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.

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

  For them any conflict spells danger, a devil that threatens to tear the fabric of family life, destroy their marriage, and break their hearts. Because children of divorce don’t know how to negotiate conflict well, many reach for the worst solutions when trouble strikes. For example, some will sit on their feelings, not mentioning complaints or differences until their suppressed anger blows sky-high. Others burst into tears and are immobilized or retreat into themselves or into the next room and close the door. But the most common tendency is to run away at the first serious disagreement and wrestle with unconscious demons. This is because from the perspective of the child of divorce any argument can be the first step in an inevitable chain of conflict that will destroy the marriage. It’s easier to run away. One thirty-two- year-old woman left her marriage when she concluded that her husband gave priority to the wishes of his daughter from a previous marriage. She didn’t try to discuss the situation before bolting. Although she was otherwise content with the marriage and fond of the man, she never stopped to consider that the stepchild was an adolescent and would soon be out of the home. When I asked about it, she shrugged. “I’m used to being pushed around. It’s not worth fighting about. I’ll manage.” Then she confessed to me, “I realized when I packed that I had no place to go.” This kind of behavior totally baffles spouses like Gavin who were raised in intact families. The major and minor battles of their parents’ marriages were unpleasant but not terrifying. Fights do not, in their minds, threaten the marriage. They are storms but not hurricanes. The Gavins of this world do not enjoy conflict, but their anxiety is muted by an understanding that marriages just don’t spring into being. Resolving differences and recovering from anger and hurt simply goes with the territory. They’ve been present at family crises and seen their parents struggle with serious issues and survive. They understand that marriage requires dedication and hard work. They expect high points and lows. And they expect that two people who love each other will deal rationally with conflict and resolve it. When their partner who is a child of divorce panics after a minor quarrel like the one Karen described or threatens to leave, their reaction is utter bewilderment. What should people in this situation do? First, couples need to learn to recognize brewing storms and realize that one partner may be badly frightened. The goal is to maintain the relationship, not win the fight.

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

  At that moment the child is absolutely open to what the parents have to say and they may never have another chance like it. Handled properly and treated with respect, the conversation that ensues can be one of the most important conversations in the lives of each adult and child. Parents need to speak honestly and from the heart. This is their time to tell the child the moral principles that they believe in, not abstractly or in fancy language, but as simply as they can. They should say what they believe and show him how they’re acting in accord with these principles. First they need to tell him honestly that his perceptions are on target, that each adult is indeed in trouble, that they’re both worried and sad about what’s happening. Both are giving it their full attention. They need to explain that marriage, like all human relationships, has good times mixed with difficult times, laughter as well as tears. They should make absolutely clear (assuming it is true and it usually is) that children are one of the joys of marriage. And they can tell him that whatever the deficits are at this moment, balance is what matters. Each parent hopes and fully expects to pull through. That was the substance of Gary’s father’s important and long- remembered message to his son. Please note that a good parent doesn’t criticize the other parent. Quite the opposite. They go out of their way to protect the child from feeling he needs to take sides or that there are sides. Nor do they tell the child that mom and dad are staying together to protect him and his siblings. Such martyrdom is not a gift. They’d be giving the child a painful and heavy burden; imagine feeling responsible for your parents’ years of unhappiness together just because you were born. As an aside here, I should mention that the “don’t criticize” rule of behavior given to parents after divorce—for example, if you don’t fight in front of the children, they will be spared further harm—is good advice but insufficient. It certainly helps children to not see their parents act out like marionettes in a Punch and Judy show. But fighting and taking sides after a divorce has a fundamentally different quality than fighting and taking sides within an intact marriage. After a divorce, open disagreements are normal and expected. The marriage is over and presumably you divorced because of serious differences. People need to try to get along, but tensions are inevitable. And the child has a right to know why his parents divorced. In an intact marriage, disagreements are also normal, but the structure of the marriage itself contains them and makes them safe. Arguments have a beginning, middle, and end—because the important goal is to protect the marriage. It’s a critical part of the child’s education to learn firsthand how arguments can be resolved without threatening the integrity of the family.

• From Etched in Sand (2013)

  At night, Mom’s husband, also named Norman, comes home and stumbles up the stairs in the dark. If he’s with Mom and they’re happy, they go to sleep and the house is all quiet. But if Norman gets mad, he beats Mom up, and then we have to be really, really good. If we don’t clean the house or change Little Norm’s diaper the right way, she beats us just like Big Norman beats her. After a few weeks here my sisters stop playing with each other. They don’t even talk anymore, and nobody laughs together. If dinner’s not ready or a dish is still wet, Mom wants to know whether it’s Cherie or Camille who should get the beating. My sisters point their fingers at each other, and Mom stands with her hands on her hips, considering which one of them she’d like to hurt. Cherie and Camille don’t try to cheer me up anymore, and when I cry, they yell at me. “Shut up!” they say. “Do you want Mom to beat you again?” It’s every kid for herself, except for Little Norman. Mom loves Little Norman. This isn’t my family anymore—they’re like strange, scary ghosts. I used to love Cherie and Camille more than anyone in the world, but in Mom’s house they’re different people. I’d rather be by myself than with them, so when Mom and Big Norman are out one night, I decide I don’t want to live with all the sad people anymore. I sneak out the door, down the thirty-six steps. I run across the street and deep into the woods. I hide. I stay hiding, even when I hear the voices of Cherie and Camille calling out for me. Then Mom and Big Norman join them, and I close my eyes. I’m never coming out. They keep calling and calling, but I know they’ll never find me. I drift off to sleep under a pile of leaves . . . until . . . do I hear the sound of Susan’s voice calling for me? “Little pumpkin! Fairy princess!” I hear her, again and again. I jump up. Susan’s come to get me to bring me home! I just know it. I dash out of the brush and run toward her voice, racing into her arms. I hear Cherie and Camille yell, “She was in the woods, we found her!” Susan carries me back toward the street where I see Papa’s car is parked . . . oh, I knew they’d come back for me! But she doesn’t stop at the car to put me inside. Instead she walks past it, carrying me toward the glue factory. “No!” I scream. She carries me into the hallway up the steps, stopping at the platform where Mom is standing. “I’m so happy you’re okay!” Mom says, smiling at Susan.

