Ice And Fire

ICE AND FIRE

By the same author

Nonfiction

W om an H ating

O ur Blood: Prophecies and D iscourses on Sexual Politics

Pornography: M en Possessing W omen

Right-w ing W omen:

T he Politics o f Dom esticated Fem ales

Fiction

the new w om ans broken heart: short stories

ICE AND FIRE

A Novel

by

Andrea Dworkin

Seeker & W arb u rg

L on don

First published in England 1986 by

Martin Seeker & Warburg Limited

54 Poland Street, London WI V 3DF

Copyright ©

by Andrea Dworkin

Reprinted 1986

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Dworkin, Andrea

Ice and fire: a novel.

1. Title

823'. 91 4[F]

PR6054. W/

ISBN 0-436-13960-X

Pages 52-56 first appeared, translated into French, in La Vie

en Rose, No 18, July-August 1984.

Filmset in Great Britain in II on 12 pt Sabon

by Richard Clay Ltd, Bungay, Suffolk

Printed and bound in Great Britain

by Billings & Son Ltd,

Hylton Road, Worcester

For Elaine M arkson

Neither weep nor laugh but understand.

Spinoza

*

I have two first memories.

The sofa is green with huge flowers imprinted on it, pink

and beige and streaks of yellow or brown, like they were

painted with a wide brush to highlight the edges and borders

of the flowers. The sofa is deep and not too long, three cushions, the same green. The sofa is against a wall in the living room. It is our living room. Nothing in it is very big but we

are small and so the ceilings are high and the walls tower,

unscalable, and the sofa is immense, enough width and depth

to burrow in, to get lost in. My brother is maybe two. I am

two years older. He is golden, a white boy with yellow hair

and blue eyes: and happy. He has a smile that lights up the

night. He is beautiful and delicate and divine. Nothing has set

in his face yet, not fear, not malice, not anger, not sorrow: he

knows no loss or pain: he is delicate and happy and intensely

beautiful, radiance and delight. We each get a corner of the

sofa. We crouch there until the referee, father always, counts

to three: then we meet in the middle and tickle and tickle until

one gives up or the referee says to go back to our corners

because a round is over. Sometimes we are on the fl oor, all

three of us, tickling and wrestling, and laughing past when I

hurt until dad says stop. I remember the great print flowers, I

remember crouching and waiting to hear three, I remember the

great golden smile of the little boy, his yellow curls cascading

as we roll and roll.

The hospital is all light brown outside, stone, lit up by electric

lights, it is already dark out, and my grandfather and I are

outside, waiting for my dad. He comes running. Inside I am

put in a small room. A cot is set up for him. My tonsils will

come out. Somewhere in the hospital is my mother. I think all

night long that she must be in the next room. I tap on the wall,

sending secret signals. She has been away from home for a

long time. The whole family is in the hospital now, my father

with me: I don’t know where my brother is— is he born yet?

7

He is somewhere for sure, and my mother is somewhere,

probably in the next room. I remember flowered wallpaper.

I haven’t seen my mother for a very long time and now

I am coming to where she is, I expect to see her, I am

close to her now, here, in the same hospital, she is near,

somewhere, here. I never see her but I am sure she is lying

in bed happy to be near me on the other side of the wall

in the very next room. She must be happy to know I am

here. Her hair was long then, black, and she was young.

My father sleeps in the hospital room, in the bed next to

mine.

*

The street was home, but, oh, these were kind streets, the

streets of children, real children. The houses were brick row

houses, all the same, two cement flights of stairs outside, the

outside steps, from the sidewalk. The lawns were hills sloping

down the height of one flight of steps, the lower one, to the

sidewalk. There was a landing between flights. Some of us had

patios: the big cement truck came, the huge tumbler turning

round and round, and the cement was poured out and flattened

down, and sticks marked the edges until it dried. Others had

some flowers: next door there were shabby roses, thorns. Each

house was the same, two floors, on the first floor a living

room, dining room, and tiny kitchen; up a tall flight of stairs

three bedrooms, two big, one tiny, a bathroom, a closet. The

stairs were the main thing: up and down on endless piggyback

rides on daddy’s back: up to bed with a piggyback ride, up

and down one more time, the greatest ride had a story to go

with it about riding horses or piggies going to market; up the

stairs on daddy’s back and then into bed for the rest of the

fabulous story; and I would try to get him to do it again and

again, up and down those stairs, and a story. Each house had

one family, all the houses were in a row, but two doors were

right next to each other above the cement steps so those were

the closest neighbors. The adults, mostly the women, would sit

on chairs up by their doors, or sit on the steps up by the doors

talking and visiting and watching the children, and the children

of all the houses would converge in the street to play. If you

looked at it you would see dismal brick row houses all the

same at the top of two flights of cement steps out in the wea­

8

ther. But if you were a child, you would see that the adults

were far away, and that the street stretched into a million

secret hidden places. There were parked cars to hide behind

and under and telephone poles, the occasional tree, secret

valleys at the bottoms of lawns, and the mysterious interiors of

other people’s houses across the way. And then the backs of

the houses made the world bigger, more incredible yet. There

were garages back there, a black asphalt back alley and back

doors and places to hang clothes on a line and a million places

to hide, garbage cans, garages half open, telephone poles,

strange dark dirty places, basements. Two blocks behind us in

the back there was a convent, a huge walled-in place all verdant

with great trees that hid everything: and so our neighborhood

turned gothic and spooky and we talked of children captured

and hidden inside: and witches. Outside there were maybe

twenty of us, all different ages but all children, boys and girls,

and we played day after day and night after night, well past

dark: hide-and-seek, Red Rover Red Rover, statue, jump rope,

hopscotch, giant steps, witch. One summer we took turns

holding our breath to thirty and then someone squeezed in our

stomachs and we passed out or got real dizzy. This was the

thing to do and we did it a million times. There were alleys

near one or two of the houses suddenly breaking into the brick

row and linking the back ways with the front street and we

ran through them: we ran all over, hiding, seeking, making up

new games. We divided into teams. We played giant steps. We

played Simon Says. Then the boys would play sports without

us, and everything would change. We would taunt them into

playing with us again, going back to the idyllic, all together,

running, screaming, laughing. The girls had dolls for when the

boys wouldn’t let us play and we washed their hair and set it

outside together on the steps. We played poker and canasta

and fish and old maid and gin rummy and strip poker. When

babies, we played in a sandbox, until it got too small and we

got too big. When bigger, we roller-skated. One girl got so big

she went out on a date: and we all sat on the steps across the

street and watched her come out in a funny white dress with a

red flower pinned on it and a funny-looking boy was with her.

We were listless that night, not knowing whether to play hide-

and-seek or statue. We told nasty stories about the girl in the

9

white dress with the date and wouldn’t play with her sister

who was like us, not a teenager. Something was wrong. Statue

wasn’t fun and hide-and-seek got boring too. I watched my

house right across the street while the others watched the girl

on the date. Intermittently we played statue, bored. Someone

had to swing someone else around and then suddenly let them

go and however they landed was how they had to stay, like a

statue, and everyone had to guess what they were— like a

ballet dancer or the Statue of Liberty. Whoever guessed what

the statue was got to be turned around and be the new statue.

Sometimes just two people played and everybody else would

sit around and watch for any little movement and heckle and

guess what the person was being a statue of. We were mostly

girls by now, playing statue late at night. I watched my house

across the street because the doctor had come, the man in the

dark suit with the black bag and the dour expression and the

unpleasant voice who never spoke except to say something bad

and I had been sent outside, I had not wanted to leave the

house, I had been ordered to, all the lights were out in the

house, it was so dark, and it was late for them to let me out

but they had ordered me to go out and play, and have a good

time they said, and my mother was in the bedroom with the

door closed, and lying down I was sure, not able to move,

something called heart failure, something like not being able to

breathe, something that bordered on death, it had happened

before, I was a veteran, I sat on the steps watching the house

while the girl in the white dress stood being laughed at with

her date and I had thoughts about death that I already knew I

would remember all my life and someday write down: death is

someone I know, someone who is dressed exactly like the

doctor and carries the same black bag and comes at night and

is coming tonight to get mother, and then I saw him come,

pretending to be the doctor, and I thought well this is it she

will die tonight I know but the others don’t because they go on

dates or play statue and I’m more mature and so they don’t

know these things that I know because I live in a house where

death comes all the time, suddenly in the night, suddenly in the

day, suddenly in the middle of sleeping, suddenly in the middle

of a meal, there is death: mother is sick, we’ve called the doctor,

I know death is on the way.

10

The streetlights lit up the street. The brick was red, even- at

night. The girl on the date had a white dress with a red corsage.

We sat across the street, near our favorite telephone pole for

hide-and-seek, and played statue on and off. I always had a

home out there, on the steps, behind the cars, near the telephone pole.

*

Inside the woman was dying. Outside we played witch.

The boys chased the girls over the whole block from front

to back. They tried to catch a girl. When they caught her they

put her in a wooden cage they had built or found and they

raised the cage up high on a telephone pole, miles and miles

above the ground, with rope, and they left her hanging there.

She was the witch. Then they let her down when they wanted

to. After she begged and screamed enough and they wanted to

play again or do something else.

You were supposed to want them to want to catch you.

They would all run after one girl and catch her and put her in

the cage and raise it up with the rope high, high on the telephone pole out in the back where the adults didn’t see. Then they would hold the cage in place, the girl inside it screaming,

four or five of them holding her weight up there in the wooden

cage, or they would tie the rope to something and stand and

watch.

When they picked you it meant you were popular and fast

and hard to catch.

*

When we played witch all the girls screamed and ran as fast as

they could. They ran from all the boys and ran so fast and so

far that eventually you would run into some boy somewhere

but all the boys had decided who they were going to catch so

the boy you would run into accidentally would just pass you

by and not try to catch you and capture you and put you in

the cage.

*

Everyone wanted to be caught and was terrified to be caught.

The cage was wooden and had pieces missing and broken. The

rope was just a piece of heavy rope one of the boys found

somewhere or sometimes even just a piece of clothesline stolen

from a backyard. You could hang there for as long as an hour

and the boys would threaten to leave you there and all the

girls would come and watch. And you would feel ashamed. To

be caught or not to be caught. *

When we played witch it was always the boys against the girls

and the boys always chased the girls and it was a hard chase

and we ran places we had never seen before and hid in places

we were afraid of. There was the street with the row houses

facing into it and then there were the back ways behind the

houses, and the distance between the back ways and the front

street connected by an occasional alley between the row houses

was enormous to a girl running. But we never went out of

these bounds, even when we reached the end of the boundaries

and a boy was right behind us. The street was long and at

each end it was bounded by another street and we never crossed

those streets. We never went past the two back ways on to

streets parallel to our own and we never went into foreign

back ways not behind our own houses. In this neighborhood

everyone had their block and you didn’t leave your block. Our

block was white and Jewish. The block across the street on

one end of our street was Polish Catholic. The block across

the street at the other end of our street was black. Even when

we played witch, no matter how hard you wanted to run and

get away, you never left the block.

*

I would play witch, racing heart.

*

I would play witch, wanting to be chased and caught, terrified

to be chased and caught, terrified not to be chased: racing

heart.

*

I would play witch, running, racing heart: running very fast,

running away, someone chasing: realizing: you have to slow

down to get caught: wanting to be caught: not slowing down.

*

I would play witch, already slow, barely chased, out of breath,

hiding, then wander back to where we had started, then wander

back to where the wooden cage was and see the girl hoisted in

the wooden cage, see the clothesline or rope tied to something

and the boys standing there looking up, hear the shrieking.

12

Downhearted, I would wait until they let her down. All the

girls would stand around, looking up, looking down, waiting,

trying to see who it was, trying to figure out who was missing,

who got caught, who was pretty, who slowed down.

*

Inside mother was dying and outside, oh, it was incredible to

run, to run, racing heart, around the houses and between the

cars and through the alleys and into the half-open garages and

just up to the boundaries of the block, farther, farther than

you had ever been before, right up to the edge: to run with a

boy chasing you and then to saunter on alone, out of breath,

having run and run and run. If only that had been the game.

But the game was to get caught and put in the cage and hoisted

up the telephone pole, tied by rope. Sometimes they would tie

your hands behind you and sometimes they would put tape

over your mouth. The game was to be the witch and have

them chase you and catch you and put you in a wooden cage

and tie your hands and hoist you up a telephone pole and tie

the rope so the cage would stay up high: you weren’t supposed

to want to be the witch but if you were a girl and running

there was nothing else to want because the game was for the

boys to chase you. Everyone else just stood around waiting

until the boys got bored and tired and let the witch down.

*

The horses were running as fast as they could, Roy Rogers

was sort of standing up on the wagon driving them on,

shouting go boy go faster faster, and you could see the horses

streaking by up and down the roughest mountain roads, the

fringes on his cowboy jacket were all swept back by the wind,

and he looked back over his shoulder as he sort of stood up and

shook the reins so the horses would go faster and shouted how

you doing back there do you like this you uppity little thing or

something like that with his grin from ear to ear like a smartass,

and instead of the covered part of a covered wagon there was

a wooden cage like maybe from a medicine show that had a

circus and transported animals and it was heaving over the

rough roads at the full speed of the horses with Roy making

them go faster and faster and up against the slats Dale Evans

was holding on, her face all dirty, imprisoned in the wooden

cage and saying she would never speak to him and he had

13

better let her go. She had been snotty to him and he had gotten

her in the cage and locked her in and taken off, making the

horses go faster and faster and she was screaming and

screaming for him to stop and saying she never would never

not as long as she lived and he was shouting back over his

shoulder as the hills flashed by and the horses’ manes stood up

on end from the wind and the fringe on his cowboy jacket

went the same direction as the horses’ manes and his gun and

holster were tied to his leg, had enough yet I’ll tame you you

little devil. Eventually she was tired and dirty and saw he was

stronger and she got quiet and loved him and he won. They

were in love then. Once she quieted down he slowed down the

horses and took her back to town, leaving her in the cage,

singing her a song. Back in town, all his friends, the Sons of

the Pioneers, got to see her come out of the cage, quiet, dirty,

and she got out of the cage, all the men knowing.

*

I had a cowgirl suit, a cowgirl hat, a gun, a holster. There was

nothing more important than being a cowboy, even though I

had to be a cowgirl because I had to wear a skirt, with fringes,

and a blouse, with fringes, and the cowgirl hat and the gun

and holster didn’t entirely make up for it. It was my favorite

thing to wear, even though we never did play cowboys and

Indians. It had more to do with wanting to be a gunslinger and

learning how to draw fast and shoot straight. I would practice

my draw for hours at a time but no one would go along with

me and have a gunfight. I would draw my gun on my father

and my brother, who would be wrestling and tickling on the

living room floor. There was vague disapproval of the gun in

the air and so I would shoot it outside and it would make a

huge noise and I would gleefully shoot round after round of

caps, a red paper that sort of exploded and burned. I had a

rifle too and boots. But it was the gun I loved, and Annie

Oakley. She wore a skirt and was a crack shot and once we

went to see her at a live show with Gene Autry. I wanted to be

her or Roy Rogers or the Lone Ranger, not Dale Evans, not

ever, not as long as I lived.

