Zora and Nicky: A Novel in Black and White

by Claudia Mair Burney

  “This is where I write. Come on back into the living room, if you could call it that.”

  God, what was I thinking bringing her here? I just wanted to go away with her. I wanted to get us away from all the ugliness around us, and now all this ugliness is cropping up inside of me. And now she wants to interrogate me.

  “Tell me about your first kiss.”

  I decide I won’t tell her. Ever. The thought of it makes my palms sweat. I clench my fist. “You don’t want to know about that.”

  “I do. Tell me.”

  I feel a little claustrophobic. I lean against the doorjamb. I try to think about kissing Zora. I remember her taste that first time. My mother’s gravy still lingering in her mouth. Peas. Something minty. Something tangy. “Tell me about yours.”

  “I don’t have to. You were there.”

  “I only know what I felt, Zora.”

  “What was that?”

  I don’t want to deal with my feelings like we’re in freakin’ therapy. Frankly I want her to tell me something that will be about as close to her talking dirty to me as she’s going to get, and I know that won’t be very far. “What did you feel?”

  “Do you remember that part in the Song of Solomon, when her beloved comes to her and she’s sleeping? And he knocks. It says, ‘I sleep, but my heart waketh.’ That’s what I felt. Like my whole life I’d lived inside of a strange dream, and with that kiss you awakened me. It was like being a princess. In the best way. In the ‘my prince has finally come and kissed me’ way.”

  “I’m no prince.”

  “Yes, you are.”

  “You think too much of me. I’m going to disappoint you.”

  “No, you won’t.”

  “I will. I suck.”

  “Kiss me again.”

  “I told you I don’t want to play the prince for you.”

  “Then kiss me like a cowboy.”

  Ah. I see. She may have asked to see where I write, but she’s not in my bedroom to sample my rhymes. And the thing is, I know she doesn’t really know what she’s asking for.

  I go to her. Sit on the bed. Everything inside of me screams, Nicky, don’t do it. But I’m not an engineer. I don’t have the stuff Miles does. She wants to see where I write? I’ll put my signature on her body. Let my hands create a language meant only for her. I’ll make a poem of effleurage, starting with light touches with the pads of my fingers on her face.

  We begin. I stroke her cheeks, eyes, nose, lips until she sighs with pleasure and relaxes into my hands. She trusts me completely.

  My, my, my. Zora is magnificent. So soft. I lean in for the kiss that will elevate us to another realm of possibilities. A place where neither of us is thinking. There are no first kiss questions. Just feeling. She touches my face in turn, giving herself to me.

  We could stay here in this little empty room and fill it with whatever we have right now. Let that be enough. Never leave this room again.

  Then God speaks.

  Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity—

  Not now. That sounds like the apostle Paul. You let a little Paul in, and the next thing you know, you’ll be fleeing fornication and marrying rather than burning. I’m better at burning.

  I am become as sounding brass—

  I take a breath. God is asking me to love her. He wants real love, not my cheap horizontal imitation.

  She stops. I assume God is speaking to her, too. I don’t even bother to ask. I just push away from her and wait for her to tell me what God is saying to her like she’s some kind of prophetess.

  “I want to wait,” she says.

  “Of course you do.”

  “Don’t you?”

  I want to say very bad words in front of no, but I don’t want to scare my wife-to-be. I just smile at her like a good Baptist and lie like a rug. “Yeah. I wanna wait.”

  “I’m a virgin, Nicky.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m scared.”

  I feel unreasonably angry. I’m not even sure exactly who I’m so ticked off at.

  “You might want to keep that in mind before you go bouncing on a man’s bed, or whatever your little seduction ritual is. What’d you do to Miles? I’m beginning to feel a little sympathy for him.”

  She slaps me for that. And lemme tell you, she can hit. I get up and charge out of the room. “Screw you, Zora.”

  She yells after me. “Looks like you’re mad because that’s what you didn’t get to do.”

