Zora and Nicky: A Novel in Black and White

by Claudia Mair Burney

  She’s says pastor like it’s a big freakin’ deal. When she was eleven and he was knocking on her door evangelizing, I couldn’t get him to have a conversation with me. The pastor!

  She means it. That’s the worst part. Or maybe it’s the best part. I’m not even sure. She wants this life at Tabernacle. That’s why my parents love her so much, because she shows up at the potluck with her casserole. And she shows up for the antiabortion rally. And for the women’s breakfast, and basically every time the door opens.

  Rebecca doesn’t want to run away from church.

  “Did you enjoy the sermon?”

  Say no. Please say no.

  “I didn’t hear all of it, but it’s very good.”

  Rebecca is good about recycling. She’s a regular spiritual environmentalist.

  Cut it out. She doesn’t deserve that.

  She reaches for my hand. I let her take it. I never let things go further than this, except in my thoughts. I wonder if I should just kiss her. Just surrender to this life. I don’t even know what I’m holding out for. Kiss her. Fall in love. Go to seminary. Be the good son. You can do it, Nicky. That’s why you’re back home.

  You’re not a writer.

  Ouch. It kills me to think it.

  Rebecca must see me wince. “You sure you’re okay?”

  I don’t even speak. I just nod.

  “Why don’t we go back in? It’s almost time for communion.”

  “I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

  I see her out of the truck like the good boyfriend, even though I suck to high heaven. Oh, what I wouldn’t give to be Anglican today. I’ve been sober since I left Cali, even though I don’t go to meetings. My dad would be appalled if he thought I went to Alcoholics Anonymous. But dear God, if we served real wine instead of grape juice, I’d take the leftovers out of those tiny plastic cups and tie one on today. Then seek out the rest, served up straight from the bottle.

  Jesus, help me. Help me.

  CHAPTER TWO

  ZORA

  I’m at a strange white woman’s Bible study. Linda welcomes me into her cramped apartment, and I see books instead of walls. The volumes, dust, and stale air conjure the spirit of my girlhood like a roots woman casting spells, and for a moment, I imagine I’m sitting on the floor of a used bookstore, twelve years old, some treasured tome in hand. Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye or Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God. A buck fifty taking me on a voyage where I travel by words instead of planes and trains, boats and automobiles. The thought of that comforts me now.

  ’Cause sistah girl don’t feel no other comfort in this place. I walk toward the sectional sofa where the others wait, and I’m feeling fragile as glass and just as transparent. I think the four of them can see inside of me; they can look right through me at the disheveled room inside my head, books stewn all over the floor and debris piled up, now invisible to me since I’ve let it go for so long.

  Their smiles welcome me, greetings to the new girl. The black girl. I wonder when it will begin. When will they thrill and inspire me with their insipid stories about the one black person they know? When will they ask me, subtly or not, if my long hair is a weave? When will they tell me how pretty they think I am without saying “for a black person,” even though we both know that’s what they mean?

  I grin wide at them like I own the whole world, conscious of keeping my back straight—invisible book, something big, maybe the collected poems of Langston Hughes, balanced precariously on my head. I shake hands with a firm, decisive grip.

  “I’m Zora,” I shoot at them. I make an effort to remember their names. I think of Mama and Daddy telling me I have to work twice as hard and twice as long to get an equal measure of success among them. I wonder what I’ll have to bone up on to prove myself when all I want to do is listen, soak it all in, and maybe add something to my heavenly bank account with the zero balance.

  They are an odd lot, this group. Young and older.

  Older man, Richard, maybe in his late sixties. White hair, and a shock of it, sticking straight up. He is frail, but his big blue eyes teem with a delightful mix of wisdom and mischief. Baby-blue button-down shirt with a few buttons open. Crazy throwback windowpane pants. He wears a crucifix attached to a leather cord like somebody hip loves him. He reeks of cigarette smoke. Richard caresses a well-worn, obviously loved black leather Bible.

  I wish I had a Bible that looked like that.

