The Bigger Light

by Austin Clarke

  “I don’t think I am woman-enough to be handing-out my hard-earned money to any man. In a few more months, that bitch will get fed-up with me, and I will need some more money to attract a new man, because no established man will …”

  “Not that. I am not talking ’bout that. I axed you if you could tell, from the first time I bring-up this question to you concerning Little Janey, if you ever thought I wouldda do the same thing if Janey was a …”

  “The same thing just ran through my mind, although I was answering your question as if it was ’bout Llewellyn and the money. I was thinking just-now to myself in those very-same terms: because no established man, unless he was some elderly Canadian man, or an Eyetalian, or a German-man, would turn his head twice to notice an old whore like me, not at my age. But I would prefer a Wessindian man. Any day! This is the only place in the whole whirl, where a woman have to really find a man. Back where we come from, a man finds a woman. Not here though. The shoe’s on the other foot.”

  “You could break out, though.”

  “With what? You mean if I fool-round with a Canadian … oh! You know something, I was reading about that very-same thing only the other day in the papers. The numbers o’ young woman in this blasted place who walking ’bout with VD and gonn …”

  “VD? What the arse are you thinking?”

  “You didn’t just tell me I could break out?”

  “I did.”

  “Well?”

  “Well, shite!”

  “I don’t understand you at all, at all.”

  “You’re a stupid bitch!”

  “Oh my God, Dots, not that, don’t say that.”

  “You are a stupid-arse bitch, then, Bernice! Stupid-stupid-stupid-stupid!”

  “Well you really want to make me cry now … look how you making me cry.”

  “A woman in your position, forty-nine turning into fifty, mini-menopause licking-in your arse, and you tell me you won’t give a young man three hundred dollars to keep him inside your pants? You have me vex-vex-vex as hell now. Here I am, sitting down with you, reading all this history about my child, about Little Jane, and you bugging me over three hundred blasted dollars, when only yesterday you your-very-self told me, and showed me your bank book with thirteen thousand dollars inside it! What the hell do you intend to do with all that money, after you pass fifty-one? Buy sperms with it? Eh? Buy a plastic banana? Eh? Buy a forty-year-old man? Eh? Look woman, read this blasted thing about my child, do! Come, read it, I want to hear everything about Little Jane …” Jane is luckier than some children … “Yuh read that already, Bernice!” Just turned four, Janey is a tiny child with big blue eyes, blonde hair and fair skin.

  “Do you understand my question, now, gal?”

  “What question, Dots?”

  “About breaking out.”

  “Breaking out? What breaking out?”

  “No young Wessindian man, going through to be a lawyer, is going to come smelling round you when you turn fifty-one, if you aren’t that already. ’cause you don’t tell nobody your right age, you are frighten for your blasted age, because you lived your young-days so bad and so little that your old-days now taking a turn in your backside. Understann me? Now. That is what I mean by breaking out. Back home we does call it brekking out, meaning to leave something that you should be doing and doing something that you shouldn’ be doing, like the Canadian man you talked about your-very-self. Breaking out, Bernice. Good Jesus Christ, breaking out. Breaking out.”

  “Do you want me to read on? I don’t think I could live that way.”

  “Do you think that if this piece o’ paper had say with brown big eyes, knotty hair and Negro skin, that I …”

  “Oh my God, Dots, don’t bring up that now!”

  “It has to be brought up.”

  “Not now, though.”

  “Read-on, then.”

  Though her physical development is naturally below average, she is fine emotionally and mentally — bright, alert, and happy, gentle, appealing, and loving. Janey is shy with strangers, but talkative, outgoing and humorous with people she knows. She is full of questions and loves the company of her foster sisters, just visiting or watching everything they do. She enjoys games and likes TV. Already she knows the alphabet which she sings. Sensitive Janey needs no more discipline than the occasional “no.” She is upset by cross words or loud voices.

  “I’ll have to tell Boysie don’t play the record player so loud, if the day ever comes.”

