She went back to the chesterfield. Lonnie, her boyfriend, and the father of her child, Terence, was saying from Barbados: “Darling Bernice, love, This is Lonnie. I am pining after you real bad these days. I was going to write you long long time before now, but since I had to look after the business you ask me to look after, I could not write before this time. I visited Mammy. She is in the Poor House, all right. But I think it is a good thing that Estelle put her there, because after I had a talk with Nurse Forde who is the charge nurse in charge of Mammy, Nurse Forde told me that Estelle was right to put Mammy there. Mammy put on weight and she fat. Nurse Forde say not to worry. Mammy is in good hands in the Poor House. Nurse Forde say she remember you. The island looking like New York these days. People building new buildings, almost everybody — but me — have a new car that they buy …” (she realized she had just read this passage the second time, so she skipped it and continued further on). “But with me, things bad as usual. Rough, rough as hell, if you ask me. But I am not going to ask you again to send for me, because that is a decision that only God could make you decide. But for old times sake, I begging you to send down a few dollars because St. Matthias Church having the annual outing, and I am naked as a bird’s arse. I need a new suit. So see what you could do. Your loving man, Lonnie. PS. Roses are red / Roses are blue / My love is true / Until I dead. Lonnie.”
Bernice held the letter in her hand for some time, refusing to think of what Lonnie meant, and of what he thought of her; refusing to admit that the power of his profession of love had actually hit her; refusing to permit this power of his love to make her feel as Lonnie wanted her to feel, as he said her absence made him feel. She folded the letter and held it in her fist, and she waited. She moved to the window and she waited. In the broad daylight, she looked at the burning road, the scene, the alleyway where only a few short hours ago, Henry had been beaten up by two policemen. She felt no compunction at all for her silence as Henry was being beaten, the same silence which she had come to regard as immoral in Mrs. Burrmann, and in Mr. Burrmann. It was as if she had dreamed about Henry being beaten in a dream that was not too clear, a dream which was so undramatic that she could have either forgotten or remembered it the next morning, without feeling elation or disappointment. Henry himself was now very far from her mind. She felt depressed. She was just about to go downstairs to have something to do, for the habit of being a domestic was like a custom of washing dishes (“Wait! but there ain’ one blasted dirty dish in this place! Hey, imagine that! nobody at home: he probably up north already, fishing and drinking like a fish, the children still at camp, and Mistress Burrmann of course, ‘way down in Mexico … that bitch couldn’ even take me to Mexico with her, and even Dots mistress took her once to North Bay … the house empty. The house empty this morning. And the morning, afternoon and night belongst to me, and I here thinking about servanting …”). And then she saw Dots coming from the house where Brigitte worked. Dots was walking fast, as if she had something important to do. She looked up anxiously at the window where Bernice was sitting, but didn’t see her. Bernice thought she noticed that Dots appeared less anxious after deciding that nobody saw her coming from Brigitte’s house. But there was something in Dots’s manner which caused Bernice to fear. She had a presentiment that Dots was coming back to abuse her, or to beat her. Bernice moved away from the window just as Dots was about to cross the street. She tied on her apron, and went from her apartment, leaving the door open. She entered the kitchen to make herself a cup of tea, boiled twice to make it strong as she used to drink it back in Barbados; and she was going to do it for the first time in Canada now that Mrs. Burrmann wasn’t home.
She had just turned on the electric stove when she heard Dots calling out at the side door, “Bernice! Bernice, come, open this door! Come come!” Bernice started to tremble. “Open-up, open-up! I know you in there!” And when the door was open, Dots burst inside, held Bernice by her hand, as if she was a child crossing a busy street, and led her upstairs, back into her apartment.
When they reached the apartment, Dots closed the door, adjusted the night latch, came back, stared Bernice in the eye, and said, “Sit your arse down, girl!” And Bernice sat down. She didn’t know what
