Mercy Page 5

enough, it was safe really, a playpen, the fake girls went there

  to not get hurt, to have regular boyfriends, to pretend they

  were different or bad; but I was really lost so I had to be lost,

  not pretend, in a dark as hard and unyielding as the cement

  under it. In N ew Y ork I got o ff the bus dank from old Charles,

  old Vincent, he walked away, wet, rumpled, not •looking

  back, and I had some dollars in my hand, and I took the A train

  to Greenwich Village, and I went to the Eighth Street

  Bookstore, the center o f the universe, the place where real

  poets went, the most incredible place on earth, they made

  beauty from the dark, the gray, the cement, your head down

  in someone’s lap, the torn skin on your bruised knees, your

  bloody hands; it wasn’t the raspy, choked, rough whisper, it

  was real beautiful words with the perfect shape and sound and

  filled with pain and rage and pure, perfect; and I looked

  everywhere, at every book, at every poem, at every play, and I

  touched every book o f poems, I just touched them, just passed

  my hand over them, and I bought any poems I had money for,

  sometimes it was just a few pages stapled together with print

  on it, and I kept them with me and I could barely breathe, and I

  knew names no one else knew, Charles Olsen, Robert

  Duncan, Gregory Corso, Anselm Hollo, Leroi Jones,

  Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Kenneth Patchen, Robert Creeley,

  Kenneth Rexroth; and when Allen Ginsberg had new poems I

  almost died, Allen Ginsberg who was the most perfect and the

  bravest and the best and the words were perfect beauty and

  perfect power and perfect pain and I carried them with me and

  read them, stunned and truly trembling inside because they

  went past all lies to something hidden inside; and I got back on

  the bus and I got back to Camden and I had the poems and

  someday it would be me. I wrote words out on paper and hid

  them because my mother would say they were dirty words; all

  the true words were dirty words. I wrote private, secret words

  in funny-shaped lines. Y ou could take the dark— the thick,

  mean, hard, sad dark— the gray cement, lonely as death, cold

  as death, stone cold, the torn skin, you on your knees your

  hands bleeding on the cold cement, and you could use words

  to say I am— I am, I want, I know , I feel, I see. N in o ’s knife,

  cold, on the edge o f m y skin down m y back, the cement

  underneath: I want, I know, I feel; then he tears you apart from

  behind, inside. Y ou could use words to say what it was and

  how it felt, the dark banging into you, pressing up against you,

  pinning you down, a suffocating mask over your face or a

  granite mountain pressing you under it, you’re a fossil, delicate,

  ancient, buried alive and perfectly preserved, some bones

  between the mountain and the level ground, pressed flat on the

  cement under the dark, the great, still, thick, heavy dark. Y ou

  could sing pain soft or you could holler; you could use the

  voices o f the dead i f you had to, the other skeletons pressed in

  the cement. Y ou could write the words on the cement blind in

  the dark, pushed on your knees, a finger dipped in blood; or

  pushed flat, the dark on you, the cement under you, N in o ’s

  knife touching the edge o f your skin. The poems said: Andrea,

  me too, I’m on m y knees, afraid and alone, and I sing; I’m

  pushed flat, rammed, torn up, and I sing; I weep, I rage, I sing; I

  hurt, I’m sad, I sing; I want, I’m lost, I sing. Y ou learned the

  names o f things, the true names, short, abrupt, unkind, and

  you learned to sing them, your heart soared from them, the

  song o f them, the great, simple music o f them. The dark

  stayed dark and hard but now it had a sound in it, a bittersweet

  lyric, music carried on the edge o f a broken line. Then m y

  m omma found the words I wrote and called me awful names,

  foul names, in a screaming voice, in filthy hate, she screamed I

  was dirty, she screamed she wanted me o ff the face o f the

  earth, she screamed she’d lock me up. I left on the bus to N ew

  Y ork . N o one’s locking me up. When the men said the names

  they whispered and touched you; and flat on the cement, still

  there were no locks, no walls. When the men said the names

  they were all tangled in you and their skin was melting into

  you the w ay night covers everything, they curved and curled.

  There was the edge o f N in o’s knife on your skin, down your

  back, with him in you and the cement under you, your skin

  scraped away, burned o ff almost, the sweat on you turning as

  cold as the edge o f his knife; try to breathe. She screamed

  foul hate and spit obscene words and tore up all your things, all

  your poems you had bought and the words you had written;

  and she said she’d lock you up; no one locks me up. Men

  whispered the same names she said and touched you all over,

  they were on you, they covered you, they hid you, they were

  the weight o f midnight on you, a hundred years o f midnight,

  they held you down and kept you still and it was the only

  stillness you had and you could hear a heartbeat; men

  whispered names and touched you all over. Men wanted you

  all the time and never had enough o f you and the cement was a

  great, gray plain stretching out forever and you could wander

  on it forever, free, with signs that they had been there and

  promises they would come back, abrasions, burns, thin,

  exquisite cuts; not locked up. Under them, covered, buried,

  pinned still— the dark ramming into you— you could hear a

  heartbeat. And somewhere there were ones who could sing.

