He’s drumming his fingers on the counter and glances at his gold Rolex. His platinum wedding band glistens on his cream hand. “Am I going to wait here all day?”
Margot steps in seamlessly, subtly. It’s she who moves to give Alphonso the folder. She has been fingering it all along, knowing he would need it in this meeting. It has all the budget information she helped him compile. As she gives Alphonso the folder, their hands touch. They pause, suspended like two birds holding the ends of the same worm. Margot clears her throat and takes her hand away. She smoothes her skirt over her thighs as though she has been caught with it inched up to her waist. Like the day they got caught in the conference room—the only time Margot has ever been inside it.
“You’re welcome!” she says to Alphonso too loudly, though he says nothing. When he returns to the executive office, Margot rests her chin in her palm. Kensington clears her throat.
“What?” Margot asks.
“Nothing,” Kensington says.
“Ah thought so.”
6
ON HER WAY TO WORK, DELORES NOTICED THE BARREN FRUIT trees, the wilting flowers, and the brown, brittle grass all sucked dry. Dogs were lying on their sides with their tongues out, goats leaned against the sides of buildings and fences, and cows moved about with exposed rib cages, gnawing on sparse land. Children crowded around standpipes to bathe or drink from the little water that trickled out; the younger ones sat inside houses on cardboard boxes, sucking ice and oranges, while some accompanied their mothers to the river with big buckets. Meanwhile, idle men hugged trees for shade, or took up residence at Dino’s, pressing flasks of rum to their faces. God is coming after all, Delores thought.
But while the God-fearing people become intent on staking their claim in heaven, crying, “Jesas ’ave mercy!,” Delores prepares for another day of work. For money has to be made. With the sun comes that heat. They go hand in hand like John Mare and his old donkey, Belle. Delores fans herself with an old Jamaica Observer. Her bright orange blouse is soaked with sweat, like someone threw water and drenched her under the armpits, across the belly, all the way down to her sides. Two other vendors couldn’t take the heat, so they packed up their things and went back home. The rest, including Delores, sucked their teeth: “Dem really aggo give up a day’s work because ah di heat? Ah nuh Jamaica dem born an’ grow? Wah dem expec’?”
Delores wipes the sweat off her face with a rag she tucks inside her bosom. She prepares for business as usual. Mavis, who has the stall next to Delores, is fully covered from head to toe. She reminds Delores of one of those Muslim women she sees sometimes—on very rare occasions—walking in the square with their faces covered.
“Di heat is good fi yuh skin. Mek it come quicker,” Mavis says, adjusting the broad hat on her head. Delores fans away the woman, who has been trying different skin-lightening remedies since Delores has known her. Delores has already dismissed the woman as off. Like Ruby, who used to sell fish and is currently selling delusions to young girls who want more than apron jobs. Poor souls think a little skin-lightening will make the hoity-toity class see them as more than just shadows, slipping through cracks under their imported leather shoes.
“Why yuh nuh try drink poison while yuh at it?” Delores asks the woman.
Mavis rolls her eyes. “If me was as black as you, Delores, me woulda invest me money inna bleaching cream. Who want to be black in dis place? A true nobody nuh tell yuh how black yuh is.”
“Kiss me ass, gyal! An’ g’weh wid yuh mad self!” Delores throws down the old newspaper.
Just then John-John—the young dread whom Delores has known since he was a boy who helped his mother sell goods at the market—stops by with a box of the birds he carves out of wood. He was always creative—ever since Delores has known him—making keepsakes from scraps to occupy his time, since he didn’t go to school. Because he and Margot were playmates, Delores has treated him more like a son. Now a grown man supporting children of his own, he makes birds, which he gives Delores to sell for him and collects half of what she makes from the sales. He sees the women arguing, sees his opportunity, and seizes it by defending Delores. “Ah, wah Mavis do to you, Mama Delores? Here, let me handle it. G’weh, Mavis, an’ leave Mama Delores alone. Yuh nuh have bettah t’ings fi do? Like count out di ten cents yuh get fi yuh cheap t’ings dem? Yuh son sen’ yuh money from America, an’ yet yuh stuck inna dis place?”
