“Not coming, eh?” the man said, as if he was glad; as if he had pre-arranged Mr. Burrmann’s absence. “Can’t make a buck and a party, too! Hey! that’s a great one … I should be in show business!”
“Sam’ll soon be here,” Mrs. Burrmann said, reassuring herself, and trying to give the man the impression that she was not completely neglected by her husband. “He’s coming,” she added, struggling not to appear cheapened by her loss of control in kissing him.
And as the hours and the guests lingered; and the hours became smaller, so too did the party become choral and rebellious. Stockings came off feet; men loosened ties and inhibitions; and soon everybody was singing We Shall Overcome, and other Negro spirituals. Bernice had heard some of these songs on the radio and television. Hearing them now, she could not at first recognize them as the same beautiful melodies. The guests did not know them. But this did not deter the man (the man who had kissed Mrs. Burrmann), from singing at the top of his voice, off key. Bernice heard it, and saw some of it, and got sick; and pronounced Sodom and Gomorrah on this household. Lord in heaven look down! To look at this house from the outside you never will dream o’ the things that takes place behind these expensive curtains and drapes. I glad as hell I is a poor, black, simple woman! She used to remain downstairs, out of curiosity, until these parties wilted and ended; but after she was accustomed to them, as soon as they became sing-songs, she would leave in disgust and listen to the radio in her quarters on the third floor.
Midnight was coming. The wife of a talkative wine-faced man (at least the woman this man had arrived with; Bernice couldn’t tell who were husband and wife after eleven o’clock at these parties) was sitting on a footstool, beside the player, listening to the folk music. She was the only one who could not sing the spirituals and freedom songs; and she said so, by listening to them. She had sat on the stool the moment she arrived and at eleven o’clock was still there, in spite of the crashing of glasses and the martial alcoholic friendships and the noise and the dirty jokes which the large prosperous man, who everybody called, “Jerr, baby,” was telling about the Jews. Everybody (except this lonely, bored, vigilant woman) liked his jokes and said so by trying to laugh the loudest. Bernice was puzzled, even after having witnessed so many times how these people could laugh at jokes about Jews, when they were all Jews themselves. She moved through them, this group of wealthy people trying to be happy, falling off chairs, their eyes drooping from sleep and drink and their cigarette and cigar butts dropping ash on the expensive rugs. She pitied the woman, sitting and silent, listening and exhausted (or asleep) and she wondered what she was going to say to her choleric husband when she got him home in bed.
It was almost time to go up to her room. Bernice washed a new supply of glasses and swept up the broken ones. She said goodnight to Mrs. Burrmann; and the man who had been hovering over Mrs. Burrmann’s honey the whole evening, buzzed “Nighty-nighty, Bernice!” and stung her with a pinch, on her jello under the white tight-fitting service dress she was wearing; then he winked at her.
“Darling, you shouldn’t.” Mrs. Burrmann felt compromised.
“Oh, what the hell! I believe in intergration.”
Turning to Bernice, with a trace of embarrassment on her face, Mrs. Burrmann said, “Goodnight, Leach. And thanks for helping.” Before Bernice turned to go, she saw that the man was now pinching Mrs. Burrmann on her behind.
Bernice left her door ajar, to hear the noise and the laughter and the occasional smashing of glasses that kept her company. All night long, she waited for Mr. Burrmann to come home; and when he did, finally, about four in the morning (five minutes after the last man left) Bernice at last fell off to sleep. She felt safe now. Suddenly, she was awakened by a noise and thought she heard a fight downstairs. Her sense of justice almost made her go and tell Mr. Burrmann what had happened in his house, in his absence: how the man kissed his wife, how he pinched her. But she could not. She knew she had to keep all this evidence within; and there, she decided to keep it.
Mrs. Burrmann must have realized how vulnerable she was now that Bernice had such evidence. And after some time, she fell off to sleep again. However, Bernice knew that a time would come when she would have to blackmail Mrs. Burrmann.
The time came a few weeks later, when Mrs. Burrmann refused to give her time off to go to the airport to meet her sister, Estelle, who was coming up from Barbados on a short holiday. There was a cocktail party set for eight that night, so Bernice would have to do her work first. When Dots heard of Mrs. Burrmann’s attitude, she told Bernice plainly, “Gal! I would have blackmailed her long time!” Mrs. Burrmann knew that Bernice’s sister was arriving; but she did not know the exact date. Bernice hated to pester her about it, because she had planned (unknown to Mrs. Burrmann) to have her sister stay with her. She was sure Mrs. Burrmann would resent it; might even dismiss her. She had mentioned Estelle yesterday, and Mrs. Burrmann waved her aside. Now, Estelle was arriving at ten this very evening. And nothing was being said about it. Bernice had to go to the airport to meet her. And today, of all days, on my blasted day off, that whore in there, telling me what? The emergency of this party and her general disposition had developed into a crisis. Bernice was nervous. Nothing was going right: she couldn’t get the pickles out of the jar; the bread was sliced the wrong way; and every two seconds she had to wipe perspiration off her forehead with the tail of her apron, although the kitchen wasn’t humid. Be-Christ! stand up for your rights, Bernice. Don’t let her walk all over you, man. No, it ain’t true. Bernice remained in the kitchen, keeping her distance from Mrs. Burrmann, who was watching television. She heard her laugh shortly. Then she heard the rattle of ice cubes in a glass. The television voice grew louder, and Mrs. Burrmann laughed again. And then, the room was quiet. “Look at her, though!” Bernice said, putting down the knife she was using. She took it up again, looked at it, and thought of murder. She wiped her face again with the tail of her apron. She pushed the knife far from her, on the kitchen counter: she had seen clearly, frighteningly clearly, the repercussions of that thought. She went into the sitting-room, without the knife, to speak her mind. Mrs. Burrmann was engrossed in the programme. Her back was turned towards Bernice, who stood a full thirty seconds watching the programme, before she had the nerve to interrupt her. “Mrs. Burrmann.” The programme ended before Mrs. Burrmann replied. The news came on next.