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

  But children of divorce have one more strike against them. Unlike children who lose a parent due to illness, accident, or war, children of divorce lose the template they need because of their parents’ failure. Parents who divorce may think of their decision to end the marriage as wise, courageous, and the best remedy for their unhappiness—indeed, it may be so—but for the child the divorce carries one meaning: the parents have failed at one of the central tasks of adulthood. Together and separately, they failed to maintain the marriage. Even if the young person decides as an adult that the divorce was necessary, that in fact the parents had little in common to begin with, the divorce still represents failure—failture to keep the man or the woman, failure to maintain the relationship, failure to be faithful, or failure to stick around. This failure in turn shapes the child’s inner template of self and family. If they failed, I can fail, too. And if, as happens so frequently, the child observes more failed relationships in the years after divorce, the conclusion is simple. I have never seen a man and a woman together on the same beam. Failure is inevitable. Courtship is always fraught with excitement, yearning, and anxiety. Every adult is aware that this is the most important decision of one’s life. Fear of making the wrong choice and of being rejected and betrayed is certainly not confined to children of divorce. But the differences between the children of divorce and those from intact marriages were striking beyond my expectations. The young men and women from intact families, along with their fears, brought a confidence that they had seen it work, that they had some very clear ideas about how to do it. They said so in very convincing terms. No single adult in the divorced group spoke this way. Their memories and internal images were by contrast impoverished or frightening because they lacked guidelines to use in muting their fears. Indeed, they were helpless in the face of their fears. Gina, a forty-year-old successful executive in an international company, told me, “I grew up feeling that men are unreliable, just flaky, that like my dad they only really want to play with toys. I know that I’ve gone out with men who seemed reliable and wonderful, but still, putting all my eggs in one basket with one man is totally frightening. I’m better off relying on me.” Growing Up Takes Longer WHEN KAREN CAME to see me in 1994 on the eve of her marriage, she was bursting to tell me everything that had happened since our last visit. I remembered her crying her eyes out, complaining about Nick, and here she was, glowing with happiness and optimism.

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

  It gets worse as things get better for me. Maybe that’s the permanent result of their divorce.” She leaned forward so that she was almost doubled at the waist, as if holding herself in one piece. “Gavin teases me all the time about being afraid of change. But I think I’ve learned how to contain it. I no longer wake up in terror when I go to sleep happy.” She paused to think about what she meant. “But it never really goes away, never.” On hearing her story, I realized that Karen’s journey into full adulthood required several more steps. Leaving her first serious relationship was only an overture. The Karen who graduated in public health and who had helped establish a successful regional program to help crippled children was a different person altogether. She had acquired a new identity as a competent and proud young woman who could if necessary manage by herself. Over and beyond her professional achievements, Karen was finally able to relinquish her role as the person responsible for her parents and siblings. This was a slow and painful process. The turning point was her realization that her brother and sister were adults who were exploiting her generosity. “I had to move on,” she said. “I’d done enough.” With that she closed the door, a free woman. Having achieved intellectual and emotional growth, she was ready to be the partner of an adult man who wanted a lover and a wife, not a caregiver. In loving a man who loved her and treated her as an equal, she felt safe for the first time in her life and was able to vanquish her fears. Although residues of her early fears did not disappear, they faded into the background. Within this relationship, Karen completed her struggle to reach adulthood. In hearing story after story like Karen’s about how difficult life was during their twenties, I realized that compared to children from intact families, children of divorce follow a different trajectory for growing up. It takes them longer. Their adolescence is protracted and their entry into adulthood is delayed. Children of divorce need more time to grow up because they have to accomplish more: they must simultaneously let go of the past and create mental models for where they are headed, carving their own way. Those who succeed deserve gold medals for integrity and perseverance. Having rejected their parents as role models, they have to invent who they want to be and what they want to achieve in adult life.