Mavis whips around to face him like a player caught in the middle of a dandy-shandy game. “A an’ B having ah convahsation. Guh suck yuh mumma, yuh ole crusty, mop-head b’woy!”
But John-John puts down his boxes of birds, a grin on his face as though he’s enjoying this exchange. “Every Tom, Joe, an’ Mary know dat yuh don’t get no barrel from America. A lie yuh ah tell. When people get barrel from America dem come moggle in dem new clothes.” He struts in the little space between them to mimic models on a runway. “But yuh still dress like a mad’ooman, an’ yuh look like one too wid dat mask ’pon yuh face!”
The other vendors in the arcade erupt in boisterous laughter, their hands cupped over their mouths, shoulders shuddering, and eyes damp with tears. Mavis adjusts her hat, and touches her screwed-up face with the bleaching cream lathered all over it like the white masks obeah women wear. “A true yuh nuh know me,” she says, her mouth long and bottom lip trembling. “My son send me barrel from foreign all di time. Ah bad-mind oonuh bad-mind!”
“Nobody nah grudge yuh, Mavis,” Delores says. “John-John jus’ saying dat it nuh mek sense if di clothes dat yuh son sen’ from America look like di ugly, wash-out clothes yuh sell. American clothes not suppose to look suh cheap. There’s a discrepancy in what’s what!” The other vendors’ laughter soars above the stalls, flooding through the narrow aisles where the sun marches like a soldier during a curfew. Delores continues, “Is not like yuh t’ings sell either. Usually di tourist dem tek one look, see di cheap, wash-out, threadbare shirt dem then move on. Not even yuh bleach-out skin coulda hol’ dem!”
“G’weh!” Mavis says. “Yuh only picking on me because yuh pickney dem don’t like yuh!” Satisfied after delivering the final blow, Mavis retreats into her stall with a smirk Delores wishes she could slap away. But she can’t move fast enough; John-John is already holding her back. Her hands are frantically moving over John-John’s shoulder, wanting to catch the woman’s face and rip it to shreds. That smirk holds the weight of scorn, of judgment. She should never have told Mavis that morning that her birthday came and went without a card from either Thandi or Margot. Well, she didn’t expect a card from Margot, but Thandi should’ve remembered. Every year Thandi gives her something—last year it was a necklace made of small cowrie shells; the previous year were petals from dried flowers used to decorate the inside of a card; the year before that was a bracelet with coral beads strung by yarn. And this year, nothing. Setting up her items took longer than usual at the beginning of the week. She’s always the first to have everything presented well enough for the tourists to come by, but this week she struggled with the simplest task of covering the wooden table with the green and yellow cloth. One of the figurines had fallen, breaking in half during setup. Delores felt off. The thought of spending the entire day selling made her feel like she was carrying an empty glass and pretending to have liquid in it. She confided this to Mavis, because she wanted someone to talk to at the time. How she has been selling for years and has never felt this way. How Margot, and most recently Thandi, couldn’t care less if she dies in this heat a pauper. And in the heat of this very moment, Mavis has called her out. Mavis—with her crazy, lying, bleaching self—knows that Delores’s children hate her. Mavis—the woman with nothing good to sell and who can never get one customer to give her the time of day—knows Delores’s weakness. That smirk Delores itches to slap off her face says it all; and even if Delores succeeds in slapping the black off the woman (more than the bleach ever could), it won’t erase the fact that Mavis probably has a better relationship with her son than Delore
s will ever have with her daughters.
John-John releases Delores. “Yuh mek har know who is in charge, Mama Delores! A good fi har,” he says. “Nuh let har get to yuh dat way.” Delores ignores him and plops down hard on her stool. She fans herself with the Jamaica Observer again as John-John surveys her table, checking to see if she sold any of his carved animals since the last time she saw him.
“Notin’ at’all?” he asks when she tells him. He sits down on the old padded stool in Delores’s stall and runs one hand through his dreadlocks, visibly puzzled. Delores is the best haggler out here.
“Yuh see people come in yah from mawnin?” she asks John-John in defense. “Sun too hot.” She doesn’t tell him that she hasn’t been in the mood to do the regular routine—linking hands with tourists, courting them the way men court women, complimenting them, sweet-talking them, showing them all the goods, waiting with bated breath for them to fall in love, hoping they take a leap of faith and fish into their wallets.
