T W O
In 1961 and 1962
(Age 14, 15, 16)
M y name is Andrea. It means manhood or courage. In Europe
only boys are named it. I live in the U . S . A. I was bom down
the street from Walt W hitman’s house, on M ickle Street in
Camden in 1946, after the war, after the bomb. I was the first
generation after the bomb. I’ve always known I would die.
Other generations didn’t think so. Everyone says I’m sad but
I’m not sad. It doesn’t make me sad. The houses were brick,
the brick was made o f blood and straw, there was dust and dirt
on the sidewalks, the sidewalks were gray, the cement was
cracked, it was dark, always dark, thick dark you could reach
out and touch and it came down all around you and you could
feel it weighing on you and bumping up against you and
ramming you from behind. Y o u m oved against the dark or
under it or it pushed you from behind. The dark was
everything. Y o u had to learn to read it with your fingers or
you would be lost; might die. The cement was next, a great
gray desert. Y ou were on it, stuck and abandoned, a great gray
plain going on forever. They made you fall on your knees on
the cement and stay there so the dark could come and get you.
The dark pushed you, the cement was the bed, you fell on
your knees, the dark took you, the cement cradled you, a
harsh, angry embrace tearing the skin o ff your knees and
hands. Some places there is a great, unbearable wind, and the
fragile human breaks in it, bends in it, falls. Here there was this
dark; like the great, unbearable wind but perfectly still, quiet,
thick; it pushed without moving. Them in the dark, the
cement was the bed, a cold slat o f death, a grave with no rest,
the best bed you could get, the best bed you would ever have,
you fell forward on your knees pushed by the dark from
behind and the dark banged into you or sometimes there were
boys in cars flying by in the dark and then coming around
from behind, later, the same ones; or sometimes different
ones. The dark was some army o f them, some mass, a creature
from the deep, the blob, a giant parasite, some spreading
monster, pods, wolfmen. They called you names and they
hissed, hot steam o ff their tongues. They followed you in
beat-up cars or they just stood around and they whistled and
made noises, and the dark pushed you down and banged into
you and you were on your hands and knees, the skin torn off,
not praying, waiting, wanting all right, wanting for the dark
to move o ff you, pick itself up and run. The dark was hissing
and hot and hard with a jagged bone, a cold, brutal bone, and
hips packed tight. The dark wasn’t just at night. The dark was
