Mercy (22 page)

go until I said what happened. Some words came out and then

all the ones I had but I didn’t know how to say things, like

speculum which I had never seen, so I tried to say what

happened thing by thing, describing because I didn’t know

what to call things, sometimes even with m y hands showing

her what I meant, and when it was over she seemed to

understand. The call girl got a jail sentence because the ju dge

said she had a history o f prostitution. The pacifists didn’t say

how she was noble to stand up against the War; or how she

was reformed or any other bullshit; they just all shivered and

shook when they found out she had been a call girl; and they

ju st let her go, quiet, back into hell; thirty days in hell for

trying to stop a nasty war; and the pacifists didn’t want to

claim her after that; and they didn’t help her after that; and they

didn’t want her in demonstrations after that. They let me drift,

a mute, in the streets, just a bourgeois piece o f shit who

couldn’t take it; except for the peace woman. She seemed to

understand everything and she seemed to believe me even

though I had never heard o f any such thing happening before

and it didn’t seem possible to me that it had happened at all.

She said it was very terrible to have such a thing happen. I had

to try to say each thing or show it with m y hands because I

couldn’t sum up anything or say anything in general or refer to

any common knowledge and I didn’t know what things were

or if they were important and I didn’t know if it was all right

that they did it to me or not because they did it to everyone

there, who were mostly whores except for one woman who

murdered her husband, and they were police and doctors and

so I thought maybe they were allowed to even though I

couldn’t stop bleeding but I was afraid to tell anyone, even

myself, and to m yself I kept saying I had m y period, even after

fifteen days. She called a newspaper reporter who said so

what? The newspaper reporter said it happens all the time

there that women are hurt just so bad or worse and remember

the woman who was tortured to death and so what was so

special about this? But the woman said the reporter was wrong

and it mattered so at first I started to suffocate because the

reporter said it didn’t matter but then I could breathe again

because the woman said it mattered and it couldn’t be erased

and you couldn’t say it was nothing. So I went from this

woman after this because I couldn’t just stay there with her and

she assumed everyone had some place to go because that’s

how life is it seems in the main and I went to the peace office

and instead o f typing letters for the peace boys I wrote to

newspapers saying I had been hurt and it was bad and not all

right and because I didn’t know sophisticated words I used the

words I knew and they were very shocked to death; and the

peace boys were in the office and I refused to type a letter for

one o f them because I was doing this and he read m y letter out

loud to everyone in the room over m y shoulder and they all

laughed at me, and I had spelled America with a “ k ” because I

knew I was in K afka’s world, not Jefferson ’s, and I knew

Am erika was the real country I lived in, and they laughed that I

couldn’t spell it right. The peace wom an fed me sometimes

and let me sleep there sometimes and she talked to me so I

learned some words I could use with her but I didn’t tell her

most things because I didn’t know how and she had an

apartment and w asn’t conversant with how things were for

me and I didn’t want to say but also I couldn’t and also there

was no reason to try, because it is as it is. I’m me, not her in her

apartment. Y ou always have your regular life. She’d say she

could see I was tired and did I want to sleep and I’d say no and

she’d insist and I never understood how she could tell but I was

so tired. I had a room I always stayed in. It was small but it was

warm and there were blankets and there was a door that closed

and she’d be there and she didn’t let anyone come in after me.

M aybe she would have let me stay there more if I had known

how to say some true things about day to day but I didn’t ask

anything from anyone and I never would because I couldn’t

even be sure they would understand, even her. And what I

told her when she made me talk to her was how once you went

to jail they started sticking things up you. T hey kept putting

their fingers and big parts o f their whole hand up you, up your

vagina and up your rectum; they searched you inside and

stayed inside you and kept touching you inside and they

searched inside your mouth with their fingers and inside your

ears and nose and they made you squat in front o f the guards to

see i f anything fell out o f you and stand under a cold shower

and make different poses and stances to see if anything fell out

o f you and then they had someone w ho they said was a nurse

put her hands up you again and search your vagina again and

search your rectum again and I asked her w hy do you do this,

why, you don’t have to do this, and she said she was looking

for heroin, and then the next day they took me to the doctors

and there were two o f them and one kept pressing me all over

down on my stomach and under where m y stomach is and all

down near between my legs and he kept hurting me and

asking me if I hurt and I said yes and every time I said yes he did

it harder and I thought he was trying to find out if I was sick

because he was a doctor and I was in so much pain I must be

very sick like having an appendicitis all over down there but

then I stopped saying anything because I saw he liked pressing

harder and making it hurt more and so I didn’t answer him but

I had some tears in m y eyes because he kept pressing anyway

but I wouldn’t let him see them as best as it was possible to turn

m y head from where he could see and they made jokes, the

doctors, about having sex and having girls and then the big

one who had been watching and laughing took the speculum

which I didn’t know what it was because I had never seen one

or had anyone do these awful things to me and it was a big,

cold, metal thing and he put it in me and he kept twisting it and

turning it and he kept tearing me to pieces which is literal

because I was ripped up inside and the inside o f me was bruised

like fists had beaten me all over but from within me or

someone had taken my uterus and turned it inside out and hit it

and cut it and then I was taken back to m y cell and I got on m y

knees and I tried to cry and I tried to pray and I couldn’t cry and

I couldn’t pray. I was in G od ’s world, His world that He made

H im self on purpose, on my knees, blood coming down m y

legs; and I hated Him; and there were no tears in me to come as

if I was one o f G o d ’s children all filled with sorrow and

mourning in a world with His mercy. M y father came to get

me weeks later when the bleeding wouldn’t stop. I had called

and begged and he came at night though I had shamed them

and he wouldn’t look at me or speak to me. I was afraid to tell

the woman about the blood. At first when she made me talk I