Shame

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 Reading Biblical Literature: Genesis to Revelation (2016)

  Reading Biblical Literature: Genesis to Revelation116 to the temple—where they think they are safe—as if their unethical behavior didn’t matter. Jeremiah insists that it’s nothing but an illusion to think that the temple provides cover for those who engage in unethical conduct elsewhere. ‹ Later, Jeremiah continues to shatter illusions by considering Israel’s status as God’s chosen people. Again, he challenges the idea that belonging to God meant the people were protected no matter what. ● In chapter 18, Jeremiah uses the image of a potter working with clay for God’s relationship to Israel. He says that if Israel’s life has become misshapen—if social patterns have become warped—then God can take them through a process of collapse and rebuilding. Like the potter, God can shape the nation into a different form. Institutions can be pulled down and remade. And the image people have of themselves can be crushed and refashioned. ● Of course, the texture of clay is variable, and the potter must respond accordingly. He must change his approach according to the nature of the clay. In the same way, God might start with a wonderful design in mind, but if people prove to be too resistant, then God will alter his plans and reshape society into a new form. If people begin to respond well, then God, too, will respond favorably and change. ‹ Both the T emple Sermon and the image of the potter and clay are intended to shatter the illusions of security that Jeremiah thought stood in the way of change. These passages include constructive elements, but the critical aspects are dominant, and reactions to Jeremiah’s message are largely negative. In chapter 20, an official in the temple has Jeremiah arrested, beaten, and placed in confinement overnight. The Pathos of Jeremiah ‹ The pathos of Jeremiah himself centers on his struggle with shame. That may seem surprising, because Jeremiah has seemed so strident in his public criticism of popular beliefs. But he is human, and shame is deeply connected to the human need to be valued. People typically do what will bring approval from those whose opinions matter to them and try to avoid being shamed or humiliated, because it brings a painful sense of losing one’s value in the eyes of others.

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

  Reading Biblical Literature: Genesis to Revelation 62 the soldiers of Israel want God to support them, they take the Ark of the Covenant into battle. But in a stunning turn of events, God’s judgment unfolds by allowing Israel’s army to suffer defeat. In battle, the ark of is captured by the Philistines, and the corrupt priesthood at the sanctuary is brought to an end. Act 2: Saul’s Rise to Power ‹By the end of Act I, the old era has reached its end, and Samuel has begun to serve as a fair and honest judge for the people. But soon, Samuel’s sons fall into corruption, and it becomes clear that the old patterns will persist. Act II begins in chapter 8, where the people tell Samuel that they no longer want the old system of leadership by judges. They want a king in order to be like other nations. ‹This request is an enormous misstep. It is a point of conflict between human desire and the purposes of God. The people assume that a king will give them prestige, status, and security, yet Samuel warns that kingship will bring the opposite—oppression, abuse of power, heavy taxation, and more. In the face of their insistent demand, however, Samuel discerns God’s response to let them have a king. Here, we can see the dimension of human responsibility emerging more clearly. The new phase begins when God gives in to human demand, and their misguided intentions set the course of events. ‹In chapter 9, we are introduced to a young man named Saul, who seems to have considerable promise as a leader. Indeed, Samuel discerns that Saul is to be the new king over Israel. Samuel performs a symbolic action—anointing—that will enable Saul to rise to the heights of royal power. After Saul is anointed, he is filled with God’s Spirit, which empowers him for leadership. ‹Saul then encounters his first major challenge as king. The crisis involves a town on the eastern side of the Jordan River that is under attack from a neighboring warlord. The people of the town send messengers to Saul, pleading for help. Saul responds with a show of strength that saves the city. His triumph establishes his reputation as a leader.

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

  Lecture 2—Creation and Chaos in Genesis 13 ‹As we know, God told the man and woman that they could eat the fruit of every tree in the garden, except one: the tree that would give them knowledge of good and evil. God warned that by eating from that tree, they would die. And that is where disruption will start, at the point where God sets a limit for human beings. ‹Why would God would create such a tree, only to tell people not to touch it? Instead of answering this question, the story deals with the human desire to move beyond the limitation. ‹The serpent asks if God really told them not to eat from any tree in the garden. The woman dutifully repeats God’s warning—that they will die if they eat from the tree of knowledge. The serpent then creates the pivotal moment in the plot with some dangerous half-truths. ●He says that if they eat the fruit they won’t die, which is true; they won’t die immediately after eating the fruit, although they will die eventually. ●And the serpent says that they’ll become like God, knowing good and evil. That’s also true; they will come to know good and evil, although they will not be fully like God. ‹Will the woman’s action be shaped by what God said or what the serpent said? Will she respect the limitation or reach beyond it? The narrator heightens the tension by noting that the woman can already see that the fruit is “good.” If she can already see what is good, then what more could she want—except to learn what is evil? ‹When the woman and the man eat the fruit, their newfound knowledge brings them shame at their nakedness. The positive relationship is disrupted. When God asks what happened, the man blames the woman, while she blames the serpent. ‹This disruption is reflected in the negative judgment of God. He says that the mutuality of women and men will give way to male domination, and humanity’s relationship to the earth will be affected. Work will become hard labor, until people die and return to the dust from which they were taken. ‹The story ends when people know the difference between good and evil. Yet God recognizes that knowing what is good does not mean doing what is good. He

