“But she ain’t a child, gal! And furthermore, you had better watch her, ’cause people talking.”
“What you mean, Dots, by people talking?”
“People talking.” There was a long pause on the line; and there was something like a laugh. Bernice became tense; she gripped the receiver, and pressed it against her ear, and she thought — no, she was certain — she heard two persons, women, in the background sniggering. “I putting you on your guard. People talking. And I gone now, ’cause I damn busy.” Dots cut off the conversation. Bernice did not sleep that night. She worried, she imagined, she put the puzzle of the remark together, and all she saw was a jig-saw of confusion. That night also, she prayed to God, for strength and guidance. But it was long in coming. It didn’t come even with the dawn which caught her at the window, thinking: who could the man be, causing people to talk about my sister? (Something put it into her head that it was a man; and a married man. She was wise enough to know that people don’t talk if there is a single man and a single woman.) I hope it ain’t that man Estelle come up on the plane with, and I hope that bitch Agaffa ain’t up to no damn tricks with my sister, ’cause some o’ these rich Jewish women horny as hell, and they always on the prowl for excitement.… (She narrowed it down to a man: a married man; a married white man. She thought of and discounted Henry; she had discounted Boysie, the only married man she knew. She knew Dots and every other West Indian woman had been watching out for Boysie. The jig-saw puzzle was falling into place.) It is a man, I know that, ’cause Estelle don’t like women! But which man? It is a man, Lord, but who? Who man? (She could only fit those two pieces into the puzzle, before she fell asleep.) A man, but who, Lord? Who man?
The next day, Bernice saw a FOR RENT sign in the meat store beside the drug store where she was buying some vaseline for Mrs. Burrmann. In one glance she took in all the information on the sign. She was self-conscious about being caught reading a FOR RENT sign in this exclusive district. When she got back, she made the call from the kitchen phone. And she had to talk softly, because Mrs. Burrmann was in the sitting-room reading.
“You still have the room for rent?” she whispered into the phone. She was self-conscious also about her accent which she feared might be detected, and her chances of renting the room destroyed. So she tried to speak in an English accent. It was the same accent she used when she wanted to impress Mrs. Burrmann, or a salesgirl at Eaton’s. “Have you got a room for rent?”
“Oh yes, yes!” It was a secure voice, an old voice. “Are you interested?” But before Bernice could say she was, the voice went on talking as if it had not talked for a very long time, and had to. “Carpets in both rooms, although I’m asking rent for one room only now, and a very lovely window, actually a bay window, and a fireplace …” and before Bernice could say anything, the voice had changed the topic to something else: “and since I’m a Christian person myself, I don’t want to force my principles of living on you, so there’s a television and a record player in the room also, and don’t be shy in using it, because noise doesn’t bother me nowadays, since I have a slight difficulty hearing out of one ear.…” Bernice didn’t think she could afford such a room, judging by its description. But the woman was talking again. “Are you a Christian, too, dear?”
“Well.… Yes, I is a Christian person.”
“Oh that’s fine! Myself, I’m Baptist.”
Bernice didn’t know which denomination to give. If she said British Methodist Episcopal Church, the woman might know she was black; and she didn’t know whether Unitarianism was a denomination, or not. “Well, I used to belong to them but to tell the truth, lately I been worshipping at the United Church, and sometimes, I goes across to the Christian …”
“Oh my dear, child! Those Unitarian people don’t believe in God. They haven’t a religion as such, you know, dear?”
“Yes, but I still regards myself as a staunch Baptist.” Bernice was getting confused. She had the room, and yet having the wrong religion or denomination, it could slip from her. “I agree with you, ma’am, for I know that them people doesn’t have no religion as such …” (She suddenly realized that she had been lapsing into her Barbadian dialect. She wondered whether it had been noticeable.) “ … and rightly so, that is one rational thing that caused me to entertain second consideration concerning worshipping in an institution.…”
“Come over, come over,” the woman’s voice interrupted. “When you come, and you may come any time, I’ll show you my watercolours, and if you come today, you can sample my chocolate cake.”
