Authors: Austin Clarke
“I never thought I would come to this, to be here, sitting in front of the man who put me in all this trouble, all this damn trouble.… Look, you forget that I came up here on a vacation? … and do you want to know something else? If I thought it would do something
bad
, something bad bad bad, to you, I would kill this blasted child in my womb. But that isn’t bad enough for you!”
“Okay, okay,” was all he said, and all he could say. And to change the conversation, he told her he had arranged with a friend at the Bedford Road immigration office to help her take out landed immigrant’s papers. “That’s what you want, isn’t it?” That was the last word he said to her. That was the last time he saw her. That was the moment when the house suddenly became as quiet, and as silent as a sea without a wave.
Time was no longer time. Bernice did not now belong to time. Time had no dominion over her; for she was time. A good, summer afternoon time. Time had changed her in such a short time, that her own sister could not understand what was happening. It was a new Bernice. It was a summer Bernice. And time was long and heavy with Estelle.
“I have a plan for you, Estelle,” Bernice said. They were walking along College Street, near the Toronto General Hospital. She was thinking of a job in the hospital for Estelle. She
thought of Priscilla who had attended Estelle’s welcoming party. “I made up my mind to help you. You are staying with me, ’cause I need company. But before you go and do the wrong thing, listen to me. I am going to figure out a way to make you a immigrant, if it means changing your name from Shepherd to Estelle Leach. As a matter of fact, from this afternoon, I am calling you Leach. Don’t forget that. ’Cause today, I claim you as a sister.” Estelle remained very quiet. She had already laid her plans to remain. Sam was going to work on his friend in the immigration office; now, Bernice was coming out with a similar idea.
“You know something?” Estelle said. “I wouldn’t mind being a nurse, at all.”
“You are
going to be a nurse
!”
“I always wanted to be a nurse.”
“Gal — as Dots would say — you is almost
that
right now!”
And they passed the ugly, silent hospital. It was proud and self-centred, hiding within its dirty brown brick, all the mysteries of diseases, and the curses and the cures of those diseases, which in a short time, Estelle would be learning about. Just as they reached the corner, a long double line of people was marching towards them. Some were carrying placards; some just walking; a few black persons (mostly women) were walking and holding down their heads as if they thought they should not be seen; and all of them were mumbling a song which had a very bad and lugubrious melodic line. Estelle could see the placards saying: CANADA IS NOT ALABAMA and END RACE PREJUDICE NOW and BLACK EQUALS WHITE and NEGROES ARE PEOPLE. Estelle hurried on to see better. The leaders came into full view: a Jewish man, wearing a pair of glasses that had one eye-lens darkened, holding hands with a
black woman. And there was a tall black man, proud as a prince, and he too was wearing glasses, dark glasses. The line passed and passed, until they were opposite about five black men; and when the men saw Estelle and Bernice (who was visibly upset and annoyed) they stopped singing, shut their mouths, and hastily looked the other way. Bernice walked off, as the lights changed; and she pulled Estelle behind her, saying, “Come woman, we don’t have the whole day, standing up watching a bunch o’ black people walking ’bout the place, making themselves look more foolish.”
“It is just like in the South,” Estelle said, a little sad she had to leave the marching. “I remember now that I saw coloured people marching like this, on television.…”
“Child, they been marching down South, up South, up North, all over the States. Whenever you open a newspaper, whenever the summer come, whenever you turn on the damn television, all you seeing these days is a lot o’ stupid black people marching ’bout the place.” She made a wicked rasping noise with her lips, to show her disgust. “Black people praying, kneeling down all over the street, won’t let traffics pass, making trouble. Praying and kneeling down, and when they tired doing them two things, they getting beat up all over the damn place. Christ! it sickens me to my stomach to see what this blasted world o’ black people is coming to.” She shook her head, from side to side, to show how despondent she was with this aspect of life. “And these niggers in Canada! Well, they don’t know how lucky they are!”
“I think you are wrong, Bernice. I think you are wrong, wrong, wrong.” Bernice gave her a cruel glance. “Now, if I was a person living in Canada, and if I knew about this marching-thing, I would be in it. God! and I would be in front, too,
leading! Just like that lovely black woman at the head, hooking up with that Jew man, as if she is the Queen o’ Tonga, be-Jees, and singing loud loud, too!”
