Tenderness

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.

Page 11 of 145 · 20 per page

• From Trash (1988)

  When I visit Mama, I always look first to her hands and feet to reassure myself. The skin of her hands is transparent—large-veined, wrinkled, and bruised—while her feet are soft with the lotions I rubbed into them every other night of my childhood. That was a special thing between my mother and me, the way she’d give herself the care of my hands, lying across the daybed, telling me stories of what she’d served down at the truck stop, who had complained and who tipped specially well, and most important, who had said what and what she’d said back. I would sit at her feet, laughing and nodding and stroking away the tightness in her muscles, watching the way her mouth would pull taut while under her pale eyelids the pulse of her eyes moved like kittens behind a blanket. Sometimes my love for her would choke me, and I would ache to have her open her eyes and see me there, to see how much I loved her. But mostly I kept my eyes on her skin, the fine traceries of the veins and the knotted cords of ligaments, seeing where she was not beautiful and hiding how scared it made me to see her close up, looking so fragile, and too often, so old.

• From Trash (1988)

  Jay was a vet. He had an ugly scar under his chin and a gruff voice. Mostly, he didn’t talk. He worked at the garage, making do with hand gestures and a stern open face. Only with Jo did he let himself relax. He didn’t drink except for twice a year—each time he asked Jo to marry him, and every time she said no. Then Jay went and got seriously drunk. Jo didn’t let anyone say a word against him, but she also refused to admit he was little Beth’s daddy, though they were as alike as two puppies from the same litter. “To hell with boots,” Jo joked at me over Jay’s shoulder. “Old Jaybird’s all I really need.” She gave him another kiss and a fast tug on his dark blond hair. He wiggled against her happily. I hugged the worn cotton sheet in my arms. I’d hate it if Jo ran Jay off, but maybe she wouldn’t. Sometimes Jo was as tender with Jay as if she intended to keep him around forever. Arlene lived at Castle Estates, an apartment complex off Highway 50 on the way out to the airport. It looked to me like Kentucky Ridge where she was two years ago, and Dunbarton Gardens five years before that. Squat identical two-story structures, dotted with upstairs decks and imitation wood beams set in fields of parking spaces and low unrecognizable blue-green hedges. Castle Estates was known for its big corner turrets and ersatz iron gate decorated with mock silver horseheads. It gleamed like malachite in the Florida sunshine. When I visited last spring, I went over for a day and joked that if I wanted to take a walk, I’d have to leave a trail of breadcrumbs to find my way back. Arlene didn’t think it was funny. “What are you talking about? No one walks anywhere in central Florida. You want to drown in your own sweat?” In Arlene’s apartments, the air conditioner was always set on high and all the windows sealed. The few times I stayed with her, I’d huddle in her spare room, tucked under her old Bewitched sleeping bag, my fingers clutching the fabric under Elizabeth Montgomery’s pink-and-cream chin. Out in the front room the television droned nondenominational rock and roll on the VH-1 music channel. Beneath the backbeat, I heard the steady thunk of the mechanical ratchets on the stair-stepper. Since she turned thirty, Arlene spends her insomniac nights climbing endlessly to music she hated when it was first released.

• From Trash (1988)

