Here Comes the Sun(84)

“But why?” Thandi hears her voice come out small, like a baby chicken hatching out of an egg.

“Me was sixteen years old when ah had Margot. I was a young girl who neva know me lef’ foot from me right. Margot father was a man who all di children in di community used to call Uncle. Him took special interest in me. Maybe because me was fat. I was big for a young girl an’ him did like dat. When me get pregnant, my mother ask me is who’fa pickney. I tell her dat di pickney belongs to Uncle. She get so mad dat she beat me terrible. Everyt’ing aftah dat hurt. Margot come, an’ jus’ di sight of har hurt. Then yuh father came along. A good-looking coolie man wid hair down to him shoulders. Him did come to visit him cousin who was living in River Bank at di time. Nice, nice man. Me an’ him was together for a couple months. An’ two months lata ah was pregnant. When him found out about it, him neva like it. I neva like how him look at Margot either. She was fifteen at di time. Is she him did want. Ah couldn’t do nuttin’ ’bout dat. Him was helping me a likkle wid money. But it wasn’t much. As long as him could have Margot. One day ah come home an’ see yuh father gone. All him t’ings dem pack up an’ gone. Ah ask Margot where him gone an’ she tell me dat she refuse him, an’ him neva like dat. So him disappear. Raising two children on yuh own is not easy. Yuh hear wha’ me tellin’ you? Not easy a’tall, a’tall.”

Thandi wraps her arms around herself, because suddenly she is cold. She thinks of the man with the oblong face—the beautiful man she imagines as her father. He never wanted her. He wanted her sister. “It was him putting food in di cupboard dem,” Delores says. “Margot already did owe me fah everyt’ing ah went through wid har. Di least she could do was—”

There’s a knock on the door. Delores moves to open it. A man dressed in a white shirt and black pants greets her when she goes out on the veranda where Grandma Merle sits. Thandi can see his silhouette through the curtain. She can also see the silhouettes of the other men that accompany him. They hold narrow cylindrical tubes across their shoulders. As the main man talks, the other men survey the yard and the field where Mr. Melon ties his goat. The main man is American. Thandi can tell. “Good day, miss. We’re giving these out to all the residents who don’t own property here, but are renting. We’ve gotten the green light from the property owners.” He hands Delores a letter, then leaves. The other men go with him to the next shack.

Delores hands the letter to Thandi for her to read it out loud. Thandi looks at the piece of paper before taking it.

Dear Resident,

We are officially informing you of the development of a brand-new hotel resort on this property and hope that you will cooperate with us. We kindly ask that you vacate your premises by August 1st. The owner of this property, Mr. Donovan Sterling, has sold us the right to build our hotel resort here. Failure to vacate by the requested date will result in forceful evacuation. Thank you for your cooperation.

“But Jesus, lawd ’ave mercy, Missah Sterlin’ sell we out. Weh we aggo go?” Delores snatches the letter from Thandi and reads it herself, her eyes moving swiftly over the page. When she finishes, she blindly searches for a chair to sit down on and stares at the ceiling. Delores then lowers her head and looks at Thandi. “Is dis is punishment fah what I did? I’m not a bad mother,” she says, mostly to herself.





36


EVERY DAY THANDI FEELS THE FUTURE SLIPPING AWAY FROM her. Having light skin and going to medical school seem distant dreams, and even the results of her exams promise little in the way of hope. Her family is falling apart. She needs Charles. He is the one person who won’t fail her. She packs a few things in her bookbag—clothes, her sketchpad, Charles’s towel. It’s barely dawn, before the rooster crows. Delores and Grandma Merle are asleep. Margot is still gone. Thandi slips out the front door of the shack. She walks briskly down the path that leads farther away from the hill. She walks in the opposite direction of the women who saunter to the river with pails on their heads—women who march together to the river that is miles from where they live, only to see that it’s blocked off by cement and working tools. They return to their towns, each one with her neck held straight to balance her pail and what appears to be the weight of the world on her head.

The sun is peering above the hill, just the cap of its head rising. The sky is a clear violet blue sprinkled with leftover stars and half of a moon. Thandi quickens her pace. She has to get across the Y-shaped river to where Charles’s mother lives. She might be lucky enough to get Miss Violet to tell her where Jullette lives. She opens the gate despite the yellow tape. Mary and Joseph are no longer in the pen. Someone must have taken them to sell. Or killed them. The four dogs roam the yard, their bones more visible, protruding through their skin like ridges of broken sticks. They follow Thandi, sniffing up her skirt. “Shoo! Shoo!” She waves them off. She bypasses Charles’s zinc shed and goes directly to the main shack, where she knocks. There’s no answer. No sound. The familiar foul smell hits Thandi when she pushes the door open. This time there are no cooing sounds to guide her as she makes her way farther inside, feeling around in the dark shack. She pauses when she gets to the upholstery curtain that shields off the bedroom. Thandi pushes it aside, looking for the woman lumped on the bed. But when she parts the curtain there is no sign of Miss Violet. Just the soiled rumpled sheets. She has already left.