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

  And then Gavin sailed through the door and kissed me! He had completely forgotten our quarrel. It never registered on his radar screen. He must have realized that I was upset because he took me in his arms, hugged me and kissed me, and told me that he loves me more than he thought he would love anybody. And then it was over.” “How often do you have these panics?” “You mean how often do we quarrel? We fight very little. It’s just that when we do, it takes me back to a place in my life where I don’t want to go and I freak out. And I hate that in myself because it’s when I become like my mom or my dad. And that terrifies me.” The Terror of Conflict A CONFLICT-FREE MARRIAGE is an oxymoron. Every married couple must learn how to deal with differences in ways that suit their style, values, and particular relationship. This is a major challenge of modern marriage. Disputes are no longer settled by the father who knows best, a council of elders, or folk tradition. Women hold equal power and not all differences can be compromised, mediated, or settled by taking turns. If he wants no children and she wants one, you can’t have half a child. And you can’t walk away from the conflict. Someone has to prevail or you have to find a way to agree. You can’t live in his hometown in California and your hometown in Boston and be in the same household. Nor is it a solution to live midway in Chicago. You have to face the issue squarely, contain the anger and the disappointment that follows, and solve it peaceably to maintain the marriage. And you have to face the fact that this or another conflict will reappear. It’s an ongoing, challenging process that can be the key to a good marriage or the road to divorce. We learn our most important lessons about conflict at home, while growing up. Every day, children observe how differences and anger are resolved or not resolved in their own families. The lessons are constant, ingrained, permanent. All adults draw on experiences from childhood and adolescence to guide them in knowing how to manage conflict in their close relationships at home, at work, everywhere they turn. This is a never ending struggle because all close relationships—between friends, work or recreation partners, parents and children, or lovers—hold the seeds of repeated conflict. All need to be resolved or the relationship is on the rocks. Children of divorce have trouble with conflict because they grew up in homes where major arguments were not resolved but were surrendered to. Conflict evokes painful memories and feelings of terror from long ago. The quarrels they remember are not those that got worked out but those that spun out of control, escalated, and exploded. Karen’s panic following her husband’s fairly mild rebuke is typical of how adult children of divorce can react to simple disagreements.

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

  I couldn’t believe it. She turned out to be an awful lot like my mother at her worst.” Here Gary gave a reminiscent shudder. “She was possessive and jealous and she was pushing me to get married. I wasn’t ready and after about a year, I wanted out. I learned a lot from that experience. I learned that I wanted a woman who could think for herself and didn’t look to me to be everything for her. And I wanted someone a lot calmer. I didn’t want a playback of my dad’s life.” Gary had gotten himself deeply involved with a woman who was tempestuous like his mother. She was exactly the kind of person he promised himself he would avoid in relationships. Many of the adults we interviewed from intact families reported similar episodes. They had love affairs with partners who were exciting but bad news. Most got terrified and escaped by the skin of their teeth. Later they credited these near mistakes as rites of passage that were important to their maturation. They then used these experiences to help define what they wanted in their life partner, so by the time they were ready to marry they had in their mind’s eye a fairly realistic portrait of what they wanted and needed. Even more important, they had found out what they did not want no matter how exciting it was and when to turn away. The portrait in their heads was a composite of their perspective on their parents’ marriage, lessons from their own earlier experiences, and their lifelong hopes and yearnings. In the process of searching for love and sexual intimacy, they had learned a lot about themselves as well. It was a journey of self-discovery as well as discovery. But children of divorce, as we saw in Karen and others, did not undertake a similar search for the kind of person they wanted. They lacked the self-confidence to think of the choice as theirs. Although some had many relationships, these did not lead to a better understanding of themselves or of the kind of partner that would be a suitable choice. They were too beset by fears of loneliness and too needy to reject an unsuitable lover and move on. They didn’t dare. Nor did they enter marriage or cohabitation with a portrait in mind. Rather, their ideas of an ideal mate were sketchy or very modest, built largely on fears rather than forethought. Mostly they wanted someone nice and caring who would not betray them. Instead of actively choosing, they settled for whatever was there.

• From Etched in Sand (2013)

  Calcaterra Then I flip the pen toward Camille. “You’re up.” She gently slides it from my grip and, with the confidence of a maestro, scrawls her name beneath mine, and then Cherie follows her lead before she heads back home to her young family. “Now that you both determined you won’t return to your mother’s care,” Ms. Davis says, looking at Camille and me, “you need to begin planning how you’ll live on your own as soon as you turn eighteen. The state only covers your foster care costs until then, unless you go to college.” “College?” I asked. “Granted, that comes with its own challenges—in fact, I have yet to see a foster kid go to college.” “What? Why?” “Well, think about it: It’s tough to hold down a job and make rent when you’re working hard to study. In any case, we’ll start teaching you how to live independently. Then, hopefully, one day you can make it on your own.” I glance at Camille, who’s giving Ms. Davis a look of daggers. After she leaves, Addie stands aside to let Camille and me pass from the kitchen. “Will you be joining us for dinner?” she says. “No thanks,” we call behind us. We close ourselves in Camille’s bedroom, and I stare up at her ceiling. “I don’t know how to feel,” I confess. She collapses with her head next to mine on the pillow. “Me neither.” Then as if on cue, we turn to each other and burst out laughing. We laugh so hard we begin to hyperventilate in tears until we roll off the bed, making two bony thuds on Addie’s floor. Eventually, I’m able to compose myself enough to mock our three full days of social workers and legal talk. “Congratulations!” I declare. “Now that you’ve just dumped your mother, you’ll be homeless again at eighteen . . . if you survive until then!” Camille wipes her tears and folds her arms across her bust as Ms. Davis is apt to do. “Listen, girls,” she says with fake empathy, “really, you don’t stand an icicle’s chance in hell. Just try not to end up a drug addict, an alcoholic, pregnant, a prostitute, or in jail.” “Like your mother!” I wail. That night Camille kisses me on the cheek and smooths my hair behind my ear. “What are you thinking about?” I sigh. “Rosie and Norm. Tomorrow after school I’m going to ask Addie if we can call them.” “I’m worried about them, too . . . but this is your day,” Camille says. “Do you think our birthday girl is going to get her wish?” I smile. All weekend we’d been trying to stay out of the way at our temporary foster home while also racing against Ms. Davis’s deadline to get the affidavit completed and signed on time . . . but through all the chaos, my sister remembered that today I turned fourteen.

