Guardian

by Julius Lester

  On this late morning the two women sit around the table in Maureen’s kitchen. Each knows the other’s most dreadful secrets; each knows the other’s most poignant hopes. In their letters they have exchanged words limned with soul, words they could have never said face-to-face.

  But on this day they sit across from each other. It is time. Esther stares down at the table; Maureen’s eyes are fixed blankly on something behind Esther.

  “I take it things didn’t go well,” Maureen says finally in her toneless voice.

  Esther shakes her head slowly. “I don’t know. I think I may have frightened them, especially Ansel.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Not much. I think Willie is more of a dreamer than Ansel is. But Willie knows in the very marrow of his bones that there is no future here for him. Ansel can’t see farther than someday taking over the store.”

  Maureen does not say anything for a while. She had hoped this son of hers would not be the coward she is. From the moment she first felt him moving in her womb, she had been determined he would escape Davis. Perhaps he would get no further than a different loneliness in another place. That had to be better than the suffocating loneliness of Davis.

  “Are you going to leave, anyway?” Maureen asks Esther.

  Esther nods. “In September. I have to.”

  “I know.”

  “I feel guilty leaving you behind, leaving Amanda and Willie. I want to give them money enough so that they can go anywhere they want and get a new start. But Amanda says Big Willie will never leave here. This is the only place he has ever called home.”

  “I know how he feels. As much as I hate this place, I think I would hate being a stranger more.”

  “You’re only a stranger the first day you’re in a new place. The second day you already know more about the place than you did the day before.”

  Maureen smiles. “You would have made a good lawyer.”

  “Then I would have had to put my whole family in prison because I have never known a bigger bunch of crooks. Yet, I have a life of leisure, a life free of financial worry because of how much of a crook my grandfather and father were. I hate how they made their money, and yet, I am glad for the freedom it gives me.”

  Nothing more is said about Ansel.

  When Esther leaves, Maureen knows she has only until September, which is not much time at all.

  Inside her she senses a kernel of resolve forming. Though small, it gives her life a focus, a meaning, and as the corners of her mouth turn up, she feels a sparkle of light in her eyes.

  5.

  Late on the afternoon of the same day, Ansel and Willie are sitting behind the store. Each has a bottle of soda from which he drinks slowly, savoring its coldness against the heat of the day.

  Finally Ansel speaks.

  “What do you think about what Miz Esther said this morning?”

  Although Ansel and Willie are the same age, Willie is as old as a cotton field. He knows his survival depends on how well he is able to perceive what a white person wants to hear and then says it before the white person knows that is what he or she wants to hear.

  Until Ansel had almost called him that word this morning, he had just about forgotten that Ansel was white.

  That could be dangerous. If he forgot that Ansel was, Ansel might remember that he was. And then what?

  But his parents had assured him that Ansel and Mister Bert were not like a lot of other white people. They were more like Miz Davis than Cap’n Zeph. But Willie isn’t sure anymore.

  “I didn’t think nothing about what she said,” Willie answers.

  “You figure on staying in Davis the rest of your life?” Ansel wants to know.

  “Where else I’m gon’ go? And what would I do when I got there, if there was a there to get to.”

  Ansel ponders this for a minute. “I don’t think I knew there was a there until Miz Esther said I didn’t have to take over the store.” He stops and gazes into the distance as if he is seeing something for the first time.

  “I don’t have to do what my papa does if I don’t want to. I had never thought about that before this morning. I don’t even have to stay here in Davis.”

  “Good for you,” Willie says. There is resentment in his voice.

  “Good for me what?”

  “Good for you that you don’t have to do what anybody says. Good for you that you can go somewhere else.” Willie does not disguise the contempt he now feels for Ansel.

  Ansel opens his mouth to say something, then closes it slowly. He looks at Willie, and he is ashamed. He had forgotten what Willie cannot forget.

  It is only at this moment that he understands the difference in their lives, the difference between one who could imagine that his life could be different, and one who knew that his life would not be, regardless of how much he dreamed.

  Ansel wants to apologize, wants to say something that will take away the look of resentment on Willie’s face, wants to say something that will take back what he almost called him that morning. But when he speaks, he is surprised at the words that come out, surprised at how fervently they come out.

  “We’ve got to start dreaming, Willie. We’ve just got to!”

  This is the last thing Willie expected Ansel to say. His use of “we” startles Willie. He resents Ansel for thinking that he is in the same position as Willie, but when he looks at Ansel, when he sees the look of anguish on his face, he remembers something his father told him, something that didn’t make sense until now.

  “Don’t never let yourself be angry with white folks. Us niggers, we know things are in a bad way. But the white folks? They don’t know that by keeping us down in a ditch, they got to be right here in the ditch with us. And because they don’t know that, they worse off than we are.”

  Willie’s face relaxes. He wants to dream; he wants to believe there is a there for him.

  “How do we dream?” he wants to know.

  He doesn’t know that by asking the question, he has already begun.

  Thursday Afternoon

  Ansel likes to sit on a stool in the kitchen when his mother is cooking.

  The worried, distracted look she wears like an old sweater that should have been thrown away a long time ago vanishes, and she becomes like a cup of hot chocolate on a cold morning.

