Thomas M. Disch (31 page)

“And it’s lovely,” Hedwig had declared.

“Well, you can’t really tell until there’s a plant in it, but I followed the instructions. It’s not like we could go shopping for something.”

“Handmade presents are always the best,” Hedwig stated primly, without otherwise responding to the girl’s veiled criticism.

At this point the candles had burned down very near the chocolate frosting, but Raven couldn’t be expected to blow them out, since Hedwig had taped her mouth shut when she’d refused to stop screaming, “Fuck the birthday cake! Fuck all of you! Fuck the Church!” Hedwig proposed that Alison blow out the candles on Raven’s behalf, which Alison did, though not all at the first blow, so that any wish that Raven might have been making wouldn’t be coming true anytime soon.

Alison was pretty certain she knew what Raven would have wished for. It was what she wished for herself—getting out of BirthRight. Because for all that it was as comfortable as could be, BirthRight was more like a prison than anything else, and until you’ve actually been put in a prison, you don’t realize what it means to be free. Alison wondered whether when she’d been here as long as Raven, she’d be just as crazy. So far she’d managed to put on a good front when she was with Hedwig, but that’s all it was. On the surface she pretended, as Janet did, to go along with the situation, reciting the rosary along with Hedwig whenever the old lady felt like a rosary, or reading the books that Hedwig supplied her with, which were all about religion and mostly very dull. As a result, she was allowed a little more space to move around in.

Not freedom, but a slightly longer leash.

But in her heart she was in hell. It was a hundred times worse than sitting in a classroom waiting for the bell. Because there wasn’t any bell.

She couldn’t leave until she’d had her baby, and that wouldn’t be for
months
. She couldn’t phone anyone, even her mother. She could write to her, but she was certain that whatever she wrote would be read by one of the Obers before it was mailed,
if
it was mailed, and if a letter did get to her mother, she probably wouldn’t do anything to try to get Alison out, because Father Cogling would be able to talk her out of it. So she was really and truly trapped. Sometimes she got to feeling so desperate that she actually thought about attacking Hedwig physically, old as she was. But then what? She would still be down here in this sub-subbasement, in a maze of corridors and locked doors that didn’t unlock with keys but with a thing that looked like a pocket calculator. You had to know the right numerical code to open the doors, and only Hedwig and Gerhardt knew the code numbers. And suppose she managed to get up to ground level? This place was in the middle of a forest and was guarded by German shepherds, and Alison suspected that the dogs weren’t there so much to keep people out as to keep the girls in.

She tried not to think about it. She tried to think in a positive way about the baby she was going to have, and the gift of life, and all that. She even tried to study geometry, and she
hated
geometry, because it was either completely obvious or didn’t make any sense at all. But trying not to think about something is the best way to guarantee that you can’t think about anything else.

It seemed awful to be eating Raven’s birthday cake in front of her when her mouth was taped shut, but Hedwig said that that was the girl’s own fault and not to worry, because when Raven got hungry enough, she would eat. She always did. It even seemed a little cruel to be reading aloud from the book about the Shroud of Turin, since the part Hedwig had chosen to read aloud was all about how much Christ had suffered when he was crucified, which was not something anyone would necessarily want to dwell on in Raven’s situation, with her wrists and ankles buckled in leather restraints and her mouth taped shut.

Hedwig was a very religious person, but religious people aren’t always sensitive about what people who are less religious feel, besides which Hedwig’s style of religion tended to be on the dark side, not to say morbid.

She was an expert on how Christ had suffered and how various martyrs were killed. Also, abortion was a big issue, as you might expect, since preventing abortions was the whole reason she was here at the Shrine of Blessed Konrad of Paderborn, which was what the place had been called when it was built. But Hedwig didn’t seem very interested in the bright side of religion, the side that had to do with love.

