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

on your own. And your mother, your brothers, your sister, none of them can help you, or I cut them off. Do you understand?”
    “Mama came by last night. We talked.”
    “Then you should have apologized.”
    I want to say, “I didn’t do anything,” but I can’t seem to get the words out of me.
    My heart thunders inside me. I hope he can’t see through my baggy pajama pants how my legs are trembling. I didn’t know it was possible to feel so angry. I want to tell him to take his stuff, and then tell him what to do with it, but I can’t bring myself to do that any more than I can apologize for wanting to own my own life.
    I don’t understand. All I wanted to do was finish the newsletter. Skip dinner. Dress in jeans and a sweatshirt.
    Maybe this is my answer. Maybe this is Jesus’ capsule course on poverty. The thought of that takes a bit of the sting away.
    Daddy’s rage is so completely controlled it startles me how casual he sounds. “I’ve got some of the men from church and a moving truck with me. I’m here to get all my things since you don’t want to honor your father. You can keep what’s on your back.”
    The words confuse me, as if he’d spoken in Swahili. I can keep what’s on my back?
    He holds his hand out. “Give me your jewelry, including your promise ring.”
    This is another language. I was to give my daddy this ring back after I gave my husband my virginity. This is the ring I put on in tears, promising my daddy I would not as much as kiss a young man until I was on the altar letting my daddy pronounce me my husband’s wife. This ring kept me through high school. It kept me in college when I was away from home, aching and throbbing with need and loneliness. I would tell myself those nights I fought alone against my own body, fingering that band of gold on my finger, “I promised. True love waits.” And I meant that.
    I don’t understand this.
    But I take off my promise ring. I put it back in his hand the same way I put it on my finger, with tears in my eyes. I guess promises are made to be broken, just like the world and all those fast heifers at school said.
    I give him my gold hoops. I take the cross off my neck and give it to him. It’s like an out of body experience. Suddenly I’m not inside of me anymore. I’m watching myself put my treasures, my maid’s ornaments, into his hand. And it’s strange and surreal, as if I’m a ghost, something dead, watching what used to be me going through the motions.
    He storms past me and knocks me so hard that I fall to the ground. He doesn’t even look back.
    I’m glad the lease is in my name. At least he can’t take the apartment.
    Two of the guys I go to church with walk in to help my father strip me of my dignity. They refuse to look at me. I grew up with them. Mike Gregory and Timothy Jones. I used to have a crush on Tim. They work with solemn efficiency, and for a man who hardly gets his holy hands dirty anymore, The Bishop throws himself wholeheartedly into this project.
    Everything they walk out the door with cuts like a slash across my back.
    No, this is different. He’s not treating me like he was treated. This is just stuff. This is not a beating. These are not stripes across my back like the lashes he got.
    They take everything that Mac hasn’t packed for her move. They take all the furniture. The art. My easel and paints and brushes from the deep recesses of my now empty closets. They take my toothbrush! Everything they think belongs to me, until nothing remains but Mac’s boxed-up belongings.
    MacKenzie, for all her talk, is at least her own woman. Her things are hers. She doesn’t even have credit card debt. Nobody can repossess her life.
    I’m amazed at how quickly my life disappears. Nothing left but the pajamas on my body, some papers, business cards, and a handmade card in calligraphy that dropped out of the spring purse Tim emptied when he was taking my makeup.
    I WALK IN and out of MacKenzie’s room. She’s