“I glad too, Bernice.”
“Look what I brought for you.” And she opened the large shopping bag with Eaton’s printed on it; and she showed Estelle six large juicy-looking red apples, a dozen grapefruits, two large bars of Cadbury chocolate, a carton of cigarettes and a package of chewing gum. “I bring these,” she said, somewhat unnecessarily. “Where you want me to put them?” She was already unloading them on the table beside the bed, when she noticed the vase of red roses. “A dozen roses?” she said surprised, though impressed. “Wait, who could be wasting their money on you? A dozen roses cost a fortune! I buy them sometimes for Mistress Burrmann … a whole dozen? Who send them for you?” Before Estelle answered (and she didn’t know what to say), Bernice was searching the table to see if a card had come with the roses. A card did come. But Estelle had already destroyed it. “Estelle, who senning these roses to you? Who else know that you are in here? … besides me and Brigitte, who knows?”
“Brigitte send the roses, Bernice.”
“Christ, I told Dots that Brigitte was a real friend! That’s nice o’ Brigitte.” She was relieved. “But I thought it was he. Anyhow, I don’t want to upset you by talking ’bout him. You’s a sick girl. But when you get better, I hope you would think-up something, some plan or some action concerning your life and what you intends to make out of it in Canada. And I trust I won’t have to ask you, nor tell you, what that action is going to be. You understand me?”
“Yes, Bernice.”
“You really understand what I driving at?”
“I understand, Bernice.”
“Good!”
Estelle wished Bernice would drop dead, would leave, disappear, and never come back. She wished this afternoon was that afternoon she was to leave for Timmins with Mrs. Macmillan.
“Henry get beaten-up.” Bernice introduced this new subject because she felt she had gained enough compliance from her sister; and being herself a woman of a sensitive nature, although she could be very hard and heartless at times, she thought that this new gossip would provide some consolation for Estelle. “Henry got beaten-up.”
“No! By who?”
“Running after somebody-else woman. Fooling round with the wrong woman, a man’s woman. Heh-heh-heeee! he got some good lashes too!” She said it as if it was a blessing, long overdue.
“We Henry?” Estelle asked. “Our Henry?” she said, correcting her grammar.
“Two police. Not one. Two! And I sure he get a good stiff, cut-arse from them. Because, if what I see on television is true, and the television don’t lie, Estelle, it don’t lie … if them two police beat him half as proper as that television shows me is the manner that police does beat coloured people in Canada and in the States, well, be-Christ, Estelle, Henry got a thorough cut-arse!”
“Yuh lie!”
“I can’t say it didn’ serve him right. Them two police tarred his backside proper. One eye swell-up big big big, the other one black-and-blue, and Henry stiff from head to foot, all over.” She paused to permit Estelle time to take in all this violence, and to relish it, before she added, “It took place in front o’ me, on Marina, the same night you was bleeding your poor self to death. Opposite. That’s where this stradegy take place. Brigitte had him up in her room. Doing what she likes to do with men. And no sooner than Henry put back on his trousers, I guess, no sooner than he peeped out through that alleyway leading from the stairs to that harlot’s bedroom, and he reached the road, bram! the two police jumped him and commence to paint his arse, blam! blam! blam! … Christ, Estelle, I think I still hearing them blows right now.”
“Did you know it was Henry all the time?” The question took Bernice by surprise.
“Well, I don’t mean to say I actually heard the beating,” she said, “but what I mean is that he got such a proper licking, and the damage done to his face and features is so brutal and so bad to look at, that anybody seeing his face in this situation would swear that they was seeing it when it happened.”
“Oh!” Estelle said. Bernice was relieved.
“According to Dots, and you can’t always take everything Dots say as the gospel, but Dots did say that Henry borrow a car from Boysie, and went up there unknown to Boysie, smelling round Brigitte. Seems, if you put two and two together, that cut-arse was earmarked for nobody else but Boysie. But God works in a damn mysterious way. Boysie born lucky. But it ought to teach him a lesson.”
“This is a terrible place.” She grabbed her stomach, feeling for the child she hoped was still there.
“That isn’ the word for it, darling.”
“Toronto is a cruel place.”
“Though still, if a man is going with a woman, and that woman turned out to be deceitful and unfaithful to him, it still
