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 Etched in Sand (2013)

  I’m afraid to look at her so I don’t, but I tell her through my tears, “Thank you for my Big Wheel present.” Mama says it’s time to go. She shakes Christmas Mama’s hand and tells her to take care of her little gifts. After we all get fast big hugs from Mama and Susan, they hurry down the stairs and disappear. This visit feels different than the other Christmas visit did. I want Mama and Susan back, and I start to yell for them. Christmas Mama shushes me and takes us into a room with two little beds. My cries turn into a piercing wail. “Mama! Mama! Mama! ” Then it lands on my right cheek: a sharp front-handed slap. My head jerks toward my left shoulder but is jolted back with a backhanded slap to my left cheek that knocks me to the floor. “Stop crying or else I’ll really give you something to cry about, you little bitch!” she howls. “I’m Mom. You got that? I’m Mom.” No, no, no. I look at Cherie and Camille. “This is our mom,” Cherie tells me. She looks sad. “Listen to your big sister, you little whore. She’s right. You came from me, see this? From this belly. I’m your mom.” No. No. No. I don’t want her for my mom. “I want Papa.” “Oh, you want your father?” Christmas Mama says. “Well, he didn’t want you, and it’s no wonder, you goddamn little waste of skin. And he didn’t want me, either, so you just shut the fuck up about any papa . You got that? You do not want to get me started on that man, the arrogant, self-absorbed piece of shit.” I almost cry again but Camille runs and puts her arm around my shoulders. Christmas Mama commands her and Cherie to go outside and bring up all our stuff. “I’ll deal with this bastard,” she says. She looks mad at me, and I want to cry again. I haven’t done anything bad. Mama and Susan never yelled at me this way. Cherie and Camille stand in the door, staring with fear in their eyes. “You two go, goddammit!” she screams. When they run for the stairs, Christmas Mama tells me that she wishes I was dead, that I should have never been born. Then she bends over and grabs my right arm to yank me upright. She slaps both my cheeks again, then slams the door and locks it behind her. I’m locked in that room for days. I’m only allowed out for potty, baths, and to eat. If I start crying, my sisters come running in and beg me to stop. They lead me in counting. We count. They leave. I sleep. I wake, and I sit there bored. I count. I count. I cry. They come back. I count. The room is hot, so I take my clothes off to try and get cool.

• From Etched in Sand (2013)

  “You wanna tell the rules or me?” Mrs. Callahan said to her daughter, who had yet to close her gaping mouth. “You,” Becky said. “Fine. Rule One: all foster things in the bunkroom at eight p.m. with lights out.” Becky smiled at the words foster things, and I wondered if she’d replace rent- a-kid with that. “Rule Two,” Mrs. Callahan continued. “The bunkroom door stays locked from eight until six the next morning. Rule Three: if you have to go to the bathroom after eight, you use the bucket.” Mrs. Callahan nodded at Becky, who smiled and rushed to the closet. She slid open the door and pointed up and down with her thick arm at the blue plastic bucket. “Can I tell ’em about bucket duty?” Becky grinned. “Yup. Make it quick,” Mrs. Callahan said. “You gotta carry the bucket downstairs,” Becky’s voice swung up as if this were a question, “and you can’t spill it or you’ll get in trouble. And then you take it in the backyard and you dump it into the poop hole.” Now she was really smiling. As if the word poop brought her particular pleasure. “Rule Four,” Mrs. Callahan continued. “You can’t use the bathroom more than three times a day. This ain’t no toilet paper factory. And when you use toilet paper, don’t use more than three squares for number one and six squares for number two.” I was wondering how she would know how many squares anyone used when Mrs. Callahan said, “Becky will know if you use too much and she’ll tell me.” “Obviously,” Norm whispered, so quietly that I felt the words more than I heard them. Norm and I spent the remainder of the afternoon on our bunk bed: Norm on top, me on the bottom. We were told the other kids had after-school activities and wouldn’t be home until late. Staying away from Becky and Mrs. Callahan seemed like a wise idea, so Norm and I planned to sign up for as many after- school activities as we could the following day. Around five, Mrs. Callahan showed up in the doorway. Becky, her slumpy, open-mouthed shadow, hovered nearby. Behind them was a row of four kids varying in height from bigger than Camille and Gi to smaller than me. I quickly did the math: eight beds, six kids big and small. There was room for Gi and

