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Channing Chong wasn’t Malika’s type. She was clear on her type. Right before the end of her junior year in college, she sat at her computer and, instead of writing her term paper on the role of Internet advertisements and their effect on buying habits, she listed her non-negotiables for the caliber of man she would date when she graduated:
My Post-Graduate Boyfriend Must Have the Following Attributes
Height: 6’3” or up
Build: Muscular
Income minimum: Ability to be in the mid-six figures within five years
Job type: Finance, law, medicine (no creative types…too extra)
Complexion: Almond (no lighter, no darker)
Shoe size: 11 or over
Teeth: Clean, white, straight
Education: MBA, JD, MD
Years later, when she showed Kya the rumpled up list she’d saved in a journal, her friend reminded Malika that at the time she drafted the list, she was a 5’2” plus-sized woman with no income, a Communications major with no internships, used the second-to-darkest makeup shade they sold at Sephora, had size 10 feet, had coffee-stained teeth and an overbite, and was at her fourth college in three years.
“Yes, and this is why I need to aim higher,” Malika doubled down.
Kya laughed, “My point is, if you aren’t any of these things, how can you insist that your man is? What are you bringing to the table for the guy that has all of this? Like, you can’t just come with absolutely nothing.”
Malika’s first job out of school was at a pharmaceutical advertising agency with offices in the Meatpacking District. The cobblestones did her heels wrong, but she loved working in the industrial space with vaulted ceilings, whitewashed exposed brick, and complimentary sparkling Pellegrino in small bottles. She sat at reception. Malika offered visitors cold water or hot tea in barware and mugs she’d picked out from the MoMA Design Store site. If she was honest with herself, she felt cooler than her friends that worked in Midtown or on Long Island or Jersey. They were making twice or three times as much as her, but they weren’t surrounded by furniture from Design Within Reach and recently acquired paintings from Art Basel.
Channing was an art director on the Elevaz team. Malika couldn’t remember what the drug was indicated for. She didn’t know what most of the medications in her company’s portfolio were. She was just content to have a decent paying job in a fashionable part of the city that didn’t require too much brainpower. It gave her some time to think about what it was she really wanted to do.
“What is it you really want to do?” Thelma had asked. She was the forty-something senior vice president on the account side of the Elevaz team. “Do you want to do creative or accounts?”
“Um,” Malika’s stomach knotted when her parents or sister asked the dreaded What are you doing with your life? question. She could evade it by ignoring them or throwing a mini tantrum, but that wouldn’t go over well at work. “Um, definitely the creative side.”
“Art or copy?”
Malika had thought she had another year or two to figure that out. She had been at the job for five months and was just getting settled. The thought of uprooting herself and dealing with another learning curve made lumps develop in her throat.
“Uh, art, for sure,” she said, barely convincing herself.
“Do you know the Adobe suite of programs?”
The who?
“It’s been a while, I’m pretty rusty.”
Thelma told her she needed to take Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign classes at SVA or New School STAT and brush up on her skills so they’re updated.
“We have tuition reimbursement up to two thousand each year,” she said, folding her arms and shaking her head. “I can’t believe more people don’t take advantage of that.”
Malika couldn’t understand why this woman, with the auburn-dyed sisterlocs and Eileen Fisher linen tunics, cared so much about her present and future. Didn’t she have clients to visit, a team to run? She didn’t need or want a mentor preoccupied with what she planned on doing with her life. The two Black senior account executives had both worked under Thelma. Malika wasn’t interested in being her newest pet project.
“Then the next thing you need to do…” Thelma continued, poking at a small cactus in a terracotta pot with her pen “…is get a book together.” She leaned against the high partition that protected Malika from visitors and people lingering at her desk for too long.
“A book?”
“Yes.” Thelma nodded with intensity. ”You’re gonna need a portfolio of your work to show the creative directors before you get a promotion.”
Malika stared at her, exhausted from listening to the steps she would need to take to get out from behind the desk she didn’t mind being behind.
