Mercy (20 page)

to say things but they just talk over it. if I try to say words to

them about what we are doing they don’t hear the words. I

think I am saying words but I must be mute, m y mouth makes

shapes but it must be that nothing comes out. So I stop saying

things. I listen and put stamps on envelopes. I listen and run off

addresses for envelopes on the mimeograph machine. I listen

and make phone calls to people to get them to come to the

demonstrations. I have long lists and I make the calls for hours

at a time but if I talk too long or say too much someone makes

a sarcastic remark or if I talk too much about the War as if I am

talking about politics someone tells me I am not w orking hard

enough. I listen and type letters. The peace boys scribble out

letters and I type them. I listen and learn how to make the

plans, how to organize; I take it in in a serious w ay, for later

perhaps; I like strategy. I learn how to get people to come and

exactly what to do when and what is important and how to

take care o f people and keep them safe— or expose them to

danger i f that is our plan, which they never know . I learn how

to make plans for every contingency— i f the police do this or

that, i f people going by get violent, i f the folks demonstrating

get hurt, i f the demonstrators decide to get arrested, what to

do when the police arrest you, the laws the police have to

follow , how to make your body go limp in resisting arrest,

how to get lawyers to be ready, how to get the press there,

how to rouse people and how to quiet them down. I listen so

that I learn how to think a certain w ay and answer certain hard

questions, very specific questions, about what w ill happen in

scenario after scenario; but I am not allowed to say anything

about what to do or how to do it or ask questions or the w ords

I do say ju st disappear in the air or in m y throat. The old men

really are the ones. T hey say how to do it. T hey do all the

thinking. T hey make all the plans. They think everything

through. I listen to them and I remember everything. I am

learning how to listen too, concentrate, think it hard as if

writing it down in your mind. It is not easy to listen. The peace

boys talk and never listen. The old men do it all for them, then

they swagger and take all the credit while the old men are

happy to fade to the background so the movement looks virile

and young. The peace boys talk, smoke, rant, make their

jokes, strum guitars, run their silky white hands through their

stringy long hair. They spread their legs when they talk, they

spread out, their legs open up and they spread them wide and

their sentences spread all over and their words come and come

and their gestures get bigger and they got half erect cocks all

the time when they talk, the denim o f their dirty jeans is pulled

tight across their cocks because o f how they spread their legs

and they always finger themselves just lightly when they talk

so they are always excited by what they have to say. Somehow

they are always half reclining, on chairs, on desks, on tables,

against walls or stacks o f boxes, legs spread out so they can

talk, touching themselves with the tips o f their fingers or the

palms o f their spread hands, giggling, smoking, they think

they are Che. I live in half a dozen different places: in the

collective on Avenue B on the floor, I don’t fight for the bed

anymore; in a living room in Brooklyn with a brother and a

sister, the brother sleeps in the same room and stares and

breathes heavy and I barely dare to breathe, they are pacifists

and leave the door to their ground floor apartment open all the

time out o f love for their fellow man but a mongrel bulldog-

terrier will kill anyone who comes through, this is the

Brooklyn o f elevated subways where you walk down dark,

steep flights o f stairs to streets o f knives and broken bottles, an

open door is a merciless act o f love; in an apartment in Spanish

Harlem, big, old, a beautiful labyrinth, with three men but I

only sleep with two, one’s a sailor and he likes anal intercourse

and when he isn’t there I get the single bed in his room to myself,

some nights I am in one bed half the night, then in the other bed;

some nights between places I stay with different men I don’t

know, or sometimes a woman, not a peace woman but

someone from the streets who has a hole in the wall to-

disappear into, someone hard and tough and she seen it all and

she’s got a mattress covered with old garbage, paper garbage,

nothing filthy, and old newspapers, and I lay under her, a

pretty girl up against her dry skin and bones that feel like

they’re broke, her callouses, her scars, bad teeth but her eyes

are brilliant, savage and brilliant, and her sex is ferocious and

rough, a little mean, I find such a woman, older than me and

I’m the ingenue and I’m the tough girl with the future; some

nights between places I stay in a hallway in a building with an

open door; some nights between places I am up all night in

bars with nowhere to sleep and no one I am ready to go with,

something warns me o ff or I just don’t want to, and at two or

four when the bars close I find a doorw ay and wait or walk and

wait, it’s cold, a lethal cold, so usually I walk, a slow,

purposeful walk with m y shoulders hunched over so no one

will see I’m young and have nowhere to go. T he jail was dirty,

dark, foul. I wasn’t allowed to make the plans or write the

leaflets or draft the letters or decide anything but they let me

picket because they needed numbers and it was just being a

foot soldier and they let me sit in because it was bodies and

they let me get arrested because it was numbers for the press;

but once we were arrested the wom en disappeared inside the

prison, we were swallowed up in it, it w asn’t as if anyone was

missing to them. T hey were all over the men, to get them out,

to keep track o f them, to make sure they were okay, the heroes

o f the revolution incarnate had to be taken care of. The real

men were going to real jail in a real historical struggle; it was

real revolution. The nothing ones walked o ff a cliff and melted

into thin air. I didn’t mind being used but I didn’t expect to

disappear into a darkness resembling hell by any measure; left

there to rot by m y brothers; the heroes o f the revolution. T hey

got the men out; they left us in. Rape, they said. We had to get

them out as a priority; rape, they said. In jail men get raped,