Free Guardian by Julius Lester

did something that was hateful? Is it all right to hate somebody who does hateful things?”
    Maureen does not have an answer. Was it all rightfor her to hate Bert because he had done something hateful when he married her?
    The phone rings.
    Maureen goes into the living room to answer it.
    â€œI am so sorry, Reverend Dennis,” she says. She was going to say something more, but she stops.
    After a long pause she says, “I appreciate your call,” and slowly puts the receiver back onto the cradle.
    When she returns to her chair at the table, she is crying silently.
    â€œWhat’s the matter, Ma?”
    She gets up, goes back to the living room, and returns with some facial tissue. She wipes her eyes and blows her nose. Then she looks at Ansel.
    â€œThat was Reverend Dennis. He said…” She stops. “He said he thought it best if we didn’t come to church for a while, and that it would be better if we didn’t come to Mary Susan’s funeral.”
    â€œWhy?” Ansel wants to know, tears coming to his eyes. “Why can’t we go to the funeral?”
    â€œHe didn’t say. All he said was it would be better if we didn’t come.”
    â€œWhat did we do?”
    â€œMaybe it’s not a matter of what we did but who we are.”
    Yesterday at that time Ansel would not have understood her words. Yesterday at that time she would not have said them.

Monday Morning
    The silence in the house has become hard.
    Reverend Dennis had come in the store Saturday, come in the store when it was crowded, and said loudly, as if he was in the pulpit giving a sermon telling people to repent or suffer hellfire for eternity, that Bert was no longer welcome at the church, that Bert’s family was not to attend Mary Susan’s funeral, that he, Reverend Luther Dennis, blamed Bert for what happened because he had put a nigger where that nigger would be around a flower of southern womanhood, and everybody knew that no matter how hard a nigger tried, he couldn’t stay away from a white girl.
    There was a long embarrassed silence when the Reverend finished. Everybody knew the truth, and they blamed the Reverend’s words on grief.
    After the Reverend left the store, everybody there told Bert they didn’t put any credence in what he’d said, that the Reverend didn’t know what he was saying.
    Even though the store experienced no drop-off in business, he took the Reverend’s words seriously, and all of his anger at Reverend Dennis, at Zeph for what he had done, at Mary Susan for getting herself killed, at that dumb nigger for telling him the truth and believing that he could do something, at Esther Davis for meddling in his life, at Maureen for getting pregnant, and at Ansel for being born came to live in the house and now sat in every chair and atop each piece of furniture; it stood in every corner of every room. But it never spoke. It did not have to.
    Anger is speech.
    Maureen and Ansel leave a room when Bert enters; they eat after he has finished; they have whispered conversations when he is not in the room.
    When he asks them what they were talking about, they say, “Nothing.”
    If it was nothing, why couldn’t they say it where he could hear it?
    On this particular morning, Maureen and Ansel sit at the breakfast table because Bert told them to. He eats his usual hearty breakfast.
    Maureen had never noticed how much she hates him chewing with his mouth open. For almost fifteen years she has listened to him chewing his breakfast and dinner, and in all that time she has never told him what she says now.
    â€œCan’t you chew with your mouth closed? Why do you think anybody wants to listen to you eat?”
    Bert glares at her, then chews all the louder, his mouth open wide so she can see the masticated food inside.
    As soon as he leaves, Maureen hurries into the living room and dials a number on the phone. “He just left,” she