  She stepped around me and took her place on the other side of the bed. Jo dropped her head forward. I let my breath out slowly. Mama’s hand in mine was loose. Her mouth had gone slack, though it seemed to quiver now and then, and when it did I felt the movement in her fingers. Across from me Arlene put her right hand on Mama’s shoulder. She didn’t flinch when Mama’s bloody left eye rolled to the side. The good eye stared straight up, wide with profound terror. Arlene began a soft humming then, as if she were starting some lullaby. Mama’s terrified eye blinked and then blinked again. In the depths of that pupil I seemed to see little starbursts, tiny desperate explosions of light. Arlene’s hum never paused. She ran her hand down and took Mama’s fingers into her own. Slowly, some of the terror in Mama’s face eased. The straining muscles of her neck softened. Arlene’s hum dropped to a lower register. It resounded off the top of her hollow throat like an oboe or a French horn shaped entirely of flesh. No, I thought. Arlene is what she has always wanted to be, the one we dare not hate. I wanted Arlene’s song to go on forever. I wanted to be part of it. I leaned forward and opened my mouth, but the sound that came out of me was ugly and fell back into my throat. Arlene never even looked over at me. She kept her eyes on Mama’s bloody pupil. I knew then. Arlene would go on as long as it took, making that sound in her throat like some bird creature, the one that comes to sing hope when there is no hope left. Strength was in Arlene’s song, peace its meter, love the bass note. Mama’s eye swung in lazy accompaniment to that song—from me to Jo, and around again to Arlene. Her hands gripped ours, while her mouth hung open. From the base of the bed, Jo reached up and laid her hands on Mama’s legs. Mama looked down once, then the good eye turned back to our bird and clung there. My eyes followed hers. I watched the thrush that beat in Arlene’s breast. I heard its stubborn tuneless song. Mama’s whole attention remained fixed on that song until the pupil of the right eye finally filled up with blood and blacked out. Even then, we held on. We held Mama’s stilled shape between us. We held her until she set us free. This page constitutes an extension of the copyright page. “Deciding to Live.” Writing Women’s Lives: An Anthology of Autobiographical Narratives by Twentieth-Century Women Writers, edited by Susan Cahill. HarperPerennial, 1994. “Demon Lover.” Off Our Backs: A Women’s Liberation Bi-Weekly. Fiction/Poetry Supplement, July 1979. “Gospel Song.” Downhome: An Anthology of Southern Women Writers, edited by Susie Mee. Harcourt, Brace & Company, 1995. “Her Thighs.” The Persistent Desire: A Femme-Butch Reader, edited by Joan Nestle. Alyson Publications, 1992.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Ultimately, after many prayers, Madam Beritola protesting that she would never consent to go whereas she might be known, she persuaded her to go with her into Lunigiana, together with the two kids and their dam, which latter were meantime returned and had greeted her with the utmost fondness, to the no small wonderment of the gentlewoman. Accordingly, as soon as fair weather was come, Madam Beritola embarked with Currado and his lady in their vessel, carrying with her the two kids and the she-goat (on whose account, her name being everywhere unknown, she was styled Cavriuola[105]) and setting sail with a fair wind, came speedily to the mouth of the Magra,[106] where they landed and went up to Currado's castle. There Madam Beritola abode, in a widow's habit, about the person of Currado's lady, as one of her waiting-women, humble, modest and obedient, still cherishing her kids and letting nourish them. [Footnote 105: _i.e._ wild she-goat.] [Footnote 106: A river falling into the Gulf of Genoa between Carrara and Spezzia.] Meanwhile, the corsairs, who had taken the ship wherein Madam Beritola came to Ponza, but had left herself, as being unseen of them, betook themselves with all the other folk to Genoa, where, the booty coming to be shared among the owners of the galley, it chanced that the nurse and the two children fell, amongst other things, to the lot of a certain Messer Guasparrino d'Oria,[107] who sent them all three to his mansion, to be there employed as slaves about the service of the house. The nurse, afflicted beyond measure at the loss of her mistress and at the wretched condition where into she found herself and the two children fallen, wept long and sore; but, for that, albeit a poor woman, she was discreet and well-advised, when she saw that tears availed nothing and that she was become a slave together with them, she first comforted herself as best she might and after, considering whither they were come, she bethought herself that, should the two children be known, they might lightly chance to suffer hindrance; wherefore, hoping withal that, sooner or later fortune might change and they, an they lived, regain their lost estate, she resolved to discover to no one who they were, until she should see occasion therefor, and told all who asked her thereof that they were her sons. The elder she named, not Giusfredi, but Giannotto di Procida (the name of the younger she cared not to change), and explained to him, with the utmost diligence, why she had changed his name, showing him in what peril he might be, an he were known. This she set out to him not once, but many and many a time, and the boy, who was quick of wit, punctually obeyed the enjoinment of his discreet nurse. [Footnote 107: More familiar to modern ears as Doria.]

• From Crazy Brave (2012)