  “I don’t need this. Why don’t you take your sleek black carriage and head back to your pampered princess palace? You don’t want to be here anyway.”

  “Is this your way of running away, Nicky? Are you going to go write? Where you off to this time? New York City? Gonna write the great American novel in the Big Apple?”

  I stride, trying desperately to keep my cool, into the dining room like I actually have a reason to be upset. I’m beginning to see some really bad similarities between me and Miles. What’s worse, she probably sees them too. I wish I could get out of here, but I don’t even have my truck. Not that I’d know where to go. Where do you flee to escape your own shame?

  ZORA

  He leaves the room angry, but he comes back in a little while. I think he’s going to apologize, but he just gets his laptop and goes back out into the living room.

  I want to tell him that I didn’t mean what I said about him running away to go off writing, but I’m afraid I did mean it. And I don’t like that I did.

  I hear him typing. He’s probably drafting my walking papers. There’s a phone by his bed, and I don’t ask him if I can use it. I figure I’m his fiancée, at least for the next few minutes. That ought to be good for a phone call. I call MacKenzie. I need my best friend.

  She answers on the first ring.

  “MacKenzie, I’m in Nicky’s bed.”

  “Giiiiiiiiirl? What’s up with that? Hold on while I have somebody revive me. I just had me a heart attack.”

  “Don’t waste your heart attack on me. Nothing happened. I didn’t want anything to happen. I don’t think he did either. He stopped before I asked him to. But he still got mad.”

  “First of all, stop trippin’. If you in his bed he did want something to happen. That’s why he mad. But they all get mad if they don’t get any. That’s how they’re wired.”

  “Something bad like that happened with me and Miles yesterday. I thought he was going to do what Jordy did to you back in the day.”

  “What?”

  She sounds like she’s going to have a heart attack for real. I try to calm her.

  “I got him going, and he didn’t want to stop.”

  “Girl, I leave you alone for a few days, and you get in all kinds of trouble. You got Miles, who never even kissed you, ’bout ready to date-rape you, and now you in Halle Berry’s white boyfriend’s bed. Lord, have mercy. I’m coming back home.”

  “You don’t have to come home. I’m getting married.”

  “Oh, Lord, I’m having a big one. It’s like Fred Sanford on Sanford and Son. Girl, you ’bout to kill me. Who you talkin’ ’bout marrying?”

  “Nicky.”

  “Did you do it with him? I thought you said nothing happened! Do I have to tell you the definition of sex? I know yo’ mama and daddy didn’t teach you nothin’, but I thought at least you knew the basics.”

  “We haven’t done anything but kissed, but we’re in love and we’re going to get married.”

  “When did you meet him?”

  “Last Wednesday.”

  “It’s only Monday, heifer! You’ve known him for five days. That ain’t even a week. I’m about to get in my car—”

  “MacKenzie, I’m in love. Have I ever said those words to you?”

  She gets quiet on me. “Baby, you have said those words. But I know you never meant ’em. What scares me is that you mean ’em now. I can hear it in yo’ voice. I knew when I looked into that white boy’s face he was going to be t
he one that turned you out. I’m comin’ home, Z. We gon’ work through this. Don’t marry, or have sex with anybody, and please get out of his bed. Get out of his apartment. Girl, get off the same planet as his fine self.”

  “I’m going to marry him, Mac.”

  “You may just do that, but not right now, baby. It’s way too soon.”

  “What if I ask him to wait, and I lose him? What if I’m already losing him? He’s mad at me. He’s in the living room writing me a Dear Jane letter.”

  “Let me tell you something, Zora. You ain’t no Jane. You don’t get those kinds of letters, and you’re not the girl to ask the kinds of question you’re askin’. I am. You’re the girl the good guy waits for. You’re the one he gives everything he has for. You hear me?”

  “What if he’s not as good as I think he is?”

  “Then he ain’t the one.”

  “I’ve gotta go, Mac.”

