Here Comes the Sun

by Nicole Dennis-Benn

  “I should ask you the same question,” Margot replies, scanning the woman’s face. Her eyes are wide like a drunken person determined to display cognition. But she fails miserably, tripping over some invisible thing on the ground. Paul has to hold her up again. “I’m on my way home,” she says. “I want to beat the storm.”

  “I don’t think you should drive like this,” Margot says.

  “No, no. I feel great. Just need to get to my caaa . . .”

  Miss Novia Scott-Henry stumbles again and Margot springs into action, breaking the woman’s fall. She shoos Paul away. “I got this.”

  One week of lying awake at night, sweating through her pillow as the plan grows, white-knuckling the chair in the office every time she sat and watched the woman. So this act of kindness has become a part of the masquerade; so much so that it’s hard to distinguish what’s rehearsed from what’s authentic. She instructs Sweetness to help her carry Miss Novia Scott-Henry to the penthouse suite upstairs. Margot fidgets with her clutch, not knowing at first where to put it. She lifts the woman’s free arm over her neck and carries her to the room. Sweetness balances her weight on the other side.

  “Where yuh taking me?” Miss Novia Scott-Henry asks.

  “To a room upstairs,” Margot says. “You’re in no position to drive.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You’ll stay here for the night. I promise, Sweetness will take good care of you.”

  Upstairs, Margot opens the door to the suite and switches on the light. The burgundy drapes are drawn, and there, inside the closet next to the bathroom, is the recorder. They put the woman on the bed, lowering her gently. She’s half awake and half asleep. Margot backs away to pour the woman a glass of water. She slips the rest of the drug into the glass and stirs in case the previous dose wears off too early. “Just make yourself comfortable,” Margot says to Miss Novia Scott-Henry when she watches her take a sip of the water. She watches her lips pucker and the soft rise and fall of her throat as she drinks.

  “Thanks a lot, Margot,” the woman says, lying back down on the bed, her arms spread.

  Margot instructs Sweetness to undress and climb onto the bed next to Miss Novia Scott-Henry. For a moment the girl hesitates. Margot dares her with her eyes. The girl obeys, slipping out of her dress like a child. Margot retreats into the closet to hide and fishes for the disposable camera she carried. She watches as Sweetness leans forward and undoes the woman’s buttons. The woman stirs, but only a little. Sweetness rises to the challenge. She takes charge, looking like a lioness perched on all fours, her back arched, her magnificent rear swooping up from her spine, and her hands like paws. Miss Novia Scott-Henry inches closer to Sweetness once the coolness from the air conditioner tickles her nakedness. She scoots closer to the warmth Sweetness’s body offers, and matches her pulse. But that illusion is the drug’s secret drive—the control it tricks her into believing is hers, the excitement, the promise, the rubbed-down edge of fear. Her mind is no longer able to outsmart her body, for her body knows by instinct what it ought to do. Every single muscle of her body seems to be trembling, quivering, twitching. They are magnificent, the both of them, moving like silkworms. Margot misses Verdene this way, lowering the camera after capturing enough pictures of Miss Novia Scott-Henry and Sweetness. She is forced to turn away from the sight of them, her own hunger—her own primal want—begging to be assuaged. Margot takes her things, the recorder, and, for good measure, Sweetness’s clothes, shoes, and handbag too. She tiptoes out the door, leaving it open for this private dream to become public.

  17

  DELORES COMES HOME FROM THE MARKET AND IMMEDIATELY begins to cook dinner, her stocky frame pouring over the small stove. She wipes her face with the collar of her blouse and stirs the cowfoot soup, mindlessly dashing into it salt and pepper and pimento seeds, talking to herself about the day’s sales.

  “Ah told di man twenty dollah. Jus’ twenty dollah. Him so cheap that him pull out a ten. Say him want me to go down in price. But see here, now, massah. What can ten dollah do?” She laughs and leans over to taste the soup, her face scrunching as always as she reaches for more salt. “Eh, eh!”

  “Mama, I have something to show yuh,” Thandi says, taking small steps toward Delores, clutching the sketchpad filled with her drawings. The fire is high under the pot, and the house smells of all the spices. “What is it now?” her mother says. “Have you seen yuh sistah since mawnin’?”

