Zora and Nicky: A Novel in Black and White Read Online Free Page B

environmentalist.
    Cut it out. She doesn’t deserve that.
    She reaches for my hand. I let her take it. I never let things go further than this, except in my thoughts. I wonder if I should just kiss her. Just surrender to this life. I don’t even know what I’m holding out for. Kiss her. Fall in love. Go to seminary. Be the good son. You can do it, Nicky. That’s why you’re back home.
    You’re not a writer.
    Ouch. It kills me to think it.
    Rebecca must see me wince. “You sure you’re okay?”
    I don’t even speak. I just nod.
    “Why don’t we go back in? It’s almost time for communion.”
    “I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
    I see her out of the truck like the good boyfriend, even though I suck to high heaven. Oh, what I wouldn’t give to be Anglican today. I’ve been sober since I left Cali, even though I don’t go to meetings. My dad would be appalled if he thought I went to Alcoholics Anonymous. But dear God, if we served real wine instead of grape juice, I’d take the leftovers out of those tiny plastic cups and tie one on today. Then seek out the rest, served up straight from the bottle.
    Jesus, help me. Help me.

CHAPTER TWO
    ZORA
     
    I’m at a strange white woman’s Bible study. Linda welcomes me into her cramped apartment, and I see books instead of walls. The volumes, dust, and stale air conjure the spirit of my girlhood like a roots woman casting spells, and for a moment, I imagine I’m sitting on the floor of a used bookstore, twelve years old, some treasured tome in hand. Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye or Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God . A buck fifty taking me on a voyage where I travel by words instead of planes and trains, boats and automobiles. The thought of that comforts me now.
    ’Cause sistah girl don’t feel no other comfort in this place. I walk toward the sectional sofa where the others wait, and I’m feeling fragile as glass and just as transparent. I think the four of them can see inside of me; they can look right through me at the disheveled room inside my head, books stewn all over the floor and debris piled up, now invisible to me since I’ve let it go for so long.
    Their smiles welcome me, greetings to the new girl. The black girl. I wonder when it will begin. When will they thrill and inspire me with their insipid stories about the one black person they know? When will they ask me, subtly or not, if my long hair is a weave? When will they tell me how pretty they think I am without saying “for a black person,” even though we both know that’s what they mean?
    I grin wide at them like I own the whole world, conscious of keeping my back straight—invisible book, something big, maybe the collected poems of Langston Hughes, balanced precariously on my head. I shake hands with a firm, decisive grip.
    “I’m Zora,” I shoot at them. I make an effort to remember their names. I think of Mama and Daddy telling me I have to work twice as hard and twice as long to get an equal measure of success among them. I wonder what I’ll have to bone up on to prove myself when all I want to do is listen, soak it all in, and maybe add something to my heavenly bank account with the zero balance.
    They are an odd lot, this group. Young and older.
    Older man, Richard, maybe in his late sixties. White hair, and a shock of it, sticking straight up. He is frail, but his big blue eyes teem with a delightful mix of wisdom and mischief. Baby-blue button-down shirt with a few buttons open. Crazy throwback windowpane pants. He wears a crucifix attached to a leather cord like somebody hip loves him. He reeks of cigarette smoke. Richard caresses a well-worn, obviously loved black leather Bible.
    I wish I had a Bible that looked like that.
    White boy so pretty he can pull off having a girl’s name. He must make his parents proud. Nicky. Heaven help me, he’s hot as fire . Blue eyes that make me think of sweet raspberry popsicles and September birthstones, and that subtle