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 The Decameron (1353)

  Whilst deriving little comfort from all this, the two brothers nevertheless went off to a friary and asked for a wise and holy man to come and hear the confession of a Lombard who was lying ill in their house. They were given an ancient friar of good and holy ways who was an expert in the Scriptures and a most venerable man, towards whom all the townspeople were greatly and specially devoted, and they conducted him to their house. On reaching the room where Ser Ciappelletto was lying, he sat down at his bedside, and first he began to comfort him with kindly words, then he asked him how long it was since he had last been to confession. Whereupon Ser Ciappelletto, who had never been to confession in his life, replied: ‘Father, it has always been my custom to go to confession at least once every week, except that there are many weeks in which I go more often. But to tell the truth, since I fell ill, nearly a week ago, my illness has caused me so much discomfort that I haven’t been to confession at all.’ ‘My son,’ said the friar, ‘you have done well, and you should persevere in this habit of yours. Since you go so often to confession, I can see that there will be little for me to hear or to ask.’ ‘Master friar,’ said Ser Ciappelletto, ‘do not speak thus, for however frequently or regularly I confess, it is always my wish that I should make a general confession of all the sins I can remember committing from the day I was born till the day of my confession. I therefore beg you, good father, to question me about everything, just as closely as if I had never been confessed. Do not spare me because I happen to be ill, for I would much rather mortify this flesh of mine than that, by treating it with lenience, I should do anything that could lead to the perdition of my soul, which my Saviour redeemed with His precious blood.’ These words were greatly pleasing to the holy friar, and seemed to him proof of a well-disposed mind. Having warmly commended Ser Ciappelletto for this practice of his, he began by asking him whether he had ever committed the sin of lust with any woman. To which, heaving a sigh, Ser Ciappelletto replied: ‘Father, I am loath to tell you the truth on this matter, in case I should sin by way of vainglory.’ To which the holy friar replied: ‘Speak out freely, for no man ever sinned by telling the truth, either in confession or otherwise.’ ‘Since you assure me that this is so,’ said Ser Ciappelletto, ‘I will tell you. I am a virgin as pure as on the day I came forth from my mother’s womb.’

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

  It is an interesting fact, that the same archbishop who had taken a prominent part in the persecution of English Protestants under Queen Mary, and who administered the last and truly evangelical comfort to the dying Emperor, became a victim of persecution, and that those very words of comfort were used by the Emperor’s confessor as one of the grounds of the charge of heresy before the tribunal of the Spanish Inquisition. Bartolomé de Carranza was seven years imprisoned in Spain, then sent to Rome, lodged in the Castle of St. Angelo, after long delay found guilty of sixteen Lutheranizing propositions in his writings, suspended from the exercise of his episcopal functions, and sentenced to be shut up for five years in a convent of his order. He died sixteen days after the judgment, in the Convent Sopra Minerva, May 2, 1576, "declaring his innocence with tears in his eyes, and yet with strange inconsistency admitting the justice of his sentence."333 In less than two months after the decease of the Emperor, Queen Mary, his cousin, and wife of his son, died, Nov. 17, 1558, and was borne to her rest in Westminster Abbey. With her the Roman hierarchy collapsed, and the reformed religion, after five years of bloody persecution, was permanently restored on the throne and in the Church of England. In view of this coincidence, we may well exclaim with Ranke, "How far do the thoughts of Divine Providence exceed the thoughts and purposes of men!"334 His Tomb. From Yuste the remains of the once mighty Emperor were removed in 1574 to their last resting-place under the altar of the cathedral of the Escorial. That gloomy structure, in a dreary mountain region some thirty miles north of Madrid, was built by his order as a royal burial-place (between 1563 and 1584), and combines a palace, a monastery, a cathedral, and a tomb (called Pantheon). Philip II., "el Escorialense," spent there fourteen years, half king, half monk, boasting that he ruled the Old and New World from the foot of a mountain with two inches of paper. He died, after long and intense suffering, Sept. 13, 1598, in a dark little room facing the altar of the church. Father and son are represented in gilt-bronze statues, opposite each other, in kneeling posture, looking to the high altar; Charles V., with his wife Isabella, his daughter Maria, and his sisters Eleonora and Maria; Philip II., with three of his wives, and his weak-minded and unfortunate son, Don Carlos. The Escorial, like Spain itself, is only a shadow of the past, inhabited by the ghost of its founder, who entombed in it his own gloomy character.335 § 53. The Diet of Worms. 1521.

