Here Comes the Sun(22)

“What yuh doing here?” Margot asks, shutting off the shower. “Ah thought you were at di market.” She clumsily reaches for her towel to cover herself.

“Is suh yuh carry on when yuh t’ink nobody is here?” Delores asks. “Yuh run up di wata rate?”

“I was washing off.”

“Yuh didn’t ’ave di decency fi do dat earlier?”

“I wanted to change my clothes. I was on my way to work when I—” Margot fans away the rest of her words. She doesn’t feel like going into details with Delores about the John-crow. Delores sucks her teeth. Margot thought her mother would leave her alone, but Delores just stands there as though waiting for more explanation.

“What else yuh want?” Margot asks.

Delores shakes her head. “Sometimes ah wondah ’bout you. If me neva come back here, you might ah been in dat wata all day. Shouldn’t you be at work? Dat hotel yuh work at giving yuh di illusion dat we ’ave money fi dash weh? If yuh lose dat job, God help we! Washing off, my foot! Which sane person wash off inna broad daylight outside? Is want yuh want Likkle Richie an’ any other Peeping Tom fi see yuh?”

“Would it make a difference?” Margot asks.

“Where did I go wrong?”

“Let me pass. I have to get to work. You said so yuhself.”

Delores doesn’t move. She regards Margot closely, like she used to do when Margot was a child—when she gave her the kind of baths that were meant to cleanse her of evil.

“What is it?” Margot asks. Her voice cracks under the weight of the memory.

“Yuh t’ink ah got di sense of a gnat?”

Margot chuckles lightly, though her knees buckle. “I don’t have no time fah dis.”

“You got time fah other t’ings. T’ink ah don’t notice dat yuh don’t sleep here no more? You is a sneak, an’ God g’wan strike yuh dung.”

Margot throws her head back and laughs out loud. “I am thirty years old. Ah can sleep anywhere ah please. An’ besides, yuh soun’ like ole Miss Gracie wid har drunk, crazy self.” She is able to walk past Delores into the house. She doesn’t let on that God was the first thing she thought about this morning when she stumbled upon death in her path.

“At di end ah di day, yuh can’t seh ah neva try wid yuh,” Delores says.

Margot is glad that she’s not facing Delores; glad that she can focus on dressing herself, careful not to rip her stocking. The proof of her innocence—since she is always on trial—is in her calm, her ability to seem unaffected by anything Delores says. She tries hard in this moment not to seek comfort in the fantasy she had earlier of moving away with Verdene—a thought that skipped like a carefree child, shifting things around, making room. But try as she might, Margot cannot stop it from emerging. Neither can she protect it from Delores. Her best and safest bet is to kill it.



Margot watches Alphonso talking to the administrative staff in his office—the higher-ups who run his hotel resort when he’s not around. Alphonso is pacing as he gives orders, looking like a boy balancing a crown on his head while walking a tight rope. Through the tilted louver windows with curtains that separate the front desk from the conference room, she can hear and see a few things—Dwight, the branch manager, clutching his pen in his tight fist as Alphonso paces before him; Simon, the activities coordinator, who is in charge of all the in-house entertainment at the hotel; Boris, the head of hotel security and a former police sergeant; Camille, Dwight’s assistant, who struggles to write down every sentence coming out of the four gentlemen’s mouths during the meeting; and Blacka, the accountant and Alphonso’s right-hand man, looking like a pharaoh sitting with his arms folded and chest puffed, silently observing.

“Yuh t’ink I’m running a farm here? Yuh t’ink is chump-change people paying to stay at my resort?” Alphonso barks. “You are all incompetent!”

Dwight sits forward, dropping his pen. “Is who yuh t’ink yuh talking to dat way? If it wasn’t fah all of us in here, this hotel wouldn’t be open! Yuh father never intended fah you to take ovah . . . It was yuh brother. If Joseph never died in that car accident yuh wouldn’t be no god dat you is now! He knew yuh was a disgrace! So don’t you come in here now, telling us you’re dissatisfied. We’re not the fault why di hotel losing money!”

Alphonso pounces at Dwight and grabs him by the collar. Boris and Simon jump up to pull them apart. When he’s free, Dwight fixes his tie and adjusts the collar of his pin-striped shirt as Alphonso calms himself. The other men, excluding Blacka, give Alphonso a look that reminds Margot of the way the other hotel employees look at her, when they whisper within earshot, “Who does that Margot think she is? She act like she is some big s’maddy. Yuh see di way she walk around here like she own di place?”

But Margot is somebody. She knows, for example, that she can do a better job than Dwight, who is a buffoon. Because of him the hotel isn’t doing well. His fancy degree, expensive suits, and luxury cars don’t hide the fact that he’s incompetent. What makes Dwight favorable is the fact that he’s Alphonso’s second cousin and went to private school with him at Ridley College in Canada. Margot knows deep down that no hotel would’ve hired Dwight had it not been for his Wellington family name—Dwight, who shows up late, flashing his watch and telling others to be on time; Dwight, who overlooks complaints and any details having to do with the comfort of the guests; Dwight, who leaves the majority of the work to his assistant, Camille—who in Margot’s opinion wastes her time every evening sitting on his lap. Poor girl chose the wrong Wellington to screw.