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 The Decameron (1353)

  When he heard both of them saying the same thing, Calandrino was quite certain he was ill, and asked them in tones of deep alarm: ‘What am I to do?’ So Bruno said: ‘I reckon you ought to return home, go straight to bed, keep yourself well covered up, and send a specimen of your water to Master Simone,2 who as you know is a close friend of ours. He’ll soon tell you what you have to do. We shall come with you, and if anything needs to be done, we’ll attend to it.’ So together with Nello, who now came up and joined them, they returned with Calandrino to his house, where he made his way to his bedroom, feeling as though he were on his last legs, and said to his wife: ‘Come and cover me up well; I’m feeling very poorly.’ He accordingly got into bed, and dispatched a servant-girl with a specimen of his water to Master Simone, whose surgery at that time was situated in the Mercato Vecchio, at the sign of the pumpkin. Turning to his companions, Bruno said: ‘You stay here with him, whilst I go and see what the doctor has to say, and fetch him back here if necessary.’ ‘Ah, yes, there’s a good fellow!’ said Calandrino. ‘Go to him and find out for me how matters stand. Goodness knows what’s going on inside my poor stomach. I feel awful.’ Bruno therefore set off for the doctor’s, arriving there ahead of the girl carrying the specimen, and explained to Master Simone what they were up to. So that when the girl turned up with the specimen, Master Simone examined it and said to her: ‘Go and tell Calandrino that he is to keep himself nice and warm. I shall be coming round straightway to tell him what’s wrong with him, and explain what he has to do.’ The girl delivered the message, and shortly afterwards the Master arrived with Bruno, sat down at Calandrino’s bedside, and proceeded to take his pulse. Then after a while, in the hearing of Calandrino’s wife, who was present in the room, he said: ‘Look here, Calandrino, speaking now as your friend, I’d say that the only thing wrong with you is that you are pregnant.’ When Calandrino heard this, he began to howl with dismay, and turning to his wife, he exclaimed: ‘Ah, Tessa, this is your doing! You will insist on lying on top. I told you all along what would happen.’ When she heard him say this, Calandrino’s wife, who was a very demure sort of person, turned crimson with embarrassment, and lowering her gaze, left the room without uttering a word. Meanwhile Calandrino continued to wail and moan, saying:

• From Crazy Brave (2012)

  They didn’t want a girl with a ghost in their room, and neither did anyone else. My room had an extra bed, and it was decided that she would move to my room. That night and for many nights after, I stayed alert in the dark and didn’t sleep, anticipating the ghost’s return. Georgette’s books were all over the floor. Her plastic beauty case overflowed with makeup and polishes, flooding the counter over the drawers that we were supposed to share. For hours she scraped and rubbed off chipped polish on her nails, then reapplied numerous thick coats, smelling up the room with polish and acetone. She left used dabs of cotton and underwear scattered on the floor. At first I was amused by this alien creature, and told myself that she had made herself her own canvas. But she was getting on my nerves. I spent more and more time in the painting studio or sat on the fire escape, listening to music. One afternoon when I came back to my room from classes, I couldn’t hear anything for the whine blasting from Georgette’s favorite country station. I had just been summoned to meet with the head dorm matron, Mrs. Wilhelm, in half an hour, and after the bare escape I had every reason to be concerned. I had to make a plan about what I would do, where I would run if I got kicked out. “Hey, I need that!” Georgette gestured to me with her nail polish applicator as I turned down the volume, almost muting it. “I had a rough day.” “Peace,” I said, and made the peace sign with my fingers. I turned up the music a notch, then opened the windows to let in some air. I took a deep breath to relieve my panic. I had to get my thoughts straight before going into the meeting with the dorm matron. I had to have a plan. I couldn’t go back to my family, I would tell her. I would kill myself first. I thought about killing myself. Once when the pressure was too much, when the stepfather was bearing down on me, I sneaked a kitchen knife into my bed. I cut myself on the wrist. The cut was superficial. None of our knives were sharp. But the cut temporarily relieved the pressure. I felt calm. Then my mother came into the room, brought there by mother instinct. She lifted my blanket and saw the knife and my cut. Pain broke her face. I never tried it again. When I thought about it, I’d see her face guarding me. Across the way, in the boys’ dorm, I could hear Herbie practicing his guitar. We shared a love for jazz, Jimi Hendrix, and esoteric philosophies.

