Zora and Nicky: A Novel in Black and White by Burney Claudia Mair

Author:Burney, Claudia Mair [Burney, Claudia Mair]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Religious Fiction
ISBN: 9781434765703
Publisher: David C Cook
Published: 2008-03-31T23:00:00+00:00

NICKY

You’d think I’d have remembered Jocko in the yard, wouldn’t you? I’d even read Flannery O’Connor’s The Artificial Nigger in college. But no. I didn’t even think about it until, to my horror, there he was, smiling at Zora with those big red lips. I wanted to drive far, far away, but I couldn’t.

You know, I never think about these kinds of things. I never think about Aunt Jemima or Uncle Ben or the myth of the black whore or the BET video girls, pimps, hos, and the hundreds of negative images that must assault Zora every day. No wonder she’s so freakin’ sensitive. I see a hillbilly image and I laugh, but I don’t think about hillbillies again unless I see Jeff Foxworthy on TV or something, and there are a million positive images to reinforce that I’m good and right and beautiful. Zora didn’t laugh at the lawn jockey. And it’s not funny. I see why she says it’s hard for her to turn it off, and the lawn jockey is just one thing—that I’ve noticed, that is.

I remember when I first saw her, and how I mused about how I’d have to marry her, and then I dismissed the idea when I couldn’t figure out why black people pronounce chitterlings the wrong way. And who’s to say the way they say it is wrong? I said to myself then that it’s too complicated. I’ve known her for almost a week and already I don’t see the world in the same way. And the complications haven’t even begun. But they’re about to. I don’t doubt that at all.

I open the door, and we’re in white people’s paradise. There’s a flag in the corner and a gun rack and early American furniture, and I’m embarrassed it’s so freakin’ white.

“This is a lovely old house,” Zora says.

“Ummm.”

“You grew up here?”

“Um hmmm.”

“I’ll bet there are all kinds of nooks and crannies you played in.”

“I could tell you stories.”

She looks at me with those brown doe eyes. “I’d like that.” And it looks like she means it when she says it. “Show me your room when you were a kid.”

“It’s my mother’s sewing room now.”

“Please.”

This woman absolutely delights me. I can’t deny her anything she asks. And much of what she doesn’t. My folks aren’t here yet and neither is Rebecca, so I take her upstairs and show her what used to be my bedroom. I can’t stop talking.

“Everything is different now. The whole house is different. Back then this was just a crappy, drafty old house. We had this awful wallpaper.” I laugh, remembering it. “It had these big, horrible flowers. Like huge cabbage roses.”

I wonder if she can see cabbage roses where hunter green walls are now. Then we walk down the beige hallway. “This had bad wallpaper, too. More awful flowers from, like, the thirties or forties.”

Zora laughs. We reach my mother’s sewing room, a shrine to Martha Stewart Living. It’s all white, glass jars, buttons, and notions.

“This is it.

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