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.

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• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  She opened her black leather bag to replace the lipstick. He glimpsed a roll of money and a packet of condoms in sky-blue tinfoil. “Why don’t you like to talk about it?” “It makes me unhappy.” The telephone by the bed rasped, indicating the end of their hour. — He saw her again the following night, and the night after that. He relished the way she laughed and playfully squeezed him around the stomach with her hefty thighs, or impatiently squiggled out from under him so they could change position. Her nonchalant reaction to his efforts to impress her sexually made him believe that her excitement, when it did occur, was real, that she wanted him. But if he so much as put a hand where she didn’t want it, she’d fiercely slap it away and snap, “I don’t like that.” “That’s why I like you so much,” he said. “You don’t let me get away with anything. You’re straightforward. Like my wife.” During that time, she told him that her real name was Jane. She still wouldn’t talk to him about her life outside the pale green room. Instead, she asked him questions about himself. He was too embarrassed by now to tell her that he’d lied about his job. The lie turned out to be a mistake. Not only was she unimpressed by his false attorneyhood, she was an animal lover. The longest conversation they ever had on a single subject was about a cat that she’d had for fifteen years, until the fat, asthmatic thing finally keeled over. “He had all black fur except for his paws and his throat patch. He looked like he was wearing a tuxedo with a white cravat and gloves, and he was more of a gentleman than any human being I’ve ever known. I saw him protect a female cat from a dog once.” The cute stories he could’ve told about all the kittens and puppies that came into his office, clinging to the shirts of their owners, the birds with broken wings in white-spattered boxes! — The fifth night he came to see her, she wasn’t sitting in the waiting room with the other girls. “Where’s Jane?” he asked the stretch-pants woman nervously. “Jane? You must mean Lisette . She’s busy right now,” she answered in her placid, salad-oily voice. “Would you like to see another lady?” A very young girl with burgundy hair smiled brightly at him. She was clutching a red patent-leather purse in purple-nailed hands. “I’ll wait for Lisette.” The stretch-pants woman widened her naked-lashed eyes in approval. “All right, Fred, just sit down and make yourself comfortable. Would you like something to drink?”

