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 The Things They Carried (1990)

  There it is, they'd say. Over and over—there it 1s, my friend, there it is —as if the repetition itself were an act of poise, a balance between crazy and almost crazy, knowing without going, there it is, which meant be cool, let it ride, because Oh yeah, man, you can't change what can't be changed, there it is, there it absolutely and positively and fucking well is. They were tough. They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing—these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight. They carried shameful memories. They carried the common secret of cowardice barely restrained, the instinct to run or freeze or hide, and in many respects this was the heaviest burden of all, for it could never be put down, it required perfect balance and perfect posture. They carried their reputations. They carried the soldier's greatest fear, which was the fear of blushing. Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to. It was what had brought them to the war in the first place, nothing positive, no dreams of glory or honor, just to avoid the blush of dishonor. They died so as not to die of embarrassment. They crawled into tunnels and walked point and advanced under fire. Each morning, despite the unknowns, they made their legs move. They endured. They kept humping. They did not submit to the obvious alternative, which was simply to close the eyes and fall. So easy, really. Go limp and tumble to the ground and let the muscles unwind and not speak and not budge until your buddies picked you up and lifted you into the chopper that would roar and dip its nose and carry you off to the world. A mere matter of falling, yet no one ever fell. It was not courage, exactly; the object was not valor. Rather, they were too frightened to be cowards. By and large they carried these things inside, maintaining the masks of composure. They sneered at sick call. They spoke bitterly about guys who had found release by shooting off their own toes or fingers. Pussies, they'd say. Candy-asses. It was fierce, mocking talk, with only a trace of envy or awe, but even so the image played itself out behind their eyes. They imagined the muzzle against flesh. So easy: squeeze the trigger and blow away a toe. They imagined it. They imagined the quick, sweet pain, then the evacuation to Japan, then a hospital with warm beds and cute geisha nurses. And they dreamed of freedom birds.

• From Synanon Kid: Book One: A Memoir of Growing Up in the Synanon Cult

  While Alice groomed me to become the lady she hoped I’d be, I also spent long days at a Compton preschool. The bright and cheerful colors of the artwork hanging on the walls, the toys at our disposal, and the chirping voices of Sesame Street characters blasting from the TV were only superficial deviations from the dysfunctional home lives that many of the children came from, and the teachers’ methods of dealing with us were unorthodox at best. When a little girl bit my ear so hard as to draw blood, I ran crying to one of my teachers and to show her the assault. “Bite her back,” the teacher said. I didn’t want to, and when I turned squeamish over the matter, the teacher grabbed my attacker, pinned her arms to her sides and demanded I bite her ear. When I sank my teeth into the squishy flesh of her lobe, the girl’s screams of pain terrified me. “Now, you see. She won’t be doin’ it agin,” the teacher told me, satisfaction rounding out her words. A drop of blood sprang to the girl’s skin where I’d left the imprint of my teeth. “You betta stop that cryin’ before I give you sometin’ to cry about,” the teacher warned the screaming child. “And you can take your little black butt and go sit down on one a dem chairs inside.” During naptime, the boys often used the girls who drifted off to sleep for masturbation. Creeping from their mats, the boys dry humped their classmates. I never closed my eyes and never did a teacher halt this regular, repugnant routine. An innocent game of cops and robbers in the schoolyard turned into a brutal reenactment of gang rape. Two of the boys wrestled my friend to the ground and yanked her legs open while a third mounted her, pumping away. I can still see the whites of her eyes as her head thrashed from side to side while the little rapist tried to kiss her. I pounded the boy’s head and back with my fists, trying to pull him off of her until he turned around and punched me in the face. No teacher came to our rescue. On one of my last days at the preschool, a girl was whisked away in an ambulance, her eye punctured by a needle driven in by another girl who sat sulkily on a blue plastic chair, swinging her legs and waiting for her parents to pick her up. Alice’s nephews were affiliated with the Crips gang. Ranging in age from twelve to sixteen, they sported enormous afros and carried giant hair picks in their back pockets. The boys liked to roughhouse with me and their little sister, Danielle, throwing us about in the front room of their home.

• From Synanon Kid: Book One: A Memoir of Growing Up in the Synanon Cult

  “Do you know how to polish your shoes?” When I shook my head, she uncapped the little bottle and showed me how to dab at the shoe with the attached sponge and work the polish into the creases with a rag. When she’d finished, she recapped the polish and put it away. “Time for inspection!” someone called out. Girls ran up and down the hallway, darting into their bedrooms. Sophie shoved me in the direction of my bed and stood in front of hers. Her small, chubby body went rigid as she held her arms ramrod straight at her sides and stretched her neck as if to appear taller while staring straight ahead at nothing. I took the same stance and heard girls moving about the neighboring rooms before a hush descended upon the dorm. Some minutes later, Demonstrator Linda entered our room. She was all business as her gaze fell on me. “Stand up straight.” I pulled my frame a little straighter, trying to stretch my neck as I’d seen Sophie do. “Open your mouth,” Linda said. I did, keeping my gaze fixed straight ahead. Linda’s face came close to mine while she squatted to peer for what felt like a long time at the inside of my mouth. “Smile,” she said. “What?” I whispered. Linda stood up. “Sophie, come over here.” Sophie walked over to us and stood facing me. “Show Celena.” Sophie’s cheeks bunched up into the obligatory smile. Linda nodded and told me to do the same. I grimaced while she squatted to examine my teeth. “Good. Turn around.” I did. “Good.” She looked at my bed. “Nice and tight. Good job, Sophie, for helping your buddy.” Sophie beamed. “You are excused. You may go to breakfast now,” Linda said. “Come on,” Sophie said, making a grab for my hand. I pulled it away, but followed her outside into the cold winter morning. Other children emerged from the buildings cloistered next to ours. All of us wore overalls and white t-shirts as well as an overshirt or jacket. Due to the uniformity of our clothing and haircuts, I still wasn’t sure which children were girls and which were boys. Sophie and I joined the merging group on the road and walked a quarter-mile to the Commons, the building where we had our meals. Only children, supervised by demonstrators, ate in the Commons. The tables were long and U-shaped, each with little pushed-in plastic chairs. We were allowed to sit wherever we wanted. A woman circulated through the room, handing out colorful, hard-plastic cups of milk. “No, thank you,” I told her. “There is no breakfast until you drink your milk,” she said. I swallowed and took the cup. I hated milk. Some of the children were already chugging theirs. As each finished, he or she was rewarded with a plate of scrambled eggs and piece of toast. I took a sip; it tasted sweet and watery, even worse than the milk I’d had in the past.

