She told Thandi that she was preparing to move them somewhere else. “Where would we get the money?” Thandi had asked her sister a few days ago. And Margot had given her the biggest grin she had ever seen on her face. “Ah jus’ win di lotto an’ buy land. Yuh looking on the new hotel general manager of Palm Star Resort!” Thandi hugged her sister before she pulled back. “Does Mama know?” Margot shook her head. “Don’t say anyt’ing to her as yet. Right now dis is between me an’ you.”
In this very moment, this indomitable woman is standing in their living space like the sun itself. Delores retreats inside the kitchen, mumbling to herself, as Margot sits Thandi down on the sofa. Very gently she cups Thandi’s face and caresses it with both hands. There are tears in her eyes too. Thandi isn’t sure if they are sad tears or happy tears. Margot clutches Thandi’s chin gently and parts her ruby-red lips as though to blow a kiss. “This is unnecessary if yuh look in the mirror an’ see what I see in those eyes.” Margot runs her hands through Thandi’s hair, untwisting the single braid and letting her hair fall around her shoulders. “Once you believe you are beautiful, then people will believe it too.”
“Is dat what they said at the hotel when they hired you as front desk clerk and then gave yuh dat promotion?” Thandi asks.
“What promotion?” Delores springs back into view.
Margot looks at Thandi in stunned silence. Without turning to Delores, she says, “I was recently promoted as hotel general manager.”
“When? Why yuh didn’t seh anyt’ing to me about it? How much dem paying yuh now?”
“Is dat all yuh care about?” Margot faces Delores. “How much I’m worth?” Delores is seething quietly in the shadows.
“What have you been telling Thandi, Mama?” Margot asks.
“What yuh mean, what ah been telling har? Is me yuh g’wan blame fah this?”
“A man like dat,” Margot says quietly under her breath. At first Thandi doesn’t hear her sister’s words, until she repeats it over and over again like a litany. Margot’s whisper becomes a laugh that rumbles in her belly and snaps her head back. “A man like dat is what I was to aspire to get, remembah, Delores?” Thandi watches this, instantly becoming a shadow, a bat perched in the dark recesses of the shack, listening. “Remember?” Margot says quietly. Just then Maxi comes to the gate and hollers for Delores:
“What tek’n suh long, Mama Delores? Ship ’bout to dock!”
And Margot’s attitude changes. She breaks the staring match between her and Delores and fixes her blouse. She bends to pick up the bags of groceries that fell earlier. Delores’s face is still twisted into a deep scowl.
“Yuh sister is different,” she says to Margot as she lifts her own weight—the basket of souvenirs. “I tell yuh dat all the time. So get offah me back an’ guh run yuh hotel. God mus’ really work in mysterious ways. I guess him bless yuh overnight, huh?” Delores’s voice has a sharp edge. “What position did you pray in, Margot? Were you on yuh knees or pon yuh back?”
Margot stiffens. She clutches Thandi’s shoulders. “Did she evah tell you?” she asks. “Did she evah tell what she did?”
“Kibbah yuh mouth,” Delores says. “Don’t bring yuh sistah in yuh mess.”
Margot’s tone raises the hairs on Thandi’s arms. “No matter what yuh do to yuhself, it not g’wan change a t’ing,” Margot says to Thandi. “Believe me, it won’t change yuh place in society or how they look at you.”
“Let me go!” she says to Margot, who still clutches Thandi as though Thandi is about to fall into some kind of an abyss that only Margot can see. Thandi stumbles backward when her sister releases her.
Thandi feels sorry for hurting her this way. She shouldn’t have shouted at Margot like that. But she thought Margot would’ve understood her and taken her side. Can’t she see that Thandi wants more than this life in River Bank? More than what Margot can ever give her? Margot waits until Delores leaves before she gets up and goes outside through the back door. Thandi watches her walk past the outhouse and the tire swing where Little Richie hides. Like a divi-divi tree thrashing in the wind, she walks with her head bent forward, storming through, parting banana leaves and trampling tall grass. Thandi slips into the fuchsia dress—snug at the hips with slits on both sides—which she bought last week for the birthday party. Might as well, since no one is there to see her wear it.