On Beauty

by Zadie Smith

  Carl grinned. ‘Oh, I hear that. She’s my Martin Luther King! I’m serious, she be – sorry,’ said Carl, looking away from them towards the outdoor balcony. ‘Sorry, I just saw someone I gotta speak to . . . Look, I’ll talk to you later, Zora – good to see you again, man. I’ll catch you both later.’

  ‘He’s very charming,’ said Jerome generously, as they watched him go. ‘Actually he’s almost slick.’

  ‘Everything’s going so well for him right now,’ said Zora uncertainly. ‘When he’s gotten used to it, he’ll get more focus, I think. More time to tune in to other important stuff. He’s just a little busy right now. Believe me,’ she said, with more conviction, ‘he’ll be a real addition to Wellington. We need more people like him.’

  Jerome hummed in an ambivalent way. Zora rounded on him. ‘You know, there’s other ways to have a successful college career than the route you went down. Traditional qualifications are not everything. Just because –’

  Jerome mimed zipping up his lip and throwing away the key. ‘I’m a hundred and ten per cent behind you, Zoor, as ever,’ he said, smiling. ‘More wine?’

  It was the kind of party where every hour two people leave and thirty people arrive. The Besley siblings found and lost each other several times that night, and lost new people they found. You’d turn to eat from a bowl of peanuts and not see the person you’d been talking to again until you met them forty minutes later in the line for the toilets. Around ten, Zora found herself on the balcony smoking a joint in an absurdly cool circle consisting of Jamie Anderson, Veronica, Christian and three grads she didn’t know. In normal circumstances she would have been ecstatic at this, but, even as Jamie Anderson was taking her theory about women’s punctuation seriously, Zora’s busy brain was otherwise occupied, wondering where Carl was, if he’d already left, and whether he’d liked her dress. Out of nerves she kept drinking, filling her cup from an abandoned bottle of white wine by her feet.

  Just after eleven, Jerome stepped out on to the balcony, interrupting the impromptu lecture that Anderson was giving and plonked himself upon his sister’s lap. He was badly drunk.

  ‘Sorry!’ he said, touching Anderson’s knees. ‘Carry on, sorry – don’t mind me. Zoor, guess what I saw? I should say who.’

  Anderson, piqued, moved away and took his acolytes with him. Zora bumped Jerome off her lap, stood up and leaned against the balcony, looking out on to the quiet, leafy street.

  ‘Great – and how are we going to get home? I’m way over the limit. There’s no taxis. You’re meant to be the designated driver. Jesus, Jerome!’

  ‘Blasphemer,’ said Jerome, not entirely unserious.

  ‘Look, I’ll start treating you like a Christian when you start acting like one. You know you can’t handle more than a glass of wine.’

  ‘But so,’ whispered Jerome and put his arm around his sister, ‘I come with news. My darling heart ex-whatever is in the coat room getting it on with your rapper friend.’

  ‘What?’ Zora shook his arm off. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Miss Kipps. Vee. And the rapper. That’s what I love about Wellington – everybody knows everybody.’ He sighed. ‘Oh, well. No, but it’s OK . . . I really couldn’t care less. I mean I care, obviously I care! But what’s the point? It’s just pretty tacky – she knew I was here, we said hi an hour ago. It’s just tacky. But you’d think she could at least try to . . .’

  Jerome kept on talking but Zora was not listening any more. Something alien to Zora was taking her over, starting in her belly and then rocketing like adrenalin through the rest of her system. Maybe it was adrenalin. It was certainly a rage physical in nature – never in her life had she experienced an emotion as corporal as this. She seemed to have no mind or will; she was only resolute muscle. Afterwards she could in no way account for how she got from the balcony to the coat room. It was as if fury transported her there instantaneously. And then she was in the room, and it was as Jerome had described. He on top of she. Her hands embracing his head. They looked perfect together. So perfect! And then, a moment after that, Zora herself was outside on the porch with Carl, with Carl’s hood in her hand, for she had – as was explained to her afterwards – physically dragged him down the hallway and out of the party. Now she released him, pushing him away from her, on to the wet wood. He was coughing and working his hand around his throat, which had been constricted. She had never known how strong she was. Everyone had always told her she was a ‘big girl’ – was this why she was big? So she might drag grown men by their hoods and throw them to the floor?

