It’s a big yard, so Thandi runs a little to cover the distance along the fence. She’s sweating profusely in the heat, and her uniform clings to the plastic, macca thorns latching onto the hem of her skirt. She’s aware of the weight of the bag with the rice, cornmeal, and crème of pearl, the only promising thing inside it. The uprooted stones press under her thinning soles, which slap her heels as she runs. She speeds up, pushing away shrubs and hanging limbs, her lungs filling with the fear of being caught.
By the time she gets to Miss Gracie’s house, she’s breathing heavily, holding her sides. She knows she’s safe in front of Miss Gracie’s house because, though Miss Gracie has a few demons of her own—which have to do with her permanent residency at Dino’s Bar—Miss Gracie is a woman of God. She is inclined to have fits of the Holy Ghost in public, preaching in the square at the top of her voice while clutching a Bible.
A group of teenage boys sit on Miss Gracie’s fence, gorging on fresh mangoes from the tree. They pause when they see Thandi, each of them lowering his hand from his mouth. She’s the only girl in the neighborhood whose presence is likened to a figure of authority—a school principal, a teacher, a nun. When Thandi passes them, they are as silent as the caterpillars that rest on the leaves. All but one. Charles. Thandi walks with her head held straight, not because of the others, but because of him.
“Wha’ g’wan, Thandi?” Charles asks, breaking the silence that serenades her. She nearly trips. Heat spreads from her neck to her face, though none of the boys let on that they saw what just happened. She nods and walks quickly past Charles, knowing that his eyes are following her as she walks. She knows they are watching the gentle sway of her hips. She knows that while his eyes trace the curves, his thoughts have already slipped under her skirt. And what might they find there? If only he wasn’t a common boy, the kind Delores tells her to stay away from; the kind Margot would disapprove of because he’s not one of those moneymen with homes in Ironshore that even some of her classmates at Saint Emmanuel brag about dating. Besides, now that her skin will be lighter, she doesn’t have to settle for a boy like Charles. And yet, a pulse stirs between her legs and she hurries down the path, holding it in like pee.
Thandi finally arrives home. It’s the only shack in the open space next to a pasture where Mr. Melon, a soft-spoken farmer, ties up his nanny goat by the barren pear tree. Every day Mr. Melon walks the goat into the fields, to the only patch of land that has not turned into the rusted brown color of the trees around it. People think he treats the goat better than he treats his woman. Miss Francis and Miss Louise query Thandi with their eyes as she walks up the incline, passing the tenement yard that more than one family shares, their shacks joined like men leaning in a drunken embrace. The women use their hands as visors to shield their eyes from the sun. Though they don’t immediately call out to Thandi, she hears them talking about her. “Is Delores dawta dat? Look how she grow up nice. Mi hardly eva see her. Always in her books. But what ah beautiful sight.” To their young daughters sitting between their legs on the veranda, whose nappy hair they rake wide-toothed combs through and whose scalps they grease with Blue Magic, they point. “That’s how yuh should be. Like Thandi. Now she’s well on her way going to dat good school. See how neat her uniform is? Everyt’ing ’bout har jus’ neat. An’ she always pleasant. Not like har sistah, Margot, who g’wan like she can’t mash ants wid har nose inna di air.” They wave when Thandi looks their way.
Thandi greets them out of obligation. She manages to pass them by without lengthy conversations. “Good afternoon, Miss Louise. Good afternoon, Miss Francis. Oh, Grandma Merle is fine. Delores? Oh, yuh know, working as usual.” She pauses, a steady lump in her throat, when they ask her about school. “Yes, I’m preparing for the CXCs. Studying really hard. Thanks for the prayers.” And long after she walks away, she feels them watching her back.
When she opens her gate, Grandma Merle is sitting on the veranda, staring at the sky. “Good afternoon, Grandma,” Thandi says, though she knows there will never be a response. She often wonders if Grandma Merle is more conscious than she’s letting on. They have not exchanged more than two words since Thandi was a baby. She’s fifteen and has no recollection what it’s like to hear her grandmother’s voice. Grandma Merle fell silent after Thandi’s Uncle Winston left for America. He was Grandma Merle’s pride and joy. These days, the old woman stares at the blue sky as though she will see her son somewhere in the clouds sailing above the house, above all the trees and the sloping hills that swallow the sun in the evenings.
