Thandi makes a beeline to Charles’s house, her backpack bouncing behind her. She will apologize to him for their last encounter, tell him that she wasn’t herself; that something came over her and made her do what she did, embarrassing them both. She flings the gate open and hurries to his shack. Cain and Abel trail behind her. They recognize her now, jumping up to greet her, their tails wagging and tongues hanging. She knocks on Charles’s door. When she knocks again and no one answers, she peers through the window. He’s not there. She looks around the yard, wondering where he could be, given that he was not by the river. Neither was he by his father’s boat. She contemplates the main shack, where the front door swings open in the light breeze. She never thought to look there. Never thought to go inside, for it is known in River Bank that Miss Violet does not take visitors. Thandi goes to the main house anyway and pushes the door open.
The house reeks of sinkle bible and boiled tamarind leaves. Thandi shudders from the stench, which reminds her of sickness. But it is the more potent mixture of piss, feces, and something else that makes her swallow the box lunch she ate at school earlier. The darkness doesn’t permit Thandi to see much farther than the doorway. She considers turning and going back outside, but her feet remain grounded as though the floor is made of wet cement. Someone coughs. This is followed by a soft coo, like a baby bird or something more fragile. Thandi steps inside, her feet aggravating the wooden floorboards. She puts her backpack over both shoulders so that her hands are free to feel around. A sliver of daylight enters through the small tear in the curtain by the only window. The curtain, Thandi notices, is just an old sheet. This faint light allows her to see the small table with a couple of chairs, some cardboard boxes, a stack of old newspapers, and a barrel. Now that she’s inside, outside seems like a foreign country. There’s no concept of time and place. The date — though currently June 1, 1994—is still August 7, 1988, according to the water-stained calendar hanging on a wall.
Inside this house, Hurricane Gilbert has not yet come and devastated the island, flooding out some residents of River Bank. Inside this house, Edward Seaga is still Prime Minister of Jamaica, a yellowing picture of him pasted next to the calendar. Inside this house, a fisherman name Asafa still brings home lobster for his family. When Thandi approaches the bedroom (the partitioned area where the cooing gets louder, sounding like a wounded animal as opposed to the soft, fragile thing that Thandi had pictured earlier) a frail woman’s voice calls out. “Asafa? Ah you dat?” But it’s not the assumption that throws Thandi off guard; it’s the sound of the woman’s voice — gravellike and strained, as though she has been weeping for hours, days, weeks, months, years. Nearly a decade. “Asafa?”
Thandi pauses. Though she’s barely breathed since entering the house, she gasps for the little air remaining.
“No, Mama, is jus’ me. Yuh imagining t’ings again.” It’s Charles. Thandi tiptoes to the side of the partition, a red, velvety upholstery material that she’s used to seeing on chairs in Mr. Farrow’s furniture place. She spies Charles squeezing a piece of washcloth from a basin. Thandi hears the water swooshing around. His mother is sitting up on a narrow bed, naked, looking like a big doll. Her dark hair is wild, flanked with powdery grays. Her eyes are sunken and wide, the bags under them like dark pouches. It’s hard for Thandi to recognize Miss Violet with all that wrinkled flesh. Her face seems to have crumpled under many years of disappointment, worry, sadness, and longing. This is Jullette’s mother. A woman Thandi once thought to be the most beautiful, loving, and caring mother compared to hers. Miss Violet would give Jullette peanuts even when she didn’t ask. She gave her perms too, something Thandi envied because it made Jullette seem grown. And when Jullette’s hair started falling out, Miss Violet had her get those extension braids. They talked like friends, giggling and smiling at each other all the time. There was never any beating or shaming. As the only girl in her family of boys, Jullette did anything she wanted without living in fear of a domineering mother. Miss Violet used to sell peanuts, tamarind balls, and peppered shrimp outside the gate of their primary school. She was always ready for Thandi with a pretty smile, though she had only a few teeth left in her mouth then. “Aye, coolie girl.”
