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 Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (2016)

  “Hey! Why are you hanging out with the blacks?” “Because I am black.” “No, you’re not. You’re colored.” “Ah, yes. I know it looks that way, friend, but let me explain. It’s a funny story, actually. My father is white and my mother is black and race is a social construct, so…” That wasn’t going to work. Not here. All of this was happening in my head in an instant, on the fly. I was doing crazy calculations, looking at people, scanning the room, assessing the variables. If I go here, then this. If I go there, then that. My whole life was flashing before me—the playground at school, the spaza shops in Soweto, the streets of Eden Park—every time and every place I ever had to be a chameleon, navigate between groups, explain who I was. It was like the high school cafeteria, only it was the high school cafeteria from hell because if I picked the wrong table I might get beaten or stabbed or raped. I’d never been more scared in my life. But I still had to pick. Because racism exists, and you have to pick a side. You can say that you don’t pick sides, but eventually life will force you to pick a side. That day I picked white. They just didn’t look like they could hurt me. It was a handful of average, middle-aged white dudes. I walked over to them. We hung out for a while, chatted a bit. They were mostly in for white-collar crimes, money schemes, fraud and racketeering. They’d be useless if anyone came over looking to start trouble; they’d get their asses kicked as well. But they weren’t going to do anything to me. I was safe. Luckily the time went by fairly quickly. I was in there for only an hour before I was called up to court, where a judge would either let me go or send me to prison to await trial. As I was leaving, one of the white guys reached over to me. “Make sure you don’t come back down here,” he said. “Cry in front of the judge; do whatever you have to do. If you go up and get sent back down here, your life will never be the same.” Up in the courtroom, I found my lawyer waiting. My cousin Mlungisi was there, too, in the gallery, ready to post my bail if things went my way. The bailiff read out my case number, and the judge looked up at me. “How are you?” he said. I broke down. I’d been putting on this tough-guy facade for nearly a week, and I just couldn’t do it anymore. “I-I’m not fine, Your Honor. I’m not fine.” He looked confused. “What?!” I said, “I’m not fine, sir. I’m really suffering.” “Why are you telling me this?” “Because you asked how I was.” “Who asked you?” “You did. You just asked me.”

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  He granted us a long interview in which he spoke of the need for “balance” in the training of a young mind and (looking appraisingly over the top of his glasses) of the young male body. A little later he found a way of mentioning again the sound mind that should go with the sound (raised eyebrows) body. I was terrified that what all this meant was more athletics for me, and it did. But my father was pleased, more or less. He distrusted the headmaster’s English accent and melodious voice issuing from someone so obviously weak and fraudulent and American. Dad sniffed a little laugh at all the dark wood, dark sherry, crackling fire of small, evenly matched birchwood logs laid on brass andirons, the whole instant tradition of dear Eton, Anglican primroses amidst the alien corn. But even as he sniffed he nodded approval, for the pretensions were exactly what he was buying for his son, much as a cowpuncher might hire a French tutor for his children—airs fit an heir, even if distasteful to the patriarch. The headmaster philosophized about manliness over a feminine clutter of tea things, tiny pots of marmalade, eggshell-thin cups, a linen-lined basket of warm scones and a cozy embroidered on one side with an Art Deco archer kneeling nudely in Aztec profile, crossbow aimed at a five-pointed Gentile star (the archer was the school emblem, ad astra the motto). My father puffed skeptically on his smelly cigar, by now a misshapen stub black with spit, and asked for a Scotch and soda. For my father, sitting uncomfortably in that petit-point chair without arms, manliness was not discussable, but had it been, it would have included a good business suit, ambition, paying one’s bills on time, enough knowledge of baseball to hand out like tips at the barbershop, a residual but never foolhardy degree of courage, and an unbreachable reserve; to the headmaster manliness was discussed constantly, every day, and entailed tweeds, trust funds, graciousness to servants, a polite but slightly chilly relationship to God, a pretended interest in knowledge and an obsessive interest in sports, especially muddy, dangerous ones like lacrosse or hockey or rugby that ended with great sullen lads hobbling off the field to lean on sticks at the sidelines, the orange and blue vertical stripes of their jerseys clinging to panting diaphragms, bare knees scarred, blond hair brown with sweat, an apache streak of mud daubed across a wan, bellicose cheek.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  see that other grinning; I would say more; but fear he is preparing to claw my scurf.” And their great Marshal, turning to Farfarello, who rolled his eyes to strike, said: “Off with thee, villainous bird!” “If you wish to see or hear Tuscans or Lombards,” the frightened sinner then resumed, “I will make them come. But let the evil claws hold back a little, that they may not fear their vengeance; and I, sitting in this same place, for one that I am, will make seven come, on whistling as is our wont to do when any of us gets out.” Cagnazzo at these words raised his snout, shaking his head, and said: “Hear the malice he has contrived, to throw himself down!” Whereat he, who had artifices in great store, replied: “Too malicious indeed! when I contrive for my companions greater sorrow.” Alichino held in no longer, and in opposition to the others said to him: “If thou stoop, I will not follow thee at gallop, but beat my wings above the pitch; let the height be left and be the bank a screen, to see if thou alone prevailest over us.” O Reader, thou shalt hear new sport! All turned their eyes toward the other side, he first who had been most unripe for doing it.