Zora and Me

by Victoria Bond

  I glanced over at Zora. She sat, rapt, listening to Gold.

  I couldn’t stop the words from leaving my mouth. “Was Ivory nothing?”

  Gold’s eyes welled up with tears.

  “You’re both lucky. You don’t have to make hard choices. You know exactly where you belong. Ivory promised my mother that he would always watch out for me, and even when I ran away from him, he was always right on my heels.”

  Zora spoke up then, but I could see her almost wincing at what she had to say. “Miss Gold, it seems like sticking by your people, by the people you love, is the easiest choice of all.”

  I imagined that Gold would rear up at that — either tell us to mind our own business or start bawling or both. But it was the opposite: Zora’s words seemed to disconnect Gold from us. She stared into the fire and started talking to herself low and fast, oblivious. The chalk came to her face in an even thicker layer than it had been when we first arrived.

  “I saw Ivory just over a week ago — it was a Friday. No, it was Thursday, out by the rail switch coming into Lake Maitland. Will’s been acting funny ever since that day. He must have followed me . . . just like those kids in Silver Springs did! What if Will thought Ivory was an uppity nigger? Or — or worse!” We sat completely still, letting the full meaning of her words sink in.

  “He’s been nervous and angry all week — asking me where I’m going, what I’m doing all day, and talking about going away for a few weeks. . . . Oh, Lord, he’s so rageful, so jealous.”

  She stood up, wild-eyed. “Oh, God, what if Will did this? I can’t go back to him! I can’t!” She stood perfectly still for a moment, then the realization of what she was saying knocked her to her knees. Her hair came forward and looked, in the firelight, like it had a life of its own, like tightening twine.

  “Miss Gold,” Zora whispered, “where are you going to go?”

  Gold got on her feet again.

  “You girls need to get on home,” she said, “and I have to get on, too.”

  We watched Gold step over the fallen bark and through the wood brush in the direction of Maitland. Both Zora and I had heard the phrase “Lay down with the devil” before, but I don’t think, staring at Gold’s back as she headed away from us and toward something truly dark, that we understood what it meant until that moment.

  Zora grabbed my good arm and pulled me up to my feet. “Let’s go home,” she said.

  We walked slowly, but not because of fatigue. The knowledge that Gold herself — her perspective on the world, her actions and her inactions — might have played a part in Ivory’s death dropped weights on our tongues and hearts.

  When we got to the road, I spoke.

  “So a man stole Ivory’s voice.”

  “Yes,” Zora said with a slow nod. She had already pressed and kneaded this thought herself. “Probably a white man.” She looked at me. “Probably Gold’s man.”

  I couldn’t shake the feeling, though, that Gold was just as dangerous as her white man. Her whole life, whether she knew it or not, Gold had been courting death. A white man may have killed and buried Gold’s brother, Gold’s keeper, but letting white folks believe the lie of her looks had made it possible.

  We were sitting on a tinderbox of secrets, and didn’t know how to tell someone without lighting the match ourselves.

  I stumbled and sat down on the front step of Zora’s house. Zora sat next to me and leaned her head against mine. I had never felt so small.

  We were up against a force more powerful than white folks and more lethal than a gator king. The color of a person’s skin alone could make one woman worth protecting, while it made another man fit to die.

  Old Lady Bronson thought her fainting spell by the Blue Sink was an omen, but she was certain the chickens weren’t coming home to roost on her doorstep. Instead she felt in her gut that somehow, for no reason at all, Mr. Pendir’s house had found its way onto Death’s itinerary. And that as a matter of chance, Death had merely stumbled over her on its way. So every morning since the day Zora declared Mr. Pendir half gator, Old Lady Bronson sent Miss Billie to Mr. Pendir’s house to check on him.

  Midmorning of the day after we found Gold in the woods, Billie Bronson went and rapped on Mr. Pendir’s door as usual. There was no answer. After a few moments, she tried the knob; it was open. Mr. Pendir’s home was a four-room square house, bigger than ours, which made it still pretty small, but darker and dustier than most.

