Mercy (67 page)

building in which many have lived in history. M aybe not

T rotsky but Em m a Goldm an for certain. I don’t go near men

really. Sometimes I do. I get a certain forgetfulness that comes

on me, a dark shadow over m y brain, I get took up in a certain

feeling, a wandering feeling to run from existence, all restless,

perpetual motion. It drives me with an ache and I go find one. I

get a smile on m y face and m y hips m ove a little back and forth

and I turn into a greedy little fool; I want the glass all em pty. I

grab some change and I hit the cement and I get one. I am

writing a certain very serious book about life itself. I go to bars

for food during happy hours when m y nerves aren’t too bad,

too loaded down with pain, but I keep to m yself so I can’t get

enough to eat because bartenders and managers keep watch

and you are supposed to be there for the men which is w hy

they let you in, there ain’t no such thing as a solitary woman

brooding poetically to be left alone, it don’t happen or she

don’t eat, and mostly I don’t want men so I’m hungry most o f

the time, I’m almost always hungry, I eat potatoes, you can

buy a bag o f potatoes that is almost too heavy to carry and you

can just boil them one at a time and you can eat them and they

fill you up for a while. M y book is a very big book about

existence but I can’t find any plot for it. It’s going to be a very

big book once I get past the initial slow beginning. I want to

get it published but you get afraid you will die before it’s

finished, not after when it can be found and it’s testimony and

then they say you were a great one; you don’t want to die

before you wrote it so you have to learn to sustain your

writing, you take it serious, you do it every day and you don’t

fail to write words down and to think sentences. It's hard to

find words. It’s about some woman but I can’t think o f what

happens. I can say where she is. It’s pretty barren. I always see

a woman on a rock, calling out. But that’s not a story per se.

Y ou could have someone dying o f tuberculosis like Mann or

someone who is suffering— for instance, someone who is

lovesick like Mann. O r there’s best-sellers, all these stories

where women do all these things and say all these things but I

don’t think I can write about that because I only seen it in the

movies. There’s marriage stories but it’s so boring, a couple in

the suburbs and the man on the train becoming unfaithful and

how bored she is because she’s too intelligent or something

about how angry she is but I can’t remember why. A love

story’s so stupid in these modern times. I can’t have it be about

m y life because number one I don’t remember very much and

number two it’s against the rules, you’re supposed to make

things up. The best thing that ever happened to me is these

walls and I don’t think you could turn that into a story per se or

even a novel o f ideas that people would grasp as philosophical:

for instance, that you can just sit and they provide a

fram ework o f dignity because no one’s watching and I have

had too many see too much, they see you when they do things

to you that you don’t want, they look, and the problem is

there’s no walls keeping you sacred; nor that if you stand up

they are solid which makes you seem real too, a real figure in a

room with real walls, a touchstone o f authenticity, a standard

for real existence, you are real or you feel real, you don’t have

to touch them to feel real, you just have to be able to touch

them. M y pacifist friend gave me money to live here. She saw

me on the street one day, I guess, after I didn’t go back to her

apartment no more. She said come with me and she got a

newspaper and she found an apartment and she called the

landlord and she put the money in m y hand and she sent me to

the landlord which scared me because I never met one before, a

real one, but also she wasn’t going to let the cash go elsewhere

which there was a fair chance it would, because I would have

liked some coke or something or some dinner or some drinks

and a m ovie and a book or something more real than being

inside which seemed impossible— it seemed not really available and it seemed impossible to sustain so it made more sense

to me to use the cash for something real that I knew I could get,

something I knew how to use. I started sending her money

back as soon as I got some, I’d put some in an envelope and

mail it back even if it was just five dollars but she said I was

stupid because she only said it was a loan but it w asn’t and I

didn’t need to pay it back and everyone knew that which is my

weakness, how everyone got to know things but I don’t know

them. I can’t think o f any stories about pacifists that aren’t

true. There’s nothing imaginary about walls, or eating,

nothing fictive as it were, but more especially there’s nothing

imaginary about them when they’re missing. M y walls are

thin; yeah I wish they were mine. N othing’s yours. God hurts

you if you think they’re yours. In one second o f a bad thought

you can bring evil down on you. The walls are thin. I dream

there’s holes in them and I get scared as if it’s not really inside.

There’s not much food and I know it ain’t mine in any

meaningful sense. Y o u ’re supposed to make things up, not

just write down true things, or sincere things, or some things

that happened. M y mother who you can’t make up either

because there’s nothing so real as one named me Andrea as if I

was someone: distinct, in particular. She made a fiction. I’m

her book, a made-up story written down on a birth certificate.

Y ou could also say she’s a liar on such a deep level she should

be shot by all that’s fair; deep justice. if I was famous and my

name was published all over the world, in Italy and in Israel

and in Africa and in India, on continents and subcontinents, in

deserts, in ancient cities, it would still be cunt to every fucking

asshole drunk on every street in the world; and to them that’s

not drunk too, the sober ones who say it to you like they’re

calling a dog: fetch, cunt. if I won the Nobel Prize and walked

to the corner for milk it would still be cunt. And when you got

someone inside you who is loving you it’s still cunt and the

ones w ho’d die i f they wasn’t in you, you, you in particular, at

least that night, at least then, that time, that place, to them it’s

still cunt and they whisper it up close and chill the blood that’s

burning in you; and if you love them it’s still cunt and you can

love them so strong you’d die for them and it’s still cunt; and

your heartbeat and his heartbeat can be the same heartbeat and

it’s still cunt. It’s behind your back and it’s to your face; the

ones you know, the ones you don’t. It’s like as i f nigger was a

term o f intimate endearment, not just used in lynching and

insult but whispered in lovemaking, the truth under the truth,

the name under the name, love’s name for you and it’s the

same as what hate calls you; he’s in you whispering nigger. It’s

thugs, it’s citizens, it’s cops, it’s strangers, it’s the ones you