  “No, Mama.”

  “Where the hell is that girl?” Delores turns to Thandi, her eyes big and wide like a ferocious animal. “Ah tell yuh, yuh sistah is siding wid the devil. Several nights in a row she coming home in di wee hours. Is which man she sleeping wid now, eh?”

  “I don’t know. She neva tell me anything.”

  Delores laughs, throwing her head back so that her braids touch the back of her neck. She seeks the counsel of the shadows in the kitchen, the ones that lurk from the steady flame of the kerosene lamp. “Yuh see mi dying trial?” she says to the shadows. “Now she keeping secrets from me.” She turns back to Thandi. “You tell yuh sistah that if she have a man, him mus’ be able to help pay Mr. Sterling our rent. Our rent was due two days ago. Two days! And Margot deh ’bout, playing hooky wid god knows who. Or what.”

  Thandi remains silent, hugging the sketchpad to her chest. It steadies her. She considers her mother’s back, the broad shoulders, the cotton blouse soaked with perspiration, the strong arms that look as though they could still carry her, the wide hips, the swollen feet shoved inside a pair of old men’s slippers. She listens to her mother talk to the shadows crouched in every corner of their shack. Thandi looks away from each of them, her eyes finding her mother’s back again. “I want to draw,” she says out loud. Delores stops moving. She turns around to face Thandi.

  “So why don’t you sit and draw?” Delores asks. “See di table dere. Draw.”

  “I mean I want to do it for a living. I want to—”

  “Hold on a second.” Delores puts both hands on her hips, her big chest lifting as though filling with all the wind and words she would eventually let out to crush Thandi’s dreams. “Yuh not making any sense right now. Yuh not making no sense a’tall, a’tall.”

  “I am really good at it,” Thandi says. Her fingers tremble as she turns each page, showing her mother sketch after sketch. Her mother takes the book from her and examines a drawing of a half-naked woman standing in front of a mirror. Thandi is certain she recognizes the mirror. It’s the one on the vanity. Thandi holds her breath as her mother studies the image. Brother Smith says she’s good. “You’re a natural, Thandi.” All she has to do is strengthen her portfolio. Thandi looks at the page her mother is looking at, wishing that she had been more precise with parts of the sketch that seem amateur under her mother’s scrutiny. She balances her weight on both legs, wringing her hands, then putting them to her sides, since she doesn’t know what else to do with them. Delores is silent for a long time. Too long. “What yuh think?” Thandi finally asks. “I was working on it for Mother’s Day, but it took longer than I thought.”

  But Delores is shaking her head. “Yuh draw dis?” she asks Thandi without taking her eyes off the woman on the paper.

  “Yes,” Thandi responds. “It’s for you. A belated Mother’s Day gift.” But Delores returns the book to Thandi without saying a word. She resumes cooking, stirring the pot of cowfoot soup.

  “I want to be an artist. Maybe yuh can start to sell my drawings to yuh customers.” Thandi continues to talk as though talking to herself. “I’m really good at it. Brother Smith says I’m really talented. He nominated me to compete for an art prize at school. He even said I could go to a school for art.”

  Delores stirs and stirs the pot, Thandi’s words seeming to drown in the bubbling soup.

  “Mama, yuh listening?” Thandi touches Delores’s arm. “Mama, yuh hear me? I want to go to art school and I only need five subjects.”

  “I’m busy,” is all Delores says. �
�I’m sending you to school to learn. So yuh g’wan be something good in life. Nothing less. Don’t come to me wid dis again, yuh hear? Yuh is no damn artist. We too poor for that. Yuh g’wan be a doctor. People can’t mek a living being no ch’upid artist. Do you see the Rastas selling in di market making money wid dem art?”

  Thandi shakes her head, her eyes on the floor. “But there are different types of artists, Mama.”

  “Different types of artist, mi backside! G’wan go learn yuh books, yuh hear? The CXC is jus’ around di corner. Why yuh entering a blasted prize fah? Why yuh not studying? Yuh need all nine subjects to be the doctor yuh want to be. Not a ch’upid prize.”

  “You want me to be a doctor.” Thandi puts the sketchpad down on the dining table.

  Delores peers at her. “Thandi, what yuh saying to me?”