• From Crazy Brave (2012)

  “He’s a boy.” “But we look the same.” “Don’t argue with me, girl, or I’ll have you pick a switch.” I went inside to put on a shirt. I knew better than to talk back. In that small moment the earthy delight of being five years old, of being utterly body and breath, came falling down. I saw the Christian law of forthright tied-tight shoes ahead of me. I saw scratchy lace and flounce, my mother’s girding girdles, the shame of “down there,” the bowed heads, and the closed doors of house or church. As I pulled my T-shirt over my head to cover my girl-shame, I decided that though temporarily I had to acquiesce, I would have nothing to do with it. I would find a way, my way. I ran back outside into the flare of twilight to join my brother and our friends, and jumped back into our game of war. By the time I started school the family included two more children, another sister and a brother. In kindergarten the students were divided into groups after naptime and sent to various activity stations around the spacious classroom. The activities varied from drawing to jumping rope to stringing beads. The two kind, elderly teachers who wore matronly dresses and black boxy shoes with laces liked to see the “cute little Indian girl” stringing beads, so I was often first assigned to play there. Drawing was my favorite station. I loved the smell of crayons on newsprint. I smelled each crayon before using it and felt each color as a friendly field of possibility. One day I lost myself in a drawing as I discovered a design similar to the joined-hands circle of paper dolls made by cutting a folded sheet of paper. When I glanced up and around the table, I noticed that the other children were all drawing the same house, the same lollipop tree, and the same sun with a smiling face. I broke through my shyness and asked, “Why are you copying each other?” The other children looked at me, then at my drawing. They began copying me. For me drawing was dreaming on paper. I didn’t always know what was going to appear there. I followed the instinct of color, of line. I understood there were

• From Crazy Brave (2012)

  She had stolen it from a witch she saw regularly to combat the many enemies she had in the world: the terrible men, the minimum-wage jobs, and the unwanted daughter-in-law. I didn’t get sick or die that day or in the weeks that followed the witching, but neither did our fortunes change. I began to believe that I had dreamed the smoke curse. I pretended it had happened far away from my babies, my house. What I didn’t dream was that each day after she blew the curse in my face she began to stoop. Just a little at first, imperceptibly even. Then it became noticeable, how the weight of the smoke bore down on her as it sat on her back, kicking its legs as it rode. I measured the falling world by my baby’s small accomplishments. He could hold his head up, he smiled, or he laughed. Each increment was a promise of change. Not long after the witching incident, his mother and I were allies again, as we were short on food and resources. It was spring. My mother-in-law, the children, and I went walking at dusk toward the rich neighborhood that bordered on our part of town. Most of the flowers were blooming. My stepdaughter was also blooming, outgrowing clothes and shoes that were difficult to afford. We stepped into an alley, attracted by a pile of used furniture and barely worn clothes thrown in a bin for trash pickup. We sifted through, holding things up, chattering about our good fortune, until a child from the huge house spotted us from his immaculate yard and yelled to his parents that Indians were going through their trash. We ran, holding on to our new stuff in our arms, along with the children, until we reached our neighborhood. We laughed after we had made it, and felt rich enough with our new treasures to buy ice cream. I harbored a vague sense of shame at being discovered digging through someone else’s trash. I wondered why the residents would rather throw away the useful items than give them to someone who could use them. Another sign of spring was the posters announcing that the circus was coming to town. We got discount passes from the grocery store. I took the kids and my sister-in-law to the Sunday afternoon show. It was my first venture out in over a year, and I felt expansive. The arena was packed with families, and the city’s kids were swirling with snacks, circus toys, and excitement. We sat next to an aisle for easier access to the bathrooms. The girls asked about everything as we waited for the show. They wanted to know what-time-the-show-started-exactly-and-how-long-would-it-be-before-the-show-started-where-were-the-tigers-could-they-have-balloons-if-they-couldn’t-have-a-balloon-could-they-ride-the-elephant-and-why-couldn’t-we-sit-closer-so-we-could-see-better-and-could-they-go-to-the-bathroom-even-though-they-had-just-been-a-few-minutes-ago. As I answered, I watched people and imagined their lives and how I would paint them, rejuvenated by the smell of popcorn and the change in scenery. Out of the churning crowds came a slim man in tights and a cape.

• From Trash (1988)

  Oh, Bobby loved that part of it, like she loved her chintz sofa, the antique armoire with the fold-down shelf she used for a desk, the carefully balanced display of appropriate liquors she never touched—unlike the bottles on the kitchen shelves she emptied and replaced weekly. Bobby loved the aura of acceptability, the possibility of finally being bourgeois, civilized, and respectable. I was the uncivilized thing in Bobby’s life, reminding her of the taste of hunger, the remembered stink of her mother’s sweat, her own desire. I became sex for her. I held it in me, in the push of my thighs against hers when she finally grabbed me and dragged me off into the citadel of her bedroom. I held myself up, back and off her. I did what I had to do to get her, to get myself what we both wanted. But what a price we paid for what I did. What I did. What I was. What I do. What I am. I paid a high price to become who I am. Her contempt, her terror, was the least of it. My contempt, my terror, took over my life, because they were the first things I felt when I looked at myself, until I became unable to see my true self at all. “You’re an animal,” she used to say to me, in the dark with her teeth against my thigh, and I believed her, growled back at her, and swallowed all the poison she could pour into my soul. Now I sit and think about Bobby’s thighs, her legs opening in the dark where no one could see, certainly not herself. My own legs opening. That was so long ago and far away, but not so far as she finally ran when she could not stand it anymore, when the lust I made her feel got too wild, too uncivilized, too dangerous. Now I think about what I did. What I did. What I was. What I do. What I am. “Sex,” I told her. “I will be sex for you.” Never asked, “You. What will you be for me?” Now I make sure to ask. I keep Bobby in mind when I stare at women’s thighs. I finger my seams, flash my teeth, and put it right out there. “You. What will you let yourself be for me?” Muscles of the Mind

• From Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)

