Grief

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 Filthy Animals (2021)

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

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  LUCIUS APULEIUS accurrit labantique spiritu totam se super corpus effudit ac paenissime ibidem, quam devoverat ei, reddidit animam. Sed aegre manibus erepta suorum invita remansit in vita, funus vero toto feralem pom- pam prosequente populo deducitur ad sepulturam. 7 “Sed Thrasyllus nimium nimius clamare, plangere, et quas in primo maerore lacrimas non habebat, iam scilicet crescente gaudio reddere et multis caritatis nominibus veritatem ipsam fallere, Illum amicum, coaetaneum, contubernalem, fratrem denique, addito nomine lugubri, ciere, necnon interdum manus Cha- rites a pulsandis uberibus amovere, luctum sedare, eiulatum coercere, verbis palpantibus stimulum do- loris obtundere, variis exemplis multivagi casus solacia nectere, cunctis tamen mentitae pietatis officiis studium contrectandae mulieris adhibere odiosumque amorem suum perperam delectando nutrire. Sed officiis inferialibus statim exactis puella protinus festinat ad maritum suum demeare, cunc- tasque prorsus pertemptat vias, certe illam lenem otiosamque nec telis ullis indigentem sed placidae quieti consimilem : inedia denique misera et incuria 354 THE GOLDEN ASS, BOOK VIII they met the slain body of Tlepolemus, Charite threw herself upon him, weeping and lamenting grievously for his death, in such sort that she would have presently ended her life upon the corpse of her slain husband, whom she so entirely loved, had it not - been that her parents and friends did comfort her, and hardly pulled her away. Then the body was taken up, and in funeral pomp brought to the city and buried. “In the mean season Thrasyllus feigned much sorrow for the death of Tlepolemus, crying and beating his breast beyond all measure, but in his heart he was well pleased and joyful, and the tears that he had not for his former grief were ready to come now for his gladness. And to counterfeit very truth by words of kindness, he would come to Charite and say: * O what a loss have I had, by the death of my friend, my fellow, my companion, my brother Tlepolemus’ (adding the name in a melancholy voice). ‘O Charite, comfort yourself, pacify your dolour, refrain your weeping, beat not your breasts.’ And so saying, he would hold her hands and restrain them, so that she might not beat her bosom: with soft words he would blunt the sting of her sorrow, and with divers examples of evil fortune he endea- voured to comfort her; but he spake and did not this for any other intent but that in guise of friend- ship he might closely handle the woman, and so nourish his odious love with filthy delight. How- beit, Charite, after the burial of her husband, sought the means to follow him, and tried every way, but especially that which is most gentle and easy, nor requireth any weapon, but is most like to quiet sleep: for she purposed to finish her life with starvation and neglecting herself, she buried herself 355

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

  But I have had to take it all with me, because it is part of my story. I grieved for many years the woman I would have been if I had not seen that episode of Little House on the Prairie, if I had not had a crush on that football player, if I had never been raped. She never got the chance to live. This is rape’s legacy, the countless deaths women die just trying to keep existing in the world as it is. I have daughters now. I cannot protect them. I cannot get inside their heads and make them unafraid, or know what they are thinking; I know that their minds are as inaccessible to me as mine was to my father. But I can try to equip them. I can help them believe that there is something in them that is unquenchable, something that is impossible to kill. I will myself to believe that they can believe all of that about themselves, even on the days that I struggle with the memories of what happened to me. They’ve never asked me or their father what rape is; we’ve already told them. We’ve talked about why it’s wrong that the entertainment industry is obsessed with violence, particularly violence against women. We’ve talked about what it means that women are largely portrayed in pop culture as either victims, sluts, virgins, or gossips, and why that’s not okay. We tell them that they can choose to live their lives in a way that is not defined by anything that happens to them, something that I have not yet been able to do. They listen. They nod. They dismiss what insults their souls. They are stronger than I am. This is what they reap; this is what I sow. Invisible Light WavesMeredith TalusanBETWEEN TRANSITIONS WHILE I LIVED WITH FIVE OTHER recent nomads in Harlem, I met Paul in our kitchen one night. He’d worked with one of my housemates during a humanitarian service trip in China and was visiting her. He was fluent in Mandarin and majored in linguistics at Yale before enlisting in the navy, where he did intelligence work in Washington, DC. Maybe it was those experiences that gave him that efficient air I associated both with linguists and men in the military. I wanted him from the moment I met him, the way I wanted men I wasn’t used to having: one of the strong, handsome white men on television I coveted when I was growing up in the Philippines. But I also knew there was something wrong about me wanting him, so my eyes cast themselves down when he said hello, and I tried to keep out of his orbit while he stayed at our apartment for a week.

