“I love him.”
Jullette says nothing at first, allowing Thandi’s professed love for Charles to linger like the smell of breadfruit roasting in the yard. The dark soot carries in the breeze and thickens the air. Jullette cocks her head to the side. “Then ah want yuh to do something fah me.”
“Whatever you want.”
“I want you to jus’ let him be. Is fah di bettah. Yuh only going to lead him on an’ destroy him.”
Jullette walks off and heads toward the house. Thandi follows her, but stops when Jullette slams the mesh door in her face.
“Is he here? Charles! Charles!” Thandi calls out.
“He’s not here. Jus’ leave us alone.”
Thandi begins to bang on the door. “Please, I won’t leave until you tell me where he is.” The neighbors are looking at her, but she doesn’t care. She wants Charles to remind her that she has the capacity to love and be loved despite where or what she comes from. They can run away together and make a new life. The familiar ache dissipates and in its place is a violent instinct to throw herself against the door until it breaks. She takes gulps of breath between sobs. She bangs and bangs, feeling as though she’s in a dream where she’s screaming without making a sound, or like she’s moving but is really stuck to the ground. She’s Thandi, the one who would make it. The scholarship girl who would make everything better for her family. As graceful as a skirt tail blowing in the wind. Now here she is, banging down the door of a boarded-up house of a prostitute in search of a street boy.
Thandi thinks of Margot and her secrets and the legacy Thandi’s inherited, how she’ll carry it now like the bucket of goat blood that Miss Gracie and Delores carried under the light of the full moon. They balanced the bucket between them to Verdene Moore’s house. Thandi had caught them one night, afraid and giddy as the women dipped paintbrushes in the animal’s blood and wrote across the pink house: The blood of Jesus is upon you. They said they had seen Verdene kill those dogs. Delores continued to go with Miss Gracie many nights after that, but Thandi grew sickened by it. Especially after witnessing Verdene Moore bent down on all fours one day, scrubbing the blood off her walkway. Thandi looked at the bending woman, her back hunched. Verdene dipped a coconut husk in a bucketful of water and scrubbed. She paused every once in a while to look up at the sky. Her movement was methodic, humble, graceful. Thandi thought of the rumors, stale and old, yet so indelible. She saw sorrow and regret in Verdene Moore’s decorum, and felt her weariness.
She gives up on the door and crouches on the ground, her head on her knees, her arms wrapped around them. She can almost smell him there with her, that ripe pawpaw scent. She inhales it as she folds into herself, tired and defeated. She doesn’t hear the door open or the coming footsteps. Thandi jumps with fright when Charles, as quick as lightning, pulls her inside and into his arms.
Charles and Thandi embrace inside Jullette’s living room. When she raises her face to his, he wipes the tears off her cheeks with his thumb. They remain like this, with Jullette fading in the background. His face is leaner, his eyes alert like an animal used to being hunted. Thandi runs her hand over the hair stubble on his face. When he pulls away, it’s clear Charles is aware of his haunted look too, because he refuses to meet her eyes. When she reaches for him again, he takes one step back. “It’s better to end it,” he says. Choked by all the questions and pleading that rise in her throat, Thandi cannot respond. “We only foolin’ ourselves, Thandi,” Charles says. “Dey g’wan catch me an’ throw me in prison. What good would I be to you in jail?”
“You don’t have to go to jail. We can run, we can hide someplace where they won’t find you.”
“Thandi, where would we hide? Yuh not t’inking ’bout anything right now. Yuh too emotional.”
“You can hide in another parish, grow a beard.”
“Yuh don’t undahstand, I’m a walking jackpot fah di people dem who believe ah can get dem ten thousan’ dollahs. Yuh t’ink that’s a good position to be in? Always looking ovah yuh shouldah . . . at yuh own family membahs?” He glances at Jullette, who is silently listening to them with a hand stroking her chin and legs apart like a bodyguard. Charles sits down on the red velvet sofa and Thandi throws herself in front of him.
“I can talk to Margot. Jullette told me everything. Charles, yuh listening to me?” She’s tugging his shirt, but he only holds his head in his hands. Thandi stands up and looks down on him. From this vantage point Charles appears shrunken, hopeless. Like a fisherman with an empty net. Thandi exchanges glances with Jullette. “Yuh not going to just let him give up hope like this, are you?” she asks Jullette.