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 Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  Why is she staring at me like that? Then she turned her head. I followed her eyes—she was now staring at Leonard. Oh, no, I thought. It’s about Leonard. Ever since that day two years earlier when Sister Catherine had forbidden me to speak to Leonard ever again, I had avoided him, not sure if he even knew about the rule. Now sitting amongst my playmates, I was unable to speak—my throat dry with fear. I grasped a prayer from deep within me, but I sensed that prayers weren’t going to do me any good. When the clock chimed noon and we headed for lunch, I tried to mingle inconspicuously among the other Little Sisters, my insides knotted with terror. But as I approached the doorway, Sister Catherine blocked my way. “You,” she said. Her voice was low, but her rage was inescapable. “Go over to St. Ann’s House and wait for me in your cubicle. I’ll see you shortly.” I had a premonition of what was to come. As I crossed the yard, my hands were shaking. I was grateful that, because of the holy day, Brother James Aloysius wasn’t working on the cars. He seemed to be able to tell when I was in trouble. Entering my cubicle, I closed the curtain behind me, and sat at the far end of my bed. My face was hot, and my chest hurt. I was too scared to cry. Minutes passed, which seemed like hours, and I started to say my Rosary. Then the corridor door creaked open, and I recognized the sound of Sister Catherine coming closer and closer by the swishing noise that her stockings made when she walked. She stopped outside my cubicle and pulled back the curtain. I knew it. In her right hand, she carried the ominous black leather bag that contained the Big Punisher. Her wrath was petrifying. “You know what you did, don’t you?” she yelled at me. “No, Sister Catherine, I don’t. I really don’t,” I replied, hoping that my honest claim of innocence might spare me. “You were laughing with Leonard during the games,” she responded, her voice shrill, her green eyes fearsome. “You’ll regret breaking the rule. Get out here now, and go down to the end of the corridor.” Beatings with the Big Punisher were always done in the cubicle farthest from the front hall so that any Big Sisters who might be passing by wouldn’t be able

