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 Canterbury Tales (2009)

  Then return here in a year and a day. Before you go, you must give me your solemn pledge that you will come back and surrender yourself to the court.’ The knight sighed, filled with doubt and perplexity. How could he answer such a question? Yet he had no real choice in the matter. In the end he decided that he would obey the queen’s command. He would leave the court and return within a year and a day. He put his faith in God to find the right course for him, and jumped on to his horse. He tried every town and village, looking for enlightenment. ‘What is it,’ he said to one and all, ‘that women desire most?’ However hard he tried, he could not find a suitable answer. No two people agreed on the subject. Some said that women loved money the most; some said that they prized honour, and others pleasure. Some said that women wanted gorgeous clothes, but others chose sex as the main dish. Some said that women loved to be married, and widowed, often. Some said that they liked to be married and looked after in luxury. The knight was told that a man could win a woman with flattery. Or that any woman, young or old, rich or poor, could be caught by fuss and attention. Of course there were others who claimed that us women really wanted our liberty. We wanted to do as we pleased, and not to be judged. I think there is a lot of truth in that. Who wants to be told that she is acting immodestly? I’ll tell you one thing. If women are attacked on a sensitive point, then they will hit back. Try it, and you will see. Even if we are vicious on the inside, we need to appear virtuous and wholesome. There were other arguments. Some people told the knight that, above all else, women wished to seem discreet and trustworthy; they wanted to have a reputation for strength of mind, and for preserving secrets. That is rubbish, naturally. Women can never keep a secret. Have you heard the story of Midas? According to Ovid and other learned writers, Midas had two great ass’s ears concealed beneath his long hair. He was terrified lest anyone should find out about his deformity. That would be the end. So no one knew anything about it, except his wife. He loved her, and he trusted her. So he told her to keep quiet about this - this unfortunate development. Could she do that? Could she hell! Of course she swore to him that she would lose everything in the world rather than reveal his secret. It would be evil, she said, to besmirch the honour of her dear husband. It would shame her, too, beyond reckoning. Yet she almost died with the effort of suppressing the truth; she was sure that she would burst, that the words would make their way out somehow.

• From Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (1994)

  You may begin showing signs of schizophrenia—like you’ll stare at the word schizophrenia so long that it will start to look wrong and you won’t be able to find it in the dictionary and you’ll start to think you made it up, and then you’ll notice a tiny mouth sore, one of those tiny canker sores that your tongue can’t keep away from, that feels like a wound the size of a marble, but when you go to study it in the mirror, you see that it is a white spot roughly as big as a pinhead. Still, the next thing you know—because you are spending too much time alone —you are convinced that you have mouth cancer, just like good old Sigmund, and you know instantly that doctors will have to cut away half of your jaw, trying to save your miserable obsessive-compulsive head from being cannibalized by the cancer, and you’ll have to go around wearing a hood over your entire face, and no one will ever want to kiss you again, not that they ever really did. I don’t think there is anything wrong with this way of thinking, only that it is ultimately not all that productive. So you might as well try to get something done. And it’s better if contact with another human being is involved. One thing I know for sure about raising children is that every single day a kid needs discipline—so it’s useful to give yourself a minimum quota of three hundred words a day. But also every single day a kid needs a break. So think of calling around as giving yourself a break. The truth is that there are simply going to be times when you can’t go forward in your work until you find out something about the place you grew up, when it was still a railroad town, or what the early stages of shingles are like, or what your character would actually experience the first week of beauty school. So figure out who would have this information and give that person a call. It’s best if you can think of someone who’s witty and articulate, so you can steal all of his or her material. Also, of course, it’s just more interesting to be on the phone with someone who’s sort of keen. But these qualities are not absolutely necessary, because you may just be looking for one piece of information, or even just one word, and you do not need a whole lot of background or humor to go with it. And it may also turn out that in searching for this one bit of information, something else will turn up that you absolutely could not have known would be out there waiting for you. For instance, when I was writing my second novel, I got to the part where the man comes over for his first date with the woman and brings with him a bottle of champagne. He removes the foil.

• From Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (1994)

  I don’t like to be touched. Anyone here ever tries to touch me, I’ll kill them,” at which point Warren Oates jumps in and says, “Hey—lighten up, Francis.” This is not a bad line to have taped to the wall of your office. Say to yourself in the kindest possible way, Look, honey, all we’re going to do for now is to write a description of the river at sunrise, or the young child swimming in the pool at the club, or the first time the man sees the woman he will marry. That is all we are going to do for now. We are just going to take this bird by bird. But we are going to finish this one short assignment. Shitty First DraftsNow, practically even better news than that of short assignments is the idea of shitty first drafts. All good writers write them. This is how they end up with good second drafts and terrific third drafts. People tend to look at successful writers, writers who are getting their books published and maybe even doing well financially, and think that they sit down at their desks every morning feeling like a million dollars, feeling great about who they are and how much talent they have and what a great story they have to tell; that they take in a few deep breaths, push back their sleeves, roll their necks a few times to get all the cricks out, and dive in, typing fully formed passages as fast as a court reporter. But this is just the fantasy of the uninitiated. I know some very great writers, writers you love who write beautifully and have made a great deal of money, and not one of them sits down routinely feeling wildly enthusiastic and confident. Not one of them writes elegant first drafts. All right, one of them does, but we do not like her very much. We do not think that she has a rich inner life or that God likes her or can even stand her. (Although when I mentioned this to my priest friend Tom, he said you can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.) Very few writers really know what they are doing until they’ve done it. Nor do they go about their business feeling dewy and thrilled. They do not type a few stiff warm-up sentences and then find themselves bounding along like huskies across the snow. One writer I know tells me that he sits down every morning and says to himself nicely, “It’s not like you don’t have a choice, because you do—you can either type or kill yourself.” We all often feel like we are pulling teeth, even those writers whose prose ends up being the most natural and fluid.