• From Synanon Kid: Book One: A Memoir of Growing Up in the Synanon Cult

  We woke at five on a Saturday morning and had a quick breakfast before we went to the tack room next to the horse stalls and collected a saddle, bit and straps. This equipment was for me. Spike rode bareback. Into the hills we hiked with the gear and a small bucket of oats. “They sometimes hang around this area,” Spike said after we’d walked for close to an hour. “This area” was a vast stretch of land that appeared similar in every direction. Another hour would pass before we saw a band of horses off in the distance. As we arrived, the creatures stood watching us, and I felt more and more uncomfortable with the prospect of Spike and me trying to persuade eight giant, muscular animals to return to the corral. Spike gave a low whistle, and one of the horses snorted, shaking its head and backing up. “That’s the leader,” she said. “Come on, boy. I’ve got some oats for you.” The horse pulled its lips back from its thick, wide teeth and answered her with a high whinny. Spike stepped forward. The horse stepped back. Spike set down the oats and grinned at me. “He wants them, but he knows it means he’s going to the corral.” I wanted to go back to the property and forget the whole project. Spike picked up the bucket. “We’ll walk away a little and they’ll follow.” Follow, they did. It was unnerving to have a herd of horses walking behind me and to have one of them nudging at my back. Spike stopped and held out the bucket. When the lead horse stretched his neck and nibbled at the air, my friend reached out her hand and grazed his nose with her fingers. His head shot back and he snorted, showering my face with a fine spray of snot. Spike laughed, unfazed by the fact that the whole lot of them could trample us to death if they didn’t feel like coming back to the corral. “They know there’s a lot more of these oats down below; they just don’t want to be locked up to get them,” she said. Overcome by the temptation of the sweet-smelling oats, the lead horse took a few steps forward and dipped its head into the bucket, the force of its movement pushing Spike’s small frame back. She petted his head while she attempted to remain standing. “Here,” she said to me. “You hold the bucket and I’ll saddle him.” Before I could say no, she pushed the oat bucket into my hands. Now I had to try to remain standing while the horse roughly satisfied his hunger. Spike saddled him while a few other horses vied for the grain in my hand. Without fear, she pushed the other horses away, wrestled the grain bucket away from the lead, then coaxed him into accepting a bit and helped hoist me onto his back.

• From A Greek-English Lexicon (Liddell-Scott) (1957)

  B. ©. DAT., 1. of Place, on both sides of, ἀμφ᾽ ὀχέεσσι Il. 5. 723; ἀμφὶ κεφαλῇ, wows, στήθεσσι about the head, etc., Hom.; ἀμφί οἱ around him, Il. 12. 396; μοι ἀμφ᾽ αὐτῷ around me, Il. 9. 470; like- wise, ἀμφὶ περὶ στήθεσσι Od. 11. 609 :—then, just like περί, all round, κρέα ἀμφὶ ὀβελοῖς ἔπειραν they fixed the meat round, i.e. upon, the spits, Od. 12. 395; πεπαρμένη ἀμφ᾽ ὀνύχεσσι Hes. Op. 203 (cf. περί B.1). 2. in a more general relation of Place, at, by, near, with, like ἐπί, ἀμφὶ πύλῃσι μάχεσθαι at the gates, Il. 12. 175; ἀμφὶ padrw on the helmet, 3. 362; ἀμφὶ πυρί on, over, or by the fire, 18. 344; ἀμφ᾽ ἐμοί by my side, Od. 11. 4233 esp. of hanging or lying over one, 1]. 4. 493, Soph. Aj. 562; ἀμφὶ γούνασι πίπτειν Eur. Alc. 947. II. of Time, ἁλίῳ ἀμφὶ ἑνί in the compass of one day, Pind. O. 13. 51. III. generally, of Connexion or Association, without any distinct notion of Place, freq. in Pind., ἀμφ᾽ ἀέθλοις in, for them, N. 2. 26; ἀμφὶ σοφίᾳ P. τ. 22; σοῦ ἀμφὶ τρόπῳ N. τ. 42; ἐπ᾽ ἔργοισιν ἀμφί τε βουλαῖς Ῥ. 5.160; so, ἔρις ἀμφὶ μουσικῇ Hdt. 6. 129, and later, e. g. Luc. D. Deor. 20. 14. IV. Causal, about, for, for the sake of, ἀμφ᾽ Ἑλένῃ μάχεσθαι 1]. 3.70; ἀμφὶ γυναικὶ ἄλγεα πάσχειν Ib. 157: about, of, regarding, concerning, 7. 408, Οἀ. τ. 48; εἰπὼν ἀμφ᾽ ᾿Οδυσῆϊ Od. 14. 364; ἀμφ᾽ ἐμοί for me, Soph. O. C.1614; ἀμφί σοι Aesch. Ag. 890; ἀμφὶ τῷ θανάτῳ αὐτῆς λόγος λέγεται about her death it is reported, 83 Hadt. 3. 32, cf. Soph. Aj. 303. 2. like περί, Lat. prae, of impulses, ἀμφὶ τάρβει, ἀμφὶ φόβῳ, prae pavore, for very fear, Aesch. Cho. 547, Eur. Or. 825 ; ἀμφὶ θυμῷ Soph. Fr. 147 :—and of the means, ἀμφ᾽ dpera δέχεσθαι for, through it, Pind. P. 1. 155; ἐμᾷ ἀμφὶ paxava by my skill, Id. P. 8. 47, cf. O. 8. 55.

