Dots realized she had spoken too hard, and she tried to soften it by adding, “You don’t have to be ashamed at what I say, gal. There isn’t, is not one woman in this room, and scarcely in all the other rooms in the whole o’ Forest Hill who went to their wedding day or on their honeymoon as a virgin. Not one o’ them. Them virgin-days done, gal. Not one o’ we in here, even counting in that” (here, she lowered her voice, as she tilted her head, indicating Brigitte, still in a corner with the men), “not even that Virgin Mary there, is a virgin. You are in grown-up company now, gal. You’re talking with grown-ups.”
Still, Agatha would have preferred this personal comment to be made more privately; or rather, that she had been the one to volunteer this biological and social information. She started to get frightened: West Indian women were too frank; perhaps, Henry had talked all their personal business already to Boysie; all their sex life, all their closest confidences were perhaps common knowledge among these women. “Not at all!” she said, not very convincingly, “I don’t mind.” But the comment was too late.
“Well, that’s good, girl.” This was Bernice. She was relieved that no feelings were hurt.
“Yes, we are women together,” Dots said.
“Yes. We is women together,” Bernice said. “I glad you feel that way. We is almost sisters now that you and Henry planning marriage.”
“But would anybody in his right mind think that you and Henry wouldda get married? I mean, you can never tell how much a person means to a next person. You may see them looking simple on the street, and bram! the next day, you hear this report, big-big wedding and big wedding-reception planned, with a honeymoon! And in a twinkling of a eye, be-Christ, the two o’ them settling down and raising a family.”
“But who tell you that Agaffa wants any damn children?”
“Bernice, what are you talking about? Every woman, there ain’ one woman alive who don’t want a chick or child for them to hold and cuddle up to, and say them little foolish things, like boo-boo, coo-coo to. And furthermore, according to something I been reading lately, they say in this book I was reading recently, that the nicest feeling you could experience is the warm body of a child next to yours. I mean, I am a woman with no lot o’ papers testifying to the fact that I have the high learning that Agaffa here possesses, but I am a human being. I am a woman. And as such, I can appreciate what that man in the book was trying to say to me. Well, tell me then, Bernice, how the hell do you think that a mother could love a child when everybody in her village, every other living soul in that village agree that the same child ugly as shite … pardon me, Agaffa dear, we does talk different to you … ugly as hell? It takes a mother to have that kind o’ contrary feeling towards a ugly child. Don’t you agree with me, Miss Agaffa?” And she laughed her sensuous laugh, like a chastisement.
Agatha shuddered; she was thinking of her child, that her child (from Henry) might be such an ugly child; and she was wondering whether everybody who knew her would hate the child; and she wondered too, if she had it in her body and in her soul, enough of the love that Dots was talking about, to love an ugly child. Particularly, a child that was half-Jewish, that is to say, half-white. But she brought her knowledge of anthropology and sociology — particularly her knowledge of anthropology — to the matter, and in this way, she tried to look at her personal life objectively, as she had been taught to do in the lecture rooms of the university. When Dots’s laugh died down, she was still frightened. But she had at least consoled herself, through the case histories of many anthropological seminars, that her child would be no different from any other child.
“I hope Henry gives you lots o’ children. A woman isn’t a woman unless she have the experience o’ childbirth. Something is lacking, something sadly lacking, unless she could boast o’ giving birth, something coming out from inside her insides, and she looks at this thing and could say to the world, This is mine. I borned it.”
Unknown to herself, Dots had put such a scare into Agatha by her last words, that Agatha curdled inside. She did not feel too sure she could look at her child (from Henry) and say, “This is mine. I borned it.”
But Dots went on talking about children, and about her own desire to have one. “It does be fighting like hell betwixt me and that man standing up there in that corner talking to Henry and that woman, fighting like hell I tell you, when the nights come. I want a child. Boysie don’t want no children. ‘Children is blasted hindrances,’ he says to me. You do not know, Agaffa dear, and neither does Bernice here, my closest friend, neither o’ the two o’ you know how badly I want a child. But can I get myself pregnant? Jesus Christ, man! I am not the Virgin Mary! Not in this day and age.” The conversation continued to frighten Agatha. She waited for the right moment to move away, and sit by herself on the chesterfield, which for this occasion was covered with its Mexican blanket.
Left to themselves now, Bernice and Dots could feel the freedom of their intercourse. No matter how great an effort they
