“But what did you do?”
“Look, Estelle, don’t you come playing you could talk to me like …” But Dots cut her short.
“Look, it is high time you forget all this shit ’bout Miss Ruthie and Miss Serene outta your head, hear? Miss Ruthie, my backside! Call the little monster by her real name, gal!”
“I say to her,” Bernice continued, her voice shaking and wet with a few tears in it, “but Miss Ruthie, why are you spying up in my behind like that? Has you lost Mummy or Daddy up in there?”
“And what did she do, then?” Estelle asked.
“She laughed, she just laughed.”
“And what did she say?”
“She tell me that a little girl … Mrs. Gasstein’ girl …” Bernice said, breaking down now in shame and tears, “she tell me, that this little girl’s father tell her that black women … ”
“Be-Jesus Christ, I don’t buy that at all!” Boysie said. “Look, we gotta be fair. Perhaps the child father say so, and perhaps he didn’t tell the child so. I have to buy that the blasted child make up that story. Some children is lying bitches!”
“I believe the child’s father tell her so,” Dots shouted.
And Bernice could not finish her story, because the shame was too much for her; and the censure in Dots’s voice and in Estelle’s eyes was too bitter. Boysie’s silence after what he said, was perhaps the greatest weapon. Dots started to shake her head, characteristically, from side to side, in sorrow; in sympathy. Bernice tried hard to forget what happened on another evening: … I think it was a Sunday, though it could be a Saturday, ’cause Mrs. Burrmann had take the kids for a drive afterwards, yes! it was a Sunday, and Mr. Burrmann was somewhere in the house …
“How old is this little girl?” Estelle asked.
“Four,” Dots told her.
“And you mean to tell me …”
“Gal, white people teaches their children some o’ the worst things ’bout black people, you hear me, gal? …” … and he had called Bernice to bring him a hot drink; and when she opened his study door he was lying on the floor, with his head touching the large speaker, and the music … jazz, I think he called it, was as loud as Mrs. Burrmann’s Beethoven; and the lights in the study was out, and I was so frighten … “you will soon find that out for yourself.”
“You know something? You really want to know something?” He slammed his foot on the brakes, and the car jerked. It was too sudden for Dots to start cursing him. “Listen! It does really pain my arse to hear how you, both you and Bernice, does say such good things ’bout Mrs. Burrmann and Mrs. Hunter one minute, and gorblummuh! the next moment, both o’ you saying Mrs. Burrmann is cheap as hell, Mrs. Hunter is a bitch; Mrs. Burrmann nice, Mrs. Burrmann bad; Mrs. Hunter is a lady, Mrs. Hunter is a whore! What I want to know is when you-all going stop talking with both sides o’ your mouths! Make up yuh minds, because, gorblummuh, Mrs. Burrmann and Mrs. Hunter couldn’t be queens today, and whores tomorrow! That is what I have to say.” He allowed his last words to sink in for a while, and then he started the car, and drove on. They were still and scolded, like children. In her heart, Dots was pleased that she had a man who talked up like a man. But she kept this satisfaction to herself. Bernice was too shocked to say anything; and Estelle, the newcomer, pretended she was looking at the scenery passing her, and she passing the scenery, like photographs taken out of focus. It was a long time, before Dots had the courage to say another word. And when she said, she was humble. Boysie noted her humility, and smiled in his heart. Gorblummuh, I gotta put my foot down more often!
“But still, after all, Boysie, you will have to remember that it is Mrs. Hunter who gave me the down-payment for this car you driving.”
“It ain’t a gift, Dots. Woman, it isn’ no blasted gift she give me. It is a repayment. And be-Christ, if you let them buy you out, they can’t and isn’t going to buy out Boysie. Not me!”
“Is Girlie still living in the old house behind Mammy?” Bernice asked her sister, after she felt it proper to change the topic.
“And what happen to Lord Nelson?” Boysie asked, thereby implying he wanted the topic changed. “Lord Nelson’ statue still standing in the middle o’ town, directing traffics? Nobody ain’t blow-down that blasted statute yet?”
“He still there, too!” Estelle said.
“And how Mammy?” Dots asked.
“I get a letter from Mammy this morning.”
