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 Escape (2007)

  First grade was the only year I didn’t have a violent teacher. It was not until I was in the upper grades that teachers stopped using violence. In the lower school it happened all the time, except in first grade. Most families controlled their children with scripture and a whip. This philosophy extended into the classrooms, too. I saw teachers beat students with yardsticks until they broke the yardstick. It wasn’t uncommon during a school assembly for the principal to kick and slap students around onstage for the entire school to witness. He did this to terrify students so that no one would ever want to be sent to the principal’s office. When he singled out a student, he chose one whose parents he knew wouldn’t complain. It was common practice at school to make an example of one student so others would comply. Whenever we walked in lines there would be an adult assigned to monitor us with a yardstick. Anyone who misbehaved in the slightest would be cracked on the head. Control mattered more than academics in the classroom. Brutality toward children was the norm within the community, but there were different levels of tolerance among families about the level of violence that was acceptable. But families would never judge one another. Even if a family knew there was severe abuse going on in another family, no one intervened. This was part of the religious doctrine that said no man had the right to interfere with another man’s family. We would hear stories about sexual and physical abuse in other families, but nothing was ever done to stop it. As a community, the feeling was that the outside world was our enemy. Its laws and rules did not apply to us in any way. There was no way that someone in the FLDS would report abuse that they’d witnessed or suspected to the authorities for investigation. Anyone who did that would have been seen as a traitor to the entire community. Many of the teachers at school were nonviolent and would never hit a child. But there were enough violent ones to make me always feel unsafe at school. But I did love learning. No matter how frightened I was by the possibility of what could happen, my fears never overrode my desire for knowledge.

• From Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture (2018)

  Though she was eventually freed from detention and sought asylum, she remained traumatized by the abuse endured at the gates of refuge. “I left one problem in my home country and encountered another one here,” she testified. “I felt afraid of everyone on the street, men and women, especially if they came near me or touched me . . . I cried at night and had a hard time falling asleep. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw him.” The “border management” regime in Australia, too, has given rise to a miniature colony in the isolated offshore detention site of Nauru, a tiny atoll where several hundred “boat people,” including scores of children, have been dumped. The facility is largely kept out of public view, but thousands of recently leaked internal staff reports going back to 2013 include accounts of sexual assault and attacks on children and reveal layers of complicity threaded through the humanitarian bureaucracy. According to a 2015 Guardian report, several detained children reported being molested by security guards. But their documented complaints were apparently quietly downgraded to less serious violations. A young Iranian woman was found traumatized, bitten, and bruised outside the facility in May 2015. Then came two suicide attempts—first the victim, then her mother, who was isolated in detention while her daughter was hospitalized. A Somali detainee who reported she had become pregnant from rape sought an abortion but was initially blocked from traveling to Australia for the hospital procedure. Meanwhile, despite public outcry, officials have stalled on prosecuting abuse cases or reforming detention policy. But the conservative Australian government’s years of silence on Nauru don’t just reflect embarrassment or incompetence. Systemic silence was what the government had budgeted for all along: from 2013 to 2016, it had reportedly sunk about $10 billion into its “border protection” system, just to keep the refugees offshore. Imagining Migrants In contrast to the wall of silence around rape in migration, rape culture has entered the mainstream Western political discourse on immigration policy, albeit at a distorted angle: migrant (black, brown, or Muslim) men are stereotyped as rapists in Europe and the US, stoking fears they arrived eager to prey on the honor of “native-born” (white) women. On New Year’s Eve 2015, the festivities on the streets of the city of Cologne, Germany, were disrupted by a rash of reports of public sexual assaults against women. Police and media outlets quickly aired suspicions that Arab and North African refugee men were to blame. The allegations inflamed public fears that sexually deviant refugee youth posed a security threat in German cities. Signs scrawled with “rape-ugees” surfaced at protest rallies. Ironically, conservative pundits who have often downplayed other issues of gender-based violence then zealously decried the “rape culture” supposedly inherent in Muslim societies. The media frenzy paralleled Donald Trump’s scaremongering on the 2016 campaign trail about Mexican “rapists” streaming across the border. Some lambasted liberals for softening their vigilance toward migrants due to naive “political correctness.”