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  Staying not, it falls of itself in wondrous wise to one of the shores; there it first learns its ways. 10 Soon as it is circumscribed 11 in place there, the formative virtue radiates around, in form and quantity as in the living members; and as the air, when it is full saturate, becomes decked with divers colours through another’s rays which are reflected in it, so the neighbouring air sets itself into that form which the soul that is there fixed impresses upon it by means of its virtue; and then, like the flame which follows the fire wheresoever it moves, the spirit is followed by its new form. Inasmuch as therefrom it afterwards has it semblance, it is called a shade; and therefrom it forms the organs of every sense even to sight. By this we speak, and by this we laugh, by this we make the tears and the sighs which thou mayst have heard about the mount. The shade takes its form according as the desires and the other affections prick us, and this is the cause of that whereof thou marvellest.” And now had we come to the last turning, and had wheeled round to the right hand, and were intent on other care. There the bank flashes forth flames, and the cornice breathes a blast upward, which bends them back, and keeps them away from it; wherefore it behoved us to go on the side which was free one by one; and on this side I feared the fire, and on that I feared to fall downward. My Leader said: “Along this place the rein must be kept tight on the eyes, because lightly a false step might be taken.” “Summæ Deus clementiæ“ 12 I then heard sung in the heart of the great burning, which made me no less eager to turn aside; and I saw spirits going through the flames; wherefore I looked at them and at my steps, with divided gaze from time to time. After the end which is made to that hymn, they cried aloud: “Virum non cognosco”; 13 then softly began the hymn again. It being finished, they further cried: “Diana kept in the wood, and chased Helice forth who had felt the poison of Venus.” 14 Then turned they to their chanting; then cried they women and husbands who were chaste, as virtue and marriage require of us. And this fashion I think suffices them for all the time the fire burns them: with such treatment, and with such diet, must the last wound be healed. 1. In Purgatory it is two o’clock P.M., or later. Aries being on the Purgatory meridian at noon, the succeeding sign of Taurus holds that position at 2 P.M.; while at the same time Scorpio (the sign opposite Taurus) is on the meridian of Jerusalem, where it is consequently 2 A.M. 2. The stork, in the “Bestiaries,” is the type of obedience.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  The girl coughs and smears dog shit across her face. No reaction. Sylvia’s fingertips sting when she dips the cloth into the water. She reaches over and takes the girl’s chin in hand without pretense of being gentle or trying to explain to her in a child’s voice why what she’s done is wrong. Her knuckles pop a little from the suddenness of turning the girl’s head, but when their eyes meet, she almost gasps at the lack of surprise or discomfort. It’s more out of her own fear that Sylvia puts the hot cloth to the girl’s face and wipes at the shit. Anything to get away from the dark of her eyes, like she’s staring up out of some deep well. After a few moments, the girl fixes her eyes on the back wall in a stare so intense that Sylvia almost turns to look, but she resists. There’s nothing waiting for her back there except floral wallpaper. The towel gets most of it, leaving the girl’s cheeks and lips flushed. Sylvia holds out her hand for the rest, and the girl squeezes their palms close until they’re glued together in the brown mess. At close proximity and in the bathroom’s humid heat, the smell is more potent. The texture is like wet sand, grainy and clumped. Sylvia can feel diffuse, solid kernels of something sticking between her fingers. “Come here,” Sylvia says, and she lifts the girl up over the sink. Before she can threaten to drop her in, Sylvia feels her throw herself forward. She plunges in up to the elbow. Sylvia tries to pull her back up and out of the hot water, but the girl flails and kicks as though she is being kept from the thing she desires most in the world. When Sylvia jerks her back one solid time too many, the girl screams with such fury that the room fills with the sound of her. It’s a horrible, fierce sound. Sylvia’s legs buckle. How can one tiny human make so much noise? Take it back, take it back, take it back. Eventually, the girl vents herself empty and goes limp in Sylvia’s arms. She tilts forward like a little rag doll when Sylvia puts her on the edge of the sink, and so Sylvia has to let the girl’s face rest against her chest. She pulls the girl’s tunic up, and blots her dry. Then the girl rocks back and Sylvia catches her by the shoulders. It’s then Sylvia remembers the shit on her own shirt. She works up and shimmies out of it using one hand. She feels greasy in the humid bathroom. The girl’s eyes shift over her, widen slightly. The girl lifts her hand, the tips soggy and red, touches the bruise on Sylvia’s side. Sylvia growls. • • •

