Relief

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  It’s my friend Maxie Schnadig announcing the death of our friend Luke Ralston. Maxie has assumed a truly sorrowful tone of voice which rubs me the wrong way. He says Luke was such a swell guy. That too sounds the wrong note for me because while Luke was all right, he was only so-so, not precisely what you might call a swell guy. Luke was an ingrown fairy and finally, when I got to know him intimately, a big pain in the ass. I told Maxie that over the telephone; I could tell from the way he answered me that he didn’t like it very much. He said Luke had always been a friend to me. It was true enough, but it wasn’t enough. The truth was that I was really glad Luke had kicked off at the opportune moment: it meant that I could forget about the hundred and fifty dollars which I owed him. In fact, as I hung up the receiver I really felt joyous. It was a tremendous relief not to have to pay that debt. As for Luke’s demise, that didn’t disturb me in the least. On the contrary, it would enable me to pay a visit to his sister, Lottie, whom I always wanted to lay but never could for one reason or another. Now I could see myself going up there in the middle of the day and offering her my condolences. Her husband would be at the office and there would be nothing to interfere. I saw myself putting my arms around her and comforting her; nothing like tackling a woman when she is in sorrow. I could see her opening her eyes wide—she had beautiful, large gray eyes—as I moved her toward the couch. She was the sort of woman who would give you a fuck while pretending to be talking music or some such thing. She didn’t like the naked reality, the bare facts, so to speak. At the same time she’d have enough presence of mind to slip a towel under her so as not to stain the couch. I knew her inside out. I knew that the best time to get her was now, now while she was running up a little fever of emotion over dear dead Luke—whom she didn’t think much of, by the way. Unfortunately it was Sunday and the husband would be sure to be home. I went back to bed and I lay there thinking first about Luke and all that he had done for me and then about her, Lottie. Lottie Somers was her name—it always seemed a beautiful name to me. It matched her perfectly. Luke was stiff as a poker, with a sort of skull and bones face, and impeccable and just beyond words. She was just the opposite—soft, round, spoke with a drawl, caressed her words, moved languidly, used her eyes effectively.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  “That must’ve really been hard. I’m sorry.” Alice turned toward her, and Connie saw another face start to surface under the composed party expression, the careful eye makeup and poise. She wasn’t sure how to define it, but it looked like the face of a young girl who had spent a lot of time studying models in fashion magazines. “Yes, it was hard. You remember how things were. In a way I was relieved. But it was awful.” Somebody turned up the music and it marched between them. “How’re things with your parents?” “Better.” Connie nodded. “They’re back together and the separation seems to have cleared the air. They actually seem to love each other again.” “Yeah? That’s great.” Alice turned toward the table, grabbed a large potato chip and used it to shovel up a mouthful of green paste. Connie found a paper cup without anything sticky on the inside and poured vodka into it. She groped for a bright sticky carton of orange juice and a brief storm of conversation bore them apart; Connie became embroiled with a very young man who wanted to talk about the magazine she worked for, while Alice was impaled by the aquamarine stare of the peanut-eater Connie had avoided. They were relieved to come together again a few minutes later in an opposite corner of the room. “So Franklin tells me that you’re living with a woman now.” “Yeah.” Alice’s eyes brightened with a flare of enlightenment; she had never been able to understand Connie’s manic affairs or the way she had flatly turned down the men Alice would introduce her to, and now here was the simple explanation: Connie was gay. “Is that good?” “Yes, it is. I really love her.” “I’m glad to hear that.” “How’re things between you and Roger?” Alice looked away and shrugged. “Okay, I guess. We’re not that close these days. He’s seeing somebody else, actually. He’s off somewhere with her tonight, I think.” “Oh!” “It’s not a crisis. I think that it’s probably good for both of us. I’d be interested in an affair myself, but there’s nobody around at the moment. Roger has a lot of access to single girls. He’s gotten to be a pretty big deal, you know.” There was another shift in the surface of Alice’s face and Connie saw a sudden resemblance to the person she’d seen in the mirror yesterday, right after her dental appointment—one half of the face was alertly contemplating the world with expectation and confidence, while the other had fallen under the weight of it. The eyes expressed the fatigue and rancor of a small, hardworking person carrying her life around on her back like a set of symbols and circumstances that she could stand apart from and arrange. “Do you think that you’ll stay married?” “Oh, yes. I mean, my marriage with Roger is like…a project I’d never drop. And I want to have children soon.”

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  It seemed absolutely crazy to me that each day of my life I had to sit and listen to other people’s stories, the banal tragedies of poverty and distress, of love and death, of yearning and disillusionment. If, as it happened, there came to me each day at least fifty men, each pouring out his tale of woe, and with each one I had to be silent and “receive,” it was only natural that at some point along the line I had to close my ears, had to harden my heart. The tiniest little morsel was sufficient for me; I could chew on it and digest it for days and weeks. Yet I was obliged to sit there and be inundated, to get out at night again and receive more, to sleep listening, to dream listening. They streamed in from all over the world, from every stratum of society, speaking a thousand different tongues, worshiping different gods, obeying different laws and customs. The tale of the poorest among them was a huge tome, and yet if each and every one were written out at length it might all be compressed to the size of the Ten Commandments, it might all be recorded on the back of a postage stamp, like the Lord’s Prayer. Each day I was so stretched that my hide seemed to cover the whole world; and when I was alone, when I was no longer obliged to listen, I shrank to the size of a pinpoint. The greatest delight, and it was a rare one, was to walk the streets alone . . . to walk the streets at night when no one was abroad and to reflect on the silence that surrounded me. Millions lying on their backs, dead to the world, their mouths wide open and nothing but snores emanating from them. Walking amidst the craziest architecture ever invented, wondering why and to what end, if every day from these wretched hovels or magnificent palaces there had to stream forth an army of men itching to unravel their tale of misery. In a year, reckoning it modestly, I received twenty-five thousand tales; in two years fifty thousand; in four years it would be a hundred thousand; in ten years I would be stark mad. Already I knew enough people to populate a good-sized town. What a town it would be, if only they could be gathered together! Would they want skyscrapers? Would they want museums? Would they want libraries? Would they too build sewers and bridges and tracks and factories? Would they make the same little cornices of tin, one like another, on, on, ad infinitum, from Battery Park to the Golden Bay? I doubt it. Only the lash of hunger could stir them.

