Here Comes the Sun(49)

“All right,” he says.



Later, she waits up in the dark kitchen for Margot. She doesn’t turn the lights on. Maybe she can catch the perpetrators if they dare step foot inside her yard again. And besides, she likes the dark. It’s cooler, quieter, and more peaceful, the chirpings of crickets like a nocturnal lullaby. The red digits on the small digital clock on the counter, which Verdene sometimes uses as a timer when baking, is blinking 11 PM. It has been like this for the last four weeks. Waiting by the telephone. Pacing. Cooking to help take her mind off things. Setting the table, laying out meals she knows that only she will eat.

Verdene calls the hotel again.

“What you mean, she already left?” she asks the girl who answers. The girl sounds like she has a clothespin clipped on the bridge of her nose.

“Did you even check? The least you can do is check!”

“Ma’am, she signed out.”

“But you said that yesterday too. How many breaks can one person take?”

Then she composes herself, taking a deep breath, allowing her question to take form. “Did she . . .” She pauses and looks at her fist on the counter by the telephone. “Did she leave with anyone?” As soon as Verdene asks this question she feels ashamed. Before the girl can respond, Verdene tells her never mind and hangs up. She thinks about all the reasons Margot could be unavailable. After all, she still has obligations as a working woman. But not even a phone call to say so herself?

Verdene clutches the blue ceramic mug in front of her on the table. She had poured some rum in her tea, hoping it would make her go to sleep quicker. She used to see her mother do the same on those nights after she had been beaten badly and needed something stronger than medicine to numb the pain, which Verdene suspected, even then, wasn’t just physical.

So here she is, unable to close her eyes as she suffers from a different pain, its impact just as powerful as a kick in the belly or a clenched fist to the chin. Margot is avoiding her. She notices the shadows from the trees outside that dance in the breeze; they’re faint like the dreaded dawning of intuition. Earlier she had taken a bath to freshen up. Just in case. In the mirror Verdene studied herself naked, regarding the love handles she had comfortably acquired around her hips and belly. For the first time in a long while, she frowned at them, conscious of the softness of her shape. Who is she? What has she become? She grabbed the fat around her hips and held it, disgust rising in her throat, settling on her tongue.

Tonight she cooked a nice meal and set the table. The candle is still resting in the center of the table like a mockery of her efforts. In the silence of waiting, Verdene sighs deeply, hoping the rush of air into her lungs and the rum warming her blood will steady her. Clear her head. In front of her, the plate of rice rises like a snow-covered mountain, its peak threatening to touch the ceiling when she looks up. The steam has cooled, but the sight of the starchy white grains promises to assuage her. She takes a spoonful with the serving spoon. One, then two, then three spoonfuls, until she loses count. She eats the plate of plantains too. And the plate of codfish fritters. Every time she swallows she feels nothing. Nothing at all. When she’s emptied the plates she jumps up from the table, accidentally knocking her chair over and bumping into things on her way to the bathroom. It’s here that she finds her reprieve, the calm that settles over her like a damp towel pressed against her forehead in the heat as the smell of stomach acid rises. Stays. She remains kneeling on the floor, too weak to move. Too tired to feel bad about what she just did.

Finally, Verdene presses her palms on the cold concrete and pushes herself up. As she stands, her vision is invaded by black polka dots. She balances herself by holding on to the sink, then the doorframe, then eventually to the walls as she makes her way down the dark corridor toward the kitchen. She moves closer to the table and clutches the mug that holds her tea mixed with rum. She lifts it to her mouth and drinks. When she’s done, she reaches for the bottle of rum and drinks from that. She squints and grimaces as the liquid burns her throat. She slams the bottle down on the table. But how could Margot not call? How could she not call? Had she been religious, this would’ve been a prayer, a litany of pleas and questions.

Verdene tilts her head back and laughs at the notion of Jesus listening to her harp over a woman. Haven’t I learned my lesson? Verdene has always been the one to push women away with her aggressive need for them to fulfill her, to pour their souls into the gaping hole inside her—a cavity with no bottom; she chased them and backed them into corners with her yearnings, her dependency on them to make her feel whole—the way Aunt Gertrude said Jesus is supposed to. On bended knees, a seventeen-year-old Verdene had bowed her head as Aunt Gertrude’s priest anointed her. Aunt Gertrude had told him about the incident with Akua at the university. The priest placed his holy hand on Verdene’s head, his grasp like a skullcap as he prayed away Verdene’s sin. The same priest married her and her husband four years later. A firm squeeze on Verdene’s right shoulder during her wedding reception was the priest’s way of saying he approved of her salvation—that God had intervened and healed her. Made her whole. Those laughs she and her husband shared, the discussions that ebbed and flowed well into the nights, the comfortable silence that breathed with them after dinner when they each settled into their own readings, sailing into disparate worlds. But a woman has other needs too. The need to be connected to something greater—a cause, a passion. Unlike the other women, who offered an escape from the lies Verdene told herself and the people whose opinions once mattered, Margot offers countenance. But then there’s that pain she senses in Margot—the kind of pain that makes other pains seem minute, insignificant in comparison. Even when Margot was a girl, Verdene sensed this pain. Saw it in her eyes. It was stifling enough to choke her if she wasn’t careful to look away.