The Girl Who Slept with God: A Novel

by Val Brelinski

  Grace pushed her hair behind her ears and then bent and snapped open the locks on her suitcase. Grace wore her hair in a totally unstylish boy cut: a dark close-cropped cap of side-parted hair with longish bangs meant to partially obscure the large rose-colored birthmark on her forehead. The doctors had tried to remove the mark when Grace was three, but it hadn’t worked and their father had been worried about the level of radiation anyway. Grace was awkwardly shy about the mark and often dipped her head down when she was talking to people, although if anyone directly mentioned the birthmark, she blinked and acted as if she had no idea what they were talking about. It was confusing and somewhat contradictory, as was nearly everything connected with Grace.

  Jory sat down on the bed next to the open blue suitcase. “How do you know how much stuff to take?”

  “They give you a list.” Grace was pulling things out of her dresser drawers and carrying them over to the suitcase: a white leather Bible, a can of Aqua Net hair spray, pairs and pairs of day-of-the-week panties, six knee-length dresses, a Spanish dictionary, rubber thongs, some mosquito repellent, a bottle of Wind Song perfume, a Tips for Teens in Troubled Times daily devotional reader, three unopened packages of run-proof nylons, and a garter belt. Grace was going to Mexico on a mission. Even though she was only seventeen, their church had picked her because of her extraordinary fervor and because she wanted to go. Jory’s mother had initially had a fit—a silent fit that involved her lying in the bedroom with the door shut for two days—but she had relented in the end because their father thought it would be a wonderful learning experience for Grace and because, he said, you should never, ever stand in God’s way.

  Jory thought it also had something to do with the fact that her parents were scared to death of Grace. Especially lately. Lately, for some unknown reason, Grace had become an even more exaggerated version of her already odd and intense and intractable self. Grace had always been tall and straight with very serious gray eyes and black winglike eyebrows and had played the piano in front of the whole church with no sheet music and no mistakes, but suddenly last spring she had stood up during the middle of Sunday evening service and testified that she was now sanctified and had rededicated her life to Christ and to His Kingdom, and then she had worked all summer long as a youth minister and turned around and put the paycheck Pastor Ron gave her directly into the offering plate when it was passed to her during early service. Jory still remembered the look on her mother’s face when she saw Grace’s three-hundred-dollar check lying in the collection plate. Come Ye Apart, it said on the purple-and-gold satin banner that hung above the choir loft at the front of the church. Even so, Jory knew her parents were worried that Grace had come a little too far apart. But how could they complain? What would they say? That their oldest daughter was just too selfless and holy and Christlike? Sometimes Jory wanted to ask Grace things. To look into her cool, pond-bottom gray eyes and ask her if she, Jory, had imagined that moment in church, that tiny second when Jory could swear she had seen Grace smile just as the collection plate reached their mother’s outstretched hand.

  “Aren’t you scared?” Jory asked as Grace folded a lilac-sprigged nightgown on top of everything, tucking its lacy bottom edge into a corner of the suitcase.

  “Of what?” Grace closed the lid on the suitcase and fastened the latch with two quick clicks.

  “I don’t know . . . being gone, I guess.” Jory drew her knees up and tucked her chin between them. “Being that far away.”

  Grace gazed at her and smiled. It was the same brilliant smile she gave to all the visitors in church as she handed them each a Welcome Friends sticker, and to Ruby and Pearl, the retarded twins in Vacation Bible School, and to Richard Richardson, the hugely fat-bottomed choir director each time she told him, no, she was very flattered and honored, but no, she wasn’t allowed to date until she was eighteen. “You don’t think that God was scared when He came down to earth as a man, do you?” Grace asked.

  Jory stared at her sister’s fathomless gray eyes. No, she thought. I bet he was petrified.

  Tonight was Grace’s good-bye dinner. In the kitchen, there was a large chocolate cake with pink frosting that read We Love You, Grace in smeary letters. Jory had spent most of the afternoon making the cake while her mother was in the bedroom crying. At one point during the afternoon, her mother had come out and blown her nose and then picked up the frosting tube and written Don’t Go, Grace in large, shaky white letters. Right before dinner Jory had blended the letters back into the frosting and started again.

