Page 21 of The Game Is Afoot

“You didn’t give me my backpack.” She nods to my side, and I realize I do still have her sparkly rainbow backpack in my hand. My nails have left deep curves in my palms with the effort.

“Sorry, baby girl,” I say, quickly sliding it over her arms.

“That’s okay.” She gives me a look that lets me knowWe’re going to talk about this later, missy, and then skips back through the gate. Mrs. Nelson smiles and waves.

“You really should consider joining us, Mavis.”

I sigh. Apparently my foul language was enough to get me in trouble with Pearl, but not enough to scare Bethany away.

“I am not interested.”

“I used to be just like you. Flustered in the morning, barely able to get myself together, didn’t do my hair or brush my teeth—”

“I brushed my—”No. Mavis, you are not about to tell this lady you brushed your teeth.“I need to go to work.”

“And see, imagine how much your days would open up if you took the leap to work for yourself. The flexibility you’d have. I’d love for you to talk to one of my self-care consultants, Pamela. She was just promoted to the Ultimate Wellness Goddess rank with fifty consultants in her downstream. Maybe we could hop on a call—”

“Oh my god, I said NO!”

I know immediately I was too loud, and it’s quickly confirmed by the startled look of Mrs. Nelson, the moms huddled in front of the kindergarten gate staring my way, and Francine the crossing guard already whispering behind her hand to her gossip buddy.

Because I just screamed at a cancer survivor in front of the school.

I’m for sure going to be the villain of the day on the Knoll Elementary Parents Facebook group. A blond lady in black athleisure wear and chunky Hoka sneakers—Della, I think her name is—is already furiously typing something one-handed as she sucks down coffee from her holographic Starbucks tumbler.

Bethany cowers back likeI’mthe predator, like she hasn’t been harassing me for days now. Like she didn’t just say in woo-woo speak that the self-care method she’s selling to tired moms cured her cancer!

But I shouldn’t even be surprised. Angry Black woman beats out pushy MLM girlboss always.

So I don’t even try to smooth this over. I turn and speed-walk to my car, and now the beat is:

Therapy-L-word-therapy-balance-Coach-Cole-scarred-for-life-trauma-zits-with-a-mortgage-FBI-agent-sad-and-mad-and-sad-angry-Black-woman

It gets louder and louder in my ears as I drive to work, park, and walk in. It hits rock concert levels when I see that everyone is already gathering in the conference room, Ruth in the front with two giant binders on display in front of her. The same two binders she offered me on Friday. And when I check and see the meeting invitation on my phone, sent out sometime this weekend when I was either holding my crying kid or crying myself, it reaches the decibels of that one volcano I read about whose eruption was so loud it traveled around the world multiple times and killed people on the spot.

That doesn’t seem like such a bad fate right now. Like, please, take me from this mortal plane, too, loud volcano. I mean, not really, of course. Of course! God, I’m worse than Bethany, joking about death when I just witnessed a death. What is wrong with me??

But also, I can’t even think straight because:

Therapy-L-word-therapy-balance-Coach-Cole-scarred-for-life-trauma-zits-with-a-mortgage-FBI-agent-sad-and-mad-and-sad-angry-Black-woman-DEIB

Therapy-L-word-therapy-balance-Coach-Cole-scarred-for-life-trauma-zits-with-a-mortgage-FBI-agent-sad-and-mad-and-sad-angry-Black-woman-DEIB

I sit between Nelson and Sally, who’s eating the last bites of her brussels sprouts omelette from a Tupperware, and try to take deep breaths to quiet down the thundering in my ears. I just need to reboot the professional robot Mavis software, keep it cute, and then I can hide in my office for the rest of the day and get my real work done. I need to avoid any meaningful eye contact and “opportunities” for me to speak for the entirety of all Black people for an hour. I can do this.

“Welcome to our first of several DEIB courageous conversations,” Rose begins. Her voice is ostentatious and her armsspread wide, like she’s presiding over the grand opening of a grocery store or performing slam poetry. Or both at the same time. “If you weren’t already aware, DEIB stands for diversity, equity, inclusion—and belonging. I’m going to repeat that again because it’s so important. Themostimportant, in my opinion.Belonging.Because here at Project Window, we want to make sure our BIPOC employees feel seen and heard and belonging—” She coughs. “Excuse me, like they belong.”

This is the same woman who was walking around saying “bisexual people of color” with her whole chest just a year ago before I quietly informed her what it actually meant, but okay. At least I know what theBstands for now. Though I’m still not convinced it isn’t…that bad word I’m not supposed to even think anymore.

“So after a lot of listening and learning, we chose this curriculum, which Nelson and I will be tag-teaming, because we know we need to”—she pauses to refer to one of the binders in front of her—“do the work. We all are going to do the work and be agents of change together.”

My god, was this written by, like, social justice ChatGPT? How much did they pay for this bull— This…stuff? They have no money to give me the raise I’ve been working toward, but they can pay probably thousands for a curriculum of courageous conversations to make me feel like I belong? And I’ll be forced to sit here and smile and pretend like all the microaggressions that are surely coming are okay as we do this Diversity 101 just to make them feel good. Because if Idon’tit’ll be something that’s brought up at my next performance evaluation as something I need to work on, as that one last hurdle before my next promotion. And that cycle will just continue on forever and ever with no progress, no money to be found in the budget, because I’m doomed to be trapped here forever.

Therapy-L-word-therapy-balance-Coach-Cole-scarred-for-life-trauma-zits-with-a-mortgage-FBI-agent-sad-and-mad-and-sad-angry-Black-woman-DEIB-trapped-forever

Rose squints down at her binder again. “Before we begin, I want to recognize the different cultural holidays we are near. Martin Luther King Jr. Day, of course, and…um…” She pauses and stares at the ceiling, as if the answer is there. Finally, she snaps her fingers. “Oh! And Chinese New Year! No, um,LunarNew Year.” Her eyes return to the safety of the binder. “We celebrate them today and every day.”

My eyebrow shoots up all on its own, a glitch in my programming. It would have been real nice to celebrate MLK Day on theactualday last week, with a paid day off. Corey got to take Pearl to play mini golf while I was stuck here, fielding Rose’s email requests to convert Word docs into PDFs for the billionth time.

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