Zami: A New Spelling of My Name

Audre is excited to have an apartment all her own for the first time, not just a couch to sleep on or a furnished room. Even though she is healthy after the abortion, she is still emotionally distraught and sometimes loses days or hours. She and The Branded decorate her apartment; they bring her birds as a housewarming gift and drink apricot brandy. Audre continues schooling, passing all of her classes, and begins to attend meetings at the Harlem Writers Guild. Even though the apartment is very small, Audre has to clean it thoroughly, “not quite believing the dirt that the former owner had allowed to accumulate” (117). She buys a mattress and moves in her books, feeling that she is acquiring a lot of things. The kitchen is still very dirty, so she doesn’t use it. She hangs Gennie’s guitar over the fireplace. She remembers learning to enjoy the heat, writing and sweating in the middle of the night. Her cat kills the birds and then runs away. Writing is the only thing that makes her feel alive, but all her poems are about “death, destruction, and deep despair” (118). When she goes to her writers’ group, she only reads the poems she wrote in high school, not her new work. She writes a poem about being hanged and rising again.

Audre fails German and trigonometry in summer school because she was “wetnursing the girls of The Branded in my tiny tenement apartment” (118), although Audre also believes it is because she cannot learn German. Audre is bored at Hunter College because she does not find her fellow students to be emotionally complicated, and she is sexually frustrated, surrounded by beautiful women and still sad from the abortion. She and The Branded joke about them sleeping with each other, which does not help the situation. Audre does not pursue them. She decides that she will have an affair with a woman that involves more than kissing under the covers, as she has been doing with a fringe member of The Branded, Marie. Even though Audre has dinner and sleeps over at Marie’s house a few times, Marie’s strict Italian mother does not approve of Audre because she is black and lives alone.

In late spring, The Branded come back from their ivy-league colleges to a reunion party at Audre’s apartment, except for Marie, who has run off and married a stranger. The Branded see Audre’s apartment as a second home, even though it has no hot water: “There was a constant stream of young women in and out of my apartment, most of them in various periods and conditions of distress” (120). One girl, Bobbi, hides out at Audre’s before running away to California with her boyfriend; when the FBI came looking for them, Audre does not let the agents inside. Audre and her friends believe they are a menace to the status quo.

Marie shows back up with her new husband. Marie tells Audre he has bizarre sexual appetites, and later her mother and more FBI agents come looking for them. Audre lets them inside this time, and they are judgmental of the male clothes left in Audre’s apartment by her cousin. Marie’s husband is wanted on white-slavery charges for prostituting young girls. One of The Branded, Lori, tells Audre about the availability of jobs in Stamford, Connecticut, and Audre decides to leave school and New York for a little while, bringing only her books and a typewriter.

Once in Stamford, Audre rents a room through the Black Community Center for an exorbitant price. She finds living in a small town to be strange and is put off by how unhurried people are. Audre decides she wants to save money to travel to Mexico, which she will do by conserving money on food, which she believes won’t be a problem because she can’t cook in her room. She starts a job at a ribbon factory, and the foreman is hard on her. After three weeks, she is fired so that she cannot join the union and they can hire more black workers at a lower cost than the unionized white workers.

Audre begins to write again. She walks the streets at night alone, pretending that Gennie is with her and talking to her. She writes poems about Gennie and is very isolated.

Audre goes back to the community center to find another job. She tries to get a job as a medical receptionist, but the community center woman tells her that since she can’t type, there are only hardware factory jobs for black girls, which the center does not associate with. She tells Audre to come back when she’s learned how to type. Audre gets a job running a commercial x-ray machine from a company that processes and delivers quartz crystals for radio and radar machinery. The factory is very dirty, loud, and smells of chemicals: “All the help in the plant, with the exception of the foreman and forewoman, were Black or Puerto Rican, and all the women were local, from the Stamford area” (126). The chemicals and the x-rays are not safe, but noone says that they cause cancer and destroy organs. Keystone Electronics is one of few companies willing to hire black women and keep them long enough so that they can join the union.

