Anxiety

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 Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  Everything in that picture was clear, sharp, in focus, the contrast so strong you could trace the lines where sunlight sheared off and shade began. There was a blush on Mama’s cheek like the shadow of a bird, polka dots on her seersucker blouse, a raised nap on her dark calf-length skirt, and a fine part in her brushed-back blond hair. Mama was beautiful in it, no question, though there was a puffiness under her eyes and a tightness in the muscles of her neck that made her chin stick out. But her smile was full, her eyes clear, and you could see right into her, see how gentle she was in the way her neck angled as she looked past Glen to Reese and me, the way her hands lay open on her lap, the fingers slightly bent as if they were ready to catch the sunlight. Beside Mama, Glen was half in shadow with his head turned to the side, but the light shone on his smile, his cheek, his strong hands and slender frame. The smile was determined, tight, forceful, the eyes brilliant in the camera lens, gleaming in the sun’s glare, the shoulders tense and hunched forward a little, one arm extended to hold Mama close, reaching around her from where he sat to her left. You could not tell a thing about Glen from that picture, except that he was a good-looking man, strong and happy to be holding his woman. Mama’s eyes were soft with old hurt and new hope; Glen’s eyes told nothing. The man’s image was as flat and empty as a sheet of tin in the sun, throwing back heat and light, but no details—not one clear line of who he really was behind those eyes. I tried to imagine what it would be like to live with him once the honeymoon was past. I looked at the picture again and remembered the day of the picnic, the way he kept pulling Mama back against him, his hands cupped over her belly possessively. I had heard Alma tease Mama the day before the wedding that she better hurry up and get married before she started showing. Mama had gotten all upset, demanding to know how Alma had found out she was pregnant. I wondered if she had told Glen yet. “Come on, girls.” Glen’s voice when he called Reese and me for the picture had had a loud impatient note I had never heard before. I’d come back around Earle’s truck at a walk and looked into his face carefully. Yes, he knew. He was so pleased with himself, he looked swollen with satisfaction under that terrible haircut. Mama had said he wanted her to have his son, and it looked to me like he was sure he had it on the way.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  Mama started taking me with her to the diner. There I could earn my own money washing dishes, money Mama didn’t make me save for clothes but let me spend as I pleased, mostly on secondhand books from racks at the thrift store that I could then trade in at the paperback exchange. Reese complained that I never played with her anymore, that I was always working or reading or sleeping. When school let out for the summer, I found a hiding place in the woods near Aunt Alma’s where I could camp for hours with a bag of Hershey Kisses and a book. The librarian gave me Black Beauty, Robinson Crusoe, and Tom Sawyer. On my own I found copies of Not as a Stranger, The Naked and the Dead, This Gun for Hire, and Marjorie Morningstar. I climbed up a tree to read the sexy parts over, drank water out of the creek, and only went home at dark. Mama was still worried about me, I could tell. “Honey, are you all right?” she asked me one morning. I just shrugged and went back to the paperback copy of The Secret Garden I’d never returned to the school library. She pushed the book down and took it away, making me look at her. Her face was thinner, her skin rougher, and there were shadows under her eyes that never went away. People no longer talked about how beautiful she was, but about how beautiful she had been. “I want you to do something for me.” She looked down at the book in her hands, at her fingers tracing the cracked spine and tape-wrapped cover. I gritted my teeth, afraid of what she might ask. “Your aunt Ruth isn’t doing well, you know. She’s gotten a lot weaker this summer, Travis says.” That surprised me. I had thought Mama would want to talk about how withdrawn I had become, how I never watched television with them now, or played with Reese or talked to anybody. Besides, Aunt Ruth had been sick so long everybody took it for granted. Could she really be that much worse? “Now that Deedee and Butch are gone, Travis worries about Ruth when she’s home alone. He asked me if you might not be willing to stay out there for a while, at least until she’s better.” Mama opened The Secret Garden to the place where I had slipped my bookmark, a piece of ribbon embossed with the Piggly Wiggly logo. “What do you think?” she asked. “I don’t know,” I said automatically. I hadn’t seen Aunt Ruth in a while, not since the day after Christmas, when Mama had taken us over to Aunt Alma’s for dinner with all her sisters. Even then Aunt Ruth had been thin and weak, her fingers blue and swollen where they lay in her lap. What would I do if she got worse while I was with her? What if she were to die?

