The Meeting Point (2 page)

But Bernice knew her place. Sometimes, it was pointed out to her that on this street she was to remember she wasn’t a housewife. A head would lean out of a passing car; or would draw back a window blind, to wonder and to consider the possibility that the two healthy-looking children belonged by blood to the woman into whose hands they had entrusted their hands. One snow-filled afternoon, a woman driving a blue Cadillac stopped and waited until Bernice and the children got alongside; and when she thought they could hear and were in smelling-shot of her Estee Lauder Youth Dew perfume, she pulled her spectacles down her long Semitic nose and said, “Well!” in that short aggressive manner, as if she
really meant to say “shit.” That was the day Bernice wished everybody in Forest Hill, man, woman and child, dead; the day when a tear came to her eyes, and shimmered her entire view of the road and the world.

But it was Bernice’s facility for work, long hard work, which knitted her into a glove of affection on to her mistress’s hand. Mrs. Burrmann would brag to all her friends on the street, and at the pottery and watercolour classes which she took at the YWHA on Spadina Avenue. She would tell Bernice, “Leach, you’re a wonderful worker. Really!” Bernice would smile sweetly and openly in her presence; but within, she would say, You don’t have to tell me that, woman. I know I works hard as hell in this house, and for peanuts. The smile would brighten on Bernice’s face a second time, and Mrs. Burrmann would contract this disease of happiness, and would smile; and the entire household would brighten for the remainder of that day. But Mrs. Burrmann never knew and couldn’t imagine how deep Bernice’s hostility was. One day, Mrs. Irene Gasstein had trouble with her German immigrant maid, Brigitte. Brigitte had remained in her quarters in Mrs. Gasstein’s house, taking a rest from a touch of influenza and a bout of overwork. Mrs. Burrmann came to her rescue. “Forget about calling an agency for extra help, darling. That costs money. I will send Bernice over. She can do the work of a mule, two mules, ha-ha! and look, you don’t even have to bother paying her anything. Bernice will come, darling.”

“Oh I couldn’t do
that
!” But she had already mentally accepted the offer of Bernice’s sweat.

“Forget it. Don’t spend your money foolishly.”

“But … ah, would Bernice come? You know how these West Indian women feel.…”

“Will Bernice come! Irene, are you forgetting Bernice is my maid? That’s what I pay her to do.”

When Bernice raised no objection, this silence was mistaken for surrender, for acceptance. Silently, she grew to hate Mrs. Burrmann even more than she hated winter and the snow. To her, Mrs. Burrmann not only symbolized the snow; she symbolized also, the uneasiness and inconvenience of the snow. Her loneliness grew, too; and so did her hatred of Mrs. Burrmann: deeper and deeper, the same way as December, January and February piled snow on the ground. Added to this, Mrs. Burrmann refused to raise her wage from the ninety dollars a month, with which she had started, almost three years ago in 1960.

The burden and demands of her new life in this country were becoming too much for her, when one day (“Bam! bam! bam!” she actually clapped her hands in joy, three times and shouted, “there’s still a God up there!”) chance and God placed Mrs. Burrmann in her hands. What she saw the mistress do that night almost terrified the maid. The discovery upset Bernice, and she had to struggle hard to keep it a secret, because an idle word
would make Mr. Burrmann tear loose in this woman’s backside, if he is a man in truth. Lord, a idle word on my behalf could do a lot o’ harm in this household! and look how I have the balance o’ power in my hand!
Her power cascaded into laughter. The laughter carried her into the kitchen, the kingdom of her service that was now a dominion; and she put her hands over her mouth to control her laughter. When she withdrew them, she was a different woman. “I’m going to blackmail her arse!” She laughed, and added, “I will whitemail her backside, clean clean clean!” She thought about it; and she conceded, “That isn’t a christian-mind thing to do, though.”