  Now the five of them sat in their usual places around the maplewood table. Her father was squashing his lentil loaf into a paste and forking it into his mouth in the happy fashion he did every night. He glanced up at Jory and smiled. Jory looked back down at her plate and began cutting her loaf into smaller and smaller pieces. She moved these pieces around to brand-new locations on her plate. Once, in fifth grade, her Sunday School teacher had invited all the girls in her class to spend the night. After they had gotten done splashing around in Mrs. Jewel’s freezing blue swimming pool, Mrs. Jewel had made them dinner: spicy cooked hamburger and cheese with shredded lettuce and tomato chunks in some kind of hard envelope-like shells. “What are these?” Jory had asked Mrs. Jewel, still shivering slightly under her beach towel. “They’re wonderful.” “You mean the tacos?” Mrs. Jewel had said, opening her eyes wide and laughing. Jory had laughed quickly too, and said no, no, she was just joking—she loved tacos, they were her favorite. Now she stirred her canned peas with her fork. She knew that her family and their habits were beyond strange. Even in fifth grade it had been apparent that her parents were of a different breed than the rest of the citizens of Arco. The Quanbecks didn’t even pass unnoticed in their own evangelical church, which was full to the brim with odd conservative folks of every stripe and shade. Jory hadn’t realized the full extent of their strangeness when she was younger, but with each passing year the exotic nature of her family was becoming more noticeable. And more horrifying. And it wasn’t just the food that they ate or didn’t eat, or the old battered car that they drove (which had been given to her father from the college in lieu of a paycheck), or the endless book reading, or even the plain and modest hand-me-down clothes that each of the Quanbeck daughters wore in turn. It was the fact that her parents acted as if this were the better, more superior way. As if it were not only vital, but practically holy to never watch TV or buy anything new or show any interest in what was modern or current or popular or fun. And it was being these very things—modern and current and popular and fun—that Jory most wished for and aspired to in life. And this was a problem.

  “I’m going to take baton twirling with Deedee Newman,” Frances announced suddenly.

  “So,” said Jory.

  “It costs fifteen dollars and it’s at the high school gym.” Frances stared unblinkingly at Jory. “It’s all summer.” Now Frances turned toward their mother. “Dad said I could.”

  Jory’s mother seemed to be saying something with her napkin. She creased and recreased one edge of it. “Baton twirling, Oren?” she said in a strange voice. “Isn’t that the type of thing cheerleaders and Miss America contestants do?”

  Jory’s father stopped chewing. He picked up his glass of milk and then seemed to think better of it. He cleared his throat. “Well, it seems to me that they’re just little girls, Esther. Does it really matter if a few little girls march around in a gym pretending to twirl batons? I don’t think baton twirling is technically a form of dancing.”

  Her mother wadded up the creased napkin and threw it at Jory’s father. It hit him softly in the tie and then fell onto his plate. He sat perfectly still, looking at their mother in disbelief.

  Grace held her fork and knife suspended above her plate. “Would it be possible to borrow your Spanish Bible commentary, Dad? Pastor Ron says that yours is probably quite a bit more comprehensive than mine.”

  Jory’s father tu
rned his head toward Grace and opened his mouth slightly just as their mother stood up and grabbed Jory’s plate. “Jory, if you’re not going to eat that, why don’t you give it to Frances? I can’t stand it when you leave perfectly good food just lying there.” With two quick swipes, she scraped its contents noisily onto Frances’s clean plate.

  Frances surveyed her newly filled plate and took several deep breaths. “I do too get to take baton,” she wailed. “I already picked one out and it has silver and gold streamers and I have four dollars of allowance left.” She gulped frantically.

  “Frances.” Grace leaned forward. “Pastor Ron says that at least half of the children in Guanajuato are severely malnourished. Think how lucky you are. Those children have probably never even seen lentil loaf.”

  Jory’s mother knit her dark eyebrows together. “Was that some kind of a joke?”

  “We have cake!” Jory jumped up and glanced from person to person. “We have cake,” she said again, a little more softly.

