“That’s not a problem.”
“All right, then. Billie, Perpetua, and I will just go over to the table and pretend we’re not listening to every word.”
“Thank you, sir.”
John opens his arms, he and Nicky embrace, and he and the ladies file into the dining room, which would be out of earshot to most, but they are well-trained in nosy.
“Hey,” I say.
“Hey yourself.”
“It’s good to see you.”
He extends a can like it’s a gift. “May I speak to the little princess?”
“Come on over to the sofa and sit with me.”
He follows me to the sofa, and it feels like he’s unleashed a thousand butterflies inside me. All kinds of flying is going on inside of me because he is here.
We sit. Side by side. I hold the can to my ear.
“Tell me about your first kiss?” he asks.
I don’t know what he’s done to it, but the sound quality has dramatically improved. He puts his can to his ear, and I respond.
“You already know about mine. But I can tell you I fell, deeply, irreversibly in love, and it was just the beginning. I used to see myself as a tiny shoot on a great big brown tree. And I used to think that tree was my history. My people. But that’s only part of the tree. I realized the tree is all God’s people. That tree is a body like His Body. All of us are nourished by the river that is His Word. His Spirit. His Life. And we’re all connected. You were right about me being a racist. My first kiss scorched me and sent me to find the shade of that tree. And when I found it, it didn’t look like I remembered it. There were blossoms of every color on it, Nicky. And one particularly beautiful white blossom. I knew I could love every flower blooming on that tree.”
I put my can to my ear.
“Wow,” is what he says. Then, “I guess I should tell you about my first kiss.”
NICKY
“Put the can down, Zora. This isn’t a children’s story.”
She lets me take the can from her and set our childish phone on the floor. I anchor my soul to the tempering kindness in her eyes.
I take a deep breath. Once Zora said to me the Sankofa bird looked behind itself to retrieve something from its past it may have left behind. I never wanted to dredge anything up from there, especially this. I have to.
“I got my first kiss at my friend Pete’s family’s summer house on Lake Superior. Both our families vacationed there in the summers. I already told you about how much I loved to go there when I was a kid.”
She nods to encourage me, staring at me, eyes wide in rapt attention, brow a bit furrowed, lips slightly parted. She’s concerned. I go on.
“He’s got this aunt, Jerri. A real hottie. Redhead. In her thirties. Wildly inappropriate.”
She takes my hand.
“She sent Pete to the store. It was Tuesday afternoon. June thirtieth. A really ordinary day, Zora, and I wanted to go to the store with Pete, but she said she wanted me to stay and help her with a few things. And I’m twelve, and dumb as a bag of nails.”
She squeezes my hand, and I squeeze hers back.
“Don’t tell me any more, Nicky.”
“No, you wanted to know. Jerri gave me my first kiss, and then she gave me more. And then she took every bit of innocence I had. Every bit of it, Zora. And I never again saw that boy I used to be. I’ve been looking for him for thirteen years. I don’t care who calls me Nicky, I haven’t been able to find the glimpse of the good in me, or even the me in me, until you gave me that sketch, and I saw me.”
Oh, man. Tears well in my eyes. “I’m sorr—”
But her kisses stop me from speaking. She rocks me and lets me weep for the boy I lost. She said Sankofa means “Go back and fetch it.” What I went back and fetched was the little Nicky. I didn’t know I couldn’t go on to be a man until I rescued him.
ZORA
Nicky is spent, but he asks for a pen and some paper. He writes while I sketch him. When he’s done, I hand him a drawing of him writing, and laugh at the irony because both of us were so stalled when we came together. He gives me his poem.
Beautiful Mosaic
I use to think I could fix broken people. I made a mess. Broke a few more than they were before they met me.
Still, I’m drawn to shattered people. Their lovely sharp edges, their exquisite, cutting shards.
I just don’t try to fix them anymore. I got tired of bleeding more than I already do.
Instead, I take my splintered pieces and scoop them into a scarlet bag. I place myself at their feet spread myself out before them as a love offering.
Sometimes this works. Sometimes they walk all over me. Oh well. I did say they were broken.
But sometimes they’ll take all their pieces their many, hard-edged pieces and pour them out of black leather or white velvet right at my feet.
And God will put His fingers— carefully now! Be careful, God!— on all our sharp and shining places. Make a beautiful mosaic out of all our brokenness. He will bind us together, by the bright, white strength of love that never fails,
even though we are broken, even though we are tiny little fragments of what we used to be or what we should be.
He has the face of an angel, and surely he writes like angels wish they could speak. I place my hand on his cheek. “I’m going to marry you.”
“Do it now.”
“How am I supposed to marry you now?”
“Zora, I never told anyone about Jerri. I’ve carried that for all those years.”
“I know. I’m so sorry, baby.”
“I’ve hurt a lot of women. Really good women, who I should have been leading to Christ. I’ve been a slave to lust. Even after I was celibate I remained a slave—this broken thing Jerri left behind. She ruined me.”
