Recently Bernice had found some solace in reading Awake and The Watchtower. (An article in Muhammad Speaks, calling upon her, spiritually and morally, to kill the white devil nearest her — Mrs. Burrmann — had shaken her up so much, that she started to fold the newspaper in half, with the front page hidden, and to file it under her chesterfield.) But these two religious papers brought no real solution. Solutions seemed far from her comprehension. Estelle was like the snow, always around in winter, which was always in the room, “always in my footsteps, always in my arse” (these were the private unspoken thoughts, communicated in communion, to God only), like a snake around her neck. She could no longer talk for hours on her princess; she began to feel her movements stiffen with tension; she was irritable: God, it is too much, Estelle have to move out. I can’t even listen to my own church services, I can’t get a chance to lay-down on my own chesterfield, I can’t even hear the word o’ God on my own radiogram, I can’t even be private, any more! Estelle turned off my church music and put on the blasted rock-’n’-roll. It pains me right down to my guts to see how this snake come in here and is taking over in my place, but be-Christ, I intends to be the conqueror. By Monday forenoon, I putting her in a nice single room, or a furnished flat, even. If it can’t happen on Monday, then on my next day off. “It is painful,” Bernice was saying to Dots (Estelle was in the bathroom, so she had to whisper into the princess. She didn’t even know if Estelle was listening: and this made her chilly and tensed.), “to have to treat our friend so harsh. But I been so damn lick-out with work, lately, that I gotta do … our friend coming out …” And once more she had to hang up. Only once before was she more furious because of an interruption; and that was when she had just dropped her clothes on to the floor, and was about to expire on the chesterfield from all the hard work in the kitchen, and as she said, “Jesus, Jesus!” in relief and anticipation, the two women from Awake and The Watchtower rapped on her door, because “the lady downstairs told us we could count on you.” They had spent her entire rest hour preparing her for God and heaven and a subscription chatting away the sins of this terrible world; drinking all of Bernice’s tea. When they left, she told Dots, “You know something, I could have killed them two ashy-faced bitches, just now. What in hell they mean by telling me for one whole blasted hour, that God love me?” Later, she found out, that it was Mrs. Burrmann who staged the meeting, as a decoy to her own conversion.
The tension between Bernice and Estelle, which grew steadily after the toothbrush incident, exploded one Sunday morning. Estelle turned off Bernice’s service from the Andes Mountains, and tuned into a rock-’n’-roll piece, Down Town, well, be-Jesus God (Bernice was swearing a lot more nowadays), girl! you have gone too far, now. I can’t take this. But later, on the way to church that very morning, she consoled herself that Dots and she would find a room for Estelle, on Monday. Estelle had decided to go to church with her: there was nothing else to do on a Sunday morning in Canada.
“I believe in two things,” Bernice was saying. “In God and in clothes. Clothes clothes my outside, and God clothes my inside. So I protected on both sides. How yuh like me?” Estelle was borrowing a dress to wear to church. She had never got over the amount of clothes Bernice owned. “These clothes, all these clothes you see here, well, they each have a particular function in my life. They may be clothes to you. But to me, they is more than clothes.” And that was the truth: for immigration had worked a substantial change in her dressing habits; and other West Indian women would praise her, and say how much she looked like a “sophisticated coloured Canadian.” Bernice chose a suit which was given to her last year by Mrs. Burrmann. (When Dots saw it, her mouth ran water, in envy. Bernice told her she had bought it at Eaton’s, brand new!) It was a green woollen suit, rich as guinea grass. Estelle had chosen a white dress, whose fabric and style bore no relation to the season of the year. She liked it. But Bernice was not pleased that she had chosen this dress: not because of fashion or style; but because the white dress was her best dress. Estelle told Bernice how young she looked; and Bernice laughed, and said, Thank you, Ess (while thinking Estelle a damn liar); and just then, Boysie blew the car horn, below the window. He blew it a second time, louder; and Estelle held half of her body out, and shouted, “Wait! Bernice putting on her make-up!”
“But Estelle,” Bernice said reprovingly, “it don’t sound nice to hear a person in this district get on like that, and on a Sunday”.
“Perhaps I should have whispered to him. You ashamed of something? Or you ashamed of me?”