• From The Things They Carried (1990)

  We called the enemy ghosts. "Bad night," we'd say, "the ghosts are out." To get spooked, in the lingo, meant not only to get scared but to get killed. "Don't get spooked," we'd say. "Stay cool, stay alive." Or we'd say: "Careful, man, don't give up the ghost." The countryside itself seemed spooky—shadows and tunnels and incense burning in the dark. The land was haunted. We were fighting forces that did not obey the laws of twentieth-century science. Late at night, on guard, it seemed that all of Vietnam was alive and shimmering—odd shapes swaying in the paddies, boogiemen in sandals, spirits dancing in old pagodas. It was ghost country, and Charlie Cong was the main ghost. The way he came out at night. How you never really saw him, just thought you did. Almost magical— appearing, disappearing. He could blend with the land, changing form, becoming trees and grass. He could levitate. He could fly. He could pass through barbed wire and melt away like ice and creep up on you without sound or footsteps. He was scary. In the daylight, maybe, you didn't believe in this stuff. You laughed it off. You made jokes. But at night you turned into a believer: no skeptics in foxholes. Azar was wound up tight. All afternoon, while we made the preparations, he kept chanting, "Halloween, Halloween." That, plus the finger snapping, almost made me cancel the whole operation. I went hot and cold. Mitchell Sanders wouldn't speak to me, which tended to cool it off, but then I'd start remembering things. The result was a kind of numbness. No ice, no heat. I just went through the motions, rigidly, by the numbers, without any heart or real emotion. I rigged up my special effects, checked out the terrain, measured distances, collected the ordnance and equipment we'd need. I was professional enough about it, I didn't make mistakes, but somehow it felt as if I were gearing up to fight somebody else's war. I didn't have that patriotic zeal. If there had been a dignified way out, I might've taken it. During evening chow, in fact, I kept staring across the mess hall at Bobby Jorgenson, and when he finally looked up at me, almost nodding, I came very close to calling it quits. Maybe I was fishing for something. One last apology—something public. But Jorgenson only gazed back at me. It was a strange gaze, too, straight on and unafraid, as if apologies were no longer required. He was sitting there with Dave Jensen and Mitchell Sanders and a few others, and he seemed to fit in very nicely, all chumminess and group rapport. That's probably what cinched it. I went back to my hootch, showered, shaved, threw my helmet against the wall, lay down for a while, got up, prowled around, talked to myself, applied some fresh ointment, then headed off to find Azar.

• From Synanon Kid: Book One: A Memoir of Growing Up in the Synanon Cult

  The soft sounds of sniffling seemed to come from the bathroom. The door stood open a crack, and I poked my head in. One of the girls who lived in my dorm, Carol, stood glaring at her reflection in the mirror. Her bloodshot eyes were slits in the puffy wet skin that surrounded them. The tips of her ears were flaming red. In the dim lighting, her recently shaved scalp gleamed pale. Her face, swollen from crying, had lost any male or female characteristics. She appeared inhuman. The movement of my image in the glass pulled her from her trance. She spun around, lunging for the door as I tried to close it. I wasn’t fast enough. Her hands grabbed at my face, her nails slicing long rakes in my cheeks while she shrieked her fury. Then, just like that, she was back in the bathroom, slamming the door after herself. My face felt like it was on fire. I covered my cheeks with my hands just as two girls came down the hallway and darted past me into one of the bedrooms. “Get in the closet,” one of them hissed. A demonstrator soon followed. When she spotted me, she caught hold of my shoulder, marching me in front of her and out of the bunkhouse to the deserted courtyard. Minutes before there had been groups of kids everywhere, but they’d dispersed like roaches exposed to the sudden glare of light. I heard whispering and saw a face or two pressed against a window as I was marched toward the playroom. I didn’t try to fight or run away. The head-shaving was going to happen. It was better to not make a fuss. In the playroom several chairs were lined up, each with a demonstrator standing behind it. In their hands were electric clippers. I sat quietly, though my stomach felt like a cage of fluttering winged insects. The ceremony was interrupted by high-pitched screams and sounds of struggling. Donna and Carlene had been caught. They were both part of the popular crowd, with their stylish Wrangler jeans and halter-tops they’d bought with their allowance. In their record collections, they had the cool albums like Saturday Night Fever and Abba’s Dancing Queen . They even smelled cool, like Hubba Bubba bubble gum and Dr. Pepper-flavored Lip Smackers. Carlene’s blond hair had grown into soft curls around her ears, giving her a more feminine look compared with the spikes she sported when her straight hair was only a few inches long. Donna’s thick beaver pelt had grown into a pageboy look, which she was able to feather in the front. They flung back their lithe bodies, digging in their heels. Waiting demonstrators ran to help their colleagues, wrestling the girls toward the chairs. Carlene’s small body buckled into the seat, the chair almost flying backward from her spasmodic motions. Donna was going for the face as Carol had. With her fingers curled like claws, she charged one of the demonstrators.

