The Girl Who Slept with God: A Novel

by Val Brelinski

  Jory shook her head. “It wasn’t like that.”

  Laird crumpled up his potato chip bag and tossed it free throw–style in the direction of a trash can. The bag fell a few inches short. “Shit,” he said. “No wonder I’m still on JV.” Laird turned and squinted at Jory and then bumped her in the arm with his elbow. “So Randy says he’s asking you to Homecoming.”

  Jory let out a huge breath and slid off the car hood. She began walking quickly in the direction of the main building.

  “Hey,” said Laird, jogging to catch up with her. “I’m only kidding.” He grabbed her elbow. “Wait up.” He glanced behind him and lowered his voice. “It’s me that’s asking you to Homecoming.”

  Jory stopped on the sidewalk. She peered up at his face. “Is that some kind of a joke?”

  Laird tried to smile. “Only if you want it to be.”

  “What? What do you mean?”

  “Jesus.” Laird put his hands in his pockets. “Am I a freak or something? Just say no if you don’t want to go.”

  “No, no. I mean, okay.” Jory’s heart seemed to be rising up into her throat. She felt strangely sick and nervously excited all at the same time. “Sure. That’d be okay.” She looked straight ahead without seeing anything.

  “Well, um, okay then.” Laird veered off the sidewalk slightly. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Or whenever.” He gave Jory a half wave and jogged crookedly off toward the gym.

  Jory stood on the sidewalk, students jostling past her. She turned around and waited for Rhea to catch up. “Guess what?” she said, feeling slightly embarrassed. “Laird asked me to Homecoming.” She opened her eyes wide at Rhea. “Can you believe it?”

  “Yeah, why not?” Rhea did not seem overly impressed.

  “Because I didn’t think anyone here would ask me to Homecoming.” Jory lowered her voice a little. “What is Homecoming? Is it a dance?”

  “What else would it be—a barn raising?” Rhea made a face. “Sorry,” she said. “I couldn’t resist. Aren’t you guys, like, Amish or something?”

  “We might as well be.”

  “Anyway, Homecoming is capital-L lame.”

  “Why?”

  “You know—balloons and streamers and the stage decorated like a fake sunken ship or the inside of a clam or something and Mr. Stoessel and Mrs. VanManen checking everybody’s breath at the door and then standing around trying to look like they’re not standing around.” Rhea rolled her eyes. “All the guys will be drunk and all the girls will be crying in the bathroom. And some truly horrible human being will get Homecoming Queen.”

  “Wow,” said Jory. “I want to go.”

  “Me too,” said Rhea.

  Jory had snuck out of typing I and was now standing in front of the long horizontal mirror in the girls’ bathroom, blessedly alone. What could she wear to Homecoming? Laird had asked her to Homecoming! There was no way Grace would let her go to Homecoming. She continued scrutinizing her own face in the mirror. Most girls wore blush and eyeliner and had mysteriously straightened hair that fell into long, shiny sheets. Jory’s hair was browny blond and wavy and thick and it went sort of everywhere. She had inherited the curliness of her father’s hair, but not the gorgeous darkness. Plus, she had a cowlick right above her eyebrows that meant that her hair stuck up in a way that precluded a perfect middle part. “You frumpity frump,” she murmured. She was engaged in smoothing and pulling her hair down tightly on either side of her face when Jude opened the bathroom door. “Oh, hey,” whispered Jory, trying to do something casual with her hands that would make it look like she hadn’t been doing what she had been doing.

  “Hey,” said Jude in a voice utterly devoid of emotion. She didn’t look at Jory, but instead began digging at the contents of her leather shoulder bag. Jude was wearing a tiny dark red dress that barely fell to the tops of her thighs. Its white floppy collar matched her white windowpane tights and brown leather knee-high boots. She looked like someone who should be in Seventeen magazine instead of in Jory’s typing I class. Jory turned the faucet on at one of the sinks and set the hall pass key on the porcelain rim as she gave her hands a cursory washing. She dried her hands with the bathroom’s hideously scratchy paper towels while making a point of not looking at herself in the mirror.

