Storm of Fortune

say that experience never killed anybody, that you have to experience a bad experience one more time to correct it, that only the weak in spirit and intelligence … but I have gathered my experience from this experience. If I tell you how this whole thing happened, if I told you all the things that that man told me ’bout his wife, Mrs. Burrmann, how she can’t do this and how she can’t do that, that he isn’ happy with her, if I tell you everything that that man promised to give me, merely because he could work-up his behind on me and feel like a man for once in his life, Bernice you yourself would be ashamed. I am so ashamed of myself, so ’shamed that I brought shame on your head and on Dots heads. … But there is one thing that I want you to understand. Bernice, one thing. And that is that I didn’t let that white man do anything to me that I couldn’t prevent him from doing. And I want you to understand that. You and Dots and everybody who would have something to say about this, although they don’t know one damn thing about my business. The only reason he succeeded in doing what he did to me was that I had less love in my heart than he had hate in his. And to-besides, I treated him like a man. And this is what got me frightened now. A great fear has come over me, Bern, a great fear. But I am not going to embark on any vengeance scheme. There ain’ going to be no hatred from me, although, be-Christ, as you would say, the white man ain’ have no blasted right expecting nothing from us save hate and hatred and bloodshed …” And it was at this point that she had fainted on the stretcher, from the exhaustion of her body and blood and thoughts — or was it while she was on the bed? Perhaps, it was on the bed where they had put her by this time.

It had been confusing and terrible amidst the screams of the ambulance and the crying of Estelle, and the shame, the shame; for Bernice had been muttering all the time during the drive down to the hospital, “My own sister, my own sister tonight have crowned my head with a crown o’ thorns and shame”; and she was shaking her head in sorrow as she said this, “Estelle have succeeded at last in making me a princess o’ shame and sorrow” — perhaps they had already put her into her bed, in the public ward, by the time she had made this confession. Yes, she said all that on her hospital cot; “and there ain’t no better place to confess or tell the truth, if in a lifetime a person had find it too hard even to talk to God or whisper something in His ear. There is no better place. But God have mercy on you, Estelle. God bound and ’bliged to have pity on you because what you have done, you did it in ignorance ’gainst the knowledge o’ white people and ’gainst the knowledge o’ white people in their actions to you, a black person. So God have a heavy penalty to pay himself, if he don’t help you.”

That was what Bernice had said, leaving the hospital, herself still under shock from the ambulance and the emergency, before Freeness (who drove taxicabs when there was nothing doing in the way of crap games and parties) found her walking in a daze, east along Gerrard, crossing Yonge Street, going in the wrong direction for Marina Boulevard. Just before Freeness recognized her, Bernice had remembered something: she had forgotten to take the 45 rpm record which Estelle had held tight in her hands, all during the long drive down to the General Hospital. It was Estelle’s favourite record: I Lost Someone, sung by James Brown. She played it everyday, particularly after she had found out she was pregnant.

Freeness stopped the cab and waited until Bernice drew alongside. He then ordered the drunk he was taking home to “Get to hell outta my cab, man, before I call the cops for you!” and although the man couldn’t understand why he was being ordered out, he hastily climbed out, hitting his head twice on the top of the back door. Freeness took Bernice home. He did not charge her one penny. He had had to drive with the meter ticking, registering money, because the regulations said so. It was a four-dollar-sixty-cents ride. And in all that time, he did not once ask her what was wrong, why she was walking the streets so late at night. He assumed it was a madness that came with loneliness and by being away from home. And when Bernice was able to piece all the jigsaws of her confusion together in the hours since she got home, she decided to get Freeness’s telephone number from Henry, to thank him personally. But she quickly forgot all about it when Dots arrived.

Bernice looked at Dots and began to hate her the same way she hated Mrs. Burrmann. Dots knew too much about her troubles: Mrs. Burrmann did too many unkind things to her and brought about these troubles. There was the same wall of noncommunication between herself and Dots as existed for over thirty-four months between Mrs. Burrmann and herself: and whereas Mrs. Burrmann never did know how Bernice felt about anything important (and probably didn’t care) because of Bernice’s smile and her apparent contentment with her employment, which were mere defences erected to prevent Mrs. Burrmann from ever getting at the truth, and to prevent herself from ever having to tell the truth to Mrs. Burrmann; now, she was using this same silence, this same dumbness, this same stubbornness against Dots, which she hoped Dots would interpret correctly and make her decide to leave. Bernice had no desire to talk this morning. But