Sister Benjamin stands over Thandi. She presses a cool pinkish hand to Thandi’s neck. As if unsatisfied with what she feels, she retrieves her thermometer and tells Thandi to open her mouth. When she takes it out and looks at it, she nods to herself. “When did the sickness start?” she asks.
Thandi clears her throat. “Last month, miss.” It’s true that she hasn’t been feeling like herself lately. Her drive to do schoolwork has diminished, though she still makes good grades. Maybe it’s because the exams are only days away and she’s ready to get them over with.
“Last month?” Sister Benjamin raises an eyebrow. “Have you been experiencing any headaches, nausea, vomiting?” Sister Benjamin asks Thandi.
Thandi nods, relieved that she can get away with the lie. She swallows, comforted by the recollection of the dizzying hot flashes she had been getting due to the plastic and sweatshirt she had been wearing since February. “How about fatigue?” Sister Benjamin asks. “Have you been feeling very tired lately?” Thandi nods again, thinking about the creeping wave of exhaustion that overwhelms her out of nowhere.
“Have you missed any periods?”
Thandi clears her throat and lowers her eyes.
“It’ll be all right, dear,” Sister Benjamin says, leaning again to touch Thandi on the arm. “You can talk to me.”
Thandi tenses. She takes a deep breath to steady herself.
“How did it happen, love?” Sister Benjamin asks.
“I’m not pregnant.” Thandi says. “I’ve never . . .”
“You’ve never had sexual relations with anyone? Is that what you’re saying?”
“No . . . I mean, yes . . . I mean, no . . . I—I didn’t do anything.”
If she tells Sister Benjamin what really happened all those years ago, it would mean that her pain would no longer be hers. She shakes her head, her eyes downcast. “I’m not pregnant.”
“Then what have you been hiding under that sweatshirt? It’s been a hundred degrees outside.”
Thandi’s face grows warm. Sister Benjamin would never understand. How can she ever explain that she wanted to be fair—like the Virgin Mary or the nuns and girls at school who take their lightness for granted? Thandi doesn’t know what’s worse in the eyes of this woman of God—the discovery that she could be correcting God’s mistake and even blasphemously suggesting that he made one; or the assumption that she has fornicated and gotten pregnant. Thandi’s eyes catch on a poster on the wall. In bold letters it declares: YOU ARE MADE IN THE IMAGE OF GOD. Below the words, a frail girl who looks like the Virgin Mary is piously bowing her covered head, her milky white skin glowing in a light that appears to be descending from heaven. Thandi averts her eyes.
“Let us pray,” Sister Benjamin says, reaching for Thandi’s hand across the table. Thandi sits back down and puts her hands inside Sister Benjamin’s. The woman’s hands are tight around hers, her eyes closed. “Repeat after me. Oh, my God, I am heartfully sorry for having offended thee, and I detest all my sins because of Thy just punishment . . .”
When Thandi opens her eyes, Sister Benjamin is smiling. “Thank you, Sister Benjamin,” Thandi chokes, unable to look her in the eyes. She feels Sister Benjamin watching her as she gets up from the chair and moves to the door.
“Concentrate on your education. A girl like you can’t afford not to. Believe me, you wouldn’t want to throw all this away just for your indiscretions. Or someone else’s.” A shadow briefly descends over her face like a veil. When Thandi blinks, it’s gone, replaced by a cool stamp of disapproval.
Thandi makes a beeline to Charles’s house, her backpack bouncing behind her. She will apologize to him for their last encounter, tell him that she wasn’t herself; that something came over her and made her do what she did, embarrassing them both. She flings the gate open and hurries to his shack. Cain and Abel trail behind her. They recognize her now, jumping up to greet her, their tails wagging and tongues hanging. She knocks on Charles’s door. When she knocks again and no one answers, she peers through the window. He’s not there. She looks around the yard, wondering where he could be, given that he was not by the river. Neither was he by his father’s boat. She contemplates the main shack, where the front door swings open in the light breeze. She never thought to look there. Never thought to go inside, for it is known in River Bank that Miss Violet does not take visitors. Thandi goes to the main house anyway and pushes the door open.
