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 Sister Outsider (1984)

  Today, with the defeat of ERA, the tightening economy, and increased conservatism, it is easier once again for white women to believe the dangerous fantasy that if you are good enough, pretty enough, sweet enough, quiet enough, teach the children to behave, hate the right people, and marry the right men, then you will be allowed to co-exist with patriarchy in relative peace, at least until a man needs your job or the neighborhood rapist happens along. And true, unless one lives and loves in the trenches it is difficult to remember that the war against dehumanization is ceaseless. But Black women and our children know the fabric of our lives is stitched with violence and with hatred, that there is no rest. We do not deal with it only on the picket lines, or in dark midnight alleys, or in the places where we dare to verbalize our resistance. For us, increasingly, violence weaves through the daily tissues of our living — in the supermarket, in the classroom, in the elevator, in the clinic and the schoolyard, from the plumber, the baker, the saleswoman, the bus driver, the bank teller, the waitress who does not serve us. Some problems we share as women, some we do not. You fear your children will grow up to join the patriarchy and testify against you, we fear our children will be dragged from a car and shot down in the street, and you will turn your backs upon the reasons they are dying. The threat of difference has been no less blinding to people of Color. Those of us who are Black must see that the reality of our lives and our struggle does not make us immune to the errors of ignoring and misnaming difference. Within Black communities where racism is a living reality, differences among us often seem dangerous and suspect. The need for unity is often misnamed as a need for homogeneity, and a Black feminist vision mistaken for betrayal of our common interests as a people. Because of the continuous battle against racial erasure that Black women and Black men share, some Black women still refuse to recognize that we are also oppressed as women, and that sexual hostility against Black women is practiced not only by the white racist society, but implemented within our Black communities as well. It is a disease striking the heart of Black nationhood, and silence will not make it disappear. Exacerbated by racism and the pressures of powerlessness, violence against Black women and children often becomes a standard within our communities, one by which manliness can be measured. But these woman-hating acts are rarely discussed as crimes against Black women. As a group, women of Color are the lowest paid wage earners in america.

• From Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (2016)

  “Holland says we need to get our asses down to the bank. Pronto.” Next thing I knew, we were all sitting in a conference room at the Bank of California. On one side of the table were Holland and two nameless men in suits. They looked like undertakers. On the other side were Hayes and I. Holland, somber, opened. “Gentlemen...” Not good, I thought. “Gentlemen?” I said. “Gentlemen? Perry, it’s us.” “Gentlemen, we’ve decided we no longer want your business at this bank.” Hayes and I stared. “Does that mean you’re throwing us out?” Hayes asked. “It does indeed,” Holland said. “You can’t do that,” Hayes said. “We can and we are,” Holland said. “We’re freezing your funds, and we will no longer honor any more checks you write on this account.” “Freezing our—! I don’t believe this,” Hayes said. “Believe it,” Holland said. I said nothing. I wrapped my arms around my torso and thought, This isn’t good, this isn’t good, this isn’t good. Never mind the embarrassment, the hassles, the cascade of bad consequences that would follow if Holland threw us out. All I could think of was Nissho. How would they react? How would Ito react? I pictured myself telling the Ice Man that we couldn’t give him his million dollars. It chilled me down to my marrow. I don’t remember the end of that meeting. I don’t remember leaving the bank, or walking out, or going across the street, or getting on the elevator, or riding it to the top floor. I only recall shaking, violently shaking, as I asked for a word with Mr. Ito. The next thing I recall is Ito and Sumeragi taking Hayes and me into their conference room. They could sense that we were fragile. They led us to chairs, and they both looked at the floor as I spoke. Kei. Much kei. “Well,” I said, “I have some bad news. Our bank... has thrown us out.” Ito looked up. “Why?” he said. His eyes hardened. But his voice was surprisingly soft. I thought of the wind atop Mount Fuji. I thought of the gentle breeze stirring the ginkgo leaves in the Meiji gardens. I said, “Mr. Ito, do you know how the big trading companies and banks ‘live on the float’? Okay, we at Blue Ribbon tend to do that, too, from time to time, including last month. And the fact of the matter is, sir, well, we missed the float. And now the Bank of California has decided to kick us out.” Sumeragi lit a Lucky Strike. One puff. Two. Ito did the same. One puff. Two. But on the exhale, the smoke didn’t seem to come from his mouth. It seemed to emanate from deep down inside him, to curl from his cuffs and shirt collar. He looked into my eyes. He bored into me. “They should not have done that,” he said. My heart stopped midbeat. This was an almost sympathetic thing for Ito to say.

• From We Were Here (2011)

  WE WERE HERE CaptionMax Page 9 3/23/2011 looking back, I know he died of AIDS, but back then there was no name for it. 1:19:02 EILEEN (VO/ON) I was hanging blood one day in the hospital, and this was the, you know, before the times that you wore gloves, and the infectious disease fellow came in and said, “Eileen, why don’t you put gloves on. We don’t know what this is.” 1:19:22 GUY (VO/ON) I was selling flowers at that time, and there was a guy down the street. Five days. One day, he went to the hospital. Five days later, he was dead. 1:19:36 ON-SCREEN TEXT (on newspaper and headline clip) The Mystery Maladies Who Can I Turn To...? Disease That Hits Gays 1:19:38 PAUL (VO/ON) I’m looking through the gay periodicals, and in one of them, new cancer described. And so I’m aware something has occurred. And I note it. I think everybody who was paying attention to the community noted, well, this could be something to pay attention to. And so we-- I did. 1:19:56 ON-SCREEN TEXT (on newspaper and headline clip) [text obscured by time code] Shorts “GAY MEN’S” PNEUMONIA” Two diseases hit state’s gays 1:20:01 PATIENT (breathes heavily) 1:20:06 EILEEN (VO/ON) People were coming in with pneumocystis pneumonia who were quite well, you know, one day. You know, uh, out there swimming, playing tennis, you know, buffed, coming in and were dying. I mean, were dead ten days later. 1:20:25 ON-SCREEN TEXT (on magazine cover) bluboy A KILLER Kaposi’s Sarcoma

