Here Comes the Sun

by Nicole Dennis-Benn

  “Yuh beautiful jus’ the way yuh is! Nuh mek di witch fool yuh!”

  Thandi clutches her clothes to her chest. “Go away!”

  “Ah not g’wan mek yuh do this to yuhself,” Charles says.

  “I said go away! It’s my skin.”

  Just then Charles loses his balance and falls out of the tree. Thandi rushes to the window, afraid he has broken some part of himself, but he springs up like a cat and sprints through the yard, with Miss Ruby chasing him with the knife.

  “Yuh damn pervert! Yuh is a shame to yuh parents! Yuh too out of order.”

  Garbage cans overturn, spilling garbage. Fowl scatter around the yard like they lost their heads. The one sleeping dog scampers from its rest spot near the standpipe.

  “Bomboclaaaat!”

  Charles’s curse triggers a surge of terror inside Thandi. Miss Ruby must have caught him. She fumbles with the zipper on her dress and leaves the money for Miss Ruby on her bench. She runs out the door and into the backyard. Too embarrassed to use the front gate, she squeezes through a small fence that was once an entrance to the sea. Thandi struggles along the seashore toward the rocky incline that will lead her to the bank of the river. This is a longer way home, but she takes it. The castle rises into view. Though unfinished, it is several stories high already, the steel foundation glistening with promise, its shadow closing in on the beach that spreads before it. She hurries along, trying hard to dodge the sun. Everything else is wilting in the drought, but the sun is getting bigger and plumper by the day.

  At home, the Queen of Pearl jar is sitting before Thandi, unopened. She touches her face, where the shade is uneven, especially the areas around her eyes and mouth. But what about the rest? When will she be fair like that goddess in the painting? The one that rises out of the oyster shell? Thandi had seen the painting for the first time hanging on the wall inside Brother Smith’s office, to the left of The Last Supper. “She was so beautiful that Botticelli used her as his muse for a very long time,” Brother Smith said when he caught Thandi staring at the painting. She was in awe of the woman’s long orange mane and delicate cornmeal skin. She can only imagine that if you touch skin like that, it melts. To Thandi, that soft pink skin had been part of an already long to-do list: to pass the Caribbean Examination Council subjects, go to university, become a doctor, marry well. Each night she’s been pushing her sketchpad aside, studying hard, falling asleep with her head in her books; pushing away Charles, her pencils, the sea.

  She swallows and dips her hand inside the Queen of Pearl cream jar and lathers her face with it.

  “Thandi!”

  She’s pulled out of her fantasy by the sound of her name.

  “Thandi, it’s me!” someone wails outside the shack. She goes to the window and parts the curtains, fingering the embroidered flowers that Grandma Merle sewed decades before she became mute. Charles is standing in the tall grass where Mr. Melon ties his goat to the dying pear tree and where Little Richie sits and plays with himself inside the old tire. Charles’s khaki shirt is open like a cape and his pants bulge at the pockets where he probably stole mangoes from somebody’s yard. His bare feet are crusted with dirt from his swim in the river. His sandy brown hair has grass in it, like he has been rolling around in the bushes too. There’s no blood on him, so Miss Ruby must have missed.

  “Ah know yuh in di house.” Thandi plays with the hem of her dress, winding her finger in the thread that has come undone. How can she face him after what he has seen at Miss Ruby’s shack? She hugs herself as though she were still naked and his look could tear down the walls at any moment. “I know yuh can hear me,” he says.

  Thandi busies herself. She dusts the furniture, sweeps the floor, fluffs the pillows on the bed that she and Margot share. When she’s overheated from all the movement, she fans herself with a piece of cardboard, grateful that Miss Ruby did not have time to wrap her with the plastic, and relieved to feel just a tingle of cool air. A girlish giggle escapes her as she recalls what Charles called out to her earlier at Miss Ruby’s shack. “Yuh beautiful jus’ the way yuh is! Nuh mek di witch fool yuh!” No one has ever called her beautiful. It is a word she associates with the evening sun when it’s thick and red-orange at the bottom of the sky, the blushing stars at night, the goddesses in the paintings at school. A word that brings to mind a billowing sheer curtain that rests like a fainting damsel on the back of an armchair—serene, graceful, elegant. She turns to the mirror again to look at her half bleached face.

