Sadness

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 Combating Cult Mind Control: The Guide to Protection, Rescue and Recovery from Destructive Cults (1988)

  In Phil’s case, before joining the Hare Krishnas he was a depressed, suicidal person wracked with guilt because he felt responsible for his brother’s death. If I hadn’t been able to help him face his feelings and reframe his brother’s fatal accident, he never would have been able to leave the group. (One could speculate that, on some unconscious level, he was punishing himself for his “sin” by being involved in the group.) Until he could rethink the circumstances of his brother’s death and verbalize what he felt, he would never be able to take a fresh step forward. In this, and other cases like it, if the individual was not happy or healthy just before joining the group, it is imperative to find some positive reference point for the person to use as an identity anchor. If there are no strong positive experiences to use for this purpose, then one has to be either created or cultivated. Imagination can be used to create positive experiences. For example, one might ask, “If you had had a warm, loving family, what would it feel like?” or “If your dad had been everything you wanted when you were growing up, what qualities would he have had, and what kinds of things would you want to do together?” In order for Phil to even consider leaving the Krishnas, he needed to remember his previous, authentic self, and recall how good it felt to play guitar, write songs and have fun with his friends and family. He needed to remember Tom as a person full of life, not just as a victim. In Phil’s inner life, he was able to resurrect Tom—his desire to be an investigative journalist, his dislike of organized religion, and his assertive stance toward life. Since twins are almost always extremely close, it was imperative that Phil reestablish his positive emotional link with Tom. Key #5: Get the Cult Member to Look at Reality From Many Different Perspectives During my interaction with Phil, I asked him to look at himself from a variety of viewpoints. When I asked Phil to switch perspectives, and think like Tom, a dramatic shift occurred. I asked him, “What would Tom do, if you were the one who had died? Would he have joined the Krishnas?” Phil had become so frozen by grief that he had never been able to find a perspective on it. When I asked him, “What would Tom say, if he knew you were in the Krishnas?” the answer came back, “He’d laugh at me and tell me to rejoin the real world.”

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

  From that point on we lived in the garage. It was a warehouse, basically, and not the fancy, romantic sort of warehouse hipsters might one day turn into lofts. No, no. It was a cold, empty space. Gray concrete floors stained with oil and grease, old junk cars and car parts everywhere. Near the front, next to the roller door that opened onto the street, there was a tiny office built out of drywall for doing paperwork and such. In the back was a kitchenette, just a sink, a portable hot plate, and some cabinets. To bathe, there was only an open wash basin, like a janitor’s sink, with a showerhead rigged up above. Abel and my mom slept with Andrew in the office on a thin mattress they’d roll out on the floor. I slept in the cars. I got really good at sleeping in cars. I know all the best cars to sleep in. The worst were the cheap ones, Volkswagens, low-end Japanese sedans. The seats barely reclined, no headrests, cheap fake-leather upholstery. I’d spend half the night trying not to slide off the seat. I’d wake up with sore knees because I couldn’t stretch out and extend my legs. German cars were wonderful, especially Mercedes. Big, plush leather seats, like couches. They were cold when you first climbed in, but they were well insulated and warmed up nicely. All I needed was my school blazer to curl up under, and I could get really cozy inside a Mercedes. But the best, hands-down, were American cars. I used to pray for a customer to come in with a big Buick with bench seats. If I saw one of those, I’d be like, Yes! It was rare for American cars to come in, but when they did, boy, was I in heaven. Since Mighty Mechanics was now a family business, and I was family, I also had to work. There was no more time for play. There wasn’t even time for homework. I’d walk home, the school uniform would come off, the overalls would go on, and I’d get under the hood of some sedan. I got to a point where I could do a basic service on a car by myself, and often I did. Abel would say, “That Honda. Minor service.” And I’d get under the hood. Day in and day out. Points, plugs, condensers, oil filters, air filters. Install new seats, change tires, swap headlights, fix taillights. Go to the parts shop, buy the parts, back to the workshop. Eleven years old, and that was my life. I was falling behind in school. I wasn’t getting anything done. My teachers used to come down on me. “Why aren’t you doing your homework?” “I can’t do my homework. I have work, at home.”

• From Born on the Fourth of July (1976)

