The Meeting Point (12 page)

“That immigration man was outta his place, if you ask me,” Boysie said.

“Be-Christ, look!” Dots said. “Look, it is not a matter of being outta his place, or not being outta his place. No, it ain’t that. For there is a lot o’ German whores and Hungarian whores and Polish whores, not to mention the droves o’ Eyetalians who comes to this country every month, and the government pays their transportation. And I bet you that not one o’ them immigration men
dare …
you hear me? … 
dare
ask one o’ them Europeans what their name is. They do not dare.”

“Tell me how they could dare, when they can’t even speak the language, Dots?”

“Boysie, I could kiss you. You just spoken a mouthful!”

“And when he insisted on bringing his freshness to me, I stared him in his face, and I said to him: Now, listen to me,
Mister White Man … I have to call you Mister White Man, because I do not know your name, and on account o’ the way you treated me, I can’t address you in a better fashion … you haven’t no right being worried about the dissimilarities in my name, and in my sister’s name. I am a Shepherd. And she is a Leach. And I am Shepherd because I am divorced lady …”

And when they stopped laughing and shaking their bodies on one another, they were entering the district of Forest Hill Village. Estelle became quiet now. Bernice was preoccupied with the difficulties of adjusting to Estelle, and her ways and her smoking, in the small apartment. But most of all, she was worn out by her sister’s experiences of arrival. Everyone was worn out. But everyone was happy. All Bernice had strength for now, was to point and show Estelle the banks and churches and other stores they were passing.

“One … two … three … six,
seven!
Seven banks in one district?” she exclaimed. “Barbados only have
five
, I think.”

They were passing the meat stores; in their windows were sausages pouring down from hooks, and looking like red cylinders; and a few late shoppers were buying groceries and other goods with their eyes through windows; and Estelle wondered why steam was coming out of their noses and mouths, whenever words came out. As Boysie drove sight-seeingly slow, she asked the question she had long been thinking about. “Where are the coloured people who live here?” Nobody answered for some time. She asked the question again. “Where are the coloured people who live in Canada, Bernice?” Boysie guffawed. Dots had to poke him to keep him quiet, and respectful. Bernice turned her head away, pretending to take a sudden interest in the surroundings where she had lived for thirty-two months; and which she had deliberately ignored for the length
of that time. They reached the cinema at the corner of Bathurst and Eglinton, where Boysie said, a lot of Jews went to the movies, “because the film stars is Jewish, that’s all!”

“Samson and Delilah,” Bernice said, aloud; naming the current film.

“Where the hell are all the black people you’ve been writing me about, Bernice, child? Bernice? … Dots? … Boysie? … well, somebody, Christ, say something, eh?”

“Estelle,” Bernice began, in a tired, hoarse voice, “we four in this car, is the only black people you are going to see in this neighbour, at this moment. The four o’ we. But don’t worry, darling, you going have to get accustomed to it, too. We all have to learn how to survive ‘mongst these white people. It really do not matter, though, Estelle, if you see a black person today, tomorrow, or the next year.…”

“Gal, the less you see of
them
, the better off you are, I tell you.”

“… but you will have to get accustom to seeing all white people round you, for the rest o’ your stay in this country.”

“I wonder then,” Estelle said, as if talking to herself, “I wonder, if that is why that little bastard in that plane said I reminded him of Aunt Jemima … perhaps, he never saw a real coloured person, before, in his life! … well, yes. It could be that, yuh know, it could be that.”

“You really think so?” It was Boysie, getting in the last word.

