Read The Meeting Point for Free Online

Gertrude let the loneliness and the hard work go to her head, and it send her straight inside the insane hospital. Up there in the wilderness, all by herself, ain’t have a chick to visit her, not a thing to do with her time, save go and sit down in a church, four times every Sunday. Gertrude, like the rest o’ we, marching her behind inside somebody church.…
(One Sunday morning, when spring first peeped into Gertrude’s boredom, she went to church, and was asked to testify. A week before, she had “taken Jesus as her personal saviour.” The church was packed. Word had walked through this resort town that a Negro woman from Africa (Gertrude was born and bred in Grenada) was giving a speech. When the day came and the church was hushed just like that time, in biblical times, when spirits of foreign languages were falling on disciples like tongues, Gertrude rose, red as a rose in a dress, and said aloud, as if her whole body was a resort in which the Spirit was rejuvenating, “I thanks the Lord for saving me and keeping me, from the rising of the sun till the going-down thereof. I am saved, amen! and I have been washed in the precious blood of the Lamb, and be-Christ, all of you brothers and sisters in here now can see that I been washed whiter than snow, amen!” Gertrude was so black, that sometimes even Bernice used to make jokes about her colour. Dots never liked her, and called her Coal Dust. Nobody in that Orillia, tongue-tied congregation, could understand the meaning of her words and nobody said amen!).…
    The party (which Mrs. Burrmann had called a cocktail party, but which was now being renamed a dinner and cocktailparty) was now a few hours off. Bernice was still working hard, making sandwiches and other tid-bits. Mrs. Burrmann shouted above the music, asking for ice. Bernice ignored her. She refused to tell herself she had heard; but she set about preparing the ice, nevertheless. “Estelle coming in, in exactly four or five hours and I haven’t heard a word yet from that princess in there, now asking me for ice, blind her!” When she took the ice, she found Mrs. Burrmann sitting on her favourite chair, a reclining creation of teak from Yugoslavia. She held up her glass to receive the ice. Her eyes were almost closed, as if she could not hear the music with them open. Bernice was hearing the music perfectly, and she had to serve ice.
But why this woman close her eyes just to listen to this music? Man, this is music to make you want to dance and jump up and throw your dress over your head …
“That is a very nice tune you playing, ma’am.” This caused Mrs. Burrmann to open her eyes. She sat up too.
    “Beethovun,” she pronounced, as if it was unquestionably beyond Bernice’s comprehension to know what the music meant. “
Classical
music.”
    “So, that is what it is!” The triumph in her voice was the triumph of new knowledge. “I like it, though. It sound real good.”
    “Beau-ti-ful!” Mrs. Burrmann tried to impress upon Bernice the genius of this creation. “I’m never tired of hearing the power and the conflict of this very great mind.…”
    “Pardon me, ma’am,” Bernice interrupted her, “but you want to know something? I don’t see nothing like power or conflicts in this music, as you telling me you could hear. It reminds me o’ women back home reaping corn, and putting that corn on their heads, and singing all the time they putting …”
    “I am sure, Leach, that you don’t really understand this symphony, dear.”
    “… and, a moment ago, just before I bring you this water and ice, I could swear that the music was telling me ’bout winds blowing, and a storm gathering up in the clouds and the skies.…” By this time, Bernice was talking to herself, because Mrs. Burrmann had left the room. She lingered for a while, looking at the dust jacket of the record. She decided she must own this record, to play it to herself, in her apartment when it got lonely and cold at