Andrea Dworkin - Mercy

you, he doesn’t let you sleep, it doesn’t stop so it can start

again, there’s no such thing as a tw enty-four-hour day. I don’t

know. I can’t say. I didn’t go out anymore. I couldn’t walk,

really, couldn’t m ove, either because physically I couldn’t or

because I couldn’t. There’s one afternoon he dragged me from

the bed and he kept punching me. He pulled me with one hand

and punched me with the other, open hand, closed fist, closed

fist, to m y face, to m y breasts, closed fists, both fists, I am on

the kitchen floor and he is kneeling down so he can hit me,

kneeling near me, over me, and he takes m y head in his hands

and he keeps banging m y head in his hands and he keeps

banging m y head against the floor. He punches m y breasts. He

burns m y breasts with a lit cigarette. He didn’t need to hold me

down no more. He could do what he wanted. He was

punching me and burning me and I was wondering i f he was

going to fuck me, because then it would be over; did I want it?

He was shouting at me, I never knew what. I was crying and

screaming. I think he was crying too. I felt the burning. I saw

the cigarette and I felt the burning and I got quiet, there was

this incredible calm, it was as i f all sound stopped. Everything

continued— he was punching me and burning me; but there

was this perfect quiet, a single second o f absolute calm; and

then I passed out. Y o u see how kind the mind is. I just stopped

existing. Y ou go blank, it’s dark, it’s a deep, wonderful dark,

blank, it’s close to dying, you could be dead or maybe you are

dead for a while and God lets you rest. Y ou don’t know

anything and you don’t have to feel anything; not the burns;

not the punches; you don’t feel none o f it. I am grateful for

every minute I cannot remember. I thank You, God, for every

second o f forgetfulness Y ou have given me. I thank Y ou for

burning m y brain out to ashes and hell, wiping it out so it is

scorched earth that don’t have no life; I am grateful for an

amnesia so deep it resembles peace. I will not mind being dead.

I am waiting for it. I have breasts that burst into flames, only

it’s blood. Suddenly there’s a hole in my breast, in the flesh, a

deep hole that goes down into my breast, I can be anywhere,

or just sitting talking somewhere, and blood starts coming out

o f m y breast, a hole opens up as if the Red Sea were splitting

apart but in a second, half a second, it wasn’t there and then

suddenly it is there, and I know because I feel the blood

running down my breast, there’s a deep hole in my breast, no

infection, it never gets infected, no pus, no blood poisoning

ever, no cyst, completely clean, a hole down into the breast,

you see the layers o f skin and fat inside, and blood pours out,

clean blood, just comes out, it hurts when the hole comes, a

clean hurt, a simple, transparent pain, the skin splitting fast

and clean, opening up, and I’m not in any danger at all though

it takes me some years to realize this, it’s completely normal,

completely normal for me, I am sitting there talking and

suddenly the skin on a breast has opened up and there is a deep,

clean hole in m y breast and blood is pouring down m y chest

and I’m fine, just fine, and the hole will stay some days and the

blood will come and go. T h ey’re m y stigmata. I know it but I

can’t tell anyone. They come from where the burns were, the

skin bursts open and the blood washes me clean, it heals me,

the skin closes up new, bathed in the blood: clean. Because I

suffered enough. Even God knows it so He sent the sign. I’ve

seen all the movies about stigmata and it’s just like in the.

movies when someone explains what real stigmata is so we

can tell it from a trick; it’s real stigmata on me; it’s God saying

He went too far. He loves me. It’s Him saying I’m the best

time He ever had. They asked in the camps, they asked where

is God; but they didn’t answer: omnipotent, omniscient,

omnipresent, H e’s right here, having a good time. When you

get married, it’s you, the man, and God, ju st like is always

said. God was there. The film unrolled. The live sex show

took place. I’m filthy all over. The worst thing was I’d just

crawl into bed and wait for him to fuck me and he’d fuck me. I

couldn’t barely breathe. His long hair’d be all over me in m y

face, in m y eyes, in m y nose, in m y mouth, and it was so hot I

couldn’t breathe so I went to a barber and I got m y hair cut off,

almost shaved like at Dachau so I’d be able to breathe, so m y

hair w ouldn’t m ix with his, so there’d be less hair, I got

dressed, I found some change, I was scared, I didn’t know

what would happen to me, I told the man to take all m y hair

off, keep cutting, keep cutting, shorter, less, keep cutting,

shave it shorter, I just couldn’t stand all the hair in m y face; but

it didn’t get no cooler and I’d lie still, perfectly still, on m y

back, m y eyes open, and he’d fuck me. He didn’t need no

rope. Y ou understand— he didn’t need no rope. Y ou understand the dishonor in that— he didn’t need no rope and God just watched and it was your standard issue porn, just another

stag film with a man fucking a woman too stupid or too near

dead to be somewhere else; a little ripe, a little bruised; eyes

glazed over, open but empty; I would just lie there for him and

he didn’t need no rope. We was married. I don’t think rape

exists. What would it be? D o you count each time separate;

and the blank days, they do count or they don’t?

E IG H T

In March 1973

(Age 26)

I was born in 1946 in Camden, N ew Jersey, down the street

from Walt Whitman’s house, Mickle Street, but m y true point

o f origin, where I came into existence as a sentient being, is

Birkenau, sometimes called Auschwitz II or The W omen’s

Cam p, where we died, m y family and I, I don’t know what

year. I have a sense memory o f the place, I’ve always had it

although o f course when I was young I didn’t know what it

was, where it was, w hy it was in m y mind, the place, the

geography, the real place, the w ay it was, it’s partial in my

mind but solid, the things I see in my mind were there, they’re

pushed back in my mind, hard to get at, behind a wall o f time

and death. Everything that matters about me begins there. I

remember it, not like a dream and it’s not something I made up