Fear

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.

Page 129 of 529 · 20 per page

• From The Bible: A Biography (2007)

  This changed after Palestine was conquered by the Roman general Pompey in 63 BCE and became a province of the Roman empire. In some ways, Roman rule was beneficial. King Herod, the protégé of Rome who reigned in Jerusalem from 37 to 4 BCE, rebuilt the temple on a magnificent scale and pilgrims flocked there to celebrate the festivals. But the Romans were unpopular and some of the prefects, notably Pontius Pilate (26–36 CE), went out of their way to insult Jewish sensibilities. A number of prophets tried to mobilize the population to revolt.50 A certain Theudas led four hundred men into the desert, promising that God would liberate them there. A prophet known as the ‘Egyptian’ persuaded thousands of people to congregate on the Mount of Olives in order to storm the Roman fortress that was positioned provocatively beside the temple. Most of these uprisings were savagely suppressed and on one occasion the Romans crucified as many as two thousand rebels outside Jerusalem. During the 20s CE, John the Baptizer, an ascetic prophet who may have belonged to the Essene movement, drew large crowds to the Judaean desert where he preached that the ‘kingdom of heaven’ was at hand.51 There would be a great judgement for which Jews must prepare by confessing their sins, immersing themselves in the river Jordan, and vowing to live a blameless, honest life.52 Even though John does not seem to have preached against Roman rule, he was executed by the authorities. John seems to have been related in some way to Jesus of Nazareth, a Galilean healer and exorcist, who announced the imminent arrival of the kingdom of God at about the same time.53 Anti-Roman feeling was especially rife during the great national festivals, and Jesus was executed by Pontius Pilate in about 30 CE when he went to Jerusalem to celebrate Passover there. But that did not end the Jesus movement. Some of his disciples were convinced that he had risen from the tomb; they claimed that they had seen him in visions and that his personal resurrection heralded the last days, when the righteous dead would rise from their graves. Jesus would soon return in glory to inaugurate the kingdom. Their leader in Jerusalem was Jesus’s brother James, who was known as the Tzaddik, the ‘Righteous One’ and had good relations with both the Pharisees and the Essenes. But the movement also attracted Greek-speaking Jews in the diaspora and, most surprisingly, a significant number of ‘God-fearers’, non-Jews who were honorary members of the synagogues.

• From The Bible: A Biography (2007)

  Yet Ezra’s reading had been prefaced by the threat of expulsion and seizure of property. It was followed by a more sombre assembly in the square in front of the temple, during which the people stood shivering as the torrential winter rains deluged the city and heard Ezra command them to send away their foreign wives.12 Membership of Israel was now confined to the Golah and those who submitted to the Torah, the official law code of Judah. There was always the danger that enthusiasm for scripture could foster an exclusive, divisive and potentially cruel orthodoxy. Ezra’s reading marks the beginning of classical Judaism, a religion concerned not merely with the reception and preservation of revelation but with its constant reinterpretation.13 The law that Ezra read was clearly unknown to the people, who wept in fear when they heard it for the first time. When he expounded the text, the exegete did not reproduce the original torah imparted in the distant past to Moses but created something new and unexpected. The biblical writers had worked in the same way, radically revising the texts they had inherited. Revelation had not happened once and for all time; it was an ongoing process that could never end, because there were always fresh teachings to be discovered. By this time, there were two established categories of scripture: the Torah and the Prophets (Neviim). But after the exile, another set of texts were produced that would become known as the Kethuvim, the ‘Writings’, which sometimes simply reinterpreted the older books. Thus Chronicles, a historical narrative written by priestly authors, was essentially a commentary on the Deuteronomic history of Samuel and Kings. When these two books were translated into Greek, they were called paralipomena: ‘the things omitted’.14 The authors were writing between the lines to make good what they regarded as deficiencies in the earlier accounts. They shared P’s ideal of reconciliation and wanted to build bridges with the Israelites who had not gone into exile and were now resident in the north. They therefore omitted the Deuteronomists’ harsh polemic against the northern kingdom.

• From The Bible: A Biography (2007)

  By the eleventh century, Europe had started to emerge from the Dark Ages. The Benedictines of Cluny, near Paris, initiated a reform to educate the laity, whose knowledge of Christianity was woefully inadequate. Uneducated layfolk could not read the Bible, of course, but were taught to experience the Mass as a complex allegory that symbolically reenacted Jesus’s life: the readings from scripture in the first part of the liturgy recalled his ministry; during the offering of the bread and wine, they meditated on his sacrificial death, and the communion represented his resurrection in the lives of the faithful. The fact that lay people could no longer follow the Latin added to the mystique: much of the Mass was recited by the priest in an undertone, and the silence and the sacred language transported the ritual into a separate space apart, introducing the congregation to the gospel as a mysterium, a power-filled act. By enabling them to enter imaginatively into the gospel story, Mass was the laity’s lectio divina.6 The Cluniacs also encouraged lay people to make pilgrimages to places associated with Jesus and the saints. Not many could make the long trip to the Holy Land, but, it was said, some of the apostles had travelled to Europe and were buried there: Peter in Rome; Joseph of Arimathea in Glastonbury, and James at Compostela in Spain. During the journey, pilgrims learned Christian values, living for a while like monks: they left secular life behind, were celibate during the journey, lived in community with other pilgrims, and were forbidden to fight or bear arms. But Europe was still a dangerous, desolate place. People were barely able to farm the land, there was famine and sickness and constant warfare, as the nobility engaged in ceaseless battles with one another, devastating the countryside and wrecking entire villages. The Cluniacs tried to impose a periodic truce and some tried to reform the barons and kings. But the knights were soldiers and wanted an aggressive religion. The first communal, cooperative act of the new Europe, as she crawled out of the Dark Ages, was the First Crusade (1095–99). Some of the Crusaders began their journey to the Holy Land by attacking the Jewish communities in the Rhine Valley; at its conclusion, the Crusaders massacred some thirty thousand Jews and Muslims in Jerusalem. The crusading ethos was based on a literal interpretation of Christ’s warning in the gospel: ‘Anyone who does not carry his cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.’7 Crusaders sewed crosses on their clothes and followed in Jesus’s footsteps to the land where he had lived and died. With tragic irony, crusading was preached as an act of love.8 Christ was the Crusaders’ feudal lord, and as loyal vassals they were duty-bound to recover his patrimony. In the Crusades, Christianity absorbed and baptized the feudal violence of Europe.