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

  Reading Biblical Literature: Genesis to Revelation114 ‹ As the lyrics go on, God’s grief turns to anger at this sense of betrayal, and by chapter 3, he is thinking of a “divorce.” Here, Jeremiah is referring to people participating in fertility cults and acts of devotion to other deities. He portrays the people as a promiscuous wife, much as Hosea did on the same issue. ‹ In conveying the confrontational side of the prophet’s message, however, the underlying sense of love doesn’t disappear. Instead, it turns into God’s longing for reconciliation, and that’s where the constructive aspect comes in. In the last half of chapter 3 and the beginning of chapter 4, God asks “faithless Israel” to return. The Shattering of Illusions ‹ If reconciliation between God and Israel is the goal, what would prevent that from happening? For Jeremiah, a major problem is that people are living with the illusion that nothing is wrong and their position is secure. He tries to shatter that illusion through his words and actions. ‹ A pivotal moment is a speech he delivers at the temple. Keep in mind that people understood the temple to be a visible sign of God’s presence among them. Further, many assumed that as long as God was present, he would protect them; thus, the temple gave them a sense of security. But for Jeremiah, it is absurd to think that God will ignore unethical conduct simply because the people maintain the temple rituals. ‹ In chapter 7, Jeremiah delivers his T emple Sermon. He positions himself at the gate leading into the temple and calls out that the people must change their way of living. Not surprisingly, people entering the temple are annoyed. ‹ Jeremiah’s initial argument fits the constructive side of his message. He says that if the people link ethical conduct to worship in the temple, things will be fine. But they must act justly with one another, not oppress the vulnerable, and not worship other deities. ‹ For the rest of the speech, the critical side of the message predominates. Jeremiah accuses people of treating the temple like a robbers’ den. He pictures people engaging in all kinds of unethical behavior in daily life, then coming Lecture 17—Jeremiah on Anguish and Compassion 115 Jeremiah’s commission to prophecy is somewhat unsettling because he learns that his life is not his own; God has set him apart for purposes that are not of his choosing.

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

  Reading Biblical Literature: Genesis to Revelation 70 will endure forever. Once God has built a house or dynasty for David, one of David’s sons can build a house or temple for God. ‹In that same passage, Nathan compares God’s relationship to the king to that of a father and his son. In ancient Israel, people believed that God adopted each king as his son, but that did not mean that the king was exempt from criticism. Nathan explains that just as an earthly father would discipline his son whenever the child did something wrong, God will discipline the king. Yet just as earthly father would remain committed to his son—even a disobedient son—God will remain committed to David and his heirs forever. ‹As we continue reading 2 Samuel, we find that despite the promise of God’s support, David is deeply flawed. He is capable of infidelity and brutality and must come to terms with the consequences of his own personal failings. ●In 2 Samuel 11, David is at home in his palace in Jerusalem while his army is fighting many miles away. One day, David catches a glimpse of a beautiful woman, Bathsheba, bathing in a house nearby. Her husband is away on active military duty. David has Bathsheba brought to his room, where he sleeps with her. Sometime later, Bathsheba lets David know that she is pregnant. ●David thinks he can cover up the affair by bringing Bathsheba’s husband back from military duty for a short home visit. But the husband refuses to sleep with Bathsheba while all his men are camped in the field. Then, David sends Bathsheba’s husband on a suicide mission and takes Bathsheba as his own wife. ●The prophet Nathan is appalled by David’s machinations. Nathan had told David that God wants to build him a dynasty and that God will establish David’s kingdom forever. Nathan confronts David by telling a parable (2 Sam. 12), in which a rich man unjustly slaughters the lamb of a poor man. ●Outraged at the injustice in the parable, David condemns what the rich man has done and declares that the rich man must repay the poor man four times the amount taken. Already, we can see the parable doing its work. Nathan did not have to tell David that what the rich man did was unjust. The story moved David himself to see the injustice. This allows Nathan to turn David’s judgment against the rich man in the story into a judgment against David’s own actions. ●To make sure that David does not miss the point, Nathan tells him that if it is wrong for a rich man to take a poor man’s lamb, then it is far worse for the