That was it. “Estelle, you moving out bright and early tomorrow morning. Take that!” She had made the appointment while butterflies skiied and mountain-climbed inside her. She thanked the woman, too many times; and she thanked God, once; and the woman’s God (for who could doubt, that she and this woman had the same God?). She even smiled with the music coming from the sitting-room. There was a bit of a storm gathering in the music, and in her plans. The rest of the morning went like a piece of snow in the sun, on the first day of spring. She was so happy, so relieved, that of her own wish, she took a new glass and a new set of ice cubes into the sitting-room of music and reading, and dress-making, for Mrs. Burrmann. “But you is a real first-class dress-maker, in truth, ma’am!”
Mrs. Burrmann looked up, and smiled. She too was having a fine day. “Bernice, dear! You look so tired. So why don’t you go up and take a rest? Oh! and Bernice? go into my bedroom and you’ll see a dress on the bed. Why don’t you see if it’ll fit Estelle, eh?”
“Yes, ma’am,” she said. Turning away, she added, “You handling that needle-and-cotton like a master!” Back in the kitchen, she held back the aquamarine plastic curtains in the aquamarine kitchen and looked out into the back yard. There was a swallow chirping on the fence of icicles. “Spring here, already?” she wondered. She joined the bird in praise of the end of the bitter winter. When the swallow flew away, she knew it had been only one day of reprieve from the blues of winter.
Later that afternoon, the day turned sour. Winter returned. She slipped out from Estelle listening to the Ten Top Tunes, and ran along the sidewalk, unmindful of the slippery ice. Ice to her meant death. Through ice, she had met the most embarrassing moments of her life on Marina Boulevard. It happened one day, returning from Eaton’s with a handful of parcels bought with her “charge plate,” when she noticed the streets weren’t cleaned. It was the first time in the history of Forest Hill that the public works department had made this slip. She saw the ice and she walked cautiously: putting one foot forward and not daring to move the other foot until she could feel her two hundred pounds securely balanced. Crawling like this, as cautious as a hearse in a funeral, she fastened her eyes on the enemy beneath. She was going well. Harry-etta on the ice! And then, Brigitte her friend, looked out and saw her, and called out to her. The left foot did not make contact with anything beneath it; her right foot was already in motion; something like a chill gripped her and took the rhythm out of her body, and she saw nothing but the melting snow man on the Muhlens’ lawn. And when she hit, there was a resounding thud. Brigitte opened her window wider than it had ever been opened before, and she shrieked and bawled and laughed and cried, “Darrr-link! darlink!”; and in a twinkling of an eye of shame, all the windows on Marina Boulevard were filled with heads and faces (she saw four faces in one window) that had opened mouths in them. Scrambling up her parcels, all she could think of was the time she laughed in her heart, at the old woman in the long fur coat, with her hands like paws in kid gloves, who fell on her bottom, once. She felt it was more ridiculous to see her, a big black woman, flat on her arse, on the wide white sidewalk. “Darlink, get up. You break you back?” But Bernice was cursing Brigitte, and all the time, rushing and sliding and slipping and cursing (forgetting to brush off her winter coat) through that shameful afternoon, all the way towards hell and Estelle.