• From Synanon Kid: Book One: A Memoir of Growing Up in the Synanon Cult

  “Is this a game?” Buddy called out to us. “No!” we yelled in unison. “Give me twenty!” She rose to all fours, shaking, and managed to get into the pushup position, her middle sagging. “Pull yourself up.” She did, her spaghetti arms trembling harder now as she attempted to make her first pushup. Creaking down, she collapsed, her body convulsing in sobs. Buddy stood, his hands on his hips, eyes hooded. “Up!” With an act of supreme will, she pushed herself back up. “Down! That’s two!” Again she collapsed. My neck felt stiff. My eyes strained from looking straight ahead. Giving up on the girl, Buddy began to pace among our ranks. “This is Synanon. You are Synanon kids, and I’m going to whip your asses into shape. You hear me?” “Yes, Buddy!” “After our exercises, we will be running. There is no stopping. I catch someone walking, all of you will start again! Understand?” “Yes, Buddy!” I heard the hollow smacking sound of something like a watermelon hitting the ground hard. It wasn’t a watermelon, but Tim’s skull. In a fit of epilepsy, he had fallen straight back from his military stance. We broke ranks and ran over to him. He was out cold, his body stiff. We stood, watching him. No one, including Buddy, seemed to know what to do. After some moments, Tim’s eyes fluttered. His face scrunched up as he came to and registered the pain. “Uh, ungh,” he cried. Tim’s epilepsy was one reason we kids were required to divide up our time with him. He needed to always have someone watching him. Yet no one had trained us on what to do when he had an epileptic episode. This major detail escaped the demonstrators in charge of his welfare. Tim opened his eyes. “You all right?” Buddy asked, a nervous smile flitting across his face. Tim said nothing. Buddy reached down to the boy, who stared silently up at all of us, tears sliding down his face. Buddy pulled him to his feet, guiding him to a shady place to sit. The rest of us set off on our run. From that day forward Tim did not participate in physical education. Then one day he vanished just as suddenly as he had arrived. It may have been weeks before we kids even noticed he was gone. In the spring of 1980 Buddy Jones put together our first basketball team to play against schools outside Synanon. I signed up immediately, excited to learn the sport and get the chance to skip some of the game-playing that usually took place after physical education and before dinner. I was one of two girls who registered for the team, and after a week, the second girl dropped out. Almost from the beginning I became obsessed with the sport, practicing whenever I had spare time.

• From Synanon Kid: Book One: A Memoir of Growing Up in the Synanon Cult

  She seemed to sense his repulsion in the curt way he spoke to her and the flare of his nostrils. My father had a temper; several of his brothers did, too, and Terry had been on the receiving side of it more than once. What was I to tell him when he waited for me to speak? Would he take me home with him that day and never bring me back to Aunt Terry’s? I couldn’t afford the risk that he might later change his mind and decide Aunt Terry’s wasn’t that bad after all. “Celena,” he urged. I thought of the beatings she’d given me, the sharp edges of the plastic racetracks that belonged to her son slicing across my skin, and the alcohol she poured on to the cuts afterward that burned like cold fire. She’d laugh gaily at my screams. Should I tell my father of the spiders she forced me to kill? Or the eggs she cooked, scrambling the dead insects into the goopy mess, and forcing me to eat them? The games she liked to play in which she pretended to desert me at Taco Bell or McDonald’s? “Go and get some napkins,” she’d order me, smiling, her children grinning next to her in the family car. When I wouldn’t budge, her teasing smile would evaporate, a chilly hatred settling in her cold eyes. “I said, ‘Go get some napkins.’” Hoping she’d change her mind, I’d open the car door and do as she’d asked. When I returned to the parking lot, the car was always gone. At five years old, I didn’t know where I was, what my phone number was or when she might be back. Too afraid to ask for help, I’d stand and wait, a stack of napkins clutched in my hand. The asphalt of the parking lot seemed wide and vast, yawning out to the chunky sidewalks, the busy street and surrounding buildings an urban forest that I could not navigate. I could only hope she’d come back. She always did, after a few long minutes, pulling the car up next to me, my cousins and her laughing at my terror-stricken expression. One of them would open the door. “Girl, we’re just playing with you.” I stared into my father’s insistent gaze. I wanted to go home with him, but I had only one chance to get it right. If he didn’t take me with him, Aunt Terry would have her revenge. So I lied. “I like it here,” I told him. I looked at my aunt as her shoulders sagged with relief, a great puff of smoke floating from her mouth. She smiled. “I told you, Jim. Everythin’s fine. We love havin’ Celena.” The drawl of each word was as silky as ribbons. My father watched me, the deep crease of a V between his brows. He didn’t believe us. He rose to his feet as if he were being pulled against his will by an invisible string.