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  “It’ll be all right,” Mama kept telling Reese and me, but she didn’t explain how. When Reese cried and said she wanted to go home, Mama held her and promised to let her stay with Patsy Ruth this summer. I sat at the table and watched them across the room, remembering the last time Mama had run away from Daddy Glen. It had only been a few days. This was now over a week. How much longer would she last? Another week? A month? I dug my nails into the soft skin inside my elbows and rocked a little on the chair. I wouldn’t cry, not where Mama could see me. I wouldn’t cry. For Reese the whole thing had been an adventure until Mama refused to let her go over to sign her name on Uncle Wade’s cast. Three days after the funeral Uncle Wade had shot himself in his right foot, and was stuck home limping around with his leg in a big cast the boys had plastered all over with oil and gas decals from the service station. We’d heard all about it from Little Earle at school, but Mama ignored Reese’s begging and brought home a couple of paint-by-number sets for us instead. “I don’t want you going nowhere that I can’t come keep an eye on you,” she told Reese. When Aunt Raylene came over, Mama didn’t even invite her inside, just spoke through the door. “Let us be, Raylene. Just let me be for a while. I need some time to think.” “Anney, you can’t hide away like you some criminal.” Aunt Raylene sounded impatient. “You an’t the one done nothing wrong. You an’t the one at fault.” “I don’t care who’s at fault,” Mama yelled. “I just need to be left alone!” Aunt Raylene called Mama’s name softly twice more but finally went slowly down the stairs and drove away. We all shared one big bed, but most nights Mama would fall asleep on the couch, one arm thrown over her face so it covered her eyes. That night Mama lay on the couch, and cried so quietly I could just barely hear her through the closed door. I curled up on the far side of the bed and listened to the small sounds of her weeping until I fell asleep and dreamed that the walls of the apartment fell away and you could see all the way out to the house where Daddy Glen was sitting up staring through the open windows waiting for us to come back. When I woke up in the early dawn, I went to make sure Mama was all right. I tried to be quiet, but she was awake, lying there looking up at the dirty gray ceiling. “Bone,” she whispered. “It’s too early. What are you doing up?” I hesitated. I wanted her arms around me but I stood there rigidly, mouth shut tight, eyes dry.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  Aunt Ruth took a sip of tea and shook the glass. “You want something to drink, Anney? Bone made me up a fresh pitcher this morning, got lots of sugar and lemon in it.” “Lord, yes. It might have cooled down a bit, but it’s still hot enough.” I jumped up, slapping my hands against my jeans to loosen the dirt. “But don’t put too much ice in it,” she called. She didn’t have to say that. I knew how Mama liked her ice tea. I took a lemon and cut six paper-thin slices from the middle, dropped them in a glass, and squeezed the rest of the juice over them. Three cubes of ice on that, then I poured the sweet tea up to the rim of the glass. I sipped it as I carried it to the porch. I heard them before I stepped through the door. “You think it’s gonna last?” Aunt Ruth’s voice was soft, Mama’s reply even softer. “I sure hope. You know what his daddy’s like, but Glen’s like a new man since he started this job. He’s sure this shows how much his daddy cares about him, hiring him on and giving him his own route. Doesn’t even seem to matter that he’s getting less money than the other routemen, says that’s just to prove he an’t getting no special treatment.” “Sounds special to me, sounds nasty. The whole bunch of them make my bones hurt.” “Oh, Ruth. I don’t know.” I put my head against the screen and waited. “Glen’s had so much trouble, been through so many jobs. An’t many people would take him on at all at this point, and God knows, he’s trying so hard. He’s out of the house at dawn, don’t get home till after sundown, goes in on weekends to do maintenance on his truck. He wants to do good, he wants to prove himself. He acts like a different man.” “Well.” Aunt Ruth sounded less sure of herself than Mama did. “He ask about Bone?” There was a pause. I put my teeth on the rim of Mama’s glass. “He an’t mentioned her once since she came over here.” Mama’s voice had dropped even more. Now it was a whisper. “He’s good as gold with Reese. But it’s like he don’t even remember Bone, like she was run off or dead, somebody we’re not supposed to mention at all. I tell you, Ruth, I don’t know what to do some days.” “Doesn’t sound like you have a lot of choice, honey.” Aunt Ruth’s voice was kind but firm. “You knew when you went back what the problem was. I can’t say whether he’s a good or a bad man. I know you love him, like I know I don’t much care for him myself…” “Ruth…” “No, listen to me. I an’t gonna tell you to leave him.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  “Lord, yes. It might have cooled down a bit, but it’s still hot enough.” I jumped up, slapping my hands against my jeans to loosen the dirt. “But don’t put too much ice in it,” she called. She didn’t have to say that. I knew how Mama liked her ice tea. I took a lemon and cut six paper-thin slices from the middle, dropped them in a glass, and squeezed the rest of the juice over them. Three cubes of ice on that, then I poured the sweet tea up to the rim of the glass. I sipped it as I carried it to the porch. I heard them before I stepped through the door. “You think it’s gonna last?” Aunt Ruth’s voice was soft, Mama’s reply even softer. “I sure hope. You know what his daddy’s like, but Glen’s like a new man since he started this job. He’s sure this shows how much his daddy cares about him, hiring him on and giving him his own route. Doesn’t even seem to matter that he’s getting less money than the other routemen, says that’s just to prove he an’t getting no special treatment.” “Sounds special to me, sounds nasty. The whole bunch of them make my bones hurt.” “Oh, Ruth. I don’t know.” I put my head against the screen and waited. “Glen’s had so much trouble, been through so many jobs. An’t many people would take him on at all at this point, and God knows, he’s trying so hard. He’s out of the house at dawn, don’t get home till after sundown, goes in on weekends to do maintenance on his truck. He wants to do good, he wants to prove himself. He acts like a different man.” “Well.” Aunt Ruth sounded less sure of herself than Mama did. “He ask about Bone?” There was a pause. I put my teeth on the rim of Mama’s glass. “He an’t mentioned her once since she came over here.” Mama’s voice had dropped even more. Now it was a whisper. [image file=image_rsrc2PS.jpg] “He’s good as gold with Reese. But it’s like he don’t even remember Bone, like she was run off or dead, somebody we’re not supposed to mention at all. I tell you, Ruth, I don’t know what to do some days.” “Doesn’t sound like you have a lot of choice, honey.” Aunt Ruth’s voice was kind but firm. “You knew when you went back what the problem was. I can’t say whether he’s a good or a bad man. I know you love him, like I know I don’t much care for him myself…” “Ruth…”

