Anger

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Trash (1988)

  I never hated my stepfather half as much for the beatings he gave me as for those stolen moments when I could have been holding Mama’s feet in my hands. Pulled away from Mama’s side to run get him a pillow or change the television channel and forced to stand and wait until he was sure there was nothing else he wanted me to do, I entertained myself with visions of his sudden death. Motorcycle outlaws would come to the door, mistaking him for a Drug Enforcement Officer, and blow his head off with a sawed-off shotgun just like the one my Uncle Bo kept under the front seat in his truck. The lawn mower would explode, cutting him into scattered separate pieces the emergency squad would have to collect in plastic bags. Standing and waiting for his orders while staring at the thin black hairs on his balding head, I would imagine his scalp seen through bloodstained plastic, and smile wide and happy while I thought out how I would tell that one to my sister in our dark room at night, when she would whisper back to me her own version of our private morality play. When my stepfather beat me I did not think, did not imagine stories of either escape or revenge. When my stepfather beat me I pulled so deeply into myself I lived only in my eyes, my eyes that watched the shower sweat on the bathroom walls, the pipes under the sink, my blood on the porcelain toilet seat, and the buckle of his belt as it moved through the air. My ears were disconnected so I could understand nothing—neither his shouts, my own hoarse shameful strangled pleas, nor my mother’s screams from the other side of the door he locked. I would not come back to myself until the beating was ended and the door was opened and I saw my mother’s face, her hands shaking as she reached for me. Even then, I would not be able to understand what she was yelling at him, or he was yelling at both of us. Mama would take me into the bedroom and wash my face with a cold rag, wipe my legs and, using the same lotion I had rubbed into her feet, try to soothe my pain. Only when she had stopped crying would my hearing come back, and I would lie still and listen to her voice saying my name—soft and tender, like her hand on my back. There were no stories in my head then, no hatred, only an enormous gratitude to be lying still with her hand on me and, for once, the door locked against him.

• From Trash (1988)

  Jack stood in the doorway. He looked uncomfortable with the three of us sitting together. “She’s looking better,” he said diffidently. Arlene nodded. Jo let blue smoke trail slowly out of her nose. I said nothing. I could feel my cheeks go stiff. I looked at the way Jack’s hairline was receding, the gray bush of his military haircut thinning out and slowly exposing the bony structure of his head. “Well.” Jack’s left hand gripped the doorframe. He let go and flexed his fingers in the air. When the hand came down again, it gripped so hard the fingertips went white. My eyes were drawn there, unable to look away from the knuckles standing out knobby and hard. Beside me Jo tore her empty potato chip bag in half, spilling crumbs on the linoleum tabletop. Arlene shifted in her chair. I heard the elevator gears grind out in the hall. “I was gonna go home,” Jack said. He let go of the doorjamb. “Good night, Daddy,” Arlene called after him. He waved a hand and walked away. Jo twisted around in her chair. “You are such a suck-ass,” she said. Arlene’s cheeks flushed. “You don’t have to be mean.” “I can’t even say his name. You call him Daddy.” Jo shook her head. “Daddy.” “He’s the only father I’ve ever known.” Arlene’s face was becoming a brighter and brighter pink. She fumbled with her cigarette case, then shoved it into her bag. “And I don’t see any reason to make this thing any worse.” “Worse?” Jo twisted further in her chair. She leaned over and put her hand on Arlene’s forearm. “Tell me the truth,” she said. “Didn’t you ever just want to kill the son of a bitch?” Arlene jerked her arm free, but Jo caught the belt of her dress. “He an’t got shit. He an’t gonna give you no money, and he can’t hurt you no more. You don’t have to suck up to him. You could tell him to go to hell.” Arlene slapped Jo’s hand away and grabbed her bag. “Don’t you tell me what to do.” She looked over at me as if daring me to say something. “Don’t you tell me nothing.” Jo dropped back in her seat and lifted her hands in mock surrender. “Me, you can say no to. Him, you run after like some little brokenhearted puppy.” “Don’t, don’t . . .” For a moment it was as if Arlene were going to say something. The look on her face reminded me of the night she had screamed and kicked. Do it, I wanted to say. Do it. But whatever Arlene wanted to say, she swallowed. “Just don’t!” She was out the door in a rush. I took a drink of cold coffee and watched Jo. Her eyes were red-veined and her hair hung limp. She shook her head. “I hate her, I swear I do,” she said.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  ‘Daughter,’ replied the friar, ‘all I can say is that he has taken an unpardonable liberty and carried things beyond all reasonable bounds, and you took the proper course in sending him off as you did. But I would implore you, since God has protected you from dishonour, that just as you have followed my advice on the two previous occasions, you should do so again this time. Do not, in other words, complain to any of your kinsfolk, but leave things to me, and I shall see whether I can restrain this headstrong devil, whom I had always thought of as such a saintly person. If I can succeed in taming the beast that possesses him, all well and good. If I can’t, then you have my blessing and my permission to follow your instinct and take whatever measures you consider most appropriate.’ ‘Very well, then,’ said the lady. ‘I have no wish to upset you, and therefore I shall follow your instructions just once more. But you’d better see that he takes care not to pester me again, because I promise you that if there’s any more of it, I shan’t be coming back to you.’ And without saying another word, she turned her back on the friar and strode away. She had hardly left the church when the gentleman arrived and was summoned by the friar, who drew him aside and gave him the fiercest scolding anyone ever had, calling him a disloyal traitor and a perjurer. Having twice previously had occasion to observe the eventual drift of these reprimands, the man was careful not to commit himself, but simply tried to wheedle an explanation out of the friar by interpolating ambiguous comments, his first words being: ‘Why are you creating such a fuss? Anyone would think I had crucified Christ.’ ‘For shame, you villain!’ exclaimed the friar. ‘Just listen to the man! He talks for all the world as if a year or two had passed, blotting out the memory of his wickedness and depravity. Can you have forgotten the offence you perpetrated in the short time that has elapsed since matins? Where were you this morning, a little before dawn?’ ‘I don’t recall where I was,’ replied the gentleman. ‘But it didn’t take you long to find out.’