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  The tiny vessels in Simon’s eyes thickened. The circles of his pupils shrank, opened, shivered in the blue of his irises. Simon turned red and his cheeks swelled like he was holding his breath. Hartjes tracked back through the hall and down the stairs and into the living room, where the light was on. Hartjes stumbled on the foot of the stairs. The living room was the same sepia shade as the upstairs, had the same blue-and-gold wallpaper that had faded with time. The light had been off. He and Simon had climbed the stairs in darkness. It was a trick being played on him. He gripped at his head and beat the hard fat of his palms against his skull. He should never have said anything about his mother. He should never have gone up those stairs. It all felt so impossible—that his mother was dead, that he’d hurt Simon, thinking he could give him what he wanted, that he stood now under a light that he had seen Simon turn off. None of it made sense. But that was a kind of sense, too. Hartjes turned in a slow circle. Hartjes held his breath. Hartjes waited. The quiet of the house droned. It gave no answers. The light overhead did not flicker. It did not waver. It was steadfast. The faucet dripped. The candle had burned itself out. Their bowls were on the counter. Everything was as it should have been. Upstairs, there was a thud like footsteps. Hartjes went to the front door and pulled and pulled at the bolt. It would not budge. He pulled harder. It would not budge. The door itself was so thin and shabby that Hartjes felt he could have jerked it right off the hinges, but he didn’t. He kept at the bolt, pulling on it, but the bolt just rattled and spun, and when Hartjes pulled on the knob, it twisted uselessly. There was quiet upstairs. Hartjes got the door open. The cold was on him right away. He had left his coat upstairs. At his car, he looked back toward the house. Two lights, the first floor and the second, burned like one yellow column. In Simon’s window, a shadow passed back and forth as if pacing. In the cold, Hartjes watched the shadow glide across the curtain like the second hand of a clock, the persistent beat of its passage. Then both lights went out, and it was impossible to tell the shadow from the rest of the house. And overhead, the tips of the trees brushed the night sky like the wingbeats of a thousand starlings.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  Hartjes stooped low in the kitchen and tore two cans from the plastic yoke. He held them in his palm, which was wide and paler than the rest of him. He counted the containers of food, the vegetables, the soups, the stock, the meat tumescent in its plastic wrap. He saw the jars of moonshine, the bottle of wine from two weeks earlier with a plastic stopper jammed into its neck, and gelatinous cubes of gristle and fat, which Simon used for broth and for taste. The light was off, but they had left a candle going on the table. He turned in Simon’s kitchen and looked back through the house into the living room, where the furniture slept like guests and where the windows were filled with the soft white glow of distant stars. He hovered near the window by the stairs and pressed his face into the bristling curtain, inhaled its dust, and closed his eyes. There had been a time when Hartjes hated the dark. No, it wasn’t hatred. It was fear—he was scared both of what he couldn’t see and what might see him. He touched his lips to the cold glass of the window and summoned the clearest image of his mother he could bear to hold in his mind, as though he were laying her within the glass itself, passing her off to the house like a benediction.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  Hammond is probably in their apartment—no, his apartment—pulling his hair out. She left him. She waited until he went to sleep that night, then packed her things and left him. She couldn’t be with him, couldn’t lie next to him, because she sensed in him the same thing that was knocking around inside her. The same looming, wild, stalking thing that moves behind her at every turn and corner. Something furry and evil that followed her off the mountain and all the way up here, to this city full of polite, clean people. She left him—no note, just the careful packing away of her things. She left him. “Grown-ups get sick sometimes, and nobody knows why and nobody knows how to fix it,” Sylvia says. “And you try your best not to get anyone else sick.” The girl sneezes. The sound is scraping and rough in the bathroom. Sylvia tucks her hands under the girl’s armpits and lifts her out. “All clean,” she says. She wraps the girl in a towel and leads her down the hall to her bedroom. Leaving her there, Sylvia returns to the bathroom and lets the water out of the tub. She runs some water to rinse the soap down the drain. Bugs twitch on the bottom of the tub, and Sylvia picks them out one by one, along with the twigs and the pieces of leaves that have not been washed away. She flushes the black things down the toilet and goes downstairs to clean the living room. The parents will be back soon. In just a couple of hours. And then she’ll slip from this house to the next like a ghost, like a phantom in the middle of the day. As she cleans, she hears the girl upstairs, thumping around. FLESH It was the class for stragglers. Charles shucked his joggers so that he could pull yesterday’s sour tights over his underwear. He squeezed two cold drops of Visine into each eye and blinked hard as he considered the black athletic brace in his bag. But he left it because if he couldn’t get through a class, he had no business dancing at all. He was against the back wall with two of the younger male dancers, Viktor and Ben. They were about sixteen and had been homeschooled from first grade. They wore wooden crosses under their Lycra shirts and talked about vacation Bible school. Once, Charles had come into the changing room after rehearsal and found them taking pictures of each other with their tights rolled down to the tops of their hips, flexing their chests and stomachs. They were startled to see him and quickly assumed a posture of boredom, their eyes cast down.