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 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.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  “Oh, don’t you start that, you mean old thing.” Reese stamped her bare feet in the dirt and pointed the Coke bottle at me. “I’m on to you, Bone. I know all your tricks, and I an’t gonna play no more. You just sit on your damn old belt. I hope it strangles you. I an’t gonna be there to see it.” [image file=image_rsrc2PS.jpg] It was around then that I discovered that Reese was masturbating almost as often as I was. In the middle of the night, I woke up to feel the bed shaking slightly. Instead of sprawling across the bottom of the bed as she usually did, her legs and arms thrown wide, Reese was at the far edge of the mattress, her body taut and curved away from me. I could hear the sound of her breathing, fast and shallow. I knew immediately what she was doing. I kept still, my own breathing quiet and steady. After a while there was a moment when she held her breath, and then the shaking stopped. Very quietly then I slipped my right hand down between my legs and held myself. I wanted to do it too, but I couldn’t stand the thought that she might hear. But what if she did? I felt Reese relax and sprawl wide again. I held my breath, I moved my hand, I almost did not shake the bed at all. Reese would go back to our bedroom alone every day when we got home from school. When she came out, I would go in. Sometimes I even imagined I could smell what she had been doing, but that could not have been so. She was a little girl and smelled like a little girl. Neither of us smelled like Mama, the ripe fleshy scent of a woman grown. I pulled my shorts down and made sure of it, carefully washing between my legs with warm soap and water every time I did that thing I knew my sister was doing too.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  Everybody who mattered knew, and she didn’t give a rat’s ass about anybody else. She teased Mama about the damn silly paper with the red stamp on the bottom. “What was it? You intended to frame that thing? You wanted something on your wall to prove you done it right?” Granny could be mean where her pride was involved. “The child is proof enough. An’t no stamp on her nobody can see.” 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. 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.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  It seemed our unbelief was what made him fail. Our lack of faith made him the man he was, made him go out to work unable to avoid getting in a fight, made him sarcastic to his bosses and nasty to the shop owners he was supposed to be persuading to take his accounts. Money would get tighter and Daddy Glen would stare at us like we cost him cash with every breath we took. The rent would be late one month, impossible the next, and late again after that. Daddy Glen started going for long drives in the evening, and people started coming to the door during the day. They’d bang on the jamb after ringing the bell. If Mama was home, she would sit at the kitchen table with a cigarette between her fingers, staring off into space and saying nothing. Reese or I would go to the door and yell out, “Mama’s not to home. I can’t let you in, my mama’s not to home.” The men and women who came to our door would wheedle and threaten, cajole and rage. They’d call Mama’s name so loud all the neighbors could hear. Mama would push her hair straight back from her face, light another cigarette, and hug us. Reese and I would grin and look carefully out from under the curtains to be sure the landlord or the bill collector had gone, and then run back to tell her. “My smart girls,” Mama would praise us. “My strong, smart girls.” Her face would relax then, the sharp lines of her eyebrows would soften, and she would pull us up close to her one more time, every time. “We’re not bad people,” Mama told us. “We’re not even really poor. Anybody says something to you, you keep that in mind. We’re not bad people. And we pay our way. We just can’t always pay when people want.” Reese and I nodded earnestly, agreeing wordlessly, but we didn’t believe her. We knew what the neighbors called us, what Mama wanted to protect us from. We knew who we were. Uncle Nevil and Aunt Fay got a place on such a steep hill that we could play in the dirt under the front porch with the dogs. When we stood on tiptoe, we could barely reach the floorboards above us. The house was set so deep in the hill that the dogs could not dig out from under it, and the back rooms were always cool and shadowy.