*

The wooden cage would hang from the telephone pole, hoisted

by a rope or a piece of clothesline. It would dangle there, the

14

girl inside it not easy to see. They would push her around

before they put her in the cage. Sometimes they would tie her

hands. The wooden cage hung over the black asphalt lined by

garages, some open, some not, and garbage cans, all the fathers

at work, all the mothers inside the houses or in the front on

the steps visiting. It would be desolate on the asphalt, boys all

huddled around the cage with the one caught girl, and slowly

girls converging back there from all the directions they had

run in, some coming back from a long way away, having run

and hidden, run to the very edges of the boundaries of our

street or having run up and down the back ways and in and

out of garages, avoiding boys, hiding from them, and then

enough time would pass, and they would dare to drift back,

lonely perhaps, thinking enough time had gone by that

someone else had been caught or the game was over, and there

would always be the one girl surrounded by boys being pushed

into the cage and the cage being hoisted off the ground, or the

cage would already be tied up there. And the boys would stand

under it, watching it, watching her, and the other girls would

stay far away, around the edges, each alone, afraid to get too

close, afraid perhaps that the boys would grab them and do

something to them, also lonely, also left out. It was our saddest

game. It never ended right.

*

lt would begin in a blaze of excitement. Someone would say

let’s play witch. Everyone’s eyes would look wildly around,

scanning the street for where the adults were. We were

accomplices in this game. We all knew not to tell. No one ever

talked about this game or mentioned it any other time than

when we were going to play. The boys would get together and

count to ten fast because it was a ferocious game: the chase

was fierce and fast and it had to be close and there had to be

the excitement of being almost caught or having a hard time

getting away and they had to be able to see you and get you. It

wasn’t a patient game like hide-and-seek. It was a feverish

game, and it would begin at a fever pitch of the boys chasing

and you running as hard and as fast as you could but you

wanted to keep them after you as much as you didn’t want to

be caught so you would have to slow down to stay in sight,

and they would divide up going in twos and threes after one

15

girl or another and they would hunt someone down but if she

wasn’t the one they wanted they would pretend not to see her

finally hiding or they would suddenly turn and run after

someone else or run in another direction pretending to run

after someone else and in the end they would all have circled

the same girl, whoever they had decided on, and they would

herd her from wherever they had caught her, sometimes far

away from the wooden cage, and push her and shove her until

they got her to the telephone pole with the wooden cage. Once

they caught her it was against the rules for her not to go with

them anyway. The game slowed down after the first few

minutes and each girl was running on her own figuring out,

independent of what the boys had planned, whether she wanted

to be caught or not: and what to do to get caught or not to get

caught: and did the boys want her anyway? It became a game

of slow loneliness, of staggering solitude: breathless, dizzy, she

would stop running in a fever and turn to see no one chasing,

no one following. Had she won, outsmarted them, outrun

them, or had she lost, they had never really been after her

anyway. She might hide, or stalk the boys, dazzle them by

showing herself, and then they would chase her and she would

lose them again or hadn’t they really tried at all? Or she would

see one in the distance, maybe half a block away, and he didn’t

see her, or did he, and she would start running and running

and congratulate herself on getting away, or had she? Then a

long time would go by and she would get bored and tired and

want the game to be over and wonder where everybody was

and make her way back to the starting point and no one would

be there so she would make her way to the back alley and the

telephone pole, but from far away, toward it but not to it, not

directly walk up to it, always stay far away from it and the

boys, safe, and see the boys huddling around the cage and try

to see who was in it and hear the screams and watch the cage

go up, two or three boys hoisting it while the rest stood under

it and watched, and you could never see who it was. Later

when they let her down you could see. They would untie her

hands and walk away and she would be left there and the

scattered ring of lonely girls would watch. She was the witch.

No one talked to her at least the rest of the day.

♦

1 6

The convent gave us the right atmosphere. We never saw anything except the thick stone walls, and they were thick, not brick or cement, but huge stones like something medieval,

black and dark gray with moss and other hanging things and

shadows falling like God over the stones: and above the high

walls thick leafy green trees all casting shadows and it seemed

like no sky or light could ever get through them, in or out. It

was completely silent. We never saw anything or heard anything. No door ever opened or closed. No Latin poured out, no bells chimed, no music pierced the early dawn or night.

The wooden cage was hoisted in the back alley closest to the

convent, and you could see it from there, hanging over the

tops of the houses, a place of gothic mystery, Catholic, eerie.

From the telephone pole, hoisted up, inside the wooden cage,

you were raised above the stone walls and the ghastly trees:

and with your hands tied there you were the witch: and the

Catholics could see you.

They had things called nuns, women dressed all in black, all

covered up, and we thought they walked around in twos and

never said a word and had their heads bowed and shaved and

their hands together in prayer. But we didn’t know. We weren’t

supposed to go too near it, the convent, and we were afraid of

disappearing in there for life, because once you went in you

could never come out. There were ghosts there too. We didn’t

know if anyone in there was really alive. When you saw the

top of the convent and the menacing trees above the backs of

the row houses and the wooden cage with a slight figure inside

it hoisted high on the telephone pole and tied there with a rope

and the afternoon began to fade and it got dusky or cloudy

and there were just the silhouettes of things, the starkness of

the cage and the figure in it, the tautness of the rope, the city

ugliness, barren, of the telephone pole, all against a sky that

had begun to lose light, reigned over by old European stones

and impenetrable trees, you knew you were near something

old, chill, something you knew but didn’t know: something

God was supposed to protect you from: something on the edge

of your memory, but not your memory. When it got late in the

day or the sky darkened with clouds or oncoming rain, the

silhouettes were awful drawings of something you had seen

before: maybe in a book: somewhere: and you stood completely

17

still and watched and prayed for the wooden cage to come

down, for the figure in it to disappear, not be there, that slight

figure, for the convent to go away, to be somewhere else: and

especially for the dread boys, the crowd, to notice the coming

dark and be afraid of what they had done. We were overcome

watching: the great shadow of the convent and its thick trees,

its cold walls of stone, and the great imposition of the wooden

cage and the caged figure on the darkening sky. It was eerie

and unhappy: and one was drawn and repelled: drawn to the

convent and the cage, wanting to run inside the house.

We were all supposed to stay away from Catholics. The

convent represented their strangeness and malice: the threat of

their ghostly superstitions. A holy ghost lived there and they

drank blood and ate cookies and kneeled down. They wanted

all the children: and at night you could disappear into those

walls and no one would ever see you again. Standing outside

the great stone thing, even in broad daylight, even with traffic

all around, because one side of the convent was right on a very

big street at a very big intersection, a child was frightened of

the unscalable cold stone and the height of it. We could never

find a way in or out and the walls were too high to climb. I

wanted to see it and go into it but I was afraid even to stand

near it. Once another girl and I stood on that street corner for

hours collecting money for a charity and if you got enough

money you got to go to a special dinner in a restaurant and I

just thought about the traffic, how regular it was, and the sun,

how bright it was, the people walking on the street, how they

looked and dressed, because behind me was the penetrating

silence of those stone walls and I was cold and afraid. I could

feel it behind my back and I could feel the cold stones there

and I could feel the giant height of the wall and I could feel the

reaching coolness of the shadows from the great trees. Then a

car stopped to give us money after we had been there for hours

and this girl I was with went up to the car and then she got

real frightened and wouldn’t say what the man said to her and

said we had to go home right away and was really scared and

since it was right next to the convent I knew it was something

really bad so we went right home and she talked to her mother

who talked to my mother and I kept asking what had happened

and what the man had done to her. Finally my mother said he

18

asked her to get in the car with him. It was very terrible and

ominous to get into the car. The air was heavy with warning

and fear and my own inestimable incomprehension. There was

this edging of my fear away from the convent to the man in

the car and to getting into a car. I thought he must be Catholic.

The girl would never speak of it or answer anything I asked.

My mother said never to say anything about it. I asked if he

had hurt her. My mother said: he didn’t get the chance.

*

There were Jewish blocks and Catholic blocks and black

blocks. We were supposed to stay off the black blocks, though

it was never put that way. We were always just showed how

to walk, down which streets, and told where not to go, which

streets. The streets we weren’t supposed to go on just had that

in common: black faces, black children. The Catholic streets

and the Jewish streets were all inside the same area, alternating,

no mixing. But I liked to go where I wasn’t supposed to, and I

often walked home alone down the Catholic streets, because

no one could tell by just looking at me exactly. I would make

new routes for myself down streets my friends didn’t go on.

Sometimes I went down black streets, because I wanted to.

Then, getting closer to the one central elementary school,

where all kinds of children converged from every direction,

there were blocks that we all had to walk down because we

were all going to the same place and it was just a fact that no

matter who lived there we all had to walk by or through,

however timidly.

Our street was bounded on one end, the one going to school,

by a busy street with lots of cars and across that street was a

Catholic block, Polish. We were supposed to walk up half a

block before crossing that busy street and continue going

toward school on a Jewish block, and usually I did. But coming

home I would want to walk down the Catholic block because

it was different and it seemed more direct. I knew I shouldn’t

but I didn’t exactly know why I shouldn’t except that it did

seep in that they were different from us and we weren’t

supposed to marry them. I wasn’t even ten yet because I was

ten when we moved away.

I had a friend on that block, Joe, and we would say hello

and talk and say shy things to each other. Their houses were

19

different, all brick row houses, but right on the sidewalks, no

flights of steps going up to the door, just one level block. There

were more gardens. Kids didn’t stay outside playing that I could

see. Or maybe there weren’t any, I don’t know. Joe had grease

on his hair and it was combed very straight and sticky sort of,

and he wore checkered shirts, and he talked different but I

don’t know why or how: he didn’t seem to be used to talking.

He was a teenager. I would walk down the street and he would

sort of come out and I wouldn’t know what to say, except one

day I smiled and he said hello, and then after that I would

decide if I was going to walk down the Catholic block or not

and if I was chasing boys and what was wrong with him that I

wasn’t supposed to talk with him and I couldn’t talk with him

too long or someone would notice that I hadn’t come home

with my friends on my block. And I used to come home other

ways too, where I had no one to talk to. I would walk home

by the convent and try to hear things inside it, and sometimes I

would walk home on the black blocks, all alone. This was my

secret life.

*

There was an alley next to a church on the way to school and

we would always try to get lost in it. It was only a tiny alley,

very narrow but long, dark and dusty, with stray cats and

discarded bottles and strange trash and urine and so even

children knew its every creak and crevice very soon. But we

would close our eyes and spin each other around and do

everything we could not to know how to get out. We would

spend hours pretending to be lost. We would try to get into

the church but it was always closed. We would play adventures

in which someone was captured and lost in the alley and

someone else had to get her out. But mostly we would flail

around being lost, the worst thing being that we would know

exactly where we were and there were no adventures and we

couldn’t go in the church. Then sometimes suddenly we would

really be lost and we would try to find our way out and not be

able to no matter how hard we tried and it would start getting

dark and we would get scared and somehow when we got

scared enough we would remember how to get out of the alley

and how to get home.

*

20

We had to walk a long way to and from school, four times a

day: to school, home for lunch, back to school, home at the

end of school; or sometimes we had to go to the Hebrew School

after school, twice a week. In school all the children were

together, especially the Polish Catholics and the blacks and the

Jews, and after school we didn’t speak to each other or be

friends. I would try to go to the houses of kids I liked in

school, just walk by to see what it was like if it was near

where I walked to go home, and there would be polite conversations sometimes on their blocks, but their parents would look at me funny and I could never go in. We got to love each other

in school and play together at recess but then no more, we had

to go back to where we came from. We had to like each other

on our block whether we did or not and it was OK when we

were playing massive games ranging over the whole wide world

of our block, but sometimes when I just wanted to talk to

someone or see someone, one person, it wasn’t someone on

our block, but someone else, someone Polish Catholic or black,

and then I couldn’t: because it just couldn’t be done, it just

wasn’t allowed. My parents were good, they were outspoken

against prejudice and they taught me everybody was the same,

but when it came to actually going on another block they just

said not to go there and there and there like everybody else

and when I tried to go there the parents on the other end

would send me away. There was Michael who was Polish Catholic, a gentle boy, and Nat who was black. She would come to my house and once at least I went to hers, at least once or

twice I was allowed to go there, mostly she came home with

me, my parents protected me and didn’t let me know how the

neighbors felt about it, and we always had to stay inside and

play, and her mother was a teacher and so was my father:

and I loved her with all my passionate heart. When we

moved away to the suburbs so mother wouldn’t have to walk

any steps because she couldn’t breathe I was torn apart from

all this, my home, my street, the games, the great throng of

wild children who played hide-and-seek late into the night

while mother lay dying: and I said, I will go if I can see Nat,

if she can come to visit me and I can visit her, and I was so

distressed and full of grief, that they looked funny at each

other and lied and said yes of course you can see Nat.

21

But where we moved was all white and I couldn’t see Nat.

*

So when I was a teenager I went back to the old neighborhood

to show it to a teenage friend, the old elementary school where

I had been happy and the old streets where I had been happy,

we took two buses to get there and walked a long way and I

didn’t tell anyone I was going, but now it was all black and

getting even poorer than it had been and there were hundreds

of teenage girls in great clusters on the streets walking home

from high school and we were white and we were surrounded

and they got nasty and mean and wanted to know why we

were showing our white faces there and I looked up and there

was Nat, quiet as she had always been, the same scholarly

serious face and long braids, now teenage like me, and black,

and with a gang of girls, and she told them to leave me alone

and so they did and she walked away with them looking away

from me, looking grave and sad and even a little confused:

walking away from me, but I was the deserter. I watched her

walking away, and I still see the look on her face even with my

eyes open, a remorseless understanding of something I didn’t

know but she did and whatever it was I had found her but it

didn’t matter because of whatever it was. It was the saddest

moment of my life. Later, mother died. I didn’t laugh or weep

or understand. Why are they gone?

22

Neither weep nor laugh but understand.

Spinoza

*

Mother would be sick and dad worked two jobs, teaching and

in the post office unloading packages. Mother would be upstairs in her bedroom in bed, near death, or in the hospital, near death. My brother would be sent somewhere and I would

be sent somewhere: to separate relatives, suddenly, in the

middle of the night. But sometimes we were allowed to stay

home. A black girl would put us in the bath together and wash

us and put us to bed. My brother and I would play and splash

water and the black girl would wash us and smile, but she was

always tentative, never belonging there. She was always young,

there were so many, even I knew she was young, not as old as

any other big people I had ever seen, and for days on end she

would be the only one to talk to us or touch us or do anything

with us. They were nice to us but never said much and none

stayed too long because we were too poor to pay for help and

eventually we always had to be farmed out separately to one

relative or another. The house of our parents would be dank

with disease and despair, my father’s frenetic dinner served so

fast because he had to get to his second job, the only minutes

we could even see him or hear his voice, and the only one who

talked to us or was nice to us was the black girl who put us in

the bath together where we played and played, after we had

our argument about who had to sit on the end with the faucet,

and she put us to bed: and I always wanted her to stay and be

my friend or at least talk and say things I could understand

like other people did. No one stayed long enough so that I

remember her name because we were funny kinds of orphans:

mother wasn’t dead but dying; father loved us but couldn’t be

there; the relatives split us up so we were always alone in

strange houses surrounded by strange ways of doing things

and adults who weren’t as nice to us as our father was and

they thought that if they were your grandmother or aunt it

made being there less lonely: which it did not. They must have

been teenagers, so much bigger than we were that they seemed

23

like adults. They must have been poorer than even we were.

