The Meeting Point (21 page)

“I always knew there wasn’t one damn thing wrong with Agaffa,” Boysie cut in. “The two o’ you always cussing that woman, but that woman is good as gold.”

“And how would you know, Boysie?” Boysie cackled; he enjoyed this kind of a challenge from his wife. But Dots was in her Sunday mood, and she merely added, “Just let me catch you with one o’ them! I tell you,
if
, if! I ever catch you with one o’ them, well, Jesus Christ himself will have to save you, Boysie Cumberbatch.” She let the threat soak in; and she allowed him time to laugh, before she said to Bernice, “Agaffa! Yes, Agaffa called me, gal. At work. And she opened her heart to me. Tell me everything, every-damn-thing: she and Henry was planning to get married, the parents start fussing, and
bram
! She ups and left home.”

“
That
is woman!” Boysie exclaimed.

“She left, or she get thrown out?” Bernice asked, not wanting to concede that Henry was worthy of a woman like Agatha. She wanted to smear Agatha too. “I feel she get thrown out. What woman in her right mind would run after a black bastard like him, anyway?”

“Thrown-out, left, or tossed-out, it is the same thing. That is how the white women loves the boys. I know from ex- …” (and when he saw how he almost said “experience,” he changed his mind and said), “I know from examples, that the white
women gives our boys a damn fair break. So I not surprised that Agaffa left home, stock, lock and barrel to run after Henry. And furthermore. It is love. Love is pain. And pain is love. She love Henry so bad that it caused pain. And by causing pain, it mean it is love.”

“But Boysie?”

“Wait, Dots? Where Boysie learn all this ’bout love equal to pain? You sending Boysie to the University?” And they laughed at him, as they always did; it was a vicious, ridiculing, oppressing laugh. It was on Boysie that they took out their bitterness against the white world. But Boysie threw back the laugh on them, and said. “Gorblummuh! one o’ these days both you and Bernice will have to address me as Mister Boysie, Esquire, B.A.” And they laughed even more at that.

“But Henry damn lucky, though,” Dots said, when everybody else had practically forgotten the topic of conversation. “Imagine that! A ordinary ex-porter man, and he has such a rich powerful woman running behind him! Well, some strange things happen in this country.”

“That don’t matter, Dots. This is one country where it do not matter what kind o’ job you have, once you bringing money on a Friday.”

“He still blasted lucky! Agaffa is a nice, rich, wealthy girl. And I must say that when she traipsed in your place that time, in fur coat and thing, I hated her like hell. But now, well, it is a different story. She is a lady.”

“Henry have a Grand Prize of a woman. And it don’t matter a shit to me if Agaffa was white or blue. ’Cause, I says one thing, and it is this. Woman is woman, cunny is cunny, one is one, and two …”

“Watch your mouth, man!” The sharpness in Bernice’s
voice cut off further conversation, until sometime later, she said she wanted to talk to Agatha about helping her to find a room for Estelle. Dots said she didn’t know her phone number. Boysie said he didn’t know it either, but that some funny things could, and do, happen in this country. “Take for an instance,” he said, “the time when a man turned up outta the blasted blue and ask me if my name is Boysie Cumberbatch. Now, how in the name o’ heaven and hell could a stranger come and ask
me
if my name is really
my
name?”

“That is nothing compared to Clotelle.”

“That gal from Grenada?”

