thinking.” Brittany sounds miserable. “I know she’s jealous because Richard asked me to join the Beaconsmith meetings.”
“You were asked because you deserve it,” says Meredith with righteous indignation. “You work hard. Like I told you the other day at lunch, if she worked as hard, she’d get those accounts as well.”
“She got upset with me when we met because she thinks I said her name wrong, but people get my name wrong all the time. It doesn’t bother me.”
“Brittany.” Meredith’s voice is as warm as a talk show therapist about to lay down some life lessons. “You can’t let people make you feel bad for being a strong, competent woman and a fantastic lawyer. Don’t drop to their level.”
“You’re right,” says Brittany. “When they go low, we go high.”
“Exactly,” approves Meredith.
At this moment, vision narrowed to a tunnel, I weigh several options.
Option:Make myself known and use this as a teachable moment to create a more tolerant world.
Analysis:I am not capable of this.
Option:Walk in there, look them both right in the eye to watch them squirm, then leave.
Analysis:I might seem like this kind of person, but it’s aspirational.
Option:Leave and forget I heard anything to save Brittany and Meredith embarrassment.
Analysis:Most likely course of action.
“I mean, I don’t want her to feel bad,” says Brittany. “It must be hard when you’re obviously the diversity hire and the rest of us got here because we put in the work.”
“We’re impressed with how fast you’re learning, and it’s because you try,” soothes Meredith. “Your mother is very proud of you, Brittany. You’re a good fit with us.”
I turn around so fast, I nearly stumble on my own feet. I’m taking option three, but it’s not to save them embarrassment. It’s to prevent my own.
In my office, I lower myself in the leather chair. The room smells expensively good from the subtle air freshener they pump through the office to negate any indication of human occupation. I don’t realize I’m shaking until a sharp pang shoots through my jaw from how hard I’m clenching my teeth.
I reach for my phone and then pull back because I can’t talk about this, not to anyone.
There are two kinds of shameful experiences. The first category is normal but mortifying, like falling down the stairs when you’re trying to make an entrance or saying something inane. They fade with eachretelling and eventually get reworked until they become cringey but hilarious anecdotes that happened to a fictional past you. They lose the ability to cause any more indignity.
The second category causes damage. They’re hailstorms where the ice takes up space so deep in your very bones that it’s impossible to melt. These are the unwelcome eye-openers, when you’re forced to face something you could damn well do without. If the first is falling down the stairs, the second is getting shoved from behind by the person you trust most in the world. Those never stop bleeding, and telling those stories, if you can, only rips them raw again. Usually you don’t.
You end up eventually owning the first kind. The second owns you.
If anyone should be uncomfortable here, it’s those two women and not me. Yet I’m the one who’s been cut down and made smaller because at some point my ancestors came from Asia and not England. I don’t even speak the language: Phoebe always called us dim sum Chinese. Despite the fact that I know jack about the motherland, I’m not allowed to be Canadian, only Chinese Canadian. My doubled descriptor seems like it halves my belonging, making me a permanent outsider. I don’t even know how to fight the Brittanys and Merediths without somehow feeling that I’m selling out a heritage I’ve never even related to.
Even though the Brittanys have a head start, I’d believed Dad when he insisted hard work would get me where I wanted to be. For the first time, I see he was too optimistic. Or Brittany really is the better lawyer, a better fit. How would I ever know if the problem is my talent or me? Although I’ve been paddling like mad in the Yesterly and Havings lake, all these conversations have been happening underneath that I’m not involved in. Hana had once warned me to watch out for this, but I’d ignored her. I was different. It didn’t apply to me.
I rub around my eyes, careful to not make my upset visible by smearing my mascara. At least it clarifies one of my decisions. I text Alex because I can’t be sure my voice won’t shake.Send me the flight information.