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  Her bright blue eyes. The stern teacher’s eyebrows. He saw the play of every muscle in her face, the relaxation in her jaw that suggested grief, the fleeting alleviation of pressure in the left temple. The subtle slackening of her throat. The faucet dripped. He tried to see the space as it was cleaved by each drop, the surface rippling and then going still again. He tried to breathe. Since Alek had started dance, he had lived in perpetual fear of disappointing his mother and father. His brothers were good at science, like their parents. His mother taught earth science in high school. His father was a plumber at first, then an engineer. His brothers had attended the advanced science and math magnet school. Alek had attended the elementary school, and had very few prospects of following them into the science and math school, but he was put into an after-school arts program by chance, and the teacher, always on the lookout for boy dancers, scouted him. At first, his parents had only stared in disbelief. Clumsy Sasha? Hyperactive Sasha? Unfocused, lazy Sasha? No, impossible. Yes, the teacher said. He had excellent balance, a good ear for music, for timing, rhythm. He could be a good dancer one day. Good would never have been enough for his father. If you tried your best and all you were was good, then it was time to try something else. His father believed in the optimal, and if you weren’t able to get to the highest level, then you were doing something for which you were not optimally suited. Good was an insult. Good was mediocre. And so, every lesson, Alek tried to be more than good. Every lesson, he tried to be perfect. Every position, every line, every angle, every turn, everything perfect. If he didn’t get something right, he tried harder, again and again, each time imagining himself going sharper and sharper, until he was so sharp he felt he might cut himself. It was a ferocity in him that he’d never known he possessed—a ferocity that gave him something—and for the first time, he felt his parents were proud of him, that he wasn’t just messing up. It was not an original story. Every ballet parent was a monster of ambition. Every ballet parent knew the terrible math. Only a few people got to be elite dancers. Everything else was just preparation for a time when dance would be something they used to do, a person they used to be. Starting ballet was like entering a second, more intense gravitational field. At any moment, an injury could end it all. Or the mind could snap and there you went, done, burned out, exhausted. A mass in his body meant that something had gone wrong, and if that was true, he might not be able to dance again.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  Anything to get away from the dark of her eyes, like she’s staring up out of some deep well. After a few moments, the girl fixes her eyes on the back wall in a stare so intense that Sylvia almost turns to look, but she resists. There’s nothing waiting for her back there except floral wallpaper. The towel gets most of it, leaving the girl’s cheeks and lips flushed. Sylvia holds out her hand for the rest, and the girl squeezes their palms close until they’re glued together in the brown mess. At close proximity and in the bathroom’s humid heat, the smell is more potent. The texture is like wet sand, grainy and clumped. Sylvia can feel diffuse, solid kernels of something sticking between her fingers. “Come here,” Sylvia says, and she lifts the girl up over the sink. Before she can threaten to drop her in, Sylvia feels her throw herself forward. She plunges in up to the elbow. Sylvia tries to pull her back up and out of the hot water, but the girl flails and kicks as though she is being kept from the thing she desires most in the world. When Sylvia jerks her back one solid time too many, the girl screams with such fury that the room fills with the sound of her. It’s a horrible, fierce sound. Sylvia’s legs buckle. How can one tiny human make so much noise? Take it back, take it back, take it back. Eventually, the girl vents herself empty and goes limp in Sylvia’s arms. She tilts forward like a little rag doll when Sylvia puts her on the edge of the sink, and so Sylvia has to let the girl’s face rest against her chest. She pulls the girl’s tunic up, and blots her dry. Then the girl rocks back and Sylvia catches her by the shoulders. It’s then Sylvia remembers the shit on her own shirt. She works up and shimmies out of it using one hand. She feels greasy in the humid bathroom. The girl’s eyes shift over her, widen slightly. The girl lifts her hand, the tips soggy and red, touches the bruise on Sylvia’s side. Sylvia growls. • • • In the kitchen, they all wait for the fries. The twins sit at the table with their coloring, the boy struggling to decide between red and blue to fill in the crude tree he’s drawn and the girl staring at him hatefully. Sylvia would like to go over there and color the whole thing green.

• From Escape (2007)

  I vowed to tell no one about the PTSD. No one. Everything I said to another person found its way back to Merril. I couldn’t risk him finding out I had PTSD. A plan formed. I would get my children to school and ferry them to their appointments. If we all showed up for everything, no one would get suspicious. I could cook and clean in five-minute intervals, then rest. I picked up my car key from the floor and turned on the ignition. It took several tries. I took a few more breaths and started the car. As soon as I got home I started my five-minute plan. Cook for five minutes. Rest. Clean for five minutes. Stop. It was slow going, but when I went to bed that night I felt I had at least tried. PTSD was a reality I could face five minutes at a time. But another reality slammed into me hard and fast: I was out of money. I learned that the Section 8 vouchers I needed for housing costs were now on an eighteen-month hold because of limited funding. I was out of cash. The money I had saved while I was living at Dan’s was gone. I knew if I went to him he would help me, but I hated asking him for everything I