Mercy Read online

  how to get lawyers to be ready, how to get the press there,

  how to rouse people and how to quiet them down. I listen so

  that I learn how to think a certain w ay and answer certain hard

  questions, very specific questions, about what w ill happen in

  scenario after scenario; but I am not allowed to say anything

  about what to do or how to do it or ask questions or the w ords

  I do say ju st disappear in the air or in m y throat. The old men

  really are the ones. T hey say how to do it. T hey do all the

  thinking. T hey make all the plans. They think everything

  through. I listen to them and I remember everything. I am

  learning how to listen too, concentrate, think it hard as if

  writing it down in your mind. It is not easy to listen. The peace

  boys talk and never listen. The old men do it all for them, then

  they swagger and take all the credit while the old men are

  happy to fade to the background so the movement looks virile

  and young. The peace boys talk, smoke, rant, make their

  jokes, strum guitars, run their silky white hands through their

  stringy long hair. They spread their legs when they talk, they

  spread out, their legs open up and they spread them wide and

  their sentences spread all over and their words come and come

  and their gestures get bigger and they got half erect cocks all

  the time when they talk, the denim o f their dirty jeans is pulled

  tight across their cocks because o f how they spread their legs

  and they always finger themselves just lightly when they talk

  so they are always excited by what they have to say. Somehow

  they are always half reclining, on chairs, on desks, on tables,

  against walls or stacks o f boxes, legs spread out so they can

  talk, touching themselves with the tips o f their fingers or the

  palms o f their spread hands, giggling, smoking, they think

  they are Che. I live in half a dozen different places: in the

  collective on Avenue B on the floor, I don’t fight for the bed

  anymore; in a living room in Brooklyn with a brother and a

  sister, the brother sleeps in the same room and stares and

  breathes heavy and I barely dare to breathe, they are pacifists

  and leave the door to their ground floor apartment open all the

  time out o f love for their fellow man but a mongrel bulldog-

  terrier will kill anyone who comes through, this is the

  Brooklyn o f elevated subways where you walk down dark,

  steep flights o f stairs to streets o f knives and broken bottles, an

  open door is a merciless act o f love; in an apartment in Spanish

  Harlem, big, old, a beautiful labyrinth, with three men but I

  only sleep with two, one’s a sailor and he likes anal intercourse

  and when he isn’t there I get the single bed in his room to myself,

  some nights I am in one bed half the night, then in the other bed;

  some nights between places I stay with different men I don’t

  know, or sometimes a woman, not a peace woman but

  someone from the streets who has a hole in the wall to-

  disappear into, someone hard and tough and she seen it all and

  she’s got a mattress covered with old garbage, paper garbage,

  nothing filthy, and old newspapers, and I lay under her, a

  pretty girl up against her dry skin and bones that feel like

  they’re broke, her callouses, her scars, bad teeth but her eyes

  are brilliant, savage and brilliant, and her sex is ferocious and

  rough, a little mean, I find such a woman, older than me and

  I’m the ingenue and I’m the tough girl with the future; some

  nights between places I stay in a hallway in a building with an

  open door; some nights between places I am up all night in

  bars with nowhere to sleep and no one I am ready to go with,

  something warns me o ff or I just don’t want to, and at two or

  four when the bars close I find a doorw ay and wait or walk and

  wait, it’s cold, a lethal cold, so usually I walk, a slow,

  purposeful walk with m y shoulders hunched over so no one

  will see I’m young and have nowhere to go. T he jail was dirty,

  dark, foul. I wasn’t allowed to make the plans or write the

  leaflets or draft the letters or decide anything but they let me

  picket because they needed numbers and it was just being a

  foot soldier and they let me sit in because it was bodies and

  they let me get arrested because it was numbers for the press;

  but once we were arrested the wom en disappeared inside the

  prison, we were swallowed up in it, it w asn’t as if anyone was

  missing to them. T hey were all over the men, to get them out,

  to keep track o f them, to make sure they were okay, the heroes

  o f the revolution incarnate had to be taken care of. The real

  men were going to real jail in a real historical struggle; it was

  real revolution. The nothing ones walked o ff a cliff and melted

  into thin air. I didn’t mind being used but I didn’t expect to

  disappear into a darkness resembling hell by any measure; left

  there to rot by m y brothers; the heroes o f the revolution. T hey

  got the men out; they left us in. Rape, they said. We had to get

  them out as a priority; rape, they said. In jail men get raped,

  they said N o jokes, no laughs, no Nazis; rape; we can’t have

  the heroes o f the revolution raped. And them that’s raped ain’t

  heroes o f the revolution; but there were no words for that. The

  women had honor. We stood up to the police. We didn’t post

  bail. We went on a hunger strike. We didn’t cooperate on any

  level, at any time. The pacifists just cut us loose so we could go

  under, no air from the surface, no lawyers, no word, no

  solace, no counsel, no help; but we didn’t give in. We didn’t

  shake and we didn’t scream and we didn’t try to die, banging

  our heads against concrete walls until they were smashed. We

  were locked in a special hell for girls; girls you could do

  anything to; girls who were exiled into a night so long and

  lonely it might last forever, a hell they made for those who

  don’t exist. “ Ladies, ” they kept calling us; “ ladies. ” “ Ladies, ”

