Mercy (18 page)

F O U R

In February 1965

(Age 18)

I live in a funny kind o f silence, I have all my life, a kind o f

invisible bubble. On the streets I am quiet and there is quiet all

around and no one gets through, nothing, except for the wind

sometimes bellowing in my head an awful noise o f cold

weeping. I don’t look quiet but I am quiet. People don’t see

much so they don’t see how still I am. I see the people talking,

all the people o f every kind, throwing words at everything,

throwing words at each other, throwing words at time, sitting

over coffee throwing words, peaceful or shouting, smiling or

in pain, throwing words at anything they see, anything that

walks up to them or anything that gets in their w ay or trying

to be friendly throwing words at someone who doesn’t know

them. I don’t have words to throw back. When I feel

something no right words come or no one would know what

they mean. It would be like throwing a ball that could never be

caught. They act like words are cheap and easy as if they can

just be replaced after they are used up and as if they make

things all right. if I am caught in a situation so I have to, I say

something, I say I am shy and I smile, but it’s not true, I am not

shy, I ju st don’t have these great numbers o f dozens o f words,

it’s so blank inside, so empty, no words, no sound at all, a

terrible nothing. I don’t know things. I don’t know where the

people come from when the light starts coming through the

sky. I don’t know where the cars come from, always starting

about an hour after the first trash can is pushed over by boys

running or cats looking for food. T here’s no one to ask if. I

knew how but I can’t think how. The people come out first; in

drips; then great cascades o f them. I don’t know how they got

there, inside, and how they get to stay there. I don’t know

where the cars come from or where the people get all their

coats or where the bus drivers come from in the em pty buses

that cruise the streets before the people come out. I f it’s raining

suddenly people have different clothes to stay dry in but I

don’t know where they got them or where you could go to get

them or how you would get the m oney or how they knew it

was going to rain if you couldn’t see it in the sky or smell it in

the air. I don’t know how anything w orks or how everyone

knows the things they know or w hy they all agree, for

instance, on when to all come out o f the buildings at once in a

swarm , or how they all know what to say and when. They act

like it’s clear and simple and they’re sure. I don’t have words

except for m y name, Andrea, which is the only w ord I have all

the time, which m y mom ma gave me, which I remember even

if I can’t remember anything else because sometimes I forget

everything that happened until now. Andrea is the name I had

since being a child. In school we had to write our names on our

papers so maybe I remember it from that, doing it over and

over day in, day out. And also m y mother whispered it to me

in m y ear when she was loving me when I was little. I

remember it because it was so beautiful when she said it. I

don’t exactly remember it in m y mind, more in m y heart. It

means manhood or courage and it is from Europe and she said

she was damned for naming me it because you become what

you are named for and I w asn’t the right kind o f girl at all but I

think I could never be named anything else because the sounds

o f the w ord are exactly like me in m y heart, a music in a sense

with m y m other’s voice singing it right to m y heart, it’s her

voice that breaks the silence inside me with a sound, a w ord;

m y name. It doesn’t matter w ho says it or in what w ay, I am

comforted, as if it is the whisper o f my mother when I was a

baby and safe up against her in her arms. I was only safe then in

all my life, for a while but everything ends soon. I was born

into her arms with her loving me in Camden, down the street

from where Walt Whitman lived. I liked having him there

because it meant that once it was somewhere; it meant you

could be great; it meant Camden was something; it meant

there was something past the rubble, this great gray man who

wasn’t afraid o f America and so I wasn’t afraid to go anywhere

and I could love anyone, like he said. Camden was broken

streets, broken cement, crushed gray dust, jagged, broken

cement. The houses were broken bricks, red bricks, red,

blood red, I love brick row houses, I love blood red, wine red,

crumbled into sawdust; w e’re dust too, blood red dust. It was

a cement place with broken streets and broken bricks and I

loved the cement and I loved the broken streets and I loved the

broken bricks and I never felt afraid, just alone, not sad, not

afraid. I had to go away from home early to seek freedom

which is a good thing because you don’t want to be a child for

too long. You get strong if you go away from where you are a

child; home; people say it’s home; you get strong but you

don’t have a lot o f words because people use words to talk

about things and if you don’t have things there’s few words

you need. It’s funny how silence goes with having nothing and

how you have nothing to say if you don’t have things and

words don’t mean much anyway because you can’t really use

them for anything if you have nothing. If you go away from

home you live without things. Things never mattered to me

and I never wanted them but sometimes I wanted words. I

read a lot to find words that were the right ones and I loved the

words I read but they weren’t exactly the ones. They were like

them but not them. I just moved along the streets and I took

what was coming and often I didn’t know what to call it. We

were going to die soon, that was for sure, with the bomb

coming, and there weren’t words for that either, even though

people threw words at it. Y ou could say you didn’t want to die

and you didn’t want them to wipe out the earth but w ho could

you say. it to so it would matter? I didn’t like people throwing

words at it when words couldn’t touch it, when you couldn’t

even wrap your mind around it at all. When I thought about

being safe I could hear the word Andrea coming from m y

m other’s lips when I was a baby, her mouth on me because she

loved me and I was in her arms but it ended soon. I played in

the bricks and on the cement; in rubble; in garbage; in alleys;

and I went from Camden to N ew Y o rk and the quiet was all

around me even more as if I was sinking under it sometimes;

and I thought, if your momma isn’t here to say your name

there is nothing to listen to. I f you try to say some words it is