Playing House: A Novel
35th Anniversary Edition with Foreword by Philip Roth
Trade paperback | 176 pages
ISBN : 978-1-58195-225-4
On sale May 6, 2008
$14.95
Excerpt from Playing House: A Novel
Can't concentrate. My mind is wandering over him crouched on top of me, over his shoulders to a summer day again, always back to then when a room was filled with sun gold, when the walls were white, when the window glass as crystal clear and there was sunshine always dancing on the floor. Heavy brown silk rugs made a border all around the bed where he pinned me there and said that if I told he'd beat me with the branches of the tree and I never told, no matter what he did I never told, he was my brother.
How old were we then? I can't remember, very young, just children, just his laughing mouth, just his straight blond hair and always the blue shirt. His face was soft, puffy, almost as if there were no bones in it at all, not even all his urgency could put bones back into his face, red cheeks, country hands, peasant hands that were flat and thick, his nails, bitten down to nothing.
He was the master, I was the slave who kept the steady beat, that was the game we played that put the urgency into his face and though I didn't k now what we were after, I went with him. I kept going with him until it happened, until he made it happen rocking on top of me, pinning me under him, keeping me, pressing himself against me hard, on and on, weary and exhausted I kept going with him until it broke loose all over me and swallowed me up into it.
That first enormous thing of ecstasy, yes, then, so long ago. And the monumental shock of it, the bewildering incomparable immediate acceptance of it, the sudden understanding of hat the secret is tumbling out of all the little hiding places in my body, this hint we're born with suddenly broke loose with him crouching over me, pinning me with the sunshine and the gleaming walls and the sparkling window glass — and him.
The soft bedsheets of childhood suddenly yielded up a different meaning, a different message in their dishevelment. Now a bed became some brand-new thing, pillows that were dented where heads sunk into them said something. "Don't tell," they said. "You must never tell about this thing. Hide it away, smooth away the evidence. It's the Secret."
Never tell, never tell. We never said a word about it, not to anyone, not to each other and I thought then that something happened that no one else on earth had ever known, no one else on earth had ever fathomed or imagined and I knew that it was something that was forbidden. It was a secret monumental accident, but a forbidden accident. That by some strange stroke of driving luck we hit upon the secret of the universe and we were the only people who ever had. I thought then in some childish, illogical way that we were supreme freaks, twisted, wicked, naughty, vile creatures who lucked out on some gigantic mistake no one ever allowed us to have the slightest understanding of, not in any way, no hint, no indications ever.
This amazing thing had been kept from us, protected by stern faces and silences, protected by warnings of going blind or madness maybe if we dared to touch, never touch, never go near there, bad girl, bad, bad girl. Stern hands pulling our wandering fingers away from the very first.
With scrupulous care we were made to believe that human beings merely walked or ran or hurt or ate or cried or did their jobs and waited, not discovered. They kept the real secret from us as best they could and yet we triumphed into all of it despite them, and it was ours.
Uncomplicated then, it seemed so uncomplicated that first time. So huge and simple, so overwhelming, like gratitude or hunger, it had no shadows, no veils, nit was the product of integrity, of wholeness. I was a total person then, caught up in a total happening. Children we were, twins I used to think, more than twins, one person, my brother and I, separate from the rest of them, removed from them, outside the world, shameful, wicked, bad, lucky freaks we were, my brother and I.