• From Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (2016)

  “I didn’t say, ‘How are you?’ I said, ‘Who are you?’ Why would I waste time asking ‘How are you?’! This is jail. I know everyone is suffering down there. If I asked everyone ‘How are you?’ we’d be here all day. I said, ‘Who are you?’ State your name for the record.” “Trevor Noah.” “Okay. Now we can carry on.” The whole courtroom started laughing, so then I started laughing, too. But now I was even more petrified because I didn’t want the judge to think I wasn’t taking him seriously because I was laughing. It turned out that I needn’t have been worried. Everything that happened next took only a few minutes. My lawyer had talked to the prosecutor and everything had been arranged beforehand. He presented my case. I had no priors. I wasn’t dangerous. There were no objections from the opposing side. The judge assigned my trial date and set my bail, and I was free to go. I walked out of court and the light of day hit my face and I said, “Sweet Jesus, I am never going back there again.” It had been only a week, in a cell that wasn’t terribly uncomfortable with food that wasn’t half bad, but a week in jail is a long, long time. A week without shoelaces is a long, long time. A week with no clocks, with no sun, can feel like an eternity. The thought of anything worse, the thought of doing real time in a real prison, I couldn’t even imagine. — I drove with Mlungisi to his place, took a shower, and slept there. The next day he dropped me back at my mom’s house. I strolled up the driveway acting real casual. My plan was to say I’d been crashing with Mlungisi for a few days. I walked into the house like nothing had happened. “Hey, Mom! What’s up?” Mom didn’t say anything, didn’t ask me any questions. I was like, Okay. Cool. We’re good. I stayed for most of the day. Later in the afternoon we were sitting at the kitchen table, talking. I was telling all these stories, going on about everything Mlungisi and I had been up to that week, and I caught my mom giving me this look, slowly shaking her head. It was a different look than I had ever seen her give before. It wasn’t “One day, I’m going to catch you.” It wasn’t anger or disapproval. It was disappointment. She was hurt. “What?” I said. “What is it?” She said, “Boy, who do you think paid your bail? Hmm? Who do you think paid your lawyer? Do you think I’m an idiot? Did you think no one would tell me?”

