Here Comes the Sun (24 page)

“I want to be an artist. Maybe yuh can start to sell my drawings to yuh customers.” Thandi continues to talk as though talking to herself. “I'm really good at it. Brother Smith says I'm really talented. He nominated me to compete for an art prize at school. He even said I could go to a school for art.”

Delores stirs and stirs the pot, Thandi's words seeming to drown in the bubbling soup.

“Mama, yuh listening?” Thandi touches Delores's arm. “Mama, yuh hear me? I want to go to art school and I only need five subjects.”

“I'm busy,” is all Delores says. “I'm sending you to school to learn. So yuh g'wan be something good in life. Nothing less. Don't come to me wid dis again, yuh hear? Yuh is no damn artist. We too poor for that. Yuh g'wan be a doctor. People can't mek a living being no ch'upid artist. Do you see the Rastas selling in di market making money wid dem art?”

Thandi shakes her head, her eyes on the floor. “But there are different types of artists, Mama.”

“Different types of artist, mi backside! G'wan go learn yuh books, yuh hear? The CXC is jus' around di corner. Why yuh entering a blasted prize fah? Why yuh not studying? Yuh need all nine subjects to be the doctor yuh want to be. Not a ch'upid prize.”

“
You
want me to be a doctor.” Thandi puts the sketchpad down on the dining table.

Delores peers at her. “Thandi, what yuh saying to me?”

Thandi cowers under the weight of her mother's glare, her heartbeat echoing in her eardrums, her face hot. “Nothing,” she replies.

“Is who filling up yuh head with all this, eh?” Delores asks.

“I have a mind of my own, you know,” Thandi says. She walks outside into the darkness that consumes her, leaving the back door open.

“Where yuh going? Dinner will be ready soon!” Delores calls after her. But Thandi doesn't respond. She's too tired. She leans against the back of the house and slides down to her buttocks.

W
hen Thandi disappears outside into the darkness, she takes all of Delores's breath with her. The girl must be smelling her ripeness, Delores thinks. Not her Thandi. She's supposed to be the good one, different from her sister. Had Thandi not been such a good girl all this time, Delores would've knocked her in the head with the spoon she uses to stir the soup. Thandi's eyes held in them the same glint of that thing Delores saw in Margot's eyes years ago; the same glint that made Delores look away in case it struck her down like lightning.

She cannot get the sketch of the half-naked woman standing in front of a mirror from her mind. The resemblance between Delores and the woman is uncanny, almost like a picture taken of her—same face, same eyes, same mouth, same sagging breasts resting atop the high bulge of her belly. The earnestness in her daughter's eyes when she looked at her and the hopeful grin that spread across the girl's face—one Delores hasn't seen in a long time, Thandi always being so serious. In the sketch Delores saw everything she thought she had hidden so well, tucked away in the folds of years, heaped upon each other like steps that she takes one at a time. In her daughter's drawing, she saw the lines in her face, her double chin. She saw an ugly woman—an ugly black woman with bulging eyes too wide to be peered into before looking away, and nose too flat on the broad face. In this sketch she was not human, but a creature. This is how her daughter sees her—bull-faced and miserable. All Delores's secrets and insecurities are exposed in the gaze of this child.

Margot was barely fourteen at the time. In the summers when Margot was out of school she would help Delores carry things to Falmouth and spread them out so that Delores could sell. While Delores sold items to tourists, Margot would help count the change and wrap the fragile items in newspaper. One day a tall, dark-haired man walked into Delores's stall. He was wearing sunglasses, like most tourists. He had a presence about him, an air Delores associated with important people—white people. Like the ones who just bought out her stall. Except the man wasn't white. A mixture, maybe. A mulatto kind. He wore a button-down shirt that revealed the dark hairs on his chest. When Delores peered up at him, she saw he was peering down at Margot. He turned to Delores, his eyes hidden behind the shades. “How much?” he asked in a voice that sounded to Delores like thunder.

“Di dolls are twenty, sah. Oh, an' di figurines guh for fifteen U.S., but ah can give yuh fah ten. An' di T-shirts! They're unique, sah. One of ah kind! Only fifteen dollah.”

