Read Online Here Comes the Sun by Nicole Dennis-Benn - Free Book Online Page B

sad songs that Margot used to hear her grandmother hum. As a little girl she knew the sorrows in those songs but felt immune to the pain in them. She knew already that helplessness is weak, and that there is no use in having faith in God. God is not the one to put food on the table or send her sister to school. And God is certainly not the one keeping the roof over their heads.
    She sways high above Horace like a palm tree in a cool breeze as he whispers his gratitude, sometimes cursing her with expletives that cause her to throw her head back and pick up speed. His head is small and inconspicuous from where she sits. There are moments when another person comes to mind, feminine lips parting, hungry for more than Margot’s body. The person’s eyes are steady on hers. Margot knows these eyes. They plead with her, so she concentrates instead on the unremarkable man’s head below her. She rocks and sways, aware of the creeping chaos, the sensation that spreads from her groin all the way to his curled toes as though her orgasm has possessed his body too. When it’s all over, Margot spirals down and down, crashing like a big tree uprooted by nature’s merciless ax. She lies next to Horace, postcoital disgust and a lurking disappointment coiling in her belly like days-old milk. She’s human again. Horace reaches for her, touches her arm, and she flinches. She never wants to be touched in this state. A week in Jamaica’s sun has turned him red. His dark hair falls into his face and he brushes it away. It falls back despite his effort. If he meant more to her, she would reach up and brush his hair aside so that she could stare into the blueness of his eyes. But she keeps seeing the eyes of someone else.
    â€œI have to go,” she tells him. She covers her breasts with the white sheet, something she never used to do. Margot is prone to prancing around naked. She used to revel in the lust she saw in her clients as they watched her move about the suite uninhibited. They expect that kind of behavior from an island woman.
    â€œGo?” Horace says to her in his heavy German accent, which sounds to her like, “ Guh? ” “But ze night is still early.”
    Margot glances at the clock on the VCR. Palm Star Resort has yet to upgrade to DVD players like all the other five-star hotels on the strip. It’s quarter after eleven. Where did the time go? Earlier in the evening Horace had ordered room service while Margot hid in the bathroom. They ate, and drank a bottle of wine between them. What did they talk about? Margot can’t remember. Whatever their conversation, she was sure of only one thing: it ended the way it always ends.
    Margot moves about the spacious room, picking up her stockings and uniform from off the floor. Horace is her oldest client. He comes to Jamaica just for her, always promising to take her back with him to Germany. And always, when he pulls out his wallet to pay her, she catches a glimpse of a smiling, yellow-haired family—a woman and two children, a boy and a girl. She wonders where he would put her if he followed through with his promise to take her with him. What would he tell the smiling woman and two children in the picture? Like Horace, all her clients promise the same thing, as though paying her isn’t enough; as though somehow their fucking has given them a desire to “save” her. They need to justify their infidelity with an act of kindness, a generosity that Margot fights the urge to laughingly decline. If she says yes, it gives them power to know that there’s a woman who depends on them, who needs them. It keeps them coming back.
    â€œI have to meet someone—” Margot says, pushing her leg inside her sheer stocking. It rips and she cusses under her breath.
    â€œAnother man?” Horace asks. “Vat is he paying you? I can give more.”
    â€œNo. It’s not a man.”
    â€œThen who is more important than