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Postremo quia difficile foret praesentes literas ad singula quaeque loca deferri in quibus necessarium foret, volumus et apostolica authoritate decernimus, quod earum transumptis manu publici notarii confectis et subscriptis, vel in alma Urbe impressis et sigillo alicujus ecclesiastici Praelati munitis ubique stetur et plena fides adhibeatur, prout originalibus literis staretur, si forent exhibitae vel ostensae. Et ne praefatus Martinus omnesque alii supradicti, quos praesentes literae quomodolibet concernunt, ignorantiam earundem literarum et in eis contentorum omnium et singulorum praetendere valeant, literas ipsas in Basilicas Principis Apostolorum et Cancellariae Apostolicae, necnon Cathedralium ecclesiarum Brandeburgen., Misnen. et Morspergen. [Merseburg] valvis affigi et publicari debere284 volumus, decernentes, quod earundem literarum publicatio sic facta, supradictum Martinum omnesque alios et singulos praenominatos, quos literae hujusmodi quomodolibet concernunt, perinde arctent, ac si literae ipsae die affixionis et publicationis hujusmodi eis personaliter lectae et intimatae forent, cum non sit verisimile, quod ea quae tam patenter fiunt debeant apud eos incognita remanere. Non obstantibus constitutionibus et ordinationibus apostolicis, seu si supradictis omnibus et singulis vel eorum alicui aut quibusvis aliis a Sede Apostolica praedicta, vel ab ea potestatem habentibus sub quavis forma, etiam confessionali et cum quibusvis etiam fortissimis clausulis, aut ex quavis causa, seu grandi consideratione, indultum vel concessum existat, quod interdici, suspendi, vel excommunicari non possint per literas Apostolicas, non facientes plenam et expressam ac de verbo ad verbum, non autem per clausulas generates id importantes, de indulto hujusmodi mentionem, ejusdem indulti tenores, causas285 et formas perinde ac si de verbo ad verbum insererentur, ita ut omnino tollatur, praesentibus pro expressis habentes. Nulli ergo omnino hominum liceat hanc paginam nostrae damnationis, reprobationis, rejectionis, decreti, declarationis, inhibitionis, voluntatis, mandati, hortationis, obsecrationis, requisitionis, monitionis, assignationis, concessionis, condemnationis, subjectionis, excommunicationis, et anathematizationis infringere, vel ei ausu temerario contraire. Si quis autem hoc attentare praesumpserit, indignationem Omnipotentis Dei ac Beatorum Petri et Pauli Apostolorum ejus se noverit incursurum. Dat. Romae apud S. Petrum anno incarnationis Dominicae Milesimo Quingentesimo Vigesimo. XVII. Kls. Julii. Pontificatus Nostri Anno Octavo. Visa. R. Milanesius. Albergatus. Impressum Romae per Iacobum Mazochium De Mandato S. D. N. Papae.286 § 48. Luther burns the Pope’s bull, and forever breaks with Rome. Dec. 10, 1520. Literature in § 47. Luther was prepared for the bull of excommunication. He could see in it nothing but blasphemous presumption and pious hypocrisy. At first he pretended to treat it as a forgery of Eck.287 Then he wrote a Latin and German tract, "Against the bull of Antichrist,"288 called it a "cursed, impudent, devilish bull," took up the several charges of heresy, and turned the tables against the Pope, who was the heretic according to the standard of the sacred Scriptures. Hutten ridiculed the bull from the literary and patriotic standpoint with sarcastic notes and queries. Luther attacked its contents with red-hot anger and indignation bordering on frenzy. He thought the last day, the day of Antichrist, had come. He went so far as to say that nobody could be saved who adhered to the bull.289

• From Trash (1988)

