Her brother mined the mountain, passing boxes, flats, and lumpy ovals to her, running his hand over half the presents before selecting the next to be opened. Jemma oscillated between states of fierce concentration on the unwrapping (no ripper, she did it with care and precision beyond her years, and with respect for every little square of transparent tape) and utter cake-distraction; she could hear, beyond the circle of witnesses around her, exclamations over the quality of the cake, compliments to her mother who, when asked for her baking secret, said that the cake had been flavored with sweet clumsy child. Some of the witnesses had cake and were eating it as they watched her. Some went back for seconds and thirds before she was done with all the opening. She smiled dutifully over the presents, the bionic-woman dolls, the extensive bionic-woman wardrobe, the fembot beauty head whose face you could paint with makeup before you removed it to reveal the two-dimensional circuit board underneath. Jemma did not understand exactly what it meant to be bionic, and her brother would play with the dolls more than she would. Her favorite gifts were a pogo stick, a hula hoop, a saxophone that blew soap bubbles, and a pair of big tough yellow punching balloons. Jemma attached them to both her hands, trying and failing to punch them at the same time and feeling unaccountably mighty.
Sitters had infiltrated the crowd of witnesses long before the mountain was leveled. As soon as the last present was opened and murmured over, they began to whisk the children away to the homes where their parents would not return until after midnight. In the confusion of goodbye kisses and sometimes clutching, tearful hugs, no one heard Jemma’s complaint that she’d eaten no cake. On her way to bed she saw the ugly, decimated cake board, empty except for random smears of icing and a few crumbs. Her father mistook her crying for sadness at the end of the party. He hugged her and rocked her as he carried her up the stairs, acknowledging how sad it was that a party had to end, but what could you do about it? He did not understand the problem until Jemma was in her pajamas, teeth brushed and head on her pillow. “We’ll get you a new cake tomorrow,” he promised her, a whole cake just for herself. He would tie up her mother and Calvin, and lastly himself, and they would all be her observant prisoners as she ate the whole thing. It made her feel no better. She didn’t like the thought of people being tied up, and tomorrow was a thousand years away. Her father sang her a song, and put on a stuffed-animal play for her, but these did nothing to comfort her, for no matter what words her father sang, or what words the animals spoke, every song was a song of cake, and every utterance was in praise of cake, or a lament for cake lost.
When she had stopped crying, her father thought she had fallen asleep. He went back to the party, which by now had put away or transformed all its childish things; the puppet master was interpreting Ionesco; Uncle Ned was smooching a caterer in the basement bathroom; a thin layer of reefer smoke had gathered against the roof of the moonwalk, where there was no more jumping, only lying about in the mellow reduced gravity. For a little while Jemma was quiet, but no less agitated. Many times before she’d drifted off to the noise of a party below her. It usually made her feel comfortable and safe, the noise of voices speaking words she could not make out, the distant music; but not tonight. Instead of sleep came worse misery, a more acute sense of absence of cake in her evening, the thought of the one nip of batter she’d taken a tease and a torture. Worse yet, she suddenly had to pee. She began to weep again, and called out to Monsieur Toilet, asking him please, please come, and to bring cake.
It seemed like forever before her brother came back to her. Forever she was alone and despondent in her pee, cursing her party, her presents, her four years, cursing everything but her lost cake. It was even forever that the candle-glow proceeded him, and flickered in her door, puzzling her. Understanding dawned forever; it took forever to make the transition from rock-bottom despair to topgallant delight, to see the piece of cake her brother was bringing to her.
To any eye but hers it would have appeared ugly. A side piece, with hardly a rose petal on it, half eaten by someone who had lacked a fork or been too excited to bother with one, it was marred with tooth marks, and lipstick stained the eaten edges of the white icing. A cigarette hole stood out plainly next to the candle.
“Follow me,” he said. “It’s time for your present.” He turned and marched solemnly out of the room. She thought he would take her downstairs, and didn’t even remember about the going until they got to his room. There were more candles burning there, stolen birthday candles stuck in upside-down styrofoam cups. There were six of them in an open circle, which, after he had entered it, Calvin closed with the cake.
“What are you doing?” she asked him.
“What does it look like? I’m getting ready to go. What? Why are you crying?”
“I don’t want you to go.”
“Sure you do.”
“I don’t want you to. I like you.”
“That doesn’t have anything to do with it. You’ll like me better, after I’ve gone.”
“But I’m scared.”
“Good. It’s scary. Going is scary. Important things are scary. But it has to happen. You’ll see. You’ll understand. Are you ready?”
“No!”
“Are you ready?” The flickering candles made his frown look like a monster face.
“Okay.”
“All right then,” he said, pulling their father’s straight razor from his pocket. “Here we go. All you have to do is close your eyes and think, Let him go, let him go, let him go. Do it now. You have to say it eleven times slowly, one for every year you are and one for every year I am. Do you understand?”
“Can I have some of my cake?”
“Not yet. But after I go I’ll be able to touch things and turn them to cake. Ready?”
“Ready.” She closed her eyes and started, trying to say it just in her head but the words spilled out of her mind and she heard herself whispering, “Let him go, let him go.” And she added “Jesus please let him go” because she thought that was who would be in charge of such a request.
“Good,” he said. “Keep going. Don’t open your eyes.”
And she wouldn’t have, except that he said not to. So she saw him cutting carefully on his chest, one long line from his shoulder to his hip, and now another on the other side, and she ran from the room, screaming as loud as she could, straight down the hall and down the stairs, and into the middle of the party that had used to be her party. She stood in a circle of her parents’ friends, screaming and screaming until her father picked her up and muffled her mouth with his shoulder.
“Good God, Jemma,” he said. “What’s wrong?”
“She had a nightmare,” Calvin said. His shirt was on and he looked like nothing unusual at all had happened. And he was looking at her, his eye to her eye, and she was sure that she heard him speak then without moving his lips. Don’t tell.
“I won’t,” she said to him.
“Won’t what?” her father said.
“Get any cake,” she said.