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 Introduction to the Hebrew Bible and Deutero-Canonical Books (2018)

  respectful in its address to the deity, and in the end “his bitter weeping was heard by his god.” It is closer to the psalms of individual complaint than to the raging of Job. The Babylonian poem “I Will Praise the Lord of Wisdom” ( ANET, 434– 37) is likewise respectful and greatly emphasizes the need to perform proper cultic acts. The analogy to Job lies in the distress of the poet (“I spend the night in my dung, like an ox”) and in the recognition that the god’s ways are inscrutable. The closest parallel to Job is found in the Babylonian Theodicy, from about 1100 B.C.E. ( ANET, 601–4). In this composition the sufferer engages in a dispute with a friend. The sufferer observes that those who do not worship the gods prosper, while those who do become impoverished. His friend grants that “Narru, king of the gods, who created mankind . . . gave twisted speech to the human race, with lies, not truth, they endowed him forever.” But in this case, the dialogue partners are cordial and mutually respectful. Nothing in any of this literature prepares us for the heated exchanges between Job and his friends. The viewpoint of the friends is grounded in traditional wisdom. “Think now,” asks Eliphaz, “who that was innocent ever perished? Or where were the righteous cut off?” (4:7). He appeals to his own experience, but one suspects that his belief is based on dogma rather than on observation. To counter Job’s protestations of innocence, Eliphaz recounts a revelation he received at night that no human being is innocent: “Can mortals be righteous before God? Can human beings be pure before their Maker?” (4:17). Job may not be a great sinner, but he cannot be completely innocent. Therefore Eliphaz recommends that Job confess his sin and appeal to God’s mercy. God’s punishment is beneficial in the long run: “Happy is the one whom God reproves” (5:17). Job reacts with unexpected anger: “Those who withhold kindness from a friend forsake the fear of the Almighty. My companions are treacherous like a torrent-bed, like freshets that pass away” (6:14-15). The offense of Eliphaz is that he has assumed Job’s guilt without evidence. He is thinking deductively: if Job is suffering, he must be guilty. Job demands an inductive approach: “Teach me, and I will be silent; make me understand how I have gone wrong. How forceful are honest words! but your reproof, what does it reprove? Do you think that you can reprove with words, as if the speech of the desperate were wind?”

