The Meeting Point (30 page)

Bernice had not recovered from the shock and the mistake about her mother’s death; and she did not cease to hate Estelle for her treatment of Mammy. A new attitude, blanket distrust, a sort of aggressive cynicism came into her life; she wanted to get back at Estelle; at Mrs. Burrmann (although she was not too clear about this vengeance); and at Dots for
spreading gossip about Estelle. Shortly after the mistake about Mammy’s death, when Bernice first decided that the whole world was against her, she began to get back at the world, via Mrs. Burrmann, who, to her, represented the world. She purposely wasted the groceries. She used too much cooking oil (sometimes, she threw some down the sink) on the lamb chops and the steaks and the pancakes. She wasted the sugar. She methodically over-used the groceries, “because if he or she, don’t intend to put more money in my hand, as wages, well she going put more money in the grocer-man’ hand, for groceries.” It was a successful sabotage: Mrs. Burrmann didn’t once ask whether the groceries were running out too fast. “That is the meaning o’ money and power, gal!” Dots remarked when she heard the scheme. She didn’t think Bernice had it in her; and she said so. “But, have patience, darling. One and one is two; and every five-cent piece does add-up to a dollar bill. Time on your side, gal.” But Bernice felt her stealing and her wastage were like stealing from a man who didn’t know it, and who didn’t miss it; and this caused her, more than once, to abandon her sabotage. But the moment she was annoyed by an action or an attitude, she promptly returned to her corrosive and denuding waste. Now that summer was here, she would have the run of the whole house, to save or denude, as she pleased.

Mrs. Burrmann was thinking of going to Mexico. Mexico, she always said, was far and foreign and exotic; and nobody there knew Mrs. Gladys Rachel Heinne-Burrmann. The children would be going, as usual, to one of the Jewish-sponsored summer camps, in the northern resort area of Ontario, to learn “camp life and leadership qualities,” where they were taught how to make wiener-roasts, pottery and to be juvenile-scaled Toby Robbinses and Lorne Greenes. Mr. Burrmann hadn’t
told anyone yet what his summer plans would be; but he knew they would depend upon Estelle.

Meanwhile, it was no picnic in the third-floor apartment. It was a hot summer. Downstairs, where the family spent most of their time, there was a new air-conditioner. The family and the workmen, had, by a small oversight, missed Bernice’s apartment. Every afternoon, Bernice, dressed in her slip and panties only, and Estelle in a housedress (with nothing underneath) would watch Mrs. Burrmann and the children get into the new Impala convertible (her birthday present from her husband) and speed across the Boulevard to the nearby community swimming pool, on Eglinton Avenue West. This was the same pool that Dots had talked about last summer, when Bernice said she wanted to go there, for a bath. Dots said she had never seen a black person in the pool yet. “That is true, too,” Bernice agreed. “I now remember that in the three years I been living in this district, I have never see a black person in that damn pool, neither.” And this caused Dots to ask, “And how the hell could they still be calling it a
community
pool?” There was no reasonable answer Bernice could give. Soon after, they both forgot about the pool, and the community.