John-John shakes his head, his eyes looking straight ahead. “We cyan mek di heat do we like dis, Delores. No customers mean nuh money,” John-John says. His jaundiced eyes swim all over Delores’s face. “Wah we aggo do, Mama Delores?”
“What yuh mean, what we g’wan do? Ah look like ah know?” Delores fans herself harder, almost ripping the newspaper filled with the smiling faces of politicians and well-to-do socialites. She wants John-John to leave her alone to her own thoughts and feelings. But the boy can talk off your ears. He would sit there on the stool and talk all day if she lets him. Sometimes this interrupts Delores’s work, because tourists see him in the stall and politely walk away, thinking they were interrupting something between mother and son. “Well, Jah know weh him ah do. Hopefully him will sen’ rain soon,” John-John says.
“Believe you me,” she says to John-John, who squats to diligently paint one of his wooden birds. “Tomorrow g’wan be a new day. Yuh watch an’ see. Ah g’wan sell every damn t’ing me have.”
“Yes, Mama Delores. Just trus’ an’ Jah will provide fah all ah we,” John-John says. The pink of his tongue shows as he works on perfecting the bird’s feathers. He has been working on that one bird since last week. Usually it takes him only a few hours. When he finishes the bird, he separates it from the rest, which he wraps one by one in old newspaper to place inside the box. Delores picks up the bird he’s just finished. It’s more extravagant than all the others, with blue and green wings skillfully outlined with black paint, a red and yellow underbelly, and a red beak. The eyes are sharp, the whites in them defined with the small black pupils. It looks like it will be a popular item, expensive. Delores already prices it in her head. She guesses fifty U.S. dollars.
As Delores examines this new bird she thinks of the parrot she once saw at Devon House in Kingston—a colonial mansion with a beautiful garden that had just opened up to the public. The year was 1968. It was her first trip to Kingston and she was eighteen years old. She left four-year-old Margot with Mama Merle and rode on the country bus to town all by herself. Initially she went to look for temporary work as a helper; but on a whim, she decided to visit the new attraction. Delores wanted to see it so that she could brag. So she wandered from Half Way Tree, where the country bus dropped her off, all the way up the busy Constant Spring Road. With a few wrong turns and stops to ask for directions (“Beg yuh please tell weh me can fine Dev-an House?”), she made it. It took a while for the nice Kingstonians she asked to understand her heavy patois and point her in the right direction. The mansion was just as beautiful in real life as it was in the papers—white paint glowing in the sun, big columns and winding staircases, a water fountain. But more amazing than the house were the parrots. They seemed suited for their habitat—flying from tree to tree with colored wings through a lush garden with so many different trees and flowers, Delores saw many she hadn’t known existed. She followed the birds until she got to the courtyard, where genteel Kingstonians sat enjoying the outdoors under the shade of fancy umbrellas and broad-brimmed hats. As if caught in a limelight onstage, Delores fidgeted with her Sunday dress—bright yellow with lace and puffed-up sleeves. She felt like Queen Elizabeth in that dress, especially because she had a pair of frilly green socks to match and a shiny pair of flats with buckles on the sides that never showed any specks of red dirt. The only things missing were a pair of gloves.
And the Kingstonians must have thought so too, for a hundred pairs of eyes followed her when she walked by, frowning pale faces transforming into amusement. They covered their mouths as though to suppress a laugh or a sneeze. Slowly, Delores backed away. She didn’t notice the pile of dog mess. She stepped right in it, and in her shock, stumbled into the path of a group of Catholic school girls on a school trip, who were gliding in a straight line across the courtyard like swans being led by their mother—a nun who walked with her head tilted confidently to the sky. The girls gasped when Delores stumbled in their path, immediately corking their small noses with delicate pale hands. The way they snickered as their eyes scanned Delores’s dress made it seem as if the dog mess were smeared across it. Right then Delores hated her dress. But it was her shoes and socks that caused the most laughter. And then the nun, as polite as she thought she was, smiled at Delores, her pinkish face glowing like a heart. “You must be lost. Are you here with the group from the country? They’re by the picnic tables.” How did she know Delores was from the country? That morning Delores thought she did a good job putting her outfit together in preparation for a day in the big city. But the girls were all snickering, shoulders hunched and pretty ponytails in white ribbons jerking back and forth. Delores should have listened to her mother. “If me was suh big an’ black, me woulda neva mek scarecrow come catch me inna dat color. Yuh bettah hope di people inna Kingston nuh laugh yuh backside back ah country.” Mama Merle was right. Maybe bright colors weren’t for her. The girls’ laughter followed Delores all the way back through the gate like the smell of dog mess she never stopped to get rid of. The humiliation was worse than the swarm of flies.
