A Song for Julia

House, really all the amazing things in the city. I couldn’t be around him without melting. But it was all so confusing. I loved him … I was … consumed by him.”
    She paused, and another tear slowly ran out of the corner of her eye, down the side of her face toward her ear.
    “I wasn’t ready to have sex yet. Not even close. I was still just a little girl. But he wanted it, and he just … took. The first time scared me so much, I was just … paralyzed. I didn’t move, I didn’t say anything. I was so afraid. I was afraid he’d hate me if I said no. I was afraid of … everything.”
    “After that, it was like … I didn’t have any control over my own life. He’d get mad if I hung out with Lana without him. He’d get mad if I even talked with a guy my age. It was like he was trying to isolate me from everything. And my parents: they were so busy, so wrapped up in themselves, they didn’t notice what was happening. My sister Carrie was nine then, and Alexandra four. It was too much for my mother. She couldn’t pay attention to her high schooler. I was invisible.”
    She fell into silence then, her eyes still tracking the shadow snowflakes, which, if anything, had increased in intensity. I remembered that—feeling invisible. Feeling desperate. I remembered that all too well.
    “When I got pregnant, I didn’t know what to do. I wasn’t even sure that’s what it was. I missed my period once, then a second time. I was sick, constantly. And so he got a home pregnancy test, and brought it to me, and it came up positive. Harry didn’t even ask what I wanted to do about it. He just … assumed. Two days later, he showed up at the flat and practically ordered me out. We took a cab a long way—Beijing is a huge city, much bigger than Boston, or even New York. There are whole huge districts where no one speaks English. I don’t know how he got the address for the place. Some fixer at the British embassy, who would do whatever it took to avoid a scandal. And … it would have been a scandal. He turned nineteen that fall, and I had just turned fourteen. There’s a lot of places in the States where you could wind up in jail for that.”
    Suddenly she moved, turned toward me, curled up on her side. And she kept talking, her voice dropping to a near whisper. “The doctor and the nurses, they didn’t speak English. They made me lie down and gave me a shot. And then I felt it. Inside … cramping, a little bit of pain. Then a lot. I didn’t even really understand what was happening. They were … using suction. Sucking my baby out of me.”
    She closed her eyes and began to shudder. I reached out, put a hand on her shoulder, and she whispered in a vicious hiss, “Don’t touch me. You promised.”
    Shaken, I pulled my hand back.
    “Let me finish,” she said.
    I nodded, and she continued.
    “When it was over, they packed me with gauze and basically shoved me out the door. And … Harry was gone. I don’t know why. I never did learn why he left … why he couldn’t even be bothered to take me home. I didn’t know where I was, and I didn’t speak the language at all back then, and no one spoke English in the neighborhood I was in. It started to snow, and I just walked. I could … I could feel … blood running down my leg. And as I walked, people just backed away from me. They saw an American kid walking through the street, and they didn’t want to get involved. I started crying, I was so scared, but no one would help. I just kept walking and walking. It was so cold. And all I could think was—I wanted my mother. I wanted to find her, and hug her, and make all of this fear and pain and cold go away. I wanted to go back to being her little girl, and having her protect me and make everything better.”
    She took a deep sobbing breath. “I finally found a police officer who spoke English, and waved around my diplomatic passport, and shouted at him. He put me on the back of his motorcycle and drove me to the compound. And dumped me off at the gate. I think he was afraid to get mixed up in anything … that the guard at the gate would want his information, and that he’d end up getting in trouble. I don’t know. But it was nearly ten o’clock at night when I got home, and Alexandra was throwing a tantrum, and my mother was freaking out, and she grabbed me by the arms when I walked in and screamed at me. How dare I go off and not call, or tell them where I was going. I started to freak out, and