Zora and Nicky: A Novel in Black and White

by Claudia Mair Burney

  “No, Billie. I’m fine.”

  “Oh, fine,” she says. She’s in a snit about it. But I kiss her on the cheek and promise I’ll call when it all blows over, and I’m hoping it does soon.

  I try not to tell myself that I’m “dead sistah walking” going up the stairs and into the building. I dig into the backpack Billie gave me for my keys, thankful for the copy I got from the super, and that I don’t have to buzz a half-dozen people to get into my own place. I get inside the building and walk down the corridor, which seems unnaturally long today. There seem to be too many stairs. I almost wish Billie had come with me after all. I haven’t seen my daddy since Friday when he took everything I owned away except the pajamas I wore. And now I’ll face him. My heart drums inside of me.

  I miss my daddy. I don’t know the man who did such a terrible thing to me. I don’t understand him. I knew Daddy to be controlling and manipulative, but not with me. Somehow I had thought I’d be exempt from his games now.

  I finally reach my door and put the key in. I don’t even turn the knob all the way before the door opens, and my mother pulls me into her embrace.

  “Oh, baby,” she says, squeezing me. “I promise you that as soon as I found out about this I raised heaven! And Jack and I have been arguing ever since. Me and several ladies from the church have stopped by. We never catch you home. And he wouldn’t tell me where he’d taken your stuff. Baby, I’ve been praying, and if the Lord hadn’t assured me you were in His hands, I’d have lost my mind. I refused to go to church on Sunday. I told Jack and Jesus that LLCC wouldn’t see the First Lady again until he brought every piece of furniture in this place back. Where on earth have you been?”

  When Mama lets me go, I see that my stuff is back. The butter-cream colored sofa. The Cheryl Riley chairs. The prints. Everything is as it should be, except MacKenzie is gone. The nightmare is over, I suppose. I close the door behind me. I also see my dad.

  “Hi, Mama and Daddy.”

  My mama squeezes me again. “Zora, baby, I can’t believe Jack took your things. I was absolutely sickened.”

  Daddy is sitting on a funky wooden Cheryl Riley chair looking grim. “I told your mother that I never expected to keep it. I expected you to call and apologize by Friday evening. How was I supposed to know you’d be so stubborn?”

  My mother puts her hands on her hips. “She’s always been just like you, Jack. What else would she do?”

  “She’s got plenty of you in her too, Liz.”

  My mother looks me up and down. I’m wearing the black pants and white shirt Nicky gave me. The silver cross and hoops. My mother is horrified. “Oh. Those cheap clothes. We need to get you out of those.”

  “I like this outfit, Mama.”

  “And where is your gold jewelry?”

  “What’s wrong with sterling silver?”

  “You’re a daughter of the King. You can wear gold. Your Father in heaven owns the cattle on a thousand hills.”

  “He also owns sterling silver. And my daddy, who does not own the cattle on a thousand hills—but probably is claiming them—took my gold, he, and the overseers with him, took everything but the pajamas I was wearing. They’d have probably taken those too, but I don’t think Daddy would have wanted them to see me naked.”

  Daddy protests. “That’s precisely the kind of insolence that caused this mess. I don’t know what’s gotten into you, Zora. Or who.”

  “Who?” I say. Daddy is never crude with me. Ever.

  He stands up. He wouldn’t want to let his baby girl have a height or psychological advantage or some such thing. “I know I took your promise ring, but I didn’t mean for you to go crazy.”

  “I dunno, Daddy. That one led me to believe all bets were off. What did Miles tell you?”

  “He told me a white boy has been calling him. What do you have to say about that, Zora?”

  “I’d say he’s a white man.”

  “A white man?”

  My mother almost seems amused by my answer. She sits down on the sofa but doesn’t ask any questions about him. Dad has enough for the both of them.

  “Miles says his name is Nicky Parker.”

  “It is.”

  “Please tell me that your white man Nicky Parker isn’t the infamous skirt-chasing son of Reverend Nicholas Parker.”

  “That’s him.”

  “Zora, do you know what kind of reputation he has?”