  notice the neighbors staring over from their front lawns or out their windows at the neighborhood boy who had returned from the war with the terrible wound, desperately trying to walk again. I did my best to put them at ease, waving to them and smiling as I awkwardly struggled to keep my balance and not fall. I didn’t want them to feel sorry for me. As difficult and frustrating as it was for me each day, I chose to see it as a great physical challenge rather than a burden. Even back then I was trying hard to see things in a more positive light. I was still the great athlete striving to win the championship, to be my very best and make the Olympics and win a gold medal. And although I fell several times in my yard that summer, each time I was able to get myself back up and continue on. One afternoon, just as the summer was ending, I remember my mother peering through the dining room window with the saddest look on her face I had ever seen, as I once again struggled to drag myself around the yard. She had watched me try to walk in my braces many times before, encouraging me and telling me how proud she was, but on this afternoon she was no longer able to hide her sorrow. Years later, my mother would confide that seeing me for the first time attempting to walk with my braces in my backyard, occasionally losing my balance, falling and picking myself up, reminded her of Jesus Christ and the Stations of the Cross. I would try to smile, lifting one of my crutches above my head and shaking it in a show of triumph to let her know everything was okay, but my mother just kept staring at me, seeming as if she was about to cry. “What’s wrong, Mom?” I asked her when I got back into the house later that day, but all she could do was continue to look at me with those sad eyes, telling me how it hurt her to see me struggling each day, my body all twisted and atrophied, dragging myself exhausted around the yard. “It really hurts me to see you out there. It’s too much, Ronnie. It’s too much. Maybe the doctors were right. Maybe you should just accept the fact that you’ve got to be in a wheelchair. It’s not good for you. It’s too much of a strain on your heart. I watch you, Ronnie, and it hurts me. I love you, Ronnie. I just don’t want to see you suffer anymore.” I had hoped that my mother would continue to be encouraging and supportive of my attempt to walk again. Didn’t she and the others understand what I was trying to do? I tried not to let the neighbors’ uneasy stares and my mother’s sadness and doubts bother me, but by the end of that summer I was

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  To us, for example, they would say “a lovely man,” but when their cronies came round and the gossip began to fly, then one would hear an entirely different brand of comment, accompanied usually by peals of scornful laughter and sly mimicry. My father fell mortally ill as a result of swearing off too abruptly. All his life he had been a jolly hail fellow well met: he had put on a rather becoming paunch, his cheeks were well filled out and red as a beet, his manners were easy and indolent, and he seemed destined to live on into a ripe old age, sound and healthy as a nut. But beneath this smooth and jolly exterior things were not at all well. His affairs were in bad shape, the debts were piling up, and already some of his older friends were beginning to drop him. My mother’s attitude was what worried him most. She saw things in a black light and she took no trouble to conceal it. Now and then she became hysterical and went at him hammer and tongs, swearing at him in the vilest language and smashing the dishes and threatening to run away for good. The upshot of it was that he arose one morning determined never to touch another drop. Nobody believed that he meant it seriously; there had been others in the family who swore off, who went on the water wagon, as they used to say, but who quickly tumbled off again. No one in the family, and they had all tried at different times, had ever become a successful teetotaler. But my old man was different. Where or how he got the strength to maintain his resolution, God only knows. It seems incredible to me, because had I been in his boots myself I would have drunk myself to death. Not the old man, however. This was the first time in his life he had ever shown any resolution about anything. My mother was so astounded that, idiot that she was, she began to make fun of him, to quip him about his strength of will which had heretofore been so lamentably weak. Still he stuck to his guns. His drinking pals faded away rather quickly. In short, he soon found himself almost completely isolated. That must have cut him to the quick, for before very many weeks had passed, he became deathly ill and a consultation was held. He recovered a bit, enough to get out of bed and walk about, but still a very sick man. He was supposed to be suffering from ulcers of the stomach, though nobody was quite sure exactly what ailed him. Everybody understood, however, that he had made a mistake in swearing off so abruptly. It was too late, however, to return to a temperate mode of living. His stomach was so weak that it wouldn’t even hold a plate of soup. In a couple of months he was almost a skeleton. And old.

