FOUR WALLS EIGHT WINDOWS
NEW YORK
Copyright © 1990, 1991 by Andrea Dworkin.
A F o u r Wa l l s E ig h t W in d o w s F i r s t E d it io n .
First Printing August, 1991.
First paperback printing September, 1992.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmit ed in any form, by any means, including
mechanical, electric, photocopying, recording or otherwise,
without the prior writ en permission of the publisher.
Excerpts from this novel have appeared in The Michigan Quarterly
Review, Vol. XXIX, No. 4, Fall 1990 and The American Voice,
No. 21, Winter 1990.
Mercy was first published
in Great Britain by Seeker & Warburg in 1990.
The author and publisher are grateful to the fol owing for
permission to quote from copyright material: Olwyn Hughes for
“Daddy, ” in Collected Poems by Sylvia Plath, published by Harper
& Row, Publishers, © 1965 1981; Pantheon for Anna Cancogni’s
translation of Sartre: A Life by Annie Cohen-Solal, © 1987
Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Dworkin, Andrea.
Mercy: a novel / Andrea Dworkin.
p.
cm.
I. Title.
PS3554. W85M4 1991
813'. 54—dc20
91-18157
(Cloth) ISBN: 0-941423-69-7
CIP
(Paper) ISBN: 0-941423-88-3
Four Wal s Eight Windows
P. O. Box 548, Village Station
New York, N. Y 10014
Printed in the U. S. A.
F o r Judith Malina
For Michael M oorcock
In M em ory o f Ellen Frankfort
D addy, daddy, you bastard, I’ m through.
“ D ad d y, ” Sylvia Plath
For a small moment have I forsaken
thee; but with great mercies will I gather
thee.
In a little wrath I hid my face from
thee for a moment; but with everlasting
kindness will I have mercy on thee, saith
the Lord thy Redeemer.
Isaiah 54: 7-8
Contents
Not Andrea: Prologue
i
o n e In August 1956 (Age 9)
5
t w o In 1961 and 1962 (Age 14, 15, 16)
29
t h r e e In January 1965 (Age 18)
35
f o u r In February 1965 (Age 18)
56
f iv e In June 1966 (Age 19)
74
s ix In June 1967 (Age 20)
100
s e v e n In 1969, 1970, 1971 (Age 22, 23, 24, 25)
134
e i g h t In March 1973 (Age 26)
164
n in e In October 1973 (Age 27)
214
TEN April 30, 1974 (Age 27)
273
e le v e n April 30, 1974 (Age 27)
308
Not Andrea: Epilogue
334
Author’s N ote
343
Not Andrea: Prologue
N o w I’ve come into m y ow n as a wom an o f letters. I am a
committed feminist, o f course. I admit to a cool, elegant
intellect with a clear superiority over the ape-like men who
write. I don’t wear silk, o f course. I am icy and formal even
alone by myself, a discipline o f identity and identification. I do
not wear m yself out with mistaken resistance, denunciation,
foolhardy anguish. I feel, o f course. I feel the pain, the sorrow ,
the lack o f freedom. I feel with a certain hard elegance. I am
admired for it— the control, the reserve, the ability to make
the fine point, the subtle point. I avoid the obvious. I have a
certain intellectual elegance, a certain refinement o f the mind.
There is nothing w rong with civilized thought. It is necessary.
I believe in it and I do have the courage o f m y convictions. One
need not raise one’s voice. I am formal and careful, yes, but
with a real power in m y style i f I do say so myself. I am not, as
a writer or a human being, insipid or bland, and I have not sold
out, even though I have manners and limits, and I am not
poor, o f course, w h y should I be? I don’t have the stink on me
that some o f the others have, I am able to say it, I am not effete.
I am their sister and their friend. I do not disavow them. I am
committed. I write checks and sign petitions. I lend m y name.
I write books with a strong narrative line in clear, detailed,
descriptive prose, in the nineteenth-century tradition o f
storytelling, intellectually coherent, nearly realistic, not
sentimental but yes with sex and romance and wom en w ho do
something, achieve something, strong women. I am
committed, I do care, and I am the one to contend with, if the
truth be told, because m y mind is clear and cool and m y prose
is exceedingly skillful if sometimes a trifle too baroque. Every
style has its dangers. I am not reckless or accusatory. I consider
freedom. I look at it from many angles. I value it. I think about
it. I’ve found this absolutely stunning passage from Sartre that
I want to use and I copy it out slow ly to savor it, because it is
cogent and meaningful, with an intellectual richness, a moral
subtlety. Y ou don’t have to shout to tell the truth. Y ou can
think. Y ou have a responsibility to think. M y wild sisters revel
in being wretched and they do not think. Sartre is writing
about the French under the German Occupation, well, French
intellectuals really, and he says— “ We were never as free as
under the German Occupation. We had lost all our rights, and,
first o f all, the right to speak; we were insulted every day, and
had to keep silent.. . . and everywhere, on the walls, the
papers, the movie screen, we were made to confront the ugly
mug that our oppressor presented to us as our own: but this is
precisely why we were free. As the German poison seeped into
our minds, every just thought we had was a real conquest; as
an omnipotent police kept forcing silence upon us, every word
we uttered had the value o f a declaration o f rights; as we were
constantly watched, every gesture we made was a commitm ent. ” This is moral eloquence, in the mouth o f a man. This
applies to the situation o f women. This is a beautiful truth,
beautifully expressed. Every just thought is a real conquest,
for women under the rule o f men. They don’t know how hard
it is to be kind. Our oppressor puts his version o f us
everywhere, on walls, in the papers, on the movie screens.
Like a poison gas, it seeps in. Every word we utter is a
declaration o f our rights. Every gesture is a commitment. I
make gestures. I experience this subtle freedom, this freedom
based on nuance, a freedom grotesquely negated by a vulgar,
reckless shout, however sincere. He didn’t know that the Je w s
were being exterminated, perhaps, not then. O f course, yes,
he did know that they had been deported from France. Yes.
And when he published these words much later, in 1949, he
did know, but one must be true to one’s original insights,
one’s true experiences, the glimpses one has o f freedom. There
is a certain pride one takes in seeing something so fine, so
subtle, and saying it so well— and, o f course, one cannot
endlessly revise backwards. His point about freedom is
elegant. He too suffered during the war. It is not a cheap point.
And it is true that for us too every w ord is a declaration o f
rights, every gesture a commitment. This is beautifully put,
strongly put. As a wom an o f letters, I fight for m y kind, for
women, for freedom. The brazen scream distracts. The wild
harridans are not persuasive. I write out Sartre’s passage with
appreciation and excitement. The analogy to the condition o f
wom en is dramatic and at the same time nuanced. I w ill not
shout. This is not the ovens. We are not the Jew s, or, to be
precise, the Je w s in certain parts o f Europe at a certain time.
We are not being pushed into the ovens, dragged in, cajoled in,
seduced in, threatened in. It is not us in the ovens. Such
hyperbole helps no one. I like the w ay Sartre puts it, though
the irony seems unintended: “ We were never as free as under
the German O ccupation. ” Actually, I do know that his
meaning is straightforward and completely sincere— there is
no irony. This embarrasses me, perhaps because I am a captive
o f m y time. We are cursed with hindsight. We need irony
because we are in fact incapable o f simple sincerity. “ We were
never as free as under the German O ccupation. ” It gives the
right significance to the gesture, something Brecht never
managed incidentally. I like the sophistication, the unexpected
meaning. This is what a writer must do: use w ords in subtle,
unexpected w ays to create intellectual surprise, real delight. I
love the pedagogy o f the analogy. There is a mutability o f
meaning, an intellectual elasticity that avoids the rigidity o f
ideology and still instructs in the meaning o f freedom. It
warns us not to be simple-minded. We were never as free as
under the German Occupation. Glorious. Really superb.
Restrained. Elegant. True in the highest sense. De Beauvoir
was my feminist ideal. An era died with her, an era o f civilized
coupling. She was a civilized woman with a civilized militance
that recognized the rightful constraints o f loyalty and, o f
course, love. I am tired o f the bellicose fools.
O N E
In August 1956
(Age 9)
M y name is Andrea. It means manhood or courage. In Europe
only boys are named it but I live in America. Everyone says I
seem sad but I am not sad. I was born down the street from
Walt W hitman’s house, on M ickle Street, in Cam den, in 1946,
broken brick houses, cardboard porches, garbage spread over
cement like fertilizer on stone fields, dark, a dark so thick you
could run your fingers through it like icing and lick it o ff your
fingers. I w asn’t raped until I was almost ten which is pretty
good it seems when I ask around because many have been
touched but are afraid to say. I w asn’t really raped, I guess, just
touched a lot by a strange, dark-haired man w ho I thought was
a space alien because I couldn’t tell how many hands he had
and people from earth only have two, and I didn’t know the
w ord rape, which is ju st some awful word, so it didn’t hurt me
because nothing happened. Y o u get asked if anything happened and you say well yes he put his hand here and he rubbed
me and he put his arm around m y shoulder and he scared me
and he followed me and he whispered something to me and
then someone says but did anything happen. And you say,
well, yes, he sat down next to me, it was in this m ovie theater
and I didn’t mean to do anything w rong and there w asn’t
anyone else around and it was dark and he put his arm around
me and he started talking to me and saying weird things in a
weird voice and then he put his hand in m y legs and he started
rubbing and he kept saying ju st let m e.. . . and someone says
did anything happen and you say well yes he scared me and he
followed me and he put his hand or hands there and you don’t
know how many hands he had, not really, and you don’t want
to tell them you don’t know because then they will think you
are crazy or stupid but maybe there are creatures from Mars
and they have more than two hands but you know this is
stupid to say and so you don’t know how to say what
happened and if you don’t know how many hands he had you
don’t know anything and no one needs to believe you about
anything because you are stupid or crazy and so you don’t
know how to say what happened and you say he kept saying
just let me. . . . and I tried to get away and he followed me
and he. . . . followed me and he. . . . and then they say,
thank God nothing happened. So you try to make them
understand that yes something did happen honest you aren’t
lying and you say it again, strained, thicklipped from biting
your lips, your chest swollen from heartbreak, your eyes
swollen from tears all salt and bitter, holding your legs funny
but you don’t want them to see and you keep pretending to be
normal and you want to act adult and you can barely breathe
from crying and you say yes something did happen and you
try to say things right because adults are so strange and so
stupid and you don’t know the right words but you try so hard
and you say exactly how the man sat down and put his arm
around you and started talking to you and you told him to go
away but he kept holding you and kissing you and talking to
you in a funny whisper and he put his hands in your legs and he
kept rubbing you and he had a really deep voice and he
whispered in your ear in this funny, deep voice and he kept
saying just to let him. . . . but you couldn’t understand what
he said because maybe he was mumbling or maybe he couldn’t
talk English so you can’t tell them what he said and you say
maybe he was a foreigner because you don’t know what he
said and he talked funny and you tried to get away but he
followed you and then you ran and you didn’t scream or cry
until you found your m omma because he might hear you and
find you so you were quiet even though you were shaking and
you ran and then they say thank God nothing happened and
you don’t know w hy they think you are lying because you are
trying to tell them everything that happened ju st the right w ay
and i f you are a stubborn child, a strong-willed child, you say
the almost-ten-year-old version o f fuck you something happened all right the fuck put his hands in m y legs and rubbed me
all over; m y legs; my legs; me; m y; m y legs; m y; m y; m y legs;
and he rubbed me; his arm was around m y shoulder, rubbing,
and his mouth was on m y neck, rubbing, and his hand was
under m y shirt, rubbing, and his hand was in m y pants,
rubbing, and he kept saying ju st let me. . . . and it was a
creepy whisper in some funny language and he was saying
sounds I didn’t understand and then they say the child is
hysterical, something must have happened, the child is
hysterical; and they want to know i f anything came inside or
was outside and you don’t want to tell them that he took your
hand and put it somewhere wet on him in his lap in the dark
and your hand touched something all funny and your hand got
all cold and slim y and they say thank God nothing happened;
and they ask i f something went inside but when you ask inside
where they look aw ay and you are nearly ten but you are a
fully desperate human being because you want to know inside
where so you w ill know what happened because you don’t
know what he did or what it was or how many hands he had
but they don’t ask you that. And your mother says show me and
you don’t know if you should put your arm around her
shoulder, rubbing, or rub your head into her neck, and she says
show me and you try to whisper the w ay he whispered in a deep
voice but you are too far away from her for it to be like him and
you don’t know what he said so you are crying and a little sick
and you point to your legs and say here and she says show me
where he touched you and you say here and you point to your
legs and she says did he put anything in and you say his hands
and she says anything else did he put anything else in and you
don’t know how many hands he had or if he put them in or in
where and you are wearing bermuda shorts because it is hot,
hot summer, August, black ones, too grown up for a girl your
age she told you but you are always fighting to wear black
because you want to be grown up and you are always fighting
with her anyway and this time she let you because she didn’t
want to fight anymore, and she wants to know i f he touched
your knee and she points to your bare knee and you say yes and
she wants to know if he touched higher and you don’t know
how high because you were sitting down and you say my legs
and she asks you if he touched your bermuda shorts and you
say yes and she asks you if he took them o ff and you think she
is trying to trick you because you were at the movies and how
could someone take your bermuda shorts o ff at the movies and
she asks you if he touched under the bermuda shorts and she
wants to know what he touched you with and it was dark and
you couldn't see and you don’t know what he touched you
with or how many hands he had but she doesn’t ask you that
and afterwards sometimes you think he was from outer space
because people from earth have two hands and when you
make a drawing o f him with crayons or pastels you draw a
stick man with a big face and big hands, lots o f hands, and
sometimes you make another hand in the sky coming down
and you never tell that you are drawing him and you say that
he rubbed you with something inside your legs, no, not there,
higher up, and she cries, your beautiful mother cries, with her
long hair, with her black hair down to her shoulders, and her
cotton summer dress with flowers on it from when she was
young, she cries and she sits across from you and she holds
your hands in hers and you feel so sorry because you always do
something wrong and make her angry or sad and this was a
special day when she let you go to the movies by yourself for
the first time because you said you were mature enough and
she let you wear black and you made her cry so you say
momma I’m sorry momma nothing happened m om ma
nothing happened he didn’t hurt me momma I’m fine m omma
honest m omma nothing happened it didn’t m omma honest
nothing; and she says “ pregnant” something; and I am
punished, in m y room, put alone in m y room and not allowed
to come out and she doesn’t like me anymore, and I cry, I am
going to cry until I get old, I am crying for God to see, I am
afraid the man will come again because he came from nowhere
the first time and he disappeared into thin air and if he is from
outer space he can go anywhere or maybe he followed me like
they do on television and I couldn’t see him because he hid
behind trees and cars and God would know if he had followed
me and maybe God could stop him from finding m y room or
it could be like when someone is killed on television and you
think he is dead and then it gets all quiet and he isn’t dead and
he attacks again with a knife or a gun or he is real strong and it
is real quiet but suddenly he appears from nowhere so I cry but
I keep m y eye on the door so I will be alert in case he is just
pretending to be gone but really he sneaked inside the house
and he is ju st waiting or he could come in the w indow ; and
something hurts me like when you fall down and scrape your
knees and the skin is all scraped o ff and it is all bloody and has
cuts in it and dirt in it and your mother cleans it o ff and puts
iodine on it and says it w o n ’t hurt but it burns and she puts a
bandage on it; something hurts somewhere where he rubbed
but I don’t look because I’m afraid and I keep m y hands away
because I don’t want m y hands to touch me and I don’t want to
touch anywhere in m y legs because I’m afraid; and I couldn’t
say something was hurting because I didn’t know if something
was hurting or not or where it was because maybe I was
making it up because it hurt like a scraped knee but it hurt
somewhere that didn’t exist. I wanted God to see me crying so
He would know and it would count. I asked God if there were
men from outer space on earth because He knew if there was
life on other planets but He didn’t answer me; and I knew there
weren’t but I knew He could have made them if He wanted to
and I knew people only had two hands and I didn’t know how
many hands this man had and I couldn’t figure it out no matter
how much I tried because if he was rubbing in some places
how could he be rubbing in so many places and I couldn’t
count how many places and if he was from outer space he
could come into my room now through the air or anytime
from nowhere. I wanted God to tell me the truth because I was
afraid. I was trying to tell God I was hurt because I thought
God should know and let me stay in m y room and keep the
man away and I wanted to stay in my room a long time, until I
got old, and I wanted God to keep my mother away because
she didn’t like me anymore and I didn’t want to take o ff my
bermuda shorts or show her any more and I didn’t want her to
look at me anymore, and I thought God should know I needed
Him and where was He? I thought maybe the man wasn’t a
bad man because they said nothing happened after all and I
looked grown up so how could he know I was just a child and I
wasn’t sure if he thought I was a child or not because I did look
very grown up and act very grown up but I told him I was a
child and he should go away but I said it in a very grown-up
way. I cried because they said nothing happened and because I
didn’t know if the man knew I was a child and I cried because I
wanted God to know something had happened and I was a
child and I wanted God to say w hy it was less bad if I wasn’t a
child because I was still the same me if I was or if I wasn’t. And
for the first time I didn’t want to be grown up because all the
adults said it was less bad. I cried because I didn’t see how it
could be less bad; and if I grew up were men going to be
putting themselves on me in movies only it wouldn’t be bad
because I wouldn’t be a child anymore. I cried because God
was busy somewhere else and didn’t come and if I cried He
w ould know I was hurting so much somewhere that didn't
exist and He could find it because He lived somewhere that
didn’t exist and He would know what I meant even if I
couldn’t say it and I w ouldn’t have to point here and here and
here and so I kept crying in case He didn’t know yet that He
should be coming to me now even though people were sick
and hungry all over and He had to see them too. I used to talk
to God, especially when m y mother was sick and in the
hospital and m y daddy had to be w orking so hard all day and
all night and God would be pretty near me, in the same room,
near me, and I wanted to know things like w hy anyone had to
die or be poor or starve in China, and if China was real or ju st a
story adults made up, and w hy colored people were treated so
bad, and w hy so many Jew s were dead; and I can’t remember
what He said but I always thought someday I would
understand if I kept trying to pin Him down and maybe I
could convince Him not to have things be so bad; and I had
complicated discussions with Him about w hy He made things
the w ay He did, because I didn’t think He did it right, and I
wanted to be a scholar when I grew up and write things about
what God meant and intended and He would listen to m y
questions and arguments but the adults wouldn’t; and I heard
Him inside m y head, and it was like He was in the room, but it
was never scary and it always made me peaceful even though I
thought He hadn’t done things completely right and I would get
calmed down and quiet even when I had been begging Him to let
m y mother get better or at least not die. I talked to Him a lot
when m y mother was in the hospital for an operation that might
kill her and they told me she might die right then and I had a high
fever and appendicitis and a rash and the adults told me I had to
tell her over the phone that I was all right because she must not
w orry and die and I knew it was wrong to lie, especially because
she might die right then or that night or the next day,
and my last words to her would be lies, and I wanted to cry to
her, but the adults said I wasn’t allowed, and it didn’t matter if
God said it was wrong to lie if adults said you had to lie because
you had to do what adults said not what God said. Y ou had to
be careful not to tell anyone you talked with God because they
might think you were crazy and you had to make sure n ob od y.
