The Girl Who Slept with God: A Novel

by Val Brelinski

  “Sure you do,” said Grip. “So time to go in and face the music. With guts.”

  Jory pulled the feather out of the headband and let it fall onto the floor. “Where do you live?”

  “Well, Missy Miss, if you must insist on knowing every little detail of my life . . . I live at the Bali Hai Trailer Court out on Rim Road. Space number 23. It’s very, very posh, you know.”

  “How old are you?”

  Grip stared fixedly out the windshield. “How old do you think I am?” His voice sounded deliberately casual.

  Jory blinked several times. “Twenty-two,” she said finally. “Or twenty-three.”

  “Good guess,” said Grip. “Give or take a few.”

  “And why don’t you have any friends your age?”

  Grip turned to her with a mock look of exasperation. “I do,” he said. “Good God, woman!”

  But for the very first time Jory could hear that he was lying.

  “Okay,” she said, and leaned over and kissed him on his freshly shaved ice cream man cheek. “Night,” she said, and raced to open the door before she could feel the extent of her daring. She clattered up the stairs and flung open the door to Henry’s house. Halloween was over.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Rhea wasn’t grounded anymore. At least not as utterly grounded as she had been, which meant that Jory and Laird were going to go to Homecoming with Rhea and . . . Randy Asumendi. This turn of events was, in Jory’s view, Shakespearean in its scope and perfectly unexpected expectedness. They were reading Romeo and Juliet in English I, and Jory was trying to write an essay about the idea of the inexorability (she had looked this up) of fate. Fate in quotation marks. Fate, according to William Shakespeare. So far, she had one small paragraph and several extensive doodlings of vines and stars and winking moons.

  Fate had also decreed that they would have a quiz in earth science today, and that Jory would not know the answers to questions 4, 17, 24, 28, and 33. And it did not matter how long she might sit contemplating and clicking the lead to her mechanical pencil in and out—she was never going to know the answers to these particular questions. She had not studied. Not nearly enough. She sighed and reread question number 4: “What is the age of the most abundant surface bedrock in the Finger Lakes region of New York State: Cambrian, Devonian, Pennsylvanian, or Permian?” This seemed like a trick question, and did it have anything to do with the fact that Pennsylvania was somewhere close-ish to New York? Jory sighed again. She could feel a trickle of sweat making its way down the inside of her sister’s bra.

  Laird glanced up from his quiz. What’s wrong? his eyebrows asked.

  Everything, hers answered. She made an even more despairing face.

  Laird leaned back in his chair and stretched, moving his quiz paper slightly in Jory’s direction. Jory squinted hard at Laird’s printing. Devonian was the answer to number 4. Devonian, she wrote down on her paper.

  “Miss Quanbeck and Mr. Albright?” Mr. DeNovia was looking sharply in their direction. “Bring your papers and come up to my desk, please.”

  Jory picked up her paper. Her heart was pounding and she felt suddenly sick to her stomach. Some tiny perverse part of her was making her face do strange things: the corners of her mouth kept jerking upward as she walked past the other quiz-taking students, who appeared both intrigued and empathetic at this unexpected expectedness.

  “You find this amusing?” Mr. DeNovia took Jory’s paper and then took Laird’s and placed them both facedown on his desk.

  “No,” whispered Jory. “My face just does that sometimes.” She blushed furiously.

  “You know I’m going to have to report this.” Mr. DeNovia looked genuinely unhappy. “Plus, you’ll both get failing grades on the quiz.” He sighed and pulled at his eyebrow. “Don’t you people ever learn?” He pitched his voice loud enough for the whole class to hear. “Can’t you think of something more original?”

  “Like what?” said a boy in the back row. “There’s only so many ways to cheat.”

  Muted laughter ran through the room. Mr. DeNovia clapped his hands. “Anyone else want to flunk this quiz?” The classroom was immediately silent.

  “Go upstairs to Mr. Mullinix’s office. I’ll meet you there after class.” Mr. DeNovia shook his head. “Go on,” he said. “Get.”