“Mammy still there, living, in the name of the Lord, as she likes to say.”
“I hear the Deep Water Harbour build,” Boysie said; although he knew it had been built, completed, even before he left the island.
“It’s built, Boysie, it built. It was built a long time now, man. You’re behind the times. The Deep Water Harbour finished, because the people made Grantley Adams get up off his sit-down, and build it. And if Adams didn’t harken, we intended to get a better man, like Dipper Barrow to build it for us. The people down there in that island, are tired with the lack o’ progress. The tourists taking over the whole damn island. And if Adams was still in politics, I think the people would have killed Adams, because Adams was the same as a tourist. Nobody never see him!”
“Adams is a hell of a man, though!” Boysie said.
“Adams likes the people; but he loved the white people,” Estelle said.
“Be-Christ, that is why I always tell this woman I married to, that I voting strictly Conservative in the next Canadian elections. I votes Liberal as a rule, at least the last time I voted Liberals. But I find out through Henry, that whilst the Liberals was running this country, it was hell for a black man to get inna this country, as a immigrant; ’specially when a man named Picklesgill was Prime Minister. Well, I telling you now, I voting strictly Conservative next federal elections. And I intends to remain so.”
“The island making progress, but it is a public progress, not really an individual one. Big public buildings, government buildings, and government offices. But it isn’t making progress in the way of putting food in the mouths of poor people, like me and …”
“That is exactly what I mean, Estelle,” Boysie intervened. “That is what I mean ’bout voting Conservative. Now, in a lazy-faire system, whiching as you know, is the system under the Conservative type o’ political system …”
“Mark your last words, Boysie, boy,” Bernice cut in. “Estelle, look on your right hand. You see something?”
“The building? You mean the building … ohh! … Palmolive!”
“Yes! P-A-L-M-O …”
And Estelle, excited as a child, completed the spelling, “L-I-V-E! Palmolive!”
“We uses to use that same soap, back home.”
“Yes, man. Palmolive! with them five little beautiful white girls on the soap.…”
“I wonder whatever happen to them five girls?” Bernice asked. “A long time I haven’t hear nothing ’bout them.”
“They grow up, Bernice,” Boysie said. “You think they is still children? They grow up. They was the Dions!”
“Christ, yes! Gal, they must be big women now.”
“I wish somebody could give me five children right now, this very minute,” Estelle said. “I would get a hell of a lot of money. Christ! it won’t be no trouble at all for me to have five every year, neither.”
“But what are you saying, gal?”
“She only joking, Dots.”
“That’s a damn funny joke to joke with.”
“Boysie, a joke is a joke, man,” Estelle said. “That’s all. You and Dots and Bernice are so tense. From the time I stepped off that plane, all I can feel and see, is a tenseness. You-all so tense, that nobody didn’t ask me how I enjoyed my trip.”
“How you enjoy the trip?” Boysie asked.
“The trip was good, man. First class.”
“You had a good plane trip?” Dots asked.
“And what about the immigration people?” Bernice asked. “We was waiting for you a long time.”
“Well, that
is where I had a little trouble. That is what spoiled the whole trip for me.” It was going to be a long answer, they felt; so they sat back to listen. “The first trouble really was with the passport.”
“Mark your last words, Estelle,” Bernice cut in. Estelle was a little annoyed at the interruption. “You see the name on that sign?”
“Cadbury!”
“Remember how we uses to eat them?”
“Chocolate, Cadbury Chocolate. Well, bless my eyesight! To think that I live to see the day, and the place …”
“Continue,” Bernice said.
“The man took me in this little room with a bright light, and started asking me questions. Child, you would have thought that I come here to rob the Bank of Canada, and not merely to get a little rest! What is my name? Have I got relatives here? What am I coming for? And am I coming in as a domestic? How could I say that my sister is Bernice Leach, when my own name is Estelle Shepherd? Well, that man had me so blasted vexed, I don’t know … ”
“That immigration man was outta his place, if you ask me,” Boysie said.
“Be-Christ, look!” Dots said. “Look, it is not a matter of being outta his place, or not being outta his place. No, it ain’t that. For there is a lot o’ German whores and Hungarian whores and Polish whores, not to mention the droves o’ Eyetalians who comes to this country every month, and the government pays their transportation. And I bet you that not one o’ them immigration men dare … you hear me? … dare ask one o’ them Europeans what their name is. They do not dare.”
