Mercy Page 8

  twice; for both. Y ou can love som ebody once and som ebody,

  a little, once. Then it ends and yo u ’re a sad, lonely girl, though

  you don’t think about it much. After, the light would come,

  slow; he’d be kissing m y hands.

  F O U R

  In February 1965

  (Age 18)

  I live in a funny kind o f silence, I have all my life, a kind o f

  invisible bubble. On the streets I am quiet and there is quiet all

  around and no one gets through, nothing, except for the wind

  sometimes bellowing in my head an awful noise o f cold

  weeping. I don’t look quiet but I am quiet. People don’t see

  much so they don’t see how still I am. I see the people talking,

  all the people o f every kind, throwing words at everything,

  throwing words at each other, throwing words at time, sitting

  over coffee throwing words, peaceful or shouting, smiling or

  in pain, throwing words at anything they see, anything that

  walks up to them or anything that gets in their w ay or trying

  to be friendly throwing words at someone who doesn’t know

  them. I don’t have words to throw back. When I feel

  something no right words come or no one would know what

  they mean. It would be like throwing a ball that could never be

  caught. They act like words are cheap and easy as if they can

  just be replaced after they are used up and as if they make

  things all right. if I am caught in a situation so I have to, I say

  something, I say I am shy and I smile, but it’s not true, I am not

  shy, I ju st don’t have these great numbers o f dozens o f words,

  it’s so blank inside, so empty, no words, no sound at all, a

  terrible nothing. I don’t know things. I don’t know where the

  people come from when the light starts coming through the

  sky. I don’t know where the cars come from, always starting

  about an hour after the first trash can is pushed over by boys

  running or cats looking for food. T here’s no one to ask if. I

  knew how but I can’t think how. The people come out first; in

  drips; then great cascades o f them. I don’t know how they got

  there, inside, and how they get to stay there. I don’t know

  where the cars come from or where the people get all their

  coats or where the bus drivers come from in the em pty buses

  that cruise the streets before the people come out. I f it’s raining

  suddenly people have different clothes to stay dry in but I

  don’t know where they got them or where you could go to get

  them or how you would get the m oney or how they knew it

  was going to rain if you couldn’t see it in the sky or smell it in

  the air. I don’t know how anything w orks or how everyone

  knows the things they know or w hy they all agree, for

  instance, on when to all come out o f the buildings at once in a

  swarm , or how they all know what to say and when. They act

  like it’s clear and simple and they’re sure. I don’t have words

  except for m y name, Andrea, which is the only w ord I have all

  the time, which m y mom ma gave me, which I remember even

  if I can’t remember anything else because sometimes I forget

  everything that happened until now. Andrea is the name I had

  since being a child. In school we had to write our names on our

  papers so maybe I remember it from that, doing it over and

  over day in, day out. And also m y mother whispered it to me

  in m y ear when she was loving me when I was little. I

  remember it because it was so beautiful when she said it. I

  don’t exactly remember it in m y mind, more in m y heart. It

  means manhood or courage and it is from Europe and she said

  she was damned for naming me it because you become what

  you are named for and I w asn’t the right kind o f girl at all but I

  think I could never be named anything else because the sounds

  o f the w ord are exactly like me in m y heart, a music in a sense

  with m y m other’s voice singing it right to m y heart, it’s her

  voice that breaks the silence inside me with a sound, a w ord;

