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 68 of 263 · 20 per page

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Having thus disposed of his daughter, well knowing to whom, he resolved to abide there no longer and accordingly, begging his way across the island, came, not without sore fatigue, as one who was unused to go afoot, into Wales. Here dwelt another of the king's marshals, who held great state and entertained a numerous household, and to his court both the count and his son whiles much resorted to get food. Certain sons of the said marshal and other gentlemen's children being there engaged in such boyish exercises as running and leaping, Perrot began to mingle with them and to do as dextrously as any of the rest, or more so, each feat that was practised among them. The marshal, chancing whiles to see this and being much taken with the manners and fashion of the boy, asked who he was and was told that he was the son of a poor man who came there bytimes for alms; whereupon he caused require him of the count, and the latter, who indeed besought God of nought else, freely resigned the boy to him, grievous as it was to him to be parted from him. Having thus provided his son and daughter, he determined to abide no longer in England and passing over into Ireland, made his way, as best he might, to Stamford, where he took service with a knight belonging to an earl of the country, doing all such things as pertain unto a lackey or a horseboy, and there, without being known of any, he abode a great while in unease and travail galore. Meanwhile Violante, called Jeannette, went waxing with the gentlewoman in London in years and person and beauty and was in such favour both with the lady and her husband and with every other of the house and whoso else knew her, that it was a marvellous thing to see; nor was there any who noted her manners and fashions but avouched her worthy of every greatest good and honour. Wherefore the noble lady who had received her from her father, without having ever availed to learn who he was, otherwise than as she had heard from himself, was purposed to marry her honourably according to that condition whereof she deemed her. But God, who is a just observer of folk's deserts, knowing her to be of noble birth and to bear, without fault, the penalty of another's sin, ordained otherwise, and fain must we believe that He of His benignity permitted that which came to pass to the end that the gentle damsel might not fall into the hands of a man of low estate.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  What a wonderful thing Love is, and how difficult it is to fathom its deep and powerful currents! The girl’s heart, which had remained sealed to Girolamo for as long as he was smiled upon by Fortune, was unlocked by his far from fortunate death. The flames of her former love were rekindled, and no sooner did she catch sight of his dead face than they were all instantly transformed into so much compassion that she edged her way forward, wrapped in her mantle, through the cluster of women mourners, coming to a halt only when she was almost on top of the corpse itself. Then with a piercing scream, she flung herself upon the dead youth, and if she failed to drench his face with her tears, that was because, almost as soon as she touched him, she died, like the young man, from a surfeit of grief. The woman, who had thus far failed to recognize her, crowded round to console her and urge her to her feet, but since she did not respond they tried to lift her themselves, only to discover that she was quite still and rigid. And when they finally succeeded in raising her, they saw at one and the same time that it was Salvestra and that she was dead. The women now had double cause for weeping, and they all began wailing again much more loudly than before. The news spread through the church to the men outside and reached the ears of her husband, who happened to be standing in their midst. Having burst into tears, he simply went on crying, oblivious to the efforts of various bystanders to console and comfort him; but eventually he told several of them about what had occurred the night before between this young man and his wife, thus clearing up the mystery of their deaths, and everyone was filled with enormous sorrow. The dead girl was taken up and decked out in all the finery with which we are wont to adorn the bodies of the dead, then she was laid on the selfsame bier upon which the young man was already lying. For a long time they mourned her, and afterwards the two bodies were interred in a single tomb: and thus it was that those whom Love had failed to join together in life were inseparably linked to each other in death. NINTH STORYGuillaume de Roussillon causes his wife to eat the heart of her lover, Guillaume de Cabestanh,1 whom he has secretly murdered. When she finds out, she kills herself by leaping from a lofty casement to the ground below, and is subsequently buried with the man she loved. The king had no intention of interfering with Dioneo’s privilege, and when, having planted no small degree of compassion in the hearts of her companions, Neifile’s story came to its conclusion, there being no others left to speak, he began as follows:

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Riding home, she felt utterly spent and bewildered. Her thoughts were full of her father again—he seemed very near, incredibly near her. For a moment she thought that she heard his voice, but when she bent sideways trying to listen, all was silence, except for the tired rhythm of Raftery’s hooves on the road. As her brain grew calmer, it seemed to Stephen that her father had taught her all that she knew. He had taught her courage and truth and honour in his life, and in death he had taught her mercy—the mercy that he had lacked he had taught her through the mighty adventure of death. With a sudden illumination of vision, she perceived that all life is only one life, that all joy and all sorrow are indeed only one, that all death is only one dying. And she knew that because she had seen a man die in great suffering, yet with courage and love that are deathless, she could never again inflict wanton destruction or pain upon any poor, hapless creature. And so it was that by dying to Stephen, Sir Philip would live on in the attribute of mercy that had come that day to his child. But the body is still very far from the spirit, and it clings to the primitive joys of the earth—to the sun and the wind and the good rolling grass-lands, to the swift elation of reckless movement, so that Stephen, feeling Raftery between her strong knees, was suddenly filled with regret. Yes, in this her moment of spiritual insight she was infinitely sad, and she said to Raftery: ‘We’ll never hunt any more, we two, Raftery—we’ll never go out hunting together any more.’ And because in his own way he had understood her, she felt his sides swell with a vast, resigned sigh; heard the creaking of damp girth leather as he sighed because he had understood her. For the love of the chase was still hot in Raftery, the love of splendid, unforeseen danger, the love of crisp mornings and frostbound evenings, and of long, dusky roads that always led home. He was wise with the age-old wisdom of the beasts, it is true, but that wisdom was not guiltless of slaying, and deep in his gentle and faithful mind lurked a memory bequeathed him by some wild forbear. A memory of vast and unpeopled spaces, of fierce open nostrils and teeth bared in battle, of hooves that struck death with every sure blow, of a great untamed mane that streamed out like a banner, of the shrill and incredibly savage war-cry that accompanied that gallant banner. So now he too felt infinitely sad, and he sighed until his strong girths started creaking, after which he stood still and shook himself largely, in an effort to shake off depression. Stephen bent forward and patted his neck. ‘I’m sorry, sorry, Raftery,’ she said gravely. CHAPTER 161W