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  “Oh, Lord.” Maybelle shook her head. “I don’t want to fight you, Alma. And maybe you’re right. I know how lonely Anney’s been. I know.” She pulled her hands free, tucked some loose gray hairs up in the bun at the back of her neck, and turned to her sister. “We got to think about this, Marvella. We got to think hard about our girl.” They did what they could. The sisters sent Mama a wedding present, a love knot Marvella had made using some of her own hair, after Maybelle had cut little notches in their rabbits’ ears under a new moon, adding the blood to the knot. She set the rabbits loose, and then the two of them tore up half a dozen rows of their beans and buried honeycomb in a piece of lace tablecloth where the beans had flourished. The note with the love knot told Mama that she should keep it under the mattress of the new bed Glen had bought, but Mama sniffed the blood and dried hair, and shook her head over the thing. She couldn’t quite bring herself to throw it away, but she put it in one of her flower pots out in the utility room where Glen wouldn’t find it stinking up their house. [image file=image_rsrc2PS.jpg] Reese and I hated the honeymoon. We both thought we would get to go. For weeks before the wedding Mama kept telling us that this was a marriage of all of us, that we were taking Glen as our daddy at the same time she was taking him as a husband. She and Alma had even sewed us up little lace veils to wear as we walked ahead of her at the wedding, Reese carrying flowers while I carried the rings. But Mama and Glen left halfway through Aunt Alma’s dinner, with only one quick kiss goodbye. “Why don’t we get to go?” Reese kept demanding while everybody laughed at her. I got so mad I hid in Alma’s sewing room and cried myself to sleep in her rocker. When I woke up I was on her daybed with a quilt across me and the house quiet. I got Alma’s picture album out and climbed into the rocker. The new pictures from the picnic were at the back. There were half a dozen snapshots of Reese and me, alone, together, and with Granny or Earle. There was only one good one of Glen and Mama, only one in which you could see her smile and his eyes. In most of them, Mama’s head was bent so that only her chin showed, or Glen’s face was turned away so that you saw only the pale line of his neck and ear under his new haircut. Because of that, perhaps, the good picture was even more startling.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  “Hell no, she tried to get Alma out of the house so she could give up the furniture quietly. She didn’t care what happened, didn’t care that the furniture-store man really was trying to rob her mama, just didn’t want the neighbors to think they couldn’t keep up the payments.” “As if everybody didn’t know it already. You can’t keep secrets like that.” “Well, you and I don’t even try. And certainly Alma don’t. She knows who she is. But it’s different for the kids. Seems like they’re all the time wanting just what they can’t have, and they’ve got such a funny dose of pride.” “No pride at all or too much, I can’t tell sometimes.” “Different from us is all, maybe.” Aunt Raylene’s face went slack and her voice dropped. “Look at your girls too, Anney. I’ve seen it in them. Not like Temple. No. But something. Something hard and angry that only shows now and again.” They went quiet and looked over at me. I tried to pretend I hadn’t been listening, concentrating on waving the steam away so that I could see down into the pot. But if I slanted my eyes sideways, I could still see them clear. Through the steam they both looked older—two worn, tired women repeating old stories to each other and trying not to worry too much about things they couldn’t change anyway. It struck me then how young they both were to be looking so old, neither of them as old as Madeline, Mama not yet twenty-six and Aunt Raylene less than ten years older. Still, they seemed so different from me, almost as if they had come out of another century. I wished then that I could be more like them, easier in my body and not so angry all the time. Too much pride or too little? What was wrong with me? I wondered. [image file=image_rsrc2PS.jpg] After all the peaches had been canned, the tomatoes and the snap peas, Aunt Raylene did the rest of the fruit, the plums and the apples and the blackberries. The days were full of sweat and steam and boiling pots. I spent every minute I was not in school planted on a stool in her kitchen, peeling or scrubbing or watching pots while Aunt Raylene told me stories and my neck cramped with worry. I was afraid somebody would find my hook under her porch, but I couldn’t get it out of there until the canning was done. If one of the uncles found that hook, I knew Aunt Raylene would figure out that it was me who had brought it up out of the cellar. One early evening when we were almost finished putting up the canned fruit racks, Grey came into the kitchen, his face so bright it jumped out at me. His grin was spread so wide I gave him a shove before Aunt Raylene could see. “You found it!” I hissed at him.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  “You got to get the tomatoes almost done before you put the eggs in, ‘cause you don’t cook the eggs much at all. Want them soft. Want them to melt like butter between your teeth and your tongue.” She spooned me out a scoop of eggs and put two biscuits on the plate next to the soft browned tomatoes. Reese spread butter on her biscuits and poured a big dollop of jelly next to her eggs. My stomach was so tight I didn’t see how I could eat, but Mama sat right across from me and smiled so wide I knew I had to eat it all. I did, slowly, while Daddy Glen sat silent in the next room and Mama went on talking like he wasn’t there at all. My eyes kept sliding over to where his hands gripped his thighs. I curled mine under the table, rubbed my leg muscles. The biscuits stuffed me but didn’t satisfy. Once I started eating I could not get full. Reese seemed to feel the same way. She ate until her eyes looked swollen shut from too much food. Then she lay her face down on the table as if she were going to nap right there. Mama smiled at her and reached over to tuck her lank blond hair behind her ears where it couldn’t fall in her eyes. She buttered all the biscuits that were left and wrapped them in a towel to keep for morning. All the time she went on talking about nothing in particular, about her mama and meals she had watched her aunts cook up late at night, about a noise the Pontiac had started to make, and how she really needed to clean out the trap on the washing machine. I listened to Mama with my mouth open. It felt like there was a wind blowing from my neck down to my belly, hot and chill at the same time, dropping little sparks into my nervous system. Finally Mama put Reese and me to bed together, sitting up beside us as if she were going to spend all night there. I could hear the television set still playing softly in the front room, and I tried to stay awake, but the food was like a drug in my system. I slid off into the dark and a dream of great soft strangling clouds lying like fogbanks on a field of blackberries. I woke up to Reese’s swollen frightened face and the low angry sound of Daddy Glen’s voice down the hall. I linked my fingers with Reese’s and prayed for silence, closing my eyes so tight my ears buzzed.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  Reese and I never talked about our private games, our separate hours alone in the bedroom. These days we barely talked at all. But we made sure no one else ever went in the bedroom when one of us was there alone. [image file=image_rsrc2PS.jpg] It was the worst time for Reese and me to be fighting. Neither of us was ever supposed to be home in the afternoon without the other, but I couldn’t tell when she might blow up at me and run off somewhere. Daddy Glen had gotten his dairy routes changed and no longer had a full schedule. He’d been coming home a lot in the afternoons and had gone back to looking worried all the time. He’d yell at me one day that I was getting too big to run around in a T-shirt with no bra, and the next accuse me of pretending to be grown-up. Mama said he was fighting with his daddy and we were to stay out of his way until things settled down. But Aunt Alma and Uncle Wade were fighting again too, so I couldn’t hang around over there, and Aunt Ruth was really sick now. “You go out to Raylene’s,” she told me finally. “You never sent me to Raylene’s before,” I complained. “I thought you didn’t want me going out to her place.” I was hoping she’d let me come to the diner again and work in the kitchen. I liked it down there. I liked listening to the waitresses tell jokes and watching the truckers flirt with Mama like she was still the prettiest woman in the county. “I never said that. I an’t never said nothing to you about Raylene.” I could tell Mama was angry from the high pitch of her voice. “Did somebody say something to you about Raylene?” “No, Mama.” “You sure?” Mama took hold of my wrist so hard my skin burned. “You sure?” “What would anyone say about Raylene?” Mama let go of my arm. “Never mind asking questions. Just don’t you go making things up, little girl. You’re not too big to have your britches warmed.” “I’m sorry. But you never sent me out to Raylene’s before.” “Well, maybe I didn’t think you were old enough to be staying out on the river before.” Mama was exasperated and impatient. She pushed her hair back with both hands and wiped her lips. “Garvey’s doing some work for Mr. Berdforth’s service station these afternoons after he gets out of school. He can give you a ride, and I should hope I can trust you not to get in any trouble while you’re there.” [image file=image_rsrc2PS.jpg] Garvey was happy to give me a lift to Aunt Raylene’s place, particularly after Mama gave him a dollar for gas money. “I an’t making no real money cleaning up for Mr. Berdforth,” he told me. “Man’s as cheap as they come. But at least I’m learning something. Daddy says a mechanic can always find a job.”

