Mercy Read Online Free PDF Page A

alone more and sometimes they
    would talk to you about things if you asked them lots o f
    intelligent questions and made them talk to you. And you
    have to be nice to adults to show you have manners and so they
    w o n ’t watch you all the time and because you get punished i f

    you aren’t nice to them because adults get to punish you if they
    want and you can’t stop them. I knew I had to be nice to the
    man in the movies because he was an adult and I had to talk to
    adults in a certain w ay because I was a child and I got punished
    if I didn’t but I also wanted to act like an adult so they would
    leave me alone so I had to talk t o him like an adult and not cry
    or be stupid or act silly or act like a baby or be rude or raise my
    voice or run away or be scared like a baby. Y ou had to say
    mister or sir and you had to be polite and if you wanted to be
    grown up you had to talk quiet and be reasonable and say
    quiet, intelligent things in a certain quiet, reasonable way.
    Children cried. Y ou didn’t cry. Little babies screamed like
    ninnies. Y ou didn’t scream. Adults didn’t scream when
    someone talked to them quietly. The man talked very quiet.
    The man was very polite. I was too grown up to scream and
    cry and then I would have had to leave the movie if I made
    noise because you weren’t even allowed to make any noise in a
    movie. You weren’t allowed to whisper. I couldn’t understand how come the man kept talking once the movie started
    because I knew you weren’t allowed to talk during it. M y
    daddy hated for me to cry. He walked away in disgust. M y
    momma yelled at me but my daddy went away. Adults said I
    was a good child or I was very mature for my age or I had
    poise. Sometimes they said I was a nice girl or a sweet child or
    a smart, sweet child with such nice manners. It was a big act on
    my part. I waited for them to go away so I could go
    somewhere and do what I wanted but I wanted them to like
    me. M y momma made me talk with respect to all adults no
    matter what they did. Sometimes a teacher was so stupid but
    m y momma said I had to talk with respect or be quiet and I
    wasn’t allowed to contradict them or even argue with them at
    all. One teacher in regular school made her pets stand behind
    her when she was sitting at her desk in the front o f the room
    and you had to brush o ff her collar, just stand there behind her

    for fifteen minutes or a half hour or longer and keep brushing
    her collar on her shoulders with your open hands, palms
    down, stroking all the whole w ay from her neck to her arms.
    She sat at her desk and we would be taking a test or writing
    something or answering her questions and she would say
    someone had to come up and stand behind her and she wore
    one o f those fuzzy collars you put on top o f sweaters and
    someone had to stand behind her chair facing the class and
    with their hands keep brushing the fuzzy collar down,
    smoothing it down, with one stroke from her neck to her
    shoulder, the left hand had to stroke the left side o f her collar
    and the right hand had to stroke the right side o f her collar, and
    it had to be smooth and in rhythm and feel good to her or she
    would get mean and say sarcastic things about you to the class.
    Y ou just had to stand there and keep touching her and they’d
    stare at you. Y ou were supposed to like it because she only
    picked you if she liked you or if you were done your test early
    or i f you were very good and everyone else stared at you and
    you were the teacher’s pet. But m y arms got tired and I hated
    standing there and I felt funny and I thought it was boring and
    I didn’t see w hy I couldn’t do something else like read while I
    was waiting for the test to be over and I tried to prolong it but I
    couldn’t too much and I thought she was mean but the meaner
    she was the more you wanted her to like you and be nice to you
    because otherwise she would hurt you so much by saying
    awful things about you to the