• From Trash (1988)

  God knows I hate that job, but thinking about looking for another one makes my stomach ache and my throat go dry. It makes me want to drink lots of beer and smoke endless cigarettes. What I’ve actually been doing is staying up late baking coffee-fudge cookies, eating them till I puke, and then going to bed to cry myself to sleep. I get to work late, barely able to sit at my keyboard. If they weren’t already going to lay me off, they’d fire me. “You haven’t quit yet, huh?” Paula waves her hand as if warding off smoke, though the air conditioner over our heads has already sucked up the thin blue cloud. It’s the reason I got here first and sat in just this seat—now I can just smile and not reply. I’ve known Paula a long time, and no response is always best with her unless you’re prepared to sit still for several hours of exhaustive argument, something I haven’t wanted to do since we left the feminist collective where we both used to live. “You’ve got such an addictive personality. Can’t you see what those cigarettes are doing to you?” I smile determinedly and take another drag. About five years ago Paula won an award for her presentation to the therapists’ collective on how fingernail biting was a form of subliminal alcoholic behavior. Since then she’s become the world’s expert on addictive behavior, talking on the radio and writing a pithy little column for the local women’s paper. Margaret jokes that Paula can spot addiction indicators faster than most people can locate a taxi. It gets tiresome for her old friends, but most of us pretend to ignore it. Occasionally Margaret and I even talk about how tolerant we all seem to have become of each other. “It’s getting older,” Margaret thinks. I tell her that all that has happened is that we’ve worn each other down. It’s a conversation we have often, every time Paula or Jackie does something that gets us mad, and Margaret and I have a tacit agreement to head off arguments when we can. This time Margaret fails me. “Paula’s right,” she says, pausing to lick salt off the rim of her glass. “You really ought to take a close look at yourself, girl.” “Don’t want to get too introspective.” I pull smoke deep into my lungs and try to look amused rather than brooding. Margaret’s eyebrows go up quizzically, and I know it’s time to get to the point of this little gathering. “I thought we were here to talk about Jackie.” That sets Margaret to nodding. “Oh Lord, don’t tell me.” Paula leans forward in her seat and grips her wineglass more tightly. “What’s she done now?” “It’s the worst. You won’t believe it.” Margaret’s voice is a little loud and excited.

• From Trash (1988)

  Snacks would be granola, fresh fruit, and peanut butter on seven-grain bread. For breakfast she wanted me to cook grits in a twenty-quart pan, though she wasn’t sure margarine wouldn’t be healthier than butter, and maybe most people would just like granola anyway. “They’ll want doughnuts and coffee,” I told her matter-of-factly. I had a vision of myself standing in front of a hundred angry lesbians crying out for coffee and white sugar. Lee soothed me with kisses and poppy-seed cake made with gluten flour, assured me that it would be fun to run the kitchen with her. The week before the conference, Lee went from church to campus borrowing enormous pots, colanders, and baking trays. Ten flat baking trays convinced her that the second dinner we had to cook could be tofu lasagna with skim-milk mozzarella and lots of chopped carrots. I spent the week sitting in front of the pool table in Jay’s apartment, peeling and slicing carrots, potatoes, onions, green and red peppers, leeks, tomatoes, and squash. The slices were dumped in ten-gallon garbage bags and stored in Jay’s handy floor-model freezer. I put a tablecloth down on the pool table to protect the green felt and made mounds of vegetables over each pocket corner. Every mound cut down and transferred to a garbage bag was a victory. I was winning the war on vegetables until the committee Lee had scared up delivered another load. I drank coffee and chopped carrots, ate a chicken pot pie and peeled potatoes, drank iced tea and sliced peppers. I peeled the onions but didn’t slice them, dropped them into a big vat of cold water to keep. I found a meat cleaver on the back porch and used it to chop the zucchini and squash, pretending I was doing karate and breaking boards. “Bite-sized,” Lee told me as she ran through, “it should all be bite-sized.” I wanted to bite her. I drank cold coffee and dropped tomatoes one at a time into boiling water to loosen their skins. There were supposed to be other women helping me, but only one showed up, and she went home after she got a rash from the tomatoes. I got out a beer, put the radio on loud, switching it back and forth from rock and roll to the country-and-western station and sang along as I chopped. I kept working. The only food left in the apartment was vegetables. I wanted to have a pizza delivered but had no money. When I got hungry, I ate carrots on white bread with mayonnaise, slices of tomatoes between slices of raw squash, and leeks I dipped in a jar of low-sodium peanut butter. I threw up three times but kept working. Four hours before the first women were to arrive I took the last bushel basket of carrots out in the backyard and hid it under a tarp with the lawn mower.

• From Trash (1988)

  “Goddamn,” I whisper now, and start the kata over a fourth time. Liquid and gold, my knees come up and my fists punch out. The kata, the dance, takes me up, makes me over. I let go of Liz and Judy and all of them. I come back into stance, with my hair loose and damp on my neck, the smell of my own body like wine in the morning sun. “Goddamn!” I hiss the word between my teeth and look up to see myself standing with my head back and face glowing in the reflected windows. The whisper carries distinctly in the morning quiet. I can almost see the ripple of it in the grass. “Goddamn.” Violence Against Women Begins at Home P aula swears that if I joined her yoga class, I would never need another chiropractor in my life. She may be right. Margaret says it’s sex. “Everything is about sex, but a bad back? That’s the worst. It’s the congestion, all that compression and tension. You know, tighter and tighter. You got to have a release, and sex is the thing that’ll do it for you.” I nod and light another Marlboro. Last week, my boss finally told me they were going to have to lay me off the first of next month. I’ve been swinging back and forth from exhilaration to a kind of mad dread since then. God knows I hate that job, but thinking about looking for another one makes my stomach ache and my throat go dry. It makes me want to drink lots of beer and smoke endless cigarettes. What I’ve actually been doing is staying up late baking coffee-fudge cookies, eating them till I puke, and then going to bed to cry myself to sleep. I get to work late, barely able to sit at my keyboard. If they weren’t already going to lay me off, they’d fire me. “You haven’t quit yet, huh?” Paula waves her hand as if warding off smoke, though the air conditioner over our heads has already sucked up the thin blue cloud. It’s the reason I got here first and sat in just this seat—now I can just smile and not reply. I’ve known Paula a long time, and no response is always best with her unless you’re prepared to sit still for several hours of exhaustive argument, something I haven’t wanted to do since we left the feminist collective where we both used to live. “You’ve got such an addictive personality. Can’t you see what those cigarettes are doing to you?”

