Here Comes the Sun

by Nicole Dennis-Benn

  “What is your friend’s name?” the man wearing the shades asks Jullette. Thandi senses him looking at her, though he doesn’t address her directly.

  “Thandi,” Jullette answers.

  The man lifts his hand to shake hers. A gesture that surprises Thandi, since she has never shaken anyone’s hand before in greeting.

  “Alphonso,” he says.

  “Nice to meet you, sir.”

  “Sir?” The man guffaws. “Just call me Alphonso.”

  Embarrassed, she apologizes. She cannot see his eyes behind his dark sunglasses, though she feels him studying her, the revelation denting a comma at the sides of his mouth. It forces her to pull her hand away. But he holds on to it.

  “You’re quite stunning,” he says. “Are you a model?” He’s still holding on to Thandi’s hand.

  “No, I’m—”

  He puts a finger to Thandi’s lips. This catches her off guard. His touch is gentle, like a soft kiss. The same intrusion by someone else would have annoyed her, made her slap the finger away. But she does nothing. “You should learn to take a compliment,” he says, removing his finger.

  Thandi feels perspiration trickling down her sides. God forbid if it soaks the skintight dress. “Uhm, where is the bathroom?” she asks.

  “Come. I’ll gladly show you.” Alphonso gently pushes the front door with his shoulder. As soon as it opens into the well-lit living space, Thandi notices the paintings. “Follow me.” He bends slightly like a portly butler, one hand behind his back, the other gesturing for her to step farther inside. There are paintings and sculptures everywhere. Thandi resists the urge to turn and turn like the bamboo ceiling fan spinning above their heads. Alphonso must have noticed her noticing everything, because he slows to her pace.

  “You like?”

  “It’s like a museum,” she says.

  “I’m a collector.”

  “You live here?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “I really like your place.”

  “I’m glad. My goal is to make everyone who walks through those doors feel like they belong here. You can stay as long as you want.” He says it so quietly that it feels like an intimate confession. He stops short when he gets to the guest bathroom door and holds it open for her. For a second Thandi wonders if he’ll move to let her pass. “How old are you, Thandi?” he asks.

  “Fifteen. I’ll be sixteen at the end of this month.”

  “Hmm. Fifteen.”

  His tilts his glasses on the bridge of his nose, his pale eyes appraising her.

  “You have a nice figure for fifteen. A body like yours could make men do anything.”

  She walks quickly past him, aware of the tension in her neck and the rodlike sensation in her back. She locks the door. Instead of sitting on the toilet, she bends over it. She feels sick again. She can hear Alphonso and the general talking to Jullette in the living room.

  Before they left the house, Charles had sulked on the sofa as Jullette gushed over how much Thandi was transformed with makeup and skintight clothes. Thandi noticed him staring as though seeing her for the first time. It made her uncomfortable, yet aware of what she possessed—a power she once thought only her sister had. Charles pulled back when Thandi came close. Something came over his face like a five o’clock shadow. “Yuh can’t go, looking like dat,” he spat, a renewed fervor in his eyes that Thandi recognized as contempt. Or fear. Charles turned to his sister. “This is not a good idea.”

  “Charles, you agreed,” Jullette argued, lowering her voice to a hiss so as not to wake Miss Violet, whom Charles had put to bed just an hour before. But Charles wasn’t having it. “Take it off,” he said to Thandi, ignoring Jullette’s plea. Thandi froze, caught between Charles’s disapproval and her desperation to free him. “Yuh hear me?” Charles said. Thandi had never seen this scowl on his face before. He repeated himself as though she hadn’t comprehended the first time: “Ah say yuh mus’ tek it off. Or else don’t come back here to me.” It was an ultimatum that almost knocked the air out of Thandi’s lungs. The anger in Charles’s eyes dared her, convicted her, softened her.

  “I’m doing it for you,” she heard herself say, stroking his arm. “You’ll thank me later.” But he pushed her hand away, his face screwed into a tight fist, as though he could already smell the other man on her fingers. “Charles, you know I’m doing this for you,” Thandi said, pleading. But he turned away from her, standing like a wilted tree in the middle of the living room. A small tug from Jullette took Thandi away from the scene and into the chilly night.

