Mercy (58 page)

thinking I’m okay, I’m inside, I’m okay; I’m thinking I will

take out m y notebook and w ork, sit with the words, make

sentences, cross words out, you hear a kind o f music in your

head and you transpose it into words but the words sit there,

block letters, just words, they don’t sing back, so you have to

keep making them better until they do, until they sing back to

you, you look at it and it moves like a song. Y ou hear it

m oving, there’s a buzz on it and the buzz is music, not noise; it

can be percussive but it’s still lyrical, it sings. It’s a delicate

thing, knowing when it’s right. At the same time it’s like

being in first grade where you had to write the words down

careful in block letters and you had to make them perfect;

because you keep trying like some six-year-old to make the

words perfect so they look back at you and they are right, as if

there’s this one right w ay and it sits there, pure and clear, when

yo u ’re smart enough, finally, to put it on the page in front o f

you. I always want to run away from it: putting the words

down, because they’re always w rong at first and for a long

time they stay wrong, but now the cold night keeps me in, the

wind, the killer wind, I sit on the cot, I m ove m y papers to the

tiny table, I get out a pencil and I find some em pty paper, and I

start again, I begin again, I have started again over and over

and tonight I start again, and I hear the words in m y heart. I

came back with two laundry bags, like canvas shopping bags.

I carried them on the plane. T hey were m y laundry bags from

when I was a housewife. One has manuscripts and a couple o f

books. The other has a sweater and some underwear and a pair

o f pants. I don’t have anything else, except a fairly ragged skirt

that I’m wearing, I made it m yself with some cheap cloth, it

has clumps and bulges and I’ve got a couple o f T-shirts. I think

the manuscripts are precious. I think you can do anything if

you must. I think I can write some stories and I think it doesn’t

matter how hard it is. I’m usually pretty tired by night but the

nights are long and if you can write the time isn’t the same kind

o f burden; the words, like oxen, pull the dark faster through

time. I think it is good to write; I think perhaps someday I

might write something beautiful like
Death in Venice
, something just that lovely and perfect, and I think it would be worth a person’s whole life to write one such thing. I have an

invitation to go to Jill’s art opening, her first show ever. It is a

big event for her. Girls don’t get to have shows very easy, and

some people say it is because o f Paul; she’s resentful o f him; I

tell her it doesn’t matter one w ay or the other, the point is to do

it, just do it. I feel I should go but I don’t have clothes warm

enough for this particular night. I walk everywhere because I

don’t have money for subways, I walk long distances, I took

m y husband’s warm coat when I left— it’s the least you can

give me, I said, he was surprised enough when I grabbed it that

he didn’t take it away— it’s a sheepskin coat from Afghanistan

but it doesn’t have any buttons so you can’t stay warm in bad

wind— it’s heavy and stiff and it doesn’t close right and if

there’s bad wind it rips through the opening; I was running

away and I wanted the warm coat, I knew it would last longer

than money, I was thinking about the streets, I was remembering. And he gave me some money too, took some change

out o f his pocket, some bills he was carrying, handed it to me,

said yeah, take this too. It was maybe what you’d spend on a

cheap dinner. I wanted his coat. I was leaving and there was

m y coat and I thought about having to get through one

fucking night in m y coat, a ladies’ coat, m y wife coat, tailored,

pretty, gray, with style and a little phony fur collar, a waist, it

had a waist, it showed o ff that you had breasts, and I thought,

shit, I w on ’t live through one night in that piece o f shit, I

thought, I’d better have a real coat, I thought, the bastard has a

real coat and yes I will risk m y life to get it so I grabbed it and at

first he didn’t want me to have it but I said shit boy it’s a real

cheap w ay to end a marriage and he could’ve smashed me but

he didn’t because he wanted me out and he looked at me and

said yeah take it and you don’t wait a second, you grab it and

you get out. I never was sorry I took it. I slept on it, I slept

under it, I wrapped it around me like it was m y real skin, m y

shelter, m y house, m y home, I didn’t need to buy other stuff

for staying warm , I wore a cheap T-shirt under it, nothing

else, I didn’t have to w o rry about clothes or nothing like that;

but tonight’s too cold for it, there’s nights like that, wind too

bad, too strong, no respite; tonight’s too cold. I think I’m

going to sit still, sit quiet and calm, inside, in a room, in this

quiet room, w ork on m y story, cross out, put new words

down, try to make it sing for me, for me now, here and now,

in m y head now. T hey say Mann was a bourgeois writer. I

never saw it myself. I think he was outside them and I

wondered how he knew when it was beautiful enough and

when it was right. It seemed you had to have this calm. Y ou

had to be still. I think it’s this funny thing inside that I’m just

getting close to, this w ay o f listening, you can sort o f vaguely

hear something, you have to concentrate and get real still but

then you hear this thin thread o f something inside, and the

words ride on it right or they don’t but if you get the words

perfect they are ju st right on that thread, balanced just right. I

can’t really do it though because I’m always tired and I’m

always afraid. I shake. I can’t quiet down enough. The fear’s

new. I w asn’t some frightened girl. I’m afraid to sit still. I’m

afraid to be alone. I’m afraid when it’s quiet. A n y time I

remember I’m afraid. A ny time I dream I’m afraid. A ny time I

have to sit still alone I’m afraid. I just got this shake in me, this

terror; it’s like the room ain’t empty except it’s hollow , worse

than em pty, like some kind o f tunnel in hell, all dark with

nothing, a perfect void, I’m part o f the void and the air I’m

breathing is part o f it and the walls o f the room are the tunnel

and I’m trapped in a nothing so damned real it’s fixed forever. I

shake bad when I’m alone. I work on the stories barely able to

hold the pencil in m y hand. I don’t have no dope to calm me

down. The shake gets less if I smoke some dope, even a small

joint. Mentally I concentrate on calming m yself down so the

shake’s inside but I ain’t trembling so bad in m y body, I’m

more normal. So I sit for as long as I can, writing words down

and saying the sentences out loud to m yself and then I start

speeding up inside with fear and there’s no reason and so I have

to start calming m yself all over again, I concentrate on it until

I’m sitting still, not shaking. Then he just came right inside.

The door opened and he was in. I heard the locks unlocking—

N ew Y ork locks, real locks, I heard the cylinders turning, but

I didn’t grasp it, it was just a noise I couldn’t associate with

anything, and the door opened before I could register the

sound and he’s there, the g u y’s there, short, dark, w iry, sort o f

bent but from rage, a kind o f twisted anger in his muscles, he’s

tied in knots and it twists him all up and he’s raging all over the

apartment touching things and screaming and it’s him, they

told me he was locked up, it’s the guy, paranoid schizophrenic