Magic Street

by Orson Scott Card

  "What did you do to me? What did you do to me?" He said it over and over again as he thought of that man just getting in his car as if he had a right, and the way he made Byron do things and say things. Making him buy See's chocolates for him! Saying Nadine was pregnant and he believed it!

  Was Bag Man a hypnotist? In the moment when Byron looked away from that motorcycle mama, was that when Bag Man caught his eye and hypnotized him without him even knowing it?

  If I see him again I'll run him over even if they put me in jail for it. Nobody ought to have power like that over another living soul.

  Word, his ten-year-old son—named for Wordsworth—came through the door from the house and rushed to Byron's car window. The boy didn't look excited, he looked worried.

  Byron turned off the engine and opened the door.

  "All right, I'm on it." Byron headed toward the house. Then he stopped and looked back at Word. "Son, would you get dinner out of the back seat?"

  "Sure," said Word. "I'm on it." And without a word of argument, the boy headed right back to get the sacks from I Cugini. That's when Byron realized that whatever was going on with Nadine, Word thought it was serious.

  She was in the bedroom and when he knocked on the door, she said, "Go away."

  "It's me," said Byron.

  "Come in," she said.

  He came through the door.

  She was lying on her back on the bed, naked, breathing rapidly. Or was she crying? Both. Short sobs.

  She wasn't just pregnant. She was as big as she had ever been with any of the children.

  "By, what's happening to me?" she said. She sounded frantic, but kept her voice low. "I just started bloating up. An hour ago. I got home from work and I had to get out of my clothes, they were strangling the baby. That's what I kept thinking. Only I'm not pregnant, By."

  He sat on the edge of the bed and felt her stomach. The skin was stretched as tight as it ever was at the peak of pregnancy, completely erasing her navel. "You sure feel pregnant," said Byron.

  And then, without thinking, he blurted: "That son-of-a-bitch."

  "Who?" she said. "What are you talking about?"

  "He said you were pregnant. He called you my pregnant wife."

  "Who? Who who who who?"

  "I don't know who. A homeless man. I gave him a ride home. I gave him a ride here."

  "You let a homeless man into our house?"

  "Not our house, I dropped him off at the bend. But it was crazy. I did whatever he wanted. I wanted to do it. He made me want to. I was thinking he hypnotized me."

  "Well this isn't hypnosis, is it," said Nadine. "It hurts, By." Then her body tautened. "Merciful Savior make it stop!"

  Byron realized his hand was cold and wet. "Baby, I think your water broke."

  "What water!" she hissed. "I'm not pregnant!" get through her fully dilated cervix.

  "Just hold still, baby, and push this thing out."

  "What thing!"

  "It looks like a baby," said Byron. "I know it's impossible but I can't lie about what I see."

  "It's not a baby," said Nadine as she panted. "Whatever it is. It's not a baby. Babies don't.

  Come this. Fast."

  But this one did. Like popping a pimple, it suddenly squished out right into Byron's waiting hands. A little boy. Smaller than any of their real children had been.

  Not that this baby didn't look real. It had the arms and legs and fingers and head of a genuine baby, and it was slithery and streaked in blood.

  "It was nice of him to let you deliver this one without an episiotomy," said Byron.

  "What?" asked Nadine, gasping as her body convulsed to deliver the afterbirth. The bed was soaked in blood now.

  "He didn't tear you. Coming out."

  "What?"

  "I've got to cut. The cord. Where are there any scissors? I don't want to go clear to the kitchen, don't you have scissors here?"

  "Sewing scissors in the kit in the closet," she said.

  The afterbirth spewed out onto the bed and Nadine whimpered a couple of times and fell asleep.

  No, fell unconscious, that was the right term for it.

  Byron got the kit open and took out the scissors and then found himself hesitating as he tried to decide what color thread to use. Until he finally realized that the color didn't matter. It was insane to even worry about it. Except what was sane about any of this? A woman who wasn't pregnant this morning, she gives birth before dinner?

  He tied the umbilical cord and then tied it again, and between the two threads he cut the springy flesh. It was like cutting raw turkey skin.

