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 Mud Vein (2014)

  I fall backwards. For the first time I feel my mother in the fall. She chose to save herself. She couldn’t bear the weight of love—not even for her own flesh and blood. And in that fall, I feel her decision to leave me. It rocks my heart and breaks it all over again. The first person you are connected to is your mother. By a cord composed of two arteries and a vein. She keeps you alive by sharing her blood and her warmth and her very life. When you are born, and the doctor severs that cord, a new one is formed. An emotional cord. My mother held me and fed me. She brushed my hair gently, and told me stories about fairies that lived in apple trees. She sang me songs, and baked me lemon cakes with rose frosting. She kissed my face when I cried and made little circles on my skin with her fingertips. And then she abandoned me. She walked out like none of that meant anything. Like we were never connected by a cord with two arteries and a vein. Like we were never connected by our hearts. I was disposable. I could be left. I was a broken- hearted little girl. Isaac broke the spell she put me under. He taught me what it was to not be left. A stranger who fought to keep me alive. I scream aloud. I roll to my side and grab my shirt, bringing the material up to my face, pressing it against my eyes and nose and mouth. I cry ungracefully, my heart hurting so exquisitely I cannot hold in the ugly noises that rise from my throat. I once read that there is an invisible thread that connects those who are destined to meet, regardless of time, place, or circumstance. The thread may stretch or tangle, but will never break. As the drugs dull me, I can feel that cord. I close my eyes, choking on my own spit and tears, and I can almost feel it tug and pull as she takes Isaac. Please don’t let it break, I silently plead to him. I need to know that some cords can’t be cut. Then the drugs take me. [image file=image41.jpg] Acceptance

• From Manhunt (2022)

  Her voice was low and throaty, her gray eyes almost colorless in the sun’s glare. The XX tattoo on her forehead stood out livid against her pale skin. “I was impressed.” Ramona remembered the screams. She remembered the shhhhhwip-thunk of the arrow whipping over Teach’s head to bury itself in Annie’s shoulder, just above and to the right of her collarbone, and the screams of the men pouring down the eroded slope of the gully along which the trannies had fled. “Shoulder to shoulder,” she said, almost automatically. “That’s the only way the sisterhood survives. Ma’am.” Teach laughed softly, pulling her high-backed chair out from her desk. She sat and gestured for Ramona to do the same. “We haven’t seen much of each other,” she said. She seemed never to blink. Ramona, perched on her folding metal chair, fought the urge to blush under her gaze. “No, ma’am.” “You’re a Hollywood girl, aren’t you?” Teach pulled open the desk’s bottom drawer and drew out a half-empty bottle of Glenlivet and two paper cups. She poured, then pushed one toward Ramona across the weighted-down maps. “How’d you wind up in Baltimore?” “Just for a few years.” She sipped her scotch, the peaty, smoky liquor burning the back of her throat. “My dad lived out there, after he and my mom split. She got diagnosed with lung cancer April of twenty eighteen and I moved back to PA to take care of her. So, a few months before T-Day.” She could almost hear her mother’s rattling, phlegmy wheeze coming from the next room, faint over the sound of The View or Days of Our Lives playing on the gigantic nineties TV set. “She died in the blackouts. My brothers…” A great amorphous mass of sadness heaved up suddenly from the depths of her stomach, beaching itself inside her. She blinked her tears back furiously, short of breath. “I’m sorry.” Nut up. Fucking nut up and stop crying like a little bitch. Those big, pale eyes moved over Ramona like searchlights cutting fog. “It was a bad time for all of us, Pierce,” Teach said softly, tapping a finger against the rim of her waxed paper cup. “Why don’t you tell me how you joined the Legion?” Ramona felt an overpowering sense of gratitude toward the other woman. She finished her drink in one quick swallow, relishing the warm, mellow bite as it rolled down her throat into her belly. She sniffed. “I saw you speak, ma’am. In Philly, two years after.”