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  It was around then that I discovered that Reese was masturbating almost as often as I was. In the middle of the night, I woke up to feel the bed shaking slightly. Instead of sprawling across the bottom of the bed as she usually did, her legs and arms thrown wide, Reese was at the far edge of the mattress, her body taut and curved away from me. I could hear the sound of her breathing, fast and shallow. I knew immediately what she was doing. I kept still, my own breathing quiet and steady. After a while there was a moment when she held her breath, and then the shaking stopped. Very quietly then I slipped my right hand down between my legs and held myself. I wanted to do it too, but I couldn’t stand the thought that she might hear. But what if she did? I felt Reese relax and sprawl wide again. I held my breath, I moved my hand, I almost did not shake the bed at all. Reese would go back to our bedroom alone every day when we got home from school. When she came out, I would go in. Sometimes I even imagined I could smell what she had been doing, but that could not have been so. She was a little girl and smelled like a little girl. Neither of us smelled like Mama, the ripe fleshy scent of a woman grown. I pulled my shorts down and made sure of it, carefully washing between my legs with warm soap and water every time I did that thing I knew my sister was doing too. One afternoon, I went outside and stood listening for the sound of Reese alone in the bedroom. She was quiet, very quiet, but I could hear the rhythm of her breathing as it gradually picked up speed, and the soft little grunts she made before it began to slow down again. I liked those grunts. When Reese did it in the middle of the night, she never made any sound at all. But then, I was just as careful myself even when I was safely alone. I wondered if Reese did it differently in the daytime. I wondered if she lay on her back with her legs wide, the way I liked to when I was alone, rather than on her stomach with both hands under her the way she did at night. There was no way to spy on her, no way to know. But I imagined Reese sometimes while I did it myself, seeing her sprawled across our big Hollywood bed, rocking only slightly, showing by nothing but her breathing that she was committing a sin. I walked in on Reese one afternoon while she was lying on the bed with a pair of mama’s panties over her face.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  But if you are still as wise as you always were, you should be counting your lucky stars that she was given to me and not to anyone else. For had she belonged to another, no matter how proper your love may have been, he would have preferred to keep her to himself rather than allow you to love her, whereas in my case, if you consider me your friend, as I am, you must hope for a kindlier fate. And the reason is this, that ever since our friendship began, I cannot recall possessing anything that was not as much yours as it was mine. ‘Just as I have shared my other possessions with you, so I would share Sophronia, if I were already married to her and no other solution were possible; but as the matter stands at present, I am able to ensure that she is yours alone, and that is what I intend to do. For I should be a poor sort of friend if I were unable to convert you to my own way of thinking when the thing can be so decorously arranged. It is perfectly true that Sophronia is my promised bride, that I love her a great deal, and that I was eagerly looking forward to our marriage; but because your love for her is greater, and because you desire more fervently than I to possess so precious an object, you may rest assured that she shall enter the bridal chamber, not as my wife, but as yours. Fret no more then, cast aside your gloom, retrieve your health, your spirits and your gaiety; and from this time forth, look forward cheerfully to the reward of your love – a love far worthier than mine ever was.’ To hear Gisippus speak in these terms, Titus was at one and the same time delighted and ashamed: delighted on account of the tempting picture Gisippus had drawn, and ashamed because common sense argued that the greater the generosity of his friend, the more unseemly did it appear for him to profit from it. And so, with tears still rolling down his cheeks, he replied with an effort as follows: ‘Gisippus, your true and generous friendship shows me very clearly where my duty lies. God forbid that I should ever accept from you as mine the wife that He has given you as a mark of your superior worth. Had He judged that she ought to be mine, neither you nor anyone else can deny that He would never have given her to you.

