Space Between the Stars

by Deborah Santana

  While I sat half in and half out of the chair, Sly threw open the bathroom door, flooding the bed with light. I stood up as he rushed toward me, his legs skinny but quick. He grabbed my blouse with both hands and jerked my body in the air. Letting go with his right hand, he backhanded me across the cheek, his diamond pinkie ring catching my lip. I screamed as my head snapped back over my shoulder. My neck made a cracking sound. “When I tell you to do something, you do it, woman,” Sly sneered. “Hamp Banks has seen me do worse to a woman for much less. Do you understand?”

  “All I understand is that you'd better not touch me again,” I said through clenched teeth.

  I pried his hand from my blouse, shoved past him, and grabbed my purse. Hamp sat in the bathroom on the counter, a vial of white powder swinging between his fingers, a smile across his lips. I pushed past Sly, opened the door, and stepped out into the bright sunlight. Walking and running toward the lobby, I could hear Sly laughing and I shuddered.

  I stumbled, and a sob hiccuped from my throat. I could still feel Sly's hand on my cheek—like a branding mark. I clutched my purse to my chest. This was not the Sly I had gone out with in San Francisco. This was the person I had seen kick in the broom closet door at the apartment on Fountain. The glass doors to the lobby opened automatically, and I hurried to the ladies' room across the carpeted foyer.

  I ran the cold water and leaned into the mirror. My lip was split open where Sly's ring had made contact. My eyes were red and swollen. With shaking hands, I splashed icy water on my face and gently dabbed my cheeks with a paper towel from the silver canister on the wall. My heart ricocheted through my chest, wounded as though from a bullet. I gulped back tears as I remembered Dad's words: “You're headed for a brick wall, Dobs.” I had had no idea what he'd meant when he said it, but I knew I had just hit the wall head-on. Where could I go? Should I call Kitsaun to come get me?

  The bathroom door opened. I jerked my body around, a scream waiting to spring from my throat. Without raising her eyes, a gray-haired woman entered the room and walked into a stall. My heartbeat slowed, and I fumbled through my purse for lipstick. Hands shaking, I rubbed color to my lips, careful to avoid the cut. I couldn't stay in the bathroom all day. I had ten dollars in my purse, so I cautiously stepped back out into the lobby and headed for the coffee shop.

  “Table, honey?” The waitress smiled.

  I nodded yes. She led me to a small booth and handed me a menu. I felt lost, like a bubble floating above my own life, not knowing where to land, or whether I could without bursting. A fat tear splashed onto the salad section of the menu. I squeezed my eyes closed and dabbed my cheeks with the paper napkin. If Kitsaun picked me up, it would be a three-hour drive. Where would I wait for her?

  “Do you know what you want?”

  The waitress's question startled me. “Uh, I'll have a tuna sandwich,” I stammered. Tuna? I hardly ever eat tuna. Well, at least I'll have a reason to sit here.

  “Something to drink?”

  “Iced tea, please.”

  I could see the glass doors to the outside in the mirror over the counter. The waitress set down my tea. As I tore open a sugar packet, I saw Sly push the door open. He wore a bright yellow shirt and a cowboy hat. Shades covered his eyes. I slipped down in the booth, hoping he hadn't seen me. I thought about kneeling under the table, but the waitress's eyes were on me. Oh, God, I thought, sitting up. He can't hit me in public. I poured the sugar into my glass and stirred frantically. I kept my eyes on the swirling ice cubes as Sly slipped into the booth. He put his arm around my shoulder and pulled me into his chest. His shirt was soft against my bare arm. “I'm sorry, baby,” he whispered, kissing my neck. I tried to pull away, but his grip on me was tight, forceful.

  When I opened my mouth to speak, a gurgling sound came out. I closed my mouth. When the waitress came back with my sandwich, she asked Sly, “Would you like to see a menu, sir?”

  “No. I'll have what she's having. She's really healthy.”

  I knew he was teasing me, and I glared at him.

  When the waitress turned away, Sly pulled me closer, turning my face to his. He lightly fingered my lip. “I love you. I didn't want to hurt you. I love those beauty marks on your neck.” He was twisting compliments and apologies together. It was confusing, but his whole way of living bewildered me. One minute his charm and passion drew me in; the next minute his selfish need for power attacked me. “You want some coke?” he asked.

