“Thought yuh was in a hurry to get somewhere,” he whispers quietly into the top of her head.
He takes her to his zinc shed. They pass the main shack, where his mother is probably staring at the ceiling, debilitated by the one thing Thandi now knows intimately—yearning. Charles takes off her clothes. He’s gentle. The panic and desperation she felt earlier makes her willing to take him as he is—uncultivated, uneducated, unkempt, hard.
“Let me put it in, jus’ a likkle,” he whispers in her ear. She lies down on his bed, her back on the cool, rumpled sheet in complete surrender to this boy—the type of boy she was sheltered from. She opens up for him, but Clover appears in her mind. It’s his breathing she hears; his rough kisses that she feels down her neck; his touch that makes her muscles clench like a tight fist. And that pulling and tugging and grunting to get inside, all of that his. She writhes with this memory, thrashing her limbs, her nails digging inside flesh, her teeth pressing into an earlobe. There’s a sharp yelp. Clover is restraining her. Thandi spits in his face and screams until she’s weak and exhausted.
When she opens her eyes a few minutes later, Charles has moved away from her to the other side of the bed, his naked body perched on the edge like a gargoyle in repose, his penis flaccid between his legs. He’s staring at her, his pupils holding in them so many things that she cannot read, mostly questions. Pieces of his skin are under her nails, the moisture of his blood fresh on their tips. What has she done? In the silence he rolls a spliff and smokes it. He doesn’t bother to tell her to get dressed, though she lies there naked, trembling, and covered in sweat. There’s a cut over one of his eyebrows. Another one on his right cheek. A couple scratches on his arms and, she’s sure, on his back. She reaches to touch him, but he flinches.
He lights the wick of the small kerosene lamp by the bed with a flick of his lighter. The lamp glows inside the shed. Thandi rests her head in the crook of her elbow and studies him in this light. A single tear runs across the bridge of her nose. “I’m sorry,” she says finally.
But he only shrugs. “It’s all right, is yuh first time. Ah shoulda been more gentle.”
His face is obscured in the cloud of smoke he puffs. She reaches for him again. She doesn’t want to go home. She doesn’t want to see Delores. Or Margot. He doesn’t pull away. Thandi gets up from the bed and stands before him. He lowers his spliff and tilts his head up at her. She bends to give him a kiss on his mouth, then on his throat. With his free hand he holds the back of her head to keep her face close to his. Their noses touch and she closes her eyes. “Yuh can stay as long as yuh want,” he whispers. Thandi lowers herself onto his lap and buries her face in the crook of his neck.
26
WHEN MARGOT ENTERS THE HOUSE, DELORES IS THERE, HER elbows on the dining table, her head resting in her hands. Grandma Merle is rocking back and forth on a chair next to the bed. Delores straightens up when she sees her daughter.
“She’s with you?” Delores asks.
“Who?”
“Yuh sistah! Is she with you?”
Margot shakes her head. “No, she’s not.”
Delores runs her hands over the purple hair-scarf she uses to cover her thinning braids. “But Jesus ’ave mercy. Where could she be?” It’s eleven o’clock at night. “Weh she could deh dis late?”
“Did you ask the neighbors?” Margot asks her mother, feeling a little woozy from the wine she drank at the hotel. She had sat in a room by herself and poured herself glass after glass. She missed Verdene terribly, but every time she picked up the telephone to dial her number, she lost the courage the wine had given her and hung up.
“Maybe she’s studying late somewhere . . .” Margot plops down on the bed and kicks off her shoes. She leans forward, resting her elbows on her knees and rubbing her temples with her hands, eyes closed. Her mother’s talking in her ears, her voice rising.
“Which neighbor?” Delores asks. “Thandi don’t talk to nobody in dis blasted community. She only go to school an’ come home.”
“You know dat for sure?” Margot asks her mother.
“Yuh sistah is not like you. She’s a good girl.”
“Mama, she’s a teenager. She’s not a likkle girl.”
Delores is rocking back and forth like Grandma Merle. “Oh, lawd, what am I going to do?” She sniffs and uses the hem of her blouse to wipe her face. “Yuh see wah me haffi deal wid, Mama?” Delores asks Grandma Merle, who is silent. Margot notices the bruises on her grandmother’s arms.
“Did you ask Grandma?” Margot asks, looking at the old woman, her eyes narrowing. “Maybe she saw something. She sees everything.”