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  Virginia was glad to see her go. But, even when she was gone, insistent ghosts of Magdalen were everywhere: Magdalen at thirteen, sharp elbows on the breakfast table, slouching in an over-long cashmere sweater, her sulky lips ghoulish with thick white lipstick—“Mom, don’t be stupid, everybody wears it”; twelve-year-old Magdalen, radiant and triumphant, clutching an English paper graded triple A; Magdalen in the principal’s office, her bony white legs locked at the ankle, her head primly cocked—“You’ve got a bright little girl, Mrs. Heathrow. She should be moved at least one year ahead, possibly two”; Magdalen lazily pushing the cart at the A&P, wearing yellow terry-cloth shorts and rubber sandals, her chin tilted and her green cat eyes cool as she noticed the stock boys staring at her; fifteen-year-old Magdalen, caught on the couch, her long limbs knotted up with those of a long-haired college freshman; Magdalen, silent at the dinner table, picking at her food, her fragile nostrils palpitating disdainfully; Magdalen acting like an idiot on drugs, clutching her mother’s legs and moaning, “Oh, David, David, please make love to me”; Magdalen in the psychiatrist’s office, her slow white fingers dropping cigarette ashes on the floor; Jarold, his mouth like a piece of barbed wire, dragging a howling Magdalen up the stairs by her hair while Charles and Daniel watched, embarrassed and stricken. For years Magdalen had overshadowed two splendid boys and her sister, Camille. Camille sat still for years, quietly watching the gaudy spectacle of her older sister. Then Magdalen ran away and Camille emerged, a gracefully narrow-shouldered, long-legged girl who wore her light-brown hair in a high, dancing ponytail. She was full of energy. She liked to wear tailored blouses and skirts, but in home economics she made herself a green-and-yellow snakeskin jumpsuit, and paraded around the house in it. She delighted her mother with her comments: “When boys tell me I’m a prude, I say, ‘You’re absolutely right. I cultivate it.’ ” She was not particularly pretty, but her alert, candid gaze and visible intelligence made her more attractive than most pretty girls. When Virginia began to pay attention to Camille, she could not understand how she had allowed Magdalen to absorb her so completely. Still, there were ghosts. — Magdalen had been gone for over a year when Anne called. It was a late summer night. Virginia and Jarold were in the den watching Cool Hand Luke on TV. The room was softly dark, except for the wavering white TV light. The picture window was open. The cool night air was clouded with rustlings and insect noises. Virginia sat with her pink sweater loose around her shoulders, against Jarold’s arm. Their drinks glimmered before them on the coffee table. Virginia’s cigarette glowed in a metal ashtray. Their sparerib dinner had been lovely.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  Just no,” and walked out of the room and down the stairs, not caring whether or not Christine fired her, which she didn’t. “I’ll send one of the other girls up,” she said to Stephanie as they huddled in the kitchen. “You’ve worked hard today and I can afford to lose that geek if he walks.” On the fourth day, when Bernard finally appeared, she fell into his arms. “I’m so glad to see you,” she said, feeling his rather automatic placating response. She told him how terrible the last few days had been. “This guy was there for half an hour droning about his stupid high school days, and how important he was, and how all the cute girls would go out with him. It was just dreadful.” She noted Bernard’s puzzled expression and laughed. “I guess it doesn’t sound so bad, but it really was. For a while I was in his life, and his life was lousy.” He looked at her seriously. “You’re right,” he said. “You shouldn’t be here. This is a bad place for you.” “I know. I’m going to quit next week.” “If you do, you must give me your phone number. I’d really like to keep in touch with you. It doesn’t have to be any big deal. I just think you’re an interesting girl.” She didn’t see him before she quit, nor did he call her right away. When a week went by, she decided he’d changed his mind. She felt disappointed, but also relieved, and then stopped thinking about it. She eased back into her life slowly, first looking for another job and then trying to write every day. Babette entered a period of energy and optimism and began asking her out to nightclubs again. Babette had a lot of friends in the club business, so they could unfailingly sail past the block-long lines of people vainly trying to catch some doorman’s imperious eye. Babette, a tiny angular creature with long, slightly slanted eyes, looked annoyingly perfect in her silk Chinese jacket and black suede boots, her slim hip tilted one way, her little head the other. Stephanie always felt large and unraveled by comparison, as though her hat was wrong or her hem was falling out. They could spend hours wandering through the dark rooms, holding their drinks and shouting comments at one another. Often they would meet friends of Babette’s who would invite them into the bathroom for cocaine. Sometimes Babette would go off to dance and Stephanie would stand on the periphery of the dance floor, watching the dancers grinning and waving their arms in blind delight or staring severely at the floor as they thrashed their limbs. Lights flashed off and on, and the disc jockey spun one record after another in a pattern of controlled delirium.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  Overnight all Grover’s preconceived values were thrown overboard. Suddenly, just like that, he ceased moving as other people move. He put the brakes on and he kept the motor running. If once, like other people, he had thought it was necessary to get somewhere now he knew that somewhere was anywhere and therefore right here and so why move? Why not park the car and keep the motor running? Meanwhile the earth itself is turning and Grover knew it was turning and knew that he was turning with it. Is the earth getting anywhere? Grover must undoubtedly have asked himself this question and must undoubtedly have satisfied himself that it was not getting anywhere. Who, then, had said that we must get somewhere? Grover would inquire of this one and that where they were heading for and the strange thing was that although they were all heading for their individual destinations none of them ever stopped to reflect that the one inevitable destination for all alike was the grave. This puzzled Grover because nobody could convince him that death was not a certainty, whereas anybody could convince anybody else that any other destination was an uncertainty. Convinced of the dead certainty of death Grover suddenly became tremendously and overwhelmingly alive. For the first time in his life he began to live, and at the same time the clubfoot dropped completely out of his consciousness. This is a strange thing, too, when you come to think of it, because the clubfoot, just like death, was another ineluctable fact. Yet the clubfoot dropped out of mind, or, what is more important, all that had been attached to the clubfoot. In the same way, having accepted death, death too dropped out of Grover’s mind. Having seized on the single certainty of death all the uncertainties vanished. The rest of the world was now limping along with clubfooted uncertainties and Grover Watrous alone was free and unimpeded. Grover Watrous was the personification of certainty. He may have been wrong, but he was certain. And what good does it do to be right if one has to limp along with a clubfoot? Only a few men have ever realized the truth of this and their names have become very great names. Grover Watrous will probably never be known, but he is very great just the same. This is probably the reason why I write about him—just the fact that I had enough sense to realize that Grover had achieved greatness even though nobody else will admit it.

• From Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (2016)

  I got another hiding and a second trip to the psychologist for that one. The third visit to the shrink, and the last straw, came in grade six. A kid was bullying me. He said he was going to beat me up, and I brought one of my knives to school. I wasn’t going to use it; I just wanted to have it. The school didn’t care. That was the last straw for them. I wasn’t expelled, exactly. The principal sat me down and said, “Trevor, we can expel you. You need to think hard about whether you really want to be at Maryvale next year.” I think he thought he was giving me an ultimatum that would get me to shape up. But I felt like he was offering me an out, and I took it. “No,” I told him, “I don’t want to be here.” And that was the end of Catholic school. Funnily enough, I didn’t get into trouble with my mom when it happened. There was no ass-whooping waiting for me at home. She’d lost the bursary when she’d left her job at ICI, and paying for private school was becoming a burden. But more than that, she thought the school was overreacting. The truth is she probably took my side against Maryvale more often than not. She agreed with me 100 percent about the Eucharist thing. “Let me get this straight,” she told the principal. “You’re punishing a child because he wants Jesus’s body and Jesus’s blood? Why shouldn’t he have those things? Of course he should have them.” When they made me see a therapist for laughing while the principal hit me, she told the school that was ridiculous, too. “Ms. Noah, your son was laughing while we were hitting him.” “Well, clearly you don’t know how to hit a kid. That’s your problem, not mine. Trevor’s never laughed when I’ve hit him, I can tell you.” That was the weird and kind of amazing thing about my mom. If she agreed with me that a rule was stupid, she wouldn’t punish me for breaking it. Both she and the psychologists agreed that the school was the one with the problem, not me. Catholic school is not the place to be creative and independent. Catholic school is similar to apartheid in that it’s ruthlessly authoritarian, and its authority rests on a bunch of rules that don’t make any sense. My mother grew up with these rules and she questioned them. When they didn’t hold up, she simply went around them. The only authority my mother recognized was God’s. God is love and the Bible is truth—everything else was up for debate. She taught me to challenge authority and question the system. The only way it backfired on her was that I constantly challenged and questioned her. —