  “Yes. I heard he’s a rebel, rascal, and whore.”

  “What did you just say? Are you using profanity?”

  “I don’t think the word whore is profanity, Daddy. In fact, I’m really good friends with a former whore. And now that I think of it, Jesus seemed really fond of whores. And since we’re on the subject, Nicky’s family thinks I’m a whore.”

  I’ve watched my father’s face since I was a little girl. I love his face. The rich, dark skin like mine. I look in his face and see in living color the sharp angles and lines of a Benin bronze sculpture. I’ve memorized that face singing lullabies to me, laughing, praying, preaching, telling stories, yelling, eating. A lifetime of expressions I’ve watched for twenty-two years, but I’ve never seen this face—a morbid mien of sorrow, anger, and horror—that says, “I’ve failed at what has meant the most to me.”

  I turn away from him. I’ve never regretted saying something so much in my entire life.

  Daddy’s voice becomes a hoarse whisper. “I don’t want you to ever see that boy again.”

  “But, Daddy—”

  “I understand that you were upset with me, Zora. I understand that I may have overreacted, but this has gone too far. My daughter is not—”

  “I’m sorry, Daddy.”

  “Come in the bathroom with me.”

  My mother gets up from the sofa. “Jack, what are you—?”

  His withering glance silences her.

  “Come with me, Zora.”

  I follow him. I think he’s going to take me in there and give me a spanking. Or some kind of beating. He used to spank us when we were little, but he hit us so hard Mama told us that if he ever hit us again, she was out like a ghost, and he’d never see us again. In that way, he had too much of his own father in him.

  Mama grabs his arm. “Jack, if you lay a hand on her—”

  His voice turns to ice. “Don’t touch me, Elizabeth.”

  He takes me by the arm, yanks me into the bathroom, and turns the light on.

  “Look into that mirror Zora Nella Hampton Johnson.”

  I don’t want to look at myself.

  His voice demands. “You look up in that mirror, girl.”

  I take a quick glance and look down again.

  “I said look!”

  This time I fix my eyes on my image.

  “I want you to see what I see.” He grabs me by the chin and keeps my face toward the mirror.

  “I see the crown jewel of creation in that mirror. From the time you were born, I have spoken God’s Word over you. I have told you that you are the head and not the tail. You are above not beneath. You are more than a conqueror in Christ Jesus our Lord. You have dominion over the earth. I have not raised a whore. Do you understand me, Zora?”

  “Yes, Daddy.”

  “You will not walk in fellowship with anyone, black or white, who believes you to be a whore. Those people, they are not worthy of you, and if in any way you have misrepresented yourself, if in any way you have behaved in a way that may have led them to believe you are a whore, then you have lost your mind, little girl. And you are far from the woman of God I have raised you to be. Do you understand me, Zora?”

  “Yes, Daddy.”

  “I want you to say to that young woman in the mirror. ‘I am nobody’s whore.’ ”

  I wanted to say it. I wanted to say it loud like James Brown telling the world he was black and he was proud, but I had let Miles put his hands all over me. I didn’t feel like I wasn’t a whore. I didn’t know what I was.

  “I can’t, Daddy.”

 
; His voice becomes steely with controlled rage. I think my heart will come right out of my chest as he nearly hisses, “Oh yes you can.”

  I feel like a tiny toddler. “No, I can’t.”

  “Say it,” he yells. It feels like his voice could shatter the red walls in the bathroom. Tears spring out of my eyes.

  “I can’t, Daddy. I’m sorry.”

  My mother stands behind him. “Leave her be, Jack.”

  He turns his rage to her. “My daughter is nobody’s whore.”

  “We know that, Jack. It doesn’t matter what they think.”

  “It matters!” He is nearly screaming now.

  And then some monster comes into the bathroom that isn’t my daddy at all. That man grabs me by my shoulders and throws me against the door. He slaps my face so hard, my cheek goes numb. “You don’t let no white man violate you. Didn’t I teach you about what they did to our women? That’s what I sent you to Spelman for. To study your history. You knew better.”