The record had just come to an end, when Boysie and Henry exchanged dancing partners. Their partners were Brigitte, the German maid from across the street, and who was Bernice’s friend; and Agatha, a young Canadian woman, of about
twenty-nine, who was studying Zoology, at the University of Toronto. Bernice and Estelle and Dots were sitting together, on the chesterfield, like the pink roses printed on the chesterfield, like Lilies-of-the-night, since eleven-thirty when they returned from the airport. The time was now one-thirty. They were sitting, not because they could not dance, not because they did not wish to dance; but because neither of the two men available cared to dance with them. There were two other black women present. One was a registered nurse at the Toronto General Hospital. Priscilla. A fierce, black woman, whose face was lined with the lines of some kind of emotional frustration; a woman thwarted out of all her expectations, it seemed; except for her extraordinarily good taste in clothes. Tonight, Priscilla the Condemned, was wearing a woollen suit, bought at Holt Renfrew. (She had already told everybody that she bought it at Holt Renfrew when
there was not a sale on
.) Priscilla’s suit, like a suit of mail to suit her present disposition, was red. The other young woman was a student. Large like Bernice, but much younger; she, Miss Carmeeta Anne Bushell (“I’m in third year, Hons, polly-sigh-and-ec,” meaning Honours Political Science and Economics), was also at the University of Toronto, a student like Agatha, but until tonight, unknown to, and by, Agatha. These two ladies had heard of the party, and had decided to come. They had had nothing on for the night anyhow; and though it was rather late to go to a party (Mrs. Burrmann had let them in through the front door, when they arrived; she excused herself from her own party to lead them upstairs, into Bernice’s apartment, to wait for Bernice and the others) they had come. Miss Carmeeta Anne Bushell wore a shiny material which looked like scales on her body every time she wriggled in her uncomfortable seat. Two minutes after
Priscilla and Miss Carmeeta Anne Bushell arrived, their excitement sank to the level of the broadloom in the room. They were sitting now like dying flowers on the trunk of a tree. They were tense and sad and angry: both at Bernice for not explaining what kind of party it was; and at the men for not noticing them. It had happened so many times before to Priscilla especially (Miss Bushell had learned her lesson about these parties a long time ago; and she usually remained in residence, studying and learning her lessons) at parties given by West Indian students: the worst one Priscilla experienced was given by a tall Grenadian law student at his place on Huron Street, where she first met Miss Carmeeta Anne Bushell; “Well, listen, Meeta, I put myself out so much just to come to this fête. Azan the hairdresser had so many girls waiting, to get their hair done, it seem that every Sam-cow-and-the-duppy had a man taking her out this weekend. I had to beg Azan to give me a’ appointment. I spent most of Friday night and Saturday morning shortening this dress, ’cause I know that West Indian men like to see their women looking sharp. And now I come here, what? What make me come here? I could be home in the little room I rent, or I could have told the head-nurse I was coming to work tonight. All these black men after the white girls, child. You can’t see that?”; and when she told this to Miss Carmeeta Anne Bushell, she was in turn, made aware that Miss Carmeeta had experienced some of this, at the Little Trinidad, a calypso club on Yonge Street.

“It seems that our lot in this country,” Miss Carmeeta Sweet Bushell said, with a heavy sigh in her voice, that night at the Little Trinidad, “is to watch our men dance with white women, take out white women, and spend their money on white women.” She had just pushed a cheese stick into her
mouth, when a white girl, a classmate and room-mate she had brought along sat down beside her. “What a lovely bunch of guys,” the friend commented. “I’ve never had such a lovely time in my life! not even at a fraternity party. You must bring me more often, Carmeets.” Priscilla javelined a side glance at Miss Bushell, and she got up and went into the washroom. That was three months ago. Now, at this party, they were sitting (along with Bernice and Dots and Estelle), watching Henry and Boysie teach the two white women the intricacies of the calypso dance. Some time ago Henry took Bernice to the West Indies Federation Club, called the
WIF
, on Brunswick Avenue. He took her there about three times on a Thursday night. Thursday nights were free admission night. But Bernice had enjoyed herself, and had even got a chance to exchange a bit of gossip with a Trinidadian girl who had come up on the domestic scheme with her. But Henry didn’t like Bernice too much. He found her most aggressive and unattractive; and he told Boysie afterward, “Goddamn, never again mention that woman’s name to me, you hear? Goddamn, in this bright day and age, that goddamn woman wearing white ankle socks with a pair of stockings with a seam in them, and winter boots, goddamn as if she is a blasted teenager at this stage o’ middle age. And the more I tell that bitch ’bout a certain Guianese fellar I know, who is a good dentist, and I hoping Bernice going to take the hint, she only saying,
Henry, I is a lonely woman, you know! I don’t like Canada, Henry. It is too lonely here. And people don’t speak to you on the street car. I don’t like this place, it too cold
. Goddamn, Boysie, they don’t speak to me, neither! And the Jewish fellar who lives in the room next to mine, he tell me they don’t speak to him, neither. The more I hint, the more she moaning and groaning ’bout how she don’t
like Canada. Bad breath! old man! Goddamn, it is enough to make me kill a woman dead, even if I am on top o’ she at that particular moment. Bad breath! goddamn.”

But unknown to Henry, and for a different reason, Bernice did get around to going to the dentist; not the one Henry had recommended, but a Jewish dentist Mrs. Burrmann recommended. And she had stopped wearing those “teenage” clothes.