“No,” the man said, returning his focus to Margot. “I'm talking about her.” He used his pointy chin to gesture to a skinny Margot, who, at the time, had barely started menstruating or growing breasts. Delores looked from her daughter to the tall stranger wearing the sunglasses. “She's not on sale, sah.”

The man pulled out a wad of cash and began to count it in front of Delores. Delores watched him count six hundred-dollar bills. She had never seen so much money in her life. The crispness of the bills and the scent of newness, which Delores thought was what wealth must smell like—the possibility of moving her family out of River Bank, affording her daughter's school fee, books, and uniforms, buying a telephone and a landline for her to call people whenever she liked instead of waiting to use the neighbor's phone—all these possibilities were too much to swallow all at once. “Sah—but she—she's only fourteen.”

“I'm staying right down there.” He gestured to the large cruise ship, which was in plain sight. “I'll have her back before dinner.” The man placed the bills in front of Delores. She tore her eyes away from the stack to look into the terrified eyes of her daughter. Margot was shaking her head slowly, mouthing,
No
, but Delores had made up her mind the minute the scent of the bills hit her. Her eyes pleaded with her daughter's, and also held in them an apology.
Please undah-stand. Do it now and you'll tank me lata
, Delores hoped her eyes communicated. She nodded to the man when Margot looked away, defeated. The man took Margot somewhere—Delores didn't ask where. It was in the direction of the ship that had docked for the day. The girl followed behind him, her steps uncertain. She never looked back to see the tears in Delores's eyes.

When the man returned Margot later that evening, she refused to speak to Delores. Delores had left the market that day with six hundred dollars plus a tip that the man had added. “
She's a natural, this one,
” he said to Delores with a wink. Delores stuffed the money in her brassiere. At home she hid it inside the mattress where she hid all her money. She hid it so well that she never noticed when the money disappeared. It wasn't until her brother, Winston, who was living with them at the time, announced months later that he got a visa and a one-way ticket to America that Delores wondered where he got the money. Immediately after Winston's announcement Delores ripped the sheets off the bed and stuck her hand inside the hole underneath the sponge layer. Nothing came up in her desperate fingers. The realization burned her stomach and spread across the width of her belly like the pressure of a child about to be born. For Thandi had just started to kick then. Delores almost collapsed, not with the fury and raging anger she harbored for her brother, but for the loss of her daughter's innocence, which, she realized too late, was worth more than the money she lost and all the money she would ever gain.

Though she doesn't know the story, Thandi has captured all of this pian. All Delores is to her is this ugly, dark woman capable of nothing but fits of rage and cruelty. Who knew that both her daughters would come to view her this way? Delores sinks into the chair around the dining table. Thandi, like Margot, hates her. And so does Mama Merle, sitting outside on that rocking chair. The old bat will spend another day wishing her beloved, good-for-nothing son home; while Delores will continue breaking her back to provide for the family, doing what she does best: survive.

18

A
LPHONSO HIMSELF ANNOUNCED THE NEWS THAT MISS NOVIA
Scott-Henry had decided to step down. But by the time the announcement was made, it had already been emptied of any potential shock. Certainly Margot could have gone to the woman with the pictures and given her an ultimatum:
You step down or I leak these to the press.
But there was no need, since what took place afterward was more epic in the unraveling. It began with a scream. A howl that startled the entire sixteenth floor when the maids discovered the two naked women in the penthouse suite. The maids' screaming drew other maids from other floors who had just slipped into their uniforms and comfortable shoes, still humming songs from last night's church revival.

Sweetness did not handle it well, crippled with guilt. Margot feared that she might come forward with some damning information about what really had taken place, so she decided to set her free, handing her severance pay.

“Yuh firing me?” the girl asked. “But ah did what yuh ask.”

“You did what I asked. Now you can go.”

“But ah thought yuh was g'wan hire me.”

“Not when yuh mope around like yuh mother jus' dead.”

“Ah was jus' feeling guilty, like a normal person wid ah heart. Now what g'wan happen to di 'ooman?”