  White boy so pretty he can pull off having a girl’s name. He must make his parents proud. Nicky. Heaven help me, he’s hot as fire. Blue eyes that make me think of sweet raspberry popsicles and September birthstones, and that subtle sense of sadness because the season will change so soon, and before you know it, it’ll be cold again. Nicky’s sapphire eyes make me think of that.

  A graphic T-shirt stretches across a broad chest that will make some white girl—blonde—very happy one day, if he isn’t making her grin already. Those blue eyes of his widen just slightly when he sees me. They flicker up and down my frame, and a smile he probably can’t help affirms his appreciation.

  Oh, yeah. Go Zora, go Zora.

  No Zora, no Zora.

  I’ll buy myself a first-class ticket to hell before I consider him for anything. I don’t care how good he thinks I look. Or how good I think he looks. I don’t do white boys. Uh-uh.

  But is he ever fine. And, watch yourself sistah Z. Is that a hint of a smile, acting completely of its own accord, spreading across your mouth? And pretty boy notices.

  I make sure not to sit by him.

  Billie. Platinum blonde in her forties. Maybe. She’s too cool to let the cutie get to her. She probably has a stable of boy-toy bucks to choose from. Her hair is a wild mane of crazy dreadlocks with rainbow colored tips. I’ve never seen anyone like her. She’s flung a black leather motorcycle jacket across the back of her chair. Her white tank top shows off impressive, though feminine, muscle mass. Tattoos of a flowered vine snake up and down her right arm. The Virgin Mary in Technicolor on her left. Nice tats. I sit between her and Linda.

  I met Linda at LLCC several weeks before I walked out. This brave white woman came alone to visit us. “Just wanted to fellowship with my brothers and sisters in Christ.”

  I’d looked at her like she was high. I didn’t particularly mind her being with us; she was a curiosity to me. I asked her why she chose to visit us, and she said she’d watched Daddy on television.

  She didn’t seem to have the hysterical “speak the Word tick” afflicting most Word-Faithers. When I shook her hand and asked, “How are you?” she didn’t spout off fifteen pages of Scriptures she’d memorized. She didn’t even say, “I’m blessed.” She said, “Fine, thank you. How are you?” I wanted to kiss her for that alone.

  “Welcome.” I actually had a sincere smile for her.

  “I’m happy to be here.” She had an easy way of speaking, almost lazy. Coarse red hair she couldn’t handle. Freckles all over. Wise hazel eyes, but a child’s zeal for life. Something about her that put you at ease. Skinny and terribly unfashionable, she’d never fit in at LLCC, and I liked her for that, too.

  We chatted for ten or fifteen minutes, and for the first time in God only knows how long, I didn’t care I wasn’t being politically correct, a good pastor’s daughter working the crowd. I learned in that short time that Linda took Sundays to visit churches, and during the week she hosted this small Bible study in her home. Whosoever will, let him come. She pulled a card out of the long, Little-House-on-the-Prairie jumper she wore. She’d done the calligraphy herself on the card she gave me.

  I tucked the card away in my Coach handbag and promised I’d visit her Wednesday-night Bible study one evening. Now, here I am, as thirsty and as bereft of God as the Samaritan woman at the well. I just want a drop of God. I want Him to come to me in a way He isn’t allowed to at LLCC.

  Knock me on my face, God.

  I stop. My mother will institutionalize me if she gets wind of such thoughts flying
around my head. You have everything. Everything, Zora. You don’t need to be knocked down.

  Linda asks me to tell the group more about myself. I hate this part. I take a deep breath and start my spiel.

  “Like I said, my name is Zora. Zora Johnson. My father is the pastor of Light of Life Christian Center in Ann Arbor. It’s a pretty big church, and I work there.” God, please don’t let them ask me what I do.

  Linda says, “That’s a coinkydink.” And I think how very Linda-like it is that she says coinkydink rather than coincidence. “Nicky is a PK too.”

  Poor Nicky. His ears and cheeks turn pink, and he looks down. I feel his pain. I smirk at him, and he shifts on his part of the sectional.

  He shrugs. Looks embarrassed. “My dad is the pastor of True Believer Gospel Tabernacle. It’s a big—”

  “I know that church! I voted for Reverend Nicholas Parker when he ran for governor the first time I ever voted.” I’d just turned eighteen.

