Here Comes the Sun (7 page)

T
handi comes home and finds Margot counting money. She's in her work uniform, hunched over the table where the envelopes are piled and where a small flame burns from the kerosene lamp, though it's still early. She's so engrossed in what she's doing that she doesn't notice Thandi. Margot's mouth moves steadily with each bill she counts. The light from the flame caresses her face. By the pale green hue of the bills, Thandi can tell that they are U.S. dollars, not Jamaican.
Where does she get so much money? What does she do with it?
Margot stashes a few bills away in one pile. She then rolls the second pile, securing it with an elastic band. She doesn't take it to the old sweat-stained mattress with the exposed spring where she and Delores usually store money to pay bills. Instead, she puts it away inside her purse. When she looks up and sees Thandi, she jumps. “Have mercy pon me, dear God! Thandi, don't you scare me like dat!” She gets rid of the evidence, dropping her purse onto a nearby chair. “What yuh doing home so early?” Margot asks Thandi. “Yuh don't have extra lessons?” She's nervous, her eyes briefly scanning Thandi's face before returning to the now-empty table.

Thandi sits on the bed and takes out a book, aware of her sister fumbling around. “I don't have extra lessons today. Remember?” Thandi leafs through a math book, staring down at equations. “Where yuh get so much money from?” she asks her sister. She looks up in time to see Margot crossing her legs.

“Overtime,” Margot explains. Thandi peeks at the purse on the chair, slumped like a black leather pillow.

“Are there any openings for summer?” Thandi asks Margot, who idly removes a clip from her straightened hair to let it fall around her shoulders. She uses both hands to fluff it. Something Thandi is learning how to do with hers, but, because of her hair's finer texture, she can never achieve.

“Wid your education, you can get bettah work than what I'm doing,” Margot says, leaning back to ease her feet out of her high-heeled shoes. A fresh odor of sweat floats up to Thandi's nostrils from Margot's stockinged feet, and Thandi takes comfort in it. “Focus yuh energy on school. People should be working for you. Not the other way around,” Margot says, pointing and flexing her toes—the sanguine nail polish she wears visible through the sheer stockings.

Thandi gets up and joins her at the table. Margot removes the purse from the chair so that Thandi can sit. Once she sits, Margot lifts both legs and rests them on Thandi's lap. “That hairstyle suits you,” Margot says. It's the first she has ever commented on a hairstyle that Thandi did herself. All she did was a single French braid, the end secured by a black rubber band. Thandi massages her sister's feet, watching Margot's head roll back and eyes close. Margot sighs loudly as Thandi runs her hands up her calves, applying pressure. More than the velvety feel of the stockings, Thandi delights in the sturdiness of Margot's calves, conjuring up memories of her running track at the small secondary school she attended. Margot made it to girls' champs and could have gone further in track and field. But for some reason, she stopped training and fell off the path. When Thandi asked her why, Margot responded with a casual shrug. “
It wasn't worth it.
”

Margot's lips part, letting out a low guttural sound that reminds Thandi of a purring cat. “I wish I didn't have to go back to work so soon,” Margot says, her eyes still closed. “I'd stay here just for this . . . You're good with your hands.” Thandi decides that this would be a good time to ask for what she wants. “Can I have some money?”

“Money for what?” Margot asks, her eyes fluttering open.

Thandi shrugs, her fingers still working her sister's calves. “I have things I want to save up for . . .” She thinks about the party coming up and the fuchsia dress she wants to wear. The last time she checked, the price hadn't gone down. She also has to pay another visit to Miss Ruby.

“Name one t'ing,” Margot says.

“A dress?” This comes out of Thandi's mouth sounding like a question.

“A dress for what?” Margot sits up.

“There's a party I was invited to by a classmate. A sweet sixteen party.”

“A party before the exam? Yuh should be studying, trying to pass all nine subjects.” Thandi's movement slows. Margot relieves her of her task, pulling her legs out of Thandi's lap. She's staring at Thandi as though focusing on the small pimple at the center of her forehead. “I just paid money for the subjects you'll be sitting in CXC. All nine of them wasn't cheap.”