“Yuh don’t see dat yuh grandmother is not a sane s’maddy?” Delores snaps.
“She’s sitting right there. Ask her. You ask her what she sees. Ask her how many things she lets happen an’ say nothing.” Margot sits up on the edge of the bed. In reams of memories, she remembers her grandmother’s knowing gazes. Margot used to like watching her make clothes, the concentration creasing her face. Back then, before her features became indistinguishable, she had high slanted cheekbones, a flared nose, and thick lips between which she held safety pins or threads. Margot kept Grandma Merle company as she hovered over the Singer, feeling they were in an intimate circle, joined together in the humming of the machine that made beauty from scraps.
“You is the mad one,” Delores says. “You don’t see yuh granny mute from yuh was fourteen? You did this to her. Ah have a feelin’ dat is you give di money to Winston an’ mek him run. Yuh mek him tek har heart wid him, leaving jus’ a empty shell of a ’ooman. You! You mek t’ings haa’d fi people.”
“Mama, I don’t know what yuh talkin’ about.” Margot picks up Thandi’s nightgown off the bed and holds it against herself.
“Yuh think me is a idiot?” Delores puts her hands on her hips, her shoulders squared, giving her upper body more proportion. “Because ah you, Winston run ’way. Ovah an’ ovah me t’ink ’bout it. Me ’membah seh you did see where me hide di money! You was di only one who know ’bout dat money. You! Yuh lying snake. You is di livin’ devil in flesh!”
Margot meets Delores’s glare. “And what does that make you?”
“Now yuh sistah is missing and it’s your fault!”
“So everything is my fault?”
“Yes. Yuh is nothing but a disgrace.”
Margot steps back a little, afraid that her mother might pounce on her, hold her down and give her those pinches again.
“If anyone is to blame for Thandi acting out, it’s you,” Delores says. “Yuh brainwash har. The same how dat woman brainwash you . . .” Delores says this in a voice Margot could’ve mistaken for tenderness had her mother been a different person. “That was why I had to fix yuh.”
Margot stumbles backward, as far away from her mother as possible. She bumps into the vanity. The mirror crashes down and breaks, the splinters scattering across the floor. Margot holds on to the edges of the vanity, helpless in her ability to defend herself from the memories. The black seeps into her, masking any sentiments, mangling any desire to forgive, hardening the weak pulp of a muscle beating inside her chest.
“You did more harm to me than anyone else,” she says to her mother.
But Delores is defiant, her mouth drawn like a zealot’s, convinced of the good of her actions. “It was the only way,” Delores says. “The only way dat ah could save yuh from yuh ways.”
Margot’s rage finally breaks and she bounds toward her mother like a wildcat. She grabs Delores by the neck and backs her into the peeling wall next to where Grandma Merle sits rocking. Delores fights Margot off her, her hands clamping on Margot’s wrists, Margot’s hands around her neck like brass shackles. Margot doesn’t give up.
“Go ahead an’ kill me,” Delores says. “Yuh might as well save me from this blasted life. Yuh is nothing but a low-down, dirty whore! A nasty, dirty, sodomite whore. And now yuh g’wan add murderer to yuh list. So kill me, yuh blasted fool!”
&nbs
p; Margot loosens her grip around her mother’s neck, but her hands don’t fall. “Yuh have yuh place in hell,” Delores growls.
Margot stands there with her hands around her mother’s neck; but the evil look in her mother’s bulging eyes is not enough to make her do what she thought she could. She wants desperately to press her face into the bosom of the woman she wishes had loved her, would hold her, rock her gently, stroke her hair. But Delores only spits in Margot’s face, the slime running down Margot’s right cheek, a thick and slow-moving tear.
27
VERDENE APPEARS ON THE VERANDA, FLOATING LIKE A GHOST in her nightgown. She doesn’t move to open the grille to let Margot inside. They look at each other for what seems to Margot like an eternity. The chirping of the crickets grows around them. Verdene parts her lips like she’s about to say something. The shadow of the moon, big and round, cuts her face in half. Her eyes fall to Margot’s overnight bag. Margot tilts her head to the side, her eyes moist with all the words she wants to say. They weigh heavily, pressed like a rock against her rib cage. If only Verdene would let her inside. “Please?” she asks her lover. But Verdene lifts her head to the ceiling, sucking her quivering lip. When she lowers her head, Margot sees tears in her eyes too.