“Nicky, she victimized you.”
“I want to belong to Jesus, Zora, and I want to belong to you. I’ve missed you so much.”
“I missed you too, Nicky. I didn’t know you could miss someone you haven’t known forever so much.”
“That’s the thing. You have known me forever. I don’t know how, but you have.”
He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a circle of gold. The earring God gave us. He holds it out to me.
“Did you know that in biblical times a Hebrew slave, in his seventh year of servitude, could declare his love for his master and refuse to go free?”
“I didn’t know that, Nicky.”
“But you can appreciate this from your own cultural experience. A slave is lowly, and despised. Above all things a slave wants freedom, right?”
“Right.”
“So you gotta really love that master if you refuse to be free when you can be, right?”
“Right.”
“I’m not saying I don’t want to be free of the lust, and the pain. And I’m not going to be a perfect man because I’ve made this resolve, but I’ve got to be a real man. A better man. A loving man. Your husband. I want to be all those things. Christ’s slave. In biblical times, if a slave declared his love for his master and refused to go free, the master took him before God and pierced his ear, and he remained his slave for life.”
Nicky takes my hand, and places the earring in it. “I want you to pierce my ear, Zora. I want you to see I am declaring my love for Jesus. I want to be His slave for the rest of my life. I want to be His servant.”
I can’t even speak. The beauty of his act steals my words.
“Please, Zora, pierce my ear and make me God’s slave. And make me yours. I am your servant.”
He drops to his knees and his head goes to my lap. “Make me your man.”
“I can’t, Nicky. I’m afraid I’ll hurt you.”
Billie’s voice calls from the dining room, “Like heck you can’t!”
A tear slips from my eye as I get to my knees beside him.
“My hands are shaking too much.”
Billie and Pet come out and Pet’s got the ice tray in her hand. Bil
lie’s got a tea towel. They both join us on our knees. “Okay. I’m the queen of self-piercing. We’ll numb him up with the ice and he won’t feel a thing.”
Nicky’s head shoots up.
“You guys can’t bring ice. That’s going to ruin the moody beauty of the whole thing.”
“Whatever,” Pet says. “Besides, the ice will give Zora a chance to calm down. The way she’s shaking you’ll end up being Swiss cheese by the time she’s done with you.”
John comes in the room with the bread and wine. “Might as well go for the full effect.”
“Including the footwashing?” I say.
John shrugs. “Slave making blood covenants, dubious communion, why not wash each other’s feet? We’ll just make a party of it. A big Jesus party.”
Nicky takes my hand. “Can’t have a party without a song.”
Nicky opens his mouth and a song so sweet and familiar begins to pour out of him that tears stream out of me with every soaring note.
He sings, “Let us break bread together on our knees.”
Voices swell in song around me. I look at Nicky. “How did you—?”
“I asked yourg dad.” And he goes right back to singing as if saying “I asked your dad,” doesn’t tell me everything I need to know about him. I’m going to marry him. I’m going to give him a house full of golden children.
John tears Christ from a single loaf and passes Him around.
Let us break bread together on our knees.
I put Christ in my mouth and begin to chew on Him, sweet and spongy in my mouth. Christ is holding my hand, looking just like her mother, crying just like her mother. I’m in love with Christ singing my favorite spiritual. Christ is scurrying around the kitchen readying towel and pitcher and bowl for our foot washing. Christ is all around me, loving me, and being loved by me. We all sing:
When I fall on my knees with my face to the rising sun, O Lord, have mercy on me.
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• Discussion Questions
• A Conversation with Claudia Mair Burney
• What’s Next for Mair?
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. Zora and Nicky meet at a home Bible study. What do they see reflected in this community that they haven’t found in their home churches?
2. Billie tells Zora that at the Beloved Community a stranger is someone who “is disconnected from love.” In what ways are Zora and Nicky strangers at the beginning of the novel?
3. Richard, the author of Good News for Rascals, Rebels, and Whores, is perhaps the most missional character in the novel. Do you think his brokenness makes him easier or more difficult to relate to?
4. When Nicky is struggling with feelings of lust, Richard tells him to think about whether the love of God wants him to defile Zora. What does this question say about the way that Richard views God? How does Richard’s perspective differ from the way Nicky views God?
5. Have you ever experienced a relationship or community where you knew that you were loved at the core of who you are, regardless of your past? If so, how did this knowledge change you?
6. Zora and Nicky are immediately attracted to each other. How does this initial attraction grow into a more mature love by the end of the novel?
7. Zora’s father doesn’t want Zora to lack for anything. How is this desire a reflection of his past?
8. The Sankofa bird’s head is turned back to symbolize that what we’ve lost is in our past, and only in going back can we truly go forward. How do Zora and Nicky come to terms with their pasts in this novel?
9. At the beginning of the novel, both Zora and Nicky are quick to point fingers at each other. How are they forced to confront the pride and racism in their own lives?
