Here Comes the Sun (33 page)

She breathes, carefully exhaling into the open room, afraid to disturb the silence. Her lipstick leaves a mark that she quickly wipes clean. She swirls around in her adjustable chair a few times, glad that no one can see her. Happiness feels like an office with good air-conditioning, a chair that adjusts to her back as though it is made for her, a mahogany desk with her name on it, a better view of the beach, the ability to slip out of her shoes and wiggle her toes, and a door she can keep locked. She can't believe that Miss Novia Scott-Henry had all this to herself yet chose to leave the door wide open. Margot will only respond to visitors who call in first through Kensington.

So when Sweetness barges in unannounced, Margot nearly falls out of her chair. She scrambles to slide her feet back inside her shoes and sit up straight. “Who let you in?” Margot asks the girl.

“It doesn't mattah now. Yuh secretary out there reading har Bible.”

Margot fights the urge to ask the girl to retrace her steps so that she can be announced the right way, but stops herself. Sweetness's eyes are red. Margot hasn't seen or heard from her since last week. There were clients who refused to be paired with other girls when Margot told them that Sweetness was unavailable. She has become a client favorite. Margot should be furious with this unannounced visit; but she has never been so happy to see the girl. Though Sweetness looks disheveled, like she has not washed in days. Her hair is matted on her head and she wears no makeup to hide the blemishes on her cheeks. Her blouse and skirt are mismatched, as if she got dressed in the dark.

Margot leans back in her chair and clasps her hands in front of her.

“Yuh look like Satan drag yuh through hell,” Margot says to the girl. “Please sit.”

“Is okay, ah won't be long,” Sweetness says.

“We've been losing money because of you,” Margot says. “This meeting won't be determined by you. Sit.”

“I'm sorry,” Sweetness says, still standing.

“Sorry?” Margot looks up at her. “Yuh know how much money we coulda mek dis week alone if you were here? 'Membah we have more responsibilities now”

“I know.”

“So what's yuh excuse?”

“Excuse?”

“Why haven't you been to work?”

“Work?”

“Sweetness, what's di mattah wid yuh?”

“I can't do dis anymore.”

“What?”

Margot gets up from her chair.

“I can't work fah yuh no more, boss lady.”

For the first time since the business started, Margot has never felt so dependent on a girl. Like the men that Sweetness leaves begging for more, Margot is tempted to throw money at the girl. She would throw herself if she has to. What will she do without Sweetness? “What yuh mean, yuh don't want to work anymore? Why?”

“Ah have to go, boss lady,” Sweetness says, holding her head down and clutching the raggedy leather purse on her shoulder. “Ah not coming back.” She heads toward the door.

“Sweetness!”

The girl stops. Margot hurries around the desk toward her. The girl stands still, trembling. Margot cups her chin. “You know I care about you. You know I'll do anyt'ing for you.” She draws her face close to Sweetness, who closes her eyes and parts her lips, her sweet, eager breath hot on Margot's face. She exhales slowly through her mouth, which Margot grazes with her own. “Jus' stay wid me till the end,” Margot whispers. “You're my number one girl.”

She strokes Sweetness's arm. But Sweetness pulls away.

“Yuh only care 'bout dat other hotel. You don't care 'bout me. If yuh did care, you woulda tell Alphonso to call off di reward or I will—”

“You know di reason why I had to,” Margot says, cutting her off. “Don't pretend you don't know.”

“Unlike you, is blood dat pump through me vein. Not greed.”

“Sweetness!” Margot reaches for her arm again.

“Nuh touch me! Either yuh tell Alphonso to change him mind, or I will mek sure to let him know how yuh scheme fi get dis office.”

Margot folds her arms across her chest. “Yuh t'ink because yuh give good pussy dat you have a voice? Dat yuh is worthy of an opinion? Yuh is nothing but a tar-black country girl wid not even a high school education. A girl wid nothing going for her but har long legs an' big behind. Yuh t'ink anyone want to hear what yuh have to say? You'll never talk to di Alphonsos of dis world without being laughed at. To them, you're a servant. And will always be a servant.”