• From Born on the Fourth of July (1976)

  Oh get me out of here, get me out of here, please someone help me! Oh help me, please help me. Oh God oh Jesus ! “Is there a corpsman?” I cry. “Can you get a corpsman?” There is a loud crack and I hear the guy begin to sob. “They’ve shot my fucking finger off! Let’s go, sarge! Let’s get outta here!” “I can’t move,” I gasp. “I can’t move my legs! I can’t feel anything!” I watch him go running back to the tree line. … I think he must be dead but I feel nothing for him, I just want to live. I feel nothing.

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

  They grow sad when talk turns to marriage. As a result, many young men from divorced families are immobilized. When the woman says “now or never” many stand silently at the door, waiting for a push, or they close their eyes in terror and jump. Sometimes they run away or play for another delay, trying to keep open an escape door for as long as they can. I was intensely curious about Larry’s marriage and decided to be blunt: “Tell me about your marriage. Is it working out as you hoped?” “If I tell you about Grace, you’ll think I’ve gone soft in the head.” “Try me.” “She’s a bright, caring, and sweet woman who has made us a home that I never dreamed I would have. It amazes me every day that something like this could come from a family like mine. Or that it even existed anywhere. She goes out of her way to make me park my work at the door, to calm me when I come home frazzled when this or the other structure is not going to hold and the foundation we okayed is going to come crashing down into the canyon. She has brought love and laughter into my life.” I was very moved by his poetic description and marveled once again at his transformation. “What kind of husband would you say you are?” “Certainly not a perfect husband. We have our ups and downs. I have a temper that can flare. When it does, I’m stubborn and mean. I have a terrible habit of getting caught up with work and forgetting to call. Look, you know what I have to go on. I keep saying to myself, ‘Do it better, do it right, don’t mess up.’ I try. I try every day.” He smiled. “She’s a generous woman and she makes allowances for dumbness.” “What would you like to change if you could?” I realized that this blunt question might throw him off balance but decided to take the chance. Larry looked out the window for a full minute without speaking. Turning to face me, he gave an answer that I will long treasure, one that captures the continuing emotional constriction and fear that so many of these young men feel but have a very hard time talking about. They are ashamed and lack the words. He said: “I have a difficult time showing love to my wife, even telling her that I love her. She complains that I don’t show her enough affection. I’m aware of that. And I try to change it. But I can’t because of my parents’ marriage and divorce. I feel almost cursed. Sometimes when Grace comes to meet me here at the office, I want to jump up and hug her—but I can’t.” Of course, women have complained since time immemorial that their men have trouble expressing tender loving feelings.

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

  After a few days I took a turn around the block with Phil. Accustomed to daily exercise, I now experienced an aching restlessness which mingled with the pain of my bruises and bones. I couldn’t make my limbs comfortable, and had to get out. It was a bright, blowy tea-time. Already people were coming home, the traffic was building up at the lights. The pavements were normal, the passers-by had preoccupied, harmless expressions. Yet to me it was a glaring world, treacherous with lurking alarm. A universal violence had been disclosed to me, and I saw it everywhere—in the sudden scatter across the pavement of some quite small boys, in the brief mocking notice of me taken by a couple of telephone engineers in a parked van, in the dark glasses and cigarette-browned fingers of a man—German? Dutch?—who stopped us to ask directions. I understood for the first time the vulnerability of the old, unfortified by good luck or inexperience. The air was full of screams—the screams of children’s games which no one mistakes for real screams as they blow on the wind from street to street. If there were real screams, I found myself wondering, would it be possible to tell the difference, would anyone detect the timbre of tragedy? Or could an atrocity take place whose sonority was indistinguishable from the make-believe of youngsters, their boredom and scares? I had never screamed in my life. Even when the three boys had laid into me I had uttered only formal little oaths, ‘Christ’, ‘God’ and ‘Oh no’. There was a lot of time to fill, but I hardly did anything useful. Mainly I closed the curtains and watched Wimbledon, alternately alerted by a breathtaking rally and soothed by the drowsy putterings of Dan Maskell, like some rich stew left bubbling all day long over a low flame. James brought me videos from the rental shop, as well—not the bath-house freak-shows he usually offered, but charming old films to make me feel better. On his day off—which was drizzly, the covers were on at the Centre Court—we sat and watched The Importance of Being Earnest together. Michael Redgrave and Michael Denison were such bliss, so brittle and yet resilient, so utterly groomed and frivolous, dancing about whistling ‘La donna è mobile’ … Afterwards James told me his theory about Bunbury and burying buns, and how earnest was a codeword for gay, and it was really The Importance of Being Uranist. I had heard it all before, but I could never quite remember it. Charles’s books were lying around, of course, and James picked them up and showed curiosity enough to make me feel ashamed that I was not getting on with them. ‘What’s it all like?’ he wanted to know. ‘Rather wonderful in parts—when he’s having adventures and things. Other bits are rather—earnest.’ ‘You must have read all of it by now.’