• From Chéri and The Last of Chéri (1920)

  He rapped out his order, frowning, and Lea felt embarrassed by the rekindled gleam in his eyes. It was as if someone had switched on the light. She shrugged her shoulders and kissed the forehead so close to her lips. He drew his arms tighter around her neck, and pulled her^down towards him. She shook her head only at the very instant that their lips touched, then she remained absolutely motionless, and held her breath like someone listening. When he released his hold, she broke away from him, rose to her feet, took a deep breath, and put a hand up to tidy her unruffled hair. She turned to him, rather pale and with rueful eyes, and said, teasingly: ‘ That was a bright idea 1 * He lay far back in the rocking-chair, speechless, and scrutinized her with a suspicious, questioning gaze, so that she asked: ‘What is it? ’ ‘Nothing,* Cheri said. ‘I know what X wanted to know.* She blushed with humiliation, then skilfully defended herself. ‘ What do you know? That I like your mouth? My poor child, I*ve kissed uglier. What does that prove? D*you think I’m going to fling myself at your feet and cry, “Take me!” You talk as if you’ve known only nice young girls! D’you imagine I’m going to lose my head because of a kiss?’ She grew calmer while speaking and wished to prove her selfcontrol. * Listen, child,’ she persisted, as she leaned over him, * d’you think a handsome mouth means anything to me?’ She smiled down at Id™ completely sure of herself, but unaware that there remained on her tace a sort of very faint quiver, an appealing sadness, and that her smile was like a rainbow after a sudden storm. ‘I’m perfectly calm. Even if I were to kiss you again, or even if we She stopped and pouted with scorn. ‘No, no, I really can’t see you and me doing that.* ‘Nor could you see us doing what we did just now,* Cheri said, taking Hme over his words. ‘And yet you don’t mind doing it, and not in a hurry, either. So now you’re thinking of going further, are you? I never suggested such a thing.’ They faced each other like enemies. Lea was afraid to reveal a desire she had not yet had time to develop or to disguise; she resented this .child, so suddenly cold and perhaps derisive. ‘You’re right,’ she conceded lightly. ‘Let’s say no more about it. Shall we say instead that I’m offering to put you out to grass! And the food will be good ... my food, in other words.* 4 We’!! see,* Ch£ri answered. ‘ Shall I bring the Renouhard tourer? * * Of course; you're not going to leave it behind with Charlotte.’ c I’ll pay for the petrol, but you’ll feed the chauffeur.’

• From Chéri and The Last of Chéri (1920)

  This very evening, at home, when dinner was over, Edmee had deftly steered the conversation round to the pathetic little tale, put together with such studied clumsiness. Cheri had it off by heart and it ended with the words: ‘And then Pierquin said to me, “I had a dream about cats, old lad; and then I'd another dream about our river at home and it looked fair mucky. ... The meaning of that's pretty clear. ...” It was at this very moment he was picked off, by the smallest scrap of shrapnel. I wanted to carry him back. They found the two of us, him on the top of me, not a hundred yards from the spot. I tell you about him because he was a rare good sort... and he had quite a lot to do with my being given this.' And, as he ended on this modest note, Cheri had lowered his eyes to his green-and-red riband and knocked the ash off his cigarette, as though to keep himself in countenance. He considered it nobody's business that a chance explosion had thrown one of them across the other's shoulders, leaving Cheri alive and Pierquin dead. The truth — more ambiguous than falsehood — was that the terrific weight of a Pierquin, suddenly struck dead, had kept Cheri alive and halfsuffocated, indignant and resentful. Cheri still bore a grudge against Pierquin. And, further, he had come to scorn the truth ever since the day when, years ago, it had suddenly fallen from his mouth like a belch, to spatter and wound one whom he had loved. But at home this evening, the Americans — Majors Marsh-Meyer and Atkins, and Lieutenant Wood — had not appeared to listen to him. With the vacant faces of athletic first communicants, with fixed and expressionless eyes, they had simply been waiting to go to a night club, waiting with almost painful anxiety. As for Filipesco! “Needs watching,” Chdri decided laconically. The lake in the Bois was encircled with a fragrant mist that rose rather from the scythed slopes of its banks than from the stagnant water. Cheri was about to lean against a tree, when, from the shadows, a woman boldly brushed against him. ‘Good evening, kid ...' The last word made him start; it was uttered in a low parched voice, the very voice of thirst, of dusty roads, of this dry hot night. ... He made no answer, and the dim figure came a step nearer on soft-soled shoes. But he caught a whiff of black woollens, soiled linen, dank hair, and turned back with long springy strides towards his own home.