  “I like cake,” her father said.

  “Oh, by all means,” her mother said, rubbing at her temples with both hands. “Bring on the cake.”

  Now there were only four lawn chairs and four books and once a week an airmail letter covered with stamps of bright birds with yellow-and-green tails. The letters weighed nothing when Jory held them in her hand. Inside the paper was crinkle thin and lavender colored and covered with Grace’s firm, straight up-and-down printing. The church in Guanajuato was going up on schedule. Grace was learning to make bricks. The villagers were very grateful for the box of clothes and old Reader’s Digests and the powdered milk. On a bus ride to Lake Chapala, Grace had seen an old woman carrying a chicken in her purse and once the chicken got out and another old woman grabbed the chicken and put it in her purse and then there was a fight—a big fight.

  “Oh,” Jory’s mother said, her lips crumpling at the corners. She brought the letter closer to her face and squinted a little as if she might have read it wrong.

  “A chicken!” Frances screeched. “How did she fit a chicken in her purse?”

  “Shh, Frances. Their purses are probably different than ours—more like big mesh bags or something.” Her mother waved her hand as if waving away all purses everywhere. “Anyway,” their mother said, lifting the letter up again. “She says the church group visited a coffee plantation, and then they went to the mercado, where everyone bought bananas and mangoes, which were delicious, and really nothing at all like American fruit. Oh!” she said, dropping the letter back into her lap. “Don’t they need to wash the fruit? Oren! Don’t they?”

  Their father put down his magazine. “I’m sure they did, Esther. Grace is a very smart girl.” He smiled and tried to pat their mother’s hand, but she was peering at the letter again, and he patted the metal armrest of her lawn chair instead.

  Their mother sighed and shook out the lavender paper and continued reading: “‘There are men everywhere here. They line the streets and alleys. None of them seem to have jobs. They stare at me and make comments and hissing noises through their teeth. Pastor Ron says it is probably because I’m so tall. That they’ve probably just never seen a girl as tall as me before.’” Their mother’s voice died suddenly away and she jerkily refolded the lavender sheets and stuffed them back into the envelope, but she hadn’t done a very good folding job and now the letter didn’t seem to fit anymore.

  Frances squinted at her mother. “Shouldn’t she have said ‘I’?”

  “Shut up, Frances.” Jory stood up out of her lawn chair and grabbed her little sister’s hand. “C’mon, I think I hear the ice cream man.”

  “Ow! You’re hurting my arm.” Frances glared reproachfully at Jory. “I don’t hear anything.”

  Jory said nothing but held tight to Frances’s strong little hand and pulled her down the sidewalk. She stopped after about a block and a half. “Listen,” she said.

  “Oh.” Frances’s face softened. “How did you hear him?”

  “I don’t know.” Jory shrugged. “I just always do.”

  The truck’s tinkly carnival music reminded Jory of things just barely hidden, like Easter eggs and sparklers the second before they catch and light. The two of them stood together watching the small white truck approaching in tiny increments, its tinny music growing ever louder. Finally it swerved over to the curb and stopped next to them. The man inside stared down at them expectantly as the music ground to a halt. “That’s not Al,” said Frances loudly.

  “It’s okay.” Jory walked staunchly toward the open door of the truck. “She’ll have the Chocolate Swirl and I’ll take a cherry Push Up.” Jory blinked a couple of times in quick succession and then took the smallest of steps backward.

  “Hm-mm,” said the man sitting in the driver’s seat. He leaned his elbow on the steering wheel and rested his chin in his hand. His long red hair was tied back with an old black shoestring. “They’re made with whipped lard, you know.”

  “What?” Jory practically whispered. Was he talking to her?

  “Whipped lard. Not even real lard, actually.” He grinned, revealing a silver tooth somewhere in the back of his mouth. “Fake lard. Now that’s worth thirty-five cents of babysitting money.”

  “I don’t babysit.” Jory could feel a rush of blood flooding her neck and face.

  “Why not?”

  “I—I’m not very maternal.”