10. Do you think that racism is an issue in our culture today? In the church? Why, or why not?
A CONVERSATION WITH CLAUDIA MAIR BURNEY
Zora and Nicky is about two of the subjects held most sacred in America: race and religion. How do you see racism reflected in our culture and the church today?
I think racism is alive and well in America in both blatant and subtle ways. How could it not be? We’ve got a painful legacy to contend with—the shared soul wounds inflicted on us through the experience of chattel slavery. I’m forty-three years old. If my great-grandmother could tell me stories about her mother being greased and placed on an auction block, we aren’t far removed from the horror of those days.
Martin Luther King Jr. said, “It is appalling that the most segregated hour in Christian America is eleven o’clock on Sunday morning.” I don’t see that things have changed much. If I go to my black church, I’m comfortable. Everything is familiar—the music, the preaching style, even the way we worship. I’m not a minority there. It’s the same for white Americans. Go to a predominantly white church and you’re likely to have a distinctly European experience of church. I’ve gone to several predominantly white churches where I never saw a black person on the ministry staff or heard a black gospel song during worship. I was completely excluded culturally. It wasn’t intentional; it just showed what was culturally important to them, what was comfortable.
I’ve seen these same church leaders deeply hurt that black people would not come and stay. I know why they didn’t stay. It’s because they didn’t find anything there for them. They had a European church experience in those churches, and they weren’t European.
Doing what is familiar isn’t inherently wrong, but it keeps us separate. We don’t have to deal with the messy issues of our biases when we stay with the people most like us. We don’t have to confront our fears, or our hate. But it’s still there, and until we can meet at the foot of the cross and say, “I’ve got this wound, but I’m willing to give it to Jesus to heal,” and then say to our brother or sister who is not like us, “Hey, show me your wound and we’ll take that to the cross too,” we aren’t going to make any progress.
We also have to make a commitment to stop hurting one another. And we must create safe places to share our pain, fissures, and scars, or we won’t take that risk. And it is a risk. That’s why so many of us are trapped in our little segregated dead ends, every bit the pious deniers, which in many ways, is not much different than being pious liars.
Can you tell us a bit about your faith background?
In a word, my faith background has been messy. I started off having my “born again” experience at the age of fifteen in a fiery Church of God in Christ. From there I went to what is now called Word Faith or Word of Faith churches. I went to a variety of independent charismatic-friendly churches, black and white, some having very little accountability. I saw a lot of abuse during those years.
I left the church as a young adult. I did a lot of running from God. I chanted with the Hare Krishnas, wanted to be a whirling dervish, got all new-agey. I blew through a whole range of religious experiences seeking the love I’d left behind in Jesus. And then I spent years making my way back to Him. Although I’d returned, I was unable to articulate or honor the deepest longings of my heart, which I believe were put there by God. I wanted a very multicultural experience in worship, and I don’t mean only black and white together. I’m closer to having that now than I’ve ever been, but I’m not quite there yet.
Now I’m Eastern Orthodox. I like it because it’s pretty much the same everywhere. No matter what Orthodox church I go to, we’re going to be celebrating the Liturgy of Saint J
ohn Chrysostom. It isn’t personality driven. You go to worship God and receive the sacrament of the Eucharist. We aren’t driven into emotional frenzies. We don’t have a preacher who is a superstar. It’s just one long prayer service until we receive the Body of Christ. I love it. It feels safer than the madness I’ve been through.
Zora and Nicky are both changed by what you would describe as incarnational Christianity. What does this mean to you? Is it something you’ve experienced in your life?
I got a real “incarnational Christianity” bug as I wrote this novel. I’d heard the term, but it didn’t click until I began asking myself questions as I wrote. What does it mean to have “this treasure in earthen vessels”? If I were to take being the body of Christ seriously, how would that affect how I lived? Christ loved. He healed. He delivered. I asked myself: How do people heal? How do they love through Christ? I put the characters in situations that challenged them to make Christ real to one another. For example, Christ is concerned about our needs. If we need clothing, He’s probably not going to drop a few outfits out of the sky. It’s more likely that He’ll provide through community. He provides for His body through His body. I believe if we caught on to this we’d change the world. People like Saint Francis of Assisi and Mother Teresa of Calcutta changed the world through incarnational living.
I’m still trying to find my footing. This is all new and exciting, and it’s turned everything I thought I knew about being a Christian on its ear. I can’t be the same old self-obsessed, apathetic slug if it’s up to me to be Christ to “the least of these.” There goes my worldly ambition! My desire for success and fame falls to the wayside when I think of all the need out there. And it’s up to me to do something. So, now I say, “Amen!” I’m trying to empty myself like the Virgin Mary did and let the Holy Spirit fill me, and use me for service that goes way beyond what I thought I was capable of giving. But it’s still a challenge. It goes against the grain of all the selfishness I’ve absorbed because of the fall, because I’m American, and because I’m an unwitting victim of the disease of affluenza, no matter how much or how little money I possess.
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