Authors: Austin Clarke
“I love you, too, man.”
“Really?”
“Well, how you mean? How you could ask me a foolish thing like that, eh, man?” And she continued to trace circles on the back of his neck; and he continued to hold her close to him. His excitement, and his ecstasy made him reconsider what he had been thinking about her.
Shit, that would be hell for this poor bitch! A man just can’t breed a broad and leave her, even if she’s a …
But he couldn’t call her a Negro, this time; not even in his mind. He thought of his friend the abortionist (unknown to him, his own wife had been treated by this same abortionist; and Brigitte used to work for him, as his cleaning-woman, before she got the job on Marina Boulevard when she was learning to be a Canadian citizen) …
and if Paul plays the ass, there’s always the Children’s Aid Society! there’s always some poor guy looking for a child, so there shouldn’t be much trouble to place a Jewisho-Africo-Westindico child! hah-hah! what’s one more Negro bastard in this goddamn world? One more mixed-up, mixed kid? But I’m sure Paul’ll play ball and help out, or if not …
His excitement was climbing a small wall at the top of which he thought he would reach some kind of manual consummation. But she knew when she had him: and just before that point of arrival — or departure — she withdrew
her hand, and ran out of the car, leaving the door open. She knew he couldn’t shout after her (he was too near home), that he had to be silent, and self-effacing; silent as he had been with Jeffrey. “You are a white son-of-a-bitch!” she told him. But she didn’t know whether he had heard.
Summer was doing something awful to Estelle. It was bringing her closer to Bernice; and it was taking her further from Sam. Apart from her own experiences of arrival, and her taste of summer and fire, she was having her own problems. It was fortunate for her that Bernice escaped downstairs to the kitchen every morning before eight o’clock; the moment she was alone, with the door locked, she would rush to the bathroom, and engage in the violent motions of vomiting. Nothing came up. But she knew that one morning, something was going to come up. This daily dry vomiting had been coming on, more regularly, for about three weeks. Bernice neither witnessed it, nor suspected it. Lately, it was coming at the same time, each morning. In spite of all this, Estelle refused to think too much about it, and refused to interpret it as a symptom of pregnancy; for by so doing, she would be confessing to a defeat of her schemes against the man. But she was frightened. And fear was like a paralysis which kept her in the apartment during the day, allowing her to go out only in the late afternoon. This was one time when being alone did not depress or exasperate her. What exasperation she suffered came through the heat, and the thought of the butterflies in her stomach, and of the man who had put them there. Since winter had turned to spring, she had been going out with Agatha more often; and she had visited many places, and was brought into a wider, more mixed circle of friends in her stay than Bernice had known in three or more years.
The kind of relationship that sprang up between Estelle and Agatha was that of a woman trying to find out everything about her rival, her enemy. On Agatha’s part there was more sincerity. She told Estelle many close things, personal things, about Henry: she was angry because he didn’t go to night school, and then university, and “raise himself”; he had such “natural ability, it is a shame he does nothing but hate all white people”; and drink himself in a stupor almost every night, either in the Paramount, or in the Pilot. “You know, Ess, sometimes I feel he is so inferior, you know what I mean? There are many things I can’t even discuss with him, and when I try to make him feel, feel equal, he starts abusing me and calling me a
white intellectual …
hell! I’m no intellectual! I am a
woman
!” And that was exactly why Estelle was so fond of Agatha. Estelle learned many things about Negro men from Agatha. She knew also, that Henry had caused Agatha to move — she was really evicted because the tenants complained — four times since she had left home, also because of him. That was two months ago. “When I moved into that bachelor apartment, on Prince Arthur Avenue, the building superintendent complained. I was having too many parties, he said. I didn’t have
one
party, Estelle. I was only in the place three weeks, and I spent those three weekends in New York, with Henry. And then he changed his tune, and said something like,
Well, you know, Miss … we haven’t got anything ’gainst you, but you see, the other tenants, well, they see you all the time with this coloured fella …
and that bastard was a DP! A foreigner! Estelle, I was never so ashamed to be a white person!” (Estelle could not fully understand the dilemma that Agatha had seen herself in.) “It’s been like that, three other times, after Prince Arthur. St. George Street … there, the superintendent was all right until he saw
Henry helping me move in. Then he started asking a lot of insulting questions.