  It is a good soul. It tells me, “Come here, forgetful one.” And we sit together. We cook a little something to eat, then a sip of something sweet, for memory, for memory. This is my song. It is a good song. It walked forever the border of fire and water, climbed ribs of desire to sing to you. Its new wings quiver with vulnerability. Come lie next to me. Put your head here. My heart is close enough to sing. Though we have instructions and a map buried in our hearts when we enter this world, nothing quite prepares us for the abrupt shift to the breathing realm. Good thoughts by our parents, relatives, and associations contribute a harmonious atmosphere to the home and provide great assistance. Disregard and fighting bring difficulty and seed enmity. Each child has a spirit and its particular relationship to parents, ancestors, and place. The spirit’s intent can bring blessings, challenges, or both to the family and to their place in the sea of time. I have been present at many births—my own, my children’s, those of patients in the Santa Fe hospital where I worked as a nursing assistant, and the births of several of my grandchildren. My first granddaughter, born when I was in my thirties, emerged with her eyes open. She saw through this world into the next. Her eyes fixed on her mother, asking for protection. Another granddaughter was fierce and determined. Even her hair arranged itself in a fiercely determined manner. Her birth was short, precise, and intense. This granddaughter knows what she wants and bided her time impatiently through babyhood. When I was born, I put up a fight. I wanted out. The emotional sea of my mother was overwhelming. She and my father were in disagreement. He liked his party, and because she was taking care of a pregnancy she could not go out with him to make sure that he didn’t stop anywhere else or forget the path home because of bewitchment by another woman. I’d seen the map of my life. What lay ahead in the early years was difficult. I wanted a head start, to make my way through as fast as possible. Then, as I got close to the door, I panicked. I began choking and kicking, fighting for air. My spirit helper spoke precisely: “If you fight water, you drown.” [image "6706.jpg" file=Image00008.jpg] [image "6709.jpg" file=Image00009.jpg] [image "6711.jpg" file=Image00010.jpg] On a mountainside in Colorado forty years later, in a vision, I relived my birth. As I struggled through the birth canal, I saw myself as a warrior with a weapon in my hand. I saw the slaughter, a battlefield of fallen comrades. I decided then to take as many enemies with me as possible. I went down, drowning in blood, still fighting. This vision could have been a memory curled in my DNA.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  [Footnote 56: _i.e._ money.] This unguent, being of great virtue (albeit Galen speaketh not thereof in any part of his Medicines), wrought to such purpose that the fire denounced against him was by favour commuted into [the wearing, by way of penance, of] a cross, and to make the finer banner, as he were to go a crusading beyond seas, the inquisitor imposed it him yellow upon black. Moreover, whenas he had gotten the money, he detained him about himself some days, enjoining him, by way of penance, hear a mass every morning at Santa Croce and present himself before him at dinner-time, and after that he might do what most pleased him the rest of the day; all which he diligently performed. One morning, amongst others, it chanced that at the Mass he heard a Gospel, wherein these words were chanted, 'For every one ye shall receive an hundred and shall possess eternal life.'[57] This he laid fast up in his memory and according to the commandment given him, presented him at the eating hour before the inquisitor, whom he found at dinner. The friar asked him if he had heard mass that morning, whereto he promptly answered, 'Ay have I, sir.' Quoth the inquisitor, 'Heardest thou aught therein whereof thou doubtest or would question?' 'Certes,' replied the good man, 'I doubt not of aught that I heard, but do firmly believe all to be true. I did indeed hear something which caused and yet causeth me have the greatest compassion of you and your brother friars, bethinking me of the ill case wherein you will find yourselves over yonder in the next life.' 'And what was it that moved thee to such compassion of us?' asked the inquisitor. 'Sir,' answered the other, 'it was that verse of the Evangel, which saith, "For every one ye shall receive an hundred." 'That is true,' rejoined the inquisitor; 'but why did these words move thee thus?' 'Sir,' replied the good man, 'I will tell you. Since I have been used to resort hither, I have seen give out every day to a multitude of poor folk now one and now two vast great cauldrons of broth, which had been taken away from before yourself and the other brethren of this convent, as superfluous; wherefore, if for each one of these cauldrons of broth there be rendered you an hundred in the world to come, you will have so much thereof that you will assuredly all be drowned therein.' [Footnote 57: "And every one that hath forsaken houses or brethren or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or lands for my name's sake shall receive an hundredfold and shall inherit everlasting life."--Matthew xix. 29. Boccaccio has garbled the passage for the sake of his point.]

• From Trash (1988)

  Mavis crossed her arms. Jo shrugged and leaned over to pull the thin blanket further up Mama’s bruised shoulders. In her sleep Mama said softly, “Please.” Then in a murmur so soft it could have been a blessing, “Goddamn, goddamn.” I reached past Jo and took Mama’s free hand in mine. “It’s OK. It’s OK,” I said. Mama’s face smoothed. Her mouth went soft, but her fingers in mine clutched tightly. “That window isn’t supposed to be open,” Mavis said suddenly. “You get it shut.” Jo and I just looked at her. Mama’s first diagnosis came when I was seventeen. Back then, I couldn’t even say the word, “cancer.” Mama said it and so did Jo, but I did not. “This thing,” I said. “This damn thing.” Twenty-five years later, I still called it that, though there was not much else I hesitated to say. That was my role. I did the talking and carried all the insurance records. Jack blinked. Jo argued. Arlene showed up late, got a sick headache, and left. In the early years it was Jack who argued and that just made things harder. Now he never said much at all. For that I was deeply grateful. It let us seem like all the other families in the hospital corridors—only occasionally louder and a little more careful of each other than anyone at MacArthur Hospital could understand. “Who do they think we are?” Jo asked me once. “They don’t care who we are.” What I did not say is that was right. Mama was the one the medical folk were supposed to watch. The rest of us were incidental, annoying, and, whenever possible, meant to be ignored. “I like your mama,” Mavis told me the first week Mama was on the ward. “But your daddy makes me nervous.” “It’s a talent he has,” I said. “Uh huh.” Mavis looked a little confused, but I didn’t want to explain. The fact is he never hit her. In the thirty years since they married, Jack never once laid a hand on her. His trick was to threaten. He screamed and cursed and cried into his fists. He would come right up on Mama, close enough to spray spittle on her cheeks. Pounding his hands together, he would shout, “Motherfuckers, ass-holes, sonsabitches.” All the while, Mama’s face remained expressionless. Her eyes stared right back into his. Only her hands trembled, the yellow-stained fingertips vibrating incessantly. Gently, I covered the bruises on Mama’s arm with my fingers. Jo scowled and turned away. “They should be here.” “Better they’re not.” Jo shoved until the window was again closed. When she turned back to me, her face was the mask Mama wore most of our childhood. She gestured at Mama’s bruises. “Look at that. You see what he did.” “He didn’t mean to,” I said. “Didn’t mean to? Didn’t care. Didn’t notice. Man’s the same he always was.” “He never hit her.”