  Debbie’s new husband, standing beside her in the picture, is a wizened, gray-haired man, almost four times as old as she is. “I got pregnant soon after that,” she says, “but I miscarried the baby. I was told it was because I had violated the Law of Chastity by having sex during my pregnancy. Ray blamed me for it, and made me feel wicked.” This double bind left Debbie reeling. “Ray would almost never talk to me,” she says. “He would ignore me for days on end. The only time he paid attention to me was when we had sex. It got so if I didn’t have a penis in me I didn’t think I was loved. And I was just a child when I was forced to deal with all of this! I was made to feel like a whore, a person with no worth beyond my vagina and my womb. Around town, I became the butt of mean jokes.” Ray Blackmore died of leukemia in 1974, after nineteen-year-old Debbie had been married to him for a little over three years and had given birth to his daughter. Soon thereafter Debbie was ordered, against her wishes, to marry Sam Ralston—one of Bountiful’s founding patriarchs, a violent, fifty-four-year-old sociopath who already had four wives. After giving birth to two of Ralston’s children and enduring years of cruelty at his hands, she became desperate enough to run away to the only refuge she could think of: her father’s home. The next time Prophet LeRoy Johnson—Uncle Roy—was in Canada, however, he commanded Debbie to return to Sam Ralston. “I begged him not to make me do it,” she says, “but he told me that when they married me to Sam they did it because they hoped it would encourage him in the priesthood and help him feel better toward my father. I was shocked, realizing for the first time that my marriage to Sam was something the men wanted me to do, not God.” Debbie dutifully returned to Ralston, whereupon he told her, she says, “that I was an evil woman and he would make me pay for my wickedness.” Debbie grew depressed, and increasingly self-destructive. Her father became so alarmed by her deteriorating condition that he clandestinely rescued Debbie and her children from Ralston’s home, installed them in his own household, and convinced Uncle Roy to “release” her from the marriage. But the failure of her second marriage reinforced the opinion in Bountiful that she was a dull-witted, disobedient nuisance, more trouble to the community than she was worth. “I began taking pills,” she says, “lots of pills: sleeping pills, painkillers, tranquilizers.” When Debbie sought solace from her father, he simply quoted scripture, telling her, “You must have a broken heart and a contrite spirit to know God.” In 1980, one night not long after this bit of advice, she was weeping and semicomatose from her medications when her father came into her bedroom and began to comfort her.

• From The Well of Loneliness (1928)

  Then Anna began to speak very slowly as though nothing of what she would say must be lost; and that slow, quiet voice was more dreadful than anger: ‘All your life I’ve felt very strangely towards you;’ she was saying, ‘I’ve felt a kind of physical repulsion, a desire not to touch or to be touched by you—a terrible thing for a mother to feel—it has often made me deeply unhappy. I’ve often felt that I was being unjust, unnatural—but now I know that my instinct was right; it is you who are unnatural, not I. . . .’ ‘Mother—stop!’ ‘It is you who are unnatural, not I. And this thing that you are is a sin against creation. Above all is this thing a sin against the father who bred you, the father whom you dare to resemble. You dare to look like your father, and your face is a living insult to his memory, Stephen. I shall never be able to look at you now without thinking of the deadly insult of your face and your body to the memory of the father who bred you. I can only thank God that your father died before he was asked to endure this great shame. As for you, I would rather see you dead at my feet than standing before me with this thing upon you—this unspeakable outrage that you call love in that letter which you don’t deny having written. In that letter you say things that may only be said between man and woman, and coming from you they are vile and filthy words of corruption—against nature, against God who created nature. My gorge rises; you have made me feel physically sick—’ ‘Mother—you don’t know what you’re saying—you’re my mother—’ ‘Yes, I am your mother, but for all that, you seem to me like a scourge. I ask myself what I have ever done to be dragged down into the depths by my daughter. And your father—what had he ever done? And you have presumed to use the word love in connection with this—with these lusts of your body; these unnatural cravings of your unbalanced mind and undisciplined body—you have used that word. I have loved—do you hear? I have loved your father, and your father loved me. That was love.’ Then, suddenly, Stephen knew that unless she could, indeed, drop dead at the feet of this woman in whose womb she had quickened, there was one thing that she dared not let pass unchallenged, and that was this terrible slur upon her love. And all that was in her rose up to refute it; to protect her love from such unbearable soiling. It was part of herself, and unless she could save it, she could not save herself any more. She must stand or fall by the courage of that love to proclaim its right to toleration.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Spinelloccio, hearing from within the chest all that Zeppa said his wife's answer and feeling the morrisdance[395] that was toward over his head, was at first so sore despited that himseemed he should die; and but that he stood in fear of Zeppa, he had rated his wife finely, shut up as he was. However, bethinking himself that the offence had begun with him and that Zeppa was in his right to do as he did and had indeed borne himself towards him humanely and like a comrade, he presently resolved in himself to be, an he would, more than ever his friend. Zeppa, having been with the lady so long as it pleased him, dismounted from the chest, and she asking for the promised jewel, he opened the chamber-door and called his wife, who said nought else than 'Madam, you have given me a loaf for my bannock'; and this she said laughing. To her quoth Zeppa, 'Open this chest.' Accordingly she opened it and therein Zeppa showed the lady her husband, saying, 'Here is the jewel I promised thee.' It were hard to say which was the more abashed of the twain, Spinelloccio, seeing Zeppa and knowing that he knew what he had done, or his wife, seeing her husband and knowing that he had both heard and felt that which she had done over his head. But Spinelloccio, coming forth of the chest, said, without more parley, 'Zeppa, we are quits; wherefore it is well, as thou saidst but now to my wife, that we be still friends as we were, and that, since there is nothing unshared between us two but our wives, we have these also in common.' Zeppa was content and they all four dined together in the utmost possible harmony; and thenceforward each of the two ladies had two husbands and each of the latter two wives, without ever having any strife or grudge anent the matter." [Footnote 395: _Danza trivigiana_, lit. Trevisan dance, O.E. the shaking of the sheets.] THE NINTH STORY [Day the Eighth] MASTER SIMONE THE PHYSICIAN, HAVING BEEN INDUCED BY BRUNO AND BUFFALMACCO TO REPAIR TO A CERTAIN PLACE BY NIGHT, THERE TO BE MADE A MEMBER OF A COMPANY THAT GOETH A-ROVING, IS CAST BY BUFFALMACCO INTO A TRENCH FULL OF ORDURE AND THERE LEFT