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

  For my mother’s part, the fact that this man didn’t particularly want a family with her, was prevented by law from having a family with her, was part of the attraction. She wanted a child, not a man stepping in to run her life. For my father’s part, I know that for a long time he kept saying no. Eventually he said yes. Why he said yes is a question I will never have the answer to. Nine months after that yes, on February 20, 1984, my mother checked into Hillbrow Hospital for a scheduled C-section delivery. Estranged from her family, pregnant by a man she could not be seen with in public, she was alone. The doctors took her up to the delivery room, cut open her belly, and reached in and pulled out a half-white, half-black child who violated any number of laws, statutes, and regulations—I was born a crime. — When the doctors pulled me out there was an awkward moment where they said, “Huh. That’s a very light-skinned baby.” A quick scan of the delivery room revealed no man standing around to take credit. “Who is the father?” they asked. “His father is from Swaziland,” my mother said, referring to the tiny, landlocked kingdom in the west of South Africa. They probably knew she was lying, but they accepted it because they needed an explanation. Under apartheid, the government labeled everything on your birth certificate: race, tribe, nationality. Everything had to be categorized. My mother lied and said I was born in KaNgwane, the semi-sovereign homeland for Swazi people living in South Africa. So my birth certificate doesn’t say that I’m Xhosa, which technically I am. And it doesn’t say that I’m Swiss, which the government wouldn’t allow. It just says that I’m from another country. My father isn’t on my birth certificate. Officially, he’s never been my father. And my mother, true to her word, was prepared for him not to be involved. She’d rented a new flat for herself in Joubert Park, the neighborhood adjacent to Hillbrow, and that’s where she took me when she left the hospital. The next week she went to visit him, with no baby. To her surprise, he asked where I was. “You said that you didn’t want to be involved,” she said. And he hadn’t, but once I existed he realized he couldn’t have a son living around the corner and not be a part of my life. So the three of us formed a kind of family, as much as our peculiar situation would allow. I lived with my mom. We’d sneak around and visit my dad when we could.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  I was twenty-one and she admitted to be thirty-six. Every time I looked at her I said to myself—when I am thirty she will be forty-five, when I am forty she will be fifty-five, when I am fifty she will be sixty-five. She had fine wrinkles under the eyes, laughing wrinkles, but wrinkles just the same. When I kissed her they were magnified a dozen times. She laughed easily, but her eyes were sad, terribly sad. They were Armenian eyes. Her hair, which had been red once, was now a peroxide blonde. Otherwise she was adorable—a Venusian body, a Venusian soul, loyal, lovable, grateful, everything a woman should be, except that she was fifteen years older . The fifteen years’ difference drove me crazy. When I went out with her I thought only—how will it be ten years hence? Or else, what age does she seem to have now? Do I look old enough for her? Once we got back to the house it was all right. Climbing the stairs I would run my finger up her crotch, which used to make her whinny like a horse. If her son, who was almost my age, were in bed we would close the doors and lock ourselves in the kitchen. She’d lie on the narrow kitchen table and I’d slough it into her. It was marvelous. And what made it more marvelous was that with each performance I would say to myself—This is the last time . . . tomorrow I will beat it! And then, since she was the janitress, I would go down to the cellar and roll the ash barrels out for her. In the morning, when the son had left for work, I would climb up to the roof and air the bedding. Both she and the son had T.B. . . . Sometimes there were no table bouts. Sometimes the hopelessness of it all got me by the throat and I would put on my things and go for a walk. Now and then I forgot to return. And when I did that I was more miserable than ever, because I knew that she would be waiting for me with those large sorrowful eyes. I’d go back to her like a man who had a sacred duty to perform. I’d lie down on the bed and let her caress me; I’d study the wrinkles under her eyes and the roots of her hair which were turning red. Lying there like that, I would often think about the other one, the one I loved, would wonder if she were lying down for it too, or. . . Those long walks I took three hundred and sixty-five days of the year!—I would go over them in my mind lying beside the other woman. How many times since have I relived these walks! The dreariest, bleakest, ugliest streets man ever created. In anguish I relive these walks, these streets, these first smashed hopes.

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

  The courts ignored Debbie Baigre’s call for a reduced sentence. By 2010, Florida had sentenced more than a hundred children to life imprisonment without parole for non-homicide offenses, several of whom were thirteen years old at the time of the crime. All of the youngest condemned children—thirteen or fourteen years of age—were black or Latino. Florida had the largest population in the world of children condemned to die in prison for non-homicides. — The section of South Central Los Angeles where Antonio Nuñez lived was plagued by gang violence. Antonio’s mother would force her children to the floor when shooting erupted outside their crowded home, which happened with disturbing regularity. Nearly a dozen of their neighbors were shot and killed after being caught in the crossfire of gun violence. The difficulties outside Antonio’s home were compounded by severe domestic abuse inside the home. From the time Antonio was in diapers, he endured abusive beatings by his father, who hit him with his hand, fist, belt, and extension cords, causing bruises and cuts; he also witnessed terrifying conflicts in which his parents would violently assault each other and threaten to kill one another. The violence was so bad that on more than one occasion Antonio called the police. He began experiencing severe nightmares from which he awoke screaming. Antonio’s depressed mother neglected him; when he cried, she just left him alone. The only activity she could recall ever attending for Antonio was his graduation from a Drug Abuse Resistance Education program in elementary school. “He was excited to take his picture with the police officer,” she would later say. “He wanted to be a police officer when he grew up.” In September 1999, a month after he turned thirteen, Antonio Nuñez was riding his bicycle near his home when a stranger shot him in his stomach, side, and arm. Antonio collapsed onto the street. His fourteen-year-old brother José heard him screaming and ran to his aid. José was shot in the head and killed when he responded to his little brother’s call for help. Antonio suffered serious internal injuries that hospitalized him for weeks. When Antonio was released from the hospital, his mother sent him to live with relatives in Las Vegas, where he tried to recover from the tragedy of José’s death. Antonio was relieved to be away from the dangers of South Central Los Angeles. He stayed out of trouble, was helpful and obedient at home, and spent evenings doing his homework with help from his cousin’s husband.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  Soon the street began to smell bad, soon the real people moved away, soon the houses began to deteriorate and even the stoops fell away, like the paint. Soon the street looked like a dirty mouth with all the prominent teeth missing, with ugly charred stumps gaping here and there, the lips rotting, the palate gone. Soon the garbage was knee deep in the gutter and the fire escapes filled with bloated bedding, with cockroaches, with dried blood. Soon the kosher sign appeared on the shop windows and there was poultry everywhere and lox and sour pickles and enormous loaves of bread. Soon there were baby carriages in every areaway and on the stoops and in the little yards and before the shop fronts. And with the change the English language also disappeared; one heard nothing but Yiddish, nothing but this sputtering, choking, hissing tongue in which God and rotten vegetables sound alike and mean alike. We were among the first families to move away, following the invasion. Two or three times a year I came back to the old neighborhood, for a birthday or for Christmas or Thanksgiving. With each visit I marked the loss of something I had loved and cherished. It was like a bad dream. It got worse and worse. The house in which my relatives still lived was like an old fortress going to ruin; they were stranded in one of the wings of the fortress, maintaining a forlorn, island life, beginning themselves to look sheepish, hunted, degraded. They even began to make distinctions between their Jewish neighbors, finding some of them quite human, quite decent, clean, kind, sympathetic, charitable, etc. etc. To me it was heartrending. I could have taken a machine gun and mowed the whole neighborhood down, Jew and Gentile together. It was about the time of the invasion that the authorities decided to change the name of North Second Street to Metropolitan Avenue. This highway, which to the Gentiles had been the road to the cemeteries, now became what is called an artery of traffic, a link between two ghettos. On the New York side the river front was rapidly being transformed owing to the erection of the skyscrapers. On our side, the Brooklyn side, the warehouses were piling up and the approaches to the various new bridges created plazas, comfort stations, poolrooms, stationery shops, ice-cream parlors, restaurants, clothing stores, hock shops, etc. In short everything was becoming metropolitan , in the odious sense of the word. As long as we lived in the old neighborhood we never referred to Metropolitan Avenue: it was always North Second Street, despite the official change of name. Perhaps it was eight or ten years later, when I stood one winter’s day at the corner of the street facing the river and noticed for the first time the great tower of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Building, that I realized that North Second Street was no more. The imaginary boundary of my world had changed.