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

  Reading Biblical Literature: Genesis to Revelation 116 to the temple—where they think they are safe—as if their unethical behavior didn’t matter. Jeremiah insists that it’s nothing but an illusion to think that the temple provides cover for those who engage in unethical conduct elsewhere. ‹Later, Jeremiah continues to shatter illusions by considering Israel’s status as God’s chosen people. Again, he challenges the idea that belonging to God meant the people were protected no matter what. ●In chapter 18, Jeremiah uses the image of a potter working with clay for God’s relationship to Israel. He says that if Israel’s life has become misshapen—if social patterns have become warped—then God can take them through a process of collapse and rebuilding. Like the potter, God can shape the nation into a different form. Institutions can be pulled down and remade. And the image people have of themselves can be crushed and refashioned. ●Of course, the texture of clay is variable, and the potter must respond accordingly. He must change his approach according to the nature of the clay. In the same way, God might start with a wonderful design in mind, but if people prove to be too resistant, then God will alter his plans and reshape society into a new form. If people begin to respond well, then God, too, will respond favorably and change. ‹Both the Temple Sermon and the image of the potter and clay are intended to shatter the illusions of security that Jeremiah thought stood in the way of change. These passages include constructive elements, but the critical aspects are dominant, and reactions to Jeremiah’s message are largely negative. In chapter 20, an official in the temple has Jeremiah arrested, beaten, and placed in confinement overnight. The Pathos of Jeremiah ‹The pathos of Jeremiah himself centers on his struggle with shame. That may seem surprising, because Jeremiah has seemed so strident in his public criticism of popular beliefs. But he is human, and shame is deeply connected to the human need to be valued. People typically do what will bring approval from those whose opinions matter to them and try to avoid being shamed or humiliated, because it brings a painful sense of losing one’s value in the eyes of others.

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

  Lecture 9—Saul, the Tragic King 63 ‹Given this promising beginning, where do things go wrong? The narrative does not give us any simple answers. To some extent, it appears that Saul brings problems on himself. He makes decisions that, on one level, make good political and military sense, but on another level, reflect character flaws that will be his undoing. Yet there is also another dimension that involves Saul’s alienation from Samuel and, ultimately, from God. That will mean that Saul must struggle against God’s decision to replace him as king. ●In chapter 15, Samuel tells Saul to go into battle against a troublesome desert tribe east of the Jordan River and to destroy all the people and livestock. ●Initially, Saul is ready to engage in total war, but he objects that it would be a shame to let the enemy’s wealth go to waste. Even though Saul is not supposed to take any booty, he thinks that skimming off the best of the enemy’s property would be acceptable. To show their gratitude, Saul believes that the Israelites can offer a little something to God at one of the local sanctuaries. ●In response, the writer of 1 Samuel says that God came to regret that he ever made Saul king. Although God was the one who chose Saul, Saul has now proven to be unreliable. God initially sends Samuel to confront Saul about the matter, but Saul merely tries to shift blame to the people. ●Yet Saul’s attempt to evade responsibility brings things to the breaking point. Samuel declares that what God wants most is obedience to his word. Thus, Samuel gives Saul this haunting declaration: “Because you have rejected the word of God, God has rejected you from being king.” This loss of divine support means that Saul is reduced to being king in name only. Act 3: Saul’s Downfall ‹The third act begins in chapter 16, where Saul’s loss of status is made clear by the selection of a new leader, who will eventually replace Saul. In Bethlehem, Samuel meets a shepherd named David whom he discerns to be the chosen king of Israel. Samuel anoints David to show that he will be the new leader, but the anointing is not made public. Saul knows nothing about it, and he unwittingly takes David into his service. ‹Saul becomes liable to deep brooding and melancholy, and to deal with it, he tries to find refuge in music. David is brought into the court as a musician, but his presence intensifies Saul’s moodiness when he becomes popular. A major

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

  Lecture 20—Jewish Identity and Rebuilding after Exile 135 commentary. These same basic actions have been done repeatedly as people gather in their synagogues. Thus, many now remember Ezra as the one who defined Jewish identity around the centrality of Jewish law. ●If we follow this theme into Nehemiah chapter 10, attention continues to focus on the community’s distinctiveness. Commitment to the law means not intermarrying with outsiders, observing the weekly Sabbath day, and paying for sacrifices to be offered in the temple. In the vast expanse of the Persian Empire, this community can say that it has an identity that is distinctively shaped by the Law of Moses. Rebuilding the Walls ‹Nehemiah, a Jewish man, is a servant of the Persian king. In chapter 1, he is in the Persian city of Susa, and the year is about 445 B.C. Some travelers tell Nehemiah that despite all the efforts at rebuilding, the walls of Jerusalem are still in a shambles, which Nehemiah regards as shameful. Walls were important for protection and to give a city a sense of grandeur. To live among ruined walls was a disgrace; thus, Nehemiah is determined to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. ‹The Persian king authorizes the project and allows Nehemiah to lead another group back to Jerusalem to begin the work. But when he arrives in Jerusalem, conflict breaks out almost immediately. The officials who govern the Persian provinces surrounding Jerusalem are highly critical of the project, which they see as a dangerous act of self-assertion. They accuse Nehemiah of strengthening the city’s defenses to achieve greater political independence and more influence. They begin a campaign of harassment to stop the rebuilding. ‹The efforts to halt the project involve the threat of attack against the workers, but Nehemiah establishes successful defenses, and by the end of chapter 6, the project is complete. To increase the population, the nearby towns and villages send 10 percent of their people to live in Jerusalem. Then, in chapter 12, there’s a festival to dedicate the walls. This well-defined and well-protected city now helps the community assert its own unique place within the empire.