  Nicky Parker’s fine-as-wine mouth hangs open. I love surprising people by doing something completely opposite of their expectations. I’m black and female. I’m not supposed to vote for a white Republican man with no concern for the poor and a rabid antiabortion agenda.

  Surprise!

  He seems to pause in thought for a moment. Runs one of his hands across his mouth, long fingers like a musician’s. Fingers that look soft-tipped and capable of magic. I shake the mental image of him touching me with those hands.

  “You voted for my dad?” he says, as if he’s never heard anything so absurd in his life.

  “I know I don’t look like a Republican, being the wrong color and all—”

  “No, I’m not surprised about your color. I know plenty of black Republicans. You look smart however. I mistook you for a thinking person.”

  Now my bottom lip almost hits the floor. When I can speak again, with the precision of an orator, I say, “Excuse me?”

  I sound so much like my mother it chills me more than it does him. Nicky keeps on swingin’.

  “I said, I mistook you for a thinking person.”

  “Are you suggesting people who want to see abortion abolished are not thinking?”

  “No, I’m saying that people who were historically subjugated and choose to ignore my dad’s despicable policies, including his thinly veiled racism and capitalistic interest in doing away with welfare—which by the way, he feels is a crutch for lazy African Americans—are not thinking.”

  “Mr. Parker, are you suggesting that because I’m black, I should, without question, vote for Democrats based on what we perceive as their support, nominal at best, of America’s—specifically black America’s—poor? Did it occur to you that I may believe abortion to be murder? Genocide to be precise.”

  He opens his mouth to respond, but Linda halts our discussion. “My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, I believe it’s time for us to pray.”

  The four of them pull out a thick book, one I don’t have until Linda walks across the room and digs a volume out of a big box full of assorted books sitting on her dining room table.

  She presents the copy to me with a grin, like she’s giving candy to a little kid. The Divine Hours, Prayers for Springtime. Biker chick tells me what page to turn to. It’s almost 7 p.m., and they seem to be sticklers about the time. We sit in silence in those few minutes, and I’m glad no one rushes to fill the space with conversation. I’m still salty with Nicky Parker, and I try to calm myself. I close my eyes, drinking in the pause before we’d contact heaven, greedy for it, consumed by my need for the simplicity of not running my mouth for a change.

  How did my life get so noisy? How did I get so noisy?

  How did I mess up everything but manage to look so fly on the outside?

  Time passes too quickly, me more aware of wanting to be quiet than actually being quiet in mind and heart. Linda stands, facing east. Everyone else does too, and I clumsily find my feet beneath me and face where the sun rises with them.

  Linda speaks one word: vespers.

  Something about the word holds infinite appeal to me. I’ve heard it somewhere but don’t know its definition. My mind associates it with religion. With God. I want to ask what vespers means, but Linda calls us to prayer, and we all quietly obey. Her voice rings out like a song.

  “Praise God, from whom all blessings flow; praise Him, all creatures here below; praise Him above ye heavenly host; praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.”

  Wow. I haven’t heard those words since the last time I visited my grandfather’s church. In my mind I hear the voices of those old timers, singing their old, old songs, their faith more ancient than their deeply lined brown faces. They are part of a massive tree, planted by an ocean. I remember one service, years ago, where they sang, “Let Us Break Bread Together on Our Knees,” and the words, “When I fall on my knees, with my face to the rising sun, Oh Lord, have mercy on me.” Those words did something to me.

  I cried when I sang it, gripping the hymnbook with my little girl hands. In that moment I became one with my ancestors, and for the first time, I became keenly aware of my roots and my place on that tree. A tender green shoot. Branches surrounding me, raised like brown arms lifted to the sky in praise. The old folks touched God on their knees for generations, and those ancient souls of my distant past—having nothing, enslaved, their own gods, language, and culture stripped away—embraced the God they’d been given, the suffering Jesus, and they begged the One, who many of them believed to be the white man’s God, for mercy.

  The tree got bigger in Granddaddy’s church that day, even though for the most part I forgot about them. Now, saying the words to the doxology elevates me again in those high branches reaching for God.

  Linda requests God’s presence.

