The Meeting Point

by Austin Clarke

  “But still, Lottie …” and she realized she had better change the conversation.

  “She dead. And I say it is a blasted shame that she died the way she had to dead. Still, it ain’t a damn thing neither you nor me could do, save follow Lottie to the grave, at the funeral.”

  “I still sorry, though. ’Cause she is one o’ we.” Just then, Mrs. Burrmann called her. “I have to go now. You hear this one breathing down my neck?”

  “I am not deaf, gal.”

  “Well, don’t forget tonight. Estelle coming in, and when you come round here, we going have to talk some more,” and with that, she put down the receiver. “Lottie, dead,” she said to herself. “Dead?” The tragedy came in upon her with power. She felt lonely all of a sudden; and she felt cruel with the world. Immediately, she hated Mrs. Burrmann a little more, and blamed her for Lottie’s death. But she talked herself out of this heavy judgement; and soon felt strong enough to face Mrs. Burrmann, once more, to talk about Estelle.

  Beethoven’s music was mournful now, as if it had reached that section purposely, on Lottie’s behalf. Bernice waited until the hearses and the black of the funeral were out of the melody, and the feeling was new and rising and lighthearted as sugar cane trash tossed in a strong wind, before she moved off towards the sitting-room. She stopped. She stood. She thought. She came back and stood beside the kitchen counter, looking into the backyard of the neighbouring house, watching the snow fall, and counting the snowflakes dropping like marshmallows. The music was still loud; but it was distant now. It was something that could not be reached out to, and touched; something that melted, like the snow, the moment it came in contact with you … Lord, a young woman! coming all this distance up here in this cold place, and You mean that You let her died? Lottie dead? just like that? What the hell that mother o’ Lottie is going to say when she find out? And the same Lottie who was thinking o’ sending for her brother to put him in a technical school to learn how to be a welder. All the money that poor girl saved up, all these five years working off her arse, and saving ninety-nine cents out of a dollar, turning her eyes ’gainst the luxuries o’ this world, and setting them on necessary things, and now, out of the blue, bram! A blasted motor-car …

  “Miss Bernice! Aunt Bernice! Auntie Bernice!” It was the children. They had just come from school, one day early in winter with Mrs. Gasstein’s two. Bernice held down and picked up Serene, and kissed her on her forehead. Serene kissed her on her lips; and Bernice stealthily but firmly passed her hands over her mouth, wiping away the kiss because it had chewing gum on it. The two of them were shut off, through their kisses, from the others. It was their little exile of happiness together. In the midst of this, one of the children, Mrs. Gasstein’s son, commented, “She’s black.” (Bernice had not then liked the word “black” used to describe her colour. It was before she began reading the Black Muslim newspaper, Muhammad Speaks.) Bernice flinched. She could feel the tension grip Serene’s tender body, as she held her darling. The little boy was a fierce, little pink pumpkin of a boy. “She’s really black.” This made Bernice stiffen; but she pretended not to hear. “Look, Deirdre! Look! She is really black,” the litle boy told his sister.

  “So what?” Serene demanded. “Wise guy!” Serene had learned her lesson a long time ago: once, she came downstairs and called Bernice Miss Nigger, and her mother heard and slapped her on her mouth. “Never again do you let me hear you say that!” As viciously as she could, Serene said again, “Wise guy!”

  “She’s black. But our maid, Brigitte, is white,” he said, savouring his last word.

  “Mummy says Brigitte is a kraut,” Deirdre said. Bernice felt it was such a heavy, ponderous and final pronouncement for a small child to make. But then, she felt she understood, seeing that she had always regarded these Jewish children (those on her street) as little spoilt brats. “Anyways, Mummy says we must never call a Negro person black or brown. They’re persons. Mummy says we should call them coloured.”

  “And Mummy called the woman on the pancake box, Aunt Jerimima, Bernice’s sister, because she is a nigger. Mummy says she is the same as Bernice. She looks like Bernice.” After all this talk, the little wise guy was more serious, more inquiring than vicious and malicious. It was as if he had been working out these difficulties in his mind, to himself and for himself, to see whether he could find any logic in them. But by this time, Bernice was fierce. She was stiff with tension, with shame and with hate. Her right hand was quivering.