They were black and we were white: and whoever it is I remember, on your knees by the bathtub, as the blond-haired baby boy and I splashed and squealed, as you dabbed and

rubbed, whoever it is: where are you now? and why were you

there at all? and why couldn’t you stay? and while mother lay

dying, you were kind.

*

Once mother was hiring the girl herself. She must have been a

little better then, standing up in the living room, dressed in

regular clothes not sick clothes, without my father there or any

doctor. I came in and there were lots of women and my mother

talked to them one at a time but all in the same room and one

was white and the rest were black and my mother said who

would you like to have and I said hire the white one.

*

I had never seen a white one so I said hire the white one.

*

Hire the white one, I said, maybe seven years old. Hire the

white one. My dying mother hit me.

*

When we had to move from Camden because my mother

couldn’t walk steps or breathe and was frail and dying, the

neighbors on our block got sullen and banded together and

came and said don’t you sell to blacks. Our next-door neighbor

got sullen and threatening and said don’t you sell to blacks.

These are our friends, said my parents. We will do what’s

right, don’t you worry, said my father ambiguously. We sold

to Polish Catholics, blond, with heavy foreign accents. Not

Jews but not black. The best offer, my father swore. The

neighbors were chilly anyway but soon they all moved. The

blacks were coming closer. So they sold to blacks and moved

out.

*

One of the houses where I had to stay was my uncle’s: marriage, not blood. He was richer than us, a judge, a reform democratic politician even though he had friends in the Klan,

and he was vulgar, and I hated him, and the reform democrats

won and my uncle and his friends looted the city and got rich

and that’s why the blacks in Camden are so poor.

24

I would be delivered to his house and his cronies would

come and they would talk about the niggers and even when

they were the government of the city they were planning to

move out to somewhere else and they planned to steal especially from the school system, or that was the part I heard: they stole equipment from Head Start programs and looted school

equipment and cheated on school-lunch programs and left the

blacks to die and called them niggers and my uncle had a bar

where he sold the niggers liquor and ridiculed them for getting

drunk and bragged that he could sell them horseshit and they

would drink it. He had friends who were friends of Nixon and

friends who were friends of the Klan. Now Camden is a ghost

town with black ghosts on those streets where we played our

real childhood games. I had a divine childhood, even with the

woman dying, and father away day and night working, and

death coming suddenly, and my brother and me separated over

and over, orphans in different places for years at a time: I ran

in those streets and played hide-and-seek and Red Rover Red

Rover and jumped rope and played fish and washed my doll’s

hair with the other girls outside on the steps and sat behind

cars near telephone poles and on strange days played witch: it

was divine until I was torn away from it: and I walked down

Catholic streets and black streets without anyone knowing and

I loved Joe and Nat and Michael: then the vultures moved in

when I had gone away, but I heard their plans and I know

what they did: and the wonderful neighbors on the block where

I lived hated blacks: and I said hire the white one at seven

years old: and the vultures picked the bones of the city and left

it plundered. Oh, Nat, where are you? Did you weep or laugh

or understand?

25

Neither weep nor laugh but understand.

Spinoza

*

We were very tiny, in the third grade— how small are seven-

and eight-year-olds? — the little girls from my block. We were

on a big street not too far from the school, one you had to

walk down. It was a rich street, completely different from ours.

There was no brick. There were big windows in the fronts of

the houses and each one had a different front, some rounded

or curved. There were fences around the few very nice steps up

to the door, ornamentation on the outside, around the

windows or on the facade, wide sidewalks, huge trees lining

the street so it was always shady even in the early afternoon

when we went home from school. We were small and happy,

carrying our books home, chattering away. A bunch of black

girls approached us, surrounded us. They were twice as tall as

we were, real big, from junior high school. They surrounded

us and began teasing and calling us names. They demanded

Diane’s scarf. We were silent, very afraid. She was beginning

to give them the scarf when I said no, don’t. There was one

minute of stunned silence, then raucous laughter: wha you say

girl? Don’t, don’t give it to them. Now why not girl we gonna

take it anyway. Because stealing is wrong, I said sincerely. They

surrounded me and began beating me, punching me, kicking

me. They kept on punching and kicking. I remember falling

and saliva pouring from my mouth and screaming. They kept

punching me in the stomach until I fell all the way to the

ground then they kicked me in the stomach over and over and

then they ran away. I lay on the ground quite a while. No one

offered to help me up. Everyone just stared at me. I got up but

I couldn’t get all the way up because I couldn’t straighten my

stomach, it hurt too much. I held it with both hands and stood

bent-backed. No one touched me or helped me or spoke to

me. I must have said something like my daddy told me it’s not

right to steal. Then someone said that she knew someone who

said my daddy was a sissy. A what? A sissy. He’s a sissy. What

does that mean, I must have asked. You know, she said, that’s

2 6

what all the boys say, that he’s a sissy. Enraged, I walked

doubled up home, determined to find the girls who had beat

me up. But my parents told me not to because they would just

hurt me more. I wanted to go into every junior high school

class and look for them. But it would just make trouble and

they would hurt me more, I was told. I remembered sissy and I

remembered my girlfriends doing nothing. They were somehow

worse than awful and mean. Doing nothing was worse.

*

When you get beat up you don’t see much, you begin falling,

you begin trying not to fall so you feel yourself falling and you

feel yourself trying to stay straight and the fists come from

every direction, down on your head and in your face and in

your gut most, and you keep not falling until you can’t breathe

anymore and then you fall. You hit the cement and you feel it

hit you and you see the feet coming at you and you keep trying

to protect your face especially and your eyes and your teeth

and if you can move once you’re down you try to kick back,

to use your legs to get them off of you, but if you fall so that

your legs are sort of twisted under you then you can’t do that

and you can feel your back twist away from your stomach and

it’s real hard not to piss and once they’ve stopped it’s real hard

not to vomit. You don’t know anything about other people

except the ones hitting you if there are a mess of them and

they are all punching you at once. You don’t think, oh, my

friends are standing around watching. It’s after, when you are

suddenly alone, when the heat of the hitting bodies is suddenly

cold air on your sweat and you suddenly understand that you

are not being punched anymore, it has stopped, and you are

not being kicked anymore, it has stopped, and you think, oh,

I’m not dead, I can breathe, now let’s see if I can move, and

you try to stand up no matter what it costs because standing is

the best thing, it gives you something back, and it is in the

process of trying to get up that you look around and see your

friends watching, and it is in the process of getting up that you

see you have to do it alone, and it is in the process of getting

up that you realize without even thinking that anyone can see

how much you hurt and your friends are just standing there,

watching, staying away from you. It is the process of getting

up that clarifies for you how afraid they were for themselves,

27

not for you, and how chickenshit they are, and even though

you are tiny and they are tiny you know that even tiny little

girls aren’t really that tiny, in fact no one on earth is that tiny,

and then they say sissy and it makes you understand that you

and your daddy are different from them forever and there is

something puny at the heart of them that smells up the sky.

You can be seven or eight and know all that and remember it

forever.

*

Diane was holding her scarf, real pretty with lots of very pretty

colors: and it was Marcy who said, your daddy is a sissy.

*

I got home down long blocks bent over and not crying and

they walked all around me not touching me, staying far away.

My stomach was kicked in but my face wasn’t hurt too bad. I

was bent and there was no way on earth I could straighten out

my back or straighten out my stomach or take my hands away

from my stomach but see I kept walking and they kept walking:

oh, and after that everything was the same, except I never

really liked Marcy again, as long as I live I never will: and I

still would have done anything for Diane: and we played

outside all our games: and I didn’t care whether they lived or

died.

*

Down the far end of our block, not the end going toward

school but the end going somewhere I never saw, there was a

real funny girl, H. She lived almost at the very end of our

block, it was like almost falling off the edge of the world to go

there and you had to pass by so many people you knew to get

there and they expected you not to go that far away from

where you lived, from the center of the block, and they

wondered where you were going and what you were going to

do, and I didn’t know too many people up that end, just some,

not any of my favorites: and also the principal of the Hebrew

School was up that way, and I didn’t like going by his house at

all because in heavy European tones he chastised me for being

alive and skipping about with no apparent purpose. So I

avoided going there at all, and also I was really scared to be so

close to the end of the block, but this girl was really funny and

so sometimes I went there anyway. She had a real nice mother

28

and a sort of bratty younger brother. It was the same basic

house as ours but with lots more things in it, lots nicer: and

her mother was always cheerful and upright and never up dying

in bed, which was as pleasant as anything could be. We

weren’t real close friends but there was some wild streak that

matched: she had it by being real funny, crazy funny, and I

had it some other way, I don’t know how I had it or how she

knew I had it, but she always liked me so she must have.

One regular Saturday afternoon H ’s mother went away and

her father was working and she and her bratty brother were

being baby-sitted and I went there to visit. The baby-sitter was

some gray gray teenager with pimples and a ponytail, and we

just got wilder and wilder until we ended up on top of her

holding her down and punching her and hitting her and

taunting her and tormenting her and calling her names and

telling her how ugly she was: and then the bratty brother came

down and we got scared for a minute that he was going to tell

or she was going to get up because we were getting pretty tired

but he came right over and sat right on top of her and we kept

hitting her and laughing like mad and having so much fun

making jokes about hitting her and calling her names and then

making jokes about that. H was at her head holding her down

by pulling her hair and sitting on her hair and slapping her in

the face and hitting her breasts. The bratty brother was sitting

sort of over her stomach and kept hitting her there and tickling

her there and grinding his knees into her sides. I was at her

feet, sitting on top of them and digging my nails into her legs

and punching her legs and hitting her between her legs. We

kept her there for hours, at least two, and we never stopped

laughing at our jokes and at how stupid and pathetic she was:

and when we let her up she ran out and left us: and when H’s

mother came home we said the baby-sitter had just left us

there to go see her boyfriend: and H’s mother was furious with

the baby-sitter for leaving us alone because we were just

children and she called to complain and call her down and got

some hysterical story of how we had tortured her: and we

said, what does that mean? what is that? what is torture? she

left to see her boyfriend, that’s what she said to us: and the

baby-sitter said we beat her up and tortured her and we said

no no we don’t know what she means: and no one ever believed

29

her. She wasn’t Jewish was the thing. It was incredible fun was

the thing. She was dumber and weaker than we were was the

thing. Especially: it was incredible fun was the thing. I never

laughed so much in my life. She wept but I’m sure she didn’t

understand. You can’t feel remorse later when you laughed so

hard then. I have never— to this day and including right now—

given a damn. Why is it that when you laugh so hard you can’t

weep or understand? Oh, little girls, weep forever or understand too much but be a little scared to laugh too hard.

30

Neither weep nor laugh but understand.

Spinoza

*

There was a stone fence, only about two feet high, uneven,

rough, broken, and behind it the mountains: a hill declining,

rolling down, and beyond the valley where it met the road the

mountains rose up, not hills but high mountain peaks, in winter

covered in snow from top to bottom, in fall and spring the

peaks white and blindingly bright and the rest underneath the

pearly caps browns and greens and sometimes dark, fervent

purples where the soil mixed with varying shades of light

coming down from the sky. The building near the stone wall,

facing out in back over the descending hill to the road and

then the grandeur of the mountains, was white and wood, old,

fragile against this bold scenery, slight against it. When it

snowed the frail building could have been part of a drawing, a

mediocre, sentimental New England house in a New England

snow, a white on white cliche, except exquisite: delicate, exquisite, so finely drawn under its appearance of being a cheap scene of the already observed, the cliched, the worn-down-into-the-ground snow scene. In the fall, the trees were lush with

yellow and crimson and purple saturated the distant soil. Green

got duller, then turned a burnt brown. The sky was huge, not

sheltering, but right down on the ground with you so that you

walked in it: your feet had to reach down to touch earth. Wind

married the sky and tormented it: but the earth stayed below

solid and never swirled around in the fight. There was no dust.

The earth was solid down in the ground, always. There was

no hint of impermanence, sand. This was New England, where

the ground did not bend or break or compromise: it rested

there, solid and placid and insensitive to the forms its own

magnificence took as it rose up in mountains of ominous

heights. These were not mountains that crumbled or fell down

in manic disorder. These were not mountains that slid or split

apart or foamed over. These were mountains where the sky

reached down to touch them in their solid splendor with their

great trees and broken branches and dwarfed stones, and they

31

stayed put because the earth was solid, just purely itself, not

mixed with sky or air or water, not harboring fire or ash: no

ice sliding down to kill anything in its path: no snow tumbling

to destroy: just dirt, solid ground, made so that humans could

comprehend it, not die in awe of it, while snow packed itself

down on top or rain pelted or punched or sun burnt itself out

or wind flashed through the sky, torturing it. These were

mountains meant to last forever in a community of human

sight and sound: not mountains meant to swallow cities and

towns forever: and so one was surrounded by a beauty not

suffused with fear, splendid but not inducing awe of the divine

or terror of the wild, intemperate menace of weather and wind

gone amuck. These were mountains that made humans part of

their beauty: solid, like earth, like soil. One felt immeasurably

human, solid, safe: part of the ground, not some shade on it

through which the wind passes. The mountains could be one’s

personal legacy, what the earth itself gave one to be part of:

one simply had to love them: nothing had to be done to deserve

them or survive them: one could be innocent of nature and not

offend them.

The wooden house, so white and old, underlined the

tameness of these mountains, the incongruity fitting right in, a

harmony, a simple delight. The mountains and the house went

hand in hand: what would the mountain be without the simple

old house? The cold came from the sky and rested on the

ground: touched the edges of the mountains high up and

reached down into the valley and edged along the road and

paced restlessly on the earnest ground. The cold could

overwhelm a human with its intensity, its bitterness, like some

awful taste rubbing on the skin. But in the fragile wooden

house it was warm: so the cold was not the terrifying cold that

could penetrate even stone or brick: this must be a gentle cold,

killed by small fires in charming fireplaces and rattling

radiators in tiny rooms.

