Magic

by Audrey Niffenegger

  She nodded, unable to speak. The words she had prepared dried in her mouth.

  “I’ve seen you before, haven’t I. I never forget a face.” He was clearly trying to think, but his eyes looked unfocused and dimmed.

  “I was outside MTV for your first-ever live TV performance. I’m–”

  “Don’t say you’re my biggest fan, like some kind of bunny-boiler.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “An old movie, forget it. Drexelle doesn’t like it when girls hang around the band. She’s not very good at dealing with fans. She thinks they’re rivals.”

  “That’s okay, I came to see you, not her.”

  He tapped long fingers against his bony white throat. “You really did?”

  “Of course. You’re the talent. She just plays what you write.”

  “You like my writing?” He leaned back against the wall and folded his arms, studying her afresh.

  “I know every song you’ve ever written.”

  “Even the bad ones?”

  “There aren’t any bad ones.”

  He laughed in surprise. “You’re probably the only person who thinks that. Even Drexelle can’t remember all the lyrics to my songs. Not any more. Is that it?” He seemed to be looking for the key to her.

  “What?”

  “You want to be a singer?”

  “No,” she said quietly, looking down at her shoes. “I’m not good enough for anything like that.”

  “Then what is it you want?” he asked, a smile forming. “What is it you want most of all?” He reached across and picked up her hand. Her fingers looked absurdly small in his calloused palm, as if they belonged to a doll. “Why are you here?”

  “I wanted to meet you,” she said simply.

  She followed him down the corridor to a strange red-flock wallpapered room behind the stage. Once it had been part of the public bar, but now it was used to store canned drinks and cartons of snacks. He found some glasses and poured her a warm vodka and coke, then pulled the dust-cloth off an old sofa. They sank into the damp cushions beside each other and talked. Riley seemed so different offstage, so intense and connected to what she was saying, even though it was obvious that he’d been drinking. He wanted to know all about her.

  “My life sucks,” she told him, dropping her head back onto the split sofa cushions.

  Riley leaned forward and studied her, placing his arm along the back of the sofa. “How old are you?”

  “Sixteen,” she lied. “Nearly seventeen. I’ve always been small for my age.”

  “Are you still at school?”

  “Just for a little longer. I’ll be leaving soon. I may not go to uni actually, I may want to start earning so I can move out and get a flat in town.” It wasn’t quite a falsehood; she hadn’t discussed it with her father yet. Talking to Riley seemed to help crystallize her thoughts. “When did you leave school?”

  “Me?” He looked shocked by the question. “Jesus, years ago. When we got our first TV break I really thought we were on our way. Turns out we weren’t. We only got those chances because Tina’s father paid for the demos.”

  “You mean Drexelle?”

  “Tina’s her real name.”

  “I didn’t know that.” Sasha was amazed. She thought she knew everything. It was all becoming clear. That was why Riley had kept her in the band. He had no choice; her father was picking up the bills. He didn’t love her, he just needed her there to keep his career alive. Sasha’s heart lifted. She turned and found him staring into her eyes with an intensity that was almost comical.

  Without any further thought she raised her face and kissed him. And to her amazement, he kissed her back with a hard, probing tongue that parted her lips and slipped deep inside her mouth.

  SASHA TOLD HERSELF she would not cry.

  Tamara had gone home without her, leaving her to claim her prize. Now she wished her friend was here to help, but there was no-one she could turn to. She limped out of the filthy alley at the side of the pub and tried to pull her hooded jacket back together, but the zip was broken.

  Her jeans were buttoned wrongly and the fly was wet with blood. The heel of her left boot had split, and the top of her thigh was so sore she could barely walk. Now that the booze-blast was wearing off, her head was burning. She had dropped her Hello Kitty purse somewhere, but did not want to go back and look for it.