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  Haggerty of the Runaway Home for Boys was sure he had just the right youngsters for me, if only I would give them a chance; all of them had been mistreated by their stepfathers or stepmothers. The Mayor of New York would appreciate it if I would give my personal attention to the bearer of said letter whom he could vouch for in every way—but why the hell he didn’t give said bearer a job himself was a mystery. Man leaning over my shoulder hands me a slip of paper on which he has just written—“Me understand everything but me no hear the voices.” Luther Winifred is standing beside him, his tattered coat fastened together with safety pins. Luther is two-sevenths pure Indian and five-sevenths German-American, so he explains. On the Indian side he is a Crow, one of the Crows from Montana. His last job was putting up window shades, but there is no ass in his pants and he is ashamed to climb a ladder in front of a lady. He got out of the hospital the other day and so he is still a little weak, but he is not too weak to carry messages, so he thinks. And then there is Ferdinand Mish—how could I have forgotten him? He has been waiting in line all morning to get a word with me. I never answered the letters he sent me. Was that just? he asks me blandly. Of course not. I remember vaguely the last letter which he sent me from the Cat and Dog Hospital on the Grand Concourse, where he was an attendant. He said he repented that he had resigned his post “but it was on account of his father being too strick over him, not giving him any recreation or outside pleasure.” “I’m twenty-five now,” he wrote, “and I don’t think I should ought to be sleeping no more with my father, do you? I know you are said to be a very fine gentleman and I am now self-dependent, so I hope . . .” McGovern, the old trusty, is standing by Ferdinand’s side waiting for me to give him the sign. He wants to give Ferdinand the bum’s rush—he remembers him from five years ago when Ferdinand lay down on the sidewalk in front of the main office in full uniform and threw an epileptic fit. No, shit, I can’t do it! I’m going to give him a chance, the poor bastard. Maybe I’ll send him to Chinatown where things are fairly quiet. Meanwhile, while Ferdinand is changing into a uniform in the back room, I’m getting an earful from an orphan boy who wants to “help make the company a success.” He says that if I give him a chance he’ll pray for me every Sunday when he goes to church, except the Sundays when he has to report to his parole officer. He didn’t do nothing, it appears.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  2. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. AUGUSTINE. (ubi sup.) Since when these temporal things are provided beforehand against the future, it is uncertain with what purpose it is done, as it may be with a single or double mind, He opportunely subjoins, Judge not. PSEUDO-CHRYSOSTOM. Otherwise; He has drawn out thus far the consequences of his injunctions of almsgiving; He now takes up those respecting prayer. And this doctrine is in a sort a continuation of that of the prayer; as though it should run, Forgive us our debts, and then should follow, Judge not, that ye be not judged. JEROME. But if He forbids us to judge, how then does Paul judge the Corinthian who had committed uncleanness? Or Peter convict Ananias and Sapphira of falsehood? PSEUDO-CHRYSOSTOM. But some explain this place after a sense, as though the Lord did not herein forbid Christians to reprove others out of good will, but only intended that Christians should not despise Christians by making a show of their own righteousness, hating others often on suspicion alone, condemning them, and pursuing private grudges under the show of piety. CHRYSOSTOM. Wherefore He does not say, ‘Do not cause a sinner to cease,’ but do not judge; that is, be not a bitter judge; correct him indeed, but not as an enemy seeking revenge, but as a physician applying a remedy. PSEUDO-CHRYSOSTOM. But that not even thus should Christians correct Christians is shewn by that expression, Judge not. But if they do not thus correct, shall they therefore obtain forgiveness of their sins, because it is said, and ye shall not be judged? For who obtains forgiveness of a former sin, by not adding another thereto? This we have said, desiring to shew that this is not here spoken concerning not judging our neighbour who shall sin against God, but who may sin against ourselves. For whoso does not judge his neighbour who has sinned against him, him shall not God judge for his sin, but will forgive him his debt even as he forgave. CHRYSOSTOM. Otherwise; He does not forbid us to judge all sin absolutely, but lays this prohibition on such as are themselves full of great evils, and judge others for very small evils. In like manner Paul does not absolutely forbid to judge those that sin, but finds fault with disciples that judged their teacher, and instructs us not to judge those that are above us.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  He arranged the slices and oily slabs on two different plates and carried the stuff into the living room to put on the coffee table. He clicked on the TV with his remote-control device, flicked the channels around a few times and then ignored it. He ate with his fingers and a plastic fork, mentally feeling over the events of the day, like a blind person groping through a drawer of personal effects. There had been the usual parade of cats and dogs, and one exotic bird with a mysterious illness. He had no idea what to do with the crested, vividly plumed thing, which was apparently worth a lot of money. He had pretended that he did, though, and the bird was sitting in his kennel now, gaping fiercely at the cats with its hooked beak. Then there was the dog that he had had to put to sleep, a toothless, blind, smelly old monster with toenails like a dinosaur’s. He thought the dog was probably grateful for the injection, and he said so, but that didn’t console the homely adolescent girl who insisted on holding it right up until the end, tears running from under her glasses and down her pink, porous face. Poor lonely girl, he thought. He had wanted to say, “Don’t worry, dear, you’re going to grow up to be a beauty. You’re going to get married and have lots of wonderful children.” Except it probably wasn’t true. He picked up his remote-control device and switched channels thoughtfully. What would Jane think when he didn’t show up? Would she think he’d gotten bored with her, that he was never coming back? Would she go home wondering what had happened? He tried to picture her in her apartment. She had told him it was very small, only one room with a tiny bathroom. She said the bathroom had big windows and a skylight, and that she had so many plants in there that you couldn’t use the toilet without arranging yourself around the plants. She said she didn’t have a chair or a couch, that she sat on the floor to eat. When she came home from work she often ordered Chinese food and ate it straight from the cardboard boxes set out on the floor between her spread legs. “What do you have for breakfast?” he asked. “Ice cream, sometimes. If it’s warm.” “What do you find to do in that little room?” “I read a lot.” “What do you like to read?” She named a few writers, one that he’d been forced to read in college and others he’d never heard of. He picked up a tiny bit of herring and mashed it with the edges of his front teeth. Maybe he could start seeing Jane in her apartment. It would be more money for her certainly. He would like to spend time in that funny little place. He could buy her a chair. Maybe even a table.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  For a few days afterward, Jarold talked about how awful it had been to have Lily there. Then he forgot about it. Charles was the last person to mention her. It was shortly after Virginia got a call from Magdalen. He said, “You and Dad were always acting like Lily and Magdalen were alike. But they weren’t anything alike at all.” — For a while after that, life was okay. Magdalen was still acting like an idiot, but seemed to have stabilized in a harmless way; she had a steady job as a waitress in a health-food restaurant in South Carolina, and talked about astral travel and crystal healing when they called her. Camille was in law school at Harvard. She was engaged to a handsome, smiling med student. She sent glorious twelve-page letters to her mother on multicolored stationery covered with purple or turquoise ink. She described her teachers and her friends. She wrote about how much she loved Kevin, how much she wanted to have children and a career. She recorded her dreams and the art exhibits she’d seen. Virginia imagined Camille sitting at her desk in class. Her legs were folded restfully before her, her body slouched with arrogant feminine ease, but her neck was erect and her large eyes watchful. She imagined her sitting at an outdoor café, her bony knees childishly tilted together under the table, her long hands draped on top of her warm coffee cup as she leaned forward, laughing with her friends. She saw Camille walking across campus with Kevin. His brown jacket was loose on her shoulders, protecting her. — Daniel and Charles grew up easily. They trooped around the house with noisy bunches of boys who all seemed to have light, swinging arms and stinging, nasty voices. At times their eyes were dull and brutish. They told cruel, violent jokes and killed animals. They were mean to other children. But they harbored a sweetness and vulnerability that became exposed at unexpected moments. And they were still her little boys. She could hear it in the way Charles called, “Mom?” when he couldn’t sleep at night. She would pass by his room and hear his voice float plaintively from the darkness. She would look in and see him sitting up in his gray-and-white pajamas, slim and spare against the headboard, his blond hair standing up in pretty spikes. She would sit on his bed for at least an hour. Sometimes she would lift up his pajama top and gently scratch his warm back. He loved that. —

