Nicole Dennis-Benn - Here Comes the Sun

Just then John-John — the young dread whom Delores has known since he was a boy who helped his mother sell goods at the market — stops by with a box of the birds he carves out of wood. He was always creative — ever since Delores has known him — making keepsakes from scraps to occupy his time, since he didn’t go to school. Because he and Margot were playmates, Delores has treated him more like a son. Now a grown man supporting children of his own, he makes birds, which he gives Delores to sell for him and collects half of what she makes from the sales. He sees the women arguing, sees his opportunity, and seizes it by defending Delores. “Ah, wah Mavis do to you, Mama Delores? Here, let me handle it. G’weh, Mavis, an’ leave Mama Delores alone. Yuh nuh have bettah t’ings fi do? Like count out di ten cents yuh get fi yuh cheap t’ings dem? Yuh son sen’ yuh money from America, an’ yet yuh stuck inna dis place?”

Mavis whips around to face him like a player caught in the middle of a dandy-shandy game. “A an’ B having ah convahsation. Guh suck yuh mumma, yuh ole crusty, mop-head b’woy!”

But John-John puts down his boxes of birds, a grin on his face as though he’s enjoying this exchange. “Every Tom, Joe, an’ Mary know dat yuh don’t get no barrel from America. A lie yuh ah tell. When people get barrel from America dem come moggle in dem new clothes.” He struts in the little space between them to mimic models on a runway. “But yuh still dress like a mad’ooman, an’ yuh look like one too wid dat mask ’pon yuh face!”

The other vendors in the arcade erupt in boisterous laughter, their hands cupped over their mouths, shoulders shuddering, and eyes damp with tears. Mavis adjusts her hat, and touches her screwed-up face with the bleaching cream lathered all over it like the white masks obeah women wear. “A true yuh nuh know me,” she says, her mouth long and bottom lip trembling. “My son send me barrel from foreign all di time. Ah bad-mind oonuh bad-mind!”

“Nobody nah grudge yuh, Mavis,” Delores says. “John-John jus’ saying dat it nuh mek sense if di clothes dat yuh son sen’ from America look like di ugly, wash-out clothes yuh sell. American clothes not suppose to look suh cheap. There’s a discrepancy in what’s what!” The other vendors’ laughter soars above the stalls, flooding through the narrow aisles where the sun marches like a soldier during a curfew. Delores continues, “Is not like yuh t’ings sell either. Usually di tourist dem tek one look, see di cheap, wash-out, threadbare shirt dem then move on. Not even yuh bleach-out skin coulda hol’ dem!”

“G’weh!” Mavis says. “Yuh only picking on me because yuh pickney dem don’t like yuh!” Satisfied after delivering the final blow, Mavis retreats into her stall with a smirk Delores wishes she could slap away. But she can’t move fast enough; John-John is already holding her back. Her hands are frantically moving over John-John’s shoulder, wanting to catch the woman’s face and rip it to shreds. That smirk holds the weight of scorn, of judgment. She should never have told Mavis that morning that her birthday came and went without a card from either Thandi or Margot. Well, she didn’t expect a card from Margot, but Thandi should’ve remembered. Every year Thandi gives her something — last year it was a necklace made of small cowrie shells; the previous year were petals from dried flowers used to decorate the inside of a card; the year before that was a bracelet with coral beads strung by yarn. And this year, nothing. Setting up her items took longer than usual at the beginning of the week. She’s always the first to have everything presented well enough for the tourists to come by, but this week she struggled with the simplest task of covering the wooden table with the green and yellow cloth. One of the figurines had fallen, breaking in half during setup. Delores felt off. The thought of spending the entire day selling made her feel like she was carrying an empty glass and pretending to have liquid in it. She confided this to Mavis, because she wanted someone to talk to at the time. How she has been selling for years and has never felt this way. How Margot, and most recently Thandi, couldn’t care less if she dies in this heat a pauper. And in the heat of this very moment, Mavis has called her out. Mavis — with her crazy, lying, bleaching self — knows that Delores’s children hate her. Mavis — the woman with nothing good to sell and who can never get one customer to give her the time of day — knows Delores’s weakness. That smirk Delores itches to slap off her face says it all; and even if Delores succeeds in slapping the black off the woman (more than the bleach ever could), it won’t erase the fact that Mavis probably has a better relationship with her son than Delores will ever have with her daughters.