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  After dinner, I sneaked glances at his wife, Sister Laura, as she did the dishes in the kitchen. She, too, seemed the same as always. With no further explanation, I became lost in my own nightmare. If Father and Sister Catherine would actually kick out one of the parents, that meant that my parents were no longer safe. For days I was unable to sleep through the night. I couldn’t fathom what a parent might have done to warrant being kicked out by Father and Sister Catherine. I thought back to that terrifying moment a year earlier when I’d overheard my father yelling behind the closed door of Sister Catherine’s office. Will they kick out my parents, too? Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, please, please, please don’t let that happen. I will sacrifice anything. Just keep them here. Please. But I braced myself for the day when it would happen. 35 Challenging Authority 1962 O ne afternoon in early autumn the year I entered ninth grade, Sister Maria Crucis turned to me as we were crossing the yard for Benediction. “Anastasia,” she said, “were you in the study hall this afternoon?” “No, Sister,” I replied “Are you sure?” she asked. Her nearly black eyes glared at me through her thick glasses. The tone of her voice was accusatory. I responded in a deferential tone of voice. “Yes, Sister, I’m sure.” She didn’t let up. “Where exactly were you?” “Down at the barn,” I said, irked at this form of inquisition. What I wanted to say was, “And you should know that I go down to the barn every afternoon to do my chores.” But I didn’t dare. I could tell she didn’t believe me. Powerless, I swallowed hard, trying to bury the anger that was boiling up inside me. As we arrived at the chapel, I knelt in my place and spent the half hour of Benediction fuming over her horridness. By the time we sat down for dinner, my rage had only increased. How dare she mistrust me. When it came time for dessert and we were allowed to speak, I laughed and chatted with the four other Little Sisters at my table but refused to make eye contact with Sister Maria Crucis. When she asked me a question, I answered without looking at her. “Look at me when you speak,” she snapped. I did so, glaring straight through her thick eyeglasses into her black eyes and enunciated my words slowly to make a point. “Yes, Sister,” I said, pausing between each word for emphasis. Watch out , a little voice in my head said to me. Ha , I said back to that little voice. And I went on chatting with my tablemates, exaggerating my effusiveness with them to make it evident that I wanted nothing to do with Sister Maria Crucis.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  No rationale was given, no opportunity to ask questions or to discuss, much less object. Brother Henry delivered his edict and left. We were sure he was carrying out Father’s orders.” She paused before finishing her thought. “There was nothing we could do. We had promised to obey Father when we signed on as religious members in 1949.” I thought she might cry, but she regained her composure and repeated, shaking her head, “It was the most awful day of my life.” That was but the first step in the gradual destruction of family life for them. They had hardly acclimated to that devastating blow when Father summoned them to a private meeting at which he asked them if they would be willing to take vows of chastity; in other words, to forgo their marriage vows in favor of those of a religious nun and brother. My father told me that he responded with an adamant “No,” telling Father that their marital vows were of paramount importance to them. “I was hoping for twelve children,” my mother said, chuckling, “one for each of the twelve apostles. I loved having babies, and I wanted to raise as many good Catholics as I could.” But succumb they did after several more meetings with Father, who let them know that the other eleven couples had agreed to the new arrangement, and they were the only holdouts. It would be decades before I learned that other couples were also coerced into forsaking their marriage vows by Father’s duplicity—telling them that they, too, were alone in their decision not to embrace celibacy. At the time, Brother Augustine (one of the parents who had three boys, the youngest of whom was less than six months old) was seriously ill with cancer. My parents spoke of their soul searching and angst as they gradually convinced themselves that perhaps if they made the sacrifice of renouncing their marriage vows in favor of celibacy, God might cure Brother Augustine. With that rationalization, they acquiesced to the pressure that Father put on them. When Brother Augustine died several weeks later, there was no option to go back to their life as a married couple. “Did you think you would have been forced out of the Center if you had not agreed to keep that vow?” I asked them. My father paused. He was generally slow to answer questions that dealt with complex issues, and I could see he was choosing his words carefully. “That was never openly discussed,” he replied, “but your mother and I had the clear sense that if we didn’t comply, we would be asked to leave.” I felt a surge of anger—anger at Father and Sister Catherine who, for all those years I was a child, acted as though I had two parents whose sole objective was to dedicate their lives to God as members of a religious order.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  I was reminded of my childhood reflections: Why did my mother have to be a nun and my father a brother? Now that façade was sundered, and I saw Father and Sister Catherine in a new light—as manipulators, driven by zealotry for a cause they decided was higher than the sacrament of marriage. My mother picked up the conversation and went on to recount how a year or two after the families had been separated and they had agreed to forgo the life of a married couple, the two of them confronted Father. “It was at St. Gabriel’s House,” she said. “Right in the refectory. We told him that we wanted our family life back, that God did not call us to be religious, but to be parents to our five children.” “What was his reaction?” I asked. “He got angry and told us we would lose our faith if we left,” my mother went on, “and so would the five of you. From the day each of us walked into the Center, long before the trouble started, we had looked up to Father as our spiritual advisor. He was telling us to stay for the good of our souls, and so we felt we had no option but to stay.” My father added, “He told us our vows of celibacy were inviolable.” In the silence that followed, I pondered his words. My father, the intellectual, the man of logic, a student of the writings of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, a man of principle—why didn’t he challenge Father about the incongruity of one set of vows superseding another set of vows? But I swallowed my instinct to ask that question. This was not a moment to interrogate my parents. They had just revealed the backstory that led to the life we lived for so many years. It was evident to me that they themselves had misgivings along the way and had suffered on account of it. My mother, almost as though to introduce some comic relief, let spill another anecdote. She laughed as she started to speak. “A couple of days later,” she said, referring to their yielding to a celibate life, “we arrived back at our little apartment at St. John’s House to find that someone had removed our double bed while we were gone and had replaced it with two twin beds, and anchored between them was a piece of plywood the length of the beds and five feet tall.” “You’re not serious?” I said. “Dead serious.” “As though you couldn’t pop into one twin bed together?” I howled with laughter. “Who do you think did it?” “I’m sure Brother Henry ordered it done,” she said. “Of course,” I replied. “Carrying out orders from on high” was the way my mother phrased it. It all seemed so counter-Catholic to me, and I asked my parents why they thought Father and Sister Catherine took such a radical step.