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  There was a whole coterie of various artists at one point. One of them was a performance artist who went off to Italy and started working with, oh, some avant-garde choreographer—I know the name but I can’t think of it. Anyway, I hear she’s doing fine.” “How do you know?” “I was a regular of hers, and we saw each other on the outside. She had short hair like yours, only hers was orange.” He smiled, as though this disclosed a revealing element that firmly established a relationship between Stephanie and the orange-haired girl. “As a matter of fact, she used this place to collect material for her work. She was extremely bright and very aware of all the contradictions she embodied by being here.” He smiled gently. “She could talk about it endlessly.” She pulled off her skirt and lay down next to him, supporting herself on one elbow. They talked about fiction in The New Yorker and The Atlantic. She ranted against the trendy writers she despised. They talked about dance performances they’d seen. He described a piece at the Dance Theater Workshop in which the dancers waved large Styrofoam animals at each other and rolled around in paint. She thought it sounded idiotic, but felt tender toward his robustly curious delight in this goofy spectacle. “I have a Workshop membership and every now and then I get invited to fabulous parties, where all the boys wear long coats and earrings, and all the girls have hair like yours.” He beamed. She thought: At this rate, I’m not going to have to do anything. They talked about her past, her coldly perfect father, her sad, passive mother, her sister on lithium, her college major, her first romance. He listened gravely. He began to stroke her arm hairs, and then her arm. He had a seductive touch; she moved closer to him and he put his arms around her. He caressed her as if he were trying to discover the places she most inhabited—not romantically, but tenderly, with a sense of exploration. She was not aroused, exactly, but it was pleasant; it had been a long time since anyone had touched her like this. She murmured, “The way you touch reminds me of my mother.” “How so?” “Her touch is very seductive. I don’t even like her, but when she starts to touch me, I suddenly become totally vulnerable to her. It’s frightening.” He liked this a lot. “That’s beautiful,” he said. The intercom buzzed, announcing that they had ten more minutes. She “took care of him” quickly, and they stood to dress. She stuck her feet back in her high heels, and cheerfully tore the sheets off the bed.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  She sent glorious twelve-page letters to her mother on multicolored stationery covered with purple or turquoise ink. She described her teachers and her friends. She wrote about how much she loved Kevin, how much she wanted to have children and a career. She recorded her dreams and the art exhibits she’d seen. Virginia imagined Camille sitting at her desk in class. Her legs were folded restfully before her, her body slouched with arrogant feminine ease, but her neck was erect and her large eyes watchful. She imagined her sitting at an outdoor café, her bony knees childishly tilted together under the table, her long hands draped on top of her warm coffee cup as she leaned forward, laughing with her friends. She saw Camille walking across campus with Kevin. His brown jacket was loose on her shoulders, protecting her. — Daniel and Charles grew up easily. They trooped around the house with noisy bunches of boys who all seemed to have light, swinging arms and stinging, nasty voices. At times their eyes were dull and brutish. They told cruel, violent jokes and killed animals. They were mean to other children. But they harbored a sweetness and vulnerability that became exposed at unexpected moments. And they were still her little boys. She could hear it in the way Charles called, “Mom?” when he couldn’t sleep at night. She would pass by his room and hear his voice float plaintively from the darkness. She would look in and see him sitting up in his gray-and-white pajamas, slim and spare against the headboard, his blond hair standing up in pretty spikes. She would sit on his bed for at least an hour. Sometimes she would lift up his pajama top and gently scratch his warm back. He loved that. — When Daniel was fifteen, he found a girlfriend. She was fourteen, she was very short and had dark hair and gentle hands. She had a round, sweet face and worried eyes. She worried about things like ecology. She sat in the kitchen with Daniel after school, eating Virginia’s sandwiches and talking about the EPA and whales. Her feet, in striped tennis shoes, barely touched the floor. Daniel admired her as he ate his sandwich. He stopped killing squirrels with BB guns. — When Charles was twelve, he was in a school play. He was one of the Lost Boys in the high school production of Peter Pan , a boy named Tootles. It was a small part, and he was nonchalant about it, but he loved to dress in his contrived rags and make his eyes fiendish with black eye paint. He came home from rehearsal that way. Virginia would see a beam of light in the driveway, then hear a car door slam and muffled voices.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  There was a grotesque old woman who would come into the store from time to time to seek out her kindness. The woman was at least sixty years old, and covered her face with heavy orange makeup. She bought horrible best-sellers and self-help books with lurid red covers. She’d stand by Daisy’s desk for half an hour and talk to her about how depressed she was. Daisy would turn off her typewriter and turn toward the woman with her chin in her hand. She’d listen gravely, agreeing sometimes, letting the woman give her small bags of hard candy and kiss her on the cheek. Everyone made rude comments about Daisy and “that crazy old dyke.” But Daisy remained courteous and attentive to the distressed creature, even though she often made fun of her after she left. — Joey didn’t think of having sex with Daisy, at least not in detail. It was more the idea of being near her, protecting her. She was obviously so confused. She looked everywhere for answers, for someone to tell her what to think. “I just want your perspective,” she’d say. There was a customer she called the “answer man” because he claimed that he could predict the future through “automatic handwriting.” He was a handsome elderly man who wore expensive suits and looked as though he’d had at least one face lift. He had been coming into the store for years. Every time he came in, Daisy would walk him off into a corner and ask him questions. He would