  Thandi cowers under the weight of her mother’s glare, her heartbeat echoing in her eardrums, her face hot. “Nothing,” she replies.

  “Is who filling up yuh head with all this, eh?” Delores asks.

  “I have a mind of my own, you know,” Thandi says. She walks outside into the darkness that consumes her, leaving the back door open.

  “Where yuh going? Dinner will be ready soon!” Delores calls after her. But Thandi doesn’t respond. She’s too tired. She leans against the back of the house and slides down to her buttocks.

  When Thandi disappears outside into the darkness, she takes all of Delores’s breath with her. The girl must be smelling her ripeness, Delores thinks. Not her Thandi. She’s supposed to be the good one, different from her sister. Had Thandi not been such a good girl all this time, Delores would’ve knocked her in the head with the spoon she uses to stir the soup. Thandi’s eyes held in them the same glint of that thing Delores saw in Margot’s eyes years ago; the same glint that made Delores look away in case it struck her down like lightning.

  She cannot get the sketch of the half-naked woman standing in front of a mirror from her mind. The resemblance between Delores and the woman is uncanny, almost like a picture taken of her—same face, same eyes, same mouth, same sagging breasts resting atop the high bulge of her belly. The earnestness in her daughter’s eyes when she looked at her and the hopeful grin that spread across the girl’s face—one Delores hasn’t seen in a long time, Thandi always being so serious. In the sketch Delores saw everything she thought she had hidden so well, tucked away in the folds of years, heaped upon each other like steps that she takes one at a time. In her daughter’s drawing, she saw the lines in her face, her double chin. She saw an ugly woman—an ugly black woman with bulging eyes too wide to be peered into before looking away, and nose too flat on the broad face. In this sketch she was not human, but a creature. This is how her daughter sees her—bull-faced and miserable. All Delores’s secrets and insecurities are exposed in the gaze of this child.

  Margot was barely fourteen at the time. In the summers when Margot was out of school she would help Delores carry things to Falmouth and spread them out so that Delores could sell. While Delores sold items to tourists, Margot would help count the change and wrap the fragile items in newspaper. One day a tall, dark-haired man walked into Delores’s stall. He was wearing sunglasses, like most tourists. He had a presence about him, an air Delores associated with important people—white people. Like the ones who just bought out her stall. Except the man wasn’t white. A mixture, maybe. A mulatto kind. He wore a button-down shirt that revealed the dark hairs on his chest. When Delores peered up at him, she saw he was peering down at Margot. He turned to Delores, his eyes hidden behind the shades. “How much?” he asked in a voice that sounded to Delores like thunder.

  “Di dolls are twenty, sah. Oh, an’ di figurines guh for fifteen U.S., but ah can give yuh fah ten. An’ di T-shirts! They’re unique, sah. One of ah kind! Only fifteen dollah.”

  “No,” the man said, returning his focus to Margot. “I’m talking about her.” He used his pointy chin to gesture to a skinny Margot, who, at the time, had barely started menstruating or growing breasts. Delores looked from her daughter to the tall stranger wearing the sunglasses. “She’s not on sale, sah.”

  The man pulled out a wad of cash and began to count it in front of Delores. Delores watched him count six hundred-dollar bills. She had never seen so much money in her life. The crispness of the bills and the scent of newness, which Delores thought was what wealth must smell like—the possibility of moving her family out of River Bank, affording her daughter’s school fee, books, and uniforms, buying a telephone and a landline for her to call people whenever she liked instead of waiting to use the neighbor’s phone—all these possibilities were too much to swallow all at once. “Sah—but she—she’s only fourteen.”

  “I’m staying right down there.” He gestured to the large cruise ship, which was in plain sight. “I’ll have her back before dinner.” The man placed the bills in front of Delores. She tore her eyes away from the stack to look into the terrified eyes of her daughter. Margot was shaking her head slowly, mouthing, No, but Delores had made up her mind the minute the scent of the bills hit her. Her eyes pleaded with her daughter’s, and also held in them an apology. Please undah-stand. Do it now and you’ll tank me lata, Delores hoped her eyes communicated. She nodded to the man when Margot looked away, defeated. The man took Margot somewhere—Delores didn’t ask where. It was in the direction of the ship that had docked for the day. The girl followed behind him, her steps uncertain. She never looked back to see the tears in Delores’s eyes.

