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 9 of 263 · 20 per page

• From Introduction to the Hebrew Bible and Deutero-Canonical Books (2018)

  ultimately a person of goodwill, that he has the decency to deplore injustice. Nathan’s technique would not work for an Elijah or an Amos who had adversarial relations with the kings of their day. But where the parable can work, it is more likely to lead the listener to repentance than the fiery denunciations characteristic of later prophets. The child born to Bathsheba dies. If this is punishment for David’s sin, we must feel that the punishment is misplaced. It is characteristic of David that he escapes the consequences of his actions by well-timed repentance. Moreover, Bathsheba becomes the mother of David’s eventual heir, Solomon. Once again, providence works in unexpected ways, and the Lord seems to write with crooked lines. As we have seen already in the story of Jacob, the blessing of the Lord is not necessarily reserved for virtuous people. The pattern of sin, repentance, and misplaced punishment is evident again in the last story in 2 Samuel, the story of the census in chapter 24. The purpose of the census is not stated explicitly, but it is transparent—it is a prelude to taxation. Hence the resistance even of David’s loyal henchman, Joab. David, characteristically, repents after the deed is done. Yet he is offered his choice of punishment, and it falls primarily on the people (even if we assume that David was grieved by their suffering). Supposedly, seventy thousand people died. Again, the punishment is misplaced. David does not lose the favor of the Lord. The upshot of this incident is that he acquires the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite and builds an altar to the Lord. This threshing floor is later identified as the site of Solomon’s temple (1 Chron 22:1; 2 Chron 3:1).

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  I knelt in my place in the chapel, this room of solemn worship in which I had spent so many hours. It was both rustic and refined. The dark pews seemed one with the roughhewn ceiling beams and window frames, while the four elegantly crafted blond wood statues that stood on either side of the light oak altar were augmented by the embroidered tabernacle cover. I knew every inch of this space. It had been my religious home for eight and a half years. Tears seeped out from my clenched eyelids, but I dared not wipe them with my sleeve, lest they betray my anguish. Composing myself, I stared at Mount Wachusett on the horizon and let the entire panoply of the last eight years of my life play through my mind. Would I never again enjoy the surroundings that I’d called home for so long? Dear God, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, St. Aloysius, St. Monica…. I began the litany again. Prayer and self-control, in a cycle of supplication and exhortation. Only a few more hours, and then what? During his First Breakfast sermon, Father made note of the upcoming graduation, specifically naming each of the five of us postulants, four Sisters and one Brother, who would be graduating later that morning. It was a day for celebration, he said. But not for me. Sister Catherine sat in her seat in the chapel, her expression composed, her posture erect. I thought I could detect an air of conquest in her demeanor. In just a few hours, she would have me where she wanted me—off the premises, kicked out. I still couldn’t fathom what I’d done to merit this ignominy. I’d tried my best to do what was expected of me. I’d never opened my soul to anyone about my deepest desires for a life that the Center excoriated. That had been my own secret. I prayed for the strength to get through the graduation ceremonies without breaking down in tears. My head throbbed and my heart pounded as the entire community sang the “Te Deum” at the end of First Breakfast, the hymn of triumph and thanksgiving for special blessings. I mouthed the words, unable to bring up a note. The Big Sisters had prepared a celebratory second breakfast in honor of the graduates, the kind usually reserved for holy days of obligation, with fried eggs, bacon, crumble coffee cake, and grapefruit. I sat at the table but couldn’t eat; a weight lay in my stomach. Graduation began promptly at eleven in the school auditorium, which the nearly eighty members of the community filled. With my fellow graduates, dressed in black cap and gown, I marched in slow and majestic form down the aisle while Sister Ann Mary played “Pomp and Circumstance.” [image file=Image00032.jpg] Graduation from high school. An hour later, I was gone.

