BOYSIE: I agree with you. But still I can’t agree with all the three or four sperspectives you mention in regards o’ death. So, I can only say, I agree and I disagree. Though I can’t pull out the words from my brain, in the manner and fashion as how you just talked … gorblummuh! this brandy going to my brain! But I agree in these respects. You was right to say death does come like a thief in the night. I say, however, death is worser than a fire. You does see a fire, and you does smell a fire. When you screel, Fire! gorblummuh, somebody coming to help put out that fire. But you can’t see, nor smell, death. And when death strike, it ain’t one blasted soul, living or dead, to come trotting. Death is a thief. The biggest ever made and create’ in this Chinee world. Death thiefed Lottie. It thiefed Mammy, too. Mammy, down there in that old house, in Barbados, didn’t know, nor hear, nor smell, death. Lottie, stepping ‘cross that crosswalk, didn’t know that death was waiting on the other side. That is the ways of a thief, Dots; and that is the ways o’ death, too.
DOTS: No, no, no, man! You can’t say that death is any damn thief, ’cause for you to say that, you are really saying that death have eyes to see with, hands to hold with, and feet to walk with. And that death have a brain. Because a thief knows, a thief does know, Boysie. A thief, any thief who is worth his salt, always knows beforehand which man stands in possession o’ possessions, and which man doesn’t. That is the onliest explanation you could give me concerning the thief, whoever he was, that robbed Dr. Hunter. That thief knew who to rob: he knew beforehand, who was doctor and who was maid. That is the difference betwixt death and a thief. A thief isn’t blind, Boysie, boy. But death is blind. Death can’t, don’t, and don’t want to see, because death don’t have eyes to see or recognize or know who he taketh away, and who he don’t and shouldn’t, take away.
BOYSIE: Yes … and no, too! Yes, to that part where you say that death isn’t a man, or a thing, or a piece o’ anything in possession o’ sight and vision. That I could agree with. But everything else is no, Dots. Death does thief a man from life. Death does thief a man from his wife. Death does, and could, thief a man from his job, or from his children, like how it thiefed the headmaster o’ St. Matthias School, back home, from his eight children in the twinkling of a eye. Be-Jesus Christ, Dots, as I sitting down here, drinking this white woman brandy, that is the only how in which death have the mechanics of being a thief; and it is the manner in which I see this present strategy concerning Mammy’s death. Death come to Mammy like a centipee on a dark night, and steeeennnnng! Mammy wasn’t no more Mammy. Death transform Mammy from one something in a next something else; and even now, even at this very moment o’ speech and event, even as we three here mourning over Mammy, the same Mammy might be keeping company with we, in the form of that something else, namely a spirit, or a ghost, or just air …
BERNICE: Boysie, do you see spirits?
BOYSIE: Look round this room, Bernice; look round this room, Dots, and tell me, either one of the two of you, if you don’t feel something like a cold draught coming in through …
DOTS: The window, man! It is open. Look man, you old ignorant arse-hole idiot … looka, don’t let me lose my temper, do!
BERNICE: You say a cold draught coming in through somewhere?
BOYSIE: A cold draught is coming in through somewhere! Look, and listen. Listen! You hear something, like a wind? Bernice, you hear the wind, the cool, cool, cold wind that does blow in your face early, early in the morning when you waiting for a streetcar that does come down the tracks creeping like a snail? I bet you, both o’ you, that it is Mammy come back from wherever the hell she is, asking to talk to you, Bernice, because you is her daughter …
BERNICE: It is only the window, open, Boysie. The window open, because I forget to close it. But look, I am going to close it now, man.
DOTS: Look, you ignorant ram-goat!
BOYSIE: You could close that window, be-Christ, till you tired closing that window. But you can’t close out the wind that coming in, as Mammy, and as Mammy’s ghost. I not talking ’bout a open window, Bernice, because I know when a window is open, and when a window is not open. I talking ’bout a feeling in this room right now. Listen! You telling me there ain’t somebody else walking ’bout in this damn room with the three o’ we? Now, I is a man, who don’t believe in no kiss-me-arse foolishness ’bout dead people coming back and turning into something else, or somebody else. But I stating in a positive way, that … shhhh! Listen …
DOTS: It is death. It is death, Boysie, that is in this room with the three of us. A dampening feeling, a feeling like a feeling crawling through this room like water crawling over a floor, and with the floor in darkness, and you can’t see the water because the whole damn place is in darkness …
BOYSIE: Now, you talking some sense, at last, Dots. I sorry to say so, but you had me thinking that you was stupid as arse, not to agree with me. Something, some-damn-thing is in this room. Maybe it is death; maybe not. But whatever the hell it is, it got me, gorblummuh! real scared.