  “No.” I slid two inches away and looked Sly straight in the eyes. “Don't you ever hit me again,” I sneered.

  His jaw tightened, but he said nothing. I was not afraid of him. I was sad that our love was turning into misery, and I would fight to the end to be who I was and not a slave to his indiscriminate moods. Even though I was in love with the charming Sly, my father's and mother's courage and bravery were in my DNA. I was a fighter, even in my confused state of love.

  While we ate, Sly clowned to entertain me. He smiled and tried to move close again, touching my arm. He reached behind me, rubbing my back. I watched him warily. He dropped two Seconals into my palm after I finished my sandwich. I drank them down with the last of my iced tea, knowing that in minutes I would feel mellowed by the drug.

  “It will never happen again. I promise,” Sly said. “Ready to drive back home?”

  His face was serious, his voice gentle. I wanted to believe him. I felt desperate by myself in Fresno. If I did not go with him, where would I go?

  I nodded.

  He paid the bill and wrapped his arm around me as we walked back to the room. Hamp had vanished. I never wanted to see him again. I finished packing, wrestling with my thoughts, which were muddled now that the “red devils” had taken affect.

  Back at Coldwater, Sly tried very hard to be charming, and he begged me to go to the studio with him for inspiration. He could be so close, pull me into a kiss, under the roof of his power. He made the act of getting high—whether it was sharing a smoke or having me bend into his hands to snort coke from his tiny mother-of-pearl spoon—an intimate exchange of love. Sly made me feel as though he needed me. Stevie told me I was different from other girlfriends Sly had had. “You're sincere,” she said.

  Sly asked Stevie to find a bigger house with a studio so that the band could record day and night. She quickly found a house to rent in Bel Air in which John and Michelle Phillips of the Mamas and Papas were living—they would be moving out in a month. More grandiose than Coldwater, the Spanish mission–style house was in the center of circular footpaths beneath hundreds of fragrant blossoms. The living room led to a balcony overlooking a sunken garden with rounded hedges and a stone-edged pool next to a pool house. The master bedroom had a window seat hiding cupboards beneath plush cushions, a marble bathroom, and pink carpeting. There was a recording studio on the third floor and a suite over the garage, with peacocks living in the dense pine trees surrounding the drive.

  Just before the move, Wendy, a young blonde from the San Fernando Valley, began hanging out at Coldwater. I suspected Wendy was trouble when she staggered drunkenly out of her baby-blue convertible Mercedes. Not knowing where she had met Sly, I assumed she was around because she had drugs. She brought a dark cloud with her. Wendy liked to sniff a white crystal powder called PCP, which was a horse tranquilizer that could cause seizures. I begged Sly not to snort it. He pushed me away as Wendy sprinkled the PCP onto a mirror. My grandmother's sweet brown face appeared before me for an instant, and I knew—without a doubt—the drug was evil. I stood up and left the room, my grandmother's image a strong warning. But Sly tried it. He was incoherent and immobile for hours. His mood was unreasonable and paranoid. I hated Wendy.

  The week we were packing to move to Bel Air, Kitsaun came down to visit. I was happy to see her and hear about home. Her Afro had grown out, and her hair curled around her brown, angular face. She was completing her second year at City College, and she and Jake had broken up. “I'm working with Frank as a showroom model to make money. I wan
t to go to Europe this summer,” she told me. Kitsaun looked in our refrigerator and asked why there was no food. “How do you guys survive?” she asked. My consumption of drugs made eating a once-a-day event. Coke squelched my appetite completely.

  “We order a lot of Pioneer Chicken and Chinese food,” I said. She shook her head in dismay, and we ordered dinner by phone and went upstairs, where everyone was hanging out in our bedroom. I sat down on the bed near Sly. Jerry, Lynn, Kitsaun, and Freddy all sat on the rug around us, talking. Sly had given me a Seconal and a Placidyl. He talked about new songs, his words beginning to sound like a tape on slow speed. I looked at Kitsaun, and her face became fuzzy and began losing its shape. My head felt heavy.