• From Between Us

  Some of his most difficult interactions were with his master, who did not do much to teach him the art of shopkeeping: “I thought it sad for me to be ingaged 9 yeares . . . to sell my Master’s ware . . . and get no knowledge.” When his master promises and then refuses to give him a new set of clothes, he also describes his feelings as grief: “soe I would have none and parted with grieve.” Grief is also his go-to emotion in situations with equals: A woman starts some malicious gossip about him, and he is “in some greefe” about it. Lowe does not see himself as angry, because anger was not “right.” God could be angry, but ordinary citizens could not. Entitlement and nonacceptance were not acceptable relationship acts. Instead, Roger Lowe and his contemporaries pray to the Lord to help them “walk humbly.” In many contemporary cultures remote from our own, especially in tightly knit communities and societies, anger is also considered “wrong.” It would be nearly impossible to play the anger card if you were an Utku Inuit, a Buddhist Tibetan, an Ifaluk, or even a Japanese individual. In these cultures, communal and relational harmony prevail over individual goals and rights. Entitlement and nonacceptance conflict with the central goals of keeping relationships smooth. Anger is barely seen in any of these cultures, and also much less reported. The Utku Inuit, the same who were “never in anger,” valued equanimity and generosity, and disruptions thereof were considered childish and dangerous (see chapter 3). Similarly, Buddhist Tibetans consider lung lang (roughly translated as “being angry”) to be an extremely destructive emotion, harmful to both self and others. Anger is motivated by a desire to harm another sentient being, and therefore at odds with the Buddhist emphasis on compassion and the ethical code of speaking, acting, and living in non- harmful ways. The Ifaluk, the Polynesian group that hosted anthropologist Catherine Lutz, also condemned anger in their everyday lives. The irritability that accompanies sickness, the frustration that builds up over the succession of minor unwanted things, or the annoyance at relatives not living up to their obligations: all of these varieties of anger were perceived to be immoral and undignified. When relational harmony is prioritized over individual autonomy, entitlement and nonacceptance are wrong. As a result, interpersonal anger is not much seen. Philosopher Owen Flanagan contrasts the acceptance of many types of anger in Western traditions to the complete condemnation of anger by, for instance, Buddhist and Stoic traditions.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  I had another question on the tip of my tongue, but I held it there when the nurse walked in. Isaac stood up and I knew our conversation was over. In my mind, I replayed the beat he’d played on my wrist as the nurse fit a cap over my hair. I wondered what song it belonged to. If it was one of the ones he’d left on my windshield. “I’m going to walk you through the procedure,” he said, lowering my gown. “Then Sandy is going to take you to surgery.” He morphed from Isaac the man to Isaac the doctor in just a few seconds. He told me where he was going to make the incisions, outlining them on my breasts with a black marker. He spoke about what he was going to be looking for. His voice was steady, professional. While he spoke tears streamed down my face and fell into my hair in a silent but torrid emotional cacophony. It was the first time I’d cried since my childhood. I hadn’t cried when my mother left, or when I was raped, or when I found out cancer was eating at my body. I hadn’t even cried when I made the decision to cut out the very essence of what made me a woman. I cried when Isaac played drums on my pulse and told me he had to give it up before they destroyed him. Go figure. Or maybe that statement had just broken it all open. My cry felt anticlimactic. Like something more profound should have kicked the last stone out of the dam before it burst open. He saw my tears, but he didn’t acknowledge them. I was so, so grateful. They wheeled me into the OR and the anesthesiologist greeted me by name. I was asked to count backwards from ten. The last thing I saw before I lost consciousness was Isaac, staring intently into my eyes. I thought he was telling me to live. “Senna … Senna…” I heard his voice. My eyes felt weighted. When I opened them Isaac was standing over me. It was an alarming comfort to see him. “Hi,” he said softly. I blinked at him, trying to clear my vision. “Everything went well. I need you to rest. I’ll be back later to talk to you about the surgery.” “Is it gone?” My voice was just a scratch. He smelled like coffee when he leaned down. He spoke into my ear as if he were telling me a secret. “I got it all.” I could barely nod before I closed my eyes again. I drifted off wanting coffee and wishing my eyelids weren’t so heavy so I could see his face a little longer.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  We lie like that for hours. Until the fire burns out its last flame and I know the night has curved into day, even though day no longer shows her face. Until I want to sob from relief and grief. Until I remember all of the ineffable hurt from years ago that he salved with the tender way he loves. We are going to die. But at least I’ll die with someone who loves me. Isaac is touch. Why have I ever thought anything different? He held me once to soothe me from my nightmares, and now he is holding me to protect me from the cold. He touches right where it hurts, and then all of a sudden it doesn’t hurt. Yes, Isaac is touch. I see the pink spade again. I can feel the grit of coffee grounds as I work them between my teeth. Then I see The Great Wall of China, and I know my brain is short circuiting, passing along images of things that are in my subconscious. When I see the table flash in my mind—the carved up, heavy, wooden table from the kitchen downstairs—I feel something true. It’s like when I sleep and my brain tells me what to write. What is it about the table…? Then I see it, but I’m so tired I can’t keep my eyes open. Don’t forget, I tell myself. You have to remember the table… The fire goes. Our hearts are slowing. We are resolute. When I wake Isaac isn’t there. I weigh my panic against the pain. I can only focus on one at a time. I choose my pain because it won’t loosen its grip on my brain. I am familiar with heart pain—intense, excruciating heart pain, but I’ve never experienced a physical pain quite this exquisite. Heart pain and physical pain are only comparable in that neither relinquish their hold on you once they get rolling. The heart releases a dull ache when it is broken; the pain in my leg so acute and sharp it’s hard to breathe. I wrestle with the pain for a minute … two, before I discard it. I broke my body and there is no way to fix it. I don’t care. I need to find Isaac. And that’s when I think it: Oh God. What if the zookeeper came while I was passed out and did something to him? I roll slightly onto my side until I have some leverage, and try to drag myself up using my good leg. That’s when I see my leg. The lower half of my pants has been cut away. The place where the bone was sticking out has been wrapped in thin gauze. I feel liquid running down to my foot as I move. I hold my hand over my mouth and breathe through my nose. Who was here? Who did this? The fire is burning.