  “I’ll see you in like, eight or nine hours.”

  “Don’t come home, Mac.”

  “I’ll see you soon, Z.”

  I hang up. I don’t know what I’ve gotten myself into.

  NICKY

  Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels.

  Paul won’t let me go. Love won’t let me go. She won’t let me go.

  I really am in love.

  I suck.

  I want to do right by her, and I’ve never done right by a woman. I’ve never had to. Don’t know how. Paul said when he was a child he spoke as a child, but when he became a man he put childish things away. How am I supposed to do that, Lord? I don’t want to lose her, but I feel like bolting here.

  Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels.

  I grab my Bible from off the floor by the side of the futon. It’s been sitting there since Friday when I’d read it, planning to spend the day just me and Jesus, and instead He sent me on a clothes-shopping mission and the journey to falling in love with her.

  I turn to the New Testament. First Corinthians, the thirteenth chapter. Read Paul’s infamous words about how to really love and know I’ve missed the mark big time. I want to write. I need to absorb these lessons in that way, with a prayer as I write, that the gruff last apostle will give me roots deeper than Alex Haley’s.

  Help me, Paul. Heavy my feet long enough to get myself a real job. Make it to the altar and the wedding night with my spotless bride, and to stay for the babies, the spreading waistline, gray hair, and death do us part.

  I read the passage again, put the Bible down, and pick up my laptop and begin to type:

  If the words I write broke the hearts of men, and staggered angels and I did not love I am mere noise, needing grace to silence me.

  And if my prophecies, opened the fragrant bud of mystery and my faith made mountains bow and leap, and I did not love what is the use of me?

  If I emptied myself of myself, and gave all I had to the poor, and if I yielded flesh to fire willingly, and on my knees and I did not love I should be pitied for my poverty.

  Love stays.

  Love cares for others more. Love doesn’t ask for what is not for love. Love bows, and love gives way.

  Love doesn’t think too highly of itself, nor does love violate. Love doesn’t insist that it has its way. It doesn’t remember sins. Love doesn’t make you beg.

  It just lets it go.

  Love loves when truth blossoms like lilacs and gardenias swollen with scents sweet as a mercy.

  Love allows.

  Trusts Abba always.

  Love opens wide eyes to see the best and shuts them tight to what is behind us; It doesn’t comprehend the past.

  Love never, ever fails.

  Like God, Love stays.

  I decide to stay where love is. I’ll fight whatever demons I must to be with Zora, even if the demon is me.

  She comes out of the bedroom and passes by me without a word. Goes banging around in my kitchen. I don’t know what she’s doing, short of looking for the sharp instrument she’ll kill me with. I only hope she stabs with less power than she slaps with.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  ZORA

  He’s calling out to me from the living room where he’s stopped typing. When I passed him, he had that contented look about him, and I know despite what I said, he’s just written something wonderful. I can’t wait to read it.

  Nicky has a dismally ill-equipped kitchen, not that I know my way around a kitchen. But Mac did show me a few things. My collard greens have come a long way, and I can make a box of Jiffy cornbread sing. My chicken is melt-off-the-bone good. A sistah’s got to do chicken right. But I’m not here to cook for him, at least right now. I pray we’ll have plenty of time for that later if we can make it through this awful right now.

  I’ve got the cans. He doesn’t have collard greens but he has string beans. Abundant string beans. I’m going to have to learn how to cook fresh string beans for him. Show him what a string bean is supposed to taste like. But if that man thinks I’m going to make him a chitlin, he’d better get himself another black woman.

  I don’t care how he pronounces it.

  I just need rope. I open all kinds of drawers, but I don’t see any. I have to call MacKenzie again. That means I have to cross the living room. It also means I have to go back into the bedroom. Even if I use my cell phone, my purse is in his bedroom.

  I take a deep breath, throw my head back like a runway model, and catwalk out of the kitchen like I own his apartment and he’s annoying me just being there.