• From Trash (1988)

  I n college I contemplated a career in biology for one long year, and rats—fat gray ones with minuscule wires in their skulls or slender white ones trailing colored threads to mark the buried electrodes. The animal labs were in a cinder-block building set away from the campus. I went there like a pilgrim to stare into the cages and finger the plush on a monkey’s neck, the monkey bent to a frame that kept his razor teeth from my flesh. After a while the teeth were gone with the larynx, and he only spat when I came to see him. It hurt me that he could not bite; the rats at least kept their teeth. I told myself that the security of a career in science demanded sacrifice. I would have to get used to rats with wires and monkeys without teeth. But it was hard, hard. I hated the whitewashed walls and the raw, shrinking creatures under my hands as much as the implacable mechanical motions of the professors in rubber gloves. After I got the job of cleaning up the lab, my dreams were full of monkeys’ teeth and the sibilant scratches of rats’ nails on Formica counters. On those rare nights when Toni and I could sleep over at a friend’s house in the city, I would wake shuddering, feeling her arms around me like the wires that trussed the monkeys. “You are one restless woman,” Toni would tell me in the morning, showing me the scratches I’d made on her arms and back. “Can’t lie still to save your life.” More out of guilt than desire, I’d kiss her shoulders and slide down between her legs to ease with my tongue what I could not cure with words. I felt about oral sex with Toni the way my roommate in the dorm felt about transcendental meditation. At the point at which my neck began to ache and my fingers spasm on her thighs, I would begin to feel righteous. The longer it took to get her off, and the greater the ache in my neck and back, the farther away I would go in my mind until finally it was as if I were not making love to Toni but to myself. I became a point of concentration, icy and hot at the same time. When she began to babble those love words that meant she was just about to come, my own thighs would shake sympathetically. I rarely came making love to Toni, but nothing made me feel so balanced as an hour or two pushing my tongue between her swollen labia. It was expiation and penance. It was redemption.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  He went up to her and engaged her in conversation, passing from subject to subject till he came to an understanding with her and took her back to his cell, making sure that no one was watching. But being carried away by the vigour of his passion, he threw all caution to the winds, and whilst he was cavorting with the girl, the Abbot, who happened to have risen from his siesta and was quietly walking past the monk’s cell, heard the racket that the pair were creating. So that he might recognize the voices, he crept softly up to the door of the cell, stood there listening, and came to the definite conclusion that one of the voices was a woman’s. His first impulse was to order the door to be opened, but he then decided to deal with the matter differently and returned to his room, where he waited for the monk to come out. The monk, albeit he had taken the greatest of pleasure and delight in the young woman’s company, suspected none the less that something was amiss, for it had seemed to him that he could hear the shuffling of feet in the corridor. He had therefore applied his eye to a tiny aperture, from which he had obtained an excellent view of the Abbot, standing there listening. He was thus well aware that the Abbot had had the opportunity of knowing that the girl was in his cell, and consequently he was very worried, for he knew he would be punished severely on account of all this. But without betraying his anxiety to the girl, he quickly ran his mind over various expedients to see if he could chance upon one that might do him some good, and hit upon a novel piece of mischief, which would have precisely the effect he was seeking. Pretending to the girl that he thought they had spent sufficient time together, he said to her: ‘I am just going to find a way of letting you out of here without your being seen. So stay here and make no sound till I return.’ He then emerged from his cell and, having locked the door, went straight to the Abbot’s room and handed him his key, this being the usual practice whenever any monk was going out. Then without so much as batting an eyelid, he said: ‘Sir, this morning I was not able to bring in all the faggots that were cut for me, so with your permission I should like to go to the wood and have them brought in.’

