The Magic Touch

by Jody Lynn Nye

  “Was an exit like that necessary?” Raymond asked, turning on Rose as they walked away toward the main street. “You scared me half to death!”

  “It’s so he’ll call me,” Rose said confidently. “If I didn’t do something like that, what do you think will happen tomorrow morning when he thinks about what happened? He’ll think he dreamed it. He’ll throw the card in the wastebasket.”

  “Oh,” Ray said.

  “What’s the matter?” Rose asked, tucking a hand into his crooked elbow. “You look disappointed.”

  “I thought being a fairy godmother meant doing magic all the time, like we did before,” Ray said, waving behind him. “All we did was walk through walls and buy ice cream.”

  Rose tapped him on the wrist. “You’re right, but this was not a flashy case either. It’s bupkis, nothing, to everyone except that little boy. We got him over the disappointment of losing the ball game. Now, he’ll think hard about whether he needs us for real, but he’ll be able to pick himself up from the little losses.” Rose searched his face in the lamplight glimmer. “We gave him a tool for handling the rest of his life. The world is cold out there. Every so often a child needs to see that other people do care.” Rose shook her head. “I blame the parents. They should have taken him out for an ice cream themselves after the game, not gone scooting off to the movies by themselves. I bet they’re some of the parents who only care about winning. Did you hear what Peter told us?”

  “Yeah,” Ray said, remembering.

  Together, Ray and Rose made three rapid stops, helping another boy and two more girls. Their wishes were easy ones, not requiring a PhD in psychology, just a little good judgment in not going too far with the magic. The last was the fanciest of the three, where Rose wished an ugly birthmark off a girl’s face, leaving her still kind of ordinary-looking, but unmarked. The radiant smile she gave them when they left made Ray feel all warm inside, but he kept thinking back to Matthew and Clarice. He liked the tricky calls best.

  “That’s about all for tonight, then,” Rose said briskly. “It’s after ten. Most of the children are going to be in bed or too sleepy to tell us what they really want.”

  She led Ray out of the last girl’s home, through the alley, and onto the main street, where they emerged into the light of a streetlamp. Ray looked around him with surprise. He realized that they had started out right here on this spot only a few hours ago. In that short time, his whole life had changed. He was going to be a fairy godfather, and like it. He felt for the wand and the little book, and gave them both an affectionate pat.

  Rose turned abruptly, so he had to jump back to keep from bumping into her. “You believe now, don’t you?”

  Ray hesitated. Rose seemed to know that he’d changed his mind, but at least she didn’t throw it back at him.

  “I guess,” he said, not willing to commit himself out loud just like that. He had some pride. Rose was pleased all the same.

  “If you do like what we’re doing, and you can think of someone who’d be good at it, tell us. Or tell him. The meetings are open to anyone who’s serious. You know what I mean.” She nodded knowingly.

  “Yeah, I guess so,” Raymond said, thinking hard. Nobody sprang to mind, exactly. He’d have liked to tell his sister, but if he did, she would want to be right in the heart of it, wanting to go grant wishes right alongside him and Rose. Ray couldn’t help but think that if Grandma Eustatia had wanted that, she’d have sent Chanel along. Maybe the child was too young. Well, what about Hakeem Barton, his best friend? Ray almost opened his mouth to mention him, then reconsidered. Hakeem used to shoplift candy from the corner store in their neighborhood. He really didn’t boost stuff anymore, but what about past sins?

  “They don’t have to be moral giants,” Rose said, reading his mind again in that maddening fashion of hers. “You know somebody who’s reformed who’d make a good fairy godmother, that’s okay. It’s the ones who sell drugs to children who wouldn’t fit in. The ones who steal from their bosses. The ones who beat animals. You know.”

  Ray knew. “Let me think about it,” he said.

  “We can’t save the world,” Rose said. “We don’t even try with the hero stuff. That’s for the people who like to make headlines. But we can make things a little better for one child at a time. Think it over. We work together well, Ray. I liked having you come out with me. I like the way you truly care about the children. We’re going to make a good team, you and I. This is a partnership here, fifty-fifty. I’m teaching you, but you’re teaching me, too.” When Ray didn’t say anything, Rose tucked her hand in his arm. “Come on, honey. It’s late. Walk me home.”

