Mercy (19 page)

likely people don’t understand them anyway. I don’t think

people in houses understand anything about the w ord cold. I

don’t think they understand the word wet. I don’t think you

could explain cold to them but if you did other words would

push it out o f their minds in a minute. T hat’s what they use

words for, to bury things. People learn long w ords to show

o ff but if you can’t say what cold is so people understand what

use is more syllables? I could never explain anything and I was

em pty inside where the words go but it was an emptiness that

caused vertigo, I fought against it and tried to keep standing

upright. I never knew what to call most things but things I

knew, cold or wet, didn’t mean much. Y o u could say you

were cold and people nodded or smiled.
Cold
. I tremble with

fear when I hear it. They know what it means on the surface

and how to use it in a sentence but they don’t know what it is,

don’t care, couldn’t remember if you told them. T h e y ’d forget

it in a minute. Cold. O r rape. Y ou could never find out what it

was from one o f them or say it to mean anything or to be

anything. Y o u could never say it so it was true. Y o u could

never say it to someone so they would help you or make

anything better or even help you a little or try to help you. Y ou

could never say it, not so it was anything. People laughed or

said something dirty. Or if you said someone did it you were

just a liar straight out; or it was you, dirty animal, who pulled

them on you to hurt you. Or if you said you were it, raped,

were it, which you never could say, but if you said it, then they

put shame on you and never looked at you again. I think so.

And it was just an awful word anyway, some awful word. I

didn’t know what it meant either or what it was, not really,

not like cold; but it was worse than cold, I knew that. It was

being trapped in night, frozen stuck in it, not the nights people

who live in houses sleep through but the nights people who

live on the streets stay awake through, those nights, the long

nights with every second ticking like a time bomb and your

heart hears it. It was night, the long night, and despair and

being abandoned by all humankind, alone on an empty planet,

colder than cold, alive and frozen in despair, alone on earth

with no one, no words and no one and nothing; cold to frozen

but cursed by being alive and nowhere near dead; stuck frozen

in nowhere; no one with no words; alone in the vagabond’s

night, not the burgher’s; in night, trapped alive in it, in

despair, abandoned, colder than cold, frozen alive, right there,

freeze flash, forever and never let loose; the sun had died so the

night and the cold would never end. God w on ’t let you loose

from it though. Y ou don’t get to die. Instead you have to stay

alive and raped but it doesn’t exist even though God made it to

begin with or it couldn’t happen and He saw it too but He is

gone now that it’s over and you’re left there no matter where

you go or how much time passes even if you get old or how

much you forget even if you burn holes in your brain. Y ou

stay smashed right there like a fly splattered over a screen,

swatted; but it doesn’t exist so you can’t think about it because

it isn’t there and didn’t happen and couldn’t happen and is only

an awful word and isn’t even a word that anyone can say and it

isn’t ever true; so you are splattered up against a night that will

go on forever except nothing happened, it will go on forever

and it isn’t anything in any w ay at all. It don’t matter anyw ay

and I can’t remember things anyw ay, all sorts o f things get

lost, I can’t remember most o f what happened to me from day

to day and I don’t know names for it anyw ay to say or who to

say it to and I live in a silence I carry that’s bigger than m y

shadow or any dark falling over me, it’s a heavy thing on m y

back and over m y head and it pours out over me down to the

ground. Words aren’t so easy anymore or they never were and

it was a lie that they seemed so. Some time ago they seemed

easier and there were more o f them. I’m Andrea but no one

says m y name so that I can hear it anymore. I go to jail against

the Vietnam War; it’s night there too, the long night, the sun is

dead, the time bomb is ticking, your heart hears it; the

vagabond’s night, not the burgher’s. I’m arrested in February.

It is cold. There is a driving wind. It slices you in pieces. It goes

right through you and comes out the other side. It freezes your

bones and your skin is a paper-thin ice, translucent. I am

against the War. I am against war. I find it easier to do things

than to say things. I am losing the w ords I had about peace.

The peace boys have all the words. The peace boys take all the

words and use them; they say them. I can’t think o f ones for

myself. T hey don’t mean what they say; words are trash to

them; it’s hollow, what they say; but the words belong to

them. In January I sat in court and saw Ja y sent aw ay for five

years to a federal prison. He w ouldn’t go to Vietnam. I sat

there and I watched and there was nothing to say. The peace

boys talked words but the words were trash. When the time

came Jay stood there, a hulking six-foot black man and I know

he wanted to cry, and the Feds took him out and he was gone

for five years. The peace boys were white. He was afraid and

the peace boys were exuberant. He didn’t have words; he

could barely say anything when the ju dge gave him his few

seconds to speak after being sentenced or before, I don’t

know, it was all predecided anyway; I think the judge said five

years then invited Ja y to speak and I swear he almost fell down

from the shock and the reality o f it and he mumbled a couple o f

words but there wasn’t anything to say and federal marshals

took him o ff and his mother and sisters were there and they

had tears, not words, and the peace boys had no tears, only

words about the struggle o f the black man against the racist

war in Vietnam, I couldn’t stop crying through the thing

which is w hy I’m not sure just when the judge said five years

and just when Ja y seemed like he was going to double over and

ju st when he was told he could say something and he tried but

couldn’t really. I’ve been organizing with the peace boys since

the beginning o f January, working to organize a demonstration at the United States Mission to the United Nations. We are going to sit in and protest Adlai Stevenson fronting for the

War. The peace boys wanted Ja y to give a speech that they

helped write and it covered all the bases, imperialism, racism,

stinking U . S. government, but it was too awful and too

tragic, and the peace boys went out disappointed that the

speech hadn’t been declaimed but regarding the trial as a

triumph; one more black man in jail for peace. I thought they

should honor him for being brave but I didn’t think they

should be jum ping for jo y ; it was too sad. They weren’t sad.

You just push people around when you organize, get them to

do what’s best for you; and if it hits you what it’s costing them

you will probably die on the spot from it. We have meetings to

work out every detail o f the demonstration. It is a w ay o f

thinking, precise, demanding, you work out every possible

scenario, anticipate every possible problem, you have the

right people at the right place at the right time, you have

everything happen that you want to have happen and nothing

that you don’t; and if something bad happens, you use it. I try