Zora and Me Read online

  The butterfly danced in the air out of Zora’s yard and down the road. It led us about a quarter mile before it decided to take us into the woods.

  It was around four in the afternoon. The sky wasn’t nearly ready for the sun to set, but everything was lit up just right, like there were chandeliers of candlelight swinging from the top of every tree.

  I ran my hand along the glossy pine needles for the tickle. The trees swayed back and forth like they were listening to a choir. The Bermuda grass was singing soft and clear for them.

  And the butterfly — it was the star of the show! Flitting up and down and side to side, in long straight lines and cockeyed circles, it was curious about everything and nothing at all. And when we wound up at Blue Sink, where the butterfly had led us, it disappeared in the long shadow of a cypress tree, as if the forest floor had opened its mouth and swallowed the butterfly without even a splash of rainwater to wash it down.

  “Hurry! Make a wish!” Zora gasped. “It must have been a fairy.”

  We silently made our wishes, holding hands on the edge of the cool shadow. I wished that Zora and me would be friends forever. And that instead of tomorrow being Sunday, it would be Saturday all over again.

  “Zora,” I asked, “what you wish for?” But she didn’t have a chance to answer. We had company. It was Mr. Ambrose, the old white man who had helped deliver Zora into the world.

  Zora’s father used to make most of his money from being a carpenter, and he still made cabinets and such from time to time after he got the call to preach, especially when people who knew his work wanted to pay him well for it. Mr. Ambrose, who had a pretty brick house in Lake Maitland right on Horatio Avenue, was one of those people; the year he built his house, the year Zora and Teddy and I were born, he gave Mr. Hurston one project after another.

  It was one day during that year, when Mr. Hurston was away preaching in Osceola and Mrs. Hurston was home alone with the children, that Zora got the idea to come into the world two weeks early. Luckily Mr. Ambrose got the idea to drop by the Hurston house with some fresh pork and vegetables. He arrived minutes after Zora was born — just in time to cut the belly cord. He said the gator bass in her brand-new lungs had called him to that house just the same as if she had been yelling his name. Mr. Ambrose never got tired of telling Zora the story. And Zora never got tired of hearing it.

  He liked to say that Blue Sink was his favorite fishing hole. He didn’t get there much, but neither of us was surprised to find him there.

  “Snidlets,” he called, “what you and Carrie doing over there?”

  “We just wishing, is all,” Zora called back.

  Only Mr. Ambrose called her Snidlets. Being there when someone is born makes folks want to name a child. The old man had earned the privilege.

  “Then come do some wishing over here by me. The fish are biting, and I don’t wanna leave my line.”

  We marched over to him. He was sitting on the same ledge where we last saw Old Lady Bronson. He and Zora started talking at the exact same time, but she stopped so he could go on. There was kind of an order to the talk, not rules but a little ritual they both observed.

  “How your mama and daddy?”

  “Good,” she said.

  “Your daddy still preachin’?”

  “Yes, sir, but mostly over in Sanford, so we don’t hardly get to hear him, except when he’s practicing.”

  “He doing any woodworking these days?”

  “Not too much. Just in the house sometimes.”

  “Best carpenter in the county.”

  Zora smiled. “I know it.”

  “How your big brothers doing?”

  “Good. Bob’s finishing his first year of medical school up in Nashville, and Ben’s been courtin’ Johnetta Sims, and keeps going to her daddy’s pharmacy just to look at her.”

  “I reckon someday somebody’s gonna be courting you, Snidlets!”

  “Oh, no — courtin’ just gets folks stuck in one place forever.”

  He laughed. “The baby — he growin’ good?”

  She was smiling, like he was building up to a joke and she saw it coming. He was smiling, too. “Yes, sir.”

  “I feel like I’m forgetting somebody important. Oh, your sister? How’s she doin’?”

  Zora cut her eyes at him in a way that made him snort. “Mr. Ambrose, she is just sugar and spice and everything nice!”

  Now they both laughed, and I did, too. I felt good, watching them — two people knowing what the other one thinks and playing with what they know, not to entertain themselves but to entertain each other.