  do this; “ ladies, ” do that; “ ladies, ” come here; “ ladies, ” go

  there. We had been in the cold all day. We picketed from real

  early, maybe eight in the morning, all through the afternoon,

  and it was almost five in the evening before Adlai Stevenson

  came. About three or four we blocked the doors by sitting

  down so then we couldn’t even keep warm by walking

  around. We sat there waiting for the police to arrest us but they

  wouldn’t; they knew the cold was bad. Finally they said they’d

  arrest us i f we blocked a side door, the one final door that

  provided access to the building. Then we saw Adlai Stevenson

  go in and we got mad because he didn’t give a fuck about us

  and then we blocked the final door and then the police arrested

  us; some people went limp and their bodies were dragged over

  cement to the police vans and some people got up and walked

  and you could hear the bones o f the people who were dragged

  cracking on the cement and you wondered if their bones
had

  split down the middle. Then we went to the precinct and the

  police made out reports. Then the men were taken to the city

  jail for men, the Tom bs, a place o f brutality, pestilence, and

  rape they said; rape; and we went to the w om en’s jail; no one

  said rape. It was w ay late after midnight when we got there.

  We got out o f the van in a closed courtyard and it was cold and

  dark and we walked through a door into hell, some nightmare

  some monster dreamed up. Hell was a building with a door

  and you walked through the door. But the men got out the

  next day on their own recognizance because the pacifists

  hurried to get them lawyers and hearings, spent the whole day

  w orking on it, a Friday, dawn to dusk, and the wom en didn’t

  get out because the pacifists didn’t have time; they had to get

  the heroes o f the revolution out before someone started

  sticking things up them. They just left us. Then it was a

  weekend and a national holiday and the jail w asn’t doing any

  nasty business like letting people who don’t exist and don’t

  matter loose; we were nothing to them and they left us to rot

  or be hurt, because it was a torture place and they knew it but

  they didn’t tell us; and they left us; the wom en who didn’t exist

  got to stay solidly in hell; and no one said rape; in jail they kept

  sticking things up us all the time but no one said rape, there is

  no such w ord with any meaning that I have ever heard applied

  when someone spreads a girl’s legs and sticks something in

  anywhere up her; no one minds including pacifists. One

  woman had been a call girl, though we didn’t know it then,

  and she was dressed real fine so the women in the jail spit on

  her. One woman was a student and some inmates held her

  down and some climbed on top o f her and some put their

  hands up her and later the newspapers said it was rape because

  lesbians did it so it was rape if lesbians piled on top o f you and

  lesbians was the bad word, not rape, it was bad because

  lesbians did it, like Nazis, and it wasn’t anything like I knew,

  being around girls and how we were. Later the newspapers

  said this w om en’s jail was known as a hellhole torture place

  and there’s a long history o f wom en beat up and burned and

  assaulted for decades but the pacifists let us stay there; didn’t

  bother them. There was a woman killed there by torture.

  There were women hurt each and every day and the newspapers couldn’t think o f enough bad names to say how evil the