  Whisper; touch everywhere; sing.

  T H R E E

  In January 1965

  (Age 18)

  M y name is Andrea. It means manhood or courage, from the

  ancient Greek. I found this in Paul Tillich, although I like

  Martin Buber better because I believe in pure love, I-Thou,

  love without boundaries or categories or conditions or

  making someone less than you are; not treating people like

  they are foreign or lower or things, I-It. Prejudice is I-It and

  hate is I-It and treating people like dirt is I-It. In Europe only

  boys are named Andrea, Andre, Andreus, but m y mother

  didn’t know that and so I got named Andrea because she

  thought it was pretty. Philosophy comes from Europe but

  poetry comes from America too. I was born down the street

  from Walt Whitman’s house, on M ickle Street in Cam den,

  N ew Jersey, in 1946, after the bomb. I’m not sad but I wish

  everyone didn’t have to die. Everyone will burn in a split

  second, even less, they w o n ’t even know it but I bet it will hurt

  forever; and then there will be nothing, forever. I can’t stand it

  because it could be any second at all, just even this second now

  or the next one, but I try not to think about it. I fought it for

  a while, when I had hope and when I loved everyone, I-Thou,

  not I-It, and I suffered to think they would die. When I was

  fourteen I refused to face the wall during
a bomb drill. T hey

  would ring a bell and we all had to file out o f class, in a line, and

  stand four or five deep against a wall in the hall and you had to

  put your hands behind your head and your elbows over your

  ears and it hurt to keep your arms like that until they decided

  the bomb wasn’t coming this time. I thought it was stupid so I

  wouldn’t do it. I said I wanted to see it coming if it was going

  to kill me. I really did want to see it. O f course no one would

  see it coming, it was too fast, but I wanted to see something, I

  wanted to know something, I wanted to know that this was it

  and I was dying. It would just be a tiny flash o f a second, so

  small you couldn’t even imagine it, but I wanted it whatever it

  was like. I wanted my whole life to go through m y brain or to

  feel m yself dying or whatever it was. I didn’t want to be facing

  a wall pretending tomorrow was coming. I said it outraged

  m y human dignity to have my elbows over m y ears and be

  facing a wall and just waiting like an asshole when I was going

  to die; but they didn’t think fourteen-year-olds had any

  human dignity and you weren’t allowed to say asshole even

  the minute before the bomb came. They punished me or

  disciplined me or whatever it is they think they’re doing when

  they threaten you all the time. The bomb was coming but I

  had to stay after school. I was supposed to be frightened o f

  staying after school instead o f the bomb or more than the

  bomb. Adults are so awful. Their faces get all pulled and tight

  and mean and they want to hit you but the law says they can’t

  so they make you miserable for as long as they can and they

  call your parents to say you are bad and they try to get your

  parents to hit you because it’s legal and to punish you some

  more. You ask them why you have to cover your ears with

  your elbows and they tell you it is so your ear drums w on ’t get

  hurt from the noise. They consult each other in whispers and

  this is the answer they come up with. I said I thought m y ear

  drums would probably burn with the rest o f me so I got

  punished more. I kept waiting to see them wink or smile or

  laugh or something even just among themselves even though

  it w ouldn’t be nice to show they knew it was crap but they

  acted serious like they meant it. They kept telling you that you

  were supposed to respect them but you would have had to take

  stupid pills. I kept thinking about what it meant that this was

  m y life and I was going to die and I thought I could say asshole

  i f I wanted and face whatever w ay I wanted and I didn’t

  understand w hy I couldn’t take a walk in the fucking spring air

  if I wanted but I knew i f I tried they would hurt me by making

  me into a juvenile delinquent which was a trick they had if you

  did things they didn’t like. I kept reading Buber and tried to

  say I-Thou but they were I-It material no matter how hard I

  tried. I thought maybe he had never encountered anything like

  them where he lived. I kept writing papers for English on

  Buber’s philosophy so I could keep in touch with I-Thou even

  though I was surrounded by I-It. I tried to reason it out but I

  couldn’t. I mean, they were going to die too and all they could

  think o f was keeping you in line and stopping you from

  whispering and making you stare at a wall. I kept thinking

  they were ghosts already, just dead already. Sometimes I

  thought that was the answer— adults were dead people in

  bodies giving stupid orders. They thought I was fresh but it

  was nothing like what I felt inside. Outside I was calm. Inside I

  kept screaming in m y brain: are you alive, are you zombies,

  the bomb is coming, assholes. Why do we have to stand in

  line? W hy aren’t we allowed to talk? Can I kiss Paul S. now?