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  I was reminded of my childhood reflections: Why did my mother have to be a nun and my father a brother? Now that façade was sundered, and I saw Father and Sister Catherine in a new light—as manipulators, driven by zealotry for a cause they decided was higher than the sacrament of marriage. My mother picked up the conversation and went on to recount how a year or two after the families had been separated and they had agreed to forgo the life of a married couple, the two of them confronted Father. “It was at St. Gabriel’s House,” she said. “Right in the refectory. We told him that we wanted our family life back, that God did not call us to be religious, but to be parents to our five children.” “What was his reaction?” I asked. “He got angry and told us we would lose our faith if we left,” my mother went on, “and so would the five of you. From the day each of us walked into the Center, long before the trouble started, we had looked up to Father as our spiritual advisor. He was telling us to stay for the good of our souls, and so we felt we had no option but to stay.” My father added, “He told us our vows of celibacy were inviolable.” In the silence that followed, I pondered his words. My father, the intellectual, the man of logic, a student of the writings of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, a man of principle—why didn’t he challenge Father about the incongruity of one set of vows superseding another set of vows? But I swallowed my instinct to ask that question. This was not a moment to interrogate my parents. They had just revealed the backstory that led to the life we lived for so many years. It was evident to me that they themselves had misgivings along the way and had suffered on account of it. My mother, almost as though to introduce some comic relief, let spill another anecdote. She laughed as she started to speak. “A couple of days later,” she said, referring to their yielding to a celibate life, “we arrived back at our little apartment at St. John’s House to find that someone had removed our double bed while we were gone and had replaced it with two twin beds, and anchored between them was a piece of plywood the length of the beds and five feet tall.” “You’re not serious?” I said. “Dead serious.” “As though you couldn’t pop into one twin bed together?” I howled with laughter. “Who do you think did it?” “I’m sure Brother Henry ordered it done,” she said. “Of course,” I replied. “Carrying out orders from on high” was the way my mother phrased it. It all seemed so counter-Catholic to me, and I asked my parents why they thought Father and Sister Catherine took such a radical step.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  In September 1947, Fakhri published an article in the Center’s quarterly entitled “Sentimental Theology” that boldly proclaimed, “There is no salvation outside the Catholic Church.” In other words, the only way for a person to be saved and reach heaven after this life was to be Roman Catholic. Over the centuries, no less than half a dozen popes had championed that dogma and it was so stated in the Baltimore catechism that was part of every parochial school child’s religious education. But in the aftermath of World War II, the Catholic Church turned its focus to fostering ecumenism between Catholics and non-Catholics. The previous hard-line position was deemed too doctrinaire. Feeney railed against ecumenism, against the professors at Harvard for their liberalism, and against Catholic colleges and universities for compromising their faith by suggesting that non-Catholics might find a way to heaven. But the fire of his rhetoric was aimed mostly at the Jews, whose crime was killing Jesus. As Feeney’s vitriol increased, many of his adherents grew wary and stopped attending his lectures at the Center. But a small cadre of followers found inspiration in his oratory and became ardent adherents. Before long, the message of the Center had morphed into a one-issue mantra: “No Salvation Outside the Catholic Church.” My father, as an intellectual and a student of theology, wholeheartedly subscribed to the dogma of “no salvation.” His graduate studies at Boston College only strengthened his orthodoxy in this regard. My mother’s long road to Catholicism had imbued her with a zealous ardor for her faith. There was nothing capricious about her spirituality. She was convinced that she had received a grace from God as a small child that led her to renounce her Episcopalian heritage and convert to Catholicism. Father Feeney had guided her through those final steps and had baptized her into the Catholic Church. She would remain loyal to her priest and her faith. Catholicism was her salvation. In a defiant, and seemingly rash, show of allegiance to Feeney, more than a dozen young, brilliant students at Harvard and Radcliffe resigned from their colleges during the scholastic year of 1947 and 1948, most of them just months away from graduation. Anguished parents, whose families had, in many cases, sent their sons to Harvard for generations and provided generous support for the institution, turned to the archbishop, beseeching him to intervene. At the same time, in May 1948, the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences of Boston College met with my father to offer him the position of instructor in philosophy for the upcoming scholastic year. But that offer came with a condition that he not teach Feeney’s doctrine (as he put it) that espoused “No Salvation Outside the Catholic Church.” My father refused to agree to that stipulation. He was, nonetheless, allowed to teach philosophy, but was aware that he was under scrutiny.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  For nearly forty years after life at the Center, we were once again a complete family, until my father died peacefully during a nap, four months shy of his ninetieth birthday. My mother, for the next eleven years attended daily Mass and was abundantly cheerful—enjoying her five children, ten grandchildren and eleven great-grandchildren. She passed away as this memoir was going to print. She read it in its entirety and it had her blessing. F Afterword riends have asked me why I’m not angry, why I don’t hate my parents, and why I seem so “normal.” To be honest, I have spent little time analyzing why I’m happy. That is not to imply that I have been free of any anger; rather that the anger I have felt has been directed, not at my parents, but at Catherine Clarke. From an early age, I had a subliminal conviction that my parents were somehow victims of the powerful Leonard Feeney and Catherine Clarke. It appeared to me that my parents, my siblings and I were thrust together in a world that was foreign to our kinship. With the benefit of adulthood and maturity, I came to realize that my parents were free to have left the Center and thus to have prevented our family from being sundered. They allowed their religious zealotry to supersede their parental obligations and the joys associated with them. When I try to understand why my parents did what they did, I cannot. I could never have made such a sacrifice. Nor do I pretend that I didn’t wish my childhood had been different. Those endless hours consumed craving family life, wondering if we were the only thirty-nine children in the whole world who were being raised in a religious order, forbidden to call our parents “mummy” and “daddy.” This incomprehension is real, as is the pain. What anger I have experienced is aimed fully at Catherine Clarke, the power behind the throne of Leonard Feeney. Tall and powerful, she exuded an Amazonian force. As a mere child, I was her challenge—unmalleable, a free spirit in the claustrophobic world of the Center. She and I engaged in a battle of the wills, and try as she might, she was unable to forge me into a submissive member of the community. And so she banished me. At the time, I felt like a failure, but in truth it was she who had failed. I was David to her Goliath. Despite the pain and the anger, I am most conscious of the many ways in which I have been blessed, not the least of which is that I’m hardwired to tackle

