The music raged as the spirits in the guests and in the drinks raged. Estelle was still beautiful in her long white wedding dress. She was thinking of when she would get married. And more than once, during the hectic afternoon and night, she wondered where Sam Burrmann, her unborn child’s father, was at this happy time. But by this time, she had put him out of her enjoyment; and she devoted all her body and energy to the dancing which shook her body as if she was in some mad trance. Sunday morning, they fighting, they drinking, they beating pan … send for the police, still the bacchanal won’t cease … It was a royal time; and as Dots said, “A person can only get married one time. Even if he divorce after that first time, the second time round can’t be like the first time. You can’t even do it in a church, then. Not the second time round. So the first time is the time!”
Boysie was dancing with Dots. Brigitte had held on to Freeness the whole day (probably because of Boysie who, now in his castle, in his role of host, wedding-giver and master of ceremonies, had no time for outside-women); and Bernice was dancing with a man who nobody knew, who nobody invited, who just heard the music and had knocked and had been invited inside and had come in, and who was treated with the same courtesy and hospitality as the bridegroom.
Agatha’s father hadn’t arrived yet. Agatha’s mother hadn’t arrived yet. Agatha’s many white friends from the university, and her lawyer-friend (all of whom were sent invitations — that was Boysie’s personal gift to the couple), hadn’t arrived yet. It was a sorrowful sight at the church when it was discovered that no one was sitting on the bride’s side. Dots saw quickly the embarrassment setting up, and how it would rain on Agatha’s sensitive feelings, when she arrived sweet and young, virginal and white in her long dress; and Dots reushered half of the church over to Agatha’s side.
When the organ roared and snorted through the wedding march, everybody was laughing, even Agatha. Reverend Markham was happy. The choir was in good voice, loud when it was supposed to be loud, soft when the organist breathed upon the keys of the organ. But when they were in the office signing away their lives and their promises to one another, for better and for worse, Dots stood like a mother hen on the top step of the church, directing the people (those who didn’t have lifts) to cars, and warning the photographer who had arrived late to “Look, don’t take the whole damn day here, hear? We have perishables and other eatables waiting long at the reception place, heh-heh-haiiii!” And after that, she whispered in Bernice’s ears, “Is a great burning shame that that bastard, Agaffa’s father, what-the-hell-his-name-is, thinks he is too great to come down here and witness his own daughter on her wedding day. Well, we didn’t expect him to behave as a bride’s-father: nobody tell him he have to give the child away! But, Christ! Anyhow, Reverend Markham said such a nice prayer for them, too! That bastard didn’t come to see his handsome black son-in-law. He didn’t have the courage to come. White people is coward bitches, all o’ them — your late Mistress Burrmann included! All o’ them!”
“And the mother. I could just see her up there, taking a overdose o’ sleeping pills and sleeping through all this life, all this love … She ain’t turned up yet, neither.”
“Their Cadillac break down, darling, heh-heh-haiiiii! Bernice, gal, you are witnessing on a certain high level o’ life the ways o’ white people. They would kill their own flesh-and-blood, just to prove a bloody point.”
“And godblummuh, guess what they would do to us!” It was Boysie, throwing a lash too.
“It is sad, though.”
“It is true, though.”
Estelle had overheard, and she drew nearer, and said, “They love one another, though. Agatha and Henry. So, let them live.” She was thinking of her turn to come.
“Still’s a blasted shame!”
And now, at the reception, nobody appeared tired, after so many hours of eating and drinking and dancing with the problems of “Shanty Town People” reproduced for them by Sparrow on the record player, and their own problems represented for them by the visit of the policeman; these West Indians and one white woman were as one in joy … I tired and I disgust … big Sunday evening, they cussing, they fighting, they gambling, they beating pan and bup-bup! iron-bolt and stone pelting, send for the police, still the bacchanal won’t cease …
There were fifty persons invited to the reception, plus the uninvited guest, all packed and sweating in the two-bedroom apartment from five o’clock. There are fifty-one persons in the apartment now, at one-thirty Sunday morning. Boysie has his arms in the air, and is dancing as if his body has been seized by some voodoo or St. Vitis dance-mood; and Dots has thrown one brocaded expensive slipper somewhere in a corner, and is jumping up. The record, a favourite with everybody in the room, is put on again. It is put on three times, four times, five times, six times; and Boysie says on the seventh time, “Man, play that thing a next time, do!” And it