“That is the Clotelle I mean. Clotelle who fell prey to one o’ them salesman-man, one night …” Bernice re-told the saga of Clotelle, trusting Clotelle, who was waylaid by her own avariciousness for cutlery and by a salesman. The story was known to every West Indian in Toronto, because it was in the newspapers. But the way Bernice told it … (“That salesman-man sweetened-up Clotelle and she signed to buy up everything for the wedding she was planning, because she had just bring up her old boyfriend from Grenada. Clotelle buy-up silvers, knife and fork, spoon, sugar bowl, cream bowl, and the knives and forks even had something called a coat of arms with Clotelle’s initials and insignias carved in them. And the salesman-crook told Clotelle they weren’t hard to pay for. But when the first instalment payment came, ninety-five dollars and five cents! Clotelle borrowed money from Sacrificial Finance Company and had to turn round and borrow money
needlessly
from Withold Corporation to pay back Sacrificial, and still the interest was mounting up, higher than the skies. And then, one fine day, Clotelle start looking for a new job, where nobody won’t find her. But she didn’t know that although this
Toronto is a large city, it ain’t so damn big that a finance company can’t track you down, and find you, and pin you down to the ground, Jesus Christ, till they squeeze every last drop of blood and payments outta you, till that debt squared-off. Three people was looking for Clotelle. They take out search warrant for her blood. ’Twas Sacrificial — Lord, deliver me ever, from them clutches! — Withold and the silvers people. And when they found Clotelle, they found her sticky and greasy and smelling like a hospital, working off her arse cooking in another kitchen, the Toronto General Hospital kitchen. Bram! The finance-man and the bailiff-man or whoever the hell he was, plus the garnishee-man, all two o’ them pounced on Clotelle, and when they get up offa Clotelle, the Hospital fired Clotelle, and she was
back in the same white woman kitchen
, working off her fat, cooking for
less
money now, because she had to beg for the job, and go back on bended knees, penitent as hell. One stinking eighty dollars a month. And no rent-free room, neither! She found a dirty room on Parliament Street, had to take street-car to and from work up in Forest Hill, and had to pay off one hundred and fifteen dollars a month, instalments. I don’t know where Clotelle get the other thirty five dollars from, and I won’t like to guess; but she had to pay off them loan-sharks. Barracudas, that’s what they is! So, this place
may
look big; but it isn’t so big, in truth. Ask Clotelle, then!”) … Bernice’s mind switched from Clotelle to Estelle, alone in the apartment, and anybody could go up there; nobody ain’t home but Mr. Burrmann, “ ’cause this is the time Mrs. Burrmann takes the children skating, and Estelle probably is still undressed, oh Christ! and I forgot to lock that door behind me! and she probably still slouching round on the damn chesterfield, too” … and she took it upon herself
to compose a letter in her mind to Mammy, about Estelle’s behaviour:

Dear Mammy, How are you? I hope the reaches of this letter will find you in a perfect state of good health, as it leaves me feeling fairly well, at present. Estelle here. But things are not working out as I did figure they would work out. But I putting everything in God hands, and all I can do now, is wait. I am making up a parcel with a few odds and ends, to send to you, including a dress and a pair of shoes …
She tore up that letter, in her mind, and considered writing one to Lonnie, who had been resting heavily on her conscience since Estelle arrived; and since she saw the folly of having sent for her. But before she thought more of Lonnie, she began again to think of Estelle, in the apartment alone: “ … wonder what she is up to, now? That girl make me so vexed this morning, and I, a Christian-minded person had to tell her such hard things, my own flesh-and-blood, Christ! I haven’t left nothing now for anybody to say to her. Bernice, you have treated that girl, your sister, worse than a slut, wishing that a man (her thoughts ran over Mr. Burrmann like a spotlight, travelling from his head to his toes: and she winced the thoughts out of her mind) would breed Estelle, and give her an unwanted child, Lord God!” … 
Dear Lonnie. Sometimes you make me so blasted vexed with all your asking and begging, that I sometimes have to consider myself a woman who must be a damn fool, or mad. Imagine me up here, in this cold climate, working for next to peanuts and supporting a blasted hardback man like you! Lonnie, you think I borned yesterday? You think you is such a Valentino that I am hard-up and crazy over you? Blind you, Lonnie! when I begged you and beseeched you and practically kissed your behind to put a ring on my finger, and make me the lady any decent man would
want to make of his woman in childbirth, be-Christ, Lonnie, you know what you did? You turn and run, and run, Lonnie, ’cause you was a coward ’gainst responsibilities. And now you have the gall writing me a letter to ask for a suit to wear to church. Christmas morning? Well, Lonnie, I think so much of you and what you stand for, that I advise you to wear the one you was borned in, if you was ever borned. Go and face the Bishop in that, heh-heh-ha-hah!
and here her letter ran out, because the power of her bitterness against Lonnie and against men, was so strong it burned up her imagination. She addressed herself
directly
to Lonnie now (she felt she was actually speaking to him, in the flesh) “
Lonnie, listen to me! if, if I give you a second chance, if we could fix up things and put our two heads together, you think you could behave like a man, even half a man?”
(Bernice herself answered for Lonnie, “Perhaps!” She answered so emphatically, she thought Dots had heard.)
“I am going to send a plane ticket for you, because this country wasn’t discovered for a woman who do not have a man as a companion. But I am going to watch you with both my eyes. You not playing no games with me, like this Boysie here, worthless Boysie who is always two-timing Dots, you hear? Or be-Christ, I kill you, Lonnie! I am a woman pushing forty years now, and no man hasn’t come yet telling me I beautiful, and that I sweet …”