  Janey has been attending a clinic in Chicago where the treatment is free but not the transportation. Similar treatment is also available in Ontario.

  “I have to tell …”

  Dear Little Janey needs warm, loving parents.

  “Dots, what do you think of this? Suppose I did give Lew the money, how would I know? … Oh, she’s sleeping, poor girl. With all this thinking ’bout this girl, Janey, no wonder she can’t keep her eyes open. What a woman this woman is! I know Dots will make a loving parent for this child, for there is so few people in the world today who have love in their hearts for anything, except money. It must be this country that makes a person fall in love with money more quicker than with a person. I am becoming as money-conscious as the biggest Canadian-born Canadian! And to think. This damn little child with so much wrong with her, and she is smiling as sweet as ever in this picture. And look at me! Dots is right. It takes a real person, a real woman, to do a thing like what she is doing. Even to spend a hour over this child, even to read the story of this child. This whole case remind me o’ Estelle and her little boy, Mbelolo. Mbelolo is growing so fast, that soon I could take him dancing with me, heh-heh-heh! And I worry myself over some blasted Wessindian lawyer-man, who when he get that piece o’ paper in his hand, when he graddiate, you think I will ever see him again? You think so, Little Janey? What would he be needing me for, when he could get a young woman to laugh-up and smile-up in his face, and take to his parties, buy a home for, buy flowers for, buy Valentine cards for, take to the movies with, here there and everywhere. All these is things a man never did for me in all the years I been living in this country, and Lew that bastard never even once asked me to a dogfight, and when he does ask me, he comes telling me some shite ’bout going Dutch! Dutch? Dutch, shite! I is a Barbadian! Or else I paying for the shot. I, Bernice, a old bitch like me, still having to pay a man to take me out? I don’t need no man. I need a child who will be waiting for me when I come home, old and haggard from brekking my behind in somebody kitchen …” She looked at Dots and wished she was not sleeping. “Dots? Dots, I feel like, I feel as if I have the strength to do the things I see you about to do, if only I was a more younger woman, if only I was living in my own house, and not in a apartment, I would adopt somebody … if I didn’t have to look after Mbelolo and look out for Estelle, or if I was back in Barbados …” Dear Little Janey needs warm, loving parents who have the resources — emotional, physical and financial — to cope with her condition and to help her cope with it when she gets older. She loves other children so there should be brothers and sisters in her adopting family … “Wait, I didn’t know this! I wonder if Dots know this. Dots, Dots! Wake up! Dots you listening? I want to go in with you in adopting this little girl. I can now see what you mean.”

  “We can’t adopt her, Bernice.”

  “How you mean we can’t adopt her?”

  “Not in a mixed family.”

  “My God!”

  “That is why I read this newspaper clipping every night before I go to bed, and I pray every night for this child, that nobody …”

  “My God, Dots!”

  “I tried, Bernice. I tried. I tried and tried. But not in a mixed family.” Since much of her playtime, of necessity, will be at home, her family must want to spend a lot of time with her. To inquire about adopting Janey, please write to Helen Allen, Today’s Child, Box 888, Station K, Toronto M4P 2H2.

  “But why are you doing this? I mean a man in your position, I didn’t even know black p
eople in this country had so much money in cash! and you giving all to your wife? I have to explain to you, I have to advise you as your lawyer, although I am not legally a lawyer yet, but you understand that this is practice, and practice makes perfect … anyhow I do the papers for you, I did the papers for you, and all you have to do now is sign them, so if you would look down here, and sign just by that seal-thing, yes, just there! you sure is a funny man, if you don’t mind me saying so. Christ! I wish I had half the money you have, half, just half. And you know what I would do with half o’ this blasted money you now signing-over to your wife? a woman who you don’t even love, a woman who you don’t know if she have, if she has another man …”

  “Watch your fucking mouth, young boy!”

