Page 347 - Enders_Game_Full_Book

"I can say anything," said Ivanova. "His name was Ender, and he destroyed everything he touched." Like me, she did not say.
"Oh? And what do you know of him?" His voice whipped out like a grass-saw, ragged and cruel. "How do you know there wasn't something that he touched kindly? Someone who loved him, who was blessed by his love? Destroyed everything he touched-- that's a lie that can't truthfully be said of any human being who ever lived."
"Is that your doctrine, Speaker? Then you don't know much." She was defiant, but still his anger frightened her. She had thought his gentleness was as imperturbable as a confessor's.
And almost immediately the anger faded from his face. "You can ease your conscience," he said. "Your call started my journey here, but others called for a Speaker while I was on the way."
"Oh?" Who else in this benighted city was familiar enough with the Hive Queen and the Hegemon to want a Speaker, and independent enough of Bishop Peregrino to dare to call for one? "If that's so, then why are you here in my house?"
"Because I was called to Speak the death of Marcos Maria Ribeira, your late husband."
It was an appalling thought. "Him! Who would want to think of him again, now that he's dead!"
The Speaker did not answer. Instead Miro spoke sharply from her bed. "Grego would, for one. The Speaker showed us what we should have known-- that the boy is grieving for his father and thinks we all hate him--"
"Cheap psychology," she snapped. "We have therapists of our own, and they aren't worth much either."
Ela's voice came from behind her. "I called for him to Speak Father's death, Mother. I thought it would be decades before he came, but I'm glad he's here now, when he can do us some good."
"What good can he do us!"
"He already has, Mother. Grego fell asleep embracing him, and Quara spoke to him." "Actually," said Miro, "she told him that he stinks."
"Which was probably true," said Ela, "since Greguinho peed all over him."
Miro and Ela burst into laughter at the memory, and the Speaker also smiled. This more than anything else discomposed Novinha-- such good cheer had been virtually unfelt in this house since Marc o brought her here a year after Pipo's death. Against her will Novinha remembered her joy when Miro was newly born, and when Ela was little, the first few years of their lives, how Miro babbled about everything, how Ela toddled madly after him through the house, how the children played together and romped in the grass within sight of the piggies' forest just beyond the fence; it