Mercy by Andrea Dworkin Read Free Book Online Page A

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