• From Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014)

  When the indictment was announced, there was joy and relief in the community that someone had been charged. Sheriff Tate, the district attorney, and other law enforcement officers who had become targets of criticism were cheered. The absence of an arrest had disrupted life in Monroeville, and now things could settle down. People who knew Walter found it difficult to believe he could be responsible for a sensational murder. He had no history of crime or violence, and for most folks who knew him, robbery just didn’t make sense for a man who worked as hard as Walter. Black residents told Sheriff Tate that he had arrested the wrong man. Tate still had not investigated McMillian himself, his life or background, or even his whereabouts on the day of the murder. He knew about the affair with Karen Kelly and had heard the suspicion and rumors that Walter’s independence must mean he was dealing drugs. Given his eagerness to make an arrest, this seemed to be enough for Tate to accept Myers’s accusations. As it turned out, on the day of the murder, a fish fry was held at Walter’s house. Members of Walter’s family spent the day out in front of the house, selling food to passersby. Evelyn Smith, Walter’s sister, was a local minister, and she and her family occasionally raised money for the church by selling food on the roadside. Because Walter’s house was closer to the main road, they often sold from his front yard. There were at least a dozen church parishioners at the house all morning with Walter and his family on the day Ronda Morrison was murdered. Walter didn’t have a tree job that day. He had decided to replace the transmission in his truck and called over his mechanic friend, Jimmy Hunter, to help. By 9:30 in the morning, the two men had dismantled Walter’s truck, completely removing the transmission. By 11 o’clock, relatives had arrived and had started frying fish and other food to sell. Some church members didn’t get there until later. “Sister, we would have been here long ago, but the traffic in Monroeville was completely backed up. Cop cars and fire trucks, looked like something bad happened up at that cleaners,” Evelyn Smith recalled one of the members saying. Police reported that the Morrison murder took place around 10:15 A.M., eleven miles or so from McMillian’s home, at the same time that a dozen church members were at Walter’s home selling food while Walter and Jimmy worked on his truck. In the early afternoon, Ernest Welch, a white man whom black residents called “the furniture man” because he worked for a local furniture store, arrived to collect money from Walter’s mother for a purchase she had made on credit. Welch told the folks gathered at the house that his niece had been murdered at Jackson Cleaners that morning. They discussed the shocking news with Welch for some time.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  She should be moved at least one year ahead, possibly two”; Magdalen lazily pushing the cart at the A&P, wearing yellow terry-cloth shorts and rubber sandals, her chin tilted and her green cat eyes cool as she noticed the stock boys staring at her; fifteen-year-old Magdalen, caught on the couch, her long limbs knotted up with those of a long-haired college freshman; Magdalen, silent at the dinner table, picking at her food, her fragile nostrils palpitating disdainfully; Magdalen acting like an idiot on drugs, clutching her mother’s legs and moaning, “Oh, David, David, please make love to me”; Magdalen in the psychiatrist’s office, her slow white fingers dropping cigarette ashes on the floor; Jarold, his mouth like a piece of barbed wire, dragging a howling Magdalen up the stairs by her hair while Charles and Daniel watched, embarrassed and stricken. For years Magdalen had overshadowed two splendid boys and her sister, Camille. Camille sat still for years, quietly watching the gaudy spectacle of her older sister. Then Magdalen ran away and Camille emerged, a gracefully narrow-shouldered, long-legged girl who wore her light-brown hair in a high, dancing ponytail. She was full of energy. She liked to wear tailored blouses and skirts, but in home economics she made herself a green-and-yellow snakeskin jumpsuit, and paraded around the house in it. She delighted her mother with her comments: “When boys tell me I’m a prude, I say, ‘You’re absolutely right. I cultivate it.’ ” She was not particularly pretty, but her alert, candid gaze and visible intelligence made her more attractive than most pretty girls. When Virginia began to pay attention to Camille, she could not understand how she had allowed Magdalen to absorb her so completely. Still, there were ghosts. — Magdalen had been gone for over a year when Anne called. It was a late summer night. Virginia and Jarold were in the den watching Cool Hand Luke on TV. The room was softly dark, except for the wavering white TV light. The picture window was open. The cool night air was clouded with rustlings and insect noises. Virginia sat with her pink sweater loose around her shoulders, against Jarold’s arm. Their drinks glimmered before them on the coffee table. Virginia’s cigarette glowed in a metal ashtray. Their sparerib dinner had been lovely. Charles called her to the phone, and she felt a thrill of duty. What had happened to Lily now? She took her drink and cigarettes and left the gentle darkness, padding down the hall and through the swing door into the kitchen. The light was bright and there was a peaceful smell of old food. She shooed Charles, who was eating a dish of lime sherbet at the counter, and sat on the high red stool under the phone, her elbows on her knees. “What is it, honey?”

