Dots was not therefore ignorant of the way Boysie felt about this subject and she could almost feel the violence of his hand on her body, the moment he found out. He would beat her like a snake, she knew. And if Henry heard first (and Henry had a habit of hearing all the gossip about women before anybody else), then he would surely tell Boysie, not to inform him, but rather to laugh at him.
“But still be careful, though.”
“As a black woman, you think if I wasn’ already careful for five years I would be sitting down here with you this afternoon? The moment I stop being careful, I am a dead woman. Dead. I been thinking a damn lot, lately. ’Bout this place and my position in this place. You know that I am leaving Mistress Hunter, that bitch. She has never told me a harsh word. She has never treat me mean. But I still have to leave her arse! It struck me sudden one night whilst I was laying down in that bed o’ mine in Rosedale. I jumped up trembling like a blasted leaf. To think, Bernice, that after five years, five long years that queen haven’ as much as taken out Blue Cross for me. I don’t have no Blue Cross, Bernice! The same thing with Physicians and Services. Tomorrow morning if I am so unlucked as to fall down them staircases in her home, be-Christ, the poor house and welfare would take me. Suppose, one o’ these nights I get drunk as hell and tell that woman what I really think of her, and tell her husband and her friends during one o’ her cocktail parties! Suppose I cuss her backside, stink-stink-stink, which I have had in mind to do many a time, where would I be?
“So, darling, I decided that since this is the way my subconscious working, I will have to put a couple o’ plans in her arse. God don’t like ugly.” She shook her head in a heavy sad gesture. The contagion smote Bernice. “This is what I planned to do, after plan number three’s in operation. I getting more older every day, not younger. And after five years I am ashamed to tell you Bernice that I do not have a bank account. I am as poor as a bird’s backside in winter, heh-heh-heh, bank-account-wise. Bank-account-wise is where you have beat me coming and going. I am thirty-eight going ’pon thirty-nine. Thirty-eight is old. That is old in any country. It is true that I married. But my being married isn’ no benefit. The man who put this ring on my finger isn’ worth shit, sometimes. That is my lot. I am not complaining, I am barely mentioning. But as I say, I am a person thirty-eight. Three-eight. It is not a pleasant thought. I know I haven’ come from no mansion back in Barbados as some o’ these worthless bitches on the domestic scheme let-on they come from. My father wasn’ no civil servant. My mother never wear a ring yet, furthermore a wedding ring. A didn’ leave no acre o’ ground and land back in Barbados. And be-Christ, I didn’ leave no money on Barclay’s Bank there, neither. That is my history. A thirty-eight-year-old whore like me soon will reach her change-o’-life, mini-pause as these people here calls it. So you see, life will soon come to a full stop, as far as I am concern. And with that in mind, I want to take up something. I want to succeed. I want to become something. I been thinking of it and I been losing sleep at night merely thinking of it.
“Bernice, I want to be a nurssaide. I not only want to be a nurssaide, I intend to be one. Look, I even went down at the Doctor’s Hospital place to ask the nursing director how I could become a nurssaide.”
“More than a year ago I told you to do this same thing.”
“A man says many things, Bernice. A man says many things in advice to a person, and that man don’t take none o’ that advice. But it don’t always mean that that advice fall on stony ground. All it mean is that that advice have not struck a note. But it strike a note in me now, though. That note is Henry. When I see how a police could come and beat up a man the way those cruel bastards beat up Henry, well, the time for taking advice not only has come, but be-Christ, darling, it come and nearly gone, too! Yes. Come September, I stepping high like anybody else, because I would be self-employ. That is our only salvation in this country, darling. To be self-employ. We must be self-employed. Self-employment. Come when you want to come, and go when the hell you wish to depart. Heh-heh-heh! And this is how I want you to fix Mistress Burrmann. Leave! Leave Mistress Burrmann. She could always get a next maid. Everyday there is boat-loads and train-loads and plane-loads of Eyetalians, Hungarians, Portuguese people, all sorts and brands o’ European people coming into this country. Let them servant for Mistress Burrmann. But you? Leave! Leave, yuh hear? Leff this bitch! Leff, leff, leff …”
“How could I do a thing like that, Dots?” Bernice said. “I don’t think a thing like
