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