• From Little Sister: A Memoir (2019)

  When the bell rang indicating the end of evening recreation, my parents kissed me goodnight. “Little Sisters and Brothers, please stand in line along the side of the house, in order of age and in silence.” The order came from Sister Matilda, herself the mother of five of the children. She directed the Little Sisters to face the front door and the Little Brothers the side door. Her broad shoulders displayed an air of authority. The tone of her voice was anything but motherly. I took my place, third in line among the twelve Little Sisters. In drill sergeant fashion, Sister Matilda walked from the head of the line to the end. “Hands by your side,” she said sternly and I stiffened to attention. As she patrolled the long line of children standing in military formation, I turned to watch my parents walking out of the far side of the yard carrying my two youngest sisters, Margaret Mary (who was just two) and five-month-old Veronica, and heading to their new home in St. John’s House. “Eyes straight ahead,” Sister Matilda barked at me. Then she led us up the stairs to the third floor—to the apartment that had, until a few hours earlier, been my family home. I stared in astonishment at the change that had taken place since I left that morning. There were now two twin beds in each of the four rooms. With no explanation, Sister Matilda assigned us to our bedrooms and I was distraught to discover that I would no longer share a room with Mary Catherine. Following orders, we prepared for bed in silence, taking turns washing at the sink, brushing our teeth, and donning the white cotton nightgowns assigned to each of us. “Everyone, line up with your hands folded.” It was time for night prayers. In single file, our hands folded as instructed, we descended to the second floor, where the front room had been converted into a chapel. Kneeling on the wooden floor in assigned places, we said, in unison, the Our Father, the Hail Mary, the Act of Contrition, and the prayer to our Guardian Angel. Then Sister Matilda rose, and we followed her in silence, returning to the third floor and our assigned beds. There was no bedtime story. Surrounded by darkness in my new bedroom, I tried to absorb the crushing realization that in a flash, my family had been split up. As I lay alone in my bed

• From Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (2017)

  So many years past being raped, I tell myself what happened is “in the past.” This is only partly true. In too many ways, the past is still with me. The past is written on my body. I carry it every single day. The past sometimes feels like it might kill me. It is a very heavy burden.

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

  Denton, a Department of Mental Health forensic psychologist, testified that Robidoux breast-feed Samuel every hour, twenty-four hours a day. However, the mother watched helplessly as her son deteriorated and died due to starvation.407 The defendant’s lawyer, Joseph Krowski, explained that “evil” people around her had so controlled his client that she was incapable of saving her child. But Karen Robidoux‘s “vile, deranged, evil” father-in-law, Roland Robidoux, led the group. “It was about power. It was about mind control. It was about brainwashing,” Krowski said.408 Psychologist Ronald Ebert examined Karen Robidoux through twelve meetings beginning in 2002. He testified in court that Robidoux believed that “if she wasn’t good, God would take her baby. She had to do what they told her to do.” Ebert concluded, “It’s my opinion that she was not able to leave the group.”409 Robidoux was twenty-eight at the time of her trial. She had joined the group at the age of fourteen and was wed to Jacques Robidoux, the leader’s son. Karen Robidoux was described as successfully “deprogrammed” before her trial. According to press reports she “cut off all the group members” during her confinement. It was within this period that she was “deprogrammed.” Shortly before trial she reportedly “finally emerged from the fog of the brainwashing sect that swallowed 14 years of her life.” The leader of that sect, Roland Robidoux, was a door-to-door salesman who had left the Catholic Church after listening to sermons by Herbert W. Armstrong on his car radio. Armstrong was the founder of the Worldwide Church of God (WWCOG), a controversial group that has been called a “cult.”410 After his radio conversion Robidoux attended WWCOG feasts and festivals with his wife and five children. In 1978 Robidoux left WWCOG, claiming God had called him to start his own church. His church was first named Church of God of Mansfield, later Church of God of Norton, and finally The Body, but it never had more than seventy members.411 A former associate described Robidoux as the “sole authority” of his group and someone who was “not being questioned.” Robidoux “believed that he had the truth.” His truth was hard on his family, which became socially isolated. Robidoux wanted to control everything. He exercised “absolute power over his family,” said his former son-in-law, Dennis Mingo, who eventually left the group. One year he decided the family should eat only meat. The next year he ordered everyone to become vegetarians and then later to eat only organic food. The family always obeyed Robidoux’s edicts.412 Robidoux then discovered a book by Carol Balizet, a former nurse who claimed seven impure systems in the world: education, medicine, government, banking, schools, entertainment, and commerce. Balizet said true believers should never seek medical care and should give birth only at home. Her website stated, “No matter what the result, we must do what God says. We mustn’t fall into the trap of trying to figure out which choice will work best for us: God or the medical system.

