They Never Told Me

by Austin Clarke

  I had to get Freddie the civil service fellow to write this letter to you for me. I didn’t post it before now, because I was still waiting to see if just in case the postman was going to ring his bicycle and stop at the house and hand me a letter from you. But seven days pass and I have not heard one word. Freddie was just on his way back from lunch, and I ask him to please finish off the letter, adding these few lines that you are reading now, and post it when he get in the Public Buildings. Freddie turned into a very nice gentleman these days. I wish that Freddie and you had made up your two minds and get married. And Freddie is nodding his head now, in my presence as he writes this. He is is a man of wisdom. A civil servant. But it was through you, and he agrees with me, that you allowed him to get married to Pats who had a child from him three years ago. They are living together now in a lovely stone bungalow in a new subdivision. He is a Brother in the Christian Mission Church. And Enid, child, you should hear him testify on a Sunday night. It would make your heart bleed. Freddie is what I call a perfect gentleman. I do not know why you didn’t follow my advice. Today, Freddie would have been my son-in-law. But I am leaving you in the hands of the Lord. I hope He talks to you. And I hope more perfect state of good health than they leave me, feeling real rotten concerning your child, Trevour, and number two, in regards to Lonnie.

  With love and affection,

  Your Mother.

  (and from Freddie)

  It is the 20th o’ December, Christmas five short days off, and things ain’ improve for poor Enid still bedridden, and the bills and the landlord, the Hydro people, the Telephone people, all o’ them bitches riding that poor girl like a racehorse. The pain that was in Enid shoulder blade, whiching as I said had work down all through her left side, well, it now gone back up in the shoulder. Enid found a half o’ lime, half-rotting, and she rub it round her forehead to get little relief from the constant headache. Somebody start knocking down the girl place. Is the time when the postman does generally come round. This time, she swear, it got to be the postman with good news, cause nobody can’t get bad news every day for a week. Life can’t be so rough. Well, it was a strange knocking, and this cause Enid to play she sleeping. Postman don’t knock as a rule saving he have a big important letter. The knocking went on and on, and Enid headache feel like if somebody wire her head with electricity. She get vex as hell and throw open the door and shout out, “What the hell you want?” A man standing up there get frighten for Enid voice, and he barely had voice to ask, “Is your name Miss Enid…?” “Yes yes yes! this is her!” And bram! the frighten man drop a blue piece o’ paper right in Enid hand, and bound down the stairs, saying, “Thank you, miss, thank you, miss…”

  It wasn’t no Christmas gift, nor no postcard the man left. It was this:

  THE FIRST DIVISION COURT OF

  THE COUNTY OF YORK, BETWEEN

  High Style Fashions for the Careful Lady – Plaintiff

  and

  Miss Enid Scantlebury, 46 Asquith Avenue, Toronto 5, Ontario – Defendant

  CLAIM

  The Plaintiff claims from the Defendant the sum of $195.00, being the amount that is owing to the Plaintiff by the Defendant for goods sold and delivered to the Defendant by the Plaintiff, as per statement hereunto annexed.

  The Plaintiff further claims the costs of this action and other relief as the nature of the case may require.

  DATED at Toronto, this 16th day of December.

  B.W. WHITE INCORPORATED

  1 Eglinton Avenue East

  Agents for the Plaintiff

  First Division Court of the County of York

  J. F. Wilkinson

  Clerk

  At this stage, Enid went mad. Everybody out to hang this girl. She rush to the telephone to call Dots, a Barbadian girl who had come up with she on the domestic scheme. Dots’ line was busy. She tried to call CROWN TRUST, but that line was busy too. Enid turn black-and-blue with rage. She look for writing paper and she bottle o’ Quink ink which Lonnie had given her as a going-away present. But she found only the writing paper. She couldn’t find the fountain pen although she did use it half hour ago to write the landlord. And then she find it. No ink. So she put the pen nib under the cold water tap and when she went to write she address, the ink was the colour o’ cold water. Christ! She start one bad stewpsing, sitting on the bed, getting up from the bed as the headache start up, sitting down again, walking bout the room like if she was a lion in a room. Just then the phone ring and it make she jump. “The Bell people ain’t take it off, yet!” she say, vex as hell that the phone ain’t disconnect. She vex and she don’t know who she vex with, but she prepare for the bastard at the other end.

  “Hello, hello, hello?” she shout out.

  “Hello?” a voice say, in a nice way.