  Later in the week Thandi stops at Mr. Levy’s Wholesale to pick up a few things for Delores. She stays by the fan that blows hot air and the smell of cat piss into the store. She itches to wriggle out of the plastic hidden beneath the uniform. But she won’t give up so easily.

  “Wh’appen, sweet girl?” Thandi stiffens when she hears his voice. It’s as though electric wires are coursing through her in this moment, her fingers spread wide, mouth agape. She turns around to meet the jaundiced eyes of Clover, Delores’s old handyman. After he hurt her he gradually came around less and less, until he slunk out of town and disappeared for years. By the looks of things he’s a worse drunk than ever, though still a young man. He sneers at Thandi with the only two crooked teeth in his mouth. His skin is an ashen black that makes it look like it has been dried in the sun. With his knuckles he raps on the counter. “Missah Chin, ah wah tek so long? Gimme a pack ah cigarette!” He shoves a dollar under the opening and leers at Thandi. There is no way for her to move away from him in this small space. She hopes he will get the message and let her be if she doesn’t acknowledge that he’s there. But Clover reaches out and touches her on the shoulder. Always, at this very instant of physical contact, she would wake with a scream. But this is not a dream.

  “Why yuh acting so?” He tilts his head like they are lovers having a harmless disagreement.

  Thandi swallows, hoping her jumbled words will be measured when she utters them, standing there in her Saint Emmanuel High uniform. “Leave. Me. Alone.” She hopes the fire in her eyes is enough to scorch him, burn him up in the flames.

  But Clover’s jaundiced eyes become watery as the sneer broadens on his face. “Ah love a ’ooman who got some fight in har.” He grabs himself and moves closer. “Turn me on . . .”

  Thandi steps away. This causes Clover to laugh, flinging his head back.

  Distracted by a dream, Thandi had wandered off onto a remote path shaded by trees—mahogany, live oaks, wild lime. She was on her way home from school, thinking about sketching the marvelous arches of the trees, the extensive roots of the mahogany, the small green clusters in the lime trees. The stillness of the green water in the cove. Clover cupped her mouth and hauled her off into the bushes. At nine years old she knew what “bombohole” meant because the man kept whispering how much he wanted hers, splaying her legs to take it. When he was done he told her not to tell or else he would break her neck. Thandi wondered then which was worse, dying or lying there hurting between her legs. Thandi kept her ugly secret even as Clover came over—less and less—to help Delores hoist up a fence, string electric wires, hammer exposed nails in their shack; or to play dominoes with the other neighborhood men whose breath always stank with white rum and whose clammy hands were always cupping Delores’s rump.

  Clover takes the pack of cigarettes Mr. Levy shoves through the opening of the mesh door with those same blackened hands she remembers. Thandi watches him from the side of her eyes as he opens the pack and puts one cigarette behind his ear. The rest he slips inside his pocket. He leans on the counter with his ankles crossed, watching her as though expecting a comment. When she says nothing, he tells her, “Ran into Delores, she ask me to come by the house on Sat’day. Looking forward to seeing yuh cute face.” Clover touches her chin and she slaps his hand away, stamping out of the store.

  13

  VERDENE SCRUBS THE BLOOD OFF THE SIDES OF HER HOUSE with a wet green rag. She concentrates deeply on the smudges and stains so she does not have to feel the rage, d
oes not have to pause long enough to touch the collar of her housedress to her face to wipe the tears. So she rubs and rubs, muttering underneath her breath, “Damn ignorant imbeciles!” The rag dries in her hand and she dips it into the mixture of bleach and water. Since the water pressure is low, there is no way she can refill the bucket. “Goddammit!” The tears begin to fall faster than she can catch them. The fact that the culprits could be hiding in the bushes, laughing so hard that their guts pain them, makes Verdene angrier. “You think this is funny?” she asks the bushes and flowers. Something seems to brace in the yard, halting every sound except the murmuring of the big black flies around her. A family of vultures are perched on a coconut tree nearby.

