I’m sorry. I don’t think Tamara’s gonna be able to do the interview. She wants to—she’s just overwhelmed. You understand.
No, no, no… was all I could think as I fumbled to come up with a response that was polite and thoughtful and not overly desperate. If I could meet Wes face-to-face, I might be able to persuade him of how important this was. I remembered a time in Joplin when I’d convinced grieving parents to go on air hours after their daughter was murdered by her boyfriend. I was all of twenty-four years old, barely older than their daughter, and I felt dirty even as I pleaded my case. But they did it. And that interview led to a Kickstarter that raised $50k for domestic violence charities in the county. As I texted Wes, I reminded myself that as intrusive as it might seem, what I do can make a difference.
I do understand and I’m so sorry for your loss. The entire team at KYX is thinking of you. Is there a chance we could meet tomorrow morning to talk? Anywhere that works for you?
After pressing send, I checked my phone every thirty seconds for a response. I told myself that my agitation and eagerness were entirely noble, not self-serving at all. The interview was important for Tamara, and for the community, even if the exclusive would also be huge for my career and might help get me one step closer to the anchor chair.
When my phone buzzed an hour later, I almost pulled a muscle lunging for it.
Okay. Can you meet me at the funeral home, Morgan & Sons, on Girard? I have to be there at 11, so maybe right before… 10:30?
There’s an opening, a window, a crack I could squeeze through. I knew the reason they agreed to the interview in the first place was because of Pastor Price. The first time I spoke with Tamara, her voice was so soft I could barely hear her over the machines beeping and whirring in the background, the ones keeping Justin alive… at least until they didn’t anymore. I could picture her, one hand on her cell phone, the other holding on to her unconscious son.
“Thanks so much for taking my call. I’m Riley Wilson, a reporter for—”
“I know who you are. I’ve seen you on TV. And Pastor Price called me about you. He said you’re good people. Local girl?”
“Yeah, Northeast. Close to where Roger’s Diner used to be.”
“Oh yeah, I loved that place. Best crab fries.” A lightness crept into Tamara’s voice.
“I’m the lead reporter on this story, Ms. Dwyer, and—”
“Call me Tamara.”
“Okay, Tamara. What’s happening to you and your family is… tragic. And you have my full assurance that I will do it justice. I want you to know that—”
She interrupted again, gently. “The pastor said I can trust you, so I will, but let me talk to my brother Wes first,” Tamara said.
Pastor Price obviously didn’t tell her about Jenny. He knows better, of course, like I do. We both want me on this story. Never mind the unease that coated me like a slick film when Tamara said those words. I can trust you.
I have the same apprehension about not being completely honest with Scotty. I still have it. The resignation letter I’d written to my old boss at work. I don’t know why I keep it—maybe it’s a reminder that sometimes prayers do get answered. I needed out of Birmingham. It was supposed to be my big break—a top-fifty market after years in the minors—but as soon as I arrived in town, I sensed I’d made a mistake. All the Confederate flags—on houses, cars, buildings, the bronze monuments of vainglorious white men and wholesome plantation tours. I took it as a bad omen when I saw a newborn baby in a MAGA onesie. And the giant hand-painted sign in the apartment next to mine that said, IF YOU DON’T LIKE IT HERE, GO HOME. I’d only been in town for forty-eight hours, but it seemed like good advice, if not exactly what the sign painter intended.
It didn’t get better when I learned I was one of only two Black people in the entire news operation, my counterpart a cameraman who was about to retire after being at the station for forty years since he started out as an “errand boy” for the affiliate’s owner.
When the news director took me to lunch for our interview—after he took it upon himself to explain what a croque monsieur was—he’d said, “We need someone like you,” I assumed he meant hardworking, talented, resourceful. I later realized that my hire likely had more to do with the fact that the station’s parent company had issued a diversity quota, and I was their check mark. Especially with Harold on his way out.
So I shouldn’t have been surprised when I overheard him on the phone complaining about me. I’d pushed back, respectfully, about a story, and he’d made a comment about my “attitude” and then called me “uppity.” And there it was, its coded meaning clear as the glass panel in his office, through which he occasionally sneered at me like he was mad I wasn’t more grateful to be graced with a job in “his” newsroom. So I decided to shut my mouth and try to practice patience and gratitude, put in my time and get out once I could build up my clips, but it got worse.
I reported a story I thought was heartwarming, about a local Black woman who’d found an abandoned baby and was trying to adopt her. The woman was Black, the baby white. I should have been prepared for the online comments, or avoided them altogether, which I usually have the good sense to do. I know better. But that day I read them, each one worse than the last, as bad as I’d ever gotten.
A nigger doesn’t know how to raise a white child right.
That baby would be better off dead.
And, of course:
Riley Wilson is an ugly ape who doesn’t deserve to be on our TV.
Even the same tired insults hurt—hate doesn’t have to be inspired to cut you. I was twelve the first time I was called the N-word. Even though Ryan DiNucci, the seventh-grade boy who left the note in my locker, spelled it wrong, the drawing of the monkey that accompanied it was pretty clear. I crumpled the paper, threw it in the trash, and never told a soul. Just like I didn’t about all those comments. But they still ate away at me, especially on top of everything else that was blowing up last fall, everything with Shaun, and Corey—it all threatened to swallow me up. I could barely keep it together in front of my colleagues. I don’t know what was worse, the comments themselves or the fact that when I mentioned them, my colleagues dismissed them entirely with breezy eye rolls and oh-so-helpful advice: “Just ignore those assholes.”
It had been a few years since my last serious bout with depression, long enough for me to believe that maybe it wouldn’t happen again, but I was wrong. That night, I could feel it coming on like the first hint of a tickle in the back of your throat before a cold. The coils inside me wound tighter and tighter, the obsessive thoughts beginning to churn, whispers that could turn into screams. What’s the point? You’re not built for this place. You’re an impostor. You’re never going to be good enough.
I drank an entire bottle of wine, wrote that resignation letter, and spent the next week working up the nerve to turn it in. Maybe if I could get out of Alabama, away from the cloying civility cloaking casual racism, from all the memories of Corey and a job that was going nowhere, I would be okay. That was the moment I found myself, bare knees on the cold dingy tile, talking to God, praying for a miracle. And wouldn’t you know it, I got one. Scotty called, out of the blue, at the end of that week. He was a fellow Northwestern alum. He had kept in touch ever since we met at a J-school event right after graduation. He’d said he wanted to hire me at KYX, and now he had a spot.