• From The Bible: A Biography (2007)

  104 The book of Revelation reveals the bitterness of Joannine Christianity. Here the dualism that was a recurrent motif in John’s gospels became a cosmic battle against good and evil forces. Satan and his cohorts assailed Michael and his angelic army in heaven, while the wicked attacked the good on earth. It seemed to the troubled ekklesia that evil must prevail, but John of Patmos, the author of Revelation, insisted that God would intervene at the critical moment and vanquish their enemies. He had received a special ‘revelation’ ( apokalypsis ), which would ‘unveil’ the true state of affairs, so that the faithful would know how to conduct themselves during the last days. The apocalypse is informed, through and through, by fear: the church was terrified of the Roman empire, the local Jewish communities and rival Christian groups. But, the author assured them, eventually Satan would give his authority to a Beast, who would rise from the depths of the sea and demand universal obeisance. Then the Lamb would come to the rescue. Even though the Whore of Babylon arrived drunk with the blood of the Christian martyrs, angels would pour seven hideous plagues over the earth and the Word would ride into battle on a white horse, to fight the Beast and fling him into a pit of fire. For a thousand years, Jesus would rule the earth with his saints, but then God would release Satan from prison. There would be more destruction, more battles until peace was restored and the New Jerusalem descended from heaven like a bride to meet the Lamb. Like all the Joannine writings, Revelation is deliberately obscure, its symbols unintelligible to outsiders. It is a toxic book and, as we shall see, would appeal to people who, like the Joannine churches, felt alienated and resentful. It was also controversial and some Christians were reluctant to include it in the canon. But when the final editors decided to place it at the end of the New Testament, it became the triumphant finale of their pesher exegesis of the Hebrew Scriptures. It transformed the historical story of the rise of Christianity into a future-oriented apocalypse. The New Jerusalem would replace the old: ‘I saw no temple in the city, for its temple was the sovereign Lord God and the Lamb.’ Judaism and its most sacred symbols had been replaced by a victorious, militant Christianity. 105 A thread of hatred runs through the New Testament. It is inaccurate to call the Christian scriptures anti-Semitic, as the authors were themselves Jewish, but many of them had become disenchanted with Jewish religion.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  I smiled and rolled that half-dollar in my palms. Earle had lived alone since his wife left him, and he spent most of his evenings either out drinking or over at one of his sisters’ houses. Before Mama had decided she was going to marry Daddy Glen, Uncle Earle was always around, but we saw less and less of him all the time. For a moment then, I wished we lived with him so Mama could take proper care of him and he could give us coins and make Mama laugh. When Daddy Glen came home late that night, he refused to go to bed even though he had to work the next day. He sat out in the living room with the radio on, his expression fixed and angry. Mama sat up with him and tried to get him to talk, but he still wouldn’t speak to her. When we got up the next morning, his face looked thin and white, and his blue eyes were so dark they looked black. The strained silence lasted for weeks, and even after it seemed to ease, Daddy Glen was different. His face took on a brooding sullen look. At dinner one night I watched him shove his plate away angrily. “Nothing I do goes right,” he complained. “I put my hand in a honey jar and it comes out shit!” “Oh, Glen,” Mama said. “Everybody has trouble now and again. Things will get better. Just give it time.” “Shut up!” he screamed at her. “Don’t give me that mama shit. Just shut up. Shut up!” Mama froze, one hand still lifted to reach toward the bread basket. Her face was like a photograph, black-and-white, her eyes enormous dark shadows and her skin bleached in that instant to a paper gloss, her open mouth stunned and gaping. Reese dropped her head down into her hands and gave a soft thin cry that turned immediately to sobs. Without even thinking about it, I locked my fingers tight to the edge of the table and pushed myself up to a standing position. Daddy Glen’s face was red, swollen, tears running down his cheeks. Mama’s eyes swept over to me like searchlights, and his followed. “Oh, God,” he moaned, and Mama shuddered. Daddy Glen stumbled around the table, his hip thudding against the edge, shaking the bowls and glasses. “Oh, Anney. I’m sorry. Oh, God! I don’t want to be yelling at you.” He kissed her forehead, cheekbones, chin, his hands pressed to the sides of her face. “Oh, Anney, I’m sorry!” “It’s all right,” she whispered, stroking his arms, and trying to push him away. “It’s all right, honey. I understand.” Reese went on sobbing while I stood gripping the edge of the table with no idea what I had been about to do.

