“Come here, man!” Bernice shouted from the kitchen. “Come in here and look after your business.” Dots stopped dancing with Estelle, wondering what now was wrong with “this man-less bitch, Bernice!” But all Bernice did was to give Dots the large fork she was holding over the simmering scrambled eggs. She left Dots standing, still wondering, and went outside into the living room, and held on to Boysie, and began dancing as if dancing had just been invented, especially for her.
“Lord Lord!” Dots screamed. “Look, don’t dance too close to my man, you blasted man-thirsty woman, you! Looka, Boysie, watch-out, boy! watch-out! Bernice horny now. Bernice is horny as hell since she been attending them, them paint-ins. Don’t let that woman rape you, boy … guard thyself!” Amidst the noise from the scrambled eggs arriving in thick yellow freshness and the sound of Sparrow, still lamenting that the slumdwellers had invaded his privacy and middle-class comfort on the hill in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, amidst the joy and the noise and the rackling of the ice cubes in the glass in Estelle’s hand, Dots went on laughing, and talking to herself about Bernice, and warning Boysie of Bernice.
Nobody was listening to her; because it was all in a joke, all part of their new release from the prison of their earlier immigration regulations. Dots even mentioned that she didn’t know it was possible to enjoy life so much, she didn’t know the happiness of being free, living in her own apartment. (“Gal, it could be a room, or a flat, or a hole in the blasted wall. But it is mine! I pay the rent here!”) Beating pan, they beating bup-bup! iron-bolt, and stone pelting …
Dots could see the sun and feel the wind in the country district of Barbados where she lived before coming to this country. She could remember herself going across the street, dusty with sun and the epitaphs of low-flying cars, as boys used to say about speedsters, and she remembered how she would stand in line, and wait until the butcher had parcelled out the best pieces of the dead pig, pork chops for Mistress Bannister, first; because Mistress Bannister is the schoolmistress of the girl-school in the village; the gentleman from America, next; and so on and so, down the line of the unspoken but sacred ladder of importance and money and light complexions; until the butcher would look up, and there would be little Dots, and he would see her, at last! standing there with the large white enamel pail in her hands, waiting for a half-pound of the cheap part o’ the pig, please, “and my mother ask you if you would mind putting this on her bill, till next week, ’cause Daddy didn’ come home Fridee night.” And depending upon whether the butcher, Mr. Webster, had got up on the wrong side of the bed, or of his wife, he would either cuss both Dots and her mother, or he would give her two pounds of the second-best part of the dead pig, free; and tell her, “Get loss! I in’ give you nothing, you hear?”
And now, on the counter in front of her was all this food: and also the inside-running water tap, beside the large white refrigerator, beside the stove which could cook a meal even when she was at the hospital, improving herself while Boysie was out with Henry and the boys, playing crap or dominoes or drinking beer. Today in Canada … praise God! I thank you that you put it in my head to get out of that blasted stiffling island called Barbados and emigrade, be-Christ, emigrade here, and it is the wisest thing I have done … (Still the bacchanal won’t cease! Sparrow was saying) … Don’t let this bacchanal cease at all, Lord! don’t let it done, it is too sweet! … She could hear the others in the living room dancing and laughing and being happy. Her thoughts went to Henry and Agatha. Breakfast was almost ready. She was making the toast. And she got the butter out of the refrigerator, and she had to comment on the fact that this morning she was eating real butter, real butter, which was a fact that she and Boysie and Estelle and Bernice could appreciate, it being also a fact that real butter cost very much (even now, in Canada) when they were home in Barbados, especially during the war years. I wonder how Henry making out? Agatha is a nice girl, it is true that she is white, but that doesn’t kill … poor Henry, poor fellow! he had such a rough break in this country. Well, it agrees with one person and it is like a dose o’ salts or a dose o’ castor oil to the next person. And you is a good man, Henry, after all; and one gotta help the other … She had to shake these serious thoughts out of her head before she could go into the living room with the others. The music was in the room with the others. The music was in the room adjoining, and she couldn’t therefore concentrate on other people’s problems while she had only happiness in her life now. When she went into the dining area with the breakfast, they noticed there were tears in her eyes.
“What happen, Dots?” Bernice asked.
“Just happy. Just happy, gal. I am happy and I just realized it.” Bernice patted her on her back; and the others knew.
They were eating now. Boysie helped the women, and Dots helped Boysie. It was a West Indian custom, sanctified in her mother’s mother’s home, and in her mother’s home, and now in her home, that a woman guest never helped, never served the man of the house. Dots was still thinking of her lot in this country. So much food, so much food, she was saying to herself, as she saw them eat; one day it is a damn famine, the next day, it is a feast. Tears came back to her
