Here Comes the Sun

by Nicole Dennis-Benn

  Thandi sits and regards the frame on Brother Smith’s desk that reads I CAN DO ALL THINGS THROUGH CHRIST WHO STRENGTHENS ME. She stares at it for a while. Surely she has been working hard, doing everything to please. Jesus Christ peers at her with sympathetic eyes that mirror the nuns’ and those of the missionaries. She’s supposed to want this. She’s supposed to be grateful. A girl like her should excel at school, because it’s the only way out—the only way to clamber up the ladder. I’m supposed to want this. Yet, year after year when she walks away with all A’s on her school report, a nagging persists. Like she’s running a race, panting on her way to a finish line that doesn’t exist.

  “Thandi, what’s going on? Our class starts in thirty minutes,” Brother Smith says. Though he’s quite young, Brother Smith is prematurely balding. His bald spot shines in the natural light from outside like the silver plate he passes around during mass. He tries to cover it with four strands of brown hair combed to the side. He’s small in stature, his fair skin interrupted by brown freckles covering his entire face like a dotted mask. But his kind, chestnut-colored eyes stand out like the languid strokes of a brush, capturing everything about a person, an object, or a setting. Currently they’re steady on her face, as if trying to figure out a crossword puzzle. He leans forward to rub her arm in that paternal way she has gotten used to. He doesn’t seem to hear the slight crinkling of the plastic underneath her sweatshirt. And if he does, he doesn’t ask. It’s here, inside Brother Smith’s art class, that Thandi feels most free.

  “Is it possible to be good at something even if you don’t want to?”

  “Yes, that’s plausible. Why?”

  Thandi shrugs, looking down at her hands. “I—I was thinking . . .” Her voice trails off. “I was thinking how much I love art. More than any other subject.” Brother Smith takes his hand away and creates distance between them. A distance Thandi feels, which momentarily creates an ache within her. He’s rubbing his chin as though suddenly aware of a burgeoning five o’clock shadow.

  “My advice is for you to love all your subjects. The CXC is just around the corner.”

  “I know. And I am prepared to pass it. It’s just . . .”

  “Thandi, I teach art as a vocational subject.”

  His response puts a sinking feeling inside Thandi’s chest like the melting of chipped ice. She looks around the room, her desires springing forth like vines across the white ceiling, coloring the beige walls. “Nothing else feels right.”

  “Thandi, you have a whole life ahead of you. It’s too soon to be feeling this way.”

  Brother Smith clasps both his hands as if he’s about to pray. “Think about your family, this school. People are rooting for you. You’re a straight-A student who can do more with your life than be—”

  “But you said I’m good.”

  “Yes, I did say that.”

  He reaches across a small stack of students’ work on his desk and locates Thandi’s sketchpad. The students had to turn in preliminary materials for the end-of-the-year project. He opens up Thandi’s. “You have skills. It’s obvious,” he says. “But I’m afraid that—” He clears his throat. “I don’t see a future for you there.”

  Brother Smith apparently picks up on her disappointment, because his face softens and his head tilts as though he’s about to reason with a five-year-old.

  “Here is the thing, Thandi. I favor landscapes and have to say that yours is my favorite by far of all the collection that I have! But this final project should give me a better understanding of you, the artist. I don’t see that. I would like to challenge you to go deeper, reveal more of yourself,” he says. “If I like what I see, I will nominate your work to be displayed in the Merridian. You can keep drawing, even if not professionally.” He pushes her drawings that she did over the last few weeks to the edge of his desk.

  The Merridian is the holy grail of artwork in the school. It was named after a white nun whose favorite pastime was painting workers in the fields whenever she came on missionary trips to the plantations. She would title her paintings Negro Picking Corn; Negro Under Tree; Negro at Sunset. Her paintings had gotten national acclaim.

