Here Comes the Sun(6)

“I used to be black like you, but now look at me . . .” Miss Ruby turns her head from side to side for Thandi to see her salmon-colored skin, delicate with the texture of scalded milk. “See how bright my skin come? If yuh follow instructions yours will get this way quicker. Now dat yuh ’ave di Queen of Pearl, yuh might be lucky. If yuh want faster results, use it twice ah day.”

She rubs the concoction up and down Thandi’s neck, back, arms, and shoulders. She rubs everywhere but her butt crack. Miss Ruby is hardly tender. Thandi wonders if Miss Ruby’s roughness is punishment for not having followed her earlier instructions. She imagines her blackness peeling off, the hydrogen peroxide Miss Ruby pours into the mixture acting like an abrasive, a medicine for her melancholy. She closes her eyes as the warm formula touches her skin. Miss Ruby works her way to Thandi’s chest. The circular motion of a stranger’s hands on her breasts makes Thandi blush. She has never been touched this way. She opens her eyes and searches for something—anything—that can take her mind off the sensation of this strange woman’s fingers. She imagines herself as a fish Miss Ruby rubs down with salt and vinegar before frying. Her eyes find the ceiling. Had she been able to lift her arm, she would trace the things she sees projected from her mind.

“Luckily yuh ’ave good hair already,” Miss Ruby says. “Good, coolie hair. Yuh daddy is a Indian?”

“I don’t know,” Thandi says, still staring up at the planks in the ceiling. “Never met him.”

“Tsk, tsk. Well, God played a cruel joke on you. Because, chile, if yuh skin was as pretty as yuh hair, you’d be one gorgeous woman.”

Miss Ruby isn’t saying anything Thandi hasn’t heard before. Her mother says the same thing, often shaking her head the way she does over burned food that has to go to waste. “It’s a pity yuh neva have skin like yuh daddy.” Thandi is neither the nutmeg-brown that makes Margot an honorable mistress—a rung lower than a bright-skinned wife—nor is she black like Delores, whose skin makes people sympathetic when they see her. “Who want to be black like dat in dis place?” Miss Ruby once said to Thandi about her mother.

Miss Ruby gives Thandi the homemade mixture in the jar for her to apply as needed. “Only as needed,” she stresses. “These are very strong chemicals that could kill yuh.” She then reaches for the Saran Wrap and begins to wrap Thandi’s arms and torso. A mummified Thandi sits and listens to Miss Ruby’s instructions:

“If yuh waan come quicker, leave on the plastic. Don’t wash. Don’t go in the sun. If yuh haffi go in the sun fah whateva reason, mek sure seh yuh covah up at all times from head to toe. If yuh start to feel like yuh g’wan faint, jus’ drink wata. It mek yuh sweat more. Whatevah yuh do, nuh tek off the plastic. An’ remembah, stay outta that sun!”

Miss Ruby repeats these words like an ominous warning, her eyes pouring into Thandi’s. Thandi listens and nods, though she wants to rip the Saran Wrap off and jump in the river. She imagines her skin boiling, becoming molten liquid underneath the plastic wrap.

“Do I have to wear this all the time?” Thandi asks.

“Heat an’ sweat is yuh advantage. Jus’ bear it,” Miss Ruby says, stamping her with a look.

Thandi regrets saying anything, sensing her complaint might be interpreted as her wanting less out of life. Less opportunity. Less chance of attracting the type of boys her mother and sister want her to attract (the type who will be at the party for sure). Less chance of acceptance in school. Less chance to flunk school—the only ship on which black girls like her could float, given that their looks will never do it for them. Her mother tells her this too. “Di only thing yuh have going for you is yuh education. Don’t ruin it.” Meanwhile, the unintelligent “brownins” in school end up with modeling contracts, or with boyfriends with money they can spend on them. The less attractive ones get good jobs in their family businesses. What else does she have to fall back on if she fails the exam, besides her drawings? But no one wants those. No one respects an artist. So when Thandi puts her clothes on, she pretends to ignore the crinkling of the plastic under her uniform and the nausea that comes over her.

Miss Ruby examines her skin, her eyes like a sharp razor raking over Thandi’s body as though looking for areas she might have missed—dark patches that need to be rubbed, scrubbed down with the rigor of someone scouring the bottom of a burnt pot. Or the way she used to scale fish. Her dark eyes have in them a subtle hostility that reminds Thandi of the way the girls and nuns at school look at her. Can she tell Thandi doesn’t belong? Can she sniff her deceit? Perhaps in that moment Thandi reminds her of someone who did her wrong. Or of herself—the way she looked before she bleached her skin. How suddenly her mood changes once Thandi pays her the money.

“Remembah to stay outta the sun like ah tell yuh,” Miss Ruby says. “’Cause you and I both know, God nuh like ugly.”

When Thandi exits Miss Ruby’s shack, she exhales. She hadn’t realized she was holding her breath all that time to prevent herself from inhaling those chemicals that stank up the place. The pungent ammonia has replaced the fish smell.

On her way back, Thandi takes the shaded path, which happens to go past the pink house—one of the nicest houses in the entire River Bank community. In fact, it’s one of only two houses in River Bank built with real cement and blocks and a shingle roof. It even has shutter windows and indoor plumbing.