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  But when we came into the first street, the torch whereunto we trusted went out with a sudden gust of wind, so that with great pain we could scarce get out of this sudden darkness to our lodging, weary with our toes stumbling against the stones. And when we were wel! nigh come to the door, behold I saw three men of great stature heaving and lifting at Milo’s gates to get in. And when they saw me, they were nothing afraid, but assayed with more force to break down the doors, whereby they gave me occasion, and not without cause, to think that they were strong thieves, Whereupon I straightway drew my sword which I carried for that purpose under my cloak, and ran in amongst them, and wounded them deeply as each thrust against me, in such sort that they fell down for their many and great wounds before my feet and gave up the ghost. "Thus when I had slain them all, I knocked, sweating and breathing, at the door, till Fotis, awaked by the tumult, let me in. And then full weary with the slaughter of these three thieves, like Hercules when he fought King Geryon, I went to my chamber and laid me down to sleep. . 99 LIBER III 1 ComMopum punicantibus phaleris Aurora roseum quatiens lacertum caelum inequitabat et me securae quieti revulsum nox diei reddidit. Aestus invadit animum vesperni recordatione facinoris; complicitis denique pedibus ae palmulis in alternas digitorum vicissitudines super genua connexis sic grabatum cossim insidens ubertim flebam, iam forum et iudicia, iam sententiam, ipsum denique carnificem imagina- bundus. “An mihi quisquam tam mitis tamque benivolus iudex obtinget, qui me trinae caedis cruore perlitum et tot civium sanguine delibutum inno- centem pronuntiare poterit? | Hanc illam mihi gloriosam peregrinationem fore Chaldaeus Dio- phanes obstinate praedicabat." Haec identidem mecum replicans fortunas meas eiulabam: quati fores interdum et frequenti 2 clamore ianuae nostrae perstrepi; nec mora, cum magna irruptione patefactis aedibus magistratibus eorumque ministris et turbae miscellaneae cuncta completa statimque lictores duo de iussu magis- tratuum immissa manu trahere me sane non reni- tentem occipiunt. Ac dum primum angiportum 100 BOOK III

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  Sophie came back. She was wearing pajamas and her face was newly washed. Lionel and Charles were not speaking to each other. He had come up against the thing that felt most frustrating about this—the inability to articulate simply what he felt or what he wanted. She sat between them—lay down between them, really, her head on Charles’s lap and her feet across Lionel’s knees. She stretched. She smelled like limes. “What got up your asses?” she asked. “Nothing,” Lionel said. “That’s your favorite word, isn’t it? Nothing.” “I should go,” he said. It was not especially late. A few minutes after eight. But he had a longish trip home, and the thought of the cold air on his face and all around him was comforting. “Why?” she asked, though she was yawning. Charles said nothing. He scrolled on his phone. “Charlie? Do you have something to say about this?” “No,” Charles said. “If he wants to go, he can go.” “It’s freezing outside,” Sophie said. “It’s okay.” “He can’t walk. Tell him to stay. Use your common sense, Lionel.” Sophie turned to him. She smiled. Her eyes were warm, caring. It was a kindhearted gesture. But then, beneath it, he sensed something else. Not meanness. But something prickly and alive. “I can, it’s okay.” “I’ll drive him,” Charles said. “I’ll drive him if he wants to go.” “No, that’s not necessary. He’s staying,” she said. Lionel twisted his scarf in his hands. Charles had looked up and was making direct eye contact with Sophie. They were exchanging some form of information. But Lionel wanted to go. He felt it necessary to leave. Sophie’s head turned very slowly to Lionel. “What are you afraid of, Lionel?” “Nothing. I just want to go home,” he said. “We have been nice to you. I let you fuck Charlie, didn’t I? What’s there to be so afraid of?” Lionel felt a chill race up his spine. Sophie sat up fully then. She put her feet on the floor, but then crossed her legs elegantly. She tilted her head to the side, rested her chin on her hand. “Do you think I’ll eat you?” She snapped her teeth playfully at him. “Sophie, leave him alone,” Charles said. “You can see he’s about to piss his pants.” “Don’t make fun of me,” Lionel said. “Yeah, Charlie, don’t make fun of him.” She was still smiling when she said it. “You know the problem with you and also you,” she said, gesturing to each of them in turn, “is that you’re both selfish.” Charles stood up. He reached behind Lionel for his coat. As he was putting it on, Sophie lay back down and closed her eyes. “I made you a nice dinner, didn’t I?” “It was great,” Lionel said. “When are you going to thank me for the rest of it?” she asked, and Lionel frowned. Charles was kneeling to put on his boots. He shook his head. “I don’t know what you mean.”

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  Charles had once seen an X-ray of his foot. He had let the back of an ax drop down carelessly, and his grandfather had needed to drive him to the emergency room. The doctor said that it wasn’t broken, just bruised very badly. She showed Charles the film of his foot and said that he was lucky. Because the foot was one of the most complicated structures in the human body. They’re never quite the same. All those little bones, you see. They don’t ever heal right. And he’d marveled at the ridiculous architecture of the foot, his foot. He had seen all the little bones, the way they fit together. He was already dancing by then, but it hadn’t occurred to him until that very moment, the doctor outlining the shape of his foot with her finger, that if he hurt himself, he’d never dance again. Until that moment, he’d been content to do as he always had. Working on the tree farm to pay for his lessons and studio time. Doing handstands to make the men laugh. Suspending himself from the monkey bars at school. Running barefoot in the locker room over slick floors. The world had not seemed dangerous to him until that moment. That was the blessing of certain childhoods. The illusion of your invincibility. Your safety. Some people didn’t know the danger they were in until years later, looking back. That was a kind of blessing, too, in a way. The ignorance of your own peril. “You smell like hell,” Alek said. “You smell like—” “Something awful,” Mats completed. Their voices were complementary: Mats very low, Alek higher, a dull tenor. “Generous,” Charles said. Mats yelped briefly. Farnland turned to them. “Is there something so funny about our fundamentals?” He let his arms hang down, his head tilted to the side. His mouth was furious. “No,” Charles said, squaring up his shoulders and facing ahead. “Nothing funny at all.” “No,” the other two said. “Oh, good. I’d hate to miss out.” Charles was not as afraid of him as he had been of other ballet teachers. There was something truly terrible about that species of human. They were farsighted by nature, seeing not what you did, only what you might do or, more often, what you might do wrong. The moment you completed a gesture, they were already looking ahead to the moment you made a mistake, and it was that fear and frustration that drove them to punish you. Again and again you drilled, again and again you dipped and turned and spotted and turned out and rotated and lifted, and higher, please, higher!, until their voices were as much a part of you as your own interior static. Charles saw Farnland for what he was, though: a preening, declining old man with a mean streak. They gazed at each other then, caught in a bitter contest of wills.

