The Keepers of the House

by Shirley Ann Grau

Sometimes I feel that my grandfather was my father. And that Margaret, black Margaret, was my mother. Living in a house like this you got your feelings all mixed up.

never let them come back, so they wouldn’t feel the blame of being a Negro. And never go see them, so they wouldn’t have the weight of their mother’s black face. They were white and she had made them that way.