Zami by Audre Lorde

Author:Audre Lorde
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780241351093
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2018-05-22T16:00:00+00:00

We left the car and climbed to the top of the hill. The air was chill as we sat on the stumps to catch our breaths.

‘Cold?’

‘No,’ I said, pulling my ragged suede jacket, inherited from CeCe, around me.

‘You ought to get a warm coat or something, winters around here ain’t like in New York.’

‘I’ve got a coat, I just don’t like to wear it, that’s all.’

Ginger cut her eyes at me. ‘Yeah, I know. Who you think you kidding? If it’s money, I can lend you some till Christmas.’ She knew about the two-hundred-dollar phone bill The Branded had run up that summer at Spring Street, which I was now paying off.

‘Hey, thanks, but I don’t need a coat.’

Ginger was walking back and forth now, puffing nervously on her Lucky Strike. I sat looking up at her. What was going on, and what was Ginger wanting me to say? I didn’t want a coat, because I didn’t mind the cold.

‘You really think you’re slick, huh?’ Ginger turned to face me, regarding me with a slight smile and narrowed eyes, head up and to one side like a pigeon. Her voice was high and nervous.

‘You always say that, Ginger, and I keep telling you it’s not true. What are you talking about?’

‘Slick kitty from the city. Well, kiddo, you don’t have to keep your mouth shut around me, because I know all about you and your friends.’

What was it that Ginger had discovered or invented in her own mind about me that I would now have to pretend to fulfill? Like the time I promptly downed two straight vodkas to fulfill her image of me as a hard-drinking New York Village girl.

‘About me and my friends?’ I was starting to get the drift of her conversation, and beginning to get acutely uncomfortable. Ginger butted her cigarette, took a deep breath, and moved a few steps closer.

‘Look, it’s no big thing.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Are you gay or aren’t you?’ She took another deep breath.

I smiled up at her and said nothing. I certainly couldn’t say I don’t know. Actually, I was at a loss as to what to say. I could not bring myself to deny what I had just this past summer decided to embrace; besides, to say no would be to admit being one of the squares. Yet, to say yes might commit me to proving it, like with the vodka. And Ginger was a woman of the world, not one of my high school girl friends with whom kissing and cuddling and fantasizing sufficed. And I had never made love to a woman before. Ginger, of course, had made up her mind that I was a woman of the world and knew ‘everything’, having made love to all the women about whom I talked with such intensity.

I stood up, feeling the need to have our eyes on a level.

‘C’mon, now, you can’t just not say anything, girl. Are you or aren’t you?’ Ginger’s voice was pleading as well as impatient.

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