• From Escape (2007)

  I had been a public school teacher and cherished literature. I had collected more than three hundred children’s books. Shortly after Jeffs took over, he decreed that all worldly material—including books—be banned from the community. My husband ordered us to comply. Our home was scoured; all literature was confiscated and destroyed, including my children’s books. It was common knowledge among us that Jeffs was marrying off younger and younger girls and taking more wives for himself. (At last count, he had seventy.) I came home once after one of Harrison’s hospitalizations and could not find my twelve-year-old daughter, Betty. My questions were ignored when I tried to find out where she was. I was upset. Someone eventually told me that she was “in compliance with her father’s wishes.” I finally learned that she and several other young girls had been invited to a sleepover at the prophet’s house. When I arrived at my sister’s house, the first call I made was to the police. There was no answer at the Arizona police station at that hour; I got their voice mail. But the Utah police answered. I asked if anyone would be willing to help a woman and her children leave the FLDS community. The police said they had no jurisdiction because even though we were just a mile or so across the border, we were legally in Arizona. It was getting close to 11 P.M. I tried calling a group that assists women fleeing polygamy. No one there could act immediately. I felt the trap closing as midnight approached. My sister and I called my brother in Salt Lake City. Arthur had left the sect four years earlier to marry the woman he loved, who was also his stepsister. When our father’s third wife moved in with us, she came with her eight children. Arthur fell in love with Thelma, one of her daughters. They were not allowed to marry even though they had no biological relationship. When the prophet at the time, who was Warren Jeffs’ father, assigned Thelma to marry someone she didn’t want, she and Arthur fled, quit the FLDS, married, and built a happy life in Salt Lake City. Arthur was home when I called. “Arthur, if I do it tonight, I can get out. Will you help me?” “Carolyn,” he said, “I’ll do everything I can to help you, but even if I leave right now, the soonest I can be there is five in the morning.” “Will you do it?” I tried not to sound as desperate as I felt. We were three hundred miles away. He would have to drive all night. “I’ll be there,” he said.

• From Escape (2007)

  I was beginning to notice other things about the world around me. One was that some of the women we’d see in the community when we went shopping were wearing dark sunglasses. I was surprised when a woman took her glasses off in the grocery store and I could see that both her eyes were blackened. I asked my mother what was wrong, but the question seemed to make her uncomfortable and she didn’t answer me. My curiosity was piqued, however, and every time I saw a woman in dark glasses, I stared at her to see if they were covering strange, mottled bruises. What I did love about my mother was her beauty. In my eyes, she was gorgeous. She dressed with pride and care. Like my father, she was tall and thin. The clothes she made for herself and my sisters and me were exquisite. She always picked the best fabrics. She knew how to make pleats and frills. I remember beaming when someone would praise my mother for her well-mannered and well-dressed children. Everyone in the community thought she was an exceptional mother. But that was the public façade. In private, my mother was depressed and volatile. She beat us almost every day. The range was anything from several small swats on the behind to a lengthy whipping with a belt. Once the beating was so bad I had bruises all over my back and my legs for more than a week. When she hit us, she accused us of always doing things to try to make her miserable. I feared her, but my fear made me a student of her behavior. I watched her closely and realized that even though she slapped us throughout the day, she never spanked us more than once a day. The morning swats were never that intense or prolonged. The real danger came in late afternoon, when she was in the depths of her sorrow. I concluded that if I got my spanking early in the morning and got it out of the way, I would basically have a free pass for the rest of the day. As soon as Mama got up, I knew I had a spanking coming. Linda and Annette quickly caught on to what I was doing, and they tried to get their spankings out of the way in the morning, too. There were several times when my mother spanked me and then screamed and screamed at me. “I’m going to give you a beating you’ll never forget! I am not going to stop beating you until you shut up and stop crying! You make me so mad! How could you be so stupid!” Even though it’s been decades, her screams still echo inside me when I think about her.

