The Girl Who Slept with God: A Novel (15 page)

Jory bent down and picked up her book bag and hefted its strap onto her shoulder. “‘Glad with exceeding joy.’” She shook her head at Grace. “Is that really how you feel?”

“Yes,” Grace said, and then paused. “Sometimes.”

“Not always?”

“Not all the time. But maybe it’s not supposed to be that kind of rejoicing. Maybe it’s more of a solemn gladness.”

“You sound like Dad.”

Grace looked surprised. “Really?”

“It wasn’t a compliment.”

The sun had crept down and was beginning to hide itself behind the tallest of the mountains. What was left of the light poured across the Kleinfelters’ yard in concentrated beams, turning the branches and leaves and tips of everything a luminous golden red, as if the outside edges of each had suddenly caught fire. She was reminded of those gilded capital letters that monks outlined in scarlet and gold in old illuminated manuscripts. Jory stood on the porch and stared out across the smallish stretch of grass that separated the two houses from each other. “Who do you love?” she asked suddenly.

Grace glanced up at Jory from her seated perch on the bottom step. “Well, God, of course, and you and Mom and Dad and Frances.” She was silent for a second. “That’s about it, I guess, in terms of real love.”

“Who do you love most?”

Grace rubbed her bare foot through a patch of weeds below the step. “I don’t know. I try to love God with all my heart.”

“I don’t.”

“Jory!”

“I don’t. I love someone else instead.”

“Don’t say that.”

“It’s true. I never loved God that much to begin with and now there’s not enough room left over for him anyway.”

Grace stood up and dusted off the seat of Henry Kleinfelter’s overalls and then she leaned against the wooden porch railing. Her voice, when she spoke, was so quiet that Jory could just barely make out the words. “Dad didn’t really say I was crazy, did he?”

Jory pulled the rubber band off of one of her braids, giving it a sharp yank. She rolled the rubber band into a ball and threw it out into the yard. “Even if he did, it doesn’t matter, since he already thinks you’re some kind of saint or something.”

“Not anymore, he doesn’t.”

“Well, whose fault is that?”

Grace gave her sister a look of pained forbearance. “You don’t understand anything.”

“Right,” said Jory. “It’s all too mysterious and wonderful for someone like me to comprehend.”

Grace allowed a second or two to pass. “You know, I think Dad just moved us out here because he was worried he’d lose his job. That the people at the college wouldn’t understand.”

“Which they wouldn’t, of course. Since the whole thing is completely insane.”

“That would make sense, though,” Grace mused on obliviously. “Since he has to support all of us on his teaching salary.”

“Didn’t you hear anything I said?” Jory shook her head. “He just doesn’t want anyone in town or at church or anywhere to know you’re pregnant because it would ruin his own perfect reputation.”

“That’s a terrible thing to say,” Grace said quietly.

“It’s true, though,” said Jory. “How could he be a church elder or academic dean at Northwestern Bible College with you sticking out to there?” Jory curved her hands out in front of her.

The two sisters stood looking at each other. The early evening air was taking on a sweet coolness and somewhere high above them in a maple tree a flicker gave a wistful one-note call.

“You’ve just had a long day,” Grace said finally, soothingly—although Jory couldn’t tell quite who it was she was trying to soothe. Whom.
Whom
she was trying to soothe. “And you’re feeling cross. You always say things you don’t mean when you’re cross.” Grace gave Jory one of her most
radiant and patient smiles. “I’m sorry, Jory. I know all of this is really hard for you.”

Jory studied her sister, knowing this was the exact moment at which she, too, could and should apologize. “I’m starving,” she said. “What are we having for dinner?”

Grace tried to blink back her disappointment. “Whatever we want,” she said, her smile dimming just slightly. “Imagine that.”

Jory opened the double-doored cupboard that hung directly over the sink. Their father’s feelings of guilt could be read in the amazing grocery purchases he had made: Nestlé’s Strawberry Quik, Mystic Mint cookies, Peter Pan peanut butter, Lay’s barbecue potato chips. Forbidden food full of sugar and chemicals and carcinogenic dye. The good stuff.

Neither Jory nor Grace could cook. They could clean and iron and sew—these they had all learned in Caravans, in Indian Maidens and Pathfinders on Wednesday nights at church, earning diamond-shaped badges to put across their green sashes—but their mother had always done the cooking because their father liked things “a certain way”: unflavored, unsweetened, with the peel still on and the vitamins and minerals still intact. Plain and healthy and raw was the way their father liked his food. No salt or sugar, and only legumes and nuts for protein. Spices like garlic and pepper and onions made his scalp tingle. As did pop. Once, at a party in high school, he frequently liked to recall, he had been given a Coca-Cola (he always shook his head at this point) and the scalp tingling had lasted for
days
. The body was a temple. An untingling temple. “Animals have the right idea,” he would say, munching down another Jonathan apple, core and seeds and all. “At least when it comes to food,” their mother would amend.