  Jude was now sitting on the room’s old radiator, smoking a cigarette and swinging her crossed legs. The window above her head was open.

  “Did he ask you?”

  “What?” Jory turned and looked at Jude, who was busily blowing a stream of smoke toward the open window.

  “He asked you, right?”

  For some reason, Jory’s heart was beating fast. “Yes,” she said, but it sounded as if it were a question rather than an answer.

  “He asked me who he should take.” Jude stubbed her cigarette out on the metal lip of the radiator and stood up. “I said you.”

  Jory had no idea what to say. “You did?” Her voice sounded like it belonged to a cartoon character. A mouse or small rabbit maybe.

  Jude put her pack of cigarettes back into her leather bag and reshouldered it, gathering her raven’s wing of hair into a ponytail that she then let fall like a length of black silk down her back. She unleashed a swift and gorgeous smile at Jory.

  “I thought you liked him.” This was out before Jory could think.

  “He milks cows,” Jude said. “Nice guy, but not quite my type.”

  “Oh,” said Jory. “So who are you going with?”

  “My brother,” said Jude, grimacing. “My dad said I had to take him since Nicky doesn’t know anyone yet.”

  “Wow,” said Jory. “That’s . . . kind of weird.”

  “Kind of, ” said Jude. She peered at herself in the mirror and brushed an imaginary flake of something out from under one long-lashed eye.

  “Is your mom really a movie star?”

  “No,” said Jude, now raking her fingers through her hair. “She’s just a stupid actress in even stupider movies.”

  “That still sounds pretty cool,” said Jory. “To have your mom be an actress.”

  “It’s not,” said Jude. “She’s an idiot.”

  Jory watched speechlessly as Jude brushed past her and out the restroom door. She stood next to the mirror seeing her own quizzical and foolish face staring back.

  After school, Jory met Rhea at the drinking fountain in the courtyard. The courtyard consisted of a large cement square between the main building and the gym that you could stand on while waiting for the bus to come or for class to get over or for the day to end. There were two long cement benches on which you could sit if you had a spine of steel, and in the very center of the cement square was the drinking fountain that hardly ever worked.

  “Hola,” said Rhea as she flung her book bag onto one of the benches. “Cómo estás?”

  “Muy bien,” said Jory. “Y tú?”

  This was as far as they ever got in this exchange.

  Rhea sat down on the bench next to her bag and looked at her shoes. She moved her feet back and forth as if she were clicking her heels together. “I like your pants,” she said to Jory.

  “Thanks,” said Jory. “My mom got them for me for my birthday.”

  “How come you only live with your sister?” Rhea squinted up at her, the wind blowing strands of her hair into her eyes.

  “I don’t know. It’s sort of a long story,” said Jory.

  “Did your parents kick you guys out?”

  Jory had never thought of it like this, but she guessed it was true.

  “Maybe they’re getting a divorce and don’t want you to know.”

  “No,” said Jory.

  “Mine are.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, my dad got mad because he couldn’t figure out how to do his taxes last year, so he drove all the way to Boise to have someone do it for him. And so this wo
man did. Do it for him. And now my mom is saying that we’re all going to have to go live with my aunt in Jackpot.” Rhea put her hands underneath her head. “My dad is such a complete goober. I can’t imagine anyone in the whole world even wanting to kiss him.” Rhea shook her head and then sat up. “He leaves little bristly black hairs in the soap next to our bathroom sink and his underwear is all gross and saggy.”

  “I know,” said Jory, although she didn’t really know what she meant by this. “Jude said that she told Laird to ask me to Homecoming.”

  “Huh?”

  “We were in the girls’ bathroom during typing and she told me he’d asked her who he should take and she said me.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “I know!”

  “She’s up to something.” Rhea picked a stray leaf out of her hair and twirled its stem between her fingers. “And it’s probably nothing good.”