  “I’d like that, sir,” Thandi says, almost falling out of her chair to rise with Brother Smith. They walk together to the studio, Thandi silently contemplating what she’ll do for the final project as they pass the sewing room, where girls sit studiously behind Singer machines; the cooking hall, with its smell of cornmeal pudding; the typing lab, where keyboards take on the sound of pecking birds; and finally to the art studio. Brother Smith squeezes her shoulder firmly before they enter the class. As soon as she gets to her space around a large table that seats all six of her art classmates, Thandi pulls out her tools. Brother Smith instructs them to sketch for a few minutes, identifying objects in the room. Thandi angles the pencil in her right hand and concentrates deeply. She taps her pencil lightly on the sheet, the Merridian still on her mind. Brother Smith may say there’s no future in art, but if he nominates her and she wins, who knows? But how can she reveal more of herself when she’s so unsure of who that is? Her hand barely moves, though other images come into focus: the chipped ceramic vase with red roses that Brother Smith keeps at the front of the room for inspiration, the Virgin Mary figurine on the windowsill, a pair of slippers with the heels rubbed down on a side table, the defiance within the straight backs of the wooden chairs. Every object has character. Substance. A story about the people who made them, owned them.

  Something slips inside Thandi, filling her with a familiar weight that presses down on her chest, holds her still, like the man’s body that one time. It’s a feeling of dread that causes her to pause, her pencil suspended in midair. Thandi’s kept her terrible secret for years, and as time has gone on she has convinced herself that no one would believe her anyway. Like a bad dream, the pain of the experience lingers—the taste of licorice when she bit into the hand cupping her mouth, the roughness of the stones, pebbles, and sticks as her heels were dragged along the dusty path and into the bushes, the heavy weight on top of her that both blinded and numbed her. All she had was her hearing. “If yuh tell ah soul, yuh dead!” The words were like the blade of a knife by her temple, which she spent the days and nights after it happened trying hard to forget. Her imagination began to produce walls behind which she crouched in silence, closed off from the pain of the memory. She didn’t have to leave this hiding place, for her imagination also produced its own food, water supply, and oxygen. After a while it became harder to piece the facts together. For example, how is it that she can remember the trees that she was looking at before it happened, and their names, the green of the water in the cove, but not the color of his shirt, what he had in his hand, or what his face looked like? Was he wearing red or black? Did he carry a knife or a broken bottle? Was he wearing a beard then? Or just a mustache? Something inside her collapses under the weight of the things she cannot remember. She sketches, knowingly and unknowingly turning the pointed pencil toward herself.

  Thandi comes home and finds Margot counting money. She’s in her work uniform, hunched over the table where the envelopes are piled and where a small flame burns from the kerosene lamp, though it’s still early. She’s so engrossed in what she’s doing that she doesn’t notice Thandi. Margot’s mouth moves steadily with each bill she counts. The light from the flame caresses her face. By the pale green hue of the bills, Thandi can tell that they are U.S. dollars, not Jamaican. Where does she get so much money? What does she do with it? Margot stashes a few bills away in one pile. She then rolls the second pile, securing it with an elastic band. She doesn’t take it to the old sweat-stained mattress with the exposed spring where she and Delores usually store money to pay bills. Instead, she puts it away inside her purse. When she looks up and sees Thandi, she jumps. “Have mercy pon me, dear God! Thandi, don’t you scare me like dat!” She gets rid of the evidence, dropping her purse onto a nearby chair. “What yuh doing home so early?” Margot asks Thandi. “Yuh don’t
have extra lessons?” She’s nervous, her eyes briefly scanning Thandi’s face before returning to the now-empty table.

  Thandi sits on the bed and takes out a book, aware of her sister fumbling around. “I don’t have extra lessons today. Remember?” Thandi leafs through a math book, staring down at equations. “Where yuh get so much money from?” she asks her sister. She looks up in time to see Margot crossing her legs.

  “Overtime,” Margot explains. Thandi peeks at the purse on the chair, slumped like a black leather pillow.

  “Are there any openings for summer?” Thandi asks Margot, who idly removes a clip from her straightened hair to let it fall around her shoulders. She uses both hands to fluff it. Something Thandi is learning how to do with hers, but, because of her hair’s finer texture, she can never achieve.