needed, and I didn’t want to run to him every month. I was determined to do everything possible before going to him. But I could not pay my utility bills and didn’t know what to do. One morning after I dropped my children at school, Patrick and Andrew came right back out and said there was something for me in the office. The boys stayed with Harrison while I went in. Patty, a woman in the office who always gave Merrilee lots of hugs, handed me a card and said the children’s teachers wanted to do something special for me. I thanked her and asked her to thank the teachers. I walked to the van, card in hand. Inside the card was close to two hundred dollars with a note from the teachers saying that they all admired my courage. Shaking with joy, I went right to the post office to mail my utility bill. The next hurdle was a notice from the welfare office that my case would be closed the next day unless I returned several forms to them within twenty-four hours. All the forms had to be signed and dated by someone at each of my children’s schools—all five of them.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  “He said I might have a mass.” “Might? What mass? You a Catholic now?” Alek wanted to laugh and to cry, both, simultaneously, but he just coughed into the phone. He tried to block the sound of it, but he could feel Grigori’s judgment. Snow was falling now. It clung to his eyelashes. The streetlight was staggering into life. “Yes, I guess, something like that.” “Like what?” “I don’t know, Grigori. I don’t know. I don’t know.” “So what do you want?” “I don’t know.” “Stop saying that!” Grigori shouted, but there was something more than anger or irritation in his voice this time. No, it was something worse—something like fear, which he had never seen Grigori experience. It spoke to something in him, too, spurred his own fear into life. Stop saying that! was a declaration, a desperate plea to speak it out of existence, and now Alek wanted to say it back to him, until they’d both said it back to each other and would never have to say another word again. “I’m sorry,” Alek said. “Sasha—did you tell Mom?” “No, just you.” “Just me,” Grigori said. It was the first secret they’d ever had together, just the two of them. They were standing now in a world of their own. “What do I tell her about this?” “Nothing,” Grigori said, sharply. “Absolutely nothing. You don’t know anything. We don’t know anything. It’s nothing.” “It’s nothing,” Alek said. “Do you have an appointment? What’s happening next?” “I have a scan,” Alek said. “Just to see. A biopsy. To confirm. That it’s nothing.” “Okay, sounds good. Do you want me to come?” “Excuse me?” “Hello, Space Cadet Sasha, do you want me to come?” Alek held the phone out from himself and regarded it. It had never occurred to him that his brother might want to come and be with him, to be in any way involved. He had never considered that possibility, and now, faced with it, he didn’t know what to do with it. “You don’t have to.” “I know—but do you want me to? I can. It must be scary.” There was a gentleness in his voice then, a gathering calm, and he didn’t seem like Alek’s brother at all. “It’s not like I’m dying,” Alek said, and Grigori seemed to relax. “Yeah. You’re not. It’s fine. You’re fine. But if you need . . . well, you know. It’s fine.” “It’s fine,” Alek said. There was a silence over the line, but Alek found it comforting. There was a time when he might not have, when silence would have meant being frozen out, lined up for trouble. But tonight, on the street, in the snow, it was enough. It was enough. It was enough. “Okay, Sasha. Okay. Good night,” Grigori said. “Good night,” Alek said.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  Milton follows him through the veil of gray night, down the grassy hill. “What are you talking about?” “You know what I’m talking about,” Abe says, even as he’s reaching for Milton’s pants to undo them. Milton grabs Abe’s thick wrists, stills him. “What is it you think I know?” “Oh, you have to know,” Abe says. “About Nolan and those girls and me. He had to have told you.” “No,” Milton says, his mouth dry. “I don’t know anything about it.” Abe grips him through his pants, and he’s hard, against his will, he’s hard. Abe starts to pump his dick through his jeans, and he smirks. “Well, last week, he says, hey, bud, I got this girl. She and her friend are a couple of freaks, do you want to come over? I say, yes. I come over. They’re already naked, going at it, licking each other all over like a bunch of cats.” “You’re lying,” Milton says. Abe guffaws, soft and deep. He pushes open Milton’s jeans and grips his bare cock. Abe’s hand is warm and rough. “I’m not. One of the girls gets real antsy about it. Nolan’s already poking around inside of her, and she’s like, no, you gotta stop, you gotta stop. And Nolan is like, let me finish, and I’ll stop.” Abe is pumping him harder and faster, rough. It hurts, but it also feels good, and it’s that first time that someone has wanted to touch him, has seemed to need it the way Abe does. His eyes are hungry and wet. “So he’s like, no, I’m gonna finish, and she’s whining and crying, and I’m like, shut that bitch up, I’m losing my hard-on, and her friend is like, no, no please, let us go home, and I’m like, shit, man, it’s not worth it.” Milton pulls away from Abe, but Abe has gripped the back of his neck and kisses him now, hard. He pulls away again, and this time, Abe has had it, pushes him up against the hill, leans in and growls. “What’s your problem, man? You want this or not? They’re gonna be here any minute.” “Want what?” Milton asks, and then, looking down, remembers his cock and how hard it is, and how damp. But there is also the hellish image of those girls in that room, trapped with them, wanting nothing but to go home, to be anywhere but there. “I don’t want anything.” “Then do mine,” he says, pushing his hips forward. “Come on, it’s almost there anyway.” “No,” Milton says. “Come on.”