  Only when he was done did he realize what was wrong. The baby hadn't made a sound.

  It just lay there on its back in a pool of blood on the bed, not crying, not moving.

  "It's dead," whispered Byron.

  How would they explain this to the police? No, we didn't know my wife was pregnant. No, we didn't have time to get to the hospital.

  And something else. Nadine still had her legs spread wide, and she was smeared with blood, but her belly wasn't swollen anymore. She had the flat stomach of a woman who takes her workouts seriously. There was no sign that a few moments ago she was nine months pregnant with this dead baby.

  There was a knock on the door.

  "What?"

  "Man here to see you," said Word.

  "I can't see anybody right now, Word," said Byron.

  The door opened and Byron moved quickly to hide his wife's naked body. But it wasn't Word in the doorway. It was Bag Man.

  "You," said Byron. "You son-of-a-bitch. What have you done to my wife?"

  "Got that baby out already? That was quick." He looked downright cheerful.

  "I got news for you," said Byron. "The baby's dead. So whatever you're doing to us, you blew it.

  It didn't work."

  Bag Man just shook his head and grinned. Byron hated that grin now. This man virtually carjacked him tonight, and somehow made him like it. Well, he didn't like it now. He wanted to throw the man against the wall. Knock him down and kick his head.

  Instead he watched as Bag Man shambled past him and picked up the baby. "Look at him," said Bag Man. "Ain't he as pretty as can be?"

  "I told you," said Byron. "He's dead."

  "Don't be silly," said Bag Man. "Baby like this, it can't die. How can it die? Ain't alive yet. Can't die less you been alive, fool."

  Bag Man held the baby like a football in one arm, while he snapped open a plastic grocery bag with the other hand. Then he slipped the baby into the bag. It fit nicely, with its legs scrunched up just like it must have been in the womb. That was the first time it occurred to Byron that all those grocery bags were exactly womb-sized. He wondered if that's how they decided how big to make them.

  "He'll suffocate in that bag," said Byron.

  "Can't suffocate if you ain't breathing," said Bag Man cheerfully. "You kind of slow, ain't you, Byron? Anyway, nobody suffocates in my bags." He looked at Nadine's naked unconscious body and Byron hated him.

  "For looking at your wife naked?"

  "For putting that dead baby in her."

  "I didn't do it," said Bag Man. "You think I got the power to do this? Drop dead, fool, this ain't my style." He grinned when he said it, but this time Byron refused to be placated.

  "Get out of my house," said Byron.

  "That's what I was planning to do," said Bag Man. "But first I got a question for you."

  "Just get out."

  "You want to forget this, or remember?"

  "I'm never gonna forget you and what you did. If I see you in the street, I'll run you down."

  "Oh, don't worry, you ain't gonna see me, not for a long time, anyway, but go ahead and run me down if you can."

  "I told you to get out."

  "So... one for remembering, the rest for not," said Bag Man. "Your order will be ready in a minute, sir." Bag Man winked and went back out the door, carrying the dead newborn in the plastic bag.

  Is th
is where those dumpster babies come from? Not pregnant teenagers at all.

  And those really fat women who give birth without ever knowing they were pregnant. Nadine once said, How can they not know? Well, what if it was like this? What if some voodoo man did it?

  Or maybe he really was a hypnotist. Maybe none of this happened. Maybe when I wake up it'll turn out not to be real.

  Except when he touched them, the sheets were wet with amniotic fluid and blood.

  He got Nadine awake enough to move while he got the sheet and mattress pad out from under her. As he feared, it had gone clear through to the mattress. It was never coming out of there. They'd have to buy a new one.

  And these sheets? They weren't going in the laundry. He got a plastic garbage bag from the cabinet under the bathroom sink and stuffed the bottom sheet and the mattress pad into it.

  As he went back into the bedroom, Nadine padded by him toward the bathroom. "That's a good idea," she murmured.

  "Washing the sheets. Time to change the sheets," she said. "Did you get dinner?"