The house reeks of sinkle bible and boiled tamarind leaves. Thandi shudders from the stench, which reminds her of sickness. But it is the more potent mixture of piss, feces, and something else that makes her swallow the box lunch she ate at school earlier. The darkness doesn’t permit Thandi to see much farther than the doorway. She considers turning and going back outside, but her feet remain grounded as though the floor is made of wet cement. Someone coughs. This is followed by a soft coo, like a baby bird or something more fragile. Thandi steps inside, her feet aggravating the wooden floorboards. She puts her backpack over both shoulders so that her hands are free to feel around. A sliver of daylight enters through the small tear in the curtain by the only window. The curtain, Thandi notices, is just an old sheet. This faint light allows her to see the small table with a couple of chairs, some cardboard boxes, a stack of old newspapers, and a barrel. Now that she’s inside, outside seems like a foreign country. There’s no concept of time and place. The date—though currently June 1, 1994—is still August 7, 1988, according to the water-stained calendar hanging on a wall.
Inside this house, Hurricane Gilbert has not yet come and devastated the island, flooding out some residents of River Bank. Inside this house, Edward Seaga is still Prime Minister of Jamaica, a yellowing picture of him pasted next to the calendar. Inside this house, a fisherman name Asafa still brings home lobster for his family. When Thandi approaches the bedroom (the partitioned area where the cooing gets louder, sounding like a wounded animal as opposed to the soft, fragile thing that Thandi had pictured earlier) a frail woman’s voice calls out. “Asafa? Ah you dat?” But it’s not the assumption that throws Thandi off guard; it’s the sound of the woman’s voice—gravellike and strained, as though she has been weeping for hours, days, weeks, months, years. Nearly a decade. “Asafa?”
Thandi pauses. Though she’s barely breathed since entering the house, she gasps for the little air remaining.
“No, Mama, is jus’ me. Yuh imagining t’ings again.” It’s Charles. Thandi tiptoes to the side of the partition, a red, velvety upholstery material that she’s used to seeing on chairs in Mr. Farrow’s furniture place. She spies Charles squeezing a piece of washcloth from a basin. Thandi hears the water swooshing around. His mother is sitting up on a narrow bed, naked, looking like a big doll. Her dark hair is wild, flanked with powdery grays. Her eyes are sunken and wide, the bags under them like dark pouches. It’s hard for Thandi to recognize Miss Violet with all that wrinkled flesh. Her face seems to have crumpled under many years of disappointment, worry, sadness, and longing. This is Jullette’s mother. A woman Thandi once thought to be the most beautiful, loving, and caring mother compared to hers. Miss Violet would give Jullette peanuts even when she didn’t ask. She gave her perms too, something Thandi envied because it made Jullette seem grown. And when Jullette’s hair started falling out, Miss Violet had her get those extension braids. They talked like friends, giggling and smiling at each other all the time. There was never any beating or shaming. As the only girl in her family of boys, Jullette did anything she wanted without living in fear of a domineering mother. Miss Violet used to sell peanuts, tamarind balls, and peppered shrimp outside the gate of their primary school. She was always ready for Thandi with a pretty smile, though she had only a few teeth left in her mouth then. “Aye, coolie girl.”
Currently the woman looks like she has aged fifty years, her eyes glazed with nostalgia. “Yuh rememba Irby an’ Georgie?” she asks her son, pronouncing “Georgie” as “Jaaaji.” Her pink tongue wallows in her gaping, toothless mouth like a whal
e.
“Yes, Mama,” Charles replies, using the cloth to bathe his mother. Miss Violet is indifferent to this. Indifferent to her grown son cleaning her this way, wiping the wet cloth over her sandy-brown breasts that are full, heavy sacks on her chest.
“An’ Premrose. Is wah become ah Premrose?” Miss Violet asks. The water trickles down her pouched belly and settles in her concave navel. Her eyes glisten as she appears to search her memory for a woman named Premrose. “Mi will do anyting fi har sorrel now,” she says, clucking her tongue. “Those was some good days.” Charles continues to wipe, his face neutral despite the downward stroke between his mother’s legs, where the black and gray hairs match the ones on her head.
“She’s dead now,” Charles says, looking away from his task out of politeness and respect. Thandi can’t see the look on his face, but his motion is a mechanical one—his mother’s hands are busy touching her hair as if to replace a wayward strand from an elegant coif. All she says is, “Uhn,” as though this news of Premrose’s passing means nothing. She says it again when Charles finishes.