• From Etched in Sand (2013)

  “Slide your feet into the stirrups, please,” she says, and I feel the blood rush from my face when the doctor walks in the door. After barely an introduction I feel the heat of his examining light between my legs, and my body clenches with the touch of his medical instruments. Suddenly I’m back in that foster home seven years ago, on the winter night when my sisters were locked out in the cold and Norm was banging on the door. “Let my sister go!” he’d screamed. This doesn’t feel much different. I feel violated, isolated, and quite certain that this makes it official: I never want to allow a boy to touch me again. It seems like no one besides Camille will give me a straight talk about womanhood, although some adults do seem to care enough to fumble through a few tidbits. On the last day of freshman year, I go home with my friend Sheryl, whose mom takes us to the park at the Wood Road School. I catch her eyeing my orange tank top before she says, “Girls, this is probably a good time to bring this up, and I’m only going to say it once: Never sit on the same swing with a boy.” Sheryl and I look at each other bewildered. “Mom, why?” she asks. “Because there are two swings: one for each of you. So you can swing, and he can swing, and you can even swing at the same time . . . but separately, you see. Never together.” We break into a fit of laughter. “Mom,” Sheryl says. “What about the teeter-totter?” “Girls, I’m serious: There will be no bumping on the swings.” “Thank you very much for that informative birds and bees talk, Mrs. Z,” I say, and Sheryl and I run for the swings, wrapping our arms around our shoulders with our imaginary swing-bumping boyfriends. That summer, Cherie is tied up with the baby. Camille’s still at the Petermans’ but often working twelve hours a day. I spend my days babysitting the kids on Addie’s street or with Sheryl and Tracey, taking the nine A.M. bus to Smith Point Beach and hopping the five P.M . bus home. We buzz about the thought of entering tenth grade and trying out for gymnastics. Secretly, I’m also excited because it’s the first time I’ll start the school year with a close-knit group of friends and a wardrobe I’m actually not embarrassed to wear. The first week of school I’m dumbstruck when the gymnastics coach reads my name off the list of girls who made the cut. “Coach,” I say, while the other girls are busy in huddled squeals. “I couldn’t even take a stab at the bars.” “Your upper body needs some strengthening, but your legs are cut and you’re strong on the beam.

• From Etched in Sand (2013)

  “Obviously,” Norm whispered. Becky didn’t seem to hear and galumphed away and then up the stairs, her feet slapping each step heavily. Norm and I followed quietly. We stopped outside a bathroom with brown and yellow tiles, a sliding shower door, and a toilet that was missing the lid. Norm and I looked at each other, holding back our smiles. We’d had far worse. In fact, as far as bathrooms went, this was one of the better ones. “Bathroom. Obviously.” This time Becky dragged out the word. As if the bathroom were even more obvious than the other rooms. “You and the other rent-a-kids have to keep it clean and you’re only allowed to use it in the day.” “What if we have to go at night?” Norm asked. “Hold it in,” Becky said. “Obviously,” Norm said. “Or use the bucket.” A jagged little smile slipped across Becky’s mouth. “Bucket?” Norm laughed, and I giggled. “You’re not gonna laugh when the door is locked and you hafta smell that bucket,” Becky said. We followed Becky down the hall to a wood-paneled room with four sets of bunk beds and a single bulb hanging from the ceiling. The switch for the light was in the hallway, outside the room. Becky turned it on. “Bunkroom. Obviously.” Becky pointed to the small stretch of wall where there was no bed. “Sit there an’ wait for my mom.” Norman and I did as we were told. We both kept our eyes on Becky, all curved and splatty in the doorway. After a couple of seconds she turned her head and shouted into the hallway, “MA! I’M DONE WITH THE TOUR!” Mrs. Callahan showed up, and Becky stepped further into the room. “I don’t want no trouble outta you two, you hear?” Mrs. Callahan said. Norm and I both nodded. “You do everything we say, and we’ll all get along fine. And don’t think you can be sneakin’ around behind my back ’cause I got eyes and ears all over this house.” I thought of floating eyes and detached ears bobbing against the ceiling like forgotten party balloons. “And Becky here”—Mrs. Callahan pointed at Becky, who stared at her mother with open-mouthed wonder—“sees everything. There ain’t nothin’ that gets by her. You got it?” “Yes,” Norm said, and he nudged me until I said yes too.