“What?” Thandi springs from the chair, which nearly topples over. “When?”

Margot is shaking her head. “I paid for them last week. Your education comes first, Thandi. You know that. How yuh going to go to a party before the exam, the exam I paid for?” Thandi swallows the solid mass that has resurfaced. “Nevah mind, then,” Thandi says quietly. “I mean, all the girls in my class are going an' ah wanted to go too, but I don't have to.”

Margot's eyes soften. “Jus' gimme my purse,” she finally says. Thandi reaches it for her. Thandi knows that her sister can never say no to her. It's as though Margot fears Thandi might find some other alternative—another way of getting the things she asks for. And Thandi takes advantage, though her conscience reprimands her each time. “You really don't have to,” Thandi says.

“Well, one day yuh g'wan pay me back tenfold. So, here.” Margot peels off a couple bills. “I'm sure you'll put it to good use.” Margot and Delores bank on Thandi as the one who will make it. Like the old mattress, Thandi is that source in which they plant their dreams and expectations. “
It's you who'll get us outta dis place
,” they say to her. She hears Delores telling her friends this too when they come over to play dominoes. No one knows how crushing the weight of Thandi's guilt is when they excuse her from cooking, cleaning, and even church because of the importance they place on her studies.

Margot slowly gets up from the table and reluctantly slips back into her shoes. Thandi watches her touch up her makeup and spritz perfume behind each ear. In less than a minute her hair is back in a bun. She grabs her bag and heads out the door. That strange, officious perfume she has started to wear grips the air like a choke hold. “Don't tell Delores dat ah was here,” she says to Thandi before disappearing. As though carried away by the wind.

4

M
ARGOT ROLLS OVER, HER LEGS STRADDLING HORACE. SHE
pinches his pink flesh between her fingers and watches it turn white. Horace groans and smiles up at her through drooping eyelids. Had she been attracted to him, she would've kissed the place on his cheeks where his long lashes touch and placed her lips on top of his puckered ones. She would've even had the patience to lie beside him beforehand and run her fingers over the hairs on his enormous chest and belly. Instead, she mounts him and moves her hips steadily, rhythmically. His hands grip her thighs before moving to her breasts. In sex she finds a deep calm, a refuge in which she hides. She imagines herself as a vacuum, inhaling everything—every word, every thought, every glance, every tear. They'd all disappear out of sight, only to be emptied behind the hotel, maids throwing the balls of dust into big bins while humming their familiar sad songs that Margot used to hear her grandmother hum. As a little girl she knew the sorrows in those songs but felt immune to the pain in them. She knew already that helplessness is weak, and that there is no use in having faith in God. God is not the one to put food on the table or send her sister to school. And God is certainly not the one keeping the roof over their heads.

She sways high above Horace like a palm tree in a cool breeze as he whispers his gratitude, sometimes cursing her with expletives that cause her to throw her head back and pick up speed. His head is small and inconspicuous from where she sits. There are moments when another person comes to mind, feminine lips parting, hungry for more than Margot's body. The person's eyes are steady on hers. Margot knows these eyes. They plead with her, so she concentrates instead on the unremarkable man's head below her. She rocks and sways, aware of the creeping chaos, the sensation that spreads from her groin all the way to his curled toes as though her orgasm has possessed his body too. When it's all over, Margot spirals down and down, crashing like a big tree uprooted by nature's merciless ax. She lies next to Horace, postcoital disgust and a lurking disappointment coiling in her belly like days-old milk. She's human again. Horace reaches for her, touches her arm, and she flinches. She never wants to be touched in this state. A week in Jamaica's sun has turned him red. His dark hair falls into his face and he brushes it away. It falls back despite his effort. If he meant more to her, she would reach up and brush his hair aside so that she could stare into the blueness of his eyes. But she keeps seeing the eyes of someone else.

“I have to go,” she tells him. She covers her breasts with the white sheet, something she never used to do. Margot is prone to prancing around naked. She used to revel in the lust she saw in her clients as they watched her move about the suite uninhibited. They expect that kind of behavior from an island woman.