Little children are home from school, playing in the big open space where Mr. Melon ties his goat. Some are chasing the fowl in Thandi’s yard that are let loose out of the coop. The squawking birds fuss about the big yard, kicking up dust and startling the sleeping mongrel dogs that wag their tails to ward off flies. Thandi leaves Grandma Merle on the veranda and walks into the house. She puts the rice and cornmeal in their rightful places inside the cupboards, then fishes out the crème. She sits before the mirror and wipes the sweat off her face with the hem of her skirt. Twice a day after bathing, the instructions read. But Miss Ruby has warned her against taking showers.
Thandi holds the new crème jar in her hand, rereading every word of instruction. She wants it to work. It has been a month, yet her skin is still the same color. She has been doing everything she was told—wiping her armpits with a wet rag and washing her privates by squatting over a basin of soapy water to freshen up; wearing the long-sleeve sweatshirt over the Saran Wrap during the day to trap moisture and prevent sunburn; massaging Miss Ruby’s concoction into her skin every other day. Queen of Pearl is her last resort for faster results. She is unable to wash her face at this time in the day when the water pressure is low. Her face looks clean enough. She touches it with her fingertips, traces the length of it, the smoothness. The longer she examines herself in the mirror, the more she begins to see what her mother and sister and the community see: Thandi the scholarship winner, Thandi the good girl, Thandi—a source of hope for her family, destined for riches and prestige. The shack falls away and so does that perpetual weight inside Thandi’s chest as she stares at herself.
2
MARGOT BRAIDS THANDI’S HAIR WHILE DELORES STIRS RICE and peas inside a pot. Margot had brought home groceries—a dozen eggs, beef, cheese, mackerel, milk, oxtail, and chicken back, though the meats might go bad. JPS cut the electricity again. Thanks to Clover, the neighborhood handyman who disappeared but has recently returned, they are usually able to get electricity by stealing it from a nearby light pole, given that the shack isn’t legally wired. The little vocational schooling Clover had at Herbert Morrison Technical High makes him River Bank’s electrician, carpenter, and plumber. He helped to build half the shacks in River Bank, most on abandoned land. But tonight, there’s nothing that can be done to restore the electricity. According to Radio Jamaica news, which Delores has turned up on the old battery-operated radio near the stove, several trees caught fire due to the drought and damaged a few main JPS wires. Half the country is without light.
The kerosene lamp glows in the shack. Delores switches off the radio and continues to stir the pot, one hand resting on her wide hip thrust forward atop sturdy brown legs. Her broad shoulders rise as though they themselves are a mounting wall of hard feelings—much like her clenched back, which seems to ward off conversation. Margot can tell that her mother is irritable. “All dis food going to waste in dis blasted heat,” Delores says with her back still turned. “An’ now di people dem telling we dat we not g’wan have no electricity for a while because ah dis drought. But yuh see me dying trial? How dat g’wan help we?” Delores sucks her teeth and leans over to taste the food. Margot imagines her face scrunching as she reaches for more salt. The smell of mackerel hangs in the heat.
Margot refocuses on Thandi’s hair—the kinky curls that wrap around her finger like black silk when she stretches them. Thandi and Margot sit near the open window, taking in the cool breeze and mosqui
toes that land on their flesh. They take turns squashing the fattened insects on their arms and legs, wiping off bloodied palms with old newspaper or tissue. They never know whose blood stains their palms; and rarely does it matter, considering that if it belongs to either one of them, then it’s the same.
The thing Margot looks forward to the most whenever she’s home is braiding her sister’s hair. It’s the only reason why she’s here tonight and not at the hotel or at Verdene’s, where there’s a generator. She finds enjoyment in the softness of her sister’s hair. Margot is older than Thandi by fifteen years, an age gap that makes Thandi regard Margot more as a second parent than an older sister. When her sister was a baby with a head full of curls, Margot discovered that in the braiding she found escape from various men’s untying, unclasping, and unbuckling. It was in this soft, delicate texture that the roughness of the other touches faded. The braiding has been a ritual ever since.
