Ice And Fire Read online

  Ice And Fire

  Andrea Dworkin

  ICE AND FIRE

  By the same author

  Nonfiction

  W om an H ating

  O ur Blood: Prophecies and D iscourses on Sexual Politics

  Pornography: M en Possessing W omen

  Right-w ing W omen:

  T he Politics o f Dom esticated Fem ales

  Fiction

  the new w om ans broken heart: short stories

  ICE AND FIRE

  A Novel

  by

  Andrea Dworkin

  Seeker & W arb u rg

  L on don

  First published in England 1986 by

  Martin Seeker & Warburg Limited

  54 Poland Street, London WI V 3DF

  Copyright ©

  by Andrea Dworkin

  Reprinted 1986

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Dworkin, Andrea

  Ice and fire: a novel.

  1. Title

  823'. 91 4[F]

  PR6054. W/

  ISBN 0-436-13960-X

  Pages 52-56 first appeared, translated into French, in La Vie

  en Rose, No 18, July-August 1984.

  Filmset in Great Britain in II on 12 pt Sabon

  by Richard Clay Ltd, Bungay, Suffolk

  Printed and bound in Great Britain

  by Billings & Son Ltd,

  Hylton Road, Worcester

  For Elaine M arkson

  Neither weep nor laugh but understand.

  Spinoza

  *

  I have two first memories.

  The sofa is green with huge flowers imprinted on it, pink

  and beige and streaks of yellow or brown, like they were

  painted with a wide brush to highlight the edges and borders

  of the flowers. The sofa is deep and not too long, three cushions, the same green. The sofa is against a wall in the living room. It is our living room. Nothing in it is very big but we

  are small and so the ceilings are high and the walls tower,

  unscalable, and the sofa is immense, enough width and depth

  to burrow in, to get lost in. My brother is maybe two. I am

  two years older. He is golden, a white boy with yellow hair

  and blue eyes: and happy. He has a smile that lights up the

  night. He is beautiful and delicate and divine. Nothing has set

  in his face yet, not fear, not malice, not anger, not sorrow: he

  knows no loss or pain: he is delicate and happy and intensely

  beautiful, radiance and delight. We each get a corner of the

  sofa. We crouch there until the referee, father always, counts

  to three: then we meet in the middle and tickle and tickle until

  one gives up or the referee says to go back to our corners

  because a round is over. Sometimes we are on the fl oor, all

  three of us, tickling and wrestling, and laughing past when I

  hurt until dad says stop. I remember the great print flowers, I

  remember crouching and waiting to hear three, I remember the

  great golden smile of the little boy, his yellow curls cascading

  as we roll and roll.

  The hospital is all light brown outside, stone, lit up by electric

  lights, it is already dark out, and my grandfather and I are

  outside, waiting for my dad. He comes running. Inside I am

  put in a small room. A cot is set up for him. My tonsils will

  come out. Somewhere in the hospital is my mother. I think all

  night long that she must be in the next room. I tap on the wall,

  sending secret signals. She has been away from home for a

  long time. The whole family is in the hospital now, my father

  with me: I don’t know where my brother is— is he born yet?

  7

  He is somewhere for sure, and my mother is somewhere,

  probably in the next room. I remember flowered wallpaper.

  I haven’t seen my mother for a very long time and now

  I am coming to where she is, I expect to see her, I am

  close to her now, here, in the same hospital, she is near,

  somewhere, here. I never see her but I am sure she is lying

  in bed happy to be near me on the other side of the wall

  in the very next room. She must be happy to know I am

  here. Her hair was long then, black, and she was young.

  My father sleeps in the hospital room, in the bed next to

  mine.