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  O 29 Getting Wise 1960 nce again, Mary Catherine had stopped eating. I thought about the secret between her and Sister Catherine that she was forbidden to tell me. It obviously wasn’t working. On a sunny spring Saturday morning, after Mary Catherine had left her breakfast untouched on her plate yet again, Sister Catherine sent for me to come up to her office. There I found Mary Catherine. Her big blue eyes were dull and carried that familiar look, the one that said, “Please help me,” and her forlorn expression was intensified by her sagging shoulders, her shaking hands, and the tremble in her lower lip, a telltale sign that she was scared. Sister Catherine greeted me with warmth. “Anastasia dear, Mary Catherine and I are going to let you in on a secret, aren’t we?” she said, turning toward Mary Catherine and speaking in that gentle, coddling voice I no longer trusted. Mary Catherine barely nodded her head. Sister Catherine went on. “Let’s go to the Little Sisters’ refectory, and I’ll explain everything.” I couldn’t imagine what was going to happen, but I suspected that the secret that had been so important for Mary Catherine to keep from me was about to be revealed. We entered the dining room and Sister Catherine closed the door behind us. She took Mary Catherine’s hand, and I followed as they walked together to one of the windows that looked out to the highway.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  My life centered around the array of loving people that poured attention on my daily activities. It wasn’t until I was four that I started to become aware that we at the Center were different from the people who lived “out in the world”—that’s how we referred to everything that existed beyond our realm. That world presented danger and Mariam tried to explain it to me. [image file=Image00015.jpg] “The bad people hate us,” she said. “So, you can’t tell anyone that Father says Mass. If you do,” she warned, sounding every bit like a seven-year-old grown-up, “the police will come and put us in jail.” “Put us in jail?” The specter was terrifying. Father had been deprived of his priestly faculties, but that did not deter him from continuing to celebrate Mass for the community. His defiance, however, was a matter of secrecy and to ensure that no slip of the tongue inadvertently alerted the local church authorities of his continued insubordination, we devised code words to describe our religious activities. Mass was called “First Breakfast,” and the real breakfast that followed, we referred to as “second breakfast.” Benediction, which Father said each afternoon, was “tea,” and if we were to say the Rosary at Benediction, we were having “tea and biscuits.” Father heard confessions each Saturday, but we called it “cubiculo ,” the Latin word for “bedroom.” These terms and others became part of our vernacular and I knew them all by heart. [image file=Image00016.jpg] Around Christmas, 1951. My parents were now wearing the “religious” garb. I am in the snow suit, my sister Cathy is holding Dad’s hand, and Mother is holding David, who is about five months old. When the weather was sunny and warm, Father would celebrate First Breakfast on the rooftop of Sacred Heart Hall. I knelt in fear, convinced that the people on the street below would hear us singing our hymns and would call the police, who would come crashing through the doors with guns drawn and haul us off to jail, just as Mariam told me. Jail was never far from my mind, and with good reason. To raise money for their daily sustenance, the men and women of the Center peddled books that Father and Catherine Clarke were writing, books that stressed the doctrine of “No Salvation Outside the Catholic Church.” Each week, in groups of six men in one car and six women in another, they set out to places as far away as New Orleans, Chicago, and St. Louis. Bookselling was what we called it, and it was the primary source of income for the community. Even the parents went on those trips, except for the women who were expecting a baby, a common occurrence during those early years. The ecclesiastical authorities in Boston got wind of the bookselling and alerted Catholic parishes across the country to be on the lookout for us and to call the police if we were in town.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  There wasn’t much difference in the length of the two pathways, and I chose to challenge her. “Yes, I think the way I went is about the same.” She looked as though she would strike me, and I waited for a blow. Instead, she thrust her hands behind her back and spoke—enraged. “I know why you walked that way.” Her voice was shaking. “You wanted to meet Brother Basil coming in from the field.” I maintained a steely composure on the outside. I wasn’t going to back down, despite knowing I’d been caught. But inside, my heart sank, painfully aware that I was unable to escape Sister Catherine’s spies. The entire “choir of Angels,” all eight of them, was on a mission to watch my every move and report back to Sister Catherine. I was trapped. M 40 Hurtling Toward the Inevitable 1964 ariam, the oldest child, graduated from high school in the spring, a celebratory moment in the life of the Center. Since the age of twelve, she had expressed her desire to live her life as a nun, the perfect illustration of the success Sister Catherine hoped to achieve among all thirty-nine children. In so many ways, Mariam was the leader of the children, and she was set as an example of what each of us could achieve. For a year before her graduation from high school, under Sister Catherine’s tutelage, she had been encouraged to spend time alone doing spiritual reading in preparation for becoming a nun. Now this summer, Sister Catherine expanded the spiritual reading to include the next twelve oldest children, seven Little Sisters and five Little Brothers. It was a clear signal that we, too, were being groomed for postulancy, the first of three steps to becoming a professed nun. For one hour each day after lunch, I was expected to find a quiet place to read and to contemplate on my vocation as a bride of Christ. I chose a secluded spot in the grove of white pines that bordered the hay fields where the alfalfa was high and ready to be cut. The site was ideal for an hour of solitude and reading, but I did neither of those. Instead, I spent the hour peering through the camouflage of pine needles and watching Brother Basil as he sat tall on the tractor and traversed the field, mowing the hay. When my hour of “meditation” had expired, I emerged from the pine grove, precisely as he neared me. We exchanged silent smiles and I basked in the warm feeling that crept through my whole body.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  Why , I thought, but no answer came to mind. I felt as though that new, hideous rule was somehow directed at me. Veronica was almost a year old and nearly ready to take her first steps. Each evening during our thirty-minute recreation, I’d let her toddle toward me with her tiny hands grasping my fingers, as I walked backward with arms outstretched. I couldn’t concoct the right words to tell my parents about this new restriction, so I tried my best to act as though nothing had changed. But one evening, when Sister Matilda wasn’t in the yard during recreation, I couldn’t resist taking Veronica’s hand. As I led her across the yard, her tiny feet making progress with my guidance, I glanced up and caught sight of Sister Matilda watching me from the second-floor window of St. Francis Xavier’s House. I gulped, knowing I would soon be in trouble. Within a minute she was standing in the doorway, beckoning to me. Without as much as a kiss good night to my parents, I headed into the house, fully aware of what lay ahead—a paddling with whatever instrument Sister Matilda deemed appropriate. Would it be her latest instrument of torture, the two-foot-long board that only she, with her Paul Bunyan–size hands, could handle? She chose instead a shoe brush, and