• From Anna Karenina (1877)

  At a big station at a town the volunteers were again greeted with shouts and singing, again men and women with collecting boxes appeared, and provincial ladies brought bouquets to the volunteers and followed them into the refreshment room; but all this was on a much smaller and feebler scale than in Moscow. Chapter 4 While the train was stopping at the provincial town, Sergey Ivanovitch did not go to the refreshment room, but walked up and down the platform. The first time he passed Vronsky’s compartment he noticed that the curtain was drawn over the window; but as he passed it the second time he saw the old countess at the window. She beckoned to Koznishev. “I’m going, you see, taking him as far as Kursk,” she said. “Yes, so I heard,” said Sergey Ivanovitch, standing at her window and peeping in. “What a noble act on his part!” he added, noticing that Vronsky was not in the compartment. “Yes, after his misfortune, what was there for him to do?” “What a terrible thing it was!” said Sergey Ivanovitch. “Ah, what I have been through! But do get in.... Ah, what I have been through!” she repeated, when Sergey Ivanovitch had got in and sat down beside her. “You can’t conceive it! For six weeks he did not speak to anyone, and would not touch food except when I implored him. And not for one minute could we leave him alone. We took away everything he could have used against himself. We lived on the ground floor, but there was no reckoning on anything. You know, of course, that he had shot himself once already on her account,” she said, and the old lady’s eyelashes twitched at the recollection. “Yes, hers was the fitting end for such a woman. Even the death she chose was low and vulgar.” “It’s not for us to judge, countess,” said Sergey Ivanovitch; “but I can understand that it has been very hard for you.”

• From The Divine Comedy (1950)

  Love led us to one death; Caïna 9 waits for him who quenched our life.” These words from them were offered to us. After I had heard those wounded souls, I bowed my face, and held it low until the Poet said to me: “What are thou thinking of?” When I answered, I began: “Ah me! what sweet thoughts, what longing led them to the woeful pass!” Then I turned again to them; and I spoke, and began: Francesca, thy torments make me weep with grief and pity.

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

  VIOLENCE IN A FAMILY COMES DOWN THROUGH GENERATIONS: long before my father (finally) left my mother, her father left her mother, and her father’s father left my great-grandmother. I look like her, it’s said, this woman I knew as a frail bird, this Jewish woman who fled Nazi-occupied Romania as a married teenager, was deserted, survived the war in England as a registered alien, a single mother with a small son who became the grandfather I never met. SOMETIMES MY MOTHER TELLS ME STORIES ABOUT HER FATHER, or stories about my father. They are not mine to repeat. “I want you to know,” she tells me, as if she feels guilty for explaining our history to me. I am amazed at how much violence we can contain—internalize, suppress, hold on to, narrate. How much we can swallow and still survive. THERE’S A SCAR ON MY LEG, A SCAR LIKE MANY PEOPLE’S SCARS. It’s shiny and pale, even against my Ashkenazi-beige skin. It will never disappear. Like the scar on my scalp, it’s marked out by hairlessness, a clear-cut in the forest. It’s evidence of a story like other people’s stories. One rainy day I was running to catch the tube home from school. I slipped and fell, sliding under the high step up to the train carriage. Two strangers caught my arms and hauled me on board as the train juddered with motion. It didn’t even surprise me. I have never been in my body: I still, as I did when I was a child, fall over all the time, walk into things, trip and tumble. I am constantly covered with bruises. My body was not my body but a postpubertal amorphous mass of Silly Putty whose shape, position in space, and vector I couldn’t control. On the way home, my friends chattered, hyped by the drama. Pumped full of the adrenaline of the near-miss. Me too. So pumped that I didn’t notice, until we got off the tube, that my navy school trousers were soaked with blood, leaking through a small rip in the fabric—a rip that mapped exactly onto a rip in my flesh. “It’s not that bad,” said my best friend, but she grudgingly went to the chemist near the tube station and bought some Band-Aids while I waited for the bus, trying not to pass out. The rip fit neatly under a large Band-Aid. Not that bad. We had a fight because I felt too faint to hang out. I stormed (limped) off. I don’t remember how I got to the doctor’s office. I remember that the Band-Aid had swollen with blood, sodden with it, ballooning outward. I remember my sock and shoe were full of blood. I remember that when the doctor cleaned the cut, you could see bone.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  LUCIUS APULEIUS squalida tenebris imis abscondita iam cum luce trans- egerat. Sed Thrasyllus instantia pervicaci, partim per semet ipsum, partim per ceteros familiares ac necessarios, ipsos denique puellae parentes extorquet tandem, iam lurore et illuvie paene collapsa membra lavacro, cibo denique confoveret. At illa parentum suorum alioquin reverens, invita quidem verum religiosae necessitati succumbens, vultu non quidem hilaro, verum paulo sereniore obiens, ut iubebatur, viventium munia, prorsus in pectore, immo vero pe- nitus in medullis luctu ac maerore carpebat animum et dies totos totasque noctes insumebat luctuoso desiderio, et imagines defuncti, quas ad habitum dei Liberi formaverat, affixo servitio divinis percolens honoribus, ipso sese solacio cruciabat. 8 "Verum Thrasyllus praeceps alioquin et de ipso nomine temerarius, priusquam dolorem lacrimae satiarent et percitae mentis resideret furor, et in sese nimietatis senio lassesceret luctus, adhuc flentem maritum, adhue vestes lacerantem, adhuc capillos distrahentem non dubitavit de nuptiis convenire et imprudentiae labe tacita pectoris sui secreta fraudes- que ineffabiles detegere. Sed Charite vocem ne- fandam et horruit et detestata est et, velut gravi lonitru procellaque sideris vel etiam ipso diali fulmine percussa, corruit corpus et obnubilavit 356 THE GOLDEN ASS, BOOK VIII deep in the darkness and had done with the light for good and all. But Thrasyllus was very impor- tunate, and at length brought to pass that at the intercession both of himself and of the friends and familiars, and last of the parents of Charite, she somewhat refreshed her body, that was all befouled and well nigh broken, with refection of meat and bathing. Howbeit, she did it unwillingly, more at the commandment of her parents and the duty she owed to them, than for anything else: and she wore a calmer, but yet not a merry face, while she went about the duties of the living, but inwardly she tormented herself very greatly with grief and mourning: she spent whole days and nights in miserable longing, and there was an image of her husband, which she had made like unto Bacchus, unto which she rendered divine honours and services, so that she grieved herself even by her consolation. * [n the mean season Thrasyllus, not being able to refrain any longer, a man bold and impatient according to the signification of his name,! before Charite had assuaged her dolours with tears, before her troubled mind had pacified her fury, before her grief had become less from its own abundance and long continuance, while she wept for her husband, while she tare her garments and rent her hair, doubted not to demand her in marriage, and so very rashly detected the secrets and unspeakable deceits of his heart. But Charite detested and abhorred his demand, and as she had been stricken with some clap of thunder, with some storm, or with the lightning of Jupiter, she presently fell down to the ground all amazed with a cloud. Howbeit in the 1 Thrasyllus is derived from the Greek 0pacsós, venturous, bold, rasb. 357