• From Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (2017)

  Shame is a difficult thing. People certainly try to shame me for being fat. When I am walking down the street, men lean out of their car windows and shout vulgar things at me about my body, how they see it, and how it upsets them that I am not catering to their gaze and their preferences and desires. I try not to take these men seriously because what they are really saying is, “I am not attracted to you. I do not want to fuck you, and this confuses my understanding of my masculinity, entitlement, and place in this world.” It is not my job to please them with my body. It is, however, difficult to hold on to what I know in the face of what I feel when I am reminded so publicly, so violently, of how certain people see me. It is difficult to not feel like I am the problem, and like I should do whatever it takes to make sure I don’t compel such men to taunt me in the future. Fat shaming is real, constant, and rather pointed. There are a shocking number of people who believe they can simply torment fat people into weight loss and disciplining their bodies or disappearing their bodies from the public sphere. They believe they are medical experts, listing a litany of health problems associated with fatness as personal affronts. These tormentors bind themselves in righteousness when they point out the obvious—that our bodies are unruly, defiant, fat. It’s a strange civic-minded cruelty. When people try to shame me for being fat, I feel rage. I get stubborn. I want to make myself fatter to spite the shamers, even though the only person I would really be spiting is myself.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  Later that evening, the five of us Little Sisters sat on the edge of Sister Maria Crucis’s garden as she weeded and watered the small patch of miniature marigolds and pansies that surrounded her favorite statue of the Virgin Mary. While the others lent her a hand, I turned my back, pretending to be bird watching. “Look,” I exclaimed. “There’s a rose-breasted grosbeak at the top of the walnut tree.” Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of Sister Maria Crucis as she dropped her trowel and squinted upward in the fading light. She could always be counted on to engage in bird watching. “Oh, it’s gone,” I said. “Too bad you missed it.” There had been no bird. Before heading to bed that night, I lingered in the bathroom so I wouldn’t have to say good night to her or accept the kiss she planted on my cheek before turning out the lights. I continued my strike the next morning at second breakfast and was beginning to enjoy the power I felt in being able to shut her out. She brought this on herself for not trusting me. Our silent battle raged for days until even I started to tire of the energy it took to stay at war. How long would we keep up this state of conflict? Forever? One thing I did know: I would not apologize for something I hadn’t done. After nearly a week of standoff, as once again we were crossing the yard to go to Benediction, Sister Maria Crucis turned to me, her eyes filled with tears. “What can I do?” she asked. “Will you never speak to me again? Is there nothing I can do to make up?” With all the composure I could muster, I replied, “You didn’t trust me, and you didn’t believe me when I told you the truth.” “I am so sorry,” she replied. “Will you ever forgive me?” “Yes,” I said, doing my best not to let a tear show in my own eye. And with that, the standoff was over. It was an awkward moment, one I’d never experienced before. Children didn’t accuse Angels and Angels didn’t apologize to the children. I was embarrassed. On the surface, life seemed to go back to normal. But with that confrontation, I discovered that I, too, could be a force to be reckoned with. The power equation had shifted. It was no longer a one-way street—at least with Sister Maria Crucis. 36 The Attack 1963 O n a sunny June morning, only the clicking of metal knives and forks on melamine plates as we ate our fried eggs and toast broke the obligatory silence at second breakfast. Ahead lay another ordinary day of tutoring. Two weeks remained before the start of our summer vacation, and my mind had turned to wondering what Sister Catherine had planned as this year’s project.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  I felt a surge of anger—anger at Father and Sister Catherine who, for all those years I was a child, acted as though I had two parents whose sole objective was to dedicate their lives to God as members of a religious order. I was reminded of my childhood reflections: Why did my mother have to be a nun and my father a brother? Now that façade was sundered, and I saw Father and Sister Catherine in a new light—as manipulators, driven by zealotry for a cause they decided was higher than the sacrament of marriage. My mother picked up the conversation and went on to recount how a year or two after the families had been separated and they had agreed to forgo the life of a married couple, the two of them confronted Father. “It was at St. Gabriel’s House,” she said. “Right in the refectory. We told him that we wanted our family life back, that God did not call us to be religious, but to be parents to our five children.” “What was his reaction?” I asked. “He got angry and told us we would lose our faith if we left,” my mother went on, “and so would the five of you. From the day each of us walked into the Center, long before the trouble started, we had looked up to Father as our spiritual advisor. He was telling us to stay for the good of our souls, and so we felt we had no option but to stay.” My father added, “He told us our vows of celibacy were inviolable.” In the silence that followed, I pondered his words. My father, the intellectual, the man of logic, a student of the writings of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, a man of principle—why didn’t he challenge Father about the incongruity of one set of vows superseding another set of vows? But I swallowed my instinct to ask that question. This was not a moment to interrogate my parents. They had just revealed the backstory that led to the life we lived for so many years. It was evident to me that they themselves had misgivings along the way and had suffered on account of it. My mother, almost as though to introduce some comic relief, let spill another anecdote. She laughed as she started to speak. “A couple of days later,” she said, referring to their yielding to a celibate life, “we arrived back at our little apartment at St. John’s House to find that someone had removed our double bed while we were gone and had replaced it with two