in the soundproof stairwell, she laid into me as I was bent over her lap. “This will teach you not to break the rules,” she thundered as the powerful force of her blows hit my bare bottom. On another morning, Sister Matilda called the eight oldest of us Little Sisters in from our recreation in the yard. Leading us up to the third floor, she waited as we assembled in order of age. Then, striding back and forth in front of us, she fired a question: “Which of you didn’t wash your face this morning before First Breakfast?” I hadn’t the slightest recollection of whether I’d remembered to wash my face in my rush to be ready on time, but Sister Matilda had apparently discovered the infraction by inspecting the towel racks after second breakfast to make sure all the facecloths were wet. When no one responded, she said, “Well, maybe this will help you to remember.” She approached Mariam, saying, “This will hurt me as much as you,” but she didn’t seem to mean it as she brought the full force of her open hand across Mariam’s face. She did the same to Rene, and then came to me. After slapping me, she said, “And a second one for you,” as her left hand came crashing into the other side of my face. I nearly fell over. The rest of the Little Sisters each received a single resounding slap. We then had to sit in silence for an hour as further punishment. Was I the culprit? I wondered.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  We were sent back out to play, but I lingered and when the others headed down the stairs, I took the opportunity to check the facecloths—mine was damp. The only dry one belonged to Sister Matilda’s daughter. It’s not fair—why does she dislike me? A powerful slap in the face became one of her favorite modes of discipline. I could feel the marks left by the impact of her hand on my cheek. But I soon observed that she was careful not to use that form of punishment if I was heading out to recreation in the evening with my parents, so they never saw the redness on my face. At another of our Saturday morning Chapter Meetings, as Sister Matilda entered the kitchen where the eight of us sat on the bench awaiting the start of the meeting, the force of her step told me there was trouble. She took her seat at the table and wasted no time. “It has come to my attention,” she announced, and the tone in her voice made my stomach churn, “that all of you were rude to Father last week when he took you for a ride in the car. Who wants to tell me about it?” I was stunned and, along with the Little Sisters, sat in silence, wracking my brain to recollect what had happened a few days back, when Father had taken us to the Italian market in Boston’s North End, where the merchants sold meat, fruits, and vegetables. Those occasional forays into the outside world were a treat. As he always did on such occasions, Father had asked us to sing some hymns for the vendors, whom he described as “good Italian Catholics.” When we were through, one of the men offered Father peaches and plums for us. Holding the fruit in his hands, Father turned to us and asked, “What would you like, dear, a peach or a plum?” I loved both and thought about it before saying, “A plum, please, Father.” The other Little Sisters made their choices. I could remember nothing else about the excursion. “Well, let me remind you.” There was an edge of sarcasm in the tone of her voice. “When Father asked you if you wanted a peach or a plum, you had the nerve to make the choice yourself instead of letting him decide.” She slammed her hand down on the table next to her chair with such impact that all eight of us jumped and her voice became thunderous. “From now on, if Father asks you what you would like, you are to reply, ‘Whatever you would like me to have, Father.’ Do you understand?” “Yes, Sister Matilda.” “Good. Now you’re going to practice it.” She turned to Mariam and asked, “What would you like to have—a peach or a plum?” Mariam replied, “Whatever you would like me to have, Father.” Then she turned to Rene and asked the same question, and then to me.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  I 38 A New Crisis 1963 t was several days after the shocking news of our loss in court when Sister Mary Dorothy vanished in the middle of the night. That was bad enough— one of the Big Sisters simply disappearing or “running away,” but she was the mother of four of the children. Would there be another lawsuit? I wondered. But Sister Catherine, leaving no doubt that she was in command, announced that evening in our refectory that the children, together with their father, Brother Theodore, would have to leave the Center. She had no appetite for another custody battle on which a verdict had already been rendered. Gasps and sobs broke the silence. Even some of the Angels were crying. Sister Catherine herself looked beaten, her normally broad shoulders hunched. But she mustered a smile as she looked lovingly at each of the four children about to depart. “You will be in our hearts and prayers every day, and we will ask Our Lady to keep you safe from the evils of the world,” she said. Maud, one of the four children, sat at my table. Tears cascaded down her cheeks onto her blue jumper. For the past five years, she’d been my breakfast, lunch, and dinner companion, sitting in the same spot to my right. Despite Sister Catherine’s rule against particular friendships, it was impossible not to have a special bond with her and the three other Little Sisters at my table. Being four years her senior, I had played the role of her defender on more than a few occasions when Sister Maria Crucis accused her unfairly of wrongdoing.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  “From now on, you may no longer hold the hands of the younger children.” I was stunned. Why, I thought, but no answer came to mind. I felt as though that new, hideous rule was somehow directed at me. Veronica was almost a year old and nearly ready to take her first steps. Each evening during our thirty- minute recreation, I’d let her toddle toward me with her tiny hands grasping my fingers, as I walked backward with arms outstretched. I couldn’t concoct the right words to tell my parents about this new restriction, so I tried my best to act as though nothing had changed. But one evening, when Sister Matilda wasn’t in the yard during recreation, I couldn’t resist taking Veronica’s hand. As I led her across the yard, her tiny feet making progress with my guidance, I glanced up and caught sight of Sister Matilda watching me from the second-floor window of St. Francis Xavier’s House. I gulped, knowing I would soon be in trouble. Within a minute she was standing in the doorway, beckoning to me. Without as much as a kiss good night to my parents, I headed into the house, fully aware of what lay ahead—a paddling with whatever instrument Sister Matilda deemed appropriate. Would it be her latest instrument of torture, the two-foot-long board that only she, with her Paul Bunyan–size hands, could handle? She chose instead a shoe brush, and in the soundproof stairwell, she laid into me as I was bent over her lap. “This will teach you not to break the rules,” she thundered as the powerful force of her blows hit my bare bottom. On another morning, Sister Matilda called the eight oldest of us Little Sisters in from our recreation in the yard. Leading us up to the third floor, she waited as we assembled in order of age. Then, striding back and forth in front of us, she fired a question: “Which of you didn’t wash your face this morning before First Breakfast?” I hadn’t the slightest recollection of whether I’d remembered to wash my face in my rush to be ready on time, but Sister Matilda had apparently discovered the infraction by inspecting the towel racks after second breakfast to make sure all the facecloths were wet. When no one responded, she said, “Well, maybe this will help you to remember.” She approached Mariam, saying, “This will hurt me as much as you,” but she didn’t seem to mean it as she brought the full force of her open hand across