• From Going Clear (2013)

  For a moment, Lola was frozen in place, wonderstruck by the hellish glory of a force so mighty, a force that threatened even the will to survive. Into her consciousness came a sound—high, keening, hysterical—it was Mary Lou Miller, the ten-year-old. “Coco! Coco!” Mary Lou cried. “Momma, Coco’s in there!” Jeannette was struggling to get the toddler into the car seat while holding on to Mary Lou. “Let me go!” Mary Lou screamed, writhing in her mother’s grasp. “Mary Lou, the barn’s full of hay, it’ll go up in a minute,” Jeannette said, forcing herself to be calm and firm. “There’s nothing to be done. Now get in the truck, we gotta save ourselves!” As Lola watched, Mary Lou broke away and ran into the burning barn. “Mary Lou! Mary Lou!” Jeannette cried, and then she rushed after her daughter, still carrying the baby. Without a second to think, Lola raced after Jeannette and blocked her. Fires are made even more dangerous by the panic they spread, and running after one child with another on her shoulder could only magnify the tragedy. Jeannette knew this. The horror was written on her face as she sank into Lola’s iron embrace. A blast of heat surrounded them like a furnace and the flames painted them in a brilliant orange glow. The hay in the barn suddenly ignited and the bales exploded. Jeannette sank to her knees. It was then that Lola saw Sonny run into the barn. His silhouette was black against the flames and then he disappeared right through them. The air itself seemed to be ablaze. Sonny could barely breathe there was so little oxygen left in the barn. He heard the girl on the other side of the fire before he saw her. She wasn’t screaming now. She was trying to calm a horse that was making sounds that Sonny had never heard a horse make. An Appaloosa mare. She spun about and pawed the air, bucking frantically, dangerously close to Mary Lou. “Coco, Coco, stop, I’m here!” Mary Lou cried in an oxygen-starved whisper. “I’ll save you!” The girl had gotten the stall door open, but the mare was berserk, seeing nothing but fire everywhere. Her whinnying turned into an eerie wail. In her frenzy, Coco kicked in the gate of the stall, then spun about and came down hard on Mary Lou. Sonny waited until the horse reared again then grabbed Mary Lou before the hooves landed on her. She was barely conscious and didn’t have any struggle left. Sonny tucked her face into his fire jacket and ran through the flames with his eyes closed and his head down. A timber crashed behind them, drawing another deathly scream from Coco. Sonny gasped and drank in the air the moment he got out of the barn. He saw Lola holding Jeannette and the look on their faces. When Mary Lou got her breath, she began sobbing, her face wrenched in agony. It wasn’t pain, it was grief.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  This correct and sensible young man expresses the deepest gratitude for the service I have just so kindly rendered him, he takes an interest in my misfortunes, and proposes to alleviate them with the bestowal of his hand. "I am only too happy to be able to make you restitution for the wrongs fortune has done you, Mademoiselle," says he; "I am my own master, dependent upon no one, I am going on to Geneva to make a considerable investment with the funds your timely warning has saved me from losing; accompany me to Switzerland; when we arrive there I shall become your husband and you will not appear in Lyon under any other title, or, if you prefer, Mademoiselle, if you have any misgivings, it will only be in my own country I will give you my name." Such an offer, so very flattering, was one I dared not refuse; but it did not on the other hand become me to accept it without making Dubreuil aware of all that might cause him to repent it; he was grateful for my delicacy and only insisted the more urgently... unhappy creature that I was! 'twas necessary that happiness be offered me only in order that I be more deeply penetrated with grief at never being able to seize it! it was then ordained that no virtue could be born in my heart without preparing torments for me! Our conversation had already taken us two leagues from the city, and we were about to dismount in order to enjoy the fresh air along the bank of the Isere, when all of a sudden Dubreuil told me he felt very ill.... He got down, he was seized by dreadful vomitings; I had him climb into the carriage at once and we flew back posthaste to Grenoble. Dubreuil is so sick he has to be borne to his room; his condition startles his associate whom we find there and who, in accordance with instructions, has not stirred from the chamber; a doctor comes, Just Heaven! Dubreuil has been poisoned!