  “Tena-kata-sho,” I say out loud and face punch up into my reflected image. The adrenaline comes even though all I have to trigger it is my own frustration. The sensei at the school I’ve been going to these past few months is a returned vet and a part-time cop who keeps switching back and forth, talking now in fortune-cookie Confucianism and then with macho insistence. Once every few weeks he loses control and really pops one of the boys. He doesn’t know how to deal with the women at all, and we all know he’d be happier if we weren’t in the class. The six of us who have remained ignore everything except the skills he has to teach us. For all of us, it is the discipline that matters, making ourselves over into what we most want to be, becoming strong for ourselves. We strip off our sex with our jewelry, sometimes so thoroughly that he forgets to treat us like the fragile incompetents he believes us to be. Last week he lost patience with me the way he does with the boys, grabbed me by the arm and shook me. “You’re behaving like a passenger here, going through the motions. You’re not thinking about what you’re doing. You’re not in control. Come on. Get into your body. Feel it, feel what you’re doing. Push those muscles, feel ’em.” The muscles of the mind, I’d thought. I’m just a passenger in here. I got to do something about the muscles of the mind. I watch myself in the wall of glass above me, watch my back as I turn and lift my arms. I make my trembling muscles coil and reach, hoping desperately that the magic will come, that the kata will become sex for me the way it sometimes does. I slip into stance, determinedly loose, trying to thoughtlessly snap out the tension, to turn and jerk crisply, sharply, my shadow under me a pinpoint like the light in the pupils of Liz’s eyes. I push and sweat but my mind won’t let go. My feet keep slipping in the grass. The sun slanting up through the dogwood trees stabs my eyes. I lose my place in the kata and can’t remember the next sequence of moves.

• From Trash (1988)

  “I don’t remember. That was a long time ago.” “Only a moment in the mind, girl. Think about it. All those details you produce on prompting, the feel of the mesh, and the stink of the fish, all that story stuff that rolls out of you so easily when you got an audience around. Bet you got that monkey in your mind all the time.” “You jealous?” “More like you’re guilty? Guilty ’bout how you play up to any and everybody, but got so little time for the folks who really care about you?” “You, huh? You want me to believe you just live for me, huh?” “Hell, me and the monkeys, girl. Me and the monkeys.” She was teasing and she wasn’t. It was the end of the semester, and for weeks she’d been trying to talk me into moving out of the dorm and into an apartment with her for the beginning of the next term. “Think about it. We’d have a door we could lock against the world.” I thought about it. I thought about never being alone when I wanted to be, about Toni keeping track of where I went and what I did, of her sudden angers and drunken tirades. But I also thought about all those Sunday mornings lying against Toni’s thigh out in front of the dormitory, reading the paper and swapping nasty stories until we were both squirming in our jeans with nowhere to go to have sex. Then I thought about making love anytime I wanted until I would get to needing it, having to have it, and only Toni to provide it. I thought about getting to where I trusted her and what she might do then. A kind of terror came up from my belly and strangled me. I’d never trusted anybody in my life. How could I trust Toni? “No,” I told her. “I don’t want to move in with you.” Toni’s black eyes narrowed, and her left hand slapped the monkey cage, sending its captive into shrieking hysterics. “Shit, bitch. You just want your stuff taken care of and never having to trade nothing for it. You tell yourself it’s just sex, and sex an’t nothing but itch-scratching. You tell yourself lies, girl. You live your life on lies.” She grabbed my wrists and pulled me close to her. I pulled back, and we both almost fell. For a moment we stood close, trembling, then she threw my hands down. “Even monkeys take mating seriously.” Her anger and hurt and outrage seemed to vibrate right through me. My own anger came rolling back. “What do you know about monkeys? What do you know about anything?” “More than your stories, girl. More than your stories tell anyone. I know who I am. I know what I want. And I know what an’t worth my trouble, what an’t worth another minute of my time.”