• From Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (1994)

  I let my mind wander. After a moment I may notice that I’m trying to decide whether or not I am too old for orthodontia and whether right now would be a good time to make a few calls, and then I start to think about learning to use makeup and how maybe I could find some boyfriend who is not a total and complete fixer-upper and then my life would be totally great and I’d be happy all the time, and then I think about all the people I should have called back before I sat down to work, and how I should probably at least check in with my agent and tell him this great idea I have and see if he thinks it’s a good idea, and see if he thinks I need orthodontia—if that is what he is actually thinking whenever we have lunch together. Then I think about someone I’m really annoyed with, or some financial problem that is driving me crazy, and decide that I must resolve this before I get down to today’s work. So I become a dog with a chew toy, worrying it for a while, wrestling it to the ground, flinging it over my shoulder, chasing it, licking it, chewing it, flinging it back over my shoulder. I stop just short of actually barking. But all of this only takes somewhere between one and two minutes, so I haven’t actually wasted that much time. Still, it leaves me winded. I go back to trying to breathe, slowly and calmly, and I finally notice the one-inch picture frame that I put on my desk to remind me of short assignments. It reminds me that all I have to do is to write down as much as I can see through a one-inch picture frame. This is all I have to bite off for the time being. All I am going to do right now, for example, is write that one paragraph that sets the story in my hometown, in the late fifties, when the trains were still running. I am going to paint a picture of it, in words, on my word processor. Or all I am going to do is to describe the main character the very first time we meet her, when she first walks out the front door and onto the porch. I am not even going to describe the expression on her face when she first notices the blind dog sitting behind the wheel of her car—just what I can see through the one-inch picture frame, just one paragraph describing this woman, in the town where I grew up, the first time we encounter her. E. L.

• From Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (1994)

  So I said a few encouraging things, too, and pointed out a few passages that didn’t ring true, recommended ways to pick up the pace, and rather gently suggested that it needed some work. The author asked a few specific questions and was given some good suggestions. Then a young woman who had been silent raised her hand. “Am I crazy?” she implored. “Am I losing my mind? Am I the only person here who doesn’t think it worked at all? Did anyone actually think there was one believable character, one meaningful image …” and she went on and on, while the rest of us stared at her entranced, as if frozen in cobra hypnosis. Much of what she said was true. She looked at me when she was finished, fevered and imploring. I looked back at her. I tried to figure out what to do. There was a silence. “Should he give up altogether?” I asked. “I think people are patronizing him. He’s not going to get better if people don’t tell the truth,” she wailed. “But what you think is the truth is just your opinion.” The author of the story scanned the ceiling, as if he had heard the drone of approaching mosquitoes. The rest of the class stared at me with a sort of wired expectation. Part of me understood how the young woman felt. It had taken a lot of courage for her to speak up. And part of me wanted to tear a leg off the table and wave it at her threateningly. I knew she was a much better writer than he, because almost everyone was. I tried to breathe, and to remember what unpublished writers need and why they come to these writing conferences. They need attention. They need someone to respond to their work as honestly as possible but without being abusive or diminishing. So in my comments I focused on the fact that the author had tried something so difficult, had taken such a risk. I told him that the best possible thing was to shoot high and make mistakes, and that when he was old, or dying, he was almost certainly not going to say, “God! I’m so glad I took so few risks! I’m so glad I kept shooting so low!” I told him to plow ahead, write it one more time, and then get to work on something else. I told the young woman, in front of the class, that it had taken guts to say what she had said. Later she sought me out and asked if I thought she was a monster. I told her I thought she’d been very honest, and that this was totally commendable, but that you don’t always have to chop with the sword of truth. You can point with it, too. Long after the conference was over, I found a poem by Bill Holm, which I wanted to send to the young man. But I no longer had his address.

