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.

Page 22 of 263 · 20 per page

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  [image file=image_rsrc2PS.jpg] In that gymnasium in Maine, I heard people speak about their horror, the horror that their children would be told stories they did not want them to know. I understood too much of that—the desire to inhabit a world in which terrible things do not happen, and therefore do not have to be explained. I want a world in which no child goes hungry, fearful, or ashamed. I want a world in which families are treasured no matter how poor or how much the object of scandal. But I looked into faces smoothed by fortune and respect as well as faces as rough-hewn as my own uncles and aunts, and I saw all over again what comes of pretending that terrible things do not happen. Shame comes with denial. Fear fattens on lies. The man who told me I told his story had not stood up to speak when the meeting was taking place. He had waited two hours to speak those words and leave. The teenagers I met with privately had been plainly frightened that people would learn their secrets, the bruises and terrible curses they endured. They wanted me to write more stories, to make sense of what did not make sense. But they were not writers, they were people trying to live their lives without having to go naked for others the way it seemed I had chosen to do. [image file=image_rsrc2PS.jpg] It is twenty years since the publication of the book I wrote, almost eighteen after the court case in Maine that upheld the school board’s right to block the use of some books in the high schools. We lost the case. We lost the ACLU appeal. After the last ruling, Stephen King and his wife, Tabitha King, bought copies of Bastard Out of Carolina for many of the libraries in the state—a gesture I appreciated more than I could ever express. It seemed to me that countering censorship with the free and open distribution of the novel was the best response possible to all that had happened. But it did not address my grief, or the loss of a dedicated teacher, or the reinforcement of the silence and anger I saw in that man’s face when he came up to me after the town hall meeting in Framingham. * * *

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  “And I just loved him. You know that. I just loved him so I couldn’t see him that way. I couldn’t believe. I couldn’t imagine…” She swallowed several times, then opened her eyes and looked at me directly. I looked back, saw her face pale and drawn, her eyes red-rimmed, her lips trembling. I wanted to tell her lies, tell her that I had never doubted her, that nothing could make any difference to my love for her, but I couldn’t. I had lost my mama. She was a stranger, and I was so old my insides had turned to dust and stone. Every time I closed my eyes, I could see again the blood on Glen’s hairline, his face pressed to her belly, feel that black despair whose only relief would be death. I had prayed for death. Maybe it wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t mine. Maybe it wasn’t a matter of anybody’s fault. Maybe it was like Raylene said, the way the world goes, the way hearts get broken all the time. “You don’t know how much I love you,” she said, her face as stark as a cracked white plate. “How much I have always loved you.” My heart broke all over again. I wanted my life back, my mama, but I knew I would never have that. The child I had been was gone with the child she had been. We were new people, and we didn’t know each other anymore. I shook my head desperately. “Mama,” I said, not wanting to speak but not able to stop the rush of that cry. I shuddered, and the word came out like a bird’s call, high and piercing. The sobs that followed were hoarse and ugly. I grabbed the front of Mama’s dress with my good arm, ignoring the pain in my shoulder as I pushed forward into her embrace. She caught me, pressing my face against her throat and whispering into my ear. “It’s all right, baby. You just cry. You just go on and cry.” Her hands touched me gently, lifted, and came back down as if she were afraid she might hurt me but couldn’t keep from reaching for me again. “You’re my own baby girl. I’m not gonna let you go.” Over Mama’s shoulder, I saw Raylene in the doorway, her face as red as a new apple. Mama’s hands stroked my hair back off my face, cupped my head, held me safe. I pressed my face into her neck, and let it all go. The grief. The anger. The guilt and the shame. It would come back later. It would come back forever. We had all wanted the simplest thing, to love and be loved and be safe together, but we had lost it and I didn’t know how to get it back.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  “I think she’s still asleep, Mama.” I pulled myself up off the couch and followed her into Alma’s kitchen. She dropped her purse on the kitchen table and sank heavily into one of the metal chairs. Her mascara was smeared under bloodshot eyes. She sat quiet, looking at me. I couldn’t read her expression. “Mama, did I do something wrong?” “No. No, baby.” She shook her head, her eyes focusing on mine for just a moment before they looked past me. “It’s not you.” She opened her bag, took out her Pall Malls, lit one, and began to rake her hair out with her other hand. I got her an ashtray. “You want me to make coffee?” “No, baby.” I sat down at the table. “Is Alma still at Ruth’s?” She nodded, paused, and looked at me directly. “Bone, your aunt Ruth died early this morning.” Her eyes glistened. I waited for her to start crying, but she didn’t. She just sat there smoking. I looked at my hands. I couldn’t believe what she had said. Aunt Ruth was dead? No. Mama cleared her throat. “Alma is still with Travis and Raylene. I just came to get you and Reese. There’s a lot to do. So much I can’t even think yet.” “I’m sorry, Mama.” My voice cracked. I swallowed hard, wanting to cry but feeling no tears come. Even after all this time, I had not really expected Aunt Ruth to die. Everybody kept saying she would beat this, the way she had before. Mama had talked as if this illness were just something that had to be gotten past, as if Ruth just needed time and quiet to get better. Everyone did. Then I remembered how thin she was when I stayed with her, how frail and weak, her whole body shaking when she laughed, the way she looked at me when she asked me if she was dying. I had known, of course I had known. It was death Aunt Ruth was thinking about all the time. Death was the reason she had talked so much, so intently, death was the fire burning her up. With every breath and laugh and wiped-away tear, she had been dying. I had known that, but I had still imagined Aunt Ruth would go on, her dying something always still to come. The fantasy had been helped along by not seeing her every day as I had all summer. All these months, I had known what was happening over at that house, known and denied it, because I could do nothing else. “Ruth was never pretty, you know.” Mama’s voice surprised me. I looked up at the clock, but the light over the stove was off. There were half a dozen butts in the ashtray, and Mama’s mascara had run even more. I licked my lips. “Aunt Alma said she was striking.”

