Nicole Dennis-Benn - Here Comes the Sun

Later in the week Thandi stops at Mr. Levy’s Wholesale to pick up a few things for Delores. She stays by the fan that blows hot air and the smell of cat piss into the store. She itches to wriggle out of the plastic hidden beneath the uniform. But she won’t give up so easily.

“Wh’appen, sweet girl?” Thandi stiffens when she hears his voice. It’s as though electric wires are coursing through her in this moment, her fingers spread wide, mouth agape. She turns around to meet the jaundiced eyes of Clover, Delores’s old handyman. After he hurt her he gradually came around less and less, until he slunk out of town and disappeared for years. By the looks of things he’s a worse drunk than ever, though still a young man. He sneers at Thandi with the only two crooked teeth in his mouth. His skin is an ashen black that makes it look like it has been dried in the sun. With his knuckles he raps on the counter. “Missah Chin, ah wah tek so long? Gimme a pack ah cigarette!” He shoves a dollar under the opening and leers at Thandi. There is no way for her to move away from him in this small space. She hopes he will get the message and let her be if she doesn’t acknowledge that he’s there. But Clover reaches out and touches her on the shoulder. Always, at this very instant of physical contact, she would wake with a scream. But this is not a dream.

“Why yuh acting so?” He tilts his head like they are lovers having a harmless disagreement.

Thandi swallows, hoping her jumbled words will be measured when she utters them, standing there in her Saint Emmanuel High uniform. “Leave. Me. Alone.” She hopes the fire in her eyes is enough to scorch him, burn him up in the flames.

But Clover’s jaundiced eyes become watery as the sneer broadens on his face. “Ah love a ’ooman who got some fight in har.” He grabs himself and moves closer. “Turn me on. .”

Thandi steps away. This causes Clover to laugh, flinging his head back.

Distracted by a dream, Thandi had wandered off onto a remote path shaded by trees — mahogany, live oaks, wild lime. She was on her way home from school, thinking about sketching the marvelous arches of the trees, the extensive roots of the mahogany, the small green clusters in the lime trees. The stillness of the green water in the cove. Clover cupped her mouth and hauled her off into the bushes. At nine years old she knew what “ bombohole ” meant because the man kept whispering how much he wanted hers, splaying her legs to take it. When he was done he told her not to tell or else he would break her neck. Thandi wondered then which was worse, dying or lying there hurting between her legs. Thandi kept her ugly secret even as Clover came over — less and less — to help Delores hoist up a fence, string electric wires, hammer exposed nails in their shack; or to play dominoes with the other neighborhood men whose breath always stank with white rum and whose clammy hands were always cupping Delores’s rump.

Clover takes the pack of cigarettes Mr. Levy shoves through the opening of the mesh door with those same blackened hands she remembers. Thandi watches him from the side of her eyes as he opens the pack and puts one cigarette behind his ear. The rest he slips inside his pocket. He leans on the counter with his ankles crossed, watching her as though expecting a comment. When she says nothing, he tells her, “Ran into Delores, she ask me to come by the house on Sat’day. Looking forward to seeing yuh cute face.” Clover touches her chin and she slaps his hand away, stamping out of the store.

VERDENE SCRUBS THE BLOOD OFF THE SIDES OF HER HOUSE with a wet green rag. She concentrates deeply on the smudges and stains so she does not have to feel the rage, does not have to pause long enough to touch the collar of her housedress to her face to wipe the tears. So she rubs and rubs, muttering underneath her breath, “Damn ignorant imbeciles!” The rag dries in her hand and she dips it into the mixture of bleach and water. Since the water pressure is low, there is no way she can refill the bucket. “Goddammit!” The tears begin to fall faster than she can catch them. The fact that the culprits could be hiding in the bushes, laughing so hard that their guts pain them, makes Verdene angrier. “You think this is funny?” she asks the bushes and flowers. Something seems to brace in the yard, halting every sound except the murmuring of the big black flies around her. A family of vultures are perched on a coconut tree nearby.

“Answer me, you cowards!” Verdene stands up, her knees stiff from being on them all morning. She throws the rag inside the bucket and clenches both fists. She’s spinning around and around, trying to pinpoint where the person could be hiding. “You get a kick out of this, don’t you?” she yells. She’s getting dizzy circling like that. Almost out of breath, she stops. The dead dog in the yard appears to be breathing, its moving ribs gilded by sunlight through the ackee tree branches. Verdene steps closer and stands over it. She brings her hands to her mouth, unable to believe that someone could be capable of such a barbaric act. They took great care to make a vertical cut down the animal’s belly and another cut across its throat. Verdene mourns the poor dog that was sacrificed because of her. How many more does she have to deal with? How many?

She goes inside for the shovel. When she returns she attempts to dig yet another hole in the ground but stops, the shovel suspended in her hands, her attention on the lush banana leaves that separate her yard from Miss Gracie’s. She lowers the shovel and marches over there. She will take care of this once and for all, she decides. She hasn’t been in the old woman’s yard since she was a little girl led by curiosity to the garden filled with rows of Scotch Bonnet peppers, which she thought were oddly shaped cherries. She bit into one of them and instantly choked. Her eyes watered so much that she could barely see to go back home to quell the fire inside her six-year-old mouth. One side of her tongue was numb for a whole week. And so were her buttocks after Ella walloped her with a rubber switch.

Verdene remembers when the yard had a scarecrow. Miss Gracie planted the peppers years ago, instead of flowers like everyone else. She used to make homemade pepper sauce and sell it in jars at the market. Fish vendors used to buy up the sauce to sprinkle on their fish when they realized that people liked it. Miss Gracie made a lot of money. Even Ella bought the sauce in bulk, because Verdene’s father would never touch anything without it. When the fishing business died down, so did the demand for Miss Gracie’s sauce. There was no indication that a young girl named Rose lived there — Miss Gracie’s daughter, who was only two years younger than Verdene. A simple girl who read her Bible instead of schoolbooks and who used to follow her mother around from door to door to preach before she got pregnant and ran away.

“ Do — do you know — Je — Jesus Christ? ” the girl stuttered to Verdene once when they were teenagers. Verdene had opened the door to see Rose and Miss Gracie standing on the steps of her veranda.

“ I’m busy. Come back later ,” Verdene had replied.

“ Yuh not too young fi hear di good word, sweetheart ,” Miss Gracie said when she stepped in front of Rose. Her eyes roved inside Verdene’s house. “ Ella surely live like ah queen in dis place. Mind if we come in? ” This seemed to embarrass Rose, who always looked shrunken in her mother’s indomitable shadow. “ My parents are not home ,” was all Verdene could come up with before excusing herself and closing the door. The last she remembered of Rose were her awkward waves at the front gate, which seemed more like pleas for friendship than eagerness to talk about sin and salvation.