“What yuh do to Mama Delores?” the man asks Verdene. “What yuh do to my Margot?”
His Margot? Verdene looks into his yellow eyes. “Who are you? You let go of me, or else.”
“Or else wah?” The man draws back his fist. Behind him, the vendors chant, “Do it! Do it! Do it! Punch di sodomite in har face!”
“Only a coward hits a woman,” Verdene says in a low voice that only he can hear. “My Margot would never want you.”
The Rasta man pulls Verdene’s face to his fist or his fist to her face. Verdene—who used to block fights between her parents, and who once felt the hard knuckles of her father’s hand in her left jaw to prevent it from fracturing another bone in her mother’s petite body—has perfected a self-defense maneuver that enables her to block the man’s fist and twist his arm behind his back. He grits his teeth as she holds his hand in place.
“When a woman says to let her go, you let her go!”
These words come from someone else. Must be from someone who is standing in the crowd, watching this taking place. For Verdene no longer recognizes her own voice.
“You heard me?” the woman—that other woman—says.
The Rasta man lets Verdene go, his eyes wide with fear. He watches Verdene pick up her basket, which is empty. He says nothing. Neither does the crowd that has gathered. Verdene suppresses the urge to cry. Not in public for all of these people to see how humiliated she really is. One by one she gathers the contents of her basket, knowing she will never return to buy produce from these people again. When she thinks she’s done, someone hands her an apple. Verdene looks up, from the clawlike fingers with blackened nails clutching the apple to the face of the woman.
“I believe this belongs to you,” the woman says; her face is a web of lines as though someone had taken off her skin, crumpled it like paper between fists, then put it back on.
Verdene hesitates before taking the apple, meeting the woman’s cataract-blue eyes. Miss Gracie grins with all her rotting teeth.
“Yuh mek Eve bite di apple,” Miss Gracie says, the accusation like the jab of a needle. “Now tek it back! Tek it back an’ go to hell weh yuh come from, yuh serpent!” She flings the apple at Verdene, hitting her in the head. Verdene drops her basket and runs, aware of the crowd stirring again with victory. “Yes, Mama Gracie, show har who run t’ings! Lick har backside! Buss har head!”
The Rasta man, who has suddenly regained his voice, shouts, “Next time me see yuh, you g’wan pay!”
Verdene hurries out of the market, realizing for the first time that Delores had been standing there in the crowd, her eyes red like the devil. It’s as though she had orchestrated the whole thing.
“G’long, yuh blasted sodomite! An’ nuh come back!” Delores says.
Delores’s final words hit Verdene like a rock in the back. Verdene picks up her pace and runs.
24
DELORES WATCHES THE WOMAN FLEE. THE EVIL THE SODOMITE has brought to the arcade makes her shudder. Of all the days, Verdene picked today to come to harass her.
“But what is it yuh want from me, Lawd Jesus?” Delores asks, her head tilted to the steel-blue sky. It must be a sign. An omen. Miss Ella’s daughter has never been up to any good. She poisoned Margot all those years ago, made her sick in the head for months. Margot was never the same after she became friends with that Verdene girl.
Margot was ten years old when Delores came home from work one day and saw her beaming. Immediately the muscles in Delores’s chest tightened at the sight of white teeth peering through brown flesh. Something seemed odd about it. For some reason, the joy and innocence in her daughter only infuriated her. Had Margot known what life could become for girls like her, she would never grin like that. And the wider the little girl grinned, the more Delores’s muscles contracted within the cavity of her chest.
“What is it yuh so happy ’bout?” Delores asked the little girl the day she saw her in the yard, putting a red hibiscus behind her ear.
“She said I’m pretty,” Margot responded.
“Who said so?”
“Verdene.”
“Verdene who?”
“Miss Ella’s dawta,” Margot said, pointing in the direction of the bright pink house.
When Margot was born, she cried and cried and cried, as though she had inherited Delores’s wails from childbirth. The baby was a burden, a living proof of something stolen, mangled, and destroyed. The man who was Margot’s father had called Delores pretty too. Had pinched her fat as a young girl who was barely thirteen and told her one day to sit on his lap. When she didn’t, he made her. He pinched and pinched and pinched her fat until Delores couldn’t take it. The final pinch was one so deep that Margot came wailing from it nine months later. And Delores wanted to silence it. Even the baby’s gentle breaths as she played or fed or snored were loud, and Delores fought the urge many times to stop her breathing with a pillow over her head.