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  Durkee calling after her, “Christina—stay inside. Christina!” She flew down the two flights of stairs, then used the white marble steps from the first floor to the street, steps the students were not allowed to use. Outside, she rounded the corner of South and Williamson streets and raced toward the flames, toward Mrs. O’Malley’s house, where Jack rented a room on the second floor. MiriKate Smith hadn’t even sung “God Bless America” when the program was interrupted by an announcement, an announcement so horrible it left her and Natalie immobile. A second plane had crashed in Elizabeth, this time near Battin High School. Before they had time to digest what they’d just heard, the sound of a long, low wail came from the kitchen. Without a word the two girls were on their feet, racing down the stairs. They found Mrs. Barnes doubled over, holding on to the kitchen counter. “No…please, God, no!” Natalie pulled open the door to the finished basement, closed it behind her and disappeared. Miri grabbed a plastic glass from the counter, filled it with water and tried to give it to Mrs. Barnes, but Mrs. Barnes, who had always seemed so in control, so calm, no matter what, knocked it away. The deep voice on the radio continued. “An American Airlines Convair, en route to Newark Airport from Buffalo, with stops in Rochester and Syracuse, has crashed and exploded…” Now Mrs. Barnes screamed, fell to the floor, banging her fists, pulling at her own hair. Fern squatted beside her. “Barnesy…stop, please stop.” Miri had never heard Fern or anyone else call her Barnesy. Mrs. Barnes didn’t let up. She wailed, “Tim…Timmy!” “Barnesy!” Fern cried. “Barnesy, you’re scaring me.” Miri didn’t know what to do so she picked up the phone and dialed Dr. O’s office. When Daisy answered, Miri cried it was Mrs. Barnes’s son flying that plane and Mrs. Barnes was on the floor and wouldn’t get up. Daisy told her to stay with Mrs. Barnes, not to leave her for a second, and she and Dr. O were on their way. Miri knew from health class when someone was in shock you should keep them warm, so she sent Fern upstairs to get a blanket, then, as an afterthought, a pillow, too. Fern came back with a pillow and quilt from Natalie’s room and Miri draped it over Mrs. Barnes, who had gone quiet and white as a ghost, lying on her back on the floor. Miri slid the pillow under Mrs. Barnes’s head. Her eyes were open, staring at the ceiling. Miri wondered if she was in shock or if it was something worse. Fern sat close to Mrs. Barnes, stroking her hand. “Barnesy, I need you to take care of me. Roy Rabbit needs you.” She nuzzled Mrs. Barnes with her toy rabbit. But Mrs. Barnes didn’t respond. LauraLaura heard the explosions but it was the general fire alarm that filled her with dread.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  Enid says. Big Davis grunts. “Don’t get smart with me,” he says, and though there is some playfulness to it, there is also danger. It’s the edge of a temper that in Grace’s father turned violent and evil. All those nights, Grace and her brother squeezed together into the kitchen cupboard while their parents screamed and broke things upstairs. All those nights of noise and tumult, banging doors and raised voices. The room vibrates with the quiet that comes after Big Davis’s voice, so much like her father’s that she sees her mother flinch a little. She goes whiter. But then thunder cracks over their heads, releasing them. “Gracie bug, we better go,” she says. “Don’t call me that,” Grace says with more resolve than she feels. Her arms betray her, shake when she goes to push up from the chair. They both reach for her, and it is worse than the stupid name, that they expect so little from her, that she can expect so little from herself. She pulls away, feels the obscure tubing of her port shift inside her. “Baby, rest a minute,” Enid says. “Y’all don’t have to rush off,” Big Davis says. “You can stay. Eat at least. I know you hate driving in the rain anyway.” Enid frowns at this. Grace folds her arms across her stomach and watches the calculation behind her eyes. It is true that Enid is wary of water on the roads. She has a pathological fear of being swept away in unseen floodwater, drowning in her car. Years ago, at the height of her terror, she had refused to drive across any bridge, fearing that it would give way and plunge them to their deaths. Junior used to make fun of her for it. One Christmas, Enid had been driving them home from dinner at Big Davis and Mama Lil’s house. Junior, drunk, high, reached over and snatched the wheel just as they crossed the bridge, and the car, with Davis and Grace drowsy in the back, swerved. For a terrifying few seconds, they were free of gravity. The whole of the car seemed to lift and turn easily, swiftly, with more speed and force than seemed possible, and they all held their breath, waiting. Then the wheels found the road again with a solid jerk and squeal. Junior’s laughter broke out in the car, loud, calamitous. Enid wept the rest of the way home. He kept asking, “What you so sad for, baby? It’s Christmas.” “We don’t want to put you out,” Enid says. “You ain’t, I got plenty. I planned for Grace anyway. We didn’t know when you’d be coming by.” “I said after my shift.” “Well, but who knows—” “I’ve never been late to get her.” They go back and forth this way, Big Davis bored, pragmatic, cruel. Enid grows redder the more they haggle over her soul.