• From Blue Nights (2011)

  The photographs were taken by one of her West Hartford cousins, Tony Dunne, who had arrived on leave from Williams to spend a few months in Malibu. He had been in Malibu only a day or two when she began to lose her first baby tooth. She had noticed the tooth loosening, she had wiggled the tooth, the tooth loosened further. I tried to remember how this situation had been handled in my own childhood. My most coherent memory involved my mother tying a piece of thread around the loose tooth, attaching the thread to a doorknob, and slamming the door. I tried this. The tooth stayed fixed in place. She cried. I grabbed the car keys and screamed for Tony: tying the thread to the doorknob had so exhausted my aptitude for improvisational caretaking that my sole remaining thought was to get her to the emergency room at UCLA Medical Center, thirty-some miles into town. Tony, who grew up with three siblings and many cousins, tried without success to convince me that UCLA Medical Center might be overkill. “Just let me try just this one thing first,” he said finally, and pulled the tooth. The next time a tooth got loose she pulled it herself. I had lost my authority. Was I the problem? Was I always the problem? In the note Tony included when he sent the photographs a few months ago he said that each image represented something he had seen in her. In some she is melancholy, large eyes staring directly into the lens. In others she is bold, daring the camera. She covers her mouth with her hand. She obscures her eyes with a polka-dotted cotton sun hat. She marches through the wash at the edge of the sea. She bites her lip as she swings from an oleander branch. A few of these photographs are familiar to me. A copy of one of them, one in which she is wearing the cashmere turtleneck sweater I bought her in London, is framed on my desk in New York.

• From Henry and June (1986)

  Since Allendy has fully won my confidence I came ready to talk very frankly about frigidity. I confess this: that when I found pleasure in sexual intercourse with Henry I was afraid of having a baby and thought that I should not have an orgasm too frequently. But a few months ago a Russian doctor told me it could not happen easily; in fact, if I wanted a child I would have to subject myself to an operation. The fear of having a baby, then, was eliminated. Allendy said the very fact that I did not try to reassure myself on this score for seven years of my married life proved I did not really give it any importance, that I used it merely as an excuse for not letting go in coition. When this fear vanished, I was able to examine more closely the true nature of my feelings. I expressed a restlessness at what I termed the enforced passivity of women. Still, perhaps two times out of three, I kept myself passive, waiting for all the activity in the man, as if I did not want to be responsible for what I was enjoying. “That is to abate your sense of guilt,” Allendy said. “You refuse to be active and feel less guilty if it is the other who is active.” After the previous talk with Allendy I had felt a slight change. I was more active with Henry. He noticed it and said, “I love the way you fuck me now.” And I felt a keen pleasure. What astonishes me most about June are Henry’s stories of her aggressivity, her taking him, seeking him at her own will. When I occasionally try aggressivity, it gives me a feeling of distress, shame. I sense now an occasional psychic paralysis in me somewhat similar to Eduardo’s, except that it is more serious for a man. Allendy pressed me to admit that since the last analysis I had complete confidence in him and that I had become very fond of him. All is well, then, as this is necessary for the success of the analysis. At the end of the session he could use the word “frigidity” without offending me. I was even laughing. One of the things he observed was that I was dressing more simply. I have felt much less the need of original costuming. I could almost wear ordinary tailored clothes now. Costume, for me, has been an external expression of my secret lack of confidence. Uncertain of my beauty, Allendy said, I designed striking clothes which would distinguish me from other women.

• From Blue Nights (2011)