  place was and how full o f cruelty and it was known; but the

  pacifists let us stay there; didn’t bother them; because if you

  get tortured they don’t hear the screams any more than if you

  talk in a meeting; you could be pulled into pieces in front o f

  them and they’d go on as if you wasn’t there; and you weren’t

  there, not for them, truly you were nothing so they weren’t

  w orrying about you when you were well-hidden somewhere

  designed to hide you; and they weren’t all overwrought just

  because someone might stick something up you or bring you

  pain; and if you got a hole to stick it up then there’s no problem

  for them if someone’s sticking something up it, or how many

  times, or if it’s very bad. I don’t know what to call what they

  did to me but I never said it was rape, I never did, and no one

  did; ever. T w o doctors, these men, gave me an internal

  examination as they called it which I had never heard o f before

  or seen and they used a steel speculum which I had never seen

  before and I didn’t know what it was or why they were putting

  it up me and they tore me apart inside so I couldn’t stop

  bleeding; but it wasn’t rape because it wasn’t a penis and it was

  doctors and there is no rape and they weren’t Nazis, or lesbians

  even, and maybe it was a lie because it’s always a lie or if it did

  happen was I a virgin because if I wasn’t a virgin it didn’t

  matter what they did to me because if something’s been stuck

  up you once it makes you dirty and it doesn’t matter if you tear

  someone apart inside. I didn’t think it was rape, I never did, I

  didn’t know what they did or w hy they did it except I knew

  how much it hurt and how afraid I was when I didn’t stop

  bleeding and I wouldn’t have ever said rape, not ever; and I

  didn’t, not ever. The peace boys told me I was bourgeois; like I

  was too spoiled to take it. The pacifists thought if it was bad

  for the prison in the newspapers it was good. But even after

  the pacifists didn’t say, see, these girls hate the War. Even

  these silly girls hate the War. Even the girl w h o ’s stupid

  enough to type our letters and bring us coffee hates the War.

  Even these dumb girls who walked through a door into hell

  hate the War. Even these silly cunts we left in a torture pit

  know ing full well they’d be hurt but so what hate the War.

  They are too stupid to hate us but they hate the War. So stop

  the War because these dregs, these nothings, these no ones,

  these pieces we sent in to be felt up and torn up and have things

  stuck in them hate the War. The peace boys laughed at me

  when they found out I was hurt. It was funny, how some

  bourgeois cunt couldn’t take it. They laughed and they spread

  their legs and they fingered themselves. I w asn’t the one who

  told them. I never told them. I couldn’t speak anym ore at all; I

  was dumb or mute or however you say it, I didn’t have words

  and I w ouldn’t say anything for any reason to anyone because I

  was too hurt and too alone. I got out o f jail after four days and I

  walked on the streets for some days and I said nothing to no

  one until this nonviolence woman found me and made me say

  what happened. She was a tough cookie in her ow n w ay which

  was only half a pose. She cornered me and she w ouldn’t let me

  go until I said what happened. Some words came out and then

  all the ones I had but I didn’t know how to say things, like

  speculum which I had never seen, so I tried to say what

  happened thing by thing, describing because I didn’t know

  what to call things, sometimes even with m y hands showing

  her what I meant, and when it was over she seemed to

  understand. The call girl got a jail sentence because the ju dge

  said she had a history o f prostitution. The pacifists didn’t say

  how she was noble to stand up against the War; or how she

  was reformed or any other bullshit; they just all shivered and

  shook when they found out she had been a call girl; and they

  ju st let her go, quiet, back into hell; thirty days in hell for

  trying to stop a nasty war; and the pacifists didn’t want to

  claim her after that; and they didn’t help her after that; and they

  didn’t want her in demonstrations after that. They let me drift,

  a mute, in the streets, just a bourgeois piece o f shit who

  couldn’t take it; except for the peace woman. She seemed to

  understand everything and she seemed to believe me even

  though I had never heard o f any suc
h thing happening before

  and it didn’t seem possible to me that it had happened at all.

  She said it was very terrible to have such a thing happen. I had

  to try to say each thing or show it with m y hands because I

  couldn’t sum up anything or say anything in general or refer to

  any common knowledge and I didn’t know what things were

  or if they were important and I didn’t know if it was all right

  that they did it to me or not because they did it to everyone

  there, who were mostly whores except for one woman who

  murdered her husband, and they were police and doctors and

  so I thought maybe they were allowed to even though I

  couldn’t stop bleeding but I was afraid to tell anyone, even

  myself, and to m yself I kept saying I had m y period, even after

  fifteen days. She called a newspaper reporter who said so

  what? The newspaper reporter said it happens all the time

  there that women are hurt just so bad or worse and remember

  the woman who was tortured to death and so what was so

  special about this? But the woman said the reporter was wrong

  and it mattered so at first I started to suffocate because the

  reporter said it didn’t matter but then I could breathe again

  because the woman said it mattered and it couldn’t be erased

  and you couldn’t say it was nothing. So I went from this

  woman after this because I couldn’t just stay there with her and

  she assumed everyone had some place to go because that’s

  how life is it seems in the main and I went to the peace office

  and instead o f typing letters for the peace boys I wrote to

  newspapers saying I had been hurt and it was bad and not all

  right and because I didn’t know sophisticated words I used the

  words I knew and they were very shocked to death; and the

  peace boys were in the office and I refused to type a letter for

  one o f them because I was doing this and he read m y letter out

  loud to everyone in the room over m y shoulder and they all

  laughed at me, and I had spelled America with a “ k ” because I

  knew I was in K afka’s world, not Jefferson ’s, and I knew

  Am erika was the real country I lived in, and they laughed that I