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  I can’t get her to shut up or to release my hand. Now she’s grabbed a pillow and stuffed it in my face. “Whatsa matter, can’t you take it, can’t you take it, play with your poop,” she’s chanting. I turn my head to breathe but she’s right there, applying the pillow to my face in this new position. Her terrible words continue, though the pillow muffles the sound. She’s planted a knee in my chest to hold me down. Terrified of suffocating, I push her off in a frantic burst of energy. I grab the nail scissors and stab her in the hand. Blood leaps out. I drop the scissors; they fall to the floor. I’m aghast, an Indian hopping around on one foot with horror, hooting a little war hoot of anguish: “Oh! Oh! Oh!” But she is transformed into a scientist, a doctor. She watches the blood pulse, pool in her palm, finally coagulate. “Neat,” she whispers with awe. By the time our mother returns, I’m exhausted by my tears of repentance. I’ve been sobbing on the bed, sobbing and sobbing with guilt and fear of punishment. When I hear the door click, I look up. “It was an accident!” I shout. “I hurt her, but it was an accident.” “Oh no, what now! What’s going on here?” Mother shouts, throwing her packages on the foot of the bed. My sister alone seems calm. She has bandaged her hand and pinned back her hair and donned a fresh nightgown. She’s sitting peacefully under a lamp, reading. She’s proud of her wound; it’s made her important. “My baby!” my mother shouts, rushing to my sister’s side. The wound is unbound and revealed. I can tell my mother is confused, since ordinarily I’m the one who’s tormented by my sister. I’m ordinarily the sweet soul, too good for this world, too kind for my own good, too gentle, a little lamb. To discover the wolf cub in lamb’s skin doesn’t suit my mother’s preconceptions, the story of our lives she’s telling herself. She sits on the edge of the bed, magisterial, coldly rational, suffering disappointment but resolved to appear fair. “Start at the beginning. Tell me everything that happened.” My sister and I compete, we try to outshout each other (“You did, I did not, Yes, you did”). Mother opens a bottle of bourbon and calls room service, ordering ice and seltzer water.

• From A Boy's Own Story (1982)

  What mysterious ignorance leaked out of Charles’s words to poison them and render them worthless, inedible? For Charles, like me, haunted the library; I watched his shelf of books in the basement rotate. And Charles was a high deacon of his church, the wizard of his tribe; when he died his splendid robes overflowed his casket. That his nonsense made perfect sense to me alarmed me—was I, like Charles, eating the tripe of knowledge while Dad sat down to the steak? I suppose I never wondered where Blanche or Charles went at night; when it was convenient to do so, I still thought of the world as a well-arranged place where people did work that suited them and lived in houses appropriate to their tastes and needs. But once Blanche called us in the middle of an August night and my father, stepmother and I rushed to her aid. In the big Cadillac we breasted our way into unknown streets through the crowds of naked children playing in the tumult of water liberated from a fireplug (“Stop that!” I shouted silently at them, outraged and frightened. “That’s illegal!”). Past the stoops crowded with grownups playing cards and drinking wine. In one glaring doorway a woman stood, holding her diapered baby against her, a look of stoic indignation on her young face, a face one could imagine squeezing out tears without ever changing expression or softening the wide, fierce eyes, set jaw, everted lower lip. The smell of something delicious—charred meat, maybe, and maybe burning honey—filled the air. “Roll up your windows, for Chrissake, and lock the doors,” my father shouted at us. “Dammit, use your heads—don’t you know this place is dangerous as hell!” A bright miner’s lamp, glass globe containing a white fire devoid of blues and yellows, dangled from the roof of a vendor’s cart; he was selling food of some sort to children. Even through the closed windows I could hear the babble of festive, delirious radios. A seven-foot skinny man in spats, shades, an electric-green shantung suit and a flat-brimmed white beaver hat with a matching green band strolled in front of our car and patted our fender with elaborate mockery. “I’ll kill the bastard,” Dad shouted. “I swear I’ll kill that goddamn ape if he scratches my fender.” “Oh-h-h …” my stepmother sang on a high note I’d never heard before. “You’ll get us all killed. Honey, my heart.” The man, who my father told us was a “pimp” (whatever that might be), bowed to unheard applause, pulled his hat down over one eye like a Parisian and ambled on, letting us pass.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  Instead, she turns the whole of her concentration toward the presence in the corner. It reaches back toward her, as if it were using her concentration to pull itself hand over hand in her direction. A sensation, heavy, dragging up the length of her leg, the quilt rumpling under this unseen force. She forces her eyes open with all her willpower. What is this, what is this, what is this, she chants to herself. The presence has always been amorphous. Her tongue is stuck to the roof her mouth, her throat full of static fuzz. She floats beneath the surface of her skin, staring at the ceiling, the white globe of the lamp overhead. The door creaks open. There is a change in the shape of the darkness as it lightens fractionally, insignificantly, but perceptibly, if only just so. There is another presence now, coming on from the distance, coming across the void toward her. She swallows thickly. Something is reaching for her, and there, suddenly, contact. Warmth like a human hand. MEAT THEY WERE LYING IN LIONEL’S BED AGAIN, FACING EACH OTHER. “Where are you from?” Lionel asked, and then, because the question seemed too personal, even though they had just fucked, he said, “Not that you have to tell me.” “Bangor,” Charles said. “Maine.” “What’s it like there?” “Cold. Wet. Empty,” he said. “It’s kind of a bleak place.” “That seems dramatic.” Charles didn’t say anything after that, and Lionel was afraid that he had been too sharp. He put his hand on Charles’s chest and moved closer to him beneath the blanket. The bed’s complaint under his shifting weight drew his attention to the fact that he was yet again sharing this lumpy mattress with another person. So remarkable was the thought that he could not hold it still, and it slipped down out of his awareness. It was just as well. “Sorry,” Lionel said. “What are you sorry for?” “You got quiet.” “If I’m quiet, I’m quiet.” “Okay,” Lionel said, “sorry for being sorry.” Charles flicked the bruise on Lionel’s cheek with the same casual gesture he’d used to spin his fork around last night. Lionel could still feel the indentations of Charles’s teeth. The skin was swollen and a little tender from the hickey. But it was nothing, really. By morning it would be gone. It seemed sad that it would fade or that things had to end. When he was a child, that had depressed him. When his mother read him stories, he’d bawl at the end even if the little duck found its way back to its mother or the bears and the girl became friends or green eggs and ham were eaten. It didn’t matter if the story had a happy ending or if things turned out okay and all the scary things were put away.