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  "Just then the clock on the mantelpiece struck the hour. Teleny shrugged his shoulders. "'Come,' said he, 'there is no time to lose.' "He snatched up his portmanteau, and we hurried downstairs. "I accompanied him to the terminus, and before leaving him when he alighted from the carriage, my arms were clasped round him, and our lips met in a last and lingering kiss. They clung fondly to one another, not with the fever of lust, but with a love all fraught with tenderness, and with a sorrow that gripped the muscles of the heart. "His kiss was like the last emanation of a withering flower, or like the sweet scent shed at evening tide by one of those delicate white cactus blossoms that open their petals at dawn, follow the sun in its diurnal march, then droop and fade away with the planet's last rays. "At parting from him I felt as if I had been bereft of my soul itself. My love was like a Nessus shirt, the severing of which was as painful as having my flesh torn from me piecemeal. It was as if the joy of my life had been snatched away from me. "I watched him as he hurried away with his springy step and feline grace. When he had reached the portal he turned round. He was deathly pale, and in his despair he looked like a man about to commit suicide. He waved a last farewell, and quickly disappeared. "The sun had set for me. Night had come over the world. I felt ⁠'like a soul belated; In hell and heaven unmated;' and, shuddering, I asked myself, what morn would come out of all this darkness? "The agony visible on his face struck a deep terror within me; then I thought how foolish we both were in giving each other such unnecessary pain, and I rushed out of the carriage after him. "All at once a heavy country lout ran up against me, and clasped me in his arms. "'Oh, ——!' I did not catch the name he said—'what an unexpected pleasure! How long have you been here?' "'Let me go—let me go! You are mistaken!' I screamed out, but he held me fast. "As I wrestled with the man, I heard the signal bell ring. With a strong jerk I pushed him away, and ran into the station. I reached the platform a few seconds too late, the train was in motion, Teleny had disappeared.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  Help!' "On the stairs my voice sounded like thunder. "The porter was out of his lodge in an instant. "I heard doors and windows opening. I again screamed out, 'Help!' and then, snatching up a bottle of cognac from the dining-room sideboard, I hurried back to my friend. "I moistened his lips; I poured a few spoonfuls of brandy, drop by drop, down his mouth. "Teleny opened his eyes again. They were veiled and almost dead; only that mournful look he always had, had increased to such an intensity that his pupils were as gloomy as a yawning grave; they thrilled me with an unutterable anguish. I could hardly stand that pitiful, stony look; I felt my nerves stiffen; my breath stopped; I burst out into a convulsive sobbing. "'Oh, Teleny! why did you kill yourself?' I moaned. 'Could you have doubted my forgiveness, my love?' "He evidently heard me, and tried to speak, but I could not catch the slightest sound. "'No, you must not die, I cannot part with you, you are my very life.' "I felt my fingers pressed slightly, imperceptibly. "The porter now made his appearance, but he stopped on the threshold frightened, terrified. "'A doctor—for mercy's sake, a doctor! Take a carriage—run!' I said, imploringly. "Other people began to come in. I waved them back. "'Shut the door. Let no one else enter, but for God's sake fetch a doctor before it is too late!' "The people, aghast, stood at a distance, staring at the dreadful sight. "Teleny again moved his lips. "'Hush! silence!' I whispered, sternly. 'He speaks!' "I felt racked at not being able to understand a single word of what he wanted to say. After several fruitless attempts I managed to make out,— "'Forgive!' "'If I forgive you, my angel? But I not only forgive you, I'd give my life for you!' "The dreary expression of his eyes had deepened, still, grievous as they were, a happier look was to be seen in them. Little by little the heartfelt sadness teemed with ineffable sweetness. I could hardly bear his glances any longer; they were torturing me. Their burning fire sank far into my soul. "Then he again uttered a whole phrase, the only two words of which I guessed rather than heard were— "'Briancourt—letter.' "After that his waning strength began to forsake him quite. "As I looked at him I saw that his eyes were getting clouded, a faint film came over them, he did not seem to see me any more. Yes, they were getting ever more glazed and glassy. "He did not attempt to speak, his lips were tightly shut. Still, after a few moments, he opened his mouth spasmodically; he gasped. He uttered a low, choking, raucous sound. "It was his last breath. Death's awful rattle. "The room was hushed. "I saw the people cross themselves. Some women knelt, and began to mumble prayers.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  My dreadful necessities, my gratitude, and above all, to say the plain truth, the dissipation and diversion I began to find in this new acquaintance, from the black corroding thoughts my heart had been a prey to, ever since the absence of my dear Charles, concurred to stun all my contrary reflections. If I now thought of my first, my only charmer, it was still with the tenderness and regret of the fondest love, embittered with the consciousness that I was no longer worthy of him. I could have begged my bread with him all over the world, but wretch that I was! I had neither the virtue or courage requisite not to outlive my separation from him. Yet, had not my heart been thus preengaged, Mr. H... might probably have been the sole master of it; but the place was full, and the force of conjectures alone had made him the possessor of my person; the charms of which had, by the bye, been his sole object and passion, and were, of course, no foundation for a love either very delicate or very durable. He did not return till six in the evening, to take me away to my new lodgings; and my moveables being soon packed, and conveyed into a hackney coach, it cost me but little regret to take my leave of a landlady whom I thought I had so much reason not to be over pleased with; and as for her part, she made no other difference to my staying or going, but what that of the profit created. We soon got to the house appointed for me, which was that of a plain tradesman, who, on the score of interest, was entirely at Mr. H...’s devotion, and who let him the first floor, very genteelly furnished, for two guineas a week, of which I was instated mistress, with a maid to attend me. He stayed with me that evening, and we had a supper from a neighbouring tavern, after which, and a gay glass or two, the maid put me to bed. Mr. H.... soon followed, and notwithstanding the fatigues of the preceding night, I found no quarter nor remission from him: he piquet himself, as he told me, on doing the honours of my new apartment.