  The little ritual went on for another couple of minutes, Mr. Ambrose asking Zora all about school and what she was learning and how she was doing and telling her what was coming next (“Oh, you gonna love algebra, Snidlets — they made that stuff up just for people who think like you!”), even asking how Teddy was doing, and Teddy’s folks, and Teddy’s brothers.

  Then he turned to me and asked me how my mama was, and how I was doing in school, and if I was staying out of trouble and so forth, and I answered as polite as I knew how. I wasn’t used to white folks asking me about much of anything at all, much less my real self, so I answered mostly “Good” and “Yes, sir.”

  Finally, we had passed all the preliminaries and he turned back to Zora. “So, Snidlets. What you two so fired up about? I know it’s bound to be something good.”

  “Oh, it ain’t good, but it’s definitely something,” Zora answered, all the leisure in her voice now gone. “You hear about that man they found by the tracks?”

  “I did. What you know about that?”

  “His name was Ivory,” Zora declared. “We knew him. And we know who killed him and stole his head.”

  The old man blinked; then he blinked again. “And who would that be, Snidlets?”

  “It was the gator man,” Zora said. “A man who can turn himself into a gator.”

  “And how you reckon he does that, exactly?” the old man asked, the gruffness of his voice rimming with interest.

  “Me and Carrie here could find out how, if we only had this book we saw in Lake Maitland today.”

  Then Zora took a big breath and told the story of how we were there when Ghost got Sonny Wrapped, and how that big gator up and vanished after that. “Folks searched for weeks, but they couldn’t find a trace!”

  Then she told him about Old Lady Bronson. “You hear about Old Lady Bronson falling onto those rocks down there? Well, I don’t think she had no accident. The gator man most likely swatted her with his tail and knocked her down. And Ivory, that man they found by the tracks, he was a turpentine worker. We met him out by the Loving Pine. Before he left to go to work, he told us he was gonna come back that night and go swimming right here at the Blue Sink. So the gator man must have gotten him, too!”

  “So the man by the tracks was a turpentine worker,” the old man said thoughtfully. He chewed on that before he spoke again.

  “And what do human gators do that regular old gators don’t?” There was no sarcasm in the way he asked — no looking down on us, not even friendly teasing; just a simple question. Mr. Ambrose was the first grown-up who took seriously what Zora believed.

  She beamed at him. “Well, that’s the whole thing. We’re not exactly sure yet. That’s why we need that book!”

  “The one you saw in Lake Maitland? About gators and whatnot?”

  “Everything about gators! It’s called The Myth and Lore of Gator Country, and I know it can help us! There’s a picture on the cover of a giant gator coming straight out at you, and he has a horrible expression on his face, way too smart for any regular gator. If that book’s not about gators and gator men, I don’t know what is.”

  “And this gator man, you know him?”

  “That’s the thing,” she whispered. “It’s Mr. Pendir!”

  Mr. Ambrose raised his eyebrows in surprise.

  “I don’t know how he does it,” Zora said. “But he can go from being a
regular old man like you to being a walking and talking gator. I know because I was out here one night, and I saw him standing on his porch with a gator snout instead of a head. I saw him just as plain as I’m seeing you.” And she pointed toward Mr. Pendir’s house as she spoke.

  “You think old Pendir, who lives a hop, skip, and a jump away from here, is really a gator?”

  “A human gator, if only I could get my hands on that book and read about it,” Zora said.

  “So, Snidlets, I heard your side. Loud and clear. You ready to hear what I think about all this murder and gator business?”

  Zora nodded. A breeze on the water tugged at the old man’s line. He didn’t bother to check it.

  “The coloreds in Eatonville ain’t never caused nobody no problems. But niggers killin’ niggers makes white folks jumpy. And when white folks are jumpy, they can reach up awfully high — so high, a few niggers will surely end up swinging from trees. And I don’t want to see no one I like dead, colored or white.”

  “You think more folks will end up dead?” Zora almost whispered.

  My throat got tight.