• From The Bible: A Biography (2007)

  The Greeks introduced a diluted version of Athenian classical culture, known as Hellenism, into the Near East. Some Jews were enthralled by the Greek ideal but opposition to Hellenism became entrenched among the more conservative Jews after 167 BCE, when Antiochus Epiphanes, ruler of the Seleucid empire in Mesopotamia and Palestine, violated the Jerusalem temple and introduced a Hellenistic cult there: Jews who opposed his regime were persecuted. Judas Maccabeus and his family led the Jewish resistance; in 164 they were able to oust the Greeks from the temple mount, but the war continued until 143, when the Maccabees were able to shake off Seleucid rule and establish Judah as an independent state, which was ruled by their Hasmonean dynasty until 63 BCE. The book of Daniel was composed during the Maccabean war. It took the form of an historical novel, set in Babylon during the exile. In real life, Daniel had been one of the more virtuous exiles, 28 but in this fictional work he was an official prophet in the courts of Nebuchadnezzar and Cyrus. In the early chapters, written before Antiochus’s sacrilege, Daniel was presented as a typical Middle Eastern court sage 29 with a special talent for ‘interpreting every kind of vision and dream’. 30 But in the later chapters, composed after Antiochus’s desecration of the temple but before the Maccabees’ final victory, Daniel becomes an inspired exegete, whose study of scriptures endows him with prophetic insight. Daniel experienced a series of perplexing visions. He saw a succession of four fearful empires (represented by fabulous beasts), each more terrible than the last. The fourth, a clear reference to the Seleucids, was of an entirely different order of wickedness, however. Its ruler would ‘speak words against the Most High, and harass the saints of the Most High’. 31 Daniel foresaw ‘the disastrous abomination’ of Antiochus’s Hellenistic cult in the temple. 32 But there was a glimmer of hope. Daniel also saw ‘coming on the clouds of heaven, one like a son of man’, a figure representing the Maccabees, who was mysteriously human and yet more than human. The saviour entered the presence of God, who conferred upon him ‘sovereignty, glory and kingship’. 33 These prophecies would later become very important, as we shall see in the following chapter. But what concerns us now is Daniel’s inspired exegesis. Daniel had another series of visions, which he was unable to understand. He sought enlightenment in scripture and was particularly preoccupied by Jeremiah’s prediction of the number of years that must pass ‘before the successive devastations of Jerusalem would come to an end, namely seventy years’.

• From The Bible: A Biography (2007)

  There was always the danger that enthusiasm for scripture could foster an exclusive, divisive and potentially cruel orthodoxy. Ezra’s reading marks the beginning of classical Judaism, a religion concerned not merely with the reception and preservation of revelation but with its constant reinterpretation. 13 The law that Ezra read was clearly unknown to the people, who wept in fear when they heard it for the first time. When he expounded the text, the exegete did not reproduce the original torah imparted in the distant past to Moses but created something new and unexpected. The biblical writers had worked in the same way, radically revising the texts they had inherited. Revelation had not happened once and for all time; it was an ongoing process that could never end, because there were always fresh teachings to be discovered. By this time, there were two established categories of scripture: the Torah and the Prophets (Neviim). But after the exile, another set of texts were produced that would become known as the Kethuvim, the ‘Writings’, which sometimes simply reinterpreted the older books. Thus Chronicles, a historical narrative written by priestly authors, was essentially a commentary on the Deuteronomic history of Samuel and Kings. When these two books were translated into Greek, they were called paralipomena: ‘the things omitted’. 14 The authors were writing between the lines to make good what they regarded as deficiencies in the earlier accounts. They shared P’s ideal of reconciliation and wanted to build bridges with the Israelites who had not gone into exile and were now resident in the north. They therefore omitted the Deuteronomists’ harsh polemic against the northern kingdom. A significant number of the Writings belonged to a school that was distinct from either the Law or the Prophets. In the ancient Near East, sages attached to the court as teachers or advisers tended to see the whole of reality as shaped by a vast, underlying principle of divine origin. The Hebrew sages called it Hokhmah, ‘Wisdom’. Everything – the laws of nature, society, and events in the lives of individuals – conformed to this celestial blueprint, which no human being could ever grasp in its entirety. But the sages who devoted their lives to the contemplation of Wisdom believed that they occasionally had glimpses of it. Some expressed their insight in such pithy maxims as: ‘A king gives a country stability by justice, an extortioner brings it to ruin’, or ‘The man who flatters his neighbour spreads a net for his feet’. 15 The Wisdom tradition had originally little connection with Moses and Sinai but was associated with King Solomon, who had a reputation for this type of acumen 16 and three of the Kethuvim were attributed to him: Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs.