  “Wid your education, you can get bettah work than what I’m doing,” Margot says, leaning back to ease her feet out of her high-heeled shoes. A fresh odor of sweat floats up to Thandi’s nostrils from Margot’s stockinged feet, and Thandi takes comfort in it. “Focus yuh energy on school. People should be working for you. Not the other way around,” Margot says, pointing and flexing her toes—the sanguine nail polish she wears visible through the sheer stockings.

  Thandi gets up and joins her at the table. Margot removes the purse from the chair so that Thandi can sit. Once she sits, Margot lifts both legs and rests them on Thandi’s lap. “That hairstyle suits you,” Margot says. It’s the first she has ever commented on a hairstyle that Thandi did herself. All she did was a single French braid, the end secured by a black rubber band. Thandi massages her sister’s feet, watching Margot’s head roll back and eyes close. Margot sighs loudly as Thandi runs her hands up her calves, applying pressure. More than the velvety feel of the stockings, Thandi delights in the sturdiness of Margot’s calves, conjuring up memories of her running track at the small secondary school she attended. Margot made it to girls’ champs and could have gone further in track and field. But for some reason, she stopped training and fell off the path. When Thandi asked her why, Margot responded with a casual shrug. “It wasn’t worth it.”

  Margot’s lips part, letting out a low guttural sound that reminds Thandi of a purring cat. “I wish I didn’t have to go back to work so soon,” Margot says, her eyes still closed. “I’d stay here just for this . . . You’re good with your hands.” Thandi decides that this would be a good time to ask for what she wants. “Can I have some money?”

  “Money for what?” Margot asks, her eyes fluttering open.

  Thandi shrugs, her fingers still working her sister’s calves. “I have things I want to save up for . . .” She thinks about the party coming up and the fuchsia dress she wants to wear. The last time she checked, the price hadn’t gone down. She also has to pay another visit to Miss Ruby.

  “Name one t’ing,” Margot says.

  “A dress?” This comes out of Thandi’s mouth sounding like a question.

  “A dress for what?” Margot sits up.

  “There’s a party I was invited to by a classmate. A sweet sixteen party.”

  “A party before the exam? Yuh should be studying, trying to pass all nine subjects.” Thandi’s movement slows. Margot relieves her of her task, pulling her legs out of Thandi’s lap. She’s staring at Thandi as though focusing on the small pimple at the center of her forehead. “I just paid money for the subjects you’ll be sitting in CXC. All nine of them wasn’t cheap.”

  “What?” Thandi springs from the chair, which nearly topples over. “When?”

  Margot is shaking her head. “I paid for them last week. Your education comes first, Thandi. You know that. How yuh going to go to a party before the exam, the exam I paid for?” Thandi swallows the solid mass that has resurfaced. “Nevah mind, then,” Thandi says quietly. “I mean, all the girls in my class are going an’ ah wanted to go too, but I don’t have to.”

  Margot’s eyes soften. “Jus’ gimme my purse,” she finally says. Thandi reaches it for her. Thandi knows that her sister can never say no to her. It’s as though Margot fears Thandi might find some other alternative—another way of getting the things she asks for. And Thandi takes advantage, though her conscience reprimands her each time. “You really don’t have to,” Thandi says.

  “Well, one day yuh g’wan pay me back tenfold. So, here.” Margot peels off a couple bills. “I’m sure you’ll put it to good use.” Margot and Delores bank on Thandi as the one who will make it. Like the old mattress, Thandi is that source in which they plant their dreams and expectations. “It’s you who’ll get us outta dis place,” they say to her. She hears Delores telling her friends this too when they come over to play dominoes. No one knows how crushing the weight of Thandi’s guilt is when they excuse her from cooking, cleaning, and even church because of the importance they place on her studies.