scrawl down answers in thin red ink and hand them to her with an imperious, terribly personal look. She would become either stricken or joyous. Later she would run around talking about what he’d said, examining the red-scrawled pieces of store stationery. “He says my painting is going to start being successful in a year and a half.” “He says there are no worthwhile men around me and that there won’t be for months.” “He says David will move out next month.” “You don’t take that stuff seriously, do you?” asked Joey. “Oh, not really,” she said. “But it’s interesting.” She went back to her desk and stuck the papers in her drawer and began typing, her face still glowing and upturned because someone who was possibly crazy had told her that she would eventually be a success. — He began thinking about her at home. He thought of her body resting against his, of his arm around her. He thought of her dressed in a white kimono, peeking from behind a fan, her eye makeup crinkling when she smiled. Diane became suspicious. “You’re a thousand miles away,” she said over the Sunday salad. “What is it?” “I’m preoccupied.” His tone made it clear that her plaintiveness was futile, and she became frightened and angry. She didn’t say anything, which was what he wanted.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  Maybe every word she uttered was a lie! Not an ordinary lie, no, something worse, something indescribable. Only sometimes the truth comes out like that too, especially if you think you’re never going to see the person again. Sometimes you can tell a perfect stranger what you would never dare reveal to your most intimate friend. It’s like going to sleep in the midst of a party; you become so interested in yourself that you go to sleep. And when you’re sound asleep you begin to talk to someone, someone who was in the same room with you all the time and therefore understands everything even though you begin in the middle of a sentence. And perhaps this other person goes to sleep also, or was always asleep, and that’s why it was so easy to encounter him, and if he doesn’t say anything to disturb you then you know that what you are saying is real and true and that you are wide-awake and there is no other reality except this being wide-awake asleep. Never before have I been so wide-awake and so sound asleep at the same time. If the ogre in my dreams had really pushed the bars aside and taken me by the hand I would have been frightened to death and consequently now dead, that is, forever asleep and therefore always at large, and nothing would be strange any more, nor untrue, even if what happened did not happen. What happened must have happened long ago, in the night undoubtedly. And what is now happening is also happening long ago, in the night, and this is no more true than the dream of the ogre and the bars which would not give, except that now the bars are broken and she whom I feared has me by the hand and there is no difference between that which I feared and what is, because I was asleep and now I am wide-awake asleep and there is nothing more to fear, nor to expect, nor to hope for, but just this which is and which knows no end. She wants to go. To go. . . . Again her haunch, that slippery glide as when she came down from the dance hall and moved into me. Again her words . . . “suddenly for no reason at all, he bent down and lifted up my dress.” She’s slipping the fur around her neck; the little black bonnet sets her face off like a cameo. The round, full face, with Slavic cheekbones. How could I dream this, never having seen it? How could I know that she would rise like this, close and full, the face full white and blooming like a magnolia? I tremble as the fullness of her thigh brushes me. She seems even a little taller than I, though she is not. It’s the way she holds her chin. She doesn’t notice where she’s walking.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  I had a few American Indians, Cherokees mostly, but no Tibetans, and no Eskimos: I saw names I could never have imagined and handwriting which ranged from cuneiform to the sophisticated and astoundingly beautiful calligraphy of the Chinese. I heard men beg for work who had been Egyptologists, botanists, surgeons, gold miners, professors of Oriental languages, musicians, engineers, physicians, astronomers, anthropologists, chemists, mathematicians, mayors of cities and governors of states, prison wardens, cowpunchers, lumberjacks, sailors, oyster pirates, stevedores, riveters, dentists, painters, sculptors, plumbers, architects, dope peddlers, abortionists, white slavers, sea divers, steeplejacks, farmers, cloak and suit salesmen, trappers, lighthouse keepers, pimps, aldermen, senators, every bloody thing under the sun, and all of them down and out, begging for work, for cigarettes, for carfare, for a chance, Christ Almighty, just another chance! I saw and got to know men who were saints, if there are saints in this world; I saw and spoke to savants, crapulous and uncrapulous ones; I listened to men who had the divine fire in their bowels, who could have convinced God Almighty that they were worthy of another chance, but not the vice-president of the Cosmococcic Telegraph Company. I sat riveted to my desk and I traveled around the world at lightning speed, and I learned that everywhere it is the same—hunger, humiliation, ignorance, vice, greed, extortion, chicanery, torture, despotism: the inhumanity of man to man: the fetters, the harness, the halter, the bridle, the whip, the spurs. The finer the caliber the worse off the man. Men were walking the streets of New York in that bloody, degrading outfit, the despised, the lowest of the low, walking around like auks, like penguins, like oxen, like trained seals, like patient donkeys, like big jackasses, like crazy gorillas, like docile maniacs nibbling at the dangling bait, like waltzing mice, like guinea pigs, like squirrels, like rabbits, and many and many a one was fit to govern the world, to write the greatest book ever written. When I think of some of the Persians, the Hindus, the Arabs I knew, when I think of the character they revealed, their grace, their tenderness, their intelligence, their holiness, I spit on the white conquerors of the world, the degenerate British, the pigheaded Germans, the smug, self-satisfied French. The earth is one great sentient being, a planet saturated through and through with man, a live planet expressing itself falteringly and stutteringly; it is not the home of the white race or the black race or the yellow race or the lost blue race, but the home of man and all men are equal before God and will have their chance, if not now then a million years hence.