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  Mama was holding Reese when the sheriff’s car pulled up at Aunt Alma’s, and she must have known immediately what he had come to tell her, because she put her head back and howled like an old dog in labor, howled and rocked and squeezed her baby girl so tight Aunt Alma had to pinch her to get Reese free. Mama was nineteen, with two babies and three copies of my birth certificate in her dresser drawer. When she stopped howling, she stopped making any sound at all and would only nod at people when they tried to get her to cry or talk. She took both her girls to the funeral with all her sisters lined up alongside of her. The Parsonses barely spoke to her. Lyle’s mother told Aunt Alma that if her boy hadn’t taken that damn job for Mama’s sake, he wouldn’t have died in the road. Mama paid no attention. Her blond hair looked dark and limp, her skin gray, and within those few days fine lines had appeared at the corners of her eyes. Aunt Ruth steered her away from the gravesite while Aunt Raylene tucked some of the flowers into her family Bible and stopped to tell Mrs. Parsons what a damn fool she was. Aunt Ruth was heavily pregnant with her eighth child, and it was hard for her not to take Mama into her arms like another baby. At Uncle Earle’s car, she stopped and leaned back against the front door, hanging on to Mama. She brushed Mama’s hair back off her face, looking closely into her eyes. “Nothing else will ever hit you this hard,” she promised. She ran her thumbs under Mama’s eyes, her fingers resting lightly on either temple. “Now you look like a Boatwright,” she said. “Now you got the look. You’re as old as you’re ever gonna get, girl. This is the way you’ll look till you die.” Mama just nodded; it didn’t matter to her anymore what she looked like. [image file=image_rsrc2PS.jpg] A year in the mill was all Mama could take after they buried Lyle; the dust in the air got to her too fast. After that there was no choice but to find work in a diner. The tips made all the difference, though she knew she could make more money at the honky-tonks or managing a slot as a cocktail waitress. There was always more money serving people beer and wine, more still in hard liquor, but she’d have had to go outside Greenville County to do that, and she couldn’t imagine moving away from her family. She needed her sisters’ help with her two girls. The White Horse Cafe was a good choice anyway, one of the few decent diners downtown. The work left her tired but not sick to death like the mill, and she liked the people she met there, the tips and the conversation. “You got a way with a smile,” the manager told her.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  The music stopped, and the sound of the river water filled the night. My crying eased and then stopped. Mama rocked back on her heels. A jaybird dropped off the porch lintel and streaked up into the darkening sky. The dog loped out to nose its track in the dusty grass. Raylene called Mama’s name softly, then mine, her voice as scratchy and penetrating as the chords of a steel guitar, as familiar as Kitty Wells or a gospel chorus. Mama looked back at her and shook her head. She straightened and gave my hand on the rocker’s arm a little pat. Her smell, that familiar salt-and-butter smell, almost made me cry again, but I felt empty. I just watched her. Raylene had been right. I didn’t understand anything. But I didn’t want to understand. Seeing Mama hurt me almost as bad as not seeing her had. There was an envelope on my lap. Mama had put it there. She leaned forward and kissed my cheek just below where Nevil had kissed me. The memory of his burning eyes startled me. He would not forgive. He was out there hunting. I almost cried out. Mama’s finger touched my lips. Her eyes burned into me. “I love you, Bone,” she said. “Never forget that. You’re my baby girl, and I love you.” Her ravaged cheeks shone in the light from the house, her eyes glittered. She bent, kissed my fingers, and stood up. Aunt Raylene came through the door, but Mama backed away quickly, shaking her head again. We watched her cross the yard, heard her start the Pontiac in the darkness past the curve of the road. “Damn,” Raylene cursed. Her fist drummed on the doorjamb. “Damn,” she said again, and dropped her hand as if she could think of nothing else to say, to do. I held the envelope and watched her shoulders. They were shaking, but she made no sound. “Do you know where she’s going?” I asked. “No.” The word was a whisper. Raylene lifted her hands slightly, dropped them again. She did not turn to me, and I knew she did not want me to see her face. “California,” I said. “Or Florida, maybe. He always talked about taking us off there sometime, someplace where they grew oranges and a man could find decent work.” My voice sounded so rough and mean I barely recognized it. I felt old and chilled, though I knew the night was warm. I looked down my bandaged arm to the envelope. It was oversized, yellow, official-looking, and unsealed. I opened it. Folded into thirds was a certificate, RUTH ANNE BOATWRIGHT. Mother: ANNEY BOATWRIGHT. Father: UNKNOWN. I almost laughed, reading down the page. Greenville General Hospital and the embossed seal of the county, the family legend on imitation parchment. I had never seen it before, but had heard all about it. I unfolded the bottom third. It was blank, unmarked, unstamped.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  What I feel every time I encounter censorship is grief, and shame, and despair—and not just when it is my book that is the subject of the matter. I have felt it with every book I have seen become the target of such actions, books that I think literally helped save my life—such as Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye or Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird—but also books that scare parents and challenge teachers and librarians to have to answer the questions of young people encountering the issues of violence or sex or prejudice and hatred in such visceral, intimate terms. For that is of course what it means to read a novel and live in it for a while. You are viscerally inside someone else’s reality. You feel and understand things you have not known before, and that is both scary and exhilarating. The world becomes more clear, reality more vivid, and your own experience larger. Of course there will be questions. This probing is how we grow and enlarge our sense of the world itself. As I said, there are books I worried about my son reading, books I would hesitate to let him pick up. But my hope is that with any book he reads, he could come to me with his questions. Then I could take that deep breath I have learned is vital to give me time to think and be patient, and then we could talk. I would hope that I would be able to be in the room with him and any book and not censor what he might read or think. I would hope for the largeness of vision that reading many, many books has given him, the ability to take in complicated ideas and painful feelings and sort out what is true and not true, and what might be true and terrible but vital to understanding the world in which we all live. I do not want to be the person who acts always out of fear or denial or old shame and older assumptions. I want to be my best self—the one who set out to tell a story that might make a difference in the lives of people who read it. Unafraid, stubborn, resilient, and capable of enormous compassion—someone like Bone. [image file=image_rsrc2PT.jpg] [image file=image_rsrc2PU.jpg] [image file=image_rsrc2PV.jpg] [image "Penguin Random House publisher logo" file=image_rsrc2PW.jpg] What’s next on your reading list?Discover your next great read! Get personalized book picks and up-to-date news about this author. Sign up now. _140197678_

