“I’m not perfect,” Thandi responds. “And what yuh mean, I don’t know struggle? We grew up in River Bank together.”
“Me an’ you was different from day one, Thandi. Two different peas. Yes, we was friends, but yuh mother neva like yuh ’roun me a’tall. She did always want you to have a special-type of friends, ones who neva have to beg fah food.” Jullette taps her pale wrist to indicate the lighter shade. “Dat was di first difference between me an’ you. Yuh was trained to be di opportunist, an’ me was suppose to be yuh doormat. Di one who would always come to yuh rescue when those children used to bully you pon di playground. Is like yuh always did need me there, but neva return no favah as a friend. An’ then yuh stop talking to me right aftah yuh pass yuh exam fah dat school. Yuh wear yuh white uniform wid nuff pride, suh much pride dat it blind yuh. Yuh walk pass me like me neva exist.”
“Jullette, I’m sorry.”
“Listen to you. Dat twanging yuh do. Yuh can’t even talk patwa no more. Yuh soun’ like a foreigner. As soon as yuh become ah Saint Emmanuel girl yuh mind twist.”
“I can’t believe after all these years you still have me up for getting into Saint Emmanuel.”
“It’s not dat, Thandi.”
“Then what is it? If it’s not jealousy, then what is it?”
“I’m not jealous, Thandi. Ah can’t be jealous if it’s clear dat yuh neva learn ah t’ing in school anyway. Yuh come out more confused than evah. Look at yuh skin!”
Thandi touches her face. She hasn’t been using the creams in a while, but traces of its results linger.
“Why yuh so upset, Jullette? A mistake is a mistake. It happened long ago. Let it go. Yuh acting like it happened yesterday.”
“Yuh is a fraud. A lizard wah change color anywhere it go. Yuh don’t know yuhself. Yuh don’t have no roots, no grounding. Yuh don’t even have a mind of yuh own. Yuh is a puppet, Thandi. Delores use yuh. Margot use yuh. Even if you an’ Charles did have something, I woulda mek sure to not mek it happen. Him is too good fah you.” The scowl deepens in Jullette’s face. “So keep on moving. Di sky is dat way. We don’t want yuh ’roun here.”
Thandi burns with rage, her face twitching from the hard slap of Jullette’s words. She thinks of Jullette parading around with that man in high heels and a skirt too short. Thandi was sure Jullette had seen her too. “You acted like yuh neva saw me at Sea Breeze when you were with that man, yuh client.”
“Whatever, Thandi,” Jullette says. “Who are you for me to waste my time wid? I learn to mek money to survive. Is long time me an’ me brothers surviving on our own. But you wouldn’t know dem t’ings. If it was you, yuh woulda end up dead. So don’t yuh dare judge me.”
Thandi hisses like a rattlesnake: “I might be sheltered, but at least I’m not a whore.” It’s a stone thrown too far. Thandi claps her hands over her mouth as soon as she says it.
“Yuh think yuh betta than me?” Jullette asks Thandi, her voice still measured but quieter now. Her eyes reveal something nasty and reptilian. “Well, ah have news for yuh. Look in di damn mirror. No apple nuh fall too far from di tree.”
“What yuh mean by that?” Thandi asks.
“Tell me where yuh get money fah yuh schoolbooks an’ fah yuh school fee. Yuh suh wrapped up in yuh own world dat yuh believe anyt’ing people tell yuh. Yuh probably believe dat di likkle scrap Delores an’ Margot mek can put togethah to sen’ yuh to dat school. Yuh really t’ink likkle chicken-feed money can afford dat deh school, Thandi?”
“I got a scholarship.”
“Ha!” Jullette laughs. “Yuh neva realize dat a scholarship is for a year? Ministry of Education nuh dat generous, m’dear. Is di empire dat fund yuh precious scholarship.”
“What yuh talking about?” Thandi asks.
“Yuh sistah, Margot, eva tell yuh what she do fi mek ends meet?” she asks Thandi instead.
The last person Thandi wants to talk about is Margot. “She works at Palm Star Resort. Has been there for eleven years,” Thandi says, swallowing.
“Jus’ ask har again,” Jullette says, narrowing her eyes. “Ask her where she get extra money from fah yuh school fee, the nice clothes she wear, the money she just put down on the villa in Lagoons.”
“She just got promoted as hotel general manager,” Thandi says through her teeth. Jullette doesn’t know what she’s talking about.
