SEVEN
I hated being singled out for reasons I’d had nothing to do with.
As long as I could remember, higher-ups—not just bosses but teachers, professors, deans, recruiters, and HR directors—were forever asking me to serve on this committee, come to that reception, be a mentor, speak on a panel.
I didn’t flatter myself by thinking that because I was possessed of such wit and charm, such keen legal acumen, my absence was unthinkable.
I knew the rule: When you find an attractive, articulate minority woman in your midst, who’s neither too strident nor too soft-spoken, who speaks English without accent or attitude, who makes friends easily and photographs well—you want her.
Being singled out was bad enough, but I resented even more the sense of burden, of unsolicited responsibility, of having constituents when I hadn’t run for office.
When you’re the only one around of a particular race and gender combination, people feel wildly free to suggest how you should be utilizing your time and abilities.
I noticed the disapproving looks on people’s faces when I politely turned them down.
No, sorry, but I don’t have time to take the foreign-exchange lawyers to lunch today; why don’t you try someone who actually works in our International Group?
Sorry, I really can’t mentor any more summer associates this year.
You’ve already given me Christine Han, Danny Rodriguez, Victor Cho, Meera Patel, and Herman Lim.
I really need some time to get my own work done.
Even though I’d felt like something of an outsider all my life—the firstborn child of first-generation Chinese American immigrants, the first in my family to be educated in America, the first to go to law school—I had never been made to feel more keenly aware of my Specialness than when I’d stepped through the gleaming glass doors at Parsons Valentine.
If I got voted in this year I wouldn’t just be making partner, I’d be making history.
I would be the first woman of color ever elected to the partnership at the prestigious law firm of Parsons Valentine & Hunt LLP.
That was the term they used for me at the firm. “Woman of color.”
It was such a peculiar term, “woman of color.” The first time I’d heard it, I’d thought about my favorite moment in The Wizard of Oz, when Dorothy’s farmhouse lands with a tremendous jolt and she opens the door and steps out into a beautiful new Technicolor world, winning instant friends and enemies.
That was how I felt here, sometimes. I had opened the door to Oz.
Where everything was shiny and grand and beautiful and looked tantalizingly within reach.
I knew what it felt like to be embraced as an exotic new stranger, even as I roused the suspicions of some.
I knew how it felt to try to winnow out the good sorts from the bad, and to be urged on by a pack of persuasive new companions to keep marching toward everything I always said I was looking for.
I was sticking fast to the partner track like it was my very own yellow brick road.
The day after Adler cornered me at the elevators, I called Dr. Stephen Rossi and introduced myself. He’d been expecting my call and suggested we speak that afternoon.
At four o’clock, I trudged down to the makeshift office that the firm had set up for Dr. Rossi.
It was in the shadowy reaches of the twenty-ninth floor, an unfrequented section of the building where the firm shunted off much of its nonlegal staff: Payroll, Travel, IT, Petty Cash, and the diversity consultant.
I found him dipping a fresh teabag into a blue Parsons Valentine mug. “Dr. Rossi?”
He looked up. “Ingrid, come in, come in. I appreciate how busy you must be. We can get started right away.”
He strode briskly around his desk and pushed the door shut.
I was a little alarmed by this. People rarely closed their office doors at the firm.
It was considered rude, as if going against the atmosphere of “collegiality” that Parsons Valentine was forever touting in its glossy brochures.
It was also a good way to get the firm’s rumor mill in gear.
I waited until he was seated behind his desk again before speaking. First, I needed to make it clear I was not here of my own free will.
“Dr. Rossi,” I said, “I hope you won’t mind my being totally honest here.”
He smiled. “Well, I certainly hope you will be, Ingrid. And please call me Stephen.”
“Fine. Stephen.” I spoke in a rush. “I just want you to know that I’ve really got a lot on my plate right now.
I’m closing a particularly high-worth acquisition in a few weeks, so I’m hoping this won’t take up too much time today.
My understanding is that I’m just here to help you encourage participation from other associates and brainstorm ideas for the diversity event the firm will be organizing. ”
Confusion flickered across Dr. Rossi’s face, but only for a second.