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  I’ll call in.” “I’ll do it for you, just stay in bed.” “No, I’m going to call. It has to be me.” I didn’t call in. The lawyer didn’t call the house. I didn’t go in or call the next day or the day after that. The lawyer still didn’t call. I was slightly hurt by his absent phone call, but my relief was far greater than my hurt. After I’d stayed home for four days, my father asked if I wasn’t worried about taking so much time off. I told him I’d quit, in front of Donna and my mother. He was dumbfounded. “That wasn’t very smart,” he said. “What are you going to do now?” “I don’t care,” I said. “That lawyer was an asshole.” To everyone’s discomfort, I began to cry. I left the room, and they all watched me stomp up the stairs. The next day at dinner my father said, “Don’t get discouraged because your first job didn’t work out. There’re plenty of other places out there.” “I don’t want to think about another job right now.” There was a disgruntlement all around the table. “Come on now, Debby, you don’t want to throw away everything you worked for in that typing course,” said my father. “I don’t blame her,” said Donna. “I’m sick of working for assholes.” “Oh, shit,” said my father. “If I had quit every job I’ve had on those grounds, you would’ve all starved. Maybe that’s what I should’ve done.” “What happened, Debby?” said my mother. I said, “I don’t want to talk about it,” and I left the room again. — After that they may have sensed, with their intuition for the miserable, that something hideous had happened. Because they left the subject alone. I received my last paycheck from the lawyer in the mail. It came with a letter folded around it. It said, “I am so sorry for what happened between us. I have realized what a terrible mistake I made with you. I can only hope that you will understand, and that you will not worsen an already unfortunate situation by discussing it with others. All the best.” As a P.S. he assured me that I could count on him for excellent references. He enclosed a check for three hundred and eighty dollars, a little over two hundred dollars more than he owed me. It occurred to me to tear up the check, or mail it back to the lawyer. But I didn’t do that. Two hundred dollars was worth more then than it is now. Together with the money I had in the bank, it was enough to put a down payment on an apartment and still have some left over. I went upstairs and wrote “380” on the deposit side of my checking account. I didn’t feel like a whore or anything.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  She should be moved at least one year ahead, possibly two”; Magdalen lazily pushing the cart at the A&P, wearing yellow terry-cloth shorts and rubber sandals, her chin tilted and her green cat eyes cool as she noticed the stock boys staring at her; fifteen-year-old Magdalen, caught on the couch, her long limbs knotted up with those of a long-haired college freshman; Magdalen, silent at the dinner table, picking at her food, her fragile nostrils palpitating disdainfully; Magdalen acting like an idiot on drugs, clutching her mother’s legs and moaning, “Oh, David, David, please make love to me”; Magdalen in the psychiatrist’s office, her slow white fingers dropping cigarette ashes on the floor; Jarold, his mouth like a piece of barbed wire, dragging a howling Magdalen up the stairs by her hair while Charles and Daniel watched, embarrassed and stricken. For years Magdalen had overshadowed two splendid boys and her sister, Camille. Camille sat still for years, quietly watching the gaudy spectacle of her older sister. Then Magdalen ran away and Camille emerged, a gracefully narrow-shouldered, long-legged girl who wore her light-brown hair in a high, dancing ponytail. She was full of energy. She liked to wear tailored blouses and skirts, but in home economics she made herself a green-and-yellow snakeskin jumpsuit, and paraded around the house in it. She delighted her mother with her comments: “When boys tell me I’m a prude, I say, ‘You’re absolutely right. I cultivate it.’ ” She was not particularly pretty, but her alert, candid gaze and visible intelligence made her more attractive than most pretty girls. When Virginia began to pay attention to Camille, she could not understand how she had allowed Magdalen to absorb her so completely. Still, there were ghosts. — Magdalen had been gone for over a year when Anne called. It was a late summer night. Virginia and Jarold were in the den watching Cool Hand Luke on TV. The room was softly dark, except for the wavering white TV light. The picture window was open. The cool night air was clouded with rustlings and insect noises. Virginia sat with her pink sweater loose around her shoulders, against Jarold’s arm. Their drinks glimmered before them on the coffee table. Virginia’s cigarette glowed in a metal ashtray. Their sparerib dinner had been lovely. Charles called her to the phone, and she felt a thrill of duty. What had happened to Lily now? She took her drink and cigarettes and left the gentle darkness, padding down the hall and through the swing door into the kitchen. The light was bright and there was a peaceful smell of old food. She shooed Charles, who was eating a dish of lime sherbet at the counter, and sat on the high red stool under the phone, her elbows on her knees. “What is it, honey?”