• From The Bible: A Biography (2007)

  On New Year’s Day, Ezra brought the Torah to the square in front of the Water Gate. Standing on a raised wooden dais, he read the text aloud, ‘translating and giving the sense, so that the people understood what was read’, while Levites3 versed in the Torah circulated among the crowds, supplementing this instruction.4 We are not sure which laws were proclaimed on this occasion, but, whatever they were, the people had clearly never heard them before. They burst into tears, frightened by these unfamiliar demands. ‘Do not weep!’ Ezra insisted. They now ‘understood the meaning of what had been proclaimed to them’. This was the season of Sukkoth, a festive time, and Ezra explained the law that commanded the Israelites to spend this sacred month in special ‘booths’ (sukkoth), in memory of their ancestors’ forty years in the wilderness.5 At once, the people rushed into the hills to pick branches of olive, myrtle, pine and palm, and leafy shelters appeared all over the city. There was a carnival atmosphere, as the people assembled each evening to listen to Ezra’s exposition. Ezra had begun to craft a spiritual discipline based on a sacred text. The Torah had now been elevated above the other writings and, for the first time, was called ‘the law of Moses’. But, if it was simply read like any other text, the Torah could seem demanding and disconcerting. It must be heard in the contexts of rituals that separated it from ordinary life and put the audience in a different frame of mind. Because the people had begun to treat it differently, the Torah was becoming ‘sacred scripture’. Perhaps the most important element of this Torah spirituality was Ezra himself.6 He was a priest, ‘a diligent scribe in the Torah of Moses’, and a guardian of tradition.7 But he was also a new type of religious official: a scholar who ‘set his heart to investigate (li-drosh) the Torah of Yahweh and to do and teach law and ordinance in Israel’.8 He was offering something different from the usual priestly instruction about ceremonial lore. The biblical author makes a point of telling us that ‘the hand of Yahweh rested upon him’ – a phrase traditionally used to describe the weight of inspiration that had descended on the prophets.9 Before the exile, priests had been wont to ‘consult’ (li-drosh) Yahweh, by casting lots with the sacred objects known as Urim and Thummim.10 The new seer was not a fortune teller but a scholar who could interpret the scriptures. The practice of midrash (exegesis) would always retain this sense of expectant inquiry.11 Torah study was not an academic exercise but a spiritual quest.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  I kicked at the short wooden fence for a moment and then swung one leg up to climb over. All right, she was a little monster, but she was my friend, and the kind of monster I could understand. Twenty feet away from me, Shannon sniffed and reached for the can of lighter fluid by the grill. She hadn’t even seen me. [image file=image_rsrc2PS.jpg] Afterward, people kept asking me what happened. “Where were you,” Sheriff Cole said for the third or fourth time. “And what exactly did you see?” He never gave me a chance to tell him. Maybe because it was hard to hear over Mrs. Pearl’s screaming. “Uh huh, and where were you?” He kept looking over his shoulder toward the grill and the sputtering fat fire. I knew he hadn’t heard a word I said. But Mrs. Pearl had. She had heard me clear, and she flailed at the people holding her, trying to get her hands on me. She kept screaming “You!” over and over like I had done something, but all I had done was watch. I was sure of that. I had never gotten two steps past the fence. Shannon had put her glasses back on. She had the lighter-fluid can in one hand and she took up that long-handled fork in the other. She poked the coals with the fork and sprayed them with the fluid. The can made a popping noise as she squeezed it. She was trying to get more of the coals burning, it seemed. Or maybe she just liked the way the flames leaped up. She sprayed and sprayed, pulled back and sprayed again. Shannon shook her hand. I heard the lighter-fluid can sputter and suck air. I saw the flame run right up to it and go out. Then it came back with a boom. The can exploded, and fire ballooned out in a great rolling ball. Shannon didn’t even scream. Her mouth was wide open, and she just breathed the flames in. Her glasses went opaque, her eyes vanished, and all around her skull her fine hair stood up in a crown of burning glory. Her dress whooshed and billowed into orange-yellow smoky flames. I saw the fork fall, the wooden handle on fire. I saw Mrs. Pearl come to her feet and start to run toward her daughter. I saw all the men drop their icetea glasses. I saw Shannon stagger and stumble from side to side, then fall in a heap. Her dress was gone. I saw the smoke turn black and oily. I saw Shannon Pearl disappear from this world.

• From The Bible: A Biography (2007)

