The Meeting Point (9 page)

And now this evening, a year later, before she went upstairs to dress to go to the airport,
this same lawlessness, Lord! lawlessness to the height! I too glad I is a poor black woman!
Mrs. Burrmann came to her, “Oh, Bernice,” she said; and handed her two envelopes. “These came earlier. And thanks.” Suspicious always, Bernice took them, and did not open them until she was half-way up the stairs. One envelope had the Burrmann family crest stamped into it, and Mrs. Burrmann’s bold handwriting saying,
Have a good time, Leach, with your sister, Estelle. Love, Rachel Gladys Heinne
. After the word, “sister,” in brackets, was a large question mark which was drawn over and over more than three times, so that it looked shaggily written. Inside the envelope were five crisp ten-dollar bills. All Bernice could do, was roll her eyes and laugh; but her heart was touched, and a tear escaped from her.
Lord, the more I cuss that woman, the more kinder she is to me! She may be bad, Lord, but she ain’t so bad, though. Have mercy on her, for me, please
. Mounting the stairs, and shaking her head all the time, she passed the children’s room where Serene was telling her younger sister, Ruthie, that Jesus was not born on a farm. And Ruthie was laughing. Bernice examined the other envelope. It was from Lonnie. When she got into her room, she put Lonnie’s letter in a drawer and forgot it instantly. “That bitch think I made outta money!”

The old Chevrolet was clapping, and its muffler pipe was shrieking. Bernice waited until some of the noise subsided,
before she continued her story to Dots, about Mrs. Burrmann. “ … and the whole damn afternoon that princess breathing-down my neck. ‘Bernice, give me a first-class job, tonight, dear. Important people coming.’ As fast as I make a sandwich, she got it in her damn mouth! talking up in my face, and all I could smell is the whiskey on her breath. Well, I not shamed to confess to you, Dots, that more than one time I imagine myself cutting off Mrs. Burrmann hand with that carving knife … and the onliest way I could get her from offa my tail was to tell her that before I stooped so low as to bring myself to come in this country servanting for her, I was working for the Governor o’ Barbados, otherwise call’ His Excellency, yes! I tell her that, and be-Christ, she believe me, too! White people believe any-damn-thing you tell them, they stupid so! And in case, I says, in case you don’t rightly
comprend
, Mrs. Burrmann, what that means, it stands for the biggest and the best …” and Bernice lost herself in the psychiatry of the lie, and went on talking to Dots, as if Dots was Mrs. Burrmann:
and I don’t want to sound as if you is not a proper lady, whiching I know is the case, otherwise; but I have experienced the experience o’ setting table, laying knife and fork for Her Highness, Princess Margret, whiching as you know, is sister to the Queen, and for a hell of a lot o’ other high and mighty people. Yes, man! they have sit down at that dinner party I fix for eighty people, not eight like you getting so excited over, but eighty! — eight, nought! and they eat, not with knife and fork as you would expect royal people to employ in their eating, no! they put down them eating tools outta their hands, and when they saw the Barbadian cuisines I laid on ’pon that table in the form o’ dried-peas and rice, with a piece o’ corned beef boiled-down in that pot, and some good thick dolphin steaks, it is bare hands they eating with, as if they was
borned and bred in the Island o’ Barbados, like anybody else …
Dots was finding it difficult to concentrate both on Bernice’s story and on the highway. She did not trust Boysie behind a steering wheel. A narrow escape had just prevented them from crashing into another car. When she had chastised Boysie with a nasty look, she turned to Bernice and said, “A little lie don’t hurt to put these people in their right and proper perspection.”

“But a German fellar tell me once,” Boysie said, talking out of the corner of his mouth, so as not to take his eyes off the highway, “a German friend o’ mine tell me that the Europeans is bigger liars than anybody else when they come over here. He says everyone o’ them does say they was counts or kings back in Europe. Nobody don’t be no plain, simple immigrant, no more.”

Bernice was going to make a comment, but Dots cut in, changing the subject, and therefore ignoring her husband. “Food tastes a hundred times more better and sweet when you could take up a handful o’ rice, holding that handful ’twixt your thumb and these four other fingers, so, look! look at my hand, Bernice, right so! and when hand and mouth meet, and mouth tastes what hand deliver, Christ, gal! well you would have to be something more than a royal kind o’ man or woman, to want to divert back to knife and fork.”

