High Yellow, Blue-black

Pencils sketched the dimensions of the product bottles and squeeze tubes. Sounds of erasing and rubber dust being swept off of paper created a symphony of productiveness. Computer screens matched the analog activity. A distant hum of the machines in the factory drove the minds of the engineers and artists that knew exactly what to do. When the time came for a break, thirty-one-year-old Galina Hoffstra looked at the snack machine and selected probiotics infused with fruit flavored water and celery. Her selections didn’t bore her. They propelled her mind to think. Even more than the gentle droning of the machinery in the background.

Her skin color resembled oil. It looked like the kind little rainbows circled around in puddles. Her face radiated with the grace of all her years and shone with a simple curve of the cheek and a tight little chin that supported the rest of the structure. Her honey brown eyes reflected the light and almost caused traffic collisions. Built like a ballerina, her petite frame could sweep across the room powered by nothing but elegance and wit. She chomped on her celery and finished her water. She wiped invisible sweat from her brow and returned to her desk.

“Miss Hoffstra to the C-Suite, please,” a learned machine’s voice echoed throughout the stations. Galina looked up from her work. She peered into the mirror near the stage and fixed her lochs. Her high heels clicked from her office to the executive office.

“Yes, Regina?”

“Those designs you gave yesterday…they should be ready for production for the third quarter, no?”

“Yes, of course. They’re simple and sleek and best fit the entire line of other products.”

Regina Toll sat, forty-five-years-old and stood able to give direction and guidance from her vaunted position as chief executive officer of LGHT Industries of Wilmington, Delaware.

“You’re what we need at this company. You’ve got a…sense about you. You’re always on time, you finish your work ahead of schedule. Why don’t you consider a raise and a weighty compensation package?” Regina’s fair skin and slight amount of vitiligo almost couldn’t be differentiated. Crow’s feet at her eyes only accentuated her steely gray irises.

“That would be wonderful,” Galina replied.

“I’m going to make you chief makeup officer,” Regina mentioned, grinning. “You’re also going to watch me be a guinea pig of sorts. If you so choose, you will aid in the transformation.”

“What is that, exactly?”

“Down in the bowels of this fair corporation, the chemists have concocted a brand new way of colorization.”

Galina looked intrigued and somewhat perplexed. “What will it entail?”

“It will mean that I will one day be a mirror image of your skin.”

“You say what now?”

“For years we’ve been making bleaching agents and endorsing that men and women get their skin brightened. As you know, I have this vitiligo. I could pass for a white woman, if it weren’t for this afro atop my head.”

Galina breathed. She looked at Regina head-on. “I think that would be a disastrous idea, respectfully.”

“Why is that? You’re beautiful. I want to be as dark as you and as the head of this company, who would make a better candidate for the first trial of the Blackening Agent?”

“Regina this is…isn’t this blackface?”

The CEO sighed. “Darling, no. This is beautification. This is making myself as wonderfully cacao chocolate as you. No more white chocolate, vanilla for me. I’ll be your color.”

“But you’re already beautiful, and I already accept the raise so it’s not that talking. Your light skin is gorgeous. My black skin is gorgeous. Anything that is itself that is, pro reason, pro mind, pro life, that is what should drive people to know something that is otherwise as trivial as hair color and texture.”

Regina narrowed her eyes. “What we have to do is make sure we can create a product that will also be sold to white people. You know the term: transracial. We’d make a killing with just that angle alone. The sector of white men and women who want to be black can achieve their dream with our design.”

Galina looked like a spider had just crawled on the wall. She then closed her eyes and breathed. “Regina, I understand that we could increase our profit margins and that’s wonderful. I think, however, that we should be able to have at least an inkling of a pause when it comes to people changing their skin color on whim, without logic.”