  ···

  When Thandi returns from the bathroom, Jullette is already sitting next to the general like she has known him intimately. They are blowing smoke into air diffused by the spinning bamboo fan above their heads. Warm light glows from a sculpted lamp in the room, gilding the paintings on the coral walls. The general taps the empty space next to him on the green couch for Thandi to sit too. On the glass coffee table is a Gleaner. And on the front page Alphonso is shaking hands with a government official. The headline reads “HOTELIER CHANGING JAMAICA FOR BETTER.” Thandi sits just so she can read more of the article, but the general mistakes her willingness as obedience. The general places his hand on Thandi’s thigh. She doesn’t move. Jullette gives her a smirk and waits a couple of seconds too long before pulling the man toward her, relieving Thandi. Alphonso is on the telephone. Thandi watches him pace the tiled floor, where she can see his reflection.

  When he finishes his private conversation he walks in the direction of the bar and pours himself a drink. He stops short when he catches Thandi staring. “How about a shot of brandy for the lady in pink?” Alphonso says, winking at Thandi. Jullette had explained to her earlier that if a man offers a drink, accept it and make sure to display the acrobatics of the tongue while working the straw. “But what if they don’t give you a straw?” Thandi asked. “Then yuh mus’ use di ice to wet yuh lips,” Jullette quipped.

  Thandi watches Alphonso pour brandy in two mini-glasses that look like they belong in a dollhouse. No ice or straw. He hands the glass to her and lifts his own. “Cheers to a memorable night!”

  Thandi feebly clinks her glass with his and watches him throw his head back. She drinks too, squinting at the burning sensation of the alcohol in her throat. He pulls out a cigar from his left breast pocket and lights it. “I would like us to play a game of show-and-tell. I couldn’t help but notice your fascination with the artwork. So how about you show me your favorite artwork and I show you mine?” He turns his head to blow smoke the other way. He’s studying her again.

  “All right.” She glances at the walls, not knowing where to begin. She points to an abstract painting with geometric shapes and vibrant colors. This elevates a slow, uneven smirk on Alphonso’s face behind the veil of smoke. The orange ash glows like the inside of an oven. “You have good taste.” He takes her by the hand. “Let me borrow you for a minute. You haven’t seen anything yet.”

  She glances over at Jullette, who is already tonguing the general, whose free hand is clamped firmly, possessively, on her bottom. “Yuh don’t have to do whateva dey ask of you,” Jullette told Thandi when they waited on a taxi in the square. “But yuh get as much as yuh give. ’Membah dat.”

  Thandi follows Alphonso. He takes the brandy bottle with him and leads her through the backyard like they are going on a picnic. The lights along the cobblestone walkway shine brightly, bringing into view a gazebo, a swimming pool, and a Jacuzzi. The space could hold a wedding with a hundred people. On the other side of the yard is a small cottage. It looks like it might be the maid’s quarters. Outside the cottage are palm trees with lights strung up and down their trunks like ivy. The dark sea roars nearby. Thandi can hear the waves nudging their way onto the pristine white sand.

  Alphonso opens the door to the cottage and leads her to a couch. A gentle breeze floats inside from the open window as he busies himself in the small kitchenette area, searching for two more glasses. Thandi tries to dist
ract herself with the canvases that are leaned against the green walls.

  “I store stuff here when I don’t know where to hang them,” Alphonso says, handing her another glass of the brown liquor. “I don’t allow many people in here. So consider yourself special.”

  He hauls plastic cover after plastic cover from large frames. Each time he uncovers a painting, Thandi is taken aback, unable to believe one man could own so much beauty. She’s aware of him watching her as she marvels at his collection.

  “Go ahead,” he says gently. “You can touch.”

  Thandi touches the frames. There’s one painting in particular that she’s drawn to. She likes how the artist captures the essence of the naked woman with chiney-bump knots in her hair—the way mothers style their daughters’ hair after washing it in the river, taking their time to part, oil, then wind the kinks into corkscrews with their fingers all over the girls’ heads. But this woman is grown, though she poses demurely on a red couch—similar to the one in this room under the window. She smiles with her eyes, not her mouth, one arm slung over the back of the couch, while the other hand rests comfortably across her small potbelly. Her soft brown flesh seems palpable even in the painting, and her breasts are perfectly round. One leg is propped seductively on the couch, while one foot rests flatly on the floor, the separation revealing the dark triangular patch between them. But it’s the chipped red nail polish on the woman’s big toe that gives the painting a personal touch—a vulnerability that makes Thandi feel like she’s both violating the woman’s privacy and getting to know her. “She’s beautiful,” Thandi says.

