Nicole Dennis-Benn - Here Comes the Sun

“Let me put it in, jus’ a likkle,” he whispers in her ear. She lies down on his bed, her back on the cool, rumpled sheet in complete surrender to this boy — the type of boy she was sheltered from. She opens up for him, but Clover appears in her mind. It’s his breathing she hears; his rough kisses that she feels down her neck; his touch that makes her muscles clench like a tight fist. And that pulling and tugging and grunting to get inside, all of that his. She writhes with this memory, thrashing her limbs, her nails digging inside flesh, her teeth pressing into an earlobe. There’s a sharp yelp. Clover is restraining her. Thandi spits in his face and screams until she’s weak and exhausted.

When she opens her eyes a few minutes later, Charles has moved away from her to the other side of the bed, his naked body perched on the edge like a gargoyle in repose, his penis flaccid between his legs. He’s staring at her, his pupils holding in them so many things that she cannot read, mostly questions. Pieces of his skin are under her nails, the moisture of his blood fresh on their tips. What has she done? In the silence he rolls a spliff and smokes it. He doesn’t bother to tell her to get dressed, though she lies there naked, trembling, and covered in sweat. There’s a cut over one of his eyebrows. Another one on his right cheek. A couple scratches on his arms and, she’s sure, on his back. She reaches to touch him, but he flinches.

He lights the wick of the small kerosene lamp by the bed with a flick of his lighter. The lamp glows inside the shed. Thandi rests her head in the crook of her elbow and studies him in this light. A single tear runs across the bridge of her nose. “I’m sorry,” she says finally.

But he only shrugs. “It’s all right, is yuh first time. Ah shoulda been more gentle.”

His face is obscured in the cloud of smoke he puffs. She reaches for him again. She doesn’t want to go home. She doesn’t want to see Delores. Or Margot. He doesn’t pull away. Thandi gets up from the bed and stands before him. He lowers his spliff and tilts his head up at her. She bends to give him a kiss on his mouth, then on his throat. With his free hand he holds the back of her head to keep her face close to his. Their noses touch and she closes her eyes. “Yuh can stay as long as yuh want,” he whispers. Thandi lowers herself onto his lap and buries her face in the crook of his neck.

WHEN MARGOT ENTERS THE HOUSE, DELORES IS THERE, HER elbows on the dining table, her head resting in her hands. Grandma Merle is rocking back and forth on a chair next to the bed. Delores straightens up when she sees her daughter.

“She’s with you?” Delores asks.

“Who?”

“Yuh sistah! Is she with you?”

Margot shakes her head. “No, she’s not.”

Delores runs her hands over the purple hair-scarf she uses to cover her thinning braids. “But Jesus ’ave mercy. Where could she be?” It’s eleven o’clock at night. “Weh she could deh dis late?”

“Did you ask the neighbors?” Margot asks her mother, feeling a little woozy from the wine she drank at the hotel. She had sat in a room by herself and poured herself glass after glass. She missed Verdene terribly, but every time she picked up the telephone to dial her number, she lost the courage the wine had given her and hung up.

“Maybe she’s studying late somewhere. .” Margot plops down on the bed and kicks off her shoes. She leans forward, resting her elbows on her knees and rubbing her temples with her hands, eyes closed. Her mother’s talking in her ears, her voice rising.

“Which neighbor?” Delores asks. “Thandi don’t talk to nobody in dis blasted community. She only go to school an’ come home.”

“You know dat for sure?” Margot asks her mother.

“Yuh sistah is not like you. She’s a good girl.”

“Mama, she’s a teenager. She’s not a likkle girl.”

Delores is rocking back and forth like Grandma Merle. “Oh, lawd, what am I going to do?” She sniffs and uses the hem of her blouse to wipe her face. “Yuh see wah me haffi deal wid, Mama?” Delores asks Grandma Merle, who is silent. Margot notices the bruises on her grandmother’s arms.

“Did you ask Grandma?” Margot asks, looking at the old woman, her eyes narrowing. “Maybe she saw something. She sees everything.”

“Yuh don’t see dat yuh grandmother is not a sane s’maddy?” Delores snaps.

“She’s sitting right there. Ask her. You ask her what she sees. Ask her how many things she lets happen an’ say nothing.” Margot sits up on the edge of the bed. In reams of memories, she remembers her grandmother’s knowing gazes. Margot used to like watching her make clothes, the concentration creasing her face. Back then, before her features became indistinguishable, she had high slanted cheekbones, a flared nose, and thick lips between which she held safety pins or threads. Margot kept Grandma Merle company as she hovered over the Singer, feeling they were in an intimate circle, joined together in the humming of the machine that made beauty from scraps.

“You is the mad one,” Delores says. “You don’t see yuh granny mute from yuh was fourteen? You did this to her. Ah have a feelin’ dat is you give di money to Winston an’ mek him run. Yuh mek him tek har heart wid him, leaving jus’ a empty shell of a ’ooman. You! You mek t’ings haa’d fi people.”

“Mama, I don’t know what yuh talkin’ about.” Margot picks up Thandi’s nightgown off the bed and holds it against herself.

“Yuh think me is a idiot?” Delores puts her hands on her hips, her shoulders squared, giving her upper body more proportion. “Because ah you, Winston run ’way. Ovah an’ ovah me t’ink ’bout it. Me ’membah seh you did see where me hide di money! You was di only one who know ’bout dat money. You! Yuh lying snake. You is di livin’ devil in flesh!”

Margot meets Delores’s glare. “And what does that make you?”

“Now yuh sistah is missing and it’s your fault!”

“So everything is my fault?”

“Yes. Yuh is nothing but a disgrace.”

Margot steps back a little, afraid that her mother might pounce on her, hold her down and give her those pinches again.

“If anyone is to blame for Thandi acting out, it’s you,” Delores says. “Yuh brainwash har. The same how dat woman brainwash you. .” Delores says this in a voice Margot could’ve mistaken for tenderness had her mother been a different person. “That was why I had to fix yuh.”

Margot stumbles backward, as far away from her mother as possible. She bumps into the vanity. The mirror crashes down and breaks, the splinters scattering across the floor. Margot holds on to the edges of the vanity, helpless in her ability to defend herself from the memories. The black seeps into her, masking any sentiments, mangling any desire to forgive, hardening the weak pulp of a muscle beating inside her chest.

“You did more harm to me than anyone else,” she says to her mother.

But Delores is defiant, her mouth drawn like a zealot’s, convinced of the good of her actions. “It was the only way,” Delores says. “The only way dat ah could save yuh from yuh ways.”

Margot’s rage finally breaks and she bounds toward her mother like a wildcat. She grabs Delores by the neck and backs her into the peeling wall next to where Grandma Merle sits rocking. Delores fights Margot off her, her hands clamping on Margot’s wrists, Margot’s hands around her neck like brass shackles. Margot doesn’t give up.

“Go ahead an’ kill me,” Delores says. “Yuh might as well save me from this blasted life. Yuh is nothing but a low-down, dirty whore! A nasty , dirty, sodomite whore. And now yuh g’wan add murderer to yuh list. So kill me, yuh blasted fool!”