Was I married, miss? …
Then Bedford Road, then Lowther, in a so-called old Toronto family home … until now, when I got this flat on Huron and Bloor.” But she didn’t tell Estelle the worst of all her experiences. It was when she had to move from Prince Arthur to St. George Street. Things were going well, until she needed a reference; and she could only get this from her previous superintendent. It was required because the St. George Street caretaker had seen Henry; neighbours with no love in their heart had caught Henry kissing Agatha goodnight outside her apartment door late one night. The neighbours complained. The superintendent asked her to leave, because, “Miss, this is a decent apartment dwelling.” Agatha hired a friend who was a lawyer; and when the lawyer knew he was involved in a racial case, he advised her to drop proceedings, because, “Well, look at it this way, Agatha. It isn’t doing you any goddamn good to get mixed up in a thing like this with a Negro chap. You understand what I’m saying? I mean, Negroes are great guys, I subscribe to the NAACP, and I dig jazz and all that, but I’m not advising you now as a lawyer, I’m talking to you as my friend. I’ll ask the owners to refund you your three months’ advance rent, and I think you should find yourself a place to live. And Agatha, there’s a lot of nice guys your kind, around still, yuh know?” This was the seed from which began to grow a smouldering hate for Henry. After this, she loved him less. She had got herself into debt (the moving, packing, lawyer-friend’s fees, bottles of sleeping pills and tranquillizer pills and two emergency sessions with her psychiatrist) and she began to weaken under the stress of society and its demands upon her. Once, in a moment of reality — this was her mother’s favourite phrase — Agatha
really looked at herself; and toyed with the idea of going with a man
less
black than Henry: somebody like Harry Belafonte. Her reputation was being discussed at parties (she was no longer invited to them) as the poor Jewish kid who got kicked out of apartments because of her weakness for Negroes. Somebody suggested making her an honorary president of the NAACP. When word got back to her, through a mutual, but tongue-lashing friend, she remained in her Huron Street room, forcing herself into perpetual sleep, because everywhere she went, she thought white people and black people were pointing their fingers at her, and saying
There she is!
It was her landlord, a painter, and a kind of Bohemian, who got her out of this depression, by inviting her,
and
Henry to have dinner with him, and his wife. A new view of the world sprung up out of the four glasses of Beaujolais wine which her landlord served.
That was Agatha’s story, as she told it (in parts, and in part) to Estelle. But the person whom Estelle sympathized with was Henry. Secretly, Estelle still felt that Agatha was “stealing one of our men.”
But now, it was summer. Summer brought with it a remarkable exposure: an exposure of friendliness, of happiness, of gaiety and of life to the shrouded, over-coated atmosphere of the city. Summer brought Estelle closer once more to Sam, who seemed a new man. He took her to Niagara Falls, to Oshawa where they made cars; he took her across the Canadian border to Buffalo and to Syracuse where she saw many houses painted white, like in Barbados. Sam was now driving a white convertible Cadillac. It was education and excitement. But Estelle could not speak a word of it to Bernice. As far as Bernice knew, she was going out with Agatha.
But the excitement was tiring. She was losing her stamina
in the heat. She was losing it because now there was no denying that her physiological condition had changed. The dry vomiting changed to real vomiting. She would come in late at night, and pretend to fall asleep fast, so she wouldn’t have to talk to Bernice. She had to do this, because Bernice got tired of sleeping on the two chairs, and she began to make the chesterfield into a bed. She would put Estelle’s pillow at
her
feet. She herself wasn’t too keen on talking, either. But she had been thinking. Estelle’s symptoms were now clear; and she planned how best to tell Sam she was pregnant. It was going to be difficult, since Sam himself suspected; and he had become edged with an over-sensitivity, capable of cutting both ways.