  The school secretary gave them both a scowlingly sympathetic look. Everyone else had left for the day. The buses had come and gone. The janitors were mopping the floors and emptying the garbage cans. Rhea had walked past the office a long time before and stuck out her tongue at them in a show of solidarity. Jory’s father and Laird’s mother were now in the inner office with Mr. Mullinix. Jory and Laird were in the reception area sitting on the squeaky orange chairs.

  “How mad will he be?” Laird whispered.

  “Mad enough not to say anything about it for a while.” Jory slumped a little lower in her chair.

  “My mom’s gonna kill me,” said Laird. “And she’s not gonna wait till later, either.”

  “Tell her it was my fault. Seriously. Tell her I forced you to let me look at your paper.” Jory sat up. “Or that you didn’t even know that I was looking at your paper.”

  Laird shrugged. “It doesn’t matter,” he said in a tone of voice that revealed how very much it did.

  The office door opened and Dr. Quanbeck and Mrs. Albright stepped out, followed by Mr. Mullinix. None of them was smiling.

  “Bye,” whispered Laird.

  “I’m sorry,” whispered Jory.

  Jory wondered how many silent car trips this made for her. Surely quite a few. Her father stopped the car in Henry Kleinfelter’s driveway and ran his hand through his hair and then rubbed his eyes and the bridge of his nose. Finally, he put both his hands back on the top of the steering wheel. Turning his head as if it hurt to do so, he regarded his daughter. “Are you trying to get back at me? To punish me for moving you girls out here?”

  “No,” said Jory, but it came out as more of a squeak. Or half a squeak.

  “Well, of the little I know of psychology, it certainly seems like a possibility.” Her father paused and simply sat staring out the windshield.

  “Dad,” said Jory.

  He didn’t change expression or move his head.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “I know,” he said.

  They sat in the car. Neither one of them said anything more.

  Mrs. Kleinfelter was standing on their front porch in the waning afternoon light. She had a wriggling So Handsome squeezed in a headlock next to her flatish bosom. She waved at Jory’s father as he reversed out of the driveway and then turned as Jory came up the steps. “I was just going to knock. Here,” she said, thrusting the kitten at Jory. “You missed all the fun.”

  Jory let herself look as sad as she felt. “Were the shots bad? Did So Handsome cry?”

  “He certainly mewed some.” Mrs. Kleinfelter wiped her hands down the front of her dress. “He has to go back in four weeks for a second round. You can come and be a part of the painful process then.”

  Jory opened the front door and ushered Mrs. Kleinfelter inside.

  Grace got up from the couch. “Where have you been? Was that Dad?”

  Jory sat down in the horsehair chair. She let her bag drop onto the floor next to her.

  Grace lifted her empty tuna salad bowl off the coffee table and set it on the floor. The kitten jumped down after it. “What? Did you miss the bus again?”

  “No,” said Jory. “I cheated on my earth science quiz.”

  “Oh, dear,” said Mrs. Kleinfelter. She pursed her lips. “Maybe I should be heading home.”

  “Jory.” Grace looked genuinely shocked. “You cheated?”

  Jory examined her skirt hem.

  “Why did you do that?”

  “I don’t know,” said Jory, shrugging slightly. “
I didn’t know some of the answers.”

  “You’ve never cheated before.” Grace was silent for a second. “Have you?”

  Jory shook her head.

  “I’m so surprised,” said Grace. Her face wore an expression quite a bit worse than surprise.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said Mrs. Kleinfelter. “Doesn’t everyone cheat sometime? I’m sure I probably did on something or other.”

  Grace looked at Mrs. Kleinfelter with dismay. “I don’t really think that’s a good excuse. Simply because it’s common behavior doesn’t make it good behavior.”

  “Oh, well,” said Mrs. Kleinfelter. “It’s probably not the end of the world.”

  “Would you say that to your own child?” Grace’s brows knit together.

  Mrs. Kleinfelter thought. “Maybe not,” she said.

  Grace seemed somewhat mollified. She turned to Jory. “What happened after that? Did you flunk the quiz?”

  “Yes,” said Jory. “I certainly did. And I have to miss school for the rest of the week.”