• From Etched in Sand (2013)

  BY MID -AUGUST, IT’S been six weeks since we’ve seen Cookie, and one afternoon Rosie and Norm are playing down the road when the landlord comes knocking. What would Amelia do? What would Camille do? Instantly I hide in the kitchen, ready to run out the back if he comes through the front. He knocks loudly once, twice, then three times. I hold my breath in anticipation of the sound of the doorknob turning. When all I hear is the buzz of the refrigerator, I peer around the corner to see if he’s still standing there. He’s not, but his truck is still perched in the driveway. Unfortunately, I straighten just in time to see him walk past the kitchen window, catching his eye as he catches mine. Shoot! I freeze. His face is creased and round, and what’s left of his white hair looks iridescent in the afternoon sun. I steady myself against the wall, bracing for an angry expression, but instead, concern has taken over his face. He motions for me to open the door. I debate it for a second. Then, having no choice, I turn the knob. “Your mother here?” he asks. “No,” I tell him. “She’s working.” “Oh, I see. She must work a lot.” “Pretty much all the time.” He frowns. “The rent is two weeks late,” he continues, as though I’d be shocked. “I’ve stopped by here a few times and haven’t seen anybody at home.” Now he’s studying me, but he makes no move to come inside. I’m blocking the door with my hip, leaving it only slightly ajar. I feel half naked in my striped tube top and cutoff jean shorts. Aware that he appears in no hurry to leave, I cross my arms over my chest to make it clear I don’t welcome any physical contact. “Everything in the house work okay?” he asks, peering behind me. “Yeah.” I peek over my shoulder and nod at him. “No sweat.” Something tells me this man won’t be easy to fool. Great. I’ll have to be on the lookout for social services from now on. “Okay then,” he says, starting down the back steps. “Good. Well, tell your mother I stopped by.” I don’t say anything, so he turns and walks toward the side of the house. Just before he’s out of sight, I call after him. “She works late.” He turns to face me again. “I noticed the oil tank is empty. Anybody been around lately to fill it?” “I’m not sure, but we don’t need it. It’s summer. It’s not a big deal.” After he rounds the corner, I close the door. Then I sit down with my back against it, sighing in relief as his truck pulls away. The next afternoon, when we return from the library, Norman heads out with his new neighborhood friends to play with someone’s skateboard. “Hey, Gi?” he yells.

• From Etched in Sand (2013)

  If she comes home to Rosie crying or to a cold dinner on the table, or a front yard that hasn’t been properly cut with our dull scissors, then the drinking turns into beatings. The new house gets broken in by my body as it makes dents and holes through the paneling and Sheetrock walls. I avoid her because I never know when she’ll feel like grabbing me by the back of the head and slamming my face into the table, causing relentless nosebleeds. I begin to run away again, hiding in the woods near my school or up in trees where no one can find me. Sometimes I disappear overnight, and at lunchtime the next day I tell my teacher I’m walking home for lunch. Then I head straight for the woods to search out safer hiding spaces. When I find them, I stash books wrapped in plastic bags there for me to read when I arrive later. When I’ve finished a book faster than I’d anticipated, I pass the time spelling antidisestablishmentarianism , the longest word in the dictionary. My goal is to get all the letters in under seven seconds. Then I shorten it to six seconds, then five, and when I conquer that, my mind begins to ponder how else I can keep it busy. Every few weeks Mom brings my siblings and me with her to her mandated psychiatrist visit. When we were in foster care, she spent time in what she called the loony bin—Pilgrim State Hospital. They only discharged her on account that she was good about taking what she calls her “happy pills,” and because she agreed to fulfill regular visits with a psychiatrist that would include a few visits with us kids. Before we walked into his office for the first time, Mom bent down and wrapped her hand around my arm so tight her fingernails dug tiny pink half-moons into my skin. “So help me Christ, if you blow it, Regina . . . He reads body language for a living. Lie good.” “About what?” “You know about what—about the little tiffs you and I have sometimes.” She leans in so I’m breathing the cigarettes from her breath. “Or else, you know, Regina. You know what will happen next.” I knew: The state would take us away again. I sit quietly in the psychiatrist’s office, looking at my hand against the blue canvas couch and insisting with my nods and smiles that life with Cookie Calcaterra is a day at the beach. The psychiatrist seems to watch me closer than he does my siblings, and I know he knows I’m lying. People look but don’t see, why? People hear but don’t listen, why? People touch, but don’t feel, why? After I write a poem titled “Why?” my fourth-grade teacher, Ms. Muse, suddenly seems to take a special liking to me.