“Next time yuh see Margot, ask her who help her to get dat promotion,” Jullette says, with that nasty reptile look in her eyes. “Bettah yet, ask her how many of those big-money man she sleep wid. Ask ’bout her empire. Ask har about the girls she owns. Yuh sistah, Margot, is more of a whore than I will ever be. She’s the biggest pimp on di North Coast. Yuh sistah sell out River Bank. She’s di one who g’wan manage dat hotel dey destroying River Bank to build.”
Jullette sneers when she sees Thandi slump as though physically wounded. “Ask yuh sista, she’ll tell yuh. An’ yuh know what she tell the girls weh work fah har? Girls like me? Yuh know what she tell anyone who would listen? She tell dem seh it’s all fah her sister, who g’wan be a doctor. Her precious, perfect Thandi, who can do no wrong. Her dainty, stuck-up Thandi, who, in my opinion, will one day kick dirt in har face as soon as she reach somewhere, because she wouldn’t want to associate wid har own color.”
“Enough!” Thandi clamps her hands over her ears. She stoops down, resting on her haunches as though cowering from the sun. She cannot let Jullette see the shame that reddens her face. “What yuh get from telling me this?” Thandi asks Jullette, raising her head to meet her eyes. “How much bettah yuh feel from letting all this off yuh chest?” Jullette seems taken aback by this question. Thandi sees a glint of her former friend—the one who stood up for her on the playground when they were girls in primary school. Jullette is breathing heavily from the exchange, her chest rising and falling under her loose dress, as though she’s struggling to maintain her hardness. Very slowly her shoulders lower as though melting in the sun. In a soft voice she says, “Thandi, some people run. Some people mek up fantasy to deny or forget. While some people stan’ up an’ face di storm, whicheva direction it blow. Ah was hoping dat yuh would come outta yuh fantasy one day. I neva mean to say it like dat.”
“You meant every word.”
“Forget ah said anyt’ing. Jus’ do what’s best, Thandi, an’ leave us alone. Yuh done cost my brother a lot already.”
“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.
“We might have more options. Right now I need to get dressed. I have to be somewhere. Mama already staying here wid we. You can’t stay.” She doesn’t look at Thandi.
“Please,” Thandi says, standing up. “I have nowhere else to go.”
“I don’t think you can be trusted,” Jullette says.
Charles raises his head. “Jus’ cool it, Jullette. She’s my girl.” Thandi looks into his face. She takes his hand in hers and turns to Jullette. Jullette is regarding her with the same meanness Thandi saw earlier. “Okay. I’ll be back soon,” Jullette says.
When she returns two hours later, she’s carrying two shopping bags full of clothing items. She throws a dress at Thandi and tells her to get dressed. “If you love Chucky as much as you say, then this should be easy.”
39
THE TAXI PULLS UP TO THE VILLA, ITS LARGE BLACK AND GOLD gate, the manicured hedges and the waving palm trees in the front yard poised like hula dancers welcoming them. The place sits like a castle overlooking Montego Bay and seemingly the entire island. Thandi turns to Jullette. “What is this place?”
“The headquarters.” Jullette pays the taxi driver.
Once they set foot on the property, the lights come on in the yard. Jullette knocks on the oak door, lightly at first. Then harder. A woman finally opens the door and peers at them. “Can I help you?”
“We here fah Alphonso,” Jullette says to the woman, whose brown neck and chest are covered with talcum powder. She has on a long denim skirt and a red top. A simple black leather bag is slung over one shoulder. In one hand she carries a maid’s uniform on a hanger, covered by a garment bag. In her other hand is a black plastic bag that she holds delicately at her side. The smell of some kind of a stew—maybe oxtail or red pea soup with pig’s feet—follows her. Her shift must be over. Her face contorts with a smugness that communicates to Thandi the fact that they are unlikely guests. She lays eyes on Thandi. Thandi tries to straighten herself, since she’s propped up like a rag doll with her right arm around Jullette’s neck, unable to walk in heels. “Don’t I know you?” the woman asks Thandi. Thandi is surprised. She has never seen this woman before. She might be younger than she looks. Maybe not a day older than Delores. But she appears tired. Not so much in a physical sense; it’s a fatigue Thandi knows too well, for she herself has felt it. The woman’s blackened lips don’t curve upward into a smile to match Thandi’s uncertain one. Thandi can’t tell if the woman is wearing black lipstick or if that’s her real lip color. A pair of large hoop earrings soften an otherwise hard, chiseled face.