• From In the Unlikely Event (2015)

  They were knocked down by the force, Rusty covering Miri’s body with her own, trying to protect her. When Miri opened her eyes she saw feet, dozens of feet, and at first she was so disoriented she didn’t know where she was. She couldn’t hear anything. There was a ringing in her ears. From every direction people were running toward the flames that were shooting up, toward the thing that had crashed and was burning in the frozen bed of the Elizabeth River. Rusty helped Miri to her feet. “Go home and tell Nana we’re okay,” she shouted. “Hurry!” Rusty gave her a gentle shove. “Go, Miri!” She ran for home. Her feet were numb in her saddle shoes. Snot ran down her face and froze on her upper lip, on her chin, as she rounded the corner of Sayre Street and raced up the front steps. “Nana,” she called, bursting into the house. “Nana, where are you? Nana!” she shouted. “Nana!” She found her under the dining room table. “A bomb?” Irene asked. “No,” Miri told her. “Something crashed in the river. They say it’s a plane.” Irene clutched her chest. Miri grabbed her pills from the kitchen counter. Irene put one under her tongue. “Rusty?” she asked. “She’s okay.” “Thank god.” “I have to go back,” Miri said. “Over my dead body!” Irene told her. “Nana, please…I have to help!” Irene came out from under the table. “Not without me.” She pulled galoshes over her shoes. Miri helped her into her coat, all the time arguing, “It’s too cold for you, Nana.” Cold wasn’t good for Irene’s angina. But Irene wouldn’t listen. She wrapped a wool scarf over her mouth and nose so the wind wouldn’t take her breath away. Outside, Miri held her arm, afraid Irene would slip and fall on the snow that had turned to ice from Friday’s snowstorm. When they got to the crash site, Irene looked around and gave one cry. Her hand went to her heart. Miri shouldn’t have let her come. She was afraid to let go of Irene’s arm, afraid someone would knock her over. She didn’t see Rusty anywhere. But she recognized Rabbi Halberstadter standing with a couple of priests, all of them stomping their feet in the cold. And then Uncle Henry saw them and ordered Miri to take Irene home. “Now!” he barked, and Miri wasn’t about to argue with him. HenryHe’d had to elbow his way through the crowd to where the plane lay on its back in the Elizabeth River, belly ripped open, rubble spilling into the frozen stream and onto the banks. The river was a mass of roaring flames shooting a hundred feet into the air and surrounding the mangled wreckage, one wing pointing straight up. Firemen, policemen and other rescue workers swarmed to the scene, armed with cutting torches, grappling hooks, blankets, stretchers and bags.

• From Escape (2007)

  The next time Merril had visitation, he didn’t bring the children back. I called my attorney on Sunday night, and she called Rod Parker. He said Merril was too sick to drive. I knew this was a game. I was also told my father was too busy. When I called him he said he couldn’t bring the kids back that week and he was sorry. I didn’t believe him, but I let it go. The next day I called the schools and explained why my children were absent. My van wasn’t in good enough shape to make the trip. Mitzi said she and her husband would drive down to Colorado City. I couldn’t thank her enough. Merril went nuts when he found out Mitzi would be driving his children back to Salt Lake. I had called his bluff. Moments later, my father called. He said he’d drop everything and drive the children back. I told him to forget it. Merril had already broken the court order by not returning the kids on Sunday, so I’d made arrangements for their safe return. Merril’s family went ballistic. No one knew who Mitzi was, and they tried to claim they had no way of knowing if the children would be safe with her. My father returned with the children after all. Mitzi and her husband had made the six-hundred-mile round-trip for nothing. But Merril never tried this trick again. Word found its way back to me that Merril had married five more wives since I’d left. Each had been married to someone else until Warren Jeffs had ordered her to marry Merril Jessop. I knew that some of the families who had joined Merril’s had a history of physical and sexual abuse among their children. I told my attorney that I didn’t feel safe sending Merrilee into that environment. She was too young and too vulnerable. I feared she’d be molested by one of the older boys that were now part of her “family.” We moved to get the case back into court as soon as possible. Lisa agreed with me that the situation for Merrilee was too dangerous. My children’s therapists were frustrated by Merril’s behavior. They were trying to help them heal, but after every visit to Colorado City they came back injured and lost ground. The violence was always reported to Merril’s attorney. Rodney Parker began pushing to keep the case out of court and got three postponements. When he tried for a fourth, my attorney objected and stood her ground. A date was set. Parker said he had a conflict, and another conference call was scheduled among the lawyers and judge. But Parker wasn’t in his office, so the judge said the date would stand: June 24, 2004.