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

  When I went upstairs to the courtroom, I spotted the correctional officer who had given me such a hard time when I had first met Avery. I hadn’t seen the officer since that initial ugly encounter. I had asked another client about the guard and was told that he had a bad reputation and usually worked the late shift. Most people tried to steer clear of him. He must have been the officer assigned to transport Avery to the hearing, which made me worried about how Avery might have been treated on the trip, but he had seemed his usual self. Over the next three days we presented our evidence about Avery’s background. The experts who spoke about Avery’s disabilities were terrific. They weren’t partial or biased, just very persuasive in detailing how organic brain damage, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder can conspire to create severe mental impairment. They explained that the psychosis and other serious mental health problems that burdened Mr. Jenkins could lead to dangerous behavior, but this behavior was a manifestation of serious illness, not a reflection of his character. We also put forth evidence about the foster care system and how it had failed Avery. Several of the foster parents with whom Avery had been placed were later convicted of sexual abuse and criminal mismanagement of foster children. We discussed how Avery had been passed from one unhappy situation to the next, until he was drug-addicted and homeless. Several former foster parents admitted to being very frustrated by Avery because they weren’t equipped to deal with his serious mental health problems. I argued to the judge that not taking Avery’s mental health issues into consideration at trial was as cruel as saying to someone who has lost his legs, “You must climb these stairs with no assistance, and if you don’t, you’re just lazy.” Or to say to someone who is blind, “You should get across this busy interstate highway unaided, or you’re just cowardly.” There are hundreds of ways we accommodate physical disabilities—or at least understand them. We get angry when people fail to recognize the need for thoughtful and compassionate assistance when it comes to the physically disabled, but because mental disabilities aren’t visible in the same way, we tend to be dismissive of the needs of the disabled and quick to judge their deficits and failures. Brutally murdering someone would, of course, require the State to hold that person accountable and to protect the public. But to completely disregard a person’s disability would be unfair in evaluating what degree of culpability to assign and what sentence to impose.

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

  We talked about music, we talked about prison, we talked about what’s important in life and what’s not. I was completely absorbed in our conversation. We laughed at times, and there were moments when he was very emotional and sad. We kept talking and talking, and it was only when I heard a loud bang on the door that I realized I’d stayed way past my allotted time for the legal visit. I looked at my watch. I’d been there three hours. The guard came in and he was angry. He snarled at me, “You should have been done a long time ago. You have to leave.” He began handcuffing Henry, pulling his hands together behind his back and locking them there. Then he roughly shackled Henry’s ankles. The guard was so angry he put the cuffs on too tight. I could see Henry grimacing with pain. I said, “I think those cuffs are on too tight. Can you loosen them, please?” “I told you: You need to leave. You don’t tell me how to do my job.” Henry gave me a smile and said, “It’s okay, Bryan. Don’t worry about this. Just come back and see me again, okay?” I could see him wince with each click of the chains being tightened around his waist. I must have looked pretty distraught. Henry kept saying, “Don’t worry, Bryan, don’t worry. Come back, okay?” As the officer pushed him toward the door, Henry turned back to look at me. I started mumbling, “I’m really sorry. I’m really sor—” “Don’t worry about this, Bryan,” he said, cutting me off. “Just come back.” I looked at him and struggled to say something appropriate, something reassuring, something that expressed my gratitude to him for being so patient with me. But I couldn’t think of anything to say. Henry looked at me and smiled. The guard was shoving him toward the door roughly. I didn’t like the way Henry was being treated, but he continued to smile until, just before the guard could push him fully out of the room, he planted his feet to resist the officer’s shoving. He looked so calm. Then he did something completely unexpected. I watched him close his eyes and tilt his head back. I was confused by what he was doing, but then he opened his mouth and I understood. He began to sing. He had a tremendous baritone voice that was strong and clear. It startled both me and the guard, who stopped his pushing. I’m pressing on, the upward way New heights I’m gaining, every day Still praying as, I’m onward bound Lord, plant my feet on Higher Ground. It was an old hymn they used to sing all the time in the church where I grew up.

