"Day of Vow" (cont'd as Part 3)

Day of Vow (cont'd Part 3 of the story)
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Before dawn, Zorina and her mother were back at the Theron estate. Preparing the house for when everyone awakened. At daybreak, Golf arose to have his usual oatmeal with his usual rat turds while Zorina sat by waiting to be brushed up against before a long, satisfying tournament of glassmaking.

It had been nine years since the school burned down, but as Zorina was experiencing cramps that morning and the start of her monthly bleeding, it didn't seem so long ago, because along with her monthlies always came a nagging pain in the scar tissue of her burn. As though the burn were new again.

"What's in that pretty little head, ha?", asked Golf. "Keeping secrets are we?"

"No�Noble."

In the beautiful oceans of his blue eyes she thought that she wanted to backstroke naked. Feel the beating of his heart against her warm golden body. Be swept away.

Suddenly, Etah appeared�filling up the back door in her giant maid's uniform. She had none of Hattie McDaniel's famous sass. No subdued outrage like the American star had shown in all her gallant portrayals of black maid women. Etah was a real servant spirit. "My daughter?"

"Oh!!!�ahhhhh�..yes, mama!?"

"Miss Lindy would like to see you in the library."

"Is that my Zorina!?"

"Top of the morning, Miss Lindy."

"You've got to get packed dear. We're flying to Durban."

"�ew�wu�Durban?"

Cribbitch, her sweet blond crystal-blue eyed little daughter chimed in with: "Mummy's having a glass show a the Wedgwood Gallery."

"Your glassworks are making me famous, Zorina!"

"But I haven't anything to wear."

"It's alright, love. No one expects a black to be dressed that well, but I want you to represent the furnace workers."

Miss Lindy, who lead people to believe that she actually designed and self-crafted the Dutch Theron Glass Collection, hadn't been inside the actual furnace house for twelve years. Her husband, Dutch, had a reputation for taking his Indian whores down there at night, so Miss Lindy refused to set her wifely heels on those sticky floors.

"Oh, Zorina! They're giving me an award!"

"Glassmaker of the year", chirped Cribbitch.

It never occurred to any of them (not even Zorina) that the award should be given to Zorina.

"Hurry home and pack", cheered Cribbitch. "We've already told Etah that you're going away."

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Zorina tried to remember how the poem went. I come from a place�

I come from a place�but my place is not named for me
I am the caretaker, unnamed,
the insider
whose heartbeat you hear.
I have no place�not even my own
footprints
have any place.

She had never seen how breathtakingly beautiful South Africa is from the sky. How earthen brown and green and soulful the landscape is. An African's dream; kissed by God.

"My place" Zorina thought�as tears ran down her dark cheek and she thought of her devoted mother, her dead father. Mines!

One day, she prayed, all the whites would be gone from South Africa. So that the black people could take the time necessary to get over all the cruel and inhumane evils that the Europeans had so lavishly carried out. Even in the name of God, they had carried out unspeakable evils that could never really be forgotten. It seemed so unfair, their being here�living high and mighty off the back and the land of Africa's true children.

Zorina wondered how it felt to die by having community police kick holes in your stomach? And knowing how many black men and black women had experienced such horrifying deaths in South Africa, she wondered how many whites had experienced such evil?

"Remove them, God."

Zorina put her head back and stared out the window to the gliding wing of the plane (she was seated alone). That's when Eve's face popped into her memory. Little girl Eve. So charcoal black that she wasn't allowed to be registered at Children of Christ Protectorate School�even though it was founded, funded and ran by two Black men. Eve's charcoal coloring prevented her from attending, and two decades before that, Eve's mother, one of several dozen charcoal prostitutes, had been deterred from seeking education due to the same skin problem. 
The secret came back to Zorina now.

"It's morning time!", one of the Black Reverends had said when Eve's Monkey tried to register.

These two Bantu clergymen, schoolteachers, were of South Africa's popular belief that the Black race was moving away from oppression and the darkness that caused that oppression. Girls like Eve were a threat, because no one wanted those genes passed on.

Little charcoal Black "boys" (in fact, one of them was Eve's very own brother) were allowed to attend classes. But whenever a charcoal black girl tried to register�the men did not allow it. Why even the two girls as chocolate as mud were allowed in�but not girls as charcoal black as Eve's Monkey.

"Don't call me Eve's Monkey!", the seven year old barefoot girl had hissed back at one of the clergymen one day. "That's not my name!", the girl had cried.

"Well, you look like a monkey!", retorted the Reverend. A grown man, a chocolate-skinned man, a man of the cloth. "And you won't be enrolled here, you smelly, ugly little oil stain! It's morning time!"

Everyday, Zorina had witnessed it. The little blue black girl marching barefoot, dressed in rags, to the school building. All the other girls her color had accepted their rejection on notice, but not this nervy little black thing. She was brave!

"I want to learn to read and count my fingers!", Eve's Monkey would beg.

"Go to monkey and ape school, little prostitute!"

Brilliant laughter.