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  The young man understanding the whole matter (to please and gratify his mother) went immediately to the young maiden, keeping the matter secret in his heart, for feare of inconvenience, and (lamenting to see his sister forsaken both of mother and father) incontinently after endowed her with part of his owne goods, and would have married her to one of his especial and trusty friends: But although hee brought this to passe very secretly and sagely, yet in the end cruell fortune sowed great sedition in his house. For his wife who was now condemned to beasts, waxed jealous of her husband and began to suspect the young woman as a harlot and common queane, insomuch that shee invented all manner of meanes to dispatch her out of the way. And in the end shee invented this kind of mischiefe: She privily stale away her husbands ring, and went into the country, whereas she commanded one of her trusty servants to take the ring and carry it to the mayden. To whom he should declare that her brother did pray her to come into the country to him, and that she should come alone without any person. And to the end shee should not delay but come with all speed he should deliver her the ring, which should be a sufficient testimony of the message. This mayden as soone as she had received the ring of her brother, being very willing and desirous to obey his commandement: (For she knew no otherwise but that he had sent for her) went in all hast as the messenger willed her to doe. But when she was come to the snare and engine which was prepared for her, the mischievous woman, like one that were mad, and possessed with some ill spirit, when the poore maiden called for helpe with a loud voyce to her brother, the wicked harlot (weening that she had invented and feined the matter) tooke a burning firebrand and thrust it into her secret place, whereby she died miserably. The husband of this maiden but especially her brother, advertised of her death, came to the place where she was slain, and after great lamentation and weeping, they caused her to be buried honourably. This yong man her brother taking in ill part the miserable death of his sister, as it was convenient he should, conceived so great dolour within his mind and was strucken with so pestilent fury of bitter anguish, that he fell into the burning passions of a dangerous ague, whereby he seemed in such necessity, that he needed to have some speedy remedy to save his life.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  1 Parricide had in Roman tegal phraseology a much wider sensethan the English word. The murder of a free man, or any assassination or treachery, was called parricidal ; and a woman's marriage with her husband's murderer would be in the same category. 359 . LUCIUS APULEIUS turnis imaginibus, sed indicio facinoris prorsus dissimulato, et nequissimum percussorem punire et aerumnabili vitae sese subtrahere tacita decernit. Ecce rursus improvidae voluptatis detestabilis petitor aures obseratas de nuptiis obtundens aderat: sed illa clementer aspernata sermonem Thrasylli astuque miro personata instanter garrienti summisseque deprecanti *Adhue' inquit * Tui fratris meique carissimi mariti facies pulchra illa in meis deversatur oculis, adhue odor cinnameus ambrosei corporis per nares meas percurrit, adhuc formosus Tlepolemus in meo vivit pectore. Boni ergo et optimi consules, si luctui legitimo miserrimae feminae necessarium con- cesseris tempus, quoad residuis mensibus spatium reliquum compleatur anni, quae res cum meum pudorem, tum etiam tuum salutare commodum respicit, ne forte immaturitate nuptiarum indigna- tione iusta manes acerbos mariti ad exitium salutis tuae suscitemus.' 10 “Nec isto sermone Thrasyllus sobriefactus vel saltem tempestiva pollicitatione recreatus identidem pergit linguae sauciantis susurros improbos inurguere, quoad simulanter revicta Charite suscipit: *Istud equidem certe magnopere deprecanti concedas necesse est mihi, mi Thrasylle, ut interdum taciti clandestinos coitus obeamusnecquisquam persentiscat familiarium, quoad dies reliquos metiatur annus.’ Promissioni fallaciosae mulieris oppressus succubuit Thrasyllus et prolixe consentit de furtivo concubitu 360 : THE GOLDEN ASS, BOOK VIII no manner of person, but dissembling that she knew the truth of the mischief, devised silently with herselt how she might be revenged on the wicked murderer, and finish her own life, to end and knit up all sorrow. Again came Thrasyllus the detestable demander of the pleasure that should betray him, and wearied the closed ears of Charite with talk of marriage ; but she, gently refusing his communication, and colouring the matter with passing craft in the midst of his earnest desires and humble prayers, began to say: *'Thrasyllus, you shall understand that yet the comely face of your brother! and my husband is always before mine eyes; I smell yet the cinnamon scent of his precious body, I yet feel Tlepolemus alive in my heart: wherefore you shall do well it you grant to me, miserable woman, necessary time to bewail his death, until after the residue of a few months the whole year may be expired, which thing toucheth as well my shame as your wholesome profit, lest peradventure by our speedy and quick marriage we should justly raise and provoke the resentful spirit of my husband to work your destruction.’