• From Synanon Kid: Book One: A Memoir of Growing Up in the Synanon Cult

  The woman jumped back just in time and the distraction was sufficient to allow someone else to grab Donna and secure her with a silky cloth rope that was wrapped around her upper body, pinning her arms at her sides. “Look at Celena and how quietly she sits,” one of the demonstrators said. “Fuck her! Fuck you!” Donna yelled. Her face filled with blood, seeming as if it might burst as a demonstrator held her head still against her will. Carlene had given up, breaking into sobs. Watery mucus dripped from her nose. The buzz of the clippers rang, and I felt the comb vibrate over my scalp as chunks of hair fell onto our shoulders and laps. It took only a few minutes to have our hair shaved to a quarter of an inch. The demonstrators passed around oval hand mirrors, seemingly oblivious to our distress. This was “act as if” at its finest. “Take a look at how beautiful you are now,” a demonstrator said to me. I couldn’t stomach looking in the mirror. I avoided mirrors whenever I could. I already knew how I looked: a narrow skinny head with big, dark, haunted eyes. In my dresser drawer was a knitted hat I’d tucked away for these occasions. Every moment that I was allowed I would wear that hat until my hair grew back to some semblance of normalcy. For days we girls skulked around, startlingly odd-looking with our newly shaven appearances until time wore away our timidity and awkwardness and we were once again ourselves. A few days after the mandatory haircuts, a group of us girls were rounded up again. “Come, come!” two of the demonstrators beckoned. The summons was for a special tea party at the Big House. A large, white, plantation-style home on the property where Chuck and Betty had once lived was now a museum of sorts. I was given a shiny, poufy dress the color of pale pink frosting, which clashed with my dark skin and reddish undertones. The fabric, stiff and unyielding, caged my boyish muscular body and long neck. I was freakishly eye-catching wearing this princess attire while sporting my newly shaven look. I joined my peers on the dirt road, each bedecked in her own spectacular atrocity. We followed the demonstrators, who were also queerly dressed, with their cheeks carefully rouged and eyes enveloped in giant, spidery, fake eyelashes. We walked up a hill to the plantation home, climbed up to the wide porch and went into the main parlor, where we were led to small round tables dressed in gossamer white tablecloths and set with fine china. We sat, stuffed into our chairs, sipping tea from delicate, rosebud-decorated cups while we listened in resignation to talk about our status as the daughters of Synanon: beautiful girls with lovely bald heads and healthy bodies. After tea we were made to walk back and forth across the room with our heads held high.

• From Synanon Kid: Book One: A Memoir of Growing Up in the Synanon Cult

  A bowl of sprouts left on the table for me to eat, my mother and her friend behind his closed bedroom door. Alone in the hum of silence, I watched faint dust funnels swirl in the fading light. When the door opened and her friend emerged, his long, dusky brown hair spilling over pale naked shoulders, I ran to the futon bed where my mother lay curled under blankets. She lifted them for me and I wiggled myself into the curve of her body. Later we sat cross-legged on the bed, accepting her friend’s offerings of little white boxes, neat and compact like birthday presents, with the flaps open, long thin sticks thrusting out of them. Inside one of the boxes was something slick and gelatinous. The other held rice mixed with bits of carrots and pink, crescent-shaped things. I poked my finger into the slimy stuff. “Chinese food,” he said, also sitting cross-legged, his penis, shrunken and limp, tucked away under a thick cloud of pubic hair. At the house of a different friend, my mother washed dishes, completely at home in his kitchen. I wandered into the yard: a jumble of unattended shrubbery, dead grass and dirt patches. On the inside crease of my left arm is a pale little wrinkle, a scar where his dog bit me. I remember nothing of the attack, only the man shaking me so hard afterward that I was too shocked to cry. “What did I tell you, huh? Huh?” he demanded. “You were teasing him. That’s why he bit you. I told you not to tease my dog.” Beyond him my mother watched, her eyes mirroring my fear. When she stepped forward to reach for me, he yanked me out of her grasp. “I’ll take care of it.” She said nothing, the color gone from her face. Instead she stood very still while he whisked me down the hallway to the bathroom and poked his finger into the jagged bits of my torn flesh, blood spooling up from the wound. I held myself rigid as he lifted me up to thrust my arm under the faucet, turning on the water and washing the bite with a white sludge of melted soap. “Little brat,” he hissed, and he dried the wound, slapping on a bandage before prodding me toward his bedroom, where he sat me on the bed, rough as a sack of rocks. “You stay here until it’s time for you to go.” I shuddered and tried not to breathe as I watched him walk away and close the door. Long minutes ticked by. I didn’t dare move. When the door creaked open, I held my breath and focused on the carpet, but the person who entered was my mother, smiling, with an apology tucked into the corners of her lips. “Hi,” she whispered. I remained silent; the thought of her friend rushing in to yell at us kept me mute.

• From Synanon Kid: Book One: A Memoir of Growing Up in the Synanon Cult

  Other times we stayed home and hung out at the pool in the apartment complex. Having never learned to swim, my father would sun himself on one of the white plastic pool chairs while Alice waded into the cool water, carrying me on her hip, my arms and legs wrapped like octopus tentacles around her body. Try as she might, she could not peel me off to begin my swimming lessons. I could see clear to the bottom of the pool and the dip of the cement alarmed me. I’d wiggle myself higher into Alice’s arms to escape the water lapping against my shoulders. My father laughed genially from the safety of his chair at my frantic attempts to cling to Alice. Sometimes he’d follow us along the perimeter, calling out encouragingly for me to kick my legs or place my face in the water. I could not trust him at these times. He wanted me to swim, but would not put even a toe into the water himself. When we finally went inside, a warm towel would be wrapped around me, and with eyes burning from chlorine, I’d skitter to the bathroom, waiting for the comfort of the dry clothes Alice brought me. Soon all the terror of the swimming lesson was forgotten as I ate a hot baloney sandwich prepared by my father, the white bread soaked with grease and mayonnaise. My life took on a regular rhythm as Alice eagerly stepped into the maternal role that my mother had vacated. She provided me with dolls whose blond hair I continually brushed until they were balding. My clothing, which Alice kept neatly folded in my dresser, smelled of Tide detergent and lavender. On weekends she plaited my hair into two braids and tied them with ribbons that matched the colors of my clothes. Among Alice’s relatives, I was called her little girl. When I wanted comfort, I learned to go to Alice. Possibly, at such a young age, Alice and my mother blended into one and the same person for me. They looked very similar to each other, and I don’t recall missing my mother with Alice around. But one afternoon, just as suddenly as my mother had departed, Alice left too. My father and I returned to the apartment to find all the furniture gone. Alice had taken what belonged to her. In shock, I walked the length of our bare living room. Then I sat on the floor while my father paced, phone to ear, his jaw clenched with tension. By the end of the week, my bags were packed. Jobless and struggling financially, he thought I might fare better under Alice’s care, and so, like the furniture, I went too. In Compton, where Alice’s father, Lewis, had a house, I was given two rooms: a bedroom and a playroom equipped with every toy Alice thought I should possess, as well as a school desk and handwriting booklets. Alice valued education.