• From Trash (1988)

  Aunt Alma turned around and bumped her hip against the pool table. “Where?” One disdainful glance rendered the pews for what they were— exquisitely uncomfortable even for my hips. Her expression reminded me of my Uncle Jack’s jokes about her, about how she refused to go back to church till they put in rocking chairs. “No rocking chairs here,” I laughed, hoping she’d laugh with me. Aunt Alma just leaned forward and rocked one of the balls on the table against another. Her mouth kept its flat, impartial expression. I tried gesturing across the pool table to my room and the big water bed outlined in sunlight and tree shade from the three windows overlooking it. “It’s cleaner in there,” I offered, “it’s my room. This is our collective space.” I gestured around. “Collective,” my aunt echoed me again, but the way she said the word expressed clearly her opinion of such arrangements. She looked toward my room with its narrow cluttered desk and stacks of books, then turned back to the pool table as by far the more interesting view. She rocked the balls again so that the hollow noise of the thump resounded against the high, dim ceiling. “Pitiful,” she sighed, and gave me a sharp look, her washed-out blue eyes almost angry. Two balls broke loose from the others and rolled idly across the matted green surface of the table. The sunlight reflecting through the oak leaves outside made Aunt Alma’s face seem younger than I remembered it, some of the hard edge eased off the square jaw. “Your mama is worried about you.” “I don’t know why.” I turned my jaw to her, knowing it would remind her of how much alike we had always been, the people who had said I was more her child than my mama’s. “I’m fine. Mama should know that. I spoke to her not too long ago.” “How long ago?” I frowned, mopped at my head some more. Two months, three, last month? “I’m not sure . . . Reese’s birthday. I think it was Reese’s birthday.” “Three months.” My aunt rocked one ball back and forth across her palm, a yellow nine ball. The light filtering into the room went a shade darker. The -9- gleamed pale through her fingers. I looked more closely at her. She looked just as she had when I was thirteen, her hair gray in that loose bun, her hands large and swollen, and her body straining the seams of the faded print dress.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  He hesitated: ‘ Won’t you shake hands? ° ‘ Of course,’ she smiled; ‘ aren’t you my very good friend? But you know, you really must leave me now, Martin.’ 494 THE WELL OF LONELINESS 3 Arter he had gone she lit a cigarette; the action was purely auto- matic. She felt strangely excited yet strangely numb -a most ) curious synthesis of sensations; then she suddenly felt deathly sick and giddy. Going up to her bedroom she bathed her face, sat down on the bed and tried to think, conscious that her mind was completely blank. She was thinking of nothing — not even of Mary. CHAPTER 55 I BITTER and most curious warfare it was that must now be waged between Martin and Stephen, but secretly waged, lest because of them the creature they loved should be brought to suffer; not the least strange aspect being that these two must quite often take care to protect each other, setting a guard upon eyes and lips when they found themselves together with Mary. For the sake of the girl whom they sought to protect, they must actually often protect each other. Neither would stoop to detraction or malice, though they fought in secret they did so with honour. And all the while their hearts cried out loudly against this cruel and in- sidious thing that had laid its hand upon their doomed friendship - verily a bitter and most curious warfare. And now Stephen, brought suddenly face to face with the menace of infinite desolation, fell back upon her every available weapon in the struggle to assert her right to possession. Every link that the years had forged between her and Mary, every tender and passionate memory that bound their past to their ardent pres- ent, every moment of joy — aye, and even of sorrow, she used in sheer self defence against Martin. And not the least powerful of all her weapons, was the perfect companionship and understand- ing that constitutes the great strength of such unions. Well armed she was, thanks to both present and past— but Martin’s sole weapon lay in the future. With a new subtlety that was born of his love, he must lead the girl’s thoughts very gently forward towards a life of security and peace; such a life as marriage with him would offer. In a thousand little ways must redouble his efforts to make himself indispensable to her, to surround her with the warm, happy cloak of protection that made even a hostile world seem friendly. And although he forbore to speak openly as yet, playing his hand with 496 THE WELL OF LONELINESS much skill and patience — although before speaking he wished to be certain that Mary Llewellyn, of her own free will, would come when he called her, because she loved him — yet nevertheless she divined his love, for men cannot hide such knowledge from women.

• From Crazy Brave (2012)

  close to my now limited universe as the planet Mars. Despite all my attempts at flight, I couldn’t afford art supplies, not even a junked car. Strange things would happen around the house in the dark. One night one of my mother-in-law’s enemies came to her as a bird. It sat in a tree outside the living room window. I’ll always remember the haunting cry, like the peculiar howl of the dog in my family that always foretold a death. It sent shivers through all of us. When I heard the bird calling and calling, I picked up my newly born son and took his older sister into my arms, while my mother-in-law sent out her son with a gun. She told him to get rid of it, that she knew who it was. I hummed to the children louder and louder. We heard the shot fired into the tree. The haunting singing abruptly stopped. Shortly after, my husband, the children, and I moved to Tulsa. My mother-in-law followed with her daughter and moved in next door. Each day was predictable. We got up, ate cold pizza for breakfast, left over from my husband’s shift at the restaurant the night before. I washed the children, cleaned the house, and he went to work. I worried about money and what we would do when he lost his job. He would eventually lose it, as he had lost all the others. The only question was when. The last time he had walked out on a job we had had only an industrial-sized box of pancake mix, a gift from my mother, for meals, to supplement beans and commodity cheese. My mother was disappointed with my life and did everything she could to keep from coming to the side of town I was living in. She had grown up in worse and had cleaned and cooked her way to decency. My life was now a mockery of her struggle. Every night my husband came in from work in a furious cloud of anger. He told yet another story of how someone had tried to put one over on him. He had barely managed to keep from punching out his “skinny white boss,” who was riding him even though the new waitress was the one screwing up the orders. We had nearly starved before he got this job. The baby was nearing eight weeks old, and as I watched my husband open another beer and pace the room, I decided I had better start looking for work. I would wash dishes, dance on tables if I had to, rather than starve the children or myself again. Some days his mother would come over and we would pool our resources for

