Zora and Nicky: A Novel in Black and White (11 page)

Then she really gets silly, jumping up and down. “You got to
activate
that
Word. Like that stinky pink stuff you put in a perm. Pour it in yo’ mouth.
Let it burn up yo’ doubt and negativity. Activate that Word and enjoy the soft
curls of salvation. Halleluuuuuuuu-yah!”

We both crack up, and she sits down next to me. “Did you really walk
out on him?”

“Without my car or my purse. He said everything I have is his. And he’s
right.”

“Heifer, you better call him and apologize.”

“I don’t know if I want to do that.”

“Oh. Okay, you trippin’.”

“I’m serious, Mac. I’m tired of being chained to his pockets.”

For a moment she’s quiet. “You don’t know what you sayin’, girl.”

“I do know.”

“No, you don’t know. See, you ain’t had no hungry days in yo’ life,
princess. You ain’t had to worry about where you gon’ stay, cause yo’ mama
done left with some niggah and you don’t know where she is.”

“Don’t use that word, Mac.”

“Look, just cuz you got you a white boy don’t mean you ain’t down no
more.”

“I’ve never liked that word, no matter
who
is using it, and I don’t have a
white boy.”

“We got a
right
to use it. Take that junk back and turn it on them. Make
it something other than what they said we was.”

“Is that what you just did? Because it didn’t sound like you used it as a
term of endearment just now.”

“I ain’t trying to argue the merits of the ‘n’ word right now, Zora. I’m just
saying. It’s a blessing to have the help you have. If you didn’t have yo’ rich-as-
sin daddy, you wouldn’t have been able to help me out.”

“You’re on your way to Parsons, Mac. This weekend. That little piece of
change I squirreled away here and there for you. That was nothing.”

“Girl, you trippin’. You had my back all my life. I wouldn’t know there
was a Parsons School of Design in this world without you.”

“You would have figured it out, Mac.”

“That ain’t likely. So you really left him the Lexus? When you gon’ call
and be like a Hallmark card commercial?” She sniffles with all the melodrama
of a silent movie queen, though I doubt Mac has had a conscious moment of
silence since she emerged from the womb. “Daddy, I’m so sorry.”

She pretends to be my daddy. “Baby.” Then she mimics me, again with
wonderful funny gestures of flinging herself toward an invisible father.
“Daddy.” Then an exaggerated him toward me. “Baby.”

She gets serious on me. “You got a perfect life, Zora. You don’t go walking
away from all those blessings just ’cause you mad.”

“I know. I mean, I don’t know. It’s not like I meant to disrespect him. It’s
just …”

“What?”

“I want to paint.”

“Did he say you can’t paint?”

“He thinks it’s a hobby. So does Miles.”

“Welcome to being a woman. Listen, you gotta deal, girl. Painting ain’t
nothin’ compared to the security you got. Paint, Zora. Paint without permission,
even if you don’t go to Parsons with me. But don’t lose your support system.
You are a black woman. You at the bottom of the pile, baby. I know they say the
black man is at the bottom, but who be the ones stuck with the babies when
Raheem an’ ’em gone on to pursue they rap career? You know how hard it was
for me to get all this together to go to school. You know more than anybody.
Call yo’ daddy and tell him to bring Lexi back. Then again, wait a few days so
Halle Berry’s boyfriend can give you rides again. What’s his name?”

“Nicky. As in Nicholas Parker, son of Reverend Nicholas Parker.”

“The abortion guy?”

“You guessed it.”

Her face collapses in disappointment. “Dang.”

CHAPTER SIX

NICKY

Can’t sleep. It’s three o’clock in the morning.

I keep thinking about how I drove all the way to Ypsi just because Dad
thinks if I don’t darken the doorway of his church every time he opens the
door, the wrath of God will descend upon me. Or maybe he thinks I’ll change
my mind and not let him turn me into Nicholas Parker, which is who I am
and who I’m not at the same time.

