And All Our Wounds Forgiven by Julius Lester Page B

i did not say that i do not love you. i love you more now than the afternoon we met my freshman year. i love the man you are becoming. i love you for choosing to be the leader of our people. i love you, john calvin. being your wife is another matter.
    i do not like the tightness in my stomach everytime a car passes the house. i do not like the dread of waiting for the next window to shatter from a rock or implode from the blast of a shotgun. i do not like the memory of the house falling around me; i do not like thinking, what if i had not taken three steps toward the kitchen? i would have been killed. i do not like to hear the phone ring when you’re away because one time i will pick it up and someone will tell me you are dead.
    most of all, i do not like that i am married to you and you are not married to me. i looked at that girl today and i envied the look in her eyes. i don’t mean when we were standing in the foyer but before you spoke. i noticed your eyes look up into the balcony and i knew you had found her. i turned and looked. i expected to see hero worship in her eyes. i expected to see the thick glow of infatuation. instead i was shocked. on her face, in her eyes, i saw a look of understanding. it’s not fair, i thought. i have tried so hard to be what you need. you have scarcely noticed because my efforts have been so far off the mark. you and she had not even exchanged a word, and yet, she seemed to know you in ways i never will. and afterward, in the foyer, did you notice that she stood and waited for you to come to her? did you notice that?
    john calvin: yes, i did.
    andrea: thanks for not lying. seeing how she was with you was remarkable. god, i hated her. i really hated her. it is not possible for a black woman to move through the world with such assurance, such self-confidence. how old is she? 19? my god! there has not been a 19-year-old black girl in the history of western civilization who could stand on the earth as if it were her unquestioned possession. but, i can’t hate her. it’s not her fault. and, this is what i want you to know. it is not yours, either. black men. white women. history has decreed that the two belong to each other in ways that black men and black women, white men and white women cannot. thank you for asking me to come. having seen the two of you together, having heard you speak her name, i will know that this is not some sexual fling. no woman likes to be rejected for that which all women have — pussy, if you will excuse me. if your husband is going to be sharing himself with another woman, at least let it be for something he could not have with you. i don’t know if that will lessen the hurt, but it will keep the hysteria within manageable boundaries — some of the time. it will assuage the loneliness — some of the time. it does not mean i forgive you — yet. it does not mean that i do not hate her. but my mind understands. some day, if i am blessed, my heart will accept.
    i said nothing but when we got home, we made love more truly and more tenderly than we ever had and ever would again.
    late that night, when i was downstairs going over my notes for the next day’s classes, i could hear her, upstairs, crying.

CARD

    it seemed logical that the young would respond eagerly to my calls for social change. i did not understand that for the young change has no other content than change. the appearance of activity differentiates them from their parents. the task of youth is this definitive act of differentiation because the young can have only one priority — to see themselves.
    i mistook their eagerness to follow me as confirmation. but ardor is as characteristic of youth as the large, moist eyes of cocker spaniels. though that ardor combined with courage to create a movement that ended racial segregation, what a price the nation extracted from its young to pay a debt they had not incurred.
    but did i have an alternative? the foundation of national policy for resolving