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

  She was young, beautiful, virtuous, and amiable; but he preferred to live with mistresses; and three years after the marriage he sought a divorce, with the aid of the unprincipled archbishop Siegfried of Mainz. The pope very properly refused his consent. The king gave up his wicked intention, and became attached to Bertha. She was born to love and to suffer, and accompanied him as a comforting angel through the bitter calamities of his life. The royal couple passed through Burgundy and Susa under the protection of Count William and the mother of Bertha, and crossed Mont Cenis. The queen and her child were carried up and lowered down the icy slopes in rough sledges of oxhide; some horses were killed, but no human lives lost. When Henry reached the plains of Lombardy, he was received with joy by the anti-Hildebrandian party; but he hurried on to meet the successor of Peter, who alone could give him absolution. He left his wife and child at Reggio, and, accompanied by his mother-in-law and a few friends, he climbed up the steep hill to Canossa, where Gregory was

• From Trash (1988)

  “Wasn’t she from Louisville, that woman had the sports car? The one with those boots I liked so much?” Jo and I were folding sheets. We had cleared about a month of laundry off the bed, shifting sheets and towels up onto shelves, and stacking the T-shirts, socks, and underwear in baskets. Jo’s rules for housekeeping were simple; she did the least she could. All underpants, T-shirts, and socks in her house were white. Nothing was sorted by anything but size—when it was sorted at all. If I wanted to sleep, I had to get it all off the bed. “No,” I said. “Met her after I moved to Brooklyn.” “Sure had a lot of attitude. And Lord God! Those boots. What happened to her, anyway?” “Got a job in Chicago working for a news show.” “Oh, so not the one, huh?” Jo made a rude gesture with her right hand. “You talked like she had your heart in her hands.” “For a while.” I shook out a sheet and began to refold it more neatly. “But when I moved in with her, things changed. Turned out she had Jack’s temper and Arlene’s talent for seeing what she wanted to see.” “That’s a shock.” There was a sardonic drawl in Jo’s tone. “Didn’t think there was another like Arlene in the world.” “There’s a world of Arlenes,” I said. “World of Jacks, too, and a lifetime of scary women just waiting for me to drag them here so you can talk them out of their boots.” “Well, those were damn fine boots.” Jaybird came in then, dragging his feet across the doorsill to knock loose the sand. Jo waved him over. “You remember the red boots I bought in Atlanta that time?” “They hurt your feet.” Jay took a quick nibble on Jo’s earlobe and gave me a welcome grin. “Just about crippled me. But you sure liked the way they looked when I crossed my legs at the bar that weekend.” “You look good any way, woman,” Jay said. “You come in covered in dog shit and grass seed, I’ll still want to suck on your neck. You sit back in shiny red high-heeled boots and I’ll do just about anything you want.” “You will, huh?” She snagged one of his belt loops and tugged it possessively. “You know I will.” “Uh huh.” They kissed like I was not in the room, so I pretended I was not, folding sheets while the kiss turned to giggles and then pinches and another kiss. Jo and Jaybird have been together almost nine years. I liked Jay more than any other guy Jo ever brought around. He was older than the type she used to chase. Jo wouldn’t say, but Mama swore Pammy’s daddy was a kid barely out of junior high. “Your sister likes them young,” she complained. “Too young.”

• From The Decameron (1353)

  And it was when they were begging outside a church one morning, that a great lady, the wife of one of the King of England’s marshals, happened to catch sight of the Count and his two children as she was coming away from her devotions. On asking where he came from and whether the two children were his, he replied that he was from Picardy and that he was indeed their father. But he had been compelled to leave home with the children and lead a vagabond existence because of a crime that an elder son of his had committed. The lady, who was of a kindly nature, ran her eyes over the girl and took a great liking to her, for she was a pretty little thing and had an air of gentility about her. ‘Good sir,’ said the lady. ‘If you would like to leave this little girl with me, I will gladly look after her, for she is a pretty-looking child. And if she turns out as well as she promises, when the time comes I shall arrange a good marriage for her.’ This request greatly pleased the Count, who promptly gave his consent, and with tears in his eyes he handed over his daughter, warmly commending her to the lady’s care. He was well aware of the lady’s identity, and now that he had found a good home for the child, he decided not to remain there any longer. And so, begging as he went, he made his way with Perrot to the other side of the island, finding the journey very tiring as he was unused to travelling on foot. Eventually he arrived in Wales, where there was another of the King’s marshals, a man who lived in great style and kept a large number of servants, and to this man’s castle the Count, either by himself or with his son, would frequently go in order to obtain something to eat. There were several children at the castle, of whom some belonged to the Marshal himself and others were the sons of the local gentry, and whilst they were competing with each other in children’s sports, like running and jumping, Perrot began to mix with them, performing equally as well or better than any of the others in every game they played. His prowess attracted the attention of the Marshal, who, taking a great liking to the child’s manner and general behaviour, demanded to know who he was. On being told that he was the son of a pauper who sometimes came into the castle begging for alms, the Marshal sent someone to ask whether he could keep him; and although it distressed him to part with the child, the Count, who was praying that such a thing might happen, willingly handed him over.