  m y name. It doesn’t matter w ho says it or in what w ay, I am

  comforted, as if it is the whisper o f my mother when I was a

  baby and safe up against her in her arms. I was only safe then in

  all my life, for a while but everything ends soon. I was born

  into her arms with her loving me in Camden, down the street

  from where Walt Whitman lived. I liked having him there

  because it meant that once it was somewhere; it meant you

  could be great; it meant Camden was something; it meant

  there was something past the rubble, this great gray man who

  wasn’t afraid o f America and so I wasn’t afraid to go anywhere

  and I could love anyone, like he said. Camden was broken

  streets, broken cement, crushed gray dust, jagged, broken

  cement. The houses were broken bricks, red bricks, red,

  blood red, I love brick row houses, I love blood red, wine red,

  crumbled into sawdust; w e’re dust too, blood red dust. It was

  a cement place with broken streets and broken bricks and I

  loved the cement and I loved the broken streets and I loved the

  broken bricks and I never felt afraid, just alone, not sad, not

  afraid. I had to go away from home early to seek freedom

  which is a good thing because you don’t want to be a child for

  too long. You get strong if you go away from where you are a

  child; home; people say it’s home; you get strong but you

  don’t have a lot o f words because people use words to talk

  about things and if you don’t have things there’s few words

  you need. It’s funny how silence goes with having nothing and

  how you have nothing to say if you don’t have things and

  words don’t mean much anyway because you can’t really use

  them for anything if you have nothing. If you go away from

  home you live without things. Things never mattered to me

  and I never wanted them but sometimes I wanted words. I

  read a lot to find words that were the right ones and I loved the

  words I read but they weren’t exactly the ones. They were like

  them but not them. I just moved along the streets and I took

  what was coming and often I didn’t know what to call it. We

  were going to die soon, that was for sure, with the bomb

  coming, and there weren’t words for that either, even though

  people threw words at it. Y ou could say you didn’t want to die

  and you didn’t want them to wipe out the earth but w ho could

  you say. it to so it would matter? I didn’t like people throwing

  words at it when words couldn’t touch it, when you couldn’t

  even wrap your mind around it at all. When I thought about

  being safe I could hear the word Andrea coming from m y

  m other’s lips when I was a baby, her mouth on me because she

  loved me and I was in her arms but it ended soon. I played in

  the bricks and on the cement; in rubble; in garbage; in alleys;

  and I went from Camden to N ew Y o rk and the quiet was all

  around me even more as if I was sinking under it sometimes;

  and I thought, if your momma isn’t here to say your name

 
there is nothing to listen to. I f you try to say some words it is

  likely people don’t understand them anyway. I don’t think

  people in houses understand anything about the w ord cold. I

  don’t think they understand the word wet. I don’t think you

  could explain cold to them but if you did other words would

  push it out o f their minds in a minute. T hat’s what they use

  words for, to bury things. People learn long w ords to show

  o ff but if you can’t say what cold is so people understand what

  use is more syllables? I could never explain anything and I was

  em pty inside where the words go but it was an emptiness that

  caused vertigo, I fought against it and tried to keep standing

  upright. I never knew what to call most things but things I

  knew, cold or wet, didn’t mean much. Y o u could say you

  were cold and people nodded or smiled. Cold. I tremble with

  fear when I hear it. They know what it means on the surface

  and how to use it in a sentence but they don’t know what it is,

  don’t care, couldn’t remember if you told them. T h e y ’d forget

  it in a minute. Cold. O r rape. Y ou could never find out what it

  was from one o f them or say it to mean anything or to be

  anything. Y o u could never say it so it was true. Y o u could

  never say it to someone so they would help you or make

  anything better or even help you a little or try to help you. Y ou

  could never say it, not so it was anything. People laughed or

  said something dirty. Or if you said someone did it you were

  just a liar straight out; or it was you, dirty animal, who pulled

  them on you to hurt you. Or if you said you were it, raped,

  were it, which you never could say, but if you said it, then they

  put shame on you and never looked at you again. I think so.

  And it was just an awful word anyway, some awful word. I

  didn’t know what it meant either or what it was, not really,

  not like cold; but it was worse than cold, I knew that. It was

  being trapped in night, frozen stuck in it, not the nights people

  who live in houses sleep through but the nights people who

  live on the streets stay awake through, those nights, the long

  nights with every second ticking like a time bomb and your

  heart hears it. It was night, the long night, and despair and

  being abandoned by all humankind, alone on an empty planet,

  colder than cold, alive and frozen in despair, alone on earth

  with no one, no words and no one and nothing; cold to frozen

  but cursed by being alive and nowhere near dead; stuck frozen

  in nowhere; no one with no words; alone in the vagabond’s

  night, not the burgher’s; in night, trapped alive in it, in

  despair, abandoned, colder than cold, frozen alive, right there,

  freeze flash, forever and never let loose; the sun had died so the

  night and the cold would never end. God w on ’t let you loose

  from it though. Y ou don’t get to die. Instead you have to stay

  alive and raped but it doesn’t exist even though God made it to

  begin with or it couldn’t happen and He saw it too but He is

  gone now that it’s over and you’re left there no matter where

  you go or how much time passes even if you get old or how

  much you forget even if you burn holes in your brain. Y ou

  stay smashed right there like a fly splattered over a screen,

  swatted; but it doesn’t exist so you can’t think about it because

  it isn’t there and didn’t happen and couldn’t happen and is only

  an awful word and isn’t even a word that anyone can say and it

  isn’t ever true; so you are splattered up against a night that will

  go on forever except nothing happened, it will go on forever

  and it isn’t anything in any w ay at all. It don’t matter anyw ay

  and I can’t remember things anyw ay, all sorts o f things get

  lost, I can’t remember most o f what happened to me from day

  to day and I don’t know names for it anyw ay to say or who to

  say it to and I live in a silence I carry that’s bigger than m y

  shadow or any dark falling over me, it’s a heavy thing on m y

  back and over m y head and it pours out over me down to the

  ground. Words aren’t so easy anymore or they never were and

  it was a lie that they seemed so. Some time ago they seemed

  easier and there were more o f them. I’m Andrea but no one

  says m y name so that I can hear it anymore. I go to jail against

  the Vietnam War; it’s night there too, the long night, the sun is

  dead, the time bomb is ticking, your heart hears it; the

  vagabond’s night, not the burgher’s. I’m arrested in February.