“I’m gonna hook you up with Channing,” she had said. “You know him right? New guy. Started about a month ago. He’s brilliant. Really talented AD.”
Malika knew him from the many interviews he had been on. She also remembered his first day, when he spilled the contents of his plastic bottle because the top wasn’t screwed on properly. Who drinks yogurt? Malika thought. And why would they bring it in on their first day? Channing walked around with white stains on his dark jeans all day. He offered her a dorky smile each time he passed her desk on his way to the large conference room she sat next to. She was more embarrassed for him than he was for himself. In the four weeks he’d been at Starr Rx, he would do a little wave and maybe a “Hey,” but never a “How are you?”
Within an hour of her conversation with Thelma, Channing had been leaning on the top of the partition, his head tilted on his right fist. The cactus accidentally stabbed him. He switched to leaning on his left fist.
“So Thelma tells me that you want to hook up.”
“Excuse me?”
“No, no! You know what I mean.” He laughed nervously. “I meant, we should get together.”
Malika leaned back and folded her arms.
“Okay, this is all coming out all sorts of ways wrong,” he said. “Let me start from the beginning.”
The next week they were meeting in one of the small meeting rooms shaped like a futuristic pod and Channing was showing her his book. As he flipped through explaining the concept behind each execution, Malika had thought his work looked good. She couldn’t articulate why, she didn’t even know what she was looking for, but she knew he was a gifted art director.
“With this one, I wanted to convey how someone with bipolar can feel isolated and misunderstood,” he said, pointing to a woman seated at a long table alongside other guests with whom she was not interacting.
He pointed to a picture of a happy dog with happy owners. “Gotta have the golden retriever on the beach with a stick in his mouth. Clients live for that!”
He opened his laptop to show the School of Visual Arts’ offerings for the upcoming semester. “My alma mater!” he said with sharp enthusiasm and another laugh. He ended most of his statements with a laugh. Malika had found it borderline annoying. He smelled, too. Not necessarily bad, but not great either. She thought she should add to her list that she wanted her future man to smell like Acqua Di Giò or Terre d’Hermes. Channing smelled like a hippie. Maybe it was patchouli.
“Before you take any technical classes, I think you should learn concepting first,” he said, pointing his index finger to a two hour class that met on Wednesdays at 6:00. “This is a good one. You should definitely sign up! My old professor teaches it. She’s really cool. I think you’ll like her.” He talked…a lot.
With reluctance, Malika signed up for the class and was surprised that she ended up enjoying it. Channing would meet with her on Thursdays and talk about the session from the night before and what the project was for the week. She ended up taking the technical classes at all-day, intensive workshops that ate up her weekends for the next two months. After work, Channing would sit with her at reception. He taught her Photoshop and Illustrator shortcuts for the tools and features she would use the most.
By the holiday party that December, he was officially her work bestie. They danced and sang along to Cece Penniston’s “Finally” and did an extended version of the cha cha slide. She had thought her work bestie was Dinesha Wright, but she was wrong. Once Dinesha had been promoted from account coordinator to account executive, she placed Malika on the Pay No Mind List. They had gone from going to Chelsea Market for lunch every day to Dinesha giving her a pained smile when she walked by her desk or when they passed each other in the hall.
Malika no longer saw Channing Chong as the annoying nerd with a strangely scented cologne. He was actually almost cute. He was born in Jamaica to a Black mother and Chinese father, but came to the States when he was a toddler. Malika wanted to tell him her father was Jamaican, but she thought that would get him too excited and he was already teetering on a geeky precipice.
One night she had been reviewing the non-negotiables list she had written years before and began comparing it with Channing. She had typed out the original list in an email to herself and wrote his attributes in parentheses.