Emmy and I never touched, outsiders at this rich girls’

school, on this campus nestled in these welcoming mountains:

she from Kenya, me from Camden; her an orphan separated

from her family to be sent to a girls’ school in New England as

a little girl; me with the woman upstairs dying and the father

gone to work and the brother farmed out and me farmed out,

32

poor little poor girl; her angry and wild, dark black, separated

from everyone she loved and everyone she knew and arriving

here at this college after three or four finishing schools, unfinished, to be educated; me having gotten here so I could read and write; her wanting to go home; me never having a home

anymore again; her not a rich white girl here at this right

school; me poor; her upper-class where she comes from; me

low down; both smart, too smart, for our own good. Also: in

the world of the rich the poor are outcasts. Being black made

her poor, money aside. The others were like some distant

figures who spoke with cotton stuffed in their mouths: nothing

ever came out clean and clear; they had anguish but it was

fogged, having nothing to do with what she or I understood as

real: not that any of the premises were discussed, because the

rich make their own rules, democracy being one of them, the

democracy being in the pretense that no rules have been made:

they suspend them at will: they don’t know: it’s not their fault.

She had a country to think about and plan for: the freedom of

its people and her place there, now that she had been

“ educated, ” westernized, Europeanized: she knew it but not

what to do about it, and however happy we were, in her head

she was always on her way home, to a place where she would

still be an outsider, in exile from a youth that had been stolen

from her. I loved her. I never touched her.

*

The color that comes to New England in the fall does not

leave it when the trees die. Winter is not barren or monotone.

The great evergreens go on in muted light. The bare branches

themselves are tinted with purples and yellows and tawny

shades like deer flashing by at incredible speeds. The ground is

every color of brown and blue and black with yellow and red

running through it like great streaks, and the purple lies in the

ground like some spectral presence waiting to rise up. The air

is silver and blue as it edges toward black. It has the purest

white and the grim gray of a sober storm and in the center of

it will hang the most orange sun, flaming like dreaded fire. In

the fall there are only dizzying spreads of scarlet and yellow or

crimson and ochre: but in the winter, the colors are endlessly

subtle and complex: so many shades of brown that they cannot

be counted or named, so much purple in the air between the

33

trees and under the earth shining through and sliding down

the mountainsides that when the yellow seeps in or crowds in

next to the purple the mind renounces what it sees, saying:

impossible, winter is something brown and dead. The branches

of the trees are elegant, so strong and graceful, even under the

weight of icy snows: the ice rides them like the best lover, an

unsentimental kindness of enveloping, hugging, holding on, no

matter what the pressure is to shake loose. The white branches

stand in solemn quietude, witnesses without speech to the death

called winter, reproaches to the effrontery of other seasons

with their vulgar displays. The white on the mountains reaches

out to the human eye, persuading it that winter is entirely

sublime and will stay forever, also persuading the human heart

that nothing is beyond it— no cold too cold, no snow too big,

no winter too long, no death entirely bereft of some too simple

beauty, no tree too bare, no color too insignificant or too

subtle, no silence too still, no gesture too eloquent, no human

act merely human. In these winter mountains, the human heart

learns to want peace.

The trees near the fragile white house are endlessly high.

They disappear into some low-hanging cloud, all white and

puffy, wispy, watery, dripping ice that melts and burns in the

bright sun before it gets down to the ground. They are great

carcasses rooted in the solid ground, great thick things all

knotted and gnarled, or smooth and silver-streaked. They never

were just leaves: the bright colors deceived the stupid mind.

They were always their trunks, with great canals going through

them and animals living inside. They have other things growing

on them, even in the dead of winter, even partly buried under

the snow or whiplashed by it as the snow swipes on by carried

by the wind in a storm. The great trunks deceive us into seeing

them all white in a snowstorm: but they always stay themselves, the misery-racked survivors of every assault and intrusion, every wind and falling thing, every particle blown by or falling down, every stone or rock hurled against them or

brushing by: the trunk is immoveable while everything else,

except the ground underneath, moves or dies. This is a permanence beyond our own, redeemed by having no memory and no human speech.

Emmy had come from a place entirely unlike this and so

34

had I. She said almost nothing about hers, except that there

was a huge city, cosmopolitan, exciting, and a university, big,

important, and all around the lush, infested green of hot jungle

thick with insects and heat. It had many languages, tribal and

colonial. It was troubling somehow: because there might not

be room for her there. Mine was simpler, city, a suburb later

on briefly: telephone poles, asphalt, seasons, the ubiquitous

cement, the endless chatter of automobiles and human talk:

not the grandeur of mountains. She hadn’t seen snow, except

maybe once before she came here. For me snow had been:

trying to get back and forth from school with the boys surrounding the girls, chasing us, heading us off, pelting us with snowballs, and the snow melting under the dirty car smoke

and turning brown and greasy, and a shovel to dig out the cars

and clear the sidewalks, and playing in the snow dressed in

snowsuits and trying to make a snowman: but especially,

trying to get back and forth from school without getting hurt

by a snowball. My snow had nothing to do with solitude or

beauty and it fell on a flat place, not a hill or mountain, with

the cement under it less solid than this New England earth,

less trustworthy, ready to break and split, ready to loosen and

turn into jagged pieces of stone big enough to throw instead of

snowballs or inside them. We were endlessly strange together,

not rich, foreign to this cool, elegant, simple, beautiful winter.

I didn’t touch her, but I touched him. Her best friend since

childhood, both in Kenya, little kids together and now here,

preparing, preparing for some adult future back home. She

took me with her and delivered me to him and I took him

instead of her, because he was as close as I could get. She was

delighted he liked me, and sullen. It happened in a beautiful

room, an elegant room, at elegant Harvard, friends of theirs

from home, their room, all students studying to be the future

of their country, and I was bleeding anyway and so I spread

my legs for him, not knowing of course that it was because I

loved her. I stayed with him over and over, for months, a night

here, an afternoon there, though I came to hate him, a purely

physical aversion to his clumsy, boring fuck: I didn’t want

him to touch me but I had him fuck me anyway, too polite to

say no for one thing, not knowing how to get out of it, and

wanting her, not knowing it. I got pregnant and had an

35

abortion and she went home. Nothing like pregnancy to make

the man disappear. It decided her. The years of exiled youth

ended. She went home. Like everyone else in the world I was

terrified, it would have been easier right then to be an outcast

hero and have a little black baby whom I could love to death

without having to say why and I would have felt brave, brave:

and no one would have hurt that child: but Emmy looked at

me a certain way all the time now, hate, simple, pure, and I

had the abortion, the hate was hard as a rock, diamond,

shredding the light. She got so quiet I could have died. She left,

but I was the deserter. I didn’t care too much. By the time

mother died everyone was a stranger anyway, and after that I

was a too-cold child with a too-cold heart. I have stayed that

way. Everything gets taken away and everyone eventually

weeps and laughs and understands. Why lie?

36

The great thing is to be saturated with

something— that is, in one way or another,

with life; and I chose the form of my

saturation.

Henry James

*

Have you ever seen the Lower East Side of New York in the

summer? The sidewalks are boiling cement, almost molten,

steaming, a spread of heat scorching human feet, the heat like

the pure blue of the pure flame, pure heat saddled with city

dirt and city smell and especially the old urine of the hundreds

of near-dead junkies hanging nearly skeletal in the shadows of

doorways and crouched under the stinking stairwells of

tenements in which the hot, dead air never moves.

The sun burns. It burns like in Africa. It is in the center of

the sky, huge and burning. No clouds can cover it. It comes

through them, a haze of heat. It gets bigger every day. It is a

foul yellow fire, sulfur at the edges. It hangs and burns. It

spreads out. It reaches down like the giant hand of some monster. The buildings burn.

The air is saturated with the hot sun, thick with it. The air

is a fog of fire and steam. The lungs burn and sweat. The skin

drowns in its own boiling water, erupting. The air lies still,

layers of itself, all in place like the bodies filed in a morgue,

corpses grotesquely shelved. Somewhere corpses and rot hang

in the air, an old smell in the old air, the air that has never

moved off these city streets, the air that has been waiting

through the killer winter to burn, to torment, to smother: to

burn: the air that has been there year after year, never moving,

but burning more and more summer after summer, aged air,

old smell: immortal, while humans die.

There is never any wind. There is never a cool breeze. The sun

absorbs the wind. The cement absorbs the wind. The wind

evaporates between earth and sky. There is never any air to

breathe. There is only heat. Rain disappears in the heat, making

the air hotter. Rain hangs in the air, in the thick, hot air: bullets

of wet heat stopped in motion. Rain gets hot: water boiled that

37

never cools. Rain becomes steam, hanging in midair: it burns

inside the nose, singes the hairs in the nose, scorches the throat:

leaves scars on the skin. The air gets wetter and hotter and when

the rain stops the air is heavier, thicker, harder to breathe. Rain

refreshes only the smell, giving it wings.

The smell is blood on piss. The blood coagulates on the

cement, then rots. Knives cut and figures track through the

blood making burgundy and scarlet footprints. Cats lap up its

edges. It never gets scrubbed out. The rain does not wash it

away. Dust mixes in with it. Garbage floats on top of it. Candy

bar wrappers get stuck in it. Empty, broken hypodermic

needles float. It is a sickening smell, fouling up the street,

twisting the stomach into knots of despair and revulsion: still,

the blood stays there: old blood followed by new: knives especially: sometimes the sharp shots of gunfire: sometimes the exploding shots of gunfire: the acrid smoke hanging above the

blood: sometimes the body is there, smeared, alone, red seeping

out or bubbling or spurting: sometimes the body is there, the

blood comes out hissing with steam, you can see the steam just

above the blood running with it, the blood is hot, it hits the

pavement, it hisses, hot on hot: sometimes the person moves,

walks, runs, staggers, crawls, the blood trailing behind: it stains

the cement: flies dance on it in a horrible, pulsating mass: it

coagulates: it rots: it stinks: the smell gets old and never dies.

Sometimes the next day or the day after people walk through

it and track it around step after step until it is just a faint

splash of faded, eerie pink: and the smell is on their shoes and

they go home: it gets inside, thrown near a pile of clothes or

under the bed: it clings to the floor, crawls along it, vile and

faint.

There is other blood. Cats and dogs die bleeding, smashed

under cars. Rats and mice die bleeding, poison opening up

their insides and the blood splattering out. The carcasses decompose. They are thrown in trash cans or kicked in dark corners or swept under parked cars. Chickens are sacrificed in

secret religious rites, sometimes cats. Their necks are slashed

and they are found, bloodless. The blood has been drained

out. There is no trace of it. Children fall and bleed. Their

parents beat them. Women bleed inside or sweating on street-

corners. Blood spurts out when junkies shoot up.

38

The piss sits like a blessing on the neighborhood. It is the

holy seal, the sacramental splendid presence, like God omnipresent. The men piss night and day, against the cars, against the buildings, against the steps, against the doors, against the

garbage cans, against the cement, against the window ledges

and drainpipes and bicycles: against anything standing still:

outside or inside: against the walls of foyers and the walls of

halls and on the staircases inside buildings and behind the

stairwells. Mixed with the smell of the piss is the scent of

human shit, deposited in broken-down parks or in foyers or

behind stairwells and the casual smell of dog shit, spread

everywhere outside, in heaps. The rat shit is hard and dry,

huge droppings in infested buildings, the turds almost as big as

dog turds, but harder, finer, rounder.

The heat beats down on the piss and shit and the coagulated

blood: the heat absorbs the smell and carries it: the heat turns

wet on human skin and the smell sinks in: an urban perfume: a

cosmopolitan stench: the poor on the Lower East Side of New

York.

*

On this block, there is nothing special. It is hot. It stinks. The

men congregate in packs on the hot stoops. It is no cooler at

night. Inside the crowded tenements it is burning, harder to

find air to breathe, so the men live outside, drinking, shooting

up, fights break out like brush fires, radios blare in Spanish,

knives flash, money changes hands, empty bottles are hurled

against walls or steps or cars or into the gutters of the street,

broken glass is underfoot, dazzling, destructive: the men go

inside to fuck or eat at whim: outside they are young, dramatic,

striking, frenetic until the long periods of lethargy set in and

one sees the yellow sallowness of the skin, the swollen eyes

bloodshot and hazed over, the veins icy blue and used up. “ I

got me everything, ” says Juan, my pretty, wired-up lover,

junkie snorting cocaine come to fuck while N and R are in the

kitchen. He shows up wired. I hesitate. Perhaps she wants him.

We are polite this way. “ He wants you, ” N says with her

exquisite courtesy, a formal, passionless, gentle courtesy, graceful and courtly, our code, we have seriously beautiful manners.

There are no doors but we don’t know what they are for

anyway. We have one single mattress on the floor where we

39

sleep. He fucks good, Juan, I like him, he keeps his junk to

himself, he can’t live long, the coke makes him intense, pulsating, deep thrusts, incredible tension in his hips, hard, muscled hips, not usual for a junkie, I can’t feel the smack in his body,

no languor anywhere, intense crazed coke fucking, intensely

devoted fucking for a junkie. N and R walk by, going out. N

gives an appreciative look. She smiles her broad grin. I am

groaning under him. She laughs her comradely, amused laugh,

grinning from ear to ear.

The apartment is a storefront. You walk down a few steps to

get to the door. Anyone can hide down where you have to

walk. The whole front of the apartment is a store window.

There is no way to open it. It is level with the street. It has

nothing to keep anyone out, no bars, no grating. It is just a

solid sheet of glass. The front room is right there, on the street.

We keep it empty except for some clothes in our one closet.

The middle room is right behind the front room, no door, just

a half wall dividing the two rooms. No window. We have one

single mattress, old, a sheet or two, a pillow or two, N ’s record

player and her great jazz and blues and classical records, her

clarinet, her saxophone, my typewriter, an Olivetti portable, a

telephone. Behind the middle room is a large kitchen, no door

between the rooms. There is a big wooden table with chairs.

There are old, dirty appliances: old refrigerator, old stove.

We don’t cook much or eat much. We make buckets of iced

tea. We have vodka in the refrigerator, sometimes whiskey

too. Sometimes we buy orange juice. There are cigarettes on

the table, butts piled up in muddy ashtrays or dirty, wet cups.

There are some books and some paper and some pencils. There

is a door and a window leading out back. The door has

heavy metal grating over it, iron, weaved, so that no one can

break in. The window is covered in the same heavy metal. The

door is bolted with a heavy metal bolt and locked with a heavy

metal police lock.

The floors are wooden and painted. The apartment is

painted garish red and garish blue. It is insufferably dark,

except for the front room on the street. We have to cover the

window. It is insufferably hot with virtually no ventilation. It

is a palace for us, a wealth of space. Off the kitchen is a thin

40

wooden door, no lock, just a wooden latch. Through it is- a

toilet, shared with the next door apartment, also a storefront

but vacant.

Before Juan comes, we are in the kitchen talking about our

movie. We are going to make a movie, a tough, unsentimental

avant-garde little number about women in a New York City

prison. I have written it. It strangely resembles my own story:

jailed over Vietnam the woman is endlessly strip-searched and

then mangled inside by jail doctors. N will make it— direct it,

shoot it, edit it. It is her film. R is the star. She is N ’s lover for

years, plans on forever, it is on the skids but she hangs on,

pretending not to know. She is movingly loyal and underneath

pathetically desperate. N and I are not allowed to be lovers so

we never are, alone. We evade the spirit of the law. N refuses

to make a political film. Politics, she argues, is boring and

temporary. Vietnam will be over and forgotten. A work of art

must outlast politics. She uses words sparingly. Her language

is almost austere, never ornate. We are artists, she says. I am

liberal with her. She always brings out my generosity. I take

no hard line on politics. I too want art. We need money. Most

of ours goes for cigarettes, after which there isn’t any left. We

fuck for drugs. Speed is cheaper than food. We fuck for pills.