• From The Bible: A Biography (2007)

  Jesus and his disciples came from Galilee in northern Palestine. After his death they moved to Jerusalem, probably to be on hand when the kingdom arrived, since all the prophecies declared that the temple would be the pivot of the new world order.6 The leaders of their movement were known as ‘the Twelve’: in the kingdom, they would rule the twelve tribes of the reconstituted Israel.7 The members of the Jesus movement worshipped together every day in the temple,8 but they also met for communal meals, in which they affirmed their faith in the kingdom’s imminent arrival.9 They continued to live as devout, orthodox Jews. Like the Essenes, they had no private property, shared their goods equally, and dedicated their lives to the last days.10 It seems that Jesus had recommended voluntary poverty and special care for the poor; that loyalty to the group was to be valued more than family ties; and that evil should be met with non-violence and love.11 Christians should pay their taxes, respect the Roman authorities, and must not even contemplate armed struggle.12 Jesus’s followers continued to revere the Torah,13 keep the Sabbath,14 and the observance of the dietary laws was a matter of extreme importance to them.15 Like the great Pharisee Hillel, Jesus’s older contemporary, they taught a version of the Golden Rule, which they believed to be the bedrock of the Jewish faith: ‘So always treat others as you would like them to treat you; that is the message of the Law and the Prophets.’16 Like the Essenes, the members of the Jesus group seem to have had an ambiguous relationship with the temple. Jesus was said to have predicted that Herod’s magnificent shrine would soon be laid waste. ‘You see these great buildings?’ he asked his disciples. ‘Not a single stone will be left on another; everything will be destroyed.’17 At his trial, it was claimed that he had vowed to destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days. But like the Essenes, Jesus’s followers continued to pray in the temple and in this respect were in tune with other strands of Late Second Temple piety. In other ways, however, Christianity was highly eccentric and controversial. There was no general expectation that the messiah would die and rise again. Indeed, the manner of Jesus’s death was a source of embarrassment. How could a man who had died like a common criminal have been God’s Anointed? Many regarded the messianic claims for Jesus as scandalous.18 The movement also lacked the moral rigour of some of the other sects: it claimed that sinners, prostitutes and those who collected the Roman taxes would enter the kingdom ahead of the priests.19 Christian missionaries preached the gospel or ‘good news’ of Jesus’s imminent return in marginal and religiously dubious regions of Palestine, such as Samaria and Gaza. They also established congregations in the diaspora – in Damascus, Phoenicia, Cilicia and Antioch20 – where they made an important breakthrough.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  “Oh, Bone,” Mama sighed. She sat up and pulled me down beside her so that my head was on her shoulder. I began to shake with hard, mean sobs, a strange kind of crying without tears. Mama’s hand moved automatically, stroking my head as if I were a wounded dog. I knew from the way she was touching me that if I had not come to her, pushed myself on her, she would never have taken me into her arms. I shuddered under that unfeeling palm, slapped her hand away, and ran for the bedroom. I crawled in beside Reese and pulled the pillow over my head. Reese woke up complaining, and when Mama came in I just scrunched down tighter, refusing to answer when she called my name. “Bone, don’t do this,” she said, her voice angry and impatient. I burrowed deeper into the sheets. After a little while Mama said, “That’s enough,” and took Reese away. My head pounded with heat. [image file=image_rsrc2PS.jpg] Lying alone on the big bed, I thought about Daddy Glen and the way he would come up behind me and gather me up in his arms to pull me close to his body. Remembering, I locked my hands between my legs and tightened every muscle in my body. When I was as hard and rigid as I could make myself, I tried to remember how it had started. What was it I had done? Why had he always hated me? Maybe I was a bad girl, evil, nasty, willful, stupid, ugly—everything he said. Maybe I was, but it didn’t matter. I hated him, and these days I even hated Reese and Mama. I was a bowl of hatred, boiling black and thick behind my eyes. I had been so proud of not crying that last time, so sure it was important. Why had it mattered? Whether I screamed or fought or held still, nothing changed. I curled up tighter still and thought about that, the way he beat me, the way I felt jammed against him and struggling, the smell of him and the feel of his sex against my belly. He had been pinning me against his thigh when he beat me. Had he come? Had he been beating me until he came in his trousers? The thought made me gag. I pushed my wrists harder and harder against my own sex until I was hurting myself. I could remember his smell, the sound of his breath above me, the hot sweat falling off his face onto my skin, the way he had grunted and shaken me. No, it did not matter whether I had screamed or not. It had all been the way he wanted it. It had nothing to do with me or anything I had done. It was an animal thing, just him using me. I rolled over and bit the pillow. I fell into shame like a suicide throws herself into a river.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  “He’s bad,” Mama said, her eyes still looking out the window. “He’s just bad all the way through. He steals from his mama. He’s stolen from me. Don’t dare leave your pocketbook around him, or any of your stuff that he could sell. He even took Deedee’s green stamp books one time and traded them off for some useless thing.” Her eyes drifted back to my face, the stunned brown of the pupils shining like mossy rocks under water. “I remember when we were just kids and he was always stealing candy to give away. Thought people would like him if he gave them stuff, I suppose. Now he’s always saying how he’s been robbed, and he’s got a story to account for everything he does. Beats his girlfriends up ‘cause they cheat on him. Can’t keep a job ‘cause people tell lies about him. Steals ‘cause the world’s been so cruel to him. So much nonsense. He’s just bad, that’s all, just bad. Steals from his mama and sisters, steals from his own.” I dropped my head. I remembered Grey telling me how he learned to break locks from Tommy Lee, that Tommy Lee was the slickest piece of goods in Greenville. “Boy knows how to take care of himself for sure. Never owes nobody nothing.” Grey’s face had flushed with respect and envy when he said it, and I had felt a little of the same—wishing I too knew how to take care of myself and could break locks or start cars without a key or palm stuff off a counter so smoothly that no one would know I had done it. But to steal from your mama! My face felt stiff with shame and anger. I wasn’t like that. I would never steal from Mama. Mama’s hand touched my chin, trailed along my cheek, and stroked my hair. “You’re my pride. Do you know? You and your sister are all I really have, all I ever will have. You think I could let you grow up to be like that?” I shook my head. The tears started again, and with them hiccups. Mama went and got a cool washcloth to wet my face. “Don’t cry, honey. It’ll be all right. We’ll take care of it, it’ll be all right.” She put the Tootsie Rolls in a paper bag and gave me a handful of pennies to carry. She kept talking while she brushed my hair and then hers, called Reese in and told her to stay on the porch, turned the heat down on the beans that were cooking on the stove, and walked me out to the car. She told me about when she and Aunt Raylene were girls, how they had worked for this man out past Old Henderson Road, picking strawberries for pennies every day for weeks, going through the rows and pulling loose the red ripe ones for him to sell in his stand by the side of the road.