“I don’t think we ever met,” Thandi responds.
“Hm.” The woman regards Thandi. “I’m good wid faces. That is one t’ing me pride me self on. I remembah t’ings you’d normally forget. Like di clothes ah person was wearing, dem shoes, di color ah dem socks, whether dem slip was showing, what dem request di first time me serve dem. But ah remembah mostly faces. Me mind tek pitcha like camera an’ store dem,” she says to Thandi.
But Thandi cannot remember her. She turns to Jullette, who says to the woman, “You’ve seen har sistah.”
Though Thandi knows why she’s here, the thought of Margot makes her want to turn back. Jullette kept telling her to wait and see. That Margot has no idea about their plan. Thandi imagines a string being pulled from her, unspooling every ounce of life left in her. She feels sick all of a sudden, the imaginary thread that reels from inside her taut.
“So di both ah oonuh is nothin’ but misguided girls like all di res’,” the woman says to them. “These girls who would do anyt’ing fah money. Yuh mother know yuh out here in di street, doing dese t’ings?”
“If she knew, she would ask for her cut,” Thandi says.
“It’s sad and disrespectful to speak of yuh own mother that way.”
“Clearly, yuh never met mine.”
Thandi thinks she sees a veil of sadness descend over the woman’s face. She fidgets with the black plastic bag containing the food, adjusting it, then readjusting it. Finally, as though finding the right words, she says, “Go home. Di both ah you. If oonuh know what’s good fah oonuh self, go home.”
Jullette holds the door, her movement swift. “Not before we see Alphonso. Him expecting we.”
Just then a shiny silver Mercedes pulls up, crunching stones under its wheels on the driveway. The woman closes the door behind her and walks toward the car. She lowers her things onto the paved walkway, her handbag, uniform, and plastic bag with food abandoned. Thandi watches her bend to the driver’s side, furiously knocking on the window with her knuckles. The driver rolls down his window as she gesticulates widely with her hands, pointing at Jullette and Thandi. “Dey claim dey looking fah you, sah!”
There is something magnificent in her movement. Thandi could watch her all night. The light from the car has become a stage light. In different circumstances she would have tried to capture the wild strokes of this woman’s arms in her sketchpad, the impassioned
annoyance and disbelief that shake her body like a mighty wind shakes a tree. “Look at har,” Jullette says next to Thandi, staring straight ahead with a stricken look on her face. “Actin’ like she own di place. Is like she nuh know seh she’ll pass through dis godfahsaken life without a donkey hair to har name. She spen’ har whole life cooking, cleaning, an’ protecting dese people, t’inking what belongs to dem is hers too. But is bare crumbs she scrape from dem dinnah table fi build di pride wah she ’ave. A pride weh hide di truth dat she will always deh pon har black knee, scraping.”
Two white men get out of the car. One is wearing shades even though it’s night. The silver-haired one is dressed in an army-green general’s uniform, complete with epaulets.
“You’re sure that Margot won’t be involved in this?” Thandi says to Jullette in a whisper between clenched teeth while observing the people in the driveway.
“She’s not,” Jullette says with a smirk. “Dis is your show.”
“No need to worry, I’ll handle it, Peaches,” the man wearing the shades is saying to the maid. “You can go home now.” The woman gives Thandi and Jullette a final glance before picking up her things and hobbling toward the front gate like a bird, her neck long as if to match her annoyance. Thandi could have sworn that she was looking up into the woman’s flared nostrils earlier at the door; but her fading, small, off-kilter frame makes her seem less intimidating. Once she steps through the gate, Thandi lets out a breath. The two men make their way from the driveway toward the front door. The man wearing the shades jingles his keys in his pocket. Right behind him, the general takes stiff, measured steps.
“You’re early,” the man wearing shades says to Jullette, his tone as casual as his gait. “And I see you’ve brought a friend.”
“Yes.” Jullette gives the man a toothy grin. Here she doesn’t seem like Thandi’s friend at all, but someone who came to do business. Her demureness is a tool. “My friend is new. I’m here wid har to mek har feel comfortable,” Jullette says. Thandi cringes at Jullette’s inability to switch from backward patois to standard English in the presence of these men. Its cadence clashes with the beauty and elegance of the setting. Like two Dutch pots banging into one another. Thandi imagines the smirks on their faces when they turn away. But Jullette doesn’t seem to care about the way she sounds. She seems confident, like she owns some part of them. They laugh with her, not at her. Thandi doesn’t get the joke.
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