heard you talking to Him and you had to remember not to tell
the doctor. They told you to believe in Him and you were
supposed to pray and they sent you to Hebrew School and you
had to go to the children’s services where girls weren’t allowed
to do anything anyway but He wasn’t supposed to talk to you.
He talked to Moses and Abraham but you were just Andrea
from Camden even though Abraham had just been a boy
herding sheep when he figured out there was one God. He had
been staring up in the sky trying to think about God and he
thought God was the moon but the moon disappeared when
night was over and then he thought God was the sun but the
sun disappeared when the day was over and then he figured
out God had to be there all the time so He couldn’t be the sun
or the moon or any king because they died or any idol because
you could break it and you weren’t so different from Abraham
before he grew up. Except that you didn’t understand how he
knew God couldn’t be air because air is everywhere all the time
and the teacher didn’t know but they never say they don’t
know, they just make you feel stupid for asking something.
Y ou were supposed to pray but you couldn’t lead the prayers
because you were a girl and you couldn’t read from the Torah
so a whole bunch o f boys who were a lot stupider than you got
to do all the important things and you weren’t supposed to
argue with God although the rabbis did it all the time but you
were a girl and you weren’t allowed to be a rabbi anyw ay and
all the rabbis who argued with Him were dead anyway and
none o f the rabbis you ever saw or heard who were alive ever
argued with God at all. Y ou thought they just didn’t care
enough but they kept telling you rules and what you had to do
and what you couldn’t do and how to grow up and what to
think but you knew that the dead rabbis couldn’t have been
like them and hadn’t just learned rules and so sometimes you
would write arguments in the margins o f books just like the
great rabbis because you wanted to make commentaries like
they did but you weren’t supposed to write in any holy book
even if it was for children so you would have to hide your
writings and you would have to try to argue with God out
loud in person but hiding it but mostly you would talk with
God when you were crying for your mother or had had a big
fight with her or if you were very scared. I had a big fight with
God when I learned in Hebrew School that women couldn’t
go into the Tem ple when they had their periods because I got
mine when I was nine, I was an adult when I went to the
movies alone in the Bible, and it had hurt so terrible, so bad,
and still did every month, and I couldn’t think when anyone
would need God more, and how could He keep me aw ay and
say aw ful things like that I was unclean when He gave you the
thing. We were studying Leviticus and I was in class and I was
angry with the teacher who sat slumped over the book and
told me what God had said which I could see for m yself N o
one else was upset but maybe they hadn’t gotten their periods
yet and the teacher never would and he could go into the
Tem ple all the time, the whole month, all slumped over and
stupid. When I had it out with God I tried to explain over and
over that I really was sincere and w hy would He want to keep
someone sincere like me out o f the Tem ple and there w asn’t
any good answer that I could figure out except that it w asn’t
sincerity God was looking for; He wanted people w ho didn’t
bleed so w hy had He made you bleed; and you thought that
having a baby would be even worse and hurt even more and
He said you were even more unclean and had to stay out even
longer but you could solve that by not having a baby. And if
you had a baby you would have nine months when you could
go into the Temple and make God happy but when it got real
bad and you needed Him you couldn’t go because once it got
really bad and blood came you were unclean. I thought
women should have their babies in the Temple where God
was because it might hurt less. The teacher said you had to
accept things you didn’t understand and God didn’t have to be
fair but if God wasn’t who would be and how would they
know how? The teacher said that when he went to dinner in
people’s houses he would take a book out o f the people’s
bookcases and blow dust o ff it to show the wife the books
weren’t clean and how lazy and dirty she was. He said the
books were always dusty because women were lazy and didn’t
take care o f their husbands’ books. I didn’t understand w hy it
wasn’t rude to blow dust o ff someone’s books and make them
feel bad and I couldn’t understand how she could stand it after
she had made him dinner and been real nice. But he just
laughed and said women were unclean and he had just proved
it. I asked him if his books were dusty and he said his wife
cleaned them and he blew on them. I didn’t go to God with the
problem o f the books and the dust but I didn’t think it was fair
either. I asked my mother and she said he was my teacher and I
should listen to him but I decided not to anymore. N o w I had
another problem on my mind. Why was what the man did less
bad if I wasn’t a child? If I was a grown-up and went to the
movies and wanted to see the movie, w hy would it be less bad
if the man stopped me and if he scared me and if I had to run
away and i f he hurt me and if he made me cry and i f I didn’t
want him sitting next to me and whispering or anything. I
wanted to know if God thought it was less bad; and I hated the
adults for saying it was less bad. I wanted to know where God
was when the man was there and w hy God didn’t make the
man go away. I wanted to know if God was there too. The
Hebrew School teachers said God knows everything and can
do anything and H e’s always there, everywhere. I believed He
could do anything and knew everything but I didn’t think He
was always there because too many bad things happened and if
He was there they couldn’t ju st happen; how could they? I f I
see someone do something bad I’m not supposed to ju st
watch. M om m a says call the police or an adult. H ow could He
be in the movies with me when the man came? He w ouldn’t
even come to m y room after because He knew all about it and
felt ashamed for making such a horrible man. I knew He could
do anything and made us all so w hy did He make that man?
Was God there like the teachers kept saying and the rabbis kept
saying and did He look or was He looking somewhere else
because He could have turned to look somewhere else because
it didn’t take so long and time for God must be different and it
must have been just a small minute for Him to turn away. O r if
He had to go to India or somewhere maybe He w asn’t there. I
sort o f thought He was there but I couldn’t believe that H e’d
ju st sit and watch because that w ouldn’t be right and God has
to do things that are right. M aybe He turned aw ay but maybe
He was there. M aybe He looked. I thought He was there, I
didn’t feel alone, but I couldn’t stand to think He had ju st
looked so I stopped thinking it but the only w ay I could stop
thinking it was to think that probably God didn’t exist anyw ay
and was only a superstition and there was no God the same
w ay there were no space creatures. I lectured m yself that I was
a child and I was going to grow up even though I didn’t want
to anym ore and someday I would understand w hy it was less
bad if I w asn’t a child unless the adults were just lying, because
adults lie a lot to children I had found out. M aybe they were
lying about God too and maybe there wasn’t one. I sort o f
thought God had been there though. The theater was em pty
but it didn’t feel em pty and there’s a special kind o f dark that
feels like G o d ’s in it, it’s got dots o f light in it all dancing and
sparkling or it’s almost thick so it’s just all surrounding you
like a nest or something, it’s something alive and you’re
something alive and it’s all around you, real friendly, real close
and kind as if it will take care o f you. I was so excited to be at
the movies by myself. I thought it was a very great day in my life
because usually I would be fighting with my mother and she
wouldn’t let me do anything I wanted to do. I had to play with
children and she didn’t like for them to be older than me but all
my real friends were older than me but I kept them secret. I
had to go shopping with her and try on clothes and go with her
to see the wom en’s things and the girls’ things and there were
millions o f them, and they were all the same, all matching sets
with the dressy ones all messed up with plastic flowers, all
fussy and stupid, and they were so boring, all skirts and
dresses and stupid things, little hats and little white gloves, and
I could only try on things that she liked and I wanted to read
anyway. I liked to walk around all over and go places I had
never seen before and I would always try to find a w ay to
wander around and not have to shop with her, except I loved
being near her but not shopping. N o w she was going on a big
trip to Lits, the biggest department store in Camden and
almost near Philadelphia, right near the bridge, and I loved to
be near the bridge, and I used to love to have lunch with m y
mother at the lunch counter in the giant store because that
wasn’t like being a child anymore and we would talk like
girlfriends, even holding hands. So this time I asked if I could
go to the movie across the street while she shopped and come
back to Lits all by m yself and meet her when the movie was
over and instead o f fighting with me to make me do what she
wanted she said yes and I couldn’t believe it because it made
me so happy because she didn’t fight with me and she had faith
in me and I knew I could do it and not get lost and handle the
money right and get back to the store on time and be in the
right place because I was mature. I had to act like a child but I
w asn’t one really. She wanted to have a child but I had been on
m y ow n a long time so I had to keep acting like a child but I
hated it. When she was sick I was on m y own and when I was
with relatives I was alone because they didn't know anything
and when she was in the hospital or home from the hospital I
did the ironing and I peeled the potatoes and once when she
couldn’t breathe and fell on the kitchen floor and it was late at
night and m y daddy was w orking I called the doctor and he
told me to get her whiskey right aw ay but I didn’t know what
whiskey was or how to find some so he told me to go to the
neighbors and I did and I got her whiskey and I ran like he told
me to in the dark at night and I took care o f her and made her
drink it even though she was on the floor dead and the doctor
said i f not for how calm I was she would have died but I w asn’t
calm and I wanted to cry but I didn’t. I thought she was dead
and I stopped breathing. I had already lived in lots o f different
houses and you can’t act like some normal child even though
everyone wants you to be just normal and they don’t want you
to feel bad but you have to be grown up and not give them
trouble and they never know what is in your heart or what you
really think about because their children are normal to them
and you aren’t their children and their children don’t know
about dying or being alone so you have to pretend. So I was
grow n up inside and acted grow n up all the time except when
m y mother was around because she wanted to have a child, a
real child, and got angry i f I didn’t act like a child because it
upset her to think I had got grow n up without her when she
w asn’t there because she wanted to be the mother o f a real
child. When I forgot to be a child or didn’t want to be I made
her very mad at me and very unhappy and she thought I was
trying to hurt her on purpose but I w asn’t because I loved ju st
being near her, sitting near to her when she drank her coffee,
and I was so proud once when I had helped m y daddy shovel
snow and she let me drink some coffee ju st like her. I loved her
hair. I loved when she talked to me about things, not telling
me what to do but just said things to me about things not
treating me like a baby. I loved when she let me go somewhere
with her and her girlfriends. I loved even when she was sick
but not real sick and was in bed for many days or sometimes
many weeks and I was allowed to go in and visit her a little and
sit on the bed and watch television with her and we would
watch “ The $64, 000 Question, ” and we were both crazy for
Charles Van Doren because he was so cute and so intellectual
and we rooted for him and bit our lips waiting for him to
answer and held hands and held our breath. Then I had to leave
her alone because I had tired her out but I felt wonderful for
hours after, so warm and happy, because m y mother loved
me. We held hands and we sat. But I couldn’t stand the stuff
she made me do. She made me sew and knit and do stupid
things. I was supposed to count the stitches and sit still and be
quiet and keep my legs closed when I sat down and wear white
gloves and a hat when I went out in a dress. She made me close
my legs all the time and I kept trying to get her to tell me w hy I
couldn’t sit how I wanted but she said girls must not ever sit so
sloppy and bad and she got mad because I said I liked to have
m y legs open when I sat down and I always did what I wanted
even if I got punished. She said I was a relentless child. But if I
had to think about closing my legs all the time I couldn’t just
sit and talk and I thought it was silly and stupid and I w asn’t
going to do it and she slapped me and told me how I was just
trying to hurt her. Sometimes she screamed and made me sit
with m y legs closed counting stitches knitting and I wanted
her to die. I wanted to go everywhere and I would lie and say I
was somewhere I was allowed to be and I would go
somewhere I had never been just to see it or just to be alone or
ju st to see what it was like or if anything would happen. Once I
got caught because two boys who were bigger and older
threw a Christmas tree at me and it hit the top o f m y head and
blood started running down all over me. I was walking on a
trashy dirt road but it had trees and bushes on it and even some
poison sumac on the trees which was bright red and I thought
it was beautiful and I used to pretend it was Nature and I was
walking in Nature but children w eren’t supposed to go there
alone because it was out o f the way. The tw o boys came
running out o f the bushes and trees and threw a whole
Christmas tree at m y head and m y head got cut open and
blood started running down and I got home walking with the
blood coming down and I got put in bed and the doctor came
and it w asn’t anything, only a little cut with a lot o f blood he
said. He said the head could bleed a lot without really being
hurt bad. But I had been some place I w asn’t supposed to go so
it was m y fault anyw ay even i f I had been hurt very bad. I was
supposed to learn that you weren’t supposed to go strange
places but instead I learned that m y head didn’t get smashed or
cracked open and I w asn’t going to die and I could do what I
wanted i f I w asn’t afraid o f dying; and I wasn’t. I had another
life all apart from what m y momma said and wanted and
thought and did and I did what I wanted and she couldn’t stop
me and I liked going places she wasn’t and I liked not having to
listen to her or stay with her or be like some prisoner where she
could see me and I liked doing what I wanted even if it was
nothing really. I hated her telling me everything not to do and
I stopped listening to her and no one knows all the things I did
or all the places I went. I liked it when she was away. I knew it
was bad o f me to like it because she was sick but I liked being
alone. I got sick o f being her child. I’d get angry with her and
yell at her for trying to make me do things. But I was always
nice to the other adults because you wanted them to like you
because then they left you alone more and sometimes they
would talk to you about things if you asked them lots o f
intelligent questions and made them talk to you. And you
have to be nice to adults to show you have manners and so they
w o n ’t watch you all the time and because you get punished i f
you aren’t nice to them because adults get to punish you if they
want and you can’t stop them. I knew I had to be nice to the
man in the movies because he was an adult and I had to talk to
adults in a certain w ay because I was a child and I got punished
if I didn’t but I also wanted to act like an adult so they would
leave me alone so I had to talk t o him like an adult and not cry
or be stupid or act silly or act like a baby or be rude or raise my
voice or run away or be scared like a baby. Y ou had to say
mister or sir and you had to be polite and if you wanted to be
grown up you had to talk quiet and be reasonable and say
quiet, intelligent things in a certain quiet, reasonable way.