• From The Decameron (1353)

  As soon as the latter came back, Gulfardo, having spied out a time when he was in company with his wife, betook himself to him, together with his comrade aforesaid, and said to him, in the lady's presence, 'Guasparruolo, I had no occasion for the monies, to wit, the two hundred gold florins, thou lentest me the other day, for that I could not compass the business for which I borrowed them. Accordingly, I brought them presently back to thy lady here and gave them to her; wherefore look thou cancel my account.' Guasparruolo, turning to his wife, asked her if she had the monies, and she, seeing the witness present, knew not how to deny, but said, 'Ay, I had them and had not yet remembered me to tell thee.' Whereupon quoth Guasparruolo, 'Gulfardo, I am satisfied; get you gone and God go with you: I will settle your account aright.' Gulfardo gone, the lady, finding herself cozened, gave her husband the dishonourable price of her baseness; and on this wise the crafty lover enjoyed his sordid mistress without cost." THE SECOND STORY [Day the Eighth] THE PARISH PRIEST OF VARLUNGO LIETH WITH MISTRESS BELCOLORE AND LEAVETH HER A CLOAK OF HIS IN PLEDGE; THEN, BORROWING A MORTAR OF HER, HE SENDETH IT BACK TO HER, DEMANDING IN RETURN THE CLOAK LEFT BY WAY OF TOKEN, WHICH THE GOOD WOMAN GRUDGINGLY GIVETH HIM BACK Men and ladies alike commended that which Gulfardo had done to the sordid Milanese lady, and the queen, turning to Pamfilo, smilingly charged him follow on; whereupon quoth he, "Fair ladies, it occurreth to me to tell you a little story against those who continually offend against us, without being open to retaliation on our part, to wit, the clergy, who have proclaimed a crusade against our wives and who, whenas they avail to get one of the latter under them, conceive themselves to have gained forgiveness of fault and pardon of penalty no otherwise than as they had brought the Soldan bound from Alexandria to Avignon.[365] Whereof the wretched laymen cannot return them the like, albeit they wreak their ire upon the priests' mothers and sisters, doxies and daughters, assailing them with no less ardour than the former do their wives. Wherefore I purpose to recount to you a village love-affair, more laughable for its conclusion than long in words, wherefrom you may yet gather, by way of fruit, that priests are not always to be believed in everything. [Footnote 365: Where the papal court then was. See p. 257, note.]

• From Trash (1988)