  “So are you. And I know you have a lot more to show me.” Alphonso sets down his glass on the counter. She senses that he knows why she’s here. He’s in front of her, holding her hand in his, his grip firm. He gets down on one knee as though he’s proposing. He nearly loses his balance but quickly steadies himself. He reaches out and touches her face. She flinches. He doesn’t seem to notice. She does what Jullette told her to do and remains calm. His hand is trailing her left cheek. “Why are you here, Thandi?” he asks. “Clearly you know I can do something for you. Something special.” His hand is coarse against her skin. Her mouth opens and closes. She has no ownership of anything. Not the scholarship. Not herself. And certainly not Charles. She exists merely as a debt to be paid.

  Thandi closes her eyes as Alphonso undresses her. When she opens them, she focuses on the covered paintings in the room, their worth already established. It’s Charles who comes to mind at this very moment as Alphonso tilts his head to study something on her face. It’s the possibility of strolling with him along the river that releases Thandi’s mind from the slow pull of the zipper, the cool, damp air that washes her back from the open window, which clutches her shoulders and grazes her nipples like a baby’s teeth. “Beautiful,” Alphonso says. His hands are cold on her thighs. She remains focused on the paintings. Frames and frames of them he has collected. He’s easing off her underwear. He’s pulling her onto the floor. Charles’s face begins to transform into a watercolor painting. Soon he begins to fade, his eyes becoming the same bluish glazed color of a dead fish. Thandi gasps. She realizes that she has been crying. And when she blinks through her tears, she’s surprised at the sight of her brown flesh. Alphonso is on top of her. “Don’t be nervous, it won’t hurt.” He’s unbuckling his belt.

  Just then there’s a rattle at the door. Alphonso stops what he’s doing. “You stay right here,” he commands in a whisper. He goes to the door, adjusting his pants. Meanwhile, Thandi looks around for a hiding place. But before she can find one, Alphonso opens the door and a woman’s voice enters like a breeze. “Sweetness sent me in here. Told me you have a surprise for me. I’ve been trying to get in touch with you. I thought you wanted me to bring the package. Yuh have me waiting in the villa with dat prick of a sergeant. Who or what on earth could you be doing that is more important than—” Margot stops short when she sees Thandi trying to pull up her dress. She looks from Thandi to Alphonso, then back at Thandi again.

  “What’s going on?” She turns to Alphonso. Thandi fumbles with the zipper in the back of her dress. “What is my sister doing here?” Margot says; her voice is a high-pitched screech. “You bastard!” Margot shouts. “How could you?” She hits Alphonso on the arm and he grabs her and turns her around, her back pressed into him.

  “Calm down. You know exactly why she’s here. I thought you sent her here with Sweetness, since you owe me,” he says.

  “We’ve talked about this! I helped you with the police!”

  “She came of her own free will.”

  “Am I supposed to believe you?”

  “Why don’t you ask her?”

  Margot narrows her eyes at Thandi. “Why are you here? Delores and I were looking everywhere for you! And here you are, taking off yuh clothes for ah man? What di hell is wrong wid you?”

  Thandi has lost her ability to speak under her sister’s smothering rage. She wonders if the alcohol has gotten to her brain too, for she has forgotten the reason why she’s here.

  “Thandi, answer me.”

  “Margot, you’re interrupting us,” Alphonso says. He holds on to Margot’s hand, but she pushes him away.

  “Fuck you! This was not the plan!” she says, whipping around to face him again and pointing her finger at him as if he were a child. “My role in this was to help you so that you can help me. Why her? Why my sister?” she screams at him.