Children cried. Y ou didn’t cry. Little babies screamed like
ninnies. Y ou didn’t scream. Adults didn’t scream when
someone talked to them quietly. The man talked very quiet.
The man was very polite. I was too grown up to scream and
cry and then I would have had to leave the movie if I made
noise because you weren’t even allowed to make any noise in a
movie. You weren’t allowed to whisper. I couldn’t understand how come the man kept talking once the movie started
because I knew you weren’t allowed to talk during it. M y
daddy hated for me to cry. He walked away in disgust. M y
momma yelled at me but my daddy went away. Adults said I
was a good child or I was very mature for my age or I had
poise. Sometimes they said I was a nice girl or a sweet child or
a smart, sweet child with such nice manners. It was a big act on
my part. I waited for them to go away so I could go
somewhere and do what I wanted but I wanted them to like
me. M y momma made me talk with respect to all adults no
matter what they did. Sometimes a teacher was so stupid but
m y momma said I had to talk with respect or be quiet and I
wasn’t allowed to contradict them or even argue with them at
all. One teacher in regular school made her pets stand behind
her when she was sitting at her desk in the front o f the room
and you had to brush o ff her collar, just stand there behind her
for fifteen minutes or a half hour or longer and keep brushing
her collar on her shoulders with your open hands, palms
down, stroking all the whole w ay from her neck to her arms.
She sat at her desk and we would be taking a test or writing
something or answering her questions and she would say
someone had to come up and stand behind her and she wore
one o f those fuzzy collars you put on top o f sweaters and
someone had to stand behind her chair facing the class and
with their hands keep brushing the fuzzy collar down,
smoothing it down, with one stroke from her neck to her
shoulder, the left hand had to stroke the left side o f her collar
and the right hand had to stroke the right side o f her collar, and
it had to be smooth and in rhythm and feel good to her or she
would get mean and say sarcastic things about you to the class.
Y ou just had to stand there and keep touching her and they’d
stare at you. Y ou were supposed to like it because she only
picked you if she liked you or if you were done your test early
or i f you were very good and everyone else stared at you and
you were the teacher’s pet. But m y arms got tired and I hated
standing there and I felt funny and I thought it was boring and
I didn’t see w hy I couldn’t do something else like read while I
was waiting for the test to be over and I tried to prolong it but I
couldn’t too much and I thought she was mean but the meaner
she was the more you wanted her to like you and be nice to you
because otherwise she would hurt you so much by saying
awful things about you to the class. And m y mother said she
was the teacher and an adult and I had to be respectful and do
what she said. I had to be nice to adults and do what they said
because they were adults and I wanted to grow up so I
w ouldn’t have to listen to them anymore and obey them but
the only w ay to get them to think you were grow n up was to
obey them because then they would say you were mature and
acting like an adult. Y ou had to brush the teacher’s collar and
no one ever had to say w hy to you even i f you kept asking and
they just told you to keep quiet and stop asking. She could
make you stand in the corner or sit alone or keep you after
school or give you a bad mark even if you knew everything. I
wanted to be an adult like my daddy. He was always very
polite and intelligent and he listened to people and treated
them fair and he didn’t yell and he explained things if you
asked why except sometimes when he got tired or fed up. But
he was nicer than anyone. He didn’t treat people bad, even
children. He always wanted to know what you were thinking.
He listened to what everybody said even if they were children
or even if they were stupid adults and he said you could always
listen even if you didn’t agree and even if someone was dumb
or rude or filled with prejudice or mean and then you could
disagree in the right way and not be low like them. He said you
should be polite to everyone no matter who they were or
where they came from or if they were colored or if they were
smart or stupid it didn’t make any difference. M y relatives and
teachers were pretty stupid a lot and they weren’t nice to
Negroes but I was supposed to be quiet even then because they
were adults. I was supposed to know they were wrong
without saying anything because that would be rude. I got
confused because he said you needed to be polite to Negroes
because white people weren’t and white people were wrong
and Jew s like us knew more about it than anyone and it was
meaner for us to do it than anyone but I also had to be polite to
the white people who did the bad things and used the bad
words and said the ugly things that were poisonous and made
the six million die. M y daddy said I had to be quiet because I
was a child. M y daddy said I had to be polite to my uncle who
called colored people niggers and he said I had to stay quiet and
when I was grown up I could say something. I watched my
daddy and he was quiet and polite and he would wait and listen
and then he would tell m y uncle he was wrong and Negroes
were just like us, especially like us, and they weren’t being
treated fair at all but I didn’t think it helped or was really good
enough because m y uncle never stopped it and I wanted to
explode all the time. M y daddy always said something but it
was ju st at the end because m y uncle would go aw ay and not
listen to him and no one listened to him, except me, I’m pretty
sure o f that. And once when m y mother was sick and going
into the hospital and I had to go stay in m y uncle’s house I cried
so hard because I was afraid she would die but also I knew he
would be calling colored people bad names and I would have
to be quiet and I had to live there and couldn’t go aw ay and m y
daddy told me specially as an order that I had to be quiet and
respectful even though m y uncle was doing something awful.
I didn’t understand w hy adults were allowed to do so many
things w rong and w hy children had to keep quiet all the time
during them. I stayed aw ay out o f the house as long as I could
every day, I hung out with teenagers or I’d just hang out alone,
and I prayed to God that m y uncle w ouldn’t talk but nothing
stopped him and I would try not to m ove and not to breathe so
I w ouldn’t run aw ay or call him bad names or scream because
it caused me such outrage in m y heart, I hated him so much for
being so stupid and so cruel. I sometimes had cuts on the inside
o f m y mouth because I would bite down to stop from talking
back and I would press m y fingernails into m y palms so bad
they would bleed and I had sores all over m y hands so I bit m y
nails to keep the sores from coming. Y ou had to do what
adults said no matter what even if you didn’t know them or
they were creeps or very bad people. The man was an adult.
He w asn’t so mean as m y uncle in how he talked, he talked
nicer and quieter. I was sitting there, acting grow n up,
wearing m y black bermuda shorts. Outside it was hot and
inside it was cold from air-conditioning. I liked the cold inside.
O ur house was hot and the city was hot but the movie was nice
and cold and the sweat dried on you and I liked how amazing it
felt. The man sat down next to me. There were a million empty
seats and the theater was like a huge, dark castle, but he
sat down right next to me, on m y left. The whole big theater
was empty. The usher was a teenager but I didn’t think he was
cute. He had a light blue uniform and a flashlight. He showed
me to my seat. He wanted it in the middle but I kept wanting
to go closer to the screen. I sat down in front where I’m not
allowed with my parents because they think it’s too close but I
like it because then the movie is big and it seems like the people
are giants and you forget everything looking at them. The
theater was so big and the ceiling was so high and you could
get lost in it except that the seats were all in rows. The theater
was dark but not completely dark. There was dim light but
not enough light really to see in or to read my book in. I had a
book stuffed in my pocket. I always carried a book. I liked to
read whenever I could. Y ou could read almost anywhere but
there wasn’t enough light even for me so I had to sit and wait
for the lights to go down all the w ay and the movie to start. I
crossed m y legs because I thought it was sophisticated. I
crossed them one way, then the other way. I opened the top
buttons on my blouse because I was alone now and I could do
what I wanted. The man sat down and the usher wasn’t there
because I tried to look but I didn’t want to insult the man by
acting like anything was wrong. I didn’t understand w hy he
had to sit there and I wished he wouldn’t but you had to be nice
to people who sat next to you in a bus or in a synagogue or
anywhere and I wanted to move but he hadn’t done anything
bad and I knew it would be an insult to him and I didn’t think I
was better than other people. He said some things to me and I
tried to look straight ahead and I tried to be polite and not talk
to him at the same time and I tried to ask him to leave me alone
but not to be rude because he was an adult and it wasn’t right to
be mean anyway. I didn’t understand what was w rong
because people sit next to people all the time but I thought he
could move over one seat and not be right next to me but I
didn’t know how to say he should m ove over w ith o u t. it
seeming like I was mean or thought he was dirty or poor or
something bad. He said things and I said yes or no or I don’t
know or I don’t think so and kept looking ahead to show I
w asn’t interested in talking and had other things on m y mind
and he told me I was pretty and grow n up and I said I was ju st a
child really and I had never been to the m ovies before m yself
and m y mother was waiting for me and I wanted to watch the
m ovie but when someone says yo u ’re pretty you have to say
thank you. Then the lights went o ff and it was really dark and
the room was dark and big, an enormous cave o f darkness, and
I felt buried alive in it as if it wasn’t good and then the light
started flickering across things from the screen and the man
put his arm around m y shoulder and I asked him not to touch
me but I was very polite because I thought he was just being a
friendly person because people only touched you if they were
your friends or your relatives and liked you and I wanted to
scream for the usher to come but I was afraid o f making noise
because it w asn’t right to make noise and I didn’t want to do
something w rong and insult the man and he did all those
things, many things but as i f it was one thing with no breaks or
stops in it because he ju st curled and curved and slid all over
with his arms everywhere and his mouth all over and his hands
everywhere and keeping me in the seat without stopping, and
he kept whispering and he hurt me and I didn’t know what to
do except that grow n-ups don’t cry or make noise and he
pushed his hands in me and I didn’t know what to do, except
he was hurting me, and he slumped more over me and in m y
chest and kept pressing me and then he slumped again and
shaked and stopped pressing so hard and I pulled m yself aw ay
from him grabbing on me and I ran and I ran all the w ay up the
aisle in the dark and I found the usher w ho was all the w ay in
the back and I said the man was bothering me but I was afraid
to say what he did and the usher didn’t say anything or do
anything so I asked if I could sit somewhere else please and
could he keep the man from bothering me please because I
knew you weren’t supposed to talk in the movies and the usher
could make you stop and he just stared at me and he took me
somewhere else with his flashlight and I sat there making my
shirt right and my pants right but I couldn’t make them right
and wiping my hand dry and I sat there looking all around in
the dark and there wasn’t enough light from the movie for me
to see where the man was and I couldn’t look at the movie
because I kept looking for the man but I was afraid that if he
saw me looking for him he would think I was wanting him to
come and I kept trying to see where he was in the dark and i f he
was going to try to talk to me more and the movie kept going
on but I was afraid to watch it because maybe the man would
come and I knew I couldn’t find my mother because it wasn’t
time to meet her yet and I had to stay in the movies or I didn’t
have anywhere to go and then the man came and I was going
to scream or hit him or shout but I was afraid to because I was
never allowed to hit adults, no such thing could ever happen,
and he looked at me and he stared and he walked by and down
the aisle and I was afraid he would come back and I got up and I
ran, I ran out, I ran into the street, into the cars, into the hot air,
into the light, it was like running into a wall o f heat and I
couldn’t breathe, and I ran to the department store and once
when I was a little child I had gotten lost in a department store
and I was lost from m y mother a long time and someone took
me to the manager because I was crying and lost and scared
and they announced over the loudspeaker for m y mother to
come find me and she came and this was the first time I was
ever so scared since then but I w ouldn’t cry or make noise
because I didn’t want the man to find me so I kept running and
saying I needed the manager and I needed m y mother and it
was an emergency but I kept as quiet as I could and I couldn’t
breathe so they called her on the loudspeaker and then when
she came I shook and cried and I tried to tell her and she said,
did anything happen, and I kept saying yes and I kept trying to
say each thing that happened and then we were on the bus and I
kept crying but I w asn’t supposed to talk because people could
hear and it was something bad, and then we got home and I
said how I didn’t want the man to sit next to me and I didn’t
know how to tell him to go away because he was an adult and I
didn’t mean to do something w rong but I didn’t know how to
tell the man not to rub because I didn’t even know what it was
or if it was a mistake because maybe he was making a mistake
because it was dark and maybe he thought I was someone else
that he knew or it was some other mistake and when I told him
he didn’t listen to me and he rubbed me and I didn’t want him
to, I wanted him to go away, and I tried to be polite and act like
an adult and not make noise in public and I didn’t cry like a
child and he had a dark jacket on and they asked me if it was
leather but I didn’t know what leather was and they asked me
what it felt like but I didn’t know how to say and he had on a
striped shirt and he had on dark pants and he had dark hair and
he didn’t sit straight even when he first sat down and he had
bad posture because he couldn’t sit straight and he smoked and
he asked me i f I wanted to smoke, and I did but I didn’t say that
to m y mother because I just looked ahead o f me and said no
even though I wanted to and so I was good and I didn’t have to
say I wanted to, and then he slumped all over me and held me
still with his arm around m y shoulder and his head pinned
under m y head so I couldn’t m ove aw ay and I couldn’t
describe him enough for them but I could still see him; and m y
mother cried; and now I can see him, almost, I can’t remember
yesterday as well, even now he’s right next to me, almost, on
me, almost, the pressure o f his body covering m y heart,
almost, I can touch him, nearly, I could search the earth for
him and find him, I think, or if he sat down next to me I w ould
die, except I can’t quite see his face, nearly but not enough, not
quite, and I can feel his fingers going in, almost, if I touch my
face his fingers are more real, and it hurts, the bruised, scraped
labial skin, the pushed, twisted skin; and my daddy came into
my room after I couldn’t cry anymore and said nothing
happened and not to cry anymore and we wouldn’t talk about
it anymore; and I waited to be pregnant and tried to think i f I
would die. I could have the baby standing up and I wouldn’t
make any noise. M y room is small but I can hide behind the
door.