• From The Decameron (1353)

  On finding himself in the midst of all this commotion, Ruggieri very nearly collapsed with astonishment. He was in no condition to make a dash for it, and in any case he could see that escape was impossible; so he was seized and handed over to the chief magistrate’s officers, who had meanwhile rushed to the scene, having been attracted by all the noise. He was then taken before the chief magistrate, and since he had a very bad reputation he was immediately put to the torture and forced to confess that he had broken into the money-lenders’ house with intent to rob, whereupon the magistrate resolved to have him hanged by the neck at the earliest opportunity. During the course of the morning, the news that Ruggieri had been caught red-handed burgling the money-lenders’ house spread like wildfire through the whole of Salerno. And when the lady and her maid came to hear of it, they were so bewildered and astonished that they almost began to think that instead of actually doing what they had done the night before they had merely been dreaming. What was more, the lady was nearly out of her mind with anxiety at the thought of the danger that Ruggieri was in. Halfway through the morning, the doctor returned from Amalfi and sent someone to fetch his potion so that he could operate on his patient, and when the bottle was found to be empty he made a great commotion and protested that he could not leave anything in his own house without people interfering with it. The lady, who had troubles of her own to think about, lost her temper with him and said: ‘I wonder what you would say if something really terrible had happened, when you create so much fuss over a spilled bottle of water? Isn’t there plenty more of it about?’ ‘My dear,’ said the surgeon, ‘you seem to think that it was ordinary water, but that is not the case. On the contrary, it was a potion specially prepared for putting people to sleep.’ He then told her what he needed it for, and it immediately dawned upon the lady that Ruggieri must have drunk the potion, which explained why they had thought he was dead. ‘We knew nothing of all that,’ she said. ‘You’ll have to make yourself some more of it.’ Seeing that he had no alternative, the surgeon sent out for a second bottle of the stuff, and shortly afterwards the maid, who on the lady’s instructions had gone out to discover what people were saying about Ruggieri, returned to her mistress, saying:

• From Crazy Brave (2012)

  I’d somehow even balance a stretched canvas. I didn’t have to think about it. It was a natural dance. But this time I was alone; the children were already home. I thought about what I was going to cook for dinner. Was the hamburger meat thawed, and did we have enough potatoes? And what about salad? It would be dark soon. Was my mother doing all right? Then, without warning, I was gutted by panic. It coiled around me and opened uncountable hungry mouths. I would die if I continued to stand in the middle of the avenue. I would die if I continued my way through traffic. As I press the pulse of memory, I tell myself that if I knew exactly the direction the darkness came from and the shape of the clouds forming in the sky when the panic found me, then I might be able to stop it, even now. If I am going to die, will I explode into millions of pieces? Will I evaporate? Or will I rabbit out into traffic and be run over? When there was an opening in the traffic, I sprinted across the street. My lungs were panicked butterflies in gale-force winds. I made it to the telephone booth outside Jack’s Bar. I hugged myself. I was alive, but, to my dismay, so was the panic. I’d only succeeded in running from one island of panic to the next. I dug through my pockets for change to call home, to tell my daughter’s father that I couldn’t make it. I shook as I deposited the coin and dialed. “Please come and get me,” I told him. “I can’t make it home.” How could I tell him that to make even one step was incomprehensible? That to make it the several thousand steps to go a mile up the road was beyond incomprehensible? I would die. “Of course you can make it home.” “Please,” I pleaded. “I don’t know how.” He told me they were all waiting for me. I was late; he’d already started the potatoes. And then he hung up. I can hear my voice now as I spoke into the telephone. It was flat, a dry plain. In the distance was the muscle of a whirling black tornado. How could he or anyone know? No one watching this slim young woman with her jacket hugged close would have any idea she was dying. I had no choice but to try to make it home. I didn’t have money for a taxi, or even to call a taxi. I was terrified. I had to reach with my mind to imagine each step. I walked a tightrope over an abyss that whirred with the sound of a thousand bullroarers. All around me students walked by to classes, to study, to dinner or home. Cars went up and down Central. The sun continued to fall toward the sea, into the west of endings.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  ‘And so, lest by pretending to be above such things or by becoming complacent we should succumb to that which we might possibly avoid if we so desired, I would think it an excellent idea (though I do not know whether you would agree with me) for us all to get away from this city, just as many others have done before us, and as indeed they are doing still. We could go and stay together on one of our various country estates, shunning at all costs the lewd practices of our fellow citizens and feasting and merrymaking as best we may without in any way overstepping the bounds of what is reasonable. ‘There we shall hear the birds singing, we shall see fresh green hills and plains, fields of corn undulating like the sea, and trees of at least a thousand different species; and we shall have a clearer view of the heavens, which, troubled though they are, do not however deny us their eternal beauties, so much more fair to look upon than the desolate walls of our city. Moreover the country air is much more refreshing, the necessities of life in such a time as this are more abundant, and there are fewer obstacles to contend with. For although the farmworkers are dying there in the same way as the townspeople here in Florence, the spectacle is less harrowing inasmuch as the houses and people are more widely scattered. Besides, unless I am mistaken we shall not be abandoning anyone by going away from here; on the contrary, we may fairly claim that we are the ones who have been abandoned, for our kinsfolk are either dead or fled, and have left us to fend for ourselves in the midst of all this affliction, as though disowning us completely. ‘Hence no one can reproach us for taking the course I have advocated, whereas if we do nothing we shall inevitably be confronted with distress and mourning, and possibly forfeit our lives into the bargain. Let us therefore do as I suggest, taking our maidservants with us and seeing to the dispatch of all the things we shall need. We can move from place to place, spending one day here and another there, pursuing whatever pleasures and entertainments the present times will afford. In this way of life we shall continue until such time as we discover (provided we are spared from early death) the end decreed by Heaven for these terrible events. You must remember, after all, that it is no more unseemly for us to go away and thus preserve our own honour than it is for most other women to remain here and forfeit theirs.’