  He and his mother seldom talk when they are in the kitchen together. At such times it is as if all the questions have been asked and answered, so there is no need for either of them to speak.

  But on this afternoon, the day after Esther Davis talked to him and Willie, a day when he went to work but early in the afternoon told his father he wasn’t feeling well and came home, he needs to talk with his mother, needs to know if it is all right for him to dream.

  “Do you ever think about living somewhere else?” he asks.

  Maureen is slicing apples for the pie she is making. When she hears Ansel’s question, her hands start trembling, but whether from fear or joy she does not know.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Just asking,” Ansel responds laconically, wishing his mother would tell him what she thinks for once rather than asking a question to answer his question.

  “Yes,” she says so quietly that he almost does not hear. “Yes, I do,” she adds, a little more loudly.

  Ansel’s heart is beating so fast he is afraid it will run out of beats and stop. “Where would you live?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Miss Esther thinks there’s no place in the world like Cambridge up in Massachusetts.”

  “So why don’t you go live there?”

  “I wouldn’t be any good in a place like that. Too big. Too many people. And what would I do? I don’t know how to do anything except keep house and take care of my husband and my son.”

  Ansel is silent for a long time. He wants to ask her the most important question he will ever ask anyone, but what if she gives him the answer he does not want to hear? Or thinks he doesn’t want to hear. What then?

&
nbsp; Then it occurs to him. What if she says what he wants her to say?

  That is even more frightening.

  “Ma?”

  She turns from the kitchen counter and looks at him for the first time. She hears a tremor in his voice. She knows what is coming.

  “Do I have to take over the store when I grow up?”

  There are moments in which one word can bestow life or abort it.

  A mere word, one syllable from a parent to a child has the power of a commandment from God.

  Maureen does not hesitate. “No.”

  Ansel does not have to wonder about her answer because her voice is loud and strong.

  Her answer surprises him so much that he feels like he is trying to find his balance on the knife edge of the future she has just presented to him.

  “Will Papa be mad if I don’t?”

  Maureen looks into the face of her son and sees there the fear of and elation at a world of possibilities.

  “Yes, but it’s your life, Ansel. Being a failure at living your own life as best as you can is better than being a success living the life somebody else says you should live.”

  The silence returns. Maureen turns her attention back to the pie, which will turn out to be the best one she has ever made. Though mother and son do not move, they embrace each other in the silence that embraces them.

  Friday

  1.

  It is evening. The sun has exited from the sky but forgotten to take the stifling heat of the day with it. On the unpaved, dusty streets, the heat settles into every corner and every crack of the houses.

  In these days before air conditioners, the heat inside the houses is greater than that outside.

  Everyone knows it will be at least midnight before it is cool enough to go to bed. So people sit on their porches, waiting with the patience that comes from knowing that it does no good to complain about what one cannot control.

  Around the town square, white men sit on benches beneath the ancient oak tree.

  Clouds are gathering in the southern sky, and there are flashes of lightning and an occasional distant rumble of thunder. Even if the storm comes that way, and the old men around the square are sure it won’t, it wouldn’t necessarily cool things off. More often than not, a rain in August didn’t do much good for the crops and only made the air hotter.

  Bert and Ansel are closing the store. Bert locks the door, and father and son start walking slowly to the car, which is parked off the square, next to the church cemetery.

  “Thanks for helping me fill out the orders,” Bert says. “I started learning things like that from my papa when I was around your age. Before I know it, you’ll be ready to take over from me.”

  Ansel does not know what to say. He liked helping his father, but when he tries to imagine working in the store for the rest of his life, he can’t.

  If only he knew what he wanted. Until he does, he doesn’t see any point in saying anything to his father.

  As father and son cross the street to the car, they see Big Willie hurrying out the front door of the church. He looks quickly to his right and left, and seeing Bert and Ansel, he runs to them.

  “Mistah Bert, suh! I’m glad it’s you. Yes, suh!” Willie is a tall and rather ungainly young man. His face looks as if it absorbed every death he witnessed, those he was agent of and those he was not. He is wearing a khaki military shirt with a private’s stripe on the sleeve. But the shirt is dirty and torn, as if he has not taken it off since his discharge.

  “Wasn’t me, Mistah Bert. No, suh! I didn’t have nothing to do with it, but I know I’m gon’ get blamed for it. Something like this happen, nigger gets blamed every time. Yes, suh. Sho’ do. But I ain’t done it.”

  “What are you talking about, Willie?”

  Willie points toward the church. “I seen him. I seen him just as sho’ as I’m seeing you and Mistah Ansel. Yes, suh. The young Mistah Zeph.”

  Bert hurries to the church and goes inside. In the dim light at the front, he sees and does not want to believe what he sees.

  “Ansel! Go outside!”

  Instead of doing what his father tells him, Ansel says, “Papa? What’s he doing?”

  Zeph Davis the Third turns at the sounds of the voices. In his right hand is a knife. It is slick with blood. On the floor in front of the altar lies a body, the skirt raised to reveal her nakedness.