When she saw Margot smiling that day, Delores wanted to crush the thing she saw in her daughter’s eyes: that new thing that sparkled and shone like that ungodly sun Delores yearned to rip from the sky. She clenched her fists. “Tek off yuh dirty clothes,” she told the little girl. Delores watched the light disappear from her daughter’s face; but not even that eased the pain inside Delores. “Me say tek off yuh clothes, gyal!”
The little girl did as she was told. Her little arms moved slowly as she undressed. She stood naked in the backyard as Delores filled a basin with water.
“Get in,” she said. Margot’s obedience irritated Delores more. She felt the girl was silently mocking her. How vindictive could this child be, pretending to be so well behaved? Even when she was a toddler, waking up numerous times to catch Delores holding a pillow over her head, trembling, she batted her lashes at Delores as though Delores were God himself. She still trusted her. This had to be a trick. A plan to kill Delores with tenderness.
What Delores did next made the girl scream. She wanted to teach her a lesson. Delores held Margot down in the water and pinched and pinched. The little girl wailed under Delores’s thumb and index fingers all over her body. Delores made sure to warn her.
“Neva tek compliments from anyone else, yuh hear?” Delores said. “Especially not from another ’ooman! That’s sodomite ways!”
“Yes, Mamaaa!” The little girl’s screams only egged Delores on. She wanted to tell her daughter that people only say these things to take advantage of her. Like her father took advantage.
Later that year when the news broke about Verdene messing with some girl at the university, Delores wondered if Verdene had indeed taken advantage of Margot. “Don’t let me see yuh going over there again!” Delores said to Margot. This time she put Margot inside a basin to wash the evil out of her. Miss Gracie had suggested using Guinea bush to cure the girl, but it didn’t help. Margot still ran away to Miss Ella’s yard and hid from Delores. She latched on to the other woman and her sodomite daughter as though they were her family. Delores washed Margot every day. “Yuh is neva going to be like her, yuh hear?” Delores said. But still, when Verdene was sent away, most days Margot curled up like a fetus and wept for her. She fell mute for a while. The teachers thought something was wrong with her. All she did was run around the track. She ran and ran like something was chasing her. They put her on the track team and she won every race. Made it all the way to National Stadium. Delores tried everything to make her normal. Then the stranger came. When he offered Delores the money, she not only saw her redemption, but her daughter’s too.
“Mama Delores, yuh all right?” John-John interrupts Delores’s thoughts, the worry in his face pulling her venom, sucking the poisonous anger that nearly paralyzes her. Delores nods. She can’t find her voice just yet. The exchange with Verdene has made her sick. A wave of nausea washes over her, twisting her stomach, and she searches for her bench to sit back down, her heart a big, solid mass pounding in her chest.
“Let me get yuh some wata, Mama Delores. Yuh nuh look too good.�
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John-John bounces out of her stall. Delores touches her right breast with her hand and feels the hardness there. It’s bigger, spreading under her arm. She still hasn’t taken herself to the doctor to have it looked at. What would they say? That she needs an operation? She can always drink more of the Guinea bush tea with soursop leaf.
John-John returns with a plastic cup filled with warm water.
“Donovan gimme this,” he says, referring to the old shoemaker inside the shop across the street from the arcade. He hands the cup to Delores. “Him say if yuh want ice, Miss Bernice ’ave some. But she too far, mah.”
Delores drinks the water in one thirsty gulp. She belches loudly and hands the cup back to John-John. “God bless yuh,” she says. “Now help me wid this basket,” she says to John-John. John-John eagerly picks up the basket off the floor and puts it on the table where Delores keeps the other sale items. Today is her produce day, but it doesn’t seem to be selling. She only had one customer this morning. The ships won’t dock in Falmouth again until next week, so she spends her off days here with no success. “Mi going home. Coming out here is a waste of time,” she says, getting up again.