“Go?” Horace says to her in his heavy German accent, which sounds to her like, “
Guh?
” “But ze night is still early.”

Margot glances at the clock on the VCR. Palm Star Resort has yet to upgrade to DVD players like all the other five-star hotels on the strip. It's quarter after eleven. Where did the time go? Earlier in the evening Horace had ordered room service while Margot hid in the bathroom. They ate, and drank a bottle of wine between them. What did they talk about? Margot can't remember. Whatever their conversation, she was sure of only one thing: it ended the way it always ends.

Margot moves about the spacious room, picking up her stockings and uniform from off the floor. Horace is her oldest client. He comes to Jamaica just for her, always promising to take her back with him to Germany. And always, when he pulls out his wallet to pay her, she catches a glimpse of a smiling, yellow-haired family—a woman and two children, a boy and a girl. She wonders where he would put her if he followed through with his promise to take her with him. What would he tell the smiling woman and two children in the picture? Like Horace, all her clients promise the same thing, as though paying her isn't enough; as though somehow their fucking has given them a desire to “save” her. They need to justify their infidelity with an act of kindness, a generosity that Margot fights the urge to laughingly decline. If she says yes, it gives them power to know that there's a woman who depends on them, who needs them. It keeps them coming back.

“I have to meet someone—” Margot says, pushing her leg inside her sheer stocking. It rips and she cusses under her breath.

“Another man?” Horace asks. “Vat is he paying you? I can give more.”

“No. It's not a man.”

“Then who is more important than me?”

“My mother,” she lies. “I have to meet her somewhere.” She pulls up her skirt and hastily buttons her white shirt over her bra. Horace props himself up on an elbow and watches her. When she's dressed, she walks over to the bed and kisses him on the forehead. Horace puts his hand at the back of her head and brings her closer. Without warning, he kisses her on the mouth. Margot pulls away a little. “Yuh acting like yuh won't see me again, sweetness,” she says, holding his hand.

“Okay,” he says finally. “It's on ze table.” He gestures toward the fat leather wallet sitting on the computer desk. “Take it all.”

Margot hesitates. She counts three hundred. The Germans tend to exchange their money for U.S. dollars. It's the only currency accepted on the North Coast besides Jamaican dollars. Margot thanks him and hurries along, closing the door softly behind her.

T
he sight of Margot sleeping with her thumb in her mouth raises something intense inside Verdene. Margot stirs, her eyes barely fluttering awake, though it's noon. Her limbs are spread-eagled on the bed, sugar-brown skin on yellow sheets. St. Theresa's church bell rings in on the hill, and Verdene, instead of making a sign of the cross like she learned to do as girl when she went to mass, looks down on the woman she loves and studies her. An open face that wears its emotions. Wounded and sensitive.

She inhales deeply, the love swelling inside her lungs. Afraid she might combust, she exhales. She lowers the tray of breakfast food she cooked for Margot—fried dumplings, ackee, and saltfish, with a side of sliced pear—and glances at the wardrobe that holds two full-length mirrors. Verdene catches a reflection of herself holding the tray. At forty there are still glimpses of youth in the handsome face with sculpted features and eyes that blaze a startling black. She has gone gray early, a patch of silver surrounded by thick black curls. But since being with Margot she has regained a youthfulness that enables her to ease into laughter, fits of playfulness, and a sexuality that oozes from her without effort, without any fuss.

She adjusts the tray on the small night table and reaches for the Holy Bible (just for a little Sunday devotion like Ella taught her), which is kept there like a secret inside the drawer. But the sight of her mother's picture halts her movement. All the loveliness and life and breath seem to stop at the sight of Ella.
Oh, dear Mama
. Usually the picture is turned to face the wall when Margot sleeps over. Margot doesn't like the idea of Verdene's deceased mother staring at them in bed. Quite frankly, Verdene doesn't mind. Her whole life she has lived in secrecy. Why be ashamed at this point in her own house—the house her mother left her? Nevertheless, she complies.

Margot's eyelashes flutter, her eyes opening to glance up at the wide expanse of the room and the sheet falling below her waist. Verdene blushes, as ashamed as a little girl who has just walked in on her mother having sex.