  Our speech makes us conscious of the transcendence that characterizes human experience. All this has affected the way we read the Bible, which for both Jews and Christians is the Word of God. Scripture has been an important element in the religious enterprise. In nearly all the major faiths, people have regarded certain texts as sacred and ontologically different from other documents. They have invested these writings with the weight of their highest aspirations, most extravagant hopes and deepest fears, and mysteriously the texts have given them something in return. Readers have encountered what seems like a presence in these writings, which thus introduce them to a transcendent dimension. They have based their lives on scripture – practically, spiritually and morally. When their sacred texts tell stories, people have generally believed them to be true, but until recently literal or historical accuracy has never been the point. The truth of scripture cannot be assessed unless it is – ritually or ethically – put into practice. The Buddhist scriptures, for example, give readers some information about the life of the Buddha, but have included only those incidents that show Buddhists what they must do to achieve their own enlightenment. Today scripture has a bad name. Terrorists use the Qur’an to justify atrocities, and some argue that the violence of their scripture makes Muslims chronically aggressive. Christians campaign against the teaching of evolutionary theory because it contradicts the biblical creation story. Jews argue that because God promised Canaan (modern Israel) to the descendants of Abraham, oppressive policies against the Palestinians are legitimate. There has been a scriptural revival that has intruded into public life. Secularist opponents of religion claim that scripture breeds violence, sectarianism and intolerance; that it prevents people from thinking for themselves, and encourages delusion. If religion preaches compassion, why is there so much hatred in sacred texts? Is it possible to be a ‘believer’ today when science has undermined so many biblical teachings? Because scripture has become such an explosive issue, it is important to be clear what it is and what it is not. This biography of the Bible provides some insight into this religious phenomenon. It is, for example, crucial to note that an exclusively literal interpretation of the Bible is a recent development. Until the nineteenth century, very few people imagined that the first chapter of Genesis was a factual account of the origins of life. For centuries, Jews and Christians relished highly allegorical and inventive exegesis, insisting that a wholly literal reading of the Bible was neither possible nor desirable. They have rewritten biblical history, replaced Bible stories with new myths, and interpreted the first chapter of Genesis in surprisingly different ways.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  Behind us I heard another engine, and looked over my shoulder to see Uncle Earle’s flatbed truck trailing a cloud of red dust, a rattle of tools bouncing around. He yelled something, but Mama didn’t stop, just sped into Aunt Alma’s yard and nearly knocked over her garden barrels before killing the engine and jumping out of the car. I pushed over to the driver’s side to follow right behind her, but Mama yelled at me to stay there without even turning around. I froze where I was while she ran toward the porch and Aunt Alma’s hunched still figure. Chickens were screeching and running away, dust was settling behind the Pontiac, but everything else was dead still. I could see a row of white faces watching from Aunt Alma’s chicken-wire garden fence—Patsy Ruth, Reese, and Fay’s girls, Grace and Mattie. The sun was pouring down, hot and steamy, and there were puddles under the black walnut tree that hadn’t had a chance to dry up. There was no sign of Uncle Wade or his truck, and everything looked strangely peaceful. Then I saw that all Aunt Alma’s flower baskets were lying in the yard, buds and herbs scattered. Near one of the baskets was the porcelain wringer off her old washing machine, and the lumps in the dust and mud seemed to be clothing. The sound of Mama’s voice drifted over to me, a lulling murmur of softly accented phrases that reminded me of the way Aunt Alma had always talked to baby Annie. Aunt Alma was quiet, bent over, and didn’t respond as Mama wrapped her arms around her and whispered reassuring nonsense. I opened the car door on my side quietly and stepped out. There was a fork under my foot, the tines buried in the ground. Flatware was scattered everywhere, and an egg turner stuck up out of a broken flowerpot. I stepped over a smashed plate and saw dozens of spools of thread under the porch and a pair of pliers under the Pontiac’s right front tire. Dust was on everything, making it hard to see what was what until I looked closely. Just past the fender, a little breeze lifted a tangle of red-brown curly hair from the hairbrush that lay near a shattered hand mirror. I bent over and saw a stack of faded pictures half buried under the crushed petals of black-eyed susans and a smear of baby’s breath. The fan-shaped wedge beside them looked like the venetian blinds that Aunt Alma had always hung in her bathroom. “Honey. Sweet girl. It’s all right,” Mama was saying. I looked over at them. Aunt Alma’s feet were resting on a little pile of chopped black slats—45 rpm record fragments—and her pale stockings had slid down over her broken-at-the-heel brown shoes.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  “She’s up at the house,” he whispered, as if he were afraid to talk too loud. “I tried. I tried, but she wouldn’t let me do nothing.” He hugged his shoulders tightly. “She’s up there by herself. I got the girls away and called you.” There was a pause as he gulped air between every few words. “And then Uncle Earle. Uncle Earle said not to go back, and anyway, she scared me. Mama scared me.” He stopped and looked back up the dirt drive that wound to the side and disappeared into the pines. “Oh God, Auntie, she’s gone crazy as a milk cow, just like Daddy said she would!” “Wipe your face and keep quiet,” Mama told him fiercely. “I’ll send Bone down for you in a little while, and I don’t want you scaring your sisters. You wash your face and get some of that dirt off yourself.” She sounded almost hateful—a way I had never heard her talk before to any child. I turned from watching Little Earle to look at her and almost rolled across the seat when she started the Pontiac racing up the drive again. Behind us I heard another engine, and looked over my shoulder to see Uncle Earle’s flatbed truck trailing a cloud of red dust, a rattle of tools bouncing around. He yelled something, but Mama didn’t stop, just sped into Aunt Alma’s yard and nearly knocked over her garden barrels before killing the engine and jumping out of the car. I pushed over to the driver’s side to follow right behind her, but Mama yelled at me to stay there without even turning around. I froze where I was while she ran toward the porch and Aunt Alma’s hunched still figure. Chickens were screeching and running away, dust was settling behind the Pontiac, but everything else was dead still. I could see a row of white faces watching from Aunt Alma’s chicken-wire garden fence—Patsy Ruth, Reese, and Fay’s girls, Grace and Mattie. The sun was pouring down, hot and steamy, and there were puddles under the black walnut tree that hadn’t had a chance to dry up. There was no sign of Uncle Wade or his truck, and everything looked strangely peaceful. Then I saw that all Aunt Alma’s flower baskets were lying in the yard, buds and herbs scattered. Near one of the baskets was the porcelain wringer off her old washing machine, and the lumps in the dust and mud seemed to be clothing. The sound of Mama’s voice drifted over to me, a lulling murmur of softly accented phrases that reminded me of the way Aunt Alma had always talked to baby Annie. Aunt Alma was quiet, bent over, and didn’t respond as Mama wrapped her arms around her and whispered reassuring nonsense.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  Reese was jumping rope with the MacCauley twins and didn’t want to go with me, but she cheered up when I told her we would walk to the highway and hitchhike instead of calling for a lift. Reese loved flagging down strangers on the highway and begging a ride the four miles over to where Aunt Alma lived. She had promised me she would never do it without me, but I worried that as soon as she was a little older she would be hitchhiking all over the county. So every time we hitched a ride, I made up a new horror story. The habit was so strong in me that nervous as I was, I automatically started another one, this time about the phantom driver who went around picking up girls and skinned them like young deer, eating the meat and tanning their hides to make coin purses and pocketbooks. “He’ll never get us,” Reese laughed. “We just have to be careful never to take a ride with a man alone.” I thought about that for a moment. “Well, it an’t so easy to know who the phantom is,” I told Reese. “Sometimes he catches a married couple first, hiding in the back of their car while they’re in the gas-station bathroom. When they drive off, first he murders them and then he props them up so you’d think they were the only people in the car. That way he catches lots of people who would never get in a car with a man alone.” Reese chewed her lower lip and stared up the highway. I could see she was thinking this new information over carefully. She examined the people in the truck that stopped for us, an elderly woman in a dark blue shirtwaist dress, and a younger man in khaki work clothes. Before climbing in back she slapped the side of the cab hard enough to see both of them jump in their seats. I bit my tongue to keep from laughing. The old lady scolded us for catching a ride on the highway. “You could get killed or worse,” she told us through the back window. “Young girls on the roads are an invitation to the wicked. Anything could happen to you.” We both nodded solemnly and thanked her politely when we jumped off just down the road from Aunt Alma’s place. [image file=image_rsrc2PS.jpg] It was past midnight when Mama came for us. Reese was asleep in Aunt Alma’s bed, but I was sitting up with Uncle Wade, nodding over the picture puzzle he worked at when he couldn’t sleep. “Girl, your mama,” he said, giving me a little push. I jerked fully awake when Mama touched my shoulder. Her hands were heavy and smelled faintly of Jergens Lotion.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  I knew exactly what she thought, but I didn’t know about Mama. Her face was strange and hard, her hand where it held me was still cold, but now it was shaking too. For the few moments they left us alone, she looked into my face like it was a map of hell. “Bone,” she whispered. I waited. “Sweetheart.” Someone walked past in the hall. I put my head over against Mama’s breast, listening to her heart, not wanting to hear anything else. “Baby.” “Mama,” I begged. “Mama, take me home.” [image file=image_rsrc2PS.jpg] “We’re gonna go to Aunt Alma’s house,” she told me while lifting me into the backseat. The look she gave Daddy Glen when he tried to help her seemed to freeze his heart. His hands stretched before him, he kept reaching out but not touching her. In the front seat, Reese sat with her thumb in her mouth, her face blank and still. Propped up in the back with pillows, I leaned my cheek against the plastic seat cover and tried not to move too much. My shoulder felt hot and enormous, like a balloon full of pain waiting to blow through me. Daddy Glen followed Mama around the front of the car, plucking at her shoulders hesitantly, but she kept shaking him off. “Don’t!” she shouted once. The car shook when she slammed the door, and I gritted my teeth. Daddy Glen leaned in the window, pleading, tears showing on his face in the lights of the emergency room entrance. “Anney, oh, Anney, just talk to me. Don’t do this. Anney, please, Anney!” Mama started the car off slowly, letting him hang on to the side until she pulled out into the street. I didn’t see the look she gave him then, but I heard his cry, hoarse and meaningless, as she gunned the engine, her foot holding down on the brake, the Pontiac jerking but holding. He let go of the door but didn’t step back. His face was still close and then it was gone.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  The back of my throat was tight all the time. Out in the utility room that hook no longer sang to me. The thought of its sharp pointy edges made me want to touch it again, but I could not bring myself to climb up and take it down. Even the river out at Raylene’s made me scared and sad, the rolling dirty water reminding me of the rainy mud at Shannon’s funeral. I kept thinking of how she had been standing there with her head down, all her life still open and unknown, what might have happened, who she might have become. I did not think of the fire but of the dull thudding sound of her life shutting off, everything stopping. Everything in my life was just as uncertain. I too could be standing somewhere and find myself running into the wall of my own death. I began to tremble whenever Daddy Glen turned his dark blue eyes to me, a deep hidden shaking I prayed he couldn’t see. No, I whispered in the night. No, I will not die. No. I clamped my teeth. No. I took to watching myself in mirrors to see what other people saw, to puzzle out just what showed them who I really was. What did Daddy Glen see? Aunt Raylene? Uncle Earle? My hair had started to lighten, taking on red highlights instead of blue, but my eyes had stayed black as night. I looked at my cheekbones in the bathroom mirror. Not like Reese’s smooth, soft face, my cheeks were high and strong. Maybe ugly. Probably ugly. I turned my head. My teeth were white and hard, sharp and gleaming. I was strong all over. Turned sunshine into muscle, Mama swore. She was proud of how sturdy I was, what I could lift and how fast I could run, but I was suddenly self-conscious and awkward. I had shot up in the last year, so much so that my bones seemed to ache all the time. “Growing pains,” Aunt Raylene told me. “Keep this up and you gonna be tall, girl.”

