Mercy (12 page)

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