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  —Solo estoy asegurándome. Antes solía ser un imbécil. Engañaba mucho a mi madre, y por eso no nos llevamos bien. —Hace una pausa y luego agrega—: Solo para explicar la tensión que probablemente sientas entre nosotros. ¿Engañar? ¿Por qué no me dijo esto antes? Jesús. Sin embargo, Pike no parece ser de esa forma. No me parece tan superficial. Pero las personas crecen y cambian. Quizás fue un hombre diferente hace veinte años. Pero espera... —Pensé que dijiste que tus padres se separaron cuando tenías dos —le pregunto. Si era tan joven, ¿cómo lo recordaría? —Sí. —Empieza a caminar hacia el final de la barra—. Solo sé lo que me dijo ella. Al parecer no era bonito, así que no le creas ninguna mierda. Le gusta presionar a las mujeres, lo que probablemente sea la razón por la que todavía está soltero. Bueno, su padre sí parecía confundido hoy cuando trató de decirme que me quedara en casa, y me planté en mi sitio. Creo que está acostumbrado a que la gente siga sus órdenes. La última declaración de Cole suena como verdadera. —Vamos a ir al Cue —me dice Cole, abriendo la partición y caminando hacia el otro lado de la barra—. Te veré en casa. —No llegues tarde —murmuro. Su turno no comienza hasta las diez de la mañana, pero quiero verlo cuando llegue a casa. No hemos tenido mucho tiempo juntos hoy. Él y sus amigos se escurren por la puerta principal, se dirigen a The Cue para jugar al billar, pero Jay echa una mirada en mi dirección mientras se dirige a la puerta, pasando su brazo alrededor de Shawna Abbot. Sus ojos se posan en mi pecho y luego vuelven a subir, mirándome con una parte de deseo y tres partes de amenaza. Y durante dos años ha sido solo eso. Recibir las miradas asquerosas que me lanza por miedo de reaccionar otra vez. Sin embargo, me ha dejado en paz, así que simplemente lo evito y finjo que no está allí. Ambos grupos se van, decidiendo encontrar su diversión en otro lugar, pero antes que la puerta de entrada tenga la oportunidad de cerrarse, mi hermana la atraviesa, y un par de compañeras de trabajo la siguen. Todos los ojos en la habitación se vuelven hacia ellas, mirando a las mujeres sexys en sus diminutas blusas y tacones altos.

• From Summer Sisters (1998)

  “When your mother gets here maybe we can sit down together and talk about school,” Abby said. She’d given up on the lady’s-mantle and was deadheading the fairy roses. What did she mean, school? “Lamb and I have been wondering if you’d like to go to Mountain Day with Caitlin?” “Mountain Day is a private school.” “Suppose you had a scholarship?” “A scholarship?” “Of course high school is just the beginning,” Abby told her. “Have you thought about college yet?” No one in her family had ever gone to college. She was hoping for UNM, though Tawny wanted her to become a medical technician. Healthcare, Victoria. That’s where the jobs are going to be. Listen to me. I know what I’m talking about. “I know it seems far off,” Abby continued, “but actually it’s right around the corner. You’ve got to start planning now. Maybe we can talk about the big picture when your mother gets here.” Vix kept weeding the same patch even after all the weeds were pulled. Was Abby having fantasies, too? She began to feel sweat trickle down inside her bra, a new kind of wetness that could spring from her pores in an instant, without warning, releasing a pungent odor, even if she’d just showered. She hated the unpredictability of her body. She hated being fourteen. It felt like a punishment. She just didn’t know for what. “I’m not making you uncomfortable, am I?” Abby asked. “No,” Vix said, too quickly, swiping her face with her arm, trying to get a whiff of her underarms. “It’s just that ...” “I understand completely,” Abby said. “You do?” “Of course.” As much as she dreaded the idea of Tawny invading her space, Vix was relieved to find that the visit had nothing to do with Abby. She’d come because the Countess could no longer travel on her own and the Countess had too many friends in too many places to sit at home brooding over her emphysema and failing eyesight.

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  liked to make extra foam. “Name’s Robbie,” he said. “That your man there?” He gestured toward Dad. “I’m his daughter,” I said. He took a lick of foam and started asking me about myself, leaning in close as he talked. “How old are you, girl?” “How old do you think?” I asked. “About seventeen.” I smiled, putting my hand over my teeth. “Know how to dance?” he asked. I shook my head. “Sure you do,” he said and pulled me off the stool. I looked over at Dad, who grinned and waved. On the jukebox, Kitty Wells was singing about married men and honky-tonk angels. Robbie held me close, with his hand on the small of my back. We danced to a second song, and when we sat down again on the stools facing the pool table, our backs against the bar, he slid his arm behind me. That arm made me tense but not entirely unhappy. No one had flirted with me since Billy Deel, unless you counted Kenny Hall. Still, I knew what Robbie was after. I was going to tell him I wasn’t that sort of girl, but then I thought he would say I was getting ahead of myself. After all, the only thing he’d done was dance me slow and put his arm around me. I caught Dad’s eye. I expected him to come barreling across the room and whock Robbie with a pool cue for getting fresh with his daughter. Instead, he hollered to Robbie, “Do something worthwhile with those damned hands of yours. Get over here and play me a game of pool.” They ordered whiskeys and chalked their cues. Dad held back at first and lost some money to Robbie, then started upping the stakes and beating him. After every game, Robbie wanted to dance with me again. It went on that way for a couple of hours, with Robbie getting sloppy drunk, losing to Dad, and groping me when we danced or sat at the bar between games. All Dad said to me was “Keep your legs crossed, honey, and keep ’em crossed tight.” After Dad had taken him for about eighty bucks, Robbie started muttering angrily to himself. He snapped down the cue chalk, sending up a puff of blue powder, and missed a final shot. He flung his cue on the table and announced he’d had enough, then sat down next to me. His eyes were bleary. He kept saying he couldn’t believe that old fart had beat him out of eighty bucks, as if he couldn’t decide whether he was