John-John releases Delores. “Yuh mek har know who is in charge, Mama Delores! A good fi har,” he says. “Nuh let har get to yuh dat way.” Delores ignores him and plops down hard on her stool. She fans herself with the Jamaica Observer again as John-John surveys her table, checking to see if she sold any of his carved animals since the last time she saw him.

“Notin’ at’all?” he asks when she tells him. He sits down on the old padded stool in Delores’s stall and runs one hand through his dreadlocks, visibly puzzled. Delores is the best haggler out here.

“Yuh see people come in yah from mawnin?” she asks John-John in defense. “Sun too hot.” She doesn’t tell him that she hasn’t been in the mood to do the regular routine — linking hands with tourists, courting them the way men court women, complimenting them, sweet-talking them, showing them all the goods, waiting with bated breath for them to fall in love, hoping they take a leap of faith and fish into their wallets.

John-John shakes his head, his eyes looking straight ahead. “We cyan mek di heat do we like dis, Delores. No customers mean nuh money,” John-John says. His jaundiced eyes swim all over Delores’s face. “Wah we aggo do, Mama Delores?”

“What yuh mean, what we g’wan do? Ah look like ah know?” Delores fans herself harder, almost ripping the newspaper filled with the smiling faces of politicians and well-to-do socialites. She wants John-John to leave her alone to her own thoughts and feelings. But the boy can talk off your ears. He would sit there on the stool and talk all day if she lets him. Sometimes this interrupts Delores’s work, because tourists see him in the stall and politely walk away, thinking they were interrupting something between mother and son. “Well, Jah know weh him ah do. Hopefully him will sen’ rain soon,” John-John says.

“Believe you me,” she says to John-John, who squats to diligently paint one of his wooden birds. “Tomorrow g’wan be a new day. Yuh watch an’ see. Ah g’wan sell every damn t’ing me have.”

“Yes, Mama Delores. Just trus’ an’ Jah will provide fah all ah we,” John-John says. The pink of his tongue shows as he works on perfecting the bird’s feathers. He has been working on that one bird since last week. Usually it takes him only a few hours. When he finishes the bird, he separates it from the rest, which he wraps one by one in old newspaper to place inside the box. Delores picks up the bird he’s just finished. It’s more extravagant than all the others, with blue and green wings skillfully outlined with black paint, a red and yellow underbelly, and a red beak. The eyes are sharp, the whites in them defined with the small black pupils. It looks like it will be a popular item, expensive. Delores already prices it in her head. She guesses fifty U.S. dollars.

As Delores examines this new bird she thinks of the parrot she once saw at Devon House in Kingston — a colonial mansion with a beautiful garden that had just opened up to the public. The year was 1968. It was her first trip to Kingston and she was eighteen years old. She left four-year-old Margot with Mama Merle and rode on the country bus to town all by herself. Initially she went to look for temporary work as a helper; but on a whim, she decided to visit the new attraction. Delores wanted to see it so that she could brag. So she wandered from Half Way Tree, where the country bus dropped her off, all the way up the busy Constant Spring Road. With a few wrong turns and stops to ask for directions (“ Beg yuh please tell weh me can fine Dev-an House? ”), she made it. It took a while for the nice Kingstonians she asked to understand her heavy patois and point her in the right direction. The mansion was just as beautiful in real life as it was in the papers — white paint glowing in the sun, big columns and winding staircases, a water fountain. But more amazing than the house were the parrots. They seemed suited for their habitat — flying from tree to tree with colored wings through a lush garden with so many different trees and flowers, Delores saw many she hadn’t known existed. She followed the birds until she got to the courtyard, where genteel Kingstonians sat enjoying the outdoors under the shade of fancy umbrellas and broad-brimmed hats. As if caught in a limelight onstage, Delores fidgeted with her Sunday dress — bright yellow with lace and puffed-up sleeves. She felt like Queen Elizabeth in that dress, especially because she had a pair of frilly green socks to match and a shiny pair of flats with buckles on the sides that never showed any specks of red dirt. The only things missing were a pair of gloves.