Authors: Austin Clarke
“Oh, Leach!” she exclaimed. “I thought you were a spook!
You frightened me.” Without turning round, she added, “Get me some ice, will you?” As Bernice served the ice, the announcer was saying that the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King had led 2,500 Negroes in the shadow of the State Capitol here today.… “Praise God, it doesn’t happen here,” Mrs. Burrmann said, a noticeable relief in her voice. “We’re even better than Britain.”
“Mrs. Burrmann, I want to ask you a question.”
“Sure, Leach.” She seemed glad to have a reason for turning off the news. And this she did; and when she turned round and faced Bernice, Bernice thought she saw a certain blush on her face.
“It is about Estelle, ma’am.”
“And who is Estelle?”
“Estelle? Estelle is my sister, ma’am. And as I have told you,” Bernice said, being careful with her speech and grammar in front of her mistress, “I told you Estelle is coming in today, and …”
“Oh, yes, of course, that’s right, too. Now, how is your sister, Leach?”
“Estelle better than me. But she coming in tonight, ma’am, on the ten o’clock plane.”
“And how’re you going?”
“I haven’t arrange’ transportation yet, but …”
“I mean in the kitchen, Leach.”
“Well, I don’t really know if I going or coming, ’cause as you see I still have a hundred and one things to fix for the party, and …”
“Don’t forget I’m having eight guests.”
“I know that.” Bernice was becoming aggressive. “I know. And that is why I hurrying like the devil to finish up in time, and run up to Malton Airport.” Mrs. Burrmann remained
arrogantly aloof. She pretended there was a speck of something in her whiskey. “It’s about Estelle and her coming-in that I want to talk to you about, ma’am.…”
“Please don’t forget there’ll be eight guests.”
“No, ma’am.”
“And that means eight place-settings.”
“You don’t need to tell me that, ma’am.”
“I’m not
telling
you anything.” Her voice was rising; and her cheeks changing colour. You damn West Indians, she said to herself. “No need to have a chip on your shoulder. I’m merely reminding you.…”
“But Mrs. Burrmann, listen to me! Are you forgetting that when I came to you as your servant, I came with the best papers and references. Look, I been setting table and laying knife-and-fork since I could reach the table with my head.”
“Now, what about the sandwiches? And the other things?” Mrs. Burrmann’s tone now suggested that she didn’t expect an answer, rather that she wanted to remind Bernice who was maid and who mistress. This was her favourite technique when dealing with Bernice; and Bernice had always kept silent. She stood there and abused Mrs. Burrmann in her mind. Behind the smiling face, Bernice was telling her:
But, oh Christ, woman! I am not a child this time o’ day. ‘Course I know that eight guest mean eight place-settings, so you don’t have to remind me, or tell me that!
And Mrs. Burrmann, who didn’t have the power (or the desire) to listen to Bernice’s thoughts, was saying, “… all I want to know, Leach, is that you have set the table for eight persons, and that you haven’t forgotten that I told you, twice so far, this morning, that eight persons’re coming. It is almost three o’clock now, and you still have lots to do … the children, the groceries, and you have still to go to the drug store for
me.…”
Be-Christ, look woman, I didn’t even have time to look at the blasted table, you had me so damn busy the whole day. You in here from daybreak to dusk, sitting down on your fat behind drinking drinks, whilst I out there, in that hot kitchen working off my fat, for peanut-money. From the time I come into this country, I been working. Working, working, working hard as hell, too. I really don’t know what get in me to make me do a damn-fool thing like emigrating to Canada, saying I working as servant and maid for somebody like you … “
Leach!” Mrs. Burrmann was screaming. “Have you gone deaf?” It was a long time before Bernice heard her voice. Mrs. Burrmann was now on her feet, her hands at her temples, as if she was feeling great pain. “Leach, haven’t you heard me asking you for my pills?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Well?”
And that was all it took to defeat Bernice, once more. It was always like this. Whenever there was a serious matter to discuss with Bernice, Mrs. Burrmann always felt sick, suddenly. It had happened last week, when Bernice first mentioned that her sister was coming. Then, Mrs. Burrmann had developed a migraine headache, and asked for her tranquillizer pills. She’d taken twice the amount prescribed by her doctor; and for the rest of that afternoon had escaped to her bedroom to sleep it off. When she appeared the following day, smiling and charming (“Oh, Bernice, what a lovely winter day! You know, I think you’re putting on too much weight.” And she even patted Bernice on her behind, where her weight was heaviest), Bernice’s defeat was so complete that her previous aggressiveness turned to sympathy.