• From The Things They Carried (1990)

  without any hurry up the center of the trail. There was no sound at all— none that I can remember. In a way, it seemed, he was part of the morning fog, or my own imagination, but there was also the reality of what was happening in my stomach. I had already pulled the pin on a grenade. I had come up to a crouch. It was entirely automatic. I did not hate the young man; I did not see him as the enemy; I did not ponder issues of morality or politics or military duty. I crouched and kept my head low. I tried to swallow whatever was rising from my stomach, which tasted like lemonade, something fruity and sour. I was terrified. There were no thoughts about killing. The grenade was to make him go away—ust evaporate—and I leaned back and felt my head go empty and then felt it fill up again. I had already thrown the grenade before telling myself to throw it. The brush was thick and I had to lob it high, not aiming, and I remember the grenade seeming to freeze above me for an instant, as if a camera had clicked, and I remember ducking down and holding my breath and seeing little wisps of fog rise from the earth. The grenade bounced once and rolled across the trail. I did not hear it, but there must've been a sound, because the young man dropped his weapon and began to run, just two or three quick steps, then he hesitated, swiveling to his right, and he glanced down at the grenade and tried to cover his head but never did. It occurred to me then that he was about to die. I wanted to warn him. The grenade made a popping noise—not soft but not loud either—not what I'd expected—and there was a puff of dust and smoke—a small white puff—and the young man seemed to jerk upward as if pulled by invisible wires. He fell on his back. His rubber sandals had been blown off. He lay at the center of the trail, his right leg bent beneath him, his one eye shut, his other eye a huge star-shaped hole. For me, it was not a matter of live or die. I was in no real peril. Almost certainly the young man would have passed me by. And it will always be that way. Later, I remember, Kiowa tried to tell me that the man would've died anyway. He told me that it was a good kill, that I was a soldier and this was a war, that I should shape up and stop staring and ask myself what the dead man would've done if things were reversed. None of it mattered. The words seemed far too complicated. All I could do was gape at the fact of the young man's body.

• From Synanon Kid: Book One: A Memoir of Growing Up in the Synanon Cult

  Thirty-four of the demonstrators had work schedules that consisted of seven days on and seven days off. Three of the staff worked five days with two days off, or five days with nine days off, while seven of the staff worked a consistent schedule of five days a week with two days off. Looking back, I believe this inconsistent scheduling was another method to keep us children from becoming too dependent on our providers. Chapter FifteenB ack to Basics I stared at a small brown turd that floated in the toilet bowl. “Is this yours?” Mary Sue said, gripping my shoulder. I shook my head. “Go sit down.” I turned around and sat on the linoleum floor of the bathroom with the other children while the next child was led up to the toilet to take a look and likewise deny responsibility for the little floating poop. The room was getting crowded, and a short line snaked out to the hallway, where another demonstrator, Linda, stood in the doorway, guiding kids in to make the pilgrimage. “Well, somebody did this!” Mary Sue screamed, pointing her thick finger at the toilet. Mary Sue was short with lumpy legs and wide hips. Her eyes were big and round. When she got in a rage, it seemed as if very little held them in place and they might dislodge and roll away. I found her personality jittery and unpredictable. I had learned from Mary Sue when she was new on the scene and still excited about being a demonstrator that she and Theresa were good friends. As I grew to know Mary Sue better, it was hard for me to imagine her having anything to do with my mom. When no one claimed the poop, Mary Sue changed her tone to well-modulated calm. “Whoever is guilty of this, step forward and admit it. We will have a talk about hygiene.” No one came forward. “Okay. Fine. You can all just sit here for as long as it takes.” I scrunched up my knees and buried my face in my lap. I wished I’d been playing farther away from the bunkhouse when we were all rounded up. The interrogation continued until there were no more children who hadn’t looked at the turd in the toilet. We sat in silence. Linda left. When she came back, Mary Sue left. More kids were found and brought to the bathroom. It became even more crowded. “We can sit here all day and all night,” Linda said. After an hour I noticed an uncomfortable feeling. My bladder was full and my feet numb from sitting. I inched my body against the wall to stretch my cramped legs. “Sit your ass down!” Mary Sue shrieked at me. “No! No! Come here!” I stood up and walked to Mary Sue, who looked bug-eyed again. “You did this, didn’t you?” I shook my head. “Yes, you did! Admit it!