For many nights, Bernice dreamed about what to do. In all her dreams neither the colour nor the enormity of the incident was altered. It had happened on a Thursday night. The house was smelling of incense; rose in the sitting-room; sandalwood in the pantry, because “guests’re coming here tonight, Bernice darling, so we have to cut down the awful smell of your cooking”; jasmine in the downstairs toilet, because Ruthie did not have time in the split seconds of need to get upstairs and relieve herself of her stomach flu, cabbage, minced steak and Boston beans. (“Christ! child, why you always having the belly? Your guts always running. I think something basic is wrong with you.”) All the normal house-smells had to be counteracted. Mrs. Burrmann had had some bunches of roses, red roses and white roses, delivered earlier in the day. She had draped a red satin cloth on to a round table, and on this, she had placed her “priceless, absolutely priceless” candelabra with its five candlesticks (“Those thieving bastards down there in Yorkville Village, selling a lot o’ junk for art!” But she had bought it for seventy-five dollars; and insisted in company that it was a bargain), four red candles; and a black one. When Bernice went into the sitting-room and saw it, she was speechless. She wondered if the black candle was her presence. She was thinking:
Mrs. Burrmann, do you have ghosts in here? You have as much candle and incense in here to bury a dead man and raise him up again from the dead. All these blasted candles! Mrs. Burrmann, I swear you is a fortune teller, or some damn thing
. The room was charming; and Bernice loved it. To her, it looked like the inside of Beth Tzedec, like a very sacred place; and this worried her, because she knew Mrs. Burrmann never went to the synagogue. And then the guests began to arrive; and Mrs. Burrmann, dressed to look like a sheath in a dress
with two slits at either side, showing her blue-veined calves, greeted each guest man or woman with, “Darling! how sweet of you to come.” For the men, she had a kiss on the cheek. For the women, she had a kiss on the cheek. Bernice could not understand what was happening. As the evening wore on, the guests relaxing with drink, their desires rising, it suddenly occurred to Bernice, that Mr. Burrmann was still absent. She saw Mrs. Burrmann put down her glass of port; pass her hands over her cheeks as if she was removing a stain, or pain; look purposely frustrated, and alien amongst the happiness, and go to the telephone in the hall. The stereophonic record player was giving out the soft, cool jazz of the MJQ. Nobody was listening. Mrs. Burrmann rested her left hand on the table top, to steady herself; and she dialled a number. Mr. Burrmann had left the office, his secretary said. Was he coming home? Or was he going to see a client? “He said he was coming …” and instinctively, the secretary paused, considered her salary, unemployment stamps and old-age pension, and then added in a new voice, in a surer lie, “Mr. Burrmann said he was coming home
after
seeing a client who he had to see earlier today, but who he couldn’t see today, earlier, because …” The expression on Mrs. Burrmann’s face changed. She replaced the receiver before the secretary had finished; she struggled briefly and arrogantly to steady the drink in her legs and said, “Bastard!” It was a whisper; but Bernice heard it. And then a tall man, well dressed, slightly older than Mr. Burrmann, came to her. He carried two glasses of whiskey. He leaned over. He rested his lips on her lips and forced her, gradually, gently, against the telephone table, until the table sagged a little and the receiver slipped off. Mrs. Burrmann took a glass from the man’s hands; put it on the table; wrapped her arms round the man’s waist,
and seemed to surrender herself to him. The glass fell and the whiskey was spilt. Nobody came from the sitting-room to find out why.

“Not coming, eh?” the man said, as if he was glad; as if he had pre-arranged Mr. Burrmann’s absence. “Can’t make a buck and a party, too! Hey! that’s a great one … I should be in show business!”

“Sam’ll soon be here,” Mrs. Burrmann said, reassuring herself, and trying to give the man the impression that she was not completely neglected by her husband. “He’s coming,” she added, struggling not to appear cheapened by her loss of control in kissing him.

And as the hours and the guests lingered; and the hours became smaller, so too did the party become choral and rebellious. Stockings came off feet; men loosened ties and inhibitions; and soon everybody was singing
We Shall Overcome
, and other Negro spirituals. Bernice had heard some of these songs on the radio and television. Hearing them now, she could not at first recognize them as the same beautiful melodies. The guests did not know them. But this did not deter the man (the man who had kissed Mrs. Burrmann), from singing at the top of his voice, off key. Bernice heard it, and saw some of it, and got sick; and pronounced Sodom and Gomorrah on this household.
Lord in heaven look down! To look at this house from the outside you never will dream o’ the things that takes place behind these expensive curtains and drapes. I glad as hell I is a poor, black, simple woman!
She used to remain downstairs, out of curiosity, until these parties wilted and ended; but after she was accustomed to them, as soon as they became sing-songs, she would leave in disgust and listen to the radio in her quarters on the third floor.