Zorina could see all the children now. Little chocolates, milky browns, golden browns, light browns, yellows, blue black boys�and especially Sowego's majority color (peanut butter browns)�oh they had a belly laugh! Little girls with Afros, pigtails and some with long, thick black perms�they shot their shining brown eyes at Eve with venomous disgust.

"You're too ignorant to learn!", shouted Eve's own brother. "You're so ugly, the school books won't stay in your hands!"

"Why doesn't she grow some hair!?"

Zorina could feel it again now�the heat and the pain and how everyone was suddenly in flames and the roof caved in and lucky for Zorina, she was away from her desk sharpening her pencil by the only door that led outside. She had braced her nose against the gasoline fumes as she ran out�and she had spotted Eve running through the green pastures, barefoot, dressed in rags, laughing.

She had watched Eve running, in fact, until Eve evaporated into the hillside�like a ghost. Then other dead children, children whose bodies were still burning inside the school, they began following Eve into the hillside�as if they were all going away to play together�and that was when Zorina fell in love with the fires that shape glass. Their spirits had all looked like clear glass objects to Zorina, joyfully leaping into a careless paradise. Zorina had wanted to go! Everyone was going!

But one of the dead boys yelled, "You stay here!"

Zorina was just eight then�and no one thought to put her into therapy for what she had experiences, and of course, the tragedy would be blamed on white men's racism, not black men's racism, but Zorina couldn't have cared less if white men were held responsible for it.

The hotel in Durban was exquisite.

Unfortunately, Zorina's traveling with Miss Lindy and Cribbitch always meant that she would act as surrogate maid and secretary. She had to unpack and hang up their clothes properly, prepare their baths and fix their meals, because Miss Lindy always reserved a suite with its own well stocked kitchen.

She couldn't even tell them that she was bleeding. That's how genuinely close they were.

Meanwhile, down the street, cases of the glass pieces, almost every one of them conceived and crafted on the spot by Zorina, were pulled out of padded boxes by specially trained handlers and aligned along the gallery walls. Lindy Theron was there to marvel at the wonders that bore her husband's good name. She couldn't wait for the awards presentation dinner!
"We should get a dress, mummy", said Cribbitch suddenly. "A dress for Zorina to wear. It' s her big night, too. She hasn't anything to wear and she's so pretty, mum."

"I guess I could do that much", nodded Lindy. "I don't want her standing behind me in the photographs looking like some unfed prairie dog."

Back at the hotel, Zorina sat suddenly on one of the beds she was custom making. She was dizzy and bleeding and felt like she was dying. Her cramps were like stomach punches!

She lay down on the bed�flat�and stared up at the ceiling.

Out of nowhere, she began to miss her mother, intensely, as if she might not ever see the plump, pretty face again. Zorina had always been a girl who knew instinctively that mothers need their daughters.

And she loved Etah more than anyone in this world.

"O�", gasped Cribbitch. "That is so pretty on you!"

Zorina couldn't believe she was being fitted in such a gown as the one Cribbitch had picked for her. Cribbitch might only be twelve, but she was a very sophisticated little girl and her taste in clothes was impeccable.

Shiny, lemon-tea light brown with the loveliest face and a perfect crown of cottony African bush hair on her head, Zorina looked like a Zulu princess in a strapless, flowing white Athenian tube gown complete with golden arm bracelets and gold bangles. The dinner was being given outdoors by fire pit (with a roasted pig and dancing Zulu girls), so it was only fitting that Zorina be dressed summer-like and glamorous. At just seventeen years old, she was too stunning for words.
"The only thing I don't like", said Miss Lindy, "is the way the�"

Zorina already knew what it was. She had feared it, too.

"�well, your bottom fits the dress funny."

Zorina's heart sank, because it was her big butt that was always messing up the shape of her clothes, and she was too skinny, way too thin to be cursed already with her mother's big fat firm, heartshaped ass. She burst into tears!

"Oh, Zorina�no, honey. Don't cry."

Zorina collapsed into Miss Lindy's arms. Her heart full with memories of the way her father had always teased her mother's backside by calling it "funk-trunk". It was such an ugly name, a cruel endearment. Etah had always hated it and yet Nopopie would go on and on about the sweat collecting between the crack�of Etah's funk-trunk.

"Now you listen to me�you look like a fashion model in that dress! Naomi Campbell would be proud! And as far as you being able to afford it�well, we'll just take a percentage from your salary every other week until it's paid for."

Zorina sobered up immediately. She wanted to say: Why don't we just pawn that award you're getting and pay for the dress�you selfish caucasoid bitch! But, of course, she didn't dare say it.

Thank God Cribbitch said it!

"Mummy!�Zorina's already earned that dress! She's the one who made all this beautiful glass that you're getting an award for. She shouldn't have to pay for that gown�rich as you and daddy are!"

Miss Lindy turned pink and relented.

But on the way back to the hotel, all Zorina could think about was the way that the black boys in her neighborhood were always dreaming of being rappers or athletes and how a girl like herself might be walking by and they might go: "Funk-trunk pussy stain�bang, bang, bang�Funk-trunk pussy stain�bang, bang, bang."

