Andrea Dworkin - Mercy

running or cats looking for food. T here’s no one to ask if. I

knew how but I can’t think how. The people come out first; in

drips; then great cascades o f them. I don’t know how they got

there, inside, and how they get to stay there. I don’t know

where the cars come from or where the people get all their

coats or where the bus drivers come from in the em pty buses

that cruise the streets before the people come out. I f it’s raining

suddenly people have different clothes to stay dry in but I

don’t know where they got them or where you could go to get

them or how you would get the m oney or how they knew it

was going to rain if you couldn’t see it in the sky or smell it in

the air. I don’t know how anything w orks or how everyone

knows the things they know or w hy they all agree, for

instance, on when to all come out o f the buildings at once in a

swarm , or how they all know what to say and when. They act

like it’s clear and simple and they’re sure. I don’t have words

except for m y name, Andrea, which is the only w ord I have all

the time, which m y mom ma gave me, which I remember even

if I can’t remember anything else because sometimes I forget

everything that happened until now. Andrea is the name I had

since being a child. In school we had to write our names on our

papers so maybe I remember it from that, doing it over and

over day in, day out. And also m y mother whispered it to me

in m y ear when she was loving me when I was little. I

remember it because it was so beautiful when she said it. I

don’t exactly remember it in m y mind, more in m y heart. It

means manhood or courage and it is from Europe and she said

she was damned for naming me it because you become what

you are named for and I w asn’t the right kind o f girl at all but I

think I could never be named anything else because the sounds

o f the w ord are exactly like me in m y heart, a music in a sense

with m y m other’s voice singing it right to m y heart, it’s her

voice that breaks the silence inside me with a sound, a w ord;

m y name. It doesn’t matter w ho says it or in what w ay, I am

comforted, as if it is the whisper o f my mother when I was a

baby and safe up against her in her arms. I was only safe then in

all my life, for a while but everything ends soon. I was born

into her arms with her loving me in Camden, down the street

from where Walt Whitman lived. I liked having him there

because it meant that once it was somewhere; it meant you

could be great; it meant Camden was something; it meant

there was something past the rubble, this great gray man who

wasn’t afraid o f America and so I wasn’t afraid to go anywhere

and I could love anyone, like he said. Camden was broken

streets, broken cement, crushed gray dust, jagged, broken

cement. The houses were broken bricks, red bricks, red,

blood red, I love brick row houses, I love blood red, wine red,

crumbled into sawdust; w e’re dust too, blood red dust. It was

a cement place with broken streets and broken bricks and I

loved the cement and I loved the broken streets and I loved the

broken bricks and I never felt afraid, just alone, not sad, not

afraid. I had to go away from home early to seek freedom

which is a good thing because you don’t want to be a child for

too long. You get strong if you go away from where you are a

child; home; people say it’s home; you get strong but you

don’t have a lot o f words because people use words to talk

about things and if you don’t have things there’s few words

you need. It’s funny how silence goes with having nothing and

how you have nothing to say if you don’t have things and

words don’t mean much anyway because you can’t really use

them for anything if you have nothing. If you go away from

home you live without things. Things never mattered to me

and I never wanted them but sometimes I wanted words. I

read a lot to find words that were the right ones and I loved the

words I read but they weren’t exactly the ones. They were like

them but not them. I just moved along the streets and I took

what was coming and often I didn’t know what to call it. We

were going to die soon, that was for sure, with the bomb

coming, and there weren’t words for that either, even though

people threw words at it. Y ou could say you didn’t want to die

and you didn’t want them to wipe out the earth but w ho could

you say. it to so it would matter? I didn’t like people throwing

words at it when words couldn’t touch it, when you couldn’t

even wrap your mind around it at all. When I thought about

being safe I could hear the word Andrea coming from m y

m other’s lips when I was a baby, her mouth on me because she

loved me and I was in her arms but it ended soon. I played in

the bricks and on the cement; in rubble; in garbage; in alleys;

and I went from Camden to N ew Y o rk and the quiet was all

around me even more as if I was sinking under it sometimes;

and I thought, if your momma isn’t here to say your name

there is nothing to listen to. I f you try to say some words it is

likely people don’t understand them anyway. I don’t think

people in houses understand anything about the w ord cold. I

don’t think they understand the word wet. I don’t think you

could explain cold to them but if you did other words would

push it out o f their minds in a minute. T hat’s what they use

words for, to bury things. People learn long w ords to show

o ff but if you can’t say what cold is so people understand what

use is more syllables? I could never explain anything and I was

em pty inside where the words go but it was an emptiness that

caused vertigo, I fought against it and tried to keep standing

upright. I never knew what to call most things but things I

knew, cold or wet, didn’t mean much. Y o u could say you

were cold and people nodded or smiled. Cold . I tremble with

fear when I hear it. They know what it means on the surface

and how to use it in a sentence but they don’t know what it is,

don’t care, couldn’t remember if you told them. T h e y ’d forget

it in a minute. Cold. O r rape. Y ou could never find out what it

was from one o f them or say it to mean anything or to be

anything. Y o u could never say it so it was true. Y o u could

never say it to someone so they would help you or make