Andrea Dworkin: Ice And Fire

I had a friend on that block, Joe, and we would say hello

and talk and say shy things to each other. Their houses were

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different, all brick row houses, but right on the sidewalks, no

flights of steps going up to the door, just one level block. There

were more gardens. Kids didn’t stay outside playing that I could

see. Or maybe there weren’t any, I don’t know. Joe had grease

on his hair and it was combed very straight and sticky sort of,

and he wore checkered shirts, and he talked different but I

don’t know why or how: he didn’t seem to be used to talking.

He was a teenager. I would walk down the street and he would

sort of come out and I wouldn’t know what to say, except one

day I smiled and he said hello, and then after that I would

decide if I was going to walk down the Catholic block or not

and if I was chasing boys and what was wrong with him that I

wasn’t supposed to talk with him and I couldn’t talk with him

too long or someone would notice that I hadn’t come home

with my friends on my block. And I used to come home other

ways too, where I had no one to talk to. I would walk home

by the convent and try to hear things inside it, and sometimes I

would walk home on the black blocks, all alone. This was my

secret life.

*

There was an alley next to a church on the way to school and

we would always try to get lost in it. It was only a tiny alley,

very narrow but long, dark and dusty, with stray cats and

discarded bottles and strange trash and urine and so even

children knew its every creak and crevice very soon. But we

would close our eyes and spin each other around and do

everything we could not to know how to get out. We would

spend hours pretending to be lost. We would try to get into

the church but it was always closed. We would play adventures

in which someone was captured and lost in the alley and

someone else had to get her out. But mostly we would flail

around being lost, the worst thing being that we would know

exactly where we were and there were no adventures and we

couldn’t go in the church. Then sometimes suddenly we would

really be lost and we would try to find our way out and not be

able to no matter how hard we tried and it would start getting

dark and we would get scared and somehow when we got

scared enough we would remember how to get out of the alley

and how to get home.

*

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We had to walk a long way to and from school, four times a

day: to school, home for lunch, back to school, home at the

end of school; or sometimes we had to go to the Hebrew School

after school, twice a week. In school all the children were

together, especially the Polish Catholics and the blacks and the

Jews, and after school we didn’t speak to each other or be

friends. I would try to go to the houses of kids I liked in

school, just walk by to see what it was like if it was near

where I walked to go home, and there would be polite conversations sometimes on their blocks, but their parents would look at me funny and I could never go in. We got to love each other

in school and play together at recess but then no more, we had

to go back to where we came from. We had to like each other

on our block whether we did or not and it was OK when we

were playing massive games ranging over the whole wide world

of our block, but sometimes when I just wanted to talk to

someone or see someone, one person, it wasn’t someone on

our block, but someone else, someone Polish Catholic or black,

and then I couldn’t: because it just couldn’t be done, it just

wasn’t allowed. My parents were good, they were outspoken

against prejudice and they taught me everybody was the same,

but when it came to actually going on another block they just

said not to go there and there and there like everybody else

and when I tried to go there the parents on the other end

would send me away. There was Michael who was Polish Catholic, a gentle boy, and Nat who was black. She would come to my house and once at least I went to hers, at least once or

twice I was allowed to go there, mostly she came home with

me, my parents protected me and didn’t let me know how the

neighbors felt about it, and we always had to stay inside and

play, and her mother was a teacher and so was my father:

and I loved her with all my passionate heart. When we

moved away to the suburbs so mother wouldn’t have to walk

any steps because she couldn’t breathe I was torn apart from

all this, my home, my street, the games, the great throng of

wild children who played hide-and-seek late into the night

while mother lay dying: and I said, I will go if I can see Nat,

if she can come to visit me and I can visit her, and I was so

distressed and full of grief, that they looked funny at each

other and lied and said yes of course you can see Nat.

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But where we moved was all white and I couldn’t see Nat.

*

So when I was a teenager I went back to the old neighborhood

to show it to a teenage friend, the old elementary school where

I had been happy and the old streets where I had been happy,

we took two buses to get there and walked a long way and I

didn’t tell anyone I was going, but now it was all black and

getting even poorer than it had been and there were hundreds

of teenage girls in great clusters on the streets walking home

from high school and we were white and we were surrounded

and they got nasty and mean and wanted to know why we

were showing our white faces there and I looked up and there

was Nat, quiet as she had always been, the same scholarly

serious face and long braids, now teenage like me, and black,

and with a gang of girls, and she told them to leave me alone

and so they did and she walked away with them looking away

from me, looking grave and sad and even a little confused:

walking away from me, but I was the deserter. I watched her

walking away, and I still see the look on her face even with my

eyes open, a remorseless understanding of something I didn’t

know but she did and whatever it was I had found her but it

didn’t matter because of whatever it was. It was the saddest

moment of my life. Later, mother died. I didn’t laugh or weep

or understand. Why are they gone?

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