Nicole Dennis-Benn - Here Comes the Sun

“Do you?”

Margot drops her gaze.

“Just as I thought,” Verdene says softly, swallowing the edge in her voice. She gently pushes Margot off and cuffs her wrists with her hands. “I have something on the stove. I don’t want it to burn. My mother left me that pot.”

Verdene looks out the window of her kitchen and watches people go by dressed in their Sunday best — men wearing their good button-up shirts and shiny black pants ironed too many times. Women in their church hats and bright pastel colors, Bibles clutched in their hands like purses, each pausing to make a sign of the cross as they pass by the house. Verdene rolls her fists, her nails digging deeply inside her palms until the violent tremor rumbling inside her subsides. Sunday is the only day of the week that these people take the liberty to parade in front of her property, dressed in their holier-than-thou costumes. Verdene pauses in the stillness of the kitchen, turning on the faucet full blast to take her mind off them. But then she sees Miss Gracie, the old woman who lives next door. Her bearded chin is thrust forward, jutting from beneath the broad white hat that covers the rest of her face; her wilted body that once towered over men and women in River Bank is draped in an off-white dress with lace trimmings. A very handsome young man, whose face Verdene doesn’t recognize, is walking next to her, supporting her weight as though the woman cannot walk herself. She too stops to make the sign of the cross as she passes by Verdene’s house, instructing the reluctant young man to do the same. Had she been holding something other than her Bible, she would’ve flung it. Like that tree limb she wrapped in a bloodied cloth and threw in Verdene’s yard last week.

“ The blood of Jesus is upon you! ” she had yelled with crazed eyes. It was as though she dared Verdene to say something. But Verdene remained on her veranda, stunned silent.

Before the tree limb it was a beheaded fowl that she left on Verdene’s front steps. Verdene didn’t see the woman do it, but she knew. Four Sundays ago Verdene found the body of a dead dog on her property. Since Verdene moved back from London there had been a total of four dead mongrel dogs found in her yard, their brown decaying bodies infested by flies. The incidents happened in spurts as though the perpetrator were operating on some kind of algorithm. The first time coincided with the first night Margot stayed over. A Saturday night. Verdene had woken up that Sunday morning to the slaughtered animal’s blood trailing her walkway to the veranda. The blood was smeared across the doorposts and columns. And on the veranda grill and the gate. The blood of Jesus be upon you! was scrawled on the wall on both sides of the house.

Those were the same words the old woman had uttered just days before to Verdene. Verdene did not have it in her then to do anything about the incident. What could she have done? Her first instinct was to call the police. But they would hear her accent and want her to pay them something extra to track down the perpetrator. Her next instinct was to march next door, through the lush banana leaves that separated her house from the old woman’s, but Miss Gracie might have gone off, drawing more unnecessary attention to Verdene. The old woman is senile, but it would still be her words against Verdene’s. So Verdene cleaned up the mess herself. She fetched the shovel and silver bucket. She did so as quietly as possible, since she didn’t want to wake Margot. The night before they had sipped tea and lounged in the living room — Margot on the sofa and Verdene on the floor mat — a good distance between them. It occurred to Verdene then, as she stood on the veranda with the pail and shovel, that while they talked that night, someone was violating her property. Someone who could have seen them.

That bloody morning she made her way toward the garden, though a steady stream of churchgoers were passing by. She waved at them, bowing her head reverently just like her mother had taught her to do. “ Always be nice and cordial. . ” Ella used to quip, aware of the neighbors’ eagle-eyes, especially the women’s, when she returned with all her foreign dresses. And so, like her mother, Verdene waved, her arm a windshield wiper that smeared their frowning faces. She put on her best smile stretched across her face like a taut elastic band, barely touching her eyes. The churchgoers gathered speed, and once they passed, Verdene picked up the dead animal from the flower bed with the shovel. Margot appeared in the window, her face like a full moon, with the curtains hiding the rest of her body. Verdene lowered the shovel. She saw the terror in Margot’s eyes and forced herself to keep digging a hole by the soursop tree. The same place she would put all the other carcasses.

“ Please ,” Verdene had said, pushing Margot away gently when she came up behind Verdene inside the house that morning, “ give me a moment .” She leaned against the kitchen sink, her back toward Margot. Following the huge silence between them, Verdene told Margot, “ It will always be like this. This life. With me. ” Verdene’s back was still turned. As she awaited Margot’s response, she closed her eyes to keep back the burning tears that had welled up. She sucked on her lips, almost tasting the kiss they had shared the night before. Their first. But Margot didn’t respond. Not immediately. And though she held Verdene from behind, her body warming Verdene’s, her face resting in the crook of Verdene’s neck, Verdene sensed her reserve, felt her leave the room, the footsteps receding, a door closing softly.

It’s ironic how she had wanted Margot out the picture when she first met her. During her second year at university, Verdene had come home to find a girl sitting on the sofa in her mother’s living room. The girl was probably ten years old at the time, with long, skinny legs that were ashy with too many scratches. They were hanging off the couch, swaying back and forth. The girl’s hair was uncombed and the pale dress she wore was soiled with dirt. Verdene wondered if her mother had rescued a stray. As a schoolteacher, Ella was inclined to take in neighborhood children and tutor them. When Verdene looked closer at the small brown face flanked by a mass of unruly hair like a sunflower, she realized the little girl was none other than Delores’s daughter. Verdene didn’t know the little girl’s name then, but she had seen Delores with her a few times, the both of them walking to town with goods to sell. They lived in a small boarded-up house not too far from Verdene and her mother. Margot’s Uncle Winston — an old classmate of Verdene’s — was a street boy who gambled, smoked weed, and chased after young girls. He was the one who knocked-up Rose, Miss Gracie’s daughter. Ella, out of the kindness of her heart, volunteered to look after Margot when her mother and grandmother weren’t around.

Verdene was jealous of the girl at first. It had always been Verdene and Ella against the world, when Ella wasn’t too busy working to be in her husband’s good graces. But when he died, Ella grieved as though he were the best man to ever walk the earth. Sometimes the grieving turned to anger directed at Verdene for not respecting the man who helped to bring her into this world. Ella, who was probably lonely after the death of her husband and Verdene’s departure to the university, did not mind Margot keeping her company. Verdene found Margot a little precocious. She followed Verdene around the house when Verdene came home on weekends from school (out of obligation) and asked about everything under the sun. And Verdene, who was then busy juggling exams, the pressures of being away at university and barely passing chemistry (her major), paid the girl no mind. Though Margot was bright, Verdene felt in her heart that she was Delores’s problem. Why should Ella be in charge of this woman’s child? Ella gave the girl extra lessons, since at ten years old she was only reading at a second-grade level.