• From The Case for God (2009)

  Some extremists have even murdered doctors and nurses who work in abortion clinics. Like evolution, abortion has become symbolic of the murderous evil of modernity. Christian fundamentalists are convinced that their doctrinal “beliefs” are an accurate, final expression of sacred truth and that every word of the Bible is literally true—an attitude that is a radical departure from mainstream Christian tradition. They believe that miracles are an essential hallmark of true faith and that God will give the believer anything he asks for in prayer. Fundamentalists are swift to condemn people whom they regard as the enemies of God: most Christian fundamentalists see Jews and Muslims as destined for hellfire, and some regard Buddhism, Hinduism, and Daoism as inspired by the devil. Jewish and Muslim fundamentalists take a similar stance, each seeing their own tradition as the only true faith. Muslim fundamentalists have toppled governments, and some extremists have been guilty of terrorist atrocities. Jewish fundamentalists have founded illegal settlements in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip with the avowed intention of driving out the Arab inhabitants, convinced that they are paving the way for the Messiah; others throw stones at Israelis who drive their cars on the Sabbath . In all its forms, fundamentalism is a fiercely reductive faith. In their anxiety and fear, fundamentalists often distort the tradition they are trying to defend. They can, for example, be highly selective in their reading of scripture. Christian fundamentalists quote extensively from the book of Revelation and are inspired by its violent End-time vision but rarely refer to the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus tells his followers to love their enemies, to turn the other cheek, and not to judge others. Jewish fundamentalists rely heavily on the Deuteronomist sections of the Bible and seem to pass over the rabbis’ injunction that exegesis should lead to charity. Muslim fundamentalists ignore the pluralism of the Qur’an, and extremists quote its more aggressive verses to justify violence, pointedly disregarding its far more numerous calls for peace, tolerance, and forgiveness. Fundamentalists are convinced that they are fighting for God, but in fact this type of religiosity represents a retreat from God. To make purely human, historical phenomena—such as “family values,” “the Holy Land,” or “Islam”—sacred and absolute is idolatry, and, as always, their idol forces them to try to destroy its opponents. But it is essential for critics of religion to see fundamentalism in historical context. Far from being typical of faith, it is an aberration. The fundamentalist fear of annihilation is not a paranoid delusion. We have seen that some of the most formative creators of the modern ethos have indeed called for the abolition of religion—and they continue to do so.

• From From Jesus to Constantine: A History of Early Christianity (2004)

  1. Why do you imagine that a set of religions that was otherwise so tolerant (paganism) would be so intolerant of the Christian religion? 2. Why do you suppose that the Christian persecutions appear to have sprung from the ground up (that is, from the pagan mobs), rather than from the top down (that is, from the imperial authorities)? 166 Lecture Eleven—Transcript The Early Persecutions of the State In the previous two lectures, we saw how Christianity spread throughout the Roman world. There, I argued that the religion spread by word of mouth, and proved attractive to some pagans because the Christian God appeared to be so powerful, capable of doing great miracles for his people. Moreover, the exclusive claims of the Christians—that their God alone was the true God and all others were false, that their views alone were right and that all others were wrong—were unique in that world and facilitated the spread of Christianity, in that it necessarily destroyed the other religions when pagans converted to Christianity. This made Christianity unique; it destroyed the other religions in its wake. It would be a mistake, though, to think that the conversion of the empire happened quickly and unproblematically, for, in fact, there were major obstacles, seen in the circumstance that most pagans (as most Jews before them) rejected the Christian message, found it offensive and worthy of violent opposition. In this lecture, and the three that follow, we will consider the persecution of Christians throughout the empire during the first three centuries. We have numerous accounts of Christian persecution, some of them by Christian authors who celebrate the torture and martyrdom of the faithful as signs of divine favor, others of them by Roman authors, who considered the Christians’ refusal to give up their religion in the face of torture and death to be reprehensible and idiotic. We will begin our reflections by considering one of the most graphic and significant first-hand reports of a significant persecution against Christians, which happened in the towns of Vienne and Lyons in ancient Gaul, which would be modern-day France. This persecution took place in the middle of the second century, during the reign of the Roman emperor, Marcus Aurelius. We happen to have an account of the persecution of Christians from a first-hand source. There was a letter that was written by Christians who survived the persecution. The letter was addressed to other Christians who lived in Asia Minor. It has been preserved for us in the writings of the fourth-century church historian Eusebius. 167

• From The Case for God (2009)