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  I could see the photographer waiting outside, but Raylene just harrumphed and picked me up like a baby doll, not looking left or right as she carried me out to her truck. Raylene settled me close to her right hip before she started the engine, but I slid away, over to where I could hang on to the door and look out through the window. I could not look at her, could not listen to the words she kept trying to speak softly in my direction. Murmurs of comfort, meaningless phrases that did not register. The one thing I wanted her to say went unspoken. Where was Mama? What had happened to her? When we pulled up in Raylene’s yard, the sun was beating down on the muddy spring grass. The river ran flat and fast, and there was no breeze at all. I wiped sweat off my neck and watched a big unfamiliar yellow dog creep out from under the porch and stand by the steps with his head canted to one side. Raylene sighed and cut the engine. “I need to say something to you.” Raylene sounded uncertain. “The thing you need to understand, that’s the one thing I’m afraid you’re too young to hear.” She didn’t look at me. Her words came out in a rush. “But it’s simple enough, and one day maybe you will understand it.” She turned to look at me then. “One time you talked to me about how I live, with no husband or children or even a good friend. Well, I had me a friend when I was with the carnival, somebody I loved better than myself, a lover I would have spent my life with and should have. But I was crazy with love, too crazy to judge what I was doing. I did a terrible thing, Bone.” Her skin looked tighter over her cheekbones, as if her whole frame were swelling with shame. She shook her head but didn’t look away from my eyes. “Bone, no woman can stand to choose between her baby and her lover, between her child and her husband. I made the woman I loved choose. She stayed with her baby, and I came back here alone. It should never have come to that. It never should. It just about killed her. It just about killed me.” Aunt Raylene covered her eyes for a moment, then pushed her hair back with both hands. “God!” She dropped her hands and turned back to me. “We do terrible things to the ones we love sometimes,” she said. “We can’t explain it. We can’t excuse it. It eats us up, but we do them just the same. You want to know about your mama, I know. But I can’t tell you anything. None of us can. No one knows where she’s gone. I can’t explain that to you, Bone. I just can’t, but I know your mama loves you.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  Everyone stepped around Glen like he was another chair or table, occasionally giving him a quick hug or squeeze on the shoulder. He didn’t respond, just shifted from the table to the porch when Raylene started sweeping. When Nevil and Earle came over, he stood out in the yard with them and drank until his shoulders started to go up and down in fierce suppressed sobs and they looked away to spare him being embarrassed. I watched him closely, staying out in the yard as much as I could, squatting down in the bushes where I hoped no one could see me. I put my chin on my knees and hugged myself into a tight curled ball. Mama’s face had been so pale when they brought her home, her eyes enormous and unblinking. She had barely looked at me when I tried to climb up in her lap, just bit her lips and let Aunt Alma pull me away. I cried until Aunt Raylene took me out in her truck and rocked me to sleep with a damp washcloth on my eyes. “Your mama’s gonna need a little time,” she told me. “Then she’s gonna need you more than she ever has. When a woman loses a baby, she needs to know that her other babies are well and happy. You be happy for her, Bone. You let your mama know you are happy so she can heal her heart.” They did name him Glen Junior, Reese told me. She had heard Aunt Ruth and Aunt Alma talking. They had buried the baby in the big Boatwright plot Great-grandma Shirley owned, with the four boys Granny had lost and Ruth’s stillborn girls and Alma’s first boy. Glen had wanted a plot of his own but had no money to buy one, and that seemed to be the thing that finally broke his grief and turned it to rage. His face was swollen with crying and gray with no sleep. He found a house over by the JC Penney mill near the railroad tracks and came home to announce we were moving. Aunt Alma was outraged he’d take us so far away, but Mama just nodded and asked Raylene to help her pack. “It’ll be all right,” she told Reese and me. Glen put his arms around Mama and glared at Aunt Alma. “We don’t need nobody else,” he whispered. “We’ll do just fine on our own.” Bastard Out of Carolina 5 I n the rented house, well away from the rest of the family, Daddy Glen promised Mama that when they had enough money put by, he was going to adopt Reese and me.