• From Untrue (2018)

  What looks like propriety is, from another angle, a culturally specific form of social censure, a lesson relentlessly and falsely imparted as “etiquette.” “Some girls sit like this,” other girls told me when I was an adolescent, placing their second and third fingers together tightly. “And some girls sit like this”—here they crossed their fingers. “But girls who sit like this”—they separated their second and third fingers wide—“get this”—their third finger held up in the air, obscene—“like this!”—here they snapped their fingers quickly. They were speaking the language of the plough. So are the guys who man-spread aggressively on the subway or public bus. This can feel like an assault against our personal space and our very right to be there, because it is. If we fail to remember that the legacy of the plough is that we stay inside, or minimize ourselves when out, there are always the containment strategies of street and workplace harassment, frotteurism on the subways and buses, and sexual assault. In 2012, the World Health Organization reported that among the main risk factors for a woman experiencing sexual violence, either by an intimate partner or a stranger, were living in a culture with attitudes of gender inequality and sexual purity; having or being suspected of having multiple partners; and the prevalence of ideologies of male sexual entitlement—that is, beliefs that men are “naturally” and by right more sexual than women, that they have more of a right to be out and about, and that women should stay home. If not, they will by rights be brought back into line. Beliefs of the plough.

• From Etched in Sand (2013)

  My toes wiggle inside my shoes, embarrassed to look so awful while she looks so wholesome and pretty. She looks at me crossly, then comes at me and lifts up my sweatshirt. I don’t flinch or fight her—it will only make the pain worse. There’s heartbreak in her face when she looks up from my ribs. “C’mon, Regina,” she says. “Make this the last time that you fell down the stairs, or into a stove, or out of a tree. I read your file, honey. You are almost fourteen! You can be in control soon—you know what that means, don’t you?” I know. It means I could leave my mother permanently. I’ve heard this many times before from my social workers, truant officers, guidance counselors, and other street kids. When you turn fourteen, you reach the age of reason. That means you can choose whether you want to stay with your biological parents or choose to emancipate yourself and become a ward of the state. If I opted to become a ward of the state, my mother would no longer have any control over my decisions or me. All of them—the counselors, the officers, the social workers—seemed well intentioned at first, asking if our mother hit us; if she fed us. They’d give the impression of wanting to help, but then they’d talk to Cookie, who seemed to have a sixth sense about these things and usually returned home when we were in danger of being taken away. It wasn’t hard for her to convince them that we brought the bruises on ourselves: For social services, it’s easier to keep children with their mother than deal with all the logistics, paperwork, and drama of putting kids in foster homes. And then the cycle would start all over again: Cookie would move us into a different house, using a new combination of names to delay the state in tracking us down, and things would be really bad for a while. “Regina, she’ll kill you if you stay here. Your siblings aren’t safe, either.” She pauses, watching me, then leans over and puts her arms on the counter. “If you tell me everything, we can get you away. She will do to them what she has done to you. Do you want Rosie to look like you in a few years, to feel like you feel? You owe it to them to tell the truth. Stop lying for their sakes and tell me what has been happening here.” “What if I did tell you? What would happen to the kids?” “They’ll be taken away from your mother and go to a foster home, too,” she says. “I promise you they will be kept safe.” Before I can think twice, I give in. Without Camille here to run interference, and now, faced with the idea that my silence could put my little brother and sister in danger, Ms.

• From Etched in Sand (2013)