  I do not have fantasies. Fantasy opens me up; I become fantasy. I am the dangerous daughter, thigh-stroking, soft-tongued lover, the pit, the well, and the well of horniness, laughter rolling up out of me like gravy boiling over the edge of a pan. I become the romantic, the mystic, the one without shame, rocking myself on the hip of a rock, a woman as sharp as coral. I make in my mind the muscle that endures, tame rage and hunger to spirit and blood. I become the rock. I become the knife. I am myself the mystery. The me that will be waits for me. If I cannot dream myself new, how will I find my true self? “What about you?” Judy leaned toward me with an intent expression. “Do you have fantasies?” The roar in my ears was my heart, an ocean of shame and rage. My leg muscles pulled tight and cramped. My belly turned liquid and hot under my navel. I would throw up if I opened my mouth. I would throw up. My muscles failed me, failed me completely. “Not much, not really.” Peter denied Christ three times before cockcrow. I cursed myself for being such a piece of shit, such a piece of chickenshit. “Not any more, not really.” I kept my eyes on my hands where they twisted in my lap. If I looked up I might say anything, anything. Waking up and not being able to go back to sleep, I sit with a cup of coffee and my journal. I’ve kept one off and on since school, after the guidance counselor told me it was a way to keep control of your life, to look back and see your own changes. I don’t look back at it much, though, never seem to have the time, but it doesn’t matter. Sometimes writing in it is a way of smoothing things out inside me. The morning after the concert, I didn’t write about the concert or Roxanne or even Cass. I wrote about the muscles of the mind, what my old sensei used to call the secret of all karate, the disciplined belief in yourself. “We are under so many illusions about our powers,” I wrote, “illusions that vary with the moon, the mood, the moment. Waxing, we are all-powerful. We are the mother-destroyers, She-Who-Eats-Her-Young, devours her lover, her own heart; great-winged midnight creatures and the witches of legend. Waning, we are powerless. We are the outlaws of the earth, daughters of nightmare, victimized, raped, and abandoned in our own bodies. We tell ourselves lies and pretend not to know the difference. It takes all we have to know the truth, to believe in ourselves without reference to moon or magic.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  After they were all gone, and the two rogues left alone with Calandrino, Buffalmacco said to him, 'I still had it for certain that it was thou tookst the pig thyself and wouldst fain make us believe that it had been stolen from thee, to escape giving us one poor while to drink of the monies thou hadst for it.' Calandrino, who was not yet quit of the bitter taste of the aloes, began to swear that he had not had it, and Buffalmacco said, 'But in good earnest, comrade, what gottest thou for it? Was it six florins?' Calandrino, hearing this, began to wax desperate, and Bruno said, 'Harkye, Calandrino, there was such an one in the company that ate and drank with us, who told me that thou hast a wench over yonder, whom thou keepest for thy pleasure and to whom thou givest whatsoever thou canst scrape together, and that he held it for certain that thou hadst sent her the pig. Thou hast learned of late to play pranks of this kind; thou carriedst us off t'other day down the Mugnone, picking up black stones, and whenas thou hadst gotten us aboard ship without biscuit,[384] thou madest off and wouldst after have us believe that thou hadst found the magic stone; and now on like wise thou thinkest, by dint of oaths, to make us believe that the pig, which thou hast given away or more like sold, hath been stolen from thee. But we are used to thy tricks and know them; thou shalt not avail to play us any more of them, and to be plain with thee, since we have been at pains to make the conjuration, we mean that thou shalt give us two pairs of capons; else will we tell Mistress Tessa everything.' Calandrino, seeing that he was not believed and himseeming he had had vexation enough, without having his wife's scolding into the bargain, gave them two pairs of capons, which they carried off to Florence, after they had salted the pig, leaving Calandrino to digest the loss and the flouting as best he might." [Footnote 384: _i.e._ embarked on a bootless quest.] THE SEVENTH STORY [Day the Eighth] A SCHOLAR LOVETH A WIDOW LADY, WHO, BEING ENAMOURED OF ANOTHER, CAUSETH HIM SPEND ONE WINTER'S NIGHT IN THE SNOW AWAITING HER, AND HE AFTER CONTRIVETH, BY HIS SLEIGHT, TO HAVE HER ABIDE NAKED, ALL ONE MID-JULY DAY, ON THE SUMMIT OF A TOWER, EXPOSED TO FLIES AND GADS AND SUN

• From The Decameron (1353)

  The young lady was incontinent seized by the other nuns and haled off, by command of the abbess, to the chapter-house, whilst her gallant dressed himself and abode await to see what should be the issue of the adventure, resolved, if any hurt were offered to his mistress, to do a mischief to as many nuns as he could come at and carry her off. The abbess, sitting in chapter, proceeded, in the presence of all the nuns, who had no eyes but for the culprit, to give the latter the foulest rating that ever woman had, as having by her lewd and filthy practices (an the thing should come to be known without the walls) sullied the sanctity, the honour and the fair fame of the convent; and to this she added very grievous menaces. The young lady, shamefast and fearful, as feeling herself guilty, knew not what to answer and keeping silence, possessed the other nuns with compassion for her. However, after a while, the abbess multiplying words, she chanced to raise her eyes and espied that which the former had on her head and the hose-points that hung down therefrom on either side; whereupon, guessing how the matter stood, she was all reassured and said, 'Madam, God aid you, tie up your coif and after say what you will to me.' The abbess, taking not her meaning, answered, 'What coif, vile woman that thou art? Hast thou the face to bandy pleasantries at such a time? Thinkest thou this that thou hast done is a jesting matter?' 'Prithee, madam,' answered Isabetta, 'tie up your coif and after say what you will to me.' Thereupon many of the nuns raised their eyes to the abbess's head and she also, putting her hand thereto, perceived, as did the others, why Isabetta spoke thus; wherefore the abbess, becoming aware of her own default and perceiving that it was seen of all, past hope of recoverance, changed her note and proceeding to speak after a fashion altogether different from her beginning, came to the conclusion that it is impossible to withstand the pricks of the flesh, wherefore she said that each should, whenas she might, privily give herself a good time, even as it had been done until that day. Accordingly, setting the young lady free, she went back to sleep with her priest and Isabetta returned to her lover, whom many a time thereafter she let come thither, in despite of those who envied her, whilst those of the others who were loverless pushed their fortunes in secret, as best they knew." THE THIRD STORY [Day the Ninth] MASTER SIMONE, AT THE INSTANCE OF BRUNO AND BUFFALMACCO AND NELLO, MAKETH CALANDRINO BELIEVE THAT HE IS WITH CHILD; WHEREFORE HE GIVETH THEM CAPONS AND MONEY FOR MEDICINES AND RECOVERETH WITHOUT BRINGING FORTH

• From The Decameron (1353)