• From Trash (1988)

  The sunlight reflecting through the oak leaves outside made Aunt Alma’s face seem younger than I remembered it, some of the hard edge eased off the square jaw. “Your mama is worried about you.” “I don’t know why.” I turned my jaw to her, knowing it would remind her of how much alike we had always been, the people who had said I was more her child than my mama’s. “I’m fine. Mama should know that. I spoke to her not too long ago.” “How long ago?” I frowned, mopped at my head some more. Two months, three, last month? “I’m not sure . . . Reese’s birthday. I think it was Reese’s birthday.” “Three months.” My aunt rocked one ball back and forth across her palm, a yellow nine ball. The light filtering into the room went a shade darker. The -9- gleamed pale through her fingers. I looked more closely at her. She looked just as she had when I was thirteen, her hair gray in that loose bun, her hands large and swollen, and her body straining the seams of the faded print dress. She’d worn her hair short for a while, but it was grown long again now, and the print dress under her coat could have been any dress she’d worn in the last twenty years. She’d gotten old suddenly after the birth of her eighth child, but since then she seemed not to change at all. She looked now as if she would go on forever—a worn stubborn woman who didn’t care what you saw when you looked at her. I drew breath in slowly, carefully. I knew from old experience to use caution in dealing with any of my aunts, and this was the oldest and most formidable. I’d seen grown men break down and cry when she’d kept that look on them too long; little children repent and swear to change their ways. But I’d also seen my other aunts stare her right back, and like them I was a grown woman minding my own business. I had a right to look her in the eye, I told myself. I was no wayward child, no half-drunk, silly man. I was her namesake, my mama’s daughter. I had to be able to look her in the eye. If I couldn’t, I was in trouble and I didn’t want that kind of trouble, here five hundred miles and half a lifetime away from my aunts and the power of their eyes. Slow, slow, the balls rocked one against the other. Aunt Alma looked over at me levelly. I let the water run down between my breasts, looked back at her. My mama’s sister. I could feel the tears pushing behind my eyes. It had been so long since I’d seen her or any of them! The last time I’d been to Old Henderson Road had been years back.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Bless and Howard loathed each other for two days, then palled up again, because of a grievance that had recently been evolved against Stephen. For every one knew that Stephen and Blakeney were by far the best drivers in the Breakspeare Unit, and as such should be shared by all the members in turn; but poor Blakeney was nursing a very sore eye, while Stephen still continued to drive only with Mary. They were splendidly courageous and great-hearted women, every one of them, glad enough as a rule to help one another to shoulder burdens, to be tolerant and kind when it came to friendships. They petted and admired their youngest recruit, and most of them liked and respected Stephen, all the same they had now grown childishly jealous, and this jealousy reached the sharp ears of Mrs. Breakspeare. Mrs. Breakspeare sent for Stephen one morning; she was sitting at a Louis Quinze writing-table which had somehow survived the wreck of the château and was now in her gloomy, official dug-out. Her right hand reposed on an ordnance map, she looked like a very maternal general. The widow of an officer killed in the war, and the mother of two large sons and three daughters, she had led the narrow, conventional life that is common to women in military stations. Yet all the while she must been filling her subconscious reservoir with knowledge, for she suddenly blossomed forth as leader with a fine understanding of human nature. So now she looked over her ample bosom not unkindly, but rather thoughtfully at Stephen. ‘Sit down, Miss Gordon. It’s about Llewellyn, whom I asked you to take on as second driver. I think the time has now arrived when she ought to stand more on her own in the Unit. She must take her chance like every one else, and not cling quite so close—don’t misunderstand me, I’m most grateful for all you’ve done for the girl—but of course you are one of our finest drivers, and fine driving counts for a great deal these days, it may mean life or death, as you yourself know. And—well—it seems scarcely fair to the others that Mary should always go out with you. No, it certainly is not quite fair to the others.’ Stephen said: ‘Do you mean that she’s to go out with every one in turn—with Thurloe for instance?’ And do what she would to appear indifferent, she could not quite keep her voice from trembling. Mrs. Breakspeare nodded: ‘That’s what I do mean.’