  “Answer me, you cowards!” Verdene stands up, her knees stiff from being on them all morning. She throws the rag inside the bucket and clenches both fists. She’s spinning around and around, trying to pinpoint where the person could be hiding. “You get a kick out of this, don’t you?” she yells. She’s getting dizzy circling like that. Almost out of breath, she stops. The dead dog in the yard appears to be breathing, its moving ribs gilded by sunlight through the ackee tree branches. Verdene steps closer and stands over it. She brings her hands to her mouth, unable to believe that someone could be capable of such a barbaric act. They took great care to make a vertical cut down the animal’s belly and another cut across its throat. Verdene mourns the poor dog that was sacrificed because of her. How many more does she have to deal with? How many?

  She goes inside for the shovel. When she returns she attempts to dig yet another hole in the ground but stops, the shovel suspended in her hands, her attention on the lush banana leaves that separate her yard from Miss Gracie’s. She lowers the shovel and marches over there. She will take care of this once and for all, she decides. She hasn’t been in the old woman’s yard since she was a little girl led by curiosity to the garden filled with rows of Scotch Bonnet peppers, which she thought were oddly shaped cherries. She bit into one of them and instantly choked. Her eyes watered so much that she could barely see to go back home to quell the fire inside her six-year-old mouth. One side of her tongue was numb for a whole week. And so were her buttocks after Ella walloped her with a rubber switch.

  Verdene remembers when the yard had a scarecrow. Miss Gracie planted the peppers years ago, instead of flowers like everyone else. She used to make homemade pepper sauce and sell it in jars at the market. Fish vendors used to buy up the sauce to sprinkle on their fish when they realized that people liked it. Miss Gracie made a lot of money. Even Ella bought the sauce in bulk, because Verdene’s father would never touch anything without it. When the fishing business died down, so did the demand for Miss Gracie’s sauce. There was no indication that a young girl named Rose lived there—Miss Gracie’s daughter, who was only two years younger than Verdene. A simple girl who read her Bible instead of schoolbooks and who used to follow her mother around from door to door to preach before she got pregnant and ran away.

  “Do—do you know—Je—Jesus Christ?” the girl stuttered to Verdene once when they were teenagers. Verdene had opened the door to see Rose and Miss Gracie standing on the steps of her veranda.

  “I’m busy. Come back later,” Verdene had replied.

  “Yuh not too young fi hear di good word, sweetheart,” Miss Gracie said when she stepped in front of Rose. Her eyes roved inside Verdene’s house. “Ella surely live like ah queen in dis place. Mind if we come in?” This seemed to embarrass Rose, who always looked shrunken in her mother’s indomitable shadow. “My parents are not home,” was all Verdene could come up with before excusing herself and closing the door. The last she remembered of Rose were her awkward waves at the front gate, which seemed more like pleas for friendship than eagerness to talk about sin and salvation.

  Up and down the rows, from the fence to the house, the Scotch Bonnet peppers are dying. The smell permeates the air, making Verdene’s eyes water. She makes her way across the yard with the shovel and picks up a stone to bang on the bars on Miss Gracie’s veranda. There’s no answer. Verdene bangs again, determined. Her tongue coils inside her mouth with an ammunition of choice words. She will tell Miss Gracie to bury the dog her damn self. That she has had it with cleaning up dead animals and bloodstains. She thinks she hears murmuring and steps toward it. Someone is working in the yard, on the other side of the house that leads to an open field of fountain grass. He’s crouched, peacefully uprooting weeds by a post.

  “Excuse me,” Verdene says to the young man. He stops what he’s doing at the sound of her voice and turns his head. When he sees her, he straightens himself, squares his shoulders. The muscles of his face tighten, the blood seeming to drain from it when he recognizes her.

  “What is it yuh want, miss?” he asks.

  He hasn’t let go of the machete that he’s using to cut the weeds. Verdene is taken by the title miss. “Please, call me Verdene.”

  The young man stands to his feet. “What yuh doing ovah here?” he asks.

  Verdene licks her lips, realizing how dry they are. She knows that there is no way she can count on this young man to offer her a glass of water. She gets straight to the point. “I’m here for Miss Gracie. Is she here?”

  “Why yuh want to know?”

