The Meeting Point (16 page)

Bernice had grown accustomed
to her triangle of life, in thirty-two months of working with Mrs. Burrmann. It was a life that centred round her kitchen, her radio and her princess telephone. It was a life, which, although restricted by virtue of her being a domestic in Forest Hill Village, nevertheless, was an interesting perspective into the world around her, the world of riches in Forest Hill itself. Because of which, she never considered changing this world. Nobody could get her to change her daily pattern of existence. “I happy as hell in Canada,” she once told Dots; and Dots had to wonder whether it was the same person who had said last week, “Canada, Mississippi, Alabama, South Africa, God, they is the same thing!” And when Dots asked how, Bernice added, “As far as a black person is concerned.” This made Dots very unhappy and confused. But it was this ambivalence which Bernice entertained even with the Burrmann’s: on Monday morning, she hated Mrs. Burrmann for what she had done to her over the weekend, and by Friday, she was in Mrs. Burrmann’s corner, blaming Mr. Burrmann for his wife’s drinking. And she would say he was giving his wife a dog’s life. And sometimes too, she would say,
“Child, it is Canada that liberate me, you hear?” One Thursday afternoon, when Dots was visiting her, Bernice pulled from under her chesterfield, a handful of wrinkled and dog-eared
Muhammad Speaks
(the newspaper of the Muslims in America) and some Jet magazines. She had been introduced to these by her cousin in Harlem. “Look at the facts o’ your life,” she said, holding them in Dots’s face. “Here! read the truth ’bout yourself.” And she tossed them into Dots’s lap. Deep inside her, Bernice really felt she could be happier living somewhere else; maybe even in Harlem. (She had never considered going to Africa.) She thought of returning home; but she knew the chances of living happily there, depended upon the amount of money she could save here; and after hearing Estelle talk about the number of people unemployed back home, and after talking with some domestics who had gone back on holidays, Bernice decided that going back to Barbados to live, was not such a good idea after all. She was, in a sense, as happy on Marina Boulevard, as she could be (as a black woman) anywhere else in North America.

Before Estelle’s arrival, Bernice could not conceive of anyone living in her apartment with her. She resented the intrusion upon her cleanliness, tidiness and order. Yet, the closer her sister’s arrival drew, the happier she became. She was going to have someone to talk to; someone with whom to share her loneliness. But the moment Estelle arrived, Bernice saw the mistake. It might have been better to have brought up Lonnie: at least Lonnie is a man … Lonnie that damn woman-hound, always wanting something, always writing asking for something as if he think I am up here working off my backside in his behalfs …! And she thought of what Estelle’s presence would do to her on Thursdays, her days off; her day for putting
her wages in the bank; her relaxation and visits downtown; and sometimes, her little laughing and drinking (“Just a Coca-Cola for me, Mr. Geary, please. You don’t know I is a Christian?”) at the WIF Club. On those Thursdays which coincided with her wage-days, Bernice would take a bus from Marina Boulevard to entrust her wages to the Personal Chequing Account she had opened with the Royal Bank of Canada, near the corner of Eglinton and Yonge Streets. Something about the name, and the impressively printed
lion
, yeah, the British lion! and her name — her own name! — on her own cheques (a prestige she could never have hoped to attain in Barbados, in her class) drew her, like a magnet, to put her money into the safekeeping of this bank. The very name —
Royal Bank! —
impressed upon her, the worthiness and durability of the bank: a bank where her money would never be in danger. But it was only recently that she had come to regard banks as being safe for her money. She could not forget that night in Barbados, when the flames vied with the moonlight for the possession of the Penny Bank; and they fought the moon’s fluorescence for all the life-savings of the poor villagers. That night, Lord, it was in the dry season, I think, and the dollar bills and the shingles off the house burn and turn into leaves o’ black brittle wafers, or like crusts of soot; and they blow all over the village, like if they was interests o’ grief. Lord, and I would never forget how, even before the last speck o’ black burned-up shingle-money had disappeared from the skies, like black-birds flying home, that man, Mr. Toppin the owner, manager, president and inventor o’ the Penny Bank, was already halfway on his way to Harlem, New York City, America. Five years! and fifty dollars and forty-five cents I had saved-up, all the money to my name, to pay down on a house with. Five, ought, forty-five and five!

But it was different in this country, with banks. They were built so beautifully, with large glass windows which exposed to her, the tellers and the people doing business in them; and the managers (these Canadian managers were not hiding like Mr. Toppin, in a room with the door under lock and key: they were there, in the open, to attract money and banking-people and borrowers, like fly-paper to attract flies) all visible; and the women who worked there, dressed so clean in their anonymous personality of the bank clerk, so plain and pallid and trained to smile and to be courteous, and to look poor and honest … and I like to see the way they smile every time I come through that swinging door marked PUSH; which I
pulled
one time, and continue walking in, and I walked right into the blasted glass door, and cut myself and my dress was ripped up in pieces, and I felt so ‘shamed and embarrassed! as if my petticoat was showing, which it was. Yes, the Royal Bank of Canada was a special thing in Bernice’s life. No one can imagine the satisfaction she had, when she received her first cheque book. The word,
Royal
, gave it that special flavour and prestige. (That same afternoon, she called Dots on her princess telephone, and yelled, “Dots, child, I got it! I get the thing, man. You must come and see it!” It was only a cheque book: not a loan.) It told her that never never, in this world or in the next to come, would this bank ever go bankrupt on her, and burn down, while she was sleeping. It was safe and sound. Safe as the continuation of kings and queens who were royal; whose births and deaths were linked like the beginning is linked to the end, in a line of water flowing through a circular pipe. “Lord, don’t matter how I cuss this place, Canada,” she said once on the bus going home, after a pang of conscience, “no matter how I say Canada is this, and Canada is that, be-Christ, look!
three thousand dollars,
three-ought-ought-and-ought
! thousands not hundreds; on my own personal chequing account cheque book. My name, Bernice Leach,
Miss
Bernice Leach write down in it,
if yuh please
, and my address and telephone number printed in it, too. That is what Canada have done for me. This is my testimony to this place, called Canada. And Lord, I am glad as hell that I come here, that I is a Canadian.” But this did not prevent both Bernice and Dots from lambasting Canada that very week, when they saw a story in the newspapers that a certain West Indian nurse couldn’t get an apartment on Bathurst Street, to rent, because she wasn’t white. Subsequently, they both agreed, volubly, that “Canada ain’t worth shit!”