It was supposed to be a compliment. It was supposed to mean that she was sexually desirable. However, Zorina was smart enough to know the difference between a boy dreaming about banging up inside a hot-hole and a boy dreaming about making love to a girl. These boys, so dark and handsome, imagined her as nothing more than meat for sex.

Zorina figured that some unseen mystery girl, probably not from Sowego, was their choice for dreams about lovemaking, but whatever the case, she foolishly blamed her funk-trunk for her status with neighborhood boys.

The next night�Golf Theron arrived in Durban!

With his beautiful fiance, Maritza.

"I wouldn't miss your big night for the world, mother!"

Miss Lindy grinned, proudly, and kissed him and hugged him. "Oh, my baby boy!"

Zorina was dizzy with excitement�because Golf was going to get to see her all dressed up in her glamorous evening wear! It was just too good to be true!

But first�she was told to custom make Golf and Maritza's separate beds. So she went to their suite. First, she went into Golf's room and made his bed. Then she went to Maritza's room. There was music coming from the dressing room that led to the bathroom. It was Diana Ross singing, "It's My House and I Live here." For some reason, hearing that song in Maritza's bathroom made Zorina intensely jealous. She didn't think that Diana Ross should be christening Maritza's territory.

She heard faint laughter.

Obviously, Golf was in the dressing room with Maritza. Zorina could smell him. His cologne. Then suddenly they laughed out really loud, Golf's voice proclaiming from behind the wall, "I must be in love with an angel!"

I am an angel!�Zorina wanted to proclaim out loud, not so much for Golf, but for the God who had cast her black and African.

Zorina couldn't help herself.

Really, she couldn't.

She went to the crack in the doorway of the dressing room and peeped inside.

Beautiful gowns, jewels�strewn everywhere.

Apparently, Maritza was trying on different outfits and Golf was there to lust over the creamy white contours of her incredibly tiny body. Her breasts, thought Zorina, were like slivers of liver hanging with big, cherry nipples. But her hair was incredible�flowing like gold all around her shoulders. Her face was so pale, like the Queen Elizabeth II portrait over Etha's bed. Pale like a Queen.

"Is there anything I could want more than an angel?"

"Yes, a woman", replied Maritza.

Golf chuckled at her sharpness, and there was a way that he held her. Held her in his arms like she was grace itself. It was so incredibly endearing to Zorina's watching eyes. A kind of poetry in motion that she suddenly remembered dreaming about�wide awake sometimes, asleep other times. Now she remembered that she had dreamed about that kind of silly, emotional hanging on. Like in cinema films.

No. It was better than that. This couldn't be staged.

The way his eyes searched for Maritza in the mirror even though she was right up against him.

He loved her hair�he fingered around in it.

His chin rested on her shoulder and Zorina knew, intuitively, that they had never ever made love and that Maritza was a virgin. She just knew it.

"You smell like sunshine", he told Maritza.

"It's called Privilege by Dutchess Wayborn."

His hands fastened in front of her and his dreamy blue eyes closed and rocked her gently.

At the door, Zorina slid slowly, quietly, to the floor. There were no tears in her eyes now. She was totally engrossed in watching Golf behave just as she had dreamed he would.

"How many children should we have?"

"Two", she said. "A boy and a girl."

"Only two?", he growled.

Then he tickled her. She giggled and shook free of him. Zorina noticed that they had the prettiest wine she had ever seen�sitting in glasses in front of the mirror. What beautiful color! What richness! It had to be absolutely delicious, Zorina thought, and her tastebuds suddenly went to fantasizing about what it must taste like. A wine that red and pretty. I� made those glasses, she suddenly realized.

Golf lifted a glass just then and took a swig from it. His white knuckles against the stem. Zorina's nipples hardened�her heart panted and her eyes felt as though someone had suddenly blown in them hard.

He put the rim of the glass to Maritza's thin rosy lips and she drank a swallow, comfortably closing her eyes and sinking back into the warmth of his chest.

"You make me so happy, Golf."

"I told you not to call me Golf when we're alone. Call me Noble."

She giggled and said, "Yes�Noble."

Zorina suddenly couldn't see a thing.

Not through her tears.

She went about the task of custom making Maritza's bed. Fluffing the pillows with an extra something�her admiration for Maritza. In and out of her mind, the memories of being raped by Golf Theron at thirteen sprung up like some annoying radio tune that she couldn't stop humming.

Tears fell off her chin�onto the lavish bedcovers.

Some old blues song was coming from the dressing room. A drunk lady singing out: "�put that dog in the back-ah the house�tie �em up; tie �em up�hand me my pigfoot, hand me my beer!�tie �em up; tie �em up�"

Zorina was done with the bed.

Just then�Golf came tumbling out of the dressing room. He halted as Zorina turned startled and said, "�Zorina!"

She wasn't accustomed to him calling her Zorina, so she said, "It's Zora to you�remember?"

Golf gulped. He came over to her and said in a low voice, "I really need to talk to you about something before you go to bed this evening. It's about us, Zorina. It's really important. Could you come to my room later�around midnight?"

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