  She tried to understand how it had all gone so wrong, but could not even pinpoint the moment when she had lost the initiative. She had gone from encouraging him to slowing him down, gently resisting, then fighting him off, all in a matter of seconds. It was only when she had looked into his drugged, uncomprehending eyes that she realized the gravity of her situation.

  She hobbled around to the front of the building hoping to find the landlord, but the pub was locked up and the lights were off inside. She realized that he probably knew what was going on, and didn’t care. That was why the back room had not been locked; the band members were allowed unlimited use of it.

  Tamara had asked why the raffle hadn’t offered bottles of vodka as prizes. Why should they give away alcohol when the tickets could just as easily be used to deliver girls to the bands? She felt dirty and ashamed, disgusted with her own stupidity. Anyone looking at her now would be able to see exactly what had happened. It was as if she had been branded.

  She had allowed a burned-out junkie to force sex on her, lying on a filthy couch in the back of a pub. No – not allowed – but she could have fought back harder instead of just begging him to stop. She had lost the most precious thing she owned and had ruined everything.

  She could go back and accuse him. She could go to the police and tell them what he had done. But she was underage and they would want to know where she lived, and then they would insist on talking to her father. Nobody would understand what it had been like.

  Even Tamara would not speak to her after this. No matter what she told people, it would be her word against his. She had beaten the raffle by buying most of the tickets and had chosen to go backstage – even Tamara would be forced to admit that. She had been seen hanging around outside his dressing room door.

  She knew it would be obvious to others that she had been drinking. To accuse him publicly would be to expose herself to an entirely different adult world, one that she would not be able to control.

  Although she had dropped her purse, she still had her Oyster card in her jacket pocket and could catch the Tube home, but it was brightly lit down there and she felt sure that the other passengers would stare at her in disgust.

  She didn’t think of the obvious word for what had just happened. It didn’t seem entirely applicable. It wasn’t as if he had jumped out on her in the park with a knife in his hand. In her mind, the line that had been crossed was scuffed and blurred. She was afraid that something had been irrevocably altered inside her. It wasn’t just her fantasy that had been destroyed.

  It was still raining hard outside, but for once she was glad. The obscuring downpour could cloak her guilt and hide her from others. She limped through the backstreets in tears, and even though she knew that it was too far to walk, nothing on earth could make her face the accusing looks in the underground.

  Eventually she was forced to catch a night bus. She walked quickly past the other passengers with her eyes fixed on the floor, then slouched down on the furthest back seat. Her MP3 player – another gift from Karen – had been in her purse. She wished she had it now, so she could listen to music and shut her eyes and pretend she was somewhere else.

  She returned to find the house in darkness. A note in the kitchen explained that her father had taken Karen out for dinner.

  Sasha sat in her room and studied herself in her pink bedroom mirror, trying to gauge the extent of the damage. Her private parts felt raw and bruised, but apart from a thin scratch on the inside of her right thigh and a number of faint blue-grey bruises where his fingers had dug in hard, there were no other outward signs of coercion.

  Sh
e threw away her torn jeans and pants, knotting them in a binbag, then ran a bath. Keeping the water as hot as she dared, she scrubbed at her body until her skin was red and tender. After drying herself, she put on the quilted pink dressing gown her mother had bought her and dug her old teddy bears out from the back of the cupboard. They smelled faintly of chocolate and childhood, so she arranged them along her pillows. Then she climbed into bed and swallowed a Temazepam stolen from Karen’s bathroom cabinet. She fell asleep with Beauty And The Beast still playing on her computer. She resolved not to cry anymore; crying was for the blameless.

  As she sank into unconsciousness, she tried to bury the terrifying thought that he had used no contraception and he had come inside her.

  “WHAT WAS IT all for?”

  Her father rose from his desk and walked to the windows. He could not let his daughter see his face, because he was close to tears. “Tell me, what was it all for?”

  “All what, Dad? What are you talking about?”

  “The private education, the extra tuition, all the effort your mother and I put in to give you a good moral grounding in life.”