  You left that out of your confession.” 25 In the past, the monastic life had encouraged a spirituality that was essentially communal. Monks had listened to the scriptures together during the liturgy. Lectio divina had been a ruminative, unanxious, and even enjoyable method of appropriating the truths of religion. But the new emphasis on the individual made Luther so obsessed with his own spiritual performance that he had become mired in the ego that he was supposed to transcend. None of the medieval rites and practices could touch what he called the tristitia (“sorrow”) that filled him with an acute terror of death and a conviction of abject impotence. 26 In addition, he had expressed the yearning for absolute certainty that would also characterize religion in the modern period. Luther found salvation in the doctrine of justification by faith alone. Human beings could not save themselves by performing meritorious deeds and rituals; if we had faith, Christ would clothe us in his own righteousness. Our good deeds were, therefore, the result rather than the cause of God’s favor. This was not an original idea; it was already a perfectly respectable Catholic position. 27 But while he was studying Paul’s letter to the Romans, it broke upon Luther with the overwhelming power of a new revelation when he came across the words: “The just man lives by faith.” 28 They “made me feel as though I had been born again, and as though I had entered through the open gates of paradise itself,” he would recall later. 29 The precise conclusion that Luther drew from this one sentence would probably have surprised Paul, but it spoke to the unconscious needs of a generation that found traditional practices empty and unproductive. 30 The profound societal changes of early modernity caused many to feel disoriented and lost. Living in medias res, they could not see the direction that their society was taking but experienced its slow transformation in isolated, incoherent ways. As the old mythology that had given structure and significance to their ancestors crumbled in this new situation, many seem to have experienced the sense of powerlessness that had afflicted Luther. Before their own conversions to fresh religious vision, Zwingli and Calvin had also experienced a paralyzing helplessness before the trials of human existence and were convinced that they could contribute nothing toward their own salvation. Consequently, all the reformers emphasized the unqualified divine sovereignty that would not only characterize the modern God but also help to shape the Scientific Revolution. 31 The emphasis on God’s absolute power meant that God alone could change the course of events, so human beings, who were essentially impotent, must rely on his unconditional might.

• From Ulysses (Kindle edition — verify full work) (1922)

  The extent to which Eva is inundated by sexually aggressive and inappropriate circumstances, especially to the point that they seem almost monolithic, is also evident in other instances. Beyond her early violation with a "dirty popsicle stick" and later rape by Tyrone, even Eva's cousin Alfonso is relentless in his solicitation of sex that ranges from wanting to "feel her up" to a desire to actually "get her started." Even blood ties or familial relations do not protect her from male sexual aggression. While she runs away, escaping Alfonso, her interactions with Moses Tripp-whom she meets at a bar and stabs in the hand in selfdefense from sexual violation-make evident her subsequent refusals to tolerate inappropriate sexual advances. Because she does not delineate to the authorities what circumstances led to her committing the crime, she, at age seventeen, serves time in prison, where, ironically, she meets and later marries her husband, James Hunn: a fifty-two-year-old man whose initial gestures of "tenderness" toward her later evolve into masculine power and domination. The incident with Moses Tripp foreshadows what happens with Davis Carter, whom she later meets at a bar and "shacks up" with briefly, before killing him with poison and then castrating him. And while she never explicates what exactly led to her horrendous crime-his confining her to his apartment, her discovery that he is married, and/or his sexual dehumanization of her-what does become evident is that Davis embodies the cumulative sexualized aggression and male sexual hegemony that she has experienced throughout her lifetime. "`You know what I think,"' the psychiatrist asserts to Eva during a session, "`I think [Davis] came to represent all the men you'd known in your life"' (81).

• From Ulysses (Kindle edition — verify full work) (1922)

  This speaks to the larger issues governing black women's sexuality, especially when read within the context of the sociopolitical juncture in which Walker's novel was produced: during the black nationalist era when women were encouraged to "make babies for the revolution"; during the feminist movement when women fought the tyranny of patriarchal and gender oppression; and, even more fittingly in this instance, during the sexual revolution, with its expressed interest in sexual liberation. In this scene reverberates my previous discussion of blacks and the sexual revolution, particularly had it bypassed blacks. Walker demonstrates the deleterious effects of an entrenched communal silence, coupled with a racialized Victorian disposition, that contributes to a lack of sexual knowledge and preventive measures that result in unwanted/compulsory pregnancy-the reproductive consequence of sex. This sensibility and the devastating effects are literalized in the novel by the sexual casualities, the overwhelming number of female characters (Meridian, Nelda, Wile Child, Fast Mary, among others) who have sex and, consequently, end up pregnant (with stunted lives, literally, since two of these characters die). This also reflects black women's exigencies of the time, as evidenced in the larger treatment of black female sexuality and black sexual politics in black general-interest periodicals. In 1976, the same year as the publication of Meridian, Essence magazine featured a monthly question-and-answer column entitled "Your Sexual Health." Joanne H.Tyson, the then codirector of the Institute for Marriage Enrichment and Sexual Studies, responded to the personal, often detailed and explicit questions on topics ranging from birth control pills usage and mishaps, sexual arousal, orgasms, oral sex, and sexually transmitted diseases to pregnancy prevention and the existence of home brews to terminate an unwanted pregnancy to avoid a medical abortion. Alongside such discussions, in the July 1976 issue, an excerpt of Alice Walker's Meridian appeared (see Figure 3.1), accompanied by an epigraphic quote: "She had been spasmodic with fear," it read. "Fear because sex was always fraught with ugly consequences for her, and fear because if she did not make out with him she might lose him, and if she did make love with him he might lose interest."23

• From Educated (2018)