Bernice continued to look at Estelle and blame her for the heat. Too many o’ we in this damn little room. It is you, Estelle, causing this heat, she would think. But she never had the courage to speak it openly. She was going out of her mind. The only consolation was the hostility she took out in the form of wasting the groceries. Then, after much thinking about her own condition, and about what Dots said concerning Estelle’s long absences from the apartment, Bernice sat down and wrote a long letter to Lonnie. There were things she had to find out; and Lonnie was the only person she could trust. It was not an
honest trust; not an implicit trust, but rather a bargain. Lonnie wanted to emigrate to Canada, and he wanted money. She addressed herself to this bargain, and put her cards on the table of honesty and near-defeat.
My dearest Lonnie
, (“If that don’t make the bastard listen, and feel that I am serious, well, I don’t know what would!)
who I have not treated too good in the past
(she wrote),
a time comes in a woman’s life, when she has to sit down and make up a tally of things she mean to do, and have succeeded in doing, and of things she mean to do, and did not get the chance of doing. My dropping you these few lines is one of the things I had in mind always to do, but which life in this country, and other things in life, prevent me from putting my attention to. Estelle up here, as you know. Something gone wrong down there with Mammy; and I want you to ’vestigate the ins and outs of that situation in my behalf, and tell me everything. I am not happy up here. There is a lot of things wrong with this country, I do not have time to tell you everything that is wrong with this country; but I will say one thing. Loneliness, Lonnie, is a thing I did not know to exist against a person, as I have come to know it, in this Canada. That is one thing. Another thing I could tell you about my life here, is that money is not all. Money is not all, boy. I was after money when I put down my name to come up here to work off my fat in these people kitchen. But I will not make that mistake two times. But yet, according to some of the things that Estelle been saying, all is not roses down there in Barbados, neither. And this bring me to something else. You have always written to me asking for a piece of change. Well, I am going to give it to you. I can only send you twenty dollars now. But I hope that you will be able to get some of the things you always wanted to get, with it. And don’t forget to take care of the little boy. Terence is all I have. He is my future. I only hoping that God will give me the strength
to endure this slavery up here, by which time Terence will be a big man to come up and live with me. I have great things in mind for that boy. But sometimes, things is so bad, that I have to sit down and cry and wish that I was back home where I can speak to a friend, or laugh with a friend, or even laugh with myself, if there is no friend to laugh with. You understand what I saying, Lonnie? Canada to me, is only a place to make money in, not a place to live in, or feel relaxed in. These people don’t owe me nothing; and I owes them nothing, in return. But I am here, and I have to make the most of a bad situation. I want you to understand, Lonnie, that although I have not sat down and poured out my heart to you as I used to, and as a woman would pour out her heart to the man she loves, it do not mean that you were not always in my mind, and in my heart …
(“Jesus Christ, I am going too far with Lonnie, now! I don’t think I should tell that man all this, ’cause he might start imagining things …”) … 
a young strong woman cannot live in this place by herself. She needs a man …
(“Yes, I gone too far with Lonnie, now!”) She waited until a voice within her reasoned with her as to whether she was really saying too much, writing too many personal things, to Lonnie. She hadn’t written him in about eighteen months. “The things I am writing that man … suppose he already found himself a woman to live with, Christ! what a shameful position I would be putting myself in! I can see Lonnie showing my love letter to every man, woman and child.…” She convinced herself that the inner voice was wisdom. She folded the letter. She folded the envelope, already addressed, round the letter. She tore up the letter with the envelope, and dropped them into the toilet bowel. As she flushed them down, she stood there and composed in her mind, a better letter to Lonnie; a straightforward one, which he could never mistake as a surrender. She
was very concerned about giving in to him; and very proud about her strength and her sexual abstinence, and about withstanding his advances for so long.… 
Lonnie, I am sending you this twenty dollars because you ask for it
. (“Can’t get nothing for nothing, child!”)
Go round by St. Peters Almshouses and visit Mammy for me. Estelle put her there. Tell me everything. The name of the charge nurse, what ward they have Mammy in, everything Be good to Terence. I am thinking of taking out papers to help you to come up here
. (“Now, I will see what kind o’ man that Lonnie is!”) This was a much better letter, she decided. More business-like. She revised it twice in her mind, and made a promise that after cleaning up the kitchen tonight, she would write it down, on paper.

They were sitting on the balcony of a coffee house on Avenue Road, Estelle and her man. It was a cool night, one of the first of the summer. They were drinking iced tea. The inside room was crowded, mostly with young people. The men were wearing beards, and the women, mostly, were wearing their hair long. A few were barefoot, Estelle noticed. As they were walking along Yorkville, they met the owner of the coffee house, a European gentleman with long Jesus-like hair and beard, an old bowler hat covering the bald spot of his head, and a cane in his hand. He had a plaster cast on his right foot and leg. “Welcome to Zee Place!” he was telling everyone; and giving out handbills advertising The Place, which was the name of the coffee house. Below and across the street from where they were sitting now, they could see the owner, still hawking his club.

“Beautiful night,” the man said, without looking up at the stars.

“Reminds me of the West Indies, of Barbados,” Estelle said. “Stars, stars, stars.…”

“Like northern Ontario, too. In summer.” Earlier, they had been talking about going to Muskoka, or Timmins, for the summer. But she disregarded the suggestion, until, at least, it became a firm invitation.