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  She wrote: ‘Mother, I am going abroad quite soon, but I shall not see you to say good-bye, because I don’t want to come back to Morton. These visits of mine have always been painful, and now my work is beginning to suffer—that I can not allow; I live only for my work and so I intend to guard it in future. There can now be no question of gossip or scandal, for every one knows that I am a writer and as such may have occasion to travel. But in any case I care very little these days for the gossip of neighbours. For nearly three years I have borne your yoke—I have tried to be patient and understanding. I have tried to think that your yoke was a just one, a just punishment, perhaps, for my being what I am, the creature whom you and my father created; but now I am going to bear it no longer. If my father had lived he would have shown pity, whereas you showed me none, and yet you were my mother. In my hour of great need you utterly failed me; you turned me away like some unclean thing that was unfit to live any longer at Morton. You insulted what to me seemed both natural and sacred. I went, but now I shall not come back any more to you or to Morton. Puddle will be with me because she loves me; if I’m saved at all it is she who has saved me, and so for as long as she wishes to throw in her lot with mine I shall let her. Only one thing more; she will send you our address from time to time, but don’t write to me, Mother, I am going away in order to forget, and your letters would only remind me of Morton.’ She read over what she had written, three times, finding nothing at all that she wished to add, no word of tenderness, or of regret. She felt numb and then unbelievably lonely, but she wrote the address in her firm handwriting: ‘The Lady Anna Gordon,’ she wrote, ‘Morton Hall. Near Upton-on-Severn.’ And when she wept, as she presently must do, covering her face with her large, brown hands, her spirit felt unrefreshed by this weeping, for the hot, angry tears seemed to scorch her spirit. Thus was Anna Gordon baptized through her child as by fire, unto the loss of their mutual salvation. CHAPTER 311I t was Jonathan Brockett who had recommended the little hotel in the Rue St. Roch, and when Stephen and Puddle arrived one evening that June, feeling rather tired and dejected, they found their sitting-room bright with roses—roses for Puddle—and on the table two boxes of Turkish cigarettes for Stephen. Brockett, they learnt, had ordered these things by writing specially from London.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  ‘No, sir,’ replied Ambrogiuolo. ‘That is not the reason. I am laughing about the way I acquired them.’ ‘Oh,’ said Sicurano. ‘Then perhaps, if the explanation is not too improper, you will be good enough to tell us about it.’ ‘Sir,’ replied Ambrogiuolo. ‘These things were given to me, along with various others, by a gentlewoman of Genoa called Donna Zinevra, the wife of Bernabò Lomellin. It was after I had slept with her for the night, and she asked me to keep them as a token of her love. And I was laughing just now because I was reminded of the foolishness of her husband, who was insane enough to wager five thousand gold florins against a thousand that I would not succeed in seducing his lady. I won the wager of course, and I am given to understand that the husband, who should have punished himself for his stupidity instead of punishing his wife for doing what all other women do, returned from Paris to Genoa and had her put to death.’ On hearing these words, Sicurano understood at once why Bernabò had been so enraged with her, and realized that this was the fellow who was responsible for all her woes. And she vowed to herself that he would not remain unpunished. Sicurano therefore pretended to be greatly amused by his story and skilfully cultivated his friendship, so that when the fair was over, Ambrogiuolo packed up all his goods and at Sicurano’s invitation went with him to Alexandria, where Sicurano had a warehouse built for him and placed a large sum of money at his disposal. And Ambrogiuolo, seeing that it was greatly to his profit, was only too ready to stay there. Being anxious to offer Bernabò clear proof of his wife’s innocence, Sicurano never rested until, with the assistance of one or two influential Genoese merchants in the city and a variety of ingenious pretexts, he had enticed him to come to Alexandria. Bernabò was by now in a state of poverty, and Sicurano secretly commissioned some of his friends to shelter him and keep him out of the way until such time as he felt he could put his plans into effect. Sicurano had already persuaded Ambrogiuolo to repeat his story in front of the Sultan, who had greatly relished it. But now that Bernabò had arrived, he wanted to see the business through as quickly as possible, and took the earliest opportunity to induce the Sultan to summon Ambrogiuolo and Bernabò to his presence, so that, in Bernabò’s hearing, Ambrogiuolo could be coerced by fair means or foul to confess the truth concerning his boast with regard to Bernabò’s wife.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  ‘Ricciardo,’ she said. ‘I do not know how God can ever provide me with sufficient strength to bear the wicked deception you have practised upon me. I have no wish to raise a clamour in this place, to which I was led by my own simplicity and excessive jealousy. But you may rest assured that I shall never be happy until I see myself avenged in some way or other for the wrong you have done me. Now let me go, and get out of here! You have had what you wanted, you have tortured me to your heart’s content, and now you can go. For heaven’s sake, go!’ On seeing that she was still far from mollified, Ricciardo, who was determined not to leave her until she had recovered her equanimity, set about the task of appeasing her with a stream of honeyed endearments. And he exhorted and cajoled and beseeched her to such good effect that she eventually succumbed and forgave him, after which, by mutual consent, they tarried together at some length to their inordinate delight. And so it was that from that day forward, the lady abandoned the stony attitude she had previously displayed to Ricciardo, and began to love him with all the tenderness in the world. And by proceeding with the greatest of discretion, they enjoyed their love together on many a later occasion. May God grant that we enjoy ours likewise. SEVENTH STORYTedaldo, exasperated with his mistress, goes away from Florence. Returning after a long absence disguised as a pilgrim, he talks to the lady, induces her to acknowledge her error, and liberates her husband, who has been convicted of murdering Tedaldo and is about to be executed. He then effects a reconciliation between the husband and his own brothers; and thereafter he discreetly enjoys the company of his mistress. On lapsing into silence, Fiammetta was congratulated by all present, and the queen, being anxious not to lose any time, promptly called upon Emilia to tell her story. So Emilia began: For my own part, I intend to return to our own city, from which the last two speakers chose to depart, and show you how a citizen of ours regained his lost mistress.

• From Trash (1988)