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  Oh, I understand the psychology of hurt and desperate characters. I understand how people can make terrible choices in situations in which they feel powerless and full of rage. I understand all too much about self-hatred and violence and how the cycles of violence are handed down in families rich and poor, urban and rural, and in every region. No one has a monopoly on horror. Many of us can tell terrible stories that barely hide the origins of our understanding—the kinds of stories that are unbelievable without a newspaper clipping or a video on YouTube. What banning books does is continue the denial, extend that damage, and block any way for us to come together and address the reality of violence within our families and communities. We know this even as we go on wanting a world in which we do not need to tell these stories at all. Last year another school board—this one just down the highway from my home in northern California—voted to ban the use of Bastard Out of Carolina in the schools of Fremont. I was in Colorado teaching a workshop when a reporter called me to get my response on the case. I stood there feeling again that weak helplessness I had felt in Maine. I knew I could not say what I was feeling, say “this breaks my heart” and hang up the phone. I had to take a deep breath and try to be reasonable and respectful and pretend I was not feeling what I was feeling. Grief. What I feel every time I encounter censorship is grief, and shame, and despair—and not just when it is my book that is the subject of the matter. I have felt it with every book I have seen become the target of such actions, books that I think literally helped save my life—such as Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye or Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird —but also books that scare parents and challenge teachers and librarians to have to answer the questions of young people encountering the issues of violence or sex or prejudice and hatred in such visceral, intimate terms. For that is of course what it means to read a novel and live in it for a while. You are viscerally inside someone else’s reality. You feel and understand things you have not known before, and that is both scary and exhilarating. The world becomes more clear, reality more vivid, and your own experience larger. Of course there will be questions. This probing is how we grow and enlarge our sense of the world itself. As I said, there are books I worried about my son reading, books I would hesitate to let him pick up. But my hope is that with any book he reads, he could come to me with his questions. Then I could take that deep breath I have learned is vital to give me time to think and be patient, and then we could talk.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  Mama pulled her lips in and bit the lower lip lightly. It was something I had seen Aunt Ruth do often, something I did myself when I was nervous. Now it almost made me cry. I wiped at my own eyes, watching Mama use the back of her hand to wipe her eyes again. “For some reason, Ruth didn’t think she could have babies. When she got pregnant, she was so happy. It was a mystery to me why she liked having children so much. Seemed like everybody else whined and complained about it, but Ruth just took on so, laughed and sang and made her own baby clothes. Then, one time, I asked her why she acted so happy, and she stared at me like I was just plain crazy. Told me it was proof. Being pregnant was proof that some man thought you were pretty sometime, and the more babies she got, the more she knew she was worth something. I just about cried, and at the same time I wanted to hit her for talking like that, talking like she wasn’t worth something on her own. Talking like my love didn’t make her worth something!” I remembered all the times I had stared in the bathroom mirror, knowing I wasn’t pretty and hating it. I felt a cold chill go up my back, as if Aunt Ruth had just touched my spine. Mama was shaking her head, reaching to open her bag, rummaging around and pulling out a napkin. Carefully she dabbed under her eyes. “Go get me some cold cream, Bone. Let me get some of this gunk off.” I ran into the bathroom and grabbed the Noxzema jar. Reese was there, her hair all tousled and her eyes gummy with too much sleep. “Why didn’t you wake me up?” she complained. “Where is everybody?” “Everybody’s gone, but Mama’s here. Get cleaned up and come out to the kitchen.” I hurried away. Mama would have to tell her. I couldn’t. When I got back, Mama was still in the same position with the napkin under her eyes, but now she was truly crying. Big tears were spilling out and streaking down her face. I ran to her and threw my arms around her. For a moment we clung together, and then, awkwardly, she pulled her arms free and pushed me a little away. “You loved her too, didn’t you, Bone?” She looked hard into my face as if she could see inside me. “You know how much she loved you?” I nodded. I couldn’t talk. Mama hugged me to her, rocked me against her breasts. Her hands squeezed my shoulders and shook me a little. “Oh, my little girl,” Mama whispered. “I wish I could be sure Ruth knew how beautiful she was.”