It was as though a veil had lifted from her eyes. When she looked down, all she saw was her black skin and how it clashed with the dress. With her surroundings. With everything. It had collided with the order and propriety of the colonial mansion that day, and the uniform line of those high-color Catholic schoolgirls. Something about that trip changed her, and on the bus ride back her home looked different: the sea-green of the nauseating sea, the sneering sun in the wide expanse of a pale sky, the indecisive Y-shaped river that once swallowed her childhood, and even the red dirt from the bauxite mines caked under her worn heels, seemed like a wide-open wound that bled and bled between the rural parishes.
Delores looks at this bird John-John has created—a creature of the wild that he too had probably seen and fallen in love with. Delores frowns. John-John looks up and sees her staring at the bird. He gives her one of his clownish grins, his front teeth lapping over each other like the badly aligned picket fences around Miss Gracie’s pigpen. “Ah see yuh admiring me work, Mama Delores.” He’s only a boy, Delores decides. In time he will begin to see the ugly.
He raises the bird to Delores and she takes it. “Yuh didn’t have to,” she says, her heart pressed against her rib cage. She always wondered if she’d ever see anything like those parrots again.
“Is fah Margot,” he says. “Tell har is a gift from me. Ah made it ’specially fah her. It’s the prettiest one in di lot.”
Delores’s hand shakes and the bird slips from her fingers and drops with an impact that breaks its beak. She’s not sure if it slipped or if she heard Margot’s name and flung it. The grin fades from John-John’s face. He says nothing. He only sits there, his shirt open, his hands on his knees, with his legs wide. He looks down at the de-beaked bird on the ground.
“Me nevah mean fi bruk it,” Delores says. She bends to pick it up, but John-John stops her.
“Is okay, Mama Delores. Nuh worry ’bout it. I an’ I can mek anothah one.” But the
shadow hasn’t left his face, and his eyes barely meet hers. She knows he has been working on this one for a while. She knows it probably took him a long time to choose the colors.
“Ah can always mek anothah one,” John-John says again after a while, his eyes focusing intently on something in front of him. “Maybe if ah start now ah can give it to you tomorrow.”
Delores is silent. She knows if she agrees it would give him too much hope. Delores lifts her tongue and tastes the dry roof of her mouth. She takes a sip of water from the plastic cup that has grown warm sitting on the table. A wave of exhaustion comes over her. Like all other things that slow her down, she thinks this too will pass. Only this time she’s not certain what exactly she hopes will pass first—the drought, the fatigue, or that dark, looming thing that has been present inside her since the trip to Kingston and has recently risen to the surface. She has held on to her anger all these years, knowing very well what she would say to those girls if she ever saw them again.
“She can come collec’ it herself,” Delores finally says to John-John. “Ah can’t speak for Margot. Margot is a big ’ooman. She know what she like an’ what she nuh like. If yuh want my humble opinion, not a bone in dat girl’s body is deserving of anything yuh can sell fah good money.”
7
MARGOT COMES HOME LATER THAT EVENING AND SEES HER SISTER curled on the couch. She’s in a faded housedress with balls of paper scattered around her. Margot doesn’t wake her. She wonders how long Thandi has been lying there like this on her side with her dress hiked up, hands between her thighs. And those damn drawings. It’s four o’ clock; shouldn’t she just be getting home from extra lessons? Margot hardly knows her sister’s schedule anymore, since she’s never around much. Thandi’s education means more to her than her own well-being. Just last week Margot had to march down to the school to beg that condescending nun to change Thandi’s demerit status. Though her sister shouldn’t be wearing a sweatshirt to school, Margot still argued on her behalf. Margot remembers herself at that age—how she had to be pried open like a lobster, though she had no choice.
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