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  But after a while the storm seemed to pass, Jamie seemed to grow suddenly calm and collected: ‘You two,’ she said gravely, ‘I want to thank you for all you’ve been to Barbara and me.’ Mary started crying. ‘Don’t cry,’ said Jamie. The evening came. Stephen lighted the lamp, then she made up the stove while Mary laid the supper. Jamie ate a little, and she actually smiled when Stephen poured her out a weak whiskey. ‘Drink it, Jamie—it may help you to get some sleep.’ Jamie shook her head: ‘I shall sleep without it—but I want to be left alone to-night, Stephen.’ Mary protested but Jamie was firm: ‘I want to be left alone with her, please—you do understand that, Stephen, don’t you?’ Stephen hesitated, then she saw Jamie’s face; it was full of a new and calm resolution: ‘It’s my right,’ she was saying, ‘I’ve a right to be alone with the woman I love before they—take her.’ Jamie held the lamp to light them downstairs—her hand, Stephen thought, seemed amazingly steady. 8The next morning when they went to the studio quite early, they heard voices coming from the topmost landing. The concierge was standing outside Jamie’s door, and with her was a young man, one of the tenants. The concierge had tried the door; it was locked and no one made any response to her knocking. She had brought Jamie up a cup of hot coffee—Stephen saw it, the coffee had slopped into the saucer. Either pity or the memory of Mary’s large tips, had apparently touched the heart of this woman. Stephen hammered loudly: ‘Jamie!’ she called, and then again and again: ‘Jamie! Jamie!’ The young man set his shoulder to a panel, and all the while he pushed he was talking. He lived just underneath, but last night he was out, not returning until nearly six that morning. He had heard that one of the girls had died—the little one—she had always looked fragile. Stephen added her strength to his; the woodwork was damp and rotten with age, the lock suddenly gave and the door swung inwards. Then Stephen saw: ‘Don’t come here—go back, Mary!’ But Mary followed them into the studio. So neat, so amazingly neat it was for Jamie, she who had always been so untidy, she who had always littered up the place with her large, awkward person and shabby possessions, she who had always been Barbara’s despair . . . Just a drop or two of blood on the floor, just a neat little hole low down in her left side. She must have fired upwards with great foresight and skill—and they had not even known that she owned a revolver!

• From The Decameron (1353)