  "I Cugini, as ordered," he said. Could she really be this calm?

  "Mmmm," she said. "I'm gonna shower now, By. Let's eat when I get out."

  She didn't remember. She had no idea that any of this had happened.

  "You were real sweet, baby," she said.

  She thinks we made love, thought Byron.

  Well, if a woman can give birth, fall asleep, and wake up five minutes later thinking all she had was great sex, that was some kind of hypnotism, that's for sure.

  If it happened at all.

  I've got the bloody sheet in this bag, he told himself impatiently.

  He opened the garbage bag again just to be sure. Bloody all right. And wet. And slimy. A mess.

  He heard the shower start. He tied the bag again and carried it out of the room and through the kitchen, on his way to the city garbage can in the garage.

  "Dad," said Andrea, the oldest. "Is Mom okay?"

  "She's fine," said Byron. "Just a little sick to her stomach, but she's feeling better now."

  "Did she puke?" asked seven-year-old Danielle. "I always feel better if I'm sick and then I puke.

  Not during the puke, after."

  "I don't know if she puked," said Byron. "She's in the bathroom with the door closed."

  "Puking's nasty," said Danielle.

  "Not as nasty as licking it up afterward," said Word.

  Byron didn't tell him off. The girls were saying Gross, Disgusting, You're as funny as a dead slug: the koine of intersibling conversation. Byron only wanted to get to the garbage can and jam this bag of bloody sheet and mattress pad as far down into it as possible.

  What was the old man going to do with that dead baby? What was this all about? Why did this witch doctor or whatever he was pick us?

  He came back in and washed his hands with antibacterial soap three times and he still didn't feel dean.

  "Not the salads."

  Andrea rolled her eyes. He could hear her muttering as she heated up the warm dishes. "Think you have to tell me not to nuke a salad, I'm not retarded, I think I know lettuce sucks when it's hot."

  Byron supervised the setting of the table. And as they were finishing, Nadine came in.

  "Well, I feel a lot better," she said. "I just needed to rest a minute and then wash off the troubles of the day."

  She really was clueless. For the first time it occurred to Byron that this meant there was no one on God's green earth he could ever tell about what happened. Who would believe him, if Nadine didn't back him up? Miz Nadine, your husband said you swoll up and gave birth all in one hour and a homeless man come and took it away in a grocery bag, is that so? And Nadine would say, That's just sick, if my husband said that he's making fun.

  "By," she said, "you look green as a ghost. Are you ill?"

  "Bad traffic on the ten," he said.

  "I thought you said only a fool takes the ten, you've got to take Olympic."

  "So I'm a fool," he said.

  Why didn't the old man come with me all the way to our house, if he was here to pick up the baby? Why did he go into that fenced-off park?

  And when did they put a gate in the fence? There was no gate in the fence.

  Wait a minute. There's no fence. There is no damn fence around that park.

  "Really, By, are you sure you shouldn't just go to bed? You look pretty awful."

  "I suppose I just need a shower, too."

  "Well, right after dinner, and I'll give you a neck rub to wipe out all that tension, see if I don't."

  "I sure hope you can," said Byron.

  "Of course I can, darling," she said primly. "A woman like me, I can do anything."

  "She is woman!" intoned Word. "She rocks!"

  "Now that," said Nadine, "is one well-raised boy."

  "Well-raised man," said Word.

  "I'm ten," said Word.

  "Don't go calling yourself a man, then," said Nadine. "Man's not a man till he earns money."

  "Or drives a car," said Danielle.

  What a thing to teach the children. That a man's not a man if he isn't making money. Does that mean that the more you earn, the more of a man you are? Does that mean if you get fired, you've been emasculated?

  But there was no point arguing the point. Word wasn't a man yet, and when he was, Byron would make sure he got a man's respect from his father, and then it wouldn't matter what the boy's mother said. That was a power a father had that no woman could take away.

  While the rest of the family bantered, Byron's thoughts turned again to that baby. If it was real, was it a child of Nadine's, or some kind of magical changeling? If it was her child, then who was the father? Byron? Was it our son that freak toted out of our bedroom in a grocery sack? Word's little brother, now bound for some miserable grave in a dumpster somewhere?