  “Me either.” The ice cream man frowned at her. “Who’s this, then?”

  “My little sister.” Jory tried to bring Frances around in front of her, but Frances was having none of it.

  “Well, Sister Sue,” the ice cream man said, opening the lid on his silver freezer and pulling out a chocolate-covered ice cream bar, “here’s your bit of sheer deliciousness, or as delicious as you can get using ice milk.” He stepped down one of the truck’s steps and held the paper-covered treat out to Frances. Frances was clutching the back of Jory’s shorts and would not let go, so Jory took the ice cream for her. “And,” he said, reaching back into the freezer again, “one cherry Push Up for the lady with daisies in her eyes.” He held the ice cream bar in front of his chest. Jory noted the hand holding the ice cream. There were tiny red hairs on each of his knuckles and some kind of blue tattoos between two of his fingers. She reached into her pocket again and pulled out the quarters. “Nah,” he said and gave his head a shake. “These are definitely on the house.” Jory had to take the ice cream. She reached for it and felt his fingers, rough and warm, still holding the wooden stick. “Well,” the ice cream man said, and moved up into the driver’s seat, “back to work.” He nodded at Jory. “Look out. Those melt quick.”

  Jory watched as the truck lurched away from the curb and then tootled on down the street.

  “Who was that?” Frances asked, her ice cream sloping toward the sidewalk. “Do you know him, Jory?”

  “I’m not sure,” she said slowly, not sure which question she was answering.

  Chapter Two

  Early the next morning, even before it got hot, the lady from the tall stucco house on the corner came to ask if Grace could babysit, and of course Grace was in Mexico and had been for a month, so now, amazingly enough, Jory had a job. A real job that paid a dollar twenty-five an hour, even though Jory wasn’t very maternal.

  Mrs. Hewett was beautiful like Linda Evans on The Big Valley, but with higher heels and still higher hair. Her husband was a private detective. Jory’s mother always said she couldn’t imagine what on earth there was to detect in Arco, Idaho.

  Now, at the suggestion of Jory’s new job, her mother was shaking her head. “She smokes,” she said. “And that skirt!” She made the strange clucking noise in the back of her throat that stood for all manner of verbal disapproval. “I don’t think so.”

  “I’ll be good. I’ll do a good job. I can witness.” This last was a final effort on Jory’s part. A trump card that should be p
ulled out only in emergency situations.

  Her mother lifted one eyebrow. “That would be the day,” she said. “At the very least, though, I expect you to be a good example over there. A good Christian example, Jory.”

  Monday afternoon found Jory at the Hewetts’, dutifully poking Barbie and Ken into their coral-colored Corvette and arguing with Dinah, Mrs. Hewett’s three-year-old daughter, about which doll would drive.

  “Barbie doesn’t drive,” Dinah was insisting. “And Skipper’s the baby.”

  “Skipper is nobody’s baby. She’s like some cousin or orphan or something. I mean, look at her hat.”

  “I don’t like you.” Dinah chugged over and climbed up into a high-backed chair at the far end of the living room.

  “What a coincidence.” Jory rewound her ponytail and then pulled a piece of gum out of her shorts pocket. She began to unwrap it and then stopped. She held the piece of gum out. “Want some?”

  Dinah climbed warily down from the chair. She hummed a little as she dragged Skipper’s dog along on its side by its little leash, then sat down on the floor to unwrap the gum. “Skipper can too go.”

  “Only if she’s in the trunk.” Jory rolled the Corvette along the sculptured carpet. “They’re probably gonna make out. You know, kiss and stuff. Strictly grown-up beeswax.”

  Dinah frowned.

  Jory stopped the car and folded her legs under, Indian-style. “You do know how to kiss, don’t you?” She rolled her eyes and sighed dramatically. “Look, I’ll show you. Come over here.”

  Still clutching the plastic dalmatian, Dinah inched closer to Jory.

  “Stick out your lips a little. Like this. And close your eyes.” Jory leaned forward and touched Dinah’s lips with her own. They were smoother and different than she’d imagined. It was like kissing a fat flower come to life. Jory sat back. “Now this time you kiss me.”