An old soul at only 37, driven by both enormous passion and exceptional intellect, Billie approaches everything important to her from an extreme vantage point: When she loves, it is boundless, and when she feels, it is unwavering. The other side of this precarious coin is that when she is angry or hurt, the aftermath is psychologically debilitating and self-destructive.

Billie is a graduate student in psychology and is in the process of adjusting to life without her husband, Othello, who has deserted her for Mona, his younger white colleague at Columbia University. Othello’s betrayal has driven her to madness, and her morbid jealousy, like that of Shakespeare’s Othello, poises her to entertain dangerous thoughts. Although her current mental state may be partially due to a genetic predisposition—her mother suffered from what her father called “moods”—the main cause of her pain and despair is the loss of her dreams.

In tandem with mourning her personal trials, Billie also grieves the societal conditions that continue to impact the Black community. When she moved to Harlem—a place she refers to as a sanctuary—she was excited to be living in a predominantly Black section of New York, but her happiness has gradually waned. Much like Malcolm X, Billie eschews the notion of peaceful protest and gradual assimilation as espoused by Martin Luther King Jr.