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  But Aunt Alma and Uncle Wade were fighting again too, so I couldn’t hang around over there, and Aunt Ruth was really sick now. “You go out to Raylene’s,” she told me finally. “You never sent me to Raylene’s before,” I complained. “I thought you didn’t want me going out to her place.” I was hoping she’d let me come to the diner again and work in the kitchen. I liked it down there. I liked listening to the waitresses tell jokes and watching the truckers flirt with Mama like she was still the prettiest woman in the county. “I never said that. I an’t never said nothing to you about Raylene.” I could tell Mama was angry from the high pitch of her voice. “Did somebody say something to you about Raylene?” “No, Mama.” “You sure?” Mama took hold of my wrist so hard my skin burned. “You sure?” “What would anyone say about Raylene?” Mama let go of my arm. “Never mind asking questions. Just don’t you go making things up, little girl. You’re not too big to have your britches warmed.” “I’m sorry. But you never sent me out to Raylene’s before.” “Well, maybe I didn’t think you were old enough to be staying out on the river before.” Mama was exasperated and impatient. She pushed her hair back with both hands and wiped her lips. “Garvey’s doing some work for Mr. Berdforth’s service station these afternoons after he gets out of school. He can give you a ride, and I should hope I can trust you not to get in any trouble while you’re there.” Garvey was happy to give me a lift to Aunt Raylene’s place, particularly after Mama gave him a dollar for gas money. “I an’t making no real money cleaning up for Mr. Berdforth,” he told me. “Man’s as cheap as they come. But at least I’m learning something. Daddy says a mechanic can always find a job.” “Yeah.” I was restless and uninterested in Garvey’s troubles. Aunt Alma joked that the twins were too lazy to fart on their own, and sometimes I thought she was right. They were certainly dumb enough. Neither of them ever read a book or talked about anything but how rich they were gonna be “someday.” Mama said you could tell they were starting to grow up by how silly they had become, that teenagers always got stupid before they got smart. I wondered if that was what was happening to me, if I had already started to get stupid and just didn’t know it. Not that it mattered. Stupid or smart, there wasn’t much choice about what was going to happen to me, or to Grey and Garvey, or to any of us. Growing up was like falling into a hole.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  She had promised me she would never do it without me, but I worried that as soon as she was a little older she would be hitchhiking all over the county. So every time we hitched a ride, I made up a new horror story. The habit was so strong in me that nervous as I was, I automatically started another one, this time about the phantom driver who went around picking up girls and skinned them like young deer, eating the meat and tanning their hides to make coin purses and pocketbooks. “He’ll never get us,” Reese laughed. “We just have to be careful never to take a ride with a man alone.” I thought about that for a moment. “Well, it an’t so easy to know who the phantom is,” I told Reese. “Sometimes he catches a married couple first, hiding in the back of their car while they’re in the gas-station bathroom. When they drive off, first he murders them and then he props them up so you’d think they were the only people in the car. That way he catches lots of people who would never get in a car with a man alone.” Reese chewed her lower lip and stared up the highway. I could see she was thinking this new information over carefully. She examined the people in the truck that stopped for us, an elderly woman in a dark blue shirtwaist dress, and a younger man in khaki work clothes. Before climbing in back she slapped the side of the cab hard enough to see both of them jump in their seats. I bit my tongue to keep from laughing. The old lady scolded us for catching a ride on the highway. “You could get killed or worse,” she told us through the back window. “Young girls on the roads are an invitation to the wicked. Anything could happen to you.” We both nodded solemnly and thanked her politely when we jumped off just down the road from Aunt Alma’s place. It was past midnight when Mama came for us. Reese was asleep in Aunt Alma’s bed, but I was sitting up with Uncle Wade, nodding over the picture puzzle he worked at when he couldn’t sleep. “Girl, your mama,” he said, giving me a little push. I jerked fully awake when Mama touched my shoulder. Her hands were heavy and smelled faintly of Jergens Lotion. “Come on, Bone,” she whispered. “We’re going home.” She thanked Uncle Wade in a tired voice. Her hair was limp and her face scrubbed clean.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  Pearl insisted on laying an intricately embroidered baby blanket over the coffin. I gave it one glance and then kept my head down. Mrs. Pearl had put a cherub with pink cheeks and yellow hair on the spot that was probably covering Shannon’s blackened features. I kept my hand in Mama’s and my mouth shut tight. Reese had wanted to come, but Mama had refused to let her and sent her off to Raylene’s for the day. Mama wasn’t too happy that I wanted to go to the funeral either, but she agreed to bring me after I started crying. Daddy Glen had gotten angry at Mama for giving in to my “nonsense,” as he’d called it, and gone off fishing with Beau and Nevil. Over the last few months, he’d started drinking, matching them beer for beer at family gatherings and coming home to fall asleep on the couch. “Boy can’t drink,” Beau joked, taking great amusement in Glen’s red-faced confusion after a few shots. “Just don’t have the constitution for it.” “The belly,” Uncle Nevil corrected. “Right, the belly.” They all laughed at that. Glen suddenly taking up drinking seemed to please them in some odd way. “Damn fools,” Raylene had complained. “It don’t matter,” Mama had told her. “Glen an’t gonna be a drinker no matter how hard he tries.” It was true. Where Beau and Nevil could drink for hours and only get noisy and mean, Daddy Glen would invariably fall asleep while they were still sipping away. He’d wake up with an aching head and a sour stomach when Beau and Nevil were starting to sip coffee to get ready for a day of work, both of them still half drunk from the night before but going on anyway. It all made me nervous, but like Mama I couldn’t see anything that could be done about it. “Did you ever see her?” Mrs. Pearl said to the preacher they’d brought in from their family church in Mississippi. “She was just an angel of the Lord.” The preacher nodded and laid his hands over Mrs. Pearl’s as she hugged close a great bunch of yellow mums. Beyond them, the choir director had one hand on Mr. Pearl’s elbow. Mr. Pearl was as gray as a dead man. I watched from under lowered lashes while the choir director pressed a paper cup into Mr. Pearl’s hand and whispered in his ear. Mr. Pearl nodded and sipped steadily. He kept looking over at his wife and the flowers she was gripping so tightly. “She loved babies, you know. She was always a friend to the less fortunate. All her little friends are here today. And she could sing. Oh! You should have heard her sing.” I remembered Shannon’s hoarse wavering voice humming in the backseat of her daddy’s car after she had told me a particularly horrible story. Was it possible Mrs. Pearl had never heard her daughter sing?