  And since her own milk was not yet dry after her recent confinement, she picked them up tenderly and applied them to her breast. They showed no sign of refusing this favour, but took suck from her as though she were their own mother; and from then on they made no distinction between their mother and herself. Thus the lady felt she had found some company on this deserted island, and having become just as familiar with the doe as with the two roebucks, she resolved to remain there for the rest of her days on a diet of grass and water, bursting into tears whenever she remembered her past life with her husband and children. As a result of leading this sort of life, the gentle woman had turned quite wild when, a few months later, a small Pisan ship happened to be driven in by a storm, casting anchor in the same little bay where she herself had arrived, and lying there for several days. Now, aboard this ship there was a gentleman of the Malespina family called Currado, 4 who was returning home from a pilgrimage with his worthy and devout lady after visiting all the holy places in the Kingdom of Apulia. One day, in order to relieve the monotony of the delay, he went ashore with his wife, some of his servants, and his dogs, and started exploring the island. And not very far from the place where Madonna Beritola was, Currado’s dogs began giving chase to the two roebucks, which had now grown quite big and were out grazing. Pursued by the dogs, the two roebucks ran to the very cave where Madonna Beritola was sheltering. Seeing what was happening, she got up, took hold of a stick, and drove the dogs back. Shortly afterwards, Currado and his lady, who had been following the dogs, arrived on the scene; and when they saw her standing there, all bronzed and emaciated, with long and unkempt hair, their astonishment, though much less than her own, was very great indeed. However, after Currado had complied with her entreaties to call off his dogs, they persuaded her, with a good deal of coaxing, to tell them who she was and what she was doing there, and she gave them a full account of her past life and all her misfortunes, ending by revealing her fierce determination to stay on the island. On hearing this, Currado, who had been very well acquainted with Arrighetto Capece, wept with compassion, and attempted to talk her out of her proud decision, offering to take her back to her home, or alternatively, to honour her as a sister and keep her in his own family, where she could stay until such time as God granted her a kindlier fate.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  On the night of 18–19 July 1374, Petrarch died in Arquà, and when, three months later, the news of his death reached Certaldo, Boccaccio wrote a commemorative sonnet, thus rounding off his own comparatively undistinguished collection of shorter poems, the Rime , with a final tribute to one whom he rightly acknowledged as his master in vernacular lyric poetry. The earlier poems constituting Boccaccio’s Rime had been strongly derivative from the dolce stil novo and the rime petrose of Dante; the later ones took their cue from Petrarch. In the sixteenth century, the great Florentine linguist Lionardo Salviati was to assert that Boccaccio ‘non fece mai verso che avesse verso nel verso’ , by which he implied that his lyrical poetry was neither lyrical nor poetic. And whilst that is much too severe an assessment of Boccaccio’s skills as a lyric poet, it is certainly true that in the Rime he fell far short of the heights he scaled in the art of narrative, whether in verse or in prose. Generally speaking, the Rime form the least original part of the output of a writer whose work, whatever its shortcomings, was seldom lacking in originality. During the last few years of his life, Boccaccio was troubled by a succession of physical disorders, and suffered from severe obesity. This was probably the chief contributory factor to his final illness, leading to his death in Certaldo on 21 December 1375. II. THE WORLD OF THE NARRATORS The idea of assembling a substantial number of tales within a single work was doubtless one that Boccaccio had been contemplating for many years before he brought it to fruition. The questioni episode in the Filocolo and the nymphs’ accounts of their amorous exploits in the Comedía delle ninfe fiorentine are the two most obvious tokens in his earlier writings of the path he was eventually to follow. Those two extended episodes may be regarded as trial runs for a project of far more ambitious proportions, for which he must already have begun to gather the formidable amount of narrative raw material he would require, some of it being pressed into service in two of the questioni , as well as in another episode of the Filocolo . As for the actual design of the Decameron , there are many other significant pointers in the earlier works. One instance is the passage in the Fiammetta in which the narrator/protagonist reminisces nostalgically about excursions undertaken with her young Neapolitan fellow-patricians to Baiae, a location with strong classical associations where the remains of the ancient Roman Baths of Venus, the Terme di Venere, are still in evidence. There the hotter part of the day would be devoted, by the ladies themselves or in the company of young men ( o le donne per sé, o mescolate co’ giovani ), to amorous discussions ( amorosi ragionamenti ), with music and dancing and singing as their other diversions.

• From Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma (1997)

  This approach has special applications in the transformation of trauma in our society today. While this endorsement is not intended to suggest that we all seek shamanistic aid in healing trauma, we can gain valuable insight by studying how shamans address traumatic reactions. The methods used over the ages by medicine men and women are varied and complex. However, these diverse rituals and beliefs share a common understanding of trauma. When people are overwhelmed, their “souls” may become separated from their bodies. According to Mircea Eliade [5] (an important scholar of shamanistic practice), “rape of the soul” is by far the most widespread and damaging cause of illness cited by shamanic healers. Missing important parts of their souls, people become lost in states of spiritual suspension. From the shamanistic point of view, illness is a result of being stuck in “spiritual limbo.” Since pre-civilization, shamanistic healers from many cultures have been able to successfully orchestrate the conditions that encourage the “lost soul” to return to its rightful place in the body. Through colorful rituals, these so-called “primitive” healers catalyze powerful innate healing forces in their patients. An atmosphere of community support enhanced by drumming, chanting, dancing, and trancing creates the environment in which this healing takes place. Often the proceedings continue for days and may involve the use of plant substances and other pharmacological catalysts. Significantly, while the ceremonies themselves vary, the beneficiary of the healing almost always shakes and trembles as the event nears its conclusion. This is the same phenomenon that occurs in all animals when they release bound-up energy. It happened with Nancy that day more than twenty-five years ago in my urban office. Although we are cultures apart from these primitive peoples, modernized trauma survivors often use similar language to describe their experiences. “My father stole my soul when he had sex with me” is a typical description of the devastating loss experienced by the individual who was sexually abused as a child. When people share how they feel after medical procedures and operations, they also convey this sense of loss and disconnection. I have heard many women say, “The pelvic exam felt like a rape of my body and spirit.” People often feel disembodied for months or years following surgery employing general anesthesia. The same results can appear after seemingly minor accidents, falls, and even deep betrayals and abandonment.

• From Crazy Brave (2012)

