“You guess?” Miss Ruby puts her hands on her hips. “Yuh betta be. It’s in four months, no? That’s a big, big deal. My cousin in Kingston fail five subjects last year an’ did haffi tek them ovah. Anothah girl end up dropping out an’ going to vocational school fi learn a trade. You is yuh mother’s only hope. Yuh know how hard she wuk fi send you to dat school?” It’s true. Delores cheats tourists out of their money with cheap souvenirs she sells for triple the price in Falmouth Market, and Margot works long hours at the hotel. They do it for her.
Thandi swallows, looking down at her uniform piled on the floor like a rumpled sheet. It used to give her a sense of pride, but at this very moment, as she stares at it, she considers the other uses one could make of the white material that costs more than groceries for a month. Because of the expense, Thandi only owns two sets of uniforms, washing them by hand every evening after school, then ironing them for the next day.
She looks down at her brown thighs. They haven’t changed a bit since her last visit. “Do you think I can get light in four months?” she asks Miss Ruby, thinking of the party and the boys who will be there.
“You took the plastic off,” Miss Ruby says, a tinge of accusation in her voice.
“It was too hot,” Thandi tells her. “I felt like I was going to pass out.”
“I used to be black like you, but now look at me . . .” Miss Ruby turns her head from side to side for Thandi to see her salmon-colored skin, delicate with the texture of scalded milk. “See how bright my skin come? If yuh follow instructions yours will get this way quicker. Now dat yuh ’ave di Queen of Pearl, yuh might be lucky. If yuh want faster results, use it twice ah day.”
She rubs the concoction up and down Thandi’s neck, back, arms, and shoulders. She rubs everywhere but her butt crack. Miss Ruby is hardly tender. Thandi wonders if Miss Ruby’s roughness is punishment for not having followed her earlier instructions. She imagines her blackness peeling off, the hydrogen peroxide Miss Ruby pours into the mixture acting like an abrasive, a medicine for her melancholy. She closes her eyes as the warm formula touches her skin. Miss Ruby works her way to Thandi’s chest. The circular motion of a stranger’s hands on her breasts makes Thandi blush. She has never been touched this way. She opens her eyes and searches for something—anything—that can take her mind off the sensation of this strange woman’s fingers. She imagines herself as a fish Miss Ruby rubs down with salt and vinegar before frying. Her eyes find the ceiling. Had she been able to lift her arm, she would trace the things she sees projected from her mind.
“Luckily yuh ’ave good hair already,” Miss Ruby says. “Good, coolie hair. Yuh daddy is a Indian?”
“I don’t know,” Thandi says, still staring up at the planks in the ceiling. “Never met him.”
“Tsk, tsk. Well, God played a cruel joke on you. Because, chile, if yuh skin was as pretty as yuh hair, you’d be one gorgeous woman.”
Miss Ruby isn’t saying anything Thandi hasn’t heard before. Her mother says the same thing, often shaking her head the way she does over burned food that has to go to waste. “It’s a pity yuh neva have skin like yuh daddy.” Thandi is neither the nutmeg-brown that makes Margot an honorable mistress—a rung lower than a bright-skinned wife—nor is she black like Delores, whose skin makes people sympathetic when they see her. “Who want to be black like dat in dis place?” Miss Ruby once said to Thandi about her mother.
Miss Ruby gives Thandi the homemade mixture in the jar for her to apply as needed. “Only as needed,” she stresses. “These are very strong chemicals that could kill yuh.” She then reaches for the Saran Wrap and begins to wrap Thandi’s arms and torso. A mummified Thandi sits and listens to Miss Ruby’s instructions:
“If yuh waan come quicker, leave on the plastic. Don’t wash. Don’t go in the sun. If yuh haffi go in the sun fah whateva reason, mek sure seh yuh covah up at all times from head to toe. If yuh start to feel like yuh g’wan faint, jus’ drink wata. It mek yuh sweat more. Whatevah yuh do, nuh tek off the plastic. An’ remembah, stay outta that sun!”
Miss Ruby repeats these words like an ominous warning, her eyes pouring into Thandi’s. Thandi listens and nods, though she wants to rip the Saran Wrap off and jump in the river. She imagines her skin boiling, becoming molten liquid underneath the plastic wrap.
“Do I have to wear this all the time?” Thandi asks.