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  And when he came home, the wicked woman declared that his sonne had empoysoned his brother, because he would not consent to his will, and told him divers other leasings, adding in the end that hee threatned to kill her likewise, because she discovered the fact: Then the unhappy father was stroken with double dolour of the death of his two children, for on the one side he saw his younger sonne slaine before his eyes, on the other side, he seemed to see the elder condemned to dye for his offence: Againe, where he beheld his wife lament in such sort, it gave him further occasion to hate his sonne more deadly; but the funerals of his younger sonne were scarce finished, when the old man the father with weeping eyes even at the returne from the grave, went to the Justice and accused his sonne of the slaughter of his brother, and how he threatned to slay his wife, whereby the rather at his weeping and lamentation, he moved all the Magistrates and people to pitty, insomuch that without any delay, or further inquisition they cryed all that hee should be stoned to death, but the Justices fearing a farther inconvenience to arise by the particular vengeance, and to the end there might fortune no sedition amongst the people, prayed the decurions and other Officers of the City, that they might proceed by examination of witnesses, and with order of justice according to the ancient custome before the judging of any hasty sentence or judgment, without the hearing of the contrary part, like as the barbarous and cruell tyrants accustome to use: otherwise they should give an ill example to their successours. This opinion pleased every man, wherefore the Senatours and counsellors were called, who being placed in order according to their dignity, caused the accuser and defender to be brought forth, and by the example of the Athenian law, and judgement materiall, their Advocates were commanded to plead their causes briefly without preambles or motions of the people to pitty, which were too long a processe. And if you demand how I understood all this matter, you shall understand that I heard many declare the same, but to recite what words the accuser used in his invective, what answer the defender made, the orations and pleadings of each party, verily I am not able to doe: for I was fast bound at the manger. But as I learned and knew by others, I will God willing declare unto you.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  Grace sighs. Her brother, Davis, is a third-year at Hopkins. He wants to be a cardiologist like their grandfather, for whom he is named. Their grandfather no longer speaks to Davis, however, because Davis is gay and they are from Virginia. When Davis came out, it had gone as well as it could go, which was to say that a veil had descended between the two of them, and Davis, like their father, had ceased to exist to their grandfather. There was no argument. No recitation of Scripture. No blowup or passionate speeches. Only instant and deep cold. It’s harder to argue with apathy. Davis texts Grace throughout the week: You seen Big Davis? Tell him he was right about Marshfield being awful Remind him the pond needs to be restocked Tell him about this new rabbit trap Tell him they be shooting out here Tell him something for me Sometimes Grace wants to weep at how pitiful it is. The Tell him something for me is the worst of it. She could read the text message in its entirety. It’s not the words. It’s not the what. Enid knows about the text messages. She has made her feelings known. Which is why he does not call her. Not because of the gay thing—Enid is ambivalent on the point of sexuality. What room would she have to judge, her own life having exploded so spectacularly? No. It’s something else. Judgment. Davis feels judged, he says. Sometimes she act like I’m trying to murder somebody. Just to be asking about Big Davis. She act like she don’t care I don’t exist anymore, is what Davis said the last time they spoke about it. “She’s projecting,” Grace had said. Because years ago, when they were small, Enid had shown up at this house with Grace and Davis squeezed tight to her like a shield bearer wading into a sea of pikemen. Grace’s father had gotten himself stabbed outside a bar in Charlottesville—no surprise, considering, was what the church ladies said. It had never been a secret how Big Davis felt about white people, and here Enid was. The church ladies had words for that, too. Begging. Cut off from her own kind, like she hadn’t known what would happen. Grace wonders if Enid sees in this needling some imitation of how it had been years before, when they were younger, and pushed like little pawns across a chessboard. Sees, perhaps, some reflection of the deceased Junior. “He should be a man,” Enid says. “He’s a man. Big Davis is a man,” Grace replies. “That’s the problem.” “Men and trouble, like water and a grease fire.”