  Jory felt a sting of disappointment at her own naiveté.

  “Hey,” said Rhea, “there’s the bus.”

  “Oh, yippee,” said Jory, hoisting her bag. “Another exciting afternoon in Arco, Idaho.”

  Jory lugged her book bag up the front steps of the diamond-windowed house and let the screen door fall shut behind her. The air inside smelled spicy and warm like some kind of cinnamon deliciousness. Jory dropped her bag on the couch and peered into the kitchen. Grace was sitting at the kitchen table with several textbooks spread out in front of her. Her dark, semi-unflattering cap of hair was gone and in its place was the merest sort of shadowy stubble. Jory stopped still in the doorway. “What happened to your hair?” she squealed.

  Grace’s hand rose instinctively to the top of her head. Her face flushed a bright shade of pink. “Nothing,” she said.

  Jory sank down in the chair across from Grace and stared openmouthed at her sister. Grace’s hair, which had always been thick and stubbornly wavy and cut in a sort of strange Peter Pan–style, was now shorn like a man’s military crew cut, minus any regularity in length. Entire patches of Grace’s pale scalp showed through in several spots and her birthmark was now totally on display. The whole look reminded Jory wrenchingly of the translucent and vulnerable skull of a brand-new baby bird. “You look terrible,” she said, as if beseeching Grace to contradict her.

  “Well, I’m sorry about that,” said Grace, whose hand still roamed the back of her neck.

  “But what . . . why did you do this?” Jory continued to stare unabashedly, mesmerized by Grace’s hideously ravaged scalp. It was like seeing someone for the first time after they’d had surgery or been in a car accident. “I mean, what were you trying to do?” Jory’s voice rose further in pitch.

  “How was school today? Did you turn in your Lord of the Flies essay?” Grace turned a page in her trigonometry book. “I made that gingerbread of Mom’s that you like.”

  Jory stared at her sister. At the bald spots of skin and the short bristly remains of Grace’s hair. At her reddening birthmark, which Jory could see now resembled a sort of half-furled and almost lovely rose. “Wait. Wait a minute.” Jory put her face in her hands and closed her eyes. “Does this have something to do with yesterday? With the baby blanket and all that?”

  Grace said nothing.

  Jory opened her eyes and stared at her sister again.

  Grace picked up a pencil and wrote down some figures on the margin of her textbook. “Seriously. You should try the gingerbread while it’s still warm.”

  Jory was unable to tear her eyes away from her sister and her nearly naked head. Finally, she stood up and walked in a daze over to the oven. A square pan of the spicy-smelling cake sat on the counter next to it. She picked up a fork and sank it into the gingerbread, gouging out a small piece. It was delicious. At home they would have made whipped cream to go on top, which they each would have taken turns whipping, carefully stirring in the sugar and vanilla until the cream was thick and sweet. Frances would have insisted on licking the bowl. The contrast between the cool creaminess of the whipping cream and the spicy warmth of the gingerbread was a sort of heaven that always tasted like autumn to Jory. She let the cake dissolve slowly on her tongue.

  “You should have some,” she said thickly to Grace. “It’s wonderful.”

  Grace placed her finger in her textbook and regarded her sister, her gray eyes made even larger and more serious-looking by the strange absence of hair. “I can’t,” she said. “I’m fasting.” She turned her head and went back to her work.

  Jory didn’t know exactly how late it was. From the diamond-shaped window, the ground below appeared almost blue in the darkness and a sheer layer of frost glimmered on top of the propane tank. So Handsome twined between her bare ankles and Jory scooped him up and held him to her chest. He yawned his fishy breath at her, displaying a tiny set of needle-sharp teeth. Jory crept down the stairs holding the kitten. The kitchen still smelled faintly of gingerbread. Jory picked up the old phone receiver and dialed the only number that she knew. The phone rang several times and then she heard her father’s sleep-laden voice saying hello with a certain amount of hesitation.