BERNICE: Mammy dead. But look at that thing, though — Mammy dead. And Estelle nowhere to be found. Dots, Estelle reminds me of the prodigal son: cannot be found at a time like this. I cry till I can’t cry no more. It is Estelle’s duty to come and assist in this mourning, you don’t think so? …
DOTS: Gal, this is a evening of sorrow, and I don’t intend to heap more on your head, than you already carrying, nor than you is able to bear. But just the same, since you already down down down with grief and sufferation, a little more can’t kill you. So I might as well tell you that everybody else in Toronto know what you don’t seem to know. Bernice, you may not like to hear this concerning your sister, Estelle, but …
BOYSIE: Dots, I think you need another sip o’ this thing.
BERNICE: Now, let me see … toothpaste, toothbrush, Palmolive soap, lipstick, under-arm deodorant, perspiration odour, what else? … down there in that island so damn hot! Oh yes! a extra toothbrush, in case this one breaks. Earrings, I got them? Yes, I got them … panties, five pairs, ’cause Barbados sweaty at this time o’ year … slips, five dresses, brassieres, mensing pads and powder.… Look, Estelle isn’t even present and I packing to leave first thing in the morning, eh! … Death is a funny thing. It could join blood more closer to blood than anything I know. Look, today, death came and death taketh away a mother; but that same death joined me and my missy, Mrs. Burrmann, on bended knee, like if we was siamee twins, join-up to one another by a spinal cord. When I received that letter, marked MAMMY UNKNOWN, sitting right here on this floor, you should have seen the two o’ we, child. Black woman and Jew woman together, in grief and sorrow, feeling the same sorrow and feeling the same grief, experiencing the same emotion, as if I were her sister, and she were my sister. And in the midst o’ my grief, I had was to raise my head to God, and ask him, Christ, now where the hell could Estelle be?
DOTS: Of a truth I could bear witness to your testimony, tonight, gal, that what you say, is so. You are a woman with grief in your heart. And as I say a moment ago, it isn’t my place to add more grief to the toll you already dragging, but as you just mentioned Estelle, and admit to me and to Boysie, that you knew nothing concerning Estelle’s whereabouts, although you is her sister, Bernice, I must tell you, although it could mean the end of our long friendship …
BOYSIE: Have another drink, Dots.…
DOTS: I talking, man! You don’t have no damn manners? … (Mrs. Burrmann’s Beethoven was suddenly so loud that Dots could not hear her own voice talking. The music had been loud the whole night; but not so loud. And Dots didn’t know that Bernice had heard very little of the night’s conversation, and mourning.)
BERNICE: Mark your last words, Dots. Don’t let me interrupt whatever you was saying. But I have to add, in fairness to Mrs. Burrmann, down there, poor soul, that when death came this afternoon, it joined us together in one, as no amount of hard work I could do in her kitchen, could have join us. And in the midst o’ life, as you say, there is death;
well, listen to me now! I adding something new to that. In the midst o’ death, there is life!
BOYSIE: Amen! I saying amen to that, ’cause it sound like sense to me.
DOTS: Missy and maid? Maid and missy kneeling down in prayer, side by side, because o’ death? Oh Jesus God, no!
BOYSIE: It is a good sign, it is a damn good sign, ’cause it show you one thing. Some white people isn’t as bad as we does think they …
DOTS: But it mean more than that, though, Boysie! It mean and connote much much more than what you just said. It mean, in this sperspective, as Mrs. Hunter would put it, that white people and black people …
Someone was running up the stairs. They stopped talking to listen. Bernice, as if transfixed, was holding a pair of nylons in her hand.
Estelle bounded into the room.
“God, Bernice, I just heard. Henry told me.”
“She dead, all right, gal!”
“Mammy dead,” Bernice said. Immediately, she broke down crying, and screaming. (Dots got up and closed the door.) It seemed that her mind broke finally, for she started to roll all over the floor, like a woman in the spirit, at a revivalist meeting.
“How you heard?” Nobody was too keen to answer Estelle. She looked at Dots, and then at Boysie, already visibly drunk from the brandy. Finally, she looked at her sister, who was now merely writhing on the floor, and foaming at the mouth. Still, nobody answered. “Who sent the message, the cable? You got a cable, Bernice?”
“I get this!” Bernice reached up for the bible, and took the letter from it.
“But Bernice,” Estelle said, “this letter couldn’t have come from the Poor House where Mammy …” She checked herself, although it was too late.
“What you say?” Bernice was staring mad. The hand that reached for the bible, and which was resting on the chesterfield, now fell to her side, dead. Silence, like the silence Boysie was trying to explain earlier, came over the room. “Poor House? I hear you say Poor House?”