• From Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (2014)

  94 In the coastal town of Yavneh, they began to compile three new scriptures: the Mishnah, completed around 200, and the Jerusalem and Babylonian Talmuds, which reached their final form in the fifth and sixth centuries respectively. At first, most of the rabbis probably assumed that the temple would be rebuilt, but those hopes were quashed when the emperor Hadrian visited Judea in 130 and announced that he would build a new city called Aelia Capitolina on the ruins of Jerusalem. The following year, as part of his policy of uniting the empire culturally, he outlawed circumcision, the ordination of rabbis, the teaching of the Torah, and public Jewish gatherings. Inevitably, perhaps, there was another revolt, and the tough Jewish soldier Simon bar Koseba planned his guerrilla campaign so skillfully that he held Rome at bay for three years. Rabbi Akiva, a leading Yavneh scholar, hailed him as the messiah, calling him Bar Kokhba (“Son of the Star”). 95 But Rome finally gained control, systematically destroying almost a thousand Jewish villages and killing 580,000 Jewish rebels, while countless civilians were either burned to death or died of hunger and disease. 96 After the war, Jews were expelled from Judea and would not be permitted to return for over five hundred years. The violence of this imperial assault profoundly affected Rabbinic Judaism. Instead of allowing Jews to bring their more aggressive traditions to the fore, they deliberately marginalized them, determined to prevent any more catastrophic military adventures. 97 In their new academies in Babylonia and Galilee, they therefore evolved a method of exegesis that excised any adulation of chauvinism or belligerence. They were not particularly peaceable men—they fought their scholarly battles fiercely—but they were pragmatists. 98 They had learned that Jewish tradition could survive only if Jews learned to rely on spiritual rather than physical strength. 99 They could not afford any more heroic messiahs. 100 They recalled Rabbi Yohanan’s advice: “If there is a seedling in your hand and you are informed ‘King Messiah has arrived,’ first plant your seedling and then go forth to greet him.” 101 Other rabbis went further: “Let him come, but let me not see him!” 102 Rome was a fact of life, and Jews must come to terms with it. 103 The rabbis scoured their biblical and oral traditions to show that God had decreed Rome’s imperial power. 104 They praised Roman technology and instructed Jews to make a blessing whenever they saw a gentile king. 105 They devised new rules forbidding Jews to bear arms on the Sabbath or to bring weapons into the House of Studies, because violence was incompatible with Torah scholarship. The rabbis made it clear that instead of being an inflammatory force, religious activity could be used to quell violence.

• From Best Erotica & Sexual Deviance Narratives Ever Written (2024)

  They were veiled and almost dead; only that mournful look he always had, had increased to such an intensity that his pupils were as gloomy as a yawning grave; they thrilled me with an unutterable anguish. I could hardly stand that pitiful, stony look; I felt my nerves stiffen; my breath stopped; I burst out into a convulsive sobbing. "'Oh, Teleny! why did you kill yourself?' I moaned. 'Could you have doubted my forgiveness, my love?' "He evidently heard me, and tried to speak, but I could not catch the slightest sound. "'No, you must not die, I cannot part with you, you are my very life.' "I felt my fingers pressed slightly, imperceptibly. "The porter now made his appearance, but he stopped on the threshold frightened, terrified. "'A doctor—for mercy's sake, a doctor! Take a carriage—run!' I said, imploringly. "Other people began to come in. I waved them back. "'Shut the door. Let no one else enter, but for God's sake fetch a doctor before it is too late!' "The people, aghast, stood at a distance, staring at the dreadful sight. "Teleny again moved his lips. "'Hush! silence!' I whispered, sternly. 'He speaks!' "I felt racked at not being able to understand a single word of what he wanted to say. After several fruitless attempts I managed to make out,— "'Forgive!' "'If I forgive you, my angel? But I not only forgive you, I'd give my life for you!' "The dreary expression of his eyes had deepened, still, grievous as they were, a happier look was to be seen in them. Little by little the heartfelt sadness teemed with ineffable sweetness. I could hardly bear his glances any longer; they were torturing me. Their burning fire sank far into my soul. "Then he again uttered a whole phrase, the only two words of which I guessed rather than heard were— "'Briancourt—letter.' "After that his waning strength began to forsake him quite. "As I looked at him I saw that his eyes were getting clouded, a faint film came over them, he did not seem to see me any more. Yes, they were getting ever more glazed and glassy. "He did not attempt to speak, his lips were tightly shut. Still, after a few moments, he opened his mouth spasmodically; he gasped. He uttered a low, choking, raucous sound. "It was his last breath. Death's awful rattle. "The room was hushed. "I saw the people cross themselves. Some women knelt, and began to mumble prayers. "A horrible light dawned upon me. "What! He is dead, then? "His head fell lifeless on my chest. "I uttered a shrill cry. I called for help. "A doctor had come at last. "'He is beyond help,' the doctor said; 'he is dead.' "What! My Teleny dead? "I looked around at the people. Aghast, they seemed to shrink from me. The room began to spin round. I knew nothing more. I had fainted.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  He put on wordless music when we got in his car. That bothered me for some reason. Perhaps I expected him to have something new for me. I tapped my finger on the window as we drove. It was cold out. It would be like this for another few months before the weather would crack, and the sun would start to warm Washington. I liked the feel of the cold glass on my fingertips, like tiny shocks of winter. Isaac carried my bag inside. When I got to my room my eyes found my nightstand. There was a clear rectangle cut in the dust. I felt a pang of something. Grief? I was feeling a lot of grief; I had just lost my breasts. It had nothing to do with Nick, I told myself. “I’m making lunch,” Isaac said, standing just outside my room. “Do you want me to bring it up here?” “I want to shower. I’ll come down after.” He saw me staring at the bathroom door and cleared his throat. “Let me take a look before you do that.” I nodded and sat down on the edge of my bed, unbuttoning my shirt. When I was finished, I leaned back, my fingers gripping the comforter. You’d think I’d be used to this by now—the constant gawking and touching of my chest. Now that there was nothing there I should feel less ashamed. I was just a little boy as far as what was underneath my shirt. He unwound the bandages from my torso. I felt the air hit my skin and my eyes closed automatically. I opened them, defying my shame, to watch his face. Blank When he touched the skin around my sutures I wanted to pull back. “The swelling is down,” he said. “You can shower since the drain is out, but use the antibacterial soap I put in your bag. Don’t use a sponge on the stitches. They can snag.” I nodded. All things I knew, but when a man was looking at your mangled breasts he needed something to say. Doctor or not. I pulled my shirt closed and held it together in a fist. “I’ll be downstairs if you need me.” I couldn’t look at him. My breasts weren’t the only thing torn and ripped. Isaac was a stranger and he had seen more of my wounds than anyone else. Not because I chose him like I did Nick. He was just always there. That’s what scared me. It was one thing inviting someone into your life, choosing to put your head on the train tracks and wait for imminent death, but this—this I had no control over. What he knew, and what he’d seen about me brought so much shame I could barely look him in the eyes. I tiptoed to the bathroom, glancing once more at the nightstand before shutting the door.