“But Bernice, how you think the finance people track-down Clotelle?” Dots was thinking about her over-due payments on the old Chevrolet, and about the sewing machine she had bought from a salesman. “Millions and millions o’ people in this city!”

“White people, Dots,” Bernice said, tidying her mind to answer. “They have invented every device and contraption for tracking down people and things. You ain’t see they even tracking down the moon these days, child?”

“You know something?” Boysie said. “A German fellar, a immigrant like me, or you, tell me they have a big book with all the names and addresses and jobs of people, living in this city. That book is lock up, always under lock and key in the Parliament Buildings, below there on Queen’s Park. This German fellar say, that any man at all, once that man living here — even if he moved in the city for half day! — all you got to do, is consult with that book, and that man is
found
!”

“But Boysie, where do you get these stories from?”

“I is a man who associates with people in the know,” he said proudly. “I looks at my position in this country this way. I come into this country, gorblummuh! to
stay
. And I figures that my stay here could only be better if I mix-in with the people in command here, not with West Indians.” Not a man with much finesse and modesty, Boysie was always conscious of his inferiority to Dots (he did not think of Bernice in this way) and when he had a chance to make a point, he always overstated it. It was this way with other things too. Like the way he parked the car now: spinning the steering wheel, when he knew it couldn’t turn any more; and then allowing the wheel to unwind itself and spin through his hands. He always wanted to impress whoever was present. He was now impressing Bernice and Dots, but particularly Bernice. Bernice and Dots shrugged their winter coats into place; adjusted their hats, and looked prepared. Boysie turned off the engine before applying the brakes, and the car jerked and then stopped. He opened his door, slammed it hard and said, “I think I going wait here, in the car, till you and …”

“You coming with we! Church don’t bite.”

“But Dots …”

“If you got it in your head to dodge back up there and
crawl behind Brigitte, and you think you leaving me in this hot, stuffy church, listening to that damn fool talk ’bout God, looka Boysie! don’t make Satan get in my behind today.…” Boysie slammed the door again, and dragged his winter boots through the snow and went into the church. “That bastard!”

“He better be careful that the policeman Brigitte got don’t bathe his behind in licks one o’ these days!” Bernice said, joking. But deep down she was not joking. Dots made a note of it, too. Bernice saw this; but after all, the damage was already done. They did things to their faces in small pocket compacts; they applied a fresh layer of white powder so that when they were finished, the colour and the texture on their faces were noticeably different from that of their necks. Bernice smacked her lipstick into place.

“Getting out of a car in the winter time is hell, eh, gal?” It was difficult for her to keep her legs closed. A white man, standing opposite and drinking out of a paper bag, was looking at her. “Looka that bitch!” Bernice hadn’t noticed. “There! He spying up under me, you can’t see that?” Bernice saw him. In a lower voice, Dots said to the man, so that he couldn’t hear,
“Spy! Spy, you bitch!
’cause you never see nothing so pretty, so get a good eyeful!” Bernice almost choked with laughter. The man did not hear; and he did not stop looking and he did not stop drinking. Perhaps he was frozen stiff, frozen dead. Just before entering the church, Bernice told Dots that Estelle wasn’t working out at all. Dots commiserated with her.

“I want you to help me look for a room tomorrow. Perhaps you could get Agaffa to see if she know a place, ’cause she would have a better chance getting a better place.…”

“Yes, gal.”

Mr. Burrmann had been reading
The New Class
by Milovan Djilas, for the past two hours. He would find himself following the argument on page 131, and becoming engrossed in what Djilas was saying; and he would shake his head, and realize he had read the passage already. It had taken him about forty-five minutes to finish page 130. He was worried this morning, a dull Sunday morning; and he was lonely. Mrs. Burrmann had taken Putzi and the children to the neighbourhood skating rink. He had seen Bernice leave for church.