Here Comes the Sun (26 page)

21

O
UTSIDE, THE HUMID AIR HANGS LOW LIKE THE MANGOES ON
the trees. It's June, the tail end of mango season. So the little breeze, if any, carries the sweet, battered smell of rotting mangoes. The school compound is empty, since classes have begun. The sun plays on the well-manicured lawn that is surrounded by quaint two-story buildings built by the British founders of the school. The walkways are lined with manicured hedges of bright red and pink hibiscuses, all leading to the Victorian architecture of the administrative office—a place where Thandi imagines girls with pale skin wearing broad hats used to sip afternoon tea back in the day before black girls were admitted. She is finding it difficult to focus on her studies the way she should, dawdling between classes.

“Young lady, why are you not in class?”

Thandi turns around and sees Sister Benjamin, a wiry-thin nun whose pointed nose resembles a beak. She's the school nurse. “Uhm . . . ah . . . I was sent to . . . I feel sick,” Thandi blurts out, surprised at her ability to manufacture such a lie on the spot while staring straight into the eyes of a nun.

“Come with me,” Sister Benjamin says with authority. Thandi follows behind her into a more shaded area by the physical education building—a newer building with a gymnasium and a swimming pool—where Sister Benjamin's office is located. Once inside the nurse's office, Thandi sits ladylike, back straight and legs crossed at the ankles, in the cold metal chair by the desk. There are plastic molds of human anatomy on the shelves inside the office—various parts like the eyes with squiggly blue veins drawn on the cornea, the intestines that zigzag all the way to the mannequin's bottom half, and the womb that is shaped like the horns of a ram. The air-conditioning in the office feels like opening Mr. Levy's deep freeze, revealing the bottles of soft drinks inside. These white nuns would never survive in Jamaica without air-conditioning. Thandi imagines that they would melt like candle wax.

Sister Benjamin stands over Thandi. She presses a cool pinkish hand to Thandi's neck. As if unsatisfied with what she feels, she retrieves her thermometer and tells Thandi to open her mouth. When she takes it out and looks at it, she nods to herself. “When did the sickness start?” she asks.

Thandi clears her throat. “Last month, miss.” It's true that she hasn't been feeling like herself lately. Her drive to do schoolwork has diminished, though she still makes good grades. Maybe it's because the exams are only days away and she's ready to get them over with.

“Last month?” Sister Benjamin raises an eyebrow. “Have you been experiencing any headaches, nausea, vomiting?” Sister Benjamin asks Thandi.

Thandi nods, relieved that she can get away with the lie. She swallows, comforted by the recollection of the dizzying hot flashes she had been getting due to the plastic and sweatshirt she had been wearing since February. “How about fatigue?” Sister Benjamin asks. “Have you been feeling very tired lately?” Thandi nods again, thinking about the creeping wave of exhaustion that overwhelms her out of nowhere.

“Have you missed any periods?”

Thandi clears her throat and lowers her eyes.

“It'll be all right, dear,” Sister Benjamin says, leaning again to touch Thandi on the arm. “You can talk to me.”

Thandi tenses. She takes a deep breath to steady herself.

“How did it happen, love?” Sister Benjamin asks.

“I'm not pregnant.” Thandi says. “I've never . . .”

“You've never had sexual relations with anyone? Is that what you're saying?”

“No . . . I mean, yes . . . I mean, no . . . I—I didn't do anything.”

If she tells Sister Benjamin what really happened all those years ago, it would mean that her pain would no longer be hers. She shakes her head, her eyes downcast. “I'm not pregnant.”

“Then what have you been hiding under that sweatshirt? It's been a hundred degrees outside.”

Thandi's face grows warm. Sister Benjamin would never understand. How can she ever explain that she wanted to be fair—like the Virgin Mary or the nuns and girls at school who take their lightness for granted? Thandi doesn't know what's worse in the eyes of this woman of God—the discovery that she could be correcting God's mistake and even blasphemously suggesting that he made one; or the assumption that she has fornicated and gotten pregnant. Thandi's eyes catch on a poster on the wall. In bold letters it declares:
YOU ARE MADE IN THE IMAGE OF GOD
. Below the words, a frail girl who looks like the Virgin Mary is piously bowing her covered head, her milky white skin glowing in a light that appears to be descending from heaven. Thandi averts her eyes.