  Zora’s brief physical elation was soon replaced by panic. Out here it was cold and wet. The knees of Carl’s jeans were soaked. What had she done? What had she done? Now Carl knelt before her, breathing heavily, looking up, enraged. Her heart justly broke. She saw she had nothing further to lose.

  ‘Oh, man, oh, man . . . I can’t believe . . .’ he was whispering. Then he stood up and became loud: ‘What the FUCK do you think –’

  ‘Did you even read that piece?’ cried Zora, shaking madly. ‘I spent so long on that, I missed my dissertation deadline, I’ve been working constantly for you and – ’

  But of course without the secret piece of the narrative in Zora’s head – the one that connected ‘writing pieces for Carl’ with ‘Carl kissing Victoria Kipps’ – no sense could be made of what she was saying.

  ‘What the hell are you talking about, man? What did you just do?’

  Zora had shamed him in front of his girl, in front of a whole party. This was no longer the charming Carl Thomas of Wellington’s Black Music Library. This was the Carl who had sat out on the front porches of Roxbury apartments on steamy summer days. This was the Carl who could play the Dozens good as anybody. Zora had never been spoken to like this in her life.

  ‘I–I–I’

  ‘Are you my girlfriend now?’

  Zora began to weep wretchedly.

  ‘And what the fuck has your article got to do with . . . Am I meant to be grateful?’

  ‘All I was trying to do was help you. That was all I wanted to do. I just wanted to help.’

  ‘Well,’ said Carl, putting his hands on his hips, reminding Zora, absurdly, of Kiki, ‘apparently you wanted to do a little more than help me. Apparently you expected some payback. Apparently I had to sleep with yo’ skank ass as well.’

  ‘Fuck you!’

  ‘That’s what it was all about,’ said Carl and whistled satirically, but the hurt was clear to read in his face, and this hurt grew deeper as he stumbled over further realizations, one after the other. ‘Man, oh, man. Is that why you helped me? I guess I can’t write at all – is that it? You were just making me look an idiot in that class. Sonnets! You been making a fool of me since the beginning. Is that it? You pick me up off the streets and when I don’t do what you want, you turn on me? Damn! I thought we was friends, man!’

  ‘So did I!’ cried Zora.

  ‘Stop crying – you ain’t gonna get out of this by crying,’ he warned heatedly, and yet Zora could hear concern in his voice. She dared to hope that this still might end well. She reached out a hand to him, but he took a step back.

  ‘Speak to me,’ he demanded. ‘What is this? You got some problem with my girl?’ Upon hearing this formulation, a snotty clump of tears flew spectacularly from Zora’s nose.

  ‘Your girl!’

  ‘Have you got some problem with her?’

  Zora wiped her face on the neck of her dress. ‘No,’ she snapped indignantly. ‘I haven’t got a problem with her. She’s not worth having a problem with.’

  Carl opened his eyes wide, shocked by this answer. He pressed a hand to his forehead, trying to figure it out. ‘Now, what the fuck does that mean, man?’

  ‘Nothing. God! You totally deserve each other. You’re both trash.’

  Carl’s eyes grew cold. He brought his face right up to hers, in an awful inversion of what Zora had spent six months hoping for. ‘You know what?’ he said, and Zor
a prepared to hear his judgement on what he saw. ‘You’re a fucking bitch.’

  Zora turned her back to him and began her difficult journey down the porch steps, minus her coat and purse, minus her pride and with a good deal of trouble. These shoes took stairs in only one direction. At last she made it to the street. She wanted to go home now desperately; the humiliation was beginning to outweigh the rage. She was experiencing the first inklings of a shame she sensed would live with her for a long, long time. She needed to get home and hide under something heavy. Just then Jerome appeared on the porch.

  ‘Zoor? You OK?’

  ‘Jay, go back in – I’m fine – please go back in.’

  As she said this Carl ran down the stairs and confronted her again. He was not willing to leave her with this last, ugly image of himself; it still, somehow, mattered to him what she thought of him.

  ‘I’m just trying to understand why you would act so crazy,’ he said earnestly, coming close to her again and searching for an answer in her face; Zora almost fell into his arms. From where Jerome was standing, however, it appeared that Zora was cringing in fear. He rushed down the steps to put himself between his sister and Carl.