“Yuh all right, Mama Delores?” John-John asks, this time regarding her face closely. “Yuh sweating bad bad. Dat woman . . . why she affect yuh like dat? Mavis seh yuh run har from yuh stall.”
“Hush yuh mouth ’bout Mavis. What dat Mavis know? Is nothin’ of concern to she nor you.”
Delores fans herself with an old Courts Furniture Store calendar as she packs her things. John-John watches her pack. It’s still early. Almost two o’ clock in the afternoon. For Delores, this is usually the high time. Usually when she sees the other vendors leaving so early she chastises them, clucking her tongue at them. “Oonuh lazy-like! Yuh don’t see we have plenty more hours lef in a day? Stay an’ work, man!”
But today she’s tired.
At home, Merle is sitting on the veranda staring out at the sky, a peaceful look on her face. Delores goes inside and puts down her things. The place feels small, no longer able to contain her. She looks around at the shabbiness and thinks she should have hidden that money better. With that money, she could’ve bought herself a ticket to America. But no. Winston took everything. She goes back outside to the veranda and stands in front of her mother, blocking her view.
“Him not coming back!” she yells to the old woman. Merle doesn’t blink. She doesn’t even stir. “Ah said, yuh ole neagger son not coming back!” Delores yells again. When her mother doesn’t say or do anything, Delores grabs her by the arm and shakes her. “Yuh hear me?” The old woman cries out. Delores squeezes harder, her nails sinking into the old woman’s flesh. It’s soft to the touch, like tender meat on a chicken bone. Delores feels her mother’s slight bones underneath. How fragile they seem under her powerful grip. Merle’s cry turns into a whimper.
Delores picks up her mother from her chair on the veranda and takes her inside the house. She shoves her onto the couch. “No more looking at the sky. Him gone! Him not coming back!”
Merle whines louder, holding herself. She rocks back and forth, her whines becoming guttural like those of a tormented swine. Delores leans closer so that she can look into the eyes of the woman who used to tell her she was nothing, the woman who sent her brother (and not her) to school simply because he was the boy. The man of the house. The woman who knew about the pinching and blamed Delores for it.
“What? Yuh t’ink him g’wan save yuh now?” Delores asks her mother. “Yuh see it’s not him taking care ah yuh. It’s me. It’s me! Him forget ’bout you! Him tek me money. Didn’t you say everything used to belong to him? Didn’t you say it was him who was g’wan mek it? But yuh see? How him gone an’ lef’ yuh like you is a pile ah shit pon me doorstep!”
Delores wheels around. She can no longer bear looking at the pain in her mother’s eyes. A pain that isn’t caused by Delores’s abuse, but by the absence of her beloved son.
25
THE DAY THANDI FINISHES HER FINAL ROUND OF CXC EXAMS and sees Charles waiting by the school gate in his cutoff trousers, open shirt, and dusty old shoes, she nearly ditches him. She has been avoiding him since the day she walked in on him cleaning his mother. Since her miserable failure at the party, her focus has been on studying. Delores has always said that her education is the only thing she has going for her anyway—the only thing that will set her worlds apart from the people in River Bank. Charles sees her and waves, a grin slowly lighting up his face, as though against his will. But no amount of waving can get Thandi to lift her free hand and wave back. Already the stares of her schoolmates have bound her hand to her side. It dangles helplessly, her fingers twitching. Charles waits for her to cross the street to where he stands. Thandi greets him, managing a smile that she hopes will look to onlookers like a polite one—the kind given to beggars and unsolicited admirers. She walks a few steps ahead, aware of his shadow, his ripe pawpaw scent, and the distance between them.
“How it feel to be done wid all yuh exam dem?” he asks.
“Fine.”
“Jus’ fine? A heavy weight mus’ lif’ off ah yuh shoulders. Don’t?”
When she doesn’t respond, he says, “Yuh want me to hol’ yuh bag?”
Thandi shakes her head and caresses the strap on her shoulder. “I can carry it.”
“How about dat umbrella?” he asks, pointing to the black umbrella that Thandi keeps above her head so that she won’t get dark. With all the skin-lightening creams she still allows Miss Ruby to rub on her body despite Delores’s threat, just a few minutes of the sun could scald Thandi’s delicate flesh.