• From Delta of Venus (1977)

  Elena postponed her return to Paris. Pierre could not return. They met every day, sometimes staying the whole night away from Casutza. The dream continued unbroken for ten days, until a woman came to call. It was an evening when Elena and Pierre were away. His wife received her. They locked themselves up together. Madame Kazimir tried to listen to what they said but they caught sight of her head at one of the little windows. The woman was Russian. She was unusually beautiful, with violet eyes and dark hair, an Egyptian cast of features. She did not talk very much. She appeared greatly disturbed. When Pierre arrived in the morning he found her there. He was quite evidently surprised. Elena received a shock of inexplicable anxiety. She feared the woman immediately. She sensed danger for her love. Yet when Pierre met her hours later, he explained it all on the basis of his work. The woman had been sent with orders. He was to move on. He was given work to do in Geneva. He had been rescued from the complications in Paris with the understanding that he was to obey orders from then on. He did not say to Elena, “Come with me to Geneva.” She waited for his words. “How long will you be away?” “I don’t know.” “You are going with . . . ?” She could not even repeat her name. “Yes, she is in charge.” “If I am not to see you anymore, Pierre, tell me at least, the truth.” But neither his expression or his words seemed to come from the man she knew intimately. He seemed to be saying what he had been made to say, nothing more. He had lost all his personal authority. He was talking as if someone else were listening to him. Elena was silent. Then Pierre approached her and whispered, “I am not in love with any woman. I never have been. I am in love with my work. With you I was in great danger. Because we could talk together, because we were so near each other in so many ways, I stayed with you too long. I forgot my work.” Elena was to repeat these words to herself over and over again. She remembered his face as he talked, his eyes no longer fixed on her with obsessional concentration, but like those of a man obeying orders, not the laws of desire and love. Pierre, who had done more than any human being to draw her out of the caves of her secret, folded life, now threw her down into deeper recesses of fear and doubt. The fall was greater than she had ever known, because she had ventured so far into emotion and had abandoned herself to it. She never questioned Pierre’s words or considered pursuing him. She left Casutza before he did. On the train she recalled his face as it had been, so open, commanding, and yet somewhere, vulnerable and yielding too.

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  Asiento, sin saber qué más decir. De todos modos, tengo la sensación de que no estaré aquí mucho tiempo. Ya siento que estoy caminando por la cuerda floja. Me obligo a comer, porque esto no sabrá bien como sobras mañana. La música se escucha desde afuera, el zumbido de una podadora cobra vida en la distancia, y el aroma del césped golpea el fondo de mi garganta cuando entra por las ventanas abiertas, las sencillas cortinas beige de la casa de Pike se mueven con la brisa que entra. Escalofríos cubren mis brazos. Verano. Un teléfono suena, y veo a Pike estirarse y tomar su teléfono de la isla. —Hola —responde. Suena la voz de un hombre del otro lado, pero no puedo escuchar lo que dice. Pike se levanta, cargando su plato hacia el fregadero con una mano y sosteniendo el teléfono con la otra, y echo una ojeada mientras está distraído. Las bromas de Cam sobre él siguen viniendo a mí, calentándome las mejillas, pero no es así. Pike es un misterio. Vi fotografías de él y Cole en la sala de estar, de bebé y de niño, pero aparte de eso, la casa no tiene mucho de su padre. Sé que es un tipo soltero, pero no hay libros sobre la mesa de centro que muestren sus intereses, no hay recuerdos de vacaciones, ni mascotas, ni arte, ni adornos, ni revistas, ninguna parafernalia que indique sus pasatiempos como deportes, juegos, o música... es una casa hermosa, pero es como una casa de exhibición donde en realidad no vive una familia. —No, necesito otra excavadora y al menos cien bolsas más de cemento —le dice al tipo, sosteniendo el teléfono entre su hombro y oreja, y subiendo más sus mangas abre el grifo. Sonrío para mí misma. Está lavando los platos. ¿Sin que se le pida? Suelto un suspiro y me levanto del asiento. Supongo que normalmente vive solo, después de todo. ¿Quién más lo haría? Se ríe ante algo que le dice el tipo y sacude la cabeza, mientras limpio mi plato en la basura. —Dile a ese imbécil que no está enfermo —exige al teléfono—, y que si no sale de donde sea que esté metido en la mañana, iré y lo buscaré yo mismo. Quiero seguir adelantado a la programación. Voy a su lado y suavemente dejo mi plato en el mostrador antes de poner la limonada y condimentos de regreso en el refrigerador.