  And just that easy her face was there, her full swollen mouth mocking me, whispering back, “Like a dyke. You the dyke here, girl. I sure an’t.” So then I’d cried, sobbed and cried, and beaten on that mirror with my fists until the women outside came to try and see what was going on. I’d shut up, washed my face, and told them nothing. What could I tell them, anyway? My ghost lover just came back and made me piss all over my jeans. My ghost lover is haunting me, and the trick is I am glad to see her. Katy hands me the joint again, moving her small hands delicately. She smiles when she sees where my glance is trained. She flexes her fist, opens the fingers, and wags them in front of my nose. I laugh and take the joint again . “I loved that shirt. It was the best present you ever got me.” “You forgetting those black gloves with the rhinestones on the back I got in that shop on Peachtree Street. We always got the best stuff in Atlanta. Didn’t we?” “You just about got us busted in Atlanta.” “Oh hell, you were just a nervous Nellie. Thought you were the only woman capable of sleight of hand. You just never trusted me, girl.” “You were always so stoned. You did stupid things.” “I did wonderful things. I did amazing things, and stoned only made me better, made me smoother. Loosened me up and made me psychic. I was doing acid when I got you those gloves. That windowpane Blackie sold us.” “Purple haze. You always talk about the windowpane, but we only did it once. You talk about the windowpane ’cause you like to scare people with the notion of you sticking it in your eyes.” “I only did it once with you. I did it lots with Mickey. We put it in our eyes, in our noses. Son of a bitch even shoved it up my ass.” She crushes the joint out on the bedframe. She is smiling and relaxed now, very beautiful even though I am getting angry. Mickey was the one took her to California after I ran off. Mickey was the one who got her back on junk, left her in the motel room where she overdosed. Mickey was the one threatened me at her memorial service, with his parole officer standing right there sweating in the heat. Mickey was the one I’d told to try it. Come for me, asshole, and I’ll cut off your balls and push them up your butt. The parole officer had smiled, and my sweat had turned cold on my back. That wasn’t like me, wasn’t the kind of thing I’d say.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  ‘Madam,’ replied the scholar, who was only too delighted to converse with her, ‘it was not because you loved me that you took me into your confidence, but to recover the love that you had lost, and hence you deserve to be treated even more harshly. Moreover you are out of your mind if you suppose that this was the only way I had of obtaining the revenge that I coveted. I had a thousand others, and I had placed a thousand snares around your feet whilst pretending to love you, so that even if this one had failed, you would inevitably have stumbled into another before very long. True, you could not have chosen to fall into a trap which would bring you greater shame and suffering than this, but then I laid it in this way, not in order to spare your pain, but to enhance my pleasure. And even supposing that all my little schemes had failed, I should still have had my pen, with which I should have lampooned you so mercilessly, and with so much eloquence, that when my writings came to your notice (as they certainly would), you would have wished, a thousand times a day, that you had never been born. ‘The power of the pen is far greater than those people suppose who have not proved it by experience. I swear to God (and may He grant that my revenge will continue to be as sweet from now until its end as it has been in its beginning), that you yourself, to say nothing of others, would have been so mortified by the things I had written that you would have put out your eyes rather than look upon yourself ever again. It’s no use reproaching the sea for having grown from a tiny stream. ‘As for your love, or that you should belong to me, these are matters towards which, as I said before, I am utterly indifferent. Go on belonging, if you can, to the man you belonged to before, whom I now love as much as I formerly hated, considering the pretty pass to which you have been brought on his account. You women are always falling in love with younger men, and yearning for them to love you in return, because of their fresher complexions and darker beards, their jaunty gait, their dancing and their jousting; but when a man is properly mature, he has put such matters as these behind him, and knows a thing or two that these young fellows have yet to learn.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  The woman’s eyes filled with tears, and she said: ‘It’s this villain of a man, who returns home drunk of an evening, or else he falls asleep in some tavern or other and then comes back at this hour. I’ve put up with it for God knows how long and remonstrated with him until I was blue in the face. But I can’t put up with it any longer, and so I’ve decided to take him down a peg or two by locking him out, to see whether he will mend his ways.’ Tofano on the other hand, like the fool that he was, explained precisely what had happened, and came out with a whole lot of threats and abuse, whereupon his wife spoke up again, saying to the neighbours: ‘You see the sort of man he is! What would you say if I were in the street and he was in the house, instead of the other way round? In God’s faith I’ve no doubt you would believe what he was saying. So you can see what a crafty fellow he is. He accuses me of doing the very thing that he appears to have done himself. He thought he could frighten me by dropping something or other down the well; but I wish to God that he really had thrown himself in, and drowned himself at the same time, so that all the wine he’s been drinking would have been well and truly diluted.’ The neighbours, men and women alike, all began to scold Tofano, putting the blame on him alone and reviling him for slandering his poor wife; and in brief, they created such an uproar that it eventually reached the ears of the woman’s kinsfolk. Her kinsfolk hurried to the scene, and having listened to the accounts of several of the neighbours, they took hold of Tofano and hammered him till he was black and blue. They then went into the house, collected all the woman’s belongings, and took her back with them, threatening Tofano with worse to follow. Seeing what a sorry plight he had landed himself in on account of his jealousy, Tofano, since he was really very fond of his wife, persuaded certain friends of his to intercede on his behalf with the lady’s kinsfolk, with whom he succeeded in making his peace and arranging for her to come back to him. And not only did he promise her that he would never be jealous again, but he gave her permission to amuse herself to her heart’s content, provided she was sensible enough not to let him catch her out. So, like the stupid peasant, he first was mad and then was pleasant. Long live love, therefore, and a plague on all skinflints!