“Tell me how they could dare, when they can’t even speak the language, Dots?”
“Boysie, I could kiss you. You just spoken a mouthful!”
“And when he insisted on bringing his freshness to me, I stared him in his face, and I said to him: Now, listen to me, Mister White Man … I have to call you Mister White Man, because I do not know your name, and on account o’ the way you treated me, I can’t address you in a better fashion … you haven’t no right being worried about the dissimilarities in my name, and in my sister’s name. I am a Shepherd. And she is a Leach. And I am Shepherd because I am divorced lady …”
And when they stopped laughing and shaking their bodies on one another, they were entering the district of Forest Hill Village. Estelle became quiet now. Bernice was preoccupied with the difficulties of adjusting to Estelle, and her ways and her smoking, in the small apartment. But most of all, she was worn out by her sister’s experiences of arrival. Everyone was worn out. But everyone was happy. All Bernice had strength for now, was to point and show Estelle the banks and churches and other stores they were passing.
“One … two … three … six, seven! Seven banks in one district?” she exclaimed. “Barbados only have five, I think.”
They were passing the meat stores; in their windows were sausages pouring down from hooks, and looking like red cylinders; and a few late shoppers were buying groceries and other goods with their eyes through windows; and Estelle wondered why steam was coming out of their noses and mouths, whenever words came out. As Boysie drove sight-seeingly slow, she asked the question she had long been thinking about. “Where are the coloured people who live here?” Nobody answered for some time. She asked the question again. “Where are the coloured people who live in Canada, Bernice?” Boysie guffawed. Dots had to poke him to keep him quiet, and respectful. Bernice turned her head away, pretending to take a sudden interest in the surroundings where she had lived for thirty-two months; and which she had deliberately ignored for the length of that time. They reached the cinema at the corner of Bathurst and Eglinton, where Boysie said, a lot of Jews went to the movies, “because the film stars is Jewish, that’s all!”
“Samson and Delilah,” Bernice said, aloud; naming the current film.
“Where the hell are all the black people you’ve been writing me about, Bernice, child? Bernice? … Dots? … Boysie? … well, somebody, Christ, say something, eh?”
“Estelle,” Bernice began, in a tired, hoarse voice, “we four in this car, is the only black people you are going to see in this neighbour, at this moment. The four o’ we. But don’t worry, darling, you going have to get accustomed to it, too. We all have to learn how to survive ‘mongst these white people. It really do not matter, though, Estelle, if you see a black person today, tomorrow, or the next year.…”
“Gal, the less you see of them, the better off you are, I tell you.”
“… but you will have to get accustom to seeing all white people round you, for the rest o’ your stay in this country.”
“I wonder then,” Estelle said, as if talking to herself, “I wonder, if that is why that little bastard in that plane said I reminded him of Aunt Jemima … perhaps, he never saw a real coloured person, before, in his life! … well, yes. It could be that, yuh know, it could be that.”
“You really think so?” It was Boysie, getting in the last word.