“Ouch!” Thandi pulls Margot back to the present.
“What’s di mattah?”
“You’re pulling again!”
“I’m sorry,” Margot says, feeling something greater slip from her fingers when her sister yanks her head away this time.
“Careful wid har hair!” Delores says, reeling from the stove with the dripping wooden spoon. “Yuh t’ink she’s a playt’ing?”
Margot sucks her teeth while pulling balls of dark hair from the fine-toothed comb and wrapping them inside tissue so that she can burn them later.
“Yuh always in dat child’s hair like yuh don’t have yuh own.”
“She has swimming lessons tomorrow,” Margot says in defense, though there was a letter sent from the school concerning Thandi’s lack of participation in swimming. According to the letter, her sister had to sit out swimming class eight times this term, saying she had her period. This became a concern for the school. Margot knows that Thandi hates water, save for taking showers. But she has always made sure that her sister learns how to swim, paying for the lessons anyway no matter how many times she fails to show up. It’s also the one excuse Margot holds on to for braiding Thandi’s hair.
“Then let me do it,” Delores says.
Margot holds the comb as if it’s a weapon. “You always think I’m hurting her.”
Thandi is quiet. Delores steps back and dries her hands on the front of her dress. She wipes sweat from her upper lip, then goes back to stirring the pot. Without turning around she says, “Mr. Sterling increase di rent again.”
“Again?” Margot asks, continuing to comb Thandi’s hair. “But him increase it jus’ two months ago.”
“Yuh already know is so dat man stay,” Delores says, stirring harder. “T’iefing culprit.”
Margot looks down into the roots of her sister’s hair. She brushes the curls, meticulously tames them, avoiding the weight of her mother’s frustration on her shoulders. “I want to put down something for a house,” she hears herself say. It sounds as if someone else is speaking—someone crouched inside the dark shadows in the corners of the shack. “I want to move us from dis rat hole. It don’t mek no sense why we have to stay here an’ keep paying dat man rent. We don’t even have real electricity.”
“Yuh sure ’bout dat?” Delores asks, pausing with the wooden spoon to look at Margot, her eyes hardening. “Yuh been working in dat hotel fah god knows how long, saying di same damn t’ing. If ah didn’t know bettah ah woulda t’ink yuh spending it pon yuhself.” Her eyes seem to have electricity running through them. The only source on the entire island. Their shadows clash in the dim light when Delores steps closer with the spoon. If it weren’t for her sister pressing her head between her legs as if to allow her to carry on, Margot would have snatched the wooden spoon out of her mother’s hand. Who knows what she would’ve done with it? Margot knows that Thandi gets uneasy with confrontations like these between her and Delores. She becomes anxious, watchful, acquiring the fidgetiness of a kitchen mouse and doing everything in her power to resolve the issue. Margot swallows the boiling-hot fury inside her for Thandi’s sake. “Delores, yuh know very well dat everyt’ing I earn goes into Thandi’s education. And into dis blasted place.”
“We all know dat hotel work is good work,” Delores charges. “Yet we can’t see di fruits ah yuh labor. We ovah here barely holdin’ on. Thandi ’ave har exam in June, di rent piling up, we haffi pay Clover money fah di electricity—”
“We owe Clover nothing,” Margot says between clenched teeth. “Not one cent!”
“Well, is not like yuh stick aroun’ at night to see dat we been using dis tired kerosene lamp even when is not a power cut. Poor Thandi haffi strain har eye undah dis dim light—” She gestures to the kerosene lamp. Inside it, the flame is dancing. Margot focuses on it. How weak it seems, trapped inside glass. This little flame that has the potential to destroy the whole house. Margot stares and stares, her own flame building on the inside, burning and burning until it’s too hot to keep to herself. “I’ll figure it out,” she says in a low, tempered voice.
Delores is silent for a moment. The fire hisses under the pot. “How?” she asks. The liquid from the spoon is dripping onto the floor.
“I said.” Margot lifts her head to meet her mother’s gaze. “I’ll figure it out. I always do.”