• From Crazy Brave (2012)

  that connected my heart to hers. I walked behind the motel to look for him. I found his shoes under a tree. Beyond them were his socks, like two dark salamanders. A little farther beyond his socks was his belt, and then I followed a trail of pants, shirt, and underwear until I was standing in the courtyard of the motel. My stomach turned and twisted as I considered all the scenarios a naked, drunk Indian man might get into in a motel on the main street of the city. I heard a splash in the pool. I remember thinking, He’s a Pueblo Indian; he can’t swim. I considered leaving him there to flounder. It would be his foolish fault, as well as the fault of a society that builds its cities over our holy places. At that moment, his disappearance would be a sudden relief. It was then that I first felt our daughter moving within me. She awakened me with a flutter, a kick. As I walked to the pool, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. I never told her father about the night she showed up to announce her intentions, or how I saw her spirit when she was conceived, wavering above us on a fine sheen of light. I never told my daughter how I pulled her father from deep water. Not long after Rainy Dawn was born on a hot July day in Albuquerque when everyone was wishing for rain. I can still close my eyes and open them four floors up looking south and west from the hospital in the approximate direction of Acoma— and farther on to the roofs of the houses of the gods who have learned there are no endings, only beginnings. That day so hot, heat danced in waves off bright car tops, we both stood poised at that door from the east, listened for a long time to the sound of our grandmothers’ voices the brushing wind of sacred wings, the rattle of rain drops in dry gourds. I had to participate in the dreaming of you into memory, cupped your head in the bowl of my body as ancestors lined up to give you a name made of their dreams cast once more into this stew of precious spirit and flesh. And let you go, as I am letting you go once more in this ceremony of the living. And when you were born I held you wet and unfolding, like a butterfly newly born from the chrysalis of my body. And breathed with you as you breathed your first breath. Then was your promise to take it on like the rest of us, this immense journey, for love, for rain.

• From Trash (1988)

  I nod, scratch chigger bites on my ankles, unable to relax to pissing in the weeds, hoping that trailer comes back and pays for more than the plumbing. She married late, Cousin Temple did, married late and well—a steady boy, one of those Roberts from Asheville, a lean, freckled, still boy, as steady as she was and as quiet, a good son who loved his mother and never ran around like the other boys all the other cousins married early. Temple rolls a little hair between two fingers and turns her red-tan face up into the sun slanting past the porch beams. This house, yard, dirt road, myrtle trees, kudzu holding the screens on the windows—none of it would stand up to a northern winter, a Yankee tax assessor, or an estate sale. But it puts Temple outside them, a property owner, something none of the rest of the family can imagine becoming. Temple has been an outsider all her life, though living on her own since her mama left her with her own mother when Temple was barely seven—a quiet red-faced seven as she is now a quiet red-faced woman whose hair shows gray where it lies close to her skull. “You were a bean when you were a girl,” Temple tells me, “a string bean, and your sister was a butter bean. Your mama was a stretch of stringy pork, and together you didn’t make a decent Sunday dinner.” When Temple laughs, her head goes back. Her long red hair shakes out, and all the gray she has so skillfully tried to hide flakes loose and flashes at me silver and white. “Temple,” I tell her, “you’re finally getting old.” “Bullshit,” she flares. “And apple butter. I’m just more woman than the men in this town can handle. And I’ve more left to me than most people get to start out.” Then she smiles, oh she smiles! The skin around her mouth that’s aged so dry and tight flushes and fills like the grin on a mewling baby. But her teeth slip loose, and her hand flies up to hide the wolf grin. “Goddamn,” she sighs. Her daughter doesn’t look up. Temple’s hand caresses her porch, strokes the soft, worn wood like the lover she barely remembers. “It an’t Robert, you know, but it is, I’d swear. All I have of him anyway. Nights, I seem to hear him breathing, but it’s the walls. They sweat so, they smell just the way he did. And I got to where I don’t care if I’m crazy. I talk to this house like it was him.” Somehow it is. There was an army insurance policy, a thousand-dollar burial, and a four-thousand-dollar mortgage, plus two more for the plumbing which never worked anyway. In the North, it would have bought nothing: in Asheville only a little more: but out here off Old Henderson Road in 1959 it was an estate for three orphans and a redheaded woman suddenly going gray.

• From Crazy Brave (2012)