  “I want her to pick up the dead animal she left in my yard last night and clean up my walkway.”

  “Miss Gracie is ah ole ’ooman. An’ from what ah hear, you kill those dogs yuhself.”

  “Look here . . .” She pauses. “What’s your name?”

  “Charles.”

  “Look here, Charles, you don’t know me. You know nothing about me. So don’t you dare tell me what I do and don’t do in my own house. Now please call that old hag out here or else I will smash her windows with this shovel.” She lifts the shovel for effect, though she no longer feels strong enough to deliver on her threat.

  “She’s not here.”

  “When will she be back?”

  He wipes sweat off his forehead with the back of his free hand. “I don’t know. I’m jus’ here helping out ’round di yard.”

  “Then I’ll wait. I need to get to the bottom of this.”

  “Miss Gracie can’t even lift ah grocery bag, much less kill ah dog an’ put inna yuh yard. So gwaan ’bout yuh business.”

  Verdene finally recognizes him as the young man she has seen escorting Miss Gracie to church. “Who are your people?” she asks, trying to place him. “I know Miss Gracie doesn’t have a son. And I’m certain that she isn’t deserving of a bodyguard. Why do you waste your time?”

  “Why should it mattah to you?”

  “It’s you, isn’t it? It’s you who is helping her with this childish prank!”

  The young man wrinkles his face. There’s a youthful innocence there buried under the theatrical performance of disgust—the type toddlers display when they discern adults’ disapproval of them eating dirt or sniffing their poop. He’s just a boy, trying to be a man, she thinks. She has the sinking feeling that she has wrongly accused him. Something in his gentle manner gives this away. He’s not at all threatening with the machete in his hand. Suddenly she’s aware of the weight of the shovel hanging from her fingertips, her housedress soaked with perspiration, her wild hair. Surely she has given him more reason to fear her than vice versa. She watches him to see if he hesitates out of fear. A light sheen breaks out on his forehead. Verdene realizes that they have been standing in the blazing sun.

  “Miss, ah t’ink yuh bettah leave Miss Gracie alone,” he says finally. “She can’t tek no trouble.”

  “Can you help me, then?” Her voice is calm and reasonable, as though she didn’t just accuse him of putting a dead dog in her yard. “I need help cleaning my walkway and burying this dog.”

  “Why should I help you?”

  “Because it’s the only way I’ll leave. I want this mess out of my yard. I want to live in peace. I want to be treated like a human being. I want—” The tears she had shed earlier are rolling back heavy down t
o her chin, wetting her collar. The young man relaxes and stoops to lay down his machete. All the frustration Verdene has been holding back comes spewing out in this young man’s presence. She has never done this with Margot—not since the first incident—because she fears it might scare her away. And maybe it already has, since Margot hasn’t been to visit in weeks. Hasn’t even called. The young man raises his hand and rests it on Verdene’s shoulder—a gesture Verdene did not expect or even think she needed. But she does.

  “All right,” he says.

  Later, she waits up in the dark kitchen for Margot. She doesn’t turn the lights on. Maybe she can catch the perpetrators if they dare step foot inside her yard again. And besides, she likes the dark. It’s cooler, quieter, and more peaceful, the chirpings of crickets like a nocturnal lullaby. The red digits on the small digital clock on the counter, which Verdene sometimes uses as a timer when baking, is blinking 11 PM. It has been like this for the last four weeks. Waiting by the telephone. Pacing. Cooking to help take her mind off things. Setting the table, laying out meals she knows that only she will eat.

  Verdene calls the hotel again.

  “What you mean, she already left?” she asks the girl who answers. The girl sounds like she has a clothespin clipped on the bridge of her nose.

  “Did you even check? The least you can do is check!”

  “Ma’am, she signed out.”

  “But you said that yesterday too. How many breaks can one person take?”

  Then she composes herself, taking a deep breath, allowing her question to take form. “Did she . . .” She pauses and looks at her fist on the counter by the telephone. “Did she leave with anyone?” As soon as Verdene asks this question she feels ashamed. Before the girl can respond, Verdene tells her never mind and hangs up. She thinks about all the reasons Margot could be unavailable. After all, she still has obligations as a working woman. But not even a phone call to say so herself?