  He looks up at me. “Hey.”

  I ignore him. Communication at this point would completely defeat my purpose. I get my cell phone out of my purse in the bedroom, just in case he makes me get off his landline. Hit MacKenzie up. She answers on the first ring, sounding frantic.

  “What now?”

  “I need to know where he might keep his man stuff?”

  She fires questions at me like her mouth is a machine gun. “What kind of man stuff? Girl, what you need man stuff for? What are you about to do? Don’t do nuthin’, okay? I’ll walk you through this all, but you got to take it slow. You ain’t ready for man stuff.”

  “I just want some rope.”

  She moans. “Oh, Jesus! Jesus, stop her! That freaky white boy done broke her down and she talkin’ ’bout rope, Lord! I knew I shoulda stayed. I could just look at him and see he was trouble.”

  “Mac, what are you talking about?”

  “What am I talking about? You’re talking about rope and man stuff.”

  “I just mean where would he keep tape, and nails, and that sort of thing.”

  “Oh, Lord, what are you tryna do, girl?”

  “I just want to make a tin-can telephone.”

  I can hear MacKenzie take several breaths. She seems calm for a moment, until she starts yelling. “Why would you need a tin-can telephone?! Are y’all having vacation Bible school?! What is the matter with you, Zora?!”

  “We had a talk once. It would be sweet and meaningful. I think it would be a good way to end our argument.”

  “I just had a stroke because you want to do something sweet?”

  “I told you I’m not going to do anything.”

  “Zora, you drivin’ me crazy.”

  “Stop worrying about me, Mac. I just want the chance to grow up, just like you’re doing. I’m worried about you, too, all the way in New York, alone. But I had to let you go. Why don’t you just let me go, and take the call when I need you? You don’t need to come back home for me.”

  She doesn’t say anything, and I know she’s thinking it over.

  “Mac?”

  “Yeah, baby?”

  “You can let Jesus take care of me.”

  I hear her sigh. “I guess I have to.”

  “Are you really on your way here?”

  “Girl, I’m so on my way.”

  “Turn around and go back to New York.”

  “Just ask him if he has any rope.”

  “Just ask him?
”

  “He’s a white boy. He’ll think you want to do something freaky. If he got some, he’ll tell you.”

  “You’re gonna have to work on your racial profiling, you know.”

  “Oh, no. Now you ’bout to turn in to that sistah.”

  “The one who is trying to lay her racism at the cross?”

  “Yeah, that one.”

  “Bye, Mac.”

  “Bye, Z. Stay good. Okay?”

  I tell her I will stay good, and I pray that God will give me the strength to, and I mean that. I try to act like I’ve got some sense and go out of Nicky’s bedroom, and actually say something to him when I get to him sitting on the futon.

  “Nicky?”

  “Your highness is speaking to me now?”

  “Do you have any rope?”

  “Will you be tying me up and torturing me before you kill me? I’m assuming you were in my kitchen drawers looking for knives.”

  “Are you still mad because you couldn’t get in my drawers?”

  A wide smile spreads across his face. “You are way too clever. And it hurts when I smile. It hurts when I laugh. It also hurts when I kiss you. You’ve been tormenting me all day.”

  “You don’t have to smile, laugh, or kiss me anymore. Now, about that rope. String, Nicky.”

  He goes to his living-room closet, of all places, and pulls out a roll of string. Gives it to me as if it were an offering. “Zora?”

  “Have a seat, Nicky.”

  He sits on the futon.

  I go into the kitchen to finish the telephone. I’d already punched the holes in the can, and make quick work of adding the string. I didn’t want to be in another room to talk with him. I just wanted it to be a simple peace offering. It was silly, but I wanted it to be something innocent. This may be the last childhood thing we’ll do.

  I come into the living room holding the tin can telephone.

  He grins when he sees it. “I’m assuming you’re not about to kill me.”

  “I’m not going to kill you, cowboy.”