  Raymond had so many questions he didn’t even know which one to blurt out first. Just in one evening, a few hours’ time, he’d seen so much, had so much to absorb. That they were doing a good and worthy thing for children he had no doubt. That he enjoyed doing it was dawning ever so grudgingly on him. Grandma Eustatia had been right to send him. But was it right for him to keep it up? He had to think how he felt about having magical powers. He glanced up at the sky, unable to see any stars because of the city lights. Did God think it was all right to do magic, even in a good cause?

  “Rose?” he asked. “Where does the magic come from?”

  She looked up toward the sky, too. “I think at its source it comes from God. When I first joined the Fairy Godmothers I worried that doing magic might take me farther away from God, in spite of the name, but I think it’s brought me closer instead. I did a little experimentation. I thought that if magic was an evil thing, you couldn’t do it in a church or a synagogue, or saying the holy name. So I said prayers while I was granting wishes.” She smiled a little sheepishly. “I did a few good deeds while I was in churches and synagogues. Lightning didn’t smite me down, so I have to guess it’s all right with Whoever up there. In my personal opinion, what we do is a mitzvah, a good deed. How the Union channels the magic to our wands is from a vow made hundreds of years ago to help every child. A miracle is vouchsafed to each and every youngster at some time in his or her life. Where the miracle doesn’t happen on its own, we give things a little push. It’s all in your manual. You should read it.”

  “I will,” Raymond promised.

  “Here we are,” Rose said, turning off the walk toward a yellow brick three-flat on the side street. “This is home!” Ray looked at the building, the glass door flanked by plantings of tulips and evergreens and little trees with their roots buried in colored pebbles, three long skinny mailboxes with the names and doorbells set above. It was a nice place, in a pretty nice street, but not special. There was nothing at all to tell that a fairy godmother lived here. And he was surprised to note how close it was to the neighborhood where he lived.

  Rose turned to him. “Well, thank you for bringing me home, Raymond. Do you want to come in? I think I have some pop in the fridge.”

  “Uh, no, thanks,” Ray said. “I’ve got to go.”

  “Fine, then. I’ll see you again on, say, Thursday, all right?”

  “Yeah, okay, Thursday,” Raymond said. “No, wait a minute.” Once he might let her run things, but not twice. He didn’t know what he was thinking of. Didn’t he just promise himself he’d be in charge of his own life? Did he want to devote hours on several nights a week to unpaid volunteer work, however unique and uncanny? He had college expenses to think of. When would he see his girlfriend? His friends? And yet, he thought of the faces of those kids when he and Rose helped them. And doing magic—it had been cooler than dry ice to walk through a wall and stand on thin air. Nobody in the history of the world had ever had so many incredible things happen to him in one evening. “Friday. I’d rather go out Friday,” he heard himself saying.

  “All right,” Rose said, at once, without any complaint. “Friday is fine with me.”

  “Yeah,” Raymond said, then stopped. Had she given in too easily? Was the matter not sufficiently important to start a dominance battle, or did she mean it when she said he could make som
e of the decisions? Was she telling the truth about making this a partnership instead of just a plain student/teacher relationship? That’d be too much to expect. “I guess. Uh, Mrs.—Rose, what are you gonna tell my grandma?”

  “I’ll tell her what a fine young man her grandson is,” Rose said, with a smile on her face. She took a key out of the door and stuck it in the lock. “See you Friday, Ray.”

  “’Night, Rose,” Raymond said, turning away. He wondered again just for a moment if she was humoring him, letting him have his way. He’d have to see on Friday. Yeah, Friday. In the meantime, he had a lot to think about.

  Chapter 7

  Walking hunched over with his hands in his pockets, he didn’t see Hakeem and Zeon as they fell into step beside him. He was so preoccupied he didn’t even smell the smoke of their cigarettes until Zeon leaned over and blew a plume of it into his face. I wasn’t paying attention, he thought, coughing and batting at the air to the others’ great amusement. That can get me killed.

