Andrea Dworkin - Mercy

wouldn’t and I would be as big an asshole as the teachers not to

have screamed, a shithead hypocrite because I didn’t believe

tom orrow was coming, one day it wouldn’t come, but I

would die pretending like them, acting nice, not screaming. I

wanted to scream at them and make them tell me the truth—

would there be a tomorrow or not? When I was a child they

made us hide under our desks, crawl under them on our knees

and keep our heads down and cover our ears with our elbows

and keep our hands clasped behind our heads. I use to pray to

God not to have it hurt when the bomb came. They said it was

practice for when the Russians bombed us so we would live

after it and I was as scared as anyone else and I did what they

said, although I wondered why the Russians hated us so much

and I was thinking there must be a Russian child like me,

scared to die. You can’t help being scared when you are so

little and all the adults say the same thing. Y ou have to believe

them. You had to stay there for a long time and be quiet and

your shoulders would hurt because you had to stay under your

desk which was tiny even compared to how little you were

and you didn’t know what the bomb was yet so you thought

they were telling the truth and the Russians wanted to hurt

you but if you stayed absolutely still and quiet on your knees

and covered your ears underneath your desk the Russians

couldn’t. I wondered if your skin just burned o ff but you

stayed on your knees, dead. Everyone had nightmares but the

adults didn’t care because it kept you obedient and that was

what they wanted; they liked keeping you scared and making

you hide all the time from the bomb under your desk. Adults

told terrible lies, not regular lies; ridiculous, stupid lies that

made you have to hate them. They would say anything to

make you do what they wanted and they would make you

afraid o f anything. N o one ever told so many lies before,

probably. When the Bay o f Pigs came, all the girls at school

talked together in the halls and in the lunchrooms and said the

same thing: we didn’t want to die virgins. N o one said anyone

else was lying because we thought we were all probably going

to die that day and there w asn’t any point in saying someone

wasn’t a virgin and you couldn’t know , really, because boys

talked dirty, and no one said they w eren’t because then you

would be low-life, a dirty girl, and no one would talk to you

again and you would have to die alone and if the bomb didn’t

come you might as well be dead. Girls were on the verge o f

saying it but no one dared. O f course now the adults were

saying everything was fine and no bomb was com ing and

there was no danger; we didn’t have to stand in the halls, not

that day, the one day it was clear atomic death was right there,

in N ew Jersey. But we knew and everyone thought the same

thing and said the same thing and it was the only thought we

had to say how sad we were to die and everyone giggled and

was almost afraid to say it but everyone had been thinking the

same thing all night and wanted to say it in the morning before

we died. It was like a record we were making for ourselves, a

history o f us, how we had lived and been cheated because we

had to die virgins. We said to each other that it’s not fair we

have to die now, today; we didn’t get to do anything. We said

it to each other and everyone knew it was true and then when

we lived and the bomb didn’t come we never said anything

about it again but everyone hurried. We hurried like no one

had ever hurried in the history o f the world. O ur mothers

lived in dream time; no bomb; old age; do it the first time after

marriage, one man or yo u ’ll be cheap; time for them droned

on. B ay o f Pigs meant no more time. They don’t care about

w hy girls do things but we know things and we do things;

w e’re not just animals who don’t mind dying. The houses

where I lived were brick; the streets were cement, gray; and I

used to think about the three pigs and the bad w o lf blow ing

down their houses but not the brick one, how the brick one

was strong and didn’t fall down; and I would try to think i f the

brick ones would fall down when the bomb came. They

looked like blood already; blood-stained walls; blood against

the gray cement; and they were already broken; the bricks

were torn and crumbling as if they were soft clay and the

cement was broken and cracked; and I would watch the houses

and think maybe it was like with the three pigs and the big bad

w o lf couldn’t blow them down, the big bad bomb. I thought

maybe we had a chance but if we lived in some other kind o f

house we wouldn’t have a chance. I tried to think o f the bomb

hitting and the brick turned into blood and dust, red dust

covering the cement, wet with real blood, but the cement

would be dust too, gray dust, red dust on gray dust, just dust

and sky, everything gone, the ground just level everywhere

there was. I could see it in my mind, with me sitting in the

dust, playing with it, but I wouldn’t be there, it would be red

dust on gray dust and nothing else and I wouldn’t even be a

speck. I thought it would be beautiful, real pure, not ugly and

poor like it was now, but so sad, a million years o f nothing,

and tidal waves o f wind would come and kill the quiet o f the

dust, kill it. I went away to N ew Y ork C ity for freedom and it

meant I went away from the red dust, a picture bigger than the

edges o f m y mind, it was a red landscape o f nothing that was in

me and that I put on everything I saw like it was burned on my

eyes, and I always saw Camden that way; in m y inner-mind it

was the landscape o f where I lived. It didn’t matter that I went

to Point Zero. It would just be faster and I hadn’t been hiding

there under the desk afraid. I hate being afraid. I hadn’t grown

up there waiting for it to happen and making pictures o f it in

m y mind seeing the terrible dust, the awful nothing, and I

hadn’t died there during the Bay o f Pigs. The red dust was

Camden. Y ou can’t forgive them when you’re a child and they

make you afraid. So you go away from where you were afraid.

Some stay; some go; it’s a big difference, leaving the

humiliations o f childhood, the morbid fear. We didn’t have