The Meeting Point (11 page)

Estelle was very excited. She talked and she talked; and she told them about the small boy in the plane who called her Aunt Jemima. “What really made the devil get up in me, was that I was waiting for that child’s mother to scold him.”

“You still waiting!”

“Boysie, this is one time you utter a mouthful, boy,”
Dots said. “White woman apologize to you? Well, gal, you just come and you got a lot to learn
and
unlearn. One thing I going tell you, in case this sister o’ yours forget to tell you. And it is this. You weren’t born here. You were not born in Canada. And furthermore, the people who born here, they ain’t black, eh, gal!”

“Be-Christ, Dots! if I wasn’t behind this steering wheel, I would kiss you ’pon your mouth.”

“Look, niggerman, mind your manners, eh?”

“Dots is right, Estelle. We were not born here. We in captivity here.”

“All the time,” Estelle said, continuing her story, “all the time, I could see my five fingers printed plain plain in that boy’s behind. That is the way we treat children where I come from — if they don’t have manners.”

“Huh!” Boysie sniggered, “you try it here!”

“Rudeness is rudeness,” Estelle said. And she said it as a final pronouncement on children, and upon the whole world.

“The childrens in this outside-world is a different breed o’ beasts altogether, from the ones I uses to know back in Barbados,” Boysie said. All the time he was talking, he never once left the road with his eyes. “They watches too much damn television. Everytime you pass near somebody living room, beChrist! all you hears is
bang-bang-bang
!”

“Violence, gal!”

“But that is children, though, Dots.”

“Children, my arse — excuse me, Estelle — you mean this brand o’ children.” Boysie was really mad. His words affected everybody in the car; and for some time, there was a general re-shuffling of positions and comfort. Estelle took out a package of Barbadian cigarettes, and made a big stage-show in lighting
one. Bernice made a mental note that she wasn’t going to smoke in her apartment, oh no!

“I would never forget how, one day, Mrs. Burrmann’ second girl-child nearly caused me to go to the gallows,” Bernice said. She paused there, while a little more attentiveness crept imperceptibly into the car. You could hear everybody breathing, as they settled back to listen. Bernice herself had to think hard to remember what she was going to say, because the fact of Estelle’s smoking worried her greatly: she never thought Estelle was a woman who smoked. It was too much. She couldn’t stomach Mrs. Burrman’s drinking and smoking; and Estelle’s smoking, too. She recalled her story, and said, “ ’Twas during the first days I was working for that princess, Mrs. Burrmann. One day … I think it is the first time, too … she ask me to bathe them two brutes o’ hers. Well, I got the firstborn, Serene, in the bath tub, and she licking all the damn cold water … those two children love cold water! they are like eskimoes, heh-heh-heh! … Serene throwing all the blasted cold water up in my face, all in the bathroom, and making the water into waves as if a storm brewing up in the tub. The soap burning my eyes. I feel I losing my sight, but I still laughing with the child all the time,
hee-hee-hee-water-water-water cool, cool water!
me and she playing we are two children playing. But I vex as bloody hell, and any moment now, I feel I going strangulate or drown the blasted unmannerly child …”

“Ho-ho!” Boysie brayed; he was enjoying this.

“Listen, man. The next bastard, Ruthie, the second-born, she come round behind me. Well, I paying attention now to the next one in the tub, seeing that she don’t drown by mistake, and have all o’ Forest Hills and Mrs. Burrmann out looking to
lynch me,
blind them
! … although, to tell the truth, that was exactly what went through my head. But, murder is murder. Then, as I telling you now, I feel this thing running down my leg, right from up under the middle o’ my behind … pardon me, Boysie, child … in the soft part o’ my behind. Christ! a fright take a hold o’ me. Wait! am I wetting myself already? A young woman like me, starting to wet my trousers so early in life? And then, as I telling you, something told me look round, look round, Bernice, a mind tell me, and inspect thyself when nobody ain’t noticing, and
see
. Could the water you feel crawling down your leg be your own water, or water from the bath tub? And Jesus God, Dots! when I turn round, that little white bastard was
up under my uniform.…
”

“But wait!” Estelle exclaimed, because she could think of nothing else to say.

“… and her hand was ‘vestigating what she didn’t put down.”

“Gorr-blummuh!” Boysie said; threatening the whole world. He spoke the threat again, equally viciously, in two distant murderous syllables. “Gorr-blummuh!”

