“Oh come! What the hell you telling me? Ninety stinking dollars a month for clear three years now?”
“I am still living, Dots,” Bernice said. What Dots didn’t know was that as the storm of scandal burst, Mr. Burrmann had raised her wages to three hundred dollars a month. She knew that the coincidence of the increase with Estelle’s illness was not insignificant. But she was not going to expose this to Dots. Although Dots would appreciate the increase in wages, and would say, “Gal, it over-due, it due and over-due long long long time!” and would be very happy for Bernice’s sake, yet she would be resentful and would talk about the motive for the increase.
“You forgetting everything, already?”
“Like what?”
“Like Estelle. When that girl arrived, Mistress Burrmann didn’ even want to give you time off to go to the airport to meet your own sister. The children been rude as hell to you, a grown woman. Mr. Burrmann came into this apartment and do what the hell he did to your sister. Mash her up. Henry get beat up, brutalized on this same street. And you are telling me that you don’t understand what this same street symbolize to you? It don’t symbolize something nasty to you?”
“I still have to live, child.”
Bernice said it simply, and like an afterthought. Dots could think of nothing suitably angry to tell her. Instead, she went back to her original conversation about plans. “Anyhow,” she said, “we have to plan.” She settled herself comfortably on the chesterfield which was now covered with the Mexican cloth, and which was tidy. “Look, let me and you live together.”
The suggestion took Bernice by surprise.
“What?”
“Me and you. And Estelle. We could live together. That way, we could save some money. Even if you still want to work for Mistress Burrmann you don’t have to live in. Consider it.”
“But Dots, after what we did …”
Bernice became very embarrassed when she said this. Before Dots could answer (if indeed she intended answering), Bernice looked away. She mentioned the kissing incident again, and Dots shook her head, signifying that she hadn’t forgotten, and could never probably forget as long as she lived.
“Look, it would be cheaper,” Dots urged her, getting away at the same time from the embarrassment of the memory. “It would be cheaper. I wouldn’t have to journey all the way up here to see you when I want to see you. Boysie wouldn’t be any wiser, neither. Instead o’ me having to pay for the apartment by my one, you will chip in, and Boysie would be working soon.” Bernice refused. Dots began to think of Boysie. “Christ, I feel that the most ignorant man in the world must be able to get a job in Canada. This place have jobs. No man could be so stupid as not to be able to find a job in Toronto.”
“But you must admit it, Dots, that it already take Boysie eight months to try to put his hands on something to do. I know Europeans that come to this country today, say, and tomorrow morning they have sick benefits, a bank account, credit and a job plus a motor car. Boysie should try harder and he should stop listening to Henry. Henry is a lost cause, a very lost cause. Furthermore, Henry have white woman to look after him. Boysie don’t.”
“Still, yuh have to give the devil his due. Look, two or three mornings ago, I pressed Boysie’s white shirt, his trousers legs was like two razor blades, sharp! and he had-on a tie and dress-off real nice, and he went down at the unemployment place downtown. The man down there at that job centre must have ask Boysie if he want a job in the cleaning department. And child! you should have heard the way Boysie cussed that man! Well, Jesus Christ, we is black people in a white man land. What therefore is so blasted wrong with a white man suggesting to a black man that he should be a janitor? Eh? What is wrong with Boysie, a stupid arse man like him; if I have to be honest, what is so contrary that he couldn’ take that cleaning job? God, it wasn’ even a cleaning job outside. I could have understand if he was ashamed to let people see him collecting garbage in the street. I could have understood that sperspective, as Mistress Hunter would say. But a inside cleaning job? Jesus Christ, I know hundreds o’ Europeans, white people who come here and they work the first five or six years as cleaners. Be-Christ, Boysie ain’t went as far as grade four in school, and all he intend to do is to listen to the shit that Henry fills his head with, day in and day out. Henry tell him don’t look for no work. Darling, this is one country where it does not matter what kind o’ job a man have. The only thing that matters in this place is what size a man’s pay cheque is when Friday evening comes. If you could push a heavy bundle-buggy o’ groceries with a couple thick
