Zora and Nicky: A Novel in Black and White

by Claudia Mair Burney

  She smiles at me. And I can’t help but smile back.

  “Hey, brother Nicky.”

  “Hey, Linda.”

  “Missed you at Bible study.”

  I challenge her, though it’s useless. “I came to Bible study, Linda.”

  “You know what I mean. Did something bother you?”

  “I just had to go. I didn’t want to interrupt you with the new girl,” I say, as if I don’t know everything I possibly could find out about “the new girl.”

  She looks through me like I’m made of Saran Wrap. “That Zora sure is pretty, isn’t she?”

  If my flaming red cheeks don’t give me away, my grin will. “Is she?”

  Linda laughs. She knows she’s nailed me. “I think she is. Maybe you didn’t notice. At least not her face.”

  Wicked, wicked woman.

  I throw my hands up. “I noticed her face too.” I fold my hands across my chest. “I noticed everything, Linda. That’s the problem. You know me. You know I’m trying not to be that guy.” I am that guy, but I’m trying not to be.

  She stands. Rest her hands on the countertop. “So why’d you leave? You didn’t leave any other time a nice-looking young woman came to Bible study.”

  “I’ve only been going a few months, Linda. Not many nice looking women have come, no offense to beautiful you and Billie.”

  “But some have.”

  “None like her.”

  “Why don’t you tell me about that?”

  I roll my eyes, thrust my hands in my pockets. “There isn’t anything to tell. Let’s just say she aroused certain passions in me. Ponder that statement awhile, just so we’re really clear.”

  “I think God can handle that, Nicky.”

  “I can’t handle it.”

  “But what if she comes back?”

  “She won’t.”

  “Why not?”

  I laugh because what I’m going to say sounds absurd even before I let it out of my mouth. “Because I prayed she wouldn’t.”

  Linda cracks up, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen her laugh like that. Her whole face opens wide, and something akin to music spills out of her mouth. She hits the countertop with one gentle hand.

  “We’ll see about that one,” she says, wiping away actual tears.

  This time it’s me that puts my elbows on the countertop. “I’m not the defiler of virgins anymore. For the last three years I’ve forced myself to be Mr. Upright. I’ve never even kissed Rebecca.”

  She looks at me askance.

  I backpedal. “Okay, maybe I think about what I’d like to do to her when we get married.”

  Another searing gaze.

  “Okay, engaged. But there’s no guarantee I’ll try any of that stuff once we are.”

  She cocks her head to the side, those wise eyes knowing.

  “Okay, give me a minute. I’ll clean that up too! My point is, the old Nicky would have had Rebecca horizontal by now, and gone on to the music director’s daughter and six more handmaidens of the Lord. Or I’d be back out in the world doing what prodigal me did best. But I’ve never touched Rebecca.”

  Linda shakes her head at me. “I don’t think this is about Rebecca. You don’t touch her, but you don’t seem to talk about her either. You don’t tell me cute Rebecca stories at lunch. You don’t bring her to Bible study. You don’t seem to feel anything for her. But you felt so strongly about Zora you got up and walked out of Bible study.”

  “It’s lust. I’m feeling lust. Big, sweeping, all-encompassing lust.”

  “I’m glad, because at least you’re feeling instead of walking around like a corpse.”

  “I don’t want to feel lust, Linda. Lust is bad for me. God doesn’t like lust.”

  “Then fight it full on, with the whole armor of God. Don’t scamper away from it like that’ll make it go away. It won’t. I don’t want to lose you, Nicky. God is doing something in you. And something happened for Zora last night too. I’d like for her to come back to us so we can see what else God does. I don’t want to lose her either, Nicky. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  I nod. “Yeah, you’re saying to me, ‘Stop praying amiss.’”

  “I’m praying for you, Nicky. You can beat this.”

  I mumble thanks and stand upright, a posture my slouching spirit doesn’t share.

  The whole armor of God, huh? I have no more ability to put that on than I have to grow a third eye in the middle of my forehead.

  I’m in trouble, but Linda is right. I have to fight it full on. I’ll start with the computer. No more myspace.com/blkandsassy.