• From The Bible: A Biography (2007)

  The new American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sent a team of lawyers to defend him, headed by the rationalist campaigner Clarence Darrow. Bryan agreed to support the law. Immediately the trial became a contest between the Bible and science. Bryan was a disaster on the stand and Darrow emerged from the trial as the champion of rational thought. The press gleefully denounced the fundamentalists as hopeless anachronisms, who could take no part in the modern world. This had an effect that is instructive to us today. When fundamentalist movements are attacked they usually become more extreme. Before Dayton, the conservatives were wary of evolution, but very few had espoused ‘creation science’, which maintained that the first chapter of Genesis was factually true in every detail. After Scopes, however, they became more vehemently literal in their interpretation of scripture, and creation science became the flagship of their movement. Before Scopes, fundamentalists had been willing to work for social reform with people on the left; after Scopes, they swung to the far right of the political spectrum, where they have remained. After the Holocaust, orthodox Jews felt impelled to rebuild the Hasidic courts and misnagdic yeshivoth in the new Jewish state of Israel and the United States as an act of piety to the six million. 51 Torah study was now a lifelong, full-time pursuit. Men would continue at the yeshivah after they married and, supported financially by their wives, had minimal contact with the outside world. 52 These ultra-orthodox Jews, known as the Haredim (the ‘trembling ones’), 53 observed the commandments more rigorously than ever before, 54 finding new ways of being punctilious about diet and purification. 55 Before the Holocaust, excessive stringency had been discouraged as divisive. But now the Haredim were creating a Bible-based counter-culture in diametrical opposition to the rationalized efficiency that had helped to slaughter six million Jews. Yeshivah study had nothing in common with the pragmatism of modernity: many of the laws studied, such as the laws of temple service, could no longer be implemented. The repetition of the Hebrew words that God had spoken on Sinai was a form of communion with the divine. Exploring the minutiae of the law was a way of symbolically entering the mind of God. Becoming familiar with the halakha of the great rabbis was a way of appropriating the tradition that had so nearly been destroyed.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  [image file=image_rsrc2PS.jpg] She waited another year before going back, that time taking my aunt Ruth with her and leaving me with Granny. “I was there,” Aunt Ruth promised them, “and it was really my fault. In so much excitement I just got confused, what with Anney here looking like she was dead to the world and everybody shouting and running around. You know, there was a three-car accident brought in just minutes after us.” Aunt Ruth gave the clerk a very sincere direct look, awkwardly trying to keep her eyes wide and friendly. “You know how these things can happen.” “Oh, I do,” he said, enjoying it all immensely. The form he brought out was no different from the others. The look he gave my mama and my aunt was pure righteous justification. “What’d you expect?” he seemed to be saying. His face was set and almost gentle, but his eyes laughed at them. My aunt came close to swinging her purse at his head, but Mama caught her arm. That time she took the certificate copy with her. “Might as well have something for my two dollars,” she said. At seventeen, she was a lot older than she had been at sixteen. The next year she went alone, and the year after. That same year she met Lyle Parsons and started thinking more about marrying him than dragging down to the courthouse again. Uncle Earle teased her that if she lived with Lyle for seven years, she could get the same result without paying a courthouse lawyer. “The law never done us no good. Might as well get on without it.” [image file=image_rsrc2PS.jpg] Mama quit working as a waitress soon after marrying Lyle Parsons, though she wasn’t so sure that was a good idea. “We’re gonna need things,” she told him, but he wouldn’t listen. Lyle was one of the sweetest boys the Parsonses ever produced, a soft-eyed, soft-spoken, too-pretty boy tired of being his mama’s baby. Totally serious about providing well for his family and proving himself a man, he got Mama pregnant almost immediately and didn’t want her to go out to work at all. But pumping gas and changing tires in his cousin’s Texaco station, he made barely enough to pay the rent. Mama tried working part-time in a grocery store but gave it up when she got so pregnant she couldn’t lift boxes. It was easier to sit a stool on the line at the Stevens factory until Reese was born, but Lyle didn’t like that at all. “How’s that baby gonna grow my long legs if you always sitting bent over?” he complained. He wanted to borrow money or take a second job, anything to keep his pretty new wife out of the mill. “Honey girl,” he called her, “sweet thing.”

