Here Comes the Sun(2)

“When yuh g’wan get yuh own car, Margot?” Maxi asks. “Ah hear seh di hotel pay good, good money.”

Margot leans back on the leather seat and breathes in the pungent smells. “Soon.” She looks out the window. Although it’s pitch-black, she can tell she’s passing by the sea. For a moment she wants to give her thoughts freedom to roam in this dark, in this uncertainty.

“How soon?” Maxi asks.

“What? Yuh dat desperate to go out of business?” She smiles at him—it’s a slow, easy smile; her first real one all day. Her job entails a conscious movement of the jaw, a curve of the mouth to reveal teeth, all teeth—a distraction from the eyes, which never hold the same enthusiasm, but are practiced all the same to maintain eye contact with guests. “It’s a wonderful day at Palm Star Resort, how may I help you?” “Good morning, sir.” “Yes, ma’am, let me get that for you.” “No, sir, we don’t offer a direct shuttle to Kingston, but there’s one to Ocho Rios.” “May I help you with anything else, ma’am?” “Your shuttle is outside waiting on you, sir.” “You have a good day, now. I’m here if you need anything. No problem.”

“We jus’ haffi stop meeting like this. Dat’s all,” Maxi says.

Margot returns her attention outside. “As soon as Thandi gets through school. Yuh know how dat goes.”

Maxi chuckles softly. When she looks at him, she sees the flash of his teeth, which seem luminous in the dark. “Yuh know how dat goes.” He mimics her.

“What?”

“Nottin’.”

“What’s di mattah with you, Maxi?”

He uses one hand to smooth the mustache over his wide mouth. In school all her friends had crushes on him. They thought he looked like Bob Marley, with the naps in his head that grew longer and longer, his peanut-brown skin, and his rebel ways. Once he told a teacher that she was ignorant for believing Christopher Columbus discovered Jamaica. “Wha’ ’bout di indigenous people who were here first?” He was always book-smart, using words no one had ever heard used in everyday conversations: indigenous, inequality, uprising, revolution, mental slavery. He skipped classes to read books about Marcus Garvey, telling anyone who would listen that real history was in those books. The principal, Mr. Rhone, a high yellow man from St. Elizabeth, grew concerned about Maxi’s rebelliousness, fearing it might influence other students, and expelled him. Maxi hadn’t been back to school since. Had he not filled his head with rubbish about freedom and Africa, he would’ve been a doctor, a lawyer, a politician, or some other big shot by now, since he had certainly been the smartest boy in school. Margot doesn’t want the same thing to happen to her sister. Like Maxi, Thandi is book-smart. She has the potential to be somebody. Margot has to make sure that Thandi doesn’t ruin it for herself.

“Yuh put too much pressure pon di poor chile. Why yuh don’t focus on your own dreams?”

“My dream is for my sister to be successful.”

“And what’s her dream?”

“Same.”

“Yuh eva ask har?”

“Maxi, what’s with all dis talk?”

“Jus’ saying if yuh eva ask yuh sista what is her dreams. Yuh so set on pushing her. One day di bottom aggo drop out.”

“Max, stop wid dis foolishness. Unlike certain people I know, Thandi ’ave ambition.”

“Certain people.” Maxi grimaces. Again he runs his hand over his faint mustache. “I an’ I did know weh me want long ago. An’ it didn’t have nothing to do wid weh dem teach inna school. Dem creating robots outta our children, Margot. Is di white man’s philosophy dem learning. What about our heritage and culture?” He kisses his teeth. “Ah Babylon business dem ah fill up di children’s minds wid. Yuh sista, Thandi, is a sweet girl. She know har book. But as ah say, when pot boil too long di wata dry out an’ di bottom aggo drop out.”

Margot holds a hand to his face like a stop sign. “Ah t’ink we done wid dis convahsation.”

They fall into the hum of the silence. Maxi begins to whistle as he concentrates on the dark road ahead of them. Only the white lines are visible, and Margot tries to count them to calm herself. Of course she has dreams. She has always had dreams. Her dream is to get away as far as possible from here. Maybe America, England, or someplace where she can reinvent herself. Become someone new and uninhibited; a place where she can indulge the desires she has resisted for so long. The hotel actually doesn’t pay much, but this Margot cannot say to anyone. She dresses nicely to go to work, her dove-gray uniform carefully pressed, each pleat carefully aligned; her hair straightened and combed into a neat bun, not a strand out of place except for the baby hairs slicked down with gel around the edges to give the impression of good hair; and her makeup meticulously perfect, enough powder to make her seem lighter than she is; a glorified servant. Maybe that’s how Alphonso—her white Jamaican boss—sees her. A glorified servant. As heir to his father’s Wellington empire—which includes coffee farms, rum estates, and properties all over the island, from Portland to Westmoreland, including Palm Star Resort—he was nice enough to keep her aboard after firing everyone else that his father, the late Reginald Wellington Senior, had hired. At first she despised herself for letting him touch her. But then she despised herself for the pride that made her believe she had a choice. What she got from it (and continues to get from it) was better than scrubbing floors. She didn’t want to lose this opportunity. All she wanted in the beginning was to be exposed to other worlds, anything that could take her out of this squalor and give her a chance to get away from Delores and the memory of what her mother had done to her.