  ‘Hey, buddy,’ he said unconvincingly, ‘back off, OK?’

  The front door opened once more. It was Victoria Kipps.

  ‘Great!’ shouted Zora, throwing her head back and spotting the little audience on the balcony who were watching these events. ‘Let’s sell tickets!’

  Victoria closed the door behind her and skipped down the stairs with the style of a woman well practised at walking in impossible heels. ‘What are you on?’ she asked Zora as she reached the ground, and seemed more curious than angry.

  Zora rolled her eyes. Victoria turned instead to Jerome.

  ‘Jay? What’s this about?’

  Jerome shook his head at the floor. Victoria approached Zora again.

  ‘Have you got something to say to me?’

  Usually Zora feared confrontation with her peers, but Victoria Kipps’s composed radiance standing right opposite her own snot-faced breakdown was simply too maddening. ‘I’ve got NO THING to say to you! Nothing!’ she yelled, and began the march down the street. At once she stumbled on her heel and Jerome steadied her, getting her by the elbow.

  ‘She jealous – that’s her problem,’ taunted Carl. ‘Just jealous ’cos you finer than her. And she can’t stand that.’

  Zora spun back round. ‘Actually, I look for a little more from my partners than just a nice ass. For some reason I thought you did too, but, my mistake.’

  ‘Pardon me?’ said Victoria.

  Zora hobbled a little way further along the road, accompanied by her brother, but Carl followed.

  ‘You don’t know anything about her. You’re just uppity about everybody.’

  Zora stopped once more. ‘Oh, I know about her. I know she’s an airhead. I know she’s a slut.’

  Victoria reached out for Zora, but Carl restrained her. Jerome grabbed hold of Zora’s pointing hand.

  ‘Zoor!’ he said, raising his voice. ‘Stop it! That’s enough!’

  Zoor wrenched her wrist from her brother’s grasp. Carl looked disgusted with them both. He took Victoria’s hand and began to walk her towards the house.

  ‘Take your sister home,’ he said, without looking back at Jerome. ‘She’s drunk as hell.’

  ‘And I also know about guys like you,’ said Zora, shouting impotently after him. ‘You can’t keep your dick in your pants for five minutes – that’s all that’s important to you. That’s all you can think about. And you haven’t even got the good taste to stick it in something a little more classy than Victoria Kipps. You’re just one of those kind of assholes.’

  ‘Fuck you!’ screamed Victoria and began to cry.

  ‘Like your old man?’ yelled Carl. ‘An asshole like that? Let me tell you something –’

  But Victoria began to speak frantically over him. ‘No! Please, Carl – please, just leave it. There’s no point – please – no!’

  She was hysterical, placing her hands all over his face, apparently trying to stop him speaking. Zora frowned at her, not understanding.

  ‘Why the hell not?’ Carl asked, peeling a hand from his mouth and holding Victoria at the shoulders as she continued to weep loudly. ‘She’s so damn superior all the time, she should have a little home truth told to her – she thinks her daddy’s such a –’

  ‘NO!’ screamed Victoria.

  Zora put her hands on her hips, utterly bemused, almost entertained, by this new scene passing in front of her. Someone was making a fool of herself, and, for the first time tonight, it wasn’t Zora. A window someplace down the street was thrown up.

  ‘Keep the goddamn noise down! It’s the middle of the goddamn night! ’

  The clapboard houses, prim and shuttered, silently seemed to support the departure of the street’s noisy visitors.

  ‘Vee, baby, go back in the house. I’ll be in in a minute,’ said Carl and tenderly wiped some tears from Victoria’s face with his hand. Zora abandoned her curiosity. She felt the fury double inside her. She didn’t stop to consider the meaning of what had just passed, and so did not follow Jerome as his mind wandered down a formerly concealed path to a dark destination: the truth. Jerome put his hand against the soggy trunk of a tree, and this alone kept him upright. Victoria rang the bell to get back in the house. For a moment Jerome met her eye with all that he felt: disappointment because he had loved her; grief because she had betrayed him.

  ‘Can you keep it down out here?’ requested a kid at the door and let a distraught, broken Victoria back into the house.