Height: 6’3” or up (CC is 5’7, but 5’8” when he wears those sneakers with the thick bottoms)
Build: Muscular (skinny with a pudgy tummy)
Income minimum: ability to be in the low six figures within five years (definitely)
Job type: Finance, law, medicine (no creative types…too extra) (he’s for sure extra…but he’ll be an associate creative director in under five years, so he’ll be an extra boss)
Complexion: Almond (no lighter, no darker) (CC is more like those caramel candies old ladies keep in their pocketbooks)
Shoe size: 11 or over (a solid 9)
Teeth: Clean, white, straight (Not white, but whiter than mine)
Education: Master’s, JD, MD (BA, but at least he went to one school the entire four years, who am I to judge???)
For the first time, Malika was getting up for work and worrying about what to wear. It was a frigid February and snowing, but she had felt compelled to wear a dress. She picked a black one with a floral pattern she hadn’t worn to the office yet. She layered as much as she could underneath without creating too much bulk. The thickest tights she could find and knee high boots kept her warm enough. She wore a nubby cardigan over it and put extra effort into making her makeup look natural.
“You look...really pretty,” Channing said when he saw her perched at the front desk. It was the widest grin she’d ever seen on him.
“Thanks!” she’d said, smiling so hard her cheeks burned.
When Malika returned to her apartment from brunch with Kya, she was relieved to find Elena wasn’t there. Lingering layers of her roommate’s Miss Dior perfume hovered above her wherever she walked. This was confirmation that Elena had just left. On more than a few occasions, Malika had spritzed the scent on her wrists after its owner left for her day job in the mornings.
She headed back to her room where she saw an envelope stuffed underneath the door. Inside was a check. In the memo section the word “deposit” was written in Elena’s chicken scratch. A neon pink sticky note indicated the e-check included the accrued interest, minus the cleaning fee for spilling nail polish on a vintage welcome mat. Shouldn’t I be getting this after I move out? Malika thought. A sour taste filled her mouth while a wave of nausea swept over her head, shoulders, stomach, and arms, the same kind she got when going on the rides at Great Adventure as a young girl. When she opened the door, her bedroom stifled her in its smallness. The queen size mattress ate up most of the space, making it impossible to navigate the room without grazing her legs along the edges of the bed. She needed new sheets. Kya said she also needed to get a headboard, and not having one was a sign Malika wasn’t fully adulting.
She collapsed onto the unmade bed, its rumpled sheets smelling of her roommate’s stale cigarette smoke that snaked its way into the room and attached itself to every soft surface. Malika turned her head on the floppy pillow she’d been meaning to replace, and faced the full-length mirror. She propped herself up halfway and rested her torso on her elbows.
Taking personal inventory, she decided that her eyes were too far apart, which made her face look flatter than it actually was. Malinda called her “pie face” growing up, even though they both had their father’s wide-set eyes. Malika did, however, like their shape. Almonds that turned up at the ends when she smiled. She also thought her cheekbones were nice. Her nose was cute, too. She knew this because enough people had told her. One guy at a networking event Kya dragged her out to had pinched it and said it was a Minnie Mouse nose. She had swatted his hand away, grimaced, and told him he was a moron, but secretly appreciated the compliment.
She used to think she was too dark, but her complexion didn’t bother her anymore. She liked that it was even and glowed when it was over eighty degrees and sunny outside. Channing loved her shoulders and told her so, usually after they made love. Malika had never made love to anyone else before. Sex, yes, but this making love thing was new to her. Uncharted territory. She wasn’t even sure how it all happened.
On a morning towards the end of her semester at SVA, Channing had been reviewing her work for an upcoming class, mumbling about white space and kerning. They were in the same pod they always used, the one right next to the front desk in case Malika needed to buzz a visitor up or sign for a package. One minute Channing was discussing the beauty of Helvetica as a font, the next they were locking eyes and he wasn’t able to complete his sentence about text hierarchy in her layout. She had forgotten what he was saying. She closed her eyes and he swallowed his dry throat, loud enough for Malika to hear. She waited for him to kiss her, but it didn’t happen. After an awkward few seconds, she opened her eyes, surprised by how disappointed she was.
