Nicole Dennis-Benn - Here Comes the Sun

Verdene allows the question to fall between them before she says, “You’re fooling yourself if you think things would be any different in another neighborhood. It’s still Jamaica.”

“Then why don’t you take me with you to London so that we could have a life outside of this?”

“You’ve never been willing to leave River Bank.” Verdene moves to the edge of the bed. “You’re the one always talking about your sister and how you have to be here for her.”

Margot walks to the rocking chair for her bag. Verdene has a point. Thandi needs her. But that was not what she wanted to hear. Alphonso would never choose her, and maybe she can never choose Verdene. She has been wasting time vacillating between two secret lives. She wonders if what she feels — and has always felt — for Verdene is nothing more than a spell, something temporarily debilitating like a gigantic wave in the ocean. She has to break the water’s surface. Swim back to shore. She cannot afford to be controlled.

“I have to go,” Margot says. She kisses Verdene goodbye on the mouth.

“When will I see you again?” Verdene asks.

“I don’t know.”

THANDI GOES OUTSIDE TO THE BACKYARD WITH HER SKETCHPAD. The grass is knee-high, neglected. The sun peers through the branches of the trees. Two roosters that escaped the neighbor’s yard high-step toward the side of the shack. The old tire tied to the tree where Little Richie likes to sit swings by itself as though a ghost is pushing it. Thandi tries to sketch whatever she sees, but every time an image appears on the page, she rips it out and balls it inside her fists. Nothing looks or feels right. By the time she’s halfway through ripping page after page out of her book, she’s ready to scream into the open air. Her frustration threatens to break free and shatter to pieces the image she has struggled so hard to uphold. But this backyard is too small. The web of branches above her head might contain her frustrated scream. The sleeping dogs might holler at it. The chickens will halt, one leg suspended like the breaths of the nearby washerwomen, who might wonder about the commotion and come running.

Finally, she decides that her growing discomfort might have to do with the plastic that Miss Ruby meticulously wrapped around her limbs and torso. She makes her way back inside, takes it off, and slips a modest yellow dress over a tank top and a pair of shorts — since she has to wash her slip. She grabs her sketchpad and leaves, passing Grandma Merle, who is sitting stiff-necked on the wooden chair; and Miss Francis and Miss Louise, who wave. The hum of their voices washes her back. “ Is where she going in di hot sun dressed like dat? Shouldn’t she be in school? ”

She hurries along to the river, passing by the bathers who have their clothes spread out on the rocks. She makes her way to where the boats are tied up. The construction workers with their tools aren’t on site today. There is a sign that reads NO TRESPASSING on the beach right where Thandi used to play as a child, which was once an extension of River Bank. The hotels are building along the coastlines. Slowly but surely they are coming, like a dark sea. Little Bay, which used to be two towns over from River Bank, was the first to go. Just five years ago the people of Little Bay left in droves, forced out of their homes and into the streets. It was all over the news when it happened, since the people — out of anger — ended up blocking roads with planks and tires and burning them. In the past, developers would wait for landslides and other natural disasters to do their dirty work. But when tourism became the bread and butter for the island’s economy, the developers and the government alike became ravenous, indifferent. In retaliation, people stole concrete blocks and cement and zinc from the new developments to rebuild homes in other places, but their pilfering brought soldiers with rifles and tear gas. The developers won the fight, and the people scattered like roaches. Some came to River Bank begging to be taken in, some fled to other parishes. Those who could not bear the stress of uprooting all their belongings to start a new life roamed the streets and mumbled to themselves. It was as though their own land had turned on them — swallowed up their homes and livestock and produce and spat out the remains. By the time the workmen arrived in River Bank, Little Bay had been long forgotten.

There is no sound out here. Just the gentle lull of the sea and her heart beating in her eardrums when she sees Charles, sitting in his father’s fishing boat. He’s looking at the tranquil water where the river meets the ocean. He looks like he belongs in a painting, contemplating the blue of the water and the sky. Just above them, the coconut trees rustle in the wind, their fronds wavelike. Thandi looks up at the sky between the palm branches through which the sun plays a game of hide-and-seek. She sits on an abandoned crate underneath one of the trees and sketches Charles with his head tilted back in the face of the sun, careful with each line, her fingers wrapped around the pencil. His back is an elegant stretch of muscle. It takes her longer than usual to get it right, erasing shadows and drawing them over. Charles turns and catches her staring. “What yuh doing out here?” he asks above the gentle roar of the sea.

Embarrassed, Thandi fumbles to cover the drawing with her hands as if he can see them from where he sits. He gets up out of his father’s boat and walks over to her, his bare feet making footprints in the white sand. He’s wearing a pair of khaki trousers cut off at the knees, a faded green shirt slung over his right shoulder. Thandi inches closer to the tree as if it can hide her. She crosses and uncrosses her legs, pressing her sketchpad to her chest as she watches him look around for a crate to sit on. She sits up straight, unsure what posture she should assume. She’s afraid she might look too rigid this way. Too schoolgirlish. So she curves her back. Just a little. What would Margot do? Too many times Delores says to Thandi that she’s nothing like Margot. “ Nothing like yuh sistah a’tall. ” Thandi wonders if this is good or bad.

When Thandi was younger she used to observe her sister. Under the appraisal of men’s stares was the mysterious force that swayed Margot’s wide hips atop sturdy bow legs. When she passed them by, they would turn their heads, their eyes trained on those hips, their hands stroking their chins as though contemplating a plate of oxtail stew. “ Wh’appen, sugah? ” Brown sugar , or brownin’ for short. Margot never seemed uncomfortable, unlike Thandi, who shies away from such attention; Margot touched men frequently as she talked, her hand casually stroking their arm or chest. And when they said something, anything, Margot used to throw her head back and laugh a soft, titillating laugh that rippled through the air above the sounds of Gregory Isaacs, Beres Hammond, or Dennis Brown coming from the boom box at Dino’s. This caused the men to pause and observe the skin of her neck, the length of her lashes that swept her full cheeks as her eyes squinted with delight; lust filling their own eyes, like smoke from a ganja spliff. In Margot’s presence, a man would shout to his contenders amid the shuffling of dominoes, slamming his hand or his beer hard on the wooden table, “ Anotha roun’! ” Then, to Margot, “ Watch me win nuh, sugah? ” And Margot, gracious as she is, would decline, stroking the man’s arm. “ Maybe next time, love. ” The man would proceed to play his hand, smiling to himself as though he had already won.

When Charles approaches Thandi with a crate he’s found inside another abandoned boat, he’s grinning from ear to ear. He plops down in front of her, smelling like the salty air. Their knees touch but she doesn’t move hers away.