  I changed lanes to drive around them, but stopped when I saw a small object lying in the middle of the highway. It was a wide-brimmed Aussie hat. I pulled over and ran toward the people clustered by the ditch. “Shawn!” I shouted. The crowd parted to let me through. Shawn was facedown on the gravel, lying in a pool of blood that looked pink in the glare from the headlights. He wasn’t moving. “He hit a cow coming around the corner,” a man said. “It’s so dark tonight, he didn’t even see it. We’ve called an ambulance. We don’t dare move him.” Shawn’s body was contorted, his back twisted. I had no idea how long an ambulance might take, and there was so much blood. I decided to stop the bleeding. I dug my hands under his shoulder and heaved but I couldn’t lift him. I looked up at the crowd and recognized a face. Dwain.* He was one of us . Mother had midwifed four of his eight children. “Dwain! Help me turn him.” Dwain hefted Shawn onto his back. For a second that contained an hour, I stared at my brother, watching the blood trickle out of his temple and down his right cheek, pouring over his ear and onto his white T-shirt. His eyes were closed, his mouth open. The blood was oozing from a hole the size of a golf ball in his forehead. It looked as though his temple had been dragged on the asphalt, scraping away skin, then bone. I leaned close and peered inside the wound. Something soft and spongy glistened back at me. I slipped out of my jacket and pressed it to Shawn’s head. When I touched the abrasion, Shawn released a long sigh and his eyes opened. “Sidlister,” he mumbled. Then he seemed to lose consciousness. My cellphone was in my pocket. I dialed. Dad answered. I must have been frantic, sputtering. I said Shawn had crashed his bike, that he had a hole in his head. “Slow down. What happened?” I said it all a second time. “What should I do?” “Bring him home,” Dad said. “Your mother will deal with it.” I opened my mouth but no words came out. Finally, I said, “I’m not joking. His brain, I can see it!” “Bring him home,” Dad said. “Your mother can handle it.” Then: the dull drone of a dial tone. He’d hung up. Dwain had overheard. “I live just through this field,” he said. “Your mother can treat him there.” “No,” I said. “Dad wants him home. Help me get him in the car.” Shawn groaned when we lifted him but he didn’t speak again. Someone said we should wait for the ambulance. Someone else said we should drive him to the hospital ourselves. I don’t think anyone believed we would take him home, not with his brain dribbling out of his forehead. We folded Shawn into the backseat.

• From Going Clear (2013)

  Sparks flew up like rockets. The firefighters could easily be surrounded and trapped by the blaze; it had happened before in this country, a dozen killed at a time. There was no one else who could help them now. Lola was in charge of the bucket brigade. There was practically no pressure in the hose, so they fetched water from the stock tank, in buckets; but the water was no match for the wind, which had lost direction and had begun to whirl, the heat having created its own atmosphere. Everyone was moving fast but the fire was faster, vaulting over the heads of the beaters, who had to re-form and stamp out the fresh blazes before they gained some measure of control. Lola could hear excited voices rising in volume, but she was so intent on filling the buckets that it wasn’t until the scream that she turned around. The barn was ablaze. Flames gushed from the eaves. For a moment, Lola was frozen in place, wonderstruck by the hellish glory of a force so mighty, a force that threatened even the will to survive. Into her consciousness came a sound—high, keening, hysterical—it was Mary Lou Miller, the ten-year-old. “Coco! Coco!” Mary Lou cried. “Momma, Coco’s in there!” Jeannette was struggling to get the toddler into the car seat while holding on to Mary Lou. “Let me go!” Mary Lou screamed, writhing in her mother’s grasp. “Mary Lou, the barn’s full of hay, it’ll go up in a minute,” Jeannette said, forcing herself to be calm and firm. “There’s nothing to be done. Now get in the truck, we gotta save ourselves!” As Lola watched, Mary Lou broke away and ran into the burning barn. “Mary Lou! Mary Lou!” Jeannette cried, and then she rushed after her daughter, still carrying the baby. Without a second to think, Lola raced after Jeannette and blocked her. Fires are made even more dangerous by the panic they spread, and running after one child with another on her shoulder could only magnify the tragedy. Jeannette knew this. The horror was written on her face as she sank into Lola’s iron embrace. A blast of heat surrounded them like a furnace and the flames painted them in a brilliant orange glow. The hay in the barn suddenly ignited and the bales exploded. Jeannette sank to her knees. It was then that Lola saw Sonny run into the barn. His silhouette was black against the flames and then he disappeared right through them. The air itself seemed to be ablaze. Sonny could barely breathe there was so little oxygen left in the barn. He heard the girl on the other side of the fire before he saw her. She wasn’t screaming now.