• From Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (1994)

  So let the plot go left in this one place instead of right, or let your character decide to go back to her loathsome passive-aggressive husband. Maybe it was the right thing, maybe not. If not, go back and try something else. Some of us tend to think that what we do and say and decide and write are cosmically important things. But they’re not. If you don’t know which way to go, keep it simple. Listen to your broccoli. Maybe it will know what to do. Then, if you’ve worked in good faith for a couple of hours but cannot hear it today, have some lunch. Radio Station KFKDI need to bring up radio station KFKD, or K-Fucked, here. It is perhaps the single greatest obstacle to listening to your broccoli that exists for writers. Then I promise I’ll never mention it again. If you are not careful, station KFKD will play in your head twenty-four hours a day, nonstop, in stereo. Out of the right speaker in your inner ear will come the endless stream of self-aggrandizement, the recitation of one’s specialness, of how much more open and gifted and brilliant and knowing and misunderstood and humble one is. Out of the left speaker will be the rap songs of self-loathing, the lists of all the things one doesn’t do well, of all the mistakes one has made today and over an entire lifetime, the doubt, the assertion that everything that one touches turns to shit, that one doesn’t do relationships well, that one is in every way a fraud, incapable of selfless love, that one has no talent or insight, and on and on and on. You might as well have heavy-metal music piped in through headphones while you’re trying to get your work done. You have to get things quiet in your head so you can hear your characters and let them guide your story. The best way to get quiet, other than the combination of extensive therapy, Prozac, and a lobotomy, is first to notice that the station is on. KFKD is on every single morning when I sit down at my desk. So I sit for a moment and then say a small prayer—please help me get out of the way so I can write what wants to be written. Sometimes ritual quiets the racket. Try it. Any number of things may work for you—an altar, for instance, or votive candles, sage smudges, small-animal sacrifices, especially now that the Supreme Court has legalized them. (I cut out the headline the day this news came out and taped it above the kitty’s water dish.) Rituals are a good signal to your unconscious that it is time to kick in. You might also consider trying to breathe.

• From Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (1994)

  Two nights ago I showed up to teach my class with a raw chest and a raging sore throat, the kind that feels like cancer of the trachea. I happen to have two doctors in this class, and one of them tried to assure me that it probably wasn’t tracheal cancer, that in fact the viral cloud of mid-autumn had descended and many people were having similar symptoms. The other doctor recommended drinking really, really hot water. “Hot water?” I said. “Hot water? I should be home hooked up to an epidural, drinking codeine cough syrup, and you’re prescribing hot water?” Then I threatened to lower his grade. (Of course, this is not a graded workshop, so my students tend to roll their eyes when I threaten them.) At the break, that doctor brought me a cup of boiling water, as though for tea but without the tea bag, and I drank it. My throat and chest stopped aching about twenty seconds later. I hate that. Still, breathing calmly can help you get into a position where the workings of your characters’ hearts and the things people say on the streets of your story can be heard above the sound of KFKD. When you are in that position, you will know. I am struggling very hard not to use the word harmony here. So let me tell you a quick story. Last summer I got a call from a producer in New York who wanted me to fly east two days later, stay in town overnight, do her TV talk show, and fly home. I thought long and hard about whether I should—for about thirty seconds. Of course I wanted to go. But I would have to make arrangements for Sam to stay overnight with his grandparents, and I needed to catch a return flight that would get me back in time to teach my workshop the next night, and the only one that could do that involved a layover at Dallas–Fort Worth. A layover at Dallas–Fort Worth is something for which, believe me, I am not remotely well enough. So I shared all this with the producer and took off for a committee meeting I had at church. I was a mess. Out of the right speaker, KFKD was playing a dress rehearsal of the TV talk show and of subsequent appearances with Dave and Arsenio. Out of the left speaker was a call-in program on airplane crashes, with descriptions of what happens to the body on impact. I got to church and my committee had not yet assembled, but four of the church’s elders—all women—three African Americans and one white, were having a prayer meeting. They were praying for homeless children. “Can we discuss my personal problems for a moment?”

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  AS SPRING APPROACHED and the day of Lori’s graduation drew closer, I lay awake at night, thinking about her life in New York City. “In exactly three months,” I said to her, “you’ll be living in New York.” The following week, I said, “In exactly two months and three weeks, you’ll be living in New York.” “Would you please shut up,” she said. “You’re not nervous, are you?” I asked. “What do you think?” Lori was terrified. She was not sure what she was supposed to do once she got to New York. That had always been the vaguest part of our escape plan. Back in the fall, I’d had no doubt that she could get a scholarship to one of the city’s universities. She’d been a finalist for a National Merit Scholarship, but she’d had to hitchhike into Bluefield to take the test, and she got rattled when the trucker who picked her up put the moves on her; she arrived nearly an hour late and botched the test. Mom, who supported Lori’s New York plans and kept saying she wished she were going to the big city herself, suggested that Lori apply to the Cooper Union art school. Lori put together a portfolio of her drawings and paintings, but just before the submissions deadline, she spilled a pot of coffee on them, which made Mom wonder aloud if Lori had a fear of success. Then Lori heard about a scholarship sponsored by a literary society for the student who created the best work of art inspired by one of the geniuses of the English language. She decided to make a clay bust of Shakespeare. She worked on it for a week, using a sharpened Popsicle stick to shape the slightly bulging eyes and the goatee and earring and longish hair. When it was finished, it looked exactly like Shakespeare. That night we were all sitting at the drafting table watching Lori put the final touches on Shakespeare’s hair when Dad came home drunk. “That does indeed resemble old Billy,” Dad said. “Only thing is, as I been telling you, he was a goddamn fake.” For years, every time Mom brought out Shakespeare’s plays, Dad would carry on about how they’d been written not by William Shakespeare of Avon but by a bunch