  “That’s their idea of punishment?” Mrs. Kleinfelter pushed a stray bobby pin into her hair. “Interesting.”

  “Well, I just don’t know,” said Grace. She smoothed her dress down over her rounding front, then turned and went into the kitchen.

  Jory and Mrs. Kleinfelter watched the kitten licking Grace’s bowl clean and cleaner.

  “You were right,” Jory said. “That night after the party when you told me it wouldn’t be the last time I’d disappoint her.”

  “Well,” said Mrs. Kleinfelter. “That wasn’t very nice of me to say, was it?”

  “It was true, though,” said Jory.

  “She’s an easy person to disappoint.” Mrs. Kleinfelter bent and picked up So Handsome’s peacock feather toy off the floor. “Her standards are fairly high.”

  “She lives by them, though.”

  “Hm,” said Mrs. Kleinfelter. “Well.”

  So Handsome leaped at the bottom of Mrs. Kleinfelter’s dress, snagging his claws in the process. Jory detached the kitten and scooped him up and held him under her arm like a purse. “I don’t think Laird will get to take me to Homecoming now.”

  “Homecoming?”

  “A boy actually asked me.” Jory smiled into the cat’s fur. “But I’m pretty sure they don’t let suspended people go.”

  “Maybe they’ll have forgotten about it by then.”

  “It’s three weeks from now.”

  “Oh.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Grace would never have let me go.”

  “I suppose not.” Mrs. Kleinfelter began rebuttoning her cardigan. “With the dancing and everything. There is dancing, isn’t there?”

  Jory nodded. “I don’t know how to dance anyway.”

  “Oh, you just move around some.” Mrs. Kleinfelter waved her hands back and forth. “Nothing to it.”

  “That’s what you say about everything.”

  “Well, that’s what it looks like on the TV—all they do is jump around and wiggle-waggle their bottoms a little.”

  “No,” said Jory, laughing. “You have to look really cool. Especially me—I’d have to look more than okay because everyone at Schism already thinks I am the weirdest, most uncool person ever.”

  “Obviously not everyone thinks that.” Mrs. Kleinfelter smiled.

  “Maybe not entirely everyone.” Jory held the kitten up by its front legs and made it take several steps across the floor on its hind legs. “What will I do for the rest of the week?”

  “Well, you can help me pack up some of my things. How’s that for a fun project?”

  “But no one’s even come to look at your house yet.”

  “No, but if I get started now, I’ll actually be ready when they do.”

  “You know,” said Jory, “if you pack up and move, you’ll just have to unpack, and you know how much you hate that.”

  Mrs. Kleinfelter shook her head.

  “I think maybe you should just avoid unpacking altogether.”

  “By the by,” Mrs. Kleinfelter said, lowering her voice and glancing toward the kitchen, “what on earth did happen to her hair? I know your father said no ringworm, but those patchy spots look kind of, well, diseased maybe?”

  Jory briefly considered trying to answer this. “It’s not a disease,” she said. “It’s just Grace.”

  “That sounds almost motto-ish.” Mrs. Kleinfelter waved the peacock feather as she walked to the front door. “All right—whatever you say. See you tomorrow,” she said, “bright and early.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Jory. She waved the kitten’s paw good-bye.

  Mrs. K had a lot of junk. No, stuff—she had a lot of stuff. Jory still had a hard time thinking without her mother’s interfering voice editing her thoughts. She and Mrs. Kleinfelter had packed up at least six boxes of stuff from just the basement, and these were big boxes.

  Jory looked up from the glass of Tang that she was drinking. She and Mrs. K were taking a momentary break.

  Mrs. Kleinfelter pushed herself up from the table and walked over to the refrigerator. “How about some lunch? I have bologna and . . . bologna.”

  “I’ll take bologna,” said Jory.

  “Do you want mustard?”

  “I don’t know. Is it good?”

  “You’ve never had mustard?”