• From Going Clear (2013)

  When she finally left the building, she tore it to pieces. SPANKY TAYLOR’S SON, TRAVIS, was born in March 1979, weighing less than three pounds, although he was carried to full term. (Both of Taylor’s children are alive and healthy today.) Many former Sea Org members found their departure from the church to be tangled in confusion, panic, grief, and conflicting loyalties. Many still cling to a relationship with the church, sometimes for years, like Taylor, or for the rest of their lives. The coda to Taylor’s story is that a year after leaving the Sea Org, she traveled to Houston to meet with Travolta. He was filming Urban Cowboy at the time. On her own initiative, she came to “recover” him for the church. She had heard that he was having problems in his life, and she worried that her own troubles had prevented him from turning to the church for help. It was also possible that if she brought Travolta back into the fold, her standing in the church would be improved. Like most celebrities, Travolta had been shielded from the church’s inner workings. The scandals that periodically erupted in the press about Hubbard’s biography, or his disappearance, or the church’s use of private investigators and the courts to harass critics—these things rarely touched the awareness of Scientology luminaries. Many simply didn’t want to hear about the problems inside their organization. It was easy enough to chalk such revelations up to religious persecution or yellow journalism. “There are two sides to the story, but I don’t know both sides,” Travolta blithely said when he was asked about Operation Snow White. “I’m not involved with that.” In any case, for someone like Travolta, who was so publicly associated with the church, it would be hard to just walk away. He had been asked to declare himself publicly, and he had done so, again and again. The star was staying in a private house in Houston. He and Taylor met in the evening, after dinner, over a plate of chocolate-chip cookies that she had brought. She explained that she had left the Sea Org and was with her children now, then quickly changed the subject and asked about him. He described the problems he was having. Former Scientologists have given conflicting accounts of Travolta’s stressful relationship with the church at that time. The church hierarchy was desperately concerned that their most valuable member would be revealed as gay; at the same time, the hierarchy was prepared to use that against him. Bill Franks, the church’s former executive director, told Time magazine that Travolta was worried that if he defected, the church would expose his sexual identity. Jesse Prince has stated that Travolta was threatening to marry a man, although that wasn’t a legal option at the time. In Franks’s opinion, the church had Travolta trapped.

• From Mud Vein (2014)

  When he reads the words, “I was destined to be unlucky in life…” my eyes shoot open. I want to say Jinx. Maybe I’ll like David Copperfield after all. This isn’t the first time Isaac’s read to me. The last time was under very different circumstances. Very different and very much the same. He reads until his voice becomes hoarse. Then I take the book from him and read until mine gives, too. We mark the spot and set it down until tomorrow. Part Two Pain & Guilt The days melt. They melt into each other until I can’t remember how long we’ve been here, or if it’s supposed to be morning or night. The sun never stops with the damn light. Isaac never stops with the damn pacing. I lie still and wait. Until it comes. Clarity, bleeding through my denial, warm against my numb brain. Warm—it’s a word I’m becoming less and less familiar with. Isaac has become increasingly worried about the generator lately. He calculates how long we’ve been here. “It’s going to run out of gas. I don’t know why it hasn’t already…” We turned off the heat and used the wood from the closet downstairs. But now we are running out of wood. Isaac has rationed us down to four logs a day. Any day now the generator could run out of fuel. It is Isaac’s fear that we will no longer be able to get water through the faucet without the power. “We can burn things in the house for heat,” he tells me. “But once we run out of water we’re dead.” My feet are cold, my hands are cold, my nose is cold; but right now, my brain is cooking something. I press my face into the pillow and will it away. My brain is sometimes like a rogue Rubik’s cube. It twists until it finds a pattern. I can figure out any movie, any book within five minutes of starting it. It’s almost painful. I wait for it to pass, the twisting. My mind can see the picture that Isaac has been looking for. While he, no doubt, paces the kitchen, I get up and sit on the floor in front of my dwindling fire. The wood is hard against my legs, but wood absorbs heat and I’d rather be warm and uncomfortable than cold and cushioned. I’m trying to distract my thoughts, but they are persistent. Senna! Senna! Senna! My thoughts sound like Yul Brynner. Not girl voice, not my voice, Yul Brynner’s voice. Specifically in The Ten Commandments . “Shut up, Yul,” I whisper. But, he doesn’t shut up. And no wonder I didn’t see it before. The truth is more twisted than I am. If I am right, we will be home soon; Isaac with his family, me with mine. I giggle. If I am right, the door will open and we can walk to a place where there is help. All of this will be over.