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  Frequently, the Big Punisher would be meted out for a full week at a time to a single child, for an infraction as slight as looking out the window instead of at the altar during First Breakfast. A comment that an Angel deemed to be even slightly insubordinate was another reason for a succession of beatings. There was an aura of secrecy about the Big Punisher—a “code of silence” as it were. Its existence was never revealed outside of the subcommunity of children and Angels inside the Center, not even at community meetings when we met with our parents. Parents they were, but no longer authority figures. I had no reason to believe that they could have done a thing to mitigate the punishments meted out. It would be many years before the truth was revealed to them. S 25 First Christmas in Still River 1958 ister Teresa, the head Angel, hauled a seven-foot balsam fir tree into our corridor on the first Sunday of Advent. “It’s a Christmas tree,” she said in her matter-of-fact way as she set it upright in a red metal stand. The pungent, piney aroma wafted through the corridor as she brought in boxes of ornaments, along with strings of colored lights, tinsel icicles, and long strands of silver garland. At the age of ten, I was decorating a Christmas tree for the first time. When we plugged in the lights, it was like magic, as the corridor sparkled in a multicolored glow of green, red, blue, and white. When I got into bed that night, I left my curtain open just enough to allow me to gaze at the glowing tree in the corridor. The scent of pine that I’d come to love from hours spent in the woods over the summer was soothing. The kaleidoscopic lights were magnified a hundred times in the reflection they cast on the shimmering streams of silver icicles draped across the branches. A Christmas tree, a real live Christmas tree. This was different from any other Christmas I’d ever had. I felt joy—deep and peaceful. As Christmas drew near, the Big Brothers and Sisters decorated the many doors with pine wreaths. Poinsettias dotted the hallways, the chapel, and the great front room. During meals, our single record player provided a constant stream of English, French, and Italian Christmas carols, as well as Gregorian chants by the Benedictine monks of Solesmes Abbey.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  It was around this time that the women at the Center stopped wearing their colorful clothes. Floral patterned dresses, royal-blue jackets, and cinched waist suits were replaced by long black skirts and white blouses covered by a black jacket. Instead of a pocketbook, my mother now carried a small black fabric satchel. Her shoes were lace-up—no longer the heels and open-toed shoes she used to wear. The men wore identical black suits and white shirts, except when they were working and had to wear overalls. Even my own clothes changed. Now I wore the same kind of blouse and jumper as the other little girls. But I was unfazed by the new wardrobe. My life centered around the array of loving people that poured attention on my daily activities. It wasn’t until I was four that I started to become aware that we at the Center were different from the people who lived “out in the world”—that’s how we referred to everything that existed beyond our realm. That world presented danger and Mariam tried to explain it to me. “The bad people hate us,” she said. “So, you can’t tell anyone that Father says Mass. If you do,” she warned, sounding every bit like a seven-year-old grown- up, “the police will come and put us in jail.” “Put us in jail?” The specter was terrifying. Father had been deprived of his priestly faculties, but that did not deter him from continuing to celebrate Mass for the community. His defiance, however, was a matter of secrecy and to ensure that no slip of the tongue inadvertently alerted the local church authorities of his continued insubordination, we devised code words to describe our religious activities. Mass was called “First Breakfast,” and the real breakfast that followed, we referred to as “second breakfast.” Benediction, which Father said each afternoon, was “tea,” and if we were to say the Rosary at Benediction, we were having “tea and biscuits.” Father heard confessions each Saturday, but we called it “cubiculo,” the Latin word for “bedroom.” These terms and others became part of our vernacular and I knew them all by heart. Around Christmas, 1951. My parents were now wearing the “religious” garb. I am in the snow suit, my sister Cathy is holding Dad’s hand, and Mother is holding David, who is about five months old. When the weather was sunny and warm, Father would celebrate First Breakfast on the rooftop of Sacred Heart Hall. I knelt in fear, convinced that the people on the street below would hear us singing our hymns and would call the police, who would come crashing through the doors with guns drawn and haul us off to jail, just as Mariam told me.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  W 34 The Unthinkable 1962 here was Brother Martin? Brother Martin was one of the married Big Brothers, and five of the Little Brothers were his and Sister Laura’s children. He hadn’t been around for more than a week. I knew he wasn’t on a bookselling trip because I kept a mental account of each of the Big Brothers and Sisters who was traveling. I looked for clues to his whereabouts but could come up with nothing. If he were sick, we’d be praying for him. But there were no special prayers, no announcement. He’d just disappeared. Weeks went by with no mention of Brother Martin. Then one evening, Sister Catherine took her place in the doorway of our refectories and broke the news to us. “Little Brothers and Sisters, I have something to tell you,” she began, her voice serious. “Brother Martin is no longer with us,” she said. “He has betrayed the faith and Our Blessed Mother and already has one foot in hell. He is now Richard Cullinane [his name before coming to the Center], not Brother Martin.” I was thunderstruck and terrified. This could only mean one thing: Brother Martin had been kicked out of the Center. Why? I searched the faces of his five sons, trying to see if their expressions were sad. But I could detect nothing. After dinner, I sneaked glances at his wife, Sister Laura, as she did the dishes in the kitchen. She, too, seemed the same as always. With no further explanation, I became lost in my own nightmare. If Father and Sister Catherine would actually kick out one of the parents, that meant that my parents were no longer safe. For days I was unable to sleep through the night. I couldn’t fathom what a parent might have done to warrant being kicked out by Father and Sister Catherine. I thought back to that terrifying moment a year earlier when I’d overheard my father yelling behind the closed door of Sister Catherine’s office. Will they kick out my parents, too? Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, please, please, please don’t let that happen. I will sacrifice anything. Just keep them here. Please. But I braced myself for the day when it would happen.

