Mercy (14 page)

puppy you can put your head up against the ticking when

you’re lonely and when you want to move the beat’s behind

you. I don’t need things. I’m not an American consumer. I’m

on the peace side and I have ideals about freedom and I don’t

want anyone telling me what to do, I’ve had enough o f it, I’m

against war, I go to demonstrations, I’m a pacifist, I have been

since I can remember. I read books and I go to places in N ew

Y ork, churches and bare rooms even, and I hear people read

poems and in m y mind I am with Sartre or Camus or Rimbaud

and I want to show love to everyone and not be confined and

sex is honest, it’s not a lie, and I like to feel things, strong

things. In N ew Y ork there’s people like me everywhere,

hiding where regular people don’t look, in every shadow

there’s the secret people. There are pockets o f dark in the dark

and the people like me are in them, poor, with nothing, not

afraid, I’m never afraid. It’s as if every crack in the sidewalk is

an open door to somewhere; you can go between the cracks to

the hidden world but regular people never even see the cracks.

People the same as you go through the cracks because they’re

not afraid and you meet them there, in the magic places, real

old from other generations even, hidden, some great underground city, dirty, hard, dark, free. There’s always sex and dope and you can get pretty hungry but you can get things if

you have to; there’s always someone. I never doubted it was

home from the start; where I was meant to come. I’m known

and invisible at the same time; fitting in but always going m y

own way, a shy girl alone in a dark corner o f the dark, the

dark’s familiar to me and so are the men in it, no rules can ever

stop night from putting its arms around a lonely girl. I like

doing what I want no matter what it is and I like drifting and I

run i f I have to; someone’s always there, kind or otherwise,

you decide quick. I love the dark, it’s got no rough edges for

me. I hear every sound without trying. I feel as if I was born

knowing every signal. I’m an animal on instinct lucky to be in

the right jungle, a magic animal charged with everything

intense and sacred, and I hate cages. I’m the night, the same.

Y ou have to hurt it to hurt me. I am one half o f everything

lawless the night brings, every lawless embrace. I can smell

where to turn in the dark, it’s not something you can know in

your head. It’s a whisper so quiet not even the dead could hear

it. It’s touching fire so fast you don’t burn your hand but the

fire’s real. I don’t know much, not what things are called or

how to do them right or how people act all the regular times.

Everything is ju st what it is to me with nothing to measure it

against and no w ay to check and I don’t have any tom orrow

and I don’t have a yesterday that I can remember because the

days and nights just go on and on and never stop and never

slow down and never turn regular; nothing makes time

normal. I have nineteen cents, I buy a big purple thing, it’s

with the vegetables, a sign says eggplant, it’s the cheapest

thing there is, I never saw one before, I try to cook it in m y one

pan in a little water, I eat it, you bet I do, it’s an awful thing, I

see w hy momma always used vegetables in cans but they cost

more. I buy rice in big unmarked bags, I think it’s good for

you because Asian people eat it and they have lived for

centuries no matter how poor they are and they have an old

civilization so it must be good but then someone says it has

starch and starch is bad so I stop buying it because the man’s very

disapproving as if I should know better because it makes you fat

he says. I just boil what there is. I buy whatever costs what I have

in m y pocket. I don’t know what people are talking about

sometimes but I stay quiet because I don’t want to appear so

ignorant to them, for instance, there are funny words that I

can’t even try to say because I think they will laugh at me but I

heard them once like zucchini, and if someone makes something and hands it to me I eat it. Sometimes someone asks me if

I like this or that but I don’t know what they mean and I stare

blankly but I smile and I don’t know what they think but I try

to be polite. I worked at the Student Peace Union and the War

Resisters League to stop the bomb and I was a receptionist at a

place that taught reading and I was a waitress at a coffee shop

that poured coffee-to-go and I typed and carried packages and

I went with men and they had smoke or food or music or a

place to sleep. I didn’t get much money and I didn’t keep any

jobs because mostly I lived in pretty bad places or on the streets

or in different places night to night and I guess the regular

people didn’t like it or wanted to stay away but I didn’t care or

think about it and I never thought about being regular or

looking regular or acting regular; I did what I wanted from

what there was and I liked working for peace and the rest was

for cigarettes. I slept in living rooms, on cots, on floors, on

soiled mattresses, in beds with other people I didn’t know who

fucked while I slept, in Brooklyn, in Spanish Harlem, near

Tompkins Square Park, in abandoned buildings, in parks, in

hallways, curled up in corners. Y ou can build your own walls.

Even the peace people had apartments and pretty things and

warm food, it seemed regular and abundant but I don’t know,

I never asked them for anything but sometimes someone took

me home and I could see. I didn’t know where it came from; it

was just like some play with scenery. They had plants or

pretty rugs or wool things or pots; posters; furniture; heat;

food; things around. I tried to live in a collective on Avenue B

and I was supposed to have a bed and we were going to cook

and all but that was where the junkies kept rolling on top o f me

because the collective would never tell anyone they couldn’t

sleep there and I never was there early enough so there wasn’t

someone asleep where I thought was mine. I never did really

sleep very well, it’s sort o f a lie to say I could sleep with junkies

rolling over on top o f me, a little bravado on m y part, except I

fell o ff to sleep, or some state o f less awake, and then it’d

happen. Y ou are always awake a little. I lived in a living room

o f a woman for peace who lived with her brother. He slept in

the living room, she slept in the bedroom, but she put me in

the living room with him. He breathed heavy and stayed up

watching me and I had to move out because she said he

couldn’t sleep. I stayed anywhere I could for as long as I could

but it w asn’t too long usually. I slept on benches and in

doorways. D oorw ays can be like palaces in the cold, in the

dark, when it’s wet; doorways are strong; you feel sheltered,

like in the arms o f God, unless the wind changes and comes

right at you and drives through you; then you wake up already

shivering, sleep pulling you down because you want to believe

you are only dreaming the wind is driving through you, but

you started to shake unconscious and the cold permeates your

body before you can bring your mind to facing it. Y ou can’t

find any place in N ew Y ork that doesn’t have me in it. I’m

stuck in the dark, m y remembrance, a shadow, a shade, an

old, dark scar that keeps tearing, dark edges ripping, dark

blood spilling out, there’s a piece left o f me, faded, pasted onto

every night, the girl who wanted peace. Later I found out it

was Needle Park or Bed-Stuy or there were whores there or it

was some kind o f sociological phenomenon and someone had