We fuck for prescriptions. We fuck for meals when we have

to. We fuck for drinks in bars. We fuck for tabs of acid. We

fuck for capsules of mescaline. We fuck for loose change. We

fuck for fun. We fuck for adventure. We fuck when we are hot

from the weather. We fuck for big bucks to produce our movie.

In between, we discuss art and politics. We listen to music and

read books. She plays sax and clarinet and I write short stories.

We are poor but educated.

*

The day we moved in the men, our neighbors, paid us a visit.

We will get you, they said. We will come when we are ready.

We will fuck you when we are ready. We will come one

night when we decide. Maybe we will sell you. N is worth a

lot of money in Puerto Rico, they say. I am worth not so

much but still a little something. They are relaxed, sober.

Some have knives. They take their time. How will you keep

us out, one man asks logically. What can you do to keep us

out. One night we will come. There are six or seven of them

4i

there. Two speak, alternating promises. One night we will

come.

Our friend M shows up then, cool cool pacifist hippie type,

white, long hair in a ponytail. Hey man, he says, hey man,

hey man, let’s talk peace not war, let’s be friends man, let’s have

some smoke. He invites them into our storefront. The men sit

in a circle in the front room, the front door wide open. Hey,

man, come on, these chicks are cool. Hey, man, come on, these

chicks are cool. Hey, man, come on, I got some good smoke, let’s

just cool this out man smoke some smoke man together man

these are cool chicks man. He passes a pipe, passes joints: it is

a solemn ceremony. We gonna come in and get these chicks

when we want them man. Hey man, come on, man, these

chicks are real cool, man, you don’t wanna mess with these

chicks man they are cool man. The pipe goes round and round.

The neighbors become quiet. The threats cease. M gloats with

his hip, his cool, his ponytail accomplishment as peacemaker.

Hey man any time you want some smoke you just come to me

man just leave these chicks alone man smoke and peace man,

you know, man.

They file out, quiet and stoned. M is elated. He has forged a

treaty, man. M is piss-proud, man. We get stoned. Smoke,

man. The front door stays wide open as we sit in the front

room and smoke. Night comes, the dark. M points to the open

door. Just stay cool with those guys, man. Those guys come

back you just invite them in for a little smoke. It’s cool, man.

*

I have a habit, not nice. I am two years into it this time. I have

had it before. Black beauties. I take a lot of pills. The pills cost

a lot of money. N takes them too. I don’t know if it is addiction

or pleasure for her or how long she has been taking them or if

she can do without them. I never ask. These are privacies I

respect. I have my own dignity too. I pretend it is cheaper than

food.

One night N brings home a fuck, a Leo named Leo. He

steals our speed and all our cash. The speed is gone. I go into

emergency gear. I pretend it is a joke. How the fuck, I ask her

repeatedly, can anyone be stupid enough to fuck someone who

says he is a Leo named Leo? I ask this question, tell this joke,

many times. I am scared. We find a trick. She fucks him because

42-

she lost the pills. It is our code and her own personal sense of

courtesy. We get the pills. A Leo named Leo, I say. How can

anyone be so stupid? We pop the pills. A Leo named Leo. We

sit in our middle room, she is drinking scotch and I am drinking

vodka, we are momentarily flush: and the pills hit. A Leo

named Leo. We laugh until we start to cry. We hold our guts

and shake. A Leo named Leo. She grins from ear to ear. She

has done something incredibly witty: fucked a Leo named Leo.

We are incredibly delighted with her.

*

Walking down St Mark’s Place I run into an old lover, Nikko. He

is Greek. I love Greece. We say hello, how are you in Greek. It is

hot. I take him back with me. N is not there. We have a fight. I am

insulted because he wants to wear a condom. But women are

dirty, he says as a point of fact. I am offended. I won’t allow the

condom. We fight. He hits me hard in the face several times. He

hits me until I fall. He fucks me. He leaves. It is two weeks before

I remember that this is what happened last time. Last winter.

Women carry diseases, he said. No condoms, I said. He hit me

several times, hard in the face, holding me up so he could keep

hitting. He fucked me and left. I had another lover coming, a

woman I had been waiting for weeks to see, married, hard to see.

I picked myself up and forgot about him. She was shameless: she

liked the bruises, the fresh semen. He didn’t use the condom.

Either time.

*

We proceed with our film project. We are intensely committed

to it, for the sake of art. The politics of it is mine, a hidden

smile behind my eyes. We call a famous avant-garde film critic.

He says he will come to see us at midnight. At midnight he

comes. We sit in the front room, huddled on the floor. He is

delicate, soft-spoken, a saintly smile: he likes formal, empty

filmic statements not burdened by content: our film is some

baroque monster in his presence, overgrown with values and

story and plot and drama. It will never have this appearance

again. Despite his differences with us— aesthetic, formal,

ethereal— he will publish an interview with us to help us raise

money. We feel lifted up, overwhelmed with recognition: what

he must see in us to do this for us, a pure fire. We wait for the

other shoe to drop.

43

But he sits there, beatific. We can interview each other and

send it to him along with photographs of us. He drinks our

pathetic iced tea. He smiles. No shoe drops. He leaves.

The next days we spend in a frenzy of aesthetic busywork.

We take pencils in hand and plot out long, interesting conversations about art. We try to document an interesting, convoluted discussion of film. We discuss Godard at some length and write

down for posterity our important criticisms of him. We are

brassy, hip, radical, cool. We haunt the photo machines at

Woolworth’s, taking artistic pictures of ourselves, four poses

for four quarters. We use up all our change. We hustle more.

Excuse me, sir, but someone just stole my money and I don’t

have a subway token to get home with. Excuse me, sir, I am

very hungry and can’t you spare a quarter so I can get some

food. Excuse me, sir, I just lost my wallet and I don’t have bus

fare home.

Then we go back to the machine and pose and look intense

and avant-garde. We mess up our hair and sulk, or we try

grinning, we stare into the hidden camera, looking intense,

looking deep, looking sulky and sultry and on drugs.

We write down some more thoughts on art. We pick the

photos we want. We hustle for money for stamps. Excuse me,

sir, my child is sick and I don’t have any money to buy her

medicine.

The critic prints our interview. He doesn’t print our

photographs. We are famous. Our thoughts on film and

art are in the newspaper. We wait for people to send us

money.

*

We run back and forth from our storefront to Woolworth’s as

we get the money to take more photos. We run back and forth

as we add pages and pages to our interview with each other. I

sit at the typewriter ponderously. This is an important project.

We run back and forth each time we think of something new

to add: a new pose to try, a new sentence to write down, a

new topic to explore, a new intensely artistic sulk or pout. We

make feverish notes in Woolworth’s and run home to type them

up. On one trip a policeman follows us. He walks half a block

behind us, keeping us in sight. We go faster, go slower, he stays

half a block behind us. Girls, he calls finally, girls. We wait.

44

He catches up. There is a silence. Did you know, girls, that

about half an hour ago you crossed the street against a red

light? We are properly stunned, truly stunned, silent and

attentive. I have to write you girls a ticket but listen I don’t

want to be too hard on you, I don’t want to give you a

record or anything so why don’t I write it just for one of

you. The three of us decide he will give the ticket to N since

the apartment is not in her name. He slowly, soberly, prints

her name out in big block letters. Now listen girls you be

careful next time I don’t want to have to do this again you

hear. We stand there, dazed and acquiescent. We walk on

slowly, once we are sure he is really gone. We look over our

shoulders. Is he still there or was he really there? N has a

ticket for jaywalking in her hand. Between us right then we

have a dozen tabs of acid and a bag of marijuana and some

loose joints. We have no money for food so we have been

living on speed and alcohol. We have the speed on us, in a

prescription bottle but you would have to be a fool to believe

it. We are hungry and as soon as we mail off our interview

we know we are going to have to find a fuck. We are stoned

beyond all imagining, and yet of course intensely serious

about art. Still, in the scheme of things, jaywalking is not

a good thing to do. We can see that now, once we think

about it. We think about it now quite a lot, rolling along the

city streets in the burning heat, our sides splitting with

laughter. We are dazzled with the universe and its sense of

humor. We are dazzled too by its generosity: we are left to

pursue art: we are not carted off, dangerous criminals,

drowning in drugs. We are artists, not riffraff. We are scared,

the cop’s breath still hot on our silly necks. Hungry, we find

a fuck, a safe one, N ’s girlfriend, to whom we recount our

uproarious adventure, stressing our triumphant escape. She

feeds us, just barely pretending to be amused. I leave them

alone. N pays for the meal.

*

Poor R ’s apartment is tiny and dark, on the first floor of a

brown brick building in a Mafia neighborhood. Italian rings

out around us: is it apocryphal or are stolen bicycles really

returned? R says it is true. She says she is safe here. Every

window is covered in layers of metal. It is dark, but it is the

45

real Village, not the Lower East Side. It is West. It is not piss-

covered. It is not blood-drenched.

Poor R is refined, ladylike, devoted. She cuts N ’s hair and

sews clothes for her. She makes her meals and feeds her friends.

She is repelled by the company N keeps but she is devoted

anyway, the soul of quiet devotion no matter what the provocation. She wants to be a refuge, a retreat, a nest. She makes sachets of delicate smells. She lights delicate candles to go with

dinner. She cooks delicate souffles and serves many kinds of

cheeses. She goes to auditions and gets jobs off-Broadway in

little theaters. She is small and delicate and refined. She is

quiet and kind. She is genuinely devoted. We come from the

dense torment of our storefront, immersed in the drugs,

smelling of the sex, numb from the violence, nevertheless exhilarated: and she feeds us and lets us sleep: because she is in love and devoted. She is talented, carefully dressed, not pretty,

not handsome, but each feature is distinct so that the face adds

up to an expressive one. She reads books and listens to music,

all in moderation. She loves devotedly, without moderation.

She hangs in for the long haul. She is promising to be there

forever. She wants to be there when N, weary, wants peace.

Given half a chance, she would be the one. But she has no

chance. N is bored. We eat, I leave, N pays for the meal.

*

N is easy to love, devotedly. She is very beautiful, not like a

girl. She is lean and tough. She fucks like a gang of boys. She is

smart and quiet. She doesn’t waste words. She grins from ear

to ear. She is never afraid.

*

Women pursue her. She is aloof, amused. She fucks everyone

eventually, with perfect simplicity and grace. She is a rough

fuck. She grinds her hips in. She pushes her fingers in. She

tears around inside. She is all muscle and jagged bones. She

thrusts her hips so hard you can’t remember who she is or

how many of her there are. The first time she tore me apart. I

bled and bled.

*

Women want her. So do men. She fucks everyone. It is always

easier for her to than not to. She has perfect courtesy and rare

grace. She is marvelously polite, never asking, never taking,

46

until licensed by an urgent request. Then she is a hooligan, all

fuck and balls.

*

She is slightly more reserved with men. When a man fucks me,

she says, I am with him, fucking me. The men ride her like

maniacs. Her eyes roll back but stay open and she grins. She is

always them fucking her, no matter how intensely they ride.

Me I get fucked but she is different, always just slightly outside

and on top: being him, fucking her. The men are ignorant and

entranced.

*

She dresses like a glittering boy, a tough, gorgeous boy.

She is Garbo in Queen Christina but run-down and dirty and

druggy, leaner and tougher: more used: slightly smelling of

decay and death, touched by the smell of the heat and the

smell of the piss and the smell of the men: but untouched

underneath by any human lust not her own.

*

She is ardent and intense, entirely charming, a grimy prince of

the streets, tough and fast: destitute and aloof, drawn to the

needle: edging toward the needle: but she fucks instead most of

the time: she likes the needle though: you can see it in her eyes,

all glazed over: she stops grinning and her lips get thick with

sensuality and dirty with greed: she loses her courtesy: she is

finally taken over: the needle is not her fucking her: it is something outside her fucking her: and she dissolves, finally. I could lose her to this. I never think about losing her or having her,

except around the needle. It is the only thing I am afraid of. I

would do anything for her. I want to shoot up with her: her do

it to me, tie the rubber thing, heat the spoon, fill the needle,

find the vein, shoot it up. She demurs politely. She keeps away

from it: except sometimes: she does not draw me in. She does

it away from me: with other lovers: now and then: glassy-eyed

and elated: not aloof but ecstatic: sated: when no one could

even see, from day to day, that she had been hungry.

Or I couldn’t see.

Or she wasn’t: the needle just gutted her with pleasure: so

afterward, in retrospect, one inferred that there had been a

lack, a need, before the needle: but in fact she had been complete before and now was simply drenched in something extra: 47

something exquisite, heavy and thick like some distilled perfume, sweet to the point of sickness, a nauseating sweetness: something transporting and divine: something that translated

into eyelids weighed down and swollen, lips puffed up, the

cracks in them spreading down, the body suddenly soft and

pliant, ready to curl, to billow, to fold: a fragile body, delicate

bones suddenly soft, eyes hiding behind lush eyelids: the hard

tension of her hips dissolved, finally. The way other women

look when they’ve been fucked hard and long, coming and

coming, is how she looked: the way other women look fucked

out, creamy and swollen, is how she looked. The needle gave

her that, finally: dissolved.

*

The jazz club is on a rough street, darker even than ours. It is

low down in a cellar. It is long and narrow. The walls are

brick. The tables are small, brown covered with a thick shellac,

heavy and hard, ugly. They are lined up against the brick walls

one right next to the other. You have to buy two drinks. There

is a stage at the end of the long, narrow room. Jazz blares,

live, raw: not the cold jazz, but belted-out jazz, all instruments,

all lips and spit. There is no chatter. There is no show. There

is just the music. The musicians are screaming through metal.

Or there is waiting—glasses, ice, cigarette smoke, subdued

mumbling. The music is loud. No one talks when the musicians

are on stage, even when they stop for a minute. Everyone waits

for the next sound. The smoke is dense but the sounds of the

horns punch through it and push it into the brick. We are

listening to the legendary black musician who according to

some stories turned Billie into a junkie. I am wondering if this

is as awful as it seems on the surface and why it is whispered

in a hushed awe. He is a sloppy musician by now, decades

later. He is bent over, blowing. He is sweating like a pig. His

instrument screams. There is not a hint of delicacy or remorse.

The music rouses you, the volume raises hackles on your skin,

the living, breathing sound makes your blood jump, but the

mind is left bored and dazed. Other musicians on the stage try

to engage that lost faculty: they solo with ideas or moods,

some sadness, some comic riffs. But the legend blares on,

interrupts, superimposes his unending screech. We can only

afford two drinks but the legend makes us desperate for more:

48

to take the edge off the blowing, blowing, blowing, the shrill

scream of the instrument, the tin loudness of his empty spasms.