  “Hey, Ray,” Hakeem said, giving him a full-cheeked grin.

  “Hey, man,” Ray said, putting up a hand for a friendly salute. He and Hakeem had been best friends since they were babies. They had gone all the way through school together. Hakeem was exactly one inch taller and five pounds heavier than Ray. His cheeks had always been prominent and round, even though he grew out of the last of his baby fat years ago. Aunts and grandmothers couldn’t help but reach up for a pinch. Hakeem stood it like a gentleman, but he cursed about it in private with Raymond. They had big dreams as kids, vowing to go to medical school or law school or invent something fabulous and become rich, important men. Things being what they were in the neighborhood, neither of them had put their whole hearts into making the straight A’s necessary for any of the showcase programs. Their teachers were openly disappointed in them. Ray had kept plugging at his schoolwork, urged by his family to go to college and make the best he could of himself anyhow. Hakeem had given up and was falling back. As much as Ray tried to pull him along, he began to think he was losing him to the street. Hanging out sure was easier than trying and failing, but it went nowhere. Ray thought his smarter best friend would know that in his heart, if not his head.

  Zeon was somebody Hakeem had started hanging out with a few months before. Hakeem thought he was all right, but Zeon gave Ray the creeps. He was a member of the Riverside Jackals. Ray was afraid he was going to try and recruit them into the gang whether they wanted to join or not. Ray’s parents worried about the gangs, and for good reason. People who turned them down sometimes ended up dead in the alley. Ray had managed to stay out of their clutches in a friendly way so far, but it looked like Hakeem was drifting in. Every time Ray tried to discuss it with Hakeem, Zeon would appear out of nowhere and get in the way. He was dangerous, six or seven inches taller than Ray, and built across the shoulders like a professional football player and with hands like huge, black spiders. He had long eyelashes that would look effeminate on a smaller guy, but instead made him look more sinister. So far he hadn’t used any real threats or violence on Ray, but Ray was always wary that that would come next if he kept saying no or prevented the Jackals from getting Hakeem.

  “Saw you walking around with the old white lady,” Zeon said. “What you doing with her?”

  “Nothing,” Ray said.

  “Running errands for her?” Hakeem nudged the other, grinning lasciviously. “She want a little special company? Likes ’em young, does she? I saw Antoinette tonight. Should I tell her you’ve got somebody else and she should start dating other guys?”

  “Chill it, Darrell,” Ray blurted out. Hakeem made a face. That was his birth name. Hakeem had changed it when they went to junior high to sound more cool, and tried to persuade Raymond to change his. Ray had pointed out he was named for Ray Charles, and who could be cooler than that? Besides, Raymond meant “king of the world.” “You don’t know what you’re talking about. Mrs. Feinstein’s a friend of my grandmother’s. You dissing her now?”

  Hakeem, like the other boys on the block, had a healthy respect for Grandma Eustatia Green. He held up his hands in surrender.

  “No, no, of course not, Ray. So how come you’re spending time with the old lady and not with us? You dissing us? You disrespecting your own ’hood?”

  “No,” Raymond said, weary of the argument and of the television slang that had come into their way of talking. The gate of his house was about fifty yards ahead. He could make a quick escape if things started to get hairy. There was a light in Grandma’s room upstairs, but none in his folks’ room. Were they downstairs watching TV, or out? The front door would be locked at this hour. Grandma didn’t like strangers in the house after dark. Could he get inside without having to ask the other two in? He tried to push past, and the two of them blocked his way. “Come on, man, I’m tired. I need to sleep.”

  “Old lady wear you out?” Zeon asked, a fierce and dirty grin on his face.

  With difficulty, Raymond held his temper. “That’s not it. My grandma made me join this group, see? A charity group.” Hakeem and Zeon both groaned in sympathy. “The old lady’s in the group, too. I was just walking her home. Streets aren’t safe, or haven’t you heard?”

  The guys just thought that was hilarious. They laughed and slapped each other on the backs. “Yeah, we heard something like that,” Zeon said. “Well, don’t you try and avoid us. Don’t you try, or we might have to take steps, you know?” He snapped his fingers under Ray’s nose.

