eyes brighten. She smiles, though her lips do not part. âAfter what happened last night,I think being a nigger lover is better than being white.â
Bert angrily shoves his chair back from the table. âI donât know what in hell has got into you, woman, but you better get it out. You stay away from Esther Davis. Sheâs the one been filling your head with foolish ideas. You wouldnât be saying these things to me if it wasnât for her. None of this would have happened if it wasnât for her. Just because she started you reading books, you acting like youâre smarter than you are. Well, youâre not, Maureen. Youâre still a dumb little piece of white trash who tricked me into marrying you. Stop trying to be something you ainât!â
Maureen has never seen him so angry. He does not draw back his hand as he did last night, but he does not have to. The hatred in his eyes hurts her far more than a blow to the face ever could.
âHave I made myself clear?â he shouts.
Maureen is trembling as she nods her head.
âGood. Iâve changed my mind about you and Ansel coming to the store today. Both your and his sympathy for that crazy nigger would be all over your faces like a billboard. And that wouldnât be good for business.â
Maureen wants to ask him why whatâs good for business is more important than whatâs good for her, good for Ansel. Instead she says, meekly, âIâm sorry Iâm not the person youâd like me to be.â
âJust go back to being the simple girl I married. Everything will be fine then.â
He leaves.
Maureen does not move from the table. She is not proud of herself for telling him what she thought he wanted to hear, for apologizing for who she is. But she had to find a way to put his anger and his hatred back in the cage where he had guarded them all these years.
But how long would they stay there? How long before the day comes when he cannot control them, and they break out of their cage, and his fist smashes into her face, again and again and again?
There is no longer a question of what to do. She has only to work out the how.
2.
Ansel has not slept.
Now it is morning. Already his bedroom at the top of the stairs is getting hotter.
He wants to go downstairs, but hears his father shouting. His stomach tightens. He looks frantically around his room for something, for anything he can use if it sounds like his father is hitting his mother.
When he hears the front door opening, then slamming shut, he hurries to the window to see his father getting in the car and driving away.
Anselâs stomach relaxes.
From downstairs he hears the phone ring. His mother picks up before the first ring is completed. He listens to her faint, muffled voice.
When he thinks she is off the phone, he goes downstairs.
His mother sits at the kitchen table.
She looks up at him standing in the doorway.
âDo you want some breakfast?â she asks, because that is what she does. She cooks meals, washes clothes, darns socks, sews on buttons that have come loose from pants and shirts.
Anybody could do those things. Anybody. But no one else can be his mother, and a mother is more than meals and laundry and sewing.
âIâm not hungry,â Ansel says quietly.
âNeither am I,â she responds.
Ansel looks at his fatherâs dirty breakfast plate. What happened last night did not affect his appetite. That is all Ansel needs to know.
He sits down in a chair next to his mother.
She reaches out and takes his hand in hers. âIâm proud of you, Ansel.â
âFor what?â he wants to know. âI didnât do anything.â
âYou know whatâs right, which is more than I can say for your father.â
âI hate him!â
âYou mustnât say that, not even think it. Heâs your father. You can be angry with him, but you mustnât hate him.â
âBut what if he
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