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  T 5 Then Came the Decline, and a Fall 1946 and 1949 he first sign of a change in the air came after the United States bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. Leonard Feeney decried the bombings. They were a moral outrage, he said, a callous disregard for human life and an un-Christian act. He blamed a godless society for such atrocities and channeled his indignation at the faculties of colleges and universities, arguing that liberalism was corrupting the morals of students. Within a couple of years, a number of his adherents—intellectuals like himself —had become convinced by the passion of his arguments. One of those was Dr. Fakhri Maluf, the man who had invited my father to the Center. In September 1947, Fakhri published an article in the Center’s quarterly entitled “Sentimental Theology” that boldly proclaimed, “There is no salvation outside the Catholic Church.” In other words, the only way for a person to be saved and reach heaven after this life was to be Roman Catholic. Over the centuries, no less than half a dozen popes had championed that dogma and it was so stated in the Baltimore catechism that was part of every parochial school child’s religious education. But in the aftermath of World War II, the Catholic Church turned its focus to fostering ecumenism between Catholics and non-Catholics. The previous hard-line position was deemed too doctrinaire. Feeney railed against ecumenism, against the professors at Harvard for their liberalism, and against Catholic colleges and universities for compromising their

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  O 35 Challenging Authority 1962 ne afternoon in early autumn the year I entered ninth grade, Sister Maria Crucis turned to me as we were crossing the yard for Benediction. “Anastasia,” she said, “were you in the study hall this afternoon?” “No, Sister,” I replied “Are you sure?” she asked. Her nearly black eyes glared at me through her thick glasses. The tone of her voice was accusatory. I responded in a deferential tone of voice. “Yes, Sister, I’m sure.” She didn’t let up. “Where exactly were you?” “Down at the barn,” I said, irked at this form of inquisition. What I wanted to say was, “And you should know that I go down to the barn every afternoon to do my chores.” But I didn’t dare. I could tell she didn’t believe me. Powerless, I swallowed hard, trying to bury the anger that was boiling up inside me. As we arrived at the chapel, I knelt in my place and spent the half hour of Benediction fuming over her horridness. By the time we sat down for dinner, my rage had only increased. How dare she mistrust me. When it came time for dessert and we were allowed to speak, I laughed and chatted with the four other Little Sisters at my table but refused to make eye contact with Sister Maria Crucis. When she asked me a question, I answered without looking at her. “Look at me when you speak,” she snapped. I did so, glaring straight through her thick eyeglasses into her black eyes and enunciated my words slowly to make a point. “Yes, Sister,” I said, pausing between each word for emphasis. Watch out, a little voice in my head said to me. Ha, I said back to that little voice. And I went on chatting with my tablemates, exaggerating my effusiveness with them to make it evident that I wanted nothing to do with Sister Maria Crucis.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  anger, instigated by opposition to the war in Vietnam, but soon enflamed by a growing array of perceived—and in some cases, real—social ills. The rule of law seemed on the verge of annihilation around the country, most notably when students overtook buildings on the campus of Columbia University for five days. The Democratic National Convention in Chicago that summer was the scene of endless riots and confrontations with the police. The fever pitch of hate was foisted directly on those in the military, and as war-weary veterans returned to U. S. soil—those lucky enough to come back alive—they were frequently met with scorn and physical abuse. But it was the massacre of four unarmed students at Kent State University in May of 1970 that brought the greatest shock to the country, resulting in hundreds of colleges and universities being shuttered for the rest of the school year. Throughout that era of upheaval, I voiced no opinion on the social issues wracking the country. The discord and enmity felt too close to home. I wanted no more of that way of life, the one I’d been forced to lead for nearly eighteen years at the Center—defying the authorities, challenging the Catholic Church, standing on a soapbox. Not long after my mother started working, my father began coming down to visit us for Sunday dinner. My mother was always waiting at the door when he arrived. Their embrace in the front hallway was evidence of their affection. With hands clasped, they snuggled together, almost like young teenagers who were not quite sure it was all right to go further. I made myself scarce, embarrassed by their romance. However, deep inside I was pleased that, away from the prying eyes of the authorities at the Center, they acted like the married couple they were forbidden to be in Still River. Their obvious love for each other was something I had never doubted during my years at the Center, but for which I had little obvious evidence. Those Sunday dinners were an opportunity for my father to catch up on the news of the world. He read the newspapers that were forbidden at the Center, and when dinner was over, he found reasons to stay on, watching television with my mother as the two of them held hands. It was often long after dark when he bade her a prolonged farewell in the front hall, while I headed off to bed.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  Despite a staunchly conservative upbringing, there was a large contingent of Democrats, as well as some Republicans, Libertarians, and Independents. Some enjoyed gathering at an annual summer reunion in Still River, while others refused to speak to anyone at the Center again. In a way, we represented a microcosm of society in this country, notwithstanding the unusual circumstances of our early life. Thirty-nine children were raised in an experiment—part of the vision of a woman who believed she could supersede the “evil” forces of nature and mold human beings into a cadre of religious zealots who would follow her, in cult-like fashion, embracing a celibate way of life for God. Where was Leonard Feeney’s input in all this? He was the spiritual leader of the Center. Sadly, once we moved to Still River, his role as leader was titular at best. A romantic at heart, he needed to be admired and praised, and he sought the approbation of those who would give it. That weakness gave Catherine Clarke the upper hand, and despite the fact that she could not hold a candle to Feeney on matters of theology, she usurped his role. He was not strong enough to counter her. Was Catherine Clarke’s vision conceived in the moment of crisis that forced the Center into hiding in 1949? It seems more likely it was honed piecemeal as she became increasingly enamored of her own power. Did she ever concern herself with the thought that she might get pushback from some sixty highly intelligent, educated, and sophisticated men and women as she manipulated them emotionally? How could she be assured that they would forever sacrifice their personal ambitions and dreams and adopt her vision? If she ever doubted her prowess, there was no evidence of it. Her actions, over the course of nearly twenty years, influencing the lives and emotions not only of the children but of their parents as well, implied that in her mind, any means were valid to justify the end. Whatever deep-seated pathological conditions in her past may have influenced Catherine Clarke’s decisions concerning the lives of parents and children will never be known. One can only conjecture how a mother who chose to keep her own family intact, spending nights at her private home away from the Center, could, with blithe indifference, have sundered the family bonds of twelve other families. The evidence was monumental that to her dying breath she had no remorse over her actions. My youngest sister relayed to me that as recently as three days before Catherine Clarke succumbed, she called for the Little Sisters to assemble in her bedroom as she lay on her deathbed. She then excoriated my sister for her “particular friendship” with one of the other Little Sisters. A day or two later, she slipped into a coma from which she never recovered. While she lived, Catherine Clarke’s experiment seemed to meet with success. She simply rid herself of those, like me, who stood to thwart her plan.

