“But why would a police come right outta the blasted blue and beat up Henry? That is a thing I see happening on television in the South. I didn’ know it could happen in Canada. And I don’t even know if in the South, a police could come out of the blue and pour licks in a man just because that man is a black man, or a negro, or a nigger, as they call them in the South, and get off scotch-free.”
“I don’t know either, Dots, I just don’t know.”
“And Henry say he didn’ do that blasted police nothing.” She sighed, and added, “Just like that?”
“I don’t know, Dots. Some funny things does happen in this place, Toronto.”
“But Christ, not like that, though! Not for doing nothing, at all. It is the same case as that coloured gentleman in the motor car accident I witnessed four years ago at the corner o’ Bloor Street and Sherbourne.”
“Child, I don’t know,” Bernice said. She got up and started moving her favourite memento, an artificial waterfall in the likeness of Niagara Falls, dusting the spot on which it had stood for three days without being dusted; and then she replaced it; and she did the same thing with the other porcelain figurines and false forests of deciduous and coniferous trees which decorated her centre table. Now that Estelle was in the hospital, she had replaced the plastic cover on the chesterfield with the Mexican spread which Mrs. Burrmann had given her a long time ago, as a present from one of her Mexican vacations. Bernice had picked up the habit of covering the chairs and the chesterfield in her apartment with plastic, just like Mrs. Burrmann, who protected all her new and expensive furniture in this way, until one night, Mr. Burrmann came home drunk and horny for sex (Estelle had had her period), and knowing he couldn’t make love with his wife, and unable to find any unfaithfulness on her, unable too, to find any fault with her housekeeping, screamed at the plastic slipcovers on the furniture and ripped them off.
In his mind, he was ripping off his wife’s nightgown. “Take those fucking things off, you cheap Jewish bitch!” he screamed.
(Bernice had heard his voice from her apartment on the third floor and had winced.)
“I see you want to get rid o’ me, so I going, gal,” Dots said.
“It’s not that. Just that I’m busy this morning.”
“The mistress still on her vacation?” Dots asked. “Where she gone this time?”
“Mexico.”
“And he? Where he gone?”
“Last time I rested my eyes on him, he say he was heading north. But I don’t know if he gone north or if he gone south, or if he gone at all. I can’t bother myself tracking-down Mr. Burrmann.” Bernice wasn’t looking at Dots as she was talking, but continued to discover dust on the centre table; and by the time Dots was opening the door, Bernice was inspecting the dressing table, moving a bottle of cosmetics, wiping the ring on which it had sat with the side of her hand, replacing it, and moving on to the next bottle which contained complexion lightener.
“If you’re not too busy later on, phone me. I gone.” And she was gone.
Bernice didn’t tell her good-bye. In her mind she wished her good riddance. Since there was no need to pretend further, she sat down on the chesterfield. A great loneliness shook her body like a spasm. She was alone now; really alone. Alone in the world, it seemed. And she was frightened. It was a closer fear than the fear she felt that afternoon when the letter which she had sent to Mammy came back from Barbados, ADDRESSEE UNKNOWN. At least then, Mrs. Burrmann was in the house. Brigitte was there across the street, still a friend; and Dots was down there in Rosedale, a telephone call away, and as a friend. Now, she was friendless. They had all deserted her through their insincerity.
The letter, the letter; she was thinking of the letter from Lonnie. “Where I put that letter? Where I put it?” She searched in the drawers of her dressing table, and it was not there; she searched under the linen white plains with the West Indies skies of blue and the green coconut palm trees and red coconuts and other fruits of the tablecloth which Mammy had sent up to her two Christmases ago, and it wasn’t there. She peered under the large old-fashioned radio which Mrs. Burrmann had moved out of the basement and had placed in her room. Then she remembered that the letter was in her dress, the dress she had on when she took Estelle to the hospital. There was blood on the dress. Many blotches, made in motion. The things that must have been said by those nurses when they saw her with so much blood on her dress; and by the people when she was walking the street afterwards! A policeman in a cruiser had missed his light as he watched her and tried to make up his mind. Then he roared through the red light. The blood covered from her chest down to her waist; and there it must have been in two minds, because it left out the space which represented her abdomen; and it continued uninterruptedly in dots and dashes, all down its way morse-coding the terrible experience of her sister’s unsuccessful attempt to have an unprofessional abortion. Brigitte had given the instructions for the unsuccessful abortion, after having convinced Bernice that she was “good at these things.” The letter was in this blood-stained pocket of this blood-stained dress. But the letter was unblemished. She wiped away the tears that came with the memory of the dress and the blood, and she started to read the letter. “People building new buildings, almost everybody — but me — have a new car that they buy on the time-payment plan, and a lot of American ships in the harbour
