Vengeance and Retribution

In the Montparnasse Cemetery, in Paris’s 14th Arrondissement, there are two snarling lions guarding a grave. As we walked past early one morning last May on the rain-damp path, I said, “not exactly Patience and Fortitude” (the serene lions guarding the New York Public Library). Nate replied, “more like Vengeance and Retribution.”

We promptly decided that the next pit bulls we adopt will be named Vengeance and Retribution, but then we thought maybe they should be the Dachshunds, and the pit bulls will be Agnes and Gertrude (one of my great-grandmothers was Agnes Gertrude (Hedtler) Fairfield). My heart, my little Tiny-girl, a foster fail, was a Dachshund-pit bull mix, and she was perfect. Perfectly wretched, others might tell you, but oh how I loved her.

One of our other fosters was a little Papillon named Hannah, who came to us with severe mastitis and had been covered in fleas before being treated at the shelter. We’d put warm compresses on her swollen nipples and Nate carried her around in the baby sling I’d had for my girls. Hannah slept on his pillow, curled around his head like a little halo. Someday, Nate will have a Papillon again.

So I think the little dogs will be Vengeance and Retribution and the pit bulls will be Agnes and Gertrude, unless we name the pit bulls after champagne bottles: Melchizedek, Jeroboam, Nebuchadnezzar, and the size, one liter, that we think should exist but doesn’t, which we’ve named the “Christobel,” in honor of a good friend.

I will probably have a little bundle of rage named “Vengeance” and Nate will have sweet Agnes, whatever kinds of dogs they are.

At the embassy recently, as a community-building prompt I think, we were asked to write our favorite word in the English language on a white board set up in a public area. I wrote “retribution” because it is actually one of my favorite words. “Vengeance” is more about personal grievances, but retribution? That’s karma basically (but more fun to say). “Retribution” means that it’s out of my hands: you know what you did, and it’ll come someday. It’s justice, not meted out by me but by the universe.

I like the word “retribution” for its cadence, its invitation to growl when you say it, landing in the deep cellar of “shun” after cascading from the height of “bew.” The last syllable gathers the fury of the preceding ones for a final flourish: “re-tri-BEW-shun.”

It’s such a good word! Much better than gentle “karma,” which is, though, something of a synonym (see “divine retribution” as “karma or cosmic justice”).

Anyway, someone promptly erased “retribution” off the board. Words like “football” and “lovely” got to stay.

Oh well.

“Karma” is softer both in the meaning and the speaking. It’s more “you’ll very likely get what’s coming” while retribution is “oh you definitely will and you’ll know.” Vengeance is specific and personal and is about doling out individual payback; retribution lends itself to the collective belief many of us seem to have in universal balance.

Here’s a story I’ve never told that I hope will make you laugh (you might cringe a little for me first): my first semester in college, I went to the Head of the Charles (a big, perhaps the world’s largest, regatta in Boston, Massachusetts, held annually in October) with my “Big Sisters” from the house we lived in (we lived in houses at Smith, not dorms…our main house was built in early 1700-something and was definitely haunted, though we lived next door in the “Annex,” an old inn, very pretty, less haunted).

For some reason, shoplifting was kind of a thing my Big Sisters did for fun then; they were somewhat privileged (one of them had a car and her dad’s credit card), and I was completely broke, washing dishes as my work-study job, back when they made us work in the kitchens, so I was curious about the casual way they got things for nothing. They’d throw packs of gum in bags of groceries already tallied up and paid for, or slide away with merch at booths and announce “they’re giving away free t-shirts over there.”

So I tried it: at a rest stop on the way back from Boston, we got food but instead of getting in line to pay for my hotdog, I just went right to the condiment counter and slathered it with mustard and relish. They nodded approvingly, smothering their grins, but as soon as we stepped out the door, my hotdog slipped out of its bun and the flimsy cardboard container it was resting in and splatted on the ground at my feet.

I think they thought it was the funniest thing they had ever seen, mostly because my dad had been elected Episcopal Bishop of North Dakota a few months earlier. They screamed with laughter: “BESS!!!” they intoned, as if channelling God’s voice, “you are a BISHOP’S DAUGHTER!!!” As you can imagine, I never heard the end of it, but it did bring an end to my career as a shoplifter. I was not slick or bold or skilled enough to manage this kind of thievery.

The episode gave rise to my college nickname: Dopey. I was somewhat, maybe very, dopey at times, but there were reasons for that, primarily that I was deeply traumatized by things that had happened in the first few months of that year, 1989, including being raped and the murder of a friend by another friend. I was so overwhelmed by memories and images and intrusive thoughts that I think I was dissociating almost constantly. I’m pretty sure they meant “Dopey” affectionately, though, because a common refrain was “where’s Dopey?" and that made me happy, like they wanted me around.

I felt safe-ish in college, far away from everything that had happened, eager to just get lost in this new place with its strange rules and unfamiliar social constructs, so I just sort of wandered along with whatever everyone else was doing, learning not to ask questions or express too much surprise, especially after I saw someone’s debutante picture and thought it was from a costume party. I’d come to school on the East Coast to find out why my parents had run away to Alaska in the 1960s, and I was, finding out why, that is.

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Anyway, “vengeance” is much less interesting, both as a word and a concept, I think. It’s driven by anger and hurt and is something one seeks and executes themselves, which breaks the “you can’t negotiate with crazy people/don’t wrestle a pig” rule, both ways.

Seeking vengeance rather than retribution is asking for trouble, because the injured party has a skewed sense of their own suffering and is therefore not a reliable arbiter. If I’m wronged, I believe it will be righted, eventually. It may not be easy or pretty or take the form I imagine it will. I might never even know about it, and that’s okay.

If you have a dog available to you, radically accepting things, almost anything, is a little easier. Dogs make everything, like believing in cosmic justice, a little easier.

We went to an Apple Store when we were in the U.S. and loaded up on AirTags; when it came time to toss them in our suitcases for the trip back, we paused only briefly over what to name them: Vengeance, Retribution, Agnes, and Gertrude.

We’ll meet them in their dog forms someday, for sure.

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