• From Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990)

  Perhaps the problem is even more serious. Is the construction of the category of women as a coherent and stable subject an unwitting regulation and reification of gender relations? And is not such a reification precisely contrary to feminist aims? To what extent does the category of women achieve stability and coherence only in the context of the heterosexual matrix?6 If a stable notion of gender no longer proves to be the foundational premise of feminist politics, perhaps a new sort of feminist politics is now desirable to contest the very reifications of gender and identity, one that will take the variable construction of identity as both a methodological and normative prerequisite, if not a political goal. To trace the political operations that produce and conceal what qualifies as the juridical subject of feminism is precisely the task of a feminist genealogy of the category of women. In the course of this effort to question “women” as the subject of feminism, the unproblematic invocation of that category may prove to preclude the possibility of feminism as a representational politics. What sense does it make to extend representation to subjects who are constructed through the exclusion of those who fail to conform to unspoken normative requirements of the subject? What relations of domination and exclusion are inadvertently sustained when representation becomes the sole focus of politics? The identity of the feminist subject ought not to be the foundation of feminist politics, if the formation of the subject takes place within a field of power regularly buried through the assertion of that foundation. Perhaps, paradoxically, “representation” will be shown to make sense for feminism only when the subject of “women” is nowhere presumed. II THE COMPULSORY ORDER OF SEX/GENDER/DESIREAlthough the unproblematic unity of “women” is often invoked to construct a solidarity of identity, a split is introduced in the feminist subject by the distinction between sex and gender. Originally intended to dispute the biology-is-destiny formulation, the distinction between sex and gender serves the argument that whatever biological intractability sex appears to have, gender is culturally constructed: hence, gender is neither the causal result of sex nor as seemingly fixed as sex. The unity of the subject is thus already potentially contested by the distinction that permits of gender as a multiple interpretation of sex.7

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  They were all throwing in pieces of brush to keep the fire going, plus chunks of tire treads, and we cheered at the thick black rubber smoke that made our noses sting as it rolled past us into the air. Billy came up to me and pulled my arm, motioning me away from the other kids. He dug into his pocket and pulled out a turquoise and silver ring. “It’s for you,” he said. I took it and turned it over in my hand. Mom had a collection of turquoise and silver Indian jewelry that she kept at Grandma’s house so Dad wouldn’t pawn it. Most of it was antique and very valuable—some man from a museum in Phoenix kept trying to buy pieces from her—and when we visited Grandma, Mom would let me and Lori put on the heavy necklaces and bracelets and concha belts. Billy’s ring looked like one of Mom’s. I ran it across my teeth and tongue like Mom had taught me to. I could tell by the slightly bitter taste that it was real silver. “Where’d you get this?” I asked. “It used to be my mom’s,” Billy said. It sure was a pretty ring. It had a simple thin band and an oval-shaped piece of dark turquoise held in place by snaking silver strands. I didn’t have any jewelry and it had been a long time since anyone had given me a present, except for the planet Venus. I tried on the ring. It was way too big for my finger, but I could wrap yarn around the band the way high school girls did when they wore their boyfriend’s rings. I was afraid, however, that if I took the ring, Billy might start thinking that I had agreed to be his girlfriend. He’d tell all the other kids, and if I said it wasn’t true, he’d point to the ring. On the other hand, I figured Mom would approve, since accepting it would make Billy feel good about himself. I decided to compromise. “I’ll keep it,” I said. “But I’m not going to wear it.” Billy’s smile spread all across his face. “But don’t think this means we’re boyfriend and girlfriend,” I said. “And don’t think this means you can kiss me.” • • • I didn’t tell anyone about the ring, not even Brian. I kept it in my pants pocket during the day, and at night I hid it in the bottom of the cardboard box where I kept my clothes. But Billy Deel had to go and shoot his mouth off about giving me the ring. He started telling the other kids things like how, as soon as I was old enough, me and him were going to get married. When I found out what he was saying, I knew accepting the ring had been a big mistake. I also knew I should return it. But I didn’t.