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  “Only the ripe ones, he kept telling us, but it was so hot and the dust was so thick, sometimes we’d pull up the ones that weren’t quite ripe, you know—green ones, or half-green anyway. We’d hide them under the ripe ones when we set them up for him. People would buy a box and then get home to find those half-ripe ones, call him up to complain. He’d get so mad, but we were just kids, and his yelling didn’t bother us so long as he kept paying us for the work.” “What’d he pay you?” Mama waved her hand as if that didn’t matter. “Not enough, you know, not enough. Strawberry picking is terrible work, hurts your back, your eyes. You get that juice all over you, get those little prickers in your hands. An’t enough money in it even for children, even if you eat as many as you can. After a while you don’t want any anyway.” She laughed. “Though Raylene sure could eat a lot. Faster than you could see, she’d swallow handfuls of berries. Only proof she’d been eating them was her red red tongue.” She stopped the car in front of the Woolworth’s, cut the engine, and sat for a moment, her hands resting on the wheel. I looked out at the big display windows, where stacks of plastic picnic baskets, little tin office waste cans, and sleeveless cotton sundresses on hangers were squeezed behind ratty stuffed animals and tricycles with multicolored plastic streamers on the handlebars. The thought of going back in there with Mama made me feel sick to my stomach and almost angry at her. Why couldn’t she just let me promise never to do it again? Her hand on my shoulder made me jump. “Your granny found out what we’d been doing, ‘cause we got lazy, you know, and started putting more and more green ones in the bottom of the boxes. Grandpa laughed about it, but your granny didn’t laugh. She came over there one afternoon and turned half a dozen boxes upside down. Collected a bucket of green strawberries and paid the man for them. Took us home, sat us at the kitchen table, and made us eat every one of them. Raylene and I puked strawberries all night long.” “You must have hated her!” Mama was quiet, and I got scared. I didn’t want her to think I hated her. I didn’t even want to be angry at her. I clamped my teeth tight and tried not to start crying again.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  If Granny didn’t care, Mama did. Mama hated to be called trash, hated the memory of every day she’d ever spent bent over other people’s peanuts and strawberry plants while they stood tall and looked at her like she was a rock on the ground. The stamp on that birth certificate burned her like the stamp she knew they’d tried to put on her. No-good, lazy, shiftless. She’d work her hands to claws, her back to a shovel shape, her mouth to a bent and awkward smile—anything to deny what Greenville County wanted to name her. Now a soft-talking black-eyed man had done it for them—set a mark on her and hers. It was all she could do to pull herself up eight days after I was born and go back to work waiting tables with a tight mouth and swollen eyes. [image file=image_rsrc2PS.jpg] Mama waited a year. Four days before my first birthday and a month past her sixteenth, she wrapped me in a blanket and took me to the courthouse. The clerk was polite but bored. He had her fill out a form and pay a two-dollar fee. Mama filled it out in a fine schoolgirl’s hand. She hadn’t been to school in three years, but she wrote letters for everyone in the family and was proud of her graceful, slightly canted script. “What happened to the other one?” the clerk asked. Mama didn’t look up from my head on her arm. “It got torn across the bottom.” The clerk looked at her more closely, turned a glance on me. “Is that right?” He went to the back and was gone a long time. Mama stood, quiet but stubborn, at the counter. When he came back, he passed her the paper and stayed to watch her face. It was the same, identical to the other one. Across the bottom in oversized red-inked block letters it read, “ILLEGITIMATE.” Mama drew breath like an old woman with pleurisy, and flushed pink from her neck to her hairline. “I don’t want it like this,” she blurted. “Well, little lady,” he said in a long, slow drawl. Behind him she could see some of the women clerks standing in a doorway, their faces almost as flushed as her own but their eyes bright with an entirely different emotion. “This is how it’s got to be. The facts have been established.” He drew the word out even longer and louder so that it hung in the air between them like a neon reflection of my mama’s blush—established. The women in the doorway shook their heads and pursed their lips. One mouthed to the other, “Some people.” Mama made her back straighten, bundled me closer to her neck, and turned suddenly for the hall door. “You forgetting your certificate,” the man called after her, but she didn’t stop. Her hands on my body clamped so tight I let out a high, thin wail. Mama just held on and let me scream.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  For me, none of these issues were purely intellectual. I had spent years trying to be carefully frank about the difference between my life and the fiction I created. I knew how important it was for me personally to tell the truth about my childhood and my family, even all the ways I had messed up and caused myself further damage in sorting out the impact of violence and self-hatred. I knew too how important it was that we have a sense of what people’s lives were genuinely like—all of us who got caught in the gears of family violence. The mythology of rape and child abuse had done me so much damage. People from families like mine—southern working poor with high rates of illegitimacy and all too many relatives who have spent time in jail—we are the people who are seen as the class who does not care for their children, for whom rape and abuse and violence are the norm. That such assumptions are false, that the rich are just as likely to abuse their children as the poor, and that southerners do not have a monopoly on either violence or illegitimacy are realities that are difficult to get people to recognize. The myths are so strong they subvert sociological data and personal accounts. I remember reading Gone with the Wind when I was eleven years old and recognizing with painful clarity that those dirty white-trash Slatterys from whom Scarlett O’Hara’s mother caught the fever that killed her were exactly the figures that my family were supposed to represent. That was a fiction, but I am always running headlong into people for whom that family is part of how they see people like me and those I love. I want the society in which I live to be clear about the reality of our families; to know all the ways in which we avoid the issues of violence, abuse, and societal contempt; and to see survivors as more than victims. If we know more about what it means to survive abuse, we will be better able to help those still caught in the whole shameful secret world of physical and sexual violence. No lies, I thought, but lots of stories. True stories. True lies. Powerful stories, heroic tales, and cautionary fables. Stories open the door to the darkened room. Language can carry us past the horror to the sense of purpose in a life that refuses to surrender to that darkness.