  “Yeah?”

  “Is this Missis Scantlebury?”

  “That is my name!”

  “Well, I’m sorry to bother you, Missis Scantlebury, but…”

  “What you calling me? Mistress? Look, man, my name is Miss Scantlebury. I am a single lady.”

  “Beg your pardon, Miss Scantlebury. Your name was referred to us by a young lady, named…”

  “Wait! What you telling me? My name was refer to you? By who? Who by? Who the arse now been spreading my name all over Toronto, that you, a complete stranger to me, could call me up on my phone and tell me…”

  “Missis Scantle… Miss Scantlebury, please, just one minute… we are not trying to sell you anything… All we are asking you is that you permit us to place in your home one of our beautiful sets of Encyclopedia Britannica, as part…”

  “What the hell do I want with a Encyclopedia Britannica?”

  “Well, we thought that you might like it for reference…”

  “Reference? What the hell I got to do with reference, or referring, or refereeing, or whatever the… Look, I don’t understand what you telling me, at all.”

  “… and for study, Miss Scantlebury. We also have for you a gift of the Oxford Concise Dictionary. Eight thousand pages, plus an appendix. Or you may choose an Atlas. And, and… Miss Scantlebury… we could make you a present of, ah… are you there, Miss Scantlebury?”

  “I still here. Talk!”

  “Well, as I was saying Miss Scantlebury, you could make a lovely Christmas gift with the Atlas, for a friend.”

  “Who give you my name?”

  “A lady by the name of Miss Dots Cumber…”

  “Look, be-Christ, man!…”

  Enid clang down the phone after she call Dots all kinds o’ bitch and bad names. She even call the salesman-man by a couple o’ bad words, before he put down the phone. Enid dial Dots’ number again to tell Dots a thing or two about giving out her number, and when she put the receiver to she ear, the phone was dead. “Them blasted Bell people…” she rattle the phone two more times, but it was really dead.

  When the postman did come that morning, Enid didn’t know. Passing from the bathroom where she decide to comb her hair and fix up her appearance a little bit, since the pain and the sickness didn’t wearing off, she happen to see this letter push under the door:

  Haggatt Hall

  Bridgetown

  Barbados

  The West Indies

  17 December

  Darling Enid,

  You have been in my heart, morning noon and night; and sometimes, in the middle of the night also. And at those times, it is because a damn dream has take me up in its hands, roll me all over my bed from side to side, tossing me all over the place, topsy-turvy, and make me think that you are in my bed with me, beside me. And be-damn, when foreday morning does come, I am licked out and smashed up, and panting for you like hell. A wet dream. That is what the absence of you does to me. I am longing like hell for you, in a certain fashion and manner, Enid. I am longing for you. Christmas knocking hard on the door. Rediffusion playing Christmas carols for so. I hope that you still thinking about sending me a little something. Cuthbert say that the three-piece suit going to co
st too much dollars for the making, and more dollars for the various taxes he introduce in this island. And he tell me yesterday that if I don’t put that forty-four dollars of payment down, including tax, inside his palm first, the suit is not touching my back Christmas morning, at all. I have my eyes on a nice two-tone pair of brown-and-whites, from Fogarty. Your mother – I will have something later to say about her – make me a silk shirt two months pass. She say at the time that the shirt was for my birthday. My birthday come and gone six weeks ago. I have not seen the shirt yet. Seeing as how things are with me and your mother, I will be looking for a next silk shirt. And you know something? I see Freddie the man you used to know before me, and when I see him, he was wearing a shirt that look something like the material I know my shirt is. I am hoping you could see your way and put in extra dollars for the shirt.

  I remain,

  Always in your Heart,

  Lonnie, the man.

  Roses are red,

  Skies are blue,

  My love is true,

  Until I dead.

  All Enid could do when she read Lonnie letter was to laugh. But it really wasn’t no true true laugh, though. It inspire she to write one to the landlord, cause she had something to tell him. Lonnie could wait till she had more strength. Cause she spend all finding the Quink ink.