“I only say that I don’t think it look good, decent, to see a person shouting through a window … Look, you had better learn one thing. We is the only coloured people in this district. We have to be on our best peace and behaviour, always. Everything we do, every word we utter, we gotta be always remembering it is a reflection on all the hundreds and thousands o’ coloured people in Toronto and in the whole o’ Canada.” Estelle didn’t know whether she ought to laugh; or pity Bernice. “I didn’t make it so. I come and find it so, so you don’t have to look at me as if I is some, some-some-some, mad person!” Estelle kicked off her shoes in disgust. She threw down her handbag.
“I changed my mind.”
“You mean you not going to church?”
“No.”
“Merely because I had to teach you a little goodness? I, a person, a, the only coloured person in this street … trying to make you understand …”
“No, no, no! Jesus Christ, Bernice, can’t you hear I say no? No, no, no!”
Estelle’s voice was still screaming in Bernice’s ears, even as she went down to the car. Her lipstick was put on badly. It had smeared her lips, and was on her teeth. She was agitated. That bitch, that bitch, was all Bernice could say. She had wrenched the plastic curtains shut, because Estelle was now naked, except for her panties.
“I’m too young,” Estelle said, sitting on the chesterfield, “I am too young, man. I not wasting my time in no damn church. You talk to God, and let me talk to man.”
“And I hopes to-Christ that you will find one! I kiss this bible in my hand, and I pray and hopes, Estelle Shepherd, that you will find one who will full-up your damn belly with a child, and a fatherless child, at that!”
With a problem as serious as Estelle on her mind, Bernice would refuse to seek advice until she had first reached her own decision. Dots frequently gave her opinions, and Bernice would alter them; but by that time, she had already settled her mind on some action she was going to take. She felt that if she was going to find any solace, or reprieve, it had to come from within herself. Sometimes, problems were too large for her. They would burden her, and then a new problem would come; and she would forget the first one. You know something? Perhaps, Estelle have a point, when she say she isn’t interested in God, only in man. Perhaps. (Dots had confided in Bernice that she had spent the first ten months in Canada, in masturbation. “Without a blasted man in my pants, gal! It don’t make you feel happier when you, as a woman in bed alone, night after night, hearing the springs in the missy’s bed. Ten months I carried the racket o’ them creaking springs in my ears and in my pants, gal, twelve months o’ loneliness I don’t ever want to live over again.” And so said; so done: Boysie was brought up from Barbados, shortly afterwards. But Bernice had tried to solve her loneliness in another way. She had seen a future, and permanence, in a young Jamaican man she met on Cecil Street, in those days when you could dance for a whole night for one dollar. It was a place managed by an old West Indian who tried to help “reorientate the islanders to the Canadian way of life.” This Jamaican was told by one of his student-friends to “grab the first piece o’ pussy, white or black, that come across, old man, ’cause winter does be cold as arse in this country!” And the Jamaican grabbed Bernice. He knew (and she knew too) that it was only temporary; but both insisted that their love affair had to last forever. She invited him to Marina Boulevard on Fridays, when Mrs. Burrmann was usually helping at the Doctors’ Hos
pital; and the student-man would stay the whole weekend; and once he had to jump through the second floor window, when it looked as if Mrs. Burrmann would never leave the house on that Monday afternoon, for her regular cocktails with friends, on the roof of the Park Plaza Hotel. Bernice was thinking of all these things, on the way to church this Sunday. She was in the back seat. Dots was sitting beside Boysie; and she was grumbling about the cold weather, and about Mrs. Hunter, and about Boysie “creeping in this morning at six, but one o’ these times, be-Christ, I am going to track you down!” Bernice tried to close her mind to all this; and tried to concentrate on the memories of her student-friend of two-and-a-half years ago, when she stood at the window, black and invisible, and saw her student-man walk up and down Marina Boulevard, five times, waiting for her signal that the coast was clear: shhh! snow boots in hand, shoes in Bernice’s hands, stockings walking like ashes and cats on the hot broadloom; and how on that night when he ate his first square meal, and he ate her food and her body, too. And she was very, so very happy. “You don’t know this is the first time in almost a year, that I do that,” she said, not as tenderly as she would have liked, because she was out of the custom of being tender to a man. “I love you, bad. Me and you …” She had given him money; and occasionally, washed a shirt for him, while he waited naked in bed, in glee, under her lily-white sheets. She loved