The Meeting Point Read Online Free PDF Page A

on him, hardly three feet above the floor, and she wondered
why this little white bastard don’t have no manners? Wonder what would happen if I bashed in his little arse with this cookie tin
. “She has to give me, I don’t have to be nice to
her
. She is only a maid!” A quiet, like the quiet of the interval between new, unintroduced, faltering conversation, settled on the kitchen.
Boy, if I wasn’t in this house, I would tar your little red arse now!
Serene tried to push the little wise guy of a boy out of the kitchen, before he said more embarrassing things; but he was too strong for her.
It is the same thing all over this world, big and small; and this bastard is bad bad, and strong to boot!
Serene eventually gave up trying tothrow him out. And Wise Guy was quiet, and nice again. Bernice went to the top of the refrigerator for the large toffee tin in which she kept her home-baked cookies.
    “Miss Bernice,” Deirdre said, eating a cookie, “see my new bracelet. I just got it. I got it for my birthday.” She held up her hand; and Bernice inspected it. Deirdre gave her brother a dirty look. It was impossible for her to relax in his presence. And just as Bernice was about to touch the bracelet, and run her fingers over its embossed patterns, Deirdre withdrew her hand. “It cost fifty dollars. Mummy bought it. But Daddy paid for it. And Daddy says I should have got a much better one. A better one cost
seventy-
five dollars. This is not a better one. This is a cheap one.” It grieves my heart to see how your mothers spoil you children, she thought; but aloud she said, “You have a nice Mummy, dear, to spend fifty dollars on you, for that.”
    “You’re
black
!” Little Red Wise Guy had not forgotten Bernice.
    “She’s six,” Serene said. “She had a party, though. Not a very good party. I invited only twenty of my friends … persons. My Daddy says when I am thirteen, I am going to Europe for my birthday present. And …”
    “How old you is now, please?” Bernice asked.
    “Six.”
    “Looka, you-all come and take these cookies, please.” Bernice was disgusted by the waste of wealth on these children. “I have work to do.”
    The children grabbed more cookies; and pushed their hands into her tin. Bernice smiled. Within her heart, she felt that these children were just like those she knew back in Barbados. Wise Guy came right up to her; rested his sticky redhand, softly, on her hand; and said, quizzically, “You’re
black
.” He touched her gently; perhaps even with love in the gesture. But how was she to know? After what he had been calling her? Swiftly, like electric current, Bernice’s hand, her right hand, moved. And just as swiftly, something told her,
No! don’t do that, you fool
. She looked at Serene and Ruthie, and realized that they did not know what to do with the little boy, their friend. The situation was too large for them. “My Mummy says you people are nasty,” he said, eating a few cookies, and allowing some to crumble down his mouth. “And my Mummy says you shouldn’t live among us. You’re different from us.”
    “You’re not even white, wise guy,” Ruthie said. “You’re just a lousy little Jew, like all of us.”
    “Oh God, man! you shoudn’t call your friend by them hard words.” And Bernice shook her head in sorrow.
    “I’m not a Jew. I am white. And, and-and-and … she’s black then, anyhow.” The situation was now out of hand. Completely. Bernice remained clenched with anger, beside the counter, biting her lips, trying to evade the stares of Serene and Ruthie, her two dear sweet children, whom she knew would never say bad things like this; and she cried in her heart, because she could not strike the little boy dead. “Un-eeny-meeny-miney, moe! catch a …” he continued. And then he smiled, as soon as he reached that part in the nursery rhyme; he stopped; he looked up at Bernice, and smiled again. Instead, he merely added, “ … catch a
dolphin
by