  46 Asquith Avenue

  Toronto 5,

  Ontario

  December 21

  Dear Mr. Landlord,

  I got the letter you sent me. And I get the message too. I am only writing you to explain certain things to you which you don’t seem to understand. These is things that happen to coloured people only. So let me tell you some of them. Do you expect me to make blood out of water, or out of stones? Do you expect me to move out of this apartment, when I can’t even use a phone this sad morning to call the moving people – if I really and truly did intend to move out. But I do not intend to move. No. You have to learn a few things about coloured people, Mr. Crown Trust. Is that what you say your name is? And it is this. You are dealing with a West Indian, a Barbadian. You are not dealing with one of the stupid Canadians walking about this place. You are dealing with me, Miss Enid Scantlebury, a bred and born Barbadian. And you are not going to frighten me, nor scare me, and come and trample over me just because I happen to owe you one or two dollars and merely because I am far from my home.

  I say that only to say this. I have not got the money right now. I do not have it. I am sick in bed. My mother, poor soul, write me last week to say that my child is poorly down in Barbados. I got a letter a day or two from the First Divisional Court people. They claim I owe somebody nearly two hundred dollars. The telephone coming out soon. The Bell people decide on that. The Electricity people, the Hydro, threaten that by December 24, if my bill of one hundred and thirty dollars not paid, I am going to be eating my Christmas dinner in the dark, and opening my presents under a tree without lights if at all I have either of them two things for Christmas. I don’t know what the hell to make of my life in this cold country. Everybody here asking me for money, everybody in the world. Enid, we want money. We need money from you, Miss Scantlebury. Enid Scantlebury, you owe we money, we want money. The Lord have mercy, Landlord, what am I going to do? You tell me because you have a damn lot of money, and a damn lot of things to say.

  I am,

  Your tenant, Miss E. Scantlebury.

  PS. The phone just ring with a message for me from Cooksville. The job there already taken. Christmas four days off. Miss E.S.

  It looking now as if Enid can’t stop writing letter, and dirty letter at that! But she vex with the world. And she find the Quink ink, and she have the fountain pen in she hand, so she decide to write one to Dots case she vex with Dots too. Dots the person who give her name to the salesman-man. She take up four sheets o’ paper, the pen full-up with ink, and she sit down, meantime the headache pounding like hell. Strength gone outta she body, and a bad feels take hold of her. So she didn’t really try write down the words in the letter to Dots, she only imagine them. But this is what she write to Dots in she mind:

  “Lissen to me, Dots! I know you now three years going on four, and you value my friendship so little that you would spread my name…” But she couldn’t even imagine the bad letter she had in mind to write to Dots. After all, if she had to leave the apartment, if the landlord really get on like a bastard, then it is only Dots she going have to run to. So she ask God to forgive she for the evil thoughts she had in her mind concerning Dots, and she say, to sheself, aloud, “God forgive me.” She did feel better after that. The headache stop pounding, and she really get some relief. She even start thinking about the kind o’ apartment she going rent after this sickness. She plan she life from top to bottom, and she make up she mind that if only she could get over this ailment then she going to make a proper woman of sheself. Well, she went to bed, and had a good night’s rest. Morning break nice. Enid get up. She wash out she mouth. She pour a little warm water in a glass with Listerine. She laugh, when she remember a television commercial talking about “jungle mouth,” and she hold back she head and gargle. The morning start off fresh. Headache gone. The pain working itself outta she system. She sit down over some cornflakes, which is all she had in the house, and she talking to God. Same time, the postman interrupt she, with a letter push under the door.

  December 22

  c/o Dr. and Mrs. Reuben Rubenstein

  Forest Hill Road, Ontario

  Listen to me, Enid,

  You make that the last time you ever pick up a telephone and call my employer place and discuss my personal business over the phone with her. You understand me? I was shame-shame when the Doctor break the news to me. Canada is already rough enough. I do not need you now to come and muddy up my waters. Allow me to earn the few dollars from these Jewish people. Never, never, never again do you ask Mrs. Rubenstein to lend you money because you and me are friends. Business does not get conducted like that. You are a disgrace to black women who come up here to better themselves in this damn cold country. We who have come up here, struggling. But we also contriving. If we could do it so can you.

  God help you, and goodbye.

  Mrs. Dorothea Maynard

  The only relief Enid had that day was from a thing somebody push under the door, with this written on it:

  THE CANADIAN TUBERCULOSIS SOCIETY

  Dear Friend, Buy Christmas Seals

  Help support your Tuberculosis Society

  “What got in me to come up here to live? I would give the world just to be back home now, or be able to talk to a friend, or to have somebody I could call out to to bring me some warm tea and a Phensic or a asprin… God, if you ever bring me through this test, I going get a job, and when I have that passage money, back to Barbados I going! This isn’t no wholesome place for a civilize person to live…”