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  His hum went on in time to the soft radio music, and the smell of Pall Malls began to soothe me. I didn’t know I was falling asleep until I woke up in the bright gray light of full morning. Glen was gone, the car still and cold. There was an ache between my legs, but I wasn’t afraid in the daylight. I sat up and looked out on gray clouds and dew-drenched fir branches. The asphalt looked wet and dark. There were a few nurses going in and out the emergency-room doors, talking in low mumbly tones. I breathed through my mouth and watched as more and more people drove into the lot, wondering if I had dreamed that whole early-morning scene. I kept squeezing my thighs together, feeling the soreness, and trying to imagine how I could have bruised myself if it had been a dream. When Glen came out of the emergency room, the doors swung back like a shot in the morning air. His face was rigid, his legs stiff, his hands clamped together in front of him, twisting and twisting. I looked into that face and knew it had not been a dream. I pulled Reese up against me, ignoring her soft protesting cry. Glen climbed in the car and slammed the door so hard Reese woke up with a jerk. She twisted her head like a baby bird, looking from me to Glen’s neck and back again. We sat still, waiting. He said, “Your mama’s gonna be all right.” He paused. “But she an’t gonna have no more babies.” He put his hands on the steering wheel, leaned forward, pushed his mouth against his fingers. He said, “My baby’s dead. My boy. My boy.” I wrapped my arms around Reese and held on, while in the front seat, Glen just sobbed and cried. After Mama got home from the hospital, her sisters came around to see us every day. Aunt Ruth had been in the hospital with what Granny called female trouble only a few weeks before, and still wasn’t well enough to do much but sit with Mama for an hour or two and hold her hand, but she called every morning. Aunt Alma practically moved in and-took over, making Mama stay in bed, doing all the cooking, and fixing beef and bean stew. “To put some iron back in your blood, honey,” she said. Aunt Raylene showed up in her overalls and low boots to clean the house from one end to the other, going so far as to make Reese and me help her move furniture out in the yard for the sun to warm it. When she went in to change the sheets on Mama’s bed, she lifted Mama easily and carried her out to sit on the couch in the fresh air.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  We’d gotten ourselves messed up on our own. “Baby.” Mama’s voice was a raspy whisper. I did not move, did not speak. “Bone.” She touched my shoulder. “Oh, girl.” I could not pull away, but still I did not speak. I wondered if she could see herself in my pupils. She drew back a little and dropped down to half-kneel beside me. “I know,” she said. “I know you must feel like I don’t love you, like I didn’t love you enough.” She took hold of her own shoulders, hugging herself and shivering as if she were cold. “Bone, I never wanted you to be hurt. I wanted you to be safe. I wanted us all to be happy. I never thought it would go the way it did. I never thought Glen would hurt you like that.” Mama shut her eyes and turned her head as if she could no longer stand to look into my face. Her mouth opened and closed several times. I saw tears at the corners of her eyes. “And I just loved him. You know that. I just loved him so I couldn’t see him that way. I couldn’t believe. I couldn’t imagine…” She swallowed several times, then opened her eyes and looked at me directly. I looked back, saw her face pale and drawn, her eyes red-rimmed, her lips trembling. I wanted to tell her lies, tell her that I had never doubted her, that nothing could make any difference to my love for her, but I couldn’t. I had lost my mama. She was a stranger, and I was so old my insides had turned to dust and stone. Every time I closed my eyes, I could see again the blood on Glen’s hairline, his face pressed to her belly, feel that black despair whose only relief would be death. I had prayed for death. Maybe it wasn’t her fault. It wasn’t mine. Maybe it wasn’t a matter of anybody’s fault. Maybe it was like Raylene said, the way the world goes, the way hearts get broken all the time. “You don’t know how much I love you,” she said, her face as stark as a cracked white plate. “How much I have always loved you.” My heart broke all over again. I wanted my life back, my mama, but I knew I would never have that. The child I had been was gone with the child she had been. We were new people, and we didn’t know each other anymore. I shook my head desperately. “Mama,” I said, not wanting to speak but not able to stop the rush of that cry. I shuddered, and the word came out like a bird’s call, high and piercing. The sobs that followed were hoarse and ugly.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  The man who told me I told his story had not stood up to speak when the meeting was taking place. He had waited two hours to speak those words and leave. The teenagers I met with privately had been plainly frightened that people would learn their secrets, the bruises and terrible curses they endured. They wanted me to write more stories, to make sense of what did not make sense. But they were not writers, they were people trying to live their lives without having to go naked for others the way it seemed I had chosen to do. It is twenty years since the publication of the book I wrote, almost eighteen after the court case in Maine that upheld the school board’s right to block the use of some books in the high schools. We lost the case. We lost the ACLU appeal. After the last ruling, Stephen King and his wife, Tabitha King, bought copies of Bastard Out of Carolina for many of the libraries in the state—a gesture I appreciated more than I could ever express. It seemed to me that countering censorship with the free and open distribution of the novel was the best response possible to all that had happened. But it did not address my grief, or the loss of a dedicated teacher, or the reinforcement of the silence and anger I saw in that man’s face when he came up to me after the town hall meeting in Framingham. * * * Books can offer a counter narrative—another story to the one we think we know. Story is told in a voice. The voice of Bastard Out of Carolina is that of a young girl who has just lost her mother and her sense of any real hope or justice. You don’t know who she is until the story ends, and I always intended for the ending to make the reader angry. In the writing I had thought that if I get this right, I can change so much—how people think about rape and child abuse, and working-class families and the nature of resilience, and even perhaps something about how love can both save us and not save us. But also in the writing, I had thought that there was no way to get anything that right. All I could really do was tell a story the best way I could and hope to nudge some people’s notions a little more toward understanding what still does not make sense. Why would anyone beat a child? Why would anyone rape a child? Older and full of the world’s experiences as I am, I still do not know the answer to those questions.

