A Certain Slant of Light

by Laura Whitcomb

  I opened the door and Cathy went immediately to the top desk drawer, pulling out a small date book. “Let’s see,” she said. “No, you shouldn’t start for another week and a half.” She replaced the book. “Tell me when you’ve washed up, and I’ll come read with you.” Then Cathy looked at the room and frowned. “It looks like a tornado hit.”

  “I’m sorry,” I told her.

  She shrugged and went down the hall. I grabbed the clothes and put them into the hamper, except for the shoes, which I put back in the box that I had seen Jenny take them from. Then I went into the bathroom where I had watched Jenny brush her teeth. This was a strange and wonderful task, scrubbing my teeth with a brush, tasting peppermint. And what a peculiar thing, the need to urinate and the sensation of doing so. Everything was new, as if I had never even been in my own body when I was Quick. I came back to my room and sat at the dressing table, brushing my hair over and over again, I was so taken with the feeling. Not only was I Quick again, I was young. It was unbelievable.

  “All ready?” Cathy asked, standing in the doorway with a small magazine in her hands.

  “Yes.” I moved to the bed when she sat on the edge of it. She pulled open the covers, so I slid in, delighted by the cool smoothness of the sheets. Cathy put the magazine down for a moment and with the sides of her hands thumped the covers on either side of my legs to hug me in like a cocoon.

  “Nice and snug,” she said. “Should I choose first?”

  “Very well.”

  She gave me an odd glance. I tried to think of how Mr. Brown’s students would reply. “Okay,” I said.

  Cathy opened the small periodical and flipped through a couple of pages. “Here’s one called ‘The Miracle of the Missing Key.’” She cleared her throat and began to read. “‘By Amy Christopher. My father tells me that I am alive today because an elf once stole his magic key.’” Cathy spoke with the inflection of a nanny reading to her infant charge. “‘I know it wasn’t an elf, and I know in his heart he knows it too. It was an angel of God that saved me when I was only ten months old.’”

  It was a pedestrian piece, but I would’ve forgiven the writer anything. Someone was reading to me. Cathy smiled when she finished. “Your turn.”

  I took the magazine. It was called In His Time. I turned the pages with pleasure. I stopped on a short poem.

  “‘Narrow the Way’ By Prentice Dorey,” I read aloud.

  Always my grandfather stood at the gate,

  A sweat stained hat in his powerful hand.

  Always he pointed the stranger the way

  To the bridge he had built on his ancestors’ land.

  He’d run his long fingers through gray thinning hair,

  When the river was high or the storms had rushed in,

  And pointed the way to each wagon or cart,

  Never barring the path, never seeing their skin.

  One farmer asked him if the trek would be safe.

  He told him, “Stay to the path’s what you do.

  Don’t look down. Don’t turn back. It’s narrow, that’s true.

  But if you keep going then God gets you through.’

  I teetered on the verge of tears but laughed instead. Cathy gave me an odd look as she took the magazine.

  “Don’t forget to say your prayers.” She kissed me on the cheek, and I could smell rose-scented lotion and something like lemon in her hair. “I’ll send your father in.”

  I was so intrigued by reading even a trite poem that I jumped out of bed as soon as she had left the room and looked for Jenny’s books. To my amazement, there was no bookcase in the room. There were only a handful of books standing between two thin metal bookends on top of her dresser: four schoolbooks (science, history, government, algebra), Be a Better Baby Sitter, and a Bible dictionary. I felt a pang, as if the universe had played a trick on me.

  I jumped back under the covers as I heard footsteps in the hall. Dan came into the room and smiled at me. “Feeling better?”

  I nodded. He crossed to the bed and kissed the top of my head. His skin smelled of soap, but his shirt, for some reason, smelled of gardenias.

  Nine

  I STAYED IN MY ROOM, far too excited for sleep. I wanted to wait until the others had gone to bed before exploring, so I sat down and read Jenny’s American history book. I had read history books with my hosts over the years but had still never gotten used to certain terms, such as antebellum—the time before the War Between the States. It did not seem so very long ago to me. I myself predated the war. Like the use of the term antediluvian, which divided time into two parts, before the great flood and after, antebellum implied a separation of time. I had been left behind in the former pages of history. But Jenny’s body was my escape into the present world.