• From The Canterbury Tales (2009)

  ‘So you must also have heard of the trouble of Noah and his family, trying to get his wife to go on board the ark. He would have given up all the animals, from aardvark to zebra, to dispatch her on a ship of her own. So now what are we going to do? Speed is necessary. This is no time for making speeches. We cannot wait. What you have to do is this. You have to find us three tubs or troughs - you know, the kind in which you knead dough or brew beer - but they have to be large enough to accommodate each one of us. And obviously they have to be able to float. Once you have them, put enough food in each of them for a day. There will be no need for any more. The waters will go down, as swiftly as they came up, at nine o’clock the next morning.’ ‘What about young Robin? And Jill, our maid?’ ‘I am afraid that they cannot be saved. Don’t ask me why. I cannot reveal the secrets of God. It must suffice that you and Alison and I will be rescued from the flood. You would be mad not to do this. So get on with it. Oh. One more thing. When you have found these three tubs, you must hang them high up from the rafters so that no one will know what we are doing. When you have done all this, and have stored all the food and drink, you must get hold of an axe. We will need it to break the ropes, and then cast off. We will also have to make a hole through the gable, over the stable, on the garden side, so that we can float free once the great rain has stopped. We will bob along as merrily as a white duck following her drake. Then I will shout to you, “Hi there, Alison! Hi there, John! Cheer up. The flood will soon be gone.” And you will shout back, “Good morning, Nicholas! I can see you again. There is daylight!” Then we will be masters of the world, just like Noah and his wife.

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  We danced to a second song, and when we sat down again on the stools facing the pool table, our backs against the bar, he slid his arm behind me. That arm made me tense but not entirely unhappy. No one had flirted with me since Billy Deel, unless you counted Kenny Hall. Still, I knew what Robbie was after. I was going to tell him I wasn’t that sort of girl, but then I thought he would say I was getting ahead of myself. After all, the only thing he’d done was dance me slow and put his arm around me. I caught Dad’s eye. I expected him to come barreling across the room and whock Robbie with a pool cue for getting fresh with his daughter. Instead, he hollered to Robbie, “Do something worthwhile with those damned hands of yours. Get over here and play me a game of pool.” They ordered whiskeys and chalked their cues. Dad held back at first and lost some money to Robbie, then started upping the stakes and beating him. After every game, Robbie wanted to dance with me again. It went on that way for a couple of hours, with Robbie getting sloppy drunk, losing to Dad, and groping me when we danced or sat at the bar between games. All Dad said to me was “Keep your legs crossed, honey, and keep ’em crossed tight.” After Dad had taken him for about eighty bucks, Robbie started muttering angrily to himself. He snapped down the cue chalk, sending up a puff of blue powder, and missed a final shot. He flung his cue on the table and announced he’d had enough, then sat down next to me. His eyes were bleary. He kept saying he couldn’t believe that old fart had beat him out of eighty bucks, as if he couldn’t decide whether he was pissed off or impressed. Then he told me he lived in an apartment over the bar. He had a Roy Acuff record that wasn’t on the jukebox, and he wanted us to go upstairs and listen to it. If all he wanted to do was dance some more and maybe kiss a little, I could handle that. But I had the feeling he thought he was entitled to something in return for losing so much money. “I’m not sure,” I said. “Aw, come on,” he said and shouted at Dad, “I’m going to take your girl upstairs.” “Sure,” Dad said. “Just don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.” He pointed his pool cue at me. “Holler if you need me,” he said and winked at me as if to say he knew I could take care of myself, that this was just a part of my job. So, with Dad’s blessing, I went upstairs. Inside the apartment, we pushed through a curtain made from strands of beer-can pull tabs linked together. Two men sat on a couch watching wrestling on television.

• From The Glass Castle: A Memoir (2005)

  The blue was water. Mom was painting a picture of a woman drowning in a stormy lake. When she was finished, she sat for a long time in silence, staring at the picture. “So what are we going to do?” I finally asked. “Jeannette, you’re so focused it’s scary.” “You didn’t answer my question,” I said. “I’ll get a job, Jeannette,” she snapped. She threw her paintbrush into the jar that held her turpentine and sat there looking at the drowning woman. QUALIFIED TEACHERS were so scarce in McDowell County that two of the teachers I’d have at Welch High School had never been to college. Mom was able to land a job by the end of the week. We spent those days frantically trying to clean the house in anticipation of the return of the child-welfare man. It was a hopeless task, given all the stacks of Mom’s junk and the hole in the ceiling and the disgusting yellow bucket in the kitchen. However, for some reason he never came back. Mom’s job was teaching remedial reading in an elementary school in Davy, a coal-mining camp twelve miles north of Welch. Since we still had no car, the school’s principal arranged for Mom to get a ride with another teacher, Lucy Jo Rose, who had just graduated from Bluefield State College and was so fat she could barely squeeze behind the steering wheel of her brown Dodge Dart. Lucy Jo, whom the principal had more or less ordered to perform this service, took an instant dislike to Mom. She refused to say much during the trip, instead playing Barbara Mandrell tapes and smoking filter-tip Kools the entire time. As soon as Mom got out of the car, Lucy Jo made a big show of spraying Mom’s seat with Lysol. Mom, for her part, felt that Lucy Jo was woefully uninformed. When Mom mentioned Jackson Pollock once, Lucy Jo said that she had Polish blood and therefore did not appreciate Mom using derogatory names for Polish people. Mom had the same problems she’d had in Battle Mountain with organizing her paperwork and disciplining her students. At least one morning a week, she’d throw a tantrum and refuse to go to work, and Lori, Brian, and I would have to get her collected and down to the street where Lucy Jo waited with a scowl, blue smoke chugging up out of the Dart’s rusted-through tailpipe. But at least we had money. While I’d been bringing in a little extra cash babysitting, Brian was cutting other people’s weeds, and Lori had a paper route, it didn’t add up to much. Now Mom got paid about seven hundred dollars a month, and the first time I saw her gray-green pay-check, with its detachable stub and automated signatures, I thought our troubles were over. On paydays, Mom took us kids down to the big bank across from the courthouse to cash the check.