T W O
In 1961 and 1962
(Age 14, 15, 16)
M y name is Andrea. It means manhood or courage. In Europe
only boys are named it. I live in the U . S . A. I was bom down
the street from Walt W hitman’s house, on M ickle Street in
Camden in 1946, after the war, after the bomb. I was the first
generation after the bomb. I’ve always known I would die.
Other generations didn’t think so. Everyone says I’m sad but
I’m not sad. It doesn’t make me sad. The houses were brick,
the brick was made o f blood and straw, there was dust and dirt
on the sidewalks, the sidewalks were gray, the cement was
cracked, it was dark, always dark, thick dark you could reach
out and touch and it came down all around you and you could
feel it weighing on you and bumping up against you and
ramming you from behind. Y o u m oved against the dark or
under it or it pushed you from behind. The dark was
everything. Y o u had to learn to read it with your fingers or
you would be lost; might die. The cement was next, a great
gray desert. Y ou were on it, stuck and abandoned, a great gray
plain going on forever. They made you fall on your knees on
the cement and stay there so the dark could come and get you.
The dark pushed you, the cement was the bed, you fell on
your knees, the dark took you, the cement cradled you, a
harsh, angry embrace tearing the skin o ff your knees and
hands. Some places there is a great, unbearable wind, and the
fragile human breaks in it, bends in it, falls. Here there was this
dark; like the great, unbearable wind but perfectly still, quiet,
thick; it pushed without moving. Them in the dark, the
cement was the bed, a cold slat o f death, a grave with no rest,
the best bed you could get, the best bed you would ever have,
you fell forward on your knees pushed by the dark from
behind and the dark banged into you or sometimes there were
boys in cars flying by in the dark and then coming around
from behind, later, the same ones; or sometimes different
ones. The dark was some army o f them, some mass, a creature
from the deep, the blob, a giant parasite, some spreading
monster, pods, wolfmen. They called you names and they
hissed, hot steam o ff their tongues. They followed you in
beat-up cars or they just stood around and they whistled and
made noises, and the dark pushed you down and banged into
you and you were on your hands and knees, the skin torn off,
not praying, waiting, wanting all right, wanting for the dark
to move o ff you, pick itself up and run. The dark was hissing
and hot and hard with a jagged bone, a cold, brutal bone, and
hips packed tight. The dark wasn’t just at night. The dark was
any time, any place; you open your eyes and the dark is there,
right up against you, pressing. You can’t see anything and you
don’t know any names, not who they are or the names for
what they do; the dark is all you know, familiar, old, from
long ago, is it Nino or Joe or Ken or Curt, curly hair or
straight, hard hips, tight, driven, familiar with strange words
whispered in your ear, like wind lashing it. Do they see you,
do they know your name? I’m Andrea you whisper in the dark
and the dark whispers back, okay babe; shut up babe; that’s
cool babe; that’s a pretty name babe; and pulls out all the w ay
and drives back in, harder, more. Nino is rough and bad, him
and his friend, and he says what’s w rong with making love
here, right now, on this lunch counter. We are in Lits. I’m
alone, a grown-up teenage girl; at the lunch counter, myself.
They come up to me. I don’t know the name o f the other one. I
have never heard anyone say “ making love” before. Nino
takes the salt shaker and the pepper shaker from the counter
and he rubs them against each other, slow , and he talks staring
at me so I can’t m ove m y head aw ay from his eyes and he says
w hat’s w rong with it, here, now , in the daytime, on this lunch
counter, you and me, now, and I don’t know w hat’s w rong
with it; is N ino one o f them, in the dark? Stuart is m y age from
school before he stopped coming and went bad and started
running with gangs and he warned me to stay aw ay from him
and Nino who is older and bad and where they go. N ino has a
knife. I write m y first poem for Nino; I want it to be N ino; I’d
touch him back. I ran away lots o f times. I was on the bus to
N ew Y o rk lots o f times. I necked with old men I found on the
bus lots o f times. I necked with Vincent and Charles different
times, adults, Vincent had gray hair and a thick foreign accent,
Italian, and Charles had a hard, bronze face and an accent you
could barely hear from someplace far, far away, and they liked
fifteen-year-old girls; and they whispered deep, horsey,
choked words and had wet mouths; and you crunched down
in the seats and they kissed you all over, then with their hands
they took your head and forced it into their laps. One became a
famous m ovie star and I went to watch him in cow boy films.
He was the baddie but he was real nice to me. I said I wanted to
be a writer, a real writer, a great writer like Rimbaud or
D ostoevsky. He didn’t laugh. He said we were both artists and
it was hard. He said, Andrea, that’s a pretty name. He said
follow your dream, never give up, it takes a long time, years
even, and we slouched down in the seats. I knew the highw ay
to N ew Y o rk and the streets when I got there. I knew the back
alleys in Philadelphia too but I didn’t like Philadelphia. It was
fake, pretend folksingers and pretend guitar players and
pretend drug dealers, all attitude, some pot, nothing hard,
pretend poets, a different attitude, no poems. Y o u couldn’t get
lost in the dark, it w asn’t dense enough, it w asn’t desolate
enough, it was safe really, a playpen, the fake girls went there
to not get hurt, to have regular boyfriends, to pretend they
were different or bad; but I was really lost so I had to be lost,
not pretend, in a dark as hard and unyielding as the cement
under it. In N ew Y ork I got o ff the bus dank from old Charles,
old Vincent, he walked away, wet, rumpled, not •looking
back, and I had some dollars in my hand, and I took the A train
to Greenwich Village, and I went to the Eighth Street
Bookstore, the center o f the universe, the place where real
poets went, the most incredible place on earth, they made
beauty from the dark, the gray, the cement, your head down
in someone’s lap, the torn skin on your bruised knees, your
bloody hands; it wasn’t the raspy, choked, rough whisper, it
was real beautiful words with the perfect shape and sound and
filled with pain and rage and pure, perfect; and I looked
everywhere, at every book, at every poem, at every play, and I
touched every book o f poems, I just touched them, just passed
my hand over them, and I bought any poems I had money for,
sometimes it was just a few pages stapled together with print
on it, and I kept them with me and I could barely breathe, and I
knew names no one else knew, Charles Olsen, Robert
Duncan, Gregory Corso, Anselm Hollo, Leroi Jones,
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Kenneth Patchen, Robert Creeley,
Kenneth Rexroth; and when Allen Ginsberg had new poems I
almost died, Allen Ginsberg who was the most perfect and the
bravest and the best and the words were perfect beauty and
perfect power and perfect pain and I carried them with me and
read them, stunned and truly trembling inside because they
went past all lies to something hidden inside; and I got back on
the bus and I got back to Camden and I had the poems and
someday it would be me. I wrote words out on paper and hid
them because my mother would say they were dirty words; all
the true words were dirty words. I wrote private, secret words
in funny-shaped lines. Y ou could take the dark— the thick,
mean, hard, sad dark— the gray cement, lonely as death, cold
as death, stone cold, the torn skin, you on your knees your
hands bleeding on the cold cement, and you could use words
to say I am— I am, I want, I know , I feel, I see. N in o ’s knife,
cold, on the edge o f m y skin down m y back, the cement
underneath: I want, I know, I feel; then he tears you apart from
behind, inside. Y ou could use words to say what it was and
how it felt, the dark banging into you, pressing up against you,
pinning you down, a suffocating mask over your face or a
granite mountain pressing you under it, you’re a fossil, delicate,
ancient, buried alive and perfectly preserved, some bones
between the mountain and the level ground, pressed flat on the
cement under the dark, the great, still, thick, heavy dark. Y ou
could sing pain soft or you could holler; you could use the
voices o f the dead i f you had to, the other skeletons pressed in
the cement. Y ou could write the words on the cement blind in
the dark, pushed on your knees, a finger dipped in blood; or
pushed flat, the dark on you, the cement under you, N in o ’s
knife touching the edge o f your skin. The poems said: Andrea,
me too, I’m on m y knees, afraid and alone, and I sing; I’m
pushed flat, rammed, torn up, and I sing; I weep, I rage, I sing; I
hurt, I’m sad, I sing; I want, I’m lost, I sing. Y ou learned the
names o f things, the true names, short, abrupt, unkind, and
you learned to sing them, your heart soared from them, the
song o f them, the great, simple music o f them. The dark
stayed dark and hard but now it had a sound in it, a bittersweet
lyric, music carried on the edge o f a broken line. Then m y
m omma found the words I wrote and called me awful names,
foul names, in a screaming voice, in filthy hate, she screamed I
was dirty, she screamed she wanted me o ff the face o f the
earth, she screamed she’d lock me up. I left on the bus to N ew
Y ork . N o one’s locking me up. When the men said the names
they whispered and touched you; and flat on the cement, still
there were no locks, no walls. When the men said the names
they were all tangled in you and their skin was melting into
you the w ay night covers everything, they curved and curled.
There was the edge o f N in o’s knife on your skin, down your
back, with him in you and the cement under you, your skin
scraped away, burned o ff almost, the sweat on you turning as
cold as the edge o f his knife; try to breathe. She screamed
foul hate and spit obscene words and tore up all your things, all
your poems you had bought and the words you had written;
and she said she’d lock you up; no one locks me up. Men
whispered the same names she said and touched you all over,
they were on you, they covered you, they hid you, they were
the weight o f midnight on you, a hundred years o f midnight,
they held you down and kept you still and it was the only
stillness you had and you could hear a heartbeat; men
whispered names and touched you all over. Men wanted you
all the time and never had enough o f you and the cement was a
great, gray plain stretching out forever and you could wander
on it forever, free, with signs that they had been there and
promises they would come back, abrasions, burns, thin,
exquisite cuts; not locked up. Under them, covered, buried,
pinned still— the dark ramming into you— you could hear a
heartbeat. And somewhere there were ones who could sing.
Whisper; touch everywhere; sing.
T H R E E
In January 1965
(Age 18)
M y name is Andrea. It means manhood or courage, from the
ancient Greek. I found this in Paul Tillich, although I like
Martin Buber better because I believe in pure love, I-Thou,
love without boundaries or categories or conditions or
making someone less than you are; not treating people like
they are foreign or lower or things, I-It. Prejudice is I-It and
hate is I-It and treating people like dirt is I-It. In Europe only
boys are named Andrea, Andre, Andreus, but m y mother
didn’t know that and so I got named Andrea because she
thought it was pretty. Philosophy comes from Europe but
poetry comes from America too. I was born down the street
from Walt Whitman’s house, on M ickle Street in Cam den,
N ew Jersey, in 1946, after the bomb. I’m not sad but I wish
everyone didn’t have to die. Everyone will burn in a split
second, even less, they w o n ’t even know it but I bet it will hurt
forever; and then there will be nothing, forever. I can’t stand it
because it could be any second at all, just even this second now
or the next one, but I try not to think about it. I fought it for
a while, when I had hope and when I loved everyone, I-Thou,
not I-It, and I suffered to think they would die. When I was
fourteen I refused to face the wall during a bomb drill. T hey
would ring a bell and we all had to file out o f class, in a line, and
stand four or five deep against a wall in the hall and you had to
put your hands behind your head and your elbows over your
ears and it hurt to keep your arms like that until they decided
the bomb wasn’t coming this time. I thought it was stupid so I
wouldn’t do it. I said I wanted to see it coming if it was going
to kill me. I really did want to see it. O f course no one would
see it coming, it was too fast, but I wanted to see something, I
wanted to know something, I wanted to know that this was it
and I was dying. It would just be a tiny flash o f a second, so
small you couldn’t even imagine it, but I wanted it whatever it
was like. I wanted my whole life to go through m y brain or to
feel m yself dying or whatever it was. I didn’t want to be facing
a wall pretending tomorrow was coming. I said it outraged
m y human dignity to have my elbows over m y ears and be
facing a wall and just waiting like an asshole when I was going
to die; but they didn’t think fourteen-year-olds had any
human dignity and you weren’t allowed to say asshole even
the minute before the bomb came. They punished me or
disciplined me or whatever it is they think they’re doing when
they threaten you all the time. The bomb was coming but I
had to stay after school. I was supposed to be frightened o f
staying after school instead o f the bomb or more than the
bomb. Adults are so awful. Their faces get all pulled and tight
and mean and they want to hit you but the law says they can’t
so they make you miserable for as long as they can and they
call your parents to say you are bad and they try to get your
parents to hit you because it’s legal and to punish you some
more. You ask them why you have to cover your ears with
your elbows and they tell you it is so your ear drums w on ’t get
hurt from the noise. They consult each other in whispers and
this is the answer they come up with. I said I thought m y ear
drums would probably burn with the rest o f me so I got
punished more. I kept waiting to see them wink or smile or
laugh or something even just among themselves even though
it w ouldn’t be nice to show they knew it was crap but they
acted serious like they meant it. They kept telling you that you
were supposed to respect them but you would have had to take
stupid pills. I kept thinking about what it meant that this was
m y life and I was going to die and I thought I could say asshole
i f I wanted and face whatever w ay I wanted and I didn’t
understand w hy I couldn’t take a walk in the fucking spring air
if I wanted but I knew i f I tried they would hurt me by making
me into a juvenile delinquent which was a trick they had if you
did things they didn’t like. I kept reading Buber and tried to
say I-Thou but they were I-It material no matter how hard I
tried. I thought maybe he had never encountered anything like
them where he lived. I kept writing papers for English on
Buber’s philosophy so I could keep in touch with I-Thou even
though I was surrounded by I-It. I tried to reason it out but I
couldn’t. I mean, they were going to die too and all they could
think o f was keeping you in line and stopping you from
whispering and making you stare at a wall. I kept thinking
they were ghosts already, just dead already. Sometimes I
thought that was the answer— adults were dead people in
bodies giving stupid orders. They thought I was fresh but it
was nothing like what I felt inside. Outside I was calm. Inside I
kept screaming in m y brain: are you alive, are you zombies,
the bomb is coming, assholes. Why do we have to stand in
line? W hy aren’t we allowed to talk? Can I kiss Paul S. now?