  Finally the house had quieted into the tiny clicks and creaks audible only when humans are at rest. I made a furtive path through the silent dining room and into the night kitchen. I was afraid to turn on the overhead light, so I lit only the small bulb over the top of the stove. A bowl of green pears sat like an offering on the altar of the huge counter. I took one and bit into it, so instantly intoxicated that I had to sit down to finish it. I cast about in the cupboards and found a plastic jar of Country Fair peanut butter. I opened and smelled it, laughing out loud. I found a spoon in one of the drawers and tasted the paste. Even more glorious than grape punch.

  Next I explored the icebox. After sniffing a piece of bread wrapped in foil, I crushed a corner of the odd wrapping. So thin, the silver skin was almost weightless. The whole kitchen had a peculiar cleanliness about it. Except for the pears, every morsel of food was sealed away from the world. Cans of vegetables, jars of sauce, rice trapped in a rubber box. I missed the way Mrs. Brown let onions and avocados swing in chain baskets in the pantry. And then I remembered the kitchen of my childhood, where everything seemed to be part of the food. The flour and the table were one. The pot that hung in the dark fireplace always smelled of soup. The cotton bags of beans and potatoes were free to breathe the same air. Cathy’s kitchen seemed to treat food with suspicion. I preferred even Billy’s untidy kitchen to this strange room. At least at Billy’s house, a mouse could survive for a night or two.

  I was startled by my own reflection in the tinted glass of the upper oven door. I didn’t recognize myself, for a moment, because of Jenny’s face looking back at me. I tensed as I realized that Jenny’s spirit might be somewhere nearby. James had seen Billy once. Could Jenny be watching me? I looked in every corner, but I was alone, of course. Why would she or Billy want to stay here and watch the lives they had deserted?

  It was then that I noticed a set of city directories, one with yellow and one with white pages, stacked on top of each other under the wall phone. I considered looking for the name Blake, but I was afraid. It was late, and I thought I might wake Mitch.

  I darkened the kitchen and sneaked through the house, exploring every room except the master bedroom. Jenny’s home was as neat as a church sanctuary and like a church had no bookshelves. Finally I found the study, next to Dan and Cathy’s room. To my relief, there was an entire wall of books. I turned on the small desk lamp and started to read titles. On the top shelf, all the books were about business practices and strategies, contract law, and conducting research. The next row down held “how-to” books—how to increase sales, how to influence people, how to repair your own car, how to improve your public speaking skills. On the next shelf was a series of books on audiotape—steps to success, improve your memory, The Bible Diet, the New Testament, and several tapes labeled “sermon” and then the date. The next row down, the entire row, was filled with books about golf or crafts, separated into his and her sections. The bottom two shelves held a set of New House Encyclopedias. Not one novel. Not one book of poetry. Disappointed, I gave up.

  As I lay in the comfort of clean sheets, I remembered the poem I’d read to Cathy. The image of rain swelling a river, rows of crops turning into long thin islands, the soil around roots softeni
ng until a tree might be ripped out of the earth and fall. Finally, human sleep, that sweet and heavy drug, held me down for the rest of the night.

  “Rise and shine!” Cathy thumped on my door the next morning, frightening me out of bed. So unaccustomed was I to the slumber of the Quick, I could barely open my eyes.

  During my Light years, I had been in rain, under waterfalls, close to faucets and bathing showers hundreds of times, but now, as I turned on the shower tap and felt the explosion of cold water stinging like ice on Jenny’s skin, I was terrified. I jumped back from the showerhead, cowering on the little rug. The sound and sensation of freezing water brought my stomach into my mouth. I swallowed the sourness back and reached into the tub. I hit the small lever that channeled the water away from the shower above and let it gush from the lower tap. Still frightened, I reached into the stream of liquid. Now it was warm as breast milk. A moment later it was hot as soup. I adjusted the knob and kept my hand in the water but my body outside the tub until I could breathe again. Finally I lowered a second lever, the same mechanism as the Browns’ bath, and the water began to fill the tub. I stepped in carefully and let the water rise only six inches. Using my cupped hands, I washed myself, even my hair, in baptismal dips, trying to chase the images of rotting wood out of my mind.

