Here Comes the Sun (20 page)

Thandi steps away. This causes Clover to laugh, flinging his head back.

Distracted by a dream, Thandi had wandered off onto a remote path shaded by trees—mahogany, live oaks, wild lime. She was on her way home from school, thinking about sketching the marvelous arches of the trees, the extensive roots of the mahogany, the small green clusters in the lime trees. The stillness of the green water in the cove. Clover cupped her mouth and hauled her off into the bushes. At nine years old she knew what “
bombohole
” meant because the man kept whispering how much he wanted hers, splaying her legs to take it. When he was done he told her not to tell or else he would break her neck. Thandi wondered then which was worse, dying or lying there hurting between her legs. Thandi kept her ugly secret even as Clover came over—less and less—to help Delores hoist up a fence, string electric wires, hammer exposed nails in their shack; or to play dominoes with the other neighborhood men whose breath always stank with white rum and whose clammy hands were always cupping Delores's rump.

Clover takes the pack of cigarettes Mr. Levy shoves through the opening of the mesh door with those same blackened hands she remembers. Thandi watches him from the side of her eyes as he opens the pack and puts one cigarette behind his ear. The rest he slips inside his pocket. He leans on the counter with his ankles crossed, watching her as though expecting a comment. When she says nothing, he tells her, “Ran into Delores, she ask me to come by the house on Sat'day. Looking forward to seeing yuh cute face.” Clover touches her chin and she slaps his hand away, stamping out of the store.

13

V
ERDENE SCRUBS THE BLOOD OFF THE SIDES OF HER HOUSE
with a wet green rag. She concentrates deeply on the smudges and stains so she does not have to feel the rage, does not have to pause long enough to touch the collar of her housedress to her face to wipe the tears. So she rubs and rubs, muttering underneath her breath, “Damn ignorant imbeciles!” The rag dries in her hand and she dips it into the mixture of bleach and water. Since the water pressure is low, there is no way she can refill the bucket. “Goddammit!” The tears begin to fall faster than she can catch them. The fact that the culprits could be hiding in the bushes, laughing so hard that their guts pain them, makes Verdene angrier. “You think this is funny?” she asks the bushes and flowers. Something seems to brace in the yard, halting every sound except the murmuring of the big black flies around her. A family of vultures are perched on a coconut tree nearby.

“Answer me, you cowards!” Verdene stands up, her knees stiff from being on them all morning. She throws the rag inside the bucket and clenches both fists. She's spinning around and around, trying to pinpoint where the person could be hiding. “You get a kick out of this, don't you?” she yells. She's getting dizzy circling like that. Almost out of breath, she stops. The dead dog in the yard appears to be breathing, its moving ribs gilded by sunlight through the ackee tree branches. Verdene steps closer and stands over it. She brings her hands to her mouth, unable to believe that someone could be capable of such a barbaric act. They took great care to make a vertical cut down the animal's belly and another cut across its throat. Verdene mourns the poor dog that was sacrificed because of her. How many more does she have to deal with?
How many?

She goes inside for the shovel. When she returns she attempts to dig yet another hole in the ground but stops, the shovel suspended in her hands, her attention on the lush banana leaves that separate her yard from Miss Gracie's. She lowers the shovel and marches over there. She will take care of this once and for all, she decides. She hasn't been in the old woman's yard since she was a little girl led by curiosity to the garden filled with rows of Scotch Bonnet peppers, which she thought were oddly shaped cherries. She bit into one of them and instantly choked. Her eyes watered so much that she could barely see to go back home to quell the fire inside her six-year-old mouth. One side of her tongue was numb for a whole week. And so were her buttocks after Ella walloped her with a rubber switch.

Verdene remembers when the yard had a scarecrow. Miss Gracie planted the peppers years ago, instead of flowers like everyone else. She used to make homemade pepper sauce and sell it in jars at the market. Fish vendors used to buy up the sauce to sprinkle on their fish when they realized that people liked it. Miss Gracie made a lot of money. Even Ella bought the sauce in bulk, because Verdene's father would never touch anything without it. When the fishing business died down, so did the demand for Miss Gracie's sauce. There was no indication that a young girl named Rose lived there—Miss Gracie's daughter, who was only two years younger than Verdene. A simple girl who read her Bible instead of schoolbooks and who used to follow her mother around from door to door to preach before she got pregnant and ran away.

