I thought I would know myself better once I was without you, but alone, I struggled to know who I was even more. ‘My name isn’t really Selzora,’ I said to Georgia as we lay side by side. ‘It’s just Zora.’
She stared at me in surprise, assuming, most probably, that this was just an affectation. ‘Why Sel-Zora, then?’ she said after a while.
I told her about you. Then I told her about Cal and Lydia, omitting the part where Lydia and I had slept together.
But Georgia was astute. ‘Were you and Lydia in a relationship?’
‘What makes you think that?’
‘The way you talk about her. The way you say her name.’
‘For one night, that’s all.’
‘But you wanted more.’ A statement, not a question.
‘Before Cal, perhaps. Not after that.’
‘Why not?’
I told Georgia what I’d said to Cal that night.
The two of us were lying on the floor; we’d taken the mattress off my narrow bed and paired it with the one from Georgia’s room, dragging it down the stairs and along the corridor and placing them side by side. Nobody had asked what we were doing. I doubt if anyone would have cared. University wasn’t like school and it was the time of free love, as it was called back then – most of the other students believed that it didn’t matter who you loved as long as you loved somebody. Now that we had the extra mattress, I no longer had to spend my nights squashed against a wall, though we felt the draught from the gap beneath my door through the winter months.
Georgia turned onto her side and propped herself up on her elbow. ‘You couldn’t possibly have known what would happen to Cal that night. You would never have said those things if you’d known.’
‘But I never got the chance to take them back,’ I replied. I needed to change the subject. ‘When did you tell your family that you were into women?’ I found it hard to use the term lesbian. It was a label, and one that didn’t leave much room for manoeuvre.
Georgia stretched out and took a bar of chocolate from her bag. She passed half to me. ‘I was sixteen. I knew I was never going to have a heterosexual relationship so I told them one Sunday while we were watching television.’
‘How did they take it?’
They were a bit shocked, I think, a bit unsure how to deal with it at first, but in the end, they just wanted me to be happy.’
‘Did they know we were sleeping together at Christmas?’
‘Yes, of course. I’m lucky, I suppose. Live and let live, Mum always says. Dad too. Do you think your sister would disapprove of us?’
‘She’d say it was a sin.’
There was silence for a while as Georgia considered this. Then she said, ‘Everything happened at once. Selina couldn’t process it all, it was too much for her. Lydia was her only friend and she’d gone off, not only with Cal but with you as well. She probably felt a bit left out.’
Georgia was saying that last part as a joke, but perhaps there was some truth in it. She got up and started to get dressed. It was mid-afternoon and the hall was almost empty; most of the other students were attending seminars or lectures. We should have been in class ourselves but we had spent the day in bed instead, exploring each other’s bodies until we had exhausted every possibility of touch and there was nothing left to do but talk instead.
Georgia pulled a t-shirt over her head and said, ‘You didn’t see her at Christmas.’
‘I wanted to spend it with you.’
‘You should go to London, try to make it up with her.’
‘I can’t. You don’t understand. It’s suffocating, being joined.’
‘You don’t have to be joined,’ Georgia replied mildly.
‘We don’t know any other way.’
‘Go and see her,’ Georgia said. ‘Then maybe you’ll stop being so miserable without her.’
‘I’m not miserable and I can’t see Selina. She suffocates me.’
‘Go and make it up with her, for your sake as much as hers.’
Georgia was taking your side. She was seeing you as the victim in all of this, the way everybody always did. I could feel anger rising as I said, ‘You don’t understand at all.’
‘I understand that this is hard for you, but it’s hard for Selina too. She’s the closest family you’ve got. You need to see her.’
I yanked an unwashed pair of jeans off the top of the pile of dirty clothes I’d been meaning to take to the laundrette in the basement and slipped into the corridor in my knickers and bra, not caring if anybody saw. I was too angry to be in the same room as Georgia. How could she think that visiting you in London, with a grovelling apology, was the right thing to do? I showered and got dressed in one of the old-fashioned bathrooms that had deep old baths with lion-paw feet.
But Georgia kept on pushing, so in the end, I dropped you a note and got on a train.
All through the journey to London I felt dread. I shouldn’t have allowed myself to be talked into seeing you again. I stared out of the window. I didn’t want to discuss my life in Manchester and I didn’t want to hear about your new life either. I wondered what we would find to talk about. We were separate now but I feared that once I saw you, we would be joined once more.
You were waiting impatiently at Euston station. I hardly recognised you. You were pathetically thin and your spherical Afro made your face look small – I felt as if I towered over you. You tried to hug me but I couldn’t hug you back. I was full of resentment; I felt as if you’d gone whining to Georgia – even though you didn’t know of her existence – and had got her to force me to visit you, to make things right for you again.
We caught a bus to the edges of London. As we walked through the college grounds, pretty and neat, I was relieved I hadn’t opted to be there with you. The campus was too enclosed for me, too parochial.
