Margot raises her hand to slap Thandi, but it stops midair when Thandi says, “Go ahead.” Thandi knows she has spoken the truth. She sees her words wrap themselves lovingly around her sister’s neck. She steps closer to Margot. They are the same height. Thandi always thought her sister was a few inches taller. That too was an illusion.
Margot shudders. She loves nothing in this world except Thandi. She wants her to be successful, but she has wanted so much more for herself too. Now she feels as though she’s been emptied. “No compassion, no conscience, no heart.” That’s what Verdene said to her when Margot confessed that she knew her precious pink house would be worth nothing, that River Bank would be sacrificed. Verdene’s love turned to ash before Margot’s eyes. Margot looks at Thandi now, all that’s left. “You owe me. For all I have done for you, sacrificed for you. You. Owe. Me.”
Thandi, whom she clothed, sheltered, fed, gave every bit of herself to. With her body she shielded her sister from Delores’s wrath. Gave her an opportunity to get away. To be better than them so she wouldn’t have to sacrifice anything. But instead of gratitude in Thandi’s eyes, Margot sees the looming resentment.
“You don’t even know yuhself. My childhood was spent like a hundred-dollar bill on you. Everything you needed was put on me. If yuh needed formula, I had to sleep wid yuh father to get it. If yuh cry fah hunger, I had to feed you. If yuh wanted a special toy, I had to get down on my knees an’ do more than play. I had to play wid yuh daddy too. ”
Thandi doesn’t say a word. Her eyes are a pair of dark round circles, empty of understanding, struggle.
“When yuh got into that school, I had to work overtime so that you could go. But not even that was helping, so I asked Alphonso to write that check. You talk about being used? Walk a day in my shoes an’ you’ll know what dat mean. I stayed in dat shack when I could have moved on with my life, because I was afraid Delores would have done to you what she did to me. So where yuh get the right to judge me? Now tell me, Thandi, once and for alclass="underline" if it’s not to be the doctor we prayed you were going to be, then, What. Do. You. Want?” Margot stretches this question between her teeth.
Thandi glances over at Alphonso as though seeking his permission.
“I want Charles to be free. I want the charges dropped against him, and the reward. I want us to be together.”
Margot chuckles at this. “Really? Is that it?” A lump of pity rises in Margot’s throat, seeing her sister’s rounded shoulders, her young, pretty face bleached and sullied with confusion and defeat. How many girls has Margot seen this way? How many girls has she told to work for what they want? Girls her sister’s age and younger. “Mek me proud,” she tells them. They bring business to the island that shuns them, lumps them like logs to be eaten away by the elements. Or rather, leaves them to sink at sea. Margot collects them one by one and gives them a new life. A new way to claim the freedom they were denied. Terrified of what the experience might bring, these girls cling to Margot for guidance. And very methodically, she turns them out, daring them to either sink or swim. Never in a million years had she thought it possible to let go of Thandi this way. She thought she would always be the ship on which Thandi sails. The buoy that keeps her afloat. But it occurs to her that maybe her sister will only learn how to swim when she, like Margot, is pushed into the deepest parts of the ocean — that she’ll be able to manage out of sheer will for survival. Not even Pregnant Heidi’s waves will be able to deter her. So Margot leans in and kisses her sister gently on the forehead for what will be the last time. And, very gently, she pushes her toward Alphonso. “Mek me proud.”
40
MARGOT WAKES UP IN THE BEACHFRONT VILLA — HER VILLA — surrounded by damp, rumpled sheets. She sweated through the sheets again, though the overhead fan spins and spins above her king-sized canopy bed with its dark wood frame and its white netting. She cannot remember her dream, not even the tail end of it that still wraps itself around her neck and chokes her. It’s the fourth time in a row this week that this has happened. She looks around the large bedroom, where daylight has crept through the shutters, and touches her neck. Earlier she had clawed at hands that were not there. Her skin is raw, bruised.