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  Hartjes had wanted to say that if it was easy to get over your mother discarding you, then the whole world would be a different and stranger place. That hurt had a weight to it, a gravity as essential as the Earth’s, and it was a kind of natural law that kept them all doing as they should. But he just kissed Simon’s throat. But now she was dead. It was a different thing to speak ill of the dead. In his family, one did not speak the name of the dead after they had been buried. It was a summons. A beckoning. And who knew what the dead might take with them when they left again. When his grandfather had died, they had burned not only his possessions but almost everything he’d ever touched, all of it that could be burned. What made no sense to burn—the tools, the guns, the tractors, the car—they wiped and cleaned. They laid it all out on the benches and worktables in the back and scrubbed everything down with alcohol and bleach, with oil and polish, wiped and wiped as if that might erase history, time, possession. His family took down all his grandfather’s pictures, stored them away. When a person died, anything at all might be a way back, an anchor, a reason for fitful sleep. His grandmother had kept something, her wedding ring, and she woke every night for a month with his grandfather’s ghostly image standing beside her bed. And finally, as she took the ring off and slipped it into a sock and buried it in the yard, she said that, looking at him, at that sad look on his face, that expectant look, she knew that she had to either join him or let him go. • • • On the porch he gave Simon his beer, but he wouldn’t let go when Simon tried to pull it loose from his hand. Simon snatched again, and Hartjes held on tighter until he saw Simon bare his teeth, the slick, pointed canines. His eyes narrowed. The vein at the base of his neck bulged. His skinny fingers were strong. The beer sloshed. Hartjes let him have it. “Fucker,” Simon said under his breath. Hartjes sat roughly on the bench. It rattled under his weight. “Work tomorrow,” Hartjes said. “He’s getting back on his barge,” Simon said, drinking. “Call me Huck Finn,” Hartjes said. “You ever get sick of it?”