“
Do—do you know—Je—Jesus Christ?
” the girl stuttered to Verdene once when they were teenagers. Verdene had opened the door to see Rose and Miss Gracie standing on the steps of her veranda.

“
I'm busy. Come back later
,” Verdene had replied.

“
Yuh not too young fi hear di good word, sweetheart
,” Miss Gracie said when she stepped in front of Rose. Her eyes roved inside Verdene's house. “
Ella surely live like ah queen in dis place. Mind if we come in?
” This seemed to embarrass Rose, who always looked shrunken in her mother's indomitable shadow. “
My parents are not home
,” was all Verdene could come up with before excusing herself and closing the door. The last she remembered of Rose were her awkward waves at the front gate, which seemed more like pleas for friendship than eagerness to talk about sin and salvation.

Up and down the rows, from the fence to the house, the Scotch Bonnet peppers are dying. The smell permeates the air, making Verdene's eyes water. She makes her way across the yard with the shovel and picks up a stone to bang on the bars on Miss Gracie's veranda. There's no answer. Verdene bangs again, determined. Her tongue coils inside her mouth with an ammunition of choice words. She will tell Miss Gracie to bury the dog her damn self. That she has had it with cleaning up dead animals and bloodstains. She thinks she hears murmuring and steps toward it. Someone is working in the yard, on the other side of the house that leads to an open field of fountain grass. He's crouched, peacefully uprooting weeds by a post.

“Excuse me,” Verdene says to the young man. He stops what he's doing at the sound of her voice and turns his head. When he sees her, he straightens himself, squares his shoulders. The muscles of his face tighten, the blood seeming to drain from it when he recognizes her.

“What is it yuh want, miss?” he asks.

He hasn't let go of the machete that he's using to cut the weeds. Verdene is taken by the title
miss
. “Please, call me Verdene.”

The young man stands to his feet. “What yuh doing ovah here?” he asks.

Verdene licks her lips, realizing how dry they are. She knows that there is no way she can count on this young man to offer her a glass of water. She gets straight to the point. “I'm here for Miss Gracie. Is she here?”

“Why yuh want to know?”

“I want her to pick up the dead animal she left in my yard last night and clean up my walkway.”

“Miss Gracie is ah ole 'ooman. An' from what ah hear, you kill those dogs yuhself.”

“Look here . . .” She pauses. “What's your name?”

“Charles.”

“Look here, Charles, you don't know me. You know nothing about me. So don't you dare tell me what I do and don't do in my own house. Now please call that old hag out here or else I will smash her windows with this shovel.” She lifts the shovel for effect, though she no longer feels strong enough to deliver on her threat.

“She's not here.”

“When will she be back?”

He wipes sweat off his forehead with the back of his free hand. “I don't know. I'm jus' here helping out 'round di yard.”

“Then I'll wait. I need to get to the bottom of this.”

“Miss Gracie can't even lift ah grocery bag, much less kill ah dog an' put inna yuh yard. So gwaan 'bout yuh business.”

Verdene finally recognizes him as the young man she has seen escorting Miss Gracie to church. “Who are your people?” she asks, trying to place him. “I know Miss Gracie doesn't have a son. And I'm certain that she isn't deserving of a bodyguard. Why do you waste your time?”

“Why should it mattah to you?”

“It's you, isn't it? It's you who is helping her with this childish prank!”

The young man wrinkles his face. There's a youthful innocence there buried under the theatrical performance of disgust—the type toddlers display when they discern adults' disapproval of them eating dirt or sniffing their poop. He's just a boy, trying to be a man, she thinks. She has the sinking feeling that she has wrongly accused him. Something in his gentle manner gives this away. He's not at all threatening with the machete in his hand. Suddenly she's aware of the weight of the shovel hanging from her fingertips, her housedress soaked with perspiration, her wild hair. Surely she has given him more reason to fear her than vice versa. She watches him to see if he hesitates out of fear. A light sheen breaks out on his forehead. Verdene realizes that they have been standing in the blazing sun.