• From Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (2017)

  I have worked with personal trainers off and on over the years, recognizing that perhaps the support of a professional might help me improve my physical fitness. These days, my trainer is a young guy born and raised in Indiana named Tijay. He is short and compact and has an unbelievable body. His whole life is fitness. He literally glows with youth, health, and the vigorous enthusiasm of having the world as his oyster. He is a big advocate of chicken breasts as a source of protein and mustard as an accompanying condiment because it is fat free and very low in calories. Not a session goes by when he doesn’t mention some aspect of his diet that makes me so sad for him and his palate. I worry he doesn’t know about spices or flavor or anything that makes food delicious. Tijay never seems to know what to make of me because I do not glow and I am not young and I am not cheerful. He runs me through my paces, always offering me encouragement. He is not a nightmare trainer out to break my soul. He is genuine and kind and dedicated and I suppose I am his albatross. I am his project. He’s just so cheerful. He is a true believer in the benefits of a “healthy lifestyle.” He makes it all seem so easy, as I pant and sweat and ache. I want to murder this man when we work out. I am generally terrified I will drop dead at any moment, my heart pounding in my chest as I struggle to catch my breath. Sometimes, when he asks me to do something that seems well beyond my big body’s abilities, I want to scream, “Don’t you see that I’m fat?” I once asked this very question and he said, very calmly, “That’s why we’re here,” and I walked to my nearby water bottle, drank freely, muttering, “Fuck you,” under my breath. In truth, I curse at him frequently and he takes it all in stride. Each visit, he adds an exercise or intensifies an exercise we have previously done. Each visit, I stumble to my car with rubbery legs and wonder how I will find the strength to return. I sit in my car, sometimes for up to ten minutes, drenched in sweat, drinking water. I take selfies that I post to Snapchat with angry words about how much I hate exercise, and when I share these selfies on Twitter, people offer encouragement and advice, even though I am looking for neither. I am just sharing my suffering. I am looking for commiseration.