“Twinkle, twinkle, little star …” She recited the line, and then sang it, softly. “Twinkle little Estelle.…”

“… how I wonder what you are!” He touched her hand, ever so softly; and then he squeezed it, and together they laughed. They had forgotten, in their happiness, that others were on the balcony with them. It was summer. It was lovely. For some time, neither of them said a word. At last, Estelle said, “What’s going to happen, when she finds out?” He pretended he hadn’t heard; but when he saw how childish that was, he pretended he didn’t know to whom she was referring. “Your wife.” There was nothing he could say to this; there was no pretence he could put up. He had learned early in his relationship with Estelle, that she was a very straightforward woman. Blunt, almost. “You know something?” she said, knowing he wasn’t going to answer the previous question. “If I was your wife. And if it was me, in this situation I find myself in now, you know what I would do?” He touched her hand again, expecting kindness, understanding, love even. But Estelle said, bluntly, “I would kill you, Sam.”

“Do what?” The tables nearby turned to listen. He had shouted, inadvertently.

“I said I would kill you,” she said, much softer, with a whisper of a smile on her beautiful face. The candlelight was shimmering. “Come, let’s go. I’m beginning to feel bad.” She did not talk to him, until they had come within walking distance
of the house on Marina Boulevard. Normally she would get out just before reaching the house, and walk, with him driving behind to guard her. And returning home very late, normally, nobody saw them. (Once Mrs. Burrmann was looking out, from the sitting-room, with the lights out, but she only saw Estelle going in through the side entrance; and although Mr. Burrmann drove up ten minutes later, she suspected nothing.) This time, just as she was about to get out, he said, “Well?” — thereby asking a million questions in that one word: but really trying to find the answer to one question, which had been bothering him for about three weeks, and which he was terrified to ask, in case the answer was what he had suspected. When she didn’t answer, he moved closer to her. She stiffened her body against his embrace. He was sensitive to her feelings. He was vexed with her. And he forced his lips over her lips; and although he could feel her teeth against his lips, he still didn’t stop. He was beside himself this night, with desire: a brutal, rough, rapist desire. “
I
know,
I
know,” he said, trying to make his voice and manner coincide with what he thought was the James Cagney approach to romantic manliness. I could kill you right now, Sam, she was thinking, as he rubbed his tongue on her teeth, forcing her mouth open. (Suppose this bitch was to bite off my goddamn tongue; and he saw blood on his expensive suit, and it splattered all over his car. That made him stop forcing himself upon her. He hugged her; and he kissed her cheek instead.) You make me feel so cheap, she was thinking, as he passed his hand over her smooth skin. I must have been mad to let you do the things you did, all that you have done, and now, you don’t have the decency nor the understanding … (He was forcing his hand against her brassiere and her breast: he was making his hand crawl like oil on a piece of
glass) … and look what the hell I got myself into! Christ! if Bernice finds out that I let this, this, this-this-bastard treat me like a whore, take me on Jarvis Street … He was very close to her now; and his face was buried in the crook of her neck. He could taste the salt in her perspiration. Estelle remained very quiet. She even rested her hand on his neck. The neck was very smooth. The skin was very smooth. It was oily, too. There must have been too much grease in his hair. She closed her eyes under his hands, and for
one second
, she squeezed hard on his swallow pipe; and she could see the blood pumping through veins in his neck; and then she opened her eyes, and in her imagination, removing his hands, and she reached up and kissed him on the mouth; and she opened his mouth with her mouth, and talked very personal things, very provocative things to him, alone, with a twirling and articulate tongue. She knew she had him within her power. She knew his weaknesses. He was that kind of a man. Be-Christ, Sam, you’re going to pay through your arse, man, for the things you done to me, you hear? She could see him laughing with his eyes, weakening in her arms, as she tantalized him with the words of her tongue. “Darling,” he said, as if he was panting, and not talking. “Dar-ling.”

Estelle traced small circles on his neck, with the compasses of her first finger and her second finger. The circles confused and excited him; and he drew still closer to her. She hated him more deeply, the closer he came. As he embraced, and kissed her, he thought:
goddamn, look what I picked up off the street! look at me, Sam Burrmann, screwing about with this big black nig- Negro woman, goddammit, but baby, you’re barking up the wrong tree. I know a lot of men who lay their domestics, screwing and being screwed-up by them; but that’s not my scene, baby. I bet
you’re soon going to tell me you’re pregnant. Am I going to feel bad! and weep? Or get the best goddamn abortionist in Toronto, and put you in his goddamn hands? That’s a scream! … put you in his goddamn hands, with a little expense, everything’ll be fine … so, you’re not fooling me, baby. One thing about Jeffrey, that goddamn idiot: he told me a long time how to lay you black broads. You all like a piece of white prick
. And he spoke to her, and said, “I love you, Estelle.”