Nicole Dennis-Benn - Here Comes the Sun

Margot’s distracted memories carry her from under the tree to the crafts market in town. She just needs a scrap of kindess before she can recover, formulate her next move. Though Delores is hardly compassionate, Margot looks for her inside the arcade. The instant reprieve from the heat, though small, is something she’s grateful for. She hasn’t visited the stall in a long time. John-John is sitting there hee-hawing about something, and Margot has a feeling that she’s interrupting. Delores lifts her head and notices Margot, and something comes over her face. When John-John sees Margot, he too stops talking and suddenly becomes shy, lowering his head and regarding her through the lashes of his downcast eyes. “Hello, Margot,” he says boyishly.

“Wha’ppen John-John?”

“Nutten nah g’wan enuh,” John-John says, bringing Margot’s focus back. He seems glad for the opportunity to talk to her. “Same ole, same ole. . how about you? Yuh looking good.”

“Thanks, John-John,” Margot says in a noncommittal voice. She focuses on Delores and the impenetrable veil over her face.

John-John must sense this, because he picks up his box of crafts and heads to the exit, apologetic when he says to Margot, “I’ll leave you ladies alone.” He bows slightly. “Likkle more, Mama Delores.”

“Likkle more,” Delores replies.

John-John stops at the exit as though he has forgotten something. He digs into his box and hands Margot a sculpted doctor bird. “Me did mek dis special fi you.”

“Thanks, John-John,” Margot says, holding on to the wooden bird as he hurries away.

Delores is chuckling to herself. “Him always did like yuh,” she says. “Only a idiot in love would give up something fah free when him can sell it to mek good money.” She sucks her teeth and fans herself with an old yellowing newspaper. “Lawd Jesas, what ah buffoon, eh?”

“I know.” Margot examines the beautiful bird. She traces the contours with her fingers, every ridge meticulously carved. “Poor t’ing.”

“Poor t’ing is right,” Delores says. “Remember how him used to bring yuh flowers he pick from s’maddy else yard?” Margot chuckles when she remembers this — John-John stealing flowers to give to her. “Both of oonuh was so young,” Delores continues, with the memory glistening in her eyes. “Him used to sit here an’ wait on me, jus’ so he could geet to yuh.” But the humor quickly disappears from Delores’s face, wiped clean by a scowl. “If only he knew.”

“I guess you’d rather put me wid a man who was into fondling and fucking likkle girls?” Margot says, her voice conversational. She’s been friendly with her mother, but the day’s disappointment has her raw, prodding the wounds of her past. This painful fact has solidified into a rock she throws at her mother when it becomes too big, too heavy to carry alone.

Delores stops fanning. After a long pause, she braces herself into the chair, which creaks under her weight. “Why are you here?” Delores asks. “To tell me how me is a bad mother?” Delores’s spit flies on Margot’s face. Delores continues. “What should I have done, eh? Tell me!” Her eyes are bulging. “Didn’t it put food on the table? Didn’t it feed yuh? If yuh t’ink yuh bettah than dat — now dat you is Miss High ’an Mighty — then g’weh! G’long!”

Margot doesn’t budge. She can’t. “Ah want to talk to you,” she says. Her voice drops, giving in to a slight tremor.

Delores’s eyes gleam like the edges of swords, her mouth twisted to the right side of her face. “’Bout what?”

“Ah don’t know where to start.”

“Start somweh. Yuh wasting me time.” Delores starts fanning herself again, but before Margot can gather her thoughts, three tourists enter the stall. Delores’s attitude changes. Margot steps aside and waits until her mother is done with them. Suddenly she’s a pleasant woman, the type of woman Margot would’ve liked to get to know, or wanted as a mother — not the mother she grew up with, who was quick to anger and even quicker to trample Margot’s self-esteem. Margot always wondered what it was about her that made her mother so angry. She wished she could make her mother happy the way these tourists do. The way Thandi does. “Yes, sweetie, ah can give yuh dat for a discounted price,” Delores says to the young American teen.

When the tourists leave, Delores goes back to being Delores. “So talk,” she says. “More people soon come an’ me need fi sell.”

Margot treads lightly. “I’m seeing someone.” She clears her throat, feeling an overwhelming need to specify, if not for herself, then for Delores, whose eyes hold in them the question that Margot can never avoid. “A man.” It rolls off her tongue so easily, so naturally, so necessary. A man . Her mother’s facial expression remains neutral, though Margot imagines the smirk behind the dark emotionless face.

“He’s in di hotel business,” Margot continues. “A Wellington.”

“A Wellington?” Delores asks, her eyes wide. “What yuh doing wid ah Wellington?” she asks. “Since when those people commune wid di help? Don’t you work fah dem?”

“He said he loves me,” Margot says, defensive. All she hopes for is Delores’s grudging approval. “He’s willing to leave his wife. And he’s serious about it.”

“Oh?” Delores sits up straight and puts down the rolled-up newspaper she was using to fan with, a gleam finally creeping into her eyes, filling Margot with hope.

“So yuh get yuhself a big man.”

“Yes.”

“How yuh so ch’upid, gyal?”

Delores leans forward, her big arms flopping over her knees. Margot realizes that it wasn’t pride she has seen in her mother’s eyes, it was a sneer. A sneer that reveals the wide gap in her mother’s teeth as she says, “My question to you, Miss High an’ Mighty , is how ah man like dat can leave him pretty wife fi s’maddy like you? Yuh t’ink dem man deh want a black gyal pon dem arm in public? Dey like yuh to fuck. Not to marry. So know yuh place.”

Margot feels the sting of tears, but she narrows her eyes. She doesn’t even want Alphonso. All Margot wants — now more than ever — is to prove her mother wrong.

Margot bursts through Verdene’s bedroom door and puts her palms against the woman’s cheeks. Her lips trail Verdene’s neck, her breasts. Verdene gasps in surprise, but slows Margot’s fingers.

“Calm down, now. Why don’t you sit down?”

Margot relents, resting her head against Verdene’s before slumping onto the bed. “I wish things were different,” she says. Verdene is watching her, watching the storm of unknown origin rage across her face. “Don’t you just wish things were different?” she asks.

“Many times,” Verdene says.

They peer at each other in the mirror.

“I don’t think I can go on living like this,” Margot says.

“What are you saying?” Verdene sits up against the headboard. Margot studies her face to see if the answer she hopes to find is there. But all she sees is concern and confusion just above Verdene’s eyebrows.

“If you love me, then why haven’t you offered to sell this house so that we can have a fresh start? You know. In an area where we can—”

Verdene cuts her off. “It’s not that simple, Margot.”

“Why not? What do you have to lose by selling this house? It’s not like you have anything left here. We can build something together.”

“It’s all I have left of my mother.” Verdene looks at the picture of her mother that sits on the small table, facing the wall — the only picture she kept out. She reaches over and turns the picture around.

“So I’m best kept as a secret?” Margot asks quietly, turning away from the smiling Miss Ella.