“But look Satan, gal!” Dots tried not to laugh. “Jesus Christ, what was she searching for, Bernice?” But her laughter was too much for her, and she collapsed, loud, and sensuous and throaty. “Look the devil!” Her heavy breasts were jerking up and down like two pneumatic drills.

Estelle was vexed; and she asked Bernice, as if challenging her, “And what did you do?”

“I turned round, and I say, but Miss Ruthie …”

“Miss Ruthie, my fat arse!” Dots screamed. She was almost hysterical. “Miss Ruthie, hell! You should have slapped her arse till it is still black-and-blue. Miss Ruthie? Miss Ruthie?”

“Do what, Dots?” Bernice asked, obviously embarrassed and humiliated. “You ask me to touch that woman’s child? And lose my head? And lose my job?”

“But what
did
you do?”

“Look, Estelle, don’t you come playing you could talk to me like …” But Dots cut her short.

“Look, it is high time you forget all this shit ’bout Miss Ruthie and Miss Serene outta your head, hear? Miss Ruthie, my backside! Call the little monster by her real name, gal!”

“I say to her,” Bernice continued, her voice shaking and wet with a few tears in it, “but Miss Ruthie, why are you spying up in my behind like that? Has you lost Mummy or Daddy up in there?”

“And what did she do, then?” Estelle asked.

“She laughed, she just laughed.”

“And what did she say?”

“She tell me that a little girl … Mrs. Gasstein’ girl …” Bernice said, breaking down now in shame and tears, “she tell me, that this little girl’s father tell her that black women … ”

“Be-Jesus Christ, I don’t buy that at all!” Boysie said. “Look, we gotta be fair. Perhaps the child father say so, and perhaps he didn’t tell the child so. I have to buy that the blasted child make up that story. Some children is lying bitches!”

“I believe the child’s father tell her so,” Dots shouted.

And Bernice could not finish her story, because the shame was too much for her; and the censure in Dots’s voice and in Estelle’s eyes was too bitter. Boysie’s silence after what he said, was perhaps the greatest weapon. Dots started to shake her head, characteristically, from side to side, in sorrow; in sympathy. Bernice tried hard to forget what happened on another evening: … 
I think it was a Sunday, though it could be a Saturday
,
’cause Mrs. Burrmann had take the kids for a drive afterwards, yes! it was a Sunday, and Mr. Burrmann was somewhere in the house …

“How old is this little girl?” Estelle asked.

“Four,” Dots told her.

“And you mean to tell me …”

“Gal, white people teaches their children some o’ the worst things ’bout black people, you hear me, gal? …” … 
and he had called Bernice to bring him a hot drink; and when she opened his study door he was lying on the floor, with his head touching the large speaker, and the music … jazz, I think he called it, was as loud as Mrs. Burrmann’s Beethoven; and the lights in the study was out, and I was so frighten …
“you will soon find that out for yourself.”

“You know something? You really want to know something?” He slammed his foot on the brakes, and the car jerked. It was too sudden for Dots to start cursing him. “Listen! It does really pain my arse to hear how you, both you and Bernice, does say such good things ’bout Mrs. Burrmann and Mrs. Hunter
one minute
, and gorblummuh! the next moment, both o’ you saying Mrs. Burrmann is cheap as hell, Mrs. Hunter is a bitch; Mrs. Burrmann nice, Mrs. Burrmann bad; Mrs. Hunter is a lady, Mrs. Hunter is a whore! What I want to know is when you-all going stop talking with both sides o’ your mouths! Make up yuh minds, because, gorblummuh, Mrs. Burrmann and Mrs. Hunter couldn’t be queens today, and whores tomorrow! That is what I have to say.” He allowed his last words to sink in for a while, and then he started the car, and drove on. They were still and scolded, like children. In her heart, Dots was pleased that she had a man who talked up like a man. But she kept this satisfaction to herself. Bernice was too
shocked to say anything; and Estelle, the newcomer, pretended she was looking at the scenery passing her, and she passing the scenery, like photographs taken out of focus. It was a long time, before Dots had the courage to say another word. And when she said, she was humble. Boysie noted her humility, and smiled in his heart. Gorblummuh, I gotta put my foot down more often!

“But still, after all, Boysie, you will have to remember that it is Mrs. Hunter who gave me the down-payment for this car you driving.”

“It ain’t a gift, Dots. Woman, it isn’ no blasted gift she give me. It is a repayment. And be-Christ, if you let them buy you out, they can’t and isn’t going to buy out Boysie. Not me!”