“That’s just it, my dear, we’re going to be able to expand the market. Red, black, brown, yellow, and white people will be dying to try the process. It’s like anything else. Men fried, dyed, and laid their hair to the side just as much if not more than women. Conchs used to be cool. We can bring that energy back. We can show the world that you don’t have to be stuck with a lighter complexion. There’s always the DRK side. That’s going to be the new name of the company.”

“I’ve worked in this firm for over a decade and have loved it. I got past the idea that we’re promoting the idea of people lightening up their skin. As long as I didn’t have to engage in it or be a subject of it, I was fine. But at the executive level, I’m not prepared to take those company chances, Regina.”

The CEO’s face turned subzero and then she warmed again.

“That’s okay. We can always demote you back to where you were before placing labels on the various bottles….” Regina hummed.

“Then I will do that. I will not be a part of this vicious doctrine. Bleaching skin is bad enough but to darken people who are not black, it’s heinous. The history is too littered with disgusting tales of vaudeville and all kinds of ugliness.”

“But you’re not ugly!” Regina exclaimed. “You’re an ebony edifice. You’re a black diamond or pearl.”

“That’s not what I mean. There have been too many examples of white men and women, even children, with burnt cork smeared across their visages to mock the black race.”

“And what is skin lightening? That’s a disgrace in some folks’ eyes as an abomination against color. You’ve been working here for a long time, again?”

“Regina, I respect you as my boss, but I cannot condone this action any further. It flies in the face of decency and greatness. It demeans a company that already takes flack for offering products to brighten up factions of the populace.”

Regina looked out her window. Her tall silhouette looked at once imposing and vulnerable. As she peered down at the different bottles being filled with the bleaching agent she devised in her basement decades ago, she kept her hands at her sides. She let out a little giggle. “You know I started this company when I was thirteen years old. I didn’t know much. I just had the Internet and a lot of creams and lotions that I had dragged from my mother’s cabinet. I read up from various websites how to mix certain chemicals together to get them to make skin lighter. It worked. A corporation that brings in ten billion dollars a year from that. I think you ought to reconsider.”

“I will not. You can send me to the contractors who sweep the floors after everyone goes home. I’m not going to get tangled up in nonessentials. I’m all about the brain as I know you are, Regina. Your story is so compelling. Hell, they made it into a movie as you know. I, nevertheless, refuse to be part of this. It’s all good if someone from my complexion puts on ‘white face.’ It’s seen as artistic and even revelatory. If you put a white woman or man in the black skin, there would be riots and all kinds of disruption. I won’t do it.”

“Alright. If you would like to be a part of the C-Suite, you will have to consider yourself hired.”

“What?” Galina struggled to understand.

“Yes. I need someone here that will tell me ‘no’ for a change. I’ve got 'yes' men and women who are just trying to advance and make their grubby little hands filthy with lucre. No, not you. All you did was stick up for yourself. I’ve noticed that for over a decade and you made it all the more clear here.”

“I don’t like any of the ideas you have presented to me and you still wish to promote me?” Galina asked.

“That’s right.”

“We’re going to put your office next to mine.” Regina swept her hands through the room and pointed at a glass box that would be Galina’s office. The office looked pristine. A glass desk that doubled as a treadmill adorned the space. Regina walked around her own desk to meet up with Galina face to face. Her high yellow, and Galina’s blue-black skin contrasted as she held hands. Galina faced away from the entrance to the office.

“You’ve made some good points,” Regina continued. “Sound points.” She then looked up while Galina slowly turned. “Here is one of our test subjects now!”

A white man named Serling Buck strode in the room. Buck had bright blonde hair that looked like barley in a field with azure sky blue eyes. His skin, though, looked as black as the street. Only he wasn’t the same chief financial officer that Galina had known. Her eyes widened and a shriek escaped from her lips. Galina ran out of the office as Serling shot a glance at Regina in complete astonishment.

“Just like that,” Buck snapped his fingers.

Regina lifted her hands and let them fall just as quickly. “We can always get another chief makeup officer, but never another Galina.”