Read Online Guardian by Julius Lester - Free Book Online Page B

eyes brighten. She smiles, though her lips do not part. “After what happened last night,I think being a nigger lover is better than being white.”
    Bert angrily shoves his chair back from the table. “I don’t know what in hell has got into you, woman, but you better get it out. You stay away from Esther Davis. She’s the one been filling your head with foolish ideas. You wouldn’t be saying these things to me if it wasn’t for her. None of this would have happened if it wasn’t for her. Just because she started you reading books, you acting like you’re smarter than you are. Well, you’re not, Maureen. You’re still a dumb little piece of white trash who tricked me into marrying you. Stop trying to be something you ain’t!”
    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.
    â€œHave I made myself clear?” he shouts.
    Maureen is trembling as she nods her head.
    â€œGood. I’ve 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 wouldn’t be good for business.”
    Maureen wants to ask him why what’s good for business is more important than what’s good for her, good for Ansel. Instead she says, meekly, “I’m sorry I’m not the person you’d like me to be.”
    â€œJust go back to being the simple girl I married. Everything will be fine then.”
    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.
    Ansel’s 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.
    â€œDo you want some breakfast?” 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.
    â€œI’m not hungry,” Ansel says quietly.
    â€œNeither am I,” she responds.
    Ansel looks at his father’s 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. “I’m proud of you, Ansel.”
    â€œFor what?” he wants to know. “I didn’t do anything.”
    â€œYou know what’s right, which is more than I can say for your father.”
    â€œI hate him!”
    â€œYou mustn’t say that, not even think it. He’s your father. You can be angry with him, but you mustn’t hate him.”
    â€œBut what if he