“Can I ... can we go out sometime soon? Like, I don’t mean as friends.”
“Oh,” she said, opening her eyes.
“I mean, I don’t know if I’m even allowed to ask you, you know, since we work together,” Channing said, tripping over each word.
“You’re allowed. We’re grown,” she assured him. “We can do anything we want to.”
“Oh ... okay!” he said, perking up.
“Get your filthy mind outta the gutter, nasty boy.”
That weekend they went on their first official date, not as friends. Malika was confused as to why she was nervous. Channing Chong had been her work bestie for months by this point. And despite being the same age, he was her design mentor as well. With her in Brooklyn and him in Queens, they agreed to meet back in the city. She wasn’t a foodie and content to eat the same thing every day, but he had been meaning to try a new Ethiopian restaurant in the West Village.
Malika found moisture on the backs of her knees and the creases between her biceps and forearms. Where is this coming from? This nerd is nothing special, she thought. No matter how much she tried to convince herself, sitting across from her over a platter of injera and tibs was a man she was shocked to be falling for. Falling hard. Since their last meeting in the pod, the little wave he would do as he walked by her desk gave her weird, juvenile tingles she hadn’t experienced since her first year at her first college. The guy with dreadlocks and goatee that sat security at the Thursday night campus parties conjured up the same tingles. Tingles at the nape of her neck, in her fingers. Other places. Her Jamaican grandmother would just say it’s gas. She sipped her tej. Channing smiled his impish smile. As the flavor of the honey-based drink coated her tongue and throat, she had a thought. “Malika Chong” sounded nice.
“I don’t know if I can keep the baby,” Malika said. “I’m just not in a good place ... at all.” She took a breath, clenched her eyelids and released a groan. “My life right now is trash! Bringing a baby into it would just be selfish.”
“Look,” Kya said, after an audible deep breath. “You know I’m gonna support you regardless. I think I can speak for Keith, too. We’re here for you, you know that.”
“But?”
“But just make sure you’ve thought this out, really thought it through,” Kya continued. “I mean, you haven’t even told Channing yet. Don’t you think he has a right to know?”
“Ugghh!” Malika cried, sitting up in her bed. “I don’t know. Maybe. Yeah, I guess …”
“Please, Malika,” Kya said. “Call him. Tell him. Today.”
She had slept most of Sunday. Her waking hours were spent holed up in her room scrolling through pictures of her and Channing on her phone. Romantic selfies in Central Park with one or the other kissing the cheek of the person holding the phone. There was a cheesy aerial selfie of them in bed with a sleeping Channing nestled in the delicate space between her neck and shoulder. Makeup from the night before was smeared and her braids should have been removed weeks before, but Malika looked stunning. She glowed.
Elena and her boyfriend were just outside in the living room watching an epic and very loud trilogy. Malika had never actually seen him, only heard him: laughing, cursing, farting. When he came over, she kept herself sequestered in her room or slipped out while they were conducting their business. They were laughing loudly, then arguing loudly, having heated political arguments about Spain’s relations with the US that soon evolved into moaning and some relations of their own. Thoroughly grossed out, Malika told herself that she could never sit on the sofa again. Then she reminded herself that she wouldn’t be around long enough to need to worry about that.
Malika typically called her parents on Sundays, but since learning about the pregnancy, wanted to skip this week. Her mother called multiple times. Finally picking up, they discussed her three nephews’ academic achievements.
“Cooper is on the honor roll. All As for the second time in a row!”
“That’s great,” Malika forced out.
“And Carter scored the winning goal on his soccer team. We’re so proud of him! You should have been there. Try to make the next match.”
“Will do.”
“And my baby Christopher! He drew his nana the cutest picture,” she squealed. “I didn’t even bother putting it on the fridge. I just drove on over to the Home Goods and got a nice frame for it. Silver. Says ‘grandson’ on the bottom and it’s got these little hearts and baseballs and soccer balls. You should see it.”