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  The door opened and Aunt Alma looked out. “You kids playing good?” She squinted against the sun. “No problem, Mama,” Grey told her. I looked down to the window below us again. It was a girl, I was almost sure, a fierce girl watching us distrustfully. Grey pulled himself up from the steps with one big hand. The girl’s eyes followed his fist and then looked back to me. I tried to smile but my face felt stiff, nervous. The girl’s face remained expressionless and pulled back into the darkness of the apartment. “Don’t you be mean to those kids downstairs,” Aunt Alma told Grey. “I don’t want no trouble with these people.” “Yes, Mama,” Grey and Little Earle echoed. The window below stayed dark. The next time we went over to visit, Grey told me there were five of them downstairs, same as upstairs, with the daddy off working up north and none of the kids as old as he was. The woman kept to herself, wouldn’t do more than nod to Aunt Alma, but the kids started hanging out on the steps again after the first week, running inside whenever one of the uncles’ trucks pulled up but otherwise ignoring the white children. Sometime in the second week they held a spitting contest, upstairs against down, and Grey won. After that things got a little easier. Grey showed his pocketknife to the boys downstairs and in turn admired a set of tools the oldest boy had from his father. It was only the girl who kept herself aloof, staying with her mama while the boys played out in the yard. “She’s pretty, if niggers can be pretty,” Grey told me, “but not friendly. Looks like she expects me to bite her neck or something.” “You call her that and she might bite you. I would.” I was remembering the girl’s intent, determined face. I had heard all the hateful jokes and nasty things people said about “niggers,” but on my own, I had never before spoken to a colored person in anything more than the brief, careful “sir” and “ma’am” that Mama had taught us. I was as shy with those kids as they seemed to be with us. As nervous as the idea made me, I wished that girl would come out so I could try to talk to her, but she never did more than look out the windows at us. Her mama had probably told her all about what to expect from trash like us. “Boy howdy, you should have heard what Daddy and Uncle Beau said when they came over, the things they called them.” Grey frowned and kicked one foot against the other. “Daddy’s awful mad we moved in here.” I knew what he meant.