• From Etched in Sand (2013)

  At Christmas, the shelter workers invite us kids to help them decorate a Christmas tree. Rosie, now six, gently takes my hand and looks on with a shy smile when Santa arrives carrying a sack on his shoulder. The shelter director encouraged me to make a wish list, so I asked for new Mad Libs game pads and Highlights magazines to share with Rosie and Norm. As the gifts are being handed out, he also tells me to write a list of books appropriate for seventh grade, and he’ll sign them out of the library for me. I jot down a dozen Landmark history books to read to Rosie, and a couple Judy Blumes. I figure, why not load up? You don’t have to pay at the library. Then a few months later, in March of 1979, Cookie returns to the shelter and announces that she’s registered us back in school and rented the top unit in a duplex in Ronkonkoma. She drops us there and takes off immediately, which suits Rosie, Norm, and me fine: After having lived in the shelter for a few months, the three of us are so used to having friends around that every day after school we invite the neighborhood kids to our house. But the fun’s over one afternoon when Cookie decides to come home, taking me by the hair and dragging me into her bedroom. Our friends tear down the stairs and outside as Cookie grabs a belt then rips off my shirt. She lashes my back, over and over. I try for the door but end up huddled in the corner, and as she takes a break to regain her grip on the belt, I start fighting back. She fights for her breath as she hurls the belt and screams, “The more you fight it, you skinny little whore, the longer it’s going to take! You have boys over, you stupid slut? This is for your own good. You want to end up pregnant? Who’s gonna take care of your baby? Huh?” she demands. “Me?” When she’s finished, she drags me to my room by my arm and tosses me inside. Quickly I put on a different shirt and shimmy down the back of the house, running out of the yard, dodging the commotion on the back porch as the neighbors point her to where I’ve gone. All one-hundred-eighty pounds of Cookie come heaving after me, and again she takes me by my hair and tugs me back to the house. “Take off your jeans and your top,” she says. I glare at her. “Take off your fucking clothes, you whore. Rosie, Norman,” she says, “I want you to see what happens when you try to run away.” I make eye contact with Rosie, who’s looking on in fear as Cookie spins me so that my back’s facing her. I stiffen, hearing her arm rise high in the air. She whips me . . . and whips me . . .

• From Etched in Sand (2013)

  “It’s okay,” Norm said. He swallowed away his tears and he put his arm around me. “Now it’s my turn to take care of you.” Minutes later, we stopped in front of a sad-looking Victorian house. In the front yard were three cars, one of which was up on blocks and had no trunk or hood cover. Between the cars on the weedy dirt were bikes, skateboards, and wagons. Each one had something missing: a wheel, a seat, handlebars. “Time to go, kiddos,” Mrs. Brady said, and she stood at the open back door. “I want my sisters!” I cried and wedged myself against the backseat, refusing to leave. “Norman, help your sister out of the car. Now.” Mrs. Brady said. The real Mrs. Brady would have used humor, or maybe she’d bring brownies or cookies out to the car. This Mrs. Brady was all business. Norm, who was always pragmatic, said, “Ma’am, this looks like a bad place. And if Rosie doesn’t want to go, I think we better not go.” Mrs. Brady lifted her shoulders and huffed. The pink-faced driver got out of his seat, opened the other back door and lunged across the seat. He grabbed my legs and pulled while I kicked and screamed. Norm held on to me, a determined gritty look on his face. Once I’d slipped free of Norm and was left trembling on the ground, my brother scrambled out and picked me up. “We don’t have a choice,” he said. “But don’t worry, we won’t be here too long anyway.” At the front door, on the cement stoop, was a thin woman with stringy brown and gray hair. She wore black leggings and an oversized Popeye sweatshirt. In the same hand in which Popeye held his pipe, she held her cigarette. She looked us up and down, her nose and lips contracted as if we smelled, and then she dropped her cigarette on the stoop and stomped on it with her white canvas sneaker. This was something I’d seen Cookie do many times, although Cookie was fond of high shoes that made a horse’s clop-clop when she walked. “Thought you got lost,” she said. Her voice was like crushed ice. “This one took a little longer than usual,” Mrs. Brady said. “So these are the two, huh?” Her eyes were tiny blue pinpoints that she drilled into me for a second before drilling them into Norm. “This is Norman and Rosanne,” Mrs. Brady said. “Kids, meet Mrs. Callahan, your new foster mother.” “I want Gi,” I whispered. “I got you,” Norm whispered back. “They look too skinny to me,” Mrs. Callahan said. “I don’t want no finicky