  It’s a start.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ZORA

  Dinner at my parents’ house. Oh, joy.

  The gang’s not all here. Mama is present in the living room as resident queen. It’s a weeknight, which means their cook—they actually have a cook, a servant, and she’s black, ironically—doesn’t have to work as hard as she does on Sundays. Weeknight dinner is a relatively casual affair.

  I’m wearing a Spelman sweatshirt, some Levi’s, and my Coach sneaks. I know Mama wants to kill me for this hookup because dinner isn’t really casual. It’s never casual. She looks sophisticated as ever in her pink cashmere sweater, pearl earrings, straight black skirt, and silk hose—she wears silk hose or none. Her feet are shod with a pair of black leather mules made of butter-soft calfskin, and mercy! I’d smile at her while taking them right off her feet if she didn’t wear that itty-bitty size five-and-a-half.

  Her oval unlined face nearly glows she’s so radiant. Mama’s skin, a golden color, reminds you of a peach that needs to sit a few more days in the sun to sweeten, and she’s got a mane of fiery auburn hair she doesn’t have to chemically straighten to go with that peachy skin. Our family is a regular rainbow coalition. Daddy and I dark, my chestnut brown-toned twin brothers in the middle, hale and hearty men, and Mama and my little sister Zoe, fair-skinned maidens. God doled out the hair texture haphazardly. The twins got wondrous multi-textured heads that can’t quite decide what they want to be. Zoe got hair like Daddy, and she never forgave God that trespass. Let’s just say, I got a flat iron and the best of both. Hair not quite as confused as the twins’ and not quite as willful as Zoe’s “If only I’d been born in the seventies” afro.

  Daddy sits down on the couch and begins small talk.

  Daddy does not love Mama. I think over the years he’s grown used to her. He may even be fond of her. But he doesn’t look at her like a man should his woman. She lives the nightmare of being a trophy wife every day of her life, but I’m not supposed to know. It isn’t hard to see, though. To make up for the lack of love in her life, she buys everything she needs, wants, doesn’t need, and doesn’t want. My sister, brothers, and I benefit immensely.

  Mama wears a mask of perfection I have seen slip only on few occasions. Sometimes, when we’re at the table and she asks Daddy a question, he ignores her. Doesn’t even glance in her direction. Sometimes the mask slips and a bit of sorrow clouds her hazel eyes. She fitted all of us with our own masks of perfection. Mine grows heavier every day. And I’m afraid it’s going to fall right off my face, and soon, if I’m not careful.

  I’ve gotta be careful. Careful, Zora.

  Daddy wears a white button-down shirt with navy linen slacks. He has on a silk striped tie, elegant and understated. He’s blessed with the good looks of a movie star. Or is that a curse? I’ll have to ask my mother about that. Hershey’s chocolate-bar-brown skin and perfect teeth that startle you they’re so white against his dark skin. And he doesn’t bleach them either. He’s just naturally beautiful. Dark and comely. He exudes a manly wildness that on occasion I see and love in other men.

  Nicky?

  Don’t start, Zora.

  If you didn’t know Daddy well, you’d never know about the scars. Some of them physical. Some of them soul scars. Daddy’s back reminds me of the Mississippi slave, Gordon. They show his pictures in a lot of slave books, whip marks slashing a
story on his broken body.

  To make him into a religious man, Granddaddy brutalized him. The stern apostle did not spare the rod. But Daddy refused to be broken. He lives his life by faith. When he speaks, his words have power. Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and Daddy speaks life. He’s the beloved that the apostle Paul—not his father, the wanna-be apostle—wished above all things would prosper and be in good health, even as his soul prospers.

  And I can’t blame him. I can’t fault him for wanting life when Granddaddy held it at arm’s length away from him while giving it liberally to the people in his congregation.

  Can I blame Granddaddy? Maybe he thought the best way to get his message across to the charmed boy with good looks was to beat it into him. I don’t know. I only know I feel the same pressure Daddy must have felt, even though my parents pamper me rather than batter me. I feel bribed instead of beaten to conform to their image, an image increasingly hard for me to understand.