• From Reading Biblical Literature: Genesis to Revelation (2016)

  Reading Biblical Literature: Genesis to Revelation14 assumes they’ll reach beyond the limits again and take from the tree of life, to once again seize immortality for themselves. Thus, God sends them out of the garden. ‹ As literature, the Genesis story is set at the dawn of time, but it’s designed to shape perspectives on the world as it is. It shows the contrast between the harmony God intends and the disruption human beings have created. On the one hand, God intends that people care for the earth and its creatures and that women and men be partners in that work. On the other hand, the earth and relationships within it have been damaged by human action. Noah and the Flood ‹ The narrative thus far has gone from harmony to disruption, but with the story of the flood (Gen. 6–9), Noah brings it to a point of renewal. As a favorite in children’s literature, the plot of this story is usually simplified into a few major elements: God’s warning to Noah, Noah’s need to build an ark and gather the animals, the 40 days and nights of rain, and ultimately, the appearance of a rainbow—a sign that God will never again send a flood. In its basic outline, it’s a wonderful story of deliverance and renewal. ‹ But when we look more closely, the story becomes troubling. It seems inexplicable that God brings about this disaster. After all, Genesis introduces God as the creator. For God to send the flood means that the creator has become the destroyer. In the simplified version, all attention centers on Noah and the animals, who ride safely in the ark. But in Genesis itself, we look outside the ark, at the people and animals who drown in the deluge. When we ask how the creator could do such a thing, there is no easy answer. ‹ The portrayal of God is surprisingly complex. In Genesis 6:5, the story starts with divine grief. God created the world to be good, but he sees that human beings have given in to evil. God comes to regret that he ever created humankind and decides to blot them out. ‹ Yet this creates a dilemma for God. Simply blotting out all life would turn the creator into the destroyer. This is where Noah plays a role.

• From Reading Biblical Literature: Genesis to Revelation (2016)

  Lecture 10—David and Nation Building 71 ● Nathan forgives David, but forgiveness does not mean that David’s actions have no consequences. Nathan warns that David has set in motion a pattern of violence that will continue into the next generation. T o be sure, David repents of what he has done, but he cannot control what his children will do. And the last part of 2 Samuel tells of the violent pattern that David has set in motion being followed by one of his sons, Absalom. The Story of Absalom ‹ In 2 Samuel 15, we learn that Absalom, like David, has both ambition and ability and is brilliant at currying favor with the public. Eventually, Absalom has enough support to launch his bid for kingship, which he does in the city of Hebron, just as David had done years before. And just as David then captured Jerusalem to make it his capital, Absalom sets out to capture Jerusalem. He succeeds and sets out after David, in what promises to be a decisive battle. ‹ Underneath this political and military maneuvering, the personal side of the story moves toward a heartbreaking conclusion. Although Absalom has rebelled, David still loves him. Thus, as the time for battle approaches, David tells his men, “Deal gently with the young man Absalom.” But that does not prove to be easy during the chaos of war, and Absalom is killed. A messenger brings the news to David. ‹ At the end of chapter 18, when David gets the news of Absalom’s death, he is deeply moved. In grief, he weeps: “O my son Absalom, my son, my son, Absalom. Would that I had died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my son.” David’s words express the willingness of a parent to sacrifice his or her own life for the sake of a child. The scene captures the heartrending sorrow of someone whose child has set out on a destructive path, from which not even the most devoted love can save him. ‹ It may also be that David weeps not only for Absalom but also for himself. After all, his son is simply following in his father’s footsteps. David’s life set a pattern in motion, a pattern of violence and abuse that continued to play out in the life of Absalom. In the affair with Bathsheba and its aftermath, David ruined the lives of others to satisfy his own desires. David grieves not only as someone who has lost a child but as someone whose own moral failings set the pattern that led to the loss.