“Just like them Indian people,” Boysie commented.

“And what the hell so special ’bout them?”

“They eats with their bare hands, Dots,” Bernice said. “Everybody knows that. You don’t know that?”

“I know they eat with their hand, but …” She tried to hide her ignorance; but only Boysie knew she didn’t know anything about the Indians. She hated to see Boysie with a new, intelligent idea.

“And you know why they uses
that
particular hand that they uses in eating with?” Boysie asked Bernice, who didn’t know. “Because. Because …”

“What?” Dots snapped, confident that he didn’t know.

“Because they uses the other hand to wipe their arse clean with!”

The car was death still, for three minutes of mourning for Boysie’s uncouthness. Then Dots said, “Have more respect for Bernice, you hear? If you have none for me, have some for her!” Again, three minutes of death fell in silence; and after a respectful lapse of time, Bernice asked, “This thing have a roof light, Dots?” She looked at Boysie and asked again, “This old dump that you carrying us to our graves in, this limousine, have in a roof light?” Boysie pointed to the light switch, and at the same time the car swerved. Dots shrieked. “Christ, Boysie! you want to kill me?” Boysie ignored her; but in his heart, he said,
Yes
, gorblummuh! Then the light was on; Bernice took out her letter from Mammy, and turning to Dots, said, “Listen.” Bernice read: “ … 
everytime I see Berry, the postman, pass across on his bicycle, my heart gives a shudder, and tears sometimes comes to my eyes, because I know that you have not sent me anything …
” Bernice put the letter back into her handbag, while Dots moaned and shook her head, in sympathetic sorrow.

“The way those people down there expect to get money every week!”

“But you don’t think that is ungratefulness to the height?” Bernice asked.

“We is millionaires,” Boysie said, this time without taking his eyes from the road. “The moment they see we emigrate, they think we elevate, heh-heh-hee!”

“Nobody would think, after hearing that letter, that you,
Bernice, sends that mother o’ yours at least twenty-five Canadian dollars a month, every month, for the past three years. They won’t think so, gal.” Dots did not know whether this was the truth; but she said it, nevertheless. “If I didn’t know you as a decent daughter to Mammy, I would swear that you is the ungrateful brute that that letter making you out to be, gal.…”

“Some mother real ungrateful, though!”

“Shut your damn mouth, Boysie,” Dots snapped. “This ain’t your business … and besides, that is the woman who gave birth to Bernice. A mother is a mother, and you could only have one.”

“You have not remembered me. You have forsaken your own mother.”
Bernice was reading from the letter again. “But to think …” and then she sighed.

“Christ!” Boysie said in sympathy. He was sorry for Bernice; because she had always been kind to him. Many times (unknown to Dots) Bernice had lent him money for beer and other “accidentals for this blasted old Boer-war Chevvy”; and she had never asked him to repay any of it. And once, out of gratitude, Boysie got away from Dots, and sneaked out with Bernice, and took her down to the Little Trinidad Club, where the two of them danced calypsoes until Bernice was tired and cramped. But when Boysie tried to kiss her, she turned away her face in shame. However, she never forgot his kindness. “Dots, you just said a mother is a mother? But I know some mothers who don’t get on like no blasted mothers at all. I mean, just because they happen to make a blasted mistake and born a child, it don’t …”

“Was you borned, though, Boysie?”

“Are you infirming that a stork bring me into this world, then, woman? Looka, God blind …”

“I inform
and
infirm that! yes. Because, for the way you treats me, and the way you …” Boysie looked back.

“Oh, God, look out!” Bernice screamed.

“Lookout! look out, man!”

The brakes screeled. The old Chevrolet swerved and rattled. Their bodies bounced against the torn upholstery and against each other. When Boysie had the courage to turn on the ignition, after the rush of blood to his head, the engine held its silence. He pressed the starter, and the more he pressed, the less happened. “Gorblummuh!” he swore at the engine and at the women (but they felt he was cursing the car, only). And then the engine turned over. He pressed the gas, the wheels whined; and the more he pressed, the more the wheels whined. He had put the car to bed, deep in a snow bank.