  And to open that book was to disappear into many dream worlds, like the ones I had left behind after I started school and began to perfect language. The collection was generous in scope and included everyone from Elizabeth Bishop and her spectacular poem “The Fish” to William Blake’s “The Tiger” and the hypnotic lines “Tiger, tiger, burning bright/In the forests of the night”; to Emily Dickinson (“I’m nobody! Who are you?”) and Lewis Carroll’s “The Crocodile” (“How doth the little crocodile/Improve his shining tail”). Those poems, taken as a group, summed up my soul at that crucial moment in my personal history. My father was out with girlfriends or coming home drunk and fighting my mother. He was the “tiger, tiger, burning bright.” My parents were in the process of a difficult divorce. My escape was remembering fishing with my grandfather the summer before and the “rainbow, rainbow, rainbow” of the caught fish glittering in the afternoon sunlight. I saw the police come to the house. My father staggered in and out with his belongings, with the smell of other women like strange clouds on his clothes. My mother confided my father’s shortcomings in me and I advised her to leave my father. I felt like I was “nobody—who are you?” My father disappeared. And so did I in this world without father. Emptiness took the place of everything I had known to be true. With the alligators or the crocodile, I could find refuge in another realm below this one. There are underground cities, other peoples. Even though I was the oldest female in my family, I didn’t gather and mother my brothers and sister when my father left. I dove into the other realm, and everyone was left to fend for him- or herself. [image "6706.jpg" file=Image00008.jpg] [image "6709.jpg" file=Image00009.jpg] [image "6711.jpg" file=Image00010.jpg] In one of my last childhood memories of my father, I was a brown child wearing one of those dollar-apiece sun suits made of cheap polished cotton that fades after the first wash. It was tied at my shoulders. Two blue-black braids hung down my back. I was sweaty from running; my knees were scraped from jumping and falling. I leaned against my father. I adored him. And I was afraid of him. Together both of those places lived within me. I looked up toward his face and read his lips for mood. I read for love or imminent cruelty. He was laughing and making a joke with his friends. Yeasty beer smell mixed with father sweat. He pulled me to his lap. I heard his heart beating. I tapped the rhythm on his pressed-jean thigh. I was always tapping rhythms. I counted. One, and ah. Two, and ah. Three, and ah. Our heartbeats are numbered. We have only so many allotted. When we use them up, we die. How many did my father have? How many did I have?

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  one hundred and sixty years to occupy the papal throne. With him the papacy came under French control, where it remained, with brief intervals, for more than a century. Urban displayed his strong national partisanship by his appointment of seven French cardinals in a conclave of seventeen. The French influence was greatly strengthened by his invitation to Charles of Anjou, youngest brother of Louis IX. of France, to occupy the Sicilian throne, claiming the right to do so on the basis of the inherent authority of the papacy and on the ground that Sicily was a papal fief. For centuries the house of Anjou, with Naples as its capital, was destined to be a disturbing element in the affairs, not only of Italy, but of all Europe.281 It stood for a new alliance in the history of the papacy as their ancestors, the Normans, had done in the age of Hildebrand. Called as supporter and ward of the papacy, Charles of Anjou became dictator of its policy and master of the political situation in Italy. Clement IV., 1265–1268, one of the French cardinals appointed by Urban, had a family before he entered a Carthusian convent and upon a clerical career. He preached a crusade against Manfred, who had dared to usurp the Sicilian throne, and crowned Charles of Anjou in Rome, 1266. Charles promised to pay yearly tribute to the Apostolic see. A month later, Feb. 26, 1266, the possession of the crown of Sicily was decided by the arbitrament of arms on the battlefield of Benevento, where Manfred fell. On the youthful Conradin, grandson of Frederick II., the hopes of the proud German house now hung. His title to the imperial throne was contested from the first. William of Holland had been succeeded, by the rival emperors, the rich Duke Richard of Cornwall, brother of Henry III., elected in 1257 by four of the electors, and Alfonso of Castile, elected by the remaining three.282 Conradin marched to Italy to assert his rights, 1267, was met by the papal ban, and, although received by popular enthusiasm even in Rome, he was no match for the tried skill of Charles of Anjou. His fortunes were shattered on the battlefield of Tagliacozzo, Aug. 23, 1268. Taken prisoner, he was given a mock trial. The Bolognese lawyer, Guido of Suzarra, made an ineffective plea that the young prince had come to Italy, not as a robber but to claim his inheritance. The majority of the judges were against the death penalty, but the spirit of Charles knew no clemency, and at his instance Conradin was executed at Naples, Oct. 29, 1268. The last words that fell from his lips, as he kneeled for the fatal stroke, were words of attachment to his mother, "O mother, what pain of heart do I make for you!" With Conradin the male line of the Hohenstaufen became extinct. Its tragic end was enacted on the soil which had always been so fatal to the German rulers.

• From Trash (1988)

  That cold cut me then like a knife in fresh slaughter. I knew certainly that she’d go back and take care of Mama, that she’d never say a word, probably never tell anybody she’d been here. ’Cause then she’d have to talk about the other thing, and I knew as well as she that however much she tried to forget it, she’d really always known. She’d done nothing then. She’d do nothing now. There was no justice. There was no justice in the world. When I started to cry it wasn’t because of that. It wasn’t because of babies or no babies, or pain that was so far past I’d made it a source of strength. It wasn’t even that I’d hurt her so bad, hurt Mama when I didn’t want to. I cried because of the things I hadn’t said, didn’t know how to say, and cried most of all because behind everything else there was no justice for my aunts or my mama. Because each of them to save their lives had tried to be strong, had become, in fact, as strong and determined as life would let them. I and all their children had believed in that strength, had believed in them and their ability to do anything, fix anything, survive anything. None of us had ever been able to forgive ourselves that we and they were not strong enough, that strength itself was not enough. Who can say where that strength ended, where the world took over and rolled us all around like balls on a pool table? None of us ever would. I brought my hands up to my neck and pulled my hair around until I clenched it in my fists, remembering how my aunt used to pick up Annie to rub that baby’s belly beneath her chin—Annie bouncing against her in perfect trust. Annie had never had to forgive her mama anything. “Aunt Alma, wait. Wait!” She stopped in the doorway, her back trembling, her hands gripping the doorposts. I could see the veins raised over her knuckles, the cords that stood out in her neck, the flesh as translucent as butter beans cooked until the skins come loose. Talking to my mama over the phone, I had not been able to see her face, her skin, and her stunned and haunted eyes. If I had been able to see her, would I have ever said those things to her? “I’m sorry.” She did not look back. I let my head fall back, rolled my shoulders to ease the painful clutch of my own muscles. My teeth hurt. My ears stung. My breasts felt hot and swollen. I watched the light as it moved on her hair. “I’m sorry. I would . . . I would . . . anything. If I could change things, if I could help . . .” I stopped.

