VERDENE SCRUBS THE BLOOD OFF THE SIDES OF HER HOUSE with a wet green rag. She concentrates deeply on the smudges and stains so she does not have to feel the rage, does not have to pause long enough to touch the collar of her housedress to her face to wipe the tears. So she rubs and rubs, muttering underneath her breath, “Damn ignorant imbeciles!” The rag dries in her hand and she dips it into the mixture of bleach and water. Since the water pressure is low, there is no way she can refill the bucket. “Goddammit!” The tears begin to fall faster than she can catch them. The fact that the culprits could be hiding in the bushes, laughing so hard that their guts pain them, makes Verdene angrier. “You think this is funny?” she asks the bushes and flowers. Something seems to brace in the yard, halting every sound except the murmuring of the big black flies around her. A family of vultures are perched on a coconut tree nearby.
“Answer me, you cowards!” Verdene stands up, her knees stiff from being on them all morning. She throws the rag inside the bucket and clenches both fists. She’s spinning around and around, trying to pinpoint where the person could be hiding. “You get a kick out of this, don’t you?” she yells. She’s getting dizzy circling like that. Almost out of breath, she stops. The dead dog in the yard appears to be breathing, its moving ribs gilded by sunlight through the ackee tree branches. Verdene steps closer and stands over it. She brings her hands to her mouth, unable to believe that someone could be capable of such a barbaric act. They took great care to make a vertical cut down the animal’s belly and another cut across its throat. Verdene mourns the poor dog that was sacrificed because of her. How many more does she have to deal with? How many?
She goes inside for the shovel. When she returns she attempts to dig yet another hole in the ground but stops, the shovel suspended in her hands, her attention on the lush banana leaves that separate her yard from Miss Gracie’s. She lowers the shovel and marches over there. She will take care of this once and for all, she decides. She hasn’t been in the old woman’s yard since she was a little girl led by curiosity to the garden filled with rows of Scotch Bonnet peppers, which she thought were oddly shaped cherries. She bit into one of them and instantly choked. Her eyes watered so much that she could barely see to go back home to quell the fire inside her six-year-old mouth. One side of her tongue was numb for a whole week. And so were her buttocks after Ella walloped her with a rubber switch.
Verdene remembers when the yard had a scarecrow. Miss Gracie planted the peppers years ago, instead of flowers like everyone else. She used to make homemade pepper sauce and sell it in jars at the market. Fish vendors used to buy up the sauce to sprinkle on their fish when they realized that people liked it. Miss Gracie made a lot of money. Even Ella bought the sauce in bulk, because Verdene’s father would never touch anything without it. When the fishing business died down, so did the demand for Miss Gracie’s sauce. There was no indication that a young girl named Rose lived there—Miss Gracie’s daughter, who was only two years younger than Verdene. A simple girl who read her Bible instead of schoolbooks and who used to follow her mother around from door to door to preach before she got pregnant and ran away.
“Do—do you know—Je—Jesus Christ?” the girl stuttered to Verdene once when they were teenagers. Verdene had opened the door to see Rose and Miss Gracie standing on the steps of her veranda.
“I’m busy. Come back later,” Verdene had replied.
“Yuh not too young fi hear di good word, sweetheart,” Miss Gracie said when she stepped in front of Rose. Her eyes roved inside Verdene’s house. “Ella surely live like ah queen in dis place. Mind if we come in?” This seemed to embarrass Rose, who always looked shrunken in her mother’s indomitable shadow. “My parents are not home,” was all Verdene could come up with before excusing herself and closing the door. The last she remembered of Rose were her awkward waves at the front gate, which seemed more like pleas for friendship than eagerness to talk about sin and salvation.