“Let us pray,” Sister Benjamin says, reaching for Thandi's hand across the table. Thandi sits back down and puts her hands inside Sister Benjamin's. The woman's hands are tight around hers, her eyes closed. “Repeat after me. Oh, my God, I am heartfully sorry for having offended thee, and I detest all my sins because of Thy just punishment . . .”

When Thandi opens her eyes, Sister Benjamin is smiling. “Thank you, Sister Benjamin,” Thandi chokes, unable to look her in the eyes. She feels Sister Benjamin watching her as she gets up from the chair and moves to the door.

“Concentrate on your education. A girl like you can't afford not to. Believe me, you wouldn't want to throw all this away just for your indiscretions. Or someone else's.” A shadow briefly descends over her face like a veil. When Thandi blinks, it's gone, replaced by a cool stamp of disapproval.

Thandi makes a beeline to Charles's house, her backpack bouncing behind her. She will apologize to him for their last encounter, tell him that she wasn't herself; that something came over her and made her do what she did, embarrassing them both. She flings the gate open and hurries to his shack. Cain and Abel trail behind her. They recognize her now, jumping up to greet her, their tails wagging and tongues hanging. She knocks on Charles's door. When she knocks again and no one answers, she peers through the window. He's not there. She looks around the yard, wondering where he could be, given that he was not by the river. Neither was he by his father's boat. She contemplates the main shack, where the front door swings open in the light breeze. She never thought to look there. Never thought to go inside, for it is known in River Bank that Miss Violet does not take visitors. Thandi goes to the main house anyway and pushes the door open.

The house reeks of sinkle bible and boiled tamarind leaves. Thandi shudders from the stench, which reminds her of sickness. But it is the more potent mixture of piss, feces, and something else that makes her swallow the box lunch she ate at school earlier. The darkness doesn't permit Thandi to see much farther than the doorway. She considers turning and going back outside, but her feet remain grounded as though the floor is made of wet cement. Someone coughs. This is followed by a soft coo, like a baby bird or something more fragile. Thandi steps inside, her feet aggravating the wooden floorboards. She puts her backpack over both shoulders so that her hands are free to feel around. A sliver of daylight enters through the small tear in the curtain by the only window. The curtain, Thandi notices, is just an old sheet. This faint light allows her to see the small table with a couple of chairs, some cardboard boxes, a stack of old newspapers, and a barrel. Now that she's inside, outside seems like a foreign country. There's no concept of time and place. The date—though currently June 1, 1994—is still August 7, 1988, according to the water-stained calendar hanging on a wall.

Inside this house, Hurricane Gilbert has not yet come and devastated the island, flooding out some residents of River Bank. Inside this house, Edward Seaga is still Prime Minister of Jamaica, a yellowing picture of him pasted next to the calendar. Inside this house, a fisherman name Asafa still brings home lobster for his family. When Thandi approaches the bedroom (the partitioned area where the cooing gets louder, sounding like a wounded animal as opposed to the soft, fragile thing that Thandi had pictured earlier) a frail woman's voice calls out. “Asafa? Ah you dat?” But it's not the assumption that throws Thandi off guard; it's the sound of the woman's voice—gravellike and strained, as though she has been weeping for hours, days, weeks, months, years. Nearly a decade. “Asafa?”

Thandi pauses. Though she's barely breathed since entering the house, she gasps for the little air remaining.

“No, Mama, is jus' me. Yuh imagining t'ings again.” It's Charles. Thandi tiptoes to the side of the partition, a red, velvety upholstery material that she's used to seeing on chairs in Mr. Farrow's furniture place. She spies Charles squeezing a piece of washcloth from a basin. Thandi hears the water swooshing around. His mother is sitting up on a narrow bed, naked, looking like a big doll. Her dark hair is wild, flanked with powdery grays. Her eyes are sunken and wide, the bags under them like dark pouches. It's hard for Thandi to recognize Miss Violet with all that wrinkled flesh. Her face seems to have crumpled under many years of disappointment, worry, sadness, and longing. This is Jullette's mother. A woman Thandi once thought to be the most beautiful, loving, and caring mother compared to hers. Miss Violet would give Jullette peanuts even when she didn't ask. She gave her perms too, something Thandi envied because it made Jullette seem grown. And when Jullette's hair started falling out, Miss Violet had her get those extension braids. They talked like friends, giggling and smiling at each other all the time. There was never any beating or shaming. As the only girl in her family of boys, Jullette did anything she wanted without living in fear of a domineering mother. Miss Violet used to sell peanuts, tamarind balls, and peppered shrimp outside the gate of their primary school. She was always ready for Thandi with a pretty smile, though she had only a few teeth left in her mouth then. “
Aye, coolie girl.
”

