The Meeting Point by Austin Clarke Page A

come,” Dots said, “because we can see her standing up there, like a lord, like-like-like a queen. She sure come.” Tears came also to Dots’s eyes, as she spoke. They slid down the white powder on her face, leaving a black mark across the whiteness of the powder. They flowed over the plains of her face, and she did nothing to regulate them, or restrain them. Uncontrolled, they rambled over the powder on her face, that was like snow. Out of the corner of her eyes, she saw Bernice; and Bernice saw her. And she gave the lace handkerchief to Dots, and Dots took it. But she did not wipe away the tears. She let them run. “You know why I shedding tears, gal? I crying because I happy. Estelle come through, and she beat them. Be-Christ, they can’t keep we out o’ this country, no matter how they contrive it! We is good, hard-working people, and they need us, God blind them — pardon my language, gal, but I happy, happy as hell now!” They were her tears of victory; and Bernice’s tears of victory. It was their victory over the experience of arrival. Boysie saw them crying; and he played brave, and sucked disgustedly on his teeth. But he could notregulate the convulsions of his body. And when they moved, the two women, arms round each other, to the door to kiss Estelle, and to throw their arms and their kisses on her, Boysie lingered behind so he might wipe away the sorrow from the joy, with the back of his hand.
    “It was the first time I ever was in a plane. I remember flying over America, God! that America is a place of places! In a way, I wish it was to America, I was going; not that I’m grumbling that it is to Canada that I come; but I couldn’t help saying to myself, that America is really God’s country on earth.” Boysie cleared his throat to object to what Estelle was saying about America; but before he could say anything, his wife interrupted.
    “You in Canada, now, gal!” she said.
    “I know,” Estelle said, “and this is a good place too, ’cause a white lady in the plane asked me where I come from, and where I was going. And when I say, Canada, she said, My goodness! And she went on to say that jobs easy to get here, and there isn’t any problem finding somewhere to live. But I told her I was coming on a holiday, to stay with my sister in Forest Hill, and she didn’t say another word.”
    “Take your time, Estelle,” Bernice cautioned.
    “… when I say I was living in Forest Hill, that white lady didn’t say another word. I wonder why.” Boysie started sniggering. Estelle went on. “Though this is the first time I ever flew, I wasn’t nervous. I was sitting down beside a white gentleman, for more than five hours, and he and I talked about everything under the sun. And when the plane reached the ground, guess what? Christ! when you see that plane putt-putt and landed, I never set eyes on that man again. “ ‘Twas as if he was going to a different world altogether.”
    “He would see you a thousand more times, on Yonge Street or Bloor Street, and he won’t even fart on you,” Boysie said.
    “I don’t see how that could be true, though, because he gave me his telephone number to call him, if I need anything.…”
    “He
what?”
Dots shrieked. She saw she had lost control of her emotions, and added instead, “What you say he do?” Estelle showed them the card with the man’s company, his name, and his telephone number at his office. Bernice took the card out of her hand, and threw it through the window. Boysie expected a row to follow; and he was surprised when Estelle said nothing. After the tension left the car, Estelle began to talk some more about her flight.
    “Well, anyhow, in that plane, I fell in love with a Chinese lady, who was one of the four stewardesses on the plane. And do you know what struck me as being funny on that plane? She was kept chipping, on her toes, the whole flight, whilst them other three brutes was in the front o’ plane licking their mouths and