• From The Bible: A Biography (2007)

  Luke was the author of some portions of the Acts of the Apostles as well as the gospel. He too was anxious to show that Jesus and his followers were devout Jews but he also emphasized that the gospel was for everybody: Jews and gentiles; women as well as men; the poor; tax collectors; the good Samaritan and the prodigal son. Luke gives us a precious glimpse of the spiritual experience that their pesher exegesis gave to early Christians. He told an emblematic story of two of Jesus’s disciples, who were walking from Jerusalem to Emmaus three days after the crucifixion.90 Like many of the Christians in Luke’s own time they were distraught and despondent, but on the road they fell in with a stranger, who asked them why they were so troubled. They explained that they were followers of Jesus and had been certain that he was the messiah. But he had been crucified and, to make matters worse, the women in their company were spreading wild tales of an empty tomb and a vision of angels. The stranger gently rebuked them: had they not realized that the messiah must suffer before entering his glory? Starting with Moses, he began to expound ‘the full message’ of the prophets. When the disciples arrived at their destination that evening, they begged the stranger to lodge with them, and when he broke bread at dinner they suddenly realized that all along they had been in the presence of Jesus, but their ‘eyes had been held’ from recognizing him. As he vanished from their sight, they recalled how their hearts had ‘burned’ within them when he had ‘opened the scriptures’. Christian pesher was a spiritual discipline, rooted in grief and bewilderment, which spoke directly to the heart and set it alight. Christians would gather ‘in twos and threes’ and discuss the relationship of the Law and the prophets to Jesus. As they conversed together, the texts ‘opened’ and yielded a momentary illumination. This would pass, just as Jesus vanished as soon as he had been recognized, but afterwards apparent contradictions locked together in a numinous intimation of wholeness. The stranger played a crucial role. When they confided in somebody they had never seen before, the disciples made an act of trust (pistis). In Luke’s ekklesia, Jews and gentiles found that by reaching out to the ‘other’, they experienced the Shekhinah, which, increasingly, they identified with their christos.

• From The Bible: A Biography (2007)

  The six Orders were constructed like a temple.43 The first and last Orders – Zeraim and Tohoroth – dealt respectively with the holiness of the land and the holiness of the people. The two innermost Orders – Nashim and Niziqin – legislated for the private, domestic lives of Jews and their business relationships. But the subject of the second and the fifth Orders – Moed (‘Festivals’) and Qodeshim (‘Holy Things’) was the temple. These two Sederim, which were compiled almost entirely at Usha,44 were like two equidistant, load-bearing pillars on which the whole edifice depended. They lovingly recalled the homely details of life in the lost temple: what each room was used for and where the high priest kept his wine. How did the night-watch comport themselves? What happened if a priest fell asleep on duty? In this way, the temple would live on in the minds of Jews and would remain the centre of Jewish life. Studying the obsolete temple laws set forth in the Mishnah was equivalent to actually performing the rites.45 It had been one thing for the early Pharisees to live as priests while the temple was still standing, but quite another when all that remained were a few charred ruins. The new spirituality demanded a heroic exegetical denial. But the Mishnah did not simply look back to the past. Thousands of entirely novel rulings worked out the implications of the temple’s virtual presence. If Jews were to live like priests, how should they deal with gentiles? What was the role of women, who now had the priestly task of supervising the purity rules in the house? The rabbis would never have been able to persuade the people to observe this formidable body of law if it had not given them a satisfying spiritual experience. About fifty years after the Mishnah had been completed, a new text provided this oral tradition with a spiritual pedigree that went back to Mount Sinai.46 The author of Pirke Avoth (‘Chapters of the Fathers’) traced the line of transmission from the rabbis of Usha and Yavneh, back to R. Johanan ben Zakkai, who had learned the Torah from Hillel and Shammai. He then showed how the teaching had passed through generations of distinguished sages of the Second Temple period, ending with the men of ‘the Great Assembly’,47 who had received the Torah from the prophets; the prophets had been instructed by the ‘elders’ who had conquered the Promised Land,48 the elders by Joshua, Joshua by Moses, and Moses, the source of the tradition, had received the Torah from God himself.