• From Trash (1988)

  Randall went by and said there’d be a baby, a hatched egg to throw out with the rags, but there wasn’t. I watched to see and there wasn’t; nothing but the blood, thinning out desperately while the house slowed down and grew quiet, hours of cries growing soft and low, moaning under the smoke. My Aunt Raylene came out on the porch and almost fell on me, not seeing me, not seeing anything at all. She beat on the post until there were knuckle-sized dents in the peeling paint, beat on that post like it could feel, cursing it and herself and every child in the yard, singing up and down, “Goddamn, goddamn that girl . . . no sense . . . goddamn!” I’ve these pictures my mama gave me—stained sepia prints of bare dirt yards, plank porches, and step after step of children—cousins, uncles, aunts; mysteries. The mystery is how many no one remembers. I show them to Jesse, not saying who they are, and when she laughs at the broken teeth, torn overalls, the dirt, I set my teeth at what I do not want to remember and cannot forget. We were so many we were without number and, like tadpoles, if there was one less from time to time, who counted? My maternal great-grandmother had eleven daughters, seven sons; my grandmother, six sons, five daughters. Each one made at least six. Some made nine. Six times six, eleven times nine. They went on like multiplication tables. They died and were not missed. I come of an enormous family and I cannot tell half their stories. Somehow it was always made to seem they killed themselves: car wrecks, shotguns, dusty ropes, screaming, falling out of windows, things inside them. I am the point of a pyramid, sliding back under the weight of the ones who came after, and it does not matter that I am the lesbian, the one who will not have children. I tell the stories and it comes out funny. I drink bourbon and make myself drawl, tell all those old funny stories. Someone always seems to ask me, which one was that? I show the pictures and she says, “Wasn’t she the one in the story about the bridge?” I put the pictures away, drink more, and someone always finds them, then says, “Goddamn! How many of you were there, anyway?” I don’t answer. Jesse used to say, “You’ve got such a fascination with violence. You’ve got so many terrible stories.” She said it with her smooth mouth, that chin that nobody ever slapped, and I love that chin, but when Jesse said that, my hands shook and I wanted nothing so much as to tell her terrible stories.

• From Trash (1988)