• From Sister Outsider (1984)

  A piece of the price we paid for learning survival was our childhood. We were never allowed to be children. It is the right of children to be able to play at living for a little while, but for a Black child, every act can have deadly serious consequences, and for a Black girl child, even more so. Ask the ghosts of the four little Black girls blown up in Birmingham. Ask Angel Lenair, or Latonya Wilson, or Cynthia Montgomery, the three girl victims in the infamous Atlanta murders, none of whose deaths have ever been solved. Sometimes it feels as if I were to experience all the collective hatred that I have had directed at me as a Black woman, admit its implications into my consciousness, I might die of the bleak and horrible weight. Is that why a sister once said to me, “white people feel, Black people do”? It is true that in america white people, by and large, have more time and space to afford the luxury of scrutinizing their emotions. Black people in this country have always had to attend closely to the hard and continuous work of survival in the most material and immediate planes. But it is a temptation to move from this fact to the belief that Black people do not need to examine our feelings; or that they are unimportant, since they have so often been used to stereotype and infantalize us; or that these feelings are not vital to our survival; or, worse, that there is some acquired virtue in not feeling them deeply. That is carrying a timebomb wired to our emotions. There is a distinction I am beginning to make in my living between pain and suffering. Pain is an event, an experience that must be recognized, named, and then used in some way in order for the experience to change, to be transformed into something else, strength or knowledge or action. Suffering, on the other hand, is the nightmare reliving of unscrutinized and unmetabolized pain. When I live through pain without recognizing it, self-consciously, I rob myself of the power that can come from using that pain, the power to fuel some movement beyond it. I condemn myself to reliving that pain over and over and over whenever something close triggers it. And that is suffering, a seemingly inescapable cycle. And true, experiencing old pain sometimes feels like hurling myself full force against a concrete wall. But I remind myself that I HAVE LIVED THROUGH IT ALL ALREADY, AND SURVIVED. Sometimes the anger that lies between Black women is not examined because we spend so much of our substance having to examine others constantly in the name of self-protection and survival, and we cannot reserve enough energy to scrutinize ourselves.

• From The Pisces (2018)

  We sat down at the kitchen table. She was tan from the Roman sun and smelled like orange blossoms. Her ass had gotten bigger under her yoga pants and she wore a blousy shirt to cover it. I sat with my hands under me, clenched in fists, and squeezed them hard every time she spoke. “What am I going to do now? I mean, what the fuck am I supposed to do now?” “Do you want me to go out and get you something to eat?” I asked. “Eat?” she looked up at me. “Oh no, I can’t eat.” “Okay.” “I wanted so many more years with him. There was so much life we had left together. I mean, I would have eventually outlived him. But not for so many more years. He wasn’t even old. And to me he was still a puppy. He will always be my puppy.” “Annika, I’m so sorry,” I said. But she didn’t blame me. She didn’t say, “How could you have let this happen?” Instead she stared blankly, her full lips slightly parted, as though she too now knew the nothingness. Maybe it was the first time she could see it. Even when we lost our father she hadn’t had this look. This was the face of a mother who had lost her child. It made me think about my mother. I wondered, if my mother hadn’t died—if it had been me who died instead and my mother had lived—was this what she would have looked like? Steve came over and put his hands on her shoulders. He said that they were going to have Dominic cremated, because California law would not allow them to bury a body so close to the beach. The vet tech would come pick him up in the morning. With that Annika began to sob. She went inside the pantry. I followed her to the door and saw her lie down on the floor with her dead dog, her hair fanned out beside him. He was hers, the creature she loved most, and I had taken him from her. I could smell him from the doorway. Neither Annika nor Steve said anything about the smell, but the scent of death was wafting up from his body and through the glass house. —After Steve had gone to bed and Annika fell asleep on the floor of the pantry, I crept out to the rocks in the dark to see Theo. He hadn’t come out of the water and was resting his arms on one of the rocks, bobbing in the waves. “You’re late,” he said, looking up at me. “I thought maybe you weren’t coming.” “I know, I’m sorry. But I’ll always come. And tomorrow, the water.” “I’m glad,” he said without smiling.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  But Anna, whose word was now absolute law, had become one of those who have done with smiling; a quiet, enduring, grief-stricken woman, in whose eyes was a patient, waiting expression. She was gentle to Stephen, yet terribly aloof; in their hour of great need they must still stand divided these two, by the old, insidious barrier. Yet Stephen clung closer and closer to Morton; she had definitely given up all idea of Oxford. In vain did Puddle try to protest, in vain did she daily remind her pupil that Sir Philip had set his heart on her going; no good, for Stephen would always reply: ‘Morton needs me; Father would want me to stay, because he taught me to love it.’ And Puddle was helpless. What could she do, bound as she was by the tyranny of silence? She dared not explain the girl to herself, dared not say: ‘For your own sake you must go to Oxford, you’ll need every weapon your brain can give you; being what you are you’ll need every weapon,’ for then certainly Stephen would start to question, and her teacher’s very position of trust would forbid her to answer those questions. Outrageous, Puddle would feel it to be, that wilfully selfish tyranny of silence evolved by a crafty old ostrich of a world for its own well-being and comfort. The world hid its head in the sands of convention, so that seeing nothing it might avoid Truth. It said to itself: ‘If seeing’s believing, then I don’t want to see—if silence is golden, it is also, in this case, very expedient.’ There were moments when Puddle would feel sorely tempted to shout out loud at the world. Sometimes she thought of giving up her post, so weary was she of fretting over Stephen. She would think: ‘What’s the good of my worrying myself sick? I can’t help the girl, but I can help myself—seems to me it’s a matter of pure self-preservation.’ Then all that was loyal and faithful in her would protest: ‘Better stick it, she’ll probably need you one day and you ought to be here to help her.’ So Puddle decided to stick it. They did very little work, for Stephen had grown idle with grief and no longer cared for her studies. Nor could she find consolation in her writing, for sorrow will often do one of two things—it will either release the springs of inspiration, or else it will dry up those springs completely, and in Stephen’s case it had done the latter. She longed for the comforting outlet of words, but now the words would always evade her. ‘I can’t write any more, it’s gone from me, Puddle—he’s taken it with him.’ And then would come tears, and the tears would go splashing down on to the paper, blotting the poor inadequate lines that meant little or nothing as their author well knew, to her own added desolation.