  Not long after Rainy Dawn was born on a hot July day in Albuquerque when everyone was wishing for rain. I can still close my eyes and open them four floors up looking south and west from the hospital in the approximate direction of Acoma— and farther on to the roofs of the houses of the gods who have learned there are no endings, only beginnings. That day so hot, heat danced in waves off bright car tops, we both stood poised at that door from the east, listened for a long time to the sound of our grandmothers’ voices the brushing wind of sacred wings, the rattle of rain drops in dry gourds. I had to participate in the dreaming of you into memory, cupped your head in the bowl of my body as ancestors lined up to give you a name made of their dreams cast once more into this stew of precious spirit and flesh. And let you go, as I am letting you go once more in this ceremony of the living. And when you were born I held you wet and unfolding, like a butterfly newly born from the chrysalis of my body. And breathed with you as you breathed your first breath. Then was your promise to take it on like the rest of us, this immense journey, for love, for rain. [image "6706.jpg" file=Image00008.jpg] [image "6709.jpg" file=Image00009.jpg] [image "6711.jpg" file=Image00010.jpg] I felt close to my ancestors when I painted. This is how I came to know my grandmother Naomi Harjo Foster intimately. I never got to know her in person because she died long before I was born. Throughout childhood I studied her drawing of two horses running in a storm, which lived on the wall of our living room. And now, as an art major at the university, I found her in the long silences, in between the long, meditative breaths that happen when you interact with the soul of creation. I began to know her within the memory of my hands as they sketched. Bones have consciousness. Within marrow is memory. I heard her soft voice and saw where my father got his sensitive, dreaming eyes. Like her, he did not like the hard edges of earth existence. He drank to soften them. She painted to make a doorway between realms. As I moved pencil across paper and brush across canvas, my grandmother existed again. She was as present as these words. I saw a woman who liked soft velvets, a clean-cut line. She was often perceived as “strange” because she appeared closer to death than to life. I felt sadness as grief in her lungs. The grief came from the tears of thousands of our tribe when we were uprooted and forced to walk the long miles west to Indian Territory. They were the tears of the dead and the tears of those who remained to bury the dead. We had to keep walking.

• From Trash (1988)

  “Wasn’t she from Louisville, that woman had the sports car? The one with those boots I liked so much?” Jo and I were folding sheets. We had cleared about a month of laundry off the bed, shifting sheets and towels up onto shelves, and stacking the T-shirts, socks, and underwear in baskets. Jo’s rules for housekeeping were simple; she did the least she could. All underpants, T-shirts, and socks in her house were white. Nothing was sorted by anything but size—when it was sorted at all. If I wanted to sleep, I had to get it all off the bed. “No,” I said. “Met her after I moved to Brooklyn.” “Sure had a lot of attitude. And Lord God! Those boots. What happened to her, anyway?” “Got a job in Chicago working for a news show.” “Oh, so not the one, huh?” Jo made a rude gesture with her right hand. “You talked like she had your heart in her hands.” “For a while.” I shook out a sheet and began to refold it more neatly. “But when I moved in with her, things changed. Turned out she had Jack’s temper and Arlene’s talent for seeing what she wanted to see.” “That’s a shock.” There was a sardonic drawl in Jo’s tone. “Didn’t think there was another like Arlene in the world.” “There’s a world of Arlenes,” I said. “World of Jacks, too, and a lifetime of scary women just waiting for me to drag them here so you can talk them out of their boots.” “Well, those were damn fine boots.” Jaybird came in then, dragging his feet across the doorsill to knock loose the sand. Jo waved him over. “You remember the red boots I bought in Atlanta that time?” “They hurt your feet.” Jay took a quick nibble on Jo’s earlobe and gave me a welcome grin. “Just about crippled me. But you sure liked the way they looked when I crossed my legs at the bar that weekend.” “You look good any way, woman,” Jay said. “You come in covered in dog shit and grass seed, I’ll still want to suck on your neck. You sit back in shiny red high-heeled boots and I’ll do just about anything you want.” “You will, huh?” She snagged one of his belt loops and tugged it possessively. “You know I will.” “Uh huh.” They kissed like I was not in the room, so I pretended I was not, folding sheets while the kiss turned to giggles and then pinches and another kiss. Jo and Jaybird have been together almost nine years. I liked Jay more than any other guy Jo ever brought around. He was older than the type she used to chase. Jo wouldn’t say, but Mama swore Pammy’s daddy was a kid barely out of junior high. “Your sister likes them young,” she complained. “Too young.”

• From Trash (1988)