“Is Girlie still living in the old house behind Mammy?” Bernice asked her sister, after she felt it proper to change the topic.

“And what happen to Lord Nelson?” Boysie asked, thereby implying he wanted the topic changed. “Lord Nelson’ statue still standing in the middle o’ town, directing traffics? Nobody ain’t blow-down that blasted statute yet?”

“He still there, too!” Estelle said.

“And how Mammy?” Dots asked.

“I get a letter from Mammy this morning.”

“Mammy still there, living, in the name of the Lord, as she likes to say.”

“I hear the Deep Water Harbour build,” Boysie said; although he knew it had been built, completed, even before he left the island.

“It’s built, Boysie, it built. It was built a long time now, man. You’re behind the times. The Deep Water Harbour finished, because the people
made
Grantley Adams get up off
his sit-down, and build it. And if Adams didn’t harken, we intended to get a better man, like Dipper Barrow to build it for us. The people down there in that island, are tired with the lack o’ progress. The tourists taking over the whole damn island. And if Adams was still in politics, I think the people would have killed Adams, because Adams was the same as a tourist. Nobody never see him!”

“Adams is a hell of a man, though!” Boysie said.

“Adams likes the people; but he
loved
the white people,” Estelle said.

“Be-Christ, that is why I always tell this woman I married to, that I voting strictly Conservative in the next Canadian elections. I votes Liberal as a rule, at least the last time I voted Liberals. But I find out through Henry, that whilst the Liberals was running this country, it was hell for a black man to get inna this country, as a immigrant; ’specially when a man named Picklesgill was Prime Minister. Well, I telling you now, I voting strictly Conservative next federal elections. And I intends to remain so.”

“The island making progress, but it is a public progress, not really an individual one. Big public buildings, government buildings, and government offices. But it isn’t making progress in the way of putting food in the mouths of poor people, like me and …”

“That is exactly what I mean, Estelle,” Boysie intervened. “That is what I mean ’bout voting Conservative. Now, in a lazy-faire system, whiching as you know, is the system under the Conservative type o’ political system …”

“Mark your last words, Boysie, boy,” Bernice cut in. “Estelle, look on your right hand. You see something?”

“The building? You mean the building … ohh! … Palmolive!”

“Yes!
P-A-L-M-O …”

And Estelle, excited as a child, completed the spelling,
“L-I-V-E!
Palmolive!”

“We uses to use that same soap, back home.”

“Yes, man. Palmolive! with them five little beautiful white girls on the soap.…”

“I wonder whatever happen to them five girls?” Bernice asked. “A long time I haven’t hear nothing ’bout them.”

“They grow up, Bernice,” Boysie said. “You think they is still children? They grow up. They was the Dions!”

“Christ, yes! Gal, they must be big women now.”

“I wish somebody could give me
five
children right now, this very minute,” Estelle said. “I would get a hell of a lot of money. Christ! it won’t be no trouble at all for me to have five every year, neither.”

“But what are you saying, gal?”

“She only joking, Dots.”

“That’s a damn funny joke to joke with.”

“Boysie, a joke is a joke, man,” Estelle said. “That’s all. You and Dots and Bernice are so tense. From the time I stepped off that plane, all I can feel and see, is a tenseness. You-all so tense, that nobody didn’t ask me how I enjoyed my trip.”

“How you enjoy the trip?” Boysie asked.

“The trip was good, man. First class.”

“You had a good plane trip?” Dots asked.

“And what about the immigration people?” Bernice asked. “We was waiting for you a long time.”

“Well, that is where I had a little trouble. That is what spoiled the whole trip for me.” It was going to be a long answer, they felt; so they sat back to listen. “The first trouble really was with the passport.”

“Mark your last words, Estelle,” Bernice cut in. Estelle was a little annoyed at the interruption. “You see the name on that sign?”

“Cadbury!”

“Remember how we uses to eat them?”

“Chocolate, Cadbury Chocolate. Well, bless my eyesight! To think that I live to see the day, and the place …”

“Continue,” Bernice said.

“The man took me in this little room with a bright light, and started asking me questions. Child, you would have thought that I come here to rob the Bank of Canada, and not merely to get a little rest! What is my name? Have I got relatives here? What am I coming for? And am I coming in as a domestic? How could I say that my sister is Bernice Leach, when my own name is Estelle Shepherd? Well, that man had me so blasted vexed, I don’t know … ”