  The previous few mornings, Billie had found him sitting in the threadbare chair underneath a sepia portrait of his parents — the only photograph in the house — deep asleep. That’s where she expected to find him again. When she didn’t see him there, she called his name softly, walking slowly through the house. The kitchen and the dining room were empty. There was only one room left: his bedroom. She opened the door and found something there she couldn’t have imagined. It wasn’t just Mr. Pendir lying dead in his bed, which he was — Billie didn’t have any trouble imagining that. The sight was among the strangest that anyone had ever heard of in Eatonville. It was Mr. Pendir lying dead in his bed, flat on his back, fully dressed, wearing a green and sparkling gold wooden gator-snout mask. Not only that but the walls of his bedroom were covered with bobcat heads and armadillo heads and parrot faces.

  All the time Mr. Pendir had lived in Eatonville knocking around his old house, alone and weary-looking, he had been making things, and the things he made were beautiful.

  That’s not to say that Billie Bronson understood that all right off. Billie said later that walking into Mr. Pendir’s bedroom was like entering an exotic zoo full of wild animals.

  Word of Mr. Pendir’s passing spread through Eatonville fast. My mama used her whole half-hour of lunch just to come home around midday and tell me, so I wouldn’t hear it from a stranger.

  The death of Mr. Pendir, after everything we had found out about Joe Clarke, Ivory, and Gold, felt like more than I could handle; I felt like a balloon somebody had let all the air out of, then stepped on for good measure. I think it was more than Zora could handle, too.

  When she got to my house for our after-school visit, she barely waved and just plopped down next to me on the front step. I was making circles in the dirt with a stick; it made me think of Gold poking the fire. We sat in silence; there was only one thing on both our minds.

  “You hear about him?” she asked after a few minutes. She stared at her knee, picking at a scab.

  I nodded.

  “Everything?” she asked.

  “I guess.”

  She leaned in for a closer look at her knee. “Poor Mr. Pendir.”

  I traced another circle in the dirt.

  “I suppose now folks know I wasn’t lying about Mr. Pendir’s gator head.”

  I looked at her for the first time since she sat down. “Me and Teddy always believed you.”

  She closed her eyes and put her head on her knee.

  After a few minutes she opened them and sat up.

  “Come on,” I said. “Let’s go for a walk.”

  We walked in silence, the weight of our knowledge hanging on our shoulders like wet wool blankets. We still didn’t have a glimmer of an idea of what to do with what we knew about Gold and Ivory and poor Mr. Pendir. Without paying much attention at all, we made our way to a nearby lagoon. We sat on the edge of the lagoon braiding moss. A cheerful whistling hit our backs. It was old Mr. Ambrose come to fish.

  “Afternoon, Mr. Ambrose,” we said.

  “Afternoon, ladies.”

  “Oh, Mr. Ambrose, did you get my letter?” Zora asked.

  “Yes, I did, Snidlets.”

  “Thank you so much for that beautiful book,” she said. “I never got such a nice gift!”

  “Well, it was my pleasure. Was it everything you’d hoped it would be?”

  “Oh, yes, it —” Zora shot me an apologetic look, like she was saying sorry for pretending that things were fine. But she didn’t have to. I understood — white lies. “It had every
thing you could ever want to know about gators and . . .”

  “And gator kings?”

  “Yes, and everything about gator kings, too.”

  Mr. Ambrose looked at her. “Mm-hm. Why’s your face so long?”

  “Oh, no reason.” Zora’s voice was so hollow it couldn’t have convinced a stranger, let alone someone who’d known her since before she knew herself. He recognized her ailment exactly.

  “There are two kinds of hearts,” he said after a time. “There’s the ones that don’t got nothing in them. And there’s others that need to pour their feelings out. Now, since I know you got a mighty strong light beating in your chest, why don’t you tell me what’s weighing on you?”

  By this time the old man was sitting beside Zora. His sunburned face was etched with craggy, honest lines. Zora’s eyes got glassy. The agony of having to decide what to do cut her. I knew Zora almost better than I knew myself, but I wasn’t sure whether she was going to tell the old man what she heard between Gold and Joe Clarke or not. Mr. Ambrose was definitely an ally, but he was also white.