  ‘You have certainly paid me back, Rinieri, for the unpleasant night I caused you to spend, for although we are in the month of July, I was convinced, not having any clothes on, that I was going to freeze to death up here last night. But apart from this I’ve been crying so much over the trick I played on you and over being such a fool as to believe you, that it’s a miracle I have any eyes left in my head. I therefore implore you, not for love of me, whom you have no reason to love, but for your own sake, as a gentleman, to let this suffice by way of revenge for the injury I did you, and bring me my clothes and let me down. Please don’t deprive me of that which you could never restore to me even if you wished, in other words, my good name. For even if I did prevent you from spending one night with me, I can make amends for it whenever you like by letting you spend many another night with me in exchange for that one. Rest content with what you have done. Let it suffice you, as a gentleman, to have succeeded in avenging yourself and making me aware of the fact. Don’t apply your strength against a there woman: the eagle that conquers a dove has nothing to boast about. For the love of God and the sake of your honour, do have mercy on me.’ The scholar, indignantly reflecting on the injury she had done him, and perceiving her tears and her entreaties, was filled with pleasure and sorrow at one and the same time: the pleasure of that revenge which he had desired above all else, and the sorrow engendered by his compassionate nature at the sight of her distress. His compassion being unequal, however, to his craving for revenge, he replied:

• From Trash (1988)

  There are people in the world who are, but they are not us. Don’t show your fear to anyone. The things that would happen are too terrible to name. Sometimes I wake in the middle of the night to the call of my name shouted in my mama’s voice, rising from silence like an echo caught in the folds of my brain. It is her hard voice I hear, not the soft one she used when she held me tight, the hard voice she used on bill collectors and process servers. Sometimes her laugh comes too, that sad laugh, thin and foreshadowing a cough, with her angry laugh following. I hate that laugh; hate the sound of it in the night following on my name like shame. When I hear myself laugh like that, I always start to curse; to echo what I know was the stronger force in my mama’s life. As I grew up my teachers warned me to clean up my language, and my lovers became impatient with the things I said. Sugar and honey, my teachers reminded me when I sprinkled my sentences with the vinegar of my mama’s rage—as if I was supposed to want to draw flies. And, “Oh honey,” my girlfriends would whisper, “do you have to talk that way?” I did, I did indeed. I smiled them my mama’s smile and played for them my mama’s words while they tightened up and pulled back, seeing me for someone they had not imagined before. They didn’t shout, they hissed; and even when they got angry, their language never quite rose up out of them the way my mama’s rage would fly. “Must you? Must you?” They begged me. And then, “For God’s sake!” “Sweet Jesus!” I’d shout back but they didn’t know enough to laugh. “Must you? Must you?” Hiss, hiss. “For God’s sake, do you have to end everything with ass? An anal obsession, that’s what you’ve got, a goddamn anal obsession!” “I do, I do,” I told them, “and you don’t even know how to say Goddamn. A woman who says Goddamn as soft as you do isn’t worth the price of a meal of shit!” Coarse, crude, rude words, and ruder gestures—Mama knew them all. You Assfucker, Get out of my Yard, to the cop who came to take the furniture. Shitsucking Bastard! To the man who put his hand under her skirt. Jesus shit a brick, every day of her life. Though she slapped me when I used them, my mama taught me the power of nasty words. Say Goddamn. Say anything but begin it with Jesus and end it with shit. Add that laugh, the one that disguises your broken heart. Oh, never show your broken heart!

• From Trash (1988)

  Then she shook her head nervously and tried to persuade me to talk about myself, interrupting only to get me to switch topics as she moved restlessly from her rocking chair to a bolster to the couch beside me. She did not want to hear about my summers working in the mop factory, but she loved my lies about hitchhiking cross-country. “Meet me for lunch on Monday,” she insisted, while her eyes behind her glasses kept glancing at me, turning away and turning back. My palms were sweaty, but I nodded yes. At the door she stopped me, and put her hand out to touch my face. “Your family is very poor, aren’t they?” My face froze and burned at the same time. “Not really,” I told her, “not anymore.” She nodded and smiled, and the heat in my face went down my body in waves. I didn’t want to go on Monday but made myself. Her secretary was confused when I asked about lunch. “I don’t have anything written down about it,” she said, without looking up from her calendar. After class that afternoon the sociology professor explained her absence with a story about one of her children who had been bitten by a dog, “but not seriously. Come on Thursday,” she insisted, but on Thursday neither she nor her secretary were there. I stood in the doorway to her office and tilted my head back to take in her shelves of books. I wanted to pocket them all, but at the same time I didn’t want anything of hers. Trembling, I reached and pulled out the fattest book on the closest shelf. It was a hardbound edition of Sadism in the Movies, with a third of the pages underlined in red. It fit easily in my backpack, and I stopped in the Student Union bookstore on the way back to the dorm to buy a Hershey bar and steal a bright blue pen. On the next Monday, she apologized again, and again invited me to go to lunch the next day. I skipped lunch but slipped in that afternoon to return her book, now full of my bright blue comments. In its spot on the shelf there was now a collection of the essays of Georges Bataille, still unmarked. By the time I returned it on Friday, heavy blue ink stains showed on the binding itself . Eventually we did have lunch. She talked to me about how hard it was to be a woman alone in a college town, about how all the male professors treated her like a fool, and yet how hard she worked. I nodded. “You read so much,” I whispered. “I keep up,” she agreed with me. “So do I,” I smiled. She looked nervous and changed the subject but let me walk her back to her office. On her desk, there was a new edition of Malinowski’s The Sexual Life of Savages .