• From The Decameron (1353)

  That Boccaccio is adopting a polemical stance in relation to the literature of profane love – a position, moreover, that is diametrically opposed to that of Dante, whose poetry he greatly admired – cannot seriously be doubted. His passionate, eloquent, and occasionally mischievous defence of the Decameron in the Introduction to the Fourth Day, as well as the remarks he appends in the work’s concluding pages, are indicative of the need he experienced to defend the genre within which he was working. And it is characteristic of Boccaccio’s realistic view of the human condition that he should have seized upon the possibilities afforded by the great natural calamity of the Black Death to furnish his stories (many of which were doubtless already written before 1348) with a plausible raison d’être. The framework of the Decameron, and the circumstances in which the hundred tales are alleged to have been told, have already been discussed in some detail. What needs to be emphasized at this juncture is that the description of the plague, and of the moral and social upheaval to which it gave rise, is first and foremost a powerful instrument for ensuring that a hitherto neglected or despised literary genre will attract due recognition. Boccaccio’s defensive posture is at once apparent in the opening paragraph of the Introduction to the First Day, where, referring to his description of the plague, he apologizes to his readers in advance for the work’s irksome and ponderous opening (grave e noioso principio), and assures them that they will be affected no differently by this grim beginning than hikers confronted by a steep and rugged hill beyond which there lies a fair and delectable plain. The delectable plain is of course the main body of the work, the hundred stories themselves, but so aware is Boccaccio of the possible opprobrium that may accrue to him from his narration of the tales that he constructs an elaborate justificatory framework within which the stories are told, in a particular set of historical circumstances, by a group of ten fictitious narrators. By using this ingenious device, which, as already noted above, is not original to Boccaccio, but is rather a sophisticated form of a technique used by compilers of earlier collections of tales, not only does he distance himself from his material, but he also provides it with a valid aesthetic and historical raison d’être.

• From Crazy Brave (2012)

  Aieeeee.” I knew he meant Lewis. And when I thought of Lewis, I remembered Lupita and the deal Clarence had going. Tonight was the deadline. I had to find Lupita and warn her before it was too late. The canteen was jammed. Herbie immediately pulled me out onto the dance floor. Dancing was like painting, like flying. Through rhythm I could travel toward the stars. Herbie and I could stay on the dance floor for hours, and if we stayed in the canteen and danced I couldn’t drink or get into any other kind of trouble. While we danced I kept my eyes on the door, looking for Lupita. We danced every dance until a Mexican song interrupted us and all the Apache girls flooded the dance floor. While they weaved back and forth to the bright music of the ranchero, Herbie bought us Cokes, and I looked around the room for Lupita. I didn’t see her anywhere. I didn’t see Clarence either. Georgette stood outside the glass doors of the entrance. She was small and alone. I watched her ask to borrow a cigarette from another student. She lit it. I remembered the night she upset the whole dorm with her panicked run from the ghost chasing her, and the big stink her roommates had caused when they demanded she move from their room. I felt sorry for the girl with the scratchy army blanket draped over her shoulders. The ghost had not reappeared, but the fear followed her. I spotted Clarence coming up out of the dark, from the direction of the ditch. He was smiling and laughing too hard, walking with Lewis. Lupita wasn’t with them. Clarence grabbed Georgette a little roughly. She smiled and melted into him, and then they came through the door and onto the dance floor, Lewis following behind them. Georgette beamed and made sure I saw her. “Where’s Lupita?” I demanded. A knot formed in my stomach. Georgette glared at me. “She’s on Venus,” said Clarence, and he and Lewis laughed. I didn’t like the sound of their sly laughter. I pulled a reluctant Herbie behind me. “We have to look for Lupita,” I urged. He slid out the door of the packed canteen with me. “Wait, wait,” he protested as he stared back at Lewis, who had no idea