Currently the woman looks like she has aged fifty years, her eyes glazed with nostalgia. “Yuh rememba Irby an' Georgie?” she asks her son, pronouncing “
Georgie
” as “
Jaaaji
.” Her pink tongue wallows in her gaping, toothless mouth like a whale.

“Yes, Mama,” Charles replies, using the cloth to bathe his mother. Miss Violet is indifferent to this. Indifferent to her grown son cleaning her this way, wiping the wet cloth over her sandy-brown breasts that are full, heavy sacks on her chest.

“An' Premrose. Is wah become ah Premrose?” Miss Violet asks. The water trickles down her pouched belly and settles in her concave navel. Her eyes glisten as she appears to search her memory for a woman named Premrose. “Mi will do anyting fi har sorrel now,” she says, clucking her tongue. “Those was some good days.” Charles continues to wipe, his face neutral despite the downward stroke between his mother's legs, where the black and gray hairs match the ones on her head.

“She's dead now,” Charles says, looking away from his task out of politeness and respect. Thandi can't see the look on his face, but his motion is a mechanical one—his mother's hands are busy touching her hair as if to replace a wayward strand from an elegant coif. All she says is, “Uhn,” as though this news of Premrose's passing means nothing. She says it again when Charles finishes.

“Yuh should get out di house sometime,” Charles says quietly. “Look for work an' stop laying up in bed like dis. Yuh is not a ole 'ooman yet, an' yuh still got yuh strength.”

Miss Violet looks at him. “Is bettah fah yuh to kill me. Tek me outta dis misery. Premrose is in a bettah place now. It shoulda been me.”

Charles straightens and looks down at his mother. “Mama, me can't continue fi do dis.”

Miss Violet presses her lips to her gums and holds his hand, bringing him back down. “Jus' do it. Me will be forevah grateful if yuh end it fah me. Put a knife to me throat, ah icepick to me 'aart. Anyt'ing. Jus' kill me, son-son. Please, please, me ah beg yuh!” Then her voice becomes cold. “Yuh is a coward! A lessah man than yuh father!” The cooing starts again.

Thandi backs away. Her footsteps trouble the floorboards again and this time the creaking brings Charles to the curtain. Their eyes meet—his, questioning, ashamed; hers, apologetic. He stands there in silence, the wet cloth dripping to the floor, his mother cooing in the background. Thandi trembles with the urge to hold him and the need for forgiveness as she witnesses the rage building in his eyes, eclipsing them like moons. She turns around and cuts through the stink, running until she's sure she has escaped it. But the smell, like the look in Charles's eyes, follows her all the way home.

22

O
N THE DAY OF THE PARTY, THANDI IRONS A MODEST GREEN
dress that falls below her knees. With a big white collar, white buttons, pleats and a bow in the back, it's a perfect cover for the daring dress she intends to change into once she gets to the restaurant. Grandma Merle had sewn the green dress for Delores when she was Thandi's size. Delores kept the dress so that it could be passed on to Margot, then Thandi. In the mirror above the vanity she spies her clear complexion; the lightness has come into her skin like a slow-moving mixture of condensed milk and Milo. Truth be told, she hasn't given much thought to the party, medical school, or her bleaching regimen since Charles. But after seeing Miss Violet, the ugliness of being black and poor remains like intaglio on her mind. It's the one thing that connects her to Miss Violet's sickness, Margot's restlessness, and Delores's intermittent wrath. After being inside Miss Violet's shack, she saw, with overwhelming dread, what might become of her. That day she rushed home to the shack, and there, before the mirror, rubbed her skin with the Queen of Pearl and Miss Ruby's concoction mixed with hydrogen peroxide until it was raw and tender. But no matter how hard and how frequently she rubs, the imprint of Charles's mother remains, for it's indelible.