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  Continuity was therefore politically essential. Thus the Akitu festival, inaugurated by the Sumerians in the mid-third millennium, was celebrated each year by every Mesopotamian ruler for over two thousand years. Originally performed in Ur in honor of Enlil when Sumer had become militarized, in Babylon these rituals centered on the city’s patron, Marduk.91 As always in Mesopotamia, this act of worship had an important political function and was essential to the regime’s legitimacy. We shall see in Chapter 4 that a king could be deposed for failing to perform these ceremonies, which marked the start of the New Year, when the old year was dying and the king’s power also waning.92 By ritually rehearsing cosmic battles that had ordered the universe at the beginning of time, the ruling aristocracy hoped to make this powerful surge of sacred energy a reality in their state for another twelve months. On the fifth day of the festival, the presiding priest would ceremonially humiliate the king in Marduk’s shrine, evoking the terrifying specter of social anarchy by confiscating the royal regalia, striking the king on the cheek, and throwing him roughly onto the ground.93 The bruised and abject king would plead with Marduk that he had not behaved like an evil ruler: I did not destroy Babylon; I did not command its overthrow; I did not destroy the temple.… Esagil. I did not forget its rites; I did not rain blows on the cheeks of the protected citizen. I did not humiliate them. I watched out for Babylon. I did not smash its walls.94 The priest then slapped the king again, so hard that tears rose to his eyes—a sign of repentance that satisfied Marduk. Thus reinstated, the king now clasped the hands of Marduk’s effigy, the regalia were returned, and his rule was secure for the coming year. The statues of all the patronal gods and goddesses of all the cities in Mesopotamia had to be brought to Babylon for the festival as an expression of cultic and political loyalty. If they were not all present, the Akitu could not be celebrated and the realm would be endangered. The liturgy, therefore, was as crucial for a city’s security as its fortifications, and it had reminded the people, only the day before, of the city’s fragility.

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

  At the second examination, on the sixth day of April, he was shown some of his epistles to Calvin. He declared, with tears in his eyes, that those letters were written when he was in Germany some twenty-five years ago, when there was printed in that country a book by a certain Servetus, a Spaniard, but from what part of Spain he did not know! At Paris he had heard Mons. Calvin spoken of as a learned man, and had entered into correspondence with him from curiosity, but begged him to keep his letters as confidential and as brotherly corrections.1157 Calvin suspected, he continued, that I was Servetus, to which I replied, I was not Servetus, but would continue to personate Servetus in order to continue the discussion. Finally we fell out, got angry, abused each other, and broke off the correspondence about ten years ago. He protested before God and his judges that he had no intention to dogmatize or to teach anything against the Church or the Christian religion. He told similar lies when other letters were laid before him. Servetus now resolved to escape, perhaps with the aid of some friends, after he had secured through his servant a debt of three hundred crowns from the Grand Prior of the monastery of St. Pierre. On the 7th of April, at four o’clock in the morning, he dressed himself, threw a night-gown over his clothes, and put a velvet cap upon his head, and, pretending a call of nature, he secured from the unsuspecting jailer the key to the garden. He leaped from the roof of the outhouse and made his escape through the court and over the bridge across the Rhone. He carried with him his golden chain around his neck, valued at twenty crowns, six gold rings on his fingers, and plenty of money in his pockets. Two hours elapsed before his escape became known. An alarm was given, the gates were closed, and the neighboring houses searched; but all in vain. Nevertheless the prosecution went on. Sufficient evidence was found that the "Restitution" had been printed in Vienne; extracts were made from it to prove the heresies contained therein. The civil court, without waiting for the judgment of the spiritual tribunal (which was not given until six months afterwards), sentenced Servetus on the 17th of June, for heretical doctrines, for violation of the royal ordinances, and for escape from the royal prison, to pay a fine of one thousand livres tournois to the Dauphin, to be carried in a cart, together with his books, on a market-day through the principal streets to the place of execution, and to be burnt alive by a slow fire.1158 On the same day he was burnt in effigy, together with the five bales of his book, which had been consigned to Merrin at Lyons and brought back to Vienne.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  The fire I built would have given up the ghost by now. Someone had built it back up, fed it new logs. I wobble where I’m standing. I need light. I need to— “Sit down.” I start, jarred by the voice. I twist my neck around as far as it can go. “Isaac,” I cry out. I start to teeter, but he darts over and catches me. Darts is a strong word , I think. For a minute it looks like he is going to fall with me. I lift my hand up, touch his face. He looks terrible. But he’s alive and walking. He lowers me gently to the ground. “Are you okay?” He shakes his head. “Alive’s not enough for you?” “You shouldn’t be,” I hiss. “I thought you were going to die.” He doesn’t acknowledge me. Instead he walks over to a pile of something I can’t see in the dark. “Look who’s talking,” he says, softly. “Isaac,” I say again. “The table…” All of a sudden I’m feeling hot … weak. The adrenaline, which carried me up the well, up the stairs, up the ladder, has run out. He walks over to me, his arms full. “I know,” he says, dryly. “I saw.” He’s looking at my leg as he sets things down next to me. He’s lining them up, double-checking everything. But every few seconds he looks at my leg again like he doesn’t know how to fix it. “Is that how this happened?” “I jumped down the table,” I say. “I wasn’t thinking. The asthma—” The corners of his mouth pull tight. “You had an asthma attack? While this happened?” I nod. I can only see his face with the dim light of the fire, but it looks as if it’s paled. “Your tibia is fractured. Your leg must have bent at just the right angle when you fell to cause the break.” “When I jumped,” I said. “When you fell.” He’s working with his hands, opening packages. I hear little rips, the clatter of metal. I lean my head back and close my eyes. I hear little bursts of air, I think it’s Isaac, but then I realize that I’m panting. He looks straight at me. “You must have gotten my body temperature back up. You did everything right.” “What?” I’m dizzy. I want to hurl again. “You saved me life,” he says. He glances up at me at the same time I crack open an eye. “I need to move you.” “No!” I grab his arm. “No, please. Just let me stay here.” I’m panting. The thought of moving makes me sick. “There is nowhere to move me, Isaac. Just do it here.” Do what here? Was he really planning to operate on the floor of the attic room? “There’s not enough light,” I say. The pain is intensifying.