“Oh, Leach!” she exclaimed. “I thought you were a spook! You frightened me.” Without turning round, she added, “Get me some ice, will you?” As Bernice served the ice, the announcer was saying that the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King had led 2,500 Negroes in the shadow of the State Capitol here today.… “Praise God, it doesn’t happen here,” Mrs. Burrmann said, a noticeable relief in her voice. “We’re even better than Britain.”
“Mrs. Burrmann, I want to ask you a question.”
“Sure, Leach.” She seemed glad to have a reason for turning off the news. And this she did; and when she turned round and faced Bernice, Bernice thought she saw a certain blush on her face.
“It is about Estelle, ma’am.”
“And who is Estelle?”
“Estelle? Estelle is my sister, ma’am. And as I have told you,” Bernice said, being careful with her speech and grammar in front of her mistress, “I told you Estelle is coming in today, and …”
“Oh, yes, of course, that’s right, too. Now, how is your sister, Leach?”
“Estelle better than me. But she coming in tonight, ma’am, on the ten o’clock plane.”
“And how’re you going?”
“I haven’t arrange’ transportation yet, but …”
“I mean in the kitchen, Leach.”
“Well, I don’t really know if I going or coming, ’cause as you see I still have a hundred and one things to fix for the party, and …”
“Don’t forget I’m having eight guests.”
“I know that.” Bernice was becoming aggressive. “I know. And that is why I hurrying like the
devil to finish up in time, and run up to Malton Airport.” Mrs. Burrmann remained arrogantly aloof. She pretended there was a speck of something in her whiskey. “It’s about Estelle and her coming-in that I want to talk to you about, ma’am.…”
“Please don’t forget there’ll be eight guests.”
“No, ma’am.”
“And that means eight place-settings.”
“You don’t need to tell me that, ma’am.”
“I’m not telling you anything.” Her voice was rising; and her cheeks changing colour. You damn West Indians, she said to herself. “No need to have a chip on your shoulder. I’m merely reminding you.…”
“But Mrs. Burrmann, listen to me! Are you forgetting that when I came to you as your servant, I came with the best papers and references. Look, I been setting table and laying knife-and-fork since I could reach the table with my head.”
“Now, what about the sandwiches? And the other things?” Mrs. Burrmann’s tone now suggested that she didn’t expect an answer, rather that she wanted to remind Bernice who was maid and who mistress. This was her favourite technique when dealing with Bernice; and Bernice had always kept silent. She stood there and abused Mrs. Burrmann in her mind. Behind the smiling face, Bernice was telling her: But, oh Christ, woman! I am not a child this time o’ day. ‘Course I know that eight guest mean eight place-settings, so you don’t have to remind me, or tell me that! And Mrs. Burrmann, who didn’t have the power (or the desire) to listen to Bernice’s thoughts, was saying, “… all I want to know, Leach, is that you have set the table for eight persons, and that you haven’t forgotten that I told you, twice so far, this morning, that eight persons’re coming. It is almost three o’clock now, and you still have lots to do … the children, the groceries, and you have still to go to the drug store for me.…” Be-Christ, look woman, I didn’t even have time to look at the blasted table, you had me so damn busy the whole day. You in here from daybreak to dusk, sitting down on your fat behind drinking drinks, whilst I out there, in that hot kitchen working off my fat, for peanut-money. From the time I come into this country, I been working. Working, working, working hard as hell, too. I really don’t know what get in me to make me do a damn-fool thing like emigrating to Canada, saying I working as servant and maid for somebody like you … “Leach!” Mrs. Burrmann was screaming. “Have you gone deaf?” It was a long time before Bernice heard her voice. Mrs. Burrmann was now on her feet, her hands at her temples, as if she was feeling great pain. “Leach, haven’t you heard me asking you for my pills?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Well?”
And that was all it took to defeat Bernice, once more. It was always like this. Whenever there was a serious matter to discuss with Bernice, Mrs. Burrmann always felt sick, suddenly. It had happened last week, when Bernice first mentioned that her sister was coming. Then, Mrs. Burrmann had developed a migraine headache, and asked for her tranquillizer pills. She’d taken twice the amount prescribed by her doctor; and for the rest of that afternoon had escaped to her bedroom to sleep it off. When she appeared the following day, smiling and charming (“Oh, Bernice, what a lovely winter day! You know, I think you’re putting on too much weight.” And she even patted Bernice on her behind, where her weight was heaviest), Bernice’s defeat was so complete that her previous aggressiveness turned to sympathy.