  “Anyways, she’s our maid,” little Ruthie said, talking up for the first time. “And she is a person.” Had it been on another occasion, in different circumstances, Bernice would have smiled and patted Ruthie on her head. But now, she saw just a child, one of four white children; and children or no children, adults, old people, be-Christ, this whole damn world is the same all over. And her hate thus became a corporate hate.

  “Miss Bernice,” Serene said, hugging Bernice, “don’t listen to him.”

  “But what is wrong with you-all tribes, eh?” she asked, certain that at least one of them would not be offended by her harsh words. “You-all come running in my kitchen, walking-over this clean floor I just sprained my back cleaning. You-all looking for cookies, I bet yuh.” She said it fast, gathering as much feeling as she could in this outburst of mock resentment. “Is cookies you-all want, ain’t it?”

  “Gimme a cookie.” It was the fierce, little, wise boy, demanding.

  “Don’t give him any, Auntie Bernice. He hasn’t any manners.”

  “She has to,” Wise Guy said. He was now red with indignation. Bernice looked down on him, hardly three feet above the floor, and she wondered why this little white bastard don’t have no manners? Wonder what would happen if I bashed in his little arse with this cookie tin. “She has to give me, I don’t have to be nice to her. She is only a maid!” A quiet, like the quiet of the interval between new, unintroduced, faltering conversation, settled on the kitchen. Boy, if I wasn’t in this house, I would tar your little red arse now! Serene tried to push the little wise guy of a boy out of the kitchen, before he said more embarrassing things; but he was too strong for her. It is the same thing all over this world, big and small; and this bastard is bad bad, and strong to boot! Serene eventually gave up trying to throw him out. And Wise Guy was quiet, and nice again. Bernice went to the top of the refrigerator for the large toffee tin in which she kept her home-baked cookies.

  “Miss Bernice,” Deirdre said, eating a cookie, “see my new bracelet. I just got it. I got it for my birthday.” She held up her hand; and Bernice inspected it. Deirdre gave her brother a dirty look. It was impossible for her to relax in his presence. And just as Bernice was about to touch the bracelet, and run her fingers over its embossed patterns, Deirdre withdrew her hand. “It cost fifty dollars. Mummy bought it. But Daddy paid for it. And Daddy says I should have got a much better one. A better one cost seventy-five dollars. This is not a better one. This is a cheap one.” It grieves my heart to see how your mothers spoil you children, she thought; but aloud she said, “You have a nice Mummy, dear, to spend fifty dollars on you, for that.”

  “You’re black!” Little Red Wise Guy had not forgotten Bernice.

  “She’s six,” Serene said. “She had a party, though. Not a very good party. I invited only twenty of my friends … persons. My Daddy says when I am thirteen, I am going to Europe for my birthday present. And …”

  “How old you is now, please?” Bernice asked.

  “Six.”

  “Looka, you-all come and take these cookies, please.” Bernice was disgusted by the waste of wealth on these children. “I have work to do.”

  The children grabbed more cookies; and pushed their hands into her tin. Bernice smiled. Within her heart, she felt that these children were just like those she knew back in Barbados. Wise Guy came right up to her; rested his sticky red hand, softly, on her hand; and said, quizzically, “You’re black.” He touched her gently; perhaps even with love in the gesture. But
how was she to know? After what he had been calling her? Swiftly, like electric current, Bernice’s hand, her right hand, moved. And just as swiftly, something told her, No! don’t do that, you fool. She looked at Serene and Ruthie, and realized that they did not know what to do with the little boy, their friend. The situation was too large for them. “My Mummy says you people are nasty,” he said, eating a few cookies, and allowing some to crumble down his mouth. “And my Mummy says you shouldn’t live among us. You’re different from us.”

  “You’re not even white, wise guy,” Ruthie said. “You’re just a lousy little Jew, like all of us.”

  “Oh God, man! you shoudn’t call your friend by them hard words.” And Bernice shook her head in sorrow.