“So be it, then,” Sweetness hisses. She walks out of the executive office and slams the door behind her. Margot whips around and with all her might hits the cylindrical pen-and-pencil holder off the desk. It crashes to the floor and rolls out of sight, all the pens and pencils scattered on the immaculate floor.

33

T
HE BULLDOZERS APPEAR OVERNIGHT. THEY STAND IN PLACE
like resting mammoths, their blades like curved tusks. It's as though they landed from the sky or were washed ashore. One by one they begin to knock down trees in the cove and along the river. They also take a chunk of the hill, cutting down the trees that cradle the limestone, which they chip away. Their big engines grind two-thousand-year-old tree trunks—trees the ancestors once hid behind, crouching in search of freedom. The workmen, imported from overseas, gather the fishing boats and load them on a truck. The men fold the earth in ways Thandi would have thought impossible. Bits and pieces of rock scatter as trees are uprooted. When they collapse, the earth shakes. A huge silence follows. Thandi always knew that the sky would fall. The clouds gather together, and the sun stands still and watches her world crumble. People begin to snatch their things from their shacks, forced into the unknown, leaving just the John-crows that brood like hunchbacked witches sniffing death under their armpits. The men rope off the fishing village, right where you go when heading to Miss Ruby's or Charles's shacks. Those shacks are marked to be destroyed. But Thandi has an inkling that her side of the river might be next.

Rumor has it that Miss Ruby, interrupted from rubbing cream on her face one morning, stood outside her shack and cussed the men. “
Ovah me dead body! Oonuh tek everyt'ing else, but not me house! This is mine!
” The men must have taken one look at Miss Ruby's white face and decided she was an obeah woman wielding spells with her wild hand gestures and that strange language that she spoke. All of a sudden the earth started to shake. The shaking was harder and longer than the tremble of the falling trees. The men clutched their helmets and searched for safety. They ran for cover, diving behind bushes and under sheets of zinc. After the shaking stopped, they came out slowly, cautiously, and surveyed the damage around them. They then looked at the white-faced black woman, who appeared just as stunned as them. Later it was reported that what they had experienced was an earthquake. They decided to halt the construction until a later date. They left the bulldozers where they were, the engines baring their teeth like a threat, leaving the residents of River Bank to wait for whatever will come next.

Currently there is yellow tape all over town. The warning is as clear as the sun. In a matter of weeks, River Bank will be no more. Everyone gathers to meet at Dino's at night to discuss the development. They talk and talk, the men pounding fists on tables or countertops and the women shaking or holding their heads. Macka offers them hard liquor, like he offered the farmers when their crops had started to die, and they take gulps, not sips, throwing their heads back and wiping sweat from ridged foreheads. Little children play hide-and-seek under the tables and chairs, avoiding the grown-ups, who are beside themselves in panic. Even if they block River Bank Road in protest, the developers will still proceed. Look what happened to Little Bay. They have already erected hotel resorts on top of people's homes, and they will do it again and again.

In the midst of their chatter, Verdene Moore appears in the doorway. A hush falls over the bar. Even the children stop playing to look. She glides inside Dino's without a pause, as though she has always belonged. As though she hasn't noticed the women shifting to avoid touching her, the mothers hissing for their little girls to move away, and the men clutching their bottles like a neck they want to strangle. Thandi, who is seated beside Delores, watches her with curiosity. Verdene smiles at Thandi and she almost smiles back before remembering not to. Verdene sits next to her. “Hello, Thandi,” she says, her voice laced with familiarity. An agitated Delores grabs a slipper as if to hit Verdene. “Get behind me, Satan!” Delores shouts.

“I'm not going to let you run me off again,” Verdene says calmly. She doesn't move away from Delores and her slipper. “My mother didn't raise a coward. This is my community too. I was born and raised here just like you.” She glances around the room. “Just like all of you.”

One by one people take their hands from their jaws or lolling heads to look. They become animated in their disapproval again, Verdene's presence seeming to revitalize their spirit. “Yuh crazy?” Macka asks Verdene. “Why yuh t'ink yuh can come in here an' stan' up like yuh own di place?”

“This problem concerns me too.”