• From Trash (1988)

  “You know. You know what it is. The way she is about you. I know it has to be you—something about you. I want to know what it is, and you’re going to tell me. Then you’re going to come home with me and straighten this out. There’s a lot I an’t never been able to fix, but this time, this thing, I’m going to see it out. I’m going to see it fixed.” I opened my eyes and she was still standing there, the cue stick shiny in her hand, her face all flushed and tight. “Go,” I said and heard my voice, a scratchy, strangling cry in the big room. “Get out of here.” “What did you tell her? What did you say to your mama?” “Ask her. Don’t ask me. I don’t have nothing to say to you.” The pool cue rose slowly, slowly till it touched the right cheek, the fine lines of broken blood vessels, freckles, and patchy skin. She shook her head slowly. My throat pulled tighter and tighter until it drew my mouth down and open. Like a shot the cue swung. The table vibrated with the blow. Her cheeks pulled tight, the teeth all a grimace. The cue split and broke. White dust rose in a cloud. The echo hurt my ears while her hands rose up as fists, the broken cue in her right hand as jagged as the pain in her face. “Don’t you say that to me. Don’t you treat me like that. Don’t you know who I am, what I am to you? I didn’t have to come up here after you. I could have let it run itself out, let it rest on your head the rest of your life, just let you carry it—your mama’s life. YOUR MAMA’S LIFE, GIRL. Don’t you understand me? I’m talking about your mama’s life.” She threw the stick down, turned away from me, her shoulders heaving and shaking, her hands clutching nothing. “I an’t talking about your stepfather. I an’t talking about no man at all. I’m talking about your mama sitting at her kitchen table, won’t talk to nobody, won’t eat, and won’t listen to nothing. What’d she ever ask from you? Nothing. Just gave you your life and everything she had. Worked herself ugly for you and your sister. Only thing she ever hoped for was to do the same for your children, someday to sit herself back and hold her grandchildren on her lap. . . .” It was too much. I couldn’t stand it.

• From Trash (1988)

  The week before the conference, Lee went from church to campus borrowing enormous pots, colanders, and baking trays. Ten flat baking trays convinced her that the second dinner we had to cook could be tofu lasagna with skim-milk mozzarella and lots of chopped carrots. I spent the week sitting in front of the pool table in Jay’s apartment, peeling and slicing carrots, potatoes, onions, green and red peppers, leeks, tomatoes, and squash. The slices were dumped in ten-gallon garbage bags and stored in Jay’s handy floor-model freezer. I put a tablecloth down on the pool table to protect the green felt and made mounds of vegetables over each pocket corner. Every mound cut down and transferred to a garbage bag was a victory. I was winning the war on vegetables until the committee Lee had scared up delivered another load. I drank coffee and chopped carrots, ate a chicken pot pie and peeled potatoes, drank iced tea and sliced peppers. I peeled the onions but didn’t slice them, dropped them into a big vat of cold water to keep. I found a meat cleaver on the back porch and used it to chop the zucchini and squash, pretending I was doing karate and breaking boards. “Bite-sized,” Lee told me as she ran through, “it should all be bite-sized.” I wanted to bite her. I drank cold coffee and dropped tomatoes one at a time into boiling water to loosen their skins. There were supposed to be other women helping me, but only one showed up, and she went home after she got a rash from the tomatoes. I got out a beer, put the radio on loud, switching it back and forth from rock and roll to the country-and-western station and sang along as I chopped. I kept working. The only food left in the apartment was vegetables. I wanted to have a pizza delivered but had no money. When I got hungry, I ate carrots on white bread with mayonnaise, slices of tomatoes between slices of raw squash, and leeks I dipped in a jar of low-sodium peanut butter. I threw up three times but kept working. Four hours before the first women were to arrive I took the last bushel basket of carrots out in the backyard and hid it under a tarp with the lawn mower. I laughed to myself as I did, swaying on rubbery legs. Lee drove up in a borrowed pickup truck with two women who’d come in from Atlanta and volunteered to help. One of them kept talking about the no-mucus diet as she loaded the truck. I went in the bathroom, threw up again, and then just sat on the tailgate in the sun while they finished up.

• From Trash (1988)

  You’ll never be left alone.” Mabel’s voice was reassuring even if her words weren’t, and I worked her station first. A family of four children, parents, and a grandmother took her biggest table. She took their order with a wide smile, but as she passed me going down to the ice drawer, her teeth were point on point. “Fifty cents,” she snapped, and went on. Helping her clean the table thirty-five minutes later I watched her pick up two lone quarters and repeat, “Fifty cents,” this time in a mournfully conclusive tone. It was a game all the waitresses played. There was a butter bowl on the back counter where the difference was kept, the difference between what you guessed and what you got. No one had to play, but most of the women did. The rules were simple. You had to make your guess at the tip before the order was taken. Some of the women would cheat a little, bringing the menus with the water glasses and saying, “I want ya’ll to just look this over carefully. We’re serving one fine lunch today.” Two lines of conversation and most of them could walk away with a guess within five cents. However much the guess was off went into the bowl. If you said fifty cents and got seventy-five cents, then twenty-five cents to the bowl. Even if you said seventy-five cents and got fifty cents you had to throw in that quarter—guessing high was as bad as guessing short. “We used to just count the short guesses,” Mabel explained, “but this makes it more interesting.” Once Mabel was sure she’d get a dollar and got stiffed instead. She was so mad she counted out that dollar in nickels and pennies, and poured it into the bowl from a foot in the air. It made a very satisfying angry noise, and when those people came back a few weeks later no one wanted to serve them. Mama stood back by the pharmacy sign smoking her Pall Mall cigarette and whispered in my direction, “Yankees.” I was sure I knew just what she meant. At the end of each week, the women playing split the butter bowl evenly. Mama said I wasn’t that good a waitress, but I made up for it in eagerness. Mabel said I made up for it in “tail.” “Those salesmen sure do like how you run back to that steam table,” she said with a laugh, but she didn’t say it where Mama could hear. Mama said it was how I smiled . “You got a heartbreaker’s smile,” she told me. “You make them think of when they were young.” Behind her back, Mabel gave me her own smile, and a long slow shake of her head. Whatever it was, by the end of the first week I’d earned four dollars more in tips than my mama. It was almost embarrassing.

