Here Comes the Sun(94)

Just then there’s a rattle at the door. Alphonso stops what he’s doing. “You stay right here,” he commands in a whisper. He goes to the door, adjusting his pants. Meanwhile, Thandi looks around for a hiding place. But before she can find one, Alphonso opens the door and a woman’s voice enters like a breeze. “Sweetness sent me in here. Told me you have a surprise for me. I’ve been trying to get in touch with you. I thought you wanted me to bring the package. Yuh have me waiting in the villa with dat prick of a sergeant. Who or what on earth could you be doing that is more important than—” Margot stops short when she sees Thandi trying to pull up her dress. She looks from Thandi to Alphonso, then back at Thandi again.

“What’s going on?” She turns to Alphonso. Thandi fumbles with the zipper in the back of her dress. “What is my sister doing here?” Margot says; her voice is a high-pitched screech. “You bastard!” Margot shouts. “How could you?” She hits Alphonso on the arm and he grabs her and turns her around, her back pressed into him.

“Calm down. You know exactly why she’s here. I thought you sent her here with Sweetness, since you owe me,” he says.

“We’ve talked about this! I helped you with the police!”

“She came of her own free will.”

“Am I supposed to believe you?”

“Why don’t you ask her?”

Margot narrows her eyes at Thandi. “Why are you here? Delores and I were looking everywhere for you! And here you are, taking off yuh clothes for ah man? What di hell is wrong wid you?”

Thandi has lost her ability to speak under her sister’s smothering rage. She wonders if the alcohol has gotten to her brain too, for she has forgotten the reason why she’s here.

“Thandi, answer me.”

“Margot, you’re interrupting us,” Alphonso says. He holds on to Margot’s hand, but she pushes him away.

“Fuck you! This was not the plan!” she says, whipping around to face him again and pointing her finger at him as if he were a child. “My role in this was to help you so that you can help me. Why her? Why my sister?” she screams at him.

But his answer is a grin. A chuckle that becomes a boisterous laugh. “You people,” he says with a laugh, shaking his head. “You people with your drama just continue to amaze me. Margot, you have a business, a responsibility. You work for me. So you’re the last person I expect to be telling me who I should and shouldn’t have. I hired you to do what you do because you’re the only person without a conscience. Then you have the nerve to blackmail me with it.” His eyes turn from jovial musing to stone. “Your sister, as far as I am concerned, is fair game.”

For a second Thandi thinks she sees Margot lose her ground, but when she turns to Thandi, her eyes are steady. “Everything I do is for you. You are the reason why I work hard, you ungrateful—”

“So that I can pay you back tenfold, right?” Thandi asks, cutting her off. “Isn’t that what you always say? That one day I will pay you back tenfold? Now I know it’s because you owe him! My scholarship? That was his money!” She gestures to Alphonso with her hand. “You use me to justify your dirty work. That’s all I’ve ever been to you and Delores, a way out. Your own conscience won’t do it for you, so you pull me into it.”

Margot raises her hand to slap Thandi, but it stops midair when Thandi says, “Go ahead.” Thandi knows she has spoken the truth. She sees her words wrap themselves lovingly around her sister’s neck. She steps closer to Margot. They are the same height. Thandi always thought her sister was a few inches taller. That too was an illusion.

Margot shudders. She loves nothing in this world except Thandi. She wants her to be successful, but she has wanted so much more for herself too. Now she feels as though she’s been emptied. “No compassion, no conscience, no heart.” That’s what Verdene said to her when Margot confessed that she knew her precious pink house would be worth nothing, that River Bank would be sacrificed. Verdene’s love turned to ash before Margot’s eyes. Margot looks at Thandi now, all that’s left. “You owe me. For all I have done for you, sacrificed for you. You. Owe. Me.”

Thandi, whom she clothed, sheltered, fed, gave every bit of herself to. With her body she shielded her sister from Delores’s wrath. Gave her an opportunity to get away. To be better than them so she wouldn’t have to sacrifice anything. But instead of gratitude in Thandi’s eyes, Margot sees the looming resentment.

“You don’t even know yuhself. My childhood was spent like a hundred-dollar bill on you. Everything you needed was put on me. If yuh needed formula, I had to sleep wid yuh father to get it. If yuh cry fah hunger, I had to feed you. If yuh wanted a special toy, I had to get down on my knees an’ do more than play. I had to play wid yuh daddy too. ”

Thandi doesn’t say a word. Her eyes are a pair of dark round circles, empty of understanding, struggle.

“When yuh got into that school, I had to work overtime so that you could go. But not even that was helping, so I asked Alphonso to write that check. You talk about being used? Walk a day in my shoes an’ you’ll know what dat mean. I stayed in dat shack when I could have moved on with my life, because I was afraid Delores would have done to you what she did to me. So where yuh get the right to judge me? Now tell me, Thandi, once and for all: if it’s not to be the doctor we prayed you were going to be, then, What. Do. You. Want?” Margot stretches this question between her teeth.