• From Educated (2018)

  Because I was now falling from the side of the bin and not the front, I hoped—I prayed—that I was falling toward the ground and not toward the trailer, which was at that moment a fury of grinding metal. I sank, seeing only blue sky, waiting to feel either the stab of sharp iron or the jolt of solid earth. My back struck iron: the trailer’s wall. My feet snapped over my head and I continued my graceless plunge to the ground. The first fall was seven or eight feet, the second perhaps ten. I was relieved to taste dirt. I lay on my back for fifteen seconds before the engine growled to silence and I heard Dad’s heavy step. “What happened?” he said, kneeling next to me. “I fell out,” I wheezed. The wind had been knocked out of me, and there was a powerful throbbing in my back, as if I’d been cut in two. “How’d you manage that?” Dad said. His tone was sympathetic but disappointed. I felt stupid. I should have been able to do it, I thought. It’s a simple thing. Dad examined the gash in my leg, which had been ripped wide as the spike had fallen away. It looked like a pothole; the tissue had simply sunk out of sight. Dad slipped out of his flannel shirt and pressed it to my leg. “Go on home,” he said. “Mother will stop the bleeding.” I limped through the pasture until Dad was out of sight, then collapsed in the tall wheatgrass. I was shaking, gulping mouthfuls of air that never made it to my lungs. I didn’t understand why I was crying. I was alive. I would be fine. The angels had done their part. So why couldn’t I stop trembling? I was light-headed when I crossed the last field and approached the house, but I burst through the back door, as I’d seen my brothers do, as Robert and Emma had done, shouting for Mother. When she saw the crimson footprints streaked across the linoleum, she fetched the homeopathic she used to treat hemorrhages and shock, called Rescue Remedy, and put twelve drops of the clear, tasteless liquid under my tongue. She rested her left hand lightly on the gash and crossed the fingers of her right. Her eyes closed. Click click click. “There’s no tetanus,” she said. “The wound will close. Eventually. But it’ll leave a nasty scar.” She turned me onto my stomach and examined the bruise—a patch of deep purple the size of a human head—that had formed a few inches above my hip. Again her fingers crossed and her eyes closed. Click click click. “You’ve damaged your kidney,” she said. “We’d better make a fresh batch of juniper and mullein flower.” —THE GASH BELOW MY knee had formed a scab—dark and shiny, a black river flowing through pink flesh—when I came to a decision.

• From Educated (2018)

  Mother said we should wait until morning, but Dad wanted to get home so he and the boys could scrap the next morning. “I can’t afford to lose any more work days,” he said. Mother’s eyes darkened with worry, but she said nothing. —I AWOKE WHEN THE CAR HIT the first utility pole. I’d been asleep on the floor under my sister’s feet, a blanket over my head. I tried to sit up but the car was shaking, lunging—it felt like it was coming apart—and Audrey fell on top of me. I couldn’t see what was happening but I could feel and hear it. Another loud thud, a lurch, my mother screaming, “Tyler!” from the front seat, and a final violent jolt before everything stopped and silence set in. Several seconds passed in which nothing happened. Then I heard Audrey’s voice. She was calling our names one by one. Then she said, “Everyone’s here except Tara!” I tried to shout but my face was wedged under the seat, my cheek pressed to the floor. I struggled under Audrey’s weight as she shouted my name. Finally, I arched my back and pushed her off, then stuck my head out of the blanket and said, “Here.” I looked around. Tyler had twisted his upper body so that he was practically climbing into the backseat, his eyes bulging as he took in every cut, every bruise, every pair of wide eyes. I could see his face but it didn’t look like his face. Blood gushed from his mouth and down his shirt. I closed my eyes, trying to forget the twisted angles of his bloodstained teeth. When I opened them again, it was to check everyone else. Richard was holding his head, a hand over each ear like he was trying to block out a noise. Audrey’s nose was strangely hooked and blood was streaming from it down her arm. Luke was shaking but I couldn’t see any blood. I had a gash on my forearm from where the seat’s frame had caught hold of me. “Everyone all right?” My father’s voice. There was a general mumble. “There are power lines on the car,” Dad said. “Nobody gets out till they’ve shut them off.” His door opened, and for a moment I thought he’d been electrocuted, but then I saw he’d pitched himself far enough so that his body had never touched the car and the ground at the same time. I remember peering at him through my shattered window as he circled the car, his red cap pushed back so the brim reached upward, licking the air. He looked strangely boyish. He circled the car then stopped, crouching low, bringing his head level with the passenger seat. “Are you okay?” he said. Then he said it again. The third time he said it, his voice quivered. I leaned over the seat to see who he was talking to, and only then realized how serious the accident had been.