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  “But Deliver Us from Evil. Amen.”The Lord has already taught us to pray for forgiveness of our sins, and how to avoid temptations. In this petition, He teaches us to pray to be preserved from evil, and indeed from all evil in general, such as sin, illness, affliction and all others, as St. Augustine explains it. But since we have already mentioned sin and temptation, we now must consider other evils, such as adversity and all afflictions of this world. From these God preserves us in a fourfold manner. First, He preserves us from affliction itself; but this is very rare because it is the lot of the just in this world to suffer, for it is written: “All that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.” Once in a while, however, God does prevent a man from being afflicted by some evil; this is when He knows such a one to be weak and unable to bear it. Just so a physician does not prescribe violent medicines to a weak patient. “Behold, I have given before thee a door opened, which no man can shut; because thou hast little strength.” In heaven this will be a general thing, for there no one shall be afflicted. “In six troubles,” those, namely, of this present life which is divided into six periods, “He shall deliver thee, and in the seventh evil shall not touch thee.” “They shall no more hunger nor thirst.” Second, God delivers us from afflictions when He consoles us in them; for unless He console us, we could not long persevere: “We were pressed out of measure above our strength so that we were weary even of life.” “But God, who comforteth the humble, comforted us.” “According to the multitude of my sorrows in my heart, Thy comforts have given joy to my soul.” Third, God bestows so many good things upon those who are afflicted that their evils are forgotten: “After the storm Thou makest a calm.” The afflictions and trials of this world, therefore, are not to be feared, both because consolations accompany them and because they are of short duration: “For that which is at present momentary and light of our tribulation, worketh for us above measure exceedingly an eternal weight of glory.” Fourth, we are preserved from afflictions in this way that all temptations and trials are conducive to our own good. We do not pray, “Deliver us from tribulation,” but “from evil.” This is because tribulations bring a crown to the just, and for that reason the Saints rejoiced in their sufferings: “We glory also in tribulations, knowing that tribulation worketh patience.” “In time of tribulation Thou forgivest sins.”

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  “Havin” a hard day, kid?” one of the butches at the bar asked me. “A hard day?” My laughter sounded shrill. “TI got kicked out of school, got no place to live, and ’m gonna lose my goddamn job if I can’t find a place to sleep so I can be on time.” She pursed her lips, nodded, and took a swig of her beer. “You can stay at our place for a while if you want,’ she said casually. “Are you fucking with me?” I demanded. She shook her head. “You need a place to stay? My girlfriend and I have an apartment over our garage. You can stay there if you want, it’s up to you.” She signaled to the bartender. “Meg, get the kid a beer, on me, OK?” We introduced ourselves. “Jes’ what?” she asked. “Jess, that’s my name. Just Jess.” She snorted, “Jes’ Jess, huh? Well, I’m jes’ Toni.” Meg slammed a bottle of beer in front of me. “Thanks for the beer, Toni.” I saluted her with the bottle. “Can I move in tonight?” Stone Butch Blues 49 Toni laughed. “Yeah, I guess so. If I’m not too drunk to get the key in the door. Hey, Betty!” Tont’s girlfriend came out of the bathroom and stood beside her. “Hey, Betty, meet Dondi. This kid’s an orphan. Parents died in a flaming car wreck, you know?” Toni laughed and took a swig of beer. Betty pulled away from Toni. “That’s not funny.” I intervened. “Toni said you got a place I could stay. I really need a place to sleep, I mean real bad.” Betty looked at Toni, shrugged, and walked away. “It’s OK with her,” Toni said. “I’m going back to sit with Betty. I'll find you before we leave.” I finished my beer and put my head down on the bar. The room was spinning and I wanted to sleep so badly. Meg rapped her knuckles on the bar near my head. “You drunk or something?” “No, I’m just working round the clock,” I told her. I didn’t think she liked me. Then she brought me another beer. “T didn’t order one.” “It’s on the house,” she said. Go figure. As the crowd started thinning out I found an empty chair near the noisy backroom, leaned my head against the wall, and fell asleep. When I awoke, Betty was tugging on my sleeve, telling me it was time to go home. Toni sang “Roll Me Over in the Clover” as 50 Leslie Feinberg Betty tried to get her into the car. I lay down on the back seat and immediately fell asleep again. “C’mon, wake up,” Betty urged me. We were in their driveway. Betty struggled to prop Toni up against the car. “Don’t give me two problems to deal with,” Betty told me curtly. I got out of the car and helped her get Toni upstairs. “You can sleep on the couch tonight,” Betty said.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  She was so messed up with drugs and men, you know. But about you.” He looked at her as if she’d already been in his office several times. “If you really want to be a writer, then don’t move to New York. You’ll just wind up in some dank little dump in the East Village with bars on the windows, and oh, I don’t know.” He grimaced and flapped his hand with distaste. She reminded him that she had already moved to the city and he said, “Well, in that case, maybe you should try The New Yorker. They generally hire only friends and family, but you have a certain, I don’t know, fresh, insipid look they might like. I’ve gotten quite a few people in there. Would you like to have a drink tomorrow evening?” She had to admit that a large part of the reason she was even trying to get a job was for the approval of people she’d known in Illinois, many of whom were living in New York and thought of her as a hopeless neurotic who couldn’t do much of anything. She thought of her last conversation with one of these people, a film production assistant on her lunch break. “Stephanie,” she said, “you’ve simply got to cut your hair. I know it sounds superficial, but really, things like that matter. Editors are very busy people; they can only see you for twenty minutes, so they have to act on impressions, and that includes style. Long hair is college—ideals, finding yourself, and all that. Nobody here has long hair.” She dug smartly into her pile of refried beans. She thought of Jackson, an ex-lover whom she had especially wanted to impress, and was perversely glad that she never did get a professional position. She remembered what a curious relief it had been to take her first job in a whorehouse, where a real job didn’t matter, where males and females performed the ancient, primal and wonderfully elementary dance of copulation, blandly, predictably and by appointment. “Is something wrong?” asked Bernard. “I was just thinking of someone.” She hesitated. “Someone I knew in college. I had a pretty awful relationship with this person and I couldn’t have sex for over a year afterward. The first time I fucked anybody else after him was my first trick in my first house.” “You’re kidding!” She laughed. “It’s too corny, isn’t it? Girl has heart broken by callous swine and turns to prostitution.” “Your life is very dramatic,” he said pleasantly. “It’s not so dramatic. These things happen.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  Alice turned toward her, and Connie saw another face start to surface under the composed party expression, the careful eye makeup and poise. She wasn’t sure how to define it, but it looked like the face of a young girl who had spent a lot of time studying models in fashion magazines. “Yes, it was hard. You remember how things were. In a way I was relieved. But it was awful.” Somebody turned up the music and it marched between them. “How’re things with your parents?” “Better.” Connie nodded. “They’re back together and the separation seems to have cleared the air. They actually seem to love each other again.” “Yeah? That’s great.” Alice turned toward the table, grabbed a large potato chip and used it to shovel up a mouthful of green paste. Connie found a paper cup without anything sticky on the inside and poured vodka into it. She groped for a bright sticky carton of orange juice and a brief storm of conversation bore them apart; Connie became embroiled with a very young man who wanted to talk about the magazine she worked for, while Alice was impaled by the aquamarine stare of the peanut-eater Connie had avoided. They were relieved to come together again a few minutes later in an opposite corner of the room. “So Franklin tells me that you’re living with a woman now.” “Yeah.” Alice’s eyes brightened with a flare of enlightenment; she had never been able to understand Connie’s manic affairs or the way she had flatly turned down the men Alice would introduce her to, and now here was the simple explanation: Connie was gay. “Is that good?” “Yes, it is. I really love her.” “I’m glad to hear that.” “How’re things between you and Roger?” Alice looked away and shrugged. “Okay, I guess. We’re not that close these days. He’s seeing somebody else, actually. He’s off somewhere with her tonight, I think.” “Oh!” “It’s not a crisis. I think that it’s probably good for both of us. I’d be interested in an affair myself, but there’s nobody around at the moment. Roger has a lot of access to single girls. He’s gotten to be a pretty big deal, you know.” There was another shift in the surface of Alice’s face and Connie saw a sudden resemblance to the person she’d seen in the mirror yesterday, right after her dental appointment—one half of the face was alertly contemplating the world with expectation and confidence, while the other had fallen under the weight of it.

