Zora and Nicky: A Novel in Black and White (34 page)

She’s right. “Okay, I want to talk about it.”

“So talk.”

“How do you know if you’re falling in love?”

“Tell me how you’re feeling.”

“When I think of Nicky, I feel like I’m standing in some wide open place,
and I’ve been living inside a mason jar. I feel like breathing, and dancing, and
singing, and stretching. I feel like doing and being
everything
, all at once. And
that’s what his kiss felt like. I wanted to just breathe him in. Take him into
myself like sometimes in church I want to take God into myself. It made me
feel all those things. Does that sound awful?”

She literally screams. “That’s awesome!”

“I just met him.”

“Just because you’re feeling a lot right now doesn’t mean you have to rush.
For some people, there really is love at first sight, and then they grow into
loving one another with a mature love that’s very different from what you’re
describing, but it’s still really nice, baby.”

“I’m so scared. He wasn’t supposed to be white. Shoot. He was
supposed
to be Miles.”

“But he isn’t. What are ya gonna do?” She shrugs even as she drives.

“I think Linda is right. I don’t even have a job. I don’t know where I’m
going to be living after three weeks if they put an eviction notice on my door.”

“When was the last time you paid your rent, baby?”

“First of this month.”

“You won’t be on the street any time soon. But I hear ya. We’re gonna
work on the job thing. But right now, you’re in love with a white guy. Are you
gonna let yourself feel that?”

“His grandfather called me a nigger to my face, like I was nothing. Like I
didn’t have a feeling worth sparing. And this wasn’t somebody hurling insults
at me from a mob. I was an invited guest at the dinner table.”

“Nicky stood up for you.”

“But how long will that last? Nicky is a black sheep that wants to be the
favored sheep. You think he’s going to keep bringing me to dinner?”

“Have dinner with other people.”

“I will. My own people.”

“Zora, I know how you feel.”

“How, Billie?”

“That guy John I told you about? His parents hated me. Of course they
didn’t call me that awful thing Nicky’s grandfather called you. They called me
a white-trash whore. To my face. They didn’t think their beautiful Princeton-
educated son should have fallen in love with a hooker who would never
amount to anything.”

I looked at her. She kept her eyes on the road. She cussed. Then said she
was sorry. “I agreed with ’em. John was a dreamboat. I could think of four or
five women from his church—good, educated, hot-looking women who his
parents would love—and I set about trying to get that going, girl.”

“No way.”

“I loved him. And I wanted him to be happy. More happy than he’d be
with a whore.”

“Former whore.”

“To some people, if you were once a whore, you’ll always be one. I knew
I’d never make the cut with them, and he loved his parents. I didn’t want him
to give them up for me, so I let him go.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah,” she says sarcastically. “Wow.”

“So what ended up happening?”

“He became a priest.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“How did his parents feel about that?”

“Hated it.”

We both crack up. It was the
way
she said it. Billie is hilarious.

“Girl, you made that poor man turn into a priest, and he still didn’t get
his parents’ approval. You might as well have married him.”

She gives me a wicked grin.

“What’s that smile about?”

“Anyway,” she says, ignoring my question, “I know what it feels like to be
despised by the parents. At least you have no control over your skin color. I
felt like my life was all my fault, whether or not it actually was.”

Time seems to fly by as Billie and I talk about everything. We whiz down
96 until we hit the downtown area. Finally, we pull up to a lovely old Arts and
Crafts house somewhere near Grand Circus Park.

“Welcome to the Beloved Community,” she says.

“It’s smaller than I thought.”

She shakes her head and laughs. “Well, this is just one house of many
that’s part of our community. This is a kinda modified House of Hospitality.
You familiar with those?”

“Not really.”

“It’s a Catholic Worker thing.” She thinks about it. “No, really, it’s a Jesus
thing. We wanted to offer hospitality to the stranger. Remember how Jesus
said in Matthew 25:35, ‘I was a stranger, and ye took me in’?”

“Yes. So, you help who? Poor or homeless people?”

“Not always. In our community, a stranger is a person who, for whatever
reason, is disconnected from love. Sure, if you don’t have a place to lay your
head you’re certainly most likely disconnected from love, but people who
seem to have everything can be ‘the stranger.’ You can have the best designer
clothes and drive a fancy car and live in the biggest mansion but feel like
nobody is listening to you. Or you can be just lonely for some reason you
don’t even know. We give meals and clothes, a place to sleep, and a little hand
up. We even give a handout or two. But sometimes a cup of coffee and a bowl
of soup with somebody to listen to your story is what people need most. And
we give them that.”