  The photographs were taken by one of her West Hartford cousins, Tony Dunne, who had arrived on leave from Williams to spend a few months in Malibu. He had been in Malibu only a day or two when she began to lose her first baby tooth. She had noticed the tooth loosening, she had wiggled the tooth, the tooth loosened further. I tried to remember how this situation had been handled in my own childhood. My most coherent memory involved my mother tying a piece of thread around the loose tooth, attaching the thread to a doorknob, and slamming the door. I tried this. The tooth stayed fixed in place. She cried. I grabbed the car keys and screamed for Tony: tying the thread to the doorknob had so exhausted my aptitude for improvisational caretaking that my sole remaining thought was to get her to the emergency room at UCLA Medical Center, thirty-some miles into town. Tony, who grew up with three siblings and many cousins, tried without success to convince me that UCLA Medical Center might be overkill. “Just let me try just this one thing first,” he said finally, and pulled the tooth. The next time a tooth got loose she pulled it herself. I had lost my authority. Was I the problem? Was I always the problem? In the note Tony included when he sent the photographs a few months ago he said that each image represented something he had seen in her. In some she is melancholy, large eyes staring directly into the lens. In others she is bold, daring the camera. She covers her mouth with her hand. She obscures her eyes with a polka-dotted cotton sun hat. She marches through the wash at the edge of the sea. She bites her lip as she swings from an oleander branch. A few of these photographs are familiar to me. A copy of one of them, one in which she is wearing the cashmere turtleneck sweater I bought her in London, is framed on my desk in New York. There is also on my desk in New York a framed photograph she herself took one Christmas on Barbados: the rocks outside the rented house, the shallow sea, the wash of surf. I remember the Christmas she took that picture. We had arrived on Barbados at night. She had gone immediately to bed and I had sat outside listening to a radio and trying to locate a line I believed to be from Claude Lévi-Strauss’s Tristes Tropiques but was never able to find: “The tropics are not exotic, they are merely out of date.” At some point after she went to sleep news had come on the radio: since our arrival on Barbados the United States had invaded Panama.

• From I'm Not a Mourning Person (2023)

  It wouldn’t surprise me if on some very old branches of my paternal family tree there were ancestors who had also experienced abandonment and neglect. Living in these conditions creates a whole bunch of behavioral issues: codependency; fear of being left; insecurity and low selfworth; difficulty saying no and trouble self-regulating, especially big feelings like—you guessed it—anger. As a result, it can be hard to form healthy relationships, because it’s difficult to trust others and even yourself. It’s my fault. There must be something wrong with me. I’m bad. These are common beliefs buried in the shameful wounds of trauma. For me, abandonment played out in countless familiar ways. As an adult, I often chose romantic partners who were emotionally cut off, were unaffectionate, or had a difficult time seeing me. I constantly made negative assumptions about what others thought of me (mirroring what I thought of myself). When my discomfort felt too big to cope with, I swiftly cut people out of my life, amputation style. And like many of us, I also self-abandoned. Not long after I was diagnosed with cancer in my early 30s, BD visited me. We’d stayed in touch over the years—a visit here, a dinner there—but we struggled to form a solid relationship. After a few pleasantries, I learned why he had come in the first place. “You need to get your affairs in order. You also need to figure out who’s going to pull the plug if it comes to that.” I was stunned. We hadn’t created the kind of relationship that allowed for deeply personal and difficult talks like this, one that took an incredible amount of trust and tenderness—not to mention sensitivity. Maybe in his own awkward way he was only trying to be helpful. But it still hurt. “Pull the plug”? Who says that? After his attempt at fatherly advice, he got up to leave. This visit lasted all of an hour. “Right-oh,” he said, nodding my way as he stood at the door. And with that, he was gone. I sat there frozen, not knowing how to process what had just happened. BD and I had barely talked about the basics, like where he was for most of my life or why he’d refused to acknowledge me. When we did connect, he preferred light banter. Throughout my 20s, the pain stacked up, and no matter how many drugs, cocktails, or boys I devoured, I couldn’t numb the truth: I wasn’t wanted. His disconnected tone about DNRs and end-of-life planning did nothing to dispel this feeling. Even with the parent who did want me, I sometimes felt like I was a burden. Growing up, I watched my mom work herself to the bone to make ends meet. Despite her efforts to hide her stress and show me love, the weight of caring for me and her two aging parents wrung her out.