• From Trash (1988)

  Every once in a while, her voice would startle, the words suddenly clear and outraged. “Goddamn!” loud in the room. Then, “Get me a cigarette, get me a cigarette,” as she came awake. Angry and begging at the same time, she cursed, “Goddamn it, just one,” before the morphine swept in and took her down again. That was not our mama. Our mama never begged, never backed up, never whined, moaned, and thrashed in her sheets. My sister Jo and I stared at her. This mama was eating us alive. Every time she started it again, that litany of curses and pleas, I hunkered down further in my seat. Jo rocked in her chair, arms hugging her shoulders and head down. Arlene, the youngest of us, had wrung her hands and wiped her eyes, and finally, deciding she was no use, headed on home. Jo and I had stayed, unspeaking, miserable, and desperate. On the third night after they gave her the pump, Mama hit some limit the nurses seemed determined to ignore. Her thumb beat time, but the pump lagged behind and the curses returned. The pleas became so heartbroken I expected the paint to start peeling off the walls. The curses became mewling growls. Finally, Jo gave me a sharp look and we stood up as one. She went over to try to force the window open, pounding the window frame till it came loose. I dug around in Jo’s purse, found her Marlboros, lit one, and held it to Mama’s lips. Jo went and stood guard at the door. Mama coughed, sucked, and smiled gratefully. “Baby,” she whispered. “Baby,” and fell asleep with ashes on her neck. Jo walked over and took the cigarette I still held. “Stupid damn rules,” she said bitterly. Mavis came in then, sniffed loudly, and shook her head at us. “You know you can’t do that.” “Do what?” Jo had disappeared the smoke as if it had never been. Mavis crossed her arms. Jo shrugged and leaned over to pull the thin blanket further up Mama’s bruised shoulders. In her sleep Mama said softly, “Please.” Then in a murmur so soft it could have been a blessing, “Goddamn, goddamn.” I reached past Jo and took Mama’s free hand in mine. “It’s OK. It’s OK,” I said. Mama’s face smoothed. Her mouth went soft, but her fingers in mine clutched tightly . “That window isn’t supposed to be open,” Mavis said suddenly. “You get it shut.” Jo and I just looked at her. Mama’s first diagnosis came when I was seventeen. Back then, I couldn’t even say the word, “cancer.” Mama said it and so did Jo, but I did not. “This thing,” I said. “This damn thing.” Twenty-five years later, I still called it that, though there was not much else I hesitated to say. That was my role. I did the talking and carried all the insurance records. Jack blinked. Jo argued.

• From Augustine: Philosopher and Saint (2005)

  Biographical Notes 74 Biographical Notes The Unnamed Friend. A close friend of Augustine who died when he was a teenager, leaving a huge wound in Augustine’s heart (Confessions, book 4). An Unnamed Woman. Augustine’s concubine from about 372 to 386. Adeodatus (372?–90?). Augustine’s son by his concubine (the unnamed woman, above); baptized with Augustine, he died a few years later. Alypius (?–430?). Augustine’s best friend; a major ¿ gure in the Confessions and a fellow bishop in Africa. Ambrose, Saint (339?–97). Church father; bishop of Milan after 374; inÀ uential in bringing about Augustine’s conversion and return to the Catholic Church in 386; he baptized Augustine on Easter Sunday, 387. Anthony, Saint (?–356?). One of the ¿ rst monks in the Egyptian desert; a story about him plays a crucial role in Augustine’s conversion. Augustine, Saint (35–430). Bishop of Hippo in Africa from 395 until his death; the most inÀ uential of the western Church Fathers. Cicero (106–43 B.C.). Roman orator and politician; author of philosophical dialogues that were Augustine’s main source of knowledge about philosophy prior to his encounter with the books of the Platonists. Locke, John (1632–1704). English philosopher, founding ¿ gure of British empiricism, and originator of the picture of the inner self as a dark inner room. Mani (216–77; also called Manes or Manichaeus). Persian religious leader and founder of Manichaeanism. 75 Monica, Saint (332?–87). Augustine’s mother, a devout Catholic who instilled in him the name of Christ from his infancy, and whose prayers and tears helped bring him back into the Church after his time as a Manichaean. Patricius (?–371). Augustine’s father, a not very devout Catholic and not very faithful husband about whom Augustine tells us very little. Paul, Saint (?–63?). Apostle and author of many of the letters in the New Testament; a central inspiration for Augustine’s theology of grace. Pelagius (?–c. 430). Originator of the Pelagian heresy. Plato (427–358 B.C.). Founder of the philosophical tradition that had the most inÀ uence on Augustine’s thought. Plotinus (205?–70). Pagan Platonist philosopher, author of a collection of treatises called the Enneads; his writings are the single most important philosophical inÀ uence on Augustine. Ponticianus (sometimes spelled Pontitianus). Friend of Augustine who visits him in Milan and tells him stories about Christians choosing a life of asceticism, thereby sparking Augustine’s conversion. Victorinus. Roman rhetorician and convert to Christianity, author of a series of treatises on the Trinity; his entrance into the Church is held up as a model for Augustine to follow in Confessions, book 8, just prior to Augustine’s conversion.