God knows I need that. If that’s the criteria for being a stranger—being
disconnected from love—I’ve never been more strange in my life.

Billie keeps talking. “Sometimes, a girl just doesn’t want to sleep on the
darned floor again and look at those blue walls, no matter how pretty the blue
is. And she doesn’t want to sleep on the air mattress her boyfriend bought
for makin’ whoopee. We’d like to make her feel welcome too.” She shakes
her head. “Makin’ whoppee! I’m showing my age now, baby.” She chuckles,
but I don’t get it. “Anyway, some of our houses are more for the homeless.
We welcome the stranger, but some strangers are stranger than others. Even
with hospitality there are issues. Sometimes it just gets darned—” I can tell
she really wants to cuss. “It gets darned hard, Zora. Hosts get tired. Guests
get crazy. We try to be Jesus to them, but we’re not. God knows I’m not
my husband. I’m always ready to give a smackdown. I have to apologize to
somebody every day. But I love this life. It’s the hardest grace to come by, and
I love it.”

We get out of the van and walk up to the house. Before we even get on
the porch the door opens and Billie runs into the arms of a man and gives him
a fierce kiss. The kind I gave Nicky.

He’s a black man. A good one. Tall. And fine. Brotha is into her like he’s
gotta serious love jones, and when I see them together it feels like someone
takes a pair of vice grips to my heart and tightens it. And not because I’m
lonely.

Billie’s husband is black! She didn’t let on one bit after all our talk about
what’s happening to me.

Few things rankle me like brothas passing over sistahs for the prize of
a white woman. And for a moment, I think about all the
worthy
, beautiful,
intelligent sistahs I know who couldn’t get a date with a good black man if
they paid for one, and this former hooker—

Oh, this isn’t feeling good inside of me. Didn’t we just have this
conversation? And despite me kissing very blond and white Nicky Parker this
very day and loving it, I feel angry that Billie has herself a brotha.

She practically purrs at him.

“I was bad today,” she says to her husband.

“What did you do, Ma?”

Ouch. He called her Ma in that sweet way the brothas do.

“I was mean to Zora’s boyfriend. He was trying his game on her. And I
called him on it.”

He pulls her into a hug. “Baby, you can’t judge people.”

I can’t judge people either, but I am. I am!

“I know,” she says. “I’ll apologize. But he bought her an
air
mattress
and
some prophylactics! You know I couldn’t let that go.”

Her husband shakes his head. “Air mattress. Lord, have mercy.” He kisses
her again. “Now stop smooching and let me meet Zora.”

He finally disengages himself from Billie long enough to come up to me.
I try to hide my disappointment, but it’s all over me like God’s handwriting
on the wall. “Hello,” I say, but it sounds cold, though I don’t mean it to. Billie
notices, and her own crestfallen gaze finds mine. She’s so tough. Such a broad.
I wait for her rebuke, but she doesn’t say anything hard to me.

She takes me by the hand, and it nearly kills me. “This is my new friend,
Zora, who I’ve already told you everything I know about. And as you can see
she’s as fabulous as I said. And Zora …” She looks at him with such love and
admiration. “This is my husband, Father John Jordan, priest, husband, father,
and former condom-and-sandwich guy.”

I utter a feeble, “I thought priests were celibate.”

“With a woman like Billie? I’d have changed religions.”

She howls in laughter, like she’s never heard that joke, although she’s
probably heard him say it a million times before.

“I’m an Orthodox priest. As in Eastern Orthodox. We’re allowed to
marry.”

“Billie’s told me all about you. In a very sneaky way. You two have quite
a story.”

“So do you, I hear. Now come on in the house. Let us show you
around.”

I step into the house, and everything is simple. The furniture is simple. It’s
just the kind of place that invites you to come on in and sit a spell. Nothing
is too nice or too shabby.

Billie quips, “It ain’t much, is it?”

“I kinda like it,” I say.

“We’ve just got beige walls, but I long for color. I think color is soul
feeding, but John is afraid to let me paint.”

“I can’t imagine why,” I say, and the three of us crack up.

John rubs Billie’s arm. “I let her paint once, and we ended up with a Day-
Glo pink family room.”