Before I die; fast; one time? In your last fucking minute on
earth can’t you do one fucking human thing like do something
or say something or believe something or show something or
cry or laugh or teach us how to fight the Goddamn Russians or
anything, anything, and not just make us stand here and be
quiet like assholes? I wanted to scream and in m y brain I
screamed, it was a real voice screaming like something so loud
it could make your head explode but I was too smart to scream
in real life so I asked quietly and intelligently w hy we couldn’t
talk and they said we might miss important instructions. I
mean: important instructions; do you grasp it? I didn’t scream
because I knew there might be a tom orrow but one day there
wouldn’t and I would be as big an asshole as the teachers not to
have screamed, a shithead hypocrite because I didn’t believe
tom orrow was coming, one day it wouldn’t come, but I
would die pretending like them, acting nice, not screaming. I
wanted to scream at them and make them tell me the truth—
would there be a tomorrow or not? When I was a child they
made us hide under our desks, crawl under them on our knees
and keep our heads down and cover our ears with our elbows
and keep our hands clasped behind our heads. I use to pray to
God not to have it hurt when the bomb came. They said it was
practice for when the Russians bombed us so we would live
after it and I was as scared as anyone else and I did what they
said, although I wondered why the Russians hated us so much
and I was thinking there must be a Russian child like me,
scared to die. You can’t help being scared when you are so
little and all the adults say the same thing. Y ou have to believe
them. You had to stay there for a long time and be quiet and
your shoulders would hurt because you had to stay under your
desk which was tiny even compared to how little you were
and you didn’t know what the bomb was yet so you thought
they were telling the truth and the Russians wanted to hurt
you but if you stayed absolutely still and quiet on your knees
and covered your ears underneath your desk the Russians
couldn’t. I wondered if your skin just burned o ff but you
stayed on your knees, dead. Everyone had nightmares but the
adults didn’t care because it kept you obedient and that was
what they wanted; they liked keeping you scared and making
you hide all the time from the bomb under your desk. Adults
told terrible lies, not regular lies; ridiculous, stupid lies that
made you have to hate them. They would say anything to
make you do what they wanted and they would make you
afraid o f anything. N o one ever told so many lies before,
probably. When the Bay o f Pigs came, all the girls at school
talked together in the halls and in the lunchrooms and said the
same thing: we didn’t want to die virgins. N o one said anyone
else was lying because we thought we were all probably going
to die that day and there w asn’t any point in saying someone
wasn’t a virgin and you couldn’t know , really, because boys
talked dirty, and no one said they w eren’t because then you
would be low-life, a dirty girl, and no one would talk to you
again and you would have to die alone and if the bomb didn’t
come you might as well be dead. Girls were on the verge o f
saying it but no one dared. O f course now the adults were
saying everything was fine and no bomb was com ing and
there was no danger; we didn’t have to stand in the halls, not
that day, the one day it was clear atomic death was right there,
in N ew Jersey. But we knew and everyone thought the same
thing and said the same thing and it was the only thought we
had to say how sad we were to die and everyone giggled and
was almost afraid to say it but everyone had been thinking the
same thing all night and wanted to say it in the morning before
we died. It was like a record we were making for ourselves, a
history o f us, how we had lived and been cheated because we
had to die virgins. We said to each other that it’s not fair we
have to die now, today; we didn’t get to do anything. We said
it to each other and everyone knew it was true and then when
we lived and the bomb didn’t come we never said anything
about it again but everyone hurried. We hurried like no one
had ever hurried in the history o f the world. O ur mothers
lived in dream time; no bomb; old age; do it the first time after
marriage, one man or yo u ’ll be cheap; time for them droned
on. B ay o f Pigs meant no more time. They don’t care about
w hy girls do things but we know things and we do things;
w e’re not just animals who don’t mind dying. The houses
where I lived were brick; the streets were cement, gray; and I
used to think about the three pigs and the bad w o lf blow ing
down their houses but not the brick one, how the brick one
was strong and didn’t fall down; and I would try to think i f the
brick ones would fall down when the bomb came. They
looked like blood already; blood-stained walls; blood against
the gray cement; and they were already broken; the bricks
were torn and crumbling as if they were soft clay and the
cement was broken and cracked; and I would watch the houses
and think maybe it was like with the three pigs and the big bad
w o lf couldn’t blow them down, the big bad bomb. I thought
maybe we had a chance but if we lived in some other kind o f
house we wouldn’t have a chance. I tried to think o f the bomb
hitting and the brick turned into blood and dust, red dust
covering the cement, wet with real blood, but the cement
would be dust too, gray dust, red dust on gray dust, just dust
and sky, everything gone, the ground just level everywhere
there was. I could see it in my mind, with me sitting in the
dust, playing with it, but I wouldn’t be there, it would be red
dust on gray dust and nothing else and I wouldn’t even be a
speck. I thought it would be beautiful, real pure, not ugly and
poor like it was now, but so sad, a million years o f nothing,
and tidal waves o f wind would come and kill the quiet o f the
dust, kill it. I went away to N ew Y ork C ity for freedom and it
meant I went away from the red dust, a picture bigger than the
edges o f m y mind, it was a red landscape o f nothing that was in
me and that I put on everything I saw like it was burned on my
eyes, and I always saw Camden that way; in m y inner-mind it
was the landscape o f where I lived. It didn’t matter that I went
to Point Zero. It would just be faster and I hadn’t been hiding
there under the desk afraid. I hate being afraid. I hadn’t grown
up there waiting for it to happen and making pictures o f it in
m y mind seeing the terrible dust, the awful nothing, and I
hadn’t died there during the Bay o f Pigs. The red dust was
Camden. Y ou can’t forgive them when you’re a child and they
make you afraid. So you go away from where you were afraid.
Some stay; some go; it’s a big difference, leaving the
humiliations o f childhood, the morbid fear. We didn’t have
much to say to each other, the ones that left and the ones that
stayed. Children get shamed by fear but you can’t tell the
adults that; they don’t care. They make children into dead
things like they are. If there’s something left alive in you, you
run. Y ou run from the poor little child on her knees; fear
burned the skin o ff all right; she’s still on her knees, dead and
raw and tender. N ew Y o rk ’s nothing, a piece o f cake; you
never get afraid like that again; not ever. I live where I can find
a bed. Men roll on top, fuck, roll off, shoot up, sleep, roll on
top again. In between you sleep. It’s how it is and it’s fine. I
never did feel more at home. It’s as i f I was always there. It’s
familiar. The streets are the same gray, home. Fucking is
nothing really. Hiding from the law and dumb adults is
ordinary life; yo u ’re always hiding from them anyw ay unless
yo u ’re one o f their robots. I hate authority and it’s no jo k e and
it’s no game; I want them dead all right, all the order givers.
N ew Y o r k ’s home because there’s other people the same; we
know each other as much as you have to, not much. The only
other w ay is the slow time o f mothers; facing a wall, staring at
a blank wall, for life, one man, forever, marriage, the living
dead. I don’t want to be like them. I never will be. I’m not
afraid o f dying and I’m not standing quiet at some wall; the
bomb comes at me, I’m going to hurl m yself into it; flashfly
into its fucking face. I’m fine on the streets. I’m not afraid; o f
fucking or anyone; and there’s nothing I’m afraid of. I have
ideals about peace and freedom and it doesn’t matter what the
adults think, because they lie and they’re stupid. I’m sincere
and smarter than them. I believe in universal love. I want to
love everybody even if I don’t know them and not to have
small minds like the adults. I don’t mind if people are strangers
or how they look and no matter how raw som ebody is they’re
human; it’s the plastic ones that aren’t human. I don’t need a
lot, a place to sleep, some money, almost none, cigarettes.
Everyone in this place knows something, jazz or poems or
anarchism or dope or books I never heard o f before, and they
don’t like the bomb. T h ey’ve lived and they don’t hide from
knowing things and sex is the main w ay you live— adults say it
isn’t but they never told the truth yet. N ew Y o rk ’s the whole
world, it’s like living inside a heartbeat, you know, like a
puppy you can put your head up against the ticking when
you’re lonely and when you want to move the beat’s behind
you. I don’t need things. I’m not an American consumer. I’m
on the peace side and I have ideals about freedom and I don’t
want anyone telling me what to do, I’ve had enough o f it, I’m
against war, I go to demonstrations, I’m a pacifist, I have been
since I can remember. I read books and I go to places in N ew
Y ork, churches and bare rooms even, and I hear people read
poems and in m y mind I am with Sartre or Camus or Rimbaud
and I want to show love to everyone and not be confined and
sex is honest, it’s not a lie, and I like to feel things, strong
things. In N ew Y ork there’s people like me everywhere,
hiding where regular people don’t look, in every shadow
there’s the secret people. There are pockets o f dark in the dark
and the people like me are in them, poor, with nothing, not
afraid, I’m never afraid. It’s as if every crack in the sidewalk is
an open door to somewhere; you can go between the cracks to
the hidden world but regular people never even see the cracks.
People the same as you go through the cracks because they’re
not afraid and you meet them there, in the magic places, real
old from other generations even, hidden, some great underground city, dirty, hard, dark, free. There’s always sex and dope and you can get pretty hungry but you can get things if
you have to; there’s always someone. I never doubted it was
home from the start; where I was meant to come. I’m known
and invisible at the same time; fitting in but always going m y
own way, a shy girl alone in a dark corner o f the dark, the
dark’s familiar to me and so are the men in it, no rules can ever
stop night from putting its arms around a lonely girl. I like
doing what I want no matter what it is and I like drifting and I
run i f I have to; someone’s always there, kind or otherwise,
you decide quick. I love the dark, it’s got no rough edges for
me. I hear every sound without trying. I feel as if I was born
knowing every signal. I’m an animal on instinct lucky to be in
the right jungle, a magic animal charged with everything
intense and sacred, and I hate cages. I’m the night, the same.
Y ou have to hurt it to hurt me. I am one half o f everything
lawless the night brings, every lawless embrace. I can smell
where to turn in the dark, it’s not something you can know in
your head. It’s a whisper so quiet not even the dead could hear
it. It’s touching fire so fast you don’t burn your hand but the
fire’s real. I don’t know much, not what things are called or
how to do them right or how people act all the regular times.
Everything is ju st what it is to me with nothing to measure it
against and no w ay to check and I don’t have any tom orrow
and I don’t have a yesterday that I can remember because the
days and nights just go on and on and never stop and never
slow down and never turn regular; nothing makes time
normal. I have nineteen cents, I buy a big purple thing, it’s
with the vegetables, a sign says eggplant, it’s the cheapest
thing there is, I never saw one before, I try to cook it in m y one
pan in a little water, I eat it, you bet I do, it’s an awful thing, I
see w hy momma always used vegetables in cans but they cost
more. I buy rice in big unmarked bags, I think it’s good for
you because Asian people eat it and they have lived for
centuries no matter how poor they are and they have an old
civilization so it must be good but then someone says it has
starch and starch is bad so I stop buying it because the man’s very
disapproving as if I should know better because it makes you fat
he says. I just boil what there is. I buy whatever costs what I have
in m y pocket. I don’t know what people are talking about
sometimes but I stay quiet because I don’t want to appear so
ignorant to them, for instance, there are funny words that I
can’t even try to say because I think they will laugh at me but I
heard them once like zucchini, and if someone makes something and hands it to me I eat it. Sometimes someone asks me if
I like this or that but I don’t know what they mean and I stare
blankly but I smile and I don’t know what they think but I try
to be polite. I worked at the Student Peace Union and the War
Resisters League to stop the bomb and I was a receptionist at a
place that taught reading and I was a waitress at a coffee shop
that poured coffee-to-go and I typed and carried packages and
I went with men and they had smoke or food or music or a
place to sleep. I didn’t get much money and I didn’t keep any
jobs because mostly I lived in pretty bad places or on the streets
or in different places night to night and I guess the regular
people didn’t like it or wanted to stay away but I didn’t care or
think about it and I never thought about being regular or
looking regular or acting regular; I did what I wanted from
what there was and I liked working for peace and the rest was
for cigarettes. I slept in living rooms, on cots, on floors, on
soiled mattresses, in beds with other people I didn’t know who
fucked while I slept, in Brooklyn, in Spanish Harlem, near
Tompkins Square Park, in abandoned buildings, in parks, in
hallways, curled up in corners. Y ou can build your own walls.
Even the peace people had apartments and pretty things and
warm food, it seemed regular and abundant but I don’t know,
I never asked them for anything but sometimes someone took
me home and I could see. I didn’t know where it came from; it
was just like some play with scenery. They had plants or
pretty rugs or wool things or pots; posters; furniture; heat;
food; things around. I tried to live in a collective on Avenue B
and I was supposed to have a bed and we were going to cook
and all but that was where the junkies kept rolling on top o f me
because the collective would never tell anyone they couldn’t
sleep there and I never was there early enough so there wasn’t
someone asleep where I thought was mine. I never did really
sleep very well, it’s sort o f a lie to say I could sleep with junkies
rolling over on top o f me, a little bravado on m y part, except I
fell o ff to sleep, or some state o f less awake, and then it’d
happen. Y ou are always awake a little. I lived in a living room
o f a woman for peace who lived with her brother. He slept in
the living room, she slept in the bedroom, but she put me in
the living room with him. He breathed heavy and stayed up
watching me and I had to move out because she said he
couldn’t sleep. I stayed anywhere I could for as long as I could
but it w asn’t too long usually. I slept on benches and in
doorways. D oorw ays can be like palaces in the cold, in the
dark, when it’s wet; doorways are strong; you feel sheltered,
like in the arms o f God, unless the wind changes and comes
right at you and drives through you; then you wake up already
shivering, sleep pulling you down because you want to believe
you are only dreaming the wind is driving through you, but
you started to shake unconscious and the cold permeates your
body before you can bring your mind to facing it. Y ou can’t
find any place in N ew Y ork that doesn’t have me in it. I’m
stuck in the dark, m y remembrance, a shadow, a shade, an
old, dark scar that keeps tearing, dark edges ripping, dark
blood spilling out, there’s a piece left o f me, faded, pasted onto
every night, the girl who wanted peace. Later I found out it
was Needle Park or Bed-Stuy or there were whores there or it
was some kind o f sociological phenomenon and someone had
made a documentary showing the real shit, some intrepid
filmmaker, some hero. It never happened. N o one ever
showed the real shit because it isn’t photogenic, it doesn’t
stand still, people just live it, they don’t know it or conceptualize it or pose for it or pretend it and you don’t get to do it over i f you make a mistake. Y ou just get nailed. Fucked or hit
or hurt or ripped o ff or poisoned with bad shit or yo u ’re just
dead; there’s no art to it. There’s more o f me stuck in that old
night than anywhere. Y o u don’t just remember it; it remem
bers you; Andrea, it says, I know you. Y ou do enough in it and
it takes you with it and I’m there in it, every night on every
street. When the dark comes, I come, every night, on every
street, until N ew Y ork is gone; I’m alive there in the dark
rubbing up against anything flesh-and-blood, not a poor,
homeless girl but a brazen girl-for-peace, hungry, tired,
waiting for you, to rub up against you, take what you have,
get what you got; peace, freedom, love, a fuck, a shy smile,
some quarters or dimes or dollars. The dark’s got a little anger
in it m oving right up against you. You can feel it pushing right
up against you now and then, a burning flash across your
thing; that’s me, I’m there, Andrea, a charred hallucination,
you know the w ay the dark melts in front o f you, I’m the
charred thing in the melting dark, the dark fire, dark ash
burned black; and you walk on, agitated, to find a living one,
not a shade stuck in midnight but some poor, trembling, real
girl, hungry enough even to smile at you. That’s m y home
you’re misbehaving in with your mischievous little indulgences, your secret little purchases o f girls and acts, because I was on every street, in every alley, fucked there, slept there,
got drugs there, found a bed for my weary head; oh, it got
weary; curled up under something, a little awake. C an’t be.
N o one can live that way. C an’t be. Isn’t true. C an’t be. Was.
Was. I wasn’t raped really until I was eighteen, pretty old.
Well, I wasn’t really raped. Rape is just some awful word. It’s a
w ay to say it was real bad; worse than anything. I was a pacifist
and I didn’t believe in hurting anyone and I wouldn’t hurt
anyone. I had been eighteen for a couple o f months; o f legal
age. It was winter. Cold. Y ou don’t forget winter. I was
w orking for peace groups and for nonviolence. It wouldn’t be
fair to call it rape; to him; it wouldn’t be fair to him. I wasn’t a
virgin or anything; he forced me but it was m y own fault. I
was working at the Student Peace Union then and at the War
Resisters League. I typed and I answered phones and I tried to
be in the meetings but they didn’t really ever let me talk and I
helped to organize demonstrations by calling people on the
phones and I helped to write leaflets. They didn’t really believe
in rape, I think. I couldn’t ask anyone or tell anyone because
they would just say how I was bourgeois, which was this
word they used all the time. Women were it more than
anybody. They were hip or cool or hipsters or bohemians or
all those words you could see in newspapers on the Low er East
Side but anytime a woman said something she was bourgeois.