  “Snidlets, I ain’t worried about men turning into gators. Old Pendir’s been here a long time for him to suddenly start acting like a gator.

  “But these turpentine workers — they’re another story. They walking knots. And wherever they settle, they seem to tie everything else up in knots with ’em. I just don’t want to see no one hanging from a tree. ’Cause it’s good sturdy knots that lands niggers there, too.”

  While the old man spoke, I thought about everything I ever saw hang from a tree that didn’t naturally belong there. I had seen dresses and slacks dangling off branches. I had seen hats and underclothes swing in the wind. Many’s the time I had hung my own lunch pail on a tree’s bough.

  Trees were everywhere in Eatonville, and I loved them as much as Zora did. The turpentine industry depended on them. Firewood was how we survived. During hurricane season, we had all experienced trees falling down or heard about a tree falling down on somebody, but it seemed a shame to me that grown men had it in them to use trees for their crimes.

  As these thoughts filled my mind, Mr. Ambrose began to pack up. “Well, Snidlets, I reckon this is all the fishing and listening an old man can stand for one day. Why don’t we all head home before the sun sets and makes things seem scarier than they already are?”

  Zora’s story about Mr. Pendir wasn’t a lie. It was her way of making things make sense, explaining our lives through a story. And just as stories guard the pictures of the selves and worlds we cherish the most, sometimes we have to defend our stories. Monday at recess was one of those times.

  Stella Brazzle led the enemy force.

  The boys were kicking a ball around the yard, playing every man for himself. We girls skipped rope in the grass, singing songs that mostly Zora had made up. We always played partners, and the rule was that one pair turned while another pair jumped. When Zora and I turned for Stella and Hennie Clarke, our voices kept time perfectly. We were so good, they stayed in the rope for at least fifty jumps.

  “I saw Pendir with a gator snout,

  Looking his way ’bout wore me out.

  But Mama’s little child got good, strong eyes.

  Mama’s little girl don’t tell no lies.

  Mama’s little girl don’t tell no lies.”

  When it was our turn to skip and Stella’s and Hennie’s duty to turn, the song they sang punched us in the gut:

  “No one saw Pendir with no gator snout,

  That’s a big ol’ lie — there is no doubt.

  Some of Mama’s children got lying eyes.

  Everybody knows that Zora lies.

  Everybody knows that Zora lies.”

  We had stopped skipping rope after the first line, but we let Stella and Hennie finish their song. We wanted to hear how it ended so we would know how hard to hit them. As soon as they stopped, I went after Hennie, and Zora went after Stella. Teddy abruptly left the boys’ kickball game to come over and see what was happening, and the rest of the boys followed right behind him.

  “What they do to y’all?” Teddy yelled out to Zora and me. Zora didn’t hear him but answered his question nonetheless.

  “Who you calling a liar?” Zora yelled as she charged Stella, tackling her from behind and yanking her thick braid. Then she paused, considering whether or not she was going to push Stella’s face into a mound of moist soil.

  Stella blithered at the prospect of eating dirt, while the boys chanted, “Fight, fight.” Hearing the commotion, Mr. Calhoun ran from inside the schoolhouse and pulled Zora off Stella.

  “I don’t tell lies,” Zora shot at Stella, the defeated girl struggling to her feet. Zora squirmed in Mr. Calhoun’s firm grasp. “I tell stories, and one of these days, all y’all are going to find out they true! My stories are true!”

  When I walked Zora home, her even dirtier than usual, both of us knowing she’d have to tell her mother about getting in a fight, we assumed that her bottom had an appointment with a switch off the chinaberry tree.

  That didn’t happen, for a reason we could never have guessed.

  There was a package waiting for Zora. It had been hand-delivered from the bookseller in Lake Maitland. Mrs. Hurston was so surprised at the arrival of a package for her youngest daughter that when Zora started to tell her story about what happened at recess, Mrs. Hurston just waved a hand for Zora to stop. She didn’t have it in her to wait through the listening or give a whipping. She just handed Zora the brown-paper package and looked at her expectantly.