• From Combating Cult Mind Control: The Guide to Protection, Rescue and Recovery from Destructive Cults (1988)

  Despite the disturbing traits of Masters’ cult group,168 as long as Alan’s parents continued their dysfunctional style of relating and communicating with him, it seemed to me that staying in the group, at least for the time being, was the better choice for him. At least the group offered him an opportunity to socialize with other people, as well as the hope that he would get better by following his “sinless” savior, Roy Masters. Clearly, understanding mind control and destructive cults was not enough for Alan. He needed an alternative environment, and the whole family needed a good deal of personal and family counseling. Unfortunately, although his parents loved him, they were unwilling to get the help they needed. They merely wanted me to get Alan out of the cult, and that was all. On top of that, the Browns didn’t want to invest the money required in a good rehabilitation program for Alan. He absolutely needed to have the experience of being somewhere healthy—not at home, and not in the cult. Sadly, he didn’t get it. My efforts were doomed from the start. Alan’s parents did not understand cults and mind control thoroughly, nor were they willing to examine their own behavior and take the necessary steps to change. Meanwhile, Alan was getting too much from the cult—hope, attention, and connection with people—to even consider giving it up. Unfortunately, people like Alan rarely succeed within a cult, even by its own standards. More often than not, they get pushed to their limit, burn out, and either walk out or are kicked out. I hoped that when that day came, Alan would remember some of the things he and I discussed. I learned several valuable lessons from this case, back in 1980. First, I learned that screening, meeting with, educating and properly preparing the family is vital. If the family is not willing to invest the necessary time, energy and money, I should not take the case. Second, if the family isn’t willing to address its own problems and make an effort to change and grow, it will undermine any rescue effort, as well as the cult member’s potential exit and recovery. Over the years, I have come to understand the critical variables for success. I will only accept a case if I am sure it will be a positive step for the cult member and their family, even if we cannot rescue the cult member overnight. In addition, I’ve learned that three full days of counseling is necessary for success. The only people I have been unsuccessful with went back to their cults without giving their families three full days’ time, or were married or had family still in the group.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  “Do you remember those cartoons in Playboy?” she asked as they lay, not yet touching, on the bed. “The ones about prostitutes with the same faces and bodies lying on pillows, wearing lacy nighties? And the men who were standing with flowers and chocolates in their hands?” “Yes, of course.” “It’s funny, because I used to look at those things when I was ten and eleven years old and—well, I didn’t really know what prostitutes were, but it looked like a good thing from what I could see in Playboy. They were beautiful and they didn’t have to do anything but sit on cushions and men loved them. So I told my mother I wanted to be a prostitute when I grew up.” “That’s fabulous.” He smiled as though this was the most entertaining thing he’d heard all week. “Naturally she freaked out, and my parents sent me to a psychiatrist.” “Oh, good Lord.” “But after a few visits the psychiatrist decided I was normal. I mean, I had good grades and friends and everything, so I didn’t have to go anymore.” She shrugged. “My poor sister wasn’t so lucky. He had her on lithium by the time she was eleven.” “But the psychiatrist was wrong about you, wasn’t he?” She laughed, but she thought: He was not wrong. I am actually pretty normal. “So that’s what you’re doing. You’re playing prostitute.” He stroked her face and hair. She was startled that he seemed to be thinking in the same terms as she had been downstairs. She pictured him with his orange-haired, chain-smoking performance artist, and she had an almost visual sense of his delight in this educated woman who flew in the face of society, deliberately taking on a role that he probably considered demeaning, and then analyzing it. “Actually, I’m not playing. This is for real. I’m not going to give you your money back.” “You know what I mean.” He drew her against him and lightly scratched her head. “But even as a kid I realized there were problems with the customer-hooker romance. Because once, when I was about twelve, I was in my father’s study rubbing his neck—I used to do that all the time for him—and there was this Playboy calendar over his desk and some babe was on it and I said to him, ‘Do you like her?’ and he said, ‘Sure I do,’ and I said, ‘Would you like to meet her?’ and he looked shocked and said, ‘No, she’s just a dumb broad.’ And I was appalled.” Bernard’s smile almost became a laugh. “Well, but you know he was lying. He would’ve loved to meet her.” “It’s not funny. I was hurt by what he said. I was hurt for her.”

