Mercy (82 page)

her by me, but I wake up and it’s hollow, m y life’s hollow, I

got an em pty life, I’m alive and it’s empty, she’s gone, I raise

m yself up on m y elbow and I look, I keep looking, there’s a

desolation beyond the burdens o f history, a sadness deeper

than any shame. I’ll take the physical pain, Lord, I deserve it,

double it, triple it, make it more, but bring her back, don’t let

him hurt her, don’t make her gone. I look, I keep looking, I

keep expecting her, that she will be there if I look hard enough

or God will hear me and the boy will walk through the door

saying he ju st walked her and I pray to just let him bring her

back, ju st let him walk in the door; ju st this; days could go by

and I w ouldn’t know ; he’ll be innocent in m y eyes, I swear. I

hallucinate her and I think she’s with me and I reach out and

she’s not real and then I fall back into the deep blackness and

when I wake up I look for her, I wait for her; I’m waiting for

her now. M y throat’s like some small animal nearly killed,

maimed for religious slaughter, a small, nearly killed beast, a

poor warm-blooded thing hurt by some ritual but I never

heard o f the religion, there’s deep sacrifice, deep pain. I can’t

move because the poor thing’d shake near to torture; it’s got to

stay still, the maimed thing. I couldn’t shout and I couldn’t cry

and I couldn’t whisper or moan or call her name, in sighs, I

couldn’t whisper to m yself in sighs. I couldn’t swallow or

breathe. I sat still in m y own shit for some long time, many,

many days, some months o f days, and I rocked, I rocked back

and forth on m y heels, I rocked and I held m yself in m y arms, I

didn’t move more than to rock and I didn’t wash and I didn’t

say nothing. I swallowed down some water as I could stand it,

I breathed when I could, not too much, not too soon, not too

hard. If he put semen on me it’s still there, I wear it, whatever

he did, if he did it I carry it whatever it is, I don’t know, I w on’t

ever know, whatever he did stays done, anything he tore stays

torn, anything he took stays gone. I look for her; I scan the

walls; I stare; I see; I know; I will make m yself into a weapon; I

will turn m yself into a new kind o f death, for them; I got a new

revolutionary love filling my heart; the real passion; the real

thing. Che didn’t know nothing, he was ruling class. Huey killed

a girl, a young prostitute, seventeen; he was pimping but she

wasn’t one o f his. He was cruising, slow, in a car. Baby, she

called out, baby, oh babe. He shot her;
no one calls me baby.
She

said baby; he said cunt. Some o f them whisper, a term o f

endearment; some o f them shout. There’s gestures more

eloquent than words. She said something, he said something,

she died. Sister child, lost heart, poor girl, I’ll avenge you, sister

o f m y heart. Did it hurt or was death the easy part? I don’t know

what m y one did, except for taking her; but it don’t matter,

really, does it? N ot what; nor why; nor who; nor how.

T E N

April 30, 1974

(Age 27)

Ma. Ssa. Da. Ma. Ssa. Da. Ma. Ssa. Da. Hear m y heart beat.

Massada. I was born there and I died there. There was time;

seventy years. The Je w s were there, the last ones, the last free

ones, seventy years. The zealots, they were called; m y folks,

m y tribe; how I love them in m y heart. N ever give in. N ever

surrender. Slavery is obscene. Die first. B y your ow n hand; if

that’s what it takes; rather than be conquered; die free. N o

shame for the women, they used to say; conquered women;

shame. Massada. I used to see this picture in m y mind, a

wom an on a rock. I wrote about her all the time. Every time I

tried to write a story I wrote there is a woman on a rock, even

in the eighth grade, there’s a woman, a strong woman, a fierce

wom an, on a rock. I didn’t know what happened in the story. I

couldn’t think o f a plot. I just saw her. She was proud. She was

strong. She was wild by our standards or so it seemed, as if

there was no other word; but she didn’t seem wild; because she

was calm; upright; with square shoulders, muscled; her eyes

were big and fearless and looked straight ahead; not like

wom en today, looking down. She was ancient, from an old

time, simple and stark, dirty and dark, austere, a proud,

unconquerable wom an on a rock. The rock towers. The rock

is barren; nothing grow s, nothing erodes, nothing changes; it

is hard and old and massive. The rock is vast. The rock is

majestic, high and bare and alone; so alone the sun nearly

weeps for it; isolated from man and God; unbreachable; a

towering wall o f bare rock, alone in a desert where the sun

makes the sand bleed. The sun is hot, pure, unmediated by

clouds or sky, a white sun; blinding white; no yellow; there’s a

naked rock under a steaming, naked sun, surrounded by

molten, naked sand. It’s a rock made to outlast the desert, a

bare and brazen rock; and the Dead Sea spreads out near it,

below it, touching the edge o f the desert that touches the edge

o f the rock. Dead rock; dead water; a hard land; for a hard

people; God kept killing us, o f course, to make us hard

enough; genocide and slavery and rape were paternal kindnesses designed to build character, to rip pity out o f you, to destroy sentimentality, your heart will be as barren as this rock

when I’m done with you, He said; stern Father, a nasty

Daddy, He made history an incest on His children, slow,

continuous, generation after generation, a sadistic pedagogy,

love and pain, what recourse does a child have? He loves you

with pain, by inflicting it on you, a slow, ardent lover, and you

love back with suffering because you are helpless and human,

an imprisoned child o f Him caged in the world o f His making;

it’s a worshipful response, filled with awe and fear and dread,

bewildered, w hy me, w hy now, w hy this, w hy aren’t Y ou

merciful, w hy aren’t Y ou kind; and because it’s all there is, this

love o f His, it’s the only love He made, the only love He lets us

know, ignorant children shut up in D addy’s house, we yearn

for Him and adore Him and wait for Him, awake, afraid,

shivering; we submit to Him, part fear, part infatuation,

helpless against Him, and we thank Him for the punishment

and the pain and say how it shows He loves us, we say Daddy,

Daddy, please, begging Him to stop but He takes it as

seduction, it eggs Him on, He sticks it in; please, Daddy. He

didn’t rest on the seventh day but He didn’t write it down

either, He made love, annihilation is how I will love them.

Y ou might say He had this thought. It was outside the plan.

The six days were the plan. On the seventh He stretched