  “Mama’s pissed herself,” Arlene told me when I came back from dinner. I was surprised to see her. Her hair was pushed behind her ears and her face scrubbed clean. She was sponging Mama’s hips and thighs. Mama’s face was red. Her eyes were closed. Arlene’s expression was unreadable. I picked up the towel by Mama’s feet and wiped behind Arlene’s sponge. Jo came in, dragging an extra chair. Arlene did not look up, she just shifted Mama’s left leg and carefully sponged the furry mat of Mama’s mound. “Jo talked to me.” Arlene’s voice was low. Without mascara she seemed young again, her cheeks pearly in the frosty light that outlined the bed. Behind me, Jo positioned the chair and sat down heavily. There was a pause while the two of them looked at each other. Then Mama opened her eyes, and we all turned to her. The white of her left eye was bloody and the pupil an enormous black hole. “Baby?” Mama whispered. I reached for her free hand. “Baby?” she kept whispering. “Baby?” Her voice was thin and raspy. Her thumb was working the pump, but it seemed to have lost its ability to help. Her good eye was wide and terrified. Arlene made a sound in her throat. Jo stood up. None of us said a thing. The door opened behind me. Jack’s face was pale and too close. His left hand clutched a big greasy bag. “Honey?” Jack said. “Honey?” I looked away, my throat closing up. Jo’s hands clamped down on the foot of the bed. Arlene’s hands curled into fists at her waist. I looked at her. She looked at me and then over to Jo. “Honey?” Jack said again. His voice sounded high and cracked, like a young boy too scared to believe what he was seeing. Arlene’s pupils were almost as big as Mama’s. I saw her tongue pressing her teeth, her lips pulled thin with strain. She saw me looking at her, shook her head, and stepped back from the bed. “Daddy,” she said softly. “Daddy, we have to talk.” Arlene took Jack’s arm and led him to the door. He let her take him out of the room. I looked over at Jo. Her hands were wringing the bar at the foot of the bed like a wet towel. She continued to do it as the door swung closed behind Arlene and Jack. She continued even as Mama’s mouth opened and closed and opened again. Mama was whimpering. “Ba . . . ba . . . ba . . . ba . . . ba . . . ba.” I took Mama’s hand and held it tight, then stood there watching Jo doing the only thing she could do, blistering the skin off her palms. [image file=image_1671.jpg] When Arlene came back, her face was gray, but her mouth had smoothed out. “He signed it,” she said.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  And this was precisely what each of them did from that day forth, especially the two gentlemen who had stayed with Saladin in Messer Torello’s house. Messer Torello’s sudden elevation to the pinnacle of renown took his mind away for a while from his affairs in Lombardy, the more so because he had every reason to believe that his letter had been safely delivered into the hands of his uncle. But on the very day that the Christian host fell into Saladin’s hands, a Provençal knight of no great repute, whose name was Messer Torello of Digne, 7 had died and was buried in the Christian camp; and since Messer Torello of Strà was famed for his nobility throughout the whole of the army, whenever anyone heard that Messer Torello was dead they at once assumed it was the latter of the two, and not the former, who was meant. Before they had a chance to perceive their mistake Messer Torello was taken prisoner, so that many Italians returned with tidings of his death, and there were those who had the audacity to assert that they had seen his corpse and attended his burial. And when this came to the knowledge of his wife and family, it brought enormous and incalculable sorrow, not only to them but to all who had known him. We should be hard put to describe in few words the nature and extent of the grief, the sadness, and the heartache experienced by his lady. Suffice it to say that when, after mourning continuously for several months on end, the pangs of her sorrow began to abate, and her hand was being sought by the most powerful men in Lombardy, she was urged by her brothers and the rest of her kinsfolk to remarry. Time after time she refused, bursting into floods of tears whenever the subject was mentioned. Eventually however she was forced to accede to the wishes of her kinsfolk, but only on condition that she should remain unmarried till the period prescribed in her promise to Messer Torello had expired. This, then, was how matters stood in Pavia with the lady when one day, about a week before she was due to be married, Messer Torello chanced to catch sight in Alexandria of a man he had seen embarking with the Genoese emissaries on the galley that was leaving for Genoa. He therefore sent for him, and asked him what sort of a voyage they had had, and when they had arrived at Genoa.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  The knights understood the hardship of the condition implied in these two well nigh impossible requirements, but, seeing that they might not by their words avail to move him from his purpose, they returned to the lady and reported to her his reply; whereat she was sore afflicted and determined, after long consideration, to seek to learn if and where the two things aforesaid might be compassed, to the intent that she might, in consequence, have her husband again. Accordingly, having bethought herself what she should do, she assembled certain of the best and chiefest men of the county and with plaintive speech very orderly recounted to them that which she had already done for love of the count and showed them what had ensued thereof, adding that it was not her intent that, through her sojourn there, the count should abide in perpetual exile; nay, rather she purposed to spend the rest of her life in pilgrimages and works of mercy and charity for her soul's health; wherefore she prayed them take the ward and governance of the county and notify the count that she had left him free and vacant possession and had departed the country, intending nevermore to return to Roussillon. Many were the tears shed by the good folk, whilst she spoke, and many the prayers addressed to her that it would please her change counsel and abide there; but they availed nought. Then, commending them to God, she set out upon her way, without telling any whither she was bound, well furnished with monies and jewels of price and accompanied by a cousin of hers and a chamberwoman, all in pilgrims' habits, and stayed not till she came to Florence, where, chancing upon a little inn, kept by a decent widow woman, she there took up her abode and lived quietly, after the fashion of a poor pilgrim, impatient to hear news of her lord. It befell, then, that on the morrow of her arrival she saw Bertrand pass before her lodging, a-horseback with his company, and albeit she knew him full well, natheless she asked the good woman of the inn who he was. The hostess answered, 'That is a stranger gentleman, who calleth himself Count Bertrand, a pleasant man and a courteous and much loved in this city; and he is the most enamoured man in the world of a she-neighbour of ours, who is a gentlewoman, but poor. Sooth to say, she is a very virtuous damsel and abideth, being yet unmarried for poverty, with her mother, a very good and discreet lady, but for whom, maybe, she had already done the count's pleasure.' The countess took good note of what she heard and having more closely enquired into every particular and apprehended all aright, determined in herself how she should do.

• From Trash (1988)

  I loved my Cousin Butch. He had this big old head, pale thin hair and enormous, watery eyes. All the cousins did, though Butch’s head was the largest, his hair the palest. I was the dark-headed one. All the rest of the family seemed pale carbons of each other in shades of blond, though later on everybody’s hair went brown or red, and I didn’t stand out so. Butch and I stood out—I because I was so dark and fast, and he because of that big head and the crazy things he did. Butch used to climb on the back of my Uncle Lucius’s truck, open the gas tank and hang his head over, breathe deeply, strangle, gag, vomit, and breathe again. It went so deep, it tingled in your toes. I climbed up after him and tried it myself, but I was too young to hang on long, and I fell heavily to the ground, dizzy and giggling. Butch could hang on, put his hand down into the tank and pull up a cupped palm of gas, breathe deep and laugh. He would climb down roughly, swinging down from the door handle, laughing, staggering, and stinking of gasoline. Someone caught him at it. Someone threw a match. “I’ll teach you.” Just like that, gone before you understand. I wake up in the night screaming, “No, no, I won’t!” Dirty water rises in the back of my throat, the liquid language of my own terror and rage. “Hold me. Hold me.” Jesse rolls over on me; her hands grip my hipbones tightly. “I love you. I love you. I’m here,” she repeats. I stare up into her dark eyes, puzzled, afraid. I draw a breath in deeply, smile my bland smile. “Did I fool you?” I laugh, rolling away from her. Jesse punches me playfully, and I catch her hand in the air. “My love,” she whispers, and cups her body against my hip, closes her eyes. I bring my hand up in front of my face and watch the knuckles, the nails as they tremble, tremble. I watch for a long time while she sleeps, warm and still against me. James went blind. One of the uncles got him in the face with home-brewed alcohol. Lucille climbed out the front window of Aunt Raylene’s house and jumped. They said she jumped. No one said why.