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  She hung up rather gratified that she’d slighted and irritated him. She paced a bit more and then settled down in the living area, where she stared into space. She remembered a story she’d read once in which the main character, an older woman who was pining to see a boy she’d likely never see again, found accidental solace in late-night TV, where she saw an actor who looked like an older version of her young heartthrob. Leisha had, after all, wanted to be an actress at one point. Susan found the remote-control unit and flicked on the TV. It was on the pornographic cable station. No one there resembled Leisha. Neither did anyone on Get Smart, Love That Bob or the Japanese horror movie. The last channel she tried revealed a nameless old Italian thing about international espionage, which had a murky, kinky sexual flavor that held her interest for several minutes. And, in fact, there was a dark, intense woman who was playing an intellectual slut. If Leisha had ever become an actress, this was probably the kind of role she’d get, but Susan doubted she had the tenacity to land roles even like this one. She flicked off the TV. It embarrassed her to hold such a low opinion of Leisha’s ability, but it wasn’t a reflection of contempt. Leisha was simply meant to feel and be, not to do. But what an arrogant thing to close off Leisha’s possibilities like that. After all, no one who knew Susan six years before could have predicted exactly where she would wind up, and some people had been surprised. She put her head back on the couch and closed her eyes. She imagined Leisha as an actress in a sci-fi movie, playing a tiny queen in silver lamé. She saw her as a mother in a blue-and-white-checked blouse, kneeling on the floor to play a game with her child. She saw her as an aging hipster in a bar, her eyes made up in flames of black and silver, complaining about her current relationship to whoever would listen. She saw her as a bag lady. Then the images peeled away and she saw her standing in empty space, wearing the tight Capri pants she used to wear, a dreamy, half-smiling girl, her intensity momentarily muted by some inner reflection. She looked at this girl and realized that, with all the falseness and silliness between them, she had cared for her, and been cared for in return. She wanted to talk to her, and tomorrow she would try again. She sat in the living area for almost an hour thinking about what she might say to her, and what Leisha might say back.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  Virginia called Magdalen late that night, when Jarold was in bed. She didn’t hear anything strange in her voice. When Virginia got off the phone, she put on an old gray sweater and walked from room to room. The rooms were dark and hollow. They seemed unfamiliar and eerie, but that didn’t make her go upstairs or turn on the light. She stood in the middle of the dark living room with her feet together, wrapping the sweater around her. She stood there not thinking about anything, just hearing the wind and the faint hum of the house. — Charles and Jarold had a fight. Charles was graduating from high school and he didn’t want to go to college. He just wanted to move out of the house. Jarold told him his attitude was stupid and weak. “Magdalen thought she’d go the unconventional, freaky route,” said Jarold at breakfast, “and look where it got her. Married, a mother. And happy for the first time in her mixed-up life.” “I still think Magdalen’s freaky,” said Charles. It went on for about a week. Then Charles lost his temper. He said, “I’d rather be on my face in the Bowery than be a horse’s ass like you.” “Charles,” said Virginia. Jarold crossed the room and belted Charles across the face, knocking him out of his chair. Virginia dropped her glass in the sink and ran to Charles. “Don’t you dare hit my son!” she screamed. “Oh, get out of here, you idiot,” said Charles. He wiped the blood from his mouth in a bored way. — Virginia began sitting up late at night in the den, drinking and staring at her gray feet. She made sarcastic comments that nobody paid any attention to. Jarold called her “Mother.” “Now, Mother,” he’d say. Charles moved to New York. He got a job in a record store and an apartment on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Other than that, it was hard to tell what he was doing. — Virginia called Camille. Camille was meeting wonderful new people and being successful. She told lots of funny stories. But then she said, “I don’t know if I should tell you this, but I’m having a hard time keeping it to myself. Last month Magdalen told me that John slapped her. Not hard or anything. But still.” She paused so Virginia could say something. Virginia sat quietly and stared at the kitchen. “Of course, we both know how annoying Magdalen can be,” continued Camille. “But that doesn’t give him the right to strike her.”