• From The Surprising Lives of Christian Saints Course Guidebook (2023)

  67 9. Margaret of Cortona: Midwife and Mystic When he was about 12, she sent him to the Franciscans of Arezzo as a novice. It is unclear whether they ever met again or what her son’s impressions of his mother were. Emphasizing this aspect of their relationship furthered Giunta’s efforts to portray Margaret as desperately penitent for her sins and eager to shed her former life, son included. The connections Margaret had built with wealthy Cortonese families benefited many of her later projects and raised her status in the community. Even as her fame as a holy woman and ascetic grew, Margaret proved herself a savvy manager of people and resources. She leveraged her contacts to become an able fundraiser and administrator. As her charitable efforts became well known, she inspired the wealthy families of her circle to greater acts of charity themselves. One Lady Diabella dedicated her own home as a hospice of mercy, which Margaret ran as an infirmary for the local Franciscans. She built the small hospice into a thriving charity. In 1286, she convinced one of the most powerful noblemen of Cortona, Uguccio Casali, to support the foundation of a hospital. She became the driving force behind the foundation and administration of Spedale di Santa Maria della Misericordia, also founding an organization of pious laypeople (known as a confraternity) to run the hospital. 9. Margaret of Cortona: Midwife and Mystic 68 Margaret’s Rising Status While Margaret’s embrace of poverty and good works benefitted her reputation in Cortona, it was her mystical visions that attracted followers and elevated her authority above that of priests and bishops. Margaret became a local celebrity. She was asked to perform baptisms, healings, and even exorcisms so often that she began to refuse, fearing that she was spending too much time on these worldly things. But Margaret also wondered if, by refusing to attend, she would lose favor with Christ. She was constantly on the alert for signs of weakness in herself, and the Legenda is full of passages in which she castigates herself for not being ascetic enough—devout enough—to atone for her past sins. She was devoted to prayer and frequently overcome with contrition. She would give away all her possessions, and paupers clustered around her cell in expectation of alms. Margaret also became the holy defender of Cortona. A miracle describes her prayers as forming a wall around the city. This was not a hypothetical attack she envisioned. Arezzo and Cortona had been at war for some time and only reached a fragile peace in 1277. They had a difficult relationship for decades afterward. The holy woman’s defense of her city was held up as an example of Cortonese independence. Margaret’s devoted followers tried to tempt her with good food, but she reprimanded them and rejected their offerings—though apparently, she had a weakness for figs, which she ate but later bemoaned as a temptation.

• From In an Unspoken Voice (2010)

  Self-blame and self-hatred are common among molestation and rape survivors, who judge themselves harshly for not “putting up a fight,” even where fight was not a viable survival option. However, both the experience of paralysis and the critical self-judgment about “weakness” and helplessness are common components of trauma. In addition, the younger, the more developmentally immature or insecurely attached the victim is, the more likely it is that he or she will respond to stress, threat and danger with paralysis rather than active struggle. People who lack solid early attachment bonding to a primary caregiver, and therefore lack a foundation of safety, are much more vulnerable to being victimized and traumatized and are more likely to develop the entrenched symptoms of shame, dissociation and depression. 37 In addition, since the psychophysiological patterns of trauma and shame are similar, there is an intrinsic association of shame and trauma. This includes the collapse of shoulders, slowing of heart rate, aversion of eyes, nausea, etc. 38 Shame also feeds into the common misperception of traumatized individuals that they are, somehow, the cause of (or, at least, deserving of) their own misfortune. Another (powerfully corrosive) factor comes into play in the formation of shame: while it appears to be an almost structural component of trauma, all too frequently trauma is inflicted by the people who are supposed to protect and love the child. Children who are molested by family and friends, of course, bear this additional confused and chaotic burden. Shame becomes deeply embedded as a pervasive sense of “badness” permeating every part of their lives. Similar erosion of a core sense of dignity is also found in adults who have been tortured, on whom pain, disorientation, terror and other violations have been deliberately inflicted. 39 While the principles of uncoupling fear from immobility discussed in this chapter apply to these cases, the therapeutic process is generally much more complex. It requires a broader skill for negotiating the therapeutic relationship so that the therapist does not get tangled up in taking on the (projected) role of the perpetrator(s) or rescuer . As They Go In, So They Come Out: The Rage Connection When a pigeon that is blithely pecking at some grain is quietly approached from behind, gently picked up, and then turned upside down, it becomes immobilized. The pigeon will, like the guinea pigs I saw in Brazil, or Picasso’s dove in the play, remain in that position, with its feet stuck straight up in the air. In a minute or two, it will come out of this trancelike state, right itself, and hop or fly away.