But on this afternoon of crisis, she forgot about the snow on the sidewalk. “Ice, man, go t
o hell, do! I in a damn hurry!” and she rushed over it like Frank Mahovlich in the Maple Leaf Hockey Stadium. When she arrived at the imposing house, accident-free and puffing, and knocked at the front door, the voice within said, “Come in, come in.” Bernice cleaned her boots on three mats placed in the passageway, and entered the sitting-room that smelled like heather and retirement. She could smell chocolate cake. She saw the strange watercolours on the brown panelled walls; but she could not see the woman. When she took off her ear-muffs and her coat and her scarf and her McGregor tartan which was wrapped around her face, she must have only then come within range of the woman’s weak eyes. There was a great intake of breath. Perhaps, the woman had difficulty breathing. “Come in, come in,” but there was a different feeling in the welcome. “So you are a Christian? I’m so glad you are a Christian person, dear. It is such a decent thing for you.” Bernice opened her mouth to ask about the rent, but the woman was still chattering. “I suppose you saw my watercolours on the way in … milk and sugar? … retirement, you know, is a good thing, you know? … providing you can provide for yourself. Piece of cake? You must try some of this dee-licious cake.… Now, take my case.…” And she went on to tell Bernice that her husband was a professor in Classics and Philosophy at a university somewhere in Africa (she called the name but Bernice wasn’t listening) and that he died last year of some disease (again Bernice heard the sound of the word, but not the word), and her voice went on like a leaking tap.
“But I come to see the room.”
The woman settled herself on her cushions, adjusted her pince-nez, and said, “You are coloured, aren’t you, dear? Before you leave …”
“But I come to see … ”
“I was saying, before you leave, I wish you would take some of these copies of Awake and The Watchtower. They are wonderful devotional reading. I’m sure you’ll find them rewarding. Don’t you know, I’ve subscribed to Awake and The Watchtower even when the Professor and I were in Africa, for almost twenty years … and I’m so glad for your sake that you have found God, and you’re not like those other coloured people who call themselves Black Muslims.… It’s a shame, don’t you think? and imagine! calling some person like me, a devil! … such a hateful thing, and such a chip on the shoulders.…” Her breath was not staying with her; and Bernice hoped it never would. She brought a small lace handkerchief from some part of her body or the cushions (she was all cloth to Bernice: the only flesh visible was her head) and rested it light on her lips. “I am a Christian.”
“I am the person …”
“You must take along those copies, dear.…”
“I come for the room.”
Something happened then to the woman’s eyes; some film of resentment replaced the little life that was in them. “But surely, you didn’t …” she began, and a smile of graciousness and dignity and old age and very old long-practised deceit and dishonesty took the place of the film. “I was under the impression you came to talk about Christianity … you did say you were a Baptist, you know … but you must take The Watchtower.…”
When Bernice stomped herself in her boots, without having said thanks for the tea and the chocolate cake, and the copies of Awake and The Watchtower (which she found in her hands) all she could think of, was “That bewitched old bitch! She think I got time to sit on my arse … but what the hell is her problem, though?” She dropped the copies of Awake and The Watchtower in a garbage can, as she turned the corner. The moment she did it, conscious always of the power of God’s words and God’s wrath, she realized that it was a bad thing to do. Looka me, throwing pearls before swines! that blasted insane woman making me cross-up my damn life with bad luck, eh! … and she would have picked them out of the garbage (she had actually bent down) if a car had not been passing at the same time.
Brigitte came out just as she reached home; and Bernice made her walk back with her to the house she had just left. “Read that sign for me, Brigitte. What that sign saying?” Brigitte read the sign in the front window: “Room, for, rent.” And still, not knowing what it was all about, she looked at Bernice and asked, “You leaving Mrs. Burrmann?”
Going back home, Bernice was pensive. Brigitte was grumbling about the amount of work Mrs. Gasstein was giving her. She said they had just quarrelled because she had her boyfriend in her quarters. “I tell you, Bernice darlink. Working for these Jews is terrible. I was a Nazi. I am German. I confess to you, Bernice darlink, that as German, I know what Nazis had in their heart about these people.”
“Girl, I understand.” Brigitte left to go back to her work. Bernice knew that the old woman with the dead husband was Jewish. “Christ, I ain’t the only person with a cross to bear. But at times, it seems so.”
When she told it to Dots, all the details, all the strange conversation, the tea, the magazines and the cake, Dots was still shaking her head in bewilderment. “I still can’t find no loop-holes in that, gal. I can’t find nothing to say, ’gainst that old woman. But then again, gal, you and she is two Christians together, heh-heh-heh! She give you religion and a lot o’ religion-talk. But be-Christ, when it come to a room for you to live in, she didn’t have nothing to say ’bout that. Figure it out for yourself, gal.”