We had lunch in a bar that served everything with baked beans in a thin tomato sauce. I paid for both of us, as if this would make up for all the anger I still stored. I knew I should have been able to put it aside but I couldn’t; there was something sustaining about it, something that made me feel stronger. Stronger in myself, or stronger than you? I no longer knew. You barely touched your sausages. You kept chatting about nothing, though you made sure I knew you liked boys – there was a student called Martin you were interested in. Anything to emphasise that in this respect, at least, we weren’t the same – you were normal. I could have told you about Georgia but I didn’t want to share her, and certainly not while you were wittering on about Martin with such superiority. You might have been nasty about her, accused us of sin. Or, worse still, you might have given us your blessing. What would I have done then? I might have felt obliged to forgive you.
We went to your room. It was bigger than mine, with a huge window. The glass was streaked with grime. The sun was getting in our eyes; you half-closed the blinds. I took off my denim jacket – the room was stifling hot – and sat on your bed.
A female student appeared, dark-haired, dressed in the obligatory jeans and desert boots. You introduced her as Judith. You mentioned somebody else called Fran, just to make sure I knew you had friends, and that I was replaceable.
Early that evening, we returned to Euston station on the bus, talking superficially about your course or mine. Just before my train arrived, you told me how much you’d missed me in the secret words we’d once used with one another. You were staking a claim on me, urging me to stay, standing in front of me, barring my escape. As you leaned in to hug me, I shoved you aside and boarded the train back to Manchester.
Zora finally phones, saying she is coming to visit. I’d given up hope of this. I scarcely sleep for days, I’m too excited. At the station, I hug her until she is hardly able to breathe. But there is no reciprocal embrace; her hands remain at her side. We are mostly silent on the bus to college and we sit in the campus café like strangers, struggling to speak. We get salad and slices of cake for lunch, and although the meal is expensive, I treat us both, in the hope that Zora will know this is a kind of peace offering. It’s a lot more edible than most of the meals we get in halls but I still struggle to finish it.
We don’t look the same anymore. Zora has put on a little weight whereas I have lost a bit. I’ve let my hair grow into an Afro, Angela Davis style, but Zora has had hers cut. Her tight curls look sleek, making the contours of her face more pronounced. I am wearing purple trousers and a cream, cheesecloth top. She is wearing a deep pink dress that falls mid-thigh, a corduroy, rust-coloured jacket and baseball boots. We are recognisable as sisters, I suppose, but all our joinedness has disappeared.
‘It’s good that you came,’ I say to her. ‘Did you get the jumper I sent for Christmas?’
‘Yes, thanks,’ she answers. I want her to tell me that she liked it, that she knew how much thought went into choosing it for her, but she doesn’t say anything more. I sent a card to thank her for the book – Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man – but I tell her once more how much it meant to me. I hope she doesn’t want to discuss it, though – I haven’t actually read it yet. I couldn’t face feeling close to her, yet so distant too, as I turned the pages.
I tell her I’ve made a couple of friends. Fran is in my tutor group. She’s very clever, I think. And there’s also Judith, who likes the same books I like, though she’s doing a different course. She has a boyfriend in the art department. I wouldn’t mind a boyfriend too, I say to Zora. There’s someone called Martin who seems interested in getting together with me.
Zora doesn’t say anything back and she doesn’t tell me if there’s anyone she feels close to. In a way I’m glad. She might have replaced me with somebody and if that’s the case, I don’t really want to know about it. We walk through the college grounds and I show her my room, with the posters I got from Athena. I’ve put them up in the hope that they will help me to feel more at home. There is a Hobbit poster and a map of Middle-earth. I’ve also put up a poster from the Easy Rider film, in case The Hobbit seems too childish for a student. Zora wrinkles her nose as she looks at them. I ask what she’s put on her own wall, but she doesn’t reply. I want her to have put up the pictures of twins she used to collect when we were young. She made a collage and hung it right across our bedroom wall, a kind of homage to our closeness. I used to love looking at it. ‘I found something in the college library,’ I say to her. I take my suitcase down from the top of the wardrobe and I pass her a book. On the cover there is a photograph of two black women, both the same, in identical ankle-length frocks and boots. They are joined at the hip.
‘They were conjoined twins, from America,’ I say to Zora. ‘This book is all about them. They were called Millie-Christine. They’re just like us. I didn’t even know they existed.’ I can’t keep the excitement from my voice. I look at Zora. I thought she would be elated, I thought she would know how important this is, but she barely looks at me or the book and she says nothing.
‘Do you remember when we used to go to the library to try to find a book like this?’
She doesn’t answer.
‘Do you remember Little Black Sambo? I buried it in the garden of that old house. You were so scared of him. When I got rid of that book, it was like a weight had been lifted from you.’
‘Little Black Sambo? What are you talking about?’ she says.
It is as if she has blasted a hole in me. I can’t speak at first, but after a while, I say, almost in a whisper, ‘The book, you hated it, it made you scared, so I buried it. You must remember?’
‘No,’ she answers, ‘I don’t remember that at all.’
We walk to the bus stop in silence.
Without Zora is no future.
In bed, when everyone else is asleep, I find the Valium the campus doctor gave me for anxiety and I shove handfuls into my mouth. I miss Cal so much. I miss Zora with all my heart.