“You, too?”
“Christ, yes! I am a Muslim, you didn’t know that?”
“But this is Canada, dear,
not
America. You and me, we is West Indians, not American Negroes. We are not in that mess. Leave that damn foolishness to
them
, you hear? ’cause we grow up in a place, the West Indies, where nobody don’t worry over things like colour, and where you aren’t condemn because you are blacker than the next person, and …”
“Woman, what the arse are you saying, at all?” When she realized how she had spoken to Bernice, she was trembling. But she was now fed up with Bernice’s dishonesty. “Look, be-Christ! Bernice you is, are, my sister. But I am saying you are
wrong
.” And she decided to end the conversation there. Bernice said nothing else.
They walked on, both of them pretending to be friends, while each one knew the other was cursing her. “Sickening,” Bernice said, at last sitting down in the WIF Club, grateful for the relief from seeing the marchers, and from walking. On the way, they heard the bells ringing in the tower of the university. They stopped to listen: Bernice shaking her head, sadly; and Estelle amazed. But they left the bells and the melody behind them. Men and women were laughing in the WIF Club; patting one another on the back, and saying, “What happ’ning, man? Oh hell, I can’t see you these days, man!” and a friend would say, with a smile, “Christ, man! things rough man, things
rough
!” And while they were there, a tall Jamaican entered, and shouted, “Rass, Small Island!” greeting a small, toughly put-together Barbadian man, who seemed to have
forgotten how to smile. Turning to the other four men sitting at the bar, drinking, he added, “Baje, here, is a hell of a skins-man, eh! I see him hustling a blonde skins last night, man!”
Bernice took her mind off the merriment of the men, to comment about the marchers, “Blasted stupid black people walking ’bout the white man road, with signs! They don’t know how to look for work? Every one o’ we seeing hell in this place, but we ain’t making trouble.… Mr. Geary, how, boy?” Mr. Geary came over, smiled, patted her on her shoulder, and wished her the best. “Can’t complain, boy,” she told him. “And how things?” He said, “Betwixt and between,” and then moved back into the curry and the steam and the ackee and cod fish that spurted and sputtered beautifully out of the kitchen.
“Well, I declare,” Estelle said, picking up the discussion after Mr. Geary left. “Something really has happened to you, Bernice. First it was the Muslim newspaper that was your bible, and now, it seems like it is
The Watchtower and Awake
.”
“That is the way life is,” Bernice said. “And anyhow, this is summer, child. So let we fill our guts with some o’ Mr. Geary’s nice curry-chicken, and get merry and drunk this peaceable Thursday afternoon.…” And they did that.
The sun was arrogant enough to suggest, through its glorious golden brightness, that it was going to catch the whole evening on fire. Bernice and Estelle, many hours after they had eaten and had drunk and were merry, were sitting, waiting, watching to see if the sun was going to keep its word. They were silent; almost respectful. The carilloneur’s music was helping to make the evening into a theatre. They were listening; almost dreaming.
“Bells
playing
hymns? Well, what the hell this white man can’t do, eh? heh-heh-heh!”
“Hymns
and
songs, darling. This is something you would never see in the West Indies,” Bernice said; and then ridiculed the West Indies, in the way she laughed.
“This is a funny country, in truth.” Estelle then looked up at the clock, which said five-twenty-five; and at the tower. But she couldn’t find the man nor the hands nor the bells.
“And this is why I tell you, Estelle, that I gets blasted vex when I see a pack o’ black people marching ’bout the road, looking like arses.”
The bells were ringing hymns now; and their voices were fresh on Estelle’s heart. They were washing out the problem that lay at the bottom of her womb; and she wished they could wash her clean of all personal problems. “I still can’t believe it is me, Estelle Shepherd, who …”
“
Leach!
Not Shepherd, child, you are a Leach by name, now, heh-heh!”
“Still, I can’t imagine that I could be here, and a man could be there, up there, playing hymns on bells.”
“Listening to them bells make me think o’ Mammy and death. One day when I was alone in that apartment, I start thinking as if Mammy was really dead, you don’t know that. Christ! and I even thought I had inherit the house in my mind …”
“Listening to that man up there, making me think of life and wanting to live. Life …” You could see how the bells were working on her face. The put a kind of fear on it; a fear for the wonderful power which was in the hands of the carilloneur. They were doing something beautiful to her. Bernice’s face, in her concentration, looked haughty and proud and beautiful, too.
