Delores starts to move around in the kitchen to prepare dinner. Thandi sits up in the bed.
“Bwoy, me ah tell yuh ’bout dem yout’ wid no ambition,” Delores says as she slices open the skin of a green banana and drops the skinned banana into the pot. “Membah Violet boy, Charles? Di ole brute who used to come ’roun here fah food? Him deh pon di wanted list now. Ten thousand U.S. dollah.” She whips around from the boiling pot to see if Thandi is listening. “Yuh hear? Ten thousand dollah! Yuh know wah dat can do?” She pauses as though Thandi is obligated to speak. When Thandi doesn’t reply, Delores answers her own question. “It can buy we nuff t’ings!” She returns to skinning bananas. “But ah feel so sorry fah Violet now. Di poor woman lose everyt’ing ’cluding all di screws in har head. But I can tell yuh one t’ing, though. If she tell di police where her son is, she will get di money an’ have a bettah life. True, true! She will be a rich woman if she send him to prison. Fah all di pain dat boy cause har. But dese hooligans ’roun here so hungry dat dem will t’ief it. Suh she should leave town an’ not tell ah soul. See how dey do har wah day? T’ink she would tell dem where him hiding?” Delores peers at Thandi when she whips around again. Her eyes narrow. “I know ’bout you two. John-John saw di both of ’oonuh in Sam Sharpe Square hugging up like lovers. Yuh t’ink me nuh ’ave eyes ’roun here? If yuh know where he is, yuh should call it in. Do it fah all ah we. Yuh know how long ah could use a break? Every single day me bruk me back wid dese damn baskets.”
Her mother is standing still by the stove, harping as if to the shadows that are perched nearby. “If yuh guh pick up wid a street boy, then yuh mus’ at least get something out of it. Because what can a dutty, wingworm, gully bwoy who don’t even own a pair of shoes do fah you, eh?”
“He’s more than just a street boy,” Thandi says when she regains her ability to speak.
Delores whips around. “Oh, suh yuh know where he is.” This is a statement, not a question. Thandi doesn’t like what she sees in her mother’s eyes. It’s a look she has seen before when asked about school and her grades—the image of herself crouched at the table with her books under the glare of the kerosene lamp mounting and mounting in her mother’s pupils—a mammoth creature of her mother’s lofty goals and dreams. It fills her mother’s eyes, expanding the blackness and roundness that reminds Thandi of the look Miss Gracie gets when she experiences one of her holy visions.
“I didn’t say that,” Thandi replies.
“Di way yuh talkin’ mek it seem suspicious. Yuh talkin’ like yuh know where him is. For all I know, yuh coulda see him yesterday an’ nuh tell a soul.” Delores’s voice is loaded with accusation. “I didn’t sacrifice to send yuh to school fi guh pick up wid those types. You become di people you associate yuhself wid—” She pauses, her head shaking and her pointer finger wagging as though to make up for half of what she’s thinking. Then the words appear—not the ones she seemed to search for, but new ones generated from somewhere as dark as the shadows from which she seeks counsel. Thandi can almost see them forming, rising from that place of darkness like soot from the inner workings of her mother’s mind. Thandi is looking straight up into Delores’s face, right up into her nostrils. “Do it fah all ah we, Thandi.” She gestures to Grandma Merle, who is silently resting on her bed. Grandma Merle, who has long been a shadow except for the subtle rise and fall of her chest.
“I have a mind of my own,” Thandi says.
“Yuh know where he is?”
“No, Mama.”
“Yuh know wah ten thousand U.S. dollah can get we?”
“Yes, but I feel responsible.”
“Responsible fah wah?” Delores stands up straight, no longer hovering over Thandi. She puts her hands on her hips. “What yuh sayin’ to me?”
“He did it because of me.”
“Wah?”
“Charles fought Clover because of me. I told him that Clover raped me years ago.”
“Clover?”
“Yes.”
“My Clover?” Thandi cringes at the possessiveness in her mother’s voice. “Di Clover who used to come ’roun here an’ help we wid t’ings ’roun di house? Clover who used to fix up di roof, mek sure seh we nuh get wet when it rain? Clover who guard di place when yuh wutless Uncle Winston lef’?”
“Yes,” Thandi says.
“When was dis?” Delores asks.
“Six years ago. I was walking home from school, an’ . . .”