• From Escape (2007)

  There had been intense competition among his daughters to get to go to the wedding. The losers had to stay home and babysit. He sent a few of the girls to help my mother finish my wedding dress because he didn’t want to wait any longer. We traveled to Salt Lake City in a small caravan of cars on Saturday morning—less than forty-eight hours since my father had dragged me out of bed to announce my engagement. I rode in the backseat of my father’s van. At one stop, Merril got into our van and talked business with my dad for an hour or two. He never once acknowledged me. It was only much later that I would learn that I was part of a business deal, a way for Merril to get back into my father’s good graces after my father filed a lawsuit against him. But at that time, my father truly believed that the prophet, Uncle Roy, had received a revelation from God that I was to become Merril’s wife. My father was so brainwashed that he couldn’t see the obvious, and I was years away from connecting those dots myself. I was brainwashed, too. I knew I didn’t want Merril to hold my hand or touch me. I didn’t even want him to open the car door for me. But I had been conditioned enough to believe that this must be some test from God that Merril and I had to endure and pass. I had been raised in the FLDS sect and at eighteen still believed that Uncle Roy was a prophet of God. For me to reject my marriage was to reject God’s will in my life. I didn’t understand the revelation about my marriage at all. But I’d internalized a lifetime of teaching that said God’s ways are not man’s ways and that there must be a purpose to this that would be revealed in time. When we got to Salt Lake City, we checked into the Comfort Inn. My father had brought my mom and Rosie with him and reserved two rooms. When I realized there wasn’t a room for me, it hit me—I would be expected to sleep with Merril. Up until this point, I had been too overwhelmed to consider the possibility of sex. The gravity keeping my world in place was gone. I was not only a virgin but someone who had never been touched in an intimate or romantic way. I had been kissed—once—by a boy, but we both got into trouble for it and were made to feel ashamed. The idea of sexual or physical contact with a man thirty-two years my senior was terrifying.

• From Escape (2007)

  That afternoon the principal, Alvin Barlow, heard a ruckus coming from a sixth-grade classroom. He didn’t know that this was a planned party, nor did he ask. He stormed into the party and began slapping students across the room and kicking them to the ground. The students in the row closest to the door were his first targets and got the worst of his wrath. Linda watched one girl get her head slammed into her desk. The principal was halfway down the second row of students before he asked the teacher if he’d given the students permission to misbehave. The teacher lied and said he had not. He feared what the principal would do to him if he knew the party was originally his idea. This increased Barlow’s rage. Linda was so terrified she could hardly move. The principal grabbed the hair of a girl sitting in the row next to hers and slapped her face so hard she hit her head on the desk and got a bloody nose. Somehow she managed to run out the door and down the hall to her mother’s second-grade classroom. Barlow suddenly stopped. Linda said that if he hadn’t, she would have been next. Then all the students were marched down to his office and forced to listen to his sermons for several hours. He went on and on about the Short Creek raid and how many had sacrificed so these students could learn the work of God. Linda said kids were shaking and crying and had a hard time sitting still. Many of the kids from that class went home with bruises all over their bodies and black eyes. My sister was so shaken that she could barely explain to Mama what had happened. Brutalizing nearly an entire classroom of students was going too far, even within the FLDS. By late that afternoon, the principal’s office was filled with angry fathers. One man said that if the principal touched his daughter again, he’d come and beat him. The school board called an emergency meeting, and the principal was put on notice that if he ever did something like this again, he’d be fired. He was never reported to the authorities, though. If he had been, the principal could have served time in jail for assault and battery. But in our closed society, he only received a warning. He was not only a member of the FLDS; he was the son of a former prophet and the stepson of Uncle Roy. Uncle Roy protected him and told parents in the community that they should support him in the good work he was doing with their children. The principal’s status was untouchable because of his ties to the prophet. Anyone who reported him would have been in serious trouble within the FLDS. (He remained in his job until two years ago, when he retired.)

• From The Sexual Outlaw (1977)