• From Trash (1988)

  “Lupus,” she says. “It was lupus.” An old story I have heard many times these twenty-five years. Temple scratches herself, and spits, angry now as she was angry then. “Damn doctors, damn hospitals, never said what else. Lupus, you know, kills slow, takes a long time—years. But Robert, Lord, Robert sank into that bed. He died so fast. Weeks seemed like no time. He just melted away.” Maryat stirs her hairpins. Claire brings a pitcher of tea to the door. I wipe my mouth again, saying nothing, watching the sweat shine on Temple’s cheeks. When I was a child and slept in her bed, I would lie awake and watch the line—eyelids to cheekbones to mouth. Never touched it, never once reached out to touch her cheekbone, though I dreamed of pulling her into my neck, sucking her throat, and licking her eyes. Now I curl my fingers around my hipbones, hug myself, and don’t quite reach out to her trembling hands. “You never saw the store, did you?” Little flecks of broken wood grain pull up under Temple’s fingernails. “Your mama wouldn’t bring you girls around. Hell, your mama thought you girls were meant to be special, wasn’t gonna carry you around to no honky-tonk roadhouse.” She reaches for me, touching my sun-warmed thigh. “But it wasn’t like that, not really. The store was across from the high school and clean as a dried peach pit. Scrubbed hollow, hell, I scrubbed me raw. We had pinball machines, and a candy counter, Coke coolers, chip racks, and billiards. No liquor ’cept for Robert’s beer in the back cooler. “But we lost it, of course. We lost everything.” Temple pauses, pulls at her tea and frowns. “Hard to remember all that, hard times and craziness. I was crazy, you know, oh yes. We lost the store, the car, even the baby’s bed—all those weeks with Robert lying still, breathing like a train going up a hill. All that slow, crazy time, and me crazy. Me just out of my head. I was howling at Granny, screaming at the girls, tearing at myself. Hated myself, like I’d done it, like I’d brought it on him. Nobody in his family had it, but Granny said we’d had a cousin with it, so maybe it had come through me. “It was important then, how it had come on us. Later I didn’t care, but then it was like that was the only thing that mattered.” Dust drifts down in the sunlight. Another truck turns the corner and shakes the porch. It’s a short cut, this road and Temple’s lot. Truckers come through and wave. Temple ignores them, slaps her porch, watches the dirty paint flake down. The dogs in the yard, tied off to a tree, howl and kick and lie down again, panting in the heat.

• From Trash (1988)

  She sighs, rolls the ragged ends of her hair between fingers suddenly flushed pink. “You know what I did?” She looks away, away from me, away from her daughter, away from the dogs who paw restlessly at the bare patches near the trees. “I let them take his body. Told them to go ahead, do anything they had to. When it came down to it, I said, just tell me what it was. The girls, of course, I was thinking of the girls. And they took him, did their stuff to him, things I can’t even imagine. I don’t think, in the end, we buried more than the frame of him.” Temple’s hands shake, her tea spills over the splintered boards of the porch. Leaning forward makes her face go a deeper red. “Doctors, like lawyers you know, they don’t hurry. “I thought it would be a while, weeks maybe, even months. But Lord, years! I never thought they’d take years, and then tell me nothing. Just the lupus, ’cause of the spots and the strangling. Lupus like with Claire or that cousin I don’t know that I really believe ever existed. But hell, they didn’t really know what killed him. Lupus kills slow, and Robert died fast. “Sometimes, sometimes, I dream sometimes, oh God!” Temple rocks her head back and forth, casts a glance at her daughters and looks quickly away, speaking in a whisper that does not carry to where they sit. “I dream sometimes I lead the children out in front of a big old semi, a row of hearses following easy as you please, all their daddies nodding at me as they’re mowed down!” She shakes her head, shakes her shoulders, her whole torso following, the pink in her cheeks going brighter than sunburn. “But, sometimes, too, I dream I am alone, walking through Greenville as it burns, the sparks coming down on my neck but nothing burning me. No one sees me. They come out and throw water and yell. I just walk through and grin. Imagine the kind of woman I am to take pleasure in that kind of thing!” Imagine the kind of woman she is, Temple on her porch with the paint flaking down. Temple with her hands still on her knees, ridged and knobby, the veins blue-purple and high. Her face a permanent red-tan flush. Her daughters going in and out, slowly, carefully, the deadly warts on the pale skin of their necks and calves burning her eyes. Imagine what kind of a woman sits still, safe in her own mind, slow as myrtle leaves turning. Sugar thickening the blood in her veins, pressure pinking her skin. Wanting nothing more than new plumbing and her daughters’ slow movement forward, alive.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  You are not the first woman to have been deceived, nor will you be the last, and in any case I had no intention of depriving you of anything. I was impelled to do it by excess of love, and indeed I am prepared to love you and serve you in all humility for the rest of my days. For a long time past, I and everything I possess have been yours, and all my power and influence have been at your disposal; but henceforth I intend to place them more completely than ever at your command. You are a wise woman, and I am certain that you will act now with that same good sense that you are wont to display in other matters.’ Catella wept bitterly while Ricciardo was speaking, and though she was exceedingly annoyed and upset, she was none the less able to see that he was right, and realized that events could easily follow the course he predicted. ‘Ricciardo,’ she said. ‘I do not know how God can ever provide me with sufficient strength to bear the wicked deception you have practised upon me. I have no wish to raise a clamour in this place, to which I was led by my own simplicity and excessive jealousy. But you may rest assured that I shall never be happy until I see myself avenged in some way or other for the wrong you have done me. Now let me go, and get out of here! You have had what you