Bernice never stopped questioning herself about Estelle’s long absences. Similarly, she never let up on her schemes of sabotaging Mrs. Burrmann’s groceries. In these two respects, summer had done nothing to seep her destructive resourcefulness. But she didn’t make the same fuss with Estelle, as she had made during winter and spring. One Thursday afternoon, drinking iced Coca-Cola with Dots, Bernice mentioned Estelle; and Dots gave the same explanation for Estelle’s absences. “You don’t have to take down Estelle’s pants and inspect them to know she is taking man, eh, gal?” Dots’s straightforwardness wounded Bernice. “You grieving too much over that gal.”
“Well, I hope she don’t get herself in trouble, though.” Sometimes, this was a dishonest wish. “The more I think ’bout it, the more I feel sure that my sister may get herself in the family-way, sometime.…”
“You get a room for Estelle, yet?”
“Not yet.”
“Same thing happened, eh, gal?”
“Same blasted excuse.”
“Only this afternoon I been reading in the
Star
, where it say there is thousands o’ white men and white women living together in sin, in apartments, and even in Rosedale!”
“Yuh lie, Dots! Well, I never would guess!”
“And the man who write this story … yuh know something? I think he had a Jew-name, too! … anyhow, he says that once a woman who wasn’t married, went up to this real exclusive place in Rosedale, and asked for an apartment. She had the honesty to say she wasn’t married to the man she was going to live with. And guess what the superintendent told that lady?”
“I don’t read the
Star
, Dots.”
“That’s true. But he said, It is all right, madam. Most of the people who live here together, as man and woman, isn’t married, neither.”
“To err is mankind, Dots.”
“You just spoke a mouthful! But you have no idea of the amount o’ sinning, fornicating and adultering that takes place in this Toronto. But when it happens in the white man’s corner o’ the world, I think they calls it by another name. Take it from me, gal, whilst you are up here reading
Muhammad Speaks
and a lot o’ race books, I am down in Rosedale reading history. I reads
Flash
and
Hush
. Them is two history books which tell me the facts and truths of life.” Bernice was very impressed: she promised to get herself these two weeklies. She never expected that everything about this world wasn’t contained in
Muhammad Speaks
, after all. “Gal, take it from me. Rosedale is too good for black people.” She remembered seeing a West Indian family in Rosedale, recently; to be honest, she added, “Now and then, you find a white man with a heart. Now and then. Take that from me, too.”
“Mr. Burrmann, my employer, is one o’ them few.”
“Why this place so damn hot?” She fanned herself with the tail of her dress and laughed. “Too much black people living in it, these days, gal! It is we who bring this damn heat, you never heard that?” Dots fanned herself some more. “Hey, Bernice! You remember that nurse-gal who was here at the party for Estelle? Priscilla? Well, she engaged to a Canadian man.”
“Yuh lie!”
“Gal, you are the only woman we waiting on still,” Dots teased; and she laughed her sensuous and suggestive laugh. “Hurry up and get a man. This nurse-gal engaged to married a orderly from the same hospital, the General.”
“He is a white man?”
“I said a Canadian man.”
“And I ask you if he is a white man.”
“He is still a man, gal!”
And swiftly, the heat took possession of them; and they paid more attention to the people passing. Almost everybody was in shorts. Some men in front gardens had already taken refuge in Bermuda shorts. Bernice said she was going to wear her shorts on the streets. “Oh Christ, no, gal! What you think you are doing? Wearing shorts? Not in Toronto! I have never seen a black person in the many years I been here, who was man enough or woman enough, to wear shorts, in public. And I not talking ’bout the shape o’ your legs, neither. I am concern with the
colour
!” Bernice said she was talking foolishness, but really she had never seen one either. And she had brought a pair of shorts from Barbados more than three years ago, and never once had she put them on, outside her apartment. “And yuh know something, else? The swimming pools! I don’t see black people in them, neither. But I promised one of these
good days. I am going to drink a good rum, go up there by the big pool on Eglinton, take
off all my clothes
, every damn stitch, and when them white men see my beautiful body, and I dive-off from that diving board, be-Jesus Christ, you will read about my debut in the three papers. I might even make television on the CBC!” When they stopped laughing, they saw a white woman passing, wearing shorts. Neither of them said anything for a while.
“That is Irene Gasstein, the woman that Brigitte works for,” Bernice said, as the woman was going out of sight.