• From The Bible: A Biography (2007)

  On Mount Sinai, God had revealed himself in a law code, not a set of doctrines, so Jewish religion was concerned only with ethics and left the mind entirely free. Before they accepted the authority of the Bible, Jews must convince themselves rationally of its claims. It is difficult to recognize this as Judaism. Mendelssohn had tried to force it into a rationalistic mould that was alien to spirituality. Nevertheless many Jews, who became known as the maskilim (the ‘enlightened ones’), were ready to follow him. They were eager to escape the intellectual constraints of the ghetto, move in gentile society, study the new sciences, and keep their faith a private matter. But this rationalism was countered by a mystical movement among the Jews of Poland, Galicia, Belorusssia and Lithuania that amounted to a rebellion against modernity. 7 In 1735, Israel ben Eliezer (1698–1760), a poor Jewish tavern-keeper in south-eastern Poland, announced that he had become a baal shem, a ‘Master of the Name’, one of the many faith-healers who wandered through the rural districts of Eastern Europe, preaching in the name of God. This was a dark time for Polish Jewry. During a peasant uprising against the nobility (1648–67), Jews had been massacred in large numbers and were still vulnerable and economically deprived. There was an ever-widening gap between rich and poor, and many of the rabbis had simply retreated into Torah study and neglected their congregations. Israel ben Eliezer initiated a reform movement and became known as the Baal Shem Tov – or the ‘Besht’ – a master of exceptional status. By the end of his life, there were about forty thousand of his Hasidim (‘pious ones’). The Besht claimed that he had not been singled out by God because he had studied the Talmud, but because he recited the traditional prayers with such fervour and concentration that he achieved ecstatic union with God. Unlike the rabbis of the Talmudic age, who believed that Torah study took precedence over prayer, 8 the Besht insisted on the primacy of contemplation. 9 A rabbi must not bury himself in his books and neglect the poor. Hasidic spirituality was based on Isaac Luria’s myth of the divine sparks trapped in the material world, but the Besht transformed this tragic vision into a positive appreciation of the ubiquitous presence of God. A spark of the divine could be found in any material object, however lowly, and no activity – eating, drinking, making love or conducting business – was profane. By the constant practice of devekut (‘attachment’), a Hasid cultivated a perpetual awareness of God’s presence. Hasidim expressed this enhanced consciousness in ecstatic, noisy and tumultuous prayer, accompanied by extravagant gestures – such as turning somersaults that symbolized a total reversal of vision – that helped them to throw their whole being into their worship.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  He stared at me for a long minute and then grinned wider. “You, huh, Bone? You the one been going in and out the cellar all this time, huh? Slick, girl, slick.” “Just keep your mouth shut or Aunt Raylene will hide it where we’ll never find it.” “I an’t gonna tell nobody.” “You looking like that, she’ll know something is going on.” Grey laughed and twirled a finger in a smear of blackberry juice I hadn’t had time to clean up. “You talk any louder and she’ll hear it from you.” I looked down the center hall into the room at the end. Aunt Raylene was folding towels and humming to herself. I pushed Grey back out onto the porch and looped my arm around his neck. I knew that if I got bossy, he’d just run off with the hook and I’d never see it again. I thought about the way Mama was always gentling Daddy Glen, and I deliberately made my voice soft and slow. “I got an idea,” I whispered into Grey’s ear. “Got a plan to use that hook for something nobody else would have ever thought of.” Grey grinned at me like I’d grown an extra set of teeth. “Something good, huh?” “Something amazing, and I want you to help me.” I tried to rub his neck, but he shook my hand off. “Tell me.” I hesitated, looking back toward the door where Aunt Raylene might appear any minute. Grey’s face was bland, showing nothing but patience. He wasn’t like his brother. Of the two of them, he was the one who did things, who rarely told secrets even when he was trying to impress someone. I gritted my teeth and then shook my head. I might as well tell him and find out what he would do. I stepped away from him and shoved my hands down in my shorts. “I want to get up on the roof of the Woolworth’s one night. I got an idea how to get in there without anybody knowing.” Now Grey turned his head, looked back at the door. “You’re serious, an’t you,” he whispered. It was not a question. I stood still, waiting. “Well, hellfire, Bone! You got past Aunt Raylene’s suspicious mind, but grand theft’s a different matter. What makes you think you can get away with it?” I rocked back on my bare feet, trying to look confident. “There are things I’ve done you don’t know nothing about, cousin. Stuff I an’t never gonna tell you. Just like I won’t never tell nobody what you and me are gonna do.” I tried to narrow my eyes the way Uncle Earle’s would shrink down when he played poker. Grey pursed his lips, whistled, and leaned over the side rail of the porch. “All right, Bone, all right. But if we get caught, I’m gonna tell ’em it was your idea. You just better know that now.”

