WOMAN OF STEEL by Valerie Hegarty
Yesterday in ceramics class Prof Woodstock did a demo of red glazes while telling us an old Chinese legend. Once there was an emperor who demanded a red glazed pot. The royal potter fired pot after pot, but could not get any of them to fire red. So the emperor sentenced him to death. The potter’s daughter was so upset she jumped in the fired kiln, and when they opened it all the pots were glazed red with her blood. Prof Woodstock said as a feminist she wasn’t thrilled with the story, but it showed the difficulty of producing a red glaze wasn’t just specific to dumb Americans. I was sipping vodka from my water bottle and swooned a bit over the open kiln, my face flushed red from my buzz and the heat. Prof Woodstock sent me home to sleep it off; she was cool like that, which was fine because my main focus in school was to make metal art. Prof Steelhead told me making metal art was not recommended as it appeared I did not have the disposition to withstand working close to the fire for extended periods of time and lifting welded metal sculpture was challenging for even the most vigorous athletic builds. Prof Steelhead made work similar in style to Richard Serra, and since Richard Serra was famous, no one cared about Steelhead’s art. It wasn’t shown in blue chip galleries in Chelsea, or at International Art Fairs like the Venice Biennale. Instead Steelhead’s rusted walls of steel littered meadows in Vermont, where cows were forced to walk the long way around these industrial barriers when looking for a lost calf.Of course I didn’t listen to Steelhead. He should have gone West and bought a depressed town to reconstruct if he wanted to be a dictator like Heizer or Judd, but since he was slowly creaking out his tenure at a liberal Arts College in New England, no one listened to Steelhead. Plus the college had the metal workshop outfitted with cranes and there were techs and other students to assist, so I don’t know why he was picking on me, aside from my slight build and nervous disposition. Truthfully I was terrified of fire, but that was exactly why I wanted to make metal art to begin with—not to face my fears—but for the surges of Norepinephrine that coursed through my body when I thought I was on the precipice of death. I finished a twelve-pack of Bud cans before class, crushing the tin cans in my fist each time I polished one off just to psych myself up. Although it calmed my anxiety, I was now staggering when I walked. I told myself not to walk in front of Steelhead and to stay on the other side of the fire from him when the techs did the demo of the molten steel pour. Ten of us arrived at class and Steelhead gave us shovels to dig out trenches as molds that would be filled with the molten steel during the demo. I dug a hole the shape of my body, like the artist Ana Mendieta who performed in the landscape—lying naked on sand, against trees, in gardens, then covering herself with earth—but mine was a hole. No body. It was a hollow, like the voids in the lava post-Vesuvius. Maybe it could be a memorial to Ana Mendieta, who was now without a body as her body broke and died when she was pushed out the window by her drunk lover, the artist Carl Andre. Without witnesses, he claimed it wasn’t him, and I know from drunken blackouts that maybe he did it and didn’t remember. Maybe it was psychic survival to keep that night dark. Now I was feeling sad about Ana Mendieta. What a fucking way to die, drunk and fighting with your drunken lover, soon to be your murderer, whose work would still be going to Venice and Paris and every MOMA retrospective in every country around the world, while your body decayed and disappeared, leaving a void deep in the ground where you were buried. It’s all very poetic except for the part where she was pushed.When I finished digging my body-shaped hole, I was dizzy from the exertion in the sun. I leaned on my shovel to prop me up. Steelhead took my shovel out from under me and gave me an “I told you so” look and I glared at him, batting my eyelashes to confuse him. My sweat smelled like barley and hops as it poured out under my armpits. I didn’t care if he smelled it, he was a drinker too; I could see it in his watery eyes in the morning class. He was blurred and hung over and pissed about Richard Serra.Steelhead told us all to stand back from our holes. Multiple techs in heavy Kevlar suits with helmets like they were headed to Mars picked up a trough that glowed fiery red with molten steel. They carried the trough to the holes and one by one filled the horse shoe shaped hole, the hole shaped like a pitchfork, the hole shaped like Carl Andre’s steel floor tiles. They carried the red molten metal to me, its liquid silver sloshing, and started to fill the hole shaped