  It took all my wits to manage simple things, such as using a pink plastic razor or an electric hair dryer. Behind the mirror on the wall, I found a cupboard of little bottles. I read the tiny printed instructions from the doctor: TAKE ONE TABLET THREE TIMES A DAY AT MEALS. And the descriptions of each pill’s purpose: FOR PAIN OR FEVER. I was reminded how the lives of children had changed so in the last hundred years. Once boys and girls were sent from the room whenever adult subjects were to be touched upon. Now they saw murders and rapes every night on television. Perhaps this was why Mitch had to search Billy’s drawers for poison and why Jenny’s bathroom had to be stocked with little blue pills for anxiety, little yellow pills for stress, and little white pills for sleep.

  I believe that I successfully applied all the daily products I found in Jenny’s bathroom and apparently chose an acceptable outfit—a dark green dress and a light brown sweater—to wear to school, as Cathy made no complaint. It was when I began to look in the kitchen cupboards for food that she regarded me curiously.

  She opened a drawer and placed a metal can in my hands. “Where’s your book bag?”

  I returned to Jenny’s bedroom and found a tan and brown plaid canvas bag under my desk. I put all four schoolbooks into it and the brown purse I had seen Jenny with in the mall the day before. I came back into the kitchen, sitting down and opening the can of my breakfast with some difficulty. I drank a sip and smiled. I had almost forgotten chocolate. I looked over to see Cathy staring at me in disbelief. She held out a plastic straw, wrapped in white paper. I took it, removed the paper, and slid the straw into the drink.

  “What’s got into you?” she asked.

  “Do I always have this for breakfast?” I said, forgetting that it would sound odd.

  Perhaps misunderstanding me, she replied, “I can get the strawberry next time, if you like it better.”

  I sat sipping, thinking of pine trees for some reason. But a moment later, Cathy gave me a pat on the shoulder as she passed.

  “Prayer Corner.” It was obvious that she expected her daughter to understand this command. I left the can behind and followed her down the hall and into the room past the master bedroom, the one with the enormous television screen. I had peeked into this room the night before while in search of books but had taken little notice of the three white chairs set in the corner. This morning, they were lighted by a bright bulb from above. The chairs faced one another and sat only a foot or two apart. On one chair sat a Bible, on one a brown leather book.

  Cathy picked up the Bible and sat in the chair it had occupied. When I hesitated, she patted the brown book.

  “We don’t want to run late,” she said.

  I lifted the book and sat. Cathy closed her eyes, placed her hand on the Bible, and took a deep breath as if she were listening to a lovely symphony I couldn’t hear. I looked at the book in my own lap. It was imprinted with the word diary. I opened the cover, and the frontispiece was labeled May 15 to. The ending date was left blank. The binding would have held perhaps a hundred pages, but I found that almost half the sheets, the ones at the front, had been torn out. Not cut out or carefully removed but ripped out, leaving the binding thread stretched and jagged parchment teeth agape. The first page remaining was dated July 7. Despite what was printed on the cover, the words neatly written in blue ink on this first page were not a diary entry, but a long quotation from the Bible.

  “Exodus twenty—Then God spoke all these words saying: I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me.”

  It was the Ten Commandments. Jenny’s handwriting, for I was sure it was hers, having seen the notes in her schoolbooks, was small, neat, and deliberately dark. I flipped forward a few pages and found a Scripture passage from Proverbs.

  “A child who gets his own way brings shame to the mother.”

  Dan appeared so suddenly that I slapped the diary shut. He sat in the third chair, smiled at Cathy, and then they both closed their eyes. Fascinated, I watched. Moments crept by in silence. When Dan spoke, I jumped so badly the diary slipped to the floor.