• From From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity (2013)

  toward secular life and the new model of moral agency— centered around an absolutely free individual whose actions bore an eternal and cosmic signifi cance— were covalent propositions. Th e individual was morally re- sponsible, and moral responsibility required freedom, from the stars and from social expectation alike. Th e chill severity of Christian sexuality was born not out of a pathological hatred of the body, nor out of a broad public anxiety about the material world. It emerged in an existentially serious culture, propelled to startling conclusions by the remorseless logic of a new moral cosmology. Th e discovery of the free will was not a circumstantial adjunct of early Christian sexual morality; it was an essential feature, determined by the deep logic of a moral order founded on sin and salvation. F O R N I C ATI O N : F RO M H E B R E W TO G R E E K Around the year AD 51 the apostle Paul arrived for the fi rst time in Corinth, the bustling seat of Roman power in Achaea. Th e city, once razed by the Romans but long since resurrected by its destroyers, was an impos-ing sight. In Paul’s own words, he came to Corinth “in weakness and in much fear and trembling.” Th e Acrocorinth, the sheer escarpment housing Corinth’s most archaic temples, dominated the views of the approaching visitor. Perched on its eastern summit was a temple of Aphrodite, looming over the town that sprawled toward the sea beneath her solicitous watch. As Paul entered the forum, he would have been confronted by the bewildering noise of power, commerce, and diff use piety that characterized urban life in a vibrant provincial town of the Roman Empire. Th e sanctuaries of the gods— Tychē and Aphrodite, Artemis and Dionysus— ringed the crowded T H E W I L L A N D T H E WO R L D  center of the town, hard by the merchants’ stalls and public offi ces. Th e haphazard accretion of religious monuments, and the tessellation of the sacred and the profane, belied the reverent balance and careful rhythms that guaranteed the gods their due honor. Into this enveloping cityscape of tremu-lous paganism crept a missionary with a startling message. “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you?” We meet the community of Christians Paul founded in Corinth through the tantalizing but imperfect prism of the letters he wrote, some six years after fi rst visiting the city, when challenged by the unexpectedly fractious relations in a small apocalyptic movement. Word reached Paul in Ephesus that the Corinthian Christians were feuding, split on a range of mundane problems, from marriage and manumission to sacrifi cial meat. In the patient response of the apostle that has come to be known as First Corinthians, fi erce disagreement over proper sexual behavior lurches to the surface.

• From Memoirs of Hadrian (1951)

  Within those absolute limits of which I was just now speaking I can defend my position step by step, and even regain a few inches of lost ground. I have nevertheless reached the age where life, for every man, is accepted defeat. To say that my days are numbered signifies nothing; they always were, and are so for us all. But uncertainty as to the place, the time, and the manner, which keeps us from distinguishing the goal toward which we continually advance, diminishes for me with the progress of my fatal malady. A man may die at any hour, but a sick man knows that he will no longer be alive in ten years' time. My margin of doubt is a matter of months, not years. The chances of ending by a dagger thrust in the heart or by a fall from a horse are slight indeed; plague seems unlikely, and leprosy or cancer appear definitely left behind. I no longer run the risk of falling on the frontiers, struck down by a Caledonian axe or pierced by an arrow of the Parths; storms and tempests have failed to seize the occasions offered, and the soothsayer who told me that I should not drown seems to have been right. I shall die at Tibur or in Rome, or in Naples at the farthest, and a moment's suffocation will settle the matter. Shall I be carried off by the tenth of these crises, or the hundredth? That is the only question. Like a traveler sailing the Archipelago who sees the luminous mists lift toward evening, and little by little makes out the shore, I begin to discern the profile of my death. Already certain portions of my life are like dismantled rooms of a palace too vast for an impoverished owner to occupy in its entirety. I can hunt no longer: if there were no one but me to disturb them in their ruminations and their play the deer in the Etrurian mountains would be at peace. With the Diana of the forests I have always maintained the swift-changing and passionate relations which are those of a man with the object of his love: the boar hunt gave me my first chance, as a boy, for command and for encounter with danger; I fairly threw myself into the sport, and my excesses in it brought reprimands from Trajan. The kill in a Spanish forest was my earliest acquaintance with death and with courage, with pity for living creatures and the tragic pleasure of seeing them suffer.

• From Etched in Sand (2013)