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  “You’re growing up, honey,” Uncle Earle told me. “You’re gonna be as pretty as your mama one of these days.” I smiled and rolled that half-dollar in my palms. Earle had lived alone since his wife left him, and he spent most of his evenings either out drinking or over at one of his sisters’ houses. Before Mama had decided she was going to marry Daddy Glen, Uncle Earle was always around, but we saw less and less of him all the time. For a moment then, I wished we lived with him so Mama could take proper care of him and he could give us coins and make Mama laugh. [image file=image_rsrc2PS.jpg] When Daddy Glen came home late that night, he refused to go to bed even though he had to work the next day. He sat out in the living room with the radio on, his expression fixed and angry. Mama sat up with him and tried to get him to talk, but he still wouldn’t speak to her. When we got up the next morning, his face looked thin and white, and his blue eyes were so dark they looked black. The strained silence lasted for weeks, and even after it seemed to ease, Daddy Glen was different. His face took on a brooding sullen look. At dinner one night I watched him shove his plate away angrily. “Nothing I do goes right,” he complained. “I put my hand in a honey jar and it comes out shit!” “Oh, Glen,” Mama said. “Everybody has trouble now and again. Things will get better. Just give it time.” “Shut up!” he screamed at her. “Don’t give me that mama shit. Just shut up. Shut up!” Mama froze, one hand still lifted to reach toward the bread basket. Her face was like a photograph, black-and-white, her eyes enormous dark shadows and her skin bleached in that instant to a paper gloss, her open mouth stunned and gaping. Reese dropped her head down into her hands and gave a soft thin cry that turned immediately to sobs. Without even thinking about it, I locked my fingers tight to the edge of the table and pushed myself up to a standing position. Daddy Glen’s face was red, swollen, tears running down his cheeks. Mama’s eyes swept over to me like searchlights, and his followed. “Oh, God,” he moaned, and Mama shuddered. Daddy Glen stumbled around the table, his hip thudding against the edge, shaking the bowls and glasses. “Oh, Anney. I’m sorry. Oh, God! I don’t want to be yelling at you.” He kissed her forehead, cheekbones, chin, his hands pressed to the sides of her face. “Oh, Anney, I’m sorry!” “It’s all right,” she whispered, stroking his arms, and trying to push him away. “It’s all right, honey. I understand.”

