Mercy

by Andrea Dworkin

and he was sorry, and he helped me, he washed m y face and he

  put me in bed and he covered me up and he let me sleep and it

  ju st w asn’t something you could imagine happening again. O r

  I didn't do the laundry right. I didn’t separate the clothes right.

  I washed his favorite T-shirt in with the colored clothes and

  some colors ran in it and he held it up and he berated me for

  how stupid I was and how I did this to hurt him on purpose

  because it was his favorite T-shirt and I was trying to placate

  him so I was trying to smile and be very nice and I said it was

  ju st a mistake and I was sorry and he said you always have

  some fucking smart answer and he hit me until I was wet stuff

  on the floor. Everything just keeps happening. Y ou do the

  laundry, you think you are free, you get waked up by

  someone on you fucking you or he ties you up and you get a

  pain in your side and then you go to the movies and time slows

  down so that a day is almost never over, it never exactly ends,

  nothing exactly ever stops or starts, I’d sit in the movie

  wondering what would happen if I just stood up and started

  begging for help, I wanted to, I wanted to just stand up and say

  help me; help me; he’s hurting me; he, this one here, he hurt

  me so bad just before; help me; take me somewhere; help me;

  take me somewhere safe; and I knew they’d laugh, he’d make

  them laugh, some jokes about women or how crazy I was and

  the stoned assholes would just laugh and he’d keep me there

  through the movie and then life would just go on; then or

  later, that night or tomorrow, he would hurt me so bad; like

  Himmler. There’s normal life going on all around you and

  you have your own ordinary days and it is true that they are

  ordinary because doing the laundry is ordinary and being

  fucked by your husband is ordinary and if you are unhappy

  that is ordinary too, as everyone will tell you i f you ask for

  help. Old ladies in the neighborhood will pat your hand and

  say yes, dear, but someday they get sick and die. Y ou can’t

  remember if there was a prior time and you get so nervous and

  so worried and you just keep trying to do everything better,

  the cleaning, bed, whatever he wants, you concentrate on

  doing it good, the w ay he likes it, and you just squeeze your

  mind into a certain shape so you can concentrate on not

  making mistakes and some days you can’t and you talk back or

  are slow or say something sarcastic and you will be hurt. Did

  you provoke it, did you want it, or are you just a fucking

  human being w h o ’s tired o f the little king? If you tell anyone

  or ask for help they blame you for it. Everyon e’s got a reason

  it’s your fault. I didn’t clean the refrigerator, I did mess up the

  laundry, I wasn’t in the right, I’m supposed to do those things,

  I’m the wife after all, whoever heard o f one who didn’t know

  how to do those things, he has rights too; I’m supposed to

  make him happy. And I let him tie me up so it’s on me what

  happened and if I say I didn’t like it people just say it’s a lie, you

  can’t face it, you can’t face how you liked it; and I can’t explain

  that I’m not like them, I’m not someone virginal in the world

  like them, I been facing what I liked since I was bom and being

  tied up isn’t what they think, the words they use like

  “ sadomasochism” or “ bondage, ” three-dollar words for

  getting a trick to come, and they get all excited just to say them

  because they read about them in books and they are all

  philosophers from the books and I hate them, I hate the

  middle-class goons who have so much to say but never spent

  one fucking day trying to stay alive. And when you are a

  fucking piece o f ground meat, hamburger he left on the floor,

  and he fucks you or he fucking leaves you there for dead,

  whichever is his pleasure that day, it’s what you wanted, what

  you are, what’s inside o f you, like you planned it all along, like

  yo u ’re General Westmoreland or something instead o f messed

  up, bleeding trash, and i f yo u ’re running aw ay they send you

  back for more, and they don’t give you money to help you,

  and they tell you that you like it; fucking middle-class

  hypocrite farts. I have a list. I remember you ones. Y o u try to

  pull the w ool over someone else’s eyes about how smart you

  are and what humanitarians you all are on the side o f

  w hoever’s hurting. Nelson Mandela provoked it. What do

  you think about that, assholes? We all o f us got the consolation

  that nobody remembers the worst things. T h ey’re gone; brain

  just burns them away. And there’s no words for the worst

  things so ain’t no one going to tell you the worst things; they

  can’t. Y ou can pick up any book and know for sure the worst

  things ain’t in it. It’s almost funny reading Holocaust literature. The person’s trying so hard to be calm and rational, controlled, clear, not to exaggerate, never to exaggerate, to

  remember ordinary details so that the story will have a

  narrative line that will make sense to you; you— whoever the

  fuck you are. The person’s trying so hard to create a twenty-

  four-hour day. The person picks words carefully, sculpts

  them into paragraphs, selects details, the victim ’s selection,

  selects details and tries to make them credible— selects from

  what can be remembered, because no one remembers the

  worst. They don’t dare scream at you. They are so polite, so

  quiet, so civil, to make it a story you can read. I am telling you,

  you have never read the worst. It has never been uttered by

  anyone ever. Not the Russians, not the Jew s; never, not ever.

  Y ou get numb, you forget, you don’t believe it even when it’s

  happening to you, your mind caves in, just collapses, for a

  minute or a day or a week or a year until the worst is over, the

  center caves in, whoever you were leaves, just leaves; if you

  try to force your mind to remember it leaves, just fucking

  empties out o f you, it might as well be a puddle on the ground.

