Mercy (13 page)

same thing: we didn’t want to die virgins. N o one said anyone

else was lying because we thought we were all probably going

to die that day and there w asn’t any point in saying someone

wasn’t a virgin and you couldn’t know , really, because boys

talked dirty, and no one said they w eren’t because then you

would be low-life, a dirty girl, and no one would talk to you

again and you would have to die alone and if the bomb didn’t

come you might as well be dead. Girls were on the verge o f

saying it but no one dared. O f course now the adults were

saying everything was fine and no bomb was com ing and

there was no danger; we didn’t have to stand in the halls, not

that day, the one day it was clear atomic death was right there,

in N ew Jersey. But we knew and everyone thought the same

thing and said the same thing and it was the only thought we

had to say how sad we were to die and everyone giggled and

was almost afraid to say it but everyone had been thinking the

same thing all night and wanted to say it in the morning before

we died. It was like a record we were making for ourselves, a

history o f us, how we had lived and been cheated because we

had to die virgins. We said to each other that it’s not fair we

have to die now, today; we didn’t get to do anything. We said

it to each other and everyone knew it was true and then when

we lived and the bomb didn’t come we never said anything

about it again but everyone hurried. We hurried like no one

had ever hurried in the history o f the world. O ur mothers

lived in dream time; no bomb; old age; do it the first time after

marriage, one man or yo u ’ll be cheap; time for them droned

on. B ay o f Pigs meant no more time. They don’t care about

w hy girls do things but we know things and we do things;

w e’re not just animals who don’t mind dying. The houses

where I lived were brick; the streets were cement, gray; and I

used to think about the three pigs and the bad w o lf blow ing

down their houses but not the brick one, how the brick one

was strong and didn’t fall down; and I would try to think i f the

brick ones would fall down when the bomb came. They

looked like blood already; blood-stained walls; blood against

the gray cement; and they were already broken; the bricks

were torn and crumbling as if they were soft clay and the

cement was broken and cracked; and I would watch the houses

and think maybe it was like with the three pigs and the big bad

w o lf couldn’t blow them down, the big bad bomb. I thought

maybe we had a chance but if we lived in some other kind o f

house we wouldn’t have a chance. I tried to think o f the bomb

hitting and the brick turned into blood and dust, red dust

covering the cement, wet with real blood, but the cement

would be dust too, gray dust, red dust on gray dust, just dust

and sky, everything gone, the ground just level everywhere

there was. I could see it in my mind, with me sitting in the

dust, playing with it, but I wouldn’t be there, it would be red

dust on gray dust and nothing else and I wouldn’t even be a

speck. I thought it would be beautiful, real pure, not ugly and

poor like it was now, but so sad, a million years o f nothing,

and tidal waves o f wind would come and kill the quiet o f the

dust, kill it. I went away to N ew Y ork C ity for freedom and it

meant I went away from the red dust, a picture bigger than the

edges o f m y mind, it was a red landscape o f nothing that was in

me and that I put on everything I saw like it was burned on my

eyes, and I always saw Camden that way; in m y inner-mind it

was the landscape o f where I lived. It didn’t matter that I went

to Point Zero. It would just be faster and I hadn’t been hiding

there under the desk afraid. I hate being afraid. I hadn’t grown

up there waiting for it to happen and making pictures o f it in

m y mind seeing the terrible dust, the awful nothing, and I

hadn’t died there during the Bay o f Pigs. The red dust was

Camden. Y ou can’t forgive them when you’re a child and they

make you afraid. So you go away from where you were afraid.

Some stay; some go; it’s a big difference, leaving the

humiliations o f childhood, the morbid fear. We didn’t have

much to say to each other, the ones that left and the ones that

stayed. Children get shamed by fear but you can’t tell the

adults that; they don’t care. They make children into dead

things like they are. If there’s something left alive in you, you

run. Y ou run from the poor little child on her knees; fear

burned the skin o ff all right; she’s still on her knees, dead and

raw and tender. N ew Y o rk ’s nothing, a piece o f cake; you

never get afraid like that again; not ever. I live where I can find

a bed. Men roll on top, fuck, roll off, shoot up, sleep, roll on

top again. In between you sleep. It’s how it is and it’s fine. I

never did feel more at home. It’s as i f I was always there. It’s

familiar. The streets are the same gray, home. Fucking is

nothing really. Hiding from the law and dumb adults is

ordinary life; yo u ’re always hiding from them anyw ay unless

yo u ’re one o f their robots. I hate authority and it’s no jo k e and

it’s no game; I want them dead all right, all the order givers.

N ew Y o r k ’s home because there’s other people the same; we

know each other as much as you have to, not much. The only

other w ay is the slow time o f mothers; facing a wall, staring at

a blank wall, for life, one man, forever, marriage, the living

dead. I don’t want to be like them. I never will be. I’m not

afraid o f dying and I’m not standing quiet at some wall; the

bomb comes at me, I’m going to hurl m yself into it; flashfly

into its fucking face. I’m fine on the streets. I’m not afraid; o f

fucking or anyone; and there’s nothing I’m afraid of. I have

ideals about peace and freedom and it doesn’t matter what the

adults think, because they lie and they’re stupid. I’m sincere

and smarter than them. I believe in universal love. I want to

love everybody even if I don’t know them and not to have

small minds like the adults. I don’t mind if people are strangers

or how they look and no matter how raw som ebody is they’re

human; it’s the plastic ones that aren’t human. I don’t need a

lot, a place to sleep, some money, almost none, cigarettes.

Everyone in this place knows something, jazz or poems or

anarchism or dope or books I never heard o f before, and they

don’t like the bomb. T h ey’ve lived and they don’t hide from

knowing things and sex is the main w ay you live— adults say it

isn’t but they never told the truth yet. N ew Y o rk ’s the whole

world, it’s like living inside a heartbeat, you know, like a