  “I’m not a Jew. I am white. And, and-and-and … she’s black then, anyhow.” The situation was now out of hand. Completely. Bernice remained clenched with anger, beside the counter, biting her lips, trying to evade the stares of Serene and Ruthie, her two dear sweet children, whom she knew would never say bad things like this; and she cried in her heart, because she could not strike the little boy dead. “Un-eeny-meeny-miney, moe! catch a …” he continued. And then he smiled, as soon as he reached that part in the nursery rhyme; he stopped; he looked up at Bernice, and smiled again. Instead, he merely added, “ … catch a dolphin by his toe!” (Bernice exhaled all her hate.) Still staring at her, he went on, “… and if she hollers, let her go, eeny-meeny-miney, moe!” Bernice had closed her eyes by now, against the catastrophe that almost happened. She would have slapped all life out of him, had he uttered that word. When she opened her eyes, the little boy was standing at the kitchen door, with the door and the door-post squeezed against his head, showing only the eyes and that part of his head which had no ears. His mouth was turned up in a sneer; his tongue was hanging out in derisive contempt. “And eeny-meeny-miney, moe! and catch a black nigger by her toe …” But he did not have the chance to finish it. Bernice’s shoe struck the aluminium screen door with a bang; and he fled with the remainder of the insult, terrified within him. His sister flounced. She placed the partially eaten cookie, scalloped by her tooth-prints, on the counter; juggled her fifty-dollar bracelet on her wrist; and left. She did not even bother to close the door behind her. Serene looked at Bernice, and then at Ruthie. And then she said, as if a great fatigue had come over her, “Come, Ruthie. Let us go upstairs.” She seemed much older after she said it. They left Bernice alone; with the tears falling down her face, like icicles melting from the branches of the tree on the front lawn.

  Many times during the thirty-two months she had worked for the Burrmann’s, Bernice made up her mind to leave, to run out on Mrs. Burrmann, without notice, and with the kitchen sink full of dinner dishes. Always, her mind was changed for her by the terror of facing a Canadian winter without a job; and also by the comfort and near luxury of her three-room (living-room, bedroom — which were really one room — and washroom) apartment on the third floor, which was part of her wages for working as a domestic. It was her self-contained shelter, against herself and other racial fall-out. It became, in time, her home away from home. This apartment contained more facilities than she had ever known back in Barbados. It was clean; she kept it clean. It was large, for her; she was accustomed to sharing a bed with her sister, Estelle, all her life in Barbados. But it was lonely.

  One day, in a pit of depression, Bernice went down to Eaton’s department store and brought back two hundred dollars in dresses plus a ninety-dollar swim suit. She put on the dresses; but she did not wear them out of the apartment. There was nowhere to go. And so she called her friend, Dots, and the two of them alternately dressed themselves in the dresses, and modelled the swim suit which left a mark on the swivelly, jowled and jelly avoirdupois of their behinds. The next day, Bernice telephoned Eaton’s to pick up the clothes. Eaton’s gave her charge account a two-hundred and ninety-dollar credit. Dots had liked the swim suit; and wanted to keep it. But she remembered in time (“Where I would wear this thing, eh, gal? In the backyard in the summer? ’Cause I have never seen one Negro person in any o’ these swimming pools they have all over this city!”), she took a final appraisal of her figure; took the swim suit off, and wrapped it in the soft, noisy paper into the box. Bernice cackled as if she was really happy, and said, “You could model it round the house, for Boysie, though.”

  “Look, gal, Boysie only married to me, you hear? And that don’t give him the rights to see my body. And let me tell you something,” she added, laughing, “we does do that in the dark.” She laughed so loudly, that she had to put her hand over her mouth. Bernice laughed too. It was like therapy; and it made her feel better. Some of her depression left her.