  Fear of rejection, at the root of so much of gay isolation, alienates us from each other and often makes us mean. Threatened by rejection by the straight world of parents, friends, teachers, the gay child finds fear of detection a factor in his early life; he hates what creates it, his homosexuality. Even as a “liberated” adult, that nailed fear may fester to infect every contact, wound every possibility. Attracted to each other, we often turn away in fear. We have intimate relations one moment and the next day well cross the street to avoid each other, in fear. We often use each other in misdirected anger, even hatred. Fear of threatened taunts on our “masculinity” pushes us to become posturing studs in fascist uniforms. Xeroxed pseudo-"butch” conformity. We want to marry. We long for one true lover. Wrong? No—if one wants that. But one should not have to marry or have only one lover. Adopt children? Well, we might be better parents than some. Join the army? Become cops! Support the rancid institutions that have slaughtered us? Join the churches that have crucified us? Revolutions are thwarted when the threatened established order hands out crumbs. So they may well “allow” us to many, join their armies, become cops and church members. But they won't let us fuck. Trying to be straighter than straight in our lifestyles is a form of self-hatred. Yes, there is much in the gay world that demands critical exploration. But hardly a word of criticism is heard about those tendencies that just may weaken us as surely as outside pressures; not a word from gay newspapers or magazines; not a word—at least not a public word—from ever-ready gay “spokesmen,” one under each palmtree in Los Angeles. For a gay person to criticize any aspect of the gay world is to expose himself to howls of wrath and betrayal. Because of that, a “serious” gay newspaper carries an approving cartoon on fistfucking—but refuses to run a news item on the fact that this increasing activity has caused maiming and death. A magazine prints a glossary of “symbols"—colored handkerchiefs, single earrings, keys, all displayed to indicate desired sexual positions and acts—but doesn't point out that these symbols may obviate even the few exploratory words we might otherwise exchange to discover each other, in sex, yes, but also, at least at times, beyond sex; extending rather than limiting possibilities. Allowing no interior criticism of the gay world, we invite a deceptive lulling that disastrously drains us by assuring us that all is fine, fine. We prefer not to face that when we weaken ourselves through lack of introspection, we strengthen the real enemy. Then the handcuffs snap on our wrists and the sticks bash our skulls. Straight expectations clash with gay realities, and the result may be a vision of hell.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  “We ain’t,” Big Davis replies as the door bangs shut behind him. Sweat and the scent of earth trail out ahead of him. He bends down and kisses the top of Grace’s forehead. She rubs his back, feels the damp of him through his shirt. His whiskers bristle against her cheek. He’s purple-black with stark white hair, deep blue eyes. “You are,” Enid says. “Big Davis.” “Enid,” he says, taking from the plate almost all of the orange segments. She squints at him. Grace feels a flutter of relief. Leans back in her chair and lets it hold her up. The strain of maintaining her posture has left her feeling a little winded. “I sure thank you for taking Grace in for the appointment today.” “Well, I took her fishing. I took her to school. I took her for ice cream. To the movies. I reckon it makes sense I’ll take her to get well.” “All that in one day?” 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.”

• From Escape (2007)

  “Harrison is going to die because of your rebellion. It is your fault that he is sick. God will take him from you because you have been in rebellion to your priesthood head. You can take him to every damn doctor you can find, but no one will be able to heal him. God is going to destroy his life because of the sins of his mother.” His chest was heaving with anger. His cheeks were flushed with anger. And he was almost out of breath. My eyes were on fire but my words were measured. “I already made this appointment. Do you want me to cancel it?” He roared back like an angry bull pricked by the matador’s spear. “You know what I want! I have told you it will do Harrison no good to see any doctors as long as your attitude is what it is!” I turned and walked back into the house. His physical violence had startled me. Merril had never attacked me before. I knew I was no longer safe in his home. I also knew this: Merril wanted Harrison to die to prove that I was in rebellion to God. He had utter contempt for his own son. I knew his real concern was that Harrison could live and not be normal. When I got back inside I gathered up Harrison and my other children. We had to get away before Merril came back inside. I knew if he attacked me again it would be far worse. I drove to my father’s house, where I knew I’d be safe. I told my mother everything that Merril had done to me in the field. She was outraged and said I should leave him—which was an extraordinary turnaround for a true believer like my mom. I told my mother that there was no way I could leave with a child as sick as Harrison. But I also knew I would never be safe in his home again, not with someone with his history of violence. I told her that I was finished with the FLDS and that being condemned to hell for eternity was far better than the living hell that stretched out for at least fifty years ahead of me. But there could be no escape until Harrison got better.

• From Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture (2018)

  Summer again, but this time, a two-week lakeside camp. The foxiest counselor; dark brown curls, dark brown eyes, summer-tan skin, a cute boy smile. Was I twelve? Thirteen? Eleven? Yes. He must’ve recognized my young girl longing. The look away and smile. The turn, giggle blush. All the puppy love behaviors. I was chubby. Unpretty. Plain. An easy mark. He was a god and he knew it. I was only prey. He taught sailing and when he asked if I’d like to take the boat out with him—just him and me—of course I said yes. He was beautiful. He was a counselor. An adult. Looking back he was probably only nineteen or twenty but he was a COUNSELOR. To me, that was akin to a teacher. There was no need to worry. I obviously had forgotten my previous lessons. Bad student. Bad girl. He took the boat from the dock out into the lake. Once we were clear, he had me take the rudder and pointing to a spot on the other side of the lake, instructed me to aim for it. He lay on his back, closed his eyes. It occurred to me that maybe this was his clever way of being able to take a short nap. I was right and also wrong. As I steered, I stared. His tan body, clad in only swim trunks. His brown, hairless chest, muscled thighs, the smell of him. Not believing my “luck” at being “chosen” by such a cute guy. Me! The chubby, plain girl! The one-piece-swimsuit-with-a-long-T-shirt-over-it girl! So many bikini-cute girls left behind, unpicked. My girl’s heart fluttered! After a while he woke up. Checked how I was doing. Praised me with that smile. Told me I’d done a fine job. Called me a good girl. He lay back down. But he reached up and started caressing my face. He took his thumb and pressed it all over my lips, then into my mouth. Again, I froze. I did not know what this was. What was this? In and out of my mouth and I sucked on it. Automatically. I sucked his thumb. I didn’t know what to do but I felt that was what was wanted FROM ONE OF MY COUNSELORS so I sucked on it. Like a sleepy baby. Even though it all felt wrong. I was in the middle of a lake, alone. Not alone. I saw the brakeless car then. It was headed toward the crest of a hill. My stomach. I couldn’t see his eyes. He had on sunglasses. But I saw he had a hard-on. I had brothers. I had my dad’s Hustlers, his Joy of Sex. I knew exactly what it was, what it could do. He began rubbing it over his shorts, while I took his thumb. And then, after a short time, he reached under his shorts and started working himself. Faster and faster until an abrupt groan and stop. I wasn’t sure what happened but I was sure nonetheless.