  He shakes me by my shoulders, banging me against the door while my mother screams at him to stop. “You brought shame to us. We didn’t raise no whores.”

  Bang. Bang. Bang. I slam against the door.

  “You don’t let no white man violate you.”

  I can’t let this go on anymore.

  “It wasn’t Nicky.”

  “What?”

  “It wasn’t Nicky. It was Miles … it was Miles who touched me. It was Miles who violated me.”

  Finally he lets me go, but my mother is so angry she hits him all over his back. “I told you not to hit my baby,” she says. I want to call the police, but I don’t even know where my cell phone is. I don’t know why I’d even bother at this point. He doesn’t hit me again and doesn’t do a thing to Mama. He just goes into the living room and leaves us in the bathroom. That’s when I hear the most God-awful sound I have ever heard in my life. Some deep, terrible noise of soul travail.

  My mother and I go into the living room when we hear it. That’s when I see Daddy with his head in his hands. For the first time in my life, I see he is crying.

  NICKY

  I say good-bye to my mother and leave the restaurant more frustrated than ever. While she doesn’t share my father’s abject horror at the thought of me being with Zora, she certainly isn’t giving us two thumbs up. Not that I have a relationship with Zora. We kissed. She looked at me. We held each other. I’m thinking that may not mean we should start picking out china patterns, which makes me wonder why I’m getting roughed up, fighting with my family and friends, and calling a black man I don’t know in the middle of the night threatening to come and get his girlfriend.

  Maybe I’m doing all this because none of this is fair. It’s not fair that my family won’t acknowledge the dreams I have. And Zora’s won’t acknowledge hers. And it’s not fair that we had to find each other at the worst time. And I ended up hurting Rebecca, who I should have never been with in the first place.

  And it’s not fair that Zora is with the Lion King and he sucks. Or that her father took all her stuff. And now I’m in love with her. And maybe she feels something for me, too. And people who don’t even know her think I can just take her to bed at will because they watch too many rap videos or have outdated ideas that should have been left behind when Lincoln freed the slaves, if not before.

  What’s the matter with all of us? I want the apostle John’s revelation. The one where he looks and sees a great multitude that no man can count, from every nation, tribe, people, and language standing before God’s throne. And every one of those people is in a white robe—and they aren’t Ku Klux Klan white robes either. Everybody holding palm branches saying in loud voices: “Salvation to our God which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb.”

  Why aren’t we living right? Why are we all looking the part, but are nothing but a bunch of whitewashed graves? Dead on the inside?

  At least some of us are. Most of the people I’ve been dealing with are, though not all. God, what a mess Your people are.

  I have never been to a church that resembles that multitude in the book of Revelation. I have never been to a Christian conference that looks that way. Even the Beloved Community doesn’t look that way. Not yet.

  I’m so tired. Of everything and everybody. Second to You, God, she’s the only one that makes me feel better. I just need to see her. I’m going to her.

  Right now.

  ZORA

  We sit in silence for a while in our own unholy trinity. My father is on the sofa. My mother is beside him, and I’m at the peak of this triangle, ignoring the perfectly good chairs, sitting, ironically, on the floor. We sit there as if a bomb has detonated, and we’re devastated, unable to the move ourselves away from the ruins.

  Daddy breaks our silence first.

  “Miles will correct this. He’s asked to marry you right away. I’ve agreed.”

  I knew it. I knew he’d side with Miles. Miles is the black man. I look to my mother.

  She nods. “He’s a good man, Zora.”

  “What if I don’t want to marry Miles?”

  “You’ve been dating him for six months,” she says. “How could you not want to marry him? Grow up, Zora. What did you think was going to happen if you kept dating him?”

  I want to tell her that I don’t like the way he tastes, and that’s a biological sign that we aren’t compatible, according to Billie. I want to tell her that he’s not the man I thought he was. That when I said he violated me, I meant he nearly forced himself on me. And that we won’t discover the mystery of one flesh for the first time together because someone else already knows him. And it’s not that I could have that with Nicky. But at least I’d know what I had to work with from the start instead of being surprised like I was with Miles. I want Mama to know Miles got me an air mattress and condoms instead of a white dress. But this doesn’t seem like the time or place. God, what am I going to do?