  Miles joins in on the fun. My boyfriend. My perfect “other” handpicked by my parents. All year he’d labored with the youth ministry, Faith Afire, in order to sidle up to Daddy hoping he’d win enough approval to ask me on a coveted date.

  And dates with me certainly are coveted. Daddy has every romantically inclined male and a few questionable females in church deathly afraid of me. Nobody, and I mean that, asked me out at church from the time I was old enough to date, with the exception of the family, not the young man, the family, who approached Mama and Daddy to ask if their son could escort me to the debutante ball where I was introduced to society. And what a cheeseball he was. Don’t make me think about him. I gotta eat.

  I guess no social life was a mixed blessing. It saved me from the storm of raging hormones that tore my best friend MacKenzie’s house down. There are worse things than twenty-two-year-old virgins who’ve never been kissed. Not that I didn’t get lonely.

  Now, Miles is good looking. A Morehouse College man, two years older than me with good teeth and clean nails. You can tell a lot about a man by his teeth and nails. He’s great with kids—having put his time in at children’s church before going on to Faith Afire. He earned an engineering degree and is already working in his field. He makes good money and, in a few years, just may be able to afford me without Daddy’s help. He’s got an “I’m hotter than Denzel Washington” thing going on that the sistahs at LLCC drool over. He’s a perfect gentleman. Only holds my hand and sometimes kisses me on the cheek. If he’s got “experience,” he hasn’t shared that with me. I assume just after his ordination to be one of our associate pastors, Miles Zekora and I will taste the first of the fruits of sexual love on our wedding night.

  And my name will be Zora Zekora.

  I don’t know if I can live with that.

  He thinks my painting is a nice hobby. Is it any wonder that I don’t care that he’s never kissed me? I used to care. He used to be the biggest crush I ever had. He used to make my heart soar, just the thought of him. Tonight I’d rather be home putting together that newsletter anybody with a brain could assemble.

  Don’t think about these things, Z. Eat. Listen. Don’t say much. You don’t know what’ll come out of your mouth, girl.

  WE’RE GETTING READY to be seated at the hub of our family, the opulent dining room table. She may not cook anymore, but Mama knows how to sit down together as a family. Despite our failings, we’ve always eaten together. The dining room is beautifully furnished; a handcrafted, endless mahogany table that seats sixteen is the focal point of the room. Mama has each place set with bone china and fine linen napkins—with an African flair, of course. The room has been featured in an issue of African American Metropolitan magazine.

  My brothers, the twins, James and John, don’t live at home anymore. They make their living as wildly successful stockbrokers and have taken a bite out of the Big Apple, lucky dogs. They offered to take me with them and look after me while I went to art school. I’d been accepted to Parsons. Parsons! MacKenzie and I dreamed of Parsons since we were little girls waxing poetic about color. And now she’s going in just a few days, God bless her, but Daddy would have none of it for me, for all his big stinkin’ faith. Mama either. It was Spelman or “you’re on your own.” Many a day I wish I’d have chosen on my own, but they forbid my brothers to help me. Worse, I couldn’t even study art at Spelman. It wasn’t practical, they said.

  My baby sister Zoe is away at school. She, too, chose Spelman—if you could call what she had a choice. Only her choice of premed is acceptable to Mama and Daddy. At least she’s got that.

  Just chill, Zora. You’ve got food to digest, girl.

  I really shouldn’t complain. I don’t even live at home—a coup for me. But because I live in town, I try to have dinner with them as often as I can. Tonight, it’s the usual suspects: Mama, Daddy, Miles, and me. My parents won’t count the cook, whose name is Betty, by the way. Betty Grace Way.

  Miles pulls out the chair to seat me. Whispers in my ear, “Why didn’t you dress for dinner?” This seemingly innocuous question is full of disapproval. My father is grooming him well. And as if he were my father, I defer. I try to charm him on the strength of my grin.

  “It’s a casual night.” It comes out with more bite than I intended. “Baby,” I add to soften it.

  My mother chimes in. “There’s casual, and there’s unacceptable. We’re eating, Zora, not playing basketball.”