“It might do yuh more good to leave.” Macka moves closer to her like he's about to do something.

“I'm not the one to blame,” Verdene says. “Why don't you focus your energy on those who are responsible?”

“You're a bigger devil,” Delores says. “Worse than the devil driving us out of our country.” The room quiets, its occupants waiting to see which way the conflict will go. Verdene walks up to the bar and stays, her body stiff with determination. Realizing she's undeterred by their bullying, and sick with their own troubles, everyone returns to clutching their bottles of liquor to wet their parched mouths and throats, completely drained and powerless as they were before.

Thandi stares out into the darkness as Margot brushes her hair. Like old times, she's sitting between her sister's legs absorbing the comfort of the gentle strokes, the mild scrape of the bristles on her forehead as she bends her head back, the
sheesh-sheesh
sound of hairs being pulled from the roots and tickling the back of her neck soothing. Thandi is sitting with her knees pressed to her chest and her arms encircled around them. It's dark except for the kerosene lamp that Margot uses to see what she's doing, and the wood fire that burns nearby, the flames crackling in the cool night air. Margot is humming a song Thandi doesn't recognize. Earlier Thandi had heard her mother and her sister whispering about her, their hissing fight stirring from the back of the house. She knows it has to do with her being withdrawn over the last few days. Delores went out to get more eucalyptus leaves from people who have the trees in their yards, to boil for Thandi's bath. They want her back to her old self as graduation approaches, but her ache is deeper than any she has ever felt. It's deeper than her bones. A soul ache that rattles her already fragile body so great that it knocks her down and yanks her under the throes of a restless sleep. When she's awake, all she can do is try to recall those dreams that were swept away by the turbulent waves. In her waking moments the water closes quickly over the place where Charles disappears, though Thandi can still feel him—the pressure of his body on hers.

Margot gently parts Thandi's hair into sections and applies Blue Magic on her scalp like a balm. Thandi inhales the familiar scent, which mixes with her sister's. She closes her eyes and just feels Margot's fingers massaging her scalp.

“You told me dat yuh didn't have a boyfriend,” Margot says gently.

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“We agreed.”

Margot begins to massage Thandi's scalp again with the oil. “Now look at all the pain he caused you, when this is supposed to be the happiest time of yuh life.” Her voice is as soft as the hair on Thandi's shoulders. “I've never seen you like this. Thandi, yuh have to snap out of it. He's not coming back. This is the kind of thing that mek women go mad, yuh see all those mad people in di streets wid their hair like thundahclouds an' privates exposed? They get like that because they expected too much. Nothing lasts forever, Thandi.” She picks up the comb and resumes her languid strokes. “Delores used to give me baths.” Margot's voice cracks. “I was sick too. Sick wid the same t'ing. Over a girl who told me I was pretty.” Margot chuckles at this. “Ached all ovah my body. Ah couldn't explain what was happening to me. Nothing Delores did could get me back to myself. I didn't know what it was then that made me so . . .” She pauses when Thandi turns around to look at her, flame dancing in her eyes. “I was young. And naïve,” she says. “But I knew something was inside me. Felt it here.” She puts her hand to her belly. “It was like a ball of fire. Delores thought the baths would heal the sickness. She thought all sorta things. Even took me to ah obeah woman to get rub down wid oil an' black magic concoction. Di woman gave me goat blood to drink in a soup an' I ran. But there was nothing that coulda get my mind off her.”

“What yuh saying, Margot?”

“I neva thought of myself as di devil,” she says.

Thandi gets up from between her sister's legs, and stands in the dark.

Margot looks up at Thandi from where she sits, the red dress she wears between her legs. “I mean, I was a child. What did I know? Maybe I thought it was something special because I was shown love an' affection that I never got from my own mother.” Margot shrugs. “Delores made sure I came to my senses.”

“How did she do that?” Thandi asks, the questions swirling inside her head. She makes out Margot's face in the light from the flames and the kerosene lamp next to her.

Margot shrugs, avoiding Thandi's eyes. “She put me in situations where I . . .” Margot's voice trails off as though the words are stuck in her throat. “I met new people—men—who offered me a lot more. Delores introduced me an' they liked me.”