I knew what it meant but I didn’t know how to say it w asn’t
right. They believed in nonviolence and so did I, one hundred
percent. I w ouldn’t hurt anybody even if he did rape me but he
probably didn’t. Men were supposed to go crazy and kill
someone if he was a rapist but they wouldn’t hurt him for raping
me because they didn’t believe in hurting anyone and because I
was bourgeois and anything that brought me down lower to the
people was okay and if it hurt me I deserved it because if you
were bourgeois female you were spoiled and had everything and
needed to be fucked more or to begin with. At the Student Peace
Union there were boys m y age but they were treated like grown
men by everyone around there and they bossed me around and
didn’t listen to anything I said except to make fun o f it and no one
treated me as if I knew anything, which maybe I didn’t, but the
boys were pretty ignorant pieces o f shit, I can tell you that. I was
confused by it but I kept working for peace. These boys all called
momma at home; I heard them. I didn’t. There were adults,
some really old, at the War Resisters League but to me they
weren’t anything like the adults from school. They were heroes
to me. They had gone to jail for things they believed in. They
weren’t afraid and they didn’t follow laws and they didn’t act
dead and they had sex and they didn’t lie about it and they didn’t
act like there was all the time in the world because they knew
there wasn’t. They stood up to the government. They weren’t
afraid. One had been a freedom rider in the South and he got
beaten up so many times he was like a punched-out prizefighter.
He could barely talk he had been beaten up so much. I didn’t try
to talk to him or around him because I held him in awe. I thought
I would be awfully proud if I was him but he wasn’t proud at all,
just quiet and shy. Sometimes I wondered if he could remember
anything; but maybe he knew everything and was just humble
and brave. I have chosen to think so. He did things like I did,
typed and put out mailings and put postage on envelopes and ran
errands and got coffee; he didn’t order anyone around. They
were all brave and smart. One wrote poems and lots o f them
wrote articles and edited newsletters and magazines. One wrote
a book I had read in high school, not in class o f course, about
freedom and utopia, but when I asked him to read a poem I
wrote— I asked a secretary who knew him to ask him because I
was too shy— he wouldn’t and the secretary said he hated
women. He had a wife and there was a birthday party for him
one day and his wife brought a birthday cake and he wouldn’t
speak to her. Everyone said he had boys. His wife was
embarrassed and just kept talking, just on and on, and everyone
was embarrassed but no one made him talk to her or thank her
and I stayed on the outside o f the circle that was around him to
think if it was possible that he hated women, even his wife, and
w hy he would be mean to her as if she didn’t exist. Y o u ’d thank
anyone for a birthday cake. From his book I thought he was
wise. I thought he loved everyone. And if he hated women and
everyone knew it how come they were so nice to him because
hate wasn’t nonviolence. When he died a few years later I felt
relieved. I wondered if his wife was sad or if she felt relieved. I
suppose she was sad but why? I thought he was this one hateful
man but the others were the great I-Thous, the real I-Thous;
fighting militarism; wanting peace; writing; I wanted to be the
same. The I-Its were the regular people on the streets dressed in
suits all the same like robots busy going to business and women
with lacquered hair in outfits. But when the boys who wanted to
be conscientious objectors came in for help there were always
a lot o f jokes about rape. I didn’t see how you could make
jokes about rape i f you were against violence; maybe rape
barely existed at all but it was pretty awful. The pacifists and
w ar resisters would counsel the conscientious objectors about
what to say to the draft boards. Vietnam was pulling all these
boys to be killers. The draft board always asked what the c. o. ’s
would do i f their mother was raped or their girlfriend or their
sister and it was a big joke. The pacifists and the c. o . ’s would
say things like they would let her have a good time. I don’t
remember all the things they said but they would laugh and
jo k e about it; it always made me sort o f sick but if I tried to say
something they w ouldn’t listen and I didn’t know what to say
anyway. Eventually the pacifists would tell the c. o. ’s the right
w ay to answer the question. It was a lofty answer about never
using violence under any circumstance however tragic or
painful but it was a lie because none o f them ever thought it
was anything to have their girlfriend raped or their mother.
They always thought it was funny and they always laughed; so
it wasn’t violence because they never laughed at violence. So
I’m not sure i f rape even really existed because these pacifists
really cared about violence and they never would turn their
backs on violence. They cared about social justice. They cared
about peace. They cared about racism. They cared about
poverty. They cared about everything bad that happened to
people. It was confusing that they didn’t care about rape, or
thought it was a joke, but then I wasn’t so sure what rape was
exactly. I knew it was horrible. I always had a picture in my
mind o f a woman with her clothes torn, near dead, on the floor,
unable to move because she was beaten up so bad and hurt so
much, especially between her legs. I always thought the Nazis
had done it. The draft board always asked about the Nazis:
would you have fought against the Nazis, suppose the Nazis
tried to rape your sister. They would rehearse how to answer the
draft board and then, when it came to the rape part, they always
laughed and madejokes. I would be typing because I never got
to talk or they would act irritated if I did or they would just
keep talking to each other anyway over me and I felt upset and
I would interrupt and say, well, I mean, rape is. . . . but I
could never finish the sentence, and if I’d managed to get their
attention, sometimes by nearly crying, they’d all just stare and
I’d go blank. It was a terrifying thing and you would be so
hurt; how could they laugh? And you wouldn’t want a Nazi to
come anywhere near you, it would just be foul. The Nazis, I
would say, trying to find a way to say— bad, very bad. Rape is
very bad, I wanted to say, but I could only say Nazis are very
bad. What’s bad about fucking my sister, someone would say;
always; every time. Then they’d all laugh. So I wasn’t even
sure if there was rape. So I don’t think I could have been raped
even though I think I was raped but I know I wasn’t because it
barely existed or it didn’t exist at all and if it did it was only
with Nazis; it had to be as bad as Nazis. I didn’t want the man
to be fucking me but, I mean, that doesn’t really matter; it’s
just that I really tried to stop him, I really tried not to have him
near me, I really didn’t want him to and he really hurt me so
much so I thought maybe it was rape because he hurt me so
bad and I didn’t want to so much but I guess it wasn’t or it
doesn’t matter. I had this boyfriend named Arthur, a sweet
man. He was older; he had dignity. He wasn’t soft, he knew
the streets; but he didn’t need to show anything or prove
anything. He just lived as far as I could see. He was a waiter in a
bar deep in the Lower East Side, so deep down under a dark
sky, wretched to get there but okay inside. I was sleeping on a
floor near there, in the collective. Someone told me you could
get real cheap chicken at the bar. I would go there every night
for m y one meal, fried chicken in a basket with hot thick
french fried potatoes and ketchup for ninety-nine cents and it
was real good, real chicken, not rat meat, cooked good. He
brought me a beer but I had to tell him to take it back because J
didn’t have the money for it but he was buying it for me. Then
I went with him one night. The bar was filled and noisy and
had sawdust on the floors and barrels o f peanuts so you could
eat them without money and there were low life and artists
there. He smiled and seemed happy and also had a sadness, in
his eyes, on the edges o f his mouth. He lived in a small
apartment with two other men, one a painter, Eldridge, the
other I never met. It was tiny, up five flights on Avenue D,
with a couple o f rooms I never saw. Y ou walked in through a
tiny kitchen, all cracked wood with holes in the floor, an
ancient stove and an old refrigerator that looked like a bank
vault, round and heavy and metal, with almost no room
inside. His bed was a single bed in a kind o f living room but
not quite. There were paintings by the artist in the room. The
artist was sinewy and had a limp and was bitter, not sad, with a
mean edge to anything he said. He had to leave the room so we
could be alone. I could hear him there, listening. I stayed the
night there and I remember how it was to watch the light come
up and have someone running his finger under m y chin and
touching m y hands with his lips. I was afraid to go back to the
bar after that because I didn’t know if he’d want me to but it
was the only place I knew to get a meal for small change.
Every time he was glad to see me and he would ask me what I
wanted and he would bring me dinner and some beer and
another one later and he even gave me a dark beer to try
because I didn’t know about it and I liked it; and I would stay;
and I would go with him. I didn’t talk much because you don’t
talk to men even if they seem nice; you can never know if they
will mind or not but usually they will mind. But he asked me
things. He told me some things, hard things, about his life,
and time in jail, and troubles; and he asked me some things,
easy things, about what I did that day, or what I thought, or i f I
liked something, or how I felt, or if something felt good, or i f I
was happy, or i f l liked him. He was my lover I guess, not
really my boyfriend, because I never knew i f l should go to the
bar or not but I would and then w e’d make love and when we
made love he was a sweet man with kisses and soft talk into
sunrise and he’d hold me after and he’d touch me. Sometimes
he took me to visit people, his friends, and I was too shy to say
anything but I thought it might mean he liked me or trusted
me or had some pride in me or felt right about me and they
asked me things too and tried to talk with me. Eldridge would
come into the bar and get drinks and say something but always
something cutting or mean so I didn’t-know what to say or do
because I didn’t know i f l was supposed to be his friend or not;
only that Arthur said he loved him. I would ask him about his
paintings but he would look away. I went to the bar for a long
time, maybe three months, and I went with Arthur to where
he slept in the bed in the living room; and w e’d kiss, face to
face, and the light would come up. I learned to love dawn and
the long, slow coming o f the light. One night I went to the bar
and Arthur wasn’t nice anymore. He brought dinner to me
and he brought beer but he wouldn’t look at me or talk to me
and his face was different, with deep anger or pain or I didn’t
know what because I don’t know how to know what people
feel or think. A lot o f time went by and then I thought I should
go away and not come back but he sat down, it was a Saturday
night, early in the night because he usually worked Saturdays
until four a. m. but now it was only ten at night and it was
busy, very busy, so it wasn’t easy for him to sit down; and he
said his sister, an older sister, Caroline, was in the hospital,
and she had brought him up, and she had cancer, and she had
had cancer for a long time but now it seemed she was dying,
now, tonight, and he was hurting so bad, he was in bad grief,
sad and angry and fucked up, and he had to go to the hospital
right now and it was far away up town and it would take most
o f the night and probably she would die tonight; and would I
go to his place, he would take me there to make sure I got there
safe, and would I wait for him there— he knew I might not
want to and it was a lot to ask, but would I? And I said I was
sorry about his sister and I would go there and I would wait for
him. He took me there and he kissed me and he showed me
with courtesy to the little bed where we slept that was all made
up like a sofa in what was sort o f a living room, with the
paintings all around, and he showed me where some books
were, and he thanked me, and I said I would wait, and I was so
sorry. I waited many hours. Sometimes I walked around.
Sometimes I sat. There wasn’t enough light to read really. I
looked at the paintings. Then Eldridge came in and he touched
me on m y face and I pulled aw ay and said no and said I was
waiting for Arthur and his sister was dying o f cancer and he
was at the hospital and she was dying now, dying now, and he
said yes but I’m his friend what’s w rong with me I’m as good
as he is I’m as good; and he limped but he was tall and strong
and angry and he forced me down on the bed and he hit me flat
out with his fist in m y face and I fought him and he raped me
and pushed me and he hit me and he was in me, sitting on top
o f me, upright, m y skirt was up over m y face and he was
punching me; and after I was bleeding on m y lips and down
m y legs and I couldn’t m ove and I could hear Arthur coming
and Eldridge said, I’m his best friend and I’ll tell him you
wanted it, and he said, I’m his best friend and yo u ’ll kill him if
you tell him, and he said, he’ll kill you if you tell him because
he can’t stand any more. I straightened up the bed fast because
I could have been sleeping on it so it didn’t have to be perfect
and I straightened up m y clothes and I tried to get the blood o ff
m y face by rubbing it on m y sleeve and I sat on the edge o f the
bed with m y hands folded, waiting, and the lights were out,
and I didn’t know if Arthur would see anything on m y face,
pain or bruises or cuts, and I didn’t know what Arthur would
believe; and he said his sister had died; and he sat down next to
me and he cried; and I held him; and he asked me if everything
was all right; and I said yes; and he asked me if anything was
wrong and I said no; and he asked me if Eldridge had bothered
me and I said no; and he wanted to make love so we made love
in the dark and the pain o f him in me was like some hot,
pointed branding iron in me, an agony o f pain on pain, and I
asked God to stop the pain, I had forgotten God but I
remembered Him now and I supplicated Him with Arthur in
me asking Him to stop the pain; and the light started coming
up, so slow, and it fell, so slow, on Arthur’s grief-stricken,
tear-stained black face, a face o f aging grace and relentless
dignity, a handsome face with remorse and sorrow in it for
what he had seen and known and done, the remorse and
sorrow that is part o f any decent life, more sorrow, more
trouble than white men had, trouble because o f color and then
the burden o f regular human pain— an older sister, Caroline,
dies; and I turned my face away because I was afraid he would
see bruises or cuts where I was hit or I was afraid he could see I
was raped and I didn’t know how to explain because I had
already lied so it couldn’t be true now later and tears were
coming down my face and he touched the tears and he asked if
I was crying because I loved him and was sad for his sister and I
said yes. He slept then and I went away. I didn’t come back.
There’s this girl I loved but she disappeared a long time ago.
When we were children we played in the rubble in the street, in
the broken cement, on broken glass and with sticks and bricks
and garbage, city garbage, we made up mysteries for ourselves and enacted stories, we made great adventures in
condemned houses, deserted garages, empty, scary warehouses, we broke into cars and churches, we trembled and
held hands, w e’d wrestle and w e’d fight, we were tender and
we were fierce; and then in alleys we would kiss each other a
hundred million times. Arthur was m y lover in m y heart, a
city lover, near to her. It made me lonely, what wasn’t rape; I
disappeared from him and grief washed over me pulling me
near to her. She’d died when someone did something, no one
would say what; but she was wild and strong, a man did
something and she took pills, a beautiful girl all the adults said;
it makes you lonely, what isn’t rape. He slept, and I left; lonely
twice; for both. Y ou can love som ebody once and som ebody,
a little, once. Then it ends and yo u ’re a sad, lonely girl, though
you don’t think about it much. After, the light would come,
slow; he’d be kissing m y hands.