Currently the woman looks like she has aged fifty years, her eyes glazed with nostalgia. “Yuh rememba Irby an’ Georgie?” she asks her son, pronouncing “Georgie” as “Jaaaji.” Her pink tongue wallows in her gaping, toothless mouth like a whale.
“Yes, Mama,” Charles replies, using the cloth to bathe his mother. Miss Violet is indifferent to this. Indifferent to her grown son cleaning her this way, wiping the wet cloth over her sandy-brown breasts that are full, heavy sacks on her chest.
“An’ Premrose. Is wah become ah Premrose?” Miss Violet asks. The water trickles down her pouched belly and settles in her concave navel. Her eyes glisten as she appears to search her memory for a woman named Premrose. “Mi will do anyting fi har sorrel now,” she says, clucking her tongue. “Those was some good days.” Charles continues to wipe, his face neutral despite the downward stroke between his mother’s legs, where the black and gray hairs match the ones on her head.
“She’s dead now,” Charles says, looking away from his task out of politeness and respect. Thandi can’t see the look on his face, but his motion is a mechanical one — his mother’s hands are busy touching her hair as if to replace a wayward strand from an elegant coif. All she says is, “Uhn,” as though this news of Premrose’s passing means nothing. She says it again when Charles finishes.
“Yuh should get out di house sometime,” Charles says quietly. “Look for work an’ stop laying up in bed like dis. Yuh is not a ole ’ooman yet, an’ yuh still got yuh strength.”
Miss Violet looks at him. “Is bettah fah yuh to kill me. Tek me outta dis misery. Premrose is in a bettah place now. It shoulda been me.”
Charles straightens and looks down at his mother. “Mama, me can’t continue fi do dis.”
Miss Violet presses her lips to her gums and holds his hand, bringing him back down. “Jus’ do it. Me will be forevah grateful if yuh end it fah me. Put a knife to me throat, ah icepick to me ’aart. Anyt’ing. Jus’ kill me, son-son. Please, please, me ah beg yuh!” Then her voice becomes cold. “Yuh is a coward! A lessah man than yuh father!” The cooing starts again.
Thandi backs away. Her footsteps trouble the floorboards again and this time the creaking brings Charles to the curtain. Their eyes meet — his, questioning, ashamed; hers, apologetic. He stands there in silence, the wet cloth dripping to the floor, his mother cooing in the background. Thandi trembles with the urge to hold him and the need for forgiveness as she witnesses the rage building in his eyes, eclipsing them like moons. She turns around and cuts through the stink, running until she’s sure she has escaped it. But the smell, like the look in Charles’s eyes, follows her all the way home.
22
ON THE DAY OF THE PARTY, THANDI IRONS A MODEST GREEN dress that falls below her knees. With a big white collar, white buttons, pleats and a bow in the back, it’s a perfect cover for the daring dress she intends to change into once she gets to the restaurant. Grandma Merle had sewn the green dress for Delores when she was Thandi’s size. Delores kept the dress so that it could be passed on to Margot, then Thandi. In the mirror above the vanity she spies her clear complexion; the lightness has come into her skin like a slow-moving mixture of condensed milk and Milo. Truth be told, she hasn’t given much thought to the party, medical school, or her bleaching regimen since Charles. But after seeing Miss Violet, the ugliness of being black and poor remains like intaglio on her mind. It’s the one thing that connects her to Miss Violet’s sickness, Margot’s restlessness, and Delores’s intermittent wrath. After being inside Miss Violet’s shack, she saw, with overwhelming dread, what might become of her. That day she rushed home to the shack, and there, before the mirror, rubbed her skin with the Queen of Pearl and Miss Ruby’s concoction mixed with hydrogen peroxide until it was raw and tender. But no matter how hard and how frequently she rubs, the imprint of Charles’s mother remains, for it’s indelible.