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  He sat next to her and put his hand on her shoulder. “Don’t you see how special you are? No other girl I’ve seen like this would ever have thought to say something like that. All they can think of is how to get more money out of me and here you are worrying about how much I’m spending. I’m not trying to flatter you, you are different.” “Aren’t you worried about getting AIDS?” “From a girl like you? C’mon, don’t put yourself down.” She smiled, sad and strained, but sort of affectionate, and put her hands on his shoulders. She felt to him like one of his puppy patients embracing him as he carried it across the room for a shot. “I’m sorry I’m being so shitty,” she said. “I just hate this job and this place.” “Here,” he said. “I’m going to buy two hours, so we can just relax and unwind. You just lie down and get snuggled up in the sheet.” He got up and turned off the light. He found a romantic jazz station on the radio. He undressed and got under the sheet with her, wrapping them both in a ball. He held her neck and felt her forehead against his shoulder. Her limbs were nestled and docile, as if all her stiff, pony-trot energy had vanished. The dim light of the gurgling fish tank cast an orangy glow over the room. “This is so nice and glamorous,” he said. “When is your wife coming back?” asked a voice from the nuzzling bundle on his arm. “In three days.” He sighed and stared at the stupid, lovely slivers of fish darting around their ugly castle. — Of course he knew that concern for his financial situation wasn’t the only reason she’d suggested that he shouldn’t see her so often. She was probably sick of him. He remembered dating well enough to know that women didn’t like to be pursued too closely. It could seem sappy, he supposed, to come grinning in there after her every single night. The next night he would stay home, and read or watch television. He enjoyed making dinner for himself. There were still a lot of good things left in the refrigerator—herring, a chunk of potato salad that was only slightly rancid, cream cheese, a jar of artichoke hearts, egg bread. It was too messy to eat in the kitchen—the counter was covered with encrusted plates and pans filled with silverware and water.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  Turning the corner wasn’t simply a selfish desire to avoid unpleasantness; Susan could imagine the pain that Leisha would feel if she was recognized, and it made her cringe. But she would have to get her off the street, buy her a meal, get in touch with her family and so on. She acknowledged and then stifled the idea that her old friend might be too disturbed to remember her, and was appalled to suddenly identify a part of herself that was satisfied, even pleased, at the thought of Leisha the bag lady. This part of her wanted to help Leisha, but only out of duty and the pleasure of condescension; their friendship had ended angrily. Susan dropped her head and covered her face with her hands, raising it to the gawking gaze of a passing teenager. She stepped into the sidewalk march again, and the bag lady was gone. No, there she was, standing against the wall. Susan walked right up to her and started to speak, then realized that the woman wasn’t Leisha. The stranger looked at her with mild, glassy eyes (hazel, not dark brown) and put out her hand. Relieved but disconcerted, Susan groped through her purse, found five dollars and pressed it into the pinched little hand. The woman put it away without looking at it and said, “Jesus loves you.” Susan walked back to her friend’s apartment via Eighth Street, becoming depressed as she was reminded of expeditions with Leisha for shoes. Leisha had been part of an amorphous body of memories provoked by this visit to Manhattan, but now she was the lens through which all the other memories were seen, Susan cursed her impressionability and tried to think of something else. Susan was thirty-five years old, and Leisha thirty-four. When they were friends, Susan was an aspiring writer and Leisha an actress. Whenever she had a positive image of Leisha—a rarity during these last six years—she saw them together in Leisha’s apartment drinking tea, drinking wine, snorting coke, something, and talking about their careers. Leisha had loved the word “career.” “I think it’s going to happen for you really first,” she’d say. “Like boom, your career’s just going to skyrocket—I mean it.”