That was the worst of it. The loneliness. Alison wasn’t used to spending so much time all by herself, with no one to talk to, no telephone, not even Mr. Boots, the neighbor’s cat who would come to the back door, meowing for scraps. Alison would have given anything just to be sitting beside her mother on the ratty old sofa in front of the TV, watching
Roseanne
and sharing Chinese takeout. Most of all she missed Greg. When they split up, she thought,

“Okay, it’s over. Too bad. Now get on with the rest of your life.” But now that there was no way he could get in touch with her, she felt as though her life were over. Without Greg nothing mattered, not even the baby, even though it was his. She wanted to touch him and to feel his touch, and she couldn’t.

She wished she were dead, and Greg too, and they were in heaven, making love again.

Janet, seeing that the party was about to be over, asked Hedwig, in her most inveigling whine, “Do you suppose I could have another little slice of cake? Just a sliver? It’s
so
good.”

“Oh well,” said Hedwig, who was vain about her cooking and had every right to be. It
was
a scrumptious chocolate cake. “Why not? Since you’ve both been so good.” She cut two more slices of cake. Then, just as she’d tipped the second slice sideways onto Alison’s paper plate, her beeper beeped.

“Oh dear,” she said, “excuse me,” and went over to stand by the door of the cell, as though she’d be more private there, and took out her beeper from the pocket of her gray wool smock and said “Yes?” and then, in a different tone of voice, “No, I can’t.”

Alison knew right away that Hedwig must be talking with her brother Gerhardt, who had driven Alison to the Shrine in his big Cadillac. Whenever she talked with her brother, in person or on the phone, Hedwig became a different person. It was like in movies about the army, when the sergeant who is usually such a bully salutes his commanding officer and is suddenly a cocker spaniel. Hedwig clutched the beeper and nodded and said, “No, not now, I’m sorry. Can’t it wait?”

Apparently it couldn’t wait, because Hedwig finally had to put the beeper back in her pocket. “I’m sorry, girls. I’m going to have to leave you here with Raven for a little. Help yourselves to some more cake if you like. I won’t be long.”

She unlocked the cell with the little thing that looked like a calculator, and exited, and they heard the door lock behind her.

“I don’t believe it,” said Alison. “She left us alone. Together.”

“But she can still hear us, you know,” said Janet. “Every cell has got a microphone or maybe a camera.”

“But she won’t be listening to us now. She’ll be talking with her brother on the phone.”

“You’re right,” said Janet.

Raven was shaking her head from side to side, the only movement she could make.

“She wants us to take the tape off,” Janet said.

“But if she starts screaming again…”

“She won’t do that,” Janet said, beginning to peel the white tape from Raven’s face. “It’s only when Hedwig’s around she gets that way. She really hates Hedwig. You can’t blame her.”

Alison was astonished at the sudden change in Janet, whom she had only seen, till now, in Hedwig’s company. She was only twelve years old, a seventh grader, and she didn’t seem that bright. Now she was acting like Sigourney Weaver in
Aliens
, full of purpose and determination.

Janet had the tape off Raven’s mouth. “Are you okay?”

“Jesus,” said Raven, in a fervent whisper, “I hate that woman, I just hate her.”

“Are you okay?” Janet insisted.

“Yes, I’m okay. Is
she?
” Meaning Alison.

Janet glanced at Alison. “I don’t know. I think so. I mean, we can never talk anymore, except in front of Hedwig. It isn’t the way it was— it’s worse now.”

“I figured that,” said Raven. “What about Mary? And Tara?”

“Mary is sick. Hedwig lets us visit her, and I don’t think she’s acting.

She looks sick. And she keeps asking Hedwig to let her see a doctor, and Hedwig keeps saying soon, soon. Tara—I don’t know. Maybe they took her away, or maybe she tried to escape.”

“But if she’d escaped, she’d have told someone, there’d be police here.”

“Maybe she didn’t get away, maybe she just tried.”

“Maybe they killed her,” Raven said.

Janet began to cry. “No,” she said, “no, they wouldn’t do that.”