• From The Bible: A Biography (2007)

  But this would not have disturbed R. Joshua, who was not attempting a historical exposition of the text, but seeking to console his traumatized community. There was no need to mourn the temple too extravagantly: practical charity could replace the old ceremonial ritual. He was building a horoz, a ‘chain’ that linked together quotations that originally had no connection to each other but which, once ‘enchained’, revealed their integral unity.9 He began by citing a well-known maxim of Simeon the Just, a revered high priest of the third century BCE:10 ‘Upon three things the world is based: upon the Torah, upon the temple service, and upon the doing of loving deeds.’11 Like the quotation from Hosea, this proved that practical compassion was as important as the Torah and temple worship. Loving kindness was, as it were, an essential leg of the tripod that supported the entire world, and now that the temple had gone, Torah and charity were more important than ever before. To back up this insight, R. Johanan quoted – or slightly misquoted – the psalmist: ‘The world is built by love.’12 In juxtaposing these three unrelated texts, R. Johanan had shown that, as Hillel claimed, charity was indeed central to scripture: it was the exegete’s job to elucidate this hidden principle and bring it to light.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  “Bone, I couldn’t stand it if you hated me,” she said. “I couldn’t hate you,” I told her. “Mama, I couldn’t hate you.” “But you’re sure I’m gonna go back to him.” “Uh-huh.” I coughed and cleared my throat. “Oh God, Bone! I can’t just go back. I can’t have you hating me.” “I an’t never gonna hate you.” I took a deep breath, and made myself speak with no intonation at all. “I know you love him. I know you need him. And he’s good to you. He’s good to Reese. He just…” I thought a minute. “I don’t know.” We were quiet for a while. When Mama spoke she sounded almost like a girl, unsure of herself and scared. “Maybe he needs to talk to somebody. Raylene said maybe he needed a doctor.” I wiped my face and shrugged. Now I felt tired, aching tired, so deeply tired it was hard to pull air all the way down into my lungs. “Maybe,” I said. “I won’t go back until I know you’re gonna be safe.” Mama’s voice was determined. “I promise you, Bone.” “I won’t go back.” The words were so quiet, so flat, they didn’t seem to have come out of me. But once they were said, some energy seemed to come back to me. “I wouldn’t make you, honey.” “No. I know. It’s not that, Mama. I know you wouldn’t.” I sat up, rocked my head forward, and heard my neck bones make an odd cracking sound as the muscles stopped straining. When I spoke this time, my voice was strong, the words clear. “I know you’ll go back, Mama, and maybe you should. I don’t know what’s right for you, just what I have to do. I can’t go back to live with Daddy Glen. I won’t. I could go stay with Aunt Carr for a while or move in with Raylene. I think she’d be glad to keep me. But no matter what you decide, when you go back to Daddy Glen, I can’t go with you.” “Bone.” Mama got up from her mattress so fast I felt myself push back against the wall nervously. Her hands came down on my shoulders, squeezed gently. “What are you saying to me?” she asked. I could see her face. The moon must have risen. In the dim reflected light from outside, her cheekbones and shadowy eyes were ghostly. She was afraid. “I love you,” I said, “but I can’t think of anything else to do.” She gripped me hard. I could feel her fingernails biting in, the intensity of her fear. She shook her head and pulled me to her neck. “Oh God, what have I done?” she cried. “Mama, don’t,” I said gently. “Please.” She let go of me but still knelt there close. I wondered if she could see me as clearly as I could see her. If so, what was she seeing in my face?