• From Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (2017)

  Christopher pushed me down in front of his laughing friends, so many bodies larger than mine. I was so scared and embarrassed and confused. I was hurt because I loved him and thought he loved me, and in a matter of moments, there I was, splayed out in front of his friends. I wasn’t a girl to them. I was a thing, flesh and girl bones with which they could amuse themselves. When Christopher lay on top of me, he didn’t take off his clothes. This detail stays with me, that he had such little regard for what he was about to do to me. He just unzipped his jeans and knelt between my legs and shoved himself inside of me. Those other boys stared down at me, leered really, and egged Christopher on. I closed my eyes because I did not want to see them. I did not want to accept what was happening. As a sheltered, good Catholic girl, I barely understood what was happening. I did understand the pain, though, the sharpness and the immediacy of it. That pain was inescapable and held me in my body when I wanted to abandon it to those boys and hide myself somewhere safe. I begged Christopher to stop. I told him I would do anything he wanted if he would just make it all stop, but he didn’t stop. He didn’t look at me. Christopher took a long time or at least it felt like a long time because I did not want him inside me. It did not matter what I wanted. After Christopher came, he switched places with the boy who was holding my arms down. I fought, but my fighting didn’t do much more than make those boys laugh. The friend held me down, his lips shiny, his beer breath in my face. To this day, I cannot stand beer breath. I thought I would break beneath the weight of those boys. I was already so sore. Christopher refused to look at me. He just held my wrists, spat on my face. I told myself, I still tell myself, he was just trying to impress his friends. I tell myself he didn’t mean it. He laughed. All those boys raped me. They tried to see how far they could go. I was a toy, used recklessly. Eventually, I stopped screaming, I stopped moving, I stopped fighting. I stopped praying and believing God would save me. I did not stop hurting. The pain was constant. They took a break. I huddled into myself and shook. I couldn’t move. I could not believe what was happening. I literally had no capacity for understanding my story as it was being written.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  The gruesomeness of what might happen flashed before my mind. No—no way was I going to die. I wouldn’t let myself be murdered by this thug. The image of my parents, my three younger sisters, and my brother came to my mind, and in that instant I felt a surge of power rise from deep inside me. My fear was transformed into rage. Glaring straight at the man sitting two feet from me, I yelled at the top of my voice, “You turn this car around right now and drive me into Harvard Square.” The driver looked at me but didn’t respond. He seemed stunned. “Do you hear me?” I screamed. His voice was oddly quiet. “Sure,” he said, “if that’s what you want.” We were approaching the light, and it was green. “Make a U-turn here at this light.” I said making my voice as steely and cold as I could. And that’s what he did, exactly as I told him. Slowing the car down, he turned around and headed back in the direction we had come. But I wasn’t letting my guard down for a moment. “Now you follow my instructions,” I said, trying to sound as though I really was in charge. And for the next ten minutes—which felt like an hour—I gave the orders as we drove back to Cambridge. No polite conversation, no small talk. “Take this exit,” I said. “And now a left here.” “Okay, straight down Mass Ave.” As we neared Harvard Square, I breathed easier, knowing I could jump out of the car and make a scene if necessary. There was no way I was going to let him find out where I lived, so I directed him to the center of Harvard Square and, when we reached the kiosk at the entrance to the subway, I said, “Stop now.” Opening the car door, I stepped onto the sidewalk, slamming it behind me and losing myself in the crowd. My knees were shaking as I made my way slowly to the muffin shop around the corner, where I sat down and ordered a cup of tea. It remained untouched while I replayed in my mind the experience I’d just been through. What if I hadn’t screamed at him? I thought. Where would I be now? Deep in the woods somewhere? Being stabbed to death? There was no need to berate myself. I’d learned my lesson. I was grateful to be alive. But I did make a pact with myself, swearing never to hitchhike again in my whole life. I kept that promise. I also decided not to tell my parents what had happened, knowing how distraught they would be. It would be more than ten years before I shared the story with them. And as I walked home to my apartment, I repeated to myself something I had believed as a child but had forgotten about as a young adult: “I really do have a guardian angel.”