  “Mama, I don’t want to marry—”

  My father stands up. “Miles is going to honor you. He’s going to pay for whatever he did and marry you. Don’t think that white boy is going to do right by you just because he didn’t make whatever mistake Miles did. At least not yet. No matter how you look at it, you’ve shamed us. Do you think the Reverend Nicholas Parker is going to welcome you into the family? He will never accept you! I can hear the gossip buzzing among their friends at their country club.” His face is a mask of disgust. “No! You will not shame us.”

  Now I stand up. “I’m sorry I’ve really caused an uproar at the Parkers’ country club, Daddy, but according to your son-in-law to be, I’ve caused quite a ruckus with the faithful at LLCC. They’re telling Miles how cursed I am. Can you see them at their little social clubs, Daddy? ‘The Bishop’s daughter is crazy. She doesn’t want her golden Lexus cage lined with our offerings anymore. She wants to fly free with a paintbrush in her beak. What a wretched, poor, naked, miserable sinner she is.’ Looks to me like I’m the object of gossip regardless, Daddy. What difference does it make if the people are white?”

  “At least they don’t think you’re a whore.”

  “I’d rather be the whore. At least the whore would have fun.”

  Once again, he raises his hand to me, but this time my mother grabs him. “You hit my baby one more time, Jack Johnson, and it will all be over today. Marriage. Family. Ministry. Everything we have will be over right here, right now. I promise you that.”

  Daddy looks at Mama. I don’t know what he sees. I don’t know what is going on between them, but he backs up. He turns to me.

  “You get married in the next few days, or I’m cutting you out of my life completely. I will never say another word to you again for the rest of your life, Zora. I don’t care what your mother says.”

  At that, he storms out the door.

  For a moment, my mother and I stare at the door. I feel as if I’m waiting. I don’t know what for. Maybe I’m waiting for another dramatic turn of events, but nothing happens. He’s said
all he will say. He’s done all he will do.

  Maybe I’m waiting for some spark of courage to fire inside of me, but everything within feels cold. Maybe I’m waiting for my wings to unfurl at this moment. Maybe I’m waiting to fly far away from here, but those big black wings stay tucked inside, and I can’t seem to move them.

  I give Mama a pleading, desperate look. “I don’t want to marry Miles.”

  “I don’t want to have to worry about you, Zora, I really don’t.” She shakes her head. She opens her mouth to speak, but nothing comes out.

  Oh, God. Let me fly away from here.

  “Zora. In some ways you’re so young. I wish I could say I think you’re going to be fine, but you’re so fragile in so many ways. You don’t need to be alone. Even if you were with MacKenzie I wouldn’t worry about you.”

  “I’ll be stronger, Mama. Look, I’ve been on my own without my stuff. I can go on without him.”

  She shakes her head at me. “Oh, honey. You really don’t know a thing about this world.”

  She steps up to me and places her hand on my cheek. She covers with gentleness the place still sore from Daddy’s slap. But her words are hard. “You’re going to have to sell your soul so many times to make it in this life. You’ll do it if you have a career. You’ll do it in a marriage. But if you marry well, at least you’ll do it in a comfortable bed wearing a pretty gown. And you’ll be lying down in that bed inside of a house you built from the ground up to your exact specifications.”

  “That’s what you did. I don’t want your life, Mama. That was good enough for you. It’s not enough for me.”

  “You haven’t suffered enough. We’ve kept you from experiencing any of the bad things of life. You don’t know what it is to have it hard. You go off on your own chasing after that white boy and you’ll lose everything, sweetie. He’ll leave you behind as surely as my mama left me behind. You’ll wish you had a Miles Zekora when that Nicky Parker is through with you. You’ll see. Love is overrated, honey. At least it is with the Nicky Parkers of this world. And he doesn’t love you. He’s a playboy, and you’re just some brown sugar.”

  “You don’t know him, Mama.”