Tonight, however, Henry had arrived alone. But when he saw the women in the room, (“Goddamn, these skins ain’t sharp enough, Boysie!”) he asked Bernice to let him use her Princess; and Bernice, expecting he was inviting more men (he had said something vaguely about “let me see what I can do to liven up this fête, girl”), whispered the word around that Henry was “bringing more people”; and then she winked. All the women understood the wink. And they relaxed for a while. Miss Carmeeta Anne Bushell reached out her long, well-shaped arms, with the long, polished, clipped fingernails, and took up a sandwich which had its edges trimmed. She put it into her mouth and looked round to see who saw. The table was full of food when she came in; but no one offered any to the guests. And then they heard footsteps coming up. Bernice stiffened, prepared herself for men, and went to answer the door. When she opened it, she gave out a short gasp of surprise. Two more white women were at the door. Miss Carmeeta Anne Bushell swallowed the sandwich paste in her mouth, and Priscilla glanced at Estelle, felt sorry for her and then felt glad: Estelle was seeing in one night what they had seen many times before. Henry rushed to introduce his friend, Agatha, to Bernice; and Agatha introduced Debbie who “is staying with me for the weekend, and I hope you don’t mind; but after
Henry called and said that you needed more …” Agatha lived nearby, on Roselawn Avenue. She was wearing a bulky fur coat, the only fur coat in the sweltering room of hostility. Debbie was part Japanese, a very sweet, a very small, a very gentle woman, who seemed to carry centuries of mysteries of her race and her love in her partly closed eyes. Boysie liked her on sight. He saw sensuousness in those eyes. He made a note to dance a calypso with her; dance close close to that body, man, and feel that body ‘pon mine, and feel the passion which he saw in her eyes and body. Dots and Bernice immediately smiled at the two women and immediately hated them intensely. Estelle looked up from her lap, where she was looking into the future of her unhappiness at this party; looked at the two men, Boysie and Henry, and wondered what was going on. Miss Bushell and Priscilla did not even say good evening. The German maid, Brigitte, standing close to Boysie across the room, took an ingrained dislike to Agatha. Agatha, who was Jewish, bore herself with supreme dignity, like a princess.

“Come come, man,” Bernice said, trying to salvage her party, “you-all come to this party, to sit down and eat? Come, Boysie put on some Sparrow, some hot calypso, and let we dance, man! This is a party to welcome my sister, Estelle, into Canada.”

And Boysie, Dots’s unbeloved but legal untender husband, ignoring his wife all night, was now sweating and entranced by his little German maid. He had been teaching her to swing her classical hips three times fast to the swinging rhythms of the calypso. Sparrow was asking his audience, in the song, whether they (meaning the men, more than the women), had ever tasted a
“white beef yet?”
Three times fast, Boysie told Brigitte
to swing her hips. He was saying while they danced away from Dots’s eagle eyes, “You does dance like a real West Indian, though! You does do this dance good good for truth!” And Brigitte, liquored-up and lacquered-down to her toenails, transformed from her maid’s uniform into this strange cinderella fashion, dropped her head on Boysie’s shoulder, telling the rest of the room and the world, that she was happy; and she grunted, from time to time, from the pit of her ecstasy, “Yahh! yahh!”

Boysie turned the record over, and a rousing tune capsized the room, embracing Boysie and Henry, who was now holding on tight to Agatha, in a certain sexual assurance that
not a woman ever complain yet, with me; I ain’t boasting, but I know I got durability …
Dots could see only a graveyard with leaves falling on a grave, and Boysie in that grave … 
if a woman ever tell you that I, ever left her dis-satisfy, she lie! she lie! she lie! …
Bernice swallowed, and she thought she could feel pebbles in her saliva; she glanced to her right to Estelle, looking prim and proper in a dress she had borrowed from Bernice; and looking sad. Oh dear, tonight is Estelle’s night, this party is for Estelle, in honour of her arriving in this new country! And she looked again at Dots, and saw the grief oozing from her mind onto her face; and at Estelle again, sitting stiff, in that West Indian attitude of utter boredom and distant respectability, her hands folded into her woollen lap: the fingers like a piece of dead ebony, scratched in thirteen places where the sculptor had tried, in vain, to create life out of matter. Oh dear, this is Estelle’s welcoming party! Bernice’s mind wanders over to Brigitte, clutched to Boysie like a snake; Brigitte whom Bernice herself has invited; Brigitte who now claims fifty-per-cent of the male population in the room. She sees Brigitte hold Boysie, and
Boysie take Brigitte into his arms, and she sees the look in Brigitte’s eyes; and she glances quickly at Dots, to see whether Dots is too drugged by hate to see the beginning of the taste of the apple.