• From Reading Biblical Literature: Genesis to Revelation (2016)

  Lecture 14—Elijah, the T roubler of Israel 97 will manipulate the system so that she can take the land without paying for it. Jezebel fabricates a legal case against Naboth that ends with his execution. The moral of the story seems to be that might makes right. ‹ But Elijah pronounces a different moral. He warns that those who wrongly perpetrate violence will suffer violence themselves. Ahab and Jezebel have destroyed an innocent man, and they, in turn, will be destroyed. The final chapter of 1 Kings shows the grim truth of the prophet’s warning. Elijah’s Departure ‹ The final part of Elijah’s story is told in 2 Kings 2. By this point, it’s clear that Elijah’s time has run out, even though his work is not complete. The still, People assumed that Elijah ascended to heaven and never died; indeed, the book of Malachi promises that Elijah will return to reconcile parents and their children. Reading Biblical Literature: Genesis to Revelation98 small voice had told him to anoint three people who would bring down the government, but Elijah has enlisted only one of them, the prophet Elisha. He has also warned that Queen Jezebel will come to a hideous end, yet she is still free. ‹ What’s intriguing about this part of the story is that it’s an ending that is not really an ending. In fact, Elijah’s departure actually opens up the prospect of much more to come. Elijah and Elisha travel down to the Jordan River valley. As they walk together, a chariot pulled by horses made of fire comes charging across the landscape. Then, there is a great whirlwind that carries Elijah up to the sky until he vanishes from sight. ‹ There are many parts of Elijah’s story that we might remember: his life on the margins and his flair for street theater; his anger at injustice and his penchant for self-absorption. But the most striking part of his story is the way it resists closure. Its ending holds the prospect of a new beginning. Suggested Reading Blenkinsopp, “Prophecy in the Northern Kingdom.” Hens-Piazza, 1–2 Kings. Questions to Consider 1. A central theme in Elijah’s story is his conflict with King Ahab and Queen Jezebel. What did the king and queen find so troublesome about the prophet? What did the prophet find so troublesome about the king and queen? 2. The middle section of Elijah’s story tells of his journey to Mount Horeb (Sinai), where he voices an angry sense of isolation and despair. In what ways is the narrative critical of the prophet? In what ways might this episode enhance a reader’s appreciation for the prophet?

• From Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (2017)

  84Some years ago, I looked up this boy from my past, wanted to know what had become of him. He does not have an uncommon name, but his name isn’t John Smith, either, so I had a chance. I looked and looked and looked. It became a minor obsession. Every day I scrolled through the hundreds of hits that came up when I searched his name on Google. I tried combinations of his name and the state where I knew him, but he no longer lives there. I tried to guess what he had become when he grew up—my first two guesses were politician or lawyer, so you can probably guess the kind of person he is. I found him. He is neither a politician nor a lawyer, but I wasn’t far off. People don’t change. I wondered if I would recognize him. I shouldn’t have. There are some faces you don’t forget. He looks exactly the same. Exactly. He looks older, but not by much. His hair is darker. I know how long it has been since I last saw him in years, months, and days. It has been more than twenty years but fewer than thirty. I would recognize him anywhere. He wears his hair in the same style he always has, real glossy-catalog preppy. He has a wide face. He’s an executive at a major company. He has a fancy title. He has the same smug facial expression, that sort of “the world is mine” cockiness innate to some people, people like him. Ever since I found him, I Google him every few days or so like I’m trying to make sure he doesn’t go missing. I need to know where he is. I need to understand, at all times, the distance between him and me, just in case. I don’t know why I’m telling you this. Or I do. I Googled him when I wrote this book. I don’t know why. Or I do. I sat for hours, staring at his picture on his webpage on his company’s website. It nauseates me. I can smell him. This is what the future brings. I think about tracking him down the next time I’m in his city. I am there sometimes. If I told my friends there what I was doing, they would try to stop me, so I would wait and keep my plans to myself, commit a sin of omission. I am good at waiting. I could make the time to find him. He wouldn’t recognize me. I was skinny when he knew me and much shorter. I was very small and cute and smart but not smart. I am not that girl anymore. I could find him and hide in plain sight. I saw to that. He wouldn’t see me. He would look right through me. I know where he works and his e-mail address and his phone number and fax number. I don’t have these things written down, but I know.

• From Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (2017)

  But I followed her to the dressing room and I told her she was beautiful. And she was indeed beautiful. She nodded, tears were streaming down her face. We both went on with our shopping. I wanted to tear her mother’s face off. I wanted to call my person and hear a kind voice. I wanted something to pull me out of the spiral of self-loathing I felt myself tumbling into. I wanted to burn the store down. I wanted to scream. When the young woman left the store with her mother, she was still crying. I cannot stop picturing her face, that look in her eyes that I know too well, how she was trying to fold in on herself in a body that was so visible. She was trying to disappear and she couldn’t. It is unbearable to want something so little and need it so much. 53I never imagined myself to be the kind of person who got a tattoo. They were certainly frowned upon by my family as a mark of criminality, at best. But in the after, I wasn’t a good girl and I didn’t have to follow the rules as I once knew them. My parents, I knew, would freak out because they were still holding on to the idea of who they thought I was. But my getting a tattoo was not about them. It was about me doing something I wanted, that I chose, to my body. And so I got my first tattoo when I was nineteen. I started with a woman with wings. The artist said getting the tattoo would hurt as he wiped my arm with rubbing alcohol, swiped a plastic razor over the hairs, removing them from his flesh canvas. I waited for pain but I felt nothing. I sat quietly and watched as the ink seeped into my skin. When I look at the arcs of ink, more than twenty years later, I still see a woman with wings, a woman who can escape anything she wants, even her body. I got my next tattoo not long after, a tribal design, black and red, just below the first tattoo on my left forearm. I wish I could say I had some kind of thoughtful approach to my tattoos, but I didn’t. I just wanted to have control over (the marking of) my body. I recognize the inherent tension in my getting tattoos while also wanting to be invisible. People notice tattoos. My tattoos often inspire conversation. People ask me about the significance or meaning of my tattoos and I don’t have good answers. Or, rather, I don’t have the kinds of answers people want to hear: convenient, easy ones.