• From The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce: A 25-Year Landmark Study (2000)

  This is far and beyond what most adolescents are expected to achieve. Given the normal challenges of growing up—which they had to accomplish on their own—it’s no surprise that children of divorce get waylaid by ill-fated love affairs and similar derailments. Most are well into their late twenties and thirties before they graduate into adulthood. My analysis may not seem to match the pseudomaturity exhibited by many children of divorce who often appear on a fast track to adulthood. Compared with youngsters from more protected families, they get into the trappings of adolescent culture at an earlier age. Sex, drugs, and alcohol are rites of passage into being accepted by an older crowd. At the same time, they’re independent and justifiably proud of their ability to make their own decisions and to advise their parents. But let’s not be fooled by the swagger. The developmental path from adolescence into adulthood is thrown out of sync after divorce. Many children of divorce can’t get past adolescence because they cannot bring closure to the normal process of separating from their parents. In the normal course of adolescence, children spend several years in a kind of push and pull pas de deux with their parents, slowly weaning themselves from home. But Karen hardly experienced this separation process. By the time she left for college at age eighteen, she was still tied to her parents by her needs and theirs . And she was not alone. By late adolescence most children of divorce are more tied to their parents and paradoxically more eager to let go than their peers in intact families. Like the folk story of Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby, the divorce is as sticky as the tar that held the rabbit. The young people want out but can’t move on because of unfinished business at home. Children of divorce are held back from adulthood because the vision of it is so frightening. From the outset, they are more anxious and uncomfortable with the opposite sex and it’s harder for them to build a relationship and gradually give it time to develop. Feeling vulnerable, bewildered, and terribly alone, and driven by biology and social pressures, these young men and women throw themselves into a shadow play of the real thing involving sex without love, passion without commitment, togetherness without a future. (We’ll explore what happens to children of divorce who marry impulsively and early marriages in Chapter 14 .) The fact that Karen and others were able to turn their lives around is very good news for all of us who have been worried about the long-term effects of divorce on children. It sometimes took many years and several failed relationships, but close to half of the women and over a third of the men in our study were finally able to create a new template with themselves in starring roles. They did it the hard way—by learning from their own experience. They got hurt, kept going, and tried again.

• From Augustine: Philosopher and Saint (2005)

  22 Lecture 5: Confessions —The Road Home • The Augustinian theme of Reason and Authority—what we understand with our minds and what we believe by faith in the divine and authoritative teaching of the Church. Augustine’s Conversion (“Confessions” 8) • A growing sense of crisis leads to Augustine’s conversion: ƕTemporary skepticism: No longer a Manichaean but not yet a Catholic, young Augustine adopts a position of skepticism (5:14.25). ƕMany years’ delay: It’s been about a dozen years reading the Hortensius, and he still hasn’t dedicated his life to seeking wisdom! (6:11.18). ƕThe need for free time: How can he pursue philosophy when he has no time to read and think but has to spend all his time teaching rhetoric—mere empty words! (6:11.18.) ƕNo more excuses: His present mode of life comes to seem increasingly untenable and inexcusable. ƕThe key obstacle: He is engaged to be married and has sent away his concubine but can’t seem to give up sex—and so takes another concubine while he’s waiting to marry an underage Christian heiress (6:13.23–15.25). • Do walls make a Christian? Augustine hears the story of Victorinus, a rhetorician and philosopher who converted to the Christian faith and discovered that private belief wasn’t enough: He needed to enter the walls of the Church and be baptized (8:2.3–5). • The problem of will: ƕThe will in self-conÀ ict: Augustine wants to dedicate his whole heart to the pursuit of wisdom, but he can’t give up his sexual habit. He dramatizes this problem as an inner conÀ ict between two competing wills (8:8.19–9.21). In the famous scene in the garden in Milan, Augustine hears a voice tell him to “take and read.” Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