“Nuh worry 'bout dat. It's done.”

“Ah couldn't stomach it. Not even fah myself. To be ousted dat way. Why yuh did such a t'ing if you is—”

“Here is yuh money. Tek it or leave it.”

But Sweetness let the padded white envelope fall between them. Margot was the one to pick it up off the floor and brush it off. “So yuh g'wan act like yuh neva earn it?” she asked the girl. “Fine, go back to where yuh come from. I'll put this money to good use. There are ah hundred more girls out there.” Sweetness looked on as Margot placed the envelope back inside her purse. She swallowed. “I didn't say ah want to stop working fah you,” she said.

“Well, if yuh want to continue working for me, then stop talking about what happened.” Margot stepped closer. She used one hand to clutch the girl by the chin. “Look at me. It's done. The woman stepped down. Whateva happen to her aftah-wards is not your business or your concern. She's going to be all right. Those people don't suffer. They don't even know di meaning of dat word. We have biggah fish to fry. So yuh either swim or yuh drown.”

The girl nodded. “Me is a very good swimmer.”

That same day after it was announced that Miss Novia Scott-Henry would step down, Margot attended her first board meeting. As senior clerk she had to help Alphonso with damage control. When she opened the door to the restroom where she'd gone to freshen up before her entrance, Miss Novia Scott-Henry was bent over the sink, both hands spanning the width. Her body was heaving and shuddering. Their eyes met in the mirror. That was when Margot saw her tears; the long streaks down her face. Like scars.

19

C
HARLES HAS AGREED TO RETURN TO HELP OUT AROUND THE
yard, uprooting weeds and washing the discolored walls and walkway. All morning long he has been working. He never pauses for a break, and declines Verdene's offers for food and water. Finally she convinces him to come inside for tea.

“Don't worry, it's not poison.” Verdene lowers a tray with the teacups and saucers her mother once reserved for special guests. Charles watches her pour the peppermint tea. Her hand shakes a little as the liquid fills his cup, a plume of steam rising from its surface. He doesn't drink until she puts her cup to her mouth.

“You're not a talker,” she says, sitting across from him at the dining table.

“Not when I'm working.” He lowers his cup into the saucer. She notices that he doesn't look anywhere else like people tend to do when they are inside a place for the first time.

“So you're a hard worker.” She regrets this statement as soon as she says it. She sounds pompous, condescending. She wishes she could take it back.

“I get di job done,” he says. “My father always used to seh dat how ah man work is ah reflection of his character.”

“Who is your father? If you don't mind me asking.”

“Asafa.”

“Lobsterman?” Verdene asks, remembering the fisherman. How could she not have known that this is his son? They look exactly alike—same sepia-colored eyes, same nose, same chin with the slight dimple. Asafa was just a youth when Verdene left. A youth her age who, like his father before him—a man people called One Eye Barry—started fishing from an early age. “Lobsterman is your father.” This is a statement, a declaration, as the image of Asafa appears across from her like a blueprint. “You say used to? Where is your father now?”

Charles puts the cup to his face again, completely burying his nose. She watches the rhythm of his throat as he swallows. When he wipes his mouth with the back of his hand he says, “Gone.”

Verdene plays with the rim of her cup. “I'm sorry.”

Charles shrugs. “It is what it is.”

Verdene picks up her cup and holds it to warm her hands.

“I'm still getting over my mother passing. So I can just imagine how you feel.”

“He didn't die. He left.”

“Oh.”

A slick of blue sky frames his head. Usually when Verdene sits at the table this time of day she sees nothing but the sky. This only makes her want to do everything in her power to keep him there, her first real company besides Margot. “More tea?” she asks, hoping to change the mood. He nods. She pours more tea into his cup and rests the teapot at the center of the table. Charles inspects it. “Dis remind me of something I would see at Buckingham Palace,” he says.

Verdene chuckles. “Have you ever been?”

“No, but dat's di kinda teapot ah imagine di queen would have in har cupboard.”

“It was a gift my aunt sent my mother when she first moved to London.”