Nella secretly searches Hazel’s bedroom during a party

On October 25, 2018, Nella Rogers turns Hazel’s natural-hair party into an opportunity to investigate her. Accompanied by Malaika, Nella enters the gathering under the appearance of friendliness while trying to confirm Hazel’s identity and uncover what lies behind the list of women she had found earlier. Her search moves from a crowded, sociable living room to a private bedroom, where a manila folder of photographs and records gives her a concrete reason to suspect the women have been collected and catalogued.

The Party as Cover

Nella’s approach to Hazel’s Brownstone Home begins with a plan she has already had to persuade Malaika to join. Malaika reduces it to its bluntest terms: confirm Hazel’s real name, pull out her fake dreadlocks, and leave. Nella likes the abridged version, but her joking response does not entirely conceal her doubts about bringing her friend. They agree to act as though they have no problem with Hazel, so that they can address the problem they believe Hazel presents. Their performance depends on keeping suspicion out of sight while moving close enough to investigate.

On the way up the steep steps, Nella remembers a much lighter walk through Clinton Hill with Owen a year earlier. They had joked about the app downloads it would take to afford a home in the neighborhood; now, climbing toward Hazel’s brownstone, Nella finds herself wanting even the ordinary option of a vestibule for a coat rack and a bicycle. That memory places the investigation amid the textures of her everyday life, but the purpose of this visit is far less casual. At the door, she presses both buzzers, and Hazel appears with her locs piled high.

Malaika’s reluctance has registered even before they enter. At dinner, she does not react as she normally would to a young boy’s tracksuit and gold chain, and she does not linger when a white passerby raps “99 Problems.” Nella teases her about owing her for all the Pitbull, while Malaika replies that this excursion counts double. Their exchange preserves the familiar teasing between friends, but the absent reactions also make Malaika’s discomfort legible: this is not a social visit she has entered without misgivings.

Reading the Room

Hazel leads the two visitors through a prewar awning and introduces them to the women gathered inside. She says that she prefers these gatherings to number about three, so everyone can receive more attention, but that this time everyone she invited accepted. The living room is lit in a yellow-orange glow. A woman with a large afro is half-swallowed by a green paisley armchair, while another Black woman sits on the floor as Juanita greases her scalp. The party gives Hazel a plausible setting in which to host women and tend to their hair; for Nella, its size and the identities of the guests also sharpen the connection to the list she found weeks earlier.

Nella’s awkward, pageant-like wrist flick as she greets the group shows how out of place she feels. Malaika, for her part, corrects Hazel sternly when Hazel shortens her name: it is Malaika. The small exchange brings a note of resistance into the welcome, even as the friends continue to maintain the appearance of guests rather than investigators. Nella needs the group to accept her presence long enough for her to learn more, and the party’s ordinary conversation gives her a reason to stay.

Hazel explains that she knows the women from different places and stages of life—college, jobs, and other changes of circumstance. Nella responds that it is striking Hazel has kept in touch with them after moving around so much. The explanation sounds like a natural account of friendship, but Nella hears it against the memory of the names on the printer. Hazel’s image of having picked up friends along the way begins to seem less like a casual description and more like a pattern that needs checking. Nella’s suspicion is not yet proof; it is the connection that makes a private search seem worth the risk.

The Search Upstairs

When Nella asks where the bathroom is, Hazel points upstairs and to the left. Malaika gives her a pleading look not to leave, but Nella rises from the cushion and goes anyway. The moment is a practical break in the party’s social cover: Hazel’s directions give Nella a legitimate reason to leave the room, while Malaika’s concern underscores that the plan could unravel if Nella is missed. On the stairs, Nella thinks of Camille, a name associated with Missoula, and concludes that the printer list cannot simply have been a guest list or an author list.

At the landing, three doors present different degrees of invitation. The left-hand door is ajar, with the faint light of a candle visible through the gap; the other two are shut. Nella estimates that she has about five minutes to look around, perhaps seven if Malaika can keep the others occupied. Rather than enter the room with the visible candlelight, she turns the knob on the right-hand door. That choice carries her away from the apparent route and into the private space where Hazel keeps the material Nella has come to find.

The first search does not immediately pay off. As time runs short, Nella begins to panic and wonders whether the risk is worth taking or whether she expected to find anything at all. Then she notices two glass doors beneath a television, several bottles that look like hair grease, and a manila folder beside them. The folder changes the search from a speculative intrusion into a discovery with something tangible at its center.

The Folder and Its Implications

Nella returns to the cabinet with only her flashlight to guide her and takes care not to leave fingerprints on the glass. She opens the folder and turns through what first appear to be magazine clippings. Among them are ordinary sheets of paper, the familiar eight-and-a-half-by-eleven size, making up about a quarter of the folder’s contents. The contrast between clippings and paperwork matters: the folder is not merely a collection of images, but contains a more organized record mixed into its contents.

The pages show rows of wallet-sized photographs of familiar faces, all women with varying shades of brown skin. Nella recognizes Kiara and Ebonee, as well as Camille, whose name appears beside her photograph. Each face is paired with a city, a three-digit number, and numerous handwritten notes. The scene does not explain the numbering system or establish what every note means, but the combination of portraits, locations, numbers, and annotations gives Nella’s earlier suspicion a material basis. The women she has encountered at the party now appear alongside records that suggest they have been identified and tracked in some fashion.

The search thus ends not with a full explanation, but with a sharper and more consequential question. Nella entered Hazel’s home intending to confirm an identity and test a theory; she leaves this part of the investigation with evidence that connects the party’s guests to the names she had found. The bedroom functions as the hidden counter-image of the living room: above, Hazel’s account of friendship and a welcoming gathering; behind the cabinet doors, a folder of faces and coded details. Nella’s discovery does not yet settle what the system is or who created it, but it turns her unease into an investigation grounded in objects she has seen for herself.