• From Educated (2018)

  It contained no greeting, no message whatsoever. Just a chapter from the Bible, from Matthew, with a single verse set apart in bold: O generation of vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak good things? It froze my blood. Shawn called an hour later. His tone was casual, and we talked for twenty minutes about Peter, about how his lungs were developing. Then he said, in a calm, even voice, “I have a decision to make, and I’d like your advice.” “Sure.” “I can’t decide.” He paused, and I thought that perhaps the connection had failed. “Whether I should kill you myself, or hire an assassin.” There was a static-filled silence. “It might be cheaper to hire someone, when you figure in the cost of the flight.” I pretended I hadn’t understood, but this only made him aggressive. Now he was hurling insults, snarling. I tried to calm him but it was pointless. We were seeing each other at long last. I hung up on him but he called again, and again and again, each time repeating the same lines, that I should watch my back, that his assassin was coming for me. I called my parents. “He didn’t mean it,” Mother said. “Anyway, he doesn’t have that kind of money.” “Not the point,” I said. Dad wanted evidence. “You didn’t record the call?” he said. “How am I supposed to know if he was serious?” “He sounded like he did when he threatened me with the bloody knife,” I said. “Well, he wasn’t serious about that.” “Not the point,” I said again. The phone calls stopped, eventually, but not because of anything my parents did. They stopped when Shawn cut me out of his life. He wrote, telling me to stay away from his wife and child, and to stay the hell away from him. The email was long, a thousand words of accusation and bile, but by the end his tone was mournful. He said he loved his brothers, that they were the best men he knew. I loved you the best of all of them, he wrote, but you had a knife in my back all of this time. It had been years since I’d had a relationship with my brother, but the loss of it, even with months of foreknowledge, stunned me. My parents said he was justified in cutting me off. Dad said I was hysterical, that I’d thrown thoughtless accusations when it was obvious my memory couldn’t be trusted. Mother said my rage was a real threat and that Shawn had a right to protect his family. “Your anger that night,” she told me on the phone, meaning the night Shawn had killed Diego, “was twice as dangerous as Shawn has ever been.” Reality became fluid. The ground gave way beneath my feet, dragging me downward, spinning fast, like sand rushing through a hole in the bottom of the universe.

• From Educated (2018)

  After they’d been cleaned, my brother Tyler chose one and set it on a sheet of black plastic, which he folded over the rifle, sealing it with yards of silvery duct tape. Hoisting the bundle onto his shoulder, he carried it down the hill and dropped it next to the red railroad car. Then he began to dig. When the hole was wide and deep, he dropped the rifle into it, and I watched him cover it with dirt, his muscles swelling from the exertion, his jaw clenched. Soon after, Dad bought a machine to manufacture bullets from spent cartridges. Now we could last longer in a standoff, he said. I thought of my “head for the hills” bag, waiting in my bed, and of the rifle hidden near the railcar, and began to worry about the bullet-making machine. It was bulky and bolted to an iron workstation in the basement. If we were taken by surprise, I figured we wouldn’t have time to fetch it. I wondered if we should bury it, too, with the rifle. We kept on bottling peaches. I don’t remember how many days passed or how many jars we’d added to our stores before Dad told us more of the story. “Randy Weaver’s been shot,” Dad said, his voice thin and erratic. “He left the cabin to fetch his son’s body, and the Feds shot him.” I’d never seen my father cry, but now tears were dripping in a steady stream from his nose. He didn’t wipe them, just let them spill onto his shirt. “His wife heard the shot and ran to the window, holding their baby. Then came the second shot.” Mother was sitting with her arms folded, one hand across her chest, the other clamped over her mouth. I stared at our speckled linoleum while Dad told us how the baby had been lifted from its mother’s arms, its face smeared with her blood. Until that moment, some part of me had wanted the Feds to come, had craved the adventure. Now I felt real fear. I pictured my brothers crouching in the dark, their sweaty hands slipping down their rifles. I pictured Mother, tired and parched, drawing back away from the window. I pictured myself lying flat on the floor, still and silent, listening to the sharp chirp of crickets in the field. Then I saw Mother stand and reach for the kitchen tap. A white flash, the roar of gunfire, and she fell. I leapt to catch the baby. Dad never told us the end of the story. We didn’t have a TV or radio, so perhaps he never learned how it ended himself. The last thing I remember him saying about it was, “Next time, it could be us.” Those words would stay with me. I would hear their echo in the chirp of crickets, in the squish of peaches dropping into a glass jar, in the metallic chink of an SKS being cleaned.

• From Educated (2018)

  The trailer could hold between fifteen and twenty bins, or about forty thousand pounds of iron. I found Dad in the field, lighting a fire to burn the insulation from a tangle of copper wires. I told him the bin was ready, and he walked back with me and climbed into the loader. He waved at the trailer. “We’ll get more in if you settle the iron after it’s been dumped. Hop in.” I didn’t understand. He wanted to dump the bin with me in it? “I’ll climb up after you’ve dumped the load,” I said. “No, this’ll be faster,” Dad said. “I’ll pause when the bin’s level with the trailer wall so you can climb out. Then you can run along the wall and perch on top of the cab until the dump is finished.” I settled myself on a length of iron. Dad jammed the forks under the bin, then lifted me and the scrap and began driving, full throttle, toward the trailer’s head. I could barely hold on. On the last turn, the bucket swung with such force that a spike of iron was flung toward me. It pierced the inside of my leg, an inch below my knee, sliding into the tissue like a knife into warm butter. I tried to pull it out but the load had shifted, and it was partially buried. I heard the soft groaning of hydraulic pumps as the boom extended. The groaning stopped when the bin was level with the trailer. Dad was giving me time to climb onto the trailer wall but I was pinned. “I’m stuck!” I shouted, only the growl of the loader’s engine was too loud. I wondered if Dad would wait to dump the bin until he saw me sitting safely on the semi’s cab, but even as I wondered I knew he wouldn’t. Time was still stalking. The hydraulics groaned and the bin raised another eight feet. Dumping position. I shouted again, higher this time, then lower, trying to find a pitch that would pierce through the drone of the engine. The bin began its tilt, slowly at first, then quickly. I was pinned near the back. I wrapped my hands around the bin’s top wall, knowing this would give me a ledge to grasp when the bin was vertical. As the bin continued to pitch, the scrap at the front began to slide forward, bit by bit, a great iron glacier breaking apart. The spike was still embedded in my leg, dragging me downward. My grip had slipped and I’d begun to slide when the spike finally ripped from me and fell away, smashing into the trailer with a tremendous crash. I was now free, but falling. I flailed my arms, willing them to seize something that wasn’t plunging downward. My palm caught hold of the bin’s side wall, which was now nearly vertical. I pulled myself toward it and hoisted my body over its edge, then continued my fall.