• From Trash (1988)

  Before I published any of my own stories, I read a great many stories by people just as passionate about writing as I was, and I learned something from everyone I read—sometimes most important what I should not try to write. I began in the tradition of Muriel Rukeyser, aching to break the world open with what I had to say on the page. There were specific feelings I wanted the stories to create, realizations I wanted people to experience. Sometimes it was grief I wanted to provoke, sometimes anger, almost always a spur to action, to change. I wanted the world to be different in my lifetime, and I truly believed that stories were one way to help that happen. I did not begin with craft, I began with strong feelings and worked toward craft. I wanted to be good and I wanted to be effective, and these are not always the same thing. Sometimes I was trying to write a poem, but the thing would not pare down enough to anything less than narrative. Sometimes I was so angry, I wrote to stop my own rage. Mostly I was angry, and drunk on words, the sound of words more than the way they looked on the page. It is quite literally the case that I wrote out loud, reading the stories out loud over and over until they were closer to what I wanted. “If I die tomorrow, I want to have gotten this down.” That is how many of these stories started. Once in a while, I had read someone else’s story and put it down in rage, beginning my own to refuse the one that had so confounded me. Going back into these stories, I remember those moments even when I no longer remember the actual stories I was refuting. Taylor Caldwell stories, I called them in an early journal—stories in which poor southern characters were framed as if they were brain-damaged, or morally insufficient, or just damn stupid.

• From Trash (1988)

  She did break his nose, and chipped two teeth that belonged to the rent-a-cop who came over to play hero. The nurses fared better, getting away with only a few scratches and one moderately unpleasant bite mark. “I’ll kill you,” Arlene kept screaming. “I’ll fucking kill you all!” Then after a while, “You’re killing me. You’re killing me!” It was Jo who had found Arlene. Baby sister had barely been breathing, her face and hair sour with vomit. Jo called the ambulance, and then poured cold water all over Arlene’s head and shoulders until she became conscious enough to scream. For a day and a half, Jo told me, Arlene was finally who she should have been from the beginning. She cursed with outrage and flailed with wild conviction. “You should have seen it,” Jo told me. By the time I got there, Arlene was going in and out—one minute sobbing and weak and the next minute rearing up to shout. The conviction was just about gone. When she was quiet for a little while, I looked in at her, but I couldn’t bring myself to speak. Every breath Arlene drew seemed to suck oxygen out of the room. Then Jack came in the door and it was as if she caught fire at the sight of him. For the first and only time in her life she called him a son of a bitch to his face. “You, you,” she screamed. “You are killing me! Get out. Get out. I’ll rip your dick off if you don’t get the hell out of here.” “She’s gone completely crazy,” Jack told everyone, but it sounded like sanity to me. The psychiatric nurse kept pushing for sedation, but Jo and I fought them on that. Let her scream it out, we insisted. By some miracle they listened to us, and left her alone. We stayed in the hall outside the room, listening to Arlene as she slowly wound herself down. “I did the best I could,” Jack kept saying to the doctor. “You can see what it was like. I just never knew what to do.” Jo and I kept our distance. Neither of us said a word. By the third morning, Arlene was gray-faced and repentant. When we went in to check on her, her eyes would not rise to meet ours. “I’m all right,” she said in a thick hoarse whisper. “And I won’t ever let that happen again.” “Damn pity,” Jo told me later. “That was just about the only time I’ve ever really liked her. Crazy out of her mind, she made sense.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  I must tell you, then, that there was once in Florence a man whom all called Ciacco,[435] as great a glutton as ever lived. His means sufficing him not to support the expense that his gluttony required and he being, for the rest, a very well-mannered man and full of goodly and pleasant sayings, he addressed himself to be, not altogether a buffoon, but a spunger[436] and to company with those who were rich and delighted to eat of good things; and with these he went often to dine and sup, albeit he was not always bidden. There was likewise at Florence, in those days, a man called Biondello, a little dapper fellow of his person, very quaint of his dress and sprucer than a fly, with his coif on his head and his yellow periwig still drest to a nicety, without a hair awry, who plied the same trade as Ciacco. Going one morning in Lent whereas they sell the fish and cheapening two very fine lampreys for Messer Vieri de' Cerchj, he was seen by Ciacco, who accosted him and said, 'What meaneth this?' Whereto Biondello made answer, 'Yestereve there were sent unto Messer Corso Donati three lampreys, much finer than these, and a sturgeon; to which sufficing him not for a dinner he is minded to give certain gentlemen, he would have me buy these other two. Wilt thou not come thither, thou?' Quoth Ciacco, 'Thou knowest well that I shall be there.' [Footnote 435: _i.e._ hog.] [Footnote 436: Lit. a backbiter (_morditore_).] Accordingly, whenas it seemed to him time, he betook himself to Messer Corso's house, where he found him with sundry neighbours of his, not yet gone to dinner, and being asked of him what he went doing, answered, 'Sir, I am come to dine with you and your company.' Quoth Messer Corso, 'Thou art welcome; and as it is time, let us to table.' Thereupon they seated themselves at table and had, to begin with, chickpease and pickled tunny, and after a dish of fried fish from the Arno, and no more, Ciacco, perceiving the cheat that Biondello had put upon him, was inwardly no little angered thereat and resolved to pay him for it; nor had many days passed ere he again encountered the other, who had by this time made many folk merry with the trick he had played him. Biondello, seeing him, saluted him and asked him, laughing, how he had found Messer Corso's lampreys; to which Ciacco answered, 'That shalt thou know much better than I, ere eight days be past.'