  Throughout the years, we’ve sharpened our nonverbal communications in this way, exchanging affection and understanding with the same evolved understanding as some of the wild lion cubs we watch on Wild Kingdom . The less we speak, the less likely it is that we’ll throw our mother into a rage without knowing why. Camille and I set out to scrub the first floor of the house, where we’ll be spending most of our time . . . but more important, it’s where our mother’s resting now. The sooner we get cleaning around her the sooner she’s sure to leave. I attack the kitchen around the corner from Cookie’s bedroom while Camille begins in the living room. “Psssst,” my sister hisses from the other side of the house. I stretch my neck out of the kitchen to meet her gaze. “You’ll help me with her room?” I nod and mouth to her: After she leaves . A white Formica table sits between three cabineted walls and a block of windows that overlooks the dusty backyard enclosed by a chain-linked fence. When I move the scummy dishes, bowls, and pots that the previous tenant left in the sink, I’m met by rivals to our survival. “WHAT’S WRONG ?” CAMILLE yells when the dishes clatter. Rosie’s head turns toward the kitchen. “Nothing. Camille, can you come help me load the fridge?” Camille will understand this code for the cockroach solution we learned long ago: If there’s a working fridge with a door that shuts, every bit of our food goes inside it, whether or not it needs refrigeration. I’m used to ants, mice, and maggots, who, as creepy as they are, will scatter in fear when they sense my presence. But cockroaches! It’s not even their spiny legs and long antennae that gross me out; it’s the way they work in packs and maneuver in the dark, attacking our food like looters. I join the others in the living room just as Cookie’s emerging from her bedroom, wearing a pair of Jordache jeans, Dr. Scholl’s sandals, and a man’s Hanes tank top. Rather than bathing, Cookie tries to mask her cigarette and alcohol stink with a cheap, toxic mixture of Jontue and Jean Naté. As her figure casts a shadow over the room, I quickly work out the cost implications of her ensemble: One pair of Jordache jeans equals one week of oil for hot water; Dr. Scholl’s equals eight loaves of bread, four boxes of spaghetti, three bags of wheat puffs, and two weeks’ worth of powdered milk. Jontue perfume and Jean Naté almost equal bail after a night in jail, since Cookie had Camille and me steal them from the five-and-dime. Cookie fluffs her hair and rubs her lips together, reminding us how grateful we should be for having a mother who can score such a nice home. “I’m going to find the hair of the dog that bit me. Feed the kids.” “We always do,” Camille mumbles.

• From Etched in Sand (2013)

  “After a nice bath I’ll give her some oatmeal and put her to bed.” She looks at me adoringly and says, “You could have gotten attacked by a wild dog—or even worse, hit by a car, you silly girl. You scared all of us!” Susan kisses me good-bye, again, and walks downstairs. I sob as she closes the outside door behind her. Mom stands there with the phony smile on her face. Then it turns mean. “Cherie, are they gone?” Cherie stands by the window and nods. I beg her, “No!” Doesn’t my big sister know what will happen now? In an instant Mom turns her energy toward me, grabbing me by my hair and slamming me to the ground. It feels like my hair is being pulled all the way out of my head, and the skin on the top of my head is being ripped open. I try to put my arms in front of my face, but she punches them down and grabs me around my waist. Then she picks me up and throws me into the wall, denting it. As I slide down to the floor and land on my back, she grabs my right arm and leg and flips me over on my stomach. Then she kicks my legs, back, and stomach until I’m all weak and my head turns heavy. There’s a loud buzzing sound ringing from my brain. All I can see is white, and I can’t fight back or move my body anymore. When I awake, I’m naked. I try to sit up, but my arms can’t cooperate. I raise my head to see why I can’t move, and I notice my arms are clasped together on my side and tied to the radiator. My legs are bound together above my ankles and tied to the rails underneath my bed. When I see this, I have to rest my neck. My brain feels like it’s swollen. I close my eyes. I feel something cold. When I open my eyes again, Camille is holding a rag that feels like it has ice inside. “Where’s Susan?” “Gi, Susan is only our foster sister. We don’t live with her anymore.” “Can we go back?” “No.” Then she whispers, “Not unless the police find out that Mom hurts us.” Camille tells me, still in a whisper, that while Mom was tying me up, she made my sisters take all my clothes out of the room so I couldn’t run away again. “This is what happens when you don’t listen to Mom,” she says. Now I want to spit in Camille’s face, but I can’t lift my head. After that, Big Norman tells Mom that having a baby was enough, he didn’t bargain for three little girls and their crazy business, too. He starts spending more time away from the house, and one morning Mom’s crying at the kitchen table, smoking a cigarette, saying Big Norman left her for good.

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

  “About nothing. They’d get into heated debates about some strange point in art or maybe politics. The topic didn’t matter to either of them. They’d get so involved by the end of their second or third martini that Mom would forget all about dinner. My brother and sister and I would take turns being the one to remind them that we hadn’t eaten, but only if the argument they were having was not dangerous. Because I’m the oldest girl, I’d often help Mom put dinner on the table. It makes me cringe to remember how she’d stumble around the kitchen, banging pans and dropping things. Once we sat down, Dad would sober up and drill us on our understanding of a political situation and he’d taunt us when we didn’t know enough. He really picked on my brother, although he could turn his sarcasm just as easily on my little sister or me. Sometimes Steve would be driven to tears. If he tried to leave the table or argue back, Dad would lose his temper and roar at him—‘You are not excused!’” Carol sighed. “Those were the good days. That happened about half the time.” “Those were the good days?” “You haven’t heard anything yet. My brother and sister and I knew it was going to be bad if they started in on each other during the second drink. My parents would begin to taunt each other with hurtful names like stupid and worm. Dad usually took the lead but Mom could rise to the occasion. She’d whisper insults and end up screaming at Dad. He’d wait and goad her on. Mom was usually the first one to get violent. She’d throw a glass at him or kick him. He’d get this horrible grin on his face and say something like ‘Now you’ve got it coming.’ Mom would back away and he’d grab her and slap her and she’d scream. On the better nights she’d cry and it would end there. He’d back off and tell her to get dinner. I’d help her in the kitchen and then we’d all sit there and pretend nothing had happened. Mom would act very aloof and distant. Daddy’d ignore her but he’d be nicer than usual.” Carol shook her head. “But some nights they’d really go at it. There’d be a lot of screaming and yelling and hitting. That was a sort of once-a-month routine. It would end with them disappearing into their bedroom or with Daddy storming out of the house and staying away for the rest of the night. We hated it when they went to their room because then their yelling would change into sounds of them having sex. We could hear them. Later, Dad would come out and tell us to get our own dinner. He’d take something to eat and disappear into his study for the rest of the night. We’d put ourselves to bed. It was so lonely and awful.”