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  They sat on the cold stone steps of an apartment building. They unbuttoned their jackets and huddled together, his hands on either side of her softly sweatered body. “You’re so strange,” she said. “It’s hard to talk to you.” “How so?” “You’re always talking at me. You don’t listen to what I say.” “I seem strange because I’m special.” “I think it’s because you take so many pills.” “You should start taking them. Did you know the government gives them to soldiers who are about to go into combat? They sharpen the reflexes, senses, everything.” “I’m not going into combat.” There was a sound from above. They turned and saw a handsome, well-dressed middle-aged couple at the head of the steps. Joey saw a flicker of admiration in Daisy’s face as she looked at the tall blond lady in her evening dress. The couple began to descend. Daisy and Joey stood and squeezed into a stony corner to let them pass. The man’s shoulder scratched against Joey. The man coughed, quite unnecessarily. “Excuse me,” said the woman. “We only live here.” “You have plenty of room,” said Daisy sharply. “You have no business being here,” said the man. The couple stood on the sidewalk and frowned, their shoulders indignant. “Why do you care?” said Daisy. “We aren’t in your way.” Her voice quivered oddly. “Ssssh,” said Joey. “Let them live their lives.” “You are very rude,” said the woman. “If you’re here when we get back, we’re going to call the police.” She swept away, sweeping her husband with her. They were probably in a hurry. Joey watched the woman’s dress fluttering along the pavement. “That was strange,” he said. “I’ve sat on lots of steps before and that’s never happened.” Daisy didn’t answer. “I guess it’s different in the East Village.” Daisy sniffed wetly. He reached into his pocket and got out his bag of jelly beans. He offered some to Daisy, but she ignored him. Her head was down, and slow, quiet tears ran singly down her nose. He put his arms around her. “Hey, come on,” he said. He felt no response from her. She didn’t move or look at him. He dropped his arm and looked away, confused. He ate his jelly beans and looked at the pool of lamplight in the black street.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  She stood in the middle of the dark living room with her feet together, wrapping the sweater around her. She stood there not thinking about anything, just hearing the wind and the faint hum of the house. — Charles and Jarold had a fight. Charles was graduating from high school and he didn’t want to go to college. He just wanted to move out of the house. Jarold told him his attitude was stupid and weak. “Magdalen thought she’d go the unconventional, freaky route,” said Jarold at breakfast, “and look where it got her. Married, a mother. And happy for the first time in her mixed-up life.” “I still think Magdalen’s freaky,” said Charles. It went on for about a week. Then Charles lost his temper. He said, “I’d rather be on my face in the Bowery than be a horse’s ass like you.” “Charles,” said Virginia. Jarold crossed the room and belted Charles across the face, knocking him out of his chair. Virginia dropped her glass in the sink and ran to Charles. “Don’t you dare hit my son!” she screamed. “Oh, get out of here, you idiot,” said Charles. He wiped the blood from his mouth in a bored way. — Virginia began sitting up late at night in the den, drinking and staring at her gray feet. She made sarcastic comments that nobody paid any attention to. Jarold called her “Mother.” “Now, Mother,” he’d say. Charles moved to New York. He got a job in a record store and an apartment on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Other than that, it was hard to tell what he was doing. — Virginia called Camille. Camille was meeting wonderful new people and being successful. She told lots of funny stories. But then she said, “I don’t know if I should tell you this, but I’m having a hard time keeping it to myself. Last month Magdalen told me that John slapped her. Not hard or anything. But still.” She paused so Virginia could say something. Virginia sat quietly and stared at the kitchen. “Of course, we both know how annoying Magdalen can be,” continued Camille. “But that doesn’t give him the right to strike her.” Virginia left the conversation feeling cheated. Camille had told her about Magdalen at the end of the conversation, after all the good things. That seemed strange to Virginia. She sat for a long time on the stool under the phone with her legs tightly crossed and her elbows on the knee of one leg. She thought about how awful the kitchen was. There were balls of dust and tiny crumbs around the edges of the floor. Pans full of greasy water ranged across the counter. The top of the refrigerator was black. Everything in the room seemed disconnected from its purpose. — In the fall, Daniel decided that he didn’t like engineering school and dropped out. Jarold argued with him over the phone for a long time.

