“Have a seat, Mr. Jackson.”
He knew where to go. In his mind, because he didn’t need to ask where, he’d answered the first question correctly.
Rahlina Rodriguez settled in the seat behind the smallish pale desk. She placed the fingers of both hands on the ledge before her, giving him a wan smile.
“Before we begin,” she said, “do you have any questions?”
“Are you Mexican?”
“Um,” Rodriguez said, maybe as a criticism.
“I said, are you Mexican?” Laertes repeated.
“We don’t ask questions like that here at Triple-M.”
“If not, then how do you plan to right the listing ship of your intentions?”
“That is a corporate-wide initiative unattached to any individual’s nationality, race, age, or gender.”
“But still you have a black man named Laertes meeting a maybe Hispanic woman named Rodriguez during a hiring period where the cultural tendencies of the company in question are not serving the makeup of the unions that that company represents.”
Rahlina Rodriguez was not happy with the direction of the interview. Laertes’s little paragraph sat his interlocutor up straight in her chair.
“The facts that you are African-American,” she countered, “and that my name has roots in the Spanish language have no direct bearing on your application for the entry position of trainee investment advisor.”
“The letter I got from human resources said that this interview might be recorded,” Laertes said. “Is it?”
“It might be.”
“Is that the answer you’re supposed to give me if the cameras and tape recorders are turned on?”
The flesh around Rahlina’s dark eyes darkened. The locks of her raven hair took on the appearance of razor wire.
“I don’t know,” she said. “We have both signed away our right to privacy in this conversation, and so we may or may not be recorded.”
They gazed across the white expanse of the desk, under the pallid ceiling.
“That’s the other thing,” Laertes said, after a minute of this white-walled silence.
“What is?”
“You called me African-American, and I don’t answer to that description. People who come from another country to this one use the hyphenate name. You know, Italians who came over a generation or two back calling themselves Italian-Americans. Maybe they kept up contact with home or followed cultural norms that are particularly Italian. But a man like me, a man whose ancestors were kidnapped, chained, and dragged over here centuries ago is not, cannot be, a hyphenate. At least not the kind of hyphenate that you say. You might call me an Abductee-American, an originally Unwilling-American. You might say that I’m a partly Disenfranchised American. But African-American? I mean, even if my mama was from Guinea, you’d do better to call me a Guinean rather than an African-American. Africa is a continent, not a country, not even one race. You don’t use the term White-American because that has no cultural basis; even saying Euro-Americans makes very little sense.”
“We say African-American because that is the parlance,” Rahlina interjected.
“Used to be the parlance was colored, Negro, Afro, nigger, coon, jigaboo. Parlance don’t make a word right. And I refuse to be called after a continent that no one in my line remembers.”
“Well, Mr. Jackson, if you say that you are not African-American, I suppose this interview is over.”
“Why is that?”
“The commitment of this firm is to hire and promote peoples from various ethnic backgrounds, including African-Americans.” With that Rahlina Rodriguez stood up and waited.
After a moment or two Laertes realized that he was being asked to leave.
He stood also, raised his eyes to the ceiling, and said, “If this conversation has been recorded, I want a copy of it delivered either to the address on my application form or to the e-mail address thereupon.”
After that he exited the white room on the twentieth floor of the offices of Martin, Martin, and Moll.
2
Three Thursday afternoons after Laertes’s failed interview, he was offered what turned out to be $112.37 in change from Madeline Chan — a seven-year-old child. Her mother, Angelique, had presented the child’s canvas bag of coins while little Maddie pulled her head up over the ledge where the money was being passed from mother to teller.
“You know, Ms. Chan,” Laertes said. “We aren’t supposed to take loose change in these amounts.”
“But that’s my money,” little Maddie called over the banker’s counter.
“I know your rules, Mr. Jackson,” Maddie’s mom said. “But you and I both know that one day, when she has money of her own, Maddie will remember the bank that made an exception for her Christmas savings.”
Laertes noticed a short man in a black suit standing at the front of the line for the next free teller. The window belonging to Ms. Becky Blondell opened up, and the short man offered his place to the bulbous woman behind him. She smiled and moved ahead.
“So will you take my money?” Little Maddie asked, hoisting herself up once more.
“Of course,” Laertes told the medium-brown child. “Leave it here, and we’ll count it in the machine overnight.”
“Yaaaaaa!” Maddie cried.
“Thank you,” said her mother.
“You’re from Jamaica, Ms. Chan?” the teller asked.
“Yes, I am. How did you know?”
“Your r’s.”
The next visitor to his window was the short man in the black suit who had let the woman behind him go to Becky Blondell’s window.
“How can I help you, sir?” Laertes asked.
“Howard Sansome,” he replied. “I started a regular checking account at your Fort Greene branch a short while ago, but now I wish to upgrade it to investment-plus.”
The man calling himself Sansome handed Laertes a plastic card designed in metallic gold, red, and blue colors. His name was superimposed in lowercase black lettering across the middle of the card.
“I’ll need to see some ID,” Laertes told him.
“Of course.”
Laertes checked the New York State driver’s license and entered the bank number on his computer.
“Changing your account would be easy enough,” the fifty-something teller advised. “But the order has to be OK’d by the manager of the branch where you started the account.”
“I moved from Brooklyn to Manhattan since then,” Howard Sansome said, with something approximating an apology on his wide face. “Can’t you just make a note on my file or something like that? It would be inconvenient for me to try to get out to Fort Greene at the hours the branch is open.”
“You could make the change by mail,” Laertes suggested.
“I don’t trust the post.” Sansome’s eyes were searching the teller’s face.
“I’d be happy to make the update...” Laertes said.
A canny look came over the bank customer’s face.
“...if you just talk to the manager here and have her call your branch,” the cashier continued.
“Can’t you call him?”
“No phones at the windows.”
“I could let you use mine,” the customer offered. There was the hint of a smile on his face.
“Also against the rules.” Laertes shrugged to underscore the apology.
“Well,” Howard Sansome said with a sigh, “I guess there’s a trip to Brooklyn in my future.”
With that he turned and walked away.