• From The Decameron (1353)

  He, hearing this, laughed it to scorn and said that it was great folly to put any faith in dreams, for that they arose of excess of food or lack thereof and were daily seen to be all vain, adding, 'Were I minded to follow after dreams, I had not come hither, not so much on account of this of thine as of one I myself dreamt last night; which was that meseemed I was in a fair and delightsome wood, wherein I went hunting and had taken the fairest and loveliest hind was ever seen; for methought she was whiter than snow and was in brief space become so familiar with me that she never left me a moment. Moreover, meseemed I held her so dear that, so she might not depart from me, I had put a collar of gold about her neck and held her in hand with a golden chain. After this medreamed that, once upon a time, what while this hind lay couched with its head in my bosom,[247] there issued I know not whence a greyhound bitch as black as coal, anhungred and passing gruesome of aspect, and made towards me. Methought I offered it no resistance, wherefore meseemed it thrust its muzzle into my breast on the left side and gnawed thereat till it won to my heart, which methought it tore from me, to carry it away. Therewith I felt such a pain that my sleep was broken and awaking, I straightway clapped my hand to my side, to see if I had aught there; but, finding nothing amiss with me, I made mock of myself for having sought. But, after all, what booteth this dream?[248] I have dreamed many such and far more frightful, nor hath aught in the world befallen me by reason thereof; wherefore let it pass and let us think to give ourselves a good time.' [Footnote 247: Or "lap" (_seno_).] [Footnote 248: Lit. what meaneth this? (_che vuol dire questo?_)] The young lady, already sore adread for her own dream, hearing this, waxed yet more so, but hid her fear, as most she might, not to be the occasion of any unease to Gabriotto. Nevertheless, what while she solaced herself with him, clipping and kissing him again and again and being of him clipped and kissed, she many a time eyed him in the face more than of her wont, misdoubting she knew not what, and whiles she looked about the garden, and she should see aught of black come anywhence. Presently, as they abode thus, Gabriotto heaved a great sigh and embracing her said, 'Alas, my soul, help me, for I die!' So saying, he fell to the ground upon the grass of the lawn. The young lady, seeing this, drew him up into her lap and said, well nigh weeping, 'Alack, sweet my lord, what aileth thee?' He answered not, but, panting sore and sweating all over, no great while after departed this life.

• From Trash (1988)

  [image file=image_264.jpg] My aunt, the one I was named for, tried to take off for Oklahoma. That was after she’d lost the youngest girl and they told her Bo would never be “right.” She packed up biscuits, cold chicken, and Coca-Cola; a lot of loose clothes; Cora and her new baby, Cy; and the four youngest girls. They set off from Greenville in the afternoon, hoping to make Oklahoma by the weekend, but they only got as far as Augusta. The bridge there went out under them. “An Act of God,” my uncle said. My aunt and Cora crawled out downriver, and two of the girls turned up in the weeds, screaming loud enough to be found in the dark. But one of the girls never came up out of that dark water, and Nancy, who had been holding Cy, was found still wrapped around the baby, in the water, under the car. “An Act of God,” my aunt said. “God’s got one damn sick sense of humor.” My sister had her baby in a bad year. Before he was born we had talked about it. “Are you afraid?” I asked. “He’ll be fine,” she’d replied, not understanding, speaking instead to the other fear. “Don’t we have a tradition of bastards?” He was fine, a classically ugly healthy little boy with that shock of white hair that marked so many of us. But afterward, it was that bad year with my sister down with pleurisy, then cystitis, and no work, no money, having to move back home with my cold-eyed stepfather. I would come home to see her, from the woman I could not admit I’d been with, and take my infinitely fragile nephew and hold him, rocking him, rocking myself. One night I came home to screaming—the baby, my sister, no one else there. She was standing by the crib, bent over, screaming red-faced. “Shut up! Shut up!” With each word her fist slammed the mattress fanning the baby’s ear. “Don’t!” I grabbed her, pulling her back, doing it as gently as I could so I wouldn’t break the stitches from her operation. She had her other arm clamped across her abdomen and couldn’t fight me at all. She just kept shrieking. “That little bastard just screams and screams. That little bastard. I’ll kill him.” Then the words seeped in and she looked at me while her son kept crying and kicking his feet. By his head the mattress still showed the impact of her fist. “Oh no,” she moaned, “I wasn’t going to be like that. I always promised myself.” She started to cry, holding her belly and sobbing. “We an’t no different. We an’t no different.” Jesse wraps her arm around my stomach, presses her belly into my back. I relax against her. “You sure you can’t have children?” she asks. “I sure would like to see what your kids would turn out to be like.” I stiffen, say, “I can’t have children. I’ve never wanted children.”