“That’s nice, Mommy,” she mustered. “They’re good kids.”
Malika didn’t have the energy to fake her way through another conversation. Her dad wasn’t much better. He talked incessantly about the boys as well and asked his younger daughter when she was going to settle down in with a husband and career. Every conversation was a fully loaded baked potato of annoying parental questions, always prefaced by “When are you going to…?” Telling Channing about the pregnancy almost seemed easier.
Sun, May 20 2:36 PM
Malika: U around?
She braced herself for his response, intending to hold her breath until he did. Channing always answered almost as soon as she pressed the send arrow. Malika had convinced herself that he was sitting around, looking at his phone, waiting for her to text or call. She had no choice but to exhale. She heard back that evening. Malika had contemplated re-texting him to make sure he had gotten the message, but that reeked of desperation, and there were too many pitiful aspects of her life at the moment. She didn’t need to add being thirsty to it.
Sun, May 20 8:07 PM
Channing: Hey
Sun, May 20 8:08 PM
Malika: need to talk
Sun, May 20 8:08 PM
Channing: I can’t do this again. I thought you said everything you needed to say.
He always spoke in full sentences and used punctuation correctly in text exchanges. This made Malika feel self-conscious, but not enough to use a semicolon or comma when necessary.
Sun, May 20 8:09 PM
Malika: it’s about something else
Sun, May 20 8:09 PM
Channing: I’m sorry. I can’t talk right now.
Sun, May 20 8:09 PM
Malika: then when???
Sun, May 20 8:11 PM
Channing: I don't know; I’ll let you know
After their first date, they had walked around the West Village, Channing snaking his skinny arms through Malika’s so he could rest his arm around her waist. At first, she sucked her stomach in but released it after a few seconds. She wondered if he could feel the back fat spilling out of her bra. It was the wrong size. Satin navy with black eyelash lace trim and matching high-rise panties. Bought on sale with a Bloomingdale’s gift card, the set was the prettiest lingerie Malika owned. Kya had always told her that the best birth control was granny panties. She had no intention of inviting Channing back to Clinton Hill and she was not going to go all the way to Jackson Heights, Queens.
“Thoughts on dinner?” he had asked, stopping in front of a Perry Street brownstone. His hand rested on the small of her back. She nodded and smiled. He tilted his head, slightly, and smiled back. He had clear framed glasses that were too big for his face. His hair was full, with thick, springy curls standing up and away from his boyish face.
“The drink was really sweet, but I liked it,” Malika said.
“Well, it’s supposed to be sweet. It’s made from honey.”
“I know,” she said. She thought his tone had a condescending air, but dismissed it.
He pulled one of her boxed braids from her face, stroking it from root to tip. The strand was twenty inches, making an awkward moment unnecessarily long.
“Uh, what are you doing?” she asked, trying not to laugh.
“I didn’t think anything should be hiding your face,” he said, the plastered smile on his face looking like it would never leave.
“You want to grab a coffee?” he asked. “Or a cocktail?”
“The latter,” she said.
Three Tom Collins later, Malika was squinting. It’s what she did when she was tired and drunk.
“Are you making fun of my eyes because I’m part Chinese?” he asked, jerking his head back.
“Huh? What? No!” she said, sitting up straight on the barstool. The street lamp cast a glow behind Channing’s head.
“Sorry,” he said. “I’m just being paranoid. It was something the kids used to do in school. Kids can be real assholes.”
“Yeah,” she agreed. “I have three nephews.”
“Oh, cool,” he said, before taking a sip of his whiskey sour.
“Can I have some?” she asked.
“You sure you want to mix?”
“What? It’s not like you’re White.”
“No, no.” He laughed through his nose. “I meant mixing whiskey with… never mind, here.”
Malika didn’t remember much after that, other than he bought a small snake plant at an all-night bodega they walked past. One that she still had and kept on her nightstand. The next morning she had woken up fully clothed in her bed. Channing, also fully clothed, was curled up in a ball in the tiny space between her large bed and small closet. Malika’s head felt like an elephant had been sitting on it all night. She had never been this hungover. The sour acid and alcohol swam around her stomach audibly, creating embarrassing gurgling sounds that were stifled only by Channing’s snores.