F O U R
In February 1965
(Age 18)
I live in a funny kind o f silence, I have all my life, a kind o f
invisible bubble. On the streets I am quiet and there is quiet all
around and no one gets through, nothing, except for the wind
sometimes bellowing in my head an awful noise o f cold
weeping. I don’t look quiet but I am quiet. People don’t see
much so they don’t see how still I am. I see the people talking,
all the people o f every kind, throwing words at everything,
throwing words at each other, throwing words at time, sitting
over coffee throwing words, peaceful or shouting, smiling or
in pain, throwing words at anything they see, anything that
walks up to them or anything that gets in their w ay or trying
to be friendly throwing words at someone who doesn’t know
them. I don’t have words to throw back. When I feel
something no right words come or no one would know what
they mean. It would be like throwing a ball that could never be
caught. They act like words are cheap and easy as if they can
just be replaced after they are used up and as if they make
things all right. if I am caught in a situation so I have to, I say
something, I say I am shy and I smile, but it’s not true, I am not
shy, I ju st don’t have these great numbers o f dozens o f words,
it’s so blank inside, so empty, no words, no sound at all, a
terrible nothing. I don’t know things. I don’t know where the
people come from when the light starts coming through the
sky. I don’t know where the cars come from, always starting
about an hour after the first trash can is pushed over by boys
running or cats looking for food. T here’s no one to ask if. I
knew how but I can’t think how. The people come out first; in
drips; then great cascades o f them. I don’t know how they got
there, inside, and how they get to stay there. I don’t know
where the cars come from or where the people get all their
coats or where the bus drivers come from in the em pty buses
that cruise the streets before the people come out. I f it’s raining
suddenly people have different clothes to stay dry in but I
don’t know where they got them or where you could go to get
them or how you would get the m oney or how they knew it
was going to rain if you couldn’t see it in the sky or smell it in
the air. I don’t know how anything w orks or how everyone
knows the things they know or w hy they all agree, for
instance, on when to all come out o f the buildings at once in a
swarm , or how they all know what to say and when. They act
like it’s clear and simple and they’re sure. I don’t have words
except for m y name, Andrea, which is the only w ord I have all
the time, which m y mom ma gave me, which I remember even
if I can’t remember anything else because sometimes I forget
everything that happened until now. Andrea is the name I had
since being a child. In school we had to write our names on our
papers so maybe I remember it from that, doing it over and
over day in, day out. And also m y mother whispered it to me
in m y ear when she was loving me when I was little. I
remember it because it was so beautiful when she said it. I
don’t exactly remember it in m y mind, more in m y heart. It
means manhood or courage and it is from Europe and she said
she was damned for naming me it because you become what
you are named for and I w asn’t the right kind o f girl at all but I
think I could never be named anything else because the sounds
o f the w ord are exactly like me in m y heart, a music in a sense
with m y m other’s voice singing it right to m y heart, it’s her
voice that breaks the silence inside me with a sound, a w ord;
m y name. It doesn’t matter w ho says it or in what w ay, I am
comforted, as if it is the whisper o f my mother when I was a
baby and safe up against her in her arms. I was only safe then in
all my life, for a while but everything ends soon. I was born
into her arms with her loving me in Camden, down the street
from where Walt Whitman lived. I liked having him there
because it meant that once it was somewhere; it meant you
could be great; it meant Camden was something; it meant
there was something past the rubble, this great gray man who
wasn’t afraid o f America and so I wasn’t afraid to go anywhere
and I could love anyone, like he said. Camden was broken
streets, broken cement, crushed gray dust, jagged, broken
cement. The houses were broken bricks, red bricks, red,
blood red, I love brick row houses, I love blood red, wine red,
crumbled into sawdust; w e’re dust too, blood red dust. It was
a cement place with broken streets and broken bricks and I
loved the cement and I loved the broken streets and I loved the
broken bricks and I never felt afraid, just alone, not sad, not
afraid. I had to go away from home early to seek freedom
which is a good thing because you don’t want to be a child for
too long. You get strong if you go away from where you are a
child; home; people say it’s home; you get strong but you
don’t have a lot o f words because people use words to talk
about things and if you don’t have things there’s few words
you need. It’s funny how silence goes with having nothing and
how you have nothing to say if you don’t have things and
words don’t mean much anyway because you can’t really use
them for anything if you have nothing. If you go away from
home you live without things. Things never mattered to me
and I never wanted them but sometimes I wanted words. I
read a lot to find words that were the right ones and I loved the
words I read but they weren’t exactly the ones. They were like
them but not them. I just moved along the streets and I took
what was coming and often I didn’t know what to call it. We
were going to die soon, that was for sure, with the bomb
coming, and there weren’t words for that either, even though
people threw words at it. Y ou could say you didn’t want to die
and you didn’t want them to wipe out the earth but w ho could
you say. it to so it would matter? I didn’t like people throwing
words at it when words couldn’t touch it, when you couldn’t
even wrap your mind around it at all. When I thought about
being safe I could hear the word Andrea coming from m y
m other’s lips when I was a baby, her mouth on me because she
loved me and I was in her arms but it ended soon. I played in
the bricks and on the cement; in rubble; in garbage; in alleys;
and I went from Camden to N ew Y o rk and the quiet was all
around me even more as if I was sinking under it sometimes;
and I thought, if your momma isn’t here to say your name
there is nothing to listen to. I f you try to say some words it is
likely people don’t understand them anyway. I don’t think
people in houses understand anything about the w ord cold. I
don’t think they understand the word wet. I don’t think you
could explain cold to them but if you did other words would
push it out o f their minds in a minute. T hat’s what they use
words for, to bury things. People learn long w ords to show
o ff but if you can’t say what cold is so people understand what
use is more syllables? I could never explain anything and I was
em pty inside where the words go but it was an emptiness that
caused vertigo, I fought against it and tried to keep standing
upright. I never knew what to call most things but things I
knew, cold or wet, didn’t mean much. Y o u could say you
were cold and people nodded or smiled. Cold. I tremble with
fear when I hear it. They know what it means on the surface
and how to use it in a sentence but they don’t know what it is,
don’t care, couldn’t remember if you told them. T h e y ’d forget
it in a minute. Cold. O r rape. Y ou could never find out what it
was from one o f them or say it to mean anything or to be
anything. Y o u could never say it so it was true. Y o u could
never say it to someone so they would help you or make
anything better or even help you a little or try to help you. Y ou
could never say it, not so it was anything. People laughed or
said something dirty. Or if you said someone did it you were
just a liar straight out; or it was you, dirty animal, who pulled
them on you to hurt you. Or if you said you were it, raped,
were it, which you never could say, but if you said it, then they
put shame on you and never looked at you again. I think so.
And it was just an awful word anyway, some awful word. I
didn’t know what it meant either or what it was, not really,
not like cold; but it was worse than cold, I knew that. It was
being trapped in night, frozen stuck in it, not the nights people
who live in houses sleep through but the nights people who
live on the streets stay awake through, those nights, the long
nights with every second ticking like a time bomb and your
heart hears it. It was night, the long night, and despair and
being abandoned by all humankind, alone on an empty planet,
colder than cold, alive and frozen in despair, alone on earth
with no one, no words and no one and nothing; cold to frozen
but cursed by being alive and nowhere near dead; stuck frozen
in nowhere; no one with no words; alone in the vagabond’s
night, not the burgher’s; in night, trapped alive in it, in
despair, abandoned, colder than cold, frozen alive, right there,
freeze flash, forever and never let loose; the sun had died so the
night and the cold would never end. God w on ’t let you loose
from it though. Y ou don’t get to die. Instead you have to stay
alive and raped but it doesn’t exist even though God made it to
begin with or it couldn’t happen and He saw it too but He is
gone now that it’s over and you’re left there no matter where
you go or how much time passes even if you get old or how
much you forget even if you burn holes in your brain. Y ou
stay smashed right there like a fly splattered over a screen,
swatted; but it doesn’t exist so you can’t think about it because
it isn’t there and didn’t happen and couldn’t happen and is only
an awful word and isn’t even a word that anyone can say and it
isn’t ever true; so you are splattered up against a night that will
go on forever except nothing happened, it will go on forever
and it isn’t anything in any w ay at all. It don’t matter anyw ay
and I can’t remember things anyw ay, all sorts o f things get
lost, I can’t remember most o f what happened to me from day
to day and I don’t know names for it anyw ay to say or who to
say it to and I live in a silence I carry that’s bigger than m y
shadow or any dark falling over me, it’s a heavy thing on m y
back and over m y head and it pours out over me down to the
ground. Words aren’t so easy anymore or they never were and
it was a lie that they seemed so. Some time ago they seemed
easier and there were more o f them. I’m Andrea but no one
says m y name so that I can hear it anymore. I go to jail against
the Vietnam War; it’s night there too, the long night, the sun is
dead, the time bomb is ticking, your heart hears it; the
vagabond’s night, not the burgher’s. I’m arrested in February.
It is cold. There is a driving wind. It slices you in pieces. It goes
right through you and comes out the other side. It freezes your
bones and your skin is a paper-thin ice, translucent. I am
against the War. I am against war. I find it easier to do things
than to say things. I am losing the w ords I had about peace.
The peace boys have all the words. The peace boys take all the
words and use them; they say them. I can’t think o f ones for
myself. T hey don’t mean what they say; words are trash to
them; it’s hollow, what they say; but the words belong to
them. In January I sat in court and saw Ja y sent aw ay for five
years to a federal prison. He w ouldn’t go to Vietnam. I sat
there and I watched and there was nothing to say. The peace
boys talked words but the words were trash. When the time
came Jay stood there, a hulking six-foot black man and I know
he wanted to cry, and the Feds took him out and he was gone
for five years. The peace boys were white. He was afraid and
the peace boys were exuberant. He didn’t have words; he
could barely say anything when the ju dge gave him his few
seconds to speak after being sentenced or before, I don’t
know, it was all predecided anyway; I think the judge said five
years then invited Ja y to speak and I swear he almost fell down
from the shock and the reality o f it and he mumbled a couple o f
words but there wasn’t anything to say and federal marshals
took him o ff and his mother and sisters were there and they
had tears, not words, and the peace boys had no tears, only
words about the struggle o f the black man against the racist
war in Vietnam, I couldn’t stop crying through the thing
which is w hy I’m not sure just when the judge said five years
and just when Ja y seemed like he was going to double over and
ju st when he was told he could say something and he tried but
couldn’t really. I’ve been organizing with the peace boys since
the beginning o f January, working to organize a demonstration at the United States Mission to the United Nations. We are going to sit in and protest Adlai Stevenson fronting for the
War. The peace boys wanted Ja y to give a speech that they
helped write and it covered all the bases, imperialism, racism,
stinking U . S. government, but it was too awful and too
tragic, and the peace boys went out disappointed that the
speech hadn’t been declaimed but regarding the trial as a
triumph; one more black man in jail for peace. I thought they
should honor him for being brave but I didn’t think they
should be jum ping for jo y ; it was too sad. They weren’t sad.
You just push people around when you organize, get them to
do what’s best for you; and if it hits you what it’s costing them
you will probably die on the spot from it. We have meetings to
work out every detail o f the demonstration. It is a w ay o f
thinking, precise, demanding, you work out every possible
scenario, anticipate every possible problem, you have the
right people at the right place at the right time, you have
everything happen that you want to have happen and nothing
that you don’t; and if something bad happens, you use it. I try
to say things but they just talk over it. if I try to say words to
them about what we are doing they don’t hear the words. I
think I am saying words but I must be mute, m y mouth makes
shapes but it must be that nothing comes out. So I stop saying
things. I listen and put stamps on envelopes. I listen and run off
addresses for envelopes on the mimeograph machine. I listen
and make phone calls to people to get them to come to the
demonstrations. I have long lists and I make the calls for hours
at a time but if I talk too long or say too much someone makes
a sarcastic remark or if I talk too much about the War as if I am
talking about politics someone tells me I am not w orking hard
enough. I listen and type letters. The peace boys scribble out
letters and I type them. I listen and learn how to make the
plans, how to organize; I take it in in a serious w ay, for later
perhaps; I like strategy. I learn how to get people to come and
exactly what to do when and what is important and how to
take care o f people and keep them safe— or expose them to
danger i f that is our plan, which they never know . I learn how
to make plans for every contingency— i f the police do this or
that, i f people going by get violent, i f the folks demonstrating
get hurt, i f the demonstrators decide to get arrested, what to
do when the police arrest you, the laws the police have to
follow , how to make your body go limp in resisting arrest,
how to get lawyers to be ready, how to get the press there,
how to rouse people and how to quiet them down. I listen so
that I learn how to think a certain w ay and answer certain hard
questions, very specific questions, about what w ill happen in
scenario after scenario; but I am not allowed to say anything
about what to do or how to do it or ask questions or the w ords
I do say ju st disappear in the air or in m y throat. The old men
really are the ones. T hey say how to do it. T hey do all the
thinking. T hey make all the plans. They think everything
through. I listen to them and I remember everything. I am
learning how to listen too, concentrate, think it hard as if
writing it down in your mind. It is not easy to listen. The peace
boys talk and never listen. The old men do it all for them, then
they swagger and take all the credit while the old men are
happy to fade to the background so the movement looks virile
and young. The peace boys talk, smoke, rant, make their
jokes, strum guitars, run their silky white hands through their
stringy long hair. They spread their legs when they talk, they
spread out, their legs open up and they spread them wide and
their sentences spread all over and their words come and come
and their gestures get bigger and they got half erect cocks all
the time when they talk, the denim o f their dirty jeans is pulled
tight across their cocks because o f how they spread their legs
and they always finger themselves just lightly when they talk
so they are always excited by what they have to say. Somehow
they are always half reclining, on chairs, on desks, on tables,
against walls or stacks o f boxes, legs spread out so they can
talk, touching themselves with the tips o f their fingers or the
palms o f their spread hands, giggling, smoking, they think
they are Che. I live in half a dozen different places: in the
collective on Avenue B on the floor, I don’t fight for the bed
anymore; in a living room in Brooklyn with a brother and a
sister, the brother sleeps in the same room and stares and
breathes heavy and I barely dare to breathe, they are pacifists
and leave the door to their ground floor apartment open all the
time out o f love for their fellow man but a mongrel bulldog-
terrier will kill anyone who comes through, this is the
Brooklyn o f elevated subways where you walk down dark,
steep flights o f stairs to streets o f knives and broken bottles, an
open door is a merciless act o f love; in an apartment in Spanish
Harlem, big, old, a beautiful labyrinth, with three men but I
only sleep with two, one’s a sailor and he likes anal intercourse
and when he isn’t there I get the single bed in his room to myself,
some nights I am in one bed half the night, then in the other bed;
some nights between places I stay with different men I don’t
know, or sometimes a woman, not a peace woman but
someone from the streets who has a hole in the wall to-
disappear into, someone hard and tough and she seen it all and
she’s got a mattress covered with old garbage, paper garbage,
nothing filthy, and old newspapers, and I lay under her, a
pretty girl up against her dry skin and bones that feel like
they’re broke, her callouses, her scars, bad teeth but her eyes
are brilliant, savage and brilliant, and her sex is ferocious and
rough, a little mean, I find such a woman, older than me and
I’m the ingenue and I’m the tough girl with the future; some
nights between places I stay in a hallway in a building with an
open door; some nights between places I am up all night in
bars with nowhere to sleep and no one I am ready to go with,
something warns me o ff or I just don’t want to, and at two or
four when the bars close I find a doorw ay and wait or walk and
wait, it’s cold, a lethal cold, so usually I walk, a slow,
purposeful walk with m y shoulders hunched over so no one
will see I’m young and have nowhere to go. T he jail was dirty,
dark, foul. I wasn’t allowed to make the plans or write the
leaflets or draft the letters or decide anything but they let me
picket because they needed numbers and it was just being a
foot soldier and they let me sit in because it was bodies and
they let me get arrested because it was numbers for the press;
but once we were arrested the wom en disappeared inside the
prison, we were swallowed up in it, it w asn’t as if anyone was
missing to them. T hey were all over the men, to get them out,
to keep track o f them, to make sure they were okay, the heroes
o f the revolution incarnate had to be taken care of. The real
men were going to real jail in a real historical struggle; it was
real revolution. The nothing ones walked o ff a cliff and melted
into thin air. I didn’t mind being used but I didn’t expect to
disappear into a darkness resembling hell by any measure; left
there to rot by m y brothers; the heroes o f the revolution. T hey
got the men out; they left us in. Rape, they said. We had to get
them out as a priority; rape, they said. In jail men get raped,
they said N o jokes, no laughs, no Nazis; rape; we can’t have
the heroes o f the revolution raped. And them that’s raped ain’t
heroes o f the revolution; but there were no words for that. The
women had honor. We stood up to the police. We didn’t post
bail. We went on a hunger strike. We didn’t cooperate on any
level, at any time. The pacifists just cut us loose so we could go
under, no air from the surface, no lawyers, no word, no
solace, no counsel, no help; but we didn’t give in. We didn’t
shake and we didn’t scream and we didn’t try to die, banging
our heads against concrete walls until they were smashed. We
were locked in a special hell for girls; girls you could do
anything to; girls who were exiled into a night so long and
lonely it might last forever, a hell they made for those who
don’t exist. “ Ladies, ” they kept calling us; “ ladies. ” “ Ladies, ”
do this; “ ladies, ” do that; “ ladies, ” come here; “ ladies, ” go
there. We had been in the cold all day. We picketed from real
early, maybe eight in the morning, all through the afternoon,
and it was almost five in the evening before Adlai Stevenson
came. About three or four we blocked the doors by sitting
down so then we couldn’t even keep warm by walking
around. We sat there waiting for the police to arrest us but they
wouldn’t; they knew the cold was bad. Finally they said they’d
arrest us i f we blocked a side door, the one final door that
provided access to the building. Then we saw Adlai Stevenson
go in and we got mad because he didn’t give a fuck about us
and then we blocked the final door and then the police arrested
us; some people went limp and their bodies were dragged over
cement to the police vans and some people got up and walked
and you could hear the bones o f the people who were dragged
cracking on the cement and you wondered if their bones had
split down the middle. Then we went to the precinct and the
police made out reports. Then the men were taken to the city
jail for men, the Tom bs, a place o f brutality, pestilence, and
rape they said; rape; and we went to the w om en’s jail; no one
said rape. It was w ay late after midnight when we got there.