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

  She never let me see us as victims. We were victims, me and my mom, Andrew and Isaac. Victims of apartheid. Victims of abuse. But I was never allowed to think that way, and I didn’t see her life that way. Cutting my father out of our lives to pacify Abel, that was her choice. Supporting Abel’s workshop was her choice. Isaac was her choice. She had the money, not him. She wasn’t dependent. So in my mind, she was the one making the decision. It is so easy, from the outside, to put the blame on the woman and say, “You just need to leave.” It’s not like my home was the only home where there was domestic abuse. It’s what I grew up around. I saw it in the streets of Soweto, on TV, in movies. Where does a woman go in a society where that is the norm? When the police won’t help her? When her own family won’t help her? Where does a woman go when she leaves one man who hits her and is just as likely to wind up with another man who hits her, maybe even worse than the first? Where does a woman go when she’s single with three kids and she lives in a society that makes her a pariah for being a manless woman? Where she’s seen as a whore for doing that? Where does she go? What does she do? But I didn’t comprehend any of that at the time. I was a boy with a boy’s understanding of things. I distinctly remember the last time we argued about it, too. It was sometime after the bicycle, or when she was moving into her shack in the backyard. I was going off, begging her for the thousandth time. “Why? Why don’t you just leave?” She shook her head. “Oh, baby. No, no, no. I can’t leave.” “Why not?” “Because if I leave he’ll kill us.” She wasn’t being dramatic. She didn’t raise her voice. She said it totally calm and matter-of-fact, and I never asked her that question again. — Eventually she did leave. What prompted her to leave, what the final breaking point was, I have no idea. I was gone. I was off becoming a comedian, touring the country, playing shows in England, hosting radio shows, hosting television shows. I’d moved in with my cousin Mlungisi and made my own life separate from hers. I couldn’t invest myself anymore, because it would have broken me into too many pieces. But one day she bought another house in Highlands North, met someone new, and moved on with her life. Andrew and Isaac still saw their dad, who, by that point, was just existing in the world, still going through the same cycle of drinking and fighting, still living in a house paid for by his ex-wife. Years passed. Life carried on.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Secondly, from the effect of man’s salvation; for, as is said Qq. Vet et Nov. Test., qu. 83, “it is in the power of the Giver to have pity when, or as much as, He wills. Hence He came when He knew it was fitting to succor, and when His boons would be welcome. For when by the feebleness of the human race men’s knowledge of God began to grow dim and their morals lax, He was pleased to choose Abraham as a standard of the restored knowledge of God and of holy living; and later on when reverence grew weaker, He gave the law to Moses in writing; and because the gentiles despised it and would not take it upon themselves, and they who received it would not keep it, being touched with pity, God sent His Son, to grant to all remission of their sin and to offer them, justified, to God the Father.” But if this remedy had been put off till the end of the world, all knowledge and reverence of God and all uprightness of morals would have been swept away from the earth. Thirdly, this appears fitting to the manifestation of the Divine power, which has saved men in several ways—not only by faith in some future thing, but also by faith in something present and past. Reply to Objection 1: This gloss has in view the mercy of God, which leads us to glory. Nevertheless, if it is referred to the mercy shown the human race by the Incarnation of Christ, we must reflect that, as Augustine says (Retract. i), the time of the Incarnation may be compared to the youth of the human race, “on account of the strength and fervor of faith, which works by charity”; and to old age—i.e. the sixth age—on account of the number of centuries, for Christ came in the sixth age. And although youth and old age cannot be together in a body, yet they can be together in a soul, the former on account of quickness, the latter on account of gravity. And hence Augustine says elsewhere (Qq. lxxxiii, qu. 44) that “it was not becoming that the Master by Whose imitation the human race was to be formed to the highest virtue should come from heaven, save in the time of youth.” But in another work (De Gen. cont. Manich. i, 23) he says: that Christ came in the sixth age—i.e. in the old age—of the human race. Reply to Objection 2: The work of the Incarnation is to be viewed not as merely the terminus of a movement from imperfection to perfection, but also as a principle of perfection to human nature, as has been said.

• From Tropic of Capricorn (1934)