  Before I die; fast; one time? In your last fucking minute on

  earth can’t you do one fucking human thing like do something

  or say something or believe something or show something or

  cry or laugh or teach us how to fight the Goddamn Russians or

  anything, anything, and not just make us stand here and be

  quiet like assholes? I wanted to scream and in m y brain I

  screamed, it was a real voice screaming like something so loud

  it could make your head explode but I was too smart to scream

  in real life so I asked quietly and intelligently w hy we couldn’t

  talk and they said we might miss important instructions. I

  mean: important instructions; do you grasp it? I didn’t scream

  because I knew there might be a tom orrow but one day there

  wouldn’t and I would be as big an asshole as the teachers not to

  have screamed, a shithead hypocrite because I didn’t believe

  tom orrow was coming, one day it wouldn’t come, but I

  would die pretending like them, acting nice, not screaming. I

  wanted to scream at them and make them tell me the truth—

  would there be a tomorrow or not? When I was a child they

  made us hide under our desks, crawl under them on our knees

  and keep our heads down and cover our ears with our elbows

  and keep our hands clasped behind our heads. I use to pray to

  God not to have it hurt when the bomb came. They said it was

  practice for when the Russians bombed us so we would live

  after it and I was as scared as anyone else and I did what they

  said, although I wondered why the Russians hated us so much

  and I was thinking there must be a Russian child like me,

  scared to die. You can’t help being scared when you are so

  little and all the adults say the same thing. Y ou have to believe

  them. You had to stay there for a long time and be quiet and

  your shoulders would hurt because you had to stay under your

  desk which was tiny even compared to how little you were

  and you didn’t know what the bomb was yet so you thought

  they were telling the truth and the Russians wanted to hurt

  you but if you stayed absolutely still and quiet on your knees

  and covered your ears underneath your desk the Russians

  couldn’t. I wondered if your skin just burned o ff but you

  stayed on your knees, dead. Everyone had nightmares but the

  adults didn’t care because it kept you obedient and that was

  what they wanted; they liked keeping you scared and making

  you hide all the time from the bomb under your desk. Adults

  told terrible lies, not regular lies; ridiculous, stupid lies that

  made you have to hate them. They would say anything to

  make you do what they wanted and they would make you

  afraid o f anything. N o one ever told so many lies before,

  probably. When the Bay o f Pigs came, all the girls at school

  talked together in the halls and in the lunchrooms and said the

  same thing: we didn’t want to die virgins. N o one said anyone

  else was lying because we thought we were all probably going

  to die that day and there w asn’t any point in saying someone

  wasn’t a virgin and you couldn’t know , really, because boys

  talked dirty, and no one said they w eren’t because then you

  would be low-l
ife, a dirty girl, and no one would talk to you

  again and you would have to die alone and if the bomb didn’t

  come you might as well be dead. Girls were on the verge o f

  saying it but no one dared. O f course now the adults were

  saying everything was fine and no bomb was com ing and

  there was no danger; we didn’t have to stand in the halls, not

  that day, the one day it was clear atomic death was right there,

  in N ew Jersey. But we knew and everyone thought the same

  thing and said the same thing and it was the only thought we

  had to say how sad we were to die and everyone giggled and

  was almost afraid to say it but everyone had been thinking the

  same thing all night and wanted to say it in the morning before

  we died. It was like a record we were making for ourselves, a

  history o f us, how we had lived and been cheated because we

  had to die virgins. We said to each other that it’s not fair we

  have to die now, today; we didn’t get to do anything. We said

  it to each other and everyone knew it was true and then when

  we lived and the bomb didn’t come we never said anything

  about it again but everyone hurried. We hurried like no one

  had ever hurried in the history o f the world. O ur mothers

  lived in dream time; no bomb; old age; do it the first time after

  marriage, one man or yo u ’ll be cheap; time for them droned

  on. B ay o f Pigs meant no more time. They don’t care about

  w hy girls do things but we know things and we do things;

  w e’re not just animals who don’t mind dying. The houses

  where I lived were brick; the streets were cement, gray; and I

  used to think about the three pigs and the bad w o lf blow ing

  down their houses but not the brick one, how the brick one

  was strong and didn’t fall down; and I would try to think i f the

  brick ones would fall down when the bomb came. They

  looked like blood already; blood-stained walls; blood against

  the gray cement; and they were already broken; the bricks

  were torn and crumbling as if they were soft clay and the

  cement was broken and cracked; and I would watch the houses

  and think maybe it was like with the three pigs and the big bad