  “Heavenly Father.” His voice boomed around the room, far louder, I thought, than God would require. “Open our ears to your word. Cleanse our hearts of sin. Turn our will to your will. In Christ’s name, Amen.”

  I quickly dipped down and retrieved the diary from the carpet as Jenny’s parents opened their eyes. Dan crossed his legs and took a pen from his dress shirt pocket, offering it to me without bothering to make eye contact. I took the pen and Cathy, who had been cheerfully patting it like a baby on her knee, passed the Bible on to her husband. He found the page he wanted and began to read aloud. I watched his hands, spread across the cover of the book, his fingers hard and tanned. He wore no wedding band.

  “You yourself have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings, and brought you to myself.”

  As he read, I watched Cathy’s shoe. She swung her crossed leg, her foot tapping the air soundlessly. Her ankle was thin as a girl’s, her shoes flat, black, and strapped like a child’s Sunday school slipper.

  “Obey my voice,” Dan read, “and keep my covenant, then you shall be my own possession among all the peoples, for all the earth is mine.”

  When he was done, he handed the Bible back to Cathy. “Proverbs twenty-two three.”

  Cathy dutifully flipped to the correct passage and swiveled in her chair to face me. She breathed in to begin reading but stopped when she glanced up at me. “Proverbs twenty-two three,” she prompted. Dan looked over as well. I finally understood that I was to write in the diary in their presence. I opened the journal and flipped to the first blank page. Now my heart started thrumming. Could I print like Jenny? I fumbled trying to open the pen, discovering that it needed to be twisted to reveal the writing point.

  “Proverbs...” Cathy prompted again.

  I began to take dictation, printing with small neat letters as close to Jenny’s hand as I could manage. Dan was the one swinging his foot now as Cathy read.

  “The prudent sees the evil and hides himself.” Cathy waited while I worked. Although the passage brought me no joy, the pen itself was a wonder. The best invention since the printing press.

  “‘But the naive go on,’” read Cathy, “‘and are punished for it.’”

  I completed my writing and tentatively offered the pen to Dan again. He took it and stood, glancing at me as he did. “Up.”

  Hesitantly I rose. He stood, hands on hips, never looked me in the eye but scanned me: my face, my body, my legs. He gave Cathy a small metal square from his pocket as she glared at him.

  “It’s a school dress,�
� she said. “It didn’t shrink.” Cathy startled me by leaning over and checking the distance from my knee to the hem of my dress with the little measuring tape.

  “She’s growing,” said Dan.

  “She’s not getting taller,” Cathy complained.

  “Turn,” said Dan, as Cathy gave him back the tape. When I hesitated, Cathy moved her hand in a circle, so I imitated the gesture and turned all the way around once. Dan scanned my body again. “Take off your sweater.”

  Cathy seemed insulted, as if inspecting Jenny’s clothes was her job and she was being demoted. “You saw this dress last week,” she told him. “The light doesn’t show through, the straps are hidden, there’s no jiggle.”

  “Cathleen.” His tone warned of a danger close at hand. I began to peel back my sweater, but Dan waved us away. “Have a good day, ladies.”

  As Cathy drove me to school, it finally began to occur to me what a fish out of water I was. Because of her books, at least I knew that Jenny was in a history, a government, a math, and a science class. I felt a bit lightheaded with nerves, and the odd cherry-scented perfume Cathy must’ve put in her car didn’t help. We passed two girls, one in a cheerleading uniform, walking to school.

  “What do you think about cheerleading?” I asked Cathy, hoping this would tell me whether I was expected at a practice.

  “We went over this in junior high. The uniforms have bare midriffs and the choreography is inappropriate.”

  She pulled up to the curb in front of the high school.

  “Have a good day, hon.” She tilted her perfectly groomed head toward me, so I gave her a kiss on the cheek.

  When I got out, I leaned down and looked at her through my open door. “Do I look all right?”

  “You look fine.”

  “What about sports?” I said.