The afternoon papers were full of a tragedy. A woman was killed. She had killed herself. But it was a mistake; because she really wanted to kill the child in her womb. The papers said a lot about “the increasing numbers of unwed mothers, both in and out of high school.” Bernice read the story on the front page, as Mrs. Burrmann held it; and she wondered why this country had such strange ways of saying things. Now, instead o’ saying pregnant women, who went and get themselves pregnant, they calling them unwed mothers? Unwed mothers, hell! They is women. Women who find themselves in the family way. But they is still women; and I know of many cases in which them same women usually make better mothers, and even better wives, when their turn come to be wives, much better than them bitches who, through ring, bible and church have their whoring made legal. I know how them unwed mothers must feel, ’cause I went through the same hell and grievances, myself. And it ain’t no bed o’ roses, darling!
Mrs. Burrmann put down the paper, and the tragedy of those thousands of Canadians, unknown, unfortunate, unwed, and unwanted mothers, faded from Bernice’s mind, just as the steam of the kettle disappeared and then died. It is hell, though, she thought. If I had a sister, and she found herself in them circumstances, with no man to father her child, and it was for one o’ them worthless bastards in this country, white or black, Japanee or Chinee, be-Jesus Christ! and I turn my eyes above to You, I would have to get a half day from You to search for that brute, and when I find him, so-help-me-God, bram! (She actually slapped her hand on the kitchen counter. Mrs. Burrmann called her name. “It’s only me, ma’am. I here, talking-over a few things with God.”) “I think I would kill that bastard. The sorrow and the sufferation and the unhappiness to bring into a girl’s life!” (Bernice remembered the case of the Jamaican girl, twenty-three years old who was working as a domestic; and she found herself in the family way; and the man didn’t stand up, nor own up and say that it was his; and the only help that girl got was the gossip from the West Indian women who spread the story through the whole of Toronto, as if it was the gospel. The gossip reached her employer; and then it reached the people at the Immigration Office; and then the girl was deported.) “A poor single woman in this country, with a child that don’t have a father? And a two-tone child, at that? Lord, Lord, Lord!” The terror and the tragedy were real, and she was shivering as if she were living through them. “And with all this hospital thing nowadays that you hearing ’bout: blue cross, physicians-and-services, group benefits to pay. This is the first country I ever live in where I hear you have to pay hard cash in order to bring a little innocent mortal into this blasted world. They make you pay through your hat, too! You pays to enter them hospital gates. You pays to lay down in that bed. You pays a certain kind o’ cash to lay down in a certain bed. You pays to lay down
in a certain bed, in a certain ward. You pays again to lay down in a certain bed, in a certain ward, in a certain place o’ that hospital. You pays to get a certain kind o’ treatment from the nurses. And there is a certain kind o’ nurse you have to get before you could even think ’bout paying out ordinary cash. You pays the doctor. If he happens to be your family doctor — well! If he happen to be somebody-else family doctor — then! You pays the delivering surgeon. You pays the drugs people. You pays the man who knock you out with the smelling salts thing, the anaesthesia-man. You pays for the birth certificate. And be-Christ, when you dead, somebody telling you you still have to pay for deading! Why it is so, like this, in Toronto?” (And there was another case: Bernice was remembering everything now. A Trinidadian girl … with a nice skin and nice features and nice long hair; and she had a good brain, too. God-love-a-duck! and Satan stepped right in and put the wrong man in that girl’s pants. That man took that nice, young girl, and give her a child; kept coming back for more; fooling-up that angel till she was four months and almost showing; and the moment she stepped into maternity clothes that her missy bought for her from Holt Renfrew, that bastard run like a rabbit.) Dots was present when Bernice heard the story over the gossiphone. “Gal, that man run like he was running from a fire that had wings on it.”
“And all he had to say is, he is a student.”
The Meeting Point Page 19