Mercy (85 page)

here, but I couldn’t write, or read; I was an old woman, tough,

proud, strong, fierce, quiet now as if dumb, a thick quiet, an

intense, disciplined quiet; I was an old woman, wild, tough,

proud, with square shoulders muscled from carrying, from

hard labor, sitting on a rock, a hard, barren rock, a terrible

rock; there was a wom an sitting on a rock, she was strong, she

was fierce, she was wild, she wasn’t afraid, she looked straight

ahead, not down like wom en now , she was dark and dirty,

maybe mad, maybe just old, near naked with rags covering

her, her hair was long and shining and dirty, a gleaming silver

under the hot, white sun; but wild is perhaps not the right

word because she was calm, upright, quiet, in intentional

solitude, her eyes were big and fearless and she faced the world

head-on not averting her eyes the w ay women do now; she

could see; she didn’t turn her eyes away. She was sitting on a

hard, barren rock under a hot, white sun, and then the sun

went down, got lower in the sky, lower and lower yet, a little

lower; the sun got lower and the light got paler, then duller;

the sun got low and she took a piece o f rock, a sharp piece o f

rock, and she cut her throat; I cut my throat. N o Romans; no

fascist Jew ish boys however splendid their thighs or pristine

their ideals; no. Mine was a righteous suicide; a political refusal

to sanction the current order; to say black was white. Theirs

was mass murder. A child can’t commit suicide. You have to

murder a child. I couldn’t watch the children killed; I couldn’t

watch the women taken one last time; throats bared; heads

thrown back, or pushed back, or pulled back; a man gets on

top, who knows what happens next, any time can be the last

time, slow murder or fast, slow rape or fast, eventual death, a

surprise or you are waiting with a welcome, an open

invitation; rape leading, inexorably, to death; on a bare rock,

invasion, blood, and death. Massada; hear my heart beat; hear

me; the women and children were murdered, except me, I was

not, when you say Massada you say m y name, I discovered

pride there, I outlined freedom, out from under, Him and him

and him; let him put the sword in your hand, little sister, then

see; don’t love them; don’t obey. It wasn’t delirium; or fear; I

saw freedom. Does Massada thrill you, do you weep with

pride and sorrow for the honor o f the heroes, the so-called

suicides? Then you weep for me, I make you proud, the

woman on the rock; a pioneer o f freedom; a beginning; for

those who had no say but their throats were ripped open; for

the illiterate in invisible chains; a righteous suicide; a resistance

suicide; mad woman; mad-dog suicide; this girl here’s got a

ripped throat, Andrea, the zealot, freedom is the theory,

suicide the practice; m y story begins at Massada, I begin there,

I see a woman on a rock and I was born in blood, the blood

from her throat carried by time; I was born in blood, the slit

between the legs, the one God did H im self so it bleeds forever,

one clean cut, a perfect penetration, the m emory o f Massada

marked on me, my covenant with her; God sliced me, a

perfect penetration, then left me like carrion for the others, the

ones He made like Him, in His own image as they always say,

as they claim with pride, or vanity I would say, or greed; pride

is me, deciding at Massada, not Him or him or him. Y o u ’re

born in blood, washed in it, you swim out in it, immersed in

it, it’s your first skin, warm , hot on fragile, wrinkled,

discolored flesh; w e’re born to bleed, the ones He sliced

Himself; when the boys come out, the toy boys, tiny figurines

made like Him, He has it done to them, sym bolically, the

penis is sliced so they’re girls to Him; and the toy b o y’ll grow

up pushing the cut thing in girls who are born cut open big,

he’ll need to stick it in and stick it in and stick it in, he doesn’t

like being one o f G o d ’s girls even a little; and it’s a m em ory,

isn’t it, you were girls to M e at Massada; a humiliation; think

o f the last ten, nine o f them on their big knees, throats bared,

one slice, the tenth sticks it up himself, there’s a woman I saw

in a porn magazine, she did that to herself, she smiled; did

number ten, the big hero, smile, a coy look at God, heavy

mascara around the eyes, a wide smile, the sword going in and

som ehow he fingers his crotch at the same time? The

Christians w ouldn’t stand for it; they said C hrist’s the last one,

he died for us so we don’t need to be cut but God wants them

sliced and they know it so they do it for health or sanitation as

if it’s secular garbage removal but in their hearts they know ,

God wants them cut, you don’t get aw ay with not being a girl

for Him except you w on’t be His favorite girl. They take it out

on us, all o f them, sliced or threatened, sliced or evading it,

enlisted or the equivalent o f draft dodgers; manly men;

fucking the hole God already made; He was there first; there

are no virgin girls; the toy boys always get used goods. Their

thing, little next to His, aspires to omnipresence; and Daddy

watches; a perpetual pornography; blood-and-guts scenes o f

pushing and hitting and humiliation, the girl on the bed, the

girl on the floor, the girl in the kitchen, the girl in the car, the

girl down by the river, the girl in the woods, the girls in cities

and towns, prairies and deserts, mountains and plains, all

colors, a rainbow o f suffering, rich and poor, sick and well,

young and old, infants even, a man sticks it in the mouths o f

infants, I know such a man; oh, he’s real; an uncle o f mine; an

adult; look up to him, listen to him, obey him, love him, he’s

your uncle; he was born in Camden but he left, smart, a big

man, he got rich and prominent, an outstanding citizen; five

infants, in the throat, men like the throat, his own children, it

was a daddy’s love, he did that, a loving daddy in the dark, and

God watched, they like the throat, the smooth cavity o f an

infant’s mouth and the tiny throat, a tight passage, men like it

tight, so tiny; and the suction, because an infant sucks, it pulls

and it sucks, it wants food but this food’s too big, too

monstrous, it sucks, it pulls it in, and daddy says to him self it

wouldn’t suck if it didn’t like it; and Daddy watches; and the

infant gags, and the infant retches, and the infant chokes; and

daddy comes; and Daddy comes; the child vomits, chokes,

panics, can’t breathe, forever, a lifetime on the verge o f

suffocation. I don’t have much o f a family, I prefer the streets

frankly to various pieties but sometimes there are these shrieks

in the night, a child quaking from a crime against humanity,

and she calls out, sister she says, he sliced m y throat with a

sword, I remember it but I don’t, it happened but it didn’t, he’s

there in the dark all the time, watching, waiting, he’s a ghost

but he isn’t, it’s a secret but w hy doesn’t everyone know? H ow