• From Cults Inside Out: How People Get In and Can Get Out (2014)

  Today that website is a database known as the Cult Education Institute (CEI), which is the largest and most comprehensive cult-related online library that is freely accessible to the general public. CEI features a database of information about controversial groups and movements, some of which have been called “cults.” The attached public message board at CEI contains more than one hundred thousand individual entries, including the comments of former cult members, current cult members, affected families, and others concerned about cultic groups and related issues. Thousands of individual and unique users visit CEI daily. I personally respond to hundreds of inquiries every month. The scope of my work has increasingly included international concerns. Many groups called “cults” are global entities, such as Scientology, the Kabbalah Centre, Landmark Education, Falun Gong, and the Reverend Moon‘s Unification Church. Israel’s Ministry of Welfare and Social Services sought my input in 2011 for its report about cults. And I have attended international conferences about cults in China, Thailand, and Canada. My first visit to China was at a conference in 2009. The paper I presented, which the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences published, was titled “Is Falun Gong a Cult?” In my opinion Falun Gong fits well within the core criteria forming the nucleus for the definition of a destructive cult. Some people seem to think that defining Falun Gong as a destructive cult is somehow politically motivated. But the real issue is, does the group hurt people? After receiving complaints from affected families in the United States and interviewing former members of Falun Gong as well as corresponding with current practitioners through e-mail, I have concluded that Falun Gong does hurt people through its practices. And in my opinion Falun Gong fits the profile of a personality-driven and defined group dominated by a charismatic leader—which is the most salient single feature of destructive cults. This book contains two chapters about Falun Gong, which has affected millions of lives in China and has reportedly contributed to the deaths of more than a thousand people. The most poignant and heartbreaking meeting I have ever attended with any former cult member was my visit with self-immolation survivors and former Falun Gong practitioners Hao Huijun and her daughter, Chen Guo. The two women, once followers of Li Hongzhi, the founder of Falun Gong, participated in a staged protest at Tiananmen Square on the Chinese New Year’s Eve on January 23, 2001. At that time a small group consisting of seven Falun Gong practitioners set themselves on fire. A twelve-year-old girl and her mother died. Hao Huijun and her then twenty-year-old daughter, Chen Guo, survived but paid a horrible price for their involvement with Falun Gong. Both women were hospitalized and endured multiple surgeries. Today they live together in welfare housing and are severely scarred and disabled. Hao Huijun told me she regrets encouraging her daughter to embrace the teachings of Li Hongzhi. She lamented, “You can see the disastrous effect this caused my daughter.

• From Trash (1988)

  When, in the night, she hears me call her name, it is not really me she hears, it is the me I constructed for her—the one who does not need her too much, the one whose heart is not too tender, whose insides are iron and silver, whose dreams are cold ice and slate—who needs nothing, nothing. I keep in mind the image of a closed door, Mama weeping on the other side. She could not rescue me. I cannot rescue her. Sometimes I cannot even reach across the wall that separates us. On my stepfather’s birthday I make coffee and bake bread pudding with bourbon sauce. I invite friends over, tell outrageous stories, and use horrible words. I scratch my scars and hug my lover, thinking about Mama twelve states away. My accent comes back and my weight settles down lower, until the ache in my spine is steady and hot. I remember Mama sitting at the kitchen table in the early morning, tears in her eyes, lying to me and my sister, promising us that the time would come when she would leave him—that as soon as we were older, as soon as there was a little more money put by and things were a little easier—she would go. I think about her sitting there now, waiting for him to wake up and want his coffee, for the day to start moving around her, things to get so busy she won’t have to think. Sometimes, I hate my mama. Sometimes, I hate myself. I see myself in her, and her in me. I see us too clearly sometimes, all the little betrayals that cannot be forgotten or changed. When Mama calls, I wait a little before speaking. “Mama,” I say, “I knew you would call.” Gospel Song A t nine, I knew exactly who and what I wanted to be. Early every Sunday morning I got up to watch The Sunrise Gospel Hour and practice my secret ambition. More than anything in the world I wanted to be a gospel singer—a little girl in a white fringe vest with silver and gold crosses embroidered on the back. I wanted gray-headed ladies to cry when they saw my pink cheeks. I wanted people to moan when they heard the throb in my voice when I sang of the miracle in my life. I wanted a miracle in my life. I wanted to be a gospel singer and be loved by the whole wide world. All that summer, while Mama was off at work, I haunted the White Horse Cafe over on the highway. They had three Teresa Brewer songs on the jukebox, and the truckers loved Teresa as much as I did. I’d sit out under the jalousie windows and hum along with her, imagining myself crooning with a raw and desperate voice. Half asleep in the sun, reassured by the familiar smell of frying fat, I’d make promises to God. If only He’d let it happen!