“Who do you think you are?” she asks.
Her voice is the scratch of a nail, a small cut that burns; it pierces the blackness around them.
“Just let me in, please?” she asks.
“How dare you, Margot? How dare you abandon me when I needed you? And now you come back begging me to let you in?”
“Please?”
Margot watches her move to open the grille, each click of the bolt loosening something inside her, this simple act of mercy.
Inside, the house is immaculate. With her back to Margot, Verdene picks up one of the pillows from the sofa, fluffs it, and puts it back. Margot watches Verdene’s back, the boniness of it. She has gotten down to just skin and bones, the way her vertebrae stick out—round, protruding marbles in the back of her neck, visible through the sheer nightgown she wears. Margot suppresses the urge to wrap her arms around Verdene from behind. When Verdene turns around and peers at her out of a pair of hollow dark circles, Margot’s hand finds the base of her own throat.
“You may have the couch,” Verdene says. “I’m going to bed.”
She walks off, leaving Margot alone in the living room. Miss Ella’s pictures are back, staring at her from each frame as though reprimanding her: Why have you hurt my daughter this way? She goes to Verdene’s room and peers through the crack of the door, watching Verdene remove her nightgown in front of the full-length mirror. Her body is leaner than Margot remembers. Her frailty more pronounced, like she can be broken into many pieces. A slow suicide is what it looks like. Margot pushes the door open, and Verdene drops her hands to her sides. She catches Margot’s frown in the mirror. She doesn’t move to cover herself. Margot walks toward her, and very gently clutches Verdene’s bony shoulders. Her hands travel the length of Verdene’s arms; and Verdene begins to weep softly. Margot turns her around and hugs her. “I’m sorry,” she whispers. She lowers her lips to Verdene’s, but Verdene pushes Margot away. “Don’t touch me,” she hisses.
Margot disobeys her. Even as Verdene hits her, pounding her back lightly with her fists, then slapping her with big, open-handed slaps, Margot bears it. There are no screams, no shouts, just the sound of Verdene’s slaps on Margot’s back. Verdene fights and fights while Margot continues to cling to her. Margot closes her eyes as Verdene’s blows pour down, for in this very moment she finally feels something more intense than she has ever felt. She feels alive, fighting for the one thing she thought was not meant for her. This feeling grips her, bringing tears and a deep sense of relief. The overhead light blinks as though all Verdene’s rage has been transmitted to the fixture. The slaps begin to weaken, until they stop for good.
28
ON HER WAY HOME, THANDI TELLS CHARLES WHAT CLOVER DID to her when she was nine. Charles is silent as she talks. Thandi is not sure if he’s brooding or listening. He’s still holding her hand, but she feels him stray somewhere in the dark. Peenie wallies swoop around them, dotting their path with glowing orange lights. It sounds strange to hear herself speaking to anyone about this. Delores would tell her never to wash dirty clothes in a public river. “Dese people are human beings like you an’ me,” Delores said, referring to the priests in the confessionals at school. “Dey hear yuh secret an’ judge yuh jus’ di same.” But Charles is different. Thandi feels at ease talking to him. Each word that leaves her mouth surprises her, dares her to tell more, and relieves her of a burden. Charles stops walking and turns to face her. He cups her chin with both his hands. Through the dark she makes out the glistening in his eyes, the ferocity of his voice when he speaks. “Him will haffi pay fah what he did,” he says. His words are urgent.
“Charles, I’m fine,” she says. “It happened long ago.”
“If yuh was fine, yuh wouldn’t have fight me like dat earlier.” He’s shaking his head, swatting away the peenie wallies that linger between them. Thandi can see a sense of purpose come into him—a gleam in his eyes—which might have washed down onto his cheeks had he not balled his hands into tight fists. It’s a gleam she has seen in the past when he used to come over to the shack to collect Delores’s leftovers. A shame that shaped his childhood and has now been projected onto her—stale, discarded, tainted goods. Frantically she searches his face for any hint of this, but finds it shut, inscrutable. “No, him mus’ learn him lesson,” he insists. “What he did was a crime.”
“What will you do to him?”
“Don’t worry ’bout dat.”
“Don’t do anything that will cost you. Yuh know he’s a drunk. He can do anything.”