• From Born on the Fourth of July (1976)

  And now he sounded like a little whining three-year-old, he sounded like a little baby, he was just like a little frightened baby. “Are you gonna cry?” screamed the sergeant. “Is that what’s gonna happen? Everybody, I want you to look at this, look over here, people, I want you to see the baby cry!” Everyone looked over to where the fat kid was. “Are those tears?” screamed the sergeant. They were all laughing now, laughing, rocking back and forth on their heels, their hands on their hips. “Cry!” screamed the sergeant. “Cry Cry Cry you little baby! That’s what we want, we want you people to cry like little babies because that’s all you maggots are. You are nothing!” The fat kid was now kneeling on the floor. His whole body was shaking; he had his hands against his face like he was praying. “I don’t want this,” he was saying. “I . . . I want . . . to go home. I want to go home.” He was saying it over and over again now, “I want to go home, I want to go home, I want to go home.” He hadn’t even gotten there, it was the first day and he wanted to go home. And as he watched, the drill instructors, having had all the fun they could, slowly stepped back from where the fat boy was kneeling, laughing and scorning him, pitying him and cursing him, running back and forth screaming in the ears of the other young boys, cursing them and jabbing them again and again, until the whole maddening thunderous echo of cursing sounds and raging angry voices began to deafen his ears and turn his head around and around till he wondered who he was and what was happening and what was this place. “He’s not gonna make it, he’s not gonna make it!” screamed the short sergeant, almost dancing in front of them. “He’s not gonna hack it. He’s a baby. He’s nothing but a baby, ladies!” “He can’t even fit into his pants!” screamed the tall sergeant, laughing. “Yeah,” said the southern sergeant. “He’s nothin’ but a goddamned little baby and you know what we do with babies,” he said. “We kick ’em in their fucking asses and send ’em home. You people, you better listen up!” said the southern sergeant. “You are in Parris Island. You are now in Platoon One Hundred Eighty-one. You are in my platoon and if you people wanna be marines, y’all gonna hafta work harder than you have ever worked before in your lives and you are gonna listen to me and you are gonna do everything I tell you to do if you want to get your asses off this island alive and become marines you better listen to me.” It was beginning to get dark on the island. It had been a long day for him. It had seemed like a hundred days, a thousand days! The day had been endless.

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  After years of prohibition and delay, executions were again taking place in the Deep South, and most of the people crowded on death row had no lawyers and no right to counsel. There was a growing fear that people would soon be killed without ever having their cases reviewed by skilled counsel. We were getting frantic calls every day from people who had no legal assistance but whose dates of execution were on the calendar and approaching fast. I’d never heard voices so desperate. When I started my internship, everyone was extremely kind to me, and I felt immediately at home. The SPDC was located in downtown Atlanta in the Healey Building, a sixteen-story Gothic Revival structure built in the early 1900s that was in considerable decline and losing tenants. I worked in a cramped circle of desks with two lawyers and did clerical work, answering phones and researching legal questions for staff. I was just getting settled into my office routine when Steve asked me to go to death row to meet with a condemned man whom no one else had time to visit. He explained that the man had been on the row for over two years and that they didn’t yet have a lawyer to take his case; my job was to convey to this man one simple message: You will not be killed in the next year. — I drove through farmland and wooded areas of rural Georgia, rehearsing what I would say when I met this man. I practiced my introduction over and over. “Hello, my name is Bryan. I’m a student with the…” No. “I’m a law student with…” No. “My name is Bryan Stevenson. I’m a legal intern with the Southern Prisoners Defense Committee, and I’ve been instructed to inform you that you will not be executed soon.” “You can’t be executed soon.” “You are not at risk of execution anytime soon.” No. I continued practicing my presentation until I pulled up to the intimidating barbed-wire fence and white guard tower of the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Center. Around the office we just called it “Jackson,” so seeing the facility’s actual name on a sign was jarring—it sounded clinical, even therapeutic. I parked and found my way to the prison entrance and walked inside the main building with its dark corridors and gated hallways, where metal bars barricaded every access point. The interior eliminated any doubt that this was a hard place. I walked down a tunneled corridor to the legal visitation area, each step echoing ominously across the spotless tiled floor. When I told the visitation officer that I was a paralegal sent to meet with a death row prisoner, he looked at me suspiciously. I was wearing the only suit I owned, and we could both see that it had seen better days. The officer’s eyes seemed to linger long and hard over my driver’s license before he tilted his head toward me to speak. “You’re not local.”