  She made you aware of it whether you wished to be or no. The nigger blood, as I say, and the fact that her mother was a trollop. The mother was white, of course. Who the father was nobody knew, not even Valeska herself. Everything was going along smoothly until the day an officious little Jew from the vice-president’s office happened to espy her. He was horrified, so he informed me confidentially, to think that I had employed a colored person as my secretary. He spoke as though she might contaminate the messengers. The next day I was put on the carpet. It was exactly as though I had committed sacrilege. Of course I pretended that I hadn’t observed anything unusual about her, except that she was extremely intelligent and extremely capable. Finally the president himself stepped in. There was a short interview between him and Valeska during which he very diplomatically proposed to give her a better position in Havana. No talk of the blood taint. Simply that her services had been altogether remarkable and that they would like to promote her—to Havana. Valeska came back to the office in a rage. When she was angry she was magnificent. She said she wouldn’t budge. Steve Romero and Hymie were there at the time and we all went out to dinner together. During the course of the evening we got a bit tight. Valeska’s tongue was wagging. On the way home she told me that she was going to put up a fight; she wanted to know if it would endanger my job. I told her quietly that if she were fired I would quit too. She pretended not to believe it at first. I said I meant it, that I didn’t care what happened. She seemed to be unduly impressed; she took me by the two hands and she held them very gently, the tears rolling down her cheeks. That was the beginning of things. I think it was the very next day that I slipped her a note saying that I was crazy about her. She read the note sitting opposite me and when she was through she looked me square in the eye and said she didn’t believe it. But we went to dinner again that night and we had more to drink and we danced and while we were dancing she pressed herself against me lasciviously. It was just the time, as luck would have it, that my wife was getting ready to have another abortion. I was telling Valeska about it as we danced. On the way home she suddenly said—“Why don’t you let me lend you a hundred dollars?”

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  But I’d still have the pleasure of feeling it for you. It doesn’t have to be returned.” He wanted to put his hands on either side of her head and squeeze. She looked at him intently. “I said that to someone recently,” she said. “Do you suppose it’s a trend of some kind?” The wind blew away her bangs, baring her white forehead. He kissed the sudden openness. She dropped her head against his shoulder. An old woman in a pink coat bearing a sequined flower with a disturbing burst of petals on her lapel looked at them and smiled. Her white face was heavy with wrinkles and pink makeup, and her smile seemed difficult under the weight. She sat on the short brick wall about two feet away from them. “I’m not making myself clear,” said Daisy. She lifted her head and looked at him with wide, troubled eyes. “If you’re nice to me, I’ll probably make you unhappy. I’ve done that to people.” “You couldn’t make me unhappy.” “I’m only nice to people who are mostly mean to me. Once somebody told me to stay away from so-and-so because he beat up girls. They said he broke his girlfriend’s jaw.” She paused, for emphasis, he supposed. The old lady was beginning to look depressed. “So I began flirting with him like wild. Isn’t that sick?” “What happened?” asked Joey with interest. “Nothing. He went to Bellevue before anything could. But isn’t it awful? I actually wanted this nut to hit me.” She paused again. “Aren’t you disgusted?” “Oh, I don’t know.” The old lady rose slowly, head down, and walked away with stiff, painful steps. Her coat blew open; her blue-veined legs were oddly pretty. Daisy turned to watch her. “See,” she said. “She’s disgusted even if you aren’t. We’ve ruined her day.” — Every day after work, he walked Daisy to a corner two blocks away from her apartment so he wouldn’t meet her boyfriend, David. There was a drugstore on the corner with colored perfume bottles nesting in fistfuls of crepe paper in the window. The druggist, a middle-aged man with a big stomach and a disappointed face, stood at the door and watched them say good-bye. It was a busy corner; traffic ran savagely in the street, and people stamped by, staring in different directions, clutching their packages, briefcases and huge, screaming radios, their faces concentrated but empty.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  She smiled and looked at the happy lions snoozing on the designer sheets. He put his hand on hers. “The first night I came here, you were uncertain, kind of shy. You came out and admitted it, you asked me questions. You trusted me. Tonight when you were mad, you didn’t put on a phony smile. You let off steam, told me how you felt. You didn’t treat me like a customer. That’s nice. There’s hardly anybody that’ll be real with you like that anymore. Sometimes even my wife isn’t honest with me.” She looked up from the smiling lions. “You shouldn’t come to prostitutes looking for honesty.” “You’re not a prostitute. Don’t say that about yourself.” “What do you think I am?” “You just happen to be a pretty, sexy girl who, uh—” “I have sex for money.” “Well, all right.” He slapped her thigh nervously. “You’re right. You’re a prostitute.” It sounded so horrible. “But you’re still a wonderful girl.” He grabbed her and snuggled her. “You don’t know me.” “You’re wonderful.” He squeezed her like he wanted to break her ribs. She shoved her pelvis against him, threw her arms and one leg around him and squeezed with all her slippery might. She smiled with half-closed eyes, and bit her grinning lip. He squeezed harder. She jammed her elbows into his sides and he made a meek “whoof” noise. He dropped his arms, panting. “God, you’re strong. How did such a small person get so strong?” She grinned like a wolf. “I dunno.” She let go and rolled off, and padded into the bathroom. He followed her. “Are you a gymnast? A dancer?” “No. I used to work out with weights in school.” She dabbed between her legs with a nubbly white washcloth. “University?” “Yeah.” She grabbed a fat economy-size jar of mentholated mouthwash, threw her head back and dumped a big splash into her mouth. Her cheeks worked vigorously as she sloshed it to and fro. “Do you show your strength in the way you deal with people? I mean, outside of this place?” She spat a green burst of mouthwash into the sink and looked at him. “Yeah. I do.” “How do you make them aware of it?” She leaned against the sink, facing him with her arms behind her, her face thoughtful and soft. “I just...don’t let people sway my thinking. I don’t mold myself to fit what other people think I am.” She came forward and put her arms around him. “It’s interesting that you find strength in women attractive.” “Why?” “Don’t most older men like passive, dependent women?” “Oh, that’s an awful stereotype. Don’t believe it.” “Is your wife a strong woman?” “Yes, she is.” “Is she a lawyer too?” “No. She’s an antiquarian. She’s got a small rare-book business.” “Did you meet her in college?” “Yes.