  “… anyhow, it is your fucking money, it is your bread, as the Americans say, and in this respect, and I respect the Americans a lot, but I must advise you that I think that as your counsel, even if I am not a qualified barrister and solicitor yet, even although I am not yet qualified to take this brief under the jurisdiction, anyhow, man … Lissen to me, man. For you to take all these Canadian Savings Bonds, three thousand dollars in bonds at how-much per cent, and for how-many years? … now this works out to, ahhmmmmm, Jesus-Jesus! Boysie, in my opinion …”

  “You are a fucking idiot, Lew. You were born an idiot, and you will die a bigger idiot! It is my money, man. It is only money, anyhow, Lew, and a man in your position, with all the learning you have, and I envy you for that, with all that education, you are still a fucking idiot, in my goddamn books. This is my money. I am paying you five hundred dollars for doing something that my lawyer would do for nothing, and you are advising me? When you cash my cheque, I hope you will straighten your affairs. And even when you do, you will still have two hundred dollars left back. You can be a man on the two hundred dollars that are yours. Give Bernice the money you owe her. Give Bernice the money you owe her, and be a man. You are three hundred dollars in debt to Bernice, three hundred dollars in slavery to that woman. Don’t ask me how I know. But if I know, somebody else know, too.”

  “Guess!”

  “Guess what, gal?”

  “Guess, Dots.”

  “What, gal? Look, I am mad as hell, and I busy as anything, too.”

  “Guess who I see this afternoon?”

  “Who?”

  “Guess, I tell you! You won’t believe.”

  “Look, Bernice, you think I have all day to spend on this telephone?”

  “Guess who came up behind me, as I was stepping on ’pon the subway at Bloor ’bout four o’clock this afternoon coming back here to prepare for a party these people having tonight? And the person who came right up behind me, and touch me on my shoulder, and Lord! when I turn round, I couldn’t believe my eyes, at all, at all, and I had was to hold on to my belly and say, ‘Lord, bless my eyesight! I haven’t seen you in years, in years.’ Guess.”

  “Lew?”

  “Lew!”

  “Lew.”

  “That bitch? I took your advice and lend that bastard three hundred dollars, and I haven’t see him since. Thursday gone is three weeks.”

  “Freeness, then.”

  “Funny you should mention him. I was thinking ’bout him only recently, and I had was to say how I don’t see Freeness no more, not since he stopped coming to visit Estelle. One night he was here, and Mr. Burrmann came to look for Mbelolo, and when Freeness see this big important man come in my humble place, well, Dots, you should have seen how Freeness changed colour. Freeness changed till he even changed the colour he have, then. And you know that it would take a lot to make Freeness change his colour, he is so blasted black already! No, it isn’ Freeness, darling. I wonder whatever happened to Freeness, though …”

  “He must be living.”

  “Or dead.”

  “You does see people often-often in this place for a time. And then, bram! they drop outta sight. Outta sight is …”

  “Outta memory.”

  “Now, back home you born seeing a certain person, and you grow up with that person, you play together with that person, Hide-and-hoop, Hobbina-bobbina-baby’s-sneeze, you play Rounders with a person, and when it is a moonlight night, you play Thief, or Ship-sail-sail-fast-how-many-men-’pon-deck, all during the corn season you play London’s Bridge, all them sorts o’things you would do with a person who born in the same village back home with you. And you go to school and finish school, and then become men and women, and you see that person almost every day, and even if they moved away from where they was living as little girls and boys, you see them in the park at the Agricultural Exhibition, or on a Friday night listening to the Police Band on the Explanade … or on Christmas morning in the Park, Queens Park … you born and you grow up with a certain person, and that person is a friend for life! But in this place which you come to, as a adult grownup person, a stranger, you could live next door to a person for years in an apartment building, and you think you could ask me the name o’ the whores living next door to me? I am sure they don’t even know my name, neither. Except they get a letter for me delivered to them, by mistake by the postman-man. So, I am not surprised that you asking me what happen to Freeness. You remember the nurse-girl?”