  “Show Your goodness, O Lord, to those who are good and to those who are true of heart.”

  I may not be good, but can’t You see I’m true? At least I am with You. In Your presence I’m naked and ashamed, the chief of Laodiceans. Look at me, God. Wretched, miserable, poor, blind. But let my dull eyes catch a glimpse of You in this darkness.

  Something in me breaks. Whatever it is, once safe, protected by the stony layers of my heart, splits wide open. I try to stop the grief flooding out of me in breaking, cascading waves, but I cannot.

  I hear only snatches of the greeting Linda gives to God. I’ve already greeted Him, and He’s been kind enough to speak to me in return, shattering what was hard and cold. Heaving sobs burst from my belly. From my very core.

  The group reads the words of a hymn, but I’ve been seized by the power of a great affection. That’s what the old folks used to call being born again. I literally throw myself to my knees, my face on the floor, my butt in the air. My heart in God’s hands. All decorum gone.

  I’m just Zora, naked with God.

  And nobody in the group seems to mind. I hope.

  NICKY

  She walks into the room like freakin’ Nefertiti, looking just as good. No, better. She’s tall. I’ll bet she can look me in the eye with very little effort, and I’m six-foot-two. She shakes hands like a man. Works the room like a politician, and I know politicians well.

  Zora, the Queen of Sheba, and I can just see her rocking King Solomon’s world. Zora, the Shulamite woman, dark and comely.

  Okay, I know this is going to sound totally white, but I’ve never seen anybody with skin like hers. She is the darkest person I’ve ever seen in real life. Her skin is luminous. Like it’s glowing. I’ve always heard that saying, “The darker the berry, the sweeter the juice.” Well, her juice must be something else, and God help me, I just want a little taste. It looks like God stained this beauty with blackberries—all those purple, blue, and red undertones lying beneath that rich brown. Holy cow, she really is colored! She’s a freaking masterpiece of tones. I can’t stop staring at her.

  And she’s a firecracker.

  Doesn’t shrink and fold when I insult her, and man, why did I insult her? I guess I think she�
��s too cool to vote for my father. I’m too cool to vote for him, and she’s way cooler than me. I don’t mean to insult her; it just comes out like that. But she stands up to me, no doubt dismissing me as a silly bleeding-heart liberal.

  And she’s right.

  I hate her instantly, while simultaneously falling deeply in love with her.

  And, God have mercy on my sex-deprived soul, she starts praying. Real down and dirty praying, and the next thing I know, she’s on the floor with her three-dimensional rear end coming right at me.

  I try not to look. God knows I try, but He made the gross error of making me a man, and we’re visual. The sight of her literally drops me to my knees.

  I think bad thoughts to distract myself: people I love dying, children in Africa with AIDS, national tragedy—anything to sober me, but nothing, and I do mean nothing, compares to the rewards I receive from swiping a few more lust-filled glances at her.

  “Lord, help me, please, please, please.”

  I have to marry her.

  I start counting the cost of her engagement ring. The Rock of Gibraltar, princess cut, on a platinum setting. How will I be able to afford Zora? I can tell she ain’t no cheap date. I’ll have to get a real job, or three. Maybe teaching. Of course teaching! What else will my worthless bachelor’s degree in English literature and creative writing make way for?

  Oh, man. How many people will come to our wedding? Like four? Will her family disown her with the same aplomb my family will disown me with? Will we have to serve chitterlings at the reception, and why are they called “chitlins” when the word is chitterlings? With three syllables, not two.

  And do I even like soul food?

  Already this is too complicated. I have to stick with Rebecca, who possesses none of the Shulamite’s charms. None! She never fights with me. She’s submissive, and we aren’t even married! And don’t get me started on the differences between both their untouched-by-me assets.

  Think of Jesus. Think of Jesus. Think of Jesus.

  I’ve changed. I’m not a total dog anymore. My animal nature no longer rules me. Not much. Okay, not as much. Come on, God. I’ve conquered a goodly amount of the flesh and even my sinful mind most days. Have mercy! I’m a good boy with Rebecca, who I’ll ask to marry me, just as soon as I banish Zora’s—