Nicole Dennis-Benn - Here Comes the Sun

Delores picks up her mother from her chair on the veranda and takes her inside the house. She shoves her onto the couch. “No more looking at the sky. Him gone! Him not coming back!”

Merle whines louder, holding herself. She rocks back and forth, her whines becoming guttural like those of a tormented swine. Delores leans closer so that she can look into the eyes of the woman who used to tell her she was nothing, the woman who sent her brother (and not her) to school simply because he was the boy. The man of the house. The woman who knew about the pinching and blamed Delores for it.

“What? Yuh t’ink him g’wan save yuh now?” Delores asks her mother. “Yuh see it’s not him taking care ah yuh. It’s me. It’s me! Him forget ’bout you! Him tek me money. Didn’t you say everything used to belong to him? Didn’t you say it was him who was g’wan mek it? But yuh see? How him gone an’ lef’ yuh like you is a pile ah shit pon me doorstep!”

Delores wheels around. She can no longer bear looking at the pain in her mother’s eyes. A pain that isn’t caused by Delores’s abuse, but by the absence of her beloved son.

THE DAY THANDI FINISHES HER FINAL ROUND OF CXC EXAMS and sees Charles waiting by the school gate in his cutoff trousers, open shirt, and dusty old shoes, she nearly ditches him. She has been avoiding him since the day she walked in on him cleaning his mother. Since her miserable failure at the party, her focus has been on studying. Delores has always said that her education is the only thing she has going for her anyway — the only thing that will set her worlds apart from the people in River Bank. Charles sees her and waves, a grin slowly lighting up his face, as though against his will. But no amount of waving can get Thandi to lift her free hand and wave back. Already the stares of her schoolmates have bound her hand to her side. It dangles helplessly, her fingers twitching. Charles waits for her to cross the street to where he stands. Thandi greets him, managing a smile that she hopes will look to onlookers like a polite one — the kind given to beggars and unsolicited admirers. She walks a few steps ahead, aware of his shadow, his ripe pawpaw scent, and the distance between them.

“How it feel to be done wid all yuh exam dem?” he asks.

“Fine.”

“Jus’ fine? A heavy weight mus’ lif’ off ah yuh shoulders. Don’t?”

When she doesn’t respond, he says, “Yuh want me to hol’ yuh bag?”

Thandi shakes her head and caresses the strap on her shoulder. “I can carry it.”

“How about dat umbrella?” he asks, pointing to the black umbrella that Thandi keeps above her head so that she won’t get dark. With all the skin-lightening creams she still allows Miss Ruby to rub on her body despite Delores’s threat, just a few minutes of the sun could scald Thandi’s delicate flesh.

“I can hold it too,” she says.

“Yuh want a mango?” Charles digs inside his pocket and pre-sents a Julie mango. Thandi looks over her shoulders. She’s still in the square where anyone can see her accepting a mango from a street boy. She walks quicker, but he matches her pace. “Why yuh speeding? Yuh late fah something?” Charles asks, trying to catch up.

“Yes, I have to meet someone in Ironshore.”

“Oh.”

“I have to hurry an’ get a taxi.”

“Who yuh ’ave up dere?”

“None of your business.”

She expects him to leave her alone, to back away and tell her that he’ll see her later, then. But he doesn’t. He continues to stand there, next to her in broad daylight, in a crowded Sam Sharpe Square in Montego Bay while she’s wearing her Saint Emmanuel High uniform. She hates him for making her feel so ashamed. She hates his naïveté—or is it arrogance? Can’t he see that she wants nothing to do with him at this time? Not when she has every intention of going to the hotels, starting with the one where Margot works, to look for a summer job. With the CXCs over, how else will she occupy her time?

“Are you ashamed of me? Because of what you saw at my house?” Charles asks out of the blue.

“Ashamed?” Thandi asks, pretending to be shocked and hurt by this assumption, which is very well true. “I’m in a hurry, that’s all.”

Charles observes her. Thandi, who is used to convincing people she is somebody other than herself, immediately works hard to change his mind. “If ah was ashamed of you, then why would I be talking to you now?”

Charles shrugs. “You tell me.”

“I’m not ashamed of you,” she says again, this time hoping to believe this herself.

“Thandi, jus’ tell me di truth. If it did mek you uncomfortable to see my mother dat way, I understand.”

“I, well, yuh know, it reminded me of. .” She pauses, trying to find the right words. “I don’t want to end up like dat.”

“It’s not contagious.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“Then say what yuh mean.”

“I don’t want to depend on anyone else for my happiness. I always used to hate my mother for not letting me mix wid certain people. But after seeing fah myself what hopelessness really looks like, I realize why. She was trying to save me.”

Charles is very quiet, so quiet Thandi thinks she can hear her own heartbeat. “All right, then. Ah get it.”

“Charles. I’m sorry.”

“No apologies necessary. Ah can’t blame yuh. I’m nothin’ but a hopeless street yout’. It’s funny, because ah kinda know dat one day you’d come to yuh senses. Ah fool myself into thinking yuh was a different type of girl, dat you’d be above dem t’ings an’ jus’ follow yuh heart.” He’s shaking his head and peering at his dusty old shoes where she can see his big toe. Thandi begins to wish that she never said anything. He’s not looking at her anymore. His shoulders are rounded and his eyes are trained on the small pebble he kicks with one foot.

“Well, ah hope dem people deh worth mixing wid,” he says.

The disgust that she sees on his face when he turns to leave fills her with disgust too. It’s disgust from trying so hard to fit in with everyone else. Where has it gotten her? She likes herself when she’s with him. With him she doesn’t fumble over herself to be someone she’s not. She remembers the day on the beach when he risked his own life to save her; the times afterward, when he told her that she’s beautiful.

Charles is several feet away, his head still down as he walks in the direction of the hill. “Charles!” she hears herself shout. Saint Emmanuel girls are warned against raising their voices in public. The world should see them as quiet vessels of God. But Thandi throws all this away when she runs after him. “Charles!” As she jogs, her bookbag slaps her back with its heavy weight. She lowers her umbrella; the sun is in her face, but she doesn’t care. She’s aware of the people watching, some stopping to let her pass. “Charles!” she calls in a panic. He continues to walk through the crowd. Only the back of his head is visible. Thandi picks up speed, knowing deep down that if she doesn’t reach him, something inside her will crumble. “Charles!” Her voice is shrill, naked, broken. He stops. When he turns, she runs right into him. Her face is pressed to his chest, and she allows herself to be held by him, inhaling his ripe pawpaw smell. She imagines how it looks for her to be carrying on this way in public, but doesn’t care. She’s too tired to care.

“Thought yuh was in a hurry to get somewhere,” he whispers quietly into the top of her head.

He takes her to his zinc shed. They pass the main shack, where his mother is probably staring at the ceiling, debilitated by the one thing Thandi now knows intimately — yearning. Charles takes off her clothes. He’s gentle. The panic and desperation she felt earlier makes her willing to take him as he is — uncultivated, uneducated, unkempt, hard.