  “Who nurse-girl?”

  “You know who I mean! The nurse-girl who was on duty the night we take Estelle down to the General Hospital to have the …”

  “You don’t have to feel ’shamed to say it, Dots. Say it. Say it, ’cause it gone and it past already. The abortion.”

  “The abortion.”

  “They giving-’way abortions now in this place. Anybody who find themselves with child could walk into any hospital, and say, ‘Make me free again to …’ ”

  “I know. I know. I work in one o’ them.”

  “But guess.”

  “Not ahmmmm … but you didn’t tell me who I mean, the nurse-girl, that is.”

  “Not Millicent!”

  “Is she the one who came to Henry’s wedding when nobody didn’ invite her? And who was on Estelle’s ward?”

  “Millicent.”

  “Look Millicent, though!”

  “Millicent, boy! I hear she married now to a nice German fella, and they living up on Baylawn Drive, up in Agincourt, the bitch, in a big house.”

  “Well, well, well, our girl, Millicent.”

  “What happened to those girls who was on the domestic scheme with us, when we uses to go down to Reverend Markham church?”

  “You know I can’t remember the name of that street! A person goes to the same church for three years, through winter and snow, fall and spring, summer too, in the days when we didn’t have a bird to call a friend in this country, and all of a sudden, that part of our lives is like a book closed shut! Shut, shut, shut, tight, tight, tight, tight. What a thing life is!”

  “If you wanted to kill me to make me call one o’ them names, just one name, one name of a girl who was in the scheme with us, and who uses to go down to Cecil Street to those Thursday night cheap dances, or to the Hall on College, well, I would have to accept and face my fate.”

  “But who is this person that you axed me to guess about?”

  “Agaffa!”

  “No!”

  “Yesss, girl.”

  “A-gaffa? A-gaffa! The A-gaffa we know? The same one who married we Henry? No, not she, not her, not the same A-gaffa who I blamed for killing-off Henry, poor fellow.”

  “May he rest in peace.”

  “Lord, have mercy.”

  “Poor Henry. Yuh telling me ’bout Agaffa, and how you saw her this afternoon.”

  “Did I say this afternoon?”

  “I think so.”

  “No, man. It was recently.”

  “Recently, then.”

  “Yes, recently.”

  “Yuh know something, gal? We talking here ’pon this telephone just like back in the old days. You remember them days? The two o’ we up here in this country, lonely! How I would sit down in my room and call you up, and you
up there at the Burrmanns. And we would talk, and lick we mouth, take the world apart and put it together again.”

  “Humpty-Dumpty sat on a wall, Humpty-Dumpty had a great fall!”

  “A great fall. A great fall o’ loneliness. That is what it is.”

  “All the King’s horses and all the King’s men couldn’t put Humpty-Dumpty back in one piece again.”

  “Be-Jesus Christ, gal!”

  “Dots, you still there? I won’t keep you much more longer, dear. But I wonder what time it must be now in Barbados? You ever, ever wonder about that? Or what the weather must be like?”

  “It hot, gal. Hot as shite, too! Back there, now-so, you would be walking through the Lower Green bus-stand with a big basket in your hand, just come from shopping for supper for the missy, whoever you happen to be working for. Or you would be sitting down ‘pon the Explanade we just mentioned, with some European-woman child, chasing the flies outta his face or from getting into his mouth! Or you might be home in your own home, doing something or the other.”

  “I was waiting for you to say I might be in my own home,” Bernice said. “Or even married.”

  “In Barbados?”

  “Or that I might be selling salt-fish and rancid butter from Australia, keeping shop in behalfs of one o’ them thiefing merchants down Swan Street, or Roebuck Street.”

  “You are dreaming, gal.”

  “I wonder sometimes. I sometimes wonder.” There was a pause in the conversation, during which there was heavy breathing. “I wonder, sometimes.”