  Sasha thought this was a bit rich coming from a man who had an affair behind his wife’s back and then asked for a divorce when she announced she was willing to forgive him. She studied his shoulders, knowing that he couldn’t bring himself to look in her eyes.

  “I thought they gave you sex education classes precisely to stop this sort of thing from happening.”

  “I go to a convent school, Dad. The teachers’ idea of sex education is to warn you not to have impure thoughts. They don’t understand. Sister Prudence says that modesty and reticence are guardians of chastity. She’s always going on about hygiene.”

  “You’re just a little girl. The only reason your mother and I put you in that school was to ensure you got the right grades for university. Christ, it wasn’t about religion.”

  “But that’s what they drum into you, all day every day.”

  “You didn’t have to pay any attention to that part. All you had to do was concentrate on your studies and be sensible around the mature boys.”

  “Well I’m not likely to meet any there, am I?”

  He swung around to face her, and now she could see the fury in his eyes. “You went out looking for a boy, did you?”

  “No, of course not. I didn’t want this to happen.”

  “Then you should have listened to the sisters.”

  “Listen to them? You listen to them.” She pulled the pamphlet from her satchel and read. “‘For the Catholic girl there can be no impurity, no premarital sex, no fornication, no adultery. She must remain chaste, repelling lustful desires and temptations, self-abuse and indecent entertainment.’”

  Harry waved the words aside. “I don’t want to hear anymore of this.”

  “Neither did I, Dad. ‘The follower of Our Lady must be pure in words and actions even in the midst of corruption.’ There’s no practical advice. It doesn’t tell you there are boys out there that’ll lie to your face and try to get you drunk just so they can–”

  “You’re not a complete idiot, Sasha, you’re supposed to know that. It’s just plain bloody common sense.”

  “Common sense? He pushed himself on me–”

  “–and you did nothing to stop him.”

  “I tried to talk to him, but wouldn’t listen.”

  “I don’t understand why you didn’t tell me earlier.”

  “I was scared. I saw the nurse and she said she would contact you, so I had to talk to you first.”

  “Well, thank God you’re still under fourteen weeks.” He was uncomfortable and wanted it to be over. “I’ll arrange for you to enter a private clinic and no-one else need know. I can tell the school you’ve got flu. But before that you’re going to tell me who did this to you. You’re not leaving this room until I get his name and address.”

  “I can’t tell you that,” said Sasha. “I hate what he did to me but I can’t ruin his life. It’s his baby as well.”

  “What the hell are you talking about? You were raped, Sasha, he forced you to have sex with him against your will–”

  There it was, that disgusting word. It made her feel diseased, marked on the outside so that all the world could see. She needed to reduce its stigma. “It wasn’t entirely against my will,” she said carefully. “I started out wanting him to, but he wouldn’t stop. Look, I’ll find him, and I’ll find out if he wants us to keep the baby.”

  Harry threw his arms wide. “I can’t believe I’m hearing this. Are you out of your mind? He doesn’t want to marry you, he doesn’t want anything to do with you, otherwise he wouldn’t have done what he did. You think he has any respect for you at all? What, did he think now was a good time to start a family? You were just some silly schoolgirl he picked up and dumped, just like those tarts over in the council flats, the ones who’ve collected half a dozen kids from different fathers by the time they’re twenty-five. You’re no better than them.”

  “Is that what you think?” she asked quietly.

  He looked into her eyes and relented. A moment later he had come to her side and was holding her in his arms. “You’re my daughter, Sasha. You’re my little girl. We have to sort this out. You can’t protect him. Don’t you see, he’s shown he has no respect for you. What he did to you was illegal. It’s something no man can do to a girl without her permission. Please, let me help you. We can solve the problem together. Promise me you’ll think it over tonight, and we can talk again in the morning. I’ll make the necessary arrangements.”

  She nodded. “All right.” It was better to agree when her father was like this. Lying was a survival technique. “What are you going to say to Karen?” She could imagine her stepmother’s first reaction. She had gone to the mall to have her nails painted. Hardly a day passed when she wasn’t undergoing refurbishment.