“You taking it with water, ma’am?” she asked now, insinuating that Mrs. Burrmann might take it with whiskey. “I hope
the head feel good soon, ma’am.”
But she was hoping the blasted pill stick in your damn craw, and choke you dead, dead as hell! ’cause you think you buy me; but you didn’t purchase me, you hear? You can’t, nor won’t ever buy Bernice, oh no, darling. You have your riches and your mansion and your broadlooms thick thick as grass, but you don’t think for one moment that could make my heart flutter
. Mrs. Burrmann took the pill, and then reached out a hand and turned on the player which was part of a streamlined, expensive walnut cabinet that also contained the television. Without getting up from her couch, she chose a record; and then turned up the volume. She did not intend to continue the discussion with Bernice. Bernice waited to see whether the volume was turned up so high by mistake; but realizing that it was done deliberately, she flounced out of the room. Hate piled up within Bernice’s heart as the eaves of the house piled with snow into shapeless mounds near the side door. The record was Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony. Bernice had heard it before: Mrs. Burrmann played it every day, at least once, from beginning to end. And so, Bernice found herself liking the record, although she never knew why.
The music echoed through the entire house, like a storm, Bernice began to notice that this music, and the volume at which it was played, coincided with their quarrels. So many things went through her mind this afternoon, like children’s fingers running at random through sand on a beach: thinking of Mrs. Burrmann,
unfair as hell, because today my day off, today is one Thursday I wanted to be free. Thursday’s is my day to be off, as the regulations say. I didn’t say so, and I certainly didn’t make them regulations. You don’t think she is a damn advantage-taker? Estelle coming in at Malton, and that princess in there, God blind her.…
But the music was upon her, coming back to her, like
the memory of a kiss. It had reached the part she liked best; the part she always listened to, and which made her think of home, because she could see the lines of corn in the small plot of land her father tilled behind their house; and see women wearing hats of old rags on their heads as shields from the violence of the sun; women bending down, bending over like hairpins, pulling the weeds from choking the corn. Sometimes, if she listened attentively, she could see the blackbirds and wood-doves calling one another.… And then the telephone rang.
“Phone, Leach!” (Bernice called out in her mind, You can’t hear it ringing yourself?) “Leach? The phone. Come and answer it.”
“Mrs. Burrmann’s residence?” she asked the phone; and when she recognized the voice, she exclaimed, “Oh Christ, Dots! That is you?”
“Guess.”
“What?”
“Gal, guess.”
“Boysie get the job in the civil service.…”
“I told you to guess, not
dream
.” She filled Bernice’s ears with her throaty, sensuous laugh. “Gal, that man been job-hunting since he come to this country eight months ago, and you think he could get a job? But I ask you to guess. Guess!”
“I can’t guess, man,” Bernice whispered. “Working for this bitch here has took away all o’ my guessing powers. I here fighting with her to let me go up to the airport to rescue Estelle outta the hands o’ them immigration people up there. And up till now, that woman hasn’t even picked her teeth to me, to say yes, or no.”
“But I ask you to
guess
.”
“What happen now, eh?”
“Lottie dead.” There was a pause, a long pause, before Bernice could speak.
“No!”
she gasped.
“Lottie dead,” Dots repeated, without too much emotion; as if she was reporting the death of a dog in the street.
“Yuh lie!”
“
Dead
. I just hear the man on the radio called out Lottie’ name.”
“How?”
“Crosswalk.”
“When? When it happen?”
“Appears Lottie was going up Bloor Street, and she put out her hand to cross through one o’ them blasted crosswalk-things, and …”
“If I had my way, Dots, if I was Mayor Givens, look! if I was a woman o’ power, I would wipe out every last one o’ them things. I calls them death-traps, not crosswalks.”
“… and even though Lottie put out her hand to point, that man driving the mottorcar came right on, and
bruggadungdung! …
”
“Poor Lottie.…”
“Jesus Christ, Dots!” And for a long time, neither said anything. Dots began to talk again. “And to think, just think, that Lottie and me was sitting down here in my room, talking ’bout the nice things she bought down in Eaton’s for the wedding. That girl spent so much money for the wedding.…”
“Perhaps … perhaps, it is a good thing that Lottie dead, though.”