“This is a place, too?” Dots said, the very next day. “This is no place for a person to live in, and feel like a human being, gal. And when you are a woman, and not married, well …”

“I feel the same way as you,” Bernice said; but she hastened to point out a condition which she felt would extenuate this denouncement: “But I still have to think of when Thursdays come, pay day. For that, and that alone, I think Canada ain’t such a bad place.”

“You know something, gal?” Dots was now laughing in her sensuous way. “You want to hear a piece o’ the hard truth, today? Well, listen. No matter how we two bitches sit down here in this white woman’ place, and say the worst things ’bout Canada
and
the white woman, ’cause she is as Canadian as Canada is, God-love-a-duck! had it not been for that woman
and
Canada, where the hell would we, both me and you, be, right now, at this very minute …”

These were things that Bernice felt she could discuss only with Dots: similarities of experiences in this country. They
could not tell them to Brigitte, because they did not want her to know. They could not tell them to Estelle, because she was a newcomer. And even if Estelle had showed any interest in knowing the hard facts — she told Bernice the morning after she arrived, she wanted to remain in Canada to work — there was a little incident which had already soured Bernice’s mind against her sister.

One remark, made in the car coming back from the airport, had bothered Bernice like a bad toothache. It was about the man who sat beside Estelle throughout her flight; and
he and me talked about everything
. Bernice remembered Estelle’s exact words. She wondered what else they talked about; she wondered
what
they talked. And she was glad that when the plane landed, the man disappeared, without giving her his name … but no! Estelle has the man’s telephone number! But she remembered she had tossed the card through the car window. She felt safer. I know he had
one
thing on his mind, one thing. She was so preoccupied with this fear of her sister falling into danger, that the first thing Friday morning when Estelle woke up, with Bernice cold and cramped from having spent so much time in the chair at the window, that before even saying, “Good morning, Estelle, how you like Canada, your first morning in Canada?”, Bernice demanded, “What you intend to do, with that man?”

“What man?”

“The man you meet coming up on the plane. That is the man I talking ’bout.”

“But Bernice …”

“Now, look here. Let me tell you something. You are in Canada now. Not in Barbados. I can’t tell you what to do,
’cause you are a big woman, twenty-nine years old. But I just want to say that you had better not get yourself mixed up with any man — particular
that
kind o’ man. In my time here, I see many things, many women having to go back home with their lives mashed-up. So, I just warning you, in case you have intentions of calling that man, whoever the hell he is.”

“But Bernice, I told you the man didn’t even as say How-d’, the moment he touched ground.”

“And that is the way I want it to stay. As I say, I not getting into your business, but I been here too long.” Bernice wanted more than that; much more, but she was too timid to say exactly what was on her mind. She wanted to tell Estelle, “Have nothing to do with that white man,” because of the way they had treated her herself, in the past (she was thinking of the subway; and one old, vague, decrepit man who spat green-and-yellow just as she was a foot from him). She tried again, saying, “Estelle, look. We who have been in this country, a long time before you, have seen the ways of this world …” (To hell with the ways of this world, Estelle thought.) “ … and I can only tell you, as a mother would, and as Mammy would, if Mammy was here, that it do not look good to see a black woman walking with that kind of a man. That is all I have to tell you.”

“But Bernice, in Barbados, I have seen many girls I went to school with, walking with …”

“This is Canada.”

And instinctively, Estelle knew this was the end of the discussion. Bernice’s outspoken words raised many questions in her mind. Although she did not give much thought, or desire, to going out with
that kind of a man
, she could not help being tempted by Bernice’s extremism on the subject. In a way, it fascinated her.

Bernice did not like her victory: it was more of a moral capitulation on Estelle’s part. And to give her position more justification, she deliberately amplified her grievance: “I would never forget what Brigitte told me, one day. She told me, right here, that she is a German, and she proud o’ being a German; and when I mention to her, all the evil and sufferation and tribulation that her German tribe poured on this Christ’s earth, all Brigitte could tell me, right here, holding one o’ my Chinese teacups in her hand, was, Listen, Bernice, darlink, a frog was in a pond, one day; and a scorpion ask that frog for a ride on his back across the water to the other side. No, says the frog, you think I is a damn fool? Carry you on my back, and let you sting the living daylights outta me? Please, please, Mister Frog, says the scorpion, I am not going to sting you, ’cause I begging you for a ride, and I know that the onliest way I could get ’cross that water, is on your back, Sir Frog. Well, the frog say Okay, and the scorpion get on the frog’s back, and they even exchanged a joke or two, in transit, ‘cross that water. And just as they reached the other side, just as the scorpion could touch land, Jesus Christ,
pinnnng!
he put such a sting in that frog’s behind, that all Poor Froggy could say is, But man, I thought you say you wasn’t going to sting me, man? And guess what that wicked scorpion say?
I is a scorpion! I can’t help that, Froggy boy!
And as you may guess, the frog died. Well, think ’bout that, because
them
is the scorpion, and we, the blasted frog.”