• From Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (2017)

  I couldn’t spend time with this person’s colleagues without a rigorous critique of everything wrong with me that I needed to try and improve. Most of the time, as you might imagine, we were not together in public because I was just not good enough. I never looked nice enough. I talked too loud. I breathed too loud. I slept too loud. I was too warm while I slept. I moved too much while I slept. I basically stopped sleeping. I just hugged as small a sliver of the edge of the bed as I could and I stayed awake so my sleeping wouldn’t be such a nuisance. I was always tired. I didn’t wash dishes correctly. There is a right way and a wrong way to wash dishes. I know that now. Don’t get water on the floor. Drain the dish rack. Be careful how you organize the dishes in the dish rack. One of my favorite things to do now is to wash dishes any old way. I spill water on the floor and I smile because these are my fucking floors and these are my dishes and no one cares if there is water on the floor. I didn’t eat food correctly. I ate too fast. I chewed too loudly. I chewed ice too often. I didn’t put things away correctly. I didn’t arrange my shoes by the front door the right way. I swung my arms while walking. I would be told these things and then have to try and remember all the things I shouldn’t do so I wouldn’t be so upsetting by just existing. We would be walking, and I would remember, Okay, hold your arms at your side. Do not swing your arms. I would spend all my time just reminding myself, Don’t swing your arms. And then I might get distracted and forget and accidentally let my arm move an inch or two and I would hear this exasperated sigh, so I would redouble my efforts to make myself less upsetting to this person I loved. DON’T SWING YOUR ARMS, ROXANE. Sometimes, I catch myself trying not to swing my arms even now and I get so angry. I get so fucking angry and I want to swing my arms like a windmill. These are my arms. This is how I walk.

• From Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (2017)

  I took the onions and peas off the heat and added some chopped mint, and then added it to fresh ricotta, an egg, and some Parmesan cheese. This was, in theory, the filling for my ravioli. It’s interesting, I’ve noticed while cooking, how ingredients in their individual and naked state can be a bit repulsive but necessary, kind of like people. The egg, Parmesan, and ricotta, so wet and loose, did not thrill me. It felt way too intimate. And then it came time to assemble the ravioli. I thought I followed the instructions correctly, but the ravioli did not reflect that. The assembly process itself was irritating. The pasta sheets wouldn’t hold together, no matter what I tried. I crimped the edges with a fork, but the edges would not stay crimped. I nearly threw the disastrous-looking ravioli against a wall because the tenor of my aggravation was wildly disproportionate to the potential of the meal I was attempting. In the end, I decided, Fuck it, and threw the sloppy mess into boiling water, hoping for the best, prepared to eat the worst. The pockets of pasta I had tried to create quickly dissembled, coming apart limply at the seams. Tragedy was multiplying. Once I thought the pasta sufficiently cooked, I drained the whole mess into a strainer, and then put that mess in a saucepan with browned butter and let it simmer until it looked at least somewhat edible. The dissembled ravioli ended up tasting fine and I am sure there was a lesson in there somewhere about how almost anything can be salvaged when you cook, but I never did find that lesson. Blue Apron and other meal kit services are well and good, but sometimes cooking is such a pain in the ass. It is exhausting wrapping my mind around having to prepare food to put in my body every single day, and living alone, I am always the one responsible for that preparation. The more I cook for myself, the richer my appreciation for women and men who cook for their families every day grows. Some nights, it is a question of whether I have peanut butter, jelly, and bread so that the dinner problem is thusly solved. Of course, I cannot help but wonder when basic meals became problems rather than meals, complicated ordeals rather than daily, sustaining rituals. I love food, but it is so difficult to enjoy food. It is so difficult to believe I am allowed to enjoy food. Mostly, food is a constant reminder of my body, my lack of willpower, my biggest flaws. 66When I ask my mother for her recipes, she is, at once, helpful and vague. She shares the basic ingredients and cooking instructions, but I can never quite replicate the taste of her dishes. Once I asked her for a recipe for soup joumou, which Haitians prepare for New Year’s Day, our Independence Day. This is what my mother offered. Two heads of cabbage Peas