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  I sobbed once, and he dropped back down and let go of me. I bit my lips and held still. He brought his hand up to wipe it on the blanket, and I could smell something strange and bitter on his fingers. I pulled away, and that made him laugh. He kept laughing as he scrubbed his fingers against the blanket. Then he lifted me slightly, turning me so he could look into my face. The light was gray and pearly, the air wet and marble-cold, Glen’s face the only thing pink and warm in sight. He smiled at me again, but this time the smile was not in his eyes. His eyes had gone dark and empty again, and my insides started to shake with fear. He wrapped the blanket around me tight and put me back with Reese in the nest of blankets and pillows he’d built up so many hours ago. I hunched my shoulders against the seat and watched Glen’s head in the gray light, his short hairs bristly and stiff. He lit another cigarette and started humming again. He looked back once and I quickly closed my eyes, then was too afraid to open them again. His hum went on in time to the soft radio music, and the smell of Pall Malls began to soothe me. I didn’t know I was falling asleep until I woke up in the bright gray light of full morning. Glen was gone, the car still and cold. There was an ache between my legs, but I wasn’t afraid in the daylight. I sat up and looked out on gray clouds and dew-drenched fir branches. The asphalt looked wet and dark. There were a few nurses going in and out the emergency-room doors, talking in low mumbly tones. I breathed through my mouth and watched as more and more people drove into the lot, wondering if I had dreamed that whole early-morning scene. I kept squeezing my thighs together, feeling the soreness, and trying to imagine how I could have bruised myself if it had been a dream. When Glen came out of the emergency room, the doors swung back like a shot in the morning air. His face was rigid, his legs stiff, his hands clamped together in front of him, twisting and twisting. I looked into that face and knew it had not been a dream. I pulled Reese up against me, ignoring her soft protesting cry. Glen climbed in the car and slammed the door so hard Reese woke up with a jerk. She twisted her head like a baby bird, looking from me to Glen’s neck and back again. We sat still, waiting. He said, “Your mama’s gonna be all right.” He paused. “But she an’t gonna have no more babies.” He put his hands on the steering wheel, leaned forward, pushed his mouth against his fingers. He said, “My baby’s dead. My boy. My boy.”