• From Collected Essays (1998)

  And the Northern Negro in the South sees, whatever he or anyone else may wish to believe, that his ancestors are both white and black. The white men, flesh of his flesh, hate him for that very reason. On the other hand, there is scarcely any way for him to join the black community in the South: fo r both he and this community are in the grip of the immense illusion that their state is more miserable than his own. This illusion owes everything to the great American illusion that our state is a state to be envied by other people: we are powerful, and we are rich. But our power makes us uncom fortable and we handle it very ineptly. The principal effect of our material well-being has been to set the children's teeth on edge. If we ourselves were not so fond of this illusion, we 1 9 7 NOBODY KNOWS MY NAME might understand ourselves and other peoples better than we do, and be enabled to help them understand us. I am very often tempted to believe that this illusion is all that is left of the great dream that was to have become America; whether this is so or not, this illusion certainly prevents us fr om making America what we say we want it to be. But let us put aside, t( >r the moment, these subversive spec ulations. In the fall of last year, my plane hovered over the rust-red earth of Georgia. I was past thirty, and I had never seen this land bct(>re. I pressed my face against the window, watching the earth come closer; soon we were just above the tops of trees. I could not suppress the thought that this earth had acquired its color trom the blood that had dripped down tr om these trees. My mind was filled with the image of a black man, younger than I, perhaps, or my own age, hanging fr om a tree, while white men watched him and cut his sex fr om him with a knitc. My tather must have seen such sights-he was very old when he died-or heard of them, or had this danger touch him. The Negro poet I talked to in Washington, much younger than my father, perhaps twenty years older than my sclt� remembered such things very vividly, had a long tale to tell, and counseled me to think back on those days as a means of steadying the soul.

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

  Although the money to hire Chestnut and Boynton was raised by family members through church donations and by financing their meager possessions, local law enforcement interpreted it as evidence of Walter’s secret money hoard and double life—confirmation that he wasn’t the innocent black man he pretended to be. Walter tried to adjust to Holman, but things only got worse. With a scheduled execution approaching, people on the row were agitated and angry. Other prisoners had advised him to take action and file a federal complaint, since he couldn’t legally be held on death row. When Walter, who could barely read or write, failed to file the various pleadings, writs, motions, and lawsuits the other prisoners had advised him to file, they blamed him for his predicament. “Fight for yourself. Don’t trust your lawyer. They can’t put you on death row without being convicted.” Walter heard this constantly, but he couldn’t imagine how to file a pleading in court himself. “There were days when I couldn’t breathe,” Walter recalled later. “I hadn’t ever experienced anything like this before in my life. I was around all these murderers, and yet it felt like sometimes they were the only ones trying to help me. I prayed, I read the Bible, and I’d be lying if I didn’t tell you that I was scared, terrified just about every day.” Ralph Myers was faring no better. He had also been charged with capital murder in the death of Ronda Morrison, and his refusal to continue cooperating with law enforcement meant that he was sent to death row, too. He was placed on a different tier to prevent contact with McMillian. Whatever advantage Myers thought he could gain by saying he knew something about the Morrison murder was clearly gone now. He was depressed and sinking deeper into an emotional crisis. From the time he was burned as a child, he had always feared fire, heat, and small spaces. As the prisoners talked more and more about the details of the Evans’s execution and Wayne Ritter’s impending execution, Myers became more and more distraught. On the night of the Ritter execution, Myers was in full crisis, sobbing in his cell. There is a tradition on death row in Alabama that, at the time scheduled for the execution, the condemned prisoners bang on their cell doors with cups in protest. At midnight, while all the other prisoners banged away, Myers curled up on the floor in the corner of his cell, hyperventilating and flinching with each clang he heard.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  PSEUDO-CHRYSOSTOM. We may also understand by the door of the chamber, the mouth of the body; so that we should not pray to God with loudness of tone, but with silent heart, for three reasons. First, because God is not to be gained by vehement crying, but by a right conscience, seeing He is a hearer of the heart; secondly, because none but thyself and God should be privy to your secret prayers; thirdly, because if you pray aloud, you hinder any other from praying near you. CASSIAN. (Collat. ix. 35.) Also we should observe close silence in our prayers, that our enemies, who are ever most watchful to ensnare us at that time, may not know the purport of our petition. AUGUSTINE. (ubi sup.) Or, by our chambers are to be understood our hearts, of which it is spoken in the fourth Psalm; (Ps 4:4.) What things ye utter in your hearts, and wherewith ye are pricked in your chambers. The door is the bodily senses; without are all worldly things, which, enter into our thoughts through the senses, and that crowd of vain imaginings which beset us in prayer. CYPRIAN. (Tr. vii. 20.) What insensibility is it to be snatched wandering off by light and profane imaginings, when you are presenting your entreaty to the Lord, as if there were aught else you ought rather to consider than that your converse is with God! How can you claim of God to attend to you, when you do not attend to yourself? This is altogether to make no provision against the enemy; this is when praying to God, to offend God’s Majesty by the neglectfulness of your prayer. AUGUSTINE. (ubi sup.) The door then must be shut, that is, we must resist the bodily sense, that we may address our Father in such spiritual prayer as is made in the inmost spirit, where we pray to Him truly in secret. REMIGIUS. Let it be enough for you that He alone know your petitions, who knows the secrets of all hearts; for He Who sees all things, the same shall listen to you. CHRYSOSTOM. He said not ‘shall freely give thee,’ but, shall reward thee; thus He constitutes Himself your debtor. 6:7–87. But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking. 8. Be ye not therefore like unto them: for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask Him. AUGUSTINE. (ubi sup.) As the hypocrites use to set themselves so as to be seen in their prayers, whose reward is to be acceptable to men; so the Ethnici (that is, the Gentiles) use to think that they shall be heard for their much speaking; therefore He adds, When ye pray, do not ye use many words.