We got out o f the van in a closed courtyard and it was cold and
dark and we walked through a door into hell, some nightmare
some monster dreamed up. Hell was a building with a door
and you walked through the door. But the men got out the
next day on their own recognizance because the pacifists
hurried to get them lawyers and hearings, spent the whole day
w orking on it, a Friday, dawn to dusk, and the wom en didn’t
get out because the pacifists didn’t have time; they had to get
the heroes o f the revolution out before someone started
sticking things up them. They just left us. Then it was a
weekend and a national holiday and the jail w asn’t doing any
nasty business like letting people who don’t exist and don’t
matter loose; we were nothing to them and they left us to rot
or be hurt, because it was a torture place and they knew it but
they didn’t tell us; and they left us; the wom en who didn’t exist
got to stay solidly in hell; and no one said rape; in jail they kept
sticking things up us all the time but no one said rape, there is
no such w ord with any meaning that I have ever heard applied
when someone spreads a girl’s legs and sticks something in
anywhere up her; no one minds including pacifists. One
woman had been a call girl, though we didn’t know it then,
and she was dressed real fine so the women in the jail spit on
her. One woman was a student and some inmates held her
down and some climbed on top o f her and some put their
hands up her and later the newspapers said it was rape because
lesbians did it so it was rape if lesbians piled on top o f you and
lesbians was the bad word, not rape, it was bad because
lesbians did it, like Nazis, and it wasn’t anything like I knew,
being around girls and how we were. Later the newspapers
said this w om en’s jail was known as a hellhole torture place
and there’s a long history o f wom en beat up and burned and
assaulted for decades but the pacifists let us stay there; didn’t
bother them. There was a woman killed there by torture.
There were women hurt each and every day and the newspapers couldn’t think o f enough bad names to say how evil the
place was and how full o f cruelty and it was known; but the
pacifists let us stay there; didn’t bother them; because if you
get tortured they don’t hear the screams any more than if you
talk in a meeting; you could be pulled into pieces in front o f
them and they’d go on as if you wasn’t there; and you weren’t
there, not for them, truly you were nothing so they weren’t
w orrying about you when you were well-hidden somewhere
designed to hide you; and they weren’t all overwrought just
because someone might stick something up you or bring you
pain; and if you got a hole to stick it up then there’s no problem
for them if someone’s sticking something up it, or how many
times, or if it’s very bad. I don’t know what to call what they
did to me but I never said it was rape, I never did, and no one
did; ever. T w o doctors, these men, gave me an internal
examination as they called it which I had never heard o f before
or seen and they used a steel speculum which I had never seen
before and I didn’t know what it was or why they were putting
it up me and they tore me apart inside so I couldn’t stop
bleeding; but it wasn’t rape because it wasn’t a penis and it was
doctors and there is no rape and they weren’t Nazis, or lesbians
even, and maybe it was a lie because it’s always a lie or if it did
happen was I a virgin because if I wasn’t a virgin it didn’t
matter what they did to me because if something’s been stuck
up you once it makes you dirty and it doesn’t matter if you tear
someone apart inside. I didn’t think it was rape, I never did, I
didn’t know what they did or w hy they did it except I knew
how much it hurt and how afraid I was when I didn’t stop
bleeding and I wouldn’t have ever said rape, not ever; and I
didn’t, not ever. The peace boys told me I was bourgeois; like I
was too spoiled to take it. The pacifists thought if it was bad
for the prison in the newspapers it was good. But even after
the pacifists didn’t say, see, these girls hate the War. Even
these silly girls hate the War. Even the girl w h o ’s stupid
enough to type our letters and bring us coffee hates the War.
Even these dumb girls who walked through a door into hell
hate the War. Even these silly cunts we left in a torture pit
know ing full well they’d be hurt but so what hate the War.
They are too stupid to hate us but they hate the War. So stop
the War because these dregs, these nothings, these no ones,
these pieces we sent in to be felt up and torn up and have things
stuck in them hate the War. The peace boys laughed at me
when they found out I was hurt. It was funny, how some
bourgeois cunt couldn’t take it. They laughed and they spread
their legs and they fingered themselves. I w asn’t the one who
told them. I never told them. I couldn’t speak anym ore at all; I
was dumb or mute or however you say it, I didn’t have words
and I w ouldn’t say anything for any reason to anyone because I
was too hurt and too alone. I got out o f jail after four days and I
walked on the streets for some days and I said nothing to no
one until this nonviolence woman found me and made me say
what happened. She was a tough cookie in her ow n w ay which
was only half a pose. She cornered me and she w ouldn’t let me
go until I said what happened. Some words came out and then
all the ones I had but I didn’t know how to say things, like
speculum which I had never seen, so I tried to say what
happened thing by thing, describing because I didn’t know
what to call things, sometimes even with m y hands showing
her what I meant, and when it was over she seemed to
understand. The call girl got a jail sentence because the ju dge
said she had a history o f prostitution. The pacifists didn’t say
how she was noble to stand up against the War; or how she
was reformed or any other bullshit; they just all shivered and
shook when they found out she had been a call girl; and they
ju st let her go, quiet, back into hell; thirty days in hell for
trying to stop a nasty war; and the pacifists didn’t want to
claim her after that; and they didn’t help her after that; and they
didn’t want her in demonstrations after that. They let me drift,
a mute, in the streets, just a bourgeois piece o f shit who
couldn’t take it; except for the peace woman. She seemed to
understand everything and she seemed to believe me even
though I had never heard o f any such thing happening before
and it didn’t seem possible to me that it had happened at all.
She said it was very terrible to have such a thing happen. I had
to try to say each thing or show it with m y hands because I
couldn’t sum up anything or say anything in general or refer to
any common knowledge and I didn’t know what things were
or if they were important and I didn’t know if it was all right
that they did it to me or not because they did it to everyone
there, who were mostly whores except for one woman who
murdered her husband, and they were police and doctors and
so I thought maybe they were allowed to even though I
couldn’t stop bleeding but I was afraid to tell anyone, even
myself, and to m yself I kept saying I had m y period, even after
fifteen days. She called a newspaper reporter who said so
what? The newspaper reporter said it happens all the time
there that women are hurt just so bad or worse and remember
the woman who was tortured to death and so what was so
special about this? But the woman said the reporter was wrong
and it mattered so at first I started to suffocate because the
reporter said it didn’t matter but then I could breathe again
because the woman said it mattered and it couldn’t be erased
and you couldn’t say it was nothing. So I went from this
woman after this because I couldn’t just stay there with her and
she assumed everyone had some place to go because that’s
how life is it seems in the main and I went to the peace office
and instead o f typing letters for the peace boys I wrote to
newspapers saying I had been hurt and it was bad and not all
right and because I didn’t know sophisticated words I used the
words I knew and they were very shocked to death; and the
peace boys were in the office and I refused to type a letter for
one o f them because I was doing this and he read m y letter out
loud to everyone in the room over m y shoulder and they all
laughed at me, and I had spelled America with a “ k ” because I
knew I was in K afka’s world, not Jefferson ’s, and I knew
Am erika was the real country I lived in, and they laughed that I
couldn’t spell it right. The peace wom an fed me sometimes
and let me sleep there sometimes and she talked to me so I
learned some words I could use with her but I didn’t tell her
most things because I didn’t know how and she had an
apartment and w asn’t conversant with how things were for
me and I didn’t want to say but also I couldn’t and also there
was no reason to try, because it is as it is. I’m me, not her in her
apartment. Y ou always have your regular life. She’d say she
could see I was tired and did I want to sleep and I’d say no and
she’d insist and I never understood how she could tell but I was
so tired. I had a room I always stayed in. It was small but it was
warm and there were blankets and there was a door that closed
and she’d be there and she didn’t let anyone come in after me.
M aybe she would have let me stay there more if I had known
how to say some true things about day to day but I didn’t ask
anything from anyone and I never would because I couldn’t
even be sure they would understand, even her. And what I
told her when she made me talk to her was how once you went
to jail they started sticking things up you. T hey kept putting
their fingers and big parts o f their whole hand up you, up your
vagina and up your rectum; they searched you inside and
stayed inside you and kept touching you inside and they
searched inside your mouth with their fingers and inside your
ears and nose and they made you squat in front o f the guards to
see i f anything fell out o f you and stand under a cold shower
and make different poses and stances to see if anything fell out
o f you and then they had someone w ho they said was a nurse
put her hands up you again and search your vagina again and
search your rectum again and I asked her w hy do you do this,
why, you don’t have to do this, and she said she was looking
for heroin, and then the next day they took me to the doctors
and there were two o f them and one kept pressing me all over
down on my stomach and under where m y stomach is and all
down near between my legs and he kept hurting me and
asking me if I hurt and I said yes and every time I said yes he did
it harder and I thought he was trying to find out if I was sick
because he was a doctor and I was in so much pain I must be
very sick like having an appendicitis all over down there but
then I stopped saying anything because I saw he liked pressing
harder and making it hurt more and so I didn’t answer him but
I had some tears in m y eyes because he kept pressing anyway
but I wouldn’t let him see them as best as it was possible to turn
m y head from where he could see and they made jokes, the
doctors, about having sex and having girls and then the big
one who had been watching and laughing took the speculum
which I didn’t know what it was because I had never seen one
or had anyone do these awful things to me and it was a big,
cold, metal thing and he put it in me and he kept twisting it and
turning it and he kept tearing me to pieces which is literal
because I was ripped up inside and the inside o f me was bruised
like fists had beaten me all over but from within me or
someone had taken my uterus and turned it inside out and hit it
and cut it and then I was taken back to m y cell and I got on m y
knees and I tried to cry and I tried to pray and I couldn’t cry and
I couldn’t pray. I was in G od ’s world, His world that He made
H im self on purpose, on my knees, blood coming down m y
legs; and I hated Him; and there were no tears in me to come as
if I was one o f G o d ’s children all filled with sorrow and
mourning in a world with His mercy. M y father came to get
me weeks later when the bleeding wouldn’t stop. I had called
and begged and he came at night though I had shamed them
and he wouldn’t look at me or speak to me. I was afraid to tell
the woman about the blood. At first when she made me talk I
said I had m y period but when the bleeding didn’t stop I didn’t
tell her because a peace boy said I had a disease from sex and I
was bleeding because o f that and he didn’t want me around
because I was dirty and sick and I thought she’d throw me
aw ay too so I said I had called m y parents. I f you tell people in
apartments that you called your parents they think you are fine
then. M y mother said I should be locked up like an animal for
being a disgrace because o f jail and she would lock me up like
the animal I was. I ran aw ay for good from all this place—
home, Amerika, I can’t think o f no good name for it. I went far
away to where they don’t talk English and I never had to talk
or listen or understand. N o one talked so I had to answer. N o
one knew m y name. It was a cocoon surrounded by
cacophony. I liked not knowing anything. I was quiet outside,
never trying. There was no talking anyw ay that could say I
was raped more now and was broke for good. If it ain’t broke
don’t fix it and if it is broke just leave it alone and someday it’ll
die. Here, Andreus is a m an’s name. Andrea doesn’t exist at
all, m y m om m a’s name, not at all, not one bit. It is monstrous
to betray your child, bitch.
F IV E
In June 1966
(Age 19)
M y name is Andrea but here in nightclubs they say ma chere.
M y dear but more romantic. Sometimes they say it in a sullen
way, sometimes they are dismissive, sometimes it has a rough
edge or a cool indifference to it, a sexual callousness; sometimes they say it like they are talking to a pet dog, except that the Greeks don’t keep pets. Here on Crete they shoot cats.
They hate them. The men take rifIes and shoot them o ff the
roofs and in the alleys. The cats are skeletal, starving; the
Cretans act as if the cats are cruel predators and slimy crawling
things at the same time. N o one would dare befriend one here.
E very time I see a cat skulking across a roof, its bony, meager
body twisted for camouflage, I think I am seeing the Jew s in
the ghettos o f Eastern Europe sliding out o f hiding to find
food. M y chere. Doesn’t it mean expensive? I don’t know
French except for the few words I have had to pick up in the
bars. The high-class Greek men speak French, the peasants
only Greek, and it is very low -brow to speak English, vulgar.
N o one asks m y name or remembers it if I say it. In Europe
only boys are named it. It means manhood or courage. If they
hear m y name they laugh; you’re not a boy, they say. I don’t
need a name, it’s a burden o f memory, a useless burden for a
woman. It doesn’t seem to mean anything to anyone. There is
an Andreus here, a hero who was the captain o f a ship that was
part o f the resistance when the Nazis occupied the island. He
brought in guns and food and supplies and got people o ff the
island who needed to escape and brought people to Crete who
needed to hide. He killed Nazis when he could; he killed some,
for certain. N o occupier has ever conquered the mountains
here, rock made out o f African desert and dust. Andreus is old
and cunning and rich. He owns olive fields and is the official
consul for the country o f N orw ay; I don’t know what that
means but he has stationery and a seal and an office. He owns
land. He is dirty and sweaty and fat. He drinks and says dirty
things to women but one overlooks them. He says dirty
words in English and makes up dirty limericks in broken
English. He likes me because I am in love; he admires love. I
am in love in a language I don’t know. He likes this love
because it is a rare kind to see. It has the fascination o f fire; you
can’t stop looking. We’re so much joined in the flesh that
strangers feel the pain if we stop touching. Andreus is a failed
old sensualist now but he is excited by passion, the life-and-
death kind, the passion you have to have to wage a guerrilla
war from the sea on an island occupied by Nazis; being near
us, you feel the sea. I’m the sea for him now and he’s waiting to
see if his friend will drown. M venerates him for his role in the
resistance. Andreus is maybe sixty, an old sixty, gritty, oiled,
lined. M is thirty, old to me, an older man if I force m yself to
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