The record had just come to an end, when Boysie and Henry exchanged dancing partners. Their partners were Brigitte, the German maid from across the street, and who was Bernice’s friend; and Agatha, a young Canadian woman, of about twenty-nine, who was studying Zoology, at the University of Toronto. Bernice and Estelle and Dots were sitting together, on the chesterfield, like the pink roses printed on the chesterfield, like Lilies-of-the-night, since eleven-thirty when they returned from the airport. The time was now one-thirty. They were sitting, not because they could not dance, not because they did not wish to dance; but because neither of the two men available cared to dance with them. There were two other black women present. One was a registered nurse at the Toronto General Hospital. Priscilla. A fierce, black woman, whose face was lined with the lines of some kind of emotional frustration; a woman thwarted out of all her expectations, it seemed; except for her extraordinarily good taste in clothes. Tonight, Priscilla the Condemned, was wearing a woollen suit, bought at Holt Renfrew. (She had already told everybody that she bought it at Holt Renfrew when there was not a sale on.) Priscilla’s suit, like a suit of mail to suit her present disposition, was red. The other young woman was a student. Large like Bernice, but much younger; she, Miss Carmeeta Anne Bushell (“I’m in third year, Hons, polly-sigh-and-ec,” meaning Honours Political Science and Economics), was also at the University of Toronto, a student like Agatha, but until tonight, unknown to, and by, Agatha. These two ladies had heard of the party, and had decided to come. They had had nothing on for the night anyhow; and though it was rather late to go to a party (Mrs. Burrmann had let them in through the front door, when they arrived; she excused herself from her own party to lead them upstairs, into Bernice’s apartment, to wait for Bernice and the others) they had come. Miss Carmeeta Anne Bushell wore a shiny material which looked like scales on her body every time she wriggled in her uncomfortable seat. Two minutes after Priscilla and Miss Carmeeta Anne Bushell arrived, their excitement sank to the level of the broadloom in the room. They were sitting now like dying flowers on the trunk of a tree. They were tense and sad and angry: both at Bernice for not explaining what kind of party it was; and at the men for not noticing them. It had happened so many times before to Priscilla especially (Miss Bushell had learned her lesson about these parties a long time ago; and she usually remained in residence, studying and learning her lessons) at parties given by West Indian students: the worst one Priscilla experienced was given by a tall Grenadian law student at his place on Huron Street, where she first met Miss Carmeeta Anne Bushell; “Well, listen, Meeta, I put myself out so much just to come to this fête. Azan the hairdresser had so many girls waiting, to get their hair done, it seem that every Sam-cow-and-the-duppy had a man taking her out this weekend. I had to beg Azan to give me a’ appointment. I spent most of Friday night and Saturday morning shortening this dress, ’cause I know that West Indian men like to see their women looking sharp. And now I come here, what? What make me come here? I could be home in the little room I rent, or I could have told the head-nurse I was coming to work tonight. All these bl
ack men after the white girls, child. You can’t see that?”; and when she told this to Miss Carmeeta Anne Bushell, she was in turn, made aware that Miss Carmeeta had experienced some of this, at the Little Trinidad, a calypso club on Yonge Street.
“It seems that our lot in this country,” Miss Carmeeta Sweet Bushell said, with a heavy sigh in her voice, that night at the Little Trinidad, “is to watch our men dance with white women, take out white women, and spend their money on white women.” She had just pushed a cheese stick into her mouth, when a white girl, a classmate and room-mate she had brought along sat down beside her. “What a lovely bunch of guys,” the friend commented. “I’ve never had such a lovely time in my life! not even at a fraternity party. You must bring me more often, Carmeets.” Priscilla javelined a side glance at Miss Bushell, and she got up and went into the washroom. That was three months ago. Now, at this party, they were sitting (along with Bernice and Dots and Estelle), watching Henry and Boysie teach the two white women the intricacies of the calypso dance. Some time ago Henry took Bernice to the West Indies Federation Club, called the WIF, on Brunswick Avenue. He took her there about three times on a Thursday night. Thursday nights were free admission night. But Bernice had enjoyed herself, and had even got a chance to exchange a bit of gossip with a Trinidadian girl who had come up on the domestic scheme with her. But Henry didn’t like Bernice too much. He found her most aggressive and unattractive; and he told Boysie afterward, “Goddamn, never again mention that woman’s name to me, you hear? Goddamn, in this bright day and age, that goddamn woman wearing white ankle socks with a pair of stockings with a seam in them, and winter boots, goddamn as if she is a blasted teenager at this stage o’ middle age. And the more I tell that bitch ’bout a certain Guianese fellar I know, who is a good dentist, and I hoping Bernice going to take the hint, she only saying, Henry, I is a lonely woman, you know! I don’t like Canada, Henry. It is too lonely here. And people don’t speak to you on the street car. I don’t like this place, it too cold. Goddamn, Boysie, they don’t speak to me, neither! And the Jewish fellar who lives in the room next to mine, he tell me they don’t speak to him, neither. The more I hint, the more she moaning and groaning ’bout how she don’t like Canada. Bad breath! old man! Goddamn, it is enough to make me kill a woman dead, even if I am on top o’ she at that particular moment. Bad breath! goddamn.”
The Meeting Point Page 9