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  Anney deserved an end to trouble in her life. The night Mama went into labor, Glen packed the Pontiac with blankets and Cokes for Reese and me, and parked out in the hospital lot to wait. He’d been warned it was going to take a while for the baby to come, and when he couldn’t stand pacing the halls anymore, he came down to smoke cigarettes and listen to music on the car radio while Reese and I napped in the backseat. At some point well before dawn, when it was still dark and cold, he reached across the seat to tug my shoulder and pull me up front with him. He gave me some Coke and half a Baby Ruth and told me he’d been in to check a little earlier and Mama was doing fine. “Fine.” I blinked at him and nodded, unsure what I was supposed to do or say. He smoked fiercely, exhaling out the top of the window where he’d opened it just a few inches, and talking to me like I was a grown-up. “I know she’s worried,” he said. “She thinks if it’s a girl, I won’t love it. But it will be our baby, and if it’s a girl, we can make another soon enough. I’ll have my son. Anney and I will have our boy. I know it. I know.” He talked on, whispering quietly, sometimes so softly I could not understand him. I pulled my blanket around me and watched the sprinkling of stars visible just over the tall fir trees at the edge of the lot. The song playing low on the radio was a Kitty Wells tune that Mama liked. I rocked my head to the music and watched the night. I was thinking about the baby Mama was having, wondering what it might be like, if maybe it wouldn’t be a girl. What were they going to name it? Glen Junior, if it was a boy? They had never said. Mama thought it was unlucky to choose a name for a baby till it was born. Glen put his hand on my neck, and the stars seemed to wink at me. I wasn’t used to him touching me, so I hugged my blanket and held still. He slid out from behind the steering wheel a little and pulled me up on his lap. He started humming to the music, shifting me a little on his thighs. I turned my face up to look into his eyes. There were only a few lights on in the parking lot, but the red and yellow dials on the radio shone on his face. He smiled, and for the first time I saw the smile in his eyes as plain as the one on his mouth.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  Mama put on a clean bra and one of the sleeveless red pullover sweaters she’d gotten from her friend Mab down at the diner—the one Mab joked was made to show just how high her tits could point. Daddy Glen came to the doorway and stood watching her with his throat working but no sound coming out. Mama outlined her mouth in bold red lipstick, combed back her dark blond hair, and hung her big old purse on one arm. She glanced up the hall and saw me leaning against the kitchen doorway. “Did you call Earle?” I nodded, uneasy at lying, but not wanting to upset her. It would be hours before Earle would be free to come get us, and I’d already decided not to wait for him. Mama paused, shook her head, walked back to the bedroom, and reached under the bedframe to pull out the box where she stored her shiny black patent-leather high heels. When she stood up in those, she looked like a different person, older and harder, her mouth set in a grim little smile. Her blond hair looked even brighter, her eyes darker, her complexion paler. She was coldly beautiful. Daddy Glen was still standing in the hall, but Mama stepped around him as if there wasn’t really anyone there, as if cocking her hip and swinging to one side were just a normal part of walking down the hall. Daddy Glen swayed a bit as she passed but did not move to stop her. His hands hung along his pockets while he breathed through his mouth like he was going to be sick. Her heels clicking on the floor were almost as loud as the cracking of his knuckles where he stood. I followed closely behind Mama, afraid to look back at Daddy Glen, afraid my glance might break the spell that seemed to be holding him in the hallway. Mama said nothing, just gave me a hug and a kiss, and slid behind the wheel of her Pontiac. When the car engine roared, the spell broke. Daddy Glen ran out and stood on the tarmac watching Mama drive away. His face was rigid. He didn’t even look in my direction, but my belly crawled up tight against my backbone. I felt as if the grass had turned to ammonia and was burning in my throat, as if Daddy Glen’s skin was radiating red heat and waves of steamy sweat. Around the narrow straps of his sleeveless T-shirt I watched the muscles in his shoulders roll and bunch. I knew he could easily break my arms as methodically as he was cracking his knuckles, wring my neck as hard as he was wringing his hands. I backed up carefully, then ran around the house, climbing the fence between our yard and the neighbor’s so I couldn’t be seen.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  “I’ve prayed for you to die,” he hissed between set white teeth. His hand caught the front of my blouse and dug into the material. “Just die and leave us alone. If it hadn’t been for you, I’d have been all right. Everything would have been all right.” He sobbed and dragged me forward so that I was up on my knees swaying in his grip until my blouse tore, and I fell back under him. He grabbed for me again, and something hit me hard between the legs. I screamed. His boot or his leg? He dropped down on top of me. “You’re not going anywhere.” He laughed. “You think you’re so grown-up. You think you’re so big and bad, saying no to me. Let’s see how big you are, how grown!” His hands spread what was left of my blouse and ripped at the zipper on my pants, pulling them down my thighs as my left hand groped to hold them. I tried to kick, but I was pinned. Tears were streaming down my face, but I wasn’t crying. I was cursing him. “Damn you! Damn you! Damn you! God will damn you!” He reached with one hand to shove my pants down almost to my ankles and with the other to open his britches. “You’ll shut up. I’ll shut you up. I’ll teach you.” He ripped my panties off me like they were paper. Then he jerked me up a little and spread my legs. “You fucker!” I punched up at him with my almost useless right arm. “You little cunt. I should have done this a long time ago. You’ve always wanted it. Don’t tell me you don’t.” His knee pushed my legs further apart, and his big hand leisurely smashed the side of my face. He laughed then, as if he liked the feel of my blood on his fist, and hit me again. I opened my mouth to scream, and his hand closed around on my throat. “I’ll give you what you really want,” he said, and his whole weight came down hard. My scream was gaspy and low around his hand on my throat. He fumbled with his fingers between my legs, opened me, and then reared back slightly, looking down into my face with his burning eyes. “Now,” he said, and slammed his body forward from his knees. “You’ll learn.” His words came in short angry bursts. “You’ll never mouth off to me again. You’ll keep your mouth shut. You’ll do as you’re told. You’ll tell Anney what I want you to tell her.” I gagged. He rocked in and ground down, flexing and thrusting his hips. I felt like he was tearing me apart, my ass slapping against the floor with every thrust, burning and tearing and bruising.