She had looked over at her nightstand, seen his clear framed glasses, and picked them up. She put them on and was jolted by how strong they were. Her roommates at the time, a lesbian interracial couple both named Jessica, were probably sleeping off their own hangovers. She looked at her charging phone and saw that it was after 8:00. She stepped over Channing’s body and brushed her teeth. When she came back, he was sitting up with his back against the bed and his glasses on.
“Hey,” he said, grinning and trying to pat down his hair.
“Hi,” she said. “Thanks for being a gentleman.”
“Oh,” he said, looking down on his makeshift bed of the parquet floor and his denim jacket. “No problem. I wanted to make sure you got home safely, but I was too exhausted to go home. There’s always something up with the G at night.”
They both smiled at each other, holding on to the feelings of the night before. “You wanna grab brunch in a bit?” he asked.
“Yeah, yeah,” Malika said. “The restaurants on DeKalb are really good, but they don’t open for a couple of hours.”
“Ah, okay,” he said. “I’ll just lay down back here.”
Rolling her eyes, she patted the empty space beside her.
“It’s okay. You can come up here.”
Channing’s eyebrows and mouth twisted, then his sheepish grin formed. Malika moved over to give him room. They both looked up at the ceiling, finding nothing. No cracks, no popcorn, no vents or high hats, just a white, nondescript ceiling that had layers of eggshell paint covering it. He pivoted over to his left side and looked at her. Malika turned her head to the right and stared back at him. “I’ve never seen your face so clearly before,” he said. “Like, the sun is really strong right now.”
Malika dipped her eyebrows. Channing went in and removed another braid that was in her face. She would go on to make sure there was always one dangling so he could pull it back. She loved the feeling of his hand gently brushing against her face. She had no idea what she would do when her hair wasn’t in box braids. He went on to touch her eyelashes, which was weird. Then he did the Minnie Mouse nose wiggle that she knew was inevitable, but also kind of weird. He outlined her lips, stained with a dark color from the day before. He put his hand around her neck and pulled her towards him. He pushed his body towards her.
Finally! Malika thought. She had played out the scenario of what their first kiss would be like. She hadn’t factored in his morning breath, but decided it wasn’t that bad, and got used to the taste. Soon, they were removing each other’s clothes and she wasn’t embarrassed by her junior high era stretch marks or her thighs that wobbled every time she moved. He didn’t seem to mind either. There wasn’t a part of her body that went untouched. While her neck was in his mouth and a cluster of hair was in his fist, Malika asked him to pause. She reached for her phone and turned to her music app, finding her playlist entitled “The Quietest of Storms.” Channing laughed out loud when the horns blared in the intro of Bobby Caldwell’s “What You Won’t Do For Love.”
That would be the first of many sleepovers before Malika asked, “So, what are we?”
“What do you want us to be?” Channing asked in bed, after two months of the routine.
“Together, I guess.”
“You guess?”
She looked at him. “I know.”
“Me too,” he said, kissing her nose. “I’ve known since that first interview I had at the office.”
Channing loved on every ripple and roll, telling her to breathe whenever she sucked in her stomach. Malika was just beginning to accept her body as it was when he entered the picture. He never told her she was pretty for a dark girl or a fat girl, she was just pretty. He never brought up her body mass index like her mother or sister. He fed her rich foods and held her hand on walks afterwards. For one reason or another, she had thought she was impossible to love and he had shown that she was loved and lovable. Channing’s physical love for her was never in question. She was always sure of that.
Seven years and multiple breakups and makeups later, Malika wasn’t sure of much else at the moment, other than the fact she was an unemployed, soon-to-be homeless, single, pregnant thirty-year-old. These were all hard facts with no grey areas or nuance. She was sure of that.