  The next thing I knew, water was filling my nose. I sputtered and coughed, opening my eyes. Sly was holding me up in the shower, my clothes plastered to my body under the stream of water pouring over me. I looked at Sly. He was fully dressed, too. What were we doing in the shower? “She's awake!” Sly called out. He turned the water off.

  Kitsaun stood at the door, gulping back tears. “Are you all right?” she asked, handing Sly a towel. He dried my face.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  Sly walked me out of the stall.

  Kitsaun cried, “You were sitting there, and then you fell straight back. Your eyes were half-opened. I thought you were dead.”

  “She's okay now,” Sly said, trying to calm Kitsaun. “Let me get her undressed and in bed. I'll be downstairs in a few minutes.”

  Sly took off my clothes, rubbed the terry towel gently over me, and laid me on the bed. I was still groggy. He covered me with blankets and the comforter. He kissed my forehead, brushed my hair back, and stepped into the walk-in closet to change his wet clothes. I wondered if I had passed out because I was trying to escape from my dead-end life. Kitsaun said I had looked dead, and I definitely felt as though I was traveling on an unstable road of harm. I drifted to sleep listening to Sly's deep voice through the floor as he sat in the living room talking with everyone else.

  Late the next morning, Kitsaun and I sat outside on the stone terrace facing the line of mulberries and madrones bordering the property. “I don't know why you faded out last night, but it really scared me. You're so thin, Deb.”

  Kitsaun had always been the closest person in my life. We had not talked as much lately—but there was no schism in our honesty and love. “I love Sly, but he's changed into a different person—not the man I met. I should leave and go back to San Francisco, but it's like I'm addicted to him.”

  “He's doing more drugs,” Kitsaun said. “I can see that.”

  “Yes,” I whispered. “And so am I—”

  “Remember when you were little and Damon gave you a rope burn across your face?”

  “Yes.” I laughed. “You beat him up during recess.”

  “Well, I'm twenty-one now and I'm still your big sister. I can be down here in a couple of hours if you need me. If you want to come home, come. And please eat more than fried chicken.”

  I drove her to Burbank Airport in the Thunderbird, coming back over Highland Boulevard in the summer sunshine. Marvin Gaye was on the radio, “Oh, mercy, mercy me. Things ain't what they used to be …” I sang along with his gentle, plaintive voice. Mercy—yes, the world was full of suffering, and my life was far from what it had been. I was not cultivating a fertile life of promise or purpose. My body knew this. I realized that I had faded out due to the excruciating pain of physically knowing the truth but not making a change.

  Sly began recording in the studio the first night we moved into Bel Air. Stevie helped me unpack. Lynn and Jerry moved into the pool house. I had made a vow to write poetry every afternoon, to try to get my mind motivated. Cal State L.A. was going to mail me their schedule of classes. I thought my life might be getting back on track—until I missed a menstrual period. I waited three weeks and then made an appointment at a women's clinic on La Cienega. The nurse confirmed what I feared: I was pregnant. She asked me to step onto a scale and measured my weight and height.

  “You are underweight, young lady. At 5 feet 6 inches and 104 pounds, you're no more than skin and bones.”

  I looked in the mirror. I was flat front and back. Even my butt was gone.

  “What are you going to do?” she asked. I stepped off the scale and looked down at the floor. She repeated her question.

  “I don't know.”

  “Get dressed. I'll be back.”

  She gave me pamphlets about birth control, pregnancy, and abortion. “If you need someone to talk to, call us. We have counselors.”

  When I left the clinic, I drove down Fountain Avenue, where I had lived when I moved to L.A. Then I drove west, out Sunset Boulevard to the beach. I cannot have a baby—I have taken too many drugs. The baby will not be healthy or normal. I don't want a baby. I need to turn my own life around—start work or go back to school. I will have to get an abortion. It isn't legal, but I have heard of women finding doctors who perform them.

  I drove back to Bel Air.

  Sly was alone in the control room, his music turned up to ten. His hat was pushed back on his head; his shirt, unbuttoned to his waist, was hanging over black leather pants. “Where were you?”

  “Driving.”

  “Why didn't you tell me where you were going?” His dark eyes looked through me.

  “I had an appointment.”

  Sly pushed the knobs on the console down. The music softened.

  “I'm pregnant.”

