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This test consists of 5 multiple choice questions, 5 short answer questions, and 10 short essay questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. What game did the little boy like to play after they installed a speaker at the gates of their home?
(a) Tag.
(b) Telephone.
(c) Hide and seek.
(d) Cops and robbers.

2. What instrument does the narrator cite when describing how "the misbeats of [her] heart tailed off" (24)?
(a) Flute.
(b) Xylophone.
(c) Trumpet.
(d) Saxophone.

3. Where does the story the narrator tells herself take place?
(a) An apartment in the city.
(b) A house in the country.
(c) A house in the suburbs.
(d) A condo by the ocean.

4. What woke the narrator in the night at the start of the story?
(a) The phone ringing.
(b) A rainstorm.
(c) Her husband.
(d) A creaking sound in her house.

5. How was the plaque meant to indicate that the property owner was not racist?
(a) It said "All Are Welcome."
(b) It contained a peace sign.
(c) The man was masked so you could not tell if he was Black or white.
(d) It depicted a Black hand holding a white hand.

Short Answer Questions

1. What begins to happen once the riots in the city are suppressed?

2. What adjective is used to describe the gardener in the narrator's tale?

3. What "most profound" place does the narrator say men may be deep under her home?

4. Why was the swimming pool in the tale fenced in?

5. What did thieves do to "somebody's trusted housemaid" (26) after the city riots were suppressed?

Short Essay Questions

1. How is the man's mother described and what warning did she give her son and his wife as they start their life together?

2. How does the husband try to assuage his wife's fears when she worries people from the cities will tear off their warning sign and "open the gates and stream in" (26).

3. What fears did the man and woman's trusted housemaid begin to have, and what did they do in response to her fears?

4. After the riots outside the city subsided, what crimes took place in the suburbs?

5. What does the narrator realize is the cause of the creaking she hears in her home at the start of the story?

6. What does the narrator do when she is an able to fall back to sleep at the start of the story?

7. What does the man have installed in their house to ease his wife's fears and what does the boy do with them?

8. What precautions do the man and woman take against theft or natural disasters when they first move in to their home together?

9. Why is the narrator unable to sleep at the start of the story?

10. What recent crimes does the narrator describe at the start of the story?

(see the answer keys)

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