• From Augustine: Philosopher and Saint (2005)

  setoN lacihpargoiB Biographical Notes The Unnamed Friend. A close friend of Augustine who died when he was a teenager, leaving a huge wound in Augustine’s heart (Confessions, book 4). An Unnamed Woman. Augustine’s concubine from about 372 to 386. Adeodatus (372?–90?). Augustine’s son by his concubine (the unnamed woman, above); baptized with Augustine, he died a few years later. Alypius (?–430?). Augustine’s best friend; a major (cid:191) gure in the Confessions and a fellow bishop in Africa. Ambrose, Saint (339?–97). Church father; bishop of Milan after 374; in(cid:192) uential in bringing about Augustine’s conversion and return to the Catholic Church in 386; he baptized Augustine on Easter Sunday, 387. Anthony, Saint (?–356?). One of the (cid:191) rst monks in the Egyptian desert; a story about him plays a crucial role in Augustine’s conversion. Augustine, Saint (35–430). Bishop of Hippo in Africa from 395 until his death; the most in(cid:192) uential of the western Church Fathers. Cicero (106–43 B.C.). Roman orator and politician; author of philosophical dialogues that were Augustine’s main source of knowledge about philosophy prior to his encounter with the books of the Platonists. Locke, John (1632–1704). English philosopher, founding (cid:191) gure of British empiricism, and originator of the picture of the inner self as a dark inner room. Mani (216–77; also called Manes or Manichaeus). Persian religious leader and founder of Manichaeanism. 74 Monica, Saint (332?–87). Augustine’s mother, a devout Catholic who instilled in him the name of Christ from his infancy, and whose prayers and tears helped bring him back into the Church after his time as a Manichaean. Patricius (?–371). Augustine’s father, a not very devout Catholic and not very faithful husband about whom Augustine tells us very little. Paul, Saint (?–63?). Apostle and author of many of the letters in the New Testament; a central inspiration for Augustine’s theology of grace. Pelagius (?–c. 430). Originator of the Pelagian heresy. Plato (427–358 B.C.). Founder of the philosophical tradition that had the most in(cid:192) uence on Augustine’s thought. Plotinus (205?–70). Pagan Platonist philosopher, author of a collection of treatises called the Enneads; his writings are the single most important philosophical in(cid:192) uence on Augustine. Ponticianus (sometimes spelled Pontitianus). Friend of Augustine who visits him in Milan and tells him stories about Christians choosing a life of asceticism, thereby sparking Augustine’s conversion. Victorinus. Roman rhetorician and convert to Christianity, author of a series of treatises on the Trinity; his entrance into the Church is held up as a model for Augustine to follow in Confessions, book 8, just prior to Augustine’s conversion. 75

• From Augustine: Philosopher and Saint (2005)

  19 Augustine to salvation and a sign that Monica’s own love for him needs to be puri¿ ed. • Monica eventually follows her son to Italy: ƕHer admiration and deference for Ambrose (6:1.1–2.2). ƕWhen Augustine is converted and returns to the Church, Monica is nearby (8:12.30). ƕIn an astonishing instance of shared mysticism, she has, with Augustine, a vision of divine Wisdom at Ostia (9:10.23–26). ƕThe vision at Ostia symbolizes the ultimate unity of philosophy and faith, Reason and Authority—Augustine and Monica. • Augustine’s tears for Monica: ƕShe dies far from home but knows that the location of her body doesn’t matter (6:11.27). ƕAt her funeral, Augustine tries to restrain his grief but can’t—more impure tears (9:12.29–33). ƕThe narrative of the Confessions ends with Augustine’s hope that we who read it may pray for his parents’ souls (9:13.37). What It Feels like to Be a Soul on Its Journey • To sin is to À ee the inescapable (omnipresent) Good. • Sin means losing what we most love. • Augustine the sinner feels grief rather than guilt. • Prayer and longing as the best state for the soul on its journey. Ŷ Augustine, Confessions, books 2, 4, and 9; also 5:8.14–9.17. Brown, Augustine of Hippo, chapters 2 and 6. Essential Reading Supplementary Reading 20 Lecture 4: Confessions —Love and Tears 1. Is Augustine right about how grief feels—and what it means? 2. Does Monica remind you of anybody you know? Questions to Consider

• From Augustine: Philosopher and Saint (2005)

  “Confessions” 4: On Loving What Can Be Lost • Incident: death of Augustine’s unnamed friend: (cid:405) They started out as Manichaeans together. (cid:405) Mortally ill, the friend is baptized while unconscious, and this is enough to convert him! (cid:405) God in his mercy snatches Augustine’s friend from him, lest he be corrupted again by Manichaeanism. • Re(cid:192) ection: why it hurt so: (cid:405) Augustine’s exquisite description of the world of grief. (cid:405) Augustine’s theory is that friendship is a form of love that unites souls. Death tears apart this union, and grief is the wound that results. (cid:405) The extraordinary thing about the Confessions is how Augustine’s literary art makes this theory palpable to his readers. • Conclusion: loving your friend in God: (cid:405) Augustine tried to (cid:191) nd comfort in God, but his imaginary Manichaean God could give no comfort. (Augustine is not one of those who think religious illusions can be comforting.) (cid:405) The solution to the problem of grief is to learn to love what can’t be lost: love God and your friend in God. • Appendix: concubine as friend: (cid:405) The rumors about Augustine’s wild youthful sex life are seriously exaggerated. After some adolescent experimentation (how much is hard to tell), he settled down with one woman for a dozen years. (cid:405) She was a concubine, which meant something similar to what we call a “common-law wife.” (cid:405) He describes his loss of her in the same terms with which he describes the loss of his unnamed friend (6:15.25). (cid:405) In the end, one of the things she taught him was the importance of rising above sexual desires (6:15.25). (cid:405) Augustine is not obsessed with sex (as some critics think). Intellectually at least, he’s much more interested in 17