Nicole Dennis-Benn - Here Comes the Sun

“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.

MARGOT 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.

The 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.