Yours in Christ, Brother Lonnie.
PS. I am going to take out a picture and send to you, showing you my wife to be and myself holding the morning service, Sunday morning, the first Sunday of the month. Thought for today:
Though your heart may be as hard as flint,
In that heart God can still make a dent.
Bernice wasn’t quite sure she was not dreaming. She read the final page again, the page that contained Lonnie’s moral and spiritual transformation. And the meaning of the page hit her as Lonnie’s baptismal water must have cleansed him of all the sorrow and the hardship and sins that baptism is meant to do. She was shaking now. She was furious. Lonnie had served her a trick. She was alone again: this time, irrevocably alone. There was no one beyond the present difficulties of life in her new adopted country to help her bear those very difficulties brought on by the country itself. Estelle, first; now, Lonnie. She could think of nothing to do but call Dots on the telephone. Dots apparently was engaged in something more important. She said this by the brusque manner in which she answered the telephone.
When Bernice poured out her heart to Dots, including reading the entire letter (she read the final page of Lonnie’s baptism and reformation twice for Dots, who wanted to hear it), all the consolation Dots gave was, “I wanted to warn you ’bout this a long time ago. I warned yuh, gal! I warned yuh. Instead of bringing up man to warm your nightgown, you went and bring up woman?”
“But I didn’ know that Lonnie was thinking ’bout marriage, though.”
“You know now!” And then Dots sought to lessen her unkindness. “Any man thinks ’bout marriage, Bernice, if the woman is sweet enough and if she can cook. You don’t know that? You didn’t know that? Well, be-Christ, you know it today!”
“And Lonnie get saved. Lonnie get saved. When I was living with Lonnie, Lonnie never ever, never ever went near a church, oh my God in all …”
“Well, he’s going now. And you’re lucky that you didn’ send down that new suit for Lonnie, for he would be wearing it to his wedding as his bridegroom-suit, and you won’t be his bride, neither.”
“And she is a sister …”
“When it rain, it does pour, gal. Lonnie gone!” And the telephone was dropped in her ears.
The message went first to Boysie. Boysie told it to Dots. Immediately (before she even knew the circumstances, the particulars, the causes, the reasons, the date or the place), Dots got on the telephone and told it to Bernice. Bernice telephoned Brigitte who was still in her bad books of “people to hate”; but this news was so happy, that old grievances and hostilities could be put aside — for the time being — so she told her. Brigitte could not call Boysie at his home for fear that Dots would answer the telephone. She would have telephoned Henry (who she was seeing on the sly, even after the policemen had beat him up), but she wanted to find out first if it was true.
Henry and Agatha were getting married.
Everybody was happy. Bernice wished aloud on the telephone to Dots that Estelle was here to hear the good news. Dots wished she would reappear before the wedding day, two weeks from now, on a Saturday afternoon, at four, at St. Thomas Church on Huron Street. Everybody wished Henry and Agatha the best in marriage, and lots of children.
Bernice got on the phone to Henry, and shouted into it, “You big ugly black man! How come you getting such a lovely woman to be married to you? That woman have rocks in her blasted head, or something, yuh! She couldn’ find no better man in the whole o’ Toronto than you?”
And she laughed; and Henry laughed too, and said, “I is a Cassernover!” They laughed again. Bernice’s well-wishing was profusely West Indian.
“I happy happy for you, though. You get a good woman. And I think you deserve it. So, look, see to it you hear me, niggerman, see to it that you bring Agaffa up here tonight. Me and Dots have a little surprise something for you and Agaffa. But don’t tell she nothing, hear?” Henry agreed to come. “Boy,” Bernice said, seriously now; feeling as happy for Henry as if Agatha was her own sister, “boy, you have a damn good woman, there. Treat she good, you hear me? Treat Agaffa good.” And Henry promised to do just that. Agatha was lying on the couch in his room on Baldwin Street, when this conversation was going on; and she was sending kisses to him, at him, all the time Bernice was bellowing on the telephone about the surprise party. When he was finished, he sat on the couch beside her, but miles away from her in thought; a bit startled, a bit ruffled, like a man in the dock who has just realized
