“How did she do that?” Thandi asks, the questions swirling inside her head. She makes out Margot’s face in the light from the flames and the kerosene lamp next to her.
Margot shrugs, avoiding Thandi’s eyes. “She put me in situations where I. .” Margot’s voice trails off as though the words are stuck in her throat. “I met new people — men — who offered me a lot more. Delores introduced me an’ they liked me.”
“But you were—”
“Young. The cure. That’s what Delores said. Di first one was a man who gave her six hundred dollars an’ in return she gave me to him. It only made me sicker. But dis sickness was different than the first — the first had to do wid losing someone I cared for and who cared for me. The second had to do wid losing myself. But it worked. Because I couldn’t hurt no more. I could no longer feel. It’s been easier that way.”
Thandi stares at her sister in confusion, Margot’s eyes rimed with the charcoal, her blood red lips, the red dress, the overnight bag she packs that sits nearby. “Ah don’t get it,” Thandi says, shaking her head. “All of dis is not making any sense.”
“The only person I ever loved was you, Thandi. You asked for nothing, so I gave you everything. An’ I work hard suh dat Delores neva feel she can use you di way she used me.”
“Clover hurt me and you weren’t there to protect me.” Thandi blurts this out to Margot. “All Charles was doing was protecting me. He doesn’t deserve to be punished for it.”
Margot drops the comb that she has been holding all this time.
“When?”
“In primary school.”
Margot mutters something under her breath. She doesn’t say anything else for a while. Thandi is looking at her sister, who is clutching both hands so tight that the bones of her knuckles are visible against the skin, even in the dim lighting. She just squats there. Her eyes, from what Thandi sees in the light of the crackling flames, are still like glass.
Margot awaits Delores’s return in the stillness of the dark veranda. Thandi and Grandma Merle are asleep inside; and the whole place is quiet except for the songs of the crickets that are hidden in the bushes and Pregnant Heidi thrashing about under the full moon. Flashlights blink in the dark like the illuminated bodies of peenie wallies as the search for Charles continues. When the gate opens and closes and Delores’s form appears in the doorway, Margot stands. The wooden chair creaks, relieved of her weight.
“Who dat?” Delores asks. Margot imagines her mother squinting in the direction of the sound. She walks slowly toward Delores like a bride approaching a groom, the dark veil lifting halfway up her face.
“Why yuh sitting in dark like dat?” Delores asks when she sees Margot. “Is me yuh waiting for?” Her perplexed face peers at Margot, who offers no answer.
“You know what he did?” Margot asks. A vein throbs fiercely at the base of her neck.
“Who?” Delores says.
“Clover,” Margot hisses, bitterness rising from her gut, coating her tongue.
At the utterance of the dead man’s name, the crease disappears from Delores’s face and she remains motionless in the moonlight. Margot steps closer and Delores steps back in panic, as though Margot is everything she has ever feared. As though she were death itself, here to claim her too. “Why yuh questioning me about di dead?” Delores whispers.
“Answer me!”
“You is nevah around.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Margot demands.
“What was I supposed to do? Go up to dat palace dat yuh work at an’ announce it? She jus’ tell me ’bout it last week.”
“Yuh could have told me!” A choked scream comes from Margot’s throat. The sounds of the crickets and Pregnant Heidi’s scream grow louder.
“An’ what would you have done about it, eh?” Delores asks. Margot’s grip tightens on the overnight bag over her shoulder. For once her mother is right. What could she have done? All her life Margot thought she could shield her sister, protect her; but Clover has proven to her at last the futility of her effort. Margot whispers, more to herself than to Delores, “We let him in our house.”
Delores’s hands drop, and with them the defense she usually puts up when she’s around Margot. “People g’wan disappoint in life. Is jus’ so it guh.” She gives Margot an apologetic look, but Margot is wary; she sees a dark satisfaction under its mute plea for forgiveness. “At di end ah di day, dis is we life. Look around yuh, gyal. Look where yuh is. Dis piece ah ground worth more than we. Yuh see dis air we breathing? Is debt we owing.”
The air is stale, the dust-yellow lights piercing the night, looking for Charles, as clear as the moon that follows men with machetes all over town. Pregnant Heidi’s screams rush in to fill the silence on the veranda of the shack, impurities of the past dredging from the bottom. Standing before her mother in the glare of the moonlight, Margot refuses to hum the same tune of grief. She begins to walk down the steps when her mother stops her. “Yuh sistah is a smart girl,” she says. “Ah tell har to do di right t’ing an’ turn in dat boy fah di money. Ten thousand dollars is a whole lotta sorry.”
Giving Delores a final bitter glance, Margot leaves.
34
MARGOT TAKES A SHORTCUT TO VERDENE’S HOUSE. THOUGH she’s aware of the danger in going to Verdene’s during the active search for Charles, she needs to clear her head. Put things back into perspective. She cuts across Miss Gracie’s yard, perhaps trampling the already dead cayenne peppers as she makes her way to the back of the pink house. She lets herself inside through the back door, careful not to make the bolt on the grille squeak when she lifts it. The house is quiet as usual, but from the orange glow inside the bedroom, Margot can tell that Verdene is still awake. She slips out of her shoes and drops her bag on the floor. She heads to the bedroom and pushes the door open. Verdene is sitting up in bed with her reading glasses, sheets of paperwork scattered around her. She’s sexy this way. Margot bends and kisses Verdene deeply. “I’m home,” she whispers. She steps away and unzips her dress, letting it fall.
Verdene takes off her glasses and places them carefully on the nightstand. As Margot searches for a nightshirt in the dresser, she pauses and puts her head back, inhaling the patchouli incense Verdene lights to keep the mosquitoes away. Margot wasn’t prepared for what Thandi had told her, but all that is in the past. Soon she will celebrate Thandi’s future and move them from this godforsaken place. And from Delores. She and Verdene haven’t made love in a week with all the late-night shifts managing the girls. Plus Verdene is selling the house, and the paperwork has been keeping Verdene occupied. Margot doesn’t know what’s taking her so long, and quite frankly, it’s making her a little nervous. Maybe this is her fault, since she discouraged Verdene from hiring a lawyer. All Verdene has to do is sign the contract, which was drafted by a subsidiary group under the Wellington Estate. Alphonso did not want his or Wellington name on the contract, and Verdene is the last property owner in River Bank who has not signed yet.
“Come here.” Verdene gets up off the bed to pull Margot close. She lowers herself just a little and puts her head under Margot’s chin, slipping her arms around Margot’s waist.
Margot cups her face. “We’re about to build this new life together, might as well we celebrate that.” Verdene nods in agreement and kisses Margot on the chin, then on the lips.
“Wait till you see the design of the sunroom,” Margot says, thinking of the sketch of the dream villa in Lagoons that the architect showed her at the office today. She was finally able to put down money for it with her raise. “Everything will be made of glass.”