“Desrine?” she calls after her house girl. But then she remembers that Desrine, entering through the back door from her cottage, doesn’t come until eight, which is around the time Margot leaves for work in the black Range Rover parked in the driveway. If Desrine were already here, Margot would have heard the slap-slap sounds of her slippers echoing on the marble tiles. All she hears now is the tap-tap of raindrops on the windowsill and on the upper veranda that her master bedroom door opens on to. It has been raining for days, as if to make up for last year’s drought.
Margot throws off the bedcover, rises up from the sturdy mattress, parts the netting, and moves from the bedroom, padding lightly, as though the marble tiles might crack with her footsteps. She walks from room to room, opening and closing the arched French doors, her long silk robe sweeping the floor behind her, as she searches for. . what? She doesn’t know. Each of the three guest bedrooms, painted the color of the sky — not the gray that it has been these last few days, but blue — are empty, almost austere, like well-dressed strangers. She wraps herself in her robe and makes her way to the sunroom — the only place in her home where she feels like herself. Whatever that means. Each detail took months to perfect — the exposed wooden beams in the arched ceilings, the dark rattan furniture and white cushions, the brightly colored walls that she painted herself, experimenting with hibiscus-pink, Valencia-orange, and sunset-red, before deciding upon clean, clear white.
If Delores could see me now, she thinks, rubbing her neck where the gashes have turned to welts. Last Margot heard of her mother, Delores moved one parish over to Trelawny with Grandma Merle to be closer to the dock. She heard Delores has lost a lot of weight, her skin sagging on bare bones. It was Maxi who relayed the message. Margot had gone into town to deposit money in the bank — an errand she doesn’t trust Desrine with — when she bumped into him. His eyes examined her new clothes, her Italian-leather pumps, her Chanel handbag, the Range Rover keys dangling from her manicured fingers. He nodded his head slowly, though no one asked him anything. “Tek good care ah yuhself, Margot,” he eventually said. He spoke more formally — no jokes, no sexual innuendos, and no Rasta-man philosophy. And worse, it sounded final. Like a goodbye. When she turned away to go inside the bank, she almost lost her balance.
Margot sits on one of the wicker sofas in the sunroom and gazes at the panoramic view of the sea. It’s a wonder to look at from up here. The view is more beautiful in the sunlight that usually streams in through the glass in enchanted beams. But lately the sky has emptied itself of everything, including stars. Like the ocean, it’s deep and brooding, roaring over the city as if God has played a trick on mankind, the sea and sky switching places. It threatens to swallow Margot.
She pictures Verdene on every surface, their bodies pressed together as they listen to the sound of water hitting the glass exterior. Margot imagines them looking out at the lush green of the landscaped garden surrounded by rosebushes, hibiscus, bougainvillea, and manicured hedges. A garden that Verdene would’ve certainly taken pride in maintaining. Margot had built this room so that they could watch the sunrises and the sunsets together. But she has hired people to populate her property; people whose presence has kept her afloat — Cudjoe, an older man who used to be a farmer but turned yardman after his crops died in the drought, and Desrine. They both show up for work on time in the mornings — Cudjoe tending to the property and Desrine to the house. Though, whenever they are there, the house is still quiet — too quiet: the lull of the ocean, the intermittent billowing of curtains by the breeze. In River Bank she was used to hearing the crowing of roosters. But here, in Lagoons, when she wakes up, there is silence, as though the day has held its breath. Desrine and Cudjoe speak in whispers to each other or make no sound at all after their initial, “Howdy, Miss Margot.” It’s this frozen formality that sparks an occasional burst of fire inside Margot’s chest that makes her snap at them for no reason. “Desrine, didn’t I tell you to stop using that blasted cleaning liquid? It affect my sinus. What yuh want to do? Kill me?” or “Cudjoe, what am I paying you for? To sit under dat tree? Don’t t’ink ah not watching! There’s plenty more people like you in Montego Bay. Half ah dem need a job.”