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  “It’s always like this,” Simon said a moment or two later. “It’s not,” Hartjes said. “It’s not like anything.” “What is it with you? Why is it always so hot and cold?” “It’s not anything, Simon. It’s not.” “Okay, champ.” Simon got up from the table. He buttoned his shirt. Blue light from the window fell across him. It was the part of the day when even the ugliest things were beautiful. “Are you staying for dinner?” “I’d like to.” “All right.” “Do you need help?” “Do you need help, he asks,” Simon said, shaking his head. He had buttoned his shirt and stuffed it into the front of his pants. He brushed the back of his hand across his mouth and sniffed hard. “No, it’s just stew from last night.” “I wasn’t joking earlier, you know, about my mom. It seemed like you thought I was joking.” Simon lifted a heavy red pot from the fridge and set it on the stove. He put his palms against his lower back and stretched. He pressed the knuckles of his left toes against the floor. “I didn’t think you were joking,” he said after a moment. “Well, all right, then.” “Don’t get mad about it. What do you want me to say?” “I don’t know. What’s to say?” “If you have something you want me to say, then I’d like to hear it.” “Forget it.” “No, not forget it. Say it. Say words, Hartjes. Words.” Hartjes leaned back. The fire on the stove spat as moisture from the skin of the pot evaporated or dropped into the flame. The blue veil of night had passed and now it was dim in the kitchen, so that the only light was from the stove. Simon reached for the switch on the other side of the doorway. “No, it’s fine.” “I don’t know what people say in moments like this—you didn’t love her, did you?” “No, I guess not, probably not,” he said. When Hartjes was ten, he’d gotten himself stung by seven wasps at his aunt Lora Anne’s house, and his mother had said, “That’s what faggots get.” It was a story he had learned to tell white people with some degree of exaggerated gravity, and it had paid for his college, because white people had a vast hunger for the calamities of others.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  They had last spoken on the night Francisco left for trade school in Georgia. They were in their room, Hartjes lying on the bed, Francisco stuffing clothes into a garbage bag. It was hot, their shirts sticking to their backs. Francisco sat on the edge of the bed, looked over his shoulder at Hartjes, and said, “I’m out of here, kid.” Hartjes shoved at him and said, “Shut up,” because it made him feel good. Francisco stood up, hoisted the black bag over his shoulder. He leaned down and they knocked fists. A friend of his gave him a ride to the bus depot, and then total silence until he called to say that Hartjes’s mother was dead. “Oh,” Hartjes had said that Tuesday on the phone four weeks before. “Oh, all right.” And then Francisco had hung up, and that was that. The apples were not for Hartjes. They were for his friend Simon, who lived in the country. They were not for Simon, either, in fact, but for Simon’s goats. The goats were named Helena, Maria, Bertram, Vicky, Dude, and Guy. Helena was a boy goat, the others were girls. Simon had named them before he knew their sexes, after picking them out at two different farms three years or so before, when they were all babies and awkward, barely weaned at all, when it was still possible to mistake a boy goat for a girl and vice versa if you didn’t know what you were doing. Hartjes cut the apples up for the goats and fed them from the sloping front porch. They had grown accustomed to his way of doing things on these Tuesday visits, and they formed a neat little line and filed up to him one at a time to receive from his palm a chunk of apple. He patted their sides, felt the bristle of their fur, watched the tufts of steam issue from their nostrils. The horizontal bars of their pupils shivered. Their eyes were pale blue. He fed them from a plastic bag, lifting chunk after chunk until they were all gone, and the goats, brushing his palms with their tongues, nipping at his fingertips, gave up on him. Off they wandered to find food elsewhere.

• From The Sexual Outlaw (1977)

  They wept for her and she wept for them, and she laughed at them and they laughed at her. When she died, the fags would fly their flags half-mast, she joked to her daughter. And retreat they did when she did die. The old faction wept on Fire Island. Their lowered flags flapped bravely in the wind Somewhere, over the rainbow. In New York, the weekend of her funeral, the first gay riot occurred. “Over the rainbow” was not good enough. Here, now. That was the reality. The acquiescing hurt was fucked. During what ordinarily would have been a routine mass harassment of gays in a Greenwich Village bar called the Stonewall, homosexuals resisted the cops for the first time. This time The Man didn't get away. Garland the symbol of gay oppression was truly dead. Victims themselves, fag hags are sad figures in the gay world. They range from the grand ones—ex-movie queens, the ghost of beauty barely clinging; to the frigid women, usually sexless by choice—brittle, smart, sophisticated, afraid of straight or sexual men, afraid of other women; to the tacky, shrill women rejected sexually. By converting men to bitchy children, all fag hags use homosexuals for substitute revenge: the dinosauric ex-movie queen, revenge for the men who used up her beauty and fled when youth fled too; the icy women, revenge for the children they'll never have; the loud ones, revenge for the men who will not touch them. And the gay men who “court” these queen bees? A very small but very visible, often chic group, happy to celebrate the ex-beauty's lost sexuality and to claim her “divine” happy for fused father-mother figures eternally virginal; with the undesirable women, sympathetic in mutual contempt. And for the fag-hag's castrating hatred, these men will pay them back by “adoring” them but never desiring them. What of other women—straight, sexual, not fag hags?— what of them in relation to gay men? (A sad fact of the gay world is that, with notable exceptions, there is little significant rapport between gay men and gay women.) That there is hostility from many straight women toward male homosexuals is as true as that there are homosexuals who despise all women—and who thus sadly cut themselves off from at least half the range of human experience.

• From The Golden Ass (Metamorphoses) (2)