“I can hold it too,” she says.
“Yuh want a mango?” Charles digs inside his pocket and pre-sents a Julie mango. Thandi looks over her shoulders. She’s still in the square where anyone can see her accepting a mango from a street boy. She walks quicker, but he matches her pace. “Why yuh speeding? Yuh late fah something?” Charles asks, trying to catch up.
“Yes, I have to meet someone in Ironshore.”
“Oh.”
“I have to hurry an’ get a taxi.”
“Who yuh ’ave up dere?”
“None of your business.”
She expects him to leave her alone, to back away and tell her that he’ll see her later, then. But he doesn’t. He continues to stand there, next to her in broad daylight, in a crowded Sam Sharpe Square in Montego Bay while she’s wearing her Saint Emmanuel High uniform. She hates him for making her feel so ashamed. She hates his naïveté—or is it arrogance? Can’t he see that she wants nothing to do with him at this time? Not when she has every intention of going to the hotels, starting with the one where Margot works, to look for a summer job. With the CXCs over, how else will she occupy her time?
“Are you ashamed of me? Because of what you saw at my house?” Charles asks out of the blue.
“Ashamed?” Thandi asks, pretending to be shocked and hurt by this assumption, which is very well true. “I’m in a hurry, that’s all.”
Charles observes her. Thandi, who is used to convincing people she is somebody other than herself, immediately works hard to change his mind. “If ah was ashamed of you, then why would I be talking to you now?”
Charles shrugs. “You tell me.”
“I’m not ashamed of you,” she says again, this time hoping to believe this herself.
“Thandi, jus’ tell me di truth. If it did mek you uncomfortable to see my mother dat way, I understand.”
“I, well, yuh know, it reminded me of . . .” She pauses, trying to find the right words. “I don’t want to end up like dat.”
“It’s not contagious.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“Then say what yuh mean.”
“I don’t want to depend on anyone else for my happiness. I always used to hate my mother for not letting me mix wid certain people. But after seeing fah myself what hopelessness really looks like, I realize why. She was trying to save me.”
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br /> Charles is very quiet, so quiet Thandi thinks she can hear her own heartbeat. “All right, then. Ah get it.”
“Charles. I’m sorry.”
“No apologies necessary. Ah can’t blame yuh. I’m nothin’ but a hopeless street yout’. It’s funny, because ah kinda know dat one day you’d come to yuh senses. Ah fool myself into thinking yuh was a different type of girl, dat you’d be above dem t’ings an’ jus’ follow yuh heart.” He’s shaking his head and peering at his dusty old shoes where she can see his big toe. Thandi begins to wish that she never said anything. He’s not looking at her anymore. His shoulders are rounded and his eyes are trained on the small pebble he kicks with one foot.
“Well, ah hope dem people deh worth mixing wid,” he says.
The disgust that she sees on his face when he turns to leave fills her with disgust too. It’s disgust from trying so hard to fit in with everyone else. Where has it gotten her? She likes herself when she’s with him. With him she doesn’t fumble over herself to be someone she’s not. She remembers the day on the beach when he risked his own life to save her; the times afterward, when he told her that she’s beautiful.
Charles is several feet away, his head still down as he walks in the direction of the hill. “Charles!” she hears herself shout. Saint Emmanuel girls are warned against raising their voices in public. The world should see them as quiet vessels of God. But Thandi throws all this away when she runs after him. “Charles!” As she jogs, her bookbag slaps her back with its heavy weight. She lowers her umbrella; the sun is in her face, but she doesn’t care. She’s aware of the people watching, some stopping to let her pass. “Charles!” she calls in a panic. He continues to walk through the crowd. Only the back of his head is visible. Thandi picks up speed, knowing deep down that if she doesn’t reach him, something inside her will crumble. “Charles!” Her voice is shrill, naked, broken. He stops. When he turns, she runs right into him. Her face is pressed to his chest, and she allows herself to be held by him, inhaling his ripe pawpaw smell. She imagines how it looks for her to be carrying on this way in public, but doesn’t care. She’s too tired to care.
Here Comes the Sun Page 22