  “No.” Jory pulled the rubber band off the end of one of her braids and began rebraiding her hair. “Once, when we were little, my dad took us to Givens Hot Springs and Frances said, ‘Bathtub. Big, big bathtub!’ She’d never seen a swimming pool before. But later, when we got older, we couldn’t go anymore because it would be considered mixed bathing—you know?”

  “Mixed bathing?” said Mrs. Kleinfelter. She spread some mustard on Jory’s sandwich and handed it to her on a plate. “Weren’t the people wearing swimming suits?”

  “Oh, sure, but in our church you’re not supposed to go swimming with men if you’re a woman and vice versa. And no dancing or going to pool halls or circuses. But anyway, at Givens we got to have hot dogs, which was exciting, but no mustard because it made my dad’s scalp tingle.”

  Mrs. Kleinfelter made a funny face and then sat down at the table with her own plate. “What’s wrong with circuses?”

  “Oh, they have sideshows and women wearing revealing costumes. Things like that.” Jory took a bite of her sandwich. She chewed. “Hey, that’s pretty good.” She took another large bite. “Sort of sour and tangy, but good.”

  “You are a strange child,” said Mrs. Kleinfelter. She gazed fondly at Jory and then picked up her plate and carried it over to the sink. “Was that enough packing for today?”

  “Yes,” said Jory. “But do you think you could teach me to dance?”

  Mrs. Kleinfelter’s radio got only three stations: All-Country All-Day, Big Jack’s Rock-Around-the-Clock, and Easy Listening 95. Mrs. Kleinfelter and Jory were now slow dancing to “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.” Jory had never realized before that she and Mrs. Kleinfelter were almost exactly the same height. She had also never realized how strange it might be to hold an old woman around the waist and to lean your head against her bony shoulder and smell the strangely familiar scent of boiled potatoes that emanated from her old housedress. It was only Jory’s extreme anxiety about not knowing how to dance that had brought her to this point, and if anyone came in Mrs. Kleinfelter’s house at this moment, Jory thought she might die of true mortification. Although the fact that Mrs. Kleinfelter was willing to do this for her also made her feel slightly like crying.

  “There,” Mrs. Kleinfelter said, pulling back from Jory’s nervous embrace. “See? Nothing to it.” Mrs. Kleinfelter patted Jory on the arm and stepped briskly toward the radio. “Enough of that,” she said, and switched off the dial. “Well, I don’t know about you,” she said, wiping her hands down the fro
nt of her dress, “but I’ve got some weeding to do.” And without a backward glance, she walked to the back door and marched down the steps and left Jory alone in the house.