“But gal, how the hell it could be a good thing when somebody dead?”
“Well, she was marrying the wrong man.…”
“You vexed with the gal becausing she had a white man in mind? So what the hell so precious with black woman marrieding white man, gal? Look, I tired telling you that if you go on waiting for a black man, or even a Westindian man, to come and put wedding ring ’pon your finger, be-Christ, you will have your wedding day ’pon your death bed! Heh-hee! or you will surely die with yuh maiden intact, gal!” Dots laughed again, more maliciously, more sensuously. Bernice didn’t see it as a joke. “Look, gal, times changing. And a man is a man.”
“But still, Lottie …” and she realized she had better change the conversation.
“She dead. And I say it is a blasted shame that she died the way she had to dead. Still, it ain’t a damn thing neither you nor me could do, save follow Lottie to the grave, at the funeral.”
“I still sorry, though. ’Cause she is one o’ we.” Just then, Mrs. Burrmann called her. “I have to go now. You hear this one breathing down my neck?”
“I am not deaf, gal.”
“Well, don’t forget tonight. Estelle coming in, and when you come round here, we going have to talk some more,” and with that, she put down the receiver. “Lottie, dead,” she said to herself. “Dead?” The tragedy came in upon her with power. She felt lonely all of a sudden; and she felt cruel with the world. Immediately, she hated Mrs. Burrmann a little more, and blamed her for Lottie’s death. But she talked herself out of this heavy judgement; and soon felt strong enough to face Mrs. Burrmann, once more, to talk about Estelle.
Beethoven’s music was mournful now, as if it had reached that section purposely, on Lottie’s behalf. Bernice waited until the hearses and the black of the funeral were out of the melody, and the feeling was new and rising and lighthearted as sugar
cane trash tossed in a strong wind, before she moved off towards the sitting-room. She stopped. She stood. She thought. She came back and stood beside the kitchen counter, looking into the backyard of the neighbouring house, watching the snow fall, and counting the snowflakes dropping like marshmallows. The music was still loud; but it was distant now. It was something that could not be reached out to, and touched; something that melted, like the snow, the moment it came in contact with you …
Lord, a young woman! coming all this distance up here in this cold place, and You mean that You let her died? Lottie dead? just like that? What the hell that mother o’ Lottie is going to say when she find out? And the same Lottie who was thinking o’ sending for her brother to put him in a technical school to learn how to be a welder. All the money that poor girl saved up, all these five years working off her arse, and saving ninety-nine cents out of a dollar, turning her eyes ’gainst the luxuries o’ this world, and setting them on necessary things, and now, out of the blue, bram! A blasted motor-car …
“Miss Bernice! Aunt Bernice! Auntie Bernice!” It was the children. They had just come from school, one day early in winter with Mrs. Gasstein’s two. Bernice held down and picked up Serene, and kissed her on her forehead. Serene kissed her on her lips; and Bernice stealthily but firmly passed her hands over her mouth, wiping away the kiss because it had chewing gum on it. The two of them were shut off, through their kisses, from the others. It was their little exile of happiness together. In the midst of this, one of the children, Mrs. Gasstein’s son, commented, “She’s
black
.” (Bernice had not then liked the word “black” used to describe her colour. It was before she began reading the Black Muslim newspaper,
Muhammad
Speaks
.) Bernice flinched. She could feel the tension grip Serene’s tender body, as she held her darling. The little boy was a fierce, little pink pumpkin of a boy. “She’s
really
black.” This made Bernice stiffen; but she pretended not to hear. “Look, Deirdre! Look! She is really black,” the litle boy told his sister.
“So what?” Serene demanded. “Wise guy!” Serene had learned her lesson a long time ago: once, she came downstairs and called Bernice Miss Nigger, and her mother heard and slapped her on her mouth. “Never again do you let me
hear
you say that!” As viciously as she could, Serene said again, “Wise guy!”
“She’s black. But our maid, Brigitte, is white,” he said, savouring his last word.
“Mummy says Brigitte is a kraut,” Deirdre said. Bernice felt it was such a heavy, ponderous and final pronouncement for a small child to make. But then, she felt she understood, seeing that she had always regarded these Jewish children (those on her street) as little spoilt brats. “Anyways, Mummy says we must never call a Negro person black or brown. They’re persons. Mummy says we should call them coloured.”