“Ouch!” Thandi pulls Margot back to the present.
“What’s di mattah?”
“You’re pulling again!”
“I’m sorry,” Margot says, feeling something greater slip from her fingers when her sister yanks her head away this time.
“Careful wid har hair!” Delores says, reeling from the stove with the dripping wooden spoon. “Yuh t’ink she’s a playt’ing?”
Margot sucks her teeth while pulling balls of dark hair from the fine-toothed comb and wrapping them inside tissue so that she can burn them later.
“Yuh always in dat child’s hair like yuh don’t have yuh own.”
“She has swimming lessons tomorrow,” Margot says in defense, though there was a letter sent from the school concerning Thandi’s lack of participation in swimming. According to the letter, her sister had to sit out swimming class eight times this term, saying she had her period. This became a concern for the school. Margot knows that Thandi hates water, save for taking showers. But she has always made sure that her sister learns how to swim, paying for the lessons anyway no matter how many times she fails to show up. It’s also the one excuse Margot holds on to for braiding Thandi’s hair.
“Then let me do it,” Delores says.
Margot holds the comb as if it’s a weapon. “You always think I’m hurting her.”
Thandi is quiet. Delores steps back and dries her hands on the front of her dress. She wipes sweat from her upper lip, then goes back to stirring the pot. Without turning around she says, “Mr. Sterling increase di rent again.”
“Again?” Margot asks, continuing to comb Thandi’s hair. “But him increase it jus’ two months ago.”
“Yuh already know is so dat man stay,” Delores says, stirring harder. “T’iefing culprit.”
Margot looks down into the roots of her sister’s hair. She brushes the curls, meticulously tames them, avoiding the weight of her mother’s frustration on her shoulders. “I want to put down something for a house,” she hears herself say. It sounds as if someone else is speaking — someone crouched inside the dark shadows in the corners of the shack. “I want to move us from dis rat hole. It don’t mek no sense why we have to stay here an’ keep paying dat man rent. We don’t even have real electricity.”
“Yuh sure ’bout dat?” Delores asks, pausing with the wooden spoon to look at Margot, her eyes hardening. “Yuh been working in dat hotel fah god knows how long, saying di same damn t’ing. If ah didn’t know bettah ah woulda t’ink yuh spending it pon yuhself.” Her eyes seem to have electricity running through them. The only source on the entire island. Their shadows clash in the dim light when Delores steps closer with the spoon. If it weren’t for her sister pressing her head between her legs as if to allow her to carry on, Margot would have snatched the wooden spoon out of her mother’s hand. Who knows what she would’ve done with it? Margot knows that Thandi gets uneasy with confrontations like these between her and Delores. She becomes anxious, watchful, acquiring the fidgetiness of a kitchen mouse and doing everything in her power to resolve the issue. Margot swallows the boiling-hot fury inside her for Thandi’s sake. “Delores, yuh know very well dat everyt’ing I earn goes into Thandi’s education. And into dis blasted place.”
“We all know dat hotel work is good work,” Delores charges. “Yet we can’t see di fruits ah yuh labor. We ovah here barely holdin’ on. Thandi ’ave har exam in June, di rent piling up, we haffi pay Clover money fah di electricity—”
“We owe Clover nothing,” Margot says between clenched teeth. “Not one cent!”
“Well, is not like yuh stick aroun’ at night to see dat we been using dis tired kerosene lamp even when is not a power cut. Poor Thandi haffi strain har eye undah dis dim light—” She gestures to the kerosene lamp. Inside it, the flame is dancing. Margot focuses on it. How weak it seems, trapped inside glass. This little flame that has the potential to destroy the whole house. Margot stares and stares, her own flame building on the inside, burning and burning until it’s too hot to keep to herself. “I’ll figure it out,” she says in a low, tempered voice.
Delores is silent for a moment. The fire hisses under the pot. “How?” she asks. The liquid from the spoon is dripping onto the floor.
“I said.” Margot lifts her head to meet her mother’s gaze. “I’ll figure it out. I always do.”
Her mother lowers her spoon and her shoulders. Strangely, something flickers in her eyes — a sadness, or perhaps regret, more pronounced than Margot has ever seen it. It reaches out across the room, over Thandi’s head, to confess that despite what she had done as a mother, despite the pain she had put Margot through, they are joined as mother and daughter. Her hand half lifts with the spoon — a gesture that Margot considers might be a first attempt at an apology. As she braces herself to receive it, Delores’s voice strikes her like a cane. “Take care of what, Margot? Where di money g’wan come from if it not coming already?” Delores laughs, her eyes wheeling over the room as if in desperate search for the shadows. “Yuh see me dying trial? She say she will tek care of it as if money fall from sky. Or grow pon tree. Di chile done lose har mind!”
“I’ll be up fah promotion any day now,” Margot says.
“Promotion?”
“Yes. A promotion.”
“To be what? Head servant?”
Delores’s derisive laugh drives Margot back into Thandi’s hair. But even her sister, in her stiff-backed silence, seems to be agreeing with their mother. Margot turns Thandi’s head this way and that way like a rag doll.
“Ouch! Ouch! Margot!” Thandi yells. But Margot doesn’t oblige. This time, as exquisite pain courses through her, propelled by her mother’s disdain, Margot pulls at her sister’s hair. The last thing she wants is to hurt Thandi. But Thandi’s pain is different — the type that comes with relief like a balm over a scab, a needle drawing splinter from skin. Margot’s stays. Delores’s voice rushes at her, flogging her with its taunt: “Tek care of what? Bettah yuh go set up shop as a market vendor at craft market than tell people yuh work in a hotel.”
They stare at her when she walks into school wearing the oversized sweatshirt, her hair newly straightened. Thandi ignores the attention, seeking the refuge of her desk in the back of the classroom. Heads turn as she makes her way down the row. Along with the speculation she hears her classmates whisper.
“Why is she wearing that dreadful sweatshirt? It’s like she has AIDS or something.”
“Or hiding a you-know-what!”
“No way!”
“Well, yuh know what they say. It’s always the quiet ones. Even her hair change. They say when you swallow, it’s extra protein. Good for the hair and skin.”
“Says who?”
“I read it somewhere.”
“But you think she has a man giving it to her on the regular?”
“Like I said, it’s the ones you least expect.”
Not since Kim Brady got slapped by her mother in front of the entire school for insulting one of the nuns has there been anything as gossip-worthy. Thandi keeps her head down during devotion in the hall where Sister Shirley, the headmistress, leads the school in worship. Sister Shirley’s voice soars above the collective: “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit by thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now, and at the hour of our death. Amen.”