  Anything I can say isn’t the worst; I don’t remember the

  worst. It’s the only thing God did right in everything I seen on

  earth: made the mind like scorched earth. The mind shows

  you mercy. Freud didn’t understand mercy. The mind gets

  blank and bare. There’s nothing there. Y ou got what you

  remember and what you don’t and the very great thing is that

  you can’t remember almost anything compared to what

  happened day in and day out. Y ou can count how many days

  there were but it is a long stretch o f nothing in your mind;

  there is nothing; there are blazing episodes o f horror in a great

  stretch o f nothing. Y ou thank God for the nothing. Y ou get

  on your fucking knees. We are doing some construction in our

  apartment and we had a pile o f wood beams piled up and he

  got so mad at me— for what? — something about a locked

  door; I didn’t lock the door or he didn’t lock the door and I

  asked him w hy not— and he picked up one o
f the w ood beams

  and he beat me with it across m y legs like he was a trained

  torturer and knew how to do it, between the knees and the

  ankle, not busting the knees, not smashing the ankles, he ju st

  hammered it down on m y legs, and I don’t remember

  anything before or after, I don’t know what month it was or

  what year; but I know it was worse, the before and the after

  were worse; the weeks I can’t remember were worse; I

  remember where it happened, every detail, we had the bed in

  the hall near the w ood beams and we were sleeping there

  temporarily and it was early on because it w asn’t the brass bed

  yet, it was ju st a dum py old bed, an old mattress, and

  everything was dull and brown, there was a hall closet, and

  there was a toilet at one end o f the hall and a foyer leading to

  the entrance to the apartment at the other end o f the hall, and

  there wasn’t much room, and it was brow n and small and had

  a feeling o f being enclosed and I know I was sitting on the bed

  when he began to hit me with the beam, when he hit me with it

  the first time, it was so fast or I didn’t expect it because I didn’t

  believe it was possible, I didn’t understand what happened, or

  how it could; but I remember it and the only thing that means

  is that it isn’t the worst. I know how to calibrate torture— how

  to measure what’s worse, what’s better, w hat’s more, w hat’s

  less. Y o u take the great morbid dark blank days and you have

  located the worst. Y ou pray it ain’t buried like Freud says; you

  pray God burned it out like I say. Some weeks later he wanted

  to have dinner with his sister and brother-in-law. I could limp

  with a great deal o f pain. I was wearing dark glasses because

  m y eyes had cuts all around them and were discolored from

  bruises and swollen out o f shape; I don’t know when m y eyes

  got that way; the time o f the wood beam or in the weeks I can’t

  remember after; but I had to wear the glasses so no one would

  see m y eyes. Them kinds o f bruises don’t heal fast like in the

  movies. They all played cards and we had cheese fondue

  which I never saw before. I walked with a bad limp, I

  concealed the pain as best I could, I wore the dark glasses, I had

  a smile pasted on my face from ear-to-ear, an indelible smile,

  and brother-in-law brought up the limp and I said smiling

  with utter charm that I had tripped over the beams and hurt

  myself. D on’t w orry, I whispered urgently to m y husband, I

  would never tell. I would never tell. What you did (hoping he

  doesn’t hear the accusation in saying he did it, but he does o f

  course and he bristles). I’m on your side. I wouldn’t tell.

  Brother-in-law, a man o f the world, smiles. He knows that a

  lot o f stupid women keep falling down mountains. H e’s a

  major in the military; we say a fascist. He knew. He seemed to

  like it; he flushed, a warm, sexy flush; he liked it that I lied and

  smiled. There’s no what happened next. Nightmares don’t

  have a linear logic with narrative development, each detail

  expanding the expressive dimensions o f the text. Terror ain’t

  esthetic. It don’t work itself out in perfect details picked by an

  elegant intelligence and organized so a voyeur can follow it. It

  smothers and you don’t get no air. It’s oceanic and you drown,

  you are trapped underneath and you ain’t going to surface and

  you ain’t going to swim and you ain’t dead yet. It destroys and

  you cease to exist while your body endures anyway to be hurt

  more and your mind, the ineffable, bleeds inside your head

  and still your brain don’t blow. It’s an anguish that implodes

  leaving pieces o f you on the wall. It’s remorse for living; it’s

  pulling-your-heart-apart grief for every second you spent

  alive. It is all them cruel things you can’t remember that went

  to make up your days, ordinary days. I was in the bedroom. It

  was dark blue, the ceiling too. I’d be doing what he wanted, or

  trying to. He fucked me a lot. I’d be crying or waiting. I’d be-

  staring. I’d stare. I was like some idiot, staring. After he

  fucked me I’d just be there, a breathing cadaver. Y ou just wait,

  finally, for him to kill you; you hope it w o n ’t take too long,

  you w o n ’t have to grow old. Hope, as they say, never dies.

  T im e’s disappearing altogether, it doesn’t seem to exist at all,

  you wait, he comes, he hurts you this w ay or that, long or

  short, an enormous brutality, physical injury or psychological

  torture, he doesn’t let you sleep, he keeps you up, he fucking

  tortures you, yo u ’re in a prison camp, yo u ’re tied up or not,

  it’s like being in a cell, he tortures you, he hurts you, he fucks

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  or just sitting talking somewhere, and blood starts coming out

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  completely normal for me, I am sitting there talking and

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  movies when someone explains what real stigmata is so we

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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