  *

  The street was home, but, oh, these were kind streets, the

  streets of children, real children. The houses were brick row

  houses, all the same, two cement flights of stairs outside, the

  outside steps, from the sidewalk. The lawns were hills sloping

  down the height of one flight of steps, the lower one, to the

  sidewalk. There was a landing between flights. Some of us had

  patios: the big cement truck came, the huge tumbler turning

  round and round, and the cement was poured out and flattened

  down, and sticks marked the edges until it dried. Others had

  some flowers: next door there were shabby roses, thorns. Each

  house was the same, two floors, on the first floor a living

  room, dining room, and tiny kitchen; up a tall flight of stairs

  three bedrooms, two big, one tiny, a bathroom, a closet. The

  stairs were the main thing: up and down on endless piggyback

  rides on daddy’s back: up to bed with a piggyback ride, up

  and down one more time, the greatest ride had a story to go

  with it about riding horses or piggies going to market; up the

  stairs on daddy’s back and then into bed for the rest of the

  fabulous story; and I would try to get him to do it again and

  again, up and down those stairs, and a story. Each house had

  one family, all the houses were in a row, but two doors were

  right next to each other above the cement steps so those were

  the closest neighbors. The adults, mostly the women, would sit

  on chairs up by their doors, or sit on the steps up by the doors

  talking and visiting and watching the children, and the children

  of all the houses would converge in the street to play. If you

  looked at it you would see dismal brick row houses all the

  same at the top of two flights of cement steps out in the wea­

  8

  ther. But if you were a child, you would see that the adults

  were far away, and that the street stretched into a million

  secret hidden places. There were parked cars to hide behind

  and under and telephone poles, the occasional tree, secret

  valleys at the bottoms of lawns, and the mysterious interiors of

  other people’s houses across the way. And then the backs of

  the houses made the world bigger, more incredible yet. There

  were garages back there, a black asphalt back alley and back

  doors and places to hang clothes on a line and a million places

  to hide, garbage cans, garages half open, telephone poles,

  strange dark dirty places, basements. Two blocks behind us in

  the back there was a convent, a huge walled-in place all verdant

  with great trees that hid everything: and so our neighborhood

  turned gothic and spooky and we talked of children captured

  and hidden inside: and witches. Outside there were maybe

  twenty
of us, all different ages but all children, boys and girls,

  and we played day after day and night after night, well past

  dark: hide-and-seek, Red Rover Red Rover, statue, jump rope,

  hopscotch, giant steps, witch. One summer we took turns

  holding our breath to thirty and then someone squeezed in our

  stomachs and we passed out or got real dizzy. This was the

  thing to do and we did it a million times. There were alleys

  near one or two of the houses suddenly breaking into the brick

  row and linking the back ways with the front street and we

  ran through them: we ran all over, hiding, seeking, making up

  new games. We divided into teams. We played giant steps. We

  played Simon Says. Then the boys would play sports without

  us, and everything would change. We would taunt them into

  playing with us again, going back to the idyllic, all together,

  running, screaming, laughing. The girls had dolls for when the

  boys wouldn’t let us play and we washed their hair and set it

  outside together on the steps. We played poker and canasta

  and fish and old maid and gin rummy and strip poker. When

  babies, we played in a sandbox, until it got too small and we

  got too big. When bigger, we roller-skated. One girl got so big

  she went out on a date: and we all sat on the steps across the

  street and watched her come out in a funny white dress with a

  red flower pinned on it and a funny-looking boy was with her.

  We were listless that night, not knowing whether to play hide-

  and-seek or statue. We told nasty stories about the girl in the

  9

  white dress with the date and wouldn’t play with her sister

  who was like us, not a teenager. Something was wrong. Statue

  wasn’t fun and hide-and-seek got boring too. I watched my

  house right across the street while the others watched the girl

  on the date. Intermittently we played statue, bored. Someone

  had to swing someone else around and then suddenly let them

  go and however they landed was how they had to stay, like a

  statue, and everyone had to guess what they were— like a

  ballet dancer or the Statue of Liberty. Whoever guessed what

  the statue was got to be turned around and be the new statue.

  Sometimes just two people played and everybody else would

  sit around and watch for any little movement and heckle and

  guess what the person was being a statue of. We were mostly

  girls by now, playing statue late at night. I watched my house

  across the street because the doctor had come, the man in the

  dark suit with the black bag and the dour expression and the

  unpleasant voice who never spoke except to say something bad

  and I had been sent outside, I had not wanted to leave the

  house, I had been ordered to, all the lights were out in the

  house, it was so dark, and it was late for them to let me out

  but they had ordered me to go out and play, and have a good

  time they said, and my mother was in the bedroom with the

  door closed, and lying down I was sure, not able to move,

  something called heart failure, something like not being able to

  breathe, something that bordered on death, it had happened

  before, I was a veteran, I sat on the steps watching the house

  while the girl in the white dress stood being laughed at with

  her date and I had thoughts about death that I already knew I

  would remember all my life and someday write down: death is

  someone I know, someone who is dressed exactly like the

  doctor and carries the same black bag and comes at night and

  is coming tonight to get mother, and then I saw him come,

  pretending to be the doctor, and I thought well this is it she

  will die tonight I know but the others don’t because they go on

  dates or play statue and I’m more mature and so they don’t

  know these things that I know because I live in a house where

  death comes all the time, suddenly in the night, suddenly in the

  day, suddenly in the middle of sleeping, suddenly in the middle

  of a meal, there is death: mother is sick, we’ve called the doctor,

  I know death is on the way.