• From Educated (2018)

  It was six in the morning and he’d been driving in silence for most of the night, piloting our station wagon through Arizona, Nevada and Utah. We were in Cornish, a farming town twenty miles south of Buck’s Peak, when the station wagon drifted over the center line into the other lane, then left the highway. The car jumped a ditch, smashed through two utility poles of thick cedar, and was finally brought to a stop only when it collided with a row-crop tractor. —THE TRIP HAD BEEN Mother’s idea. A few months earlier, when crisp leaves had begun slipping to the ground, signaling the end of summer, Dad had been in high spirits. His feet tapped show tunes at breakfast, and during dinner he often pointed at the mountain, his eyes shining, and described where he would lay the pipes to bring water down to the house. Dad promised that when the first snow fell, he’d build the biggest snowball in the state of Idaho. What he’d do, he said, was hike to the mountain base and gather a small, insignificant ball of snow, then roll it down the hillside, watching it triple in size each time it raced over a hillock or down a ravine. By the time it reached the house, which was atop the last hill before the valley, it’d be big as Grandpa’s barn and people on the highway would stare up at it, amazed. We just needed the right snow. Thick, sticky flakes. After every snowfall, we brought handfuls to him and watched him rub the flakes between his fingers. That snow was too fine. This, too wet. After Christmas, he said. That’s when you get the real snow. But after Christmas Dad seemed to deflate, to collapse in on himself. He stopped talking about the snowball, then he stopped talking altogether. A darkness gathered in his eyes until it filled them. He walked with his arms limp, shoulders slumping, as if something had hold of him and was dragging him to the earth. By January Dad couldn’t get out of bed. He lay flat on his back, staring blankly at the stucco ceiling with its intricate pattern of ridges and veins. He didn’t blink when I brought his dinner plate each night. I’m not sure he knew I was there. That’s when Mother announced we were going to Arizona. She said Dad was like a sunflower—he’d die in the snow—and that come February he needed to be taken away and planted in the sun. So we piled into the station wagon and drove for twelve hours, winding through canyons and speeding over dark freeways, until we arrived at the mobile home in the parched Arizona desert where my grandparents were waiting out the winter. We arrived a few hours after sunrise. Dad made it as far as Grandma’s porch, where he stayed for the rest of the day, a knitted pillow under his head, a callused hand on his stomach.

• From Educated (2018)

  He kept that posture for two days, eyes open, not saying a word, still as a bush in that dry, windless heat. On the third day he seemed to come back into himself, to become aware of the goings-on around him, to listen to our mealtime chatter rather than staring, unresponsive, at the carpet. After dinner that night, Grandma played her phone messages, which were mostly neighbors and friends saying hello. Then a woman’s voice came through the speaker to remind Grandma of her doctor’s appointment the following day. That message had a dramatic effect on Dad. At first Dad asked Grandma questions: what was the appointment for, who was it with, why would she see a doctor when Mother could give her tinctures. Dad had always believed passionately in Mother’s herbs, but that night felt different, like something inside him was shifting, a new creed taking hold. Herbalism, he said, was a spiritual doctrine that separated the wheat from the tares, the faithful from the faithless. Then he used a word I’d never heard before: Illuminati. It sounded exotic, powerful, whatever it was. Grandma, he said, was an unknowing agent of the Illuminati. God couldn’t abide faithlessness, Dad said. That’s why the most hateful sinners were those who wouldn’t make up their minds, who used herbs and medication both, who came to Mother on Wednesday and saw their doctor on Friday—or, as Dad put it, “Who worship at the altar of God one day and offer a sacrifice to Satan the next.” These people were like the ancient Israelites because they’d been given a true religion but hankered after false idols. “Doctors and pills,” Dad said, nearly shouting. “That’s their god, and they whore after it.” Mother was staring at her food. At the word “whore” she stood, threw Dad an angry look, then walked into her room and slammed the door. Mother didn’t always agree with Dad. When Dad wasn’t around, I’d heard her say things that he—or at least this new incarnation of him—would have called sacrilege, things like, “Herbs are supplements. For something serious, you should go to a doctor.” Dad took no notice of Mother’s empty chair. “Those doctors aren’t trying to save you,” he told Grandma. “They’re trying to kill you.” When I think of that dinner, the scene comes back to me clearly. I’m sitting at the table. Dad is talking, his voice urgent. Grandma sits across from me, chewing her asparagus again and again in her crooked jaw, the way a goat might, sipping from her ice water, giving no indication that she’s heard a word Dad has said, except for the occasional vexed glare she throws the clock when it tells her it’s still too early for bed. “You’re a knowing participant in the plans of Satan,” Dad says. This scene played every day, sometimes several times a day, for the rest of the trip. All followed a similar script.