Here Comes the Sun(72)

Charles is several feet away, his head still down as he walks in the direction of the hill. “Charles!” she hears herself shout. Saint Emmanuel girls are warned against raising their voices in public. The world should see them as quiet vessels of God. But Thandi throws all this away when she runs after him. “Charles!” As she jogs, her bookbag slaps her back with its heavy weight. She lowers her umbrella; the sun is in her face, but she doesn’t care. She’s aware of the people watching, some stopping to let her pass. “Charles!” she calls in a panic. He continues to walk through the crowd. Only the back of his head is visible. Thandi picks up speed, knowing deep down that if she doesn’t reach him, something inside her will crumble. “Charles!” Her voice is shrill, naked, broken. He stops. When he turns, she runs right into him. Her face is pressed to his chest, and she allows herself to be held by him, inhaling his ripe pawpaw smell. She imagines how it looks for her to be carrying on this way in public, but doesn’t care. She’s too tired to care.

“Thought yuh was in a hurry to get somewhere,” he whispers quietly into the top of her head.

He takes her to his zinc shed. They pass the main shack, where his mother is probably staring at the ceiling, debilitated by the one thing Thandi now knows intimately—yearning. Charles takes off her clothes. He’s gentle. The panic and desperation she felt earlier makes her willing to take him as he is—uncultivated, uneducated, unkempt, hard.

“Let me put it in, jus’ a likkle,” he whispers in her ear. She lies down on his bed, her back on the cool, rumpled sheet in complete surrender to this boy—the type of boy she was sheltered from. She opens up for him, but Clover appears in her mind. It’s his breathing she hears; his rough kisses that she feels down her neck; his touch that makes her muscles clench like a tight fist. And that pulling and tugging and grunting to get inside, all of that his. She writhes with this memory, thrashing her limbs, her nails digging inside flesh, her teeth pressing into an earlobe. There’s a sharp yelp. Clover is restraining her. Thandi spits in his face and screams until she’s weak and exhausted.

When she opens her eyes a few minutes later, Charles has moved away from her to the other side of the bed, his naked body perched on the edge like a gargoyle in repose, his penis flaccid between his legs. He’s staring at her, his pupils holding in them so many things that she cannot read, mostly questions. Pieces of his skin are under her nails, the moisture of his blood fresh on their tips. What has she done? In the silence he rolls a spliff and smokes it. He doesn’t bother to tell her to get dressed, though she lies there naked, trembling, and covered in sweat. There’s a cut over one of his eyebrows. Another one on his right cheek. A couple scratches on his arms and, she’s sure, on his back. She reaches to touch him, but he flinches.

He lights the wick of the small kerosene lamp by the bed with a flick of his lighter. The lamp glows inside the shed. Thandi rests her head in the crook of her elbow and studies him in this light. A single tear runs across the bridge of her nose. “I’m sorry,” she says finally.

But he only shrugs. “It’s all right, is yuh first time. Ah shoulda been more gentle.”

His face is obscured in the cloud of smoke he puffs. She reaches for him again. She doesn’t want to go home. She doesn’t want to see Delores. Or Margot. He doesn’t pull away. Thandi gets up from the bed and stands before him. He lowers his spliff and tilts his head up at her. She bends to give him a kiss on his mouth, then on his throat. With his free hand he holds the back of her head to keep her face close to his. Their noses touch and she closes her eyes. “Yuh can stay as long as yuh want,” he whispers. Thandi lowers herself onto his lap and buries her face in the crook of his neck.





26


WHEN MARGOT ENTERS THE HOUSE, DELORES IS THERE, HER elbows on the dining table, her head resting in her hands. Grandma Merle is rocking back and forth on a chair next to the bed. Delores straightens up when she sees her daughter.

“She’s with you?” Delores asks.

“Who?”

“Yuh sistah! Is she with you?”

Margot shakes her head. “No, she’s not.”

Delores runs her hands over the purple hair-scarf she uses to cover her thinning braids. “But Jesus ’ave mercy. Where could she be?” It’s eleven o’clock at night. “Weh she could deh dis late?”

“Did you ask the neighbors?” Margot asks her mother, feeling a little woozy from the wine she drank at the hotel. She had sat in a room by herself and poured herself glass after glass. She missed Verdene terribly, but every time she picked up the telephone to dial her number, she lost the courage the wine had given her and hung up.

“Maybe she’s studying late somewhere . . .” Margot plops down on the bed and kicks off her shoes. She leans forward, resting her elbows on her knees and rubbing her temples with her hands, eyes closed. Her mother’s talking in her ears, her voice rising.

“Which neighbor?” Delores asks. “Thandi don’t talk to nobody in dis blasted community. She only go to school an’ come home.”

“You know dat for sure?” Margot asks her mother.

“Yuh sistah is not like you. She’s a good girl.”

“Mama, she’s a teenager. She’s not a likkle girl.”

Delores is rocking back and forth like Grandma Merle. “Oh, lawd, what am I going to do?” She sniffs and uses the hem of her blouse to wipe her face. “Yuh see wah me haffi deal wid, Mama?” Delores asks Grandma Merle, who is silent. Margot notices the bruises on her grandmother’s arms.