“Jesus, don’t cry,” said Raven. “Crying can’t do any good.”

Alison put her arm around Janet’s shoulders, trying to give her some comfort, but it’s hard to comfort someone else when you feel just as bad. Both Janet and Raven knew more about BirthRight than she did, and from what she could gather, the situation was even worse than she’d imagined.

“Who is Tara?” she asked, looking up at Raven.

“Tara Seberg. She was the third one to get here. I was the first.

Listen, we probably don’t have much time till Hedwig’s back. You want to get out of here?”

Alison nodded. Raven stared into her eyes, as though she were giving her a lie detector test, and Alison stared back, trying to think of something to say to make Raven trust her.

Janet slipped away from Alison’s forgetful embrace. “I’m sorry, I’ve got to throw up.” She went to the lidless toilet bowl in the far corner of the cell and knelt down to vomit.

“That’s okay,” said Raven, keeping her eyes on Alison. “Let her puke, she’ll feel better. I’ve got to tell you something while I can. The only way we’ll any of us get out of here is if one of us can get to the police. Right?”

Alison nodded.

“And it doesn’t look like it’s going to be me. Or Tara, either, by the sound of it. And Mary Tyler can’t pick her nose without a handkerchief. Janet?

Well, she’s a great kid, tougher than any of us. She says when she gets out of here she wants to kill both her parents, and I think she’s serious about it.

It was her daddy who got her knocked up, and then her mom sends her here, so she can’t get an abortion. But Hedwig’s no dummy, she’s got the sense not to trust Janet for all the act she puts on like she’s still in diapers. But for some reason Hedwig seems to trust you.”

“I think it’s because when we were driving up here, we got a flat tire, and Gerhardt had to leave me alone in the car. And I didn’t make a bolt for it. I mean, it was raining, and where was I going to go? But when he came back with the tow truck, I think he was actually surprised to see I was still there in the car.”

Raven nodded. “Hedwig said something, earlier, about how you were up in the church with her, on the main floor?”

“I’ve helped her with the cleaning. Twice.”

“I used to do that. When I first got here, I was like you. Butter wouldn’t melt. I was waiting for my chance, but when it came, I messed up. But I did manage to do one thing. Hedwig had this can of Mace in her purse. You know what Mace is?”

“You squirt it at muggers, and it blinds them?”

“Right. She’d left me alone, just long enough to get it out of her purse and hide it the first place I could see. Maybe it’s still there. Under the kneeling pad inside the big carved-wood confessional. I don’t think anyone ever comes into the Shrine to go to confession, so it could still be there.

Unless Hedwig found it, which I doubt, because she still questions me about it sometimes. I wish I’d used it while I had the chance. Anyhow, you better put the tape back over my mouth. She’ll be coming back any minute.”

Alison nodded and pressed the wide white strip of adhesive across Raven’s mouth.

Janet had finished throwing up, but she was still kneeling beside the toilet bowl, looking at the brown mulch still recognizable as chocolate cake.

She looked up at Alison, smiling. “Isn’t it weird, I’m still hungry. Coming up it tasted almost as good as it did going down.” She hit the stainless steel flush handle with the heel of her hand, and watched the cake swirl away into the drain. “You know, a friend of mine told me that in France it’s as easy as that to get rid of a baby. There’s a pill you take. You bleed a little extra, and it’s gone.”

“I’ve heard the same thing. But it’s not legal here.”

“Sometimes I think I’d like to do the same thing myself. Just whirl around a few times inside the toilet bowl, then disappear. Like one of the rides at the fairgrounds. Have you ever been on the big Ferris wheel at the fair?”

Alison nodded.

“If I ever get out of here,” Janet said with determination, “what I want to do is go on the Ferris wheel again, and sit in one of the seats all by myself. I’ll probably have to buy two tickets. Do you think so?”

“Maybe if it’s not too busy you wouldn’t have to.”