  They ask us to stay silent, but we are five kids in a police car without our mother, and we don’t know where we are being taken. We aren’t silent. We are children. It’s mid-December and they’ve decided to put the four of us older kids in a home together so we’re not separated for the holidays—but Rosie, just a year old now, is going to another house. The foster family sets up four sleeping bags for us on the living room floor. The parents and their two teenage boys force us to lie in the sleeping bags all night and day, never moving or complaining. If we do, they close the bag around us by zipping it up over our heads, and they beat us while we’re inside of it. If we cry too loudly, the punishment turns even worse. One day the foster mom grabs me by the head and cuts off my long curls with a giant pair of scissors. When the social worker checks on us and asks what happened, she answers that I got gum all stuck in my hair so she had to cut it out. I haven’t chewed gum since the last time my sisters and I went to the Saint James General Store. One day a package of Yodels cakes goes missing. The boys force me to open my mouth so they can smell my breath, and they agree that I’m the Yodels thief. I’m beaten again, this time by them and their mom, while Cherie, Camille, and Norman are forced to watch and stay silent. If we try to defend one another, the kid getting the beating will only get it worse. One night, while I’m sleeping, I’m suddenly cold—somehow I’ve gotten out of my sleeping bag. I wake to the realization that my pajama bottoms have been removed and the two boys are looking at my private parts. I begin screaming, but by then Cherie and Camille are nowhere in sight, and Norman—despite the boys’ threats—starts kicking them and screaming for them to leave me alone. As they drag me into their room, they yell to Norman to shut up, telling him they’ll lock him outside in the freezing cold all night like they just did to my sisters. I’m alone with no one to help me. I watch the slice of light from the hallway disappear as they close their bedroom door, trapping me alone with them inside. I begin counting. BY NOW I understand what foster care means. Susan, Mama, and Papa weren’t my real family—they were people who wanted to give us a nice home after the cops found out Mom hadn’t been taking decent care of us. Now, after the bad home, the five of us are separated into three different foster families. To me, being a foster kid is a little bit like being a dog: You have no control over the kind of family who will take you.

• From Born on the Fourth of July (1976)

  A loud crack went off next to my right ear as a thirty-caliber slug tore through my right shoulder, blasted through my lung, and smashed my spinal cord to pieces. I felt that everything from my chest down was completely gone. I waited to die. I threw my hand back and felt my legs still there. I couldn’t feel them but they were still there. I was still alive. And for some reason I started believing, I started believing I might not die, I might make it out of there and live and feel and go back home again. I could hardly breathe and was taking short little sucks with the one lung I had left. The blood was rolling off my flak jacket from the hole in my shoulder and I couldn’t feel the pain in my foot anymore, I couldn’t even feel my body. I was frightened to death. I didn’t think about praying, all I could feel was cheated. All I could feel was the worthlessness of dying right here in this place at this moment for nothing.

• From Born on the Fourth of July (1976)

  I was born on the Fourth of July. I can’t feel . . .” “What religion are you?” “Catholic,” I say. “What outfit did you come from?” “What’s going on? When are you going to operate?” I say. “The doctors will operate,” he says. “Don’t worry,” he says confidently. “They are very busy and there are many wounded but they will take care of you soon.” He continues to stand almost at attention in front of me with a long clipboard in his hand, jotting down all the information he can. I cannot understand why they are taking so long to operate. There is something very wrong with me, I think, and they must operate as quickly as possible. The man with the clipboard walks out of the room. He will send the priest in soon. I lie in the room alone staring at the walls, still sucking the air, determined to live more than ever now. The priest seems to appear suddenly above my head. With his fingers he is gently touching my forehead, rubbing it slowly and softly. “How are you,” he says. “I’m fine, Father.” His face is very tired but it is not frightened. He is almost at ease, as if what he is doing he has done many times before. “I have come to give you the Last Rites, my son.” “I’m ready, Father,” I say. And he prays, rubbing oils on my face and gently placing the crucifix to my lips. “I will pray for you,” he says. “When will they operate?” I say to the priest. “I do not know,” he says. “The doctors are very busy. There are many wounded. There is not much time for anything here but trying to live. So you must try to live my son, and I will pray for you.” Soon after that I am taken to a long room where there are many doctors and nurses. They move quickly around me. They are acting very competent. “You will be fine,” says one nurse calmly. “Breathe deeply into the mask,” the doctor says. “Are you going to operate?” I ask. “Yes. Now breathe deeply into the mask.” As the darkness of the mask slowly covers my face I pray with all my being that I will live through this operation and see the light of day once again. I want to live so much. And even before I go to sleep with the blackness still swirling around my head and the numbness of sleep, I begin to fight as I have never fought before in my life. I awake to the screams of other men around me. I have made it. I think that maybe the wound is my punishment for killing the corporal and the children. That now everything is okay and the score is evened up. And now I am packed in this place with the others who have been wounded like myself, strapped onto a strange circular bed.

• From Etched in Sand (2013)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• From Etched in Sand (2013)

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

• From Born on the Fourth of July (1976)

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

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

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

• From The Swimming-Pool Library (1988)

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