“That’s true. That’s damn true, Dots. Perhaps it is something else bothering me. Perhaps, it is all this night work, all this damn night work and late hours that’s getting me down. Man, I never worked so hard in all my born days! I can now understand why Henry don’t want to look too hard for work since he married to that rich woman, Agatha.”
“That is Henry’s blasted business!”
“It’s mine, too!”
“Estelle is a damn good woman. I have said a lot o’ bad things ’gainst that girl, since she came here to this country. And just in a few weeks having her living here I now come to understand what a priceless girl she is. She is a lady. And once I even thought, what a nice wife she would have been for Henry, but, well …”
“That’s true. Estelle is a princess.”
“And so is Bernice.”
“She had a blasted hard break from that bitch Mistress Burrmann, though.”
“Bernice told me last night whilst you were out working that she intends to rent a place in this same building just because she wants to be near to me and to you, to help you with your meals whilst I am up there on Brunswick Avenue, at the Doctors. That is what I call kindness. You don’t know nothing about kindness, Boysie. Sometimes, I swear that when you was born, kindness dropped dead. Bernice intends to buy a house too. That is what I really call using your head. I always had it in my mind to buy a house. But a certain somebody I know always said, ‘House hell! house hell! We happy living at the Hunters.’ Well, you see what the Hunter’s give now, eh? You see what the Burrmann’s give now? Bernice is a wise woman. Once stung, twice shy. Estelle will be dropping child in the middle o’ winter, and that will be an added burden. That bastard Burrmann hasn’t remembered to look back yet, to see if Estelle living or dead. And Agatha been fulling her head with a lot o’ damn foolishness ’bout adoption. Estelle told me. And you want to know something? You haven’t told me yet, why you of all people, all of a sudden, you of all people, who only yesterday was singing the praises of both the Estelle and the Bernice, why now, sudden so, you want them to leave?”
Boysie could feel it coming: Dots might have diagnosed the correct motive. Women have this peculiarity, he knew, this ability to smell things.
“I think I know what’s bothering you, Boysie,” she said. Boysie froze. “And I pray, every chance I get at that hospital, that it isn’t so. You have no idea of the kind o’ thoughts that pass through my head whilst I am in that course at the Doctors, maybe emptying a bedpan full o’ some white man shit … half of my mind is always right here in this house. In this bedroom. Right here where me and you sitting down now. I always ask God, ‘Lord, Jesus Christ, don’t let it happen to me. Jesus Christ, no, God!’ ”
“Wha’ you mean, Dots?” Boysie asked in a rough manner. He wanted to shock her off the subject: he was sure she was on the right track. And in a frame of self-flagellation, he wanted, too, to shock it out of her, and have it said and done with. “What the hell are you getting at, now? You are saying a damn lot, and you ain’t saying one damn thing. You baiting me, or something, woman? What’s on your mind?”
“Every minute I get. Whilst she is here. And I pray and pray Estelle won’t do anything foolish. And with you here. You don’t even know how to boil a saucepan o’ hot water. Christ, for Estelle to attempt another abortion in anger over that man, Burrmann! Christ, it would be hell if you couldn’t help her. And if in your ignorance, you had to call-on ’pon one o’ these so-called neighbours in this building, God, look, how both you and Estelle would be landing-up in the Don Jail!” Tears were in her eyes, and she let them fall on her face, and Boysie, in a broken pathetic mood, moved her gently until she was resting on his chest. They were sitting very close now, on the bed in their bedroom. “That is what I worry about every spare minute I get from that course.”
“Oh!” And he began to thaw, to breathe more comfortably. For the first time since they started discussing this topic did he remember that he had mixed himself a rum-and-Coke. He took the glass off the dressing table, where it had marked the newness of the shine, and he raised it to his lips with his eyelids closed. And in his confidence, he planned to confront Estelle again before she left.
Bernice frightened herself when she realized she had so much energy and versatility. She wanted a job in a very rich home, with the condition that she didn’t have to sleep in on the premises. “One experience like that is good enough for me.” She had suffered an almost complete mental and physical breakdown when Mrs. Burrmann fired her; and the terror of seeing herself going through her life savings so rapidly (which now totalled only two thousand dollars from the five thousand she had when Estelle arrived), and the prospect of spending the coming winter without a job was a future that looked fatal. But there was in her a great reserve of strength which she did not know she had. She had returned to Marina Boulevard for her belongings. She had seen the oldish Polish woman struggling with the housework. Mrs. Burrmann had the Polish