  Margot slowly gets up from the table and reluctantly slips back into her shoes. Thandi watches her touch up her makeup and spritz perfume behind each ear. In less than a minute her hair is back in a bun. She grabs her bag and heads out the door. That strange, officious perfume she has started to wear grips the air like a choke hold. “Don’t tell Delores dat ah was here,” she says to Thandi before disappearing. As though carried away by the wind.

  4

  MARGOT ROLLS OVER, HER LEGS STRADDLING HORACE. SHE pinches his pink flesh between her fingers and watches it turn white. Horace groans and smiles up at her through drooping eyelids. Had she been attracted to him, she would’ve kissed the place on his cheeks where his long lashes touch and placed her lips on top of his puckered ones. She would’ve even had the patience to lie beside him beforehand and run her fingers over the hairs on his enormous chest and belly. Instead, she mounts him and moves her hips steadily, rhythmically. His hands grip her thighs before moving to her breasts. In sex she finds a deep calm, a refuge in which she hides. She imagines herself as a vacuum, inhaling everything—every word, every thought, every glance, every tear. They’d all disappear out of sight, only to be emptied behind the hotel, maids throwing the balls of dust into big bins while humming their familiar sad songs that Margot used to hear her grandmother hum. As a little girl she knew the sorrows in those songs but felt immune to the pain in them. She knew already that helplessness is weak, and that there is no use in having faith in God. God is not the one to put food on the table or send her sister to school. And God is certainly not the one keeping the roof over their heads.

  She sways high above Horace like a palm tree in a cool breeze as he whispers his gratitude, sometimes cursing her with expletives that cause her to throw her head back and pick up speed. His head is small and inconspicuous from where she sits. There are moments when another person comes to mind, feminine lips parting, hungry for more than Margot’s body. The person’s eyes are steady on hers. Margot knows these eyes. They plead with her, so she concentrates instead on the unremarkable man’s head below her. She rocks and sways, aware of the creeping chaos, the sensation that spreads from her groin all the way to his curled toes as though her orgasm has possessed his body too. When it’s all over, Margot spirals down and down, crashing like a big tree uprooted by nature’s merciless ax. She lies next to Horace, postcoital disgust and a lurking disappointment coiling in her belly like days-old milk. She’s human again. Horace reaches for her, touches her arm, and she flinches. She never wants to be touched in this state. A week in Jamaica’s sun has turned him red. His dark hair falls into his face and he brushes it away. It falls back despite his effort. If he meant more to her, she would reach up and brush his hair aside so that she could stare into the blueness of his eyes. But she keeps seeing the eyes of someone else.

  “I have to go,” she tells him. She covers her breasts with the white sheet, something she never used to do. Margot is prone to prancing around naked. She used to revel in the lust she saw in her clients as they watched her move about the suite uninhibited. They expect that kind of behavior from an island woman.

  “Go?” Horace says to her i
n his heavy German accent, which sounds to her like, “Guh?” “But ze night is still early.”

  Margot glances at the clock on the VCR. Palm Star Resort has yet to upgrade to DVD players like all the other five-star hotels on the strip. It’s quarter after eleven. Where did the time go? Earlier in the evening Horace had ordered room service while Margot hid in the bathroom. They ate, and drank a bottle of wine between them. What did they talk about? Margot can’t remember. Whatever their conversation, she was sure of only one thing: it ended the way it always ends.

  Margot moves about the spacious room, picking up her stockings and uniform from off the floor. Horace is her oldest client. He comes to Jamaica just for her, always promising to take her back with him to Germany. And always, when he pulls out his wallet to pay her, she catches a glimpse of a smiling, yellow-haired family—a woman and two children, a boy and a girl. She wonders where he would put her if he followed through with his promise to take her with him. What would he tell the smiling woman and two children in the picture? Like Horace, all her clients promise the same thing, as though paying her isn’t enough; as though somehow their fucking has given them a desire to “save” her. They need to justify their infidelity with an act of kindness, a generosity that Margot fights the urge to laughingly decline. If she says yes, it gives them power to know that there’s a woman who depends on them, who needs them. It keeps them coming back.