• From Sister Outsider (1984)

  But from the time I went to Tougaloo and did that workshop, I knew: not only, yes, I am a poet, but also, this is the kind of work I’m going to do. Practically all the poems in Cables to Rage * I wrote in Tougaloo. I was there for six weeks. I came back knowing that my relationship with Ed was not enough: either we were going to change it or end it. I didn’t know how to end it because there had never been any endings for me. But I had met Frances at Tougaloo, and I knew she was going to be a permanent person in my life. However, I didn’t know how we were going to work it out. I’d left a piece of my heart in Tougaloo not just because of Frances but because of what my students there had taught me. And I came back, and my students called me and told me — they were all of them also in the Tougaloo choir — they were coming to New York to sing in Carnegie Hall with Duke Ellington on April 4, and I covered it for the Clarion-Ledger, in Jackson, so I was there, and while we were there Martin Luther King was killed. Adrienne: On that night? Audre: I was with the Tougaloo choir at Carnegie Hall when he was killed. They were singing “What the World Needs Now Is Love.” And they interrupted it to tell us that Martin Luther King had been killed. Adrienne: What did people do? Audre: Duke Ellington started to cry. Honeywell, the head of the choir, said, “The only thing we can do here is finish this as a memorial.” And they sang again, “What the World Needs Now is Love.” The kids were crying. The audience was crying. And then the choir stopped. They cut the rest of it short. But they sang that song and it kept reverberating. It was more than pain. The horror, the enormity of what was happening. Not just the death of King, but what it meant. I have always had the sense of Armageddon and it was much stronger in those days, the sense of living on the edge of chaos. Not just personally, but on the world level. That we were dying, that we were killing our world — that sense had always been with me. That whatever I was doing, whatever we were doing that was creative and right, functioned to hold us from going over the edge. That this was the most we could do while we constructed some saner future. But that we were in that kind of peril. And here it was reality, in fact.

• From Sister Outsider (1984)

  Every Black woman in america has survived several lifetimes of hatred, where even in the candy store cases of our childhood, little brown niggerbaby candies testified against us. We survived the wind-driven spittle on our child’s shoe and pink flesh-colored bandaids, attempted rapes on rooftops and the prodding fingers of the super’s boy, seeing our girlfriends blown to bits in Sunday School, and we absorbed that loathing as a natural state. We had to metabolize such hatred that our cells have learned to live upon it because we had to, or die of it. Old King Mithridates learned to eat arsenic bit by bit and so outwitted his poisoners, but I’d have hated to kiss him upon his lips! Now we deny such hatred ever existed because we have learned to neutralize it through ourselves, and the catabolic process throws off waste products of fury even when we love. I see hatred I am bathed in it, drowning in it since almost the beginning of my life it has been the air I breathe the food I eat, the content of my perceptions; the single most constant fact of my existence is their hatred … I am too young for my history** It is not that Black women shed each other’s psychic blood so easily, but that we have ourselves bled so often, the pain of bloodshed becomes almost commonplace. If I have learned to eat my own flesh in the forest — starving, keening, learning the lesson of the she-wolf who chews off her own paw to leave the trap behind — if I must drink my own blood, thirsting, why should I stop at yours until your dear dead arms hang like withered garlands upon my breast and I weep for your going, oh my sister, I grieve for our gone. When an error of oversight allows one of us to escape without the full protective dose of fury and air of contemptuous disdain, when she approaches us without a measure of distrust and reserve flowing from her pores, or without her eyes coloring each appraisal of us with that unrelenting sharpness and suspicion reserved only for each other, when she approaches without sufficient caution, then she is cursed by the first accusation of derision — naive — meaning not programmed for defensive attack before inquiry. Even more than confused, naive is the ultimate wipeout between us.