  I looked down at the young men. They were like racehorses tossing their heads about, their thick hair cut short or tied back in clubs at their napes. Once the game started they were suddenly running and leaping, bouncing off the net walls and barely avoiding the fast-moving balls. All around me gray-headed women with solid bodies shrieked and jumped in excitement. They called out vaguely Spanish-sounding names, and crowed when their champions made a score. Now and again one of the young men would wave a hand in acknowledgment. I turned to watch Mama. Her eyes were on the boys. Her face was bright with pleasure. What did I know? Where else could she spend twenty dollars and look that happy? When later, Rafael jumped and scored, I nudged Mama’s side. “He’s the best,” I said. She blushed like a girl. Mama was not supposed to drive, so I steered her old Lincoln town car around Orlando. “You are terrible,” Mama said to me every time we pulled into another parking space. It was an act. She played as if I were dragging her out, but every time I suggested we go back to the house, she pouted. “I can nap anytime. When you’ve gone, I’ll do nothing but rest. Let me do what I want while I can.” It was part of being sick. She wasn’t sleeping, even though she was tired all the time. She’d lie on the couch awake at night with the television playing low. Every time I woke in the night I could hear it, and her, stirring restlessly out in the front room. It was awkward sleeping in Jack’s house. The last time I had lain in that bed, I had been twenty-two and back only for a week before taking a job in Louisville. Every day of that week burned in my memory. Mama had been sick then too, recovering from a hysterectomy her doctor swore would end all her troubles. Jo was in her own place over in Kissimmee, an apartment she got as soon as she graduated from high school. Only Arlene’s stuff had remained in the stuffy bedroom; she herself was never there. At dawn, I would watch her stumble in to shower and change for school. She spent her nights baby-sitting for one of Mama’s friends from the Winn Dixie. A change-of-life baby had turned out to be triplets, and Arlene spent her nights rocking one or the other while the woman curled up in her bed and wept as if she were dying. “They are in shock over there,” Mama had told me. “Don’t know whether to shit or go blind.” “Blind,” Arlene said. The woman, Arlene told us, was drunk more often than sober. Still, her troubles were the making of Arlene, who not only got paid good money, she no longer had to spend her nights dodging Jack’s curses or sudden drunken slaps.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  ‘Messer Torello, the time is approaching for you to be severed from me, and since I can neither go with you nor send another in my place, being prevented from doing so by the manner of your travelling, I am forced to take my leave of you here and now, which is why I have come. But before bidding you farewell, I implore you in the name of our love and our friendship to remember me. And before our lives are spent, I beg you if possible to settle your affairs in Lombardy and come once more to visit me; for not only will I rejoice to see you, but I shall then be able to repair the omissions which your haste to depart imposes upon me. Until such time as this should come about, let it not weary you to visit me with your letters, and ask of me whatever you please, for you may be sure that there is no other person on earth whose wants I would supply more readily.’ Messer Torello, being unable to control his tears, was prevented from replying at any length. And so in few words he declared it was impossible for him ever to forget Saladin’s courteous deeds and sterling worth, and that without fail he would do as Saladin had requested, whenever the opportunity arose. So Saladin enfolded him tenderly in his arms, kissed him, and, weeping copiously, wished him God-speed and withdrew. Then all his nobles took their leave of Messer Torello and accompanied Saladin to the hall where the bed had been set.

• From Crazy Brave (2012)

  It is a good soul. It tells me, “Come here, forgetful one.” And we sit together. We cook a little something to eat, then a sip of something sweet, for memory, for memory. This is my song. It is a good song. It walked forever the border of fire and water, climbed ribs of desire to sing to you. Its new wings quiver with vulnerability. Come lie next to me. Put your head here. My heart is close enough to sing. Though we have instructions and a map buried in our hearts when we enter this world, nothing quite prepares us for the abrupt shift to the breathing realm. Good thoughts by our parents, relatives, and associations contribute a harmonious atmosphere to the home and provide great assistance. Disregard and fighting bring difficulty and seed enmity. Each child has a spirit and its particular relationship to parents, ancestors, and place. The spirit’s intent can bring blessings, challenges, or both to the family and to their place in the sea of time. I have been present at many births—my own, my children’s, those of patients in the Santa Fe hospital where I worked as a nursing assistant, and the births of several of my grandchildren. My first granddaughter, born when I was in my thirties, emerged with her eyes open. She saw through this world into the next. Her eyes fixed on her mother, asking for protection. Another granddaughter was fierce and determined. Even her hair arranged itself in a fiercely determined manner. Her birth was short, precise, and intense. This granddaughter knows what she wants and bided her time impatiently through babyhood. When I was born, I put up a fight. I wanted out. The emotional sea of my mother was overwhelming. She and my father were in disagreement. He liked his party, and because she was taking care of a pregnancy she could not go out with him to make sure that he didn’t stop anywhere else or forget the path home because of bewitchment by another woman. I’d seen the map of my life. What lay ahead in the early years was difficult. I wanted a head start, to make my way through as fast as possible. Then, as I got close to the door, I panicked. I began choking and kicking, fighting for air. My spirit helper spoke precisely: “If you fight water, you drown.” [image "6706.jpg" file=Image00008.jpg] [image "6709.jpg" file=Image00009.jpg] [image "6711.jpg" file=Image00010.jpg] On a mountainside in Colorado forty years later, in a vision, I relived my birth. As I struggled through the birth canal, I saw myself as a warrior with a weapon in my hand. I saw the slaughter, a battlefield of fallen comrades. I decided then to take as many enemies with me as possible. I went down, drowning in blood, still fighting. This vision could have been a memory curled in my DNA.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  On gazing at this woman and observing that she was very beautiful and impeccably well-bred, to say nothing of the fortitude of spirit to which her words bore witness, the podestà was touched with compassion for her, being afraid lest she should confess and thus compel him, if he wished to preserve his authority, to have her put to death. Nevertheless, being unable to avoid questioning her about what she was alleged to have done, he said: ‘Madam, as you see, Rinaldo your husband is here, and he has lodged a complaint against you, claiming that he has taken you in adultery. He is therefore demanding that I should punish you, as prescribed by one of our statutes, by having you put to death. But this I cannot do unless you confess, and therefore I must warn you to be very careful how you answer. Now tell me, is your husband’s accusation true?’ Without flinching in the slightest, the lady replied in a most fetching sort of voice: ‘Sir, it is true that Rinaldo is my husband, and that he found me last night in Lazzarino’s arms, wherein, on account of the deep and perfect love I bear towards him, I have lain many times before; nor shall I ever deny it. However, as I am sure you will know, every man and woman should be equal before the law, and laws must have the consent of those who are affected by them. These conditions are not fulfilled in the present instance, because this law only applies to us poor women, who are much better able than men to bestow our favours liberally. Moreover, when this law was made, no woman gave her consent to it, nor was any woman even so much as consulted. It can therefore justly be described as a very bad law. ‘If, however, to the detriment of my body and your soul, you wish to give effect to this law, that is your own affair. But before you proceed to pass any judgement, I beseech you to grant me a small favour, this being that you should ask my husband whether or not I have refused to concede my entire body to him, whenever and as often as he pleased.’ Without waiting for the podestà to put the question, Rinaldo promptly replied that beyond any doubt she had granted him whatever he required in the way of bodily gratification. ‘Well then,’ the lady promptly continued, ‘if he has always taken as much of me as he needed and as much as he chose to take, I ask you, Messer Podestà, what am I to do with the surplus? Throw it to the dogs?3 Is it not far better that I should present it to a gentleman who loves me more dearly than himself, rather than allow it to turn bad or go to waste?’