Charles pulls away from her. A scowl transforms his face and twists it so that he talks from the side of his mouth. He walks a few steps ahead, his shoulders mounting like hills. Thandi runs to catch up with him. She tugs at his shirt. “What yuh going to do?” But he doesn’t answer. He turns to her, just short of her gate. Mr. Melon is untying his goat. He’s walking in their direction. When he approaches the both of them, he tips his hat. “Howdy.” Charles and Thandi mumble a greeting to the older man. After he passes, Charles says, “Don’t worry about what ah g’wan do. I’ll take care of everything.” He kisses Thandi and leaves her standing at her gate, panicked.
···
The next afternoon a crowd is gathered outside of Dino’s Bar to watch Charles and Clover roll on the dusty ground like two lizards. Macka, the bartender, is trying to pry them off each other, but he stumbles backward when Charles pushes him off, the man falling over a group of small schoolchildren squatting nearby. The children scatter like mice, then return when Macka gets up and brushes himself off. “Fight! Fight! Fight!” the little boys yell. This brings more people to the scene—mothers who are just walking from the river with buckets on their heads. The women stop and lower their buckets to scoop their children close. This is not surprising to them, since the normal meanness that the heat and the sun brings is compounded by the drought, which provokes fits of rage. They set their eyes too on the young girl madly screaming, clamping both hands to her face, a woman in despair. “Stop it! Stop it!” This sets off mild whispers among the women, for they have only heard her speak just a decibel above a whisper. Always proper.
“What a sing t’ing!” they cluck, shaking their heads.
But Thandi ignores them. Her cries are uncontrollable. She stands away from the fight like the other spectators outside of Dino’s. She had hoped Charles had forgotten his vengeance. He doesn’t seem to care what might happen to him if he kills Clover. He’s acting like a wild beast, a man with nothing to lose. Saliva fills her mouth as the urge to vomit rises.
Clover is weak and bloodied, but insists on fighting Charles, who is younger, more virile. Charles holds him down with his weight, wildly punching him. Clover pulls a knife. Charles struggles to pry it out of Clov
er’s hand. “Somebody, please help!” Thandi screams, her blood running cold. But Charles wrestles the knife out Clover’s hand, and in one swift motion Clover’s shirt is ripped, a horizontal red gash printed on his shirt. Charles springs to his feet and Clover struggles to stand up. For a moment both men dance around each other, Charles with his shirt open and the knife in his hand, and Clover with his fists clenched and renewed strength and a dangerous look in his eyes. “C’mon, yuh pussyclaat, good-fah-nottin’ bwoy . . .” he spits. “Yuh eat from people plate all yuh life, an’ now dat yuh discover pussy yuh t’ink you is a man now.” Charles drops the knife and lurches forward. Both of them are on the ground again.
“Oh, lawd ’ave mercy!” Miss Gracie shouts. She’s stumbling out of the bar and into the street, a little tipsy, with the blind faith of a toddler walking into traffic. Miss Gracie is using all her strength to pull Charles off Clover, grabbing him by the end of his shirt as he punches Clover like a sack of rice. A few men—the types Thandi has seen hovering over pecking roosters with wild eyes filled with money and dust and sometimes tears of defeat—jump in to help Miss Gracie pull Charles away. Charles fights them off, but they outnumber him, pulling his hands behind him. Clover sits there in the middle of the road looking dizzy. He clutches his chest as if he’s trying to locate a lizard slithering its way under his armpit. A few women stoop next to Clover to give him something to drink. They ignore Charles, who is busy snatching his arms from the men and then stooping to catch his breath.
The women around Clover start to scream. Clover is woozy, faint, bleeding from his nose and lip. “S’maddy help him!” Miss Louise shouts, untying her head scarf to dab Clover’s forehead.
Someone yells for Macka to call an ambulance. But Macka doesn’t have a phone, so he runs to Mr. Levy next door. Mr. Levy, who has long ago resigned himself to the shenanigans of the drunks next door, simply flips his newspaper and shakes his head. But Macka bangs on the mesh door. “A man is bleeding in di street, Missah Chin! How yuh stay suh? Have a likkle mercy an’ call di ambulance!” Finally Mr. Levy picks up the phone and dials 119. It takes a long time for the ambulance and the police to come. Meanwhile, people are pointing at Charles. “Is dat big-head bwoy do it!” Thandi is able to catch Charles before he leaves the scene.
Here Comes the Sun Page 23
