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