  “How do you know you can trust someone?” Zora asked. Of course the old man knew that Zora was asking whether or not she could trust him. He met her eyes.

  “When you help bring a person into this world, Snidlets, you have a bond. Most folks meet after they’ve been around for a while, and maybe seen a little too much. But when we met, Snidlets, you were brand, spanking new. Whenever I look at your face, I can’t help but see you as a baby. With a person who can see your baby self, you don’t have anything to be afraid of.

  “The folks you have in your mind as bundles in their mothers’ arms, you always want to keep safe. Always.”

  Zora trusted this old white man, and I was pretty sure I did, too.

  “It’s just that I don’t want anyone to get hung from a tree,” Zora blurted out. I don’t think she had even considered such a thing possible until she said it. But that was the largest portion of Zora’s burden, her knowledge and the power that gave her — the power to have a hand in hurting someone.

  “Snidlets, I don’t want that to happen, neither,” Mr. Ambrose said, wearing a look more troubled than it was curious. That distinction mattered.

  Zora told Mr. Ambrose everything she heard at the Loving Pine, and she finally began to cry. The old man became stiff. He wanted to comfort her, but didn’t quite know how. He looked like he was going to hug her, but then had a better idea.

  Mr. Ambrose reached into his front pocket and pulled out a clean white handkerchief. He offered it to Zora gently, but she was so soaked with sorrow that the gesture was lost on her. We all stared gloomily at the pine needles and leaves floating atop the lagoon.

  I don’t know how to explain that moment except to say that, before the moving pictures and before the radio, folks were accustomed to silence; we even used to hug up on it once in a while. I never thought of it as special then, that we could just sit and stare and luxuriate in the comfort of our own thoughts. Without time to think, we wouldn’t have had anything to talk about in the first place.

  But the time it took for Mr. Ambrose to speak up again felt long, even for then.

  “Only very special people can put real-life puzzles with human pieces together,” he finally said. “You’re one of those folks, Snidlets. You got a brain in your head there ain’t no match for — way smarter than algebra. You also got the feelings in your gut to go with it. It’s a gift for you to share. Don’t be stingy with what you know, but be sure of the folks you’re sharing it with. You did the right thing by telling me and not too many other folks.”

  “I think so,” Zora agreed. “But I’m scared.”

  “Only a fool,” he answered, “wouldn’t be terrified by the weight of what you know and what you feel. From the day I met you, I thought you could become a lot of things. A fool wasn’t one of them.”

  The air vibrated around us. It felt like a christening or baptism, but choirs and a preacher and pews weren’t necessary. Mr. Ambrose had just showed Zora to her seat of power, and it wasn’t in a back row.

  “I’m sending you on a very important mission,” Mr. Ambrose said. “Go to Joe Clarke and tell him everything you heard. Don’t hold anything back. Also, tell him that you told me, and that I respect him very much. Say I know that he will make sure justice is done in Eatonville. The same as I will make sure justice is done in Lake Maitland.”

  The old man gathered the fishing gear he never set up and headed home. Zora and I walked away from the lagoon lighter in step than we had arrived. Having great responsibility was one thing. Knowing what to do with it was another. And though we hadn’t gone far from home, neither of us returned the same girls we had been when we left.

  The following afternoon, we went to Joe Clarke’s store.

  We knew we had a mission, and we knew we couldn’t breathe a word about it.

  I thought about Gold. No matter how bad she felt now, she couldn’t change what had happened.

  When we got to Joe Clarke’s store, the usual cast of characters stood on the porch interrupting one another. Mr. Clarke was leaning against a post as usual, but he didn’t look right as rain. He leaned like a powerful tree taking a long overdue rest. The look in his eyes was far from peaceful.

  Zora spoke. “Can I talk to you, Mr. Clarke?”

  The chorus went silent.

  “’Course you can,” he said. He seemed to welcome the distraction.

  “Don’t do it, Joe,” someone called out. “They only want to take you for more licorice!”

  “No, we don’t.” Zora said it so calmly that Mr. Clarke could tell she was dead serious.