• From Trash (1988)

  The woman hesitated, and then nodded, “Yes. God has a plan for us all.” “Yes.” Mama nodded. “Yes.” She reached over and put both hands on the woman’s clasped palms. “Bless you.” Mama beamed. This time the woman did frown. She didn’t know whether Mama was making fun of her, but she knew something was wrong. Her friend looked nervous. “Just let me ask you something.” Mama pulled the woman’s hands toward her own midriff, drawing the woman slightly off balance and making her reach across the pile of underpants. “Have you had cancer yet?” The words were spoken in the softest matron’s drawl but they cut the air like a razor. “Oh!” the woman said. Mama smiled. Her smile relaxed, full of enjoyment. “It an’t good news. But it is definite. You know something after, how everything can change in an instant.” The woman’s eyes were fixed and dilated. “Oh! God is a rock,” she whispered. “Yes.” Mama’s smile was too wide. “And Demerol.” She paused while the woman’s mouth worked as if she were going to protest, but could not. “And sleep,” Mama added that as it had just occurred to her. She nodded again. “Yes. God is Demerol and sleep and not vomiting when that’s all you’ve done for days. Oh, yes. God is more than I think you have yet imagined. It’s not like we get to choose what comes, after all.” “Mama,” I said. “Please, Mama.” Mama leaned over so that her face was close to the woman’s chin and spoke in a tightly parsed whisper. “God is your daughter holding your hand when you can’t stand the smell of your own body. God is your husband not yelling, your insurance check coming when they said it would.” She leaned so close to the woman’s face, it looked as if she were about to kiss her, still holding on to both the woman’s hands. “God is any minute pain is not eating you up alive, any breath that doesn’t come out in a wheeze.” The woman’s eyes were wide, still unblinking; the determined mouth clamped shut. “I know God.” Mama assumed her old soft drawl. “I know God and the devil and everything in between. Oh yes. Yes.” The last word was fierce, not angry but final. When she let go, I watched the woman fall back against her friend. The two of them turned to walk fast and straight away from us, leaving their selections on the table. I felt almost sorry for them. Then Mama sighed and settled back. With an easy motion, she snatched up a set of blue nylon briefs, size five. She turned her face to me with a wide happy smile. “God! I do love shopping.”

• From Trash (1988)

  “Nothing justifies what they already did to Jackie’s apartment. She’s gonna be months replacing all her dishes.” Margaret’s features have the pained indignation of a woman who’s had to replace her mama’s glassware too often in the last year. “And to spray-paint that slogan on the walls. That was the worst. ‘Violence against women begins at home!’ That’s outrageous!” “But think about what they meant by it.” Paula is trying to look patient and understanding, but sweat is starting to show on her upper lip. I feel nauseous. “It seems to me you could make a political comment short of breaking somebody’s dishes and trashing their apartment.” “Well, the thing is I’ve agreed to take part in the arbitration.” Paula has the grace to look momentarily uncomfortable. “As an old friend of Jackie’s I didn’t think I should before, but Fawn and Pris have asked me, too, and I think I can get some things worked out between them all.” Margaret looks stunned. So do I probably, but my voice is calm when I speak. “You gonna get them to work out paying for Jackie’s apartment?” “That may be a problem. Neither of them has any money. Pris is only working part-time and Fawn is still volunteering at the coffeehouse while she finishes her studies. It’s Jackie who has a full-time job.” Paula sips her wine and looks toward the clock over the bar. She wipes her mouth with her napkin and carefully avoids my eyes. “I’m gonna be late, you know.” “Oh?” Margaret looks up to the clock on the wall and jumps in her seat. “Oh, yeah. I’ve got to get home, too.” She finishes her margarita in a gulp but doesn’t move. “Look, do you think maybe we could hold a rent party for Jackie, get her some money to fix her place back up?” Paula looks impatient and starts gathering up her stuff. “Oh, I don’t think we should do that. Not while they’re still in arbitration. And anyway, we have so many important things we have to raise money for this spring—community things.” “Jackie’s a part of the community,” I hear myself say. “Well, of course.” Paula stands up. “We all are.” The look she gives me makes me wonder if she really believes that, but she’s gone before I can say anything else. “I want to do something,” Margaret tells me. It looks like there are tears in her eyes. “I’m tired of not doing anything when these things happen, just talking about how horrible it all is and then going on with our lives. I want to call Jackie, or maybe even Fawn and Pris.” “No, not them.” I get a cold chill down my back, imagining Fawn and Pris walking in on Margaret’s mama some day. “That rent party idea is a good notion. I’ll give Jackie a call, and you and I can set it up. It’ll be like old times.”