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

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

• From Bad Behavior (1988)

  Connie looked up. “I understand what you’re saying, but that wasn’t the case with Alice. I never acted vulnerable around her. And actually I don’t really agree with you. I may have done that to you because I responded to you sexually, but in general, I don’t.” Deana shrugged. “Well, I only know what I’ve seen. I’m just trying to come up with an answer for you because you seem so distressed.” She stood and collected the dishes. Her fingers and hands, Constance thought, had an exposed, strangely cold and receptive quality, like the nose of a puppy. As she was watching her clear the table and take the dishes to the kitchen, she could see the many aspects of her lover come forward and shyly recede with each movement; her rigid, stubborn arms, her strong shoulders positioned in a soft, demure curve, her stern chin, her luminous forehead, her odd way of stiffly holding back and gently, curiously moving forward—all spoke of her radial gradations of tenderness, sorrow and radiant, fanlike intelligence. — She woke up in the middle of the night, slumberously thinking of Franklin. “I love you,” he said. “I love you in a way I’ve never loved anyone.” “I don’t know what you mean,” she said. “He’s just crazed,” said his friends. “Frank’s hyper, that’s all.” What would happen if she went to his party? Would he fall all over her and rave about how glad he was to see her, then disappear for the rest of the night? Would it hurt her feelings? She imagined Alice standing near a table of ravaged snacks, holding a plastic cup of alcohol, a little hat neatly sitting on her blow-dried head. It wasn’t true that Alice had no unhappiness. She had a schizophrenic mother who lived in a state mental hospital (Alice’s family wasn’t wealthy) and who sometimes didn’t know her. Alice felt that she wasn’t accepted as an artist by her circle, and sometimes would get so upset about it that she’d scream and throw things. “I feel like a piece of shit,” she once said to Connie. Connie turned and put her stomach and breasts against Deana’s warm back. She thought about the first woman she’d had a crush on, a beautiful stripper with black hair and bitter blue eyes. She had gone to see her strip and was irretrievably moved by the resigned but arrogant turn of her strong chin, the way she casually offered and rigidly withheld her body, as well as her tacky black lingerie. “You don’t love women. You’re just trying to live out some kind of porno fantasy invented by men with the corniest props you can find,” a gay woman had told her.

• From Saint Thomas Aquinas Collection (22 Books) (2016)

  Reply to Objection 2: As the Son of God “became man, and was circumcised in the flesh, not for His own sake, but that He might make us to be God’s through grace, and that we might be circumcised in the spirit; so, again, for our sake He was presented to the Lord, that we may learn to offer ourselves to God” [*Athanasius, on Lk. 2:23]. And this was done after His circumcision, in order to show that “no one who is not circumcised from vice is worthy of Divine regard” [*Bede, on Lk. 2:23]. Reply to Objection 3: For this very reason He wished the legal victims to be offered for Him who was the true Victim, in order that the figure might be united to and confirmed by the reality, against those who denied that in the Gospel Christ preached the God of the Law. “For we must not think,” says Origen (Hom. xiv in Luc.) “that the good God subjected His Son to the enemy’s law, which He Himself had not given.” Reply to Objection 4: The law ofLev. 12:6, 8 “commanded those who could, to offer, for a son or a daughter, a lamb and also a turtle dove or a pigeon: but those who were unable to offer a lamb were commanded to offer two turtle doves or two young pigeons” [*Bede, Hom. xv in Purif.]. “And so the Lord, who, ‘being rich, became poor for our [Vulg.: ‘your’] sakes, that through His poverty we [you] might be rich,” as is written 2 Cor. 8:9, “wished the poor man’s victim to be offered for Him” just as in His birth He was “wrapped in swaddling clothes and laid in a manger” [*Bede on Lk. 1]. Nevertheless, these birds have a figurative sense. For the turtle dove, being a loquacious bird, represents the preaching and confession of faith; and because it is a chaste animal, it signifies chastity; and being a solitary animal, it signifies contemplation. The pigeon is a gentle and simple animal, and therefore signifies gentleness and simplicity. It is also a gregarious animal; wherefore it signifies the active life. Consequently this sacrifice signified the perfection of Christ and His members. Again, “both these animals, by the plaintiveness of their song, represented the mourning of the saints in this life: but the turtle dove, being solitary, signifies the tears of prayer; whereas the pigeon, being gregarious, signifies the public prayers of the Church” [*Bede, Hom. xv in Purif.]. Lastly, two of each of these animals are offered, to show that holiness should be not only in the soul, but also in the body.