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  After a while I cried myself back to sleep. I dreamed I was a baby again, five or younger, leaning against Mama’s hip, her hands on my shoulders. She was talking, her voice above me like a whisper between stars. Everything was dim and safe. Everything was warm and quiet. She held me and I felt loved. She held me and I knew who I was. When I put my hand down between my legs, it was not a sin. It was like her murmur, like music, like a prayer in the dark. It was meant to be, and it was a good thing. I woke up with my face wet from tears I did not know I had cried, my hands still holding on between my legs. “Mama,” I whispered, but she had gone to work. I was alone in the quiet bedroom. It had been a long time since I had woken up like this, with that sweet good feeling between my legs, almost hurting me, but comforting too. I brought my hands up and looked at them, spread the fingers and looked at the light reflected through the dingy shades. I rolled over and slowly loosened the muscles of my back and legs, keeping my hands in front of my face. The light shifted as the shades swung in the breeze. I thought about fire, purifying, raging, sweeping through Greenville and clearing the earth. I dropped my hands and closed my eyes. “Fire,” I whispered. “Burn it all.” I rolled over, putting both my hands under me. I clamped my teeth and rocked, seeing the blaze in my head, haystacks burning and nowhere to run, people falling behind and the flames coming on, my own body pinned down and the fire roaring closer. “Yes,” I said. Yes. I rocked and rocked, and orgasmed on my hand to the dream of fire. [image file=image_rsrc2PS.jpg] When I woke up it was afternoon, and the apartment was still and warm. I got up carefully. There was cold coffee on the stove, and biscuits in a towel-wrapped dish. I drank some coffee and chewed on a biscuit with a slice of cheese. A note in Mama’s handwriting was on the table. “Don’t go anywhere,” it read. “I’ll be home by dark and we’ll talk.” My throat closed up. I didn’t want to talk to her. I didn’t know what I would say. I dressed myself quickly in jeans and a warm cotton shirt. When I left, I locked the door behind me. Once I was on the street, I thought about Reese coming home to an empty apartment and calling Mama at work. They’d be upset. Angrily I started walking. I didn’t care anymore who got mad at me, what happened. Maybe I’d get killed out on the highway.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  My neck ached, my teeth, my lower spine and ass. All of me was ugly, pasty, and numb—nothing like Uncle James’s girls in their white nylon crinolines and blue satin hair ribbons. They were the kind of little girls people really wanted. No part of me was that worshipful, dreamy-eyed storybook girlchild, no part of me was beautiful. I could see why Daddy Glen was hateful to me. At dinner when Mama had gone back to the bedroom to get her sweater, he had made a point of telling me that I didn’t have anything to be so proud of. “You think you’re so special,” he’d jeered. “Act like you piss rose water and honey. Think you’re too good to be straightened out. Your mama has spoiled you. She don’t know what a lazy, stubborn girl you are, but I do. I know you. I know you, and I an’t gonna have you turning out like your useless cousins, not growing up under my roof.” “Hateful man,” I whispered. “I don’t care if his daddy does treat him bad. I don’t care why he’s so mean. He’s hateful.” I rolled over and pushed my face underwater. I was no Cherokee. I was no warrior. I was nobody special. I was just a girl, scared and angry. When I saw myself in Daddy Glen’s eyes, I wanted to die. No, I wanted to be already dead, cold and gone. Everything felt hopeless. He looked at me and I was ashamed of myself. It was like sliding down an endless hole, seeing myself at the bottom, dirty, ragged, poor, stupid. But at the bottom, at the darkest point, my anger would come and I would know that he had no idea who I was, that he never saw me as the girl who worked hard for Aunt Raylene, who got good grades no matter how often I changed schools, who ran errands for Mama and took good care of Reese. I was not dirty, not stupid, and if I was poor, whose fault was that? I would get so angry at Daddy Glen I would grind my teeth. I would dream of cutting his heart out, his evil raging pit-black heart. In the dream it felt good to hate him. But the horrible thing was how I felt when I was awake and wasn’t burning with anger. The worst thing in the world was the way I felt when I wanted us to be like the families in the books in the library, when I just wanted Daddy Glen to love me like the father in Robinson Crusoe . It must have been like what he felt when he stood around his daddy’s house, his head hanging down. Love would make me beautiful; a father’s love would purify my heart, turn my bitter soul sweet, and lighten my Cherokee eyes.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  “There an’t no other way to do it,” she said quietly. “I hate it. You hate it. You might hate me for it. I don’t know, and I can’t say what might happen now. But I just don’t know no other way to do it. We’re gonna go in there and give the man back his candy, pay for what you ate, and that will be all there is to it. It will be over, and you’ll be glad it’s settled. We won’t ever have to mention it again.” Mama opened the door briskly, and I followed her numbly. There was a flush on her cheeks as she walked me back to the candy counter, waited for the salesgirl to come over, and stood me right in front of her. “My daughter has something to tell you,” she said, and gave me a little push. But I couldn’t speak. I held out the bag and the pennies, and started to cry again, this time sobbing loud. The girl looked confused, but Mama wouldn’t say anything else, just gave me another little push. I thought I’d strangle on my tongue when the manager walked over to us. “What’s this?” he said in a booming voice. “What’s this? You got something for us, little girl?” He was a big man with a wide face and a swollen belly poking out from under a buttoned-up vest. He stooped down so that his face was right in front of me, so close I could smell the sharp alcohol scent of after-shave. “You do, don’tcha, honey?” He looked like he was swallowing an urge to laugh at us. I was suddenly so angry at him my stomach seemed to curl up inside me. I shoved the bag at him, the pennies. “I stole it. I’m sorry. I stole it.” Mama’s hand squeezed my shoulder, and I heard the breath come out of her in a sigh. I closed my eyes for a moment, trying hard not to get as mad at her as I was at that man. “Uh-huh,” he said. “I see.” I looked up at him again. He was rummaging in the bag, counting the Tootsie Rolls and nodding. “It’s a good thing, ma’am,” he said, still talking loudly, “that you caught this when you did.” He nodded at me. “You’re a fortunate little girl, truly fortunate. Your mama loves you. She doesn’t want you to grow up to be a thief.”

