Mercy (88 page)

mad, m y throat’s in ribbons, just hanging streaks o f meat, you

can feel it all loose, all cut loose or ripped loose in pieces as if

it’s kind o f like pieces o f steak cut to be sauteed but someone

forgot and left it out so there’s maggots on it and it’s green,

rotted out, all crawling. Some one o f them offers me money

and I make him sorry, I prefer the garbage in the trash cans,

frankly, it’s cleaner, this walking human stuff I don’t have no

room in m y heart for, they’re not hygenic. I’m old, pretty old,

I can’t take the chance o f getting cancer or something from

them; I think they give it to you with how they look at you; so

I hide the best I can, under newspapers or under coats or under

trash I pick up; m y hair’s silver, dirty; I remember when I was

different and these legs were silk; and m y breasts were silk; but

now there’s sores; and blood; and scars; and I’m green inside

sometimes, if I cut m yself something green comes out, as if

I’m getting green blood which I never heard o f before but they

keep things from you; it could be that if you get so many bad

cuts body and soul your blood changes; from scarlet to a dank

green, an awful green; some chartreuse, some Irish, but

mostly it is morbid, a rotting green; it’s a sad story as I am an

old-fashioned human being who had a few dreams; I liked

books and I would have enjoyed a cup o f coffee with Camus in

m y younger days, at a cafe in Paris, outside, w e’d watch the

people walk by, and I would have explained that his ideas

about suicide were in some sense naive, ahistorical, that no

philosopher could afford to ignore incest, or, as I would have

it, the story o f man, and remain credible; I wanted a pretty

whisper, by which I mean a lover’s whisper, by which I mean

that I could say sweet things in a man’s ear and he’d be thrilled

and kind, I’d whisper and it’d be like making love, an embrace

that would chill his blood and boil it, his skin’d be wild, all

nerves, all smitten, it’d be my mark on him, a gentle mark but

no one’d match it, just one whisper, the kind that makes you

shiver body and soul, and it’d just brush over his ear. I wanted

hips you could balance the weight o f the world on, and I’d

shake and it’d move; in Tanzania it’d rumble. I wanted some

words; o f beauty; o f power; o f truth; simple words; ones you

could write down; to say some things that happened, in a

simple way; but the words didn’t exist, and I couldn’t make

them up, or I wasn’t smart enough to find them, or the parts o f

them I had or I found got tangled up, because I couldn’t

remember, a lot disappeared, you’d figure it would be

impressed on you if it was bad enough or hard enough but if

there’s nothing but fire it’s hard to remember some particular

flame on some particular day; and I lived in fire, the element; a

Dresden, metaphysically speaking; a condition; a circum-

stance; in time, tangential to space; I stepped out, into fire. Fire

burns m em ory clean; or the heart; it burns the heart clean; or

there’s scorched earth, a dead geography, burned bare; I

stepped out, into fire, or its aftermath; burnt earth; a dry, hard

place. I was born in blood and I stepped out, into fire; and I

burned; a girl, burning; the flesh becomes translucent and the

bones show through the fire. The cement was hot, as if flames

grew in it, trees o f fire; it was hot where they threw you down;

hot and orange; how am I supposed to remember which flame,

on which day, or what his name was, or how he did it, or what

he said, or w hy, if I ever knew; I don’t remember knowing.

O r even if, at some point; really, even if. I lived in urban flame.

There was the flat earth, for us gray, hard, cement; and it

burned. I saw pictures o f woods in books; we had great flames

stretching up into the sky and swaying; m oving; dancing; the

heat melting the air; we had burning hearts and arid hearts;

girls’ bodies, burning; boys, hot, chasing us through the forest

o f flame, pushing us down; and we burned. Then there were

surreal flames, the ones we superimposed on reality, the

atomic flames on the way, coming soon, at a theater near you,

the dread fire that could never be put out once it was ignited; I

saw it, simple, in front o f m y eyes, there never was a chance, I

lived in the flames and the flames were a ghostly wash o f

orange and red, as i f an eternal fire mixed with blood were the

paint, and a great storm the brush. I lived in the ordinary fire,

whatever made them follow you and push you down, yo u ’d

feel the heat, searing, you didn’t need to see the flame, it was

more as if he had orange and burning hands a mile high; I

burned; the skin peeled off; it deformed you. The fire boils

you; you melt and blister; then I’d try to write it down, the

flames leaping o ff the cement, the embodiment o f the lover;

but I didn’t know what to call it; and it hurt; but past what they

will let you say; any o f them. I didn’t know what to call it, I

couldn’t find the words; and there were always adults saying

no, there is no fire, and no, there are no flames; and asking the

life-or-death question, you’re still a virgin, aren’t you; which

you would be forever, poor fool, in your pitiful pure heart.

Y ou couldn’t tell them about the flames that were lit on your

back by vandal lover boys, arsonists, while they held you

down; and there were other flames; the adults said not to

watch; but I watched; and the flames stayed with me, burning

in m y brain, a fire there, forever, I lived with the flames my

whole life; the Buddhist monks in Vietnam who burned

themselves alive; they set themselves on fire; to protest; they

were calm; they sat themselves down, calm; they were simple,

plain; they never showed any fear or hesitation; they were

solemn; they said a prayer; they had kerosene; then they were

lit; then they exploded; into flame; and they burned forever; in

my heart; forever; past what television could show; in its gray;

in its black and white and gray; the gray cement o f gray

Saigon; the gray robes o f a gray man, a Buddhist; the gray fire,

consuming him; I don’t need to close my eyes to see them; I

could reach out to touch them, without even closing my eyes;

the television went off, or the adults turned it off, but you

knew they were still burning, now, later, hours, days, the

ashes would smolder, the fire’d never go out, because if it has

happened it has happened; it has happened always and forever.

The gray fire would die down and the gray monk would be

charred and skeletal, dead, they’d remove him like so much

garbage, but the fire’d stay, low along the ground, the gray

fire would spread, low along the ground, in gray Saigon; in

gray Camden. The flames would stay low and gray and they

would burn; an eternal fire; its meaning entrusted to a child for

keeping. I think they stayed calm inside the fire; burning; I

think they stayed quiet; I mourned them; I grieved for them; I

felt some shadow o f the pain; maybe there was no calm;

maybe they shrieked; maybe it was an agony obscene even to

God; imagine. I’d go to school on just some regular day and