• From Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (2017)

  Throughout high school, I had no romantic life to speak of. I was too awkward, too shy, too much of a mess to date. I was invisible to the boys at my high school because of my blackness, because of my size, because of my complete indifference toward my appearance. Because I read so much, I was a romantic in my heart of hearts, but my desire to be part of a romantic story was a very intellectual, detached one. I liked the idea of a boy asking me out, taking me on a date, kissing me, but I did not want to actually be alone with a boy, because a boy could hurt me. The men I talked to online allowed me to enjoy the idea of romance and love and lust and sex while keeping my body safe. I could pretend to be thin and sexy and confident. I discovered forums for rape and sexual abuse survivors, where, as with when I read The Courage to Heal, I saw that I was not alone. In those online forums, I saw that horrible things happened to so many girls and sometimes boys. I saw that however bad my secret was, many people had far worse secrets. In IRC chat rooms, I talked to people in the BDSM community, and I learned about safe, sane, and consensual sexual encounters, where power was exchanged, but you could have a safe word to make things stop when you wanted them to stop. I learned that there were people who would take the right kind of no as no, and that was powerful, intoxicating. I wanted to know so much more about safe ways to say no. I had a more expansive vocabulary, now, for what happened in the woods. At twelve years old, I had no such words. I just knew that these boys had forced me to have sex with them, had used my body in ways I did not know a girl body could be used. Thanks to books and therapy and my new friends online, I knew ever more clearly that there was a thing called rape. I knew that when a woman said no, men were supposed to listen and stop what they were doing. I knew that it wasn’t my fault that I had been raped. There was a quiet thrill to having this new vocabulary, but in many ways, I did not feel like that vocabulary could apply to me. I was too damaged, too weak to deserve absolution. It was not as easy to believe these truths as it was to know them.

• From Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (2017)

  85I am taking small steps toward the life I want. For the past twelve years, I have lived, rather unhappily, in rural America. As a black woman, this has been trying, at best. If I’m being honest with myself, other than graduate school, where I didn’t have a choice in where I lived, I have been hiding. I’m afraid to live in a city where, at least in my mind, everyone is thin, athletic, beautiful, and I am an abominable woman. I spent five years in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula—a place I didn’t even know existed until I moved there to attend graduate school. I lived in a town of four thousand people. The next town over, over the portage bridge, had seven thousand people. In my town, the street signs were in both English and Finnish because the town had the highest concentration of Finns outside of Finland. We were so far north that my blackness was more a curiosity than a threat. I was a woman out of place, but I did not always feel unsafe. There were the abandoned copper mines and the vast majesty of Lake Superior and so much forest cloaking everything. During fall, deer hunting, so much venison. The winters were endless, snow in unfathomable quantities, the aching whine of snowmobiles. There was loneliness. There were my friends, who made the isolation bearable. There was a man who made everything beautiful.