  ‘I think that’s enough now,’ said Jerome firmly to Carl. ‘I’m going to take Zoor home. You’ve upset her enough as it is.’

  Of all the things he had been accused of so far, this reasonably voiced charge struck Carl as the most unfair. ‘This was not me, man,’ said Carl adamantly, shaking his head. ‘I did not do this. Damn!’ He kicked a step hard. ‘You people don’t behave like human beings, man – I ain’t never seen people behave like you people. You don’t tell the truth, you deceive people. You all act so superior, but you’re not telling the truth! You don’t even know a thing about your own father, man. My daddy’s a worthless piece of shit too, but at least I know he’s a worthless piece of shit. I feel sorry for you – you know that? I really do.’

  Zora wiped her nose and cut her eyes at Carl imperiously. ‘Carl, please don’t talk about our father. We know about our father. You go to Wellington for a few months, you hear a little gossip and you think you know what’s going on? You think you’re a Wellingtonian because they let you file a few records? You don’t know a thing about what it takes to belong here. And you haven’t got the first idea about our family or our life, OK? Remember that.’

  ‘Zoor, please don’t –’ cautioned Jerome, but Zora took a step forward and felt a pool of water seep into her toeless shoes. She bent down and removed her heels.

  ‘I ain’t even talking about that,’ whispered Carl.

  Everywhere around them in the darkness the trees dripped. In the main road, far off from this one, the splatter and screech of wheels speeding through puddles.

  ‘Well, what are you talking about?’ said Zora, using her shoes to gesticulate. ‘You’re pathetic. Leave me alone.’

  ‘I’m just saying,’ said Carl darkly, ‘you think everybody you know is so pure, so perfect – man, you don’t know anything about these Wellington people. You don’t know how they do.’

  ‘That’s enough,’ insisted Jerome. ‘You can see the state she’s in, man. Have a little pity. She doesn’t need this. Please, Zoor, let’s go find the car.’

  But Zora wasn’t finished yet. ‘I know that the men I know are grown-ups. They’re intellectuals – not children. They don’t act like hound-dog teenagers every time some cute piece of ass comes shimmying up to them.’

  ‘Zora,’ said Jerome, his voice cracking, for the thought of his father and Victor
ia had begun to overwhelm him. There was a very real possibility that he was going to be sick here in the street. ‘Please! Let’s just get in the car! I can’t do this! I need to be home.’

  ‘You know what? I’ve tried being patient with you,’ said Carl, lowering his voice. ‘You need to hear some truth. All of you people, you intellectuals . . . OK, how about Monty Kipps? Victoria’s pop? You know him? OK. He been screwing Chantelle Williams – she lives in my street, she told me about it. His kids don’t know a thing about it. That girl you just made cry? She don’t know a thing about it. And everybody thinks he a saint. And now he wants Chantelle out of the class, for why? Cover his ass. And it’s me that gotta know that – I don’t want to know any of this shit. I’m just trying to get a stage higher with my life.’ Carl laughed bitterly. ‘But that’s a joke around here, man. People like me are just toys to people like you . . . I’m just some experiment for you to play with. You people aren’t even black any more, man – I don’t know what you are. You think you’re too good for your own people. You got your college degrees, but you don’t even live right. You people are all the same,’ said Carl, looking down, addressing his words to his own shoes, ‘I need to be with my people, man – I can’t do this no more.’

  ‘Well,’ said Zora, who had stopped listening to Carl’s speech halfway through, ‘that’s basically what I’d expect from somebody like Kipps. Like father like daughter. So is that your level? Is that your model? I hope you have a nice life, Carl.’

  It had started to rain properly, but at least Zora had won the argument, for Carl now gave up. With his head hanging, he walked slowly back up the steps. Zora wasn’t sure at first if she was hearing correctly, but when he spoke again, she was gratified to find she was right. Carl was crying.

  ‘You so sure of yourself, you so superior,’ she heard him splutter as he rang the doorbell. ‘All you people. I don’t know why I even got myself caught up with any of you, it can’t come to no good anyway.’

  Zora, splashing along in her bare feet, heard the thud of Carl slamming the door.

  ‘Idiot,’ she muttered, and hooked her arm around her brother as they walked away.