Thandi stares at her sister in confusion, Margot’s eyes rimed with the charcoal, her blood red lips, the red dress, the overnight bag she packs that sits nearby. “Ah don’t get it,” Thandi says, shaking her head. “All of dis is not making any sense.”
“The only person I ever loved was you, Thandi. You asked for nothing, so I gave you everything. An’ I work hard suh dat Delores neva feel she can use you di way she used me.”
“Clover hurt me and you weren’t there to protect me.” Thandi blurts this out to Margot. “All Charles was doing was protecting me. He doesn’t deserve to be punished for it.”
Margot drops the comb that she has been holding all this time.
“When?”
“In primary school.”
Margot mutters something under her breath. She doesn’t say anything else for a while. Thandi is looking at her sister, who is clutching both hands so tight that the bones of her knuckles are visible against the skin, even in the dim lighting. She just squats there. Her eyes, from what Thandi sees in the light of the crackling flames, are still like glass.
Margot awaits Delores’s return in the stillness of the dark veranda. Thandi and Grandma Merle are asleep inside; and the whole place is quiet except for the songs of the crickets that are hidden in the bushes and Pregnant Heidi thrashing about under the full moon. Flashlights blink in the dark like the illuminated bodies of peenie wallies as the search for Charles continues. When the gate opens and closes and Delores’s form appears in the doorway, Margot stands. The wooden chair creaks, relieved of her weight.
“Who dat?” Delores asks. Margot imagines her mother squinting in the direction of the sound. She walks slowly toward Delores like a bride approaching a groom, the dark veil lifting halfway up her face.
“Why yuh sitting in dark like dat?” Delores asks when she sees Margot. “Is me yuh waiting for?” Her perplexed face peers at Margot, who offers no answer.
“You know what he did?” Margot asks. A vein throbs fiercely at the base of her neck.
“Who?” Delores says.
“Clover,” Margot hisses, bitterness rising from her gut, coating her tongue.
At the utterance of the dead man’s name, the crease disappears from Delores’s face and she remains motionless in the moonlight. Margot steps closer and Delores steps back in panic, as though Margot is everything she has ever feared. As though she were death itself, here to claim her too. “Why yuh questioning me about di dead?” Delores whispers.
“Answer me!”
“You is nevah around.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Margot demands.
“What was I supposed to do? Go up to dat palace dat yuh work at an’ announce it? She jus’ tell me ’bout it last week.”
“Yuh could have told me!” A choked scream comes from Margot’s throat. The sounds of the crickets and Pregnant Heidi’s scream grow louder.
“An’ what would you have done about it, eh?” Delores asks. Margot’s grip tightens on the overnight bag over her shoulder. For once her mother is right. What could she have done? All her life Margot thought she could shield her sister, protect her; but Clover has proven to her at last the futility of her effort. Margot whispers, more to herself than to Delores, “We let him in our house.”
Delores’s hands drop, and with them the defense she usually puts up when she’s around Margot. “People g’wan disappoint in life. Is jus’ so it guh.” She gives Margot an apologetic look, but Margot is wary; she sees a dark satisfaction under its mute plea for forgiveness. “At di end ah di day, dis is we life. Look around yuh, gyal. Look where yuh is. Dis piece ah ground worth more than we. Yuh see dis air we breathing? Is debt we owing.”
The air is stale, the dust-yellow lights piercing the night, looking for Charles, as clear as the moon that follows men with machetes all over town. Pregnant Heidi’s screams rush in to fill the silence on the veranda of the shack, impurities of the past dredging from the bottom. Standing before her mother in the glare of the moonlight, Margot refuses to hum the same tune of grief. She begins to walk down the steps when her mother stops her. “Yuh sistah is a smart girl,” she says. “Ah tell har to do di right t’ing an’ turn in dat boy fah di money. Ten thousand dollars is a whole lotta sorry.”
Giving Delores a final bitter glance, Margot leaves.
34