• From Augustine: Philosopher and Saint (2005)

  4 rehtaF hcruhC :1 erutceL Some uncomfortable (but interesting) themes: • Predestination. • Sin as heart’s loss: the inability to love what we most desire. • The Restless Heart: our hearts are restless until they rest in God (opening of the Confessions). • God as our goal, as Truth, Wisdom, Love, etc. Augustine’s Location in Western Intellectual History • Augustine’s period, called late antiquity, is the turning point between the classical period and the Middle Ages. • Augustine inherits the riches of classical Roman culture. • Augustine is one of the founders of medieval culture. The Church Fathers (First Five Centuries A.D.)—Ancient, Authoritative Interpreters of the Christian Bible The Church Fathers are formulators of Christian doctrine (moving from Biblical story to theological doctrine). • Example: the Nicene Creed (Christ is “of one essence with the Father”). • Example: the doctrine of the Trinity (God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; one God). Augustine as Church Father: • Augustine as inheritor of the doctrine of Trinity. • Augustine’s early focus on the inner connection between God and the soul. Augustine’s Project: Relating the Inward and the External Exploring inner depths: • Augustine’s Soliloquies: an inward dialogue. • Augustine’s Soliloquies: a mysterious character named Reason enters the scene. • Augustine’s Soliloquies: Augustine wants to know nothing but God and the soul. External things of the Christian faith: • The year after Augustine’s death, the Council of Ephesus (431) formulates the doctrine that Christ’s (cid:192) esh is “life-giving (cid:192) esh.” • Other examples of the external things of the Christian faith all stem from the Incarnation, i.e., from Christ’s life-giving (cid:192) esh: Christ’s cruci(cid:191) xion and resurrection, the words of the Bible (containing the Gospel story of Christ), the Christian Sacraments (especially the Eucharist), the Church as the Body of Christ, etc. Augustine’s project is to understand how these external things are connected to the inner relation between God and the soul. Some Key Terminology • Western Christianity and Eastern Christianity. • Roman Catholics and Protestants are Western Christians. • In Augustine’s time, Catholic meant orthodox and hence is broader in meaning than Roman Catholic. • The term orthodox (small o) includes Protestants and Roman Catholics as well as the Eastern Orthodox (capital O). • Heretic is not equivalent to non-Christian or pagan; it denotes a Christian who teaches the wrong things about the Christian faith. (cid:374) Essential Reading Pelikan, The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition, chapter 4. Supplementary Reading Augustine, Confessions 1:1.1. 5 6 rehtaF hcruhC :1 erutceL ———, Soliloquies 1:1.1–2:7 (in Burleigh, Augustine: Earlier Works, pp. 23–27). Brown, The World of Late Antiquity, chapters 4–8. Chadwick, The Early Church, chapter 9. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, chapters 9 and 10. Questions to Consider 1. From what you’ve heard so far, what is it about Augustine that makes you most uneasy? What most intrigues you? 2. What, in your view, is Christianity all about—and how are Augustine’s concerns related to that essential core of Christianity?

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  12:16–2116. And he spake a parable unto them, saying, The ground of a certain rich man brought forth plentifully: 17. And he thought within himself, saying, What shall I do, because I have no room where to bestow my fruits? 18. And he said, This will I do: I will pull down my barns, and build greater; and there will I bestow all my fruits and my goods. 19. And I will say to my soul, Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry. 20. But God said unto him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided? 21. So is he that layeth up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God. THEOPHYLACT. Having said that the life of man is not extended by abundance of wealth, he adds a parable to induce belief in this, as it follows, And he spake a parable unto them, saying, The ground of a certain rich man brought forth plentifully. BASIL. (in Hom. de Avar.) Not indeed about to reap any good from his plenty of fruits, but that the mercy of God might the more appear, which extends its goodness even to the bad; sending down His rain upon the just and the unjust. But what are the things wherewith this man repays his Benefactor? He remembered not his fellow-creatures, nor deemed that he ought to give of his superfluities to the needy. His barns indeed bursting from the abundance of his stores, yet was his greedy mind by no means satisfied. He was unwilling to put up with his old ones because of his covetousness, and not able to undertake new ones because of the number, for his counsels were imperfect, and his care barren. Hence it follows, And he thought. His complaint is like that of the poor. Does not the man oppressed with want say, What shall I do, whence can I get food, whence clothing? Such things also the rich man utters. For his mind is distressed on account of his fruits pouring out from his storehouse, lest perchance when they have come forth they should profit the poor; like the glutton who had rather burst from eating, than give any thing of what remains to the starving. GREGORY. (Mor. 15. c. 13.) O adversity, the child of plenty. For saying, What shall I do, he surely betokens, that, oppressed by the success of his wishes, he labours as it were under a load of goods.

