They talked about everything under the sun. She knew his name, Matthew Woods (he didn’t think it would hurt to tell her his correct name), his age (he was thirty), and his address (“I live in a rasshole slum house, as my Jamaican friend would say, somewhere on Bedford Road, near the university. It does pain my arse when I have to pay that bastard, pardon my language Estelle, but this country can do funny things to a man’s vocabulary … twelve dollars every Friday,” he told her).
He was merry. He was beginning to feel his drinks, and his oats. He exchanged his seat on the chair for a place beside her, on the bed. Estelle moved to give him a comfortable seat beside her. He brought the gin bottle and placed it near, beside her on the floor. Estelle rested her hand on his, and got up, and closed her valise, which she had left open, and in which she could see a pink brassiere, and which she feared the young man had seen. (“Don’t want to give this blasted woman-hungry West Indian boy the wrong ideas!”)
The young man had seen it; he had also seen the under-softness of her knees. The moment she came back, he rested his hand on her knee, as if he was about to tell her something very personal, something very confidential. But when she saw that he was not about to say anything at all, she removed it in such a way as not to hurt his feelings. He turned, and put his arm round her waist, and forced her close to him. “All right? All right? Eh, darling?” he was asking. Estelle trembled. She trembled because she was so fed up. To think that this could happen twice in one train ride! And the second time with a black man! Her own people! “All right?” He was forcing his face against her face, trying to force her to lie on the bed. She had not yet refused his kiss by turning her face. And he, hectic with heat and sex, did not have the wisdom to see that his actions were objectionable.
“I warning you, Matthew Woods, I warning you to stop behaving like a damn fool.”
“Oh, you only playing shy. Why you let me come in here then, with you in a bare nightgown and housecoat, if you didn’t want me to …”
And then the gin bottle crashed over his head. And the blood spurted. She had given him a thud of a blow. In a mad, frightened, single action, he leaped off the bed, ran to the door, unlocked the door, rushed out, and closed the door, without the slightest sound, without the slightest jerk of his body, all in one swift, noiseless, jaguarlike action. Estelle looked at the broken bottle (she was very sorry she had spilled the gin: it was such a good summer drink!), holding it in her hand; and absolutely fed up, with herself, with her life, with Matthew Woods and the white man who tried to kiss her, she threw the bottle against the wall. Then she pressed the buzzer and started packing her valise. When the porter came (it was the Barbadian, who had made the bet with Matthew Woods, but who did not know he had won the bet), she asked him what was the next stop.
“North Bay, ma’am,” he said, politely. “But your stop is Timmins, ain’t it, ma’am? Timmins’s still a long pull.”
“How do you get off this train?”
“Two coaches down, ma’am. But the next stop is North Bay, not Timmins. We coming into North Bay in a few minutes.” (Was he worried about his bet; or about his “admittable” evidence?)
“Thanks.” She walked towards him, forcing him backwards towards the door. “Thank you now, very much.” He got the message.
“Goodnight, ma’am,” he said, and closed the door behind him. Outside, half asleep and puzzled (“Where in hell is that nigger?”), he had to admit, “she’s a real dish! and one hell of a she-cat! I shouldda tried my luck! That nigger, Matthew Woods lucky as hell.”
When Estelle walked down the steps from the platform, in the distance, amidst the steam and the roar and the men scurrying with the baggage, she saw Matthew Woods, with a large white bandage on his head. Beside him, laughing loudly so that Estelle could hear, and know why, was the Barbadian married-man-of-love porter. She did not look back. Although North Bay was a strange town.
“Estelle is nothing but a little cheap whore!” Dots said.
“Once upon a time, I would have argued with you ’bout that,” Bernice conceded. “But now, I have to be the first man to cast the first stone in regards to my sister’s badness. God knows, God knows I try hard to help out that girl. And what I get for it? I get thanks? I get acknowledgments? I get anything but botheration for the kindness I showed that girl in bringing her up here from Barbados where she would have rotten-away? I have put my job in jeopardy. I went into my bank account to the tune of three hundred dollars. Paying off debts for Estelle.”
Dots and Bernice are sitting in Bernice’s quarters: they are drinking German beer. All of a sudden Bernice says, “I have to turn over a new leaf. When Estelle leave to go back to Barbados, I will still be here fighting this man to keep alive. If Estelle get married, if she even married Mr. Burrmann, I will still be a damn domestic.