“Yuh should get out di house sometime,” Charles says quietly. “Look for work an’ stop laying up in bed like dis. Yuh is not a ole ’ooman yet, an’ yuh still got yuh strength.”
Miss Violet looks at him. “Is bettah fah yuh to kill me. Tek me outta dis misery. Premrose is in a bettah place now. It shoulda been me.”
Charles straightens and looks down at his mother. “Mama, me can’t continue fi do dis.”
Miss Violet presses her lips to her gums and holds his hand, bringing him back down. “Jus’ do it. Me will be forevah grateful if yuh end it fah me. Put a knife to me throat, ah icepick to me ’aart. Anyt’ing. Jus’ kill me, son-son. Please, please, me ah beg yuh!” Then her voice becomes cold. “Yuh is a coward! A lessah man than yuh father!” The cooing starts again.
Thandi backs away. Her footsteps trouble the floorboards again and this time the creaking brings Charles to the curtain. Their eyes meet—his, questioning, ashamed; hers, apologetic. He stands there in silence, the wet cloth dripping to the floor, his mother cooing in the background. Thandi trembles with the urge to hold him and the need for forgiveness as she witnesses the rage building in his eyes, eclipsing them like moons. She turns around and cuts through the stink, running until she’s sure she has escaped it. But the smell, like the look in Charles’s eyes, follows her all the way home.
22
ON THE DAY OF THE PARTY, THANDI IRONS A MODEST GREEN dress that falls below her knees. With a big white collar, white buttons, pleats and a bow in the back, it’s a perfect cover for the daring dress she intends to change into once she gets to the restaurant. Grandma Merle had sewn the green dress for Delores when she was Thandi’s size. Delores kept the dress so that it could be passed on to Margot, then Thandi. In the mirror above the vanity she spies her clear complexion; the lightness has come into her skin like a slow-moving mixture of condensed milk and Milo. Truth be told, she hasn’t given much thought to the party, medical school, or her bleaching regimen since Charles. But after seeing Miss Violet, the ugliness of being black and poor remains like intaglio on her mind. It’s the one thing that connects her to Miss Violet’s sickness, Margot’s restlessness, and Delores’s intermittent wrath. After being inside Miss Violet’s shack, she saw, with overwhelming dread, what might become of her. That day she rushed home to the shack, and there, before the mirror, rubbed her skin with the Queen of Pearl and Miss Ruby’s concoction mixed with hydrogen peroxide until it was raw and tender. But no matter how hard and how frequently she rubs, the imprint of Charles’s mother remains, for it’s indelible.
Delores comes in from the outhouse and sees Thandi looking at herself in the mirror.
“Is where yuh going?” she asks, putting a roll of toilet paper on a small table.
“They having last minute extra lessons today at school, remembah I told you? Since the exam started this week.” She returns to ironing the dress.
Delores nods. She’s filling up a basket with souvenirs to sell at the market later. Delores is in high spirits today. A big ship is coming into Falmouth, though it’s Saturday. Thandi looks at the rag dolls and the coasters and key chains and handcrafted jewelry that Delores delicately places inside the basket. How would visitors know the real stories behind the faces of the wooden masks they’d buy to hang on walls; the rag dolls they’d use to decorate unused furniture in their houses; the figurines they’d place on mantels that they can marvel at then quickly forget? The smell of something burning brings Thandi’s attention from her mother’s basket to the brown outline the iron has branded into the dress. Thandi quickly removes the iron, but pieces of the green fabric have attached themselves to the hot metal surface. She gasps, looking both ways for a solution, as though one would materialize out of the steam. Delores runs over to the board when she hears the hissing sound of the iron. “What yuh do to di dress?” she yells, surveying the damage—the burned spot, ruining the polyester fabric that had survived years of washing and drying in the sun, and the hems that had been stitched with the care and precision by Mama Merle’s then-abled fingers. All gone.
“Sorry, Mama. Ah wasn’t paying attention,” Thandi says.
They haven’t said much to each other since that night when Thandi showed her the drawing and told her that she wants to be an artist. When Thandi looks up again, Delores is regarding her closely. Thandi lowers the dress. “What?”
“Don’t what me.” Delores is stepping closer. “What is it yuh using on yuh face?”
“Nothing, Mama. I wash it wid soap. That’s all.”
