Satisfied that drowsiness had done nothing to take away Estelle’s attentiveness, Mrs. Macmillan raised her two hundred pounds from the moaning bed and sat up, leaving her feet, bare and white as two small ghosts, hanging a few feet above the floor. Her mouth was stiff and her palate dry, so she drank some of the stale water in a glass on her bedside table, wallowed it round and round noisily in her mouth, and then swallowed it. “Now!” she said, ready for Estelle and for a long heart-to-heart talk. “You listen to what I have to say, girl. I been down here much longer than you. And a woman like me who went through childbirth twelve times and who experienced pregnancy four more times above those twelve, well after all, she isn’t a person without some experience and common sense. And because I happen to have a wedding band on this hand” (she held it up to Estelle’s face like an accusation of spinsterhood and tainted virginity), “it does not mean that I didn’t get in a mess the same way you did. You hear me, darling? I will bet you anything you name, that there is more married whores in here with wedding bands, than single girls like you. And that is the long and the short of it. You have all your life still in front of you. You are young. One mistake do not equal a death, or failure. Without mistakes, a woman isn’t a woman. And mistakes is experience. What you told me about your sister and the situation where she works made me conclude that you have to find somewhere else to live until you are on your feet again. And girl, you hear me, darling? This country is not a place where you could exist without a little help. You hear me? And it is help that I am offering you. You hear me? You ain’t the first and like hell! you won’t be the last woman to have a child for a man who you love and who turned round and pissed on your love afterwards, and who tell you that he intends to marry you, and to do this and do that for you, and then pissed on you after he put you this way.” (Estelle could not endure the double indemnity of her mistake by admitting to Mrs. Macmillan, who after all was a stranger, that the man was already married. She told her only that he was her sister’s employer. But it didn’t fool Mrs. Macmillan, although she never let on that she knew more than Estelle told her.) “Look, I know a few people in Timmins. Timmins is a small town. I was born and raised in Halifax myself, but I know more people in Timmins because it is a friendly little town. I make you a promise that by the time you come up, in two days, after you come by train, I make you a promise that I will have a job waiting for you in one of the hotels, or at one of the resort places, or even in a restaurant run by a friend of mine, a friend of my old man’s. Girl, look, you are different from the rest of the people in Timmins. You look exotic, and you aren’t exactly what you might call a bad-looking girl neither. In fact, you’re beautiful as hell. And the way that men in the north look at beautiful and exotic women, like the Indian women! I swear to you that if you work behind a counter selling coffee, or even at the cash register as the cashier, that restaurant or that hotel or that resort would make more money, more business than it ever made in a whole summer full of American tourists! And you must get through, then … you understand what I say?”
All this impending adventure, all this strangeness, all this new life about to open in the north frightened Estelle. It went right down to the bottom of her guts like a stomach ache. She didn’t have chick nor child in Canada, except her sister Bernice, who although she would not welcome Estelle on her discharge from the hospital, yet she would scream like hell should she hear that Estelle was really going up to Timmins to spend time with a complete stranger. Bernice would see more visions of northern men and beasts and mooses and bears raping Estelle, and taking advantage of her, than the Grimm brothers could imagine in a ghost story! Bernice would not believe that Estelle was grown up enough to be able to take care of herself — although Estelle was twenty-nine years old — mainly because of what had happened to her already, and because of what had laid her out in this hospital bed with her present problem. Estelle was a child to Bernice; and a child she would always remain, so long as she lived in Canada. But Bernice didn’t know that Estelle was now a landed immigrant, meaning she was free to go and come as she pleased, free to take any job she could get. Estelle had kept this trump card hidden the same way she hid the date of her discharge. It had taken Sam Burrmann only two days after her admittance to the hospital to work out the immigration difficulties with his contact in the Bedford Road immigration office. Normally, it took a West Indian months, and in some cases years. But he said he would do it for her, and he did. It was a side of his character Estelle had not known before; and she was sorry that she could not have found out more good qualities about him. She had condemned him completely, not merely because he had got her pregnant —