  But this depression would always come back. And once when it did, she withdrew from the congregation of the Toronto Negro Baptist Church, and transferred her soul and its care to the Unitarian Congregation, on St. Clair Avenue, West. This was a much better church, she felt. (Mrs. Burrmann used to go there; but she stopped shortly after Bernice came to work for her.) It was a cleaner wealthier church than her old Negro Baptist Church; and the congregation was all white — or mostly white; and they did not come to church to moan and groan, and exchange experiences about white people and about racial discrimination. Bernice felt purged, in a way. She chopped an inch off the hemline of her dresses, stopped wearing nylon stockings with seams and began stepping out into the pearly white, white virginity of winter and broadminded liberal Christianity, clickitty-clacketty, in a pair of Italian three-quarter heels. She had bought them the day before with her Eaton’s charge-o-matic plate. One immediate result of this change in her place of worship, was that she stopped thinking Mrs. Burrmann was the devil; and consequently, stopped thinking of leaving the job. Life became a little less unbearable. She could stomach Mrs. Burrmann, who at this time, was going to the University of Toronto, doing a part-time course in Social Anthropology. Mrs. Burrmann had less time to herself; less time for the whiskey; and she spent most of the day studying. Bernice spent all her time caring for her personal appearance; and the appearance of her mind. She herself, following her mistress’s influence, took out a subscription to Life and Time magazines, because she thought she was not quite equipped to engage on formal studies. But reading these two magazines, diligently, caused her to think a great deal about her life in this new, vast country; and about the world; and of course, about Mrs. Burrmann. Reading them even prompted her to put her thoughts on paper, in a letter to Mammy, confessing that I following the lead of my mistress, and trying to improve my mind. She gone back to school, taking lessons. She is this big, rich Jew woman. So, I figure there must be something very special in doing that. That is why I subscribe to two nice magazines which I reads every night after work. I am convince there is something in learning, Mammy. Some damn thing. This lady, Mrs. Burrmann, have learning already, and money too. I don’t know yet which road to follow. But I intend to follow both; and get some of both. If she can go back to school, at her age, and she already have a lot of certificates on the wall, and other papers testifying to the fact that … and here her thoughts forsook her.

  … and all these things come back to her, working eternally it seems, in this kitchen; listening to Mrs. Burrmann play Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony as often as there is snow in winter; listening to the complaints, the small defeats and successes of the two children; and at times, giving some asked-for advice to Mrs. Burrmann about a dress — advice which was never taken. Listening now to the music, as the music possesses the room like human harvesters of women possessing a field, and leaving the field without corn, the music makes her think of home in Barbados; and it makes her say these thoughts out aloud, to herself, as she is accustomed to doing, while working in the kitchen. Sometimes, she argues aloud, to herself. And sometimes, her voice frightens her, as she hears it answering her; and she fears she is hearing the knell of a beginning insanity; and remember, Bernice, do you remember Gertrude? and what happen to her? Never a soul with who she could exchange
a word with, and comment on the colour of snow, even. Days and days pass, and not one o’ we women from the West Indies ever went up to Orillia and see how Gertrude making out; and Orillia isn’t as far as New York, and they always rushing down there, as if they have gold down there. Nobody won’t go up and see how Gertrude making out in life, living amongst all them white people. Lord, and when all of us was thinking that things up there was rosy, that Gertrude was making money like water, Gertrude, oh dear loss! flat on her back in a mental hospital. Gertrude let the loneliness and the hard work go to her head, and it send her straight inside the insane hospital. Up there in the wilderness, all by herself, ain’t have a chick to visit her, not a thing to do with her time, save go and sit down in a church, four times every Sunday. Gertrude, like the rest o’ we, marching her behind inside somebody church.… (One Sunday morning, when spring first peeped into Gertrude’s boredom, she went to church, and was asked to testify. A week before, she had “taken Jesus as her personal saviour.” The church was packed. Word had walked through this resort town that a Negro woman from Africa (Gertrude was born and bred in Grenada) was giving a speech. When the day came and the church was hushed just like that time, in biblical times, when spirits of foreign languages were falling on disciples like tongues, Gertrude rose, red as a rose in a dress, and said aloud, as if her whole body was a resort in which the Spirit was rejuvenating, “I thanks the Lord for saving me and keeping me, from the rising of the sun till the going-down thereof. I am saved, amen! and I have been washed in the precious blood of the Lamb, and be-Christ, all of you brothers and sisters in here now can see that I been washed whiter than snow, amen!” Gertrude was so black, that sometimes even Bernice used to make jokes about her colour. Dots never liked her, and called her Coal Dust. Nobody in that Orillia, tongue-tied congregation, could understand the meaning of her words and nobody said amen!).…