him; oppressively and possessively; and one night, she dressed in her best dress, the dress Estelle had chosen this morning, for church, to wait for him, to come, to take her out. Mrs. Burrmann was so happy about it: she lent Bernice her fur wrap, and a pair of elbow-length kid gloves. Bernice sat in front of her looking glass, waiting for him to take her to the annual variety show put on by the West Indian students at the University. Nine o’clock came. Nine o’clock went. Ten came. Ten went. Eleven came and went. Mrs. Burrmann came up to see what’s going on, and to say, “Some men are bastards, Bernice, you got to learn that, early,” and she went back down, confused and cursing men. Bernice was so frightened because of the disappointment, that she started to count her terror in five-minute periods. She was sitting at the window when she saw Brigitte come home in the police cruiser, for the first time, with her policeman. The phone rang. She jumped up. She brushed away the dried tears from the corners of her eyes; and she smiled. Her prince had not forgotten her. She practised her greeting, and then said, “Hello, Michael.” But it was Dots on the phone. “I thought you was coming down here at the Education College with that man o’ yours.” Bernice could hear Sparrow laughing in a calypso, Not a woman ever complain yet … “He here, yuh know. That bastard you supporting, he here, licking out your ten-dollar bill ’pon one with long blonde hair!” When morning came, cold and bitter and with a wind, Bernice had not yet taken off the white dress, nor the wrap, nor the kid gloves, which looked as if time had withered them on to her hands — nor had she replaced the telephone receiver. She never wore that white dress again. And that was what it meant to her, seeing Estelle put it on. And never did she set her eyes on her student-prince again. In the kitchen the next morning, tired and sleepy and vexed, she heard Mrs. Burrmann make one comment when she was given back the fur wrap and the gloves: “Men!”) … But imagine me, dreaming so early this Sunday morning. She then realized, that in all this time, she had said nothing either to Dots or Boysie; but time was now playing tricks upon her; and so was reality. She forgot she was not at her window, waiting for her student-prince, but that she was in a car. She couldn’t remember whether it was a moment ago she had seen Brigitte (“Looka that bitch!”) taking her policeman through the side entrance; or whether it was that night she waited like Cinderella for her prince to come. She remembered (and still remembers) envying Brigitte, not for the man, but for possessing a man. As she closed out that part of her past (which she didn’t realize as past), she saw the south-bound traffic on Bathurst thinning out, and Boysie, driving with one hand barely touching the steering wheel. She thought she heard Dots’s voice droning, like a voice talking … “She called me last week, gal. I have ladies calling on me, nowadays. How yuh like that? I belongst to high society these days, gal.”
“I always knew there wasn’t one damn thing wrong with Agaffa,” Boysie cut in. “The two o’ you always cussing that woman, but that woman is good as gold.”
“And how would you know, Boysie?” Boysie cackled; he enjoyed this kind of a challenge from his wife. But Dots was in her Sunday mood, and she merely added, “Just let me catch you with one o’ them! I tell you, if, if! I ever catch you with one o’ them, well, Jesus Christ himself will have to save you, Boysie Cumberbatch.” She let the threat soak in; and she allowed him time to laugh, before she said to Bernice, “Agaffa! Yes, Agaffa called me, gal. At work. And she opened her heart to me. Tell me everything, every-damn-thing: she and Henry was planning to get married, the parents start fussing, and bram! She ups and left home.”
“That is woman!” Boysie exclaimed.
“She left, or she get thrown out?” Bernice asked, not wanting to concede that Henry was worthy of a woman like Agatha. She wanted to smear Agatha too. “I feel she get thrown out. What woman in her right mind would run after a black bastard like him, anyway?”
“Thrown-out, left, or tossed-out, it is the same thing. That is how the white women loves the boys. I know from ex- …” (and when he saw how he almost said “experience,” he changed his mind and said), “I know from examples, that the white women gives our boys a damn fair break. So I not surprised that Agaffa left home, stock, lock and barrel to run after Henry. And furthermore. It is love. Love is pain. And pain is love. She love Henry so bad that it caused pain. And by causing pain, it mean it is love.”
“But Boysie?”
“Wait, Dots? Where Boysie learn all this ’bout love equal to pain? You sending Boysie to the University?” And they laughed at him, as they always did; it was a vicious, ridiculing, oppressing laugh. It was on Boysie that they took out their bitterness against the white world. But Boysie threw back the laugh on them, and said. “Gorblummuh! one o’ these days both you and Bernice will have to address me as Mister Boysie, Esquire, B.A.” And they laughed even more at that.