• From Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (2017)

  Many EMTs showed up and 83 percent of them were hot. They were kind and full of empathy, and they winced each time they looked at my foot. Eventually they sort of splinted it and dragged me out on this contraption and lifted me onto a gurney and from there it was fine. They had trouble finding a vein, so I ended up with bruises in all the wrong places. While waiting for the EMTs, I texted my person that I had an accident. I wanted to play it down, but I was slowly realizing I had really injured myself. At the hospital, I got X-rays and the technician said, “Your ankle is very, very broken,” which is not to be confused, I guess, with just regular broken. My ankle was also dislocated. They couldn’t operate that night so they had to realign my foot. That is exactly as horrifying as you think it is. They gave me fentanyl, that stuff Michael Jackson took to sleep, and told me I wouldn’t remember a thing. They were right. When I regained consciousness I asked, “Are you going to do it now?” I got a nice little pat on my leg for that. I was grateful for the pharmaceutical industry. Two other strange things were going on. My heart was beating in an irregular rhythm, which I am pretty sure has been the case for years, and I had a really low hemoglobin count. They were not going to send me home, so I got a room I would end up staying in for ten days. My ass became so sore I was ready to remove it surgically. I barely got any sleep, especially in the early going, so my mental state was not great. Every so often nurses would take my “vitals” and poke and do other inscrutable things to me. I hate being touched, so that was a particular treat. They did, mercifully, have appropriately large hospital gowns, but it was a very small comfort. There is so much indignity to being helpless. At this particular hospital, they took vitals at eleven p.m. and three a.m. and seven a.m., so I’m not sure when sleep was supposed to happen. They also took vitals throughout the day. I learned a great deal about hospital routines during those ten days. I basically became an expert. In the next room over was a woman who said, “Hey,” every twenty or so seconds. She liked to pull out her IVs and was a troublemaker. She was elderly and I felt bad for her because I don’t think anyone visited her the entire time. I was not so lucky.

• From Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (2017)

  50I am terrified of other people. I am terrified of the way they are likely to look at me, stare, talk about me or say cruel things to me. I am terrified of children, their guilelessness and brutal honesty and willingness to gawk at me, to talk loudly about me, to ask their parents or, sometimes, even me, “Why are you so big?” I am terrified of the awkward pause of those children’s parents as they try to respond appropriately. I do not have an answer to that question, or I do and there simply isn’t enough time or grace in the world to offer that answer up. And so I am terrified of other people. I hear the rude comments whispered. I see the stares and laughs and snickering. I see the thinly veiled or open disgust. I pretend I don’t see it. I block it out as often as I can so I can live and breathe with some semblance of peace. The list of bullshit I deal with, by virtue of my body, is long and boring, and I am, frankly, bored with it. This is the world we live in. Looks matter, and we can say, “But but but . . .” But no. Looks matter. Bodies matter. I could easily become a shut-in, hiding from the cruelty of the world. Most days it takes all my strength and no small amount of courage to get dressed and leave the house. If I don’t have to teach or travel for work, I spend most of my time talking myself out of leaving my house. I can order something in. I can make do with what I have. Tomorrow, I promise myself. Tomorrow I will face the world. If it’s late in the week, there are several tomorrows until Monday. There are several tomorrows when I can lie to myself, when I can hope to build stronger defenses for facing the world that so cruelly faces me. 51I have two wardrobes. One, the clothes I wear every day, is made up mostly of dark denim jeans, black T-shirts, and, for special occasions, dress shirts. These clothes shroud my cowardice. These are the clothes I feel safe in. This is the armor I wear to face the world, and I assure you, armor is needed. I tell myself this armor is all I need. When I wear my typical uniform, it feels like safety, like I can hide in plain sight. I become less of a target. I am taking up space, but I am doing so in an unassuming manner so I am less of a problem, less of a disturbance. This is what I tell myself. My other wardrobe, the one that dominates most of my closet, is full of the clothes I don’t have the courage to wear.

• From Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (2017)

  Because doctors know the challenges the obese body can contend with, they are surprised to learn I am not diabetic. They are surprised to learn I am not on a hundred medications. Or they are not surprised to learn I have high blood pressure. They look at that number and offer stern admonitions about the importance of losing weight and getting my numbers back under control. This is when they are happiest, when they can try and use their expertise to force me to discipline my body. As a result, I don’t go to the doctor unless it is absolutely necessary even though I now have good health insurance and have always had every right to be treated fairly and kindly. I don’t go to the doctor even though I’ve had an undiagnosed chronic stomach condition that is, at times, debilitating, for at least ten years. Doctors are supposed to first do no harm, but when it comes to fat bodies, most doctors seem fundamentally incapable of heeding their oath. 82On October 10, 2014, one of my greatest fears was realized. I was in my apartment, commenting on stories from the graduate student for whom I was serving as thesis adviser. I had been having stomach pain all that week, but I often have stomach pain, so I paid it little mind. Eventually, I went to the bathroom and experienced a very intense wave of pain. I need to lie down, I thought. When I came to, I was on the floor and I was sweaty, but I felt better. Then I looked at my left foot, which was facing in an unnatural direction, the bone nearly poking through the skin. I realized, This is not good. I closed my eyes. I tried to breathe, to not panic, to not think of everything that would happen next. At the same time, there was a plumbing crisis, but I couldn’t cope with that and my fucked-up foot, so I just moved the plumbing issue to the corner of my mind. When you’re fat, one of your biggest fears is falling while you’re alone and needing to call EMTs. It’s a fear I have nurtured over the years, and when I broke my ankle that fear finally came true. Thankfully, that night, I had my phone in my pocket, so I pulled myself into the anteroom of the bathroom, hoping for a signal. My foot was starting to hurt, but nowhere near as badly as I thought it should hurt based on years of watching medical dramas like Chicago Hope, ER, and Grey’s Anatomy. This was Lafayette, Indiana, a small town, so 9-1-1 answered promptly. While on the phone with the kind operator I blurted out, “I’m fat,” like it was some deep mark of shame, and he smoothly said, “That’s not a problem.”

