Mercy

course keep thinking; I’d be doing laundry but I’d think I was

thinking— housework wasn’t what I was doing, not me, no, I

was thinking. I shared the fruits o f all this labor with him,

clean clothes, clean dishes, clean floors, my thinking, which

has always been first-rate in some senses, and I saw him put the

thinking I had done into action so I felt like some pretty major

player, running dope and making money all over Europe, and

I kept thinking, and I saw the thinking go into political

actions, so I felt pretty major, and I just kept washing and

thinking; washing, ironing, and thinking; washing, shopping,

and thinking; washing, cooking, and thinking; washing,

scrubbing, and thinking; washing, folding, and thinking. I

saw the consequences o f m y thinking; it was us out there, not

just him. I was important; he knew; you don’t need

recognition in a revolutionary life. Increasingly he incarnated,

freedom, I dreamed it; especially he was the one who got to be

free outside the four walls, and I got to be what he rolled over

on when he got home, dead tired and mean as madness. He

did— he got on top, he fucked me, he went to sleep. I was

incredulous. In the aftershock I ironed, I washed, I scrubbed, I

cooked. I’d lie there awake after he rolled o ff me, on m y back,

not m oving, for hours— outraged, a pristine innocence,

stunned in disbelief; this was me; me. We’d entertain too, the

revolutionary couple, the subversives— I learned to do it. It’s

like you see in all those films where the bourgie wife slinks

around and makes the perfect martini amidst the glittering

furniture; well, shit, honey, I made the most magnificent joint

a boy could sit down to on a beanbag chair. I mean, I made a

joint so gorgeous, so classic and yet so full o f savagery and

bite, so smooth and so deadly, so big and so right, yo u ’d leave

your wife and fam ily and kill your fucking mother ju st to sit

on the floor near it. I was the perfect wife, illegally speaking; I

mean, I learned how to be a stoned sweet bitch, the new good

housekeeping. Y ou r man comes to visit m y man and he

don’t walk home; I am dressed fine and mostly I am quiet

except for an occasional ironic remark which establishes me, at

least in m y own mind, as smart, and I roll a fine joint, and in

this w ay I’ve done m y man proud; he’s got the best dope and a

fine wom an— and a clean house, I mean, a fucking clean

house; and I ain’t som ebody’s dumb wife except in the eyes o f

the law because I defy society— I defy society— I roll joints, I

have barely seen a martini, there’s nothing I ain’t done in bed,

including with him, except anal intercourse, I w o n ’t have it,

not from him, I don’t know w hy but I just w o n ’t, I don’t want

him in me that way, I think it’s how I said he’s m y husband;

husband. But I don’t think he even knew about it. I’d be as

perfect as I could according to his demands, gradually