The set ends. We want to stay for more. It is live music, jazz,

real jazz, we want as much as we can get of it. We cannot

come here often. The two required drinks cost a lot. We are at

a small wooden shellacked table against a brick wall. On one

side is a bohemian couple, dating nonetheless. On the other

side, the direction of the stage, is a man. He is huge. His

shoulders are broad. He is dressed very straight, a suit, a tie, a

clean shirt, polished shoes. He is alone. I hate his face on sight.

It has no lines. It is completely cold and cruel. There is nothing

wrong with it on the surface. His features are even handsome.

His skin is a glistening black, rich, luminous. He is lean but

nevertheless big, broad-shouldered, long, long legs. His legs

can barely fit under the small table. He is solitary and self-

contained. He has been watching N. He offers us drinks. She

accepts. They talk quietly between sets. I can’t hear them, don’t

want to. I can see something awful in him but she is fascinated.

I can’t name it. His expression never changes. It shows nothing.

I am instinctively afraid of him and repelled. N listens to him

intently. She looks almost female. Her body softens. Her eyes

are cast down. The music starts. He leaves. The legend sweats

and blares and spits and screams. He is even sloppier now,

more arrogant too, but we are drunker so it evens out. We

leave at dawn. We walk home in the hot haze. Junkies make

jokes at us. Men pee. Someone flashes a knife from a stoop.

We are tired. We sleep.

We wake up in early afternoon. The heat is stifling. Today

we are going to take the special acid we have been saving, N

and me and poor R. I am excited. N says first she has to meet

the guy from last night. She promised him. She just wants

forty-five minutes alone with him. He comes in the dead heat

of the afternoon. In the glaring heat of the sun he is still cold,

glistening, mean. He wears a suit. He wears a tie. He has on a

clean shirt, buttoned up to the top. His shoes are polished. His

face is set, he doesn’t try to smile, he has no expression, he

doesn’t sweat. Standing up he is towering, dangerous, cold. N

is happy to see him, reserved, courteous. I am bewildered and

afraid. I just want to fuck him, she says quietly to me. We

have dropped the acid. He is dangerous, I say. What are you

49

going to do when you start tripping? He will be gone by then,

she says. One fuck, then he will go. I wait outside like she tells

me to. They go into our storefront. I expect to hear screams. I

hear nothing. I strain to hear but I hear nothing. Forty-five

minutes later they come out. Nothing has changed with him.

Suit. Tie. Clean shirt, buttoned up. Polished shoes. No expression. Still not sweating. N is glassy-eyed, creamy, content.

I got what I wanted, she said. Whad ya do in there, I ask,

casual but really scared, worse now since I see no sign of human

emotion or exertion in him. Just fucked, she says. He is not a

man who fucks. I can see that. He may kill but he doesn’t

fuck. Either the needle or he tied her up. I am pretty sure. She

is wearing a blouse with long sleeves, not her usual T-shirt. I

don’t see her naked for the next few days. Even as the street

begins to slide and whirl, I know that there are bruises on her

arm from one thing or another. I don’t exactly know the word

sadist but that is what I think he is anyway. I strain for the

word without finding it but I know what I mean. I am scared.

She is satisfied. I never see him again. I think he kills people.

Most of the violent men we see are sloppy, one way or another.

Their violence sort of oozes out. This man is a perfect diamond

cutting through glass.

*

There are the layers, the dumb, slobbering junkies, oozing pus

and grief, dealing a little, stealing, falling down on top of whatever doesn’t move fast enough; there are bastards a little colder, still oozing, and the pimps, who drool. There is a ladder of

street slobber, so that the violence gushes out like tears or

drips like a leaky faucet, but it is a mistake, not cold, ruthless

art: as much accident as intention, not coldly calculated and

perfectly executed. Then there is this other level. No fear. No

ooze. No slobber. No exhibitionism. No boast. Nothing except

serious intention, perfectly conceived and coldly executed, an

interior of ice and a perfect economy of motion.

*

What has he done to her? The acid begins to grip and she will

not say anyway. Poor R had left when she heard N was inside

with a man. N is politely, resolutely silent. She will not budge.

We are worlds apart and the subject is closed. Then we are

awash in acid and beyond all human argument. We begin to

50

roam the magnificent city streets and to play like children in

their decaying monumental splendor. We range over these

grand cement plains like wild animals, we dance up mountains

fleet of foot, we rush down rivers dancing on the silver light of

the rapids: each sight and sign of squalor is dazzling and

unique: there is no language for this and sadist is a word even

when you can’t quite find it: and each and every human form

shimmers in light and motion: the cold, cold man is more than

gone or forgotten: there is no place in the universe for him: he

is behind us now and time is a river, rushing on. The cement is

a luminous rainbow of garish silver and blinding white coming

out of the gravel, rising up like a phoenix from it: gold mixes

into the stone from the heat and the scarlet from the blood is

brilliant and intensely beautiful.

The air is spectacular, daylight, light that dances, a million

shining fragments of light like tiny speckled stones: you could

reach out and touch them except instead you walk between

them, skirting their shiny surfaces, never feeling their glossy

round edges. You reach out your arm to touch a piece of light

and your arm stretches into the distance, it has the curves of a

gracious hill and subtle valley and your fingers slide gracefully

past each other, one then another then another, and they are

gracefully curved, like a valley between two hills, a slight curve,

slack but aesthetic and delicate. And the tips of your fingers

touch the light and dance, dance.

The red from the traffic light spreads out through the air, it

is circle on circle of diffusing red light, it is like a red light in

the sky and with the sun behind it, it becomes fierce and hot.

The streets are endless arcades filled with gentle refuges. There

are stores where they greet you warmly, hippie boys all hairy

and with wet eyes, and give you tea and have you sit and offer

you smoke: and you laugh and laugh: or are deadly solemn:

and there is sitar music and you get lost on each note and drift

until the hot tea is in your hand: and you come back, treated

like a holy traveler, an honored guest, by the warm hairy

strangers. You look at the colored beads and the huge drawings

of tantric intertwinings on the walls: and you are home here

on earth, taken care of, given refuge: until you move on, the

acid pushing you, the pulse somewhere calling you.

51

Outside it is dark now, and you roam through the streets

until dawn when you watch the light come up. There are people

you touch, their faces, their tongues, you slip behind cars or

into doorways or spread out on suddenly available floors,

mattresses that seem to just be there waiting for the simple

traveler with legs that spread all wet. You smoke and smiling

people hand you pills and you swallow them because nothing

can hurt you now: and you stop cars with your acid smile: and

communicate with your acid brain: and you watch something

you could never look at before, a huge roach, a dead rat, and

you are awed by its monstrous beauty.

Your sweat simply melts you and you take off your clothes

somewhere with someone and you come and come and come:

and laugh: and fuck: and smoke: and drink: and run, run, run:

and smile: and the music is everywhere, in the traffic, in the

rumbling of the heavy trucks, in the sirens, in the screeching

wheels of police cars, in nasty motorcycles and in the sucking

sounds of the dirty men who whisper cunt when you walk by.

And you talk, intensely. The universe. Reality. Light. Truth.

Time. Dawn comes and you are hungry. You are coming down.

You smoke. You sit on a stoop, tired and content. A man

walks by. You ask him for breakfast. He takes you to one of

the all-night restaurants run for the likes of you on the Lower

East Side. The rabble are eating, all tired, all fucked out, all

drugged out. It is beautiful, serene. You get orange juice and

blintzes and sour cream and eggs and toast and coffee. The

man waits. Hey mister, you say laughing, wanna buy us

breakfast? He nods. Now you sit and eat and he watches. Now

you are full. Now he pays the bill. Now you say, hey, mister,

wanna fuck? You are still zinging on the acid a little but mostly

it is over: back to business: of course mister wants to fuck.

*

N and I sit on the stoop in front of poor R ’s apartment. The

light is just beginning. The dark is lit up from inside. The acid

is beginning to soften, to lose its grip. We are still wavy, still

floating, still charged, still porous, bodies floating in light and

air: but personality is beginning to creep back in: we know

who we are and where we are: we know that dawn is on its

way: we know that we are hungry and have to eat: we know

the acid is going: we know the night is over and the trip is over

52

and pedestrian day is nearly here: we sit watching the dark

becoming lighter and lighter: we sit watching a dead rat at the

curb: it is indisputably a rat, not God: poor R is sleeping inside,

she won’t let us in, she won’t make us breakfast, we are excommunicated, we are happy, we are turned loose to look for breakfast elsewhere: we sit there, buddies, and chat in the dark:

we walk around: we touch fingers and briefly hold hands.

*

N and I sit on a stoop in St M ark’s Place. Hey mister. We are

hungry. The acid is wearing off. The smoke has given us

ravenous appetites. We are tired. Hey mister. Some misters

pass. This one mister takes us to breakfast. He is silent,

watchful, not easy to disarm. Mister turns out to be not such

an easy fuck. N fucks him and falls asleep. Mister doesn’t

sleep. Mister probably hasn’t slept in months. Mister is nuts. I

get Mister for hours. N sleeps like a log.

*

Mister is white, lean, wiry, crew-cut, muscled, tense, wired to

go off. A coil ready to spring. Full of inexplicable rushes of

violence. He fucks like he hates it. It never gets him anywhere.

He concentrates, he fucks. You can’t feel much except his concentration. He is doing some martial art of the thighs, over and over, trying to make it perfect, get it right: it doesn’t touch

him: then the violence pours through him, impersonal, and he

is in a frenzy of fuck: then, more tense but calmer, he concentrates, he fucks. Eventually I sleep. I don’t know how or why.

When I wake up it is nearly night again. He is taking us to

the beach. The heat here in the storefront is scalding; treacherous, wet steam. Our skin is raw and burning. Our clothes are wet. Our eyes are almost swollen shut. It is hard to breathe.

Heat hurts our lungs. Mister has a car. He is giving us dinner.

We are going with him to the beach.

He drives like a maniac, but we only feel the breeze. The car

barely touches the road. It swerves. We leave the city behind.

The air gets less hot. We see the city lights trailing behind us

as we swerve and curve in the airborne car. We cool down

enough to be afraid.

The car stops, and there is a beach and an ocean. It is endlessly deserted. There are no cars. There are no people. There is a full moon and it is nearly light on the beach. The water

53

shines. It advances up against the beach. The waves are small

and delicate. The ocean is tame but it goes on forever. It goes

out as far as we can see, way past the moon. We are on the

beach. Mister wants some sex. N whispers to me that she can’t

fuck, she is bleeding again. All summer she has had this mysterious bleeding. I tease her that she wants to get out of fucking this creep. But still: she is bleeding, not menstruation, hemorrhaging: she can’t be fucked. She and I make love for him on the beach. It is not enough. He is wired, tense, has spasms of

violence, shows us his knife. N holds me down from behind,

both arms. He turns away one minute, a modest gesture unzipping his fly. She grins ear to ear. I try to get loose watching her grin. She is strong and I can’t. She holds me down. He

pulls down his pants. He fucks me. I get dressed. N and I sit

and watch the ocean. N and I sit and watch the moon. He

goes off by himself. A cop comes along. What are you doing

here? Watching the ocean officer. It’s dangerous here at night

girls. Thanks officer. We walk up to the car. The cop moves

on. Mister jumps up from behind the car, plays with his knife.

Mister takes us for lobster, he is silent and watchful, he doesn’t

eat, then Mister drives us home.

*

We get out of the car. The beach is there. The ocean is there.

The moon is full. We see the ocean with the moon hanging

over it. Mister is wired. Mister tells us he has a gun in the car

under the front seat. Mister tells us he hates his wife. Mister

tells us he is going to kill the bitch. Mister tells us his wife has

tried to get away from him. Mister tells us his wife was walking

down a street and he beat the bitch to pieces and pulled a

knife on her. How could his wife do that, we say, not knowing

what she did. We go on to the beach.

*

The beach is a little scummy, empty cans and empty bottles,

paper, trash. The sand is a little dirty. N and I undress each

other. We kiss. We make love standing up. He wants us in the

sand. We make love in the sand. She dresses. He shows a knife.

She holds me down. I am flat on my back naked on the beach.

She is behind me. I look up into her face. She grins. It is her

comradely grin. But I try to get loose and can’t. She is strong.

She is holding me down. It is our charade, but I can’t get

54

loose. He fucks me. He disappears. I brush the sand off but I

am all gritty. I get dressed fast. N and I sit and watch the

ocean. N and I sit and watch the moon. The cop comes. He

tells us girls could get hurt alone on the beach at night. We are

panicked that Mister left without us. The car is still there. We

walk to it. We get in covered with sand. I can taste sand in my

mouth. Mister buys us lobster. He sits and watches, all tight

and coiled. He drops us at the storefront. Inside we drink iced

tea and sleep entirely embracing each other. We sleep and kiss

like it’s one thing, wound round each other like the gnarled

branches of an ancient tree. She has stopped bleeding. The

sand rubs and rubs, hurting a little, we are drenched in sweat,

we sleep and fuck at the same time, not letting go.

*

Have you ever seen the moon, full, rising behind the head of a

man fucking you on a dirty beach? Have you ever heard the

ocean, lying flat on your back, your arms behind you, held

down, have you heard the sound of the ocean behind him, have

you looked up to see her broad grinning face? Have you ever

felt the sand, dirty and a little wet, all over, and kissed her

thighs and the sand? Have you ever kissed a bleeding woman

everywhere and tasted dirty sand and then watched moonlight

fall on a knife and been naked in the sand while he fucked

you, the full moon behind him, the sound of the ocean behind

him, and your wrists weighed down by lead, her knees on top

of your arms as she caressed your breasts while he fucked like

doing push-ups, but the full moon is very beautiful and the

sound of the ocean is very fine?

*

And then, alone, have you needed each other so bad that you

slept and fucked at the same time, the whole time you were

sleeping, what others call night, so close, so entangled, melted

together, wrapped around each other, sand biting your skin

rubbing in the sweat: and been at peace, happy, with time

stopped right there?

*

The narrow mattress on the painted floor is drenched through

with sweat, and the sand pricks like sharp, tiny bites, hurting,

and the room is dark and airless, and we are wound together,

sleeping as we fuck: a somnambulant intercourse: wet and hot,

55

barely on the verge of consciousness and not yet dream: the

heat turning it into delirium: for all the hours of a human

night.

*

We wash. N goes to use poor R ’s shower. She has broken the

letter of the law but will not tell. The promise was made when

N loved her. Now she doesn’t. The shower is redundant in the

wet heat but it will get rid of the sand. I stand in our kitchen,

it is dark even though sunlight blankets the earth outside the

iron bars covering the kitchen windows: I look first through

the grating over the doors and windows into the backyard to

see if the neighborhood boys are there: they stare in, bang on

the windows, bang on the doors: we try not to undress in front of

them. I fill a big pot full of water. It comes out of the tap

sweaty. I dip an old washcloth in and out of the pot and rub it

disconsolately all over. Then I do the same again, using soap,

but not too much, because you can never quite get it off. Then

I do it again with clean water. Then I am ready.