Midnight was coming. The wife of a talkative wine-faced man (at least the woman this man had arrived with; Bernice couldn’t tell who were husband and wife after eleven o’clock at these parties) was sitting on a footstool, beside the player, listening to the folk music. She was the only one who could not sing the spirituals and freedom songs; and she said so, by listening to them. She had sat on the stool the moment she arrived and at eleven o’clock was still there, in spite of the crashing of glasses and the martial alcoholic friendships and the noise and the dirty jokes which the large prosperous man, who everybody called, “Jerr, baby,” was telling about the Jews. Everybody (except this lonely, bored, vigilant woman) liked his jokes and said so by trying to laugh the loudest. Bernice was puzzled, even after having witnessed so many times how these people could laugh at jokes about Jews, when they were all Jews themselves. She moved through them, this group of wealthy people trying to be happy, falling off chairs, their eyes drooping from sleep and drink and their cigarette and cigar butts dropping ash on the expensive rugs. She pitied the woman, sitting and silent, listening and exhausted (or asleep) and she wondered what she was going to say to her choleric husband when she got him home in bed.

It was almost time to go up to her room. Bernice washed a new supply of glasses and swept up the broken ones. She said goodnight to Mrs. Burrmann; and the man who had been hovering over Mrs. Burrmann’s honey the whole evening, buzzed “Nighty-nighty, Bernice!” and stung her with a pinch, on her jello under the white tight-fitting service dress she was wearing; then he winked at her.

“Darling, you shouldn’t.” Mrs. Burrmann felt compromised.

“Oh, what the hell! I believe in intergration.”

Turning to Bernice, with a trace of embarrassment on her face, Mrs. Burrmann said, “Goodnight, Leach. And thanks for helping.” Before Bernice turned to go, she saw that the man was now pinching Mrs. Burrmann on her behind.

Bernice left her door ajar, to hear the noise and the laughter and the occasional smashing of glasses that kept her company. All night long, she waited for Mr. Burrmann to come home; and when he did, finally, about four in the morning (five minutes after the last man left) Bernice at last fell off to sleep. She felt safe now. Suddenly, she was awakened by a noise and thought she heard a fight downstairs. Her sense of justice almost made her go and tell Mr. Burrmann what had happened in his house, in his absence: how the man kissed his wife, how he pinched her. But she could not. She knew she had to keep all this evidence within; and there, she decided to keep it.

Mrs. Burrmann must have realized how vulnerable she was now that Bernice had such evidence. And after some time, she fell off to sleep again. However, Bernice knew that a time would come when she would have to blackmail Mrs. Burrmann.

The time came a few weeks later, when Mrs. Burrmann refused to give her time off to go to the airport to meet her sister, Estelle, who was coming up from Barbados on a short holiday. There was a cocktail party set for eight that night, so Bernice would have to do her work first. When Dots heard of Mrs. Burrmann’s attitude, she told Bernice plainly, “Gal! I would have blackmailed her long time!” Mrs. Burrmann knew that Bernice’s sister was arriving; but she did not know the exact date. Bernice hated to pester her about it, because she had
planned (unknown to Mrs. Burrmann) to have her sister stay with her. She was sure Mrs. Burrmann would resent it; might even dismiss her. She had mentioned Estelle yesterday, and Mrs. Burrmann waved her aside. Now, Estelle was arriving at ten this very evening. And nothing was being said about it. Bernice had to go to the airport to meet her. And today, of all days,
on my blasted day off, that whore in there, telling me what?
The emergency of this party and her general disposition had developed into a crisis. Bernice was nervous. Nothing was going right: she couldn’t get the pickles out of the jar; the bread was sliced the wrong way; and every two seconds she had to wipe perspiration off her forehead with the tail of her apron, although the kitchen wasn’t humid.
Be-Christ! stand up for your rights, Bernice. Don’t let her walk all over you, man. No, it ain’t true
. Bernice remained in the kitchen, keeping her distance from Mrs. Burrmann, who was watching television. She heard her laugh shortly. Then she heard the rattle of ice cubes in a glass. The television voice grew louder, and Mrs. Burrmann laughed again. And then, the room was quiet. “Look at her, though!” Bernice said, putting down the knife she was using. She took it up again, looked at it, and thought of murder. She wiped her face again with the tail of her apron. She pushed the knife far from her, on the kitchen counter: she had seen clearly, frighteningly clearly, the repercussions of that thought. She went into the sitting-room, without the knife, to speak her mind. Mrs. Burrmann was engrossed in the programme. Her back was turned towards Bernice, who stood a full thirty seconds watching the programme, before she had the nerve to interrupt her. “Mrs. Burrmann.” The programme ended before Mrs. Burrmann replied. The news came on next.