  Jory stood in the living room still feeling the imprint of Mrs. Kleinfelter’s knobby hand in her own. She put her hands in her pants pocket and pulled out the tiny square of paper she found there. It was the paper the guitar man at Hope House had given her—the one with the orange stars on it. Jory ran her finger across the tiny stars and the orange print came off on her thumb. Jory licked the orange stars off and put the square back in her pocket. She remembered the guitar man pressing the paper into the palm of her hand with a certain firmness and singing that song she was embarrassed to hope was directed at her. Jory blushed in remembrance and sat down on the floor next to the row of boxes that she and Hilda had packed up. She picked up the roll of packing tape that was lying next to the boxes. The tape dispenser was unwieldy, though, and she kept getting the tape stuck to itself instead of to the box. “Poop,” she said out loud, picking vainly at the edge of the tape. She finally pulled a length of tape off the roll, but she couldn’t seem to manage to hold the box’s lid down while also smoothing the tape down onto it. After several more tries, she sighed and stood up. She walked over to the row of porcelain figurines on Mrs. Kleinfelter’s bookshelf and examined them all again, one at a time. Who would think that Mrs. Kleinfelter would make such tiny, exquisitely painted things? Jory picked up the glossy black panther. For some reason this one was her favorite. Maybe it was the jeweled green eyes or the panther’s tiny pink tongue that seemed so incongruously sweet and candylike coming from between those long white fangs. Jory touched the panther’s tongue to her own. It had an actual taste—almost like chalk or dust—although it seemed like she was really smelling this dusty moldiness rather than tasting it. She pricked her finger on the point of the panther’s fang. It was actually sharp. In fact, it felt like the panther was sliding its tiny fang deeply and sweetly into the tip of Jory’s finger. It seemed to be deliberately biting her. “Hey, cut it out,” she said and laughed, then put the panther down next to the ballerina. “Now behave,” she said, and laughed again. Jory slid the tiny rickshaw driver back and forth across the smooth surface of the shelf. The rickshaw’s wheels seemed to leave little blue-gold trails behind them. It was as if flames from the oven’s gas burner were following behind the wheels. Jory closed her eyes, but the tiny wavering meteor trails were still there—in fact, they were now sort of looping and spiraling in the most amazing and horrifying way. Jory put the rickshaw down and started heading toward the back door, her heart in her throat. The kitchen, Mrs. Kleinfelter’s kitchen, was now the most amazing shade of golden yellow, the warmest, most encompassing yellow Jory had ever seen. The kitchen’s walls were like some kind of butter, heavenly butter that leaned warmly toward Jory and breathed in and out through buttery, fluttery gills. Why hadn’t she ever noticed this before? She put her hand against the wall and tried to pet it, to let it know that it was breathing beautifully. Wait, she thought. Wait, this is not right. Something was utterly and terribly wrong with the way her mind was seeing or thinking, and the minute she thought this, a blank sort of encompassing horror swept over her. Jory stumbled to the door and seemingly went out it and maybe down the steps. The sky outside was green like a 7Up bottle, exactly like that, like the beautiful transparent green of some candy that a girl had brought for birthday treats in fourth grade once. “It’s called glass candy,” the girl had said, and it had tasted like spearmint, only sweeter, like spearmint mixed with clover. That was the sky now too, and Jory could taste the sky on her tongue like smoothest sweetest greenest glass. Jory sank down into the grass and gazed up at the sky, which was also gazing back at her. She smiled and it was like she could feel the sky filling her mouth, it was filling her mouth in a new sort of kissing, and it was like she had been doing this forever. She had been doing this forever, lying back against the curved surface of the world, or else this was what time actually was: one long moment that expanded out past the horizon, like the green glass sky that went on and up and out and all around. Or else it was all very small—time, that is—but the most concentrated small, like a tiny, dense black hole and the way things became too, too heavy in a black hole. Too dense, she thought. Too leaden. Too heavy laden. Oh, no, she thought. Oh. Her thoughts seemed to be like the words in a first-grade reading book and also the most amazing thoughts she had ever had, although she wasn’t sure, absolutely sure, which thoughts she had ever had. There was one lone cloud in the vast green of the sky that separated out into letters, or maybe numbers. Maybe it was Aramaic. Ancient Aramaic. Maybe she should go to Blackfoot since she was obviously crazy. Maybe she and Grace were sisters in everything. More than sisters. Grace, she thought, and got up from the grass. The diamond-windowed house wavered into view. She climbed the front steps and it took forever because she kept having to step on the same step over and over. She watched a foot in a shoe stepping onto a stair and then the same foot (maybe) stepped onto a different (or maybe the same) stair. That’s my foot, she said to herself. And that’s my shoe, my sweet old shoe. She felt a sudden, overwhelming fondness for her shoe. But really, was it her shoe, or did it really just belong to itself, in all its very particular shoeness? And could you truly own a shoe, and if so, what did that mean or entail? Did ownership encompass or involve more than just housing a shoe in your closet and claiming it with your foot? The door to Henry’s house opened of its own accord and someone was standing there and saying words. It was probably Grace, but Grace with a face that kept changing into someone else’s face just long enough that Jory couldn’t tell for sure who it was. Each time she was sure it was Grace, Grace would slyly switch her face. It was like a test that Jory was supposed to pass, but for a class she hadn’t taken. “Don’t do that anymore,” Jory said. “Your nose looks too much like Pastor Ron’s and your teeth aren’t right either.” Jory could tell from the look on Grace/Pastor Ron’s face that neither of them was happy with her. She tried to tell them that she was sorry, very sorry, but they didn’t seem to understand. “It’s in ancient Aramaic,” she kept saying. “I only just learned it today.”