• From Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (2017)

  Over the course of the ten days, I listened to other people snoring very loudly, making growly sounds. The temperature fluctuated wildly. I became constipated. I wanted to shower very badly but couldn’t. Instead, I was bathed by nurses’ aides who had things like dry shampoo and the body-sized equivalents of moist towelettes. I was given a lot of good drugs and I really enjoyed that part. I had to face the severity of my injury and that I would be out of commission for quite some time. I had to cancel a few events and disappoint people, but I was going to be housebound for six weeks. I arranged, with my university, to teach my courses online while I recuperated. I was well taken care of by the medical staff, but they were not good communicators. I became a throbbing mass of fear, loneliness, and neediness even though I was rarely alone for any amount of time. Everything was out of my control and I love control, so all my trigger points were being pressed at the exact same time. I was absolutely terrified going into surgery. I realized I have so much life yet to live. I did not want to die. I thought, I don’t want to die, and it was such a strange thought because I’ve never actively wanted to live as much as I did when I had to face my mortality in such a specific way. I began to think of all the things I still wanted to do, the words I had yet to write. I thought about my friends, my family, my person. I don’t do fear very well. I try to push the people I love away. I worry that I’m not allowed human weakness, that this makes me not good enough. I was not at my best during the hospital stay because so much was out of my control and the bed was too fucking short and the hospital gown did not make me feel safe and I couldn’t bathe and I couldn’t really move and I wasn’t eating because the hospital food was gross. I am not much of a crier, so I didn’t really break down for several days, until one morning when the doctor told me I wasn’t going home anytime soon. I tried not to sob. I tried to cry in that neat way that delicate ladies cry in movies but . . . I am not a delicate lady. When a nurse would peer in, I’d rub my eyes and bite my lower lip so I might appear stoic, and then when they looked away, I’d start crying again. I babbled all kinds of sorrowful stuff. It was a low point, one of many.

• From Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (2017)

  Four years later, I moved to central Indiana, a much bigger town, a small city really. In the first weeks, I was racially profiled in an electronics store. Living here never got better. When I lamented how uncomfortable I was and am here, local acquaintances often tried to tell me, in different ways, “Not all Hoosiers,” much in the same way men on social media would say, “Not all men,” to derail discussions about misogyny. There is loneliness. The confederacy is alive and well here though we are hundreds of miles from the Old South. There is a man who drives around in an imposing black pickup truck with white-supremacist flags flying from the rear. My dental hygienist tells me I live in a bad part of town. There are no bad parts of town here, not really. In the local newspaper, residents write angry letters about a new criminal element in town. “People from Chicago,” they say, which is code for black people. On campus, pro-life students chalk messages on sidewalks like “Planned Parenthood #1 Killer of Black Lives” and “Hands up, don’t abort.” My blackness is, again, a threat. I don’t feel safe, but I know how lucky I am, which leaves me wondering how unsafe black people leading more precarious lives must feel. Friends in cities have long asked me how I do it—spending year after year in these small towns that are so inhospitable to blackness. I say I’m from the Midwest, which I am, and that I have never lived in a big city, which is also true. I say that the Midwest is home even if this home does not always embrace me, and that the Midwest is a vibrant, necessary place. I say I can be a writer anywhere, and as an academic, I go where the work takes me. Or, I said these things. Now, I am simply weary. I say, “I hate it here,” and a rush of pleasure fills me. I worry that I can’t be happy or feel safe anywhere. But then I travel to places where my blackness is unremarkable, where I don’t feel like I have to constantly defend my right to breathe, to be. I am nurturing a new dream of a place I already think of as home—bright sky, big ocean. I’m learning to make a home for myself based on what I want and need, in my heart of hearts. I’ve decided that I will not allow my body to dictate my existence, at least, not entirely. I will not hide from the world.