Her mother almost dropped the cou-cou stick with which she was turning the corn meal which was her dinner; and she stood like a woman turned into the salt of wallaba, into a statue like that of Lord Horatio Nelson, and she said after she had wiped a fingernail of sweat from the forehead of her toils, “Never, you hear me? never you come into this humble but decent abode again, and utter them obscene words in my hearing! God blind England! Who the hell England think she is, anyhow?”
Two chastisements for one crime, one crime of patriotism: the headmistress had given her six lashes with her urine-soaked leather strap, and it had torn her skin in welts and little long mounds where the correction of the strap had landed. And her mother had warned her about England. It is done already, Lord, and you should forget it and stop punishing me, and I should be able to stop remembering it …
Bernice had forgotten about calling Lonnie. Instead, she was thinking again of people she hated. Mrs. Burrmann remained at the head of her inventory. In the thirty-odd months she was employed by her, Bernice had killed Mrs. Burrmann on seven different occasions, in her mind. Always, it was a violentless death: killing that wiped out Mrs. Burrmann away from the present, and from Bernice’s presence. Bernice would sometimes will Mrs. Burrmann dead like a fairy with a wand of evil-doing — although to Bernice, willing Mrs. Burrmann dead was not an evil. She elevated Brigitte to second place because she got more money for doing the same domestic job less efficiently than Bernice. And Bernice never understood how a Jewish lady like Mrs. Gasstein could employ a German maid!
“You don’t seem to understand, Bernice, gal, that this life is a battle o’ wits,” Dots said, trying to explain Brigitte’s presence in the Gasstein household. “You don’t really understand it? Well, let me explain it, then. Now, Mistress Gasstein, being a born Jew, wouldn’t think of hiring a black woman like you or me. No. That ain’ a high enough social position for her, in terms o’ domestics and maids, since every blasted little white woman with a husband making more than five-thousand dollars a year wages, and with a house, want to and could hire a blasted person as a living-in slave. But that do not bring prestige. You see the sperspective I driving at? But when she could spend her riches on a German woman, who she know is a German, and therefore a Nazzi, well, she could brag to all her Forest Hill friends that she have one o’ them working under her. You understand now, the sperspective?”
“I don’t understand it. Not that I don’t understand the words you used, it isn’t that. I do not understand it becausing it is the same thing as a woman like me, let’s say, with riches and class like the riches of a Mistress Burrmann or a Mistress Gasstein or a Mistress Hunter down in Rosedale, turning round and refusing to hire a black person as my maid, and instead, I hire a white woman who I know beforehand is a member of the Klu-Klux-Klan.”
“You got a point there!”
“Be-Christ, I have too.”
“But still.”
“Still, what?”
“Still.”
“No still. That ain’ true. It isn’t a matter of still, or no still. It splain. I would not, could not trust a Jewish person who I know hates a German person and who still turn round and employ one o’ them, a German, simply because …”
“You will understand when you understand first that white people think altogether different and contrary from black people.” Bernice was very attentive to this. “Be-Christ, they have a different brand o’ logic-machine in their head, turning out the kind of logic you just discern concerning Brigitte and Mistress Gasstein.” And that was the only explanation that Bernice would accept.
In spite of a façade of friendship between Brigitte and herself, Bernice had said some scandalous things about her, and had ripped her reputation, which she could see sometimes through the window blinds, into threads: Brigitte had two men visiting her at the same time, two white men, both policemen; and she had a third man, a black man, Boysie. Bernice said this. Gossiped about this. But she couldn’t understand it. All she knew was that one of the policemen had a name like “Wallace-something … Wallace? or Vallitz …?” She wanted Boysie to put a “proper lashing” on Brigitte and teach her sense. She wished that Boysie would breed her, and leave her. She did not wish it in such a way that Boysie would get into any trouble. She wanted the sorrow and the misery to fall entirely on Brigitte.
But now it was time to repent, because she was certain that these hatreds had brought on the vengeance which she was now experiencing. There was a great superstition involved. More than a superstition considering how obsessive her problems had become to her. She wanted to repent, and being a christian-minded woman, she could think of only one pure way to do it. She had to pray. She wanted to read her Bible; for she was a woman who knew that only in the Bible would she find the exact word of advice or reprimand which her present crime demanded. As a matter of fact, Bernice used this book like a dictionary. She was searching for it now in its usual resting places: under her pillow, on the dresser, on the shelf among the soaps and the Modess boxes, under the chesterfield; she even went into the bathroom to see whether she had read it while peeing. But it was in no place she had searched. She was getting mad. “Where the hell is my
