Here Comes the Sun(63)

Thandi makes a beeline to Charles’s house, her backpack bouncing behind her. She will apologize to him for their last encounter, tell him that she wasn’t herself; that something came over her and made her do what she did, embarrassing them both. She flings the gate open and hurries to his shack. Cain and Abel trail behind her. They recognize her now, jumping up to greet her, their tails wagging and tongues hanging. She knocks on Charles’s door. When she knocks again and no one answers, she peers through the window. He’s not there. She looks around the yard, wondering where he could be, given that he was not by the river. Neither was he by his father’s boat. She contemplates the main shack, where the front door swings open in the light breeze. She never thought to look there. Never thought to go inside, for it is known in River Bank that Miss Violet does not take visitors. Thandi goes to the main house anyway and pushes the door open.

The house reeks of sinkle bible and boiled tamarind leaves. Thandi shudders from the stench, which reminds her of sickness. But it is the more potent mixture of piss, feces, and something else that makes her swallow the box lunch she ate at school earlier. The darkness doesn’t permit Thandi to see much farther than the doorway. She considers turning and going back outside, but her feet remain grounded as though the floor is made of wet cement. Someone coughs. This is followed by a soft coo, like a baby bird or something more fragile. Thandi steps inside, her feet aggravating the wooden floorboards. She puts her backpack over both shoulders so that her hands are free to feel around. A sliver of daylight enters through the small tear in the curtain by the only window. The curtain, Thandi notices, is just an old sheet. This faint light allows her to see the small table with a couple of chairs, some cardboard boxes, a stack of old newspapers, and a barrel. Now that she’s inside, outside seems like a foreign country. There’s no concept of time and place. The date—though currently June 1, 1994—is still August 7, 1988, according to the water-stained calendar hanging on a wall.

Inside this house, Hurricane Gilbert has not yet come and devastated the island, flooding out some residents of River Bank. Inside this house, Edward Seaga is still Prime Minister of Jamaica, a yellowing picture of him pasted next to the calendar. Inside this house, a fisherman name Asafa still brings home lobster for his family. When Thandi approaches the bedroom (the partitioned area where the cooing gets louder, sounding like a wounded animal as opposed to the soft, fragile thing that Thandi had pictured earlier) a frail woman’s voice calls out. “Asafa? Ah you dat?” But it’s not the assumption that throws Thandi off guard; it’s the sound of the woman’s voice—gravellike and strained, as though she has been weeping for hours, days, weeks, months, years. Nearly a decade. “Asafa?”

Thandi pauses. Though she’s barely breathed since entering the house, she gasps for the little air remaining.

“No, Mama, is jus’ me. Yuh imagining t’ings again.” It’s Charles. Thandi tiptoes to the side of the partition, a red, velvety upholstery material that she’s used to seeing on chairs in Mr. Farrow’s furniture place. She spies Charles squeezing a piece of washcloth from a basin. Thandi hears the water swooshing around. His mother is sitting up on a narrow bed, naked, looking like a big doll. Her dark hair is wild, flanked with powdery grays. Her eyes are sunken and wide, the bags under them like dark pouches. It’s hard for Thandi to recognize Miss Violet with all that wrinkled flesh. Her face seems to have crumpled under many years of disappointment, worry, sadness, and longing. This is Jullette’s mother. A woman Thandi once thought to be the most beautiful, loving, and caring mother compared to hers. Miss Violet would give Jullette peanuts even when she didn’t ask. She gave her perms too, something Thandi envied because it made Jullette seem grown. And when Jullette’s hair started falling out, Miss Violet had her get those extension braids. They talked like friends, giggling and smiling at each other all the time. There was never any beating or shaming. As the only girl in her family of boys, Jullette did anything she wanted without living in fear of a domineering mother. Miss Violet used to sell peanuts, tamarind balls, and peppered shrimp outside the gate of their primary school. She was always ready for Thandi with a pretty smile, though she had only a few teeth left in her mouth then. “Aye, coolie girl.”

Currently the woman looks like she has aged fifty years, her eyes glazed with nostalgia. “Yuh rememba Irby an’ Georgie?” she asks her son, pronouncing “Georgie” as “Jaaaji.” Her pink tongue wallows in her gaping, toothless mouth like a whale.

“Yes, Mama,” Charles replies, using the cloth to bathe his mother. Miss Violet is indifferent to this. Indifferent to her grown son cleaning her this way, wiping the wet cloth over her sandy-brown breasts that are full, heavy sacks on her chest.

“An’ Premrose. Is wah become ah Premrose?” Miss Violet asks. The water trickles down her pouched belly and settles in her concave navel. Her eyes glisten as she appears to search her memory for a woman named Premrose. “Mi will do anyting fi har sorrel now,” she says, clucking her tongue. “Those was some good days.” Charles continues to wipe, his face neutral despite the downward stroke between his mother’s legs, where the black and gray hairs match the ones on her head.

“She’s dead now,” Charles says, looking away from his task out of politeness and respect. Thandi can’t see the look on his face, but his motion is a mechanical one—his mother’s hands are busy touching her hair as if to replace a wayward strand from an elegant coif. All she says is, “Uhn,” as though this news of Premrose’s passing means nothing. She says it again when Charles finishes.