  It is cold. There is a driving wind. It slices you in pieces. It goes

  right through you and comes out the other side. It freezes your

  bones and your skin is a paper-thin ice, translucent. I am

  against the War. I am against war. I find it easier to do things

  than to say things. I am losing the w ords I had about peace.

  The peace boys have all the words. The peace boys take all the

  words and use them; they say them. I can’t think o f ones for

  myself. T hey don’t mean what they say; words are trash to

  them; it’s hollow, what they say; but the words belong to

  them. In January I sat in court and saw Ja y sent aw ay for five

  years to a federal prison. He w ouldn’t go to Vietnam. I sat

  there and I watched and there was nothing to say. The peace

  boys talked words but the words were trash. When the time

  came Jay stood there, a hulking six-foot black man and I know

  he wanted to cry, and the Feds took him out and he was gone

  for five years. The peace boys were white. He was afraid and

  the peace boys were exuberant. He didn’t have words; he

  could barely say anything when the ju dge gave him his few

  seconds to speak after being sentenced or before, I don’t

  know, it was all predecided anyway; I think the judge said five

  years then invited Ja y to speak and I swear he almost fell down

  from the shock and the reality o f it and he mumbled a couple o f

  words but there wasn’t anything to say and federal marshals

  took him o ff and his mother and sisters were there and they

  had tears, not words, and the peace boys had no tears, only

  words about the struggle o f the black man against the racist

  war in Vietnam, I couldn’t stop crying through the thing

  which is w hy I’m not sure just when the judge said five years

  and just when Ja y seemed like he was going to double over and

  ju st when he was told he could say something and he tried but

  couldn’t really. I’ve been organizing with the peace boys since

  the beginning o f January, working to organize a demonstration at the United States Mission to the United Nations. We are going to sit in and protest Adlai Stevenson fronting for the

  War. The peace boys wanted Ja y to give a speech that they

  helped write and it covered all the bases, imperialism, racism,

  stinking U . S. government, but it was too awful and too

  tragic, and the peace boys went out disappointed that the

  speech hadn’t been declaimed but regarding the trial as a

  triumph; one more black man in jail for peace. I tho
ught they

  should honor him for being brave but I didn’t think they

  should be jum ping for jo y ; it was too sad. They weren’t sad.

  You just push people around when you organize, get them to

  do what’s best for you; and if it hits you what it’s costing them

  you will probably die on the spot from it. We have meetings to

  work out every detail o f the demonstration. It is a w ay o f

  thinking, precise, demanding, you work out every possible

  scenario, anticipate every possible problem, you have the

  right people at the right place at the right time, you have

  everything happen that you want to have happen and nothing

  that you don’t; and if something bad happens, you use it. I try

  to say things but they just talk over it. if I try to say words to

  them about what we are doing they don’t hear the words. I

  think I am saying words but I must be mute, m y mouth makes

  shapes but it must be that nothing comes out. So I stop saying

  things. I listen and put stamps on envelopes. I listen and run off

  addresses for envelopes on the mimeograph machine. I listen

  and make phone calls to people to get them to come to the

  demonstrations. I have long lists and I make the calls for hours

  at a time but if I talk too long or say too much someone makes

  a sarcastic remark or if I talk too much about the War as if I am

  talking about politics someone tells me I am not w orking hard

  enough. I listen and type letters. The peace boys scribble out

  letters and I type them. I listen and learn how to make the

  plans, how to organize; I take it in in a serious w ay, for later

  perhaps; I like strategy. I learn how to get people to come and

  exactly what to do when and what is important and how to

  take care o f people and keep them safe— or expose them to

  danger i f that is our plan, which they never know . I learn how

  to make plans for every contingency— i f the police do this or

  that, i f people going by get violent, i f the folks demonstrating

  get hurt, i f the demonstrators decide to get arrested, what to

  do when the police arrest you, the laws the police have to

  follow , how to make your body go limp in resisting arrest,