  “Dad?” Jory said.

  “Jory,” he said, “what’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Grace cut all her hair off.”

  Her father cleared his throat. She imagined him sitting up in bed and putting his glasses on.

  “Is this something serious?”

  “She’s bald.”

  “Jory,” he said. She could hear him sigh and then cover the mouthpiece to say something to her mother. “Do you want me to come over there?”

  “No,” she said. “Yes.”

  “Right now?” She could hear him trying valiantly to keep the weariness out of his voice.

  “I think she did something to her eyebrows too.”

  Her father said nothing for a moment. “I was planning on coming out that way tomorrow anyway. So I’ll see you girls then, all right?”

  Jory said nothing.

  “All right?”

  “Okay.”

  “Go to sleep, Jory.”

  “Dad.”

  “Go to sleep.”

  “Good night, Dad.”

  So Handsome had leaped up onto the kitchen counter and was cautiously sniffing the half-empty pan of gingerbread. Jory picked him up by his middle and carried him back upstairs to her bed. The sheets were still faintly warm from where she had been sleeping. She pulled the wedding quilt up to her nose and tried to still her heart. Her father would fix things. He would come out here and talk to Grace and he would fix things. She stared up into the darkness of the bedroom ceiling. She could feel So Handsome kneading his tiny claws over and over into the blanket covering her toes. She reached down and pulled him up to her face so that she could hear the subterranean rumble of his purring.

  Their father was in the living room with Grace. He was perched on the brown chair directly facing Grace, who was sitting on the dead cat couch with her arms crossed. Jory had been banished to the front porch, where she had stayed for about two minutes before sneaking around to the side of the house. She was now crouched down among the dead hollyhocks, listening beneath the side window. She could hear what was being said, although it was like listening while having a blanket thrown over her head. “I’m just trying to figure out how much to worry here,” her father was saying. Jory imagined him rubbing the bridge of his nose.

  “There’s no need to worry at all.” Jory could picture the type of smile that her sister would be wearing.

  “Well, of course I am,” said her father.

  “But there’s still no need,” said Grace.

  There was a long silence during which Jory tried to rearrange her squatting position. A persistent fly kept landing on her calf and she kept swatting it away.

  “I read in my Merck Manual about something called trichotillomania. People feel a strong des
ire to pull their hair out. It’s a . . . syndrome of some sort.”

  “All I did was cut my hair, Dad.”

  There was another protracted silence.

  “Well, it’s a rather unusual haircut.”

  “I couldn’t find the scissors.”

  “Grace.”

  There was another lengthy moment of silence and then Jory could hear her father clearing his throat and possibly recrossing his legs. “Your sister is worried about you.”

  Jory crouched farther down in the flowerbed, as if they could suddenly both see her. She closed her eyes.

  Her father’s voice grew more faint. “Jory also mentioned something about your eyebrows.”

  Jory sighed and shut her eyes even tighter.

  Grace said something brief that Jory couldn’t make out.

  “She’s just concerned,” her father said.

  “I have to do what God wants me to do, Dad.”

  “God wants you to be hairless?”

  “Is that supposed to be funny?”

  “Maybe,” said her father. “Maybe I’m having to resort to humor.”

  “This isn’t a joke.”

  “Oh, I know,” her father said sadly.

  “It was you who taught me that God sometimes asks us to make sacrifices. And that I had to be willing to do whatever was required, no matter how odd or painful it might be.”

  “But why did it have to be this . . . this particular sacrifice?”

  “I don’t know exactly,” said Grace. “It just did.”

  Jory guessed that her father was shaking his head or maybe folding and refolding his hands.

  “You know, when we had our Bible studies, you said that Jesus cried in the garden. That he begged his father to let the cup pass from him, and that he was so scared he sweat drops of blood, but that he still didn’t turn away from the cross. He still faced his own bodily sacrifice.”

  “But you’re not Jesus. You don’t have to be crucified.”