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  The sun was so bright, and that boy just grinned so.” The old man wouldn’t stop looking back over to where Lyle lay still on the edge of the road. Lyle lay uncovered for a good twenty minutes. Everybody kept expecting him to get up. There was not a mark on him, and his face was shining with that lazy smile. But the back of his head flattened into the gravel, and his palms lay open and damp in the spray of the traffic the patrolmen diverted around the wreck. Mama was holding Reese when the sheriff’s car pulled up at Aunt Alma’s, and she must have known immediately what he had come to tell her, because she put her head back and howled like an old dog in labor, howled and rocked and squeezed her baby girl so tight Aunt Alma had to pinch her to get Reese free. Mama was nineteen, with two babies and three copies of my birth certificate in her dresser drawer. When she stopped howling, she stopped making any sound at all and would only nod at people when they tried to get her to cry or talk. She took both her girls to the funeral with all her sisters lined up alongside of her. The Parsonses barely spoke to her. Lyle’s mother told Aunt Alma that if her boy hadn’t taken that damn job for Mama’s sake, he wouldn’t have died in the road. Mama paid no attention. Her blond hair looked dark and limp, her skin gray, and within those few days fine lines had appeared at the corners of her eyes. Aunt Ruth steered her away from the gravesite while Aunt Raylene tucked some of the flowers into her family Bible and stopped to tell Mrs. Parsons what a damn fool she was. Aunt Ruth was heavily pregnant with her eighth child, and it was hard for her not to take Mama into her arms like another baby. At Uncle Earle’s car, she stopped and leaned back against the front door, hanging on to Mama. She brushed Mama’s hair back off her face, looking closely into her eyes. “Nothing else will ever hit you this hard,” she promised. She ran her thumbs under Mama’s eyes, her fingers resting lightly on either temple. “Now you look like a Boatwright,” she said. “Now you got the look. You’re as old as you’re ever gonna get, girl. This is the way you’ll look till you die.” Mama just nodded; it didn’t matter to her anymore what she looked like. A year in the mill was all Mama could take after they buried Lyle; the dust in the air got to her too fast.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  I ran into the bathroom and grabbed the Noxzema jar. Reese was there, her hair all tousled and her eyes gummy with too much sleep. “Why didn’t you wake me up?” she complained. “Where is everybody?” “Everybody’s gone, but Mama’s here. Get cleaned up and come out to the kitchen.” I hurried away. Mama would have to tell her. I couldn’t. When I got back, Mama was still in the same position with the napkin under her eyes, but now she was truly crying. Big tears were spilling out and streaking down her face. I ran to her and threw my arms around her. For a moment we clung together, and then, awkwardly, she pulled her arms free and pushed me a little away. “You loved her too, didn’t you, Bone?” She looked hard into my face as if she could see inside me. “You know how much she loved you?” I nodded. I couldn’t talk. Mama hugged me to her, rocked me against her breasts. Her hands squeezed my shoulders and shook me a little. “Oh, my little girl,” Mama whispered. “I wish I could be sure Ruth knew how beautiful she was.” 17 [image file=image_rsrc2PR.jpg] Reese had never been to a funeral before, and I was unsure how we were supposed to behave. Reese was just worried about what we were going to wear. “Don’t we have to go buy black dresses?” she kept asking. “Mama, when we gonna go get our black dresses?” She sounded as if she was already thinking about going to school the day after the funeral in her new black dress. Not so long ago that was what I would have been thinking. Now all I could think about was Aunt Ruth and the way she had talked to me all last summer. When Mama shushed Reese and told her she could just wear her dark blue skirt and a white blouse, I went off to sit on the porch steps, hugging my knees to my chest. There was a tight painful place inside me that squeezed me, not my heart, but just above my heart. I remembered the way Aunt Ruth had looked when she smiled at me, how thin she had been with her bird fingers and feverish eyes. But most of all I remembered the way she had laughed with Earle and then stared off into the distance all those long hours in the hot afternoons.