  land by depriving of poor men, thou shalt still have some neighbour : but how greatly am I sorry in that by the injustice of fate I have lost mine arm wherewithal I minded to cut off thy head." When he had spoken these words, the furious thief was the more enraged and drew out his dagger, and running upon the young man thought verily to have slain him : but it chanced that he had attacked one no whit weaker than he, for the young man resisted him stoutly beyond all his expectation, and buckling together by violence seized his right hand: which done, he poised the weapon, and oft striking made the rich thief to give up his guilty ghost, and to the intent the young man would escape the hands of the servants, which came running to assist their master, with the same dagger that dripped with his enemy's blood he cut his own throat. These things were signified by the strange and dreadful wonders which fortuned in the house of the wretched man, who, after he had heard these sorrowful tidings, could in no wise even silently 461 LUCIUS APULEIUS fletum tot malis cireumventus senex quivit emittere, sed arrepto ferro, quo commodum inter suos epulones caseum atque alias prandii partes diviserat, ipse quo- que ad instar infelicissimi sui filii iugulum sibi multis ictibus contrucidat, quoad super mensam cernulus corruens portentuosi cruoris maculas novi sanguinis fluvio proluit. 39 Ad istum modum puncto brevissimo dilapsae domus fortunam hortulanus ille miseratus suosque casus graviter ingemescens, deprensis pro prandio lacrimis vacuasque manus complodens saepicule, pro- tinus inscenso me retro, quam veneramus, viam capes- sit. Nec innoxius ei saltem regressus evenit: nam quidam procerus et, ut indicabat habitus atque habi- tudo, miles e legione, factus nobis obvius, superbo atque arroganti sermone percontatur quorsum vacuum duceret asinum : at meus adhuc maerore permixtus et alias Latini sermonis ignarus, tacitus praeteribat. Nec miles ille familiarem cohibere quivit insolentiam sed indignatus silentio eius ut convicio, viti quam tenebat obtundens eum dorso meo proturbat. Tune hortulanus supplicue respondit sermonis ignorantia se quid ille diceret scire non posse: ergo igitur Graece subiciens miles “Ubi” inquit “ Ducis asinum istum?" Respondit hortulanus petere se civitatem proxumam. “Sed mihi” inquit * Operae eius opus est; nam de proxumo castello sarcinas praesidis nostri cum ceteris iumentis debet adve- here," et iniecta statim manu loro me, quo duce. 462 THE GOLDEN ASS, BOOK IX

• From Escape (2007)

  After six hours I went from active labor to transition. I knew the baby would be born soon. The nurse wanted to know how she could get hold of my husband. She was worried about him missing the birth of his son. (We knew it was a boy from all the ultrasounds I had during my pregnancy.) I lied and said Merril would call in a few minutes. The truth was he’d called a short while before and I told him nothing was happening. I didn’t want to deliver my baby alone, but I certainly didn’t want him with me. Contractions took over my body. The nurse told me not to push and called frantically for the doctor. He ran into the room and Harrison was born minutes later. The doctor handed me my beautiful baby boy. He was five pounds thirteen ounces, and unbelievably healthy. I smiled as Dr. Carter congratulated me. Merril called five minutes after Harrison was born. He could hear the child crying over the phone. He professed disappointment at missing his birth. Merril and Barbara came right over to the hospital. Barbara seemed thrilled that Merril had been with her when Harrison was born on our anniversary. I was beyond caring about Merril Jessop. As I watched him walk away with Barbara I knew my marriage to him was completely over. I had just given birth to his fifty-third child. I Take Charge of My Life After Harrison was born, I was able to stay home for the first time in a long time and not work. It had been over a year since I’d lived with Merril’s family on a regular basis. Now I saw that Warren Jeffs’ stamp on the FLDS was becoming increasingly evident. I’d had a collection of three hundred children’s books that I kept in my bedroom. I cherished books. Books were the only real window I had into any other world than my own. I loved to read stories to my children. It was a precious time together, a time of intimacy and tenderness that did not exist in any other area of our lives. Warren had decreed in 1998 that all worldly reading materials had to be eliminated. While I was away, the family had seized and destroyed my library. My shelves were stripped of my cherished books. I was heartbroken to see that my best books were gone—books such as Charlotte’s Web, Little House on the Prairie, and The Indian in the Cupboard. I made a point to collect books that had won the Newbery Award. They were all gone. The only books left were big picture books of animals. I felt so violated. The year I spent in Caliente had spoiled me in one way: I could do my laundry whenever I wanted to. This may not seem like a luxury to most. But to me, it was heaven.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  Hartjes had wanted to say that if it was easy to get over your mother discarding you, then the whole world would be a different and stranger place. That hurt had a weight to it, a gravity as essential as the Earth’s, and it was a kind of natural law that kept them all doing as they should. But he just kissed Simon’s throat. But now she was dead. It was a different thing to speak ill of the dead. In his family, one did not speak the name of the dead after they had been buried. It was a summons. A beckoning. And who knew what the dead might take with them when they left again. When his grandfather had died, they had burned not only his possessions but almost everything he’d ever touched, all of it that could be burned. What made no sense to burn—the tools, the guns, the tractors, the car—they wiped and cleaned. They laid it all out on the benches and worktables in the back and scrubbed everything down with alcohol and bleach, with oil and polish, wiped and wiped as if that might erase history, time, possession. His family took down all his grandfather’s pictures, stored them away. When a person died, anything at all might be a way back, an anchor, a reason for fitful sleep. His grandmother had kept something, her wedding ring, and she woke every night for a month with his grandfather’s ghostly image standing beside her bed. And finally, as she took the ring off and slipped it into a sock and buried it in the yard, she said that, looking at him, at that sad look on his face, that expectant look, she knew that she had to either join him or let him go. • • • On the porch he gave Simon his beer, but he wouldn’t let go when Simon tried to pull it loose from his hand. Simon snatched again, and Hartjes held on tighter until he saw Simon bare his teeth, the slick, pointed canines. His eyes narrowed. The vein at the base of his neck bulged. His skinny fingers were strong. The beer sloshed. Hartjes let him have it. “Fucker,” Simon said under his breath. Hartjes sat roughly on the bench. It rattled under his weight. “Work tomorrow,” Hartjes said. “He’s getting back on his barge,” Simon said, drinking. “Call me Huck Finn,” Hartjes said. “You ever get sick of it?”