• From Giovanni's Room (1956)

  GIOVANNrS ROOM 133 approached Sue as though she were a job of work, a job which it was necessary to do in an unforgettable manner. Somewhere, at the very bottom of myself, I realized that I was doing something awful to her and it became a matter of my honor not to let this fact become too obvious. I tried to convey, through this grisly act of love, the intelligence, at least, that it was not her, not her flesh, that I despised—it would not be her I could not face when we became vertical again. Again, somewhere at the bottom of me, I realized that my fears had been ex- cessive and groundless and, in ejffect, a lie: it became clearer every instant that what I had been afraid of had nothing to do with my body. Sue was not Hella and she did not lessen my terror of what would happen when Hella came: she increased it, she made it more real than it had been before. At the same time, I realized that my performance with Sue was succeeding even too well, and I tried not to despise her for feeling so Uttle what her laborer felt. I travelled through a network of Sue's cries, of Sue's tom- tom fists on my back, and judged by means of her thighs, by means of her legs, how soon I could be free. Then I thought, The end is com- ing soon, her sobs became even higher and harsher, I was terribly aware of the small of my back and the cold sweat there, I thought. Well, let her have it for Christ sake, get it over with; then it was ending and I hated her and me, then it was over, and the dark, tiny room rushed — 134 back. And I wanted only to get out of there. James Baldwin She lay still for a long time. I felt the night outside and it was calling me. I leaned up at last and found a cigarette. Terhaps/ she said, Ve should finish our drinks.* She sat up and switched on the lamp which stood beside her bed. I had been dreading this moment. But she saw nothing in my eyes she stared at me as though I had made a long journey on a white charger all the way to her prison house. She lifted her glass. *A la voire/ I said. 'A la votre?' She giggled. *A la tienne, cheriT She leaned over and kissed me on the mouth. Then, for a moment, she felt something; she leaned back and stared at me, her eyes not quite tightening yet; and she said, lightly, 'Do you suppose we could do this again sometime?' 1 don't see why not,' I told her, trying to laugh. 'We carry our own equipment. together— tonight?' She was silent. Then : 'Could we have supper Tm sorry,' I said. Tm really sorry, Sue, but I've got a date.'

• From Giovanni's Room (1956)

  122 James Baldwin came abreast and, as though he had seen some all-revealing panic in my eyes, he gave me a look contemptuously lewd and knowing; just such a look as he might have given, but a few hours ago, to the desperately well-dressed nym- phomaniac or trollop who was trying to make him believe she was a lady. And in another second, had our contact lasted, I was certain that there would erupt into speech, out of all that light and beauty, some brutal variation of Look, baby, I know you, I felt my face flame, I felt my heart harden and shake as I hurried past him, trying to look stonily beyond him. He had caught me by surprise, for I had, some- how, not really been thinking of him but of the letter in my pocket, of Hella and Giovanni. I got to the other side of the boulevard, not dar- ing to look back, and I wondered what he had seen in me to elicit such instantaneous con- tempt. I was too old to suppose that it had any- thing to do with my walk, or the way I held my hands, or my voice—which, anyway, he had not heard. It was something else and I would never see it. I would never dare to see it. It would be like looking at the naked sun. But, hurrying, and not daring now to look at any- one, male or female, who passed me on the wide sidewalks, I knew that what the sailor had seen in my unguarded eyes was envy and desire: I had seen it often in Jacques' eyes and my reaction and the sailor's had been the same. But if I were still able to feel affection and if he GIOVANNI'S ROOM 123 had seen it in my eyes, it would not have helped, for affection, for the boys I was doomed to look at, was vastly more frightening than lust. I walked farther than I had intended, for I did not dare to stop while the sailor might still be watching. Near the river, on rue des Pyra- mides, I sat down at a cafe table and opened Hella's letter.