N comes back clean. She has not told, I can tell. We both

broke our promise to poor R. The beach was within the law;

the whole private night was not. I am pleased. It is never

mentioned again. Today is uptown business. The days of

uptown business are few and far between, but all the same

somehow. We are going uptown to talk with men who have

money about our film.

N dresses. She wears a silk scarf as a headband and flared

sailor pants. Her eyes are elongated and blackened and her lips

are pursed: they seem longer, thinner, as if she is sucking them

in. I too go out of my way. Clean T-shirt. Her hair is dirty

blonde and straight; it stands up on end. Mine is curly and

black; it stands up on end. We both comb our hair with our

fingers. We make it stand up more.

Uptown there is a lawyer who is going to turn us into a

corporation. He is silver from top to bottom. The spittle pours

from the edges of his mouth as he listens to the details of our

film. Of course he will incorporate us for no fee: but, leaning

over, and over, and over, almost stretching the trunk of his

body further than it could possibly go, but, he will expect to

come to the Village for a private screening. Village, private

screening. Saliva pours out, a thin, dripping creek.

56

Uptown there is a producer: will he sign N up and make her

a movie star and then we can make our film with that money?

Someone who discovered a famous rock singer sends us to

him. We wait in the chilly waiting room. The sweat and the

dirt that never comes off is pasted on by the cool air of the air

conditioner. The men in suits and the women with lacquered

hair and neat blouses and modest skirts stare. The receptionist

is visibly disturbed. Inside the office is huge. It seems the producer is a quarter mile away. His huge desk is at the end of the huge room. We are told to sit on a sofa near the door. He tells

N she isn’t feminine. I say unisex is in. I say times have

changed. I say people are riveted by the way N looks. The

producer keeps staring at her. He talks and stares. He is hostile.

She mumbles like Marlon Brando. The door opens. His wife, a

famous singer but not a star, comes in. She looks old. She is

dyed blond. Her skirt is short, way above her aging knees. Her

makeup is serious. Each detail is meant to remind one of

youth. Each detail shows how old her face is and how tired

her soul is. The old legs on top of the high heels bounce under

the short skirt as she makes her way across the huge room to

kiss the producer. This is a woman, he says. You see what I

mean, he says, this is a woman. We stare.

Uptown there is an advertising executive: he wants to give

money to bright young men who want to make films. We sit in

his small office. It is chilly. He stares. We discuss the film

scene by scene. He discusses his advertising campaigns scene

by scene. He stares. We ask for money. We leave the script

with him. We are hopeful. N isn’t really. I am. She is right.

The air conditioning always helps.

The offices are strange places.

The people in them seem dead.

It is the straight world of regular USA.

We abhor it.

We go back to our world of slime and sex tired and bored:

to be alive as we understand living. Not like them.

*

The world is divided that way now: the straight adults, old

people; and us. It is that way.

*

On St Mark’s Place the police are always out in large numbers,

57

hassling the hippies. Where we live there are never any police,

no matter who gets hurt or how bad. It takes a riot to bring

them out. Then they shoot.

The flower girls and boys abound in other parts of the

neighborhood, not near us.

We are not them and not not them. N grew up in a swamp

in the South, oldest child, four boys under her, father abandoned family, became a religious fanatic after running whores for a while, came back, moved the family North, sent her to a

girls’ school to get a proper upbringing, then ran off again:

like me, poor and half orphaned. Like me she gets a scholarship

to a rich girls’ college. We meet there, the outcast poor, exiled

among the pathetic rich. We don’t have money hidden away

somewhere, if only we would behave. Her mother, my father,

have nothing to give. She has other children to feed. He is sick,

says nothing, does nothing, languishes, a sad old man with a

son killed in Vietnam and a dirty daughter on dirty streets. N

and I are poor now: poorer even than when we were children:

nothing but what we get however we get it. But also we are

white and smart and well-educated. Do we have to be here or

not?

We can’t be lacquer-haired secretaries. There is no place else

for us. The flower children are like distant cousins, the affluent

part of the family: you hear about them but it doesn’t mean

you can have what they have. They wear pretty colors and

have good drugs, especially hallucinogens, and they decorate

the streets with paint and scents: incense, glitter: fucking them

is fun sometimes but often too solemn, they bore with their

lovey pieties: but we didn’t leave anything behind and we got

nothing to go back to.

*

Eighteen, nineteen, twenty: those years. The men numbered in

the thousands. At first I was alone, then, with her, I wasn’t.

This was one summer. We also had a winter and a spring

before.

*

Every time we needed petty cash: and when we didn’t.

*

We took women for money too, but with more drama, more

plot, more plan. They had to be in love or infatuated. You had

58

to remember their names and details of their childhood. They

gave you what you needed gingerly: the seduction had to

continue past sex: sometimes they would get both of us: other

times only one of us could get near enough: or sometimes we

would both be there, each one picking up the slack when the

other got bored, and take turns before drifting off to sleep. Or

N would do it one night, me another. I liked another woman’s

body there between us, and I liked when N fucked me then her

and then I kept kissing her between the legs, though N would

have fallen asleep by then. I liked those nights. I didn’t like

that we never got enough out of it: enough money: enough

food: enough: and I didn’t like it that the women got clingy or

all pathetic or that not one could bear to remember how she

had come, wanting to be courted, and stayed.

*

And then there was just having the women: because you

wanted them: because it was a piece of heaven right in the

middle of hell: because they knew your name too: because you

went mad with them in your mouth: and you went crazy thigh

to thigh: and it was earth, sublime: and the skin, pearl: and the

breasts: and coming, coming, coming.

*

Especially the hairs that stayed in your mouth, and the bites

they left.

*

The men fucked or did whatever: but the women came close

to dying, with this quiet surprise.

*

And you did too, because you were the same, only harder, not

new. They were enough like you. As close as could be. Every

slight tremble shot through both bodies. Even when she knew

nothing and you knew everything: even when you did it all:

your fingers on her, her taste all over you, pushed you so far

over the edge you needed drugs to bring you back. The small

of her back, trembling: how small they were, how delicate, the

tiny bones, how they almost disappeared: and then the more

ecstatic exertions of a lover with her beloved.

*

The sex could go on until exhaustion defeated the prosaic

body: these were not the short, abrupt times of men with their

59

push and shove: these were long, hot, humid times, whole

seasons: but once over, life went on: she was on her own,

desolate: unhappy: ready to shell out what you needed so as

not to be alone forever: so as to be able to come back: and you

must never take too much, she must not be humiliated too

much: and you must make sure she knows that you know her

name and her uniqueness: and you must stay aloof but not be

cold: and she gives you something, money is best: and she is

just unhappy enough when she leaves. Her body still trembles

and she is as pale as death, washed out, delicate and desperate,

she has never done anything like this before, not wanting her

own life, wanting ours: which we hold for ransom. She can get

near it again, if we let her: if she has something we need. We

are tired of her and want her gone. We are both cold and

detached and ready for someone new.

*

The coffeehouse has a jukebox N likes. The music blares. She

knows how to turn them up. In any bar she can reach behind,

wink at the bartender, and turn up the music. In this

coffeehouse, all painted pink, there is no resistance. It is in the

Village, a dumpy one surrounded by plusher places for tourists

and rich hippies and old-time bohemians who have learned how

to make a living from art.

There is nightlife here, and money, and N and I hang out

for the air conditioning and to pick up men. It is easy pickings.

She roams around the room, a girl James Dean, toward the

jukebox, away from the jukebox, toward it, away from it, her

cigarette hanging out of her slightly dirty mouth, her hips tough

and lean, her legs bent at the knees, a little bowlegged, opened

up. She is dirty and her eyes have deep circles set in fragile,

high cheekbones. She spreads her arms out over the breadth

of the jukebox and spreads her legs with her knees slightly

bent outward and she moves back and forth, a slow, excruciating fuck. Jim Morrison and the Doors. Otis Redding.

Janis. Hey mister, she says in her deepest mumble, you gotta

cigarette. She gets courtly: I seem to be out, she says to him,

eyelids drooping. She smiles: I guess I must of left them somewhere. She hustles change for the jukebox. She hustles change for coffee. These are long, leisurely, air-conditioned nights. She

disappears. I disappear. She returns, orders cappuccino, it means

60

money, something easy with a boy. I return: we have sandwiches. She returns: with some grass. I return: we have dessert, chocolate cake, leisurely, cheesecake, passing it around. She

returns: drinks for tomorrow night. I return: speed for tomorrow. We are bankers, saving up, past our immediate needs.

She returns: some money toward the rent. She walks around

the room, her hips very, very tough. The cigarette dangles.

The music plays. Friends drop in and visit. She gets a glint in

her eye: disappears: comes back to buy a round of coffees,

some cake, some sandwiches.

Outside it is crowded, dark, hot, the sticky wet of the city

air. The streets are overrun with tourists. The tourist joints are

flowing over. They come to see this life.

Too hot to hang out on a stoop: so we go to the West

Village to a bright pink coffeehouse, especially on weekends,

rich tourists, rich hippie types, and then, at the end, when only

the scum is left hovering in doorways, just plain punks who

wanna fuck.

N returns: she orders a milkshake, sodas, buys cigarettes.

Poor R is going to join us for a cup of coffee: and someone

N has met on the street, A. He is not tall, not short, thin but

not noticeably, nice face but nothing special, intense big brown

eyes, Brazilian. He is street stuff, not the idle rich, but with

manners. There is polite conversation all around. Poor R considers this a formal date with N. A is there to meet me, to win my approval, because he is N ’s new friend, picked up on the

street but she likes him or I wouldn’t be meeting him now.

The walls are pink and dirty. The air conditioning is not

doing so good. The place is crowded. There is only money for

coffee: we have coffee: and coffee: and coffee. N and poor R

disappear, round the corner a block away to R ’s apartment: a

date. A and I talk. It is working out. He has a lot to say. I

don’t mind listening. It is a sad story. Something about how he

was a dancer and in love with a beautiful virgin in Brazil but

her parents oppose their marriage and so he goes on tour and

is in an accident and loses his hand and has punctures all over

his body. He only has one hand. Then about his months in the

hospital and how he couldn’t work anymore as a dancer and

how the girl left him because he was maimed and how he was

arrested for something he didn’t do and ran away from the

61

country altogether and became a fugitive because he couldn’t

make anyone believe him, it was a murder he was wanted for.

He was an artful storyteller because this story took nearly

four hours to tell. I cried. His accent was thick. He spoke

softly and deliberately. He didn’t live around here. He lived

around Times Square. Yeah he had some women out working

for him: old girlfriends but no one he was living with now: but

with N it was different. She comes back without poor R but

loaded with money: poor R got two-timed again: and we drink

coffee and eat and have more coffee and we talk there in the

pink coffeehouse, the jukebox gone quiet. Outside the streets

are emptying, it is nearly dawn. I go to the storefront alone,

thinking about pimps, nervous.*

A sits in the coffeehouse wearing a coat, as if cold. He hides

his arm. It is shrivelled at the elbow. He has tremendous poli-

tesse and dignity. He is not handsome and not not handsome.

He has some gentleness. He smokes like N, like me, cigarettes

one after another, but he holds them longer in his one hand.

He does things slowly: sits very still: slightly stooped: black

hair straight and framing his face in a kind of modified pageboy for boys. His lips are thick but not particularly sensual.

He has watery eyes. His skin is an ochre color. He wears dark

colors. He is intelligent, well-spoken: soft-spoken. When N

and poor R leave he doesn’t blink or flinch or react: he is

harmonious with how we do things: he imposes nothing: he

has a sense of courtesy not unlike N ’s: he seems removed from

physical violence but he can’t be. I watch every muscle move,

trying to figure it out. He can’t be. N comes back and orders

food for us. Poor R manages a stunning ignorance: she has

gone on a date with her lover, just like other girls on a Friday

night. N had left her some hours before, I could see by the

volume of food and the new packs of cigarettes and the new

rounds of coffee. Actual loose dollars are taken out in a

rumpled pile. N gives me some money and some grass and

some cigarettes before she goes off with A. I walk home alone

in the dawn, the streets nearly empty now, the heat beginning

to build for the new day: thinking about pimps: a bit disturbed.

*

6z

N and A are now officially friends and lovers. This means it

isn’t for money. This means he visits us both and talks. This

means we listen to music together. This means he and N go off

alone for whole nights.

He is concerned about us, down in this violent neighborhood. He is concerned about us, so poor, and for what? We should be making real money after all, not small change for

drinks and pukey drugs. We should have enough to finish our

film. He is quiet, gentle, concerned. He is worried for us. He

doesn’t think we are quite safe down here.

He seems to adore N. He is nice to me. He is a good friend.

He brings presents now and then, something nice, a bottle of

wine, like a person.

At night we roam together sometimes: meet his friends at

some late-night joint: the jukebox plays Billie, and we sit while

he talks to his friends, sometimes about us, we can’t understand, especially to one of his friends, a Latino, dark-haired, big moustache, long hair, machismo. They buy us food. We

meet here late at night. A is who we are with. No one asks us

anything. Sometimes he tells us to play something on the

jukebox. He gets us something to eat. It is friendly and not

friendly. It is tense. What are we there for? The men look at

us: make remarks we don’t understand. They play music and

smoke and stare at us. It is ominous. I don’t want to be turned

over to them. It seems possible. There is an edge somewhere.

A sits there polite as ever, our friend. N seems to trust him. He

sits and watches too. The blues vibrate from the machine. The

room is tiny. There are two or three tables against a wall

where we sit. A sits on the outside of the tables, we are blocked

in against the wall, the men stand around. There are a lot of

them, all crowded in, and then spilling over to the sidewalk.

Billie keeps us company while the men stare and do business.

We are quiet.

*

A’s best friend doesn’t say much. He never talks directly to

either of us. N sleeps with both of them by now. She says they

have quite a routine. She says the puncture marks on A’s body

are holes that go right through his skin. Sometimes she does

their laundry or stays with them a few days.

*

63

N meets some of his women. She is not happy. They are real

Times Square whores.

*

He seems to be keeping N separate, apart. He and his best

friend share her.

*

One night he comes to the storefront all soft-spoken, a

friend. He has been thinking about our situation. We are all

standing in the dark dank middle room, near the single mattress. He wants to help us. He has an apartment in Times Square we can move into, both of us. We don’t have to do

anything for him, absolutely nothing. We can just come live

there. N defers to me to say yes or no. I say no. I have been

thinking a lot about pimps. He is unruffled. He is our friend.

If we don’t want to move in with him, it’s OK. He will think of

some other way to help us. He and N go off. I wonder if she is

going to live with him. She does now and then, for a day or

two. He is a friend. I know he adores her: I can see it. I can’t

see him pimping but for a fact he pimps so so much for what I

can see. I like him and she is loyal to him: her loyalty once

given is not breachable: her code is close to absolute, unspoken,

I have never seen it breached: it is his lost hand, the punctures

in his body, his best friend and the routine, his courtesy and

intelligence, and something in him irredeemably outside: she

even does their laundry. I say to her, you know, N, about

pimps. Don’t worry, she says, yeah I know.