  Zora held the bundle in her hands and stared at it. She read her name and address to herself, three times, like she needed to convince herself it was really meant for her. She gave me a What should I do? look, but I just shrugged. I’d never gotten a letter from anybody, let alone a package.

  She handed it to her mama, who set it on the table, carefully untied the soft white twine, unfolded and opened the heavy brown paper, and lifted out of it a rich green volume.

  Zora gazed at the book. She turned it to see the marvelous spine, and around to see the marbling of the page edges. Then she opened the cover.

  Snidlets, the inscription read, knowledge unties knots.

  At the end of school the next day, we told Teddy to meet us at the Loving Pine after he was done with his chores. We had serious business to discuss.

  When he finally scootched down next to me under the awning of the Loving Pine, I realized how much I’d been missing his company. Even though I’d seen him in school that day and the day before, something about Teddy nicked my heart with longing. We were almost all alone together except for Zora. It occurred to me that, for a very long time, I had wanted just that: to be all alone with Teddy.

  I didn’t want to kiss him or anything lovey-dovey. I just wanted to watch how he looked at the sky and put his hands in his pockets when he wasn’t trying to impress anybody, when he was just being himself.

  “What’s that?” Teddy reached for the brown-paper parcel Zora had meticulously rewrapped and tied, but she held it out of reach.

  “Just wait.”

  So we told him the whole story of how we had discovered the book in Lake Maitland, and about what Mr. Ambrose said, and how the book was waiting for Zora when we got back to her house after the fight at recess with Stella Brazzle and Hennie. Zora did most of the telling, but I put in a lot of details she forgot. Teddy listened with big-eyed attention.

  Zora put up her right hand. “Before we go any further — do you both swear to keep the secrets we know, and the secrets we learn?”

  We put up our right hands. “We swear.”

  “All right, then.” Zora untied the twine holding the book, unfolded the paper with the same care she’d shown the day before, picked up the book, and held the cover for Teddy to see. His eyes bugged when he saw The Myth and Lore of Gator Country stamped on the front and the picture beneath it, but this time he knew better than to reach for the book.

>   Zora opened the book in her lap. She ran her finger down the table of contents. “Listen to this!”

  Zora turned to a page somewhere in the middle of the big book. She started to read out loud.

  “This is called ‘The Envious Gator King.’”

  “‘Once upon a time,’” Zora began, “‘there was a gator named Cane. He was twenty feet long and weighed nearly a ton. Besides his extraordinary length and prodigious weight’”— Zora spoke the long words slowly, savoring them on her tongue —“‘there were other salient features by which Cane differed from other gators. For one, his scales were not green, like those of gators who make their home in algae-laden waters. Nor were they brown or black, like the scales of those gators who bask beneath the shade of overlying trees. Cane’s scaly armor was bone-white, and he floated around his swamp like a maleficent ghost.’” Zora’s voice trailed off after the last word.

  “Do you think,” Zora asked, “Cane could be related to Ghost?”

  “But Cane is white, and we’ve seen Ghost with our own eyes and he wasn’t white,” I said. “He was plain old dark green.”

  “That don’t mean they can’t be related,” Teddy said. “Look at Hennie Clarke’s mother. She real light-skinned while Hennie is chocolate brown. Color difference don’t mean folks ain’t related. Why can’t the same go for gators?”

  “You’re right,” Zora said, her eyes thoughtful and serious. She picked up where she’d left off.

  “‘Whereas his fellow crocodilians blended easily into the swamp water, Cane had no cover, nor could he ever hide. But standing out against the greens and browns of the Floridian swamp was not his only vexation. Cane was plagued by envy, and in this he bore a greater resemblance to humans than he did to his own species.

  “‘When Cane beheld other gators, he had the same look in his onyx eyes as do human hunters. For he wanted not his brethren’s friendship or their company, but their very skin. The rare times he saw a gator of his gargantuan proportions, he eviscerated his fellow reptile and attempted to drape the creature’s lifeless pelt around his own. The other gators so feared Cane that, in hopes of appeasing him, they crowned him their king. But everywhere that King Cane looked, he saw not his reptilian domain but only that which he did not possess.