Estelle was weeping now. “I had to put her there, Bernice, because Mammy was losing her control.…” Bernice was like a piece of wood, dead wallaba wood. “If you didn’t get this letter from them, the Poor House people, well Mammy is not dead, Bernice. Bernice, you hear? Mammy is not dead.”
“You little bitch,” Dots said. “You heard what you just said? You know what you said just now? You said Mammy not dead! Mammy not dead! Two times, you say that. You didn’t even have the decency to say Mammy still living. You couldn’t say Mammy still living? Be-Christ, if Mammy isn’t dead, she must be living then, eh, gal?”
“Mammy still living,” Estelle said.
Bernice began to cry worse than ever. And then she laughed, a short laugh. “Christalmighty! and I would have gone down there by plane, and would have had to pay back every cent of that money for the plane ticket …”
“You are telling we, Estelle,” Dots said, ignoring Bernice’s words, and speaking slowly, in order to have her words understood, and to have them answered by Estelle, “you saying Mammy is not dead?” Estelle nodded. “Well, how in the name of hell, Bernice, are you going to explain all this to Mrs. Burrmann, tomorrow morning?” And then she remembered her own husband. She looked at him, with a tender feeling, and she said, “And look! Boysie have drunk-up all o’ Mrs. Burrmann expensive brandy!” And Boysie, hearing his name mentioned, but insensible to what was being said about him, wiped his lips with the back of his hand. He took the glass which was half-full, and rested it beside the twenty-six-ounce bottle of Hennessy Brandy. The bottle was already empty.
3
THE TRIANGLE IS SMASHED
Summer came to Toronto like a plague. It was hot. Bernice could not drink sufficient soft drinks, or iced tea, or iced coffee, “cool-aid,” or ginger ale — nothing she could do would conjure up a breeze, or reduce the oppressiveness in the room with her. Added to this, Estelle was in the room, too.
All the time, she cursed and said, “Jesus, is it hot!” The green trees round the house turned dumb. Not a breeze came to make them whisper. Each chance she got, she stole a “jumbo”-sized carton of ice-cream from Mrs. Burrmann’s refrigerator; and she and Estelle would eat it, although sometimes, (particularly the day following the night that Estelle came home late), she would wish that some of the ice-cream would choke her, and kill her. But still, the sweat continued to pour out of them.
Bernice had not recovered from the shock and the mistake about her mother’s death; and she did not cease to hate Estelle for her treatment of Mammy. A new attitude, blanket distrust, a sort of aggressive cynicism came into her life; she wanted to get back at Estelle; at Mrs. Burrmann (although she was not too clear about this vengeance); and at Dots for spreading gossip about Estelle. Shortly after the mistake about Mammy’s death, when Bernice first decided that the whole world was against her, she began to get back at the world, via Mrs. Burrmann, who, to her, represented the world. She purposely wasted the groceries. She used too much cooking oil (sometimes, she threw some down the sink) on the lamb chops and the steaks and the pancakes. She wasted the sugar. She methodically over-used the groceries, “because if he or she, don’t intend to put more money in my hand, as wages, well she going put more money in the grocer-man’ hand, for groceries.” It was a successful sabotage: Mrs. Burrmann didn’t once ask whether the groceries were running out too fast. “That is the meaning o’ money and power, gal!” Dots remarked when she heard the scheme. She didn’t think Bernice had it in her; and she said so. “But, have patience, darling. One and one is two; and every five-cent piece does add-up to a dollar bill. Time on your side, gal.” But Bernice felt her stealing and her wastage were like stealing from a man who didn’t know it, and who didn’t miss it; and this caused her, more than once, to abandon her sabotage. But the moment she was annoyed by an action or an attitude, she promptly returned to her corrosive and denuding waste. Now that summer was here, she would have the run of the whole house, to save or denude, as she pleased.
Mrs. Burrmann was thinking of going to Mexico. Mexico, she always said, was far and foreign and exotic; and nobody there knew Mrs. Gladys Rachel Heinne-Burrmann. The children would be going, as usual, to one of the Jewish-sponsored summer camps, in the northern resort area of Ontario, to learn “camp life and leadership qualities,” where they were taught how to make wiener-roasts, pottery and to be juvenile-scaled Toby Robbinses and Lorne Greenes. Mr. Burrmann hadn’t told anyone yet what his summer plans would be; but he knew they would depend upon Estelle.
Meanwhile, it was no picnic in the third-floor apartment. It was a hot summer. Downstairs, where the family spent most of their time, there was a new air-conditioner. The family and the workmen, had, by a small oversight, missed Bernice’s apartment. Every afternoon, Bernice, dressed in her slip and panties only, and Estelle in a housedress (with nothing underneath) would watch Mrs. Burrmann and the children get into the new Impala convertible (her birthday present from her husband) and speed across the Boulevard to the nearby community swimming pool, on Eglinton Avenue West. This was the same pool that Dots had talked about last summer, when Bernice said she wanted to go there, for a bath. Dots said she had never seen a black person in the pool yet. “That is true, too,” Bernice agreed. “I now remember that in the three years I been living in this district, I have never see a black person in that damn pool, neither.” And this caused Dots to ask, “And how the hell could they still be calling it a community pool?” There was no reasonable answer Bernice could give. Soon after, they both forgot about the pool, and the community.