“You taking it with water, ma’am?” she asked now, insinuating that Mrs. Burrmann might take it with whiskey. “I hope the head feel good soon, ma’am.” But she was hoping the blasted pill stick in your damn craw, and choke you dead, dead as hell! ’cause you think you buy me; but you didn’t purchase me, you hear? You can’t, nor won’t ever buy Bernice, oh no, darling. You have your riches and your mansion and your broadlooms thick thick as grass, but you don’t think for one moment that could make my heart flutter. Mrs. Burrmann took the pill, and then reached out a hand and turned on the player which was part of a streamlined, expensive walnut cabinet that also contained the television. Without getting up from her couch, she chose a record; and then turned up the volume. She did not intend to continue the discussion with Bernice. Bernice waited to see whether the volume was turned up so high by mistake; but realizing that it was done deliberately, she flounced out of the room. Hate piled up within Bernice’s heart as the eaves of the house piled with snow into shapeless mounds near the side door. The record was Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony. Bernice had heard it before: Mrs. Burrmann played it every day, at least once, from beginning to end. And so, Bernice found herself liking the record, although she never knew why.
The music echoed through the entire house, like a storm, Bernice began to notice that this music, and the volume at which it was played, coincided with their quarrels. So many things went through her mind this afternoon, like children’s fingers running at random through sand on a beach: thinking of Mrs. Burrmann, unfair as hell, because today my day off, today is one Thursday I wanted to be free. Thursday’s is my day to be off, as the regulations say. I didn’t say so, and I certainly didn’t make them regulations. You don’t think she is a damn advantage-taker? Estelle coming in at Malton, and that princess in there, God blind her.… But the music was upon her, coming back to her, like the memory of a kiss. It had reached the part she liked best; the part she always listened to, and which made her think of home, because she could see the lines of corn in the small plot of land her father tilled behind their house; and see women wearing hats of old rags on their heads as shields from the violence of the sun; women bending down, bending over like hairpins, pulling the weeds from choking the corn. Sometimes, if she listened attentively, she could see the blackbirds and wood-doves calling one another.… And then the telephone rang.
“Phone, Leach!” (Bernice called out in her mind, You can’t hear it ringing yourself?) “Leach? The phone. Come and answer it.”
“Mrs. Burrmann’s residence?” she asked the phone; and when she recognized the voice, she exclaimed, “Oh Christ, Dots! That is you?”
“Guess.”
“What?”
“Gal, guess.”
“Boysie get the job in the civil service.…”
“I told you to guess, not dream.” She filled Bernice’s ears with her throaty, sensuous laugh. “Gal, that man been job-hunting since he come to this country eight months ago, and you think he could get a job? But I ask you to guess. Guess!”
“I can’t guess, man,” Bernice whispered. “Working for this bitch here has took away all o’ my guessing powers. I here fighting with her to let me go up to the airport to rescue Estelle outta the hands o’ them immigration people up there. And up till now, that woman hasn’t even picked her teeth to me, to say yes, or no.”
“But I ask you to guess.”
“What happen now, eh?”
“Lottie dead.” There was a pause, a long pause, before Bernice could speak.
“No!” she gasped.
“Lottie dead,” Dots repeated, without too much emotion; as if she was reporting the death of a dog in the street.
“Yuh lie!”
“Dead. I just hear the man on the radio called out Lottie’ name.”
“How?”
“Crosswalk.”
“When? When it happen?”
“Appears Lottie was going up Bloor Street, and she put out her hand to cross through one o’ them blasted crosswalk-things, and …”
“If I had my way, Dots, if I was Mayor Givens, look! if I was a woman o’ power, I would wipe out every last one o’ them things. I calls them death-traps, not crosswalks.”
“… and even though Lottie put out her hand to point, that man driving the mottorcar came right on, and bruggadungdung! …”
“Poor Lottie.…”
“Jesus Christ, Dots!” And for a long time, neither said anything. Dots began to talk again. “And to think, just think, that Lottie and me was sitting down here in my room, talking ’bout the nice things she bought down in Eaton’s for the wedding. That girl spent so much money for the we
dding.…”
“Perhaps … perhaps, it is a good thing that Lottie dead, though.”
“But gal, how the hell it could be a good thing when somebody dead?”
“Well, she was marrying the wrong man.…”
“You vexed with the gal becausing she had a white man in mind? So what the hell so precious with black woman marrieding white man, gal? Look, I tired telling you that if you go on waiting for a black man, or even a Westindian man, to come and put wedding ring ’pon your finger, be-Christ, you will have your wedding day ’pon your death bed! Heh-hee! or you will surely die with yuh maiden intact, gal!” Dots laughed again, more maliciously, more sensuously. Bernice didn’t see it as a joke. “Look, gal, times changing. And a man is a man.”
The Meeting Point Page 2