“Ess, what hymn he say he playing now? You recognize it?”
“
The Day Thou Gavest …
”
“
Lord is Ending! Amen
.” Bernice said. “That is the hymn they took Pappy to his grave with, you remember, Ess? You don’t remember when they take Pappy outta the sea, drowned, how I cry and cry and cry, and people from all over the neighbourhood came and look in at the hole in the coffin? What a beautiful funeral Pappy had! Old women bowing down their heads low low and saying, Thank God, Pappy going up to his Maker!”
“That is one day I don’t want to remember.”
“Christ, Estelle, the weeping! the weeping and the crying and the singing. And you remember too, that I was the only person who insisted that they buried Pappy while he was still living, and really wasn’t dead yet?”
“He was dead, Bernice. Pappy was dead as hell, too!”
“Yes. But only after I make certain he was really dead, though; not before … and you remember, Estelle, you remember how all the people who couldn’t follow Pappy in mottor cars, stood outside their houses, and the walkers, then the riders on bicycles, then the cars, forty-nine cars Pappy had following him, and everybody was so sorry that Pappy didn’t make the fifty, a round number, ’cause then, that would have been a funeral to end all funerals … Well, listening to the magic and the goodness in that damn bell now, bringing it back to me, as if I was in a theatre watching a movie, two times, from beginning to end.” Bernice started to hum with the bells. Her voice, not a good singing voice, was struggling; and Estelle held her hand, and gave her strength, and joined her, singing. Just then, Henry came across the walk, from the little bridge nearby.
“Goddamn!” he said, surprised to see them sitting there. Estelle immediately dropped Bernice’s hand. He sat beside them, unfolded a large blown-up photograph of three policemen with three night sticks beating up one black woman. “Goddamn! Look at this.” Estelle looked and shuddered. Bernice snatched it from him, folded it in its original creases, tore it into bits and tore the bits into confetti, and then spread them to the wind, as if she was planting seed. “Goddamn, woman, are you crazy?”
“Don’t come here and spoil the peace for me, eh, Henry?”
“I just come from marching.”
“Well, go ’long back and march.”
“I saw you,” Estelle said. Henry sat between them now, listening to Estelle, and very impressed by her interest. He took out a cigarette and lighted it.
“And why you didn’t jump in the line, and shake yuh body-line, heh-heh!”
“It don’t have nothing, not a damn thing to do with Estelle. Estelle is a West Indian, you forget? It ain’t her business, Mister Henry.”
“Goddamn, that is your fight, too, baby! West Indian, Canadian, American, Bahamian — we is all niggers to Mister Charlie!”
“You may be one o’ them,” Bernice said, disdainfully, “but not me. I was sitting down here, listening to the niceness in these bells.”
“Fuck the bells! Excuse me, Estelle.”
“Man, what you say?”
“I say, fuck the bells!” He got up and sat beside Estelle. “You sitting down on the white man grass, in the white man university, listening to the white man playing bells, goddamn,
and telling me what? Next thing you are going to tell me, is that you ain’t no more West Indian, you is a goddamn Canadian, and a white one, too!”
Bernice sat up straight, and with great arrogance and scorn, said, “The only way I am going to beat him is to listen to him. And that is why I sitting down here.” Henry ignored her. Never before in his life, had he come to despise a woman so completely as he despised Bernice. Big, black, stupid arse-hole woman, he said to himself. But as soon as he realized he had said that about a black woman, his own people, he was sorry; and he altered his sentiment to: this big stupid woman.
“You see Boysie recently, Estelle?”
“Where Estelle would see Boysie?” Bernice snapped. “That bastard ain’t dead yet. If he ain’t careful, Dots will soon bury him, though!” She was thinking of Brigitte and the policeman’s threat. “Boysie had better watch his pees-and-queus!”
“Shit, woman! you
must
be having your period! Goddamn!”
“Why you don’t come and find out, if you is a man?”
“Listening to these bells,” Estelle cut in, a little embarrassed, “reminds me of back home …”