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  Sophie made a small, uncomplicated sound of pleasure, and she neatly plucked Charles’s fingers from her. She drew up straight and smiled at him. “Don’t hurt him, Charlie,” she said. “He’s a good boy. He’s not like us.” She climbed from the high table, adjusted her tights. She collected the book. Charles could smell Sophie and himself and Lionel. “My shift is starting,” she said. “I’ll walk you over.” “That’s chivalrous,” Sophie said. She had pulled on her coat and her hat. “It’ll just cost you one espresso.” Charles squatted briefly to get a knot out of his thigh. The brace held his knee securely. He stretched, and there was another solid pop in his spine. He felt loose. “Your body sounds like an old man.” Charles put her in a light headlock as they descended the stairs. They went out into the cold together, already talking about something else entirely. AS THOUGH THAT WERE LOVE The swollen river, the soft ice, the world coming back to itself. On Tuesday, as was his habit, Hartjes went to the small grocery store on the corner and bought ten apples and three bananas. There were places in the world where one couldn’t get apples year-round or get bananas in the middle of the winter. There were places in the world where you had to wait for the seasons to change, and where seasons didn’t mean just the state of precipitation but also commerce, industry, economy. Apples in February were a sign of good fortune, or that misfortune lurked elsewhere. The cashier grinned and chirped as he weighed the fruit. That Tuesday made four weeks since Hartjes’s mother had died suddenly. He had not seen her for seven years. Francisco, his stepbrother, had told him over the phone. At the time of her death, his mother had been living in the same narrow town in south Alabama, with its Catholic church, remarkable only because it did not also have a Baptist church. She had lived there all the years of her life, in and among a rotating series of trailers and cars that Hartjes had been spared only because he’d been sent to live with his grandparents. Then his mother married Francisco’s father, also named Francisco, who had a better job and a small house, so Hartjes went to live with them. Hartjes had not remembered giving his mother his number. That’s what he had been thinking when Francisco told him—shouted, really—as if trying to breach the actual raw distance between them, “She’s dead, she’s dead.” The other thing that Hartjes had been thinking of was how much like a man Francisco sounded—it startled Hartjes to hear him that way.

• From Filthy Animals (2021)

  Enid nods at this, loops Grace’s arm over her shoulder, whispers reassuring things to her about strength and patience and balance. Grace feels embarrassed for her, the way she sometimes feels when she can hear Enid praying in the next room in that tiny apartment of hers. Some things you should get to keep to yourself. • • • Grace sits by her room’s wide window, from which she can see the deep green pond. The old forest rimming the property line. The sleepy fields. The house is full of sounds, night music. Enid sleeps in the adjoining room that had belonged to Davis. When they were little, the two of them would spend a portion of each night passing back and forth, leaving small things for each other. Sometimes, Davis pranked her. Or left frogs under her bed. But that night of the picnic all those years ago, when her grandmother had slapped her and locked her in this very room, Davis had come in from his side. Grace was on the ground sobbing, her face hot from her grandmother’s palm. She’d been banging at the door, begging to be let out. It hadn’t even occurred to her that Davis’s side would be open, but when she looked up, there he was. Her brother. He handed her a small kitten. It looked so young that it might not have even been weaned yet. Its fur was soft gray, and it had a pink tint to it. When she asked Davis why he’d brought it to her, he had only shrugged and said he’d grown bored with it, that he’d found it in the woods and played with it until he got tired of it, and he didn’t want a cat, anyway. All that long summer, she carried the kitten around with her, stroking it and petting it and saying that she loved it. Giving the kitten everything she didn’t have. Until her grandmother got sick of seeing her loving up on the kitten and pulled it from her hands and flung it out the back door. She said that girls had no business holding on to things with all them fleas. And cats would make a girl hot, and Grace was already fast enough. She never saw the kitten again. It was the last summer they stayed with their grandparents. The last summer that her father was alive. So much had come to an end that summer. Grace should move to the bed, but she is so tired. She’s got one of her grandmother’s old blankets tossed over her legs. The window emits a cold chill that turns the room bluish in its light. She will regret falling asleep in this chair. Her body will torment her in the morning. But her legs refuse to cooperate. Her arms too heavy. She sinks low in the old chair and closes her eyes.