Mercy (10 page)

quite, and I can feel his fingers going in, almost, if I touch my

face his fingers are more real, and it hurts, the bruised, scraped

labial skin, the pushed, twisted skin; and my daddy came into

my room after I couldn’t cry anymore and said nothing

happened and not to cry anymore and we wouldn’t talk about

it anymore; and I waited to be pregnant and tried to think i f I

would die. I could have the baby standing up and I wouldn’t

make any noise. M y room is small but I can hide behind the

door.

T W O

In 1961 and 1962

(Age 14, 15, 16)

M y name is Andrea. It means manhood or courage. In Europe

only boys are named it. I live in the U . S . A. I was bom down

the street from Walt W hitman’s house, on M ickle Street in

Camden in 1946, after the war, after the bomb. I was the first

generation after the bomb. I’ve always known I would die.

Other generations didn’t think so. Everyone says I’m sad but

I’m not sad. It doesn’t make me sad. The houses were brick,

the brick was made o f blood and straw, there was dust and dirt

on the sidewalks, the sidewalks were gray, the cement was

cracked, it was dark, always dark, thick dark you could reach

out and touch and it came down all around you and you could

feel it weighing on you and bumping up against you and

ramming you from behind. Y o u m oved against the dark or

under it or it pushed you from behind. The dark was

everything. Y o u had to learn to read it with your fingers or

you would be lost; might die. The cement was next, a great

gray desert. Y ou were on it, stuck and abandoned, a great gray

plain going on forever. They made you fall on your knees on

the cement and stay there so the dark could come and get you.

The dark pushed you, the cement was the bed, you fell on

your knees, the dark took you, the cement cradled you, a

harsh, angry embrace tearing the skin o ff your knees and

hands. Some places there is a great, unbearable wind, and the

fragile human breaks in it, bends in it, falls. Here there was this

dark; like the great, unbearable wind but perfectly still, quiet,

thick; it pushed without moving. Them in the dark, the

cement was the bed, a cold slat o f death, a grave with no rest,

the best bed you could get, the best bed you would ever have,

you fell forward on your knees pushed by the dark from

behind and the dark banged into you or sometimes there were

boys in cars flying by in the dark and then coming around

from behind, later, the same ones; or sometimes different

ones. The dark was some army o f them, some mass, a creature

from the deep, the blob, a giant parasite, some spreading

monster, pods, wolfmen. They called you names and they

hissed, hot steam o ff their tongues. They followed you in

beat-up cars or they just stood around and they whistled and

made noises, and the dark pushed you down and banged into

you and you were on your hands and knees, the skin torn off,

not praying, waiting, wanting all right, wanting for the dark

to move o ff you, pick itself up and run. The dark was hissing

and hot and hard with a jagged bone, a cold, brutal bone, and

hips packed tight. The dark wasn’t just at night. The dark was

any time, any place; you open your eyes and the dark is there,

right up against you, pressing. You can’t see anything and you

don’t know any names, not who they are or the names for

what they do; the dark is all you know, familiar, old, from

long ago, is it Nino or Joe or Ken or Curt, curly hair or

straight, hard hips, tight, driven, familiar with strange words

whispered in your ear, like wind lashing it. Do they see you,

do they know your name? I’m Andrea you whisper in the dark

and the dark whispers back, okay babe; shut up babe; that’s

cool babe; that’s a pretty name babe; and pulls out all the w ay

and drives back in, harder, more. Nino is rough and bad, him

and his friend, and he says what’s w rong with making love

here, right now, on this lunch counter. We are in Lits. I’m

alone, a grown-up teenage girl; at the lunch counter, myself.

They come up to me. I don’t know the name o f the other one. I

have never heard anyone say “ making love” before. Nino

takes the salt shaker and the pepper shaker from the counter

and he rubs them against each other, slow , and he talks staring

at me so I can’t m ove m y head aw ay from his eyes and he says

w hat’s w rong with it, here, now , in the daytime, on this lunch

counter, you and me, now, and I don’t know w hat’s w rong

with it; is N ino one o f them, in the dark? Stuart is m y age from

school before he stopped coming and went bad and started

running with gangs and he warned me to stay aw ay from him

and Nino who is older and bad and where they go. N ino has a

knife. I write m y first poem for Nino; I want it to be N ino; I’d

touch him back. I ran away lots o f times. I was on the bus to

N ew Y o rk lots o f times. I necked with old men I found on the

bus lots o f times. I necked with Vincent and Charles different

times, adults, Vincent had gray hair and a thick foreign accent,

Italian, and Charles had a hard, bronze face and an accent you

could barely hear from someplace far, far away, and they liked

fifteen-year-old girls; and they whispered deep, horsey,

choked words and had wet mouths; and you crunched down

in the seats and they kissed you all over, then with their hands

they took your head and forced it into their laps. One became a

famous m ovie star and I went to watch him in cow boy films.

He was the baddie but he was real nice to me. I said I wanted to

be a writer, a real writer, a great writer like Rimbaud or

D ostoevsky. He didn’t laugh. He said we were both artists and

it was hard. He said, Andrea, that’s a pretty name. He said

follow your dream, never give up, it takes a long time, years

even, and we slouched down in the seats. I knew the highw ay

to N ew Y o rk and the streets when I got there. I knew the back

alleys in Philadelphia too but I didn’t like Philadelphia. It was

fake, pretend folksingers and pretend guitar players and

pretend drug dealers, all attitude, some pot, nothing hard,

pretend poets, a different attitude, no poems. Y o u couldn’t get

lost in the dark, it w asn’t dense enough, it w asn’t desolate

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