• From Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (2016)

  “I didn’t say, ‘How are you?’ I said, ‘Who are you?’ Why would I waste time asking ‘How are you?’! This is jail. I know everyone is suffering down there. If I asked everyone ‘How are you?’ we’d be here all day. I said, ‘Who are you?’ State your name for the record.” “Trevor Noah.” “Okay. Now we can carry on.” The whole courtroom started laughing, so then I started laughing, too. But now I was even more petrified because I didn’t want the judge to think I wasn’t taking him seriously because I was laughing. It turned out that I needn’t have been worried. Everything that happened next took only a few minutes. My lawyer had talked to the prosecutor and everything had been arranged beforehand. He presented my case. I had no priors. I wasn’t dangerous. There were no objections from the opposing side. The judge assigned my trial date and set my bail, and I was free to go. I walked out of court and the light of day hit my face and I said, “Sweet Jesus, I am never going back there again.” It had been only a week, in a cell that wasn’t terribly uncomfortable with food that wasn’t half bad, but a week in jail is a long, long time. A week without shoelaces is a long, long time. A week with no clocks, with no sun, can feel like an eternity. The thought of anything worse, the thought of doing real time in a real prison, I couldn’t even imagine. — I drove with Mlungisi to his place, took a shower, and slept there. The next day he dropped me back at my mom’s house. I strolled up the driveway acting real casual. My plan was to say I’d been crashing with Mlungisi for a few days. I walked into the house like nothing had happened. “Hey, Mom! What’s up?” Mom didn’t say anything, didn’t ask me any questions. I was like, Okay. Cool. We’re good. I stayed for most of the day. Later in the afternoon we were sitting at the kitchen table, talking. I was telling all these stories, going on about everything Mlungisi and I had been up to that week, and I caught my mom giving me this look, slowly shaking her head. It was a different look than I had ever seen her give before. It wasn’t “One day, I’m going to catch you.” It wasn’t anger or disapproval. It was disappointment. She was hurt. “What?” I said. “What is it?” She said, “Boy, who do you think paid your bail? Hmm? Who do you think paid your lawyer? Do you think I’m an idiot? Did you think no one would tell me?”

• From Stone Butch Blues (1993)