• From Escape (2007)

  Merril found other lodging, but there were not enough rooms for his thirty-four children. He decreed that they would sleep in the bus. Merril left word at his construction company for Nathan when he checked in so he’d know where to find us. In the middle of the night, Merril brought Cathleen to my room. The bus had arrived. She recounted the day’s horrors and said how fortunate it was that we’d made so many bread sticks. The next day was grueling. The children ate fast food, but there was no food for snacks in between meals. We were all physically and emotionally drained. So much for a honeymoon. Cathleen had spent the night with Merril, but I didn’t know if they’d even had sex. I wondered if her first experience with him had been as crude as mine. Even Tammy, who had spent so much time and effort cozying up to Barbara, seemed discouraged. Ruth was medicated with a very strong tranquilizer as soon as we got home. After a few weeks, she began to recover. Faunita went back to sleeping all day and staying up all night. Cathleen and I spent several days doing laundry after the trip. I then returned to college, as thankful as I ever had been for the opportunity to be a student. I was so grateful not to be pregnant. I wanted children, but I was determined to get through school first. Maybe the family would stabilize by the time I had my degree. What I was experiencing seemed like an aberration. I wasn’t questioning my faith, but I was questioning Merril. If people knew what was really going on in our family, I thought, Merril would be condemned. We weren’t living in accordance with FLDS values. Accident Eleven months after my wedding, I became pregnant with my first child. I was violently ill for nine months; the morning sickness that some women complain of laid siege to me. I lost weight, looked pale, and felt weaker than I’d imagined possible. I knew that by marrying, I had lost control of my life. With my pregnancy, I lost control of my body as well. I had barely any prenatal care. Worse, my pregnancy created even more problems for me within Merril’s family. Within the FLDS, any personal problem is seen as the direct result of sin. Serious emotional or physical problems were considered a curse from God. It was also dangerous for a woman to show any incapacitation related to pregnancy because it was viewed within her family as a sign of rebellion—unless, of course, you were Barbara, for whom the double standard applied with regard to her crying bouts during pregnancy.

• From Escape (2007)

  Dan has five guest houses on his property. His wife, Leenie, welcomed us with enthusiasm and gentleness. She couldn’t have been expecting a woman with eight children to land on her doorstep that morning, but she seemed delighted that we had. Leenie took us to the largest guest house. With four bedrooms and a large living and dining area, it felt like heaven. I started to think about getting my children fed and making sure that Arthur didn’t bolt. Leenie’s daughter Sarah had come over and said she’d get them some Happy Meals while Dan talked to me in the main house. Dan was waiting in the dining room with a glass of wine in hand. He asked me a few questions to get a grasp of my situation and background. He was impressed that I had a bachelor’s degree in education and that I’d taught for seven years. But when I mentioned that I was married to Merril Jessop, he stopped pacing around the room, put his wineglass on the table, looked at me, and said, “Wait—did you say your husband’s name was Merril Jessop? The Merril Jessop?” I looked at Dan, somewhat surprised by his reaction. “Yes, Merril is my husband.” “You mean I have Merril Jessop’s kids on my property?” “Yes. Actually, you have eight of them.” Dan’s face paled. “Carolyn, when people come to me for help I don’t usually go to the authorities. Generally, I don’t recommend it. But if Merril Jessop is your husband, you’re not going to have even a remote chance of getting out unless you go straight to the top for help. I feel it’s urgent to get the attorney general’s office involved today as soon as possible!” “I’ll do anything to protect my kids.” Dan left immediately. I don’t think either of us understood the danger we were in. My head was spinning. I hadn’t slept for twenty-eight hours. I was running on adrenaline from the stress and tension of our ordeal and there would be moments when I felt weak and ready to pass out. Everything was happening so fast. When I got back to the guest house I did a head count and discovered that Arthur was missing. I guessed that when he was watching the road he’d been looking for the nearest pay phone so he could run back and call Merril. Arthur didn’t have any money, but boys who worked on construction crews always had phone cards in case they got into trouble. I ran back to Leenie’s house and told her what happened. Her daughter Jolene had just arrived to help. Leenie called Dan, and he said it was too dangerous for us to remain on his property. He said we’d be safer at Jolene’s. I started rounding up my children to take them into hiding again and gathering up the black plastic garbage bags with all our clothes.