  Ansel does not wait for an answer from his father, who is still trying to understand what he is seeing. Ansel screams, “Mary Susan! Mary Susan!” and runs to the front of the church. He stops and stares at her nakedness. Then, realizing what he is doing, he pulls down the skirt to cover her.

  In doing so, he sees a ripped blouse and severed bra. The exposed breasts are red and slick with blood.

  He wants to stare, but feels that he shouldn’t, that Mary Susan would not want him to.

  He takes the blood-soaked blouse and pulls both sides over her bared breasts, careful not to touch them.

  Zeph looks rapidly from Ansel to Bert, back and forth, back and forth, breathing heavily, not knowing what to do, what to say.

  Then he sees Big Willie in the shadows at the back of the church.

  “He did it!” Zeph shouts, pointing at Big Willie. “He did it!”

  “Mistah Bert? Suh, look at me. Ain’t no blood nowhere on me. Look at him. He covered with blood, her blood.”

  “You know niggers, Bert!” Zeph breaks in. “They do all kinds of stuff with roots. That nigger probably got a mojo that can take blood off his hands.”

  “I seen him, Mistah Bert. I seen him. I was up in the balcony. I likes to sit up there when no one’s around. It’s real peaceful.

  “That’s where I was when the preacher’s girl, Miz Mary, come in. I wanted to leave right then ’cause I knowed it wouldn’t look good if I was alone in the same place with a white woman. But wasn’t no way I could get out without her hearing. Seein’ me, she might get the wrong idea and start screaming. So I just stayed right still.

  “She went to the altar and knelt down to pray. I wondered what could be weighing so heavy on the heart of someone as young as she was. If she’d been a nigger gal, I could understand. Us niggers need all the prayer we can get. Yes, suh.

  “Miz Mary hadn’t been there long when I heard the door of the church open and he come in. I thought maybe the two of them had decided to meet up together at the church, but when she turned around to see who it was had come in and seen it was him, she say, ‘What do you want? You get on outta here and leave me alone. I’m praying.’

  “He don’t pay no mind to what she say. He go up to her and grab her and try to kiss her. She push him away. She say, ‘Get away from me or I’ll kick you so hard you won’t be able to move for a month.’

  “That’s when he whipped out his knife and before she could do anything, he was on her, stabbing her over and over. Then I seen him raise up her skirt, and I didn’t want to see no more. Mistah Zeph was so caught up in what he was doing that he didn’t see me, and I hurried out and that’s when I seen you and your boy. That’s the God’s truth, Mistah Bert. You believe me, don’t you? You’ll tell the white folks it wasn’t me. Won’t you, Mistah Bert?”

  “Who you going to believe, Bert? A nigger or a white man?”

  Zeph notices that Bert is hesitating, that Bert is thinking about what the right thing to do is, and Zeph drops the knife on the floor next to Mary Susan’s body, runs up the aisle and out of the church.

  “Rape! Rape! Pastor’s daughter been raped by a nigger!” Zeph is running and yelling at the same time. Over and over he shouts and the only words that are clear are “rape” and “nigger.”

  The men sitting on benches around the square, who, a mere instant before had not wanted to move against the heat, spring up and hurry to meet Zeph.

  “That crazy, shell-shocked nigger who works around the church done raped and killed the preacher’s daughter!” Zeph tells his eager listeners.

  The men see the blood on his shirt, the
blood on his hands, and they know. They know Zeph Davis. They had seen him just the other day walking toward the back of Anderson’s store with the preacher’s girl, and they had seen him come back by himself, and a little later, seen her come out. They know what didn’t happen then, and they know what happened this evening. But they tell themselves Zeph got covered with blood because he was trying to save the pastor’s daughter from that crazy nigger. Yes, that’s how it was.

  Some of the men hurry off into the night to spread the news to all those sitting on their porches. Soon people are rushing to the church, some walking, some running, some in cars. They get there in time to hear a loud scream, and rush inside to see Polly, Reverend Dennis’s wife, lying across the body of her only child.

  Reverend Dennis hovers behind his wife and takes her gently by the shoulders, pulls her away from the body, and enfolds her in his arms.

  Big Willie still stands at the back of the church, tears flowing down his face. He wants to run, but that would be like saying he did it.

  But Mistah Bert knows the truth, him and the boy. They know the truth of the matter. Everything’s gon’ be all right.

  Zeph rushes back into the church, a crowd following him. He sees Willie. “There the nigger is! Grab him!”

  “Well, I be damned,” someone says. “This is one brazen nigger! Instead of running, he stays around to admire what he done to a white girl!”

  Big Willie is seized by several men, their eyes lust-blind with violence.

  Willie’s eyes plead with Bert Anderson. When those blue eyes turn quickly away from Willie’s, he calls out, “Mistah Bert, suh. Please tell these gentlemen I had nothing to do with what happened to that girl. You know that’s the God’s truth, suh. Please tell ’em!”

  Suddenly, everyone stops. All eyes are now on Bert.

  Ansel had left Mary Susan’s side when her parents came in. Now he stands next to his father, looking up at him, waiting for him to tell everyone who did it, who killed Mary Susan, his Mary Susan.