• From The Decameron (1353)

  ‘That is where you are mistaken,’ said the lady. ‘I swear to you by God’s wounds that he does it better than my husband, and he informs me that they do it up there as well. But he has fallen in love with me because he thinks me more beautiful than any of the women in Heaven, and he is forever coming down to keep me company. So there!’ On leaving Monna Lisetta, her friend could scarcely contain her eagerness to repeat what she had heard, and at the earliest opportunity, whilst attending a party with a number of other ladies, she recounted the whole of the story from beginning to end. These ladies passed the tale on to their husbands and to various of their female acquaintances, and thus within forty-eight hours the news was all over Venice. Unfortunately, however, the brothers of Monna Lisetta’s husband were among those to whose ears the story came, and they firmly made up their minds, without breathing a word to the lady herself, to run this angel to earth and discover whether he could fly. And for several nights running they lay in wait for his coming. Some tiny hint of what had occurred chanced to reach the ears of Friar Alberto, who, having called upon the lady one night with the intention of giving her a scolding, had scarcely stripped off his clothes before her brothers-in-law, who had seen him arrive at the house, were hammering at the door and trying to force it open. Hearing the noise and guessing what it signified, Friar Alberto leapt out of bed, and seeing that there was nowhere to hide, he threw open a window overlooking the Grand Canal and took a flying leap into the water. Friar Alberto was a good swimmer, and because the water was deep he came to no harm. Having swum across the canal, he dashed through the open door of a house on the other bank, and pleaded with its tenant, an honest-looking fellow, to save his life for the love of God, spinning him some yarn to account for his arrival there at such a late hour in a state of nudity. The honest man took pity on him, and since he was in any case obliged to go and attend to certain affairs of his, he tucked the Friar up in his own bed and told him to stay there until he returned. And having locked him in, he went about his business. On forcing their way into her room, the lady’s in-laws discovered that the Angel Gabriel had flown, leaving his wings behind. They were feeling discountenanced, to say the least, and bombarded the woman with a torrent of violent abuse, after which they left her there, alone and disconsolate, and returned home with the Angel’s bits and pieces.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Now, it happened that Spinelloccio spent a great deal of his time in Zeppa’s house, and since Zeppa was not always at home, he made such good friends with Zeppa’s wife that they became lovers, and it was a long time before anyone discovered their secret. One day, however, when Zeppa was at home and his wife was unaware of the fact, Spinelloccio called at his house, and, on being informed by the wife that Zeppa was out, he swiftly went up to the parlour, where, perceiving that she was all alone, he enfolded her in his arms and began to kiss her, and she greeted him in the same way. Although Zeppa saw all this happening, he held his tongue and remained hidden, so that he could see where their little game was going to end; and before long, to his utter dismay, he saw his wife and Spinelloccio, still clinging to one another, make their way into the bedroom and lock themselves in. Realizing, however, that neither by creating an uproar nor by interfering in any way was he going to reduce the extent of his injury, but that on the contrary his dishonour would thereby be increased,2 he applied his mind to devising some form of revenge that would satisfy his wounded pride without causing any scandal, and after pondering at some length, he thought he had discovered a way of doing it. He remained in hiding for as long as Spinelloccio and his wife were together, but as soon as Spinelloccio had left, he walked into the bedroom, where he found his wife still putting the finishing touches to her headdress, which had fallen off whilst she was cavorting with her lover. ‘Well, woman,’ he said, ‘and what may you be doing?’ ‘Can’t you see?’ she replied. ‘Yes,’ said Zeppa, ‘I can see all right. And I’ve seen one or two other things that I would have preferred not to see at all.’ He then took her to task over what she had been doing, and after making numerous excuses, she confessed in fear and trembling to those aspects of her relationship with Spinelloccio that she could not very well deny, then burst into tears and asked his forgiveness. Whereupon Zeppa said to her:

• From Trash (1988)

  Inside, Shirley Boatwright sat at her kitchen table sipping hot tea and staring straight ahead of her. Mattie stood at the sink with her hands flat to the nozzle of the pump. She stood still, unsure of how she could get past her mama to let her father in the door, and absolutely sure that if she tried it, she’d find herself locked out with him before either of them could get inside. “Put on another kettle,” Shirley told her, looking directly in front of herself and using only her right hand to smooth her hair behind her pristine white collar. “Make me up another cup of tea.” Outside, Tucker went on screaming and kicking. Mattie made the tea while the other children sat quietly on the stairs to the second floor. After a while, the shouting let off and Tucker stomped off the porch. Shirley fed the kids sidemeat and grits, and then put them to bed. When they got up the next morning, Tucker was sitting at the kitchen table drinking cold water and looking like someone had tried to pull out all his hair. He said nothing, but at the end of the week, he quit his job in the mine and took a position at the JCPenney textile mill. “A machinist is a higher class of man,” Shirley told the children. Tucker never got the hang of fixing the big bobbin gears. He’d had a fine talent for the winches and pumps at the mine, but the cables and wheels of the spinning machines confused him. After a few weeks, he found himself standing in front of a wheeled cart, pulling off full bobbins and popping on empty ones. His ears rang with the noise and his eyes watered from the dust, but Shirley just shrugged. “Mill workers are a better class of people than miners. I never planned to live my life as a miner’s wife.” Tucker Boatwright took to slipping whiskey into his cold tea, while his blue eyes faded to a pale gray. The Boatwright children had bad dreams. After supper they were all required to wash again while their mama watched. “That neck don’t look clean to me, Bo. You trying to grow mold in those armpits, Mattie? Why are you so dirty and stupid?” The children scrubbed and scrubbed, while Shirley rubbed her neck with one hand and her bulging belly with another. “I’d kill this thing, if I could,” she muttered.