“You don’t intend to get out? Looka, get out and start up this blasted car, do! You don’t see we are late as it is already?” Dots was furious. “We late, so get out and do something, man.” Bernice knew it was her place to remain quiet. Even after Boysie got out (still cursing), and did certain things with the front bumper and did the same things with the rear bumper; and after many jerkings and heavings and curses and drops of sweat, and the car was back on the highway, still Bernice remained silent. She had been saying her prayers.

After many miles, Boysie said, “But look at that snow, though! Look at it, man.” He was looking at the snow out of the corners of his eyes. “That damn snow real pretty, like if somebody forget and throw a big big pail o’ white paint all over the whole land. Boy! say what the hell you like ’bout living in a warm place, like back in them Islands,
any morning
, give me a cold place that have snow. Any morning. ’Cause the snow is the prettiest thing I have ever see in my whole
kiss-me-arse life.” Boysie had been living in Canada for eight months only. “Looka that blasted snow, eh!” He saw Dots out of the corner of his left eye, as she sat like a large snow-woman, inanimate, and with a vexed expression on her face. “Have you ever see snow back in Barbados?” But Dots pretended he wasn’t speaking to her. “You ever seen snow back home in Barbados, Bernice?” And immediately, Dots was exasperated. She snapped, “Look man, how the arse could she have seen snow in Barbados, a hot place?”

“I ask
if
I ask if she ever … ”

“And I say, how the bloody-hell,
if
or no
if
could you expect to find snow in … ”

“What Boysie mean to say, Dots, is that
if you ever had the …
”

“Tell her for me, Bernice,” he said, welcoming support and explanation, although he didn’t know what Bernice would say. “Tell this kiss-me-arse woman I married to, because as far as she is concern, I ignorant as a ram goat.”

“ …the, the-the-the … 
if you ever had
the occasion, or the experience, or the pleasure of the fact of that experience, of having seen snow.
If …
”

“If
, man,
if
!” Boysie said, echoing her.

“ …if ever at any one particular time, back in Barbados. It don’t matter if Barbados is a hot place, or a warm place, or a cold place. What I think Boysie mean, is that because of the absence of snow from
that
land,
this
land, meaning Canada, is a more prettier and appealing place, as far as Boysie is concern.” She waited a while to see whether Dots was following her logic; and whether she had anything to add. But Dots was still fuming: exasperated at both their stupidity. She was finding consolation in the telephone poles slipping past like stakes
in a fence round a field. “That is what Boysie mean,” Bernice concluded. Immediately after, she was sorry she had intervened.

“Bernice, you just take the exact words outta my mouth,” Boysie said. Dots was still counting the telephone poles.

“But the snow makes me want to puke, though,” Bernice added. And then, for a long time, during many furlongs of telephone poles, nobody said anything. Conversation and life in the car were dead. They were passing fewer cars now. The whirring of the worried engine, and the frequent rasping noises made by Dots’s teeth, was all the company they had. The monotonous telephone poles sped past them, like never-ending comb-teeth. “You don’t know, that travelling is a damn funny thing.” It was Dots who spoke. “Travelling, I say, is a funny funny thing.” They could see the lights at the airport. And the engines of jets came to them, even in the noisy car. “Travel, and travelling, is a funny thing. I remember back home, reading in a book that somebody lent me, something about people travelling and seeing telephone posts going in one direction, whilst the person who is travelling, was going in a different direction, altogether. Now, isn’t that a funny thing? That is what I mean. And all I try to think, I still couldn’t understand the ins and outs of what that book was trying to tell me. Until now. I just happen to look through this car window as I tossed out that piece o’ chewing gum paper.” She paused to see who was listening. Boysie caught a glimpse of the retreating poles, out the corner of his eyes; and Bernice, alone now (since the mishap in the snow bank) on the rear seat, was studying them, too. “Them telephone posts going fast in
one
direction. And we going just as fast in the
next
direction.”

“True,” Boysie said, as if it was his idea, in the first place; and a brilliant one at that. “Travel and travelling is a bitch of
a thing, man. And I think it is the lack o’ such that causing Bernice’ mother to think we is millionaires in this country.”

“But Dots,” Bernice said suddenly, “do you think that the postman, Berry, could have thieved any money that I send down to Mammy?” Bernice knew this was a possibility; but she also knew she hadn’t sent any money to Mammy for a long time. Yet she flirted with the argument of the theft, in her imagination.