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  I stared up into the pattern of rusty dried paint and spider-fine traceries on the porch ceiling. I opened my mouth to cry, but no cry came. Tears kept running down my face into my collar, but I didn’t make a sound. Children cried. I was not a child. Maybe, I told myself, I should go stay with Aunt Carr up in Baltimore or go out to Eustis and visit Aunt Maybelle and Aunt Marvella. I closed my eyes and licked my lips. The screen door swung closed with a thud. I turned my head. Mama stood motionless in one of her old short-sleeved dresses, her arms crossed under her breasts and her head up. She was looking at me from slitted eyes. My heart raced at the sight of her. Aunt Ruth had told her after Lyle Parsons’s funeral that she would look the same till she died. “Now you look like a Boatwright. Now you got the look,” she’d said. In all the years since, that prophecy had held true. Age and exhaustion had worn lines under Mama’s mouth and eyes, narrowed her chin, and deepened the indentations beside her nose, but you could still see the beautiful girl she had been. Now that face was made new. Bones seemed to have moved, flesh fallen away, and lines deepened into gullies, while shadows darkened to streaks of midnight. I breathed hard, feeling like I was underwater looking at her. She came across the porch, her face stern, her mouth set in a rigid line. The muscles in her neck stood out in high relief. I pushed myself up. She came straight to the rocker. My face felt plaster-stiff. The music was still playing. It wasn’t God who made us like this, I thought. We’d gotten ourselves messed up on our own. “Baby.” Mama’s voice was a raspy whisper. I did not move, did not speak. “Bone.” She touched my shoulder. “Oh, girl.” I could not pull away, but still I did not speak. I wondered if she could see herself in my pupils. She drew back a little and dropped down to half-kneel beside me. “I know,” she said. “I know you must feel like I don’t love you, like I didn’t love you enough.” She took hold of her own shoulders, hugging herself and shivering as if she were cold. “Bone, I never wanted you to be hurt. I wanted you to be safe. I wanted us all to be happy. I never thought it would go the way it did. I never thought Glen would hurt you like that.” Mama shut her eyes and turned her head as if she could no longer stand to look into my face. Her mouth opened and closed several times. I saw tears at the corners of her eyes.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  The guitar plunked and became clearly Patsy Cline’s voice singing “Walking After Midnight.” The driving notes and the dark undertone of the drum paced her voice. I listened closely, heard the pause as the song ended, and then Patsy’s voice started again, taking up from the beginning, the scratches and popping of the worn record overwhelming that heartbreaking voice, making me wish I could still cry the way I had with Aunt Ruth. The silence extended, the soft rustle of the river barely audible. A breeze swelled and died down. The music came back, the chords different. Not Patsy Cline. Kitty Wells. “Talk Back Trembling Lips.” Her twangy voice shook and scolded, louder still than Patsy’s drawl. Mama always said Kitty had a smoky voice, not as pure as Patsy’s, but familiar. That raw accent, like Beau’s or Alma’s, flattened vowels and stretched-out syllables to fit the chorus. I rocked back and listened to the record play through. The next one was another of Mama’s favorites, Patsy Cline telling the world that it wasn’t God who made honky-tonk angels. Grief filled me. I stared up into the pattern of rusty dried paint and spider-fine traceries on the porch ceiling. I opened my mouth to cry, but no cry came. Tears kept running down my face into my collar, but I didn’t make a sound. Children cried. I was not a child. Maybe, I told myself, I should go stay with Aunt Carr up in Baltimore or go out to Eustis and visit Aunt Maybelle and Aunt Marvella. I closed my eyes and licked my lips. The screen door swung closed with a thud. I turned my head. Mama stood motionless in one of her old short-sleeved dresses, her arms crossed under her breasts and her head up. She was looking at me from slitted eyes. My heart raced at the sight of her. Aunt Ruth had told her after Lyle Parsons’s funeral that she would look the same till she died. “Now you look like a Boatwright. Now you got the look,” she’d said. In all the years since, that prophecy had held true. Age and exhaustion had worn lines under Mama’s mouth and eyes, narrowed her chin, and deepened the indentations beside her nose, but you could still see the beautiful girl she had been. Now that face was made new. Bones seemed to have moved, flesh fallen away, and lines deepened into gullies, while shadows darkened to streaks of midnight. I breathed hard, feeling like I was underwater looking at her. She came across the porch, her face stern, her mouth set in a rigid line. The muscles in her neck stood out in high relief. I pushed myself up. She came straight to the rocker. My face felt plaster-stiff. The music was still playing. It wasn’t God who made us like this, I thought.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

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

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

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

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

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