  He ushered us into the store and led us to the small office in the back. The desktop was covered in papers — receipts, bills of lading, and long sheets of numbers in rows. I looked at the shiny varnished legs of the desk. They held the shape of sturdy branches.

  Zora dove into the conversation like skipping rope; she just jumped right in. “I overheard you talking with Gold out by the Loving Pine.”

  Mr. Clarke stared at Zora for a moment, taken aback. “What did you say, child?”

  “I heard you and Gold talking in the woods on Tuesday. We went to see her that evening to tell her Ivory had been looking for her. We wanted to help lay his spirit to rest.” Zora looked at Mr. Clarke. He was still just staring at her.

  She pressed on. “Then Gold starts wailing and tells us how jealous her white man is, that white man she goes with in Lake Maitland.” Zora paused. “She thinks he maybe killed Ivory.”

  Joe Clarke was at a loss for words. Zora, sensing his shock, talked more and faster.

  “We haven’t told a soul, Mr. Clarke. Not until yesterday when we saw old Mr. Ambrose by the lagoon. I told him everything ’cause he helped bring me into this world, and you can trust someone who done a big thing like that for you. And he said you could trust him, too. He told me to tell you that he knew you would do justice in Eatonville. He wanted you to know that he’ll do justice in Lake Maitland.”

  Joe Clarke sat back in his chair, looking winded. None of us spoke. Then he stood up and turned his back to us for a long minute. When he turned around again, he looked like his old self.

  I was so relieved that I burst into a grin, but Zora wasn’t so quick to end our talk. She wanted more answers. Now that we knew who Gold and Ivory were, and how Joe Clarke knew them, and maybe who had taken Ivory’s life, there was one piece of the puzzle still missing. And Zora, determined to know everything, demanded the final answer.

  “What about Mr. Pendir? Did he want to be a gator more than a man?”

  Mr. Clarke looked at us thoughtfully before answering.

  “Yes and no,” Joe Clarke said, squinting. “Pendir got dealt more hurt than he knew how to play. He lost his mama and daddy early on. His mama’s family were poor sharecroppers and they didn’t need another mouth to feed, so he was raised working for white folks, but like a slave, not like a child. He grew up feeling like a whipping post.
He was grown when he heard about Eatonville and came here, hoping there was enough work from colored folks that he’d never have to deal with white folks again. At first folks tried to bring him into the circle of town life, but he just couldn’t put his hurt and mistrust away. He knew how to work wood, but he never learned how to be friendly with folks, and never learned how to let folks be friendly with him. He kept to himself and after a while folks got used to hiring him for work, but otherwise leaving him be.”

  Mr. Clarke stood and stretched his big bones. “This desk right here, Mr. Pendir made it for me. He was blessed with the power to take plain wood — scraps too small to be worth much to anyone — and carve them and shape them and paint them into something else.”

  He reached into a drawer and drew out a lion mask so detailed that Zora and I gasped. “Mr. Pendir breathed life into wood. When his fears threatened to swallow him up, he faced them down with the masks he made. His art scared off his fear.”

  I thought about Mr. Pendir missing his mama and daddy, and I wondered if I had anything beautiful to make inside myself that would still my own fears. Then I thought about Gold. She and Mr. Pendir had something in common. They both felt afraid and cheated by the cards life had dealt them, but they took that fear and channeled it in different ways. Mr. Pendir took his fear inside and locked himself into a room alone. Gold hid her fear inside and walked away from where she came from and everything she knew. Both of them ended up alone.

  The bad things that happen to you in life don’t define misery — what you do with them does. When Mr. Pendir and Gold could have chosen connection, they chose solitude; when they could have brought loving themselves to loving someone else, they wore masks instead and shunned love’s power. You can’t hide from life’s pain, and folks that love you would never expect you to.

  Zora and I sat with that a moment. Joe Clarke’s lips spread across his face in a closed-mouth smile. It was a sad smile, but reassuring.

  “I’m going to do justice, girls, but sometimes justice works better in silence. You didn’t do wrong to tell me and Mr. Ambrose. But don’t tell anyone else what you know. Let justice take its course now.”