Her mother lowers her spoon and her shoulders. Strangely, something flickers in her eyes—a sadness, or perhaps regret, more pronounced than Margot has ever seen it. It reaches out across the room, over Thandi’s head, to confess that despite what she had done as a mother, despite the pain she had put Margot through, they are joined as mother and daughter. Her hand half lifts with the spoon—a gesture that Margot considers might be a first attempt at an apology. As she braces herself to receive it, Delores’s voice strikes her like a cane. “Take care of what, Margot? Where di money g’wan come from if it not coming already?” Delores laughs, her eyes wheeling over the room as if in desperate search for the shadows. “Yuh see me dying trial? She say she will tek care of it as if money fall from sky. Or grow pon tree. Di chile done lose har mind!”
“I’ll be up fah promotion any day now,” Margot says.
“Promotion?”
“Yes. A promotion.”
“To be what? Head servant?”
Delores’s derisive laugh drives Margot back into Thandi’s hair. But even her sister, in her stiff-backed silence, seems to be agreeing with their mother. Margot turns Thandi’s head this way and that way like a rag doll.
“Ouch! Ouch! Margot!” Thandi yells. But Margot doesn’t oblige. This time, as exquisite pain courses through her, propelled by her mother’s disdain, Margot pulls at her sister’s hair. The last thing she wants is to hurt Thandi. But Thandi’s pain is different—the type that comes with relief like a balm over a scab, a needle drawing splinter from skin. Margot’s stays. Delores’s voice rushes at her, flogging her with its taunt: “Tek care of what? Bettah yuh go set up shop as a market vendor at craft market than tell people yuh work in a hotel.”
They stare at her when she walks into school wearing the oversized sweatshirt, her hair newly straightened. Thandi ignores the attention, seeking the refuge of her desk in the back of the classroom. Heads turn as she makes her way down the row. Along with the speculation she hears her classmates whisper.
“Why is she wearing that dreadful sweatshirt? It’s like she has AIDS or something.”
“Or hiding a you-know-what!”
“No way!”
“Well, yuh know what they say. It’s always the quiet ones. Even her hair change. They say when you swallow, it’s extra protein. Good for the hair and skin.”
“Says who?”
“I read it somewhere.”
“But you think she has a man giving it to her on the regular?”
“Like I said, it’s the ones you least expect.”
Not since Kim Brady got slapped by her mother in front of the entire school for insulting one of the nuns has there been anything as gossip-worthy. Thandi keeps her head down during devotio
n in the hall where Sister Shirley, the headmistress, leads the school in worship. Sister Shirley’s voice soars above the collective: “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit by thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now, and at the hour of our death. Amen.”
Thandi makes the sign of the cross and focuses on her polished black shoes. The girls are ushered out of the hall under the direction of the prefects, older girls who have been given duties as disciplinarians. Before each class exits the hall in orderly lines arranged by height, the prefects march down the lines like army generals, holding notepads. They mark down the names of girls who have disobeyed some cardinal rule in attire—girls who aren’t wearing slips underneath their uniform skirts, girls wearing hair clips that aren’t black and inconspicuous, girls with any form of jewelry, girls wearing braids or any ethnic hairstyles outside of the accepted bun or neatly plaited ponytail, girls with ties that aren’t tied properly around the collars of their blouses with the short end of the ties tucked away or pinned down, girls with skirts that are too short or socks that are too long, girls with heels that are over two inches, girls with the waistbands of their skirts not showing.
When Marie Pinta, the assigned prefect for Thandi’s class (whose real name is Marie Wellington of the Wellington family in Jamaica, but who got her nickname because of her height), gets down the middle of the line to Thandi, she pauses. “Are you sick?”
“No.” Thandi replies.
“Well, take that off. It’s not allowed.”
Thandi hesitates. Her homeroom teacher, Sister Atkins, did not complain before devotion. In fact, she marked Thandi present after seeing her wearing the sweatshirt. Marie Pinta’s request is followed by a hushed silence in the corner of the devotion hall where Thandi’s class is lined up. The watchfulness of Thandi’s classmates makes her swallow a verbal plea. Instead she pleads with her eyes, hoping Marie Pinta will reconsider. Marie Pinta, whom Thandi has observed on many occasions during devotion wearily gazing out the window, her eyes focused on some elusive thing.
Here Comes the Sun Page 3