  When the man returned Margot later that evening, she refused to speak to Delores. Delores had left the market that day with six hundred dollars plus a tip that the man had added. “She’s a natural, this one,” he said to Delores with a wink. Delores stuffed the money in her brassiere. At home she hid it inside the mattress where she hid all her money. She hid it so well that she never noticed when the money disappeared. It wasn’t until her brother, Winston, who was living with them at the time, announced months later that he got a visa and a one-way ticket to America that Delores wondered where he got the money. Immediately after Winston’s announcement Delores ripped the sheets off the bed and stuck her hand inside the hole underneath the sponge layer. Nothing came up in her desperate fingers. The realization burned her stomach and spread across the width of her belly like the pressure of a child about to be born. For Thandi had just started to kick then. Delores almost collapsed, not with the fury and raging anger she harbored for her brother, but for the loss of her daughter’s innocence, which, she realized too late, was worth more than the money she lost and all the money she would ever gain.

  Though she doesn’t know the story, Thandi has captured all of this pian. All Delores is to her is this ugly, dark woman capable of nothing but fits of rage and cruelty. Who knew that both her daughters would come to view her this way? Delores sinks into the chair around the dining table. Thandi, like Margot, hates her. And so does Mama Merle, sitting outside on that rocking chair. The old bat will spend another day wishing her beloved, good-for-nothing son home; while Delores will continue breaking her back to provide for the family, doing what she does best: survive.

  18

  ALPHONSO HIMSELF ANNOUNCED THE NEWS THAT MISS NOVIA Scott-Henry had decided to step down. But by the time the announcement was made, it had already been emptied of any potential shock. Certainly Margot could have gone to the woman with the pictures and given her an ultimatum: You step down or I leak these to the press. But there was no need, since what took place afterward was more epic in the unraveling. It began with a scream. A howl that startled the entire sixteenth floor when the maids discovered the two naked women in the penthouse suite. The maids’ screaming drew other maids from other floors who had just slipped into their uniforms and comfortable shoes, still humming songs from last night’s church revival.

  Sweetness did not handle it well, crippled with guilt. Margot feared that she might come forward with some damning information about what really had taken place, so she decided to set her free,
handing her severance pay.

  “Yuh firing me?” the girl asked. “But ah did what yuh ask.”

  “You did what I asked. Now you can go.”

  “But ah thought yuh was g’wan hire me.”

  “Not when yuh mope around like yuh mother jus’ dead.”

  “Ah was jus’ feeling guilty, like a normal person wid ah heart. Now what g’wan happen to di ’ooman?”

  “Nuh worry ’bout dat. It’s done.”

  “Ah couldn’t stomach it. Not even fah myself. To be ousted dat way. Why yuh did such a t’ing if you is—”

  “Here is yuh money. Tek it or leave it.”

  But Sweetness let the padded white envelope fall between them. Margot was the one to pick it up off the floor and brush it off. “So yuh g’wan act like yuh neva earn it?” she asked the girl. “Fine, go back to where yuh come from. I’ll put this money to good use. There are ah hundred more girls out there.” Sweetness looked on as Margot placed the envelope back inside her purse. She swallowed. “I didn’t say ah want to stop working fah you,” she said.

  “Well, if yuh want to continue working for me, then stop talking about what happened.” Margot stepped closer. She used one hand to clutch the girl by the chin. “Look at me. It’s done. The woman stepped down. Whateva happen to her aftah-wards is not your business or your concern. She’s going to be all right. Those people don’t suffer. They don’t even know di meaning of dat word. We have biggah fish to fry. So yuh either swim or yuh drown.”

  The girl nodded. “Me is a very good swimmer.”

  That same day after it was announced that Miss Novia Scott-Henry would step down, Margot attended her first board meeting. As senior clerk she had to help Alphonso with damage control. When she opened the door to the restroom where she’d gone to freshen up before her entrance, Miss Novia Scott-Henry was bent over the sink, both hands spanning the width. Her body was heaving and shuddering. Their eyes met in the mirror. That was when Margot saw her tears; the long streaks down her face. Like scars.