My family never calls me Nicky. Well, they did, but stopped when I was
twelve. I like being called Nicky. They say it sounds childish. That’s what I
like about it. It reminds me of my best days. Days when we went to Lake
Superior in the summers. Days of picnics and cookouts and the promise
that everything good would stretch out before you like grains of sand. Like
Abraham’s promised sons, so good, so numerous you can’t even count ’em.
This was before my first kiss and first sexual encounter. Before I was a grown
man with a bachelor’s degree and a head full of poems flitting around like
blinking fireflies too free to place in a glass jar. Before I started pushing freakin’
potato chips into machines.

I want to sleep here in the silent darkness of my room, but I keep thinking
about Zora. All kinds of crap. About when I met her and it
was
me being
unnecessarily rude, trashing her because she voted for my dad. But I didn’t
like it when I felt she tore into me for no reason.

Who am I kidding? I don’t attack my father’s supporters. I lit into her
because she stunned me. Because I
felt
something when I looked at her, and
it scared me. Linda was right. In
two
minutes
she got more out of me than
Rebecca has in the six months I’ve dated her.

Whether or not I want to admit it, I knew then if I gave in just a little
bit to the feelings she stirred in me, my life would change. The conversation
with Pete will be the first of many talks like that, and all of the ugliness of the
people around me—all the ugliness in
me
—will come to light, just like it’s
doing tonight.

Some things are better left in the dark.

Not only is she in my thoughts, my body burns for her like it’s taken to
heart everything Pete said, and I hate that about myself.

I’ll never be able to take her home. So I think maybe I should let myself
imagine bedding her. Relieve myself of that particular pressure, and be done
with it.

This is craziness. I pick up the phone and call Richard from our Bible
study. He’s a friend of Bill—he knows what it’s like to have a temptation
and need somebody to talk it out with. Richard, a writer, used to be an AA
sponsor before he started drinking again. He always said he wasn’t afraid of a
call in the middle of the night.

I read his book when I started the Bible study. It’s called
Good News for
Rascals, Rebels, and Whores
. I had to laugh at the title because I’m certainly a
rascal. Come to think of it, I’m a rebel and a whore, too. Richard’s book is one
long, clear grace note to the imperfect, and I can hear its sweet and mellow
tone through the noisy discord inside of me. And I’m still trying to process
what he’s written.

Dialing with a little fear and trembling, I feel ridiculous calling him up
to say I want her so much I could burst. Literally. But who else am I going to
talk to about this? Linda? Or Pete?

He answers after three rings. Wasn’t even asleep. Richard’s got the coarse
voice of a man who smokes too much and drinks even more, but the colossal
mess loves Jesus more than anybody I know.

“Rich.” God knows I feel like I want to cry just to think I can unburden
myself.

“Nicky?”

“Yeah, it’s me, man. I needed to make that middle-of-the-night call.”

“You want to drink?”

“No, I want to masturbate.”

I’m glad he can’t see my face, but he has to hear the shame. It plays like
white noise when the TV set stops broadcasting and no voices are left to
drown out the pain. “I’m sorry. I’m so embarrassed, but I need to talk about
this to somebody.”

“If it makes you feel any better, you know a lot more about me than I
know about you. My books lay my life out for the world to see. Everybody
knows my crap that bothers to read ’em. If you tell me some of yours we’ll
balance the scales of the universe.”

I take a deep breath and decide to plunge deeper into the scary waters
of honesty and confessing our faults one to another. Man, I miss AA
meetings sometimes. Richard has been the next best thing. He doesn’t go
anymore because he feels guilty he’s still drinking, but I’m so grateful for his
conversation. I need this. I miss it.

But this isn’t about taking a drink.

“Remember the new girl that came to Bible study yesterday? Zora?”

“I remember her.” There’s a smirk in his voice.

“What?” I say, heat rising to my face.

“Nothing. I’m waiting for you.”

“You’re laughing at me.”

“No. I was laughing at you at Bible study. I’m just listening now, my
friend.”

“Richard!”

“Oh, come on, Nicky. That was the funniest thing I’ve seen in ages. You
should have seen how flustered you were around her. Let an old man have
some laughs.”