• From Trash (1988)

  I think of all the times my hands have curled into fists, when I have just barely held on. I open my mouth, close it, can’t speak. What could I say now? All the times I have not spoken before, all the things I just could not tell her, the shame, the self-hatred, the fear; all of that hangs between us now—a wall I cannot tear down. I would like to turn around and talk to her, tell her . . . “I’ve got a dust river in my head, a river of names endlessly repeating. That dirty water rises in me, all those children screaming out their lives in my memory, and I become someone else, someone I have tried so hard not to be.” But I don’t say anything, and I know, as surely as I know I will never have a child, that by not speaking I am condemning us, that I cannot go on loving you and hating you for your fairy-tale life, for not asking about what you have no reason to imagine, for that soft-chinned innocence I love. Jesse puts her hands behind my neck, smiles and says, “You tell the funniest stories.” I put my hands behind her back, feeling the ridges of my knuckles pulsing. “Yeah,” I tell her. “But I lie.” Meanest Woman Ever Left Tennessee My Grandmother Mattie always said my Great-grandmother Shirley lived too long. Shirley Wilmer, of the Knoxville County Wilmers, married Tucker Boatwright when she was past nineteen, and he was just barely sixteen. Her family had a peanut farm off to the north of Knoxville, a piece of property they split between the five sons. Shirley was the only daughter. Her inheritance was a cedar chest full of embroidered linen and baby clothes that she and her mama had gotten together over the years—that and sixty dollars in silver that her daddy gave her, a fortune in those days. Granny Mattie swore that when Grandma Shirley died, those silver coins were still tied in the same cloth in which she had gotten them. Two of Grandma Shirley’s children died of the flu after gathering melons on a frosty fall day. People swore you could cure the flu with a bath of hot oil and comfrey, but Shirley wasn’t the kind to gather herbs and certainly not the kind to spend her silver on someone who would. She’d never wanted children anyway—not really—and hated the way her body continuously swelled and delivered. She called the children devils and worms and trash, and swore that, like worms, their natural substance was dirt and weeds. Shirley Boatwright believed herself to be one of the quality. “The better people,” she told her daughters. “They know their own.

• From Trash (1988)

  Her eyes were red-veined and her hair hung limp. She shook her head. “I hate her, I swear I do,” she said. I looked away. “None of us have ever much liked each other,” I said. Jo lit another cigarette and rubbed under her eyes. “You an’t that bad.” She pulled out a Kleenex, dampened it with a little of my black coffee, and wiped carefully under each eye. “Not now anyway. You were mean as a snake when you were little.” “That was you.” Jo’s hand stopped. An angry glare came into her eyes, but instead of shouting, she laughed. I hesitated and she pushed her hair back and laughed some more. “Well,” she said, “I suppose it was. Yeah.” She nodded, the laughter softening to a smile. “You just stayed gone all the time.” “Saved my life.” I laced my fingers together on the table, remembering all those interminable black nights, Jo pinching me awake and the two of us hauling Arlene into the backyard to hide behind the garage. Bleak days, shame omnipresent as fear, and by the time I was twelve, I stayed gone every minute I could. “You were the smart one.” Jo looked toward the door. I watched how her eyes focused on the jamb where his hand had rested. “You were smart, I was fast, and Arlene learned to suck ass so hard she swallowed her own soul.” I kept quiet. There was nothing to say to that. “I dreamed you killed him.” Mama’s voice was rough, shaped around the tube in her nose. “How?” I kept my voice impartial, relaxed. This was not what I wanted to talk about, but it was easier when Mama talked. I hated the hours when she just lay there staring up at the ceiling with awful anticipation on her face. “All kinds of ways.” Mama waved the hand that wasn’t strapped down for the IV. She looked over at me slyly. “You know I used to dream about it all the time. Dreamed it for years. Mostly it was you, but sometimes Jo would do it. Every once in a while it would be Arlene.” She paused, closed her eyes, and breathed for a while. “I’d wake up just terrified, but sometimes almost glad. Relieved to have it over and done, I think. Bad times I would get up and walk around awhile, remind myself what was real, what wasn’t. Listen to him snore awhile, then go make sure you girls were all right.” She looked at me with dulled eyes. I couldn’t think what to say. “Don’t do it,” she whispered. I wanted to laugh, but didn’t. I watched Mama’s shadowy face. Her expression stunned me. Her mouth was drawn up in a big painful smile, not at all sincere. “Did you want to kill him?”