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

  When my mother was nine years old, she told my gran that she didn’t want to live with her anymore. She wanted to live with her father. “If that’s what you want,” Gran said, “then go.” Temperance came to pick my mom up, and she happily bounded up into his car, ready to go and be with the man she loved. But instead of taking her to live with him in the Meadowlands, without even telling her why, he packed her off and sent her to live with his sister in the Xhosa homeland, Transkei—he didn’t want her, either. My mom was the middle child. Her sister was the eldest and firstborn. Her brother was the only son, bearer of the family name. They both stayed in Soweto, were both raised and cared for by their parents. But my mom was unwanted. She was the second girl. The only place she would have less value would be China. My mother didn’t see her family again for twelve years. She lived in a hut with fourteen cousins—fourteen children from fourteen different mothers and fathers. All the husbands and uncles had gone off to the cities to find work, and the children who weren’t wanted, or whom no one could afford to feed, had been sent back to the homeland to live on this aunt’s farm. The homelands were, ostensibly, the original homes of South Africa’s tribes, sovereign and semi-sovereign “nations” where black people would be “free.” Of course, this was a lie. For starters, despite the fact that black people made up over 80 percent of South Africa’s population, the territory allocated for the homelands was about 13 percent of the country’s land. There was no running water, no electricity. People lived in huts. Where South Africa’s white countryside was lush and irrigated and green, the black lands were overpopulated and overgrazed, the soil depleted and eroding. Other than the menial wages sent home from the cities, families scraped by with little beyond subsistence-level farming. My mother’s aunt hadn’t taken her in out of charity. She was there to work. “I was one of the cows,” my mother would later say, “one of the oxen.” She and her cousins were up at half past four, plowing fields and herding animals before the sun baked the soil as hard as cement and made it too hot to be anywhere but in the shade.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  They sat on the cold stone steps of an apartment building. They unbuttoned their jackets and huddled together, his hands on either side of her softly sweatered body. “You’re so strange,” she said. “It’s hard to talk to you.” “How so?” “You’re always talking at me. You don’t listen to what I say.” “I seem strange because I’m special.” “I think it’s because you take so many pills.” “You should start taking them. Did you know the government gives them to soldiers who are about to go into combat? They sharpen the reflexes, senses, everything.” “I’m not going into combat.” There was a sound from above. They turned and saw a handsome, well-dressed middle-aged couple at the head of the steps. Joey saw a flicker of admiration in Daisy’s face as she looked at the tall blond lady in her evening dress. The couple began to descend. Daisy and Joey stood and squeezed into a stony corner to let them pass. The man’s shoulder scratched against Joey. The man coughed, quite unnecessarily. “Excuse me,” said the woman. “We only live here.” “You have plenty of room,” said Daisy sharply. “You have no business being here,” said the man. The couple stood on the sidewalk and frowned, their shoulders indignant. “Why do you care?” said Daisy. “We aren’t in your way.” Her voice quivered oddly. “Ssssh,” said Joey. “Let them live their lives.” “You are very rude,” said the woman. “If you’re here when we get back, we’re going to call the police.” She swept away, sweeping her husband with her. They were probably in a hurry. Joey watched the woman’s dress fluttering along the pavement. “That was strange,” he said. “I’ve sat on lots of steps before and that’s never happened.” Daisy didn’t answer. “I guess it’s different in the East Village.” Daisy sniffed wetly. He reached into his pocket and got out his bag of jelly beans. He offered some to Daisy, but she ignored him. Her head was down, and slow, quiet tears ran singly down her nose. He put his arms around her. “Hey, come on,” he said. He felt no response from her. She didn’t move or look at him. He dropped his arm and looked away, confused. He ate his jelly beans and looked at the pool of lamplight in the black street.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  I felt sorry for the human race, for the stupidity of man and his lack of imagination. Missing a meal wasn’t so terrible—it was the ghastly emptiness of the street that disturbed me profoundly. All those bloody houses, one like another, and all so empty and cheerless looking. Fine paving stones under foot and asphalt in the middle of the street and beautifully-hideously-elegant brownstone stoops to walk up, and yet a guy could walk about all day and all night on this expensive material and be looking for a crust of bread. That’s what got me. The incongruousness of it. If one could only dash out with a dinner bell and yell “Listen, listen, people, I’m a guy what’s hungry. Who wants shoes shined? Who wants the garbage brought out? Who wants the drainpipes cleaned out?” If you could only go out in the street and put it to them clear like that. But no, you don’t dare to open your trap. If you tell a guy in the street you’re hungry you scare the shit out of him, he runs like hell. That’s something I never understood. I don’t understand it yet. The whole thing is so simple—you just say Yes when some one comes up to you. And if you can’t say Yes you can take him by the arm and ask some other bird to help you out. Why you have to don a uniform and kill men you don’t know, just to get that crust of bread, is a mystery to me. That’s what I think about, more than about whose trap it’s going down or how much it costs. Why should I give a fuck about what anything costs? I’m here to live, not to calculate. And that’s just what the bastards don’t want you to do—to live! They want you to spend your whole life adding up figures. That makes sense to them. That’s reasonable. That’s intelligent. If I were running the boat things wouldn’t be so orderly perhaps, but it would be gayer, by Jesus! You wouldn’t have to shit in your pants over trifles.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  “Oh, no. That probably had nothing to do with it.” “Well, maybe not. I think part of it was that he was intrigued by me as a variation of her.” “Exactly!” He said this with great emphasis, as though she’d hit upon something important. “I almost seduced my wife’s sister the first time we separated, but we both balked at the last minute, mostly her. We were at the kitchen table, drinking gin.” He smiled. “Of course your sister’s boyfriend wanted you. One wants them all.” She began to talk about an old lover of hers who reminded her of Bernard, but as she talked she kept imagining Bernard on a clean tiled kitchen floor, humping his blond wife’s blond sister. It reminded her of the stories in The New Yorker about decent professional people having extramarital affairs. The more she contemplated this picture, the more difficult it was to imagine sex with this man…this customer. She had a quick feeling of sympathy for his wife, lying in her single bed, in her separate room, next to the room of a man who wanted them all. She started to feel something like guilt, and to forestall it, she began to kiss him. The bed creaked and he parted her legs. From that moment on, the same sense of disaffection that she’d felt in the restaurant overtook her. Afterward, they spoke some more, but the conversation didn’t work. They even had a strangely snide argument about whether or not Nabokov was a good writer. In the frequent silences, she felt that he sensed her sudden disapproval of him. She was a little sorry, because she liked him, but at the same time she was relieved when he got up to go. When he said “Take good care of yourself,” she knew that she wouldn’t hear from him again. It wasn’t until half an hour after he’d left that she realized that for the first time he hadn’t left her any money. This had an entirely unexpected effect on her; she sat on her bed and cried. She couldn’t have said what she was crying about. Christine’s, Brett, Jackson, her first miserable, lonely year in New York and Bernard the lawyer all seemed to have something to do with it, although she couldn’t tell if she was just pulling anything available into her sadness. She cried until she was sure she was absolutely finished. Then she got up, put on her shoes and went out for a walk.