  “Yeah, man, I know,” Raymond said, feeling the tightness in his stomach. It took all his courage not to flinch or back away.

  “You coming out later, Ray?” Hakeem asked, hopefully. He didn’t look at Zeon.

  “No, I can’t,” Ray said, trying not to look at the gangbanger either. “I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

  “Yeah, okay,” Hakeem said, then hesitated, turning to look fully into his friend’s eyes. “Hey, Ray?” Raymond saw that the pupils had dilated hugely. He recognized that his friend was strung out, and felt horribly uncomfortable. “You got any money? I need … something.”

  Ray backed away involuntarily, and saw the hurt look on Hakeem’s face. “No, man, I don’t have any.”

  “You could get some from your mama,” Zeon said, urgently. He also showed dangerous signs of drug withdrawal.

  “No. I can’t.” He said that with as much finality as he dared, and Zeon stood back, hugging himself under his athletic jacket. Hakeem grabbed his arm.

  “Okay,” he said, “but you get me some next time, you hear me? I need it.”

  “That junk messes you up, Hakeem,” Raymond said, seeing a ghost look out of his friend’s eyes. It terrified him, knowing that someone he’d been babies with could die so young. “It’s poison. You know that?”

  “Yeah, I know, man. Stop nagging me. Everyone is nagging on me. You sound like my mama.”

  At last they let him go inside. As quietly as he could he locked the dead bolt, but the faint snick gave him away. He walked upstairs listening to the derisive, too-brittle laughter of the youths in the street.

  It was painful to see Hakeem turning into a street punk. Gangs had taken almost every one of their friends. He and Hakeem had been the last holdouts, and now he was alone. It had seemed like forever since the last time the two of them had sat around talking about the relative merits of their favorite sports figures, or just hanging around and having a good time. Now all of a sudden, there was the complication of drugs, maybe weapons, maybe turf wars. All of it was undesirable and dangerous.

  Raymond had promised his family to keep out of the gangs. He did his best to avoid entanglements, but the neighborhood was changing. It got harder and harder every day to go around and mind your business. He wished it was still like the community it had been while he was growing up, but there seemed to be knives and guns and drugs everywhere he turned. The family couldn’t afford to move. His mother and grandmother prayed he would get a scholarship to an out-of-state college, but his grades, whi
le good, were unspectacular. Financial aid was the only way for him to attend a good four-year college one day. His dream, medical school, was right out of the question. In the meantime, he was scheduled to attend Roosevelt College that fall, right there in the city. Roosevelt was cheap enough for his wallet but close, too close to the gangs. The bangers didn’t like a man to get an education. They wanted everybody to be equal but lower than the leaders.

  If only the Crandall’s could have found a way to pay for a four-year college. If Ray got a top-rated education, he could get a really good job, and the faster he could earn the money to move the family to somewhere better. But there was never enough money for fancy extras. Plenty of people were worse off, he knew. He saw them on the streets, on TV, and in the newspapers. Their church was a link in the Public Action to Deliver Shelter network that hosted the local homeless one night a week, and he’d done his part in helping to make beds and meals for people who had nothing.

  “I’m grateful, God, you know I am,” Ray said a silent prayer. “I just wish we were a little richer.”

  His parents both had good jobs, but everything a big family needed cost so much sometimes Raymond felt as if his family was just holding on. They didn’t take fancy vacations. Mama kept her three kids down to one name brand, designer item a year, like a pair of Sports Figure sneakers. If only he’d stuck to his studies, or been a super brain, like Hakeem had been before he’d started hanging around with the Jackals. Ray carried a part-time job with the Chicago park district (which was full-time now that it was summer and he had graduated) and took on other odd jobs to buy clothes and records. He kicked in the rest to help out the household kitty. Ray wished he hadn’t blown any of his share on clothes and saved every penny. He could have used it as part of his tuition to Howard University. Antoinette was going there. The two of them sighed that they’d be separated in September, but there was nothing he could do about it this year.