Meanwhile, Mrs. Macmillan made another effort to influence her. “I know things are hard as hell, you hear me?” Estelle nodded. “And it has nothing to do with the fact that you aren’t a Canadian like me. I was born here. This country is mine. And by-God, sometimes, I have to sit down and wonder if it is really so. Bloody foreigners and the Italians particularly, in a small town, own this country, you hear me, darling? Foreign people in charge of the mines up north. They take charge of the resort areas. They own the clubs, the hotels, and by-God, today in Timmins you can see as many foreign faces on the city council as you can see local faces. I was born in Halifax, in a place next door, jutting and butting on Africville where your people, coloured people, been living for generations. And the little amount of high school I managed to get before I found myself with my first child I was playing with coloured children at school. I grew up with coloured children. They was decent coloured folks, too! Some of them even made good in life, and I know one fellow who is a lawyer today in Halifax. Lemme tell you something about my life. When I was pregnant with Nancy, that’s my first child, I was seventeen. Joe was eighteen. Neither he nor me had ever worked for a living ‘cepting summer jobs, which as you know, or may not know, is the custom in this country being that most high school kids work during the summer months, July, August and September. Well, anyways. I was living at Joe’s people. My own mother and father threw me out. But today we own the house we live in. Joe drives a truck for a large firm. The first three of my kids, Nancy, Peter and Anne, all are going to Timmins Collegiate. I worked in a factory for ninety cents an hour. Joe at that time was bringing in a dollar fifteen, eight hours a day, six days a week. Bur praise God, today, today he could come home anytime and sit down in front of his television and watch hockey with a bottle of beer in his hand, without worrying where the next meal is going to come from to feed twelve mouths. That’s what I call being free. I love a large family, darling. I hope you get a large one too. There’s no more fun in this world than to sit down when those supper dishes are done and everybody is warm and stuffed-full with food, it could even be potatoes! And you hear your kids talking and playing and arguing — or as we often do, in the winter, get round that old piano and have a sing-song. There’s television in Timmins now, we have our own station — don’t mind half of what you hear is in French! But the north is a bright country, and if you don’t know French, well by-God, you would have to learn French then, eh? Anybody can learn French. If you don’t want to learn French, well, don’t watch television in French and don’t learn French.” She passed her hand under the belly of her housecoat, and slid down from the bed. “I am going to wash up. When I come back, tell me that you decide to come up north with me, you hear me, darling?” And she left in a clean action, as if there was no reference to what had been talked before.
Estelle admired her. Such a powerful, determined, sure woman! She saw some of Bernice’s aggressiveness in her. Perhaps that was why Bernice didn’t take to her when they first met. On Bernice’s part, however, there was no obligation of friendliness nor of friendship: she was not in need of the kind of advice and moral support Mrs. Macmillan was resourceful in, and which was a great consolation, if not assistance, to Estelle. With Mrs. Macmillan gone merely a few yards away, merely on a visit to the washroom, a great loneliness came over Estelle. She had come to depend so much upon her; and her dependence was the greater since Mrs. Macmillan was the first woman in Canada in this hospital, white or black, who offered friendship based upon nothing more than the fact that she liked Estelle. “Girl, you are in a hell of a mess!” she had said, when they got talking the first time. “And you look like a straight kid. I could tell from the instant you came in.” Estelle did not know that she had screamed in her sleep that first night, when they brought her back from the operating room, and after the sedative had worn off. It was Priscilla who had given it to her, following the emergency operation. Bernice had left by then.
With Mrs. Macmillan still away washing up, Estelle had time to face herself, and to try to remember and redraw that part of her life which began that night she hemorrhaged. She made an attempt to get up and go to the washroom herself, but realizing that this was a subconscious desire to be near to Mrs. Macmillan, she lay back down instead and pulled the covers high, up to her chest. She looked at the ceiling of the ward, and saw that it was spotless. She would spend many hours staring at the ceiling: This ceiling is clean, everything about this hospital is clean. But it is dead, and the people in this ward are dead although they are living. I don’t know what it would be like if I was in this place in the winter! I have to thank God for that