“Miss, ah t'ink yuh bettah leave Miss Gracie alone,” he says finally. “She can't tek no trouble.”

“Can you help me, then?” Her voice is calm and reasonable, as though she didn't just accuse him of putting a dead dog in her yard. “I need help cleaning my walkway and burying this dog.”

“Why should I help you?”

“Because it's the only way I'll leave. I want this mess out of my yard. I want to live in peace. I want to be treated like a human being. I want—” The tears she had shed earlier are rolling back heavy down to her chin, wetting her collar. The young man relaxes and stoops to lay down his machete. All the frustration Verdene has been holding back comes spewing out in this young man's presence. She has never done this with Margot—not since the first incident—because she fears it might scare her away. And maybe it already has, since Margot hasn't been to visit in weeks. Hasn't even called. The young man raises his hand and rests it on Verdene's shoulder—a gesture Verdene did not expect or even think she needed. But she does.

“All right,” he says.

L
ater, she waits up in the dark kitchen for Margot. She doesn't turn the lights on. Maybe she can catch the perpetrators if they dare step foot inside her yard again. And besides, she likes the dark. It's cooler, quieter, and more peaceful, the chirpings of crickets like a nocturnal lullaby. The red digits on the small digital clock on the counter, which Verdene sometimes uses as a timer when baking, is blinking
11 PM
. It has been like this for the last four weeks. Waiting by the telephone. Pacing. Cooking to help take her mind off things. Setting the table, laying out meals she knows that only she will eat.

Verdene calls the hotel again.

“What you mean, she already left?” she asks the girl who answers. The girl sounds like she has a clothespin clipped on the bridge of her nose.

“Did you even check? The least you can do is check!”

“Ma'am, she signed out.”

“But you said that yesterday too. How many breaks can one person take?”

Then she composes herself, taking a deep breath, allowing her question to take form. “Did she . . .” She pauses and looks at her fist on the counter by the telephone. “Did she leave with anyone?” As soon as Verdene asks this question she feels ashamed. Before the girl can respond, Verdene tells her never mind and hangs up. She thinks about all the reasons Margot could be unavailable. After all, she still has obligations as a working woman. But not even a phone call to say so herself?

Verdene clutches the blue ceramic mug in front of her on the table. She had poured some rum in her tea, hoping it would make her go to sleep quicker. She used to see her mother do the same on those nights after she had been beaten badly and needed something stronger than medicine to numb the pain, which Verdene suspected, even then, wasn't just physical.

So here she is, unable to close her eyes as she suffers from a different pain, its impact just as powerful as a kick in the belly or a clenched fist to the chin. Margot is avoiding her. She notices the shadows from the trees outside that dance in the breeze; they're faint like the dreaded dawning of intuition. Earlier she had taken a bath to freshen up. Just in case. In the mirror Verdene studied herself naked, regarding the love handles she had comfortably acquired around her hips and belly. For the first time in a long while, she frowned at them, conscious of the softness of her shape. Who is she? What has she become? She grabbed the fat around her hips and held it, disgust rising in her throat, settling on her tongue.

Tonight she cooked a nice meal and set the table. The candle is still resting in the center of the table like a mockery of her efforts. In the silence of waiting, Verdene sighs deeply, hoping the rush of air into her lungs and the rum warming her blood will steady her. Clear her head. In front of her, the plate of rice rises like a snow-covered mountain, its peak threatening to touch the ceiling when she looks up. The steam has cooled, but the sight of the starchy white grains promises to assuage her. She takes a spoonful with the serving spoon. One, then two, then three spoonfuls, until she loses count. She eats the plate of plantains too. And the plate of codfish fritters. Every time she swallows she feels nothing. Nothing at all. When she's emptied the plates she jumps up from the table, accidentally knocking her chair over and bumping into things on her way to the bathroom. It's here that she finds her reprieve, the calm that settles over her like a damp towel pressed against her forehead in the heat as the smell of stomach acid rises. Stays. She remains kneeling on the floor, too weak to move. Too tired to feel bad about what she just did.