  Is he really dead? Or will the old man's magic find some spark of life inside him? And if he does, could I find him? Claim him? Bring him home to raise?

  And now Byron realized why Bag Man hadn't given Nadine a choice about whether to remember or not. If the mother didn't believe she had given birth, then how could the father go claiming paternity? Nobody gave maternity tests to mothers.

  If that's our baby, that old man stole it from us.

  I should have told him to let me forget.

  But that was wrong, too, and Byron knew it. It was important for him to know—and remember

  —that such a thing as this was possible in the world. That his life could be taken over so easily, that such a terrible thing could happen and then be forgotten.

  And now this man knows where we live. This man can do whatever he wants in our neighborhood.

  Well, if magic like this is real, then I sure as hell hope that God is also real. Because as long as Bag Man is walking around in Baldwin Hills with dead babies in his grocery sacks, then God help us all.

  Please.

  Chapter 2

  URA LEE'S WINDOW Ura Lee Smitcher looked out the window of her house on the corner of Burnside and Sanchez as two boys walked by on the other side of the street, carrying skateboards. "There's your son with that Raymond boy from out on Coliseum."

  Madeline Tucker sat on Ura Lee's couch, drinking coffee. She didn't even look up from People Magazine. "I know all about Raymo Vine."

  "I hope what you know is he's heading for jail, because he is."

  "That's exactly what I know," said Madeline. "But what can I do? I forbid Cecil to see him, and that just guarantees he'll sneak off. Right now Ceese got no habit of lying to me."

  Ura Lee almost said something.

  Madeline Tucker didn't miss much. "I know what you going to say."

  "I ain't going to say a thing," said Ura Lee, putting on her silkiest, southernest voice.

  "You going to say, What good if he tell you the truth, if what's true is he's going to hell in a wheelbarrow?"

  She was dead on, but Ura Lee wasn't about to say it in so many words. "I likely woul
d have said 'handbasket,' " said Ura Lee. "Though truth to tell, I don't know what the hell a handbasket is."

  And now it was Madeline's turn to hesitate and refrain from saying what she was thinking.

  "Oh, you don't have to say it," said Ura Lee. "Women who never had a child, they all expert on raising other women's children."

  "I was not going to say that," said Madeline.

  "Good thing," said Ura Lee, "because you best remember I chose not to give you advice. You just guessed what I was thinking, but I refuse to be blamed for meddling when I didn't say it."

  "And I refuse to be blamed for persecuting you when I didn't say it either."

  "You know," said Ura Lee, "we'd get along a lot better if we wasn't a couple of mind readers."

  "Or maybe that's why we get along so good."

  "You think those two boys really going to hike up Cloverdale and ride down on those contraptions?"

  "Not all the way down," said Madeline. "One of them always falls off and gets bloody or sprained or something."

  "They a special way to walk for that?"

  "Jaunty," said Ura Lee. "Those boys looking sneaky."

  "Ah," said Madeline.

  "Ah? That's all you got to say?"

  Madeline sighed. "I already raised Cecil's four older brothers and not one of them in jail."

  "Not one in college, either," said Ura Lee. "Not to criticize, just observing."

  "All of them with decent jobs and making money, and Antwon doing fine."

  Antwon was the one who was buying rental homes all over South Central and making money from renting week-to-week to people with no green card so they couldn't make him fix stuff that broke. The kind of landlord that Ura Lee had been trying to get away from when she saved up and bought this house in Baldwin Hills when the real estate market bottomed out after the earthquake.

  They'd had this argument before, anyway. Madeline thought it made all the difference in the world that Antwon was exploiting Mexicans. "They got no right to be in this country anyway," she said. "If they don't like it, they can go home."

  And Ura Lee had answered, "They came here cause they poor and got no choice, except to look for something better wherever they can find it. Just like our people getting away from share-cropping or whatever they were putting up with in Mississippi or Texas or Carolina, wherever they were from."