Delores is silent. She knows if she agrees it would give him too much hope. Delores lifts her tongue and tastes the dry roof of her mouth. She takes a sip of water from the plastic cup that has grown warm sitting on the table. A wave of exhaustion comes over her. Like all other things that slow her down, she thinks this too will pass. Only this time she’s not certain what exactly she hopes will pass first—the drought, the fatigue, or that dark, looming thing that has been present inside her since the trip to Kingston and has recently risen to the surface. She has held on to her anger all these years, knowing very well what she would say to those girls if she ever saw them again.
“She can come collec’ it herself,” Delores finally says to John-John. “Ah can’t speak for Margot. Margot is a big ’ooman. She know what she like an’ what she nuh like. If yuh want my humble opinion, not a bone in dat girl’s body is deserving of anything yuh can sell fah good money.”
7
MARGOT COMES HOME LATER THAT EVENING AND SEES HER SISTER curled on the couch. She’s in a faded housedress with balls of paper scattered around her. Margot doesn’t wake her. She wonders how long Thandi has been lying there like this on her side with her dress hiked up, hands between her thighs. And those damn drawings. It’s four o’ clock; shouldn’t she just be getting home from extra lessons? Margot hardly knows her sister’s schedule anymore, since she’s never around much. Thandi’s education means more to her than her own well-being. Just last week Margot had to march down to the school to beg that condescending nun to change Thandi’s demerit status. Though her sister shouldn’t be wearing a sweatshirt to school, Margot still argued on her behalf. Margot remembers herself at that age—how she had to be pried open like a lobster, though she had no choice.
At the school, Margot had flashed the Wellington name like a badge, her association with Alphonso her best asset. If she’s good enough to sleep with, then why not exercise the little bit of clout it gives her? The nun didn’t have to know that she’s only his mistress and hotel employee. “Either you erase it from her record or else,” Margot said. This or else carried a lot of weight. The Wellington family donates a lot of money to the school. It’s their wealth that built the hall in which the students worship, the new gymnasium—the only one on the island to have an indoor pool—and even the vocational block that houses all the typewriters, an art studio, and Singer ovens for baking classes. When Thandi got into the school and couldn’t afford to pay, Margot got Alphonso to write a check for her tuition under the guise of a scholarship. This carefully cultivated relationship pays her tuition each year, and Margot will never let this opportunity slip away for Thandi.
The innocence of her sister’s face holds Margot in place. Margot wonders what she’s dreaming. Maybe she’s running through a field of marigolds, the sky arched above her like a billowing blue sheet hanging from a clothesline—stretching from the beginning to the end of time. Margot knows she should cover her up with a sheet, but instead she sits and watches. Her sister is turning into a woman. Her breasts have swollen as though pumped with air from her breathing. And her hips have formed, filling out the dress. She’s even getting lighter, the mild discoloration evident around her nose and mouth. Maybe she’ll be the same café au lait shade as her father—a coolie Indian with nice hair and just enough pocket change for Delores to bring him to the house one day and introduce him to Margot. People called him Jacques. Margot was fourteen when Delores met him. He liked to give Margot sweets—gizzadas, tamarind balls, coconut drops, plantain tarts, icy-mints. As an adult, Margot gags at the smell of those sweets.
Margot’s virginity was plucked like a blossoming hibiscus before its time. But this won’t be Thandi’s fate. Margot chants this to herself over and over again under her breath, the only prayer she has ever uttered.
Just then Thandi’s eyelids flutter open as if something tells her she’s being watched. She raises herself on one elbow and rubs her eyes. “Why are you watching me like that?” she asks Margot, her voice gravel-like with sleep, but with that formal diction that irks Margot. Since attending Saint Emmanuel High, her sister speaks as though she comes from money. (Her speech is even more formal, more modulated than the diction Margot uses with Alphonso and the visitors to the hotel.)
“Good evening to you too,” Margot says. She looks away to give her sister privacy as she pulls her dress over her knees.
“What time is it?” Thandi asks.
“Yuh feeling sick?” Margot asks her sister.
Thandi swings her legs off the couch to give Margot space to sit beside her. Thandi rubs her eyes again, suppressing a yawn. “Just tired. All the studying, you know . . .” Her voice trails off.
Margot looks down at the papers around them. “Right. The CXC is jus’ around di corner. You’re on yuh way to getting nine ones, ah hope.”
Thandi nods. She glimpses Margot’s overnight bag at her feet. “You sleeping out again?” she asks Margot.
“What’s it to you?”
“Who’s the new man?” Thandi asks with a smirk. “You’ve been staying out a lot lately.”