Mercy (97 page)

pronged attack, on your body, in you, on your brain, in you;

on freedom, on memory; you might as well bury yourself in

the backyard, or throw yourself in a trash can, you’re like

some dumb cat or dog that got hit by a car, run over and died;

only they let the shells o f dead girls walk around because hell it

makes no difference to them if what they stick it in is living or

dead; w hat’s left, darling, is fine, according to the formula, a

girl frail and female, a skeleton with a fleshy pudendum, ready

to serve, these girls are ghosts, did you see, did you notice,

where are they, w hy ain’t they here, present, on earth, why

can’t you find them even if you look for them in the light, how

come they don’t know anything or do anything, how come

they ain’t anything, how come they are shaking and flitting

around and apologizing and begging and afraid and drugged

and stupid even if they are smart; how come they are comatose

even when they’re awake? He pushes it in, she pushes it out, a

dead spot in the brain marks the spot, there’s a teeny little

cemetery in her brain, lots o f torched spots, suttee; we bleed

both ends, literal, little strokes every time there’s a rape, time

gone, hours or days or weeks, words gone, self gone, memory

wiped out, severely impaired; I cannot remember— how do

you
exist
? The skills, the tricks; tie your shoes; wrap ropes

around your heart, or was it your wrists; or was it ankles;

neck; I’d make a list if I could remember; I’d memorize the list

i f someone else would write it down; or I try, I scribble big

letters, confused, misspelled, on the page; or I look at the

words, meaningless, and draw a blank; I make a list,

misspelled words signifying I don’t remember what; or I draw

a picture, I use crayons, o f what? I try to say what I try to

remember; the skills, the tricks, language, yesterday. There

are little rape strokes, erased places in the brain, eruptions o f

blood, explosions, like geysers, it’s flooded, places on the

brain, blood’s acidic, did you ever sit in a pool o f your own

blood, it wears the skin o ff you, chafes, irritates, the skin peels

off; so too in the brain, the skin peels off; I’ve been there, a

poor, dear, quiet thing, naked like a baby, in a river o f blood,

mine, curled up; fetal, as if m y mama took me back. There’s

wounds and you sit in the blood. Why can’t I remember? I am

a stroke victim, a shadow in the night, invisible in the night, a

ghostly thing, in the night, amnesiac, wandering, in the night,

not out to whore, just what’s left, the remains, on the stroll;

taking a walk, pastoral, romantic, an innocent walk, lost in

memories, lost in fog, lost in dark; having forgotten; but I got

muscles packed with memory; hard, thick, solid, from the

positions reenacted, down on m y knees, down on m y back; I

got memories packed in m y bones, because m y brain don’t

make distinctions no more; can’t tell him from him from him;

I have an intuitive dread; o f him and him and him; there’s a

heightened anxiety; I’m a nervous girl, Victorian nerves,

strain, a delicate constitution in the sense that m y brain is frail,

pale; but m y muscles is packed, it’s adrenaline, from fear;

there’s a counterproductive side to creating too much fear, it’s

a meta-amphetamine, it’s meta-speed, it’s meta-coke, it’s

more testosterone than thou, I got a body packed with rage,

you ever seen rage all stored up like a treasure in the body o f a

woman? I don’t need no full capacity brain, as you so

eloquently have insisted; I got sunstrokes in my head, enough

daylight to carry me through any darkness, I am lit up from

inside, a bursting sun; brain light. I am a citizen o f the night,

on a stroll, no dark places keep secrets from me, I am drawn to

them by a secret radiance, the light that emanates from the

human heart, some poor bum, a poor man, poor fucking

drunk somewhere in the shadows hiding his poor drunk heart

in the dark, but I find him, I see the pure light o f his pure heart,

I find him, some asshole, a vagrant, clutching his bottle, and I

like them big, I like them hairy, their skin’s red and bulbous,

all swelled from drinking, they’re mean, they’d kill you for the

fucking bottle they’re clutching to them, sometimes they got

it buried under them, and they’re curled up on cardboard or

newspapers on the street, all secure in the shadows, manly

men, behind garbage cans, hidden in the dark; but the light in

them reaches out to the light in me, my brothers, myself, I

pick on men at least twice my size, I like them with fine

shoulders, wide, real men, I like them six feet or more, I like

them vicious, I pick them big and mean, the danger psyches

me up but what I appreciate is their surprise, which is absolute,

their astonishment, which invigorates me; how easy it is to

make them eat shit; they will always underestimate me,

always, from which I enunciate the political principle, Alw ays

pick on men at least twice your size. This is the value o f

practice as opposed to theory; they’re so easy; so arrogant; so

used to the world always being the w ay they thought it was.

The small ones are harder. The small ones have to learn to

fight early and take nothing for granted, the small, w iry ones

you cannot surprise; when I am a master I will take on the

small, w iry ones; or assign them to someone else, maybe

someone who can step on them, a real tall girl who would get

something out o f it by just treating them like bugs; but now I

take the big ones, and I fucking smash their faces in; I kick

them; I hit them; I kick them blind; I like smashing their faces

in with one kick, I like dancing on their chests, their rheumy

old chests, with my toes, big, swinging kicks, and I like one

big one between the legs, for the sake o f form and symbolism,

to pay my respects to content as such, action informed by the

imperatives o f literature. Sometimes they got knives or

bottles, they’re fast, they’re good, but they are fucking drunk

and all sprawled out, and I like smashing the bottles into their

fucking faces and I like taking the knives, for my collection; I

like knives. I find them drunk and lying down and I hurt them

and I run; and I fucking don’t care about fair; discuss fair at the

U . N .; vote on it; from which I enunciate another political

principle, It is obscene for a girl to think about fair. Every girl

needs a man, gets an itch, the nights are long, I’m restless, it’s

not natural for a girl to be alone, without a man; instead o f

locking the windows and locking the doors and waiting for

one to crawl in I go out to find him; not ladylike but selfdetermining, another girl for choice; a girl needs someone big and strong, a macho man, a streetwise, street tough, street