Here Comes the Sun(35)

When Thandi was younger she used to observe her sister. Under the appraisal of men’s stares was the mysterious force that swayed Margot’s wide hips atop sturdy bow legs. When she passed them by, they would turn their heads, their eyes trained on those hips, their hands stroking their chins as though contemplating a plate of oxtail stew. “Wh’appen, sugah?” Brown sugar, or brownin’ for short. Margot never seemed uncomfortable, unlike Thandi, who shies away from such attention; Margot touched men frequently as she talked, her hand casually stroking their arm or chest. And when they said something, anything, Margot used to throw her head back and laugh a soft, titillating laugh that rippled through the air above the sounds of Gregory Isaacs, Beres Hammond, or Dennis Brown coming from the boom box at Dino’s. This caused the men to pause and observe the skin of her neck, the length of her lashes that swept her full cheeks as her eyes squinted with delight; lust filling their own eyes, like smoke from a ganja spliff. In Margot’s presence, a man would shout to his contenders amid the shuffling of dominoes, slamming his hand or his beer hard on the wooden table, “Anotha roun’!” Then, to Margot, “Watch me win nuh, sugah?” And Margot, gracious as she is, would decline, stroking the man’s arm. “Maybe next time, love.” The man would proceed to play his hand, smiling to himself as though he had already won.

When Charles approaches Thandi with a crate he’s found inside another abandoned boat, he’s grinning from ear to ear. He plops down in front of her, smelling like the salty air. Their knees touch but she doesn’t move hers away.

“So why yuh not in school?” he asks, his eyes gentle like the water with flecks of gold from the sun. She shrugs. She wonders what to tell him. What role should she play? Charles might like rude girls. Girls not afraid to raise their voices in the street. Girls who spar with grown men in the square, whom they let lift their skirts, slip their fingers inside. “Dis is a nice surprise,” he continues.

“What’s so surprising?” Thandi counters, immediately regretting that she forgot to mangle her words, chew them up, and spit them out in patois. She’s afraid she sounds too proper. But Charles doesn’t seem to mind.

“You neva strike me as a girl who would be out here jus’ like dat,” he says, regarding her face the way Brother Smith regards her paintings—with studied observation. “Yuh always to yuhself.”

“You don’t know me.”

“Yuh neva gimme a chance to.”

“So how would you know what I’m like?”

“I watch you. Like ah watch di sky.”

Thandi blushes.

“So tell me,” he says, cocking his head to one side. “What’s in dat book of yours?” he asks. “Don’t tell me is jus’ me yuh draw in it.” He’s leaning closer, his lips parted, his thick eyebrows raised. Behind him the water seems to rise, mounting the rocks.

Thandi squeezes her legs together. “You’re really full of yuhself to assume you’re my subject.”

“Ah wouldn’t say it if ah didn’t notice you staring wid it open on yuh lap.” Charles twists his mouth to the side like he’s sucking something from his teeth or trying not to laugh.

“I draw anything I feel. Don’t have to have meaning. I mean, I can’t really seem to capture what I really want to capture,” Thandi responds, searching for a reaction in his face. But she can’t tell what she sees. Charles listens to her with the intentness of a wizened old man, watching her gestures, affirming her ambivalence. She wonders how old he really is. She’s afraid that she has revealed too much too soon. “I don’t know why I even care. This might sound stupid, but I just want to win this art competition at school.” Her nervousness makes her talk too much. Very rarely does she say this much to anyone about what she wants, much less to a common boy she barely knows.

“If it is dat important to you, then why would you t’ink it’s stupid?” he asks.

Thandi shrugs her shoulders.

Charles reaches for her hand and holds it as though he has done this many times before. “Somehow ah get di feeling dis is more important to you than winning.”

Unlike her sweaty ones, Charles’s palms are dry and surprisingly warm, like sun-warmed stones. She doesn’t pull away, though a girl like her—a Saint Emmanuel High School girl—should have rebuked such audacity. A series of thoughts chastises her: Who does he think he is? Since she’s getting lighter, shouldn’t she be looking elsewhere—at the boys in Ironshore, with big houses and cars? What now? But sitting here with her hand in Charles’s feels oddly natural. Their brown skin seems connected; and a lump of uncertainty over her cream rises in Thandi’s throat. Her inhibitions melt like candle wax under his heat. She imagines this is how girls with boyfriends feel. Thandi leans into Charles, closing her eyes. But Charles pulls back, his sudden motion rustling the sticks at their feet, snapping them in half.

“Yuh all right?” he asks.

“Sorry.”

Thandi picks up the sketchpad, which had slipped from her lap. Charles puts his hand on her shoulder. She cannot read his expression.

“You’ll figure it out,” Charles says, moving away. She wishes she were still wrapped in plastic, for it might have worked to keep her broken heart intact. If this is a test, then she has failed miserably. She gets up and flees in the direction of the water.