  “I’m not going to tell her anything, and neither are you. God, that would be the last thing she needs to hear.”

  “Why can’t I talk to her?”

  “She mustn’t know about this. It was difficult enough when she found out I had a daughter. I can’t turn around and tell her that she’s about to become a step-grandmother.”

  “Is that all you care about? What she thinks? Are you going to tell my real mother? No, of course not, because that would mean speaking to her, and you’re too ashamed of yourself to do that.”

  Sasha was angry with herself for losing her temper. It made her vulnerable. She rose and walked unsteadily to the door, praying that her shaking legs would support her until she was outside.

  WHAT WE MEAN By ‘Termination.’ Sasha re-read the pamphlet with growing horror. There was a full description of the process, illustrated with diagrams of a blankly smiling girl with her legs in stirrups. Despite all the assurances that the procedure was painless, it looked barbaric. She checked the number on her ticket. 38. They were only up to 14. It was all she could do to stop herself running from the room.

  “Nervous?”

  The young woman who had leaned over to talk to her was smiling pleasantly. She looked exactly like her favourite aunt, who had died at such a tragically early age.

  “You shouldn’t look at that,” she said, indicating the pamphlet. “It will only upset you.”

  “It’s awful,” Sasha agreed. The bland pictograms lightened the horror of the situation and only made her think about it more. The idea of cold metal being inserted inside her to kill something: it was like a bayonet slicing into a baby’s soft skull, something a Russian soldier might have done to a pregnant woman during the war.

  “I know, it’s terrible what they do to the little babies. They feel everything, you know. They’re torn out and thrown into the bin, and they feel it all. They take a long time to die.”

  She had a soft American Mid-western accent. Sasha snuck a look at the woman. She was fortyish, dressed in a horrible knitted waistcoat and sweater, in very wide-beamed Guess jeans. Her shiny moisturised face was fr
ee of makeup, and her faded blonde hair was tied back to reveal hoop earrings, not real gold. She looked broke.

  “I can’t keep it,” Sasha said, lowering her voice. “I’m at school.”

  “But can you really do this?” The woman examined her with unnervingly intense eyes. She stared at Sasha’s stomach as if X-raying the unborn child.

  “I don’t have a choice.” Sasha folded up the pamphlet decisively.

  “But you see, you do,” said the woman. “There is another way. One that will take away the little life inside you gently, without any pain.”

  “How is that possible?” asked Sasha.

  “My name’s Martitia,” said the woman. “Your number won’t be called for half an hour at least. I know this place. Let’s go and get a coffee.”

  THE ROOM WAS overheated, the furnishings as nondescript and battered as those in any other low-rent business hotel near the railway terminus. It was the kind of place where you checked yourself in with a credit card and were issued with a pass key without having to see another human being. Where you might die in the night without anyone noticing.

  “Make yourself comfortable, love,” said Martitia, opening her nylon backpack. “The fifty pounds will just be to cover my expenses. I don’t make any money out of this.”

  “Then why do you do it?” Sasha asked.

  “Doctors use drugs and scalpels to conduct an operation that deserves to be more natural and sympathetic to the mother. I’m from a long line of healers who use more spiritual methods. Wouldn’t you prefer that?”

  “Yes, but–”

  Martitia turned to study her with clear eyes. “The decision has to be yours, of course. But isn’t that what you want?”

  “I wish I could–”

  “You can’t keep the baby if you can’t look after it. I’m sorry to be so blunt, but I want what’s best for all you girls. I know the options must seem so black and white to you, to terminate or to keep, but there is another way.” The eyes had softened now, misting with her own private grief. “That’s why women like me do what we can to help take away your confusion and pain. It’s about what’s best for you. I imagine you’ve had enough of people accusing you or telling you that what you did was wrong. Now you need a more practical solution.”