  “I’d rather play basketball,” I mumble.

  She gives me “the look” as I sink into my chair and Miles scoots it up to the table. “Zora!”

  “I’m sorry, Mama.”

  Miles regards me with what actually looks like a thoughtful gaze. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m wearing jeans and a sweatshirt to dinner. Clean jeans and a clean sweatshirt. I feel like you all are treating me like I’ve committed the unpardonable sin.”

  Miles sits down across from me. “No one is judging you, baby. I just wondered why you didn’t dress.”

  “Why do we have to dress when it’s casual? Why do you have to clean up before the housekeeper comes? If you do the cleaning yourself, why do you even need a housekeeper?”

  The three of them stare at me. Betty saves me from their comments. She ambles into the room, a heavy, dark-skinned sistah who can cook like God can bless. And my family treats her like the hired help. Our very own mammy.

  I gotta get out of here.

  Betty places a heaping bowl of collard greens and bacon in front of us that makes me salivate. She looks at me. “Your favorite, baby girl.”

  My mother rebukes her. “Please refer to my daughter as Zora.”

  Betty gives her a curt nod. “I’m sorry, ma’am.”

  “You’d better not, Betty,” I say. “That ‘baby girl’ thing may be why I always get the biggest piece of pie.”

  For a moment our eyes lock, and Betty’s brown eyes flash a subtle thank you.

  “You get that big piece a pie ’cause you’re a bag a bones. So skinny you disappear if you turn side-a-ways.” And probably just to let my mother know she heard her loud and clear, she adds, “Zora.”

  When Betty walks out of the room, I challenge Mama, something I rarely do. “I don’t see anything wrong with Betty calling me an endearment. She’s been working for us for years. I’m crazy about her.”

  It’s Daddy who responds. “Betty is a wonderful woman and an excellent cook. We simply don’t want her to get confused about her role around here. We’ve had some experiences we don’t want to repeat when we’ve blurred boundaries.”

  Which means they’ve treated people horribly and it turned into a hot mess. Now, Betty has gone to our church forever. But when she’s at work for us, she becomes the help. A hot mess!

  “Seems to me like boundaries get blurred all the time around here.”

  Daddy put his fork down. “Excuse me, Zora. Do I need to ask for the keys to that Lexus until you can learn some respect?”

  “It might take a long time for m
e to learn some respect so, yeah, I guess I’ll need to give you the keys to my car.”

  “It’s my car,” Daddy reminds me. “I believe I pay for that Lexus, baby girl.”

  My mother graduates to phase two of “the look,” which is more stern and menacing. By now I’m good and tired of them treating me like a surly teenager.

  Or am I acting like a surly teenager? I don’t even know.

  I only know my face burns so hot I can hardly stand it. I can hardly breathe. Betty comes back into the room with a bowl of buttery mashed baby red potatoes. She must feel the palpable tension in the air. She scurries out of the dining room to get the next portion of food.

  Miles tries to play peacemaker. “I don’t think you’ll need to take the keys to the Lexus, sir. Zora is just stressed, that’s all.” He gives me one of his Denzel smiles, complete with the Hollywood caps. I think I should be happy I’ve got this good, handsome man having dinner with my parents and asking me if I’m okay. I try to breathe. I try hard.

  “I have a lot of work to do,” I say when I can speak.

  Daddy waves away my comment. “I told you, Zorie, you don’t have to worry your pretty head about that. The newsletter will get done. That’s why I have a visual arts staff.”

  I try very hard to keep my voice even. “It’s my job to do the newsletter. It’s my job to do most of the graphic design at LLCC, or at least it used to be, Daddy. It’s what I get paid for.”

  He winks at me. “Being the bishop’s daughter has its benefits.”

  I bristle at the word bishop. Nobody made Daddy a bishop. One day he told us God had elevated his position. Deacons suddenly became associate pastors—as did my mother—and Daddy was suddenly a bishop. He didn’t have to answer or explain. We simply held a lovely service in his honor, and we gave him outrageous gifts and offerings.

  “I prefer to do my work myself,” I say.