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  No dice nada durante unos segundos, pero después de un momento concuerda: —Sí. No estoy segura si eso significa que solo está escuchando atentamente o está de acuerdo conmigo. Si ha descubierto mi apellido, debe saber quién es mi padre. Todos en la ciudad conocen a Chip Hadley, así que tendría una idea de cómo vivíamos. No sé mucho sobre la familia de Cole, o si siempre han vivido en esta ciudad. Pike Lawson no es rico, pero ciertamente no es pobre por el aspecto de su casa. —Es muy bueno. Lo digo en serio —dice nuevamente. —Gracias. —Me doy vuelta y coloco un plato en la isla perpendicular a su asiento para Cole, y el mío junto a ese. Nos quedamos en silencio, y me pregunto si también se siente raro. Hablamos tan fácilmente la otra noche cuando no sabíamos quién era el otro, pero eso ha cambiado ahora. Escucho movimiento desde la sala de estar y miro alrededor para ver a Cole entrando a la cocina. Sonrío. Tiene grasa en toda la camisa y una mancha bajo su labio. Puede comportarse mal como si fuera su trabajo, pero también puede presumir de un encanto infantil como si nada. Agarra la hamburguesa de su plato en una mano y mete una parte oxidada y sucia del auto debajo de su brazo, inclina su barbilla hacia mí. —Hola, nena. Estamos trabajando en tu VW. No te importa si como afuera, ¿verdad? Lo miro. ¿Habla en serio? Disparo una mirada entre él y su padre. —Sí —contesto suavemente, intentando decir más con mis ojos. No quiero comer a solas con su papá. —Vamos. —Cole ladea la cabeza, intentando convencerme con su expresión juguetona—. No puedo simplemente dejarlos allá. Podrías venir y sentarte afuera con nosotros. Cielos, gracias. Frunzo los labios y me vuelvo hacia el refrigerador, tomando la jarra de limonada. Es grosero simplemente irse. Su padre no es nuestro restaurante. Debería esforzarse un poco por conocerlo. Pero antes que pueda decirle a Cole que solo se vaya y coma afuera, su padre habla:

• From Birthday Girl (2018)

  —¿Ese es el carro de April Lester? —pregunta Cam a través de la ventana abierta. Giro mi cabeza, viendo un Mazda convertible rojo estacionado detrás de la camioneta de Pike, y me estómago se hunde. ¿Qué carajos sucede? Es tarde. Mis ojos se mueven como un rayo hacia la casa y veo que está oscuro, no hay luces encendidas en ningún lugar. ¿Qué estarán haciendo allí con las luces apagadas? Tengo un nudo en la garganta y siento como si fuera a vomitar. —Probablemente está vendiéndole galletas de las niñas exploradoras — bromea Cam. Pero estoy furiosa. —No es temporada de galletas. —Oh, cariño, para algunos de nosotros, siempre será temporada de galletas. Giro hacia mi hermana que está haciendo una V con sus dedos frente a su boca y metiendo su lengua entre ellos, retorciéndola. Empujo la puerta, hablándole entre diente. —Muérdeme. Pero solo se ríe, arrancando su auto a toda velocidad. —¡Bueeeeena sueeeeeerte! Me toma dos intentos pasar saliva mientras le echo un vistazo a la casa. ¿Qué está haciendo ella ahí? ¿Qué está haciendo ella ahí adentro? Sí, esta es la casa de él, y por lo que sé, no se ha estado acostando con nadie desde que vine aquí hace semanas. Es joven, soltero, tiene todo el derecho a traer mujeres a casa. Pero eso no evita que mi corazón esté latiendo a kilómetros por hora, o que me duela el estómago. Estoy aquí. ¿No pudo ir mejor a la casa de ella? ¿O a un motel? Subo los escalones del porche delantero, mi corazón palpitando en mis orejas y giro la perilla, pero está cerrada. Pike casi siempre deja la puerta desbloqueada para mí. Incluso si estoy trabajando hasta las dos de la mañana. Trato de mantener estable la cerveza de raíz en mi mano izquierda mientras busco la llave en mis pantalones cortos. Sacándola, desbloqueo la puerta, el terror me invade mientras la abro. Si los sorprendo haciendo algo, no estoy segura de no romper a llorar o empezar a gritar.