Audre starts out at the least desirable, dirtiest, and loudest position; further, it does not offer bonuses. The other machine is run by Ginger, and they get very few breaks. In a better position, one could make more money by avoiding safety precautions and exposing one’s self to radiation. Audre finds the work so boring she thinks of killing herself. She does not get paid for the first three weeks she is there, and her money is running low. Ginger warns her not to stay in her chair during her breaks or else she’ll go crazy. The forewoman, Rose, tells Audre that she is bright but goes to the bathroom too much. The other workmen hassle Audre for not being quick enough, and one day she breaks down and starts crying.

Ginger buys her a cup of coffee, and they become friends. On Thursday, they go cash their checks, and Audre learns that Thursday night is when the town comes alive, flush with the week’s cash. Ginger refers to her as a “‘slick kitty from the city’” (129) because Audre wears jeans and sneakers, which makes Audre laugh. They eat at Ginger’s house, although Cora, Ginger’s mother, is slightly annoyed that she has to feed someone else. Ginger brings Audre food and they go out to eat at White Castle together, listening to Ginger’s portable radio, a gift from her ex-husband. Ginger mostly talks, and Audre listens, realizing that the quieter you are, the more people tell you things.

The town children paint the windows with murals for Halloween, which the storeowners allow so that the kids don’t vandalize the windows later in the evening. Ginger and Audre go shopping for stockings, which Cora insists Ginger wear to church. Audre sees a boy eating a pickle, and the smell of dill and garlic remind her of New York’s Pickle Man and the smells of the Rivington Street market. Audre suggests they get pickles, and Ginger reprimands her for almost jaywalking, saying that in Stamford you’ll get a ticket. Ginger asks how Audre heard about the factory job, and Audre says the community center, but doesn’t know who Crispus Attucks is, which Ginger finds unbelievable and explains to her that he was the first man—and ablack man—to die during the Revolutionary War.

The store they go to doesn’t sell whole pickles, and the stockings are expensive if bought individually, so Ginger tries to convince Audre to get a pair with her. Audre says she hates the way they feel, failing to mention that they make her legs look bleached as well. Audre tells Ginger to spend the money anyway, thinking to herself how much she hates nylon and wondering why she has never heard of Crispus Attucks, especially since she prides herself on knowing more than most other people. It bothers her that the high school she went to did not teach her this historical fact. Ginger asks her why she’s so quiet.

Ginger becomes Audre’s only friend in Stamford, as well as a main source of real food. Ginger flirts with Audre, but Audre “had ignored it because I was at a loss as to how to handle the situation” (133). Ginger is convinced that Audre is much more knowledgeable and experienced in female sexual encounters than Ginger is, which is not true. She believes that Audre is lying about being eighteen years old.

In November, Ginger borrows her brother’s Ford and they drive around for a while before climbing to the top of a hill. Ginger harasses Audre for not wearing a coat, and then Ginger accuses Audre of being slick and knowing all about her and her friends. She asks if Audre is gay. Audre doesn’t know how to tell her that she doesn’t know, but eventually says yes anyway. They smile at each other. Ginger convinces Audre to kiss her, even though Audre is incredibly nervous at the consequences, but Audre gets less nervous the more they kiss. They go to Ginger’s house, and Cora informs them that they missed out on the treat of Chinese food. Cora admonishes Audre not to leave the water on for too long during her bath. They get ready for bed, and Audre is nervous but excited, not understanding that Ginger feels the same. Audre eventually asks Ginger to come to bed, and Ginger is relieved. As soon as Audre touches Ginger, her anxiety vanishes: “Our bodies found the movements we needed to fit each other […] Her body answered the quest of my fingers my tongue my desire to know a woman” (139). Audre feels as though she has finally found herself and is surprised at how fearful she is before making love to Ginger, although she does not let Ginger reciprocate.

Audre remembers seeing a pair of earrings Gennie would have loved shortly after her death, temporarily forgetting that Gennieis gone forever. She resolves never to depend on anyone again, so she can never be hurt.

Ginger and Audre wake up to go to work, subtly flirting and reminiscing about the previous night. Audre enjoys Ginger treating her “like a swain. It gave me a sense of power and privilege that was heady, if illusory” (142). She knows that the affair is temporary because she and Ginger want different things: Ginger goes out on dates with men and Audre pretends not to care. Cora treats Audre as another daughter and mostly ignores the evidence of their relationship, although Cora openly acknowledges that she expects Ginger to get married again.