  Kim reached out to me, but Gloria grabbed her hand and squeezed it. “Come on Kim, Scotty,” Gloria said, pulling them toward the door. “You are really sick, you know that? You really need help.” I turned up my palms in a gesture of exasperation. “Gloria.” People nearby stopped to watch. Kim broke loose and tan toward me at full speed. I lifted her into my arms and hugged her tightly. “Do you still love me?” she whispered. I kissed her nose. “More than ever.” I put her down and she ran back to Gloria. “Exp” a salesman asked me. “Huh?” “Ex-girlfriend?” he nodded with his chin toward the door. “She’s an ex, alright,” I answered. I got a steady gig at a bindery as a mechanic’s apprentice. The guy who interviewed me looked me up and down real hard. I felt color rise in my face. “You look like a clean-cut young man,” he concluded. Only a short time before I had been a monster. Having a job was the good news. But there wasn't much else to do or anyone to do it with. That was the bad news. My greatest recreation was riding my motorcycle. I decided to buy a really nice bike. Early one Saturday afternoon I rode to the West Side to take a look at a Harley Sportster I saw advertised in the newspaper. “Ask for Mike,” the ad read. “You know about bikes?” Mike asked me. We squatted next to the bike in his driveway. Stone Butch Blues V8T I said yes, but I felt like I was lying. It’s funny, a guy gets a Honda 50 mini-bike and he talks like he’s an expert on bikes. A woman could ride a full-dress Harley all her life and she still feels like she’s faking her end of the conversation. He told me he loved that bike, and I could tell by the way he touched it that he meant every word. He hated to sell it, he told me, but he fell in love with a woman who made him choose between her or the bike. He made the right decision. I handed Mike a wad of bills and revved the engine. “Take her up to Canada,” he suggested. “You'll be across the Peace Bridge in ten minutes and you can really open her up on those roads.” I put on my helmet, waved, and drove away. I stopped at Ted’s for a foot-long hot dog. I sat on top of a picnic table outside, surrounded by gulls impatiently waiting for the end of my bun. I could see the line of cars at the Peace Bridge. How many hundreds of times had I gone to Canada this way? But passing as a man meant I hadn’t been able to cross the Peace Bridge because I didn’t have a draft card. The Vietnam War had just officially ended.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  GREGORY OF NYSSA. His meditating confession so won his father to him, that he went out to meet him, and kissed his neck; for it follows, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him. This signifies the yoke of reason imposed on the mouth of man by Evangelical tradition, which annulled the observance of the law. CHRYSOSTOM. (Hom. de Patre et duob. Fil.) For what else means it that he ran, but that we through the hindrance of our sins cannot by our own virtue reach to God. But because God is able to come to the weak, he fell on his neck. The mouth is kissed, as that from which has proceeded the confession of the penitent, springing from the heart, which the father gladly received. AMBROSE. He runs then to meet thee, because He hears thee within meditating the secrets of thy heart, and when thou wert yet afar off, He runs lest any one should stop Him. He embraces also, (for in the running there is fore-knowledge, in the embrace mercy,) and as if by a certain impulse of paternal affection, falls upon thy neck, that he may raise up him that is cast down, and bring back again to heaven him that was loaded with sins and bent down to the earth. I had rather then be a son than a sheep. For the sheep is found by the shepherd, the son is honoured by the father. AUGUSTINE. (ubi sup.) Or running he fell upon his neck; because the Father abandoned not His Only-Begotten Son, in whom He has ever been running after our distant wanderings. For God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself. (2 Cor. 5:19.) But to fall upon his neck is to lower to his embrace His own Arm, which is the Lord Jesus Christ. But to be comforted by the word of God’s grace unto the hope of pardon of our sins, this is to return after a long journey to obtain from a father the kiss of love. But already planted in the Church, he begins to confess his sins, nor says he all that he promised he would say. For it follows, And his son said unto him, &c. He wishes that to be done by grace, of which he confesses himself unworthy by any merits of his own. He does not add what he had said, when meditating beforehand, Make me as one of thy hired servants. For when he had not bread, he desired to be even a hired servant, which after the kiss of his father he now most nobly disdained. CHRYSOSTOM. (non occ.) The father does not direct his words to his son, but speaks to his steward, for he who repents, prays indeed, but receives no answer in word, yet beholds mercy effectual in operation. For it follows, But the father said unto his servants, Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him.

• From Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (2016)

  I pressed my credit card into the nurse’s hand. “Do whatever you have to do. Just please help my mom.” We spent the rest of the day in limbo, waiting, not knowing, pacing around the hospital, family members stopping by. Several hours later, the doctor finally came out of the emergency room to give us an update. “What’s happening?” I asked. “Your mother is stable,” he said. “She’s out of surgery.” “Is she going to be okay?” He thought for a moment about what he was going to say. “I don’t like to use this word,” he said, “because I’m a man of science and I don’t believe in it. But what happened to your mother today was a miracle. I never say that, because I hate it when people say it, but I don’t have any other way to explain this.” The bullet that hit my mother in the butt, he said, was a through-and-through. It went in, came out, and didn’t do any real damage. The other bullet went through the back of her head, entering below the skull at the top of her neck. It missed the spinal cord by a hair, missed the medulla oblongata, and traveled through her head just underneath the brain, missing every major vein, artery, and nerve. With the trajectory the bullet was on, it was headed straight for her left eye socket and would have blown out her eye, but at the last second it slowed down, hit her cheekbone instead, shattered her cheekbone, ricocheted off, and came out through her left nostril. On the gurney in the emergency room, the blood had made the wound look much worse than it was. The bullet took off only a tiny flap of skin on the side of her nostril, and it came out clean, with no bullet fragments left inside. She didn’t even need surgery. They stopped the bleeding, stitched her up in back, stitched her up in front, and let her heal. “There was nothing we can do, because there’s nothing we need to do,” the doctor said. My mother was out of the hospital in four days. She was back at work in seven. — The doctors kept her sedated the rest of that day and night to rest. They told all of us to go home. “She’s stable,” they said. “There’s nothing you can do here. Go home and sleep.” So we did. I went back first thing the next morning to be with my mother in her room and wait for her to wake up. When I walked in she was still asleep. The back of her head was bandaged. She had stitches in her face and gauze covering her nose and her left eye. She looked frail and weak, tired, one of the few times in my life I’d ever seen her look that way.