Bernice continued to look at Estelle and blame her for the heat. Too many o’ we in this damn little room. It is you, Estelle, causing this heat, she would think. But she never had the courage to speak it openly. She was going out of her mind. The only consolation was the hostility she took out in the form of wasting the groceries. Then, after much thinking about her own condition, and about what Dots said concerning Estelle’s long absences from the apartment, Bernice sat down and wrote
a long letter to Lonnie. There were things she had to find out; and Lonnie was the only person she could trust. It was not an honest trust; not an implicit trust, but rather a bargain. Lonnie wanted to emigrate to Canada, and he wanted money. She addressed herself to this bargain, and put her cards on the table of honesty and near-defeat. My dearest Lonnie, (“If that don’t make the bastard listen, and feel that I am serious, well, I don’t know what would!) who I have not treated too good in the past (she wrote), a time comes in a woman’s life, when she has to sit down and make up a tally of things she mean to do, and have succeeded in doing, and of things she mean to do, and did not get the chance of doing. My dropping you these few lines is one of the things I had in mind always to do, but which life in this country, and other things in life, prevent me from putting my attention to. Estelle up here, as you know. Something gone wrong down there with Mammy; and I want you to ’vestigate the ins and outs of that situation in my behalf, and tell me everything. I am not happy up here. There is a lot of things wrong with this country, I do not have time to tell you everything that is wrong with this country; but I will say one thing. Loneliness, Lonnie, is a thing I did not know to exist against a person, as I have come to know it, in this Canada. That is one thing. Another thing I could tell you about my life here, is that money is not all. Money is not all, boy. I was after money when I put down my name to come up here to work off my fat in these people kitchen. But I will not make that mistake two times. But yet, according to some of the things that Estelle been saying, all is not roses down there in Barbados, neither. And this bring me to something else. You have always written to me asking for a piece of change. Well, I am going to give it to you. I can only send you twenty dollars now. But I hope that you will be able to get some of the things you always wanted to get, with it. And don’t forget to take care of the little boy. Terence is all I have. He is my future. I only hoping that God will give me the strength to endure this slavery up here, by which time Terence will be a big man to come up and live with me. I have great things in mind for that boy. But sometimes, things is so bad, that I have to sit down and cry and wish that I was back home where I can speak to a friend, or laugh with a friend, or even laugh with myself, if there is no friend to laugh with. You understand what I saying, Lonnie? Canada to me, is only a place to make money in, not a place to live in, or feel relaxed in. These people don’t owe me nothing; and I owes them nothing, in return. But I am here, and I have to make the most of a bad situation. I want you to understand, Lonnie, that although I have not sat down and poured out my heart to you as I used to, and as a woman would pour out her heart to the man she loves, it do not mean that you were not always in my mind, and in my heart … (“Jesus Christ, I am going too far with Lonnie, now! I don’t think I should tell that man all this, ’cause he might start imagining things …”) … a young strong woman cannot live in this place by herself. She needs a man … (“Yes, I gone too far with Lonnie, now!”) She waited until a voice within her reasoned with her as to whether she was really saying too much, writing too many personal things, to Lonnie. She hadn’t written him in about eighteen months. “The things I am writing that man … suppose he already found himself a woman to live with, Christ! what a shameful position I would be putting myself in! I can see Lonnie showing my love letter to every man, woman and child.…” She convinced herself that the inner voice was wisdom. She folded the letter. She folded the envelope, already addressed, round the letter. She tore up the letter with the envelope, and dropped them into the toilet bowel. As she flushed them down, she stood there and composed in her mind, a better letter to Lonnie; a straightforward one, which he could never mistake as a surrender. She was very concerned about giving in to him; and very proud about her strength and her sexual abstinence, and about withstanding his advances for so long.… Lonnie, I am sending you this twenty dollars because you ask for it. (“Can’t get nothing for nothing, child!”) Go round by St. Peters Almshouses and visit Mammy for me. Estelle put her there. Tell me everything. The name of the charge nurse, what ward they have Mammy in, everything Be good to Terence. I am thinking of taking out papers to help you to come up here. (“Now, I will see what kind o’ man that Lonnie is!”) This was a much better letter, she decided. More business-like. She revised it twice in her mind, and made a promise that after cleaning up the kitchen tonight, she would write it down, on paper.
The Meeting Point Page 23