I would believe her except for the smack. She doesn’t do it

regular but who knows what it takes, not much. He is besotted

with her but the smack is easy: and he isn’t any fool. I ask N

what his girls on the street are like. She frowns, looks down.

*

He shows me his drawings, pen sketches, elaborate and skillful,

images of horror and death. I show him my poems: the same.

N plays her clarinet. These are family times.

*

He sits in the coffeehouse, in the bar, wherever, as we come

and go: bringing money back: he doesn’t touch it and buys his

own coffee.

*

64

What else can I do? he says solemnly. I can’t dance anymore.

*

I wait for him to mention the apartment again: to seduce, to

convince. Then I will know. He doesn’t. He is either sincere or

no fool. He is no fool but is he also sincere?

Can a pimp be sincere?

Ah, he says, not too often, I wanted to dance.

*

He brings N a silk scarf: and me a book.

*

I am wondering if I should sleep with him: but they are a real

pair, boy and girl: she waits for him and he comes often. I take

my cues from her. She is not obligated, as far as I can see: she

wants him around: she really likes him, for himself as we say,

a lot. He remains nice. I begin to think I am wrong about the

apartment. Then I remember his girls. Then I think about N

and smack. I keep my distance. She is loyal to me too. She

won’t go without me. I think.

*

He died, my daddy, kind man, in a poverty of loneliness and

disregard. I was not a good daughter. Nothing came to me

when he died. I took a bus to the funeral. The relatives who

raised me on and off were there. I hadn’t dressed right. I was

dirty and hot. I only had pants. Him being dead wasn’t the

main thing for them: it was me, not dressed right. The cemetery

was flat and ugly. There were weeds. I got back on the bus

right away. I got back late at night. I walk into the storefront

and I think fucking pig, what the hell is wrong with her, there

are things thrown everywhere, papers all around all over the

floor and clothes thrown all around and everything is a fucking

mess. She is not there. I know she is out at a bar. I am pissed

like hell. I keep looking around, unable to take the mess in.

Then it registers. There is nothing left. Everything is gone. The

records are gone, the record player, the sax, the clarinet, the

typewriter, almost all our clothes, except that some are thrown

all over, every fucking thing that can be picked up and carried

is gone: I walk through the apartment: the metal has been

lifted off the back door like King Kong had done it: it

must have taken hours to do and had to have been done in

daylight: the neighbors must have enjoyed it: and in the re65

frigerator there had been a bottle of vodka, that’s all, and now

the empty bottle was there on the sink. The fucks had drunk

the fucking vodka. There is nothing left, and at the same time

an indescribable mess of strewn things, like junk, trash, like

garbage.

I go to the bars to find N. She is far east, at a rough place I

have gone to long before I even knew her— I am two years

older and show it— and the bars are littered with my lost late

adolescence— I find her— I have fucked all the bartenders in

this bar and the one she is talking to now is the best— and I

grab her and take her home. She is pissed with me until she

sees. It is impossible to calculate our loss. Everything we own.

They ravaged it. Went through. Decimated it. There hadn’t

been much until it was gone. I barely saw the damage the

first time. Barely saw what was gone. Barely remembered what

had been there. We have nothing left, except some T-shirts.

They have even taken underwear and blue jeans. They have

taken belts. They have taken everything.

The next morning our neighbors all greet us with smiles.

The next morning the boys across the street ask us how things

are going.

The next morning the head of the pack smiles and says hi

girls, next time we gonna come for you.

*

We are sleeping on the narrow mattress in the day. Next door

there is a thunderous sound. The thunderous sound moves

from one end of the apartment to the other and back again.

There are screams and laughs and things crash and break. The

feet are loud and fast, running back and forth. There is only a

thin wooden door between us and the next apartment. The

sound is very loud. It is not precisely human, not identifiably

human: it could be anything: like what? a herd of buffalo: we

are drifting off back to sleep: we dismiss it: it can’t be anything:

it is broad daylight: the sound is thunderous, back and forth,

back and forth: we sleep. Later, we go in. They have been

there, while we slept, in broad daylight. Everything is gone

except for what they left broken so we could see it good. They

didn’t take the TV that was in there. Instead they smashed it.

Hey girls we coming for you.

A knock on our door: head of the pack: hey we gonna pay

66

you girls a visit soon. You ready for us. We gonna have a goodtime. He leans against the door. He smiles. I start to close the door. He stops me, still leaning. Hey girl that ain’t gonna help.

Ain’t nothin gonna help. We coming right in. When we ready.

*

lt is having been asleep, hearing them, hearing the smashing,

hearing the plundering, hearing the raucous laughs: hearing:

while out cold: in a coma of sleep: having seen their knives:

knowing them: sleeping through it but hearing it all the same.

They will come: when they ready.

*

I beg N not to go out but she has a date with R. I don’t really

beg, it isn’t in our code, but I ask, unlikely enough. I ask once.

To my way of thinking, it is begging, don’t leave me here

alone. She wants to go, to get out, to get away, with safe little

R in her safe little apartment. She is afraid. Don’t go.

*

I bolt the door behind them, thinking where I can go. The

banging starts. Knocking first. Then banging. The front door.

Hey you got no manners you don’t open the door. Hey it go

worse for you if you don’t open the door. Hey you want we

break it down. Hey you want we come in from next door.

Hey you want we use the back door girl. Banging. Banging.

Silence. Hey girl. Just wanna talk girl you ain’t gonna do no

better than that. You got thirty seconds girl then we come

through the front window girl: it break like a bone girl: you

ever see a bone break girl I gonna show you how you arm

break girl: and I got my boys in the back too you know that

girl. I go to the phone: police, even though they won’t come:

the line is cut: the phone is dead. The back is a jungle.

I open the door. The head of the pack is there. Behind him

there are seven or eight men, slouching, spitting, smoking. They

are several feet behind him. He is smaller than most of them,

dark, curly hair, not shaved, heavy moustache, earring in one

ear, gold, big dark eyes. Now girl this is the way it is, I keep

my word, you open the door we talk. Now you make a choice

girl. See these boys do what I say and now you let me in and

you take care of me real nice girl right now and we have a

good time or you close the door girl and we come in all together

and we get you good girl: you see girl you decide. He pulls out

67

a knife: gold, ornate, the size of a dagger. He fingers it. What

do you want, I say. He says, hey girl I just wanna come in,

have a little smoke, make a little love girl what you think, but

these boys here they ain’t so nice as me they a little rough girl

sometimes they ain’t so nice but you take my word girl you let

me in and I tell them to go home and they go home. I don’t

know what he will do but I know what they will do. I take my

chances with him. I say, you have to leave the knife outside.

He says, no girl hey that knife she my friend she go with me

where 1 go girl. I say, I won’t let you in with the knife. OK,

girl, I put the knife right here, right on this here window girl,

and if anything happen to me girl my boys put this knife right

in your back you understand girl. I nod. He turns to them, says

something in Spanish. They linger. He talks again. They leave.

Ah you see girl you so sweet it hard for them to go but you a

friend of Joe now.

He saunters in, looks around. Oh yeah girl they was nice

records you had, nice. He saunters into the middle room, sits

on the mattress, takes off his shirt. A gold cross glimmers in

his hairy chest. Hey girl now you make me something to eat, I

got to have something to eat girl so I can screw you good. We

got time girl. We got all night. We don’t have much food, I

say. Oh yeah girl that right, well, what you got. I say, there are

hot dogs. You make me hot dogs girl. I want you to make me

hot dogs girl. I am counting the minutes, thinking that maybe

if I can keep him eating or talking or distracted N will come

back or it will get light or he will fall asleep or I will think of

something: I use pacifist strategies, try to make him see I am

human, ask him questions about himself. The boys still outside

girl, I holler and they come, so you cook girl. I cook.

He chatters. He grabs a sharp knife in the kitchen: hey girl

this for me not you. You thinking about using this on your

boyfriend Joe, that ain’t right girl. He eats. Why you not eating

girl? I say I am not hungry. I sit across the huge wooden table

from him, the kitchen dull in the artificial light of a bare bulb.

He eats. Oh this is good girl, you this good girl? We gonna

find out girl.

He drinks iced water. He drinks iced tea. He drinks vodka

out of the bottle. He gets up. OK girl you come.

He saunters back to the mattress. He takes off his pants. 1

68

stand there. There is a banging on the door. I am frozen. Don’t

you say nothing girl or you gonna be dead. The sharp knife is

in his hand. I stand there, quiet, so still. The knocking continues. You know who that is girl? I nod yes, thinking that if I can get to the door maybe I can get help: but afraid it is his

boys. The knocking goes on and on. I don’t dare move. We

wait for it to stop. I say maybe I should see who it is. He says

don’t you move girl, don’t you fucking move. The knocking

stops. He says, now you get over here girl. The knocking starts

again. A deep male voice calls me by name. Oh, I say, it is

someone I know, if I don’t answer he will be worried and do

something, but I can go to the door and tell him to go away.

You do that, says Joe real quiet. You better get him away girl.

You better do that. Or I gonna get you good girl. You ain’t

keeping my boys and me out girl. I promise, I say, I will make

him go away. I promise I won’t say anything. The knocking

continues. I see the knife, I see the cross, I see the hairs on his

naked chest. OK girl you got two minutes then you be here. I

walk toward the door. It is a long, slow walk and I am afraid.

I open the door. It is W, someone N and I know only slightly, a

dealer, a tall, thin, dignified black man: very tall. I step just

slightly outside the door and whisper please help me: I point to

the dagger on the window ledge: I say there’s a man in there I

can’t get out he forced his way in please help me I beg you. I will

take care of it, he says with enormous quiet conviction. He walks

in. Joe is there undressed, on the mattress, the knife in his hand

on his belly. W says, what’s this I hear you fucking junkie you

trying to take my woman from me, I’m gonna fucking kill you.

He says this very quietly but with a deep resonance in his voice.

Joe begins to shake. Hey man I didn’t know she was your girl

man hey I didn’t mean you no shit man. He fumbles with his pants.

He fumbles with his shirt. He starts sweating bad. Hey man if I

know she was your girl man hey I wouldn’t touch man it was just

a joke man. W says, don’t I know you from somewhere man? Joe

says, yeah man, I buy some smack from you but times is hard

man. W says well you come to see me man if you need anything

but I don’t want my woman here bothered. You understand, W

says with quiet seriousness and authority, this is my woman. You

treat her with respect man you understand she belongs to me.

Hey man I didn’t mean nothing by it man.

69

Joe fumbles and sweats. They talk smack. Joe is sloppy and

scared, W is austere and serious. W shows Joe to the door.

Then he comes back.

I thank him. It isn’t enough. He tears into me. He bites my

clitoris and bites it and bites it until I wish I was dead. He

fucks. He bites my clitoris more, over and over, for hours, I

want to die. The pain is shooting through my brain. I am

chewed and bitten and maimed. I am bleeding. He leaves. I

hurt so bad I can’t even crawl. He leaves the front door wide

open.

*

From now on N and I never sleep at the same time: one of us

is always awake with a knife in her hand. We lie down on the

narrow mattress together, never alone, and one sleeps and one

stays awake, knife in hand, knife clutched, ready to use. She

sleeps a few hours, I listen to every sound: knife in my hand.

The sweat is cold now always: no matter how the summer

heat boils and steams and hangs like fire in the air. I sleep a

few hours, wake up in a cold sweat, always to find her wide

awake, eyes wide open, alert, watching the room: anything

moves, it dies. I count on her. I count on the knife. I think I

can use it on myself, if there are too many of them.

*

We know they will come back. I knew Joe would turn me over

to the others when he was done that night or some other. We

know we can’t keep them out. They know. We wait. We don’t

sleep very much at all.

*

I am staggeringly hurt: body and mind.

*

N and I are inside, sitting on the mattress. She is writing in her

notebook. I am staring at the wall. I can walk now. There is a

knock on the door. It is W. He is invited in. I don’t talk. I sit.

N sits. He stands, very tall, then sits. He brings out some grass.

He is soft-spoken and courteous. He rolls a joint. We smoke.

He and N exchange pleasantries. We smoke. I don’t talk. He

speaks directly to me. I stare. I haven’t been talking much but now

I don’t talk at all. He saved me. I can’t think of anything to

say. I think I say thank you. We smoke. My body is slowly

getting numb, hard to move, nearly immobile. Each arm, each

70

leg, is very heavy, like a ton of wet sand. I can’t move. I don’t

talk. We smoke. They talk. They talk about witchcraft, the

occult, drugs. I don’t follow it. He talks to her. I hear it. He

excludes me but refers to me. He talks only to her. You young

women need my protection. I could come here once or twice a

week, get you young women a real bed, you shouldn’t be

sleeping on this mattress on the floor, so you really both sleep

here do you? and you and I could have some real fun with

her, we can do things of real depth, different things, unusual

things that call on deep energies, there are many things you

and I could do with her. I don’t look at him but I know I am

her. I can’t talk. I can’t move. My brain is some dead slug.

Everything is heavy, like a ton of wet sand. My muscles don’t

move. My legs don’t work. I remember crawling after he

chewed me up, and the pain. We could do many things with

her, he says, and there are mysteries we could discover together,

she is the perfect instrument for us to discover these mysteries,

she is so pliant, there are so many subtleties. He talks about a

big bed, and I think he wants to watch N hurt me: he is saying

they will do it to me, he is saying he will give us regular money

every week, he is talking about a big bed and tying me up, I

can’t feel anything but the pain between my legs hanging somewhere in the center of my dead brain: telling me to run, run: but I can barely move: I concentrate every living ounce of will

and energy on moving, one leg at a time, the other leg, slowly,

to get up. It takes nearly forever. I stand up. My mouth moves.

A sound comes out, loud. No. It sounds like a whisper. I walk,

a ton of wet sand inching along a desert, into the kitchen,

collapsing on the table. N says: you heard her. He says he will

leave the grass and come back some other time. The offer still

holds. N can call him anytime. But he will come back anyway.

She should think about it.

All night we talk about a ring of occultists N has heard

about and all the women they have tortured to death and their

witchcraft rites and the way they use sex and drugs ending in

death. She is sure this is true. We are afraid: we think it is a

paranoid fantasy but we believe it anyway: we know somewhere there are these dead women. We do not move all night.

The smoke has nearly paralyzed us. We fall asleep sitting up.

In the morning N examines the grass to see why we couldn’t

7 1

move. She sniffs it and rubs it between her fingers, scrutinizes

it. There are tiny fragments of glass in the weed: pieces of

glass vials. The grass has been soaked in morphine.

I am scared. So is she, I think. I want to disappear. There is

no money. I am too afraid for the streets. We are running out

of speed. I cower on the mattress. She writes in her notebook.

*

I go to a junkie doctor in the Village for a prescription. I can’t