“Yuh t’ink me is a eeediot?”
“No, Mama.”
“Then be honest wid me, Thandi . . . how come yuh look like yuh a spar wid di dead?”
Thandi touches her face, pretending to not have noticed the change. Miss Ruby was right. Her skin has lightened to how she wanted it by today. Just in time for Dana’s sweet sixteen party tonight. “It’s how me skin stay,” she says. “I’ve not been in the sun, since I’ve been studying so hard.”
“Don’t romp wid me, Thandi.” Delores puts her hands on her hips, her chest swelling.
“I’m telling the truth.”
“You been going to dat Miss Ruby?”
“No, Mama.”
“Tell me di god truth!”
Thandi beholds her pale hands. She can actually see her veins. How green and expansive they are; the sight of them inflating her lungs. She wants to show off her new skin so she’ll be like the others, the ones who don’t have to sit patiently, looking forward to the Day of Judgment, expecting its sweet relief. For heaven is right here, in her lightened skin. See? See? She got what she wanted; and she doesn’t have to wait until she gets to someplace in the sky.
“Why, Thandi?” Delores’s hands drop to her sides. “Lawd Jesus have mercy pon me!” She whips around to face the shadows perched nearby in the early morning before the sun scatters them. Like little black birds that crowd the branches of the pawpaw trees by the foot of the river, the shadows seem to descend with Delores’s presence. “Yuh see me dying trial?” she says to them. “Di chile bleaching har skin, tun white woman undah me roof!”
“Mama, ah can explain.”
“Explain?” Delores pounces and grabs Thandi, knocking over the ironing board in the process. She drags her by the collar of her nightgown. With one hand Delores rips the flimsy nightgown off Thandi to bare her chest so that she can see her bleached body in its entirety—everywhere as light as the cedar planks that Clover uses to patch holes in the shack. Gone is Thandi’s once-mahogany cocoa skin. Delores jumps back, her hands flying to her mouth as if a ghost—a duppy—snatched her breath, her eyes watering.
“Thandi, is whaddu yuh? How yuh pay for it?”
“Mama, I can explain,” Thandi repeats.
“How?” Delores is shaking mightily, like a tree branch in a hurricane. “Who is filling up yuh head wid dis rubbish? Is it di girl dem at school? Is it dem?”
<
br /> When Thandi doesn’t answer, Delores comes after her again, and Thandi runs. “Aftah me bruk me back to send yuh go school to learn, this is what yuh come home wid?” She raises her hand to slap Thandi, but Thandi escapes again. “How yuh paying dat blasted ’ooman? Dat blasted, thievin’ ’ooman who selling nuttin but lies!”
“Mama, it nuh cost much.”
“Ah g’wan find out fi me self,” Delores says. “Yuh not going nowhere looking like yuh jus’ drop outta one casket. Ah g’wan guh kill dat Ruby!”
“But Mama, I have extra lessons.”
“Yuh not going anywhere t’day. Yuh g’wan stay in that sun till yuh color come back.”
“But Mama!” Thandi cries. “I don’t want to be black any longer. Where’s dat going to get me? Nowhere.”
“But Jeezas have mercy!” Delores crouches with her head in her hand.
“Mama, I want to be somebody. I want to go places. You want that too—for me to be a doctor, leave River Bank.”
“Nonsense!” Delores springs back up from her haunches. “Yuh see how me black an’ stay? How yuh fi tun white wid a black mother, eh?”
“Is not about you, Mama. Is about me.”
“Is dat why yuh shame ah me? Because me black? Is dat why yuh neva bring any ah yuh school friend dem around? Because yuh nuh want dem fi see yuh black mother an’ fi know seh yuh live ’mongst black people? First yuh change yuh accent . . . can’t even chat patwa no more. An’ now yuh go all di way wid di bleaching t’ing. What yuh do wid me Thandi? Beg yuh bring har back, because me nuh like dis one.”
Just then Margot comes in with bags of groceries she picked up at Mr. Levy’s Wholesale. An overnight bag is strung over one shoulder. A wave of relief washes over Thandi when she sees her sister. She runs into Margot to get away from Delores, almost knocking Margot over. “What’s going on here? Why yuh naked?” Margot asks, letting go of the bags, which drop with a loud thud, to hold on to Thandi.
Here Comes the Sun Page 20