  But his answer is a grin. A chuckle that becomes a boisterous laugh. “You people,” he says with a laugh, shaking his head. “You people with your drama just continue to amaze me. Margot, you have a business, a responsibility. You work for me. So you’re the last person I expect to be telling me who I should and shouldn’t have. I hired you to do what you do because you’re the only person without a conscience. Then you have the nerve to blackmail me with it.” His eyes turn from jovial musing to stone. “Your sister, as far as I am concerned, is fair game.”

  For a second Thandi thinks she sees Margot lose her ground, but when she turns to Thandi, her eyes are steady. “Everything I do is for you. You are the reason why I work hard, you ungrateful—”

  “So that I can pay you back tenfold, right?” Thandi asks, cutting her off. “Isn’t that what you always say? That one day I will pay you back tenfold? Now I know it’s because you owe him! My scholarship? That was his money!” She gestures to Alphonso with her hand. “You use me to justify your dirty work. That’s all I’ve ever been to you and Delores, a way out. Your own conscience won’t do it for you, so you pull me into it.”

  Margot raises her hand to slap Thandi, but it stops midair when Thandi says, “Go ahead.” Thandi knows she has spoken the truth. She sees her words wrap themselves lovingly around her sister’s neck. She steps closer to Margot. They are the same height. Thandi always thought her sister was a few inches taller. That too was an illusion.

  Margot shudders. She loves nothing in this world except Thandi. She wants her to be successful, but she has wanted so much more for herself too. Now she feels as though she’s been emptied. “No compassion, no conscience, no heart.” That’s what Verdene said to her when Margot confessed that she knew her precious pink house would be worth nothing, that River Bank would be sacrificed. Verdene’s love turned to ash before Margot’s eyes. Margot looks at Thandi now, all that’s left. “You owe me. For all I have done for you, sacrificed for you. You. Owe. Me.”

  Thandi, whom she clothed, sheltered, fed, gave every bit of herself to. With her body she shielded her sister from Delores’s wrath. Gave her an opportunity to get away. To be better than them so she wouldn’t have to sacrifice anything. But instead of gratitude in Thandi’s eyes, Margot sees the looming resentment.

  “You don’t even know yuhself. My childhood was spent like a hundred-dollar bill on you. Everything you needed was put on me. If yuh needed formula, I had to sleep wid yuh father to get it. If yuh cry fah hunger, I had to feed you. If yuh wanted a special toy, I had t
o get down on my knees an’ do more than play. I had to play wid yuh daddy too. ”

  Thandi doesn’t say a word. Her eyes are a pair of dark round circles, empty of understanding, struggle.

  “When yuh got into that school, I had to work overtime so that you could go. But not even that was helping, so I asked Alphonso to write that check. You talk about being used? Walk a day in my shoes an’ you’ll know what dat mean. I stayed in dat shack when I could have moved on with my life, because I was afraid Delores would have done to you what she did to me. So where yuh get the right to judge me? Now tell me, Thandi, once and for all: if it’s not to be the doctor we prayed you were going to be, then, What. Do. You. Want?” Margot stretches this question between her teeth.

  Thandi glances over at Alphonso as though seeking his permission.

  “I want Charles to be free. I want the charges dropped against him, and the reward. I want us to be together.”

  Margot chuckles at this. “Really? Is that it?” A lump of pity rises in Margot’s throat, seeing her sister’s rounded shoulders, her young, pretty face bleached and sullied with confusion and defeat. How many girls has Margot seen this way? How many girls has she told to work for what they want? Girls her sister’s age and younger. “Mek me proud,” she tells them. They bring business to the island that shuns them, lumps them like logs to be eaten away by the elements. Or rather, leaves them to sink at sea. Margot collects them one by one and gives them a new life. A new way to claim the freedom they were denied. Terrified of what the experience might bring, these girls cling to Margot for guidance. And very methodically, she turns them out, daring them to either sink or swim. Never in a million years had she thought it possible to let go of Thandi this way. She thought she would always be the ship on which Thandi sails. The buoy that keeps her afloat. But it occurs to her that maybe her sister will only learn how to swim when she, like Margot, is pushed into the deepest parts of the ocean—that she’ll be able to manage out of sheer will for survival. Not even Pregnant Heidi’s waves will be able to deter her. So Margot leans in and kisses her sister gently on the forehead for what will be the last time. And, very gently, she pushes her toward Alphonso. “Mek me proud.”