He folded his hands neatly on his desk. “Well, Ingrid, I’d be grateful for any help you might provide in getting the other attorneys to participate.
But now let me be totally honest. I was specifically instructed by the partners on the Diversity and Inclusion Committee that you would be a particularly good associate to interview, so I was hoping that we might have our first session today. ”
Our first session?
From the moment this guy was introduced I knew he’d be a pain in my ass, but I had promised Adler I’d cooperate. In any way possible, I’d even said.
I crossed my legs, leaned back in the armchair opposite his desk, and sighed. “Fine. I’ll be happy to answer some questions, though I can’t imagine what I could say that would be all that helpful. What do you want to know?”
“Thank you, Ingrid. I appreciate that.” He took a small tape recorder and a yellow legal pad out of a desk drawer.
I sat up. “You’re taping our conversation?”
Again he looked puzzled. “Well, I often find it helpful to tape these sessions, but I certainly won’t do so if it makes you uncomfortable.”
I wished he would stop calling this a session. He wasn’t my shrink.
“It makes me uncomfortable,” I said.
“No problem.” He slid the tape recorder back into his desk.
I sat back again and glanced at my watch. “Now, what is it you need to ask me?”
“Well, to begin with, let me ask you why you think the firm gave me your name first as someone I should interview for the report.”
The answer to this was so obvious I laughed out loud. “Well, you’re reporting on diversity at this law firm, right?”
He tilted his head slightly. “And?”
“And,” I said, with a ferocity that surprised me, “how many other nonwhite nonmales do you see around here who’ve stuck it out for eight years?”
I pressed my lips together. I’d already said more than I’d planned. Watch it.
“That’s an excellent place to start,” said Dr. Rossi, producing a pen from his shirt pocket. “So you feel that you’ve been singled out by virtue of being”—he paused and looked at me searchingly—“a woman? Or an Asian American?”
As if one could be disentangled from the other. “Well, both,” I said. “Corporate firms love a twofer like me.”
He looked up. “Come again?”
“A twofer,” I said. “You know, like landing on a double-word square in Scrabble.”
Dr. Rossi laughed quietly, jotting this down. “I like that, Ingrid. Do you mind if I use it?”
“Be my guest.”
“So, to start off, let me ask you this. How many, as you describe them, ‘nonwhite nonmales’ are there at the firm who you believe are actually on the partner track?”
The directness of his question took me by surprise.
Immediately, I thought about Tyler. He’d confided to me that he had gotten a couple of second- and third-round interviews to go in-house, and would probably be giving notice in a matter of weeks.
I pretended to smile and said lightly, “I feel a little weird naming names. I mean, this isn’t the McCarthy Commission, right? ”
Dr. Rossi didn’t smile back. Instead he took off his glasses and began kneading the bridge of his nose.
“Ingrid,” he said, “believe it or not, I’m on your side here.
The reason I’m here is so that the firm can improve the quality of life for all of its associates.
But I can’t do my job if people aren’t willing to be forthcoming with me. ”
He blinked up at me. If he had whipped out a guitar and burst into a rousing rendition of “Kumbaya,” I would not have been surprised.
He let out a breath. “Okay, tell you what. Let’s get at this another way.” He made a big show of pushing away his legal pad. “What made you decide to become a lawyer in the first place?”
I pretended to consider this. Actually, I knew exactly when the idea had been planted in my head.
When I was in elementary school my mother had started a tradition in our house called Library Night.
Every Wednesday, after my mother got home from work, no matter how tired she was, or what shape dinner was in, she would drive me to the library, where she would upend the canvas tote bag filled with last week’s books onto the counter to be checked in, and then help me carry the canvas tote bag filled with new books I checked out.
I was allowed to check out as many books as I wanted, even ones from the adult section.
My mom and dad didn’t know what any of these American books were, so by the fourth grade, I was reading Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Clan of the Cave Bear and Wifey.
I’d sit on the couch in our family room—in plain sight—and my parents were none the wiser.
As far as they knew, I was just reading for school.
“You’re our best customer,” the frosted-blond lady would say each week as she beamed down at me from behind the checkout counter.