• From The Selected Works of Audre Lorde

  and sleep with their ghosts. These stones in my heart are you of my own flesh whittling me with your sharp false eyes searching for prisms falling out of your head laughing me out of your skin because you do not value your own self nor me. This is a simple poem I will have no mother no sister no daughter when I am through and only the bones are left see how the bones are showing the shape of us at war clawing our own flesh out to feed the backside of our masklike faces that we have given the names of men. Donald DeFreeze I never knew you so well as in the eyes of my own mirror did you hope for blessing or pardon lying in bed after bed or was your eye sharp and merciless enough to endure beyond the deaths of wanting? With your voice in my ears with my voice in your ears try to deny me I will hunt you down through the night veins of my own addiction through all my unsatisfied childhoods as this poem unfolds like the leaves of a poppy I have no sister no mother no children left only a tideless ocean of moonlit women in all shades of loving learning a dance of open and closing learning a dance of electrical tenderness no father no mother would teach them. Come Sambo dance with me pay the piper dangling dancing his knee high darling over your wanting under your bloody white faces come Bimbo come Ding Dong watch the city falling down down down lie down bitch slow down nigger so you want a cozy womb to hide you to pucker up and suck you back safely well I tell you what I’m gonna do next time you head for the hatchet really need some nook to hole up in look me up I’m the ticket taker on a queen of rollercoasters I can get you off cheap. This is a simple poem sharing my head with the dream of a big black woman with jewels in her eyes she dances her head in a golden helmet arrogant plumed her name is Colossa her thighs are like stanchions or flayed hickory trees embraced in armour she dances in slow earth shaking motions that suddenly alter and lighten as she whirls laughing tooled metal over her hips comes to an end and at the shiny edge an astonishment of soft black curly hair. Between Ourselves Once when I walked into a room my eyes would seek out the one or two black faces for contact or reassurance or a sign I was not alone now walking into rooms full of black faces that would destroy me for any difference where shall my eyes look? Once it was easy to know who were my people. If we were stripped of all pretense to our strength and our flesh was cut away the sun would bleach all our bones as white

• From Henry and June (1986)

  I want to love a stronger man and cannot do so. He says that I have a sense of inferiority due to my physical frailness as a child. It seemed to me that men only loved healthy, fat women. Eduardo talked to me about fat Cuban girls. Hugo’s first attraction was for a fat girl. Everybody used to comment on my slenderness, and my mother quoted the Spanish proverb: “Bones are for the dogs.” When I went to Havana, I doubted being able to please because I was thin. This theme continues right down to the moment when Henry hurt me by his admiration of Natasha’s body because it seemed rich to him. Allendy: “Do you know that sometimes the sense of sexual inferiority is due to a realization of one’s frigidity?” It is true I was quite indifferent to sex until I was eighteen or nineteen, and even then, tremendously romantic but not really sexually awake. But afterwards! “And if I were frigid, would I be so preoccupied by sex?” Allendy: “All the more so.” Silence. I am thinking that with all the tremendous joys Henry has given me I have not yet felt a real orgasm. My response does not seem to lead to a true climax but is disseminated in a spasm that is less centered, more diffuse. I have felt an orgasm occasionally with Hugo, and when I have masturbated, but perhaps that is because Hugo likes me to close my legs and Henry makes me open them so much. But this, I would not tell Allendy. From my dreams he culls the consistent desire to be punished, humiliated, or abandoned. I dream of a cruel Hugo, of a fearful Eduardo, of an impotent John. “This comes from a sense of guilt for having loved your father too much. Afterwards I am sure you loved your mother much more.” “It is true. I loved her tremendously.” “And now you seek punishment. And you enjoy the suffering, which reminds you of the suffering you endured with your father. In one of your dreams, when the man forces himself into you, you hate him.” I feel oppressed, as if his questions were thrusts. I am in a terrible need of him. Yet analysis does not help. The pain of living is nothing compared to the pain of this minute analysis. Allendy asks me to relax and tell him what goes on in my mind. But what goes on in my mind is the analysis of my life. Allendy: “You are trying to identify yourself with me, to do my work. Have you not wished to surpass men in their own work? To humiliate them by your success?” “Indeed not. I constantly help men in their work, make sacrifices for them.” I encourage, admire, applaud them. No, Allendy is very wrong. He says, “Perhaps you are one of those women who are friends not enemies of man.” “More than that.