Breaking the Ice
Anne Makepeace
Word Count 847
I sat on the edge of Auntie’s pool watching ice chunks bob in the turquoise water, shining silver under the clouds and gold in the sun. When the wind ruffled the surface, crystal nuggets jingled like bells. I dipped the toe of one red rubber boot in the lumpy water, making little waves fan outward in circles, clicking the ice cubes together. I leaned over, grabbed one, and held it up to my eye. Tiny veins in the sunlit shard cracked my reflection into pieces. I wanted to show it to Mom, but she was gone from us now. Before, she would have pointed out pictures in the ice. Ever since my baby brother died last Christmas, she never touched me anymore. Maybe she thought since I turned four, I could take care of myself.
When I threw the shard back in the water, ice chunks splashed and pinged against each other. I scrunched forward and plunged one whole boot in, then the other. The pool rippled and glittered like diamonds. “Anne, get away from there!” My brother Dougie careened down the hill and slid towards me just as I gave one kick too many. And then I was no longer sitting; I was sliding into a gelid blue world. First my boots, then my legs and arms, and then my whole body slipped over the edge and sank. The wet cold burned my face and stung my eyes. I couldn’t breathe. Ice water filled my boots and soaked through my mittens to bite my hands and feet.
And then somehow I was bobbing vertically with my head just above the surface. My heart banged in my chest; my breath came fast and shallow. Dougie lay on the deck and reached for me, but I was too far away. I couldn’t make out what he was saying. My hood froze around my head. Everything began to slow down. Dougie screamed louder. “Do the froggy! Do the froggy like you learned last summer!” he yelled, waving his arms in a scooping motion. “Swim!” I tried to move but my snowsuit had inflated around me, encasing me in hard pockets of air. Dougie looked frantically back and forth between me and the house. “It’s too far, I can’t get Mom. Try, Anne! Please try!”
I did try, as hard as I could, but my body was a statue of ice. I thought of Mikey, our cocker spaniel, who froze to death on our porch when he got tangled up in his chain. “Do the dog paddle! Swim like Mikey!” Dougie yelled, as if reading my mind. I found that I could bend my wrists, even though ice crystals covered my mittens. I made shallow paddling motions and floated closer, but he still couldn’t reach me. I paddled a little more. At last he grabbed my hood, pulled me to the edge, and dragged me out. I lay on the deck dripping, shaking, too cold to move or cry. Dougie started running towards the house. I tried to call, “Don’t go!” but my mouth wouldn’t move. I became drowsy. Everything went dark.
And then suddenly I was flying backwards over the snow. The world blurred and shook. Was I dreaming? Was I dead? Had I become an angel who could fly? But why backwards? Hair whipped across my face. Mommy! I breathed in her lavender smell. I felt her hugging me to her breasts. My chin bobbed against the back of her shoulder and she was running running running towards the house. She didn’t have her coat on, or her boots. A huge run was creeping up her stocking. Everything went dark again.
I woke by the fire on Auntie Lois’s sheepskin rug, naked, wrapped in a pink flannel blanket. My whole body shook with cold, but my feet were burning. Dougie rubbed my hands till they hurt.
“You’ll be O.K.,” he repeated over and over. “You’ll be O.K.”
Mom paced back and forth, her hair wild, her dress soaked. “I told you I told you I told you not to go down there!” she raged. “Dougie, what were you thinking?” I felt scared and guilty, but part of me was glad. There she was again! Mommy! She had been so gone from us since Tommy died. Now there was color in her face and anger in her eyes, and for the first time since Christmas, there were tears.
Then she began stripping off her clothes, right there in Auntie’s living room. Auntie hung up the phone and stared. “Lizzie!” she whispered loudly, “Your son is watching!”
“Which son?” Mommy roared as she flung her dress on the floor. “I had two; now I have one!” Dougie began to cry. “Not my little girl!” she thundered at the ceiling. “You will not take my little girl!”
Auntie Lois tried to hold her, but she jerked away. “Can’t you see her lips are blue?” Mommy shouted. She ripped off her slip, lay down naked beside me, and wrapped us both in the fuzzy pink blanket. Her skin was hot against mine, her heart beating fast, her insides boiling. “Anne my love, my sweet wild angel,” she crooned. “Come back to me. Stay with me. Come inside where you’re safe.” Through her skin, I felt a desperate wildness, a drumming of fear and fury and love. As we lay together by the fire, she held me harder and closer and longer than I remember before or since. Bundled with her like that, skin to skin and heart to heart, it felt like going home.
Anne has written, produced and directed many award winning films (see MakepeaceProductions.com) and is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies. A few years ago, she began writing stories for a linked collection, now called Coming to Light. “Breaking the Ice” is an excerpt from the first story in the collection. She is now working on the book’s title story, “Coming to Light,” and hopes to publish the book this year or next.