“But Henry damn lucky, though,” Dots said, when everybody else had practically forgotten the topic of conversation. “Imagine that! A ordinary ex-porter man, and he has such a rich powerful woman running behind him! Well, some strange things happen in this country.”
“That don’t matter, Dots. This is one country where it do not matter what kind o’ job you have, once you bringing money on a Friday.”
“He still blasted lucky! Agaffa is a nice, rich, wealthy girl. And I must say that when she traipsed in your place that time, in fur coat and thing, I hated her like hell. But now, well, it is a different story. She is a lady.”
“Henry have a Grand Prize of a woman. And it don’t matter a shit to me if Agaffa was white or blue. ’Cause, I says one thing, and it is this. Woman is woman, cunny is cunny, one is one, and two …”
“Watch your mouth, man!” The sharpness in Bernice’s voice cut off further conversation, until sometime later, she said she wanted to talk to Agatha about helping her to find a room for Estelle. Dots said she didn’t know her phone number. Boysie said he didn’t know it either, but that some funny things could, and do, happen in this country. “Take for an instance,” he said, “the time when a man turned up outta the blasted blue and ask me if my name is Boysie Cumberbatch. Now, how in the name o’ heaven and hell could a stranger come and ask me if my name is really my name?”
“That is nothing compared to Clotelle.”
“That gal from Grenada?”
“That is the Clotelle I mean. Clotelle who fell prey to one o’ them salesman-man, one night …” Bernice re-told the saga of Clotelle, trusting Clotelle, who was waylaid by her own avariciousness for cutlery and by a salesman. The story was known to every West Indian in Toronto, because it was in the newspapers. But the way Bernice told it … (“That salesman-man sweetened-up Clotelle and she si
gned to buy up everything for the wedding she was planning, because she had just bring up her old boyfriend from Grenada. Clotelle buy-up silvers, knife and fork, spoon, sugar bowl, cream bowl, and the knives and forks even had something called a coat of arms with Clotelle’s initials and insignias carved in them. And the salesman-crook told Clotelle they weren’t hard to pay for. But when the first instalment payment came, ninety-five dollars and five cents! Clotelle borrowed money from Sacrificial Finance Company and had to turn round and borrow money needlessly from Withold Corporation to pay back Sacrificial, and still the interest was mounting up, higher than the skies. And then, one fine day, Clotelle start looking for a new job, where nobody won’t find her. But she didn’t know that although this Toronto is a large city, it ain’t so damn big that a finance company can’t track you down, and find you, and pin you down to the ground, Jesus Christ, till they squeeze every last drop of blood and payments outta you, till that debt squared-off. Three people was looking for Clotelle. They take out search warrant for her blood. ’Twas Sacrificial — Lord, deliver me ever, from them clutches! — Withold and the silvers people. And when they found Clotelle, they found her sticky and greasy and smelling like a hospital, working off her arse cooking in another kitchen, the Toronto General Hospital kitchen. Bram! The finance-man and the bailiff-man or whoever the hell he was, plus the garnishee-man, all two o’ them pounced on Clotelle, and when they get up offa Clotelle, the Hospital fired Clotelle, and she was back in the same white woman kitchen, working off her fat, cooking for less money now, because she had to beg for the job, and go back on bended knees, penitent as hell. One stinking eighty dollars a month. And no rent-free room, neither! She found a dirty room on Parliament Street, had to take street-car to and from work up in Forest Hill, and had to pay off one hundred and fifteen dollars a month, instalments. I don’t know where Clotelle get the other thirty five dollars from, and I won’t like to guess; but she had to pay off them loan-sharks. Barracudas, that’s what they is! So, this place may look big; but it isn’t so big, in truth. Ask Clotelle, then!”) … Bernice’s mind switched from Clotelle to Estelle, alone in the apartment, and anybody could go up there; nobody ain’t home but Mr. Burrmann, “ ’cause this is the time Mrs. Burrmann takes the children skating, and Estelle probably is still undressed, oh Christ! and I forgot to lock that door behind me! and she probably still slouching round on the damn chesterfield, too” … and she took it upon herself to compose a letter in her mind to Mammy, about Estelle’s behaviour:
The Meeting Point Page 16