like my body. The heat from the molten steel overtook me. I was drunk and hot. If only I could sit down for a minute. I’ll just sit on my heels, I thought, and staggered backward. As I pitched forward, I tried to catch my balance. I could hear screaming as I fell into the molten metal.I was at a party and it was late. Someone was shooting up in the corner and nodding out with the needle still in his arm. A couple was fighting about art and finances, and being a bad lover, and being a drunk, and you are a drunk, and the woman said she was leaving and leaving for good, and she was looking out the window shouting to her friend to wait, and the man ran to her. He was enraged. He almost had his hands on her, and I was right there, right in between them. I stuck out my foot.The man fell and hit his head on the iron baseboard heater. He was knocked unconscious. Maybe he was dead. The woman screamed. She checked his pulse. “He’s dead!” she yelled, “Call an ambulance! He’s dead!” You’re welcome, I thought. I saw there was a fire in the kitchen sink, so I ran to put it out. I turned on the water, but whiskey flowed out, accelerating the flames. I grabbed a bottle of water and threw it on the growing fire, but it was vodka. Now the flames were consuming the cabinets and the stove. The utensil drawer dripped silver, the toaster melted, the refrigerator buckled in on itself. I ran from the room, but I was drunk and lurching. The man wasn’t dead. He was back on his feet and his face was so red it looked like he was going to pop. He was coming for me. “No! No! Get away from me!” I yelled as I ran out of the apartment, down the stairwell, into the street. He was chasing me, he had one of his steel floor tiles in his hands raised over his head. He was going to pummel me with his metal art. He was gaining on me, and I was tired of running. I stopped and turned to him. “Go ahead, kill me fast, I have a weak stomach for this type of thing,” and he raised the steel plate and crashed it down on my head. There was the clanging boing of a gong. Two men were dragging me by my elbows up to a Chinese emperor sitting on his throne. The emperor was drinking from a jug and I could smell the alcohol on his breath. At his feet was a pile of ceramic shards from broken jugs. My hands were tied behind my back and I was dragging my legs. Next to the emperor was the biggest kiln I’d ever seen in my life, with a bonfire of stacked wood burning underneath. Under the lid I could see rows of jugs waiting to be glazed and fired. “Get in if you want to save your father,” said the emperor, pointing behind me. I turned around and my father was nodding his head. “They will kill me if you don’t get in,” said my father, his eyes locking on mine. “My blood will be on your hands,” he said.I nodded my head as if I understood, and the two men released my arms. I stepped forward toward the kiln. “Save your motherfucking self!” I screamed as I ran out the door to the right of the kiln. I was running back and forth. I was in some inner courtyard and couldn’t find my way out. The two men cornered me and one of them raised his double-edged sword, the edges glinting, and I stuck out my neck, “Fine, do it, it’s better than burning to death,” I said as I heard the swish of the sword cut the air in half.I was outside my childhood home and I heard my mother’s voice. I thought my mother died two years ago of cancer, but she was in the kitchen calling my name. I ran to the kitchen. I couldn’t believe she was there, washing dessert spoons in the sink. “Sweetie, you need to stop drinking. It’s killing you. I love you and I don’t want you to die. I should have protected you more as kid.” She handed me a spoon and a bowl of ice cream. I fell into her skirt. It was my mother and I started to cry. I was crying and the bowl of ice cream was melting and I was crying and melting and crying and melting and they were pulling me out of the body shaped hole. I was still alive but all my clothes had burned off. My skin shone silver. I had a coating of steel. I looked like the tin man’s wife. Steelhead fell in love with me on the spot. He tried to hand me a can of beer to cool me off, but I deflected it with my wrist like Wonder Woman, and when the can touched my skin it instantly turned to liquid metal and poured into a puddle by my feet. Steelhead said we could make beautiful art together but I told him he was too old for me and I had a whole life to lead. He wouldn’t be able to keep up and I couldn’t be with a drinker. It would be a risk to my newly sober self. As I walked away the noon sun was so bright it glared off every side of my metal body. I heated up to the temperature of the sun itself. I was walking radiance. I could feel Steelhead’s watery eyes on me as I poured into the light.