  10

  The streetlights lit up the street. The brick was red, even- at

  night. The girl on the date had a white dress with a red corsage.

  We sat across the street, near our favorite telephone pole for

  hide-and-seek, and played statue on and off. I always had a

  home out there, on the steps, behind the cars, near the telephone pole.

  *

  Inside the woman was dying. Outside we played witch.

  The boys chased the girls over the whole block from front

  to back. They tried to catch a girl. When they caught her they

  put her in a wooden cage they had built or found and they

  raised the cage up high on a telephone pole, miles and miles

  above the ground, with rope, and they left her hanging there.

  She was the witch. Then they let her down when they wanted

  to. After she begged and screamed enough and they wanted to

  play again or do something else.

  You were supposed to want them to want to catch you.

  They would all run after one girl and catch her and put her in

  the cage and raise it up with the rope high, high on the telephone pole out in the back where the adults didn’t see. Then they would hold the cage in place, the girl inside it screaming,

  four or five of them holding her weight up there in the wooden

  cage, or they would tie the rope to something and stand and

  watch.

  When they picked you it meant you were popular and fast

  and hard to catch.

  *

  When we played witch all the girls screamed and ran as fast as

  they could. They ran from all the boys and ran so fast and so

  far that eventually you would run into some boy somewhere

  but all the boys had decided who they were going to catch so

  the boy you would run into accidentally would just pass you

  by and not try to catch you and capture you and put you in

  the cage.

  *

  Everyone wanted to be caught and was terrified to be caught.

  The cage was wooden and had pieces missing and broken. The

  rope was just a piece of heavy rope one of the boys found

  somewhere or sometimes even just a piece of clothesline stolen

  from a backyard. You could hang there for as long as an hour

  and the boys would threaten to leave you there and all the

  girls would come and watch. And you would feel ashamed. To

  be caught or not to be caught. *

  When we played witch it was always the boys against the girls

  and the boys always chased the girls and it was a hard chase

  and we ran places we had never seen before and hid in places

  we were afraid of. There was the street with the row houses

  facing into it and then there were the back ways behind the

  houses, and the distance between the back ways and the front

  street connected by an occasional alley between the row houses

  was enormous to a girl running. But we never went out of

  these bounds, even when we reached the end of the boundaries

  and a boy was right behind us. The street was long and at

  each end it was bounded by another street an
d we never crossed

  those streets. We never went past the two back ways on to

  streets parallel to our own and we never went into foreign

  back ways not behind our own houses. In this neighborhood

  everyone had their block and you didn’t leave your block. Our

  block was white and Jewish. The block across the street on

  one end of our street was Polish Catholic. The block across

  the street at the other end of our street was black. Even when

  we played witch, no matter how hard you wanted to run and

  get away, you never left the block.

  *

  I would play witch, racing heart.

  *

  I would play witch, wanting to be chased and caught, terrified

  to be chased and caught, terrified not to be chased: racing

  heart.

  *

  I would play witch, running, racing heart: running very fast,

  running away, someone chasing: realizing: you have to slow

  down to get caught: wanting to be caught: not slowing down.

  *

  I would play witch, already slow, barely chased, out of breath,

  hiding, then wander back to where we had started, then wander

  back to where the wooden cage was and see the girl hoisted in

  the wooden cage, see the clothesline or rope tied to something

  and the boys standing there looking up, hear the shrieking.

  12

  Downhearted, I would wait until they let her down. All the

  girls would stand around, looking up, looking down, waiting,

  trying to see who it was, trying to figure out who was missing,

  who got caught, who was pretty, who slowed down.

  *

  Inside mother was dying and outside, oh, it was incredible to

  run, to run, racing heart, around the houses and between the

  cars and through the alleys and into the half-open garages and

  just up to the boundaries of the block, farther, farther than

  you had ever been before, right up to the edge: to run with a

  boy chasing you and then to saunter on alone, out of breath,

  having run and run and run. If only that had been the game.

  But the game was to get caught and put in the cage and hoisted

  up the telephone pole, tied by rope. Sometimes they would tie