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  I didn’t want to be tall. I wanted to be beautiful. When I was alone, I would look down at my obstinate body, long legs, no hips, and only the slightest swell where Deedee and Temple had big round breasts. I had nothing to be proud of, and I hated Aunt Raylene’s jokes that we were all peasant stock, descendants of women who used to deliver babies in the fields and stagger up to work just after. Gawky, strong, ugly—why couldn’t I be pretty? I wanted to be more like the girls in storybooks, princesses with pale skin and tender hearts. I hated my short fingers, wide face, bony knees, hated being nothing like the pretty girls with their delicate features and slender, trembling frames. I was stubborn-faced, unremarkable, straight up and down, and as dark as walnut bark. This body, like my aunts’ bodies, was born to be worked to death, used up, and thrown away. I had read these things in books and passed right over it. The ones who died like that, worked to death or carried off by senseless accidents, they were almost never the heroines. Aunt Alma had given me a big paperback edition of Gone with the Wind, with tinted pictures from the movie, and told me I’d love it. I had at first, but one evening I looked up from Vivien Leigh’s pink cheeks to see Mama coming in from work with her hair darkened from sweat and her uniform stained. A sharp flash went through me. Emma Slattery, I thought. That’s who I’d be, that’s who we were. Not Scarlett with her baking-powder cheeks. I was part of the trash down in the mud-stained cabins, fighting with the darkies and stealing ungratefully from our betters, stupid, coarse, born to shame and death. I shook with fear and indignation. “What the hell is that girl doing in the bathroom so long?” Daddy Glen was irritable as only a man who’d been drinking the night before can be. I turned the lock against him and tried not to listen when he yelled through the door. “Bone, you get out of there and come help me with these potatoes.” I washed my face and went out to Mama, still in her waitress uniform and flat white shoes. She smiled and passed me a pot. “Cut the eyes out but leave the skins on. We’ll make mashed potatoes like your daddy likes them.” From the living room came Daddy Glen’s grunt and then the sound of the side door opening and closing. Mama put her hands on my shoulders and hugged me close. “I want you to go over to Alma’s after school for a few days. I’ll pick you and Reese up when I get off. I want you to keep those kids for Alma so she can get some time to spend with Ruth.” Mama paused, and when she spoke again her voice was quieter.