Delores comes in from the outhouse and sees Thandi looking at herself in the mirror.
“Is where yuh going?” she asks, putting a roll of toilet paper on a small table.
“They having last minute extra lessons today at school, remembah I told you? Since the exam started this week.” She returns to ironing the dress.
Delores nods. She’s filling up a basket with souvenirs to sell at the market later. Delores is in high spirits today. A big ship is coming into Falmouth, though it’s Saturday. Thandi looks at the rag dolls and the coasters and key chains and handcrafted jewelry that Delores delicately places inside the basket. How would visitors know the real stories behind the faces of the wooden masks they’d buy to hang on walls; the rag dolls they’d use to decorate unused furniture in their houses; the figurines they’d place on mantels that they can marvel at then quickly forget? The smell of something burning brings Thandi’s attention from her mother’s basket to the brown outline the iron has branded into the dress. Thandi quickly removes the iron, but pieces of the green fabric have attached themselves to the hot metal surface. She gasps, looking both ways for a solution, as though one would materialize out of the steam. Delores runs over to the board when she hears the hissing sound of the iron. “What yuh do to di dress?” she yells, surveying the damage — the burned spot, ruining the polyester fabric that had survived years of washing and drying in the sun, and the hems that had been stitched with the care and precision by Mama Merle’s then-abled fingers. All gone.
“Sorry, Mama. Ah wasn’t paying attention,” Thandi says.
They haven’t said much to each other since that night when Thandi showed her the drawing and told her that she wants to be an artist. When Thandi looks up again, Delores is regarding her closely. Thandi lowers the dress. “What?”
“Don’t what me.” Delores is stepping closer. “What is it yuh using on yuh face?”
“Nothing, Mama. I wash it wid soap. That’s all.”
“Yuh t’ink me is a eeediot?”
“No, Mama.”
“Then be honest wid me, Thandi. . how come yuh look like yuh a spar wid di dead?”
Thandi touches her face, pretending to not have noticed the change. Miss Ruby was right. Her skin has lightened to how she wanted it by today. Just in time for Dana’s sweet sixteen party tonight. “It’s how me skin stay,” she says. “I’ve not been in the sun, since I’ve been studying so hard.”
“Don’t romp wid me, Thandi.” Delores puts her hands on her hips, her chest swelling.
“I’m telling the truth.”
“You been going to dat Miss Ruby?”
“No, Mama.”
“Tell me di god truth!”
Thandi beholds her pale hands. She can actually see her veins. How green and expansive they are; the sight of them inflating her lungs. She wants to show off her new skin so she’ll be like the others, the ones who don’t have to sit patiently, looking forward to the Day of Judgment, expecting its sweet relief. For heaven is right here, in her lightened skin. See? See? She got what she wanted; and she doesn’t have to wait until she gets to someplace in the sky.
“Why, Thandi?” Delores’s hands drop to her sides. “Lawd Jesus have mercy pon me!” She whips around to face the shadows perched nearby in the early morning before the sun scatters them. Like little black birds that crowd the branches of the pawpaw trees by the foot of the river, the shadows seem to descend with Delores’s presence. “Yuh see me dying trial?” she says to them. “Di chile bleaching har skin, tun white woman undah me roof!”
“Mama, ah can explain.”
“Explain?” Delores pounces and grabs Thandi, knocking over the ironing board in the process. She drags her by the collar of her nightgown. With one hand Delores rips the flimsy nightgown off Thandi to bare her chest so that she can see her bleached body in its entirety — everywhere as light as the cedar planks that Clover uses to patch holes in the shack. Gone is Thandi’s once-mahogany cocoa skin. Delores jumps back, her hands flying to her mouth as if a ghost — a duppy — snatched her breath, her eyes watering.
“Thandi, is whaddu yuh? How yuh pay for it?”
“Mama, I can explain,” Thandi repeats.
“How?” Delores is shaking mightily, like a tree branch in a hurricane. “Who is filling up yuh head wid dis rubbish? Is it di girl dem at school? Is it dem?”
When Thandi doesn’t answer, Delores comes after her again, and Thandi runs. “Aftah me bruk me back to send yuh go school to learn, this is what yuh come home wid?” She raises her hand to slap Thandi, but Thandi escapes again. “How yuh paying dat blasted ’ooman? Dat blasted, thievin’ ’ooman who selling nuttin but lies!”
“Mama, it nuh cost much.”
“Ah g’wan find out fi me self,” Delores says. “Yuh not going nowhere looking like yuh jus’ drop outta one casket. Ah g’wan guh kill dat Ruby!”
“But Mama, I have extra lessons.”
“Yuh not going anywhere t’day. Yuh g’wan stay in that sun till yuh color come back.”
“But Mama!” Thandi cries. “I don’t want to be black any longer. Where’s dat going to get me? Nowhere.”
“But Jeezas have mercy!” Delores crouches with her head in her hand.
“Mama, I want to be somebody. I want to go places. You want that too — for me to be a doctor, leave River Bank.”
“Nonsense!” Delores springs back up from her haunches. “Yuh see how me black an’ stay? How yuh fi tun white wid a black mother, eh?”
“Is not about you, Mama. Is about me.”
“Is dat why yuh shame ah me? Because me black? Is dat why yuh neva bring any ah yuh school friend dem around? Because yuh nuh want dem fi see yuh black mother an’ fi know seh yuh live ’mongst black people? First yuh change yuh accent. . can’t even chat patwa no more. An’ now yuh go all di way wid di bleaching t’ing. What yuh do wid me Thandi? Beg yuh bring har back, because me nuh like dis one.”
Just then Margot comes in with bags of groceries she picked up at Mr. Levy’s Wholesale. An overnight bag is strung over one shoulder. A wave of relief washes over Thandi when she sees her sister. She runs into Margot to get away from Delores, almost knocking Margot over. “What’s going on here? Why yuh naked?” Margot asks, letting go of the bags, which drop with a loud thud, to hold on to Thandi.
“Is blind yuh blind?” Delores asks Margot. “Yuh sistah turning into a white ’ooman undah me roof! Is you put her up to dis?” Delores shouts, her body shaking as though aggravated by the words. Margot turns to look at Thandi, who is in her arms. “What she talking ’bout, Thandi?” Her eyes are scouring Thandi’s face. “Thandi.”
“I’m not turning white,” Thandi sniffs, wiping her eyes. “I was just bringing up my color. A lot of girls do it. I am the darkest at school. People either make fun of me or they ignore me.”
“So let them!” Delores shouts from where she stands. “Yuh g’wan be bettah than them wid what’s up here.” Delores taps her skull.
“But Mama, yuh always say—”