• From Augustine: Philosopher and Saint (2005)

  22 emoH daoR ehT—snoissefnoC :5 erutceL • The Augustinian theme of Reason and Authority—what we understand with our minds and what we believe by faith in the divine and authoritative teaching of the Church. Augustine’s Conversion (“Confessions” 8) • A growing sense of crisis leads to Augustine’s conversion: (cid:405) Temporary skepticism: No longer a Manichaean but not yet a Catholic, young Augustine adopts a position In the famous scene in the of skepticism (5:14.25). garden in Milan, Augustine (cid:405) Many years’ delay: It’s been hears a voice tell him to “take about a dozen years reading and read.” the Hortensius, and he still hasn’t dedicated his life to seeking wisdom! (6:11.18). (cid:405) The need for free time: How can he pursue philosophy when he has no time to read and think but has to spend all his time teaching rhetoric—mere empty words! (6:11.18.) (cid:405) No more excuses: His present mode of life comes to seem increasingly untenable and inexcusable. (cid:405) The key obstacle: He is engaged to be married and has sent away his concubine but can’t seem to give up sex—and so takes another concubine while he’s waiting to marry an underage Christian heiress (6:13.23–15.25). • Do walls make a Christian? Augustine hears the story of Victorinus, a rhetorician and philosopher who converted to the Christian faith and discovered that private belief wasn’t enough: He needed to enter the walls of the Church and be baptized (8:2.3–5). • The problem of will: (cid:405) The will in self-con(cid:192) ict: Augustine wants to dedicate his whole heart to the pursuit of wisdom, but he can’t give up his sexual habit. He dramatizes this problem as an inner con(cid:192) ict between two competing wills (8:8.19–9.21). .noisiviD shpargotohP dna stnirP ,ssergnoC fo yrarbiL

• From Cults Inside Out: How People Get In and Can Get Out (2014)

  Later they learn about the fantastic supernatural claims of “Master Li” and his singular status as the “living Buddha.”699 The personality-driven nature of the group isn’t completely evident at the beginning. But eventually, as the recruit becomes more deeply involved and his or her training progresses, he or she will learn that the supposed healing benefits of the group essentially depend on the supernatural powers of Li Hongzhi.700 Researcher Robert Cialdini, author of the book Influence , identified six basic principles of influence.701 These principles of influence can be used as tools to persuade anyone about almost anything, through carefully crafted advertising, sales gimmicks and fund raising. For example, the high-pressure sales and investment schemes that employ a “bait and switch” approach. This occurs when a shopper is lured in with the promise of one thing but subsequently moved to buy something else. In much the same way, cults can attract attention and interest by presenting themselves deceptively to lure in a potential recruit and then switch to something else as the recruitment process is completed. The unsettling truth about cults is that virtually anyone might be targeted and then successfully recruited. We are all more vulnerable and suggestible when we are suffering depression, feeling lonely, experiencing a difficult transition period, or trying to navigate in a new environment. This vulnerability is something most first-year college students experience. That is probably why many cults routinely target college and university campuses for recruitment. We are all more vulnerable at particular times to persuasion techniques. Anyone experiencing a personal trauma or setback, such as a death in the family, relationship problems, or some other personal ordeal, may experience a certain level of temporary vulnerability. Cults often exploit such transitional difficulties as an opportunity for recruitment. In this sense destructive cults can be seen metaphorically as a kind of seeping ooze, penetrating people through the cracks in their lives. In a rapidly changing world, people sometimes feel overwhelmed and anxious. Cults can present themselves as a solution or appear to respond to almost any dilemma. In this way they may pose as would-be providers of relief or the arbiters of certainty. Everyone at certain times wants assurance about difficulties and answers to perplexing questions. There is also a human need for security and sense of safety. Cults often feed on fear and insecurity, using such human frailties as a means of leveraging cult recruitment. Loneliness can also become a window of opportunity. The very human need for family, community, acceptance, and belonging can also be exploited as a vehicle for cult recruitment. Former cult members I have spoken with frequently recount a particularly vulnerable time in their lives when someone first approached and recruited them. It may have been a coworker, a family member, or an old friend; it was someone they trusted. In that moment they didn’t recognize what was happening, and they were in distress.

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

  To avert this calamity and to settle this irrepressible conflict, the churches of Jerusalem and Antioch resolved to hold a private and a public conference at Jerusalem. Antioch sent Paul and Barnabas as commissioners to represent the Gentile converts. Paul, fully aware of the gravity of the crisis, obeyed at the same time an inner and higher impulse.437 He also took with him Titus, a native Greek, as a living specimen of what the Spirit of God could accomplish without circumcision. The conference was held A.D. 50 or 51 (fourteen years after Paul’s conversion). It was the first and in some respects the most important council or synod held in the history of Christendom, though differing widely from the councils of later times. It is placed in the middle of the book of Acts as the connecting link between the two sections of the apostolic church and the two epochs of its missionary history. The object of the Jerusalem consultation was twofold: first, to settle the personal relation between the Jewish and Gentile apostles, and to divide their field of labor; secondly, to decide the question of circumcision, and to define the relation between the Jewish and Gentile Christians. On the first point (as we learn from Paul) it effected a complete and final, on the second point (as we learn from Luke) a partial and temporary settlement. In the nature of the case the public conference in which the whole church took part, was preceded and accompanied by private consultations of the apostles.438