Zora and Langston: A Story of Friendship and Betrayal by Yuval Taylor

Author:Yuval Taylor [Taylor, Yuval]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2019-03-26T04:00:00+00:00

8

SPRING 1930

The Bone of Contention

Charlotte Mason had orchestrated it all. Upon Zora’s return to New York in March (she had been in the Bahamas for the last two months, writing an article entitled “Dance Songs and Tales from the Bahamas”), Godmother had summoned her to come to her Park Avenue apartment, where she asked Zora to tell the stories, sing the songs, do the dances, and show the film footage she’d gathered in the South.

We can imagine the performance. There are recordings from a few years later of Zora singing the songs she collected in a beautiful contralto; her distinctive voice radiates joy. There are three photographs of her doing the crow dance in 1935, and she looks lithe and nimble. The footage she filmed in the South survives. One sequence shows a boy performing a dance with cartwheels and splits surrounded by clapping children, next pans the faces of these children, going around the circle, and then focuses on their stomping feet.

Following this performance, and echoing the logic she’d used with Langston, Mason informed Zora about her new digs. The two writers would share Louise Thompson as a secretary; Mason had even briefed Louise on what to expect: “She used to talk about Zora,” Louise later said, “about this wonderful child of nature who was so unspoiled, and what a marvellous person she was. And Zora did not disappoint me. She was a grand storyteller.” The moment the two women first met “was quite a moment. Here came in this ‘professor,’ a woman full of energy and vitality and laughter and stories. And I just thought she was wonderful, as Mrs. Mason had said.”

Naturally, Zora and Langston were overjoyed to be together again. They talked nonstop and, faced with Zora’s task of editing down her piles of folklore, Langston gladly pitched in. Louise started typing for Zora too, often spending half the night preparing the folktale manuscript for Godmother, occasionally spending the entire night in Zora’s room, typing until her arm hurt from throwing the typewriter’s carriage so often.

“How do you like that one?” Zora would ask Louise about one of her folktales. “Fine,” Louise would answer. “I made that one up,” Zora would inform her. Mason would send Zora exotic dresses to wear and Zora would call her to tell her how stunning they looked. After hanging up she would tell Louise, laughingly, that she wouldn’t dream of wearing such a thing. One day Zora telephoned Godmother and said, “Godmother, were you at the window sending me signs at 5:00 a.m.? I got the vibrations.” Of course, Zora had been in bed asleep at the time, for she would habitually stay up half the night telling hoodoo stories.

And one night, while they were both in the only bed in Zora’s room, Zora asked Louise if she was interested in homosexuality. Louise didn’t sleep the entire night.

Is it possible that Zora fell in love with Louise during those long days and nights working, talking, and sleeping together? The outsize

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