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Jeannette had already presented Jacques with several children, of whom the eldest was no more than eight, and they were the prettiest and most delightful infants imaginable. When they saw the Count at his meal, they all gathered round and made a fuss of him, as though impelled by some mysterious instinct which told them that this was their grandfather. Knowing them to be his grandchildren, the old man began to show them his affection and fondle them, with the result that the children were unwilling to come away, however much their tutor cajoled and threatened them. Hearing the commotion, Jeannette left the room she was in, came to where the Count was sitting, and spoke sharply to the children, threatening to chastise them if they did not obey their tutor’s instructions. The children began to cry, protesting that they wanted to stay with this worthy fellow who loved them more than their tutor, whereupon the lady and the Count smiled broadly at one another. The Count had risen to his feet, not in the manner of a father greeting his daughter but rather in the role of a pauper paying his respects to a fine lady, and as soon as he set eyes upon her, his heart was filled with a marvellous joy. But she never suspected for a moment who he was, either then or later, for he was thin and elderly-looking, and what with his beard, his greying hair and his dark complexion, he no longer seemed the same person. But on seeing how reluctant the children were to be parted from the old man, and how dismally they wailed whenever any attempt was made to dislodge them, the lady told their tutor to leave them for the present where they were. It was while the children were playing with this worthy fellow that Jacques’ father, who now loathed Jeannette, happened to return home and hear the whole story from their tutor. ‘Let them stay where they are,’ he said, ‘and to hell with them. It’s obvious which side of the family they take after, for they are descended from a vagrant on their mother’s side, and it’s hardly surprising if they feel at home in a vagrant’s company.’ The Count overheard these words, and was deeply wounded. But he simply shrugged his shoulders, and suffered the insult as patiently as he had borne countless others.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  ‘Antigono,’ the fair lady replied, ‘the other day, when I first saw you, it was as if I was seeing my own father. Prompted by the love and tenderness that I have an obligation to bear him, I revealed my presence to you, when I could have remained concealed. Yours is the first familiar face I have encountered for many years, and there are few people I could possibly be so contented to see. To you, therefore, as though you were my father, I shall reveal the story of my appalling misfortunes, which I have never related to anyone before. If, when you have heard what I have to say, you see any possibility of restoring me to my former state, I beseech you to explore it; if not, I must ask you never to tell a living soul that you have either seen me or heard anything about me.’ And so saying, never ceasing to weep, she told him about everything that had happened to her since the day on which she was shipwrecked off Majorca, whereupon Antigono too began to weep with compassion, and after considering the matter at some length, he said: ‘My lady, since your identity has remained a secret throughout the course of your misadventures, I shall have no difficulty in restoring you to a higher place than ever in your father’s affection, and you will then go to marry the King of Algarve, as originally arranged.’ When she inquired how it was to be managed, he explained to her in detail what she was to do. And to avoid all further delay and any further complications, Antigono returned at once to Famagusta and went to see the King, addressing him thus: ‘My lord, if it pleases you, you can at the same time cover yourself with glory and render a most valuable service to one who has grown poor while acting on your behalf. I refer of course to myself.’ The King asked him to explain, and Antigono replied: ‘The fair young daughter of the Sultan, who was long reputed to have been drowned at sea, has arrived in Paphos. For many years, she has endured extreme hardship in the struggle to preserve her honour, she has been reduced to comparative poverty, and she wishes to return to her father. If you were to send her back to the Sultan under my escort, it would redound greatly to your credit, and I would be sure of a rich reward. It is unlikely, moreover, that the Sultan will ever forget your charitable deed.’ His regal magnanimity having been stirred, the King readily gave his consent, and he dispatched a guard of honour to accompany the lady to Famagusta, where he and the Queen welcomed her amid scenes of indescribable rejoicing and magnificent pomp and splendour. And when she was asked by the King and Queen to tell them about her adventures, she replied exactly as she had been instructed by Antigono.