• From Synanon Kid: Book One: A Memoir of Growing Up in the Synanon Cult

  “I can’t talk to you here. Walk with me.” I stumbled after him, bewildered. His voice low, he said, “Some men came and took me just before the big move.” “What men?” His lips thinned as I watched him struggle to explain. “There’s a camp where they are keeping some kids from the punk squad. They sent me there. It’s like a concentration camp or something.” “What?” We walked faster, his words painting a disturbing story. “I had to sleep in a tent and dig ditches. Every day they made me run for miles at gunpoint with some of the other boys. We weren’t allowed to stop and rest. Buddy’s in on it. It was him or one of the other men who’d drive a truck behind us, acting like they were going to run us over if we stopped.” “Why?” Even as I asked, I knew the question was futile. So many things that happened in Synanon seemed to just come out of the clear blue. Chris shrugged. “They told me I was behaving like a punk and they were going to teach me a lesson.” He stopped and we stood looking at each other. “They would make me do pushups.” Chris threw a furtive look over his shoulder. “When I couldn’t do any more, they’d punch me in the stomach or kick me. There are older kids who want to escape, but we’re all trapped here. Did you know that the entrances to the properties are manned by some of the Imperial Marines, with guns?” “They said it was to keep us safe from outsiders that want to hurt us.” Even as I spoke, I knew that it wasn’t the truth. Chris shook his head. “That’s only part of it. It’s also to keep people from running away.” His words churned sickeningly in my mind as I scanned the hills around us. “They could come for any one of us,” he continued, “and throw us into the slug camp. No one tells you anything. You don’t know you’re going to camp, and just like that you disappear.” Slug camp was a place for people Synanon members deemed worthless: parasitic, lazy slugs who needed to be taught a lesson. In slug camp people worked long, grueling days exposed to the elements. At day’s end they slept outside in flimsy tents. They were shunned by the rest of community until they proved themselves to be one hundred percent on board with whatever Synanon happened to be dishing out. I had always thought slug camp was for adults. I didn’t know that kids in my peer group also went there. Chris watched me, and when I looked up at his face, I realized that the boy he had been was no more. We were not far apart in age, but he seemed much older now. “They’re all bastards. You can’t trust them,” he said softly. He walked on. I didn’t follow him.

• From Synanon Kid: Book One: A Memoir of Growing Up in the Synanon Cult

  We exploded with laughter as she made kissing noises and winked at us. Back-to-basics was winding down. Next week we would return to our regular schedule with our new and improved crew cuts. Chapter SixteenG od Does Not Exist It was the middle of the night, and I didn’t feel good. For minutes, I lay on my side, not daring to move, knowing that whatever was making my stomach ache would come out of me if I attempted to sit up. Lying still wasn’t making me feel any better, though. Pushing myself up, I tried to jump from my bed, but the vomit spewed out onto my covers. Even when there seemed to be nothing left, my stomach muscles seized until I passed out from exhaustion. Minutes later I awoke and, managing to get out of my bed, fumbled for my lamp, turning the switch on. My roommate slept soundly as I collapsed to my knees, vomiting again. Grayish chunks followed by red, runny liquid came out of me. It looked like blood. I passed out again. Minutes went by. My stomach seized. Frightened, I tried to stand but felt too weak to get past my hands and knees. I crawled forward a little, then threw up a third time, thick, foamy red stuff. I wanted to wake my roommate, yet I was too weak to talk. I threw up six times that night and made it only to the door of my room before I finally fell into a deep sleep sprawled across the floor. “Get up!” I opened my eyes to someone’s sneakered foot nudging my arm. Morning had come. The demonstrator stared down at me, a look of supreme disgust on her face. “How dare you make a mess like this and not clean up after yourself?” “I’m sick.” “What?” “I’m sick,” I managed to say a little louder. “I don’t care how you feel. You clean up all of this!” My roommate appeared with a bucket of water and plunked it down next to me. My stomach had eased somewhat while I’d slept, but as I pulled myself up, my head felt as light as a balloon. The room suddenly slanted. It seemed that every bit of strength I’d once possessed had been zapped out of me. The demonstrator waited until I put my hand in the bucket to retrieve the soapy rag. “Clean up every last bit of this vomit and then shower and take yourself to class.” “I think I was bleeding inside,” I said, trying to squeeze out the rag. She turned on her heel. “I don’t care.” The vomit had hardened into little hills, the blood having browned. I grabbed a chunk with the rag, pulled it off the carpet and deposited it into the water, my eyes warming with tears. I wanted my mother. I wanted to be hugged and loved. Even my aunt, who hadn’t liked me, had let me rest when I was sick.

• From Synanon Kid: Book One: A Memoir of Growing Up in the Synanon Cult

  Out from their ejected insides would come stringy, wormy, black things that took on a life of their own, growing in size before my eyes. For some reason there always seemed to be plenty of massacred potato bugs oozing their guts before the entryway to our dining area. The sight of them never failed to ruin my appetite. Wildlife abounded in the surrounding hills. Deer, squirrels, raccoons and opossums were the creatures we most commonly saw. One evening as I walked from the dining area back to my bunkhouse, I had a prickly sense of a presence near me that made my body hair stand on end. Several feet ahead of me in the inky darkness I barely made out the shape of something big, its eyes reflecting the faint light of the stars above. I stopped and stood still, straining to make out what was before me. The animal had not moved, and as my eyes began to adjust, I realized I was gazing at an enormous predatory cat. Terrified, I remained frozen, holding my breath as I gazed into those penetrating, glowing orbs for what felt like long slow minutes. When the creature moved, terror streaked hot through my body, but swiftly and silently the cat turned and disappeared into the shadows of the trees, the cloak of night rendering it invisible. I ran so fast and hard to my dorm that it seemed my heart might burst, and my lungs collapse. I didn’t confide in anyone about my encounter that night. Over a period of days I wondered if I’d imagined it. Then I decided to ask some of the other kids if they knew anything about large cats on the property. “Yeah,” someone told me. “There’s mountain lions.” Unsettled, I asked someone else about the possibility of mountain lions. “Yes,” came the answer, “but they’re rare to see. Usually they stay farther up in the hills.” So I hadn’t imagined it. Yet I told no one. I found the ginger-colored kittens while I was trekking through a field on my way to yet another abandoned building on the property where we kids sometimes played. This building had busted-out windows because some of the boys used the space as target practice, stoning bullfrogs they had captured. Often they missed their mark and broke the windowpanes instead, leaving large shards of glass intact within the frames. Likewise, some of the walls were splattered with frog guts from successful shots, the dismembered amphibian body parts and pieces of glass littering the floor under the windows. Old furniture stacked in a disorganized fashion throughout the building made it hazardous to walk through. Once, when I’d been hanging out there with several girls, a giant velvety black moth flew in through one of the windows and attached itself to the neck of one of the girls. She beat at the thing with frantic hands, but it clung to her, unmoving with its enormous furry legs curled against her skin.