  He dropped his forehead on the board. His hands were above him, still holding the knobs.

  “I don't think I'm going to have it.”

  He looked up at me and smiled, like the old Sly. “Phew. I mean, whatever you want, but phew. Look, my cousin's a nurse.” He stood up and put his arms around me. “I'll call her. Maybe she can help.”

  It was a lonely walk to the bedroom. On the bed, I spread out the pamphlets and leafed through them, staring at the titles: Pregnancy. Birth Control. Abortion. I tried to remember when I had last refilled my birth control prescription. God—what irresponsibility. I really had only one choice. I was not healthy with all the drugs I had taken. I wanted to go back to school and not have a child.

  Sly brought his cousin to the house a week later. “This is Toni, he said. He pushed two Seconals in my hand and bolted up the stairs while Toni and I stood facing each other in the living room. She looked about thirty. Her square, mocha-colored face opened into a smile.

  “Hi,” she said.

  “Hello. Thanks for coming.”

  I led the way to the bedroom. “Sly said you're a nurse.”

  “Well, an aide.”

  My legs felt wobbly. I poured a glass of water and swallowed the pills.

  “If it helps, I've done this before,” she said. She opened a shopping bag and took out a sheet and a stack of dark towels. “Take off your underwear and lay on the towels on the bed,” she said. I did as she instructed. “When did you have your last period?”

  I silently counted. “Seven weeks ago.”

  She walked to the closet and lifted a hanger off the wooden rod. Twisting the neck counterclockwise, she glanced at me while she unbent the wire into a straight line.

  “What are you going to use that for?” I asked.

  She looked down at me, hesitating for an instant. “This is what I'm going to scrape you out with,” she said.

  Nausea tightened my throat. My stomach turned over, and a sour taste coated my mouth. I closed my eyes when she told me to open my legs. They were trembling uncontrollably. She inserted something inside me and said, “We have to wait a few minutes for you to dilate.”

  I heard the peacocks jump onto the roof and imagined their bluish-green tails swaying in the breeze, their heads turning side to side. “Okay,” she said. The metal was cold as it climbed up my vagina. “Ow!” I screamed as it poked into the tender tissue below my stomach. Opening my eyes, I saw her on her knees, peering into my womanhood.

 
“I know this hurts,” she said, “but there's no other way right now. I'll be finished soon.”

  I grabbed fistfuls of the bedspread. She scraped the pointy metal around my uterus. It took forever and hurt so badly that I wondered if she had punctured an organ. Tears poured out of my eyes.

  “There,” she said, pulling the bloody weapon out. “You'll probably cramp up, but that's a good sign. Drink lots of liquids tonight.”

  Sweat beaded on her forehead. She pulled the towels out from under me and handed me a sanitary napkin to put on. Then she walked into the bathroom and shut the door. I could hear the water running in the sink.

  I wrapped my arms around my stomach and stared at the ceiling. I hadn't known how painful it would be to end my pregnancy. My stomach was already cramping in circles of spasm.

  She came out of the bathroom and sat down next to me. “You should go get yourself some birth control pills, honey. Take care of yourself.”

  I did not know what else to say, so I said, “Thank you.”

  She walked out the door. I heard her talking to Sly for a minute, and then a car engine started up.

  I walked into the bathroom, poured a glass of water, and gingerly sat down on the floor. So much had happened to me in the past few months: Sly hitting me; moving; an abortion. I felt as though I were in a pitch-black tunnel without light at either end to guide me out.

  The marble floor was cool. I put a towel under my head and lay down with my eyes closed.

  “Debbie?” Sly's voice called softly through the door.

  “Yes?”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Resting.”

  “Let me in.”

  I stood up slowly and wiped my legs with a wet washcloth, as I did that first time I had made love with the man on the other side of the wall. Breathing deeply, I opened the door.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “I'm in a bit of pain,” I said, trying not to cry.

  “I'll bring you a Placydil.” He handed me an envelope, “This came for you today.” He ran to the safe, got the pill, and put it in my hand. He helped me to the bed and, with his hands on my shoulders, sat me down. He ran to the bathroom for my glass of water. I leaned into his chest while I looked at the letter and swallowed the pill. I recognized Mom's slanted handwriting.