They gossiped about the nurses: who were the mean ones, who were the kind ones, and who were the good ones; and who, among the patients, in their opinion, unmedical but certain, would not live to be carried out of this ward in a wheelchair. And Mrs. Macmillan said something which stunned Estelle. It contradicted a basic belief of hers, based on the presumption that white people, because they were over there, on one side, did not notice (they didn’t have the time) what was happening on the other side, on her side, on Bernice’s side, on Nurse Priscilla’s side. Mrs. Macmillan said, making her statement sound like a question, “But tell me girl, honestly, why that coloured nurse never once in the week you’ve been here so far, why she never once came to your bedside and said good-morning, or goodnight? She never even brought you a bloody bedpan!” Estelle wasn’t sure she could tell Mrs. Macmillan the real reason. And even after Mrs. Macmillan left, and while Estelle watched her being wheeled out of the ward, and watched the elevator indicator going down down down into the lounge, and when she saw her from the window on the sixth floor, get into the taxicab on Gerrard Street, and move off; and when she waved, although she knew that Mrs. Macmillan was thinking of her home in Timmins, still Estelle was not certain she herself knew the reason. But she promised, before she was herself discharged, to find it out.
The rest of this Wednesday afternoon reminded her of the hours she had been detained in the inner glass-walled office in the immigration section up at Malton International Airport, the night she arrived in this country. This was a sad afternoon. That night was no less sad. Mrs. Macmillan knew what she was doing when she offered her the gin. Before Estelle drank any, she made sure that there was chewing gum in the drawer of her bedside table. “That woman!” she said, full of admiration for Mrs. Macmillan. “That blasted woman! I feel I lost her, now!” A tear escaped from her eyes. “She’s the only friend I can say I have.”
Dots had it all planned. The fertility of her plan startled her own husband. Bernice, when she was told about it on the telephone, was no less astonished. Neither Bernice nor Boysie had ever considered Dots to be a woman of such imagination. And perhaps she wasn’t, and had never herself felt she had this facility. Not because she did not have the inherent ability, but rather because she had never in the five years she worked as a domestic in this country been called upon to make a decision for herself: a decision such as choosing between a can of peas that cost thirty-nine cents and one that cost thirty-five cents — the dearer one being two ounces heavier than the cheaper one. Everything of this sort was done for her through the functions of her domestic job: Mrs. Hunter ordered the groceries on the telephone, and she herself paid the bills. Dots merely cooked the groceries, wasted them, pinched some for the private parties she had in her rooms, or saved them through her industriousness.
It was this prospect of a new life: the possibility that she would have to be going out in the summer heat and the cold of winter, lining up with the other housewives, shopping for her own groceries in those brightly lit frightening supermarkets, where everything was so silent, and so stark and so clean and so businesslike; where, if she had collected too many groceries in her cart for the money she had in her purse, the cashier would ring in the amount and she standing there in the long nervous line would faint before she could think of what to say or do. She was going into a new way of life after five years of seclusion and riding on the back of Mrs. Hunter’s wealth. But this she knew. And she was prepared for it.
Her first plan was based on self-preservation. Dots always said, “I have to watch my health, gal. I have to make sure that there’s always health in my body. This country is so damn rough and hard-hearted that a person is nothing, if one morning he finds himself without good health.” And with this medical philosophy rivetted home, she arranged a thorough medical examination from Dr. Hunter; and because she was his maid, she paid nothing for it. “Mister Hunter, sir,” she said to him one morning, on entering the office he had in his home where he did part of his part-time examinations of his rich friends and other clients. “Mister Hunter, if you please, and if you ain’ too busy at the present moment, I would like you to look at this thing I have on my shoulder, because all the time, standing up in that kitchen and in front of that hot stove, I can feel this pain working itself down from my shoulder-blade, right cross my whole body …” Dr. Hunter was impressed by her complaint. And without Dots having to be more specific, if in fact he felt there was anything wrong with her, specifically, the doctor came to the door (he was dozing when she knocked) and gave her a thorough examination. Nothing had been wrong with her. But she wanted to be sure.
“You’re as strong as an ox, Cumberbatch. An ox, Cumberbatch,” he said. He did not realize what he had said when he gave her this clean slate of health.
Next, Dots arranged for an examination equally thorough, for Boysie. Once or twice, the doctor had remarked that Boysie should “see a doctor with that cough of his.” It was a