• From The Things They Carried (1990)

  ended, they would blink and peek up. They would touch their bodies, feeling shame, then quickly hiding it. They would force themselves to stand. As if in slow motion, frame by frame, the world would take on the old logic—absolute silence, then the wind, then sunlight, then voices. It was the burden of being alive. Awkwardly, the men would reassemble themselves, first in private, then in groups, becoming soldiers again. They would repair the leaks in their eyes. They would check for casualties, call in dustoffs, light cigarettes, try to smile, clear their throats and spit and begin cleaning their weapons. After a time someone would shake his head and say, No lie, I almost shit my pants, and someone else would laugh, which meant it was bad, yes, but the guy had obviously not shit his pants, it wasn't that bad, and in any case nobody would ever do such a thing and then go ahead and talk about it. They would squint into the dense, oppressive sunlight. For a few moments, perhaps, they would fall silent, lighting a joint and tracking its passage from man to man, inhaling, holding in the humiliation. Scary stuff, one of them might say. But then someone else would grin or flick his eyebrows and say, Roger-dodger, almost cut me a new asshole, almost. There were numerous such poses. Some carried themselves with a sort of wistful resignation, others with pride or stiff soldierly discipline or good humor or macho zeal. They were afraid of dying but they were even more afraid to show it. They found jokes to tell. They used a hard vocabulary to contain the terrible softness. Greased they'd say. Offed, lit up, zapped while zipping. It wasn't cruelty, just stage presence. They were actors. When someone died, it wasn't quite dying, because in a curious way it seemed scripted, and because they had their lines mostly memorized, irony mixed with tragedy, and because they called it by other names, as if to encyst and destroy the reality of death itself. They kicked corpses. They cut off thumbs. They talked grunt lingo. They told stories about Ted Lavender's supply of tranquilizers, how the poor guy didn't feel a thing, how incredibly tranquil he was. There's a moral here, said Mitchell Sanders. They were waiting for Lavender's chopper, smoking the dead man's dope. The moral's pretty obvious, Sanders said, and winked. Stay away from drugs. No joke, they'll ruin your day every time. Cute, said Henry Dobbins. Mind blower, get it? Talk about wiggy. Nothing left, just blood and brains. They made themselves laugh.

• From The Things They Carried (1990)

  Shortly after midnight we moved into the ambush site outside My Khe. The whole platoon was there, spread out in the dense brush along the trail, and for five hours nothing at all happened. We were working in two-man teams—one man on guard while the other slept, switching off every two hours—and I remember it was still dark when Kiowa shook me awake for the final watch. The night was foggy and hot. For the first few moments I felt lost, not sure about directions, groping for my helmet and weapon. I reached out and found three grenades and lined them up in front of me; the pins had already been straightened for quick throwing. And then for maybe half an hour I kneeled there and waited. Very gradually, in tiny slivers, dawn began to break through the fog, and from my position in the brush I could see ten or fifteen meters up the trail. The mosquitoes were fierce. I remember slapping at them, wondering if I should wake up Kiowa and ask for some repellent, then thinking it was a bad idea, then looking up and seeing the young man come out of the fog. He wore black clothing and rubber sandals and a gray ammunition belt. His shoulders were slightly stooped, his head cocked to the side as if listening for something. He seemed at ease. He carried his weapon in one hand, muzzle down, moving

• From The Things They Carried (1990)

  Psychology—that was one thing I knew. You don't try to scare people in broad daylight. You wait. Because the darkness squeezes you inside yourself, you get cut off from the outside world, the imagination takes over. That's basic psychology. I'd pulled enough night guard to know how the fear factor gets multiplied as you sit there hour after hour, nobody to talk to, nothing to do but stare into the big black hole at the center of your own sorry soul. The hours go by and you lose your gyroscope; your mind starts to roam. You think about dark closets, madmen, murderers under the bed, all those childhood fears. Gremlins and trolls and giants. You try to block it out but you can't. You see ghosts. You blink and shake your head. Bullshit, you tell yourself. But then you remember the guys who died: Curt Lemon, Kiowa, Ted Lavender, a half-dozen others whose faces you can't bring into focus anymore. And then pretty soon you start to ponder the stories you've heard about Charlie's magic. The time some guys cornered two VC ina dead-end tunnel, no way out, but how, when the tunnel was fragged and searched, nothing was found except a pile of dead rats. A hundred stories. Ghosts wiping out a whole squad of Marines in twenty seconds flat. Ghosts rising from the dead. Ghosts behind you and in front of you and inside you. After a while, as the night deepens, you feel a funny buzzing in your ears. Tiny sounds get heightened and distorted. The crickets talk in code; the night takes on an electronic tingle. You hold your breath. You coil up and tighten your muscles and listen, knuckles hard, the pulse ticking in your head. You hear the spooks laughing. No shit, /aughing. You jerk up, you freeze, you squint at the dark. Nothing, though. You put your weapon on full automatic. You crouch lower and count your grenades and make sure the pins are bent for quick throwing and take a deep breath and listen and try not to freak. And then later, after enough time passes, things start to get bad. "Come on," Azar said, "let's do it," but I told him to be patient. Waiting was the trick. So we went to the movies, Barbarella again, the eighth straight night. A lousy movie, I thought, but it kept Azar occupied. He was crazy about Jane Fonda. "Sweet Janie," he kept saying. "Sweet Janie boosts a man's morale." Then, with his hand, he showed me which part of his morale got boosted. It was an old joke. Everything was old. The movie, the heat, the booze, the war. I fell asleep during the second reel—a hot, angry sleep—and forty minutes later I woke up to a sore ass and a foul temper. It wasn't yet midnight.