“Glad I could help. I saw her tonight.”

“I hope it went better than last night for you.”

“It did. I didn’t end up tearing out of the parking lot doing ninety.”

“So what happened?”

“I don’t even know, Rich. That’s the thing. We just seem to clash.”

Richard hacks a cough into the phone. I wait until he’s done. “My friend
Pete was with me, and he gets all jungle feverish when he meets her.”

“Jungle feverish?”

“Yeah. It’s that movie by Spike Lee. It’s about a black guy that has an
affair with this white woman. Jungle fever is supposed to be that thing where
white people think black people … well, you know.”

“I’m not sure I do, Nicky. Tell me.”

“Oh, come on, Richard. You know.”

“Do I?”

“You’re doing this on purpose.”

“I just want to know what white people think. What’s jungle fever?”

“It’s when white people think black people are, you know, kinda wild in
bed.”

He’s quiet for a moment.

I’m glad he can’t see how embarrassed I am. I can’t imagine what he’s
thinking. “Rich? Have you seen that movie?”

“Yes, I have, Nicky.”

“You suck, Richard. Why did you make me tell you all that?”

“I’m just listening, son. Why don’t you tell me what you’re feeling?”

“Pete really ticked me off. And he wasn’t even subtle.”

“Go on.”

“And then I thought about what a racist jerk I’ve been because I wasn’t a
stranger to that thought.”

“So you get home, and then what?”

“And I can’t stop thinking about her. Now, could you tell me how I can
get her royal highness out of my head?”

“Are you sure that’s what you want?”

“I have a girlfriend.”

“Are you sure that’s what you want?”

“She probably has a boyfriend, too.”

“Are you sure that’s what you want?”

I resist the urge to throw the phone across the room. “Uh, Richard. I’m
sensing a theme here. What’s your point?”

“What’s yours, Nicky?”

“I already told you.”

“I’m not so sure you did.”

I’m frustrated now. I didn’t call to talk in circles. That’s what I get for
inviting the geriatric crowd into my life.

“I think there’s a lot going on here, Nicky. But we’ll get to that. Let’s go,
first things first.”

“Okay.”

“What if I told you I thought she was pretty hot too?”

“Richard, are you some kind of pervert?”

“Yes, but that’s beside the point. I’m getting to something here. We all
feel, Nicky. I see a good-looking woman, I might think for a moment, ‘I sure
would like some of
that
.’ It’s a thought. It passes. We all get tempted. You.
Me. Even Christ was tempted.”

“I’m not Christ.”

“You’re jumping ahead, Nicky. Stay with me.”

He waits for me to interrupt, and when I don’t, he continues. “It’s not a
sin to be tempted.”

“Feels like it is.”

“That’s a trick of the Enemy of your soul, son. Look at the Christ’s
temptation. You don’t see Him with His tunic in a knot because He was
tempted. No, He dealt with the temptation, each one, until it passed.”

“Again, I’m not Christ.”

“Then why didn’t you just do it instead of calling me?”

I don’t say anything.

“Nicky, I think you called me because you want me to remind you that
you don’t
really
want to sin.”

I don’t say anything.

“And perhaps you want me to remind you that it’s okay you’re feeling
something that maybe you aren’t ready for because that beautiful girl walked
into the Bible study, and you’re so attracted to her you don’t know what to
do with yourself.”

“Was I that obvious?”

“Nicky, Billie, Linda and I, we’re all a lot older than you. We’ve been through
life. Billie and I have had particularly hard lives. Kid, it was pretty obvious.”

“Man, I’m so freakin’ embarrassed. Do you think Zora noticed?”

“Probably, but you’re a good-lookin’ kid. She didn’t miss that. But she
only had eyes for Jesus last night.”

My heart pounds when he says she noticed me. I feel like a kid all right—a
desperate, very excited one. “You think she finds me attractive?”

“Yeah, Nicky, but before you go all Romeo on me, remember you’re a
rascal, and we both know it. So we’re going to do whatever it takes to keep
both of you safe.”