thought, I’d better have a real coat, I thought, the bastard has a
real coat and yes I will risk m y life to get it so I grabbed it and at
first he didn’t want me to have it but I said shit boy it’s a real
cheap w ay to end a marriage and he could’ve smashed me but
he didn’t because he wanted me out and he looked at me and
said yeah take it and you don’t wait a second, you grab it and
you get out. I never was sorry I took it. I slept on it, I slept
under it, I wrapped it around me like it was m y real skin, m y
shelter, m y house, m y home, I didn’t need to buy other stuff
for staying warm , I wore a cheap T-shirt under it, nothing
else, I didn’t have to w o rry about clothes or nothing like that;
but tonight’s too cold for it, there’s nights like that, wind too
bad, too strong, no respite; tonight’s too cold. I think I’m
going to sit still, sit quiet and calm, inside, in a room, in this
quiet room, w ork on m y story, cross out, put new words
down, try to make it sing for me, for me now, here and now,
in m y head now. T hey say Mann was a bourgeois writer. I
never saw it myself. I think he was outside them and I
wondered how he knew when it was beautiful enough and
when it was right. It seemed you had to have this calm. Y ou
had to be still. I think it’s this funny thing inside that I’m just
getting close to, this w ay o f listening, you can sort o f vaguely
hear something, you have to concentrate and get real still but
then you hear this thin thread o f something inside, and the
words ride on it right or they don’t but if you get the words
perfect they are ju st right on that thread, balanced just right. I
can’t really do it though because I’m always tired and I’m
always afraid. I shake. I can’t quiet down enough. The fear’s
new. I w asn’t some frightened girl. I’m afraid to sit still. I’m
afraid to be alone. I’m afraid when it’s quiet. A n y time I
remember I’m afraid. A ny time I dream I’m afraid. A ny time I
have to sit still alone I’m afraid. I just got this shake in me, this
terror; it’s like the room ain’t empty except it’s hollow , worse
than em pty, like some kind o f tunnel in hell, all dark with
nothing, a perfect void, I’m part o f the void and the air I’m
breathing is part o f it and the walls o f the room are the tunnel
and I’m trapped in a nothing so damned real it’s fixed forever. I
shake bad when I’m alone. I work on the stories barely able to
hold the pencil in m y hand. I don’t have no dope to calm me
down. The shake gets less if I smoke some dope, even a small
joint. Mentally I concentrate on calming m yself down so the
shake’s inside but I ain’t trembling so bad in m y body, I’m
more normal. So I sit for as long as I can, writing words down
and saying the sentences out loud to m yself and then I start
speeding up inside with fear and there’s no reason and so I have
to start calming m yself all over again, I concentrate on it until
I’m sitting still, not shaking. Then he just came right inside.