• From Escape (2007)

  I think the dances made it possible for us to talk about our feelings in a way we might not have been able to otherwise. One day in eighth grade, several of the girls were talking about the danger we faced in the future. One of my closest friends said, “As soon as you graduate from high school, you are going to be assigned to an old man and you will have to marry him.” Another girl said, “Every one of us is doomed! We are all going to have to marry an old man who is so ancient that we’ll be forced to take care of him.” I thought of the rest home where Rosie worked and the old men I had seen slumped in their wheelchairs and staring blankly into space. I froze in shock. “The very thought of marrying an old man is enough to make me throw up,” said another friend. For the first time I was confronting a fate I knew I didn’t want. “But wait,” I said. “Several girls in the community have married young boys.” The girl who’d started this conversation said that happened only because a young girl and a young boy both went to the prophet and insisted that they be married. “So the only way you are not going to have sex with an old man is if you can get a young boy to fall in love with you. Then you have to insist that he is the only man you are willing to marry. That’s the only chance you ever have of marrying someone who’s in love with you.” “How do you get someone to fall in love with you?” I asked. We all knew how much trouble we could get in for just talking to a boy. That made the falling-in-love part hard. This prompted a revelation from one of the other girls in our group. Her sister had been allowed to marry the boy she was in love with because they had sneaked out of theology class together. They’d done it for an entire year without ever being caught. Suddenly we could see a strategy begin to emerge. We decided to start going to Sunday night theology classes, which were held three times a month. This was something else we could share, regardless of which side we stood on because of the religious divide. We signed up for a class with a teacher on the opposite side of the divide from our parents because it was to our advantage to have a teacher who was not on speaking terms with them. We started going to the classes on Sunday nights to get our parents used to the idea. After a few weeks, one of us let some of the boys in on our scheme. They leaped at the idea of using the theology class as a chance to sneak out to the reservoir.

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  “If I have rightly understood thy words,” replied that shade of the Magnanimous, “thy soul is smit with coward fear, which oftentimes encumbers men, so that it turns them back from honoured enterprise; as false seeing does a startled beast. To free thee from this dread, I will tell thee why I came, and what I heard in the first moment when I took pity of thee. I was amongst them who are in suspense; 6 and a Lady, so fair and blessed that I prayed her to command, called me. Her eyes shone brighter than the stars; and she began soft and gentle to tell me with angelic voice, in her language: “O courteous Mantuan Spirit, whose fame still lasts in the world, and will last as long as Time! my friend, and not the friend of fortune, is so impeded in his way upon the desert shore, that he has turned back for terror; and I fear he may already be so far astray, that I have risen too late for his relief, from what I heard of him in Heaven. Now go, and with thy ornate speech, and with what is necessary for his escape, help him so, that I may be consoled thereby. I am Beatrice who send thee; I come from a place where I desire to return; love moved me, that makes me speak. When I shall be before my Lord, I oft will praise thee to him.’ She was silent then, and I began: ‘O Lady of virtue, through whom alone mankind excels all that is contained within the heaven which has the smallest circles! 7 so grateful to me is thy command, that my obeying, were it done already, seems tardy; it needs not that thou more explain to me thy wish. But tell me the cause, why thou forbearest not to descend into this centre here below from the spacious place, to which thou burnest to return.’ ‘Since thou desirest to know thus far, I will tell thee briefly,’ she replied, ‘why I fear not to come within this place. Those things alone are to be feared that have the power of hurting; the others not, which are not fearful. I am made such by God, in his grace, that your misery does not touch me; nor the flame of this burning assail me. There is a noble Lady in Heaven 8 who has such pity of this hindrance, for which I send thee, that she breaks the sharp judgment there on high. She called Lucia, 9 in her request, and said: “Now thy faithful one has need of thee; and I commend him to thee.” Lucia, enemy of all cruelty, 10 arose and came to the place where I was sitting with the ancient Rachel. 11 She said: “Beatrice, true praise of God; why helpest thou not him who loved thee so, that for thee he left the vulgar crowd? Hearest not thou the misery of his plaint?