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Anna worried continually over her daughter; for one thing Stephen was a social disaster, yet at seventeen many a girl was presented, but the bare idea of this had terrified Stephen, and so it had had to be abandoned. At garden parties she was always a failure, seemingly ill at ease and ungracious. She shook hands much too hard, digging rings into fingers, this from sheer auto- matic nervous reaction. She spoke not at all, or else gabbled too freely, so that Anna grew vague in her own conversation; all eyes and ears she would be as she listened — it was certainly terribly hard on Anna. But if hard on Anna, it was harder on Stephen who dreaded these festive gatherings intensely; indeed her dread of them lacked all proportion, becoming a kind of unreasoning obsession. Every vestige of self-confidence seemed to desert her, so that Puddle, supposing she happened to be present would find herself grimly comparing this Stephen with the graceful, light- footed, proficient young athlete, with the clever and somewhat opinionated student who was fast outstripping her own powers as a teacher. Yes, Puddle would sit there grimly comparing, and would feel not a little uneasy as she did so. Then something of her pupil’s distress would reach her, so that perforce she would have to share it and as like as not she would want to shake Stephen. “Good Lord,’ she would think, ‘ why can’t she hit back? It’s absurd, it’s outrageous to be so disgruntled by a handful of petty, half-educated yokels — a girl with her brain too, it’s simply out- rageous! She’ll have to tackle life more forcibly than this, if she’s not going to let herself go under! ’ But Stephen, completely oblivious of Puddle, would be deep in the throes of her old suspicion, the suspicion that had haunted her ever since childhood — she would fancy that people were laughing at her. So sensitive was she, that a half-heard sentence, a word, a glance, made her inwardly crumble. It might well be THE WELL OF LONELINESS 81 that people were not even thinking about her, much less discuss- ing her appearance — no good, she would always imagine that the word, the glance, had some purely personal meaning. She would twitch at her hat with inadequate fingers, or walk clumsily, slouching a little as she did so, until Anna would whisper: ‘ Hold your back up, you’re stooping.’ Or Puddle exclaim crossly: ‘ What on earth’s the matter, Stephen! ? All of which only added to Stephen’s tribulation by making her still more self-conscious.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Whilst it is proper to emphasize Boccaccio’s new sense of didactic purpose after the immensely important encounter with Petrarch in 1351, it would be misleading to convey the impression, as several of his biographers have done, that his involvement in humanistic studies led him to reject his earlier writings in the vernacular, in particular the Decameron. In this connection there is a story, better described as threadbare than well-worn, concerning a vision he is said to have experienced in 1362, when a mysterious messenger, originally nameless but referred to in later versions of the episode as Gioacchino Ciani, a Carthusian monk of Siena, warned him on behalf of one Pietro Petroni, recently deceased in the odour of sanctity, that his life was approaching its end and that the time had come for him to repent the foolishness of his ways. In consequence of this vision, Boccaccio is said to have resolved to destroy all of his writings that could be construed as profane, including of course his masterpiece. But the truth of the matter is that Boccaccio, even if he experienced any such vision, never took such a resolution. The sole source for the legend of the mysterious messenger is a letter of Petrarch’s (Seniles, I, 5) dated 28 May 1362, in which the older poet refers to a letter he claims to have received from Boccaccio describing the strange visitation and expressing concern over the prospect of imminent death. Petrarch takes great pains to reassure his friend, and adduces numerous examples from classical and biblical times to dispose of the argument that both of them (not just Boccaccio alone) were devoting too much of their time to the study and practice of literature and poetry. The question is discussed within the context of the debate about the relative merits of literary studies on the one hand and devotional practices on the other, a debate which had been going on at least since the age of Dante, and which in its simplest form could be expressed as Poetry vs Theology. It is at the end of this same letter, incidentally, that Petrarch suggests that they should pool their respective libraries (Boccaccio had apparently suggested that he should sell his own library to his magister), and live together under one roof.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Ten days later Stephen was saying to her mother: ‘I’ve been needing a change for a very long time. It’s rather lucky that a girl I met in the Unit is free and able to go with me. We’ve taken a villa at Orotava, it’s supposed to be furnished and they’re leaving the servants, but heaven only knows what the house will be like, it belongs to a Spaniard; however, there'll be sunshine.’ “I believe Orotava’s delightful,’ said Anna. But Puddle, who was looking at Stephen, said nothing. That night Stephen knocked at Puddle’s door: ‘May I come in?” ‘ Yes, come in do, my dear. Come and sit by the fire — shall I make you some cocoa? ’ “No, thanks.’ A long pause while Puddle slipped into her dressing-gown of soft, grey Viyella. Then she also drew a chair up to the fire, and after a little: ‘ It’s good to see you — your old teacher’s been miss- ing you rather badly.’ ‘Not more than I’ve been missing her, Puddle.’ Was that quite true? Stephen suddenly flushed, and both of them grew very silent. Puddle knew quite well that Stephen was unhappy. They had not lived side by side all these years, for Puddle to fail now in intuition; she felt certain that something grave had happened, and her instinct warned her of what this might be, so that she secretly trembled a little. For no young and inexperienced girl sat beside 346 THE WELL OF LONELINESS her, but a woman of nearly thirty-two, who was far beyond the reach of her guidance. This woman would settle her problems for herself and in her own way — had indeed always done so. Puddle must try to be tactful in her questions. She said gently: ‘ Tell me about your new friend. You met her in the Unit?’ ‘ Yes — we met in the Unit, as I told you this evening — her name’s Mary Llewellyn.’ ‘ How old is she, Stephen? ° ‘ Not quite twenty-two.’ Puddle said: ‘ Very young — not yet twenty-two . . .’ then she glanced at Stephen, and fell silent. But now Stephen went on talking more quickly: ‘I’m glad you asked me about her, Puddle, because I intend to give her a home. She’s got no one except some distant cousins, and as far as I can see they don’t want her. I shall let her have a try at typing my work, as she’s asked to, it will make her feel independent; otherwise, of course, she'll be perfectly free — if it’s not a success she can always leave me — but I rather hope it will be a success. She’s companionable, we like the same things, anyhow she'll give me an interest in life... .’ Puddle thought: ‘ She’s not going to tell me.’