Jory watched as Grace bent and tried to light the stove burner with a match. They both jumped back when it caught with a
whoomp
of blue flame. “Whoa,” Grace said, blowing on the match. “I have no idea what I’m doing here.”

“You’re doing fine,” Jory said, and handed her the black skillet. She peeled the bacon strips apart from each other and dropped them one at a time into the pan, where they began to sputter and pop.

“How do you know when they’re done?” Grace poked at a piece of the bacon with a fork.

“When they turn nearly black,” Jory said. “They have to crinkle up like old snakes.” She could feel herself getting slightly giddy at the prospect. At the two of them here in this house choosing and preparing their own food. Alone. All by themselves. It reminded her of when they were little and they had made a secret fort on Grace’s bed with blankets and the yardstick. The light underneath the blanket was the warmest yellow imaginable. They had turned their desk chairs upside down on their desks too, and then sat between the legs, pretending they were using the pivoting feet on the chair legs to copilot a plane soaring over the high Himalayas and the vast African savanna. But they were low on gas, and one after the other the plane’s engines began to sputter and choke and die. Finally they were forced to parachute out above the dark and deadly Amazon, where enormous snakes and jungle cats slithered and roamed. Jory shivered even in remembrance. When had they stopped doing that? How long ago had that been?

Grace attempted to turn the spattering slices from one side to the other. “Ouch.
Ouch!
Forget it. They can just cook on this one side.” Grace wiped her burned hand across the bib of her overalls.

“No! They have to be turned. I watched Rhonda’s dad do it and he flipped them over. They won’t be done right.”

“Then
you
flip them.” Grace held the fork out toward Jory, who was backing away. “Ah! Very brave,” she said, and went back to poking at the bacon.

“You have to put them on a paper towel when they’re done.” Jory reached into the refrigerator and pulled out a head of lettuce.
Their
head of lettuce. And here on the windowsill were
their
tomatoes. And on the counter was
their
applesauce . . . sweetened applesauce with sugar in it. They were going to drink pop with dinner. Shasta grape pop. Jory put the head of lettuce under the faucet and turned on the water. “How do I get the water out?”

“I don’t know. You pat it or something. With a dishtowel.”

“We don’t have any dishtowels.”

“Use a napkin.”

“
Pat
is a weird word.” Jory turned and held the dripping head of lettuce in front of her, a soggy napkin underneath.

“Here. Come here.” Grace reached out for the lettuce. She rolled it up and down against the front of her overalls. “See? Drier already.”

“Very sanitary,” Jory said.

Grace took the head of lettuce and tucked it carefully underneath the waistband of her overalls. She gazed down at the results.

“Wow,” said Jory.

Grace continued to stare solemnly down at her abdomen.

The front door opened and shut.
“Knock-knock,”
their father called out from the living room. “Anyone home?”

Grace slid the head of lettuce out of her overalls and put it on the counter. She turned and began forking the bacon out of the pan and onto a plate.

“We’re in here,” Jory answered, feeling a surprising stab of disappointment.

Their father ducked slightly as he walked beneath the curved entryway into the kitchen. “Well, here you are,” he said, “safe and sound. I was beginning to worry.”

“Nothing to worry about,” said Jory. “I made it home okay.” She turned and began tearing leaves of the lettuce into smaller pieces and putting them in a yellow bowl that she lifted down from one of the cupboards.

“What happened to your bus?”

“Nothing,” Jory said quickly. “What do you think of our dinner?”

“It certainly smells . . .
bacony
.” Their father put the books he was carrying onto the kitchen table. He leaned over the frying pan and peered at the remaining pieces of bacon. “Well,” he said, “look at you two. You’re cooking dinner.” He straightened back up and gazed around the kitchen, blinking, as if it were too bright. “Think of that.”

“What did you think we’d do?” asked Grace, not looking up from her work.

“I meant,” he said, “that I’m
proud
of you. That I’m proud of the way you’re fending for yourselves.”

“Really?” said Grace. She continued in her careful slicing of a tomato.

Jory brought the jar of applesauce over to the table and sat down. “Why don’t you eat with us, Dad?”

“Oh, no—that’s a sweet offer, but your mother will be expecting me
to eat when I get back.” He sat down at the other end of the table and began curling the edge of a place mat between his fingers.

“How’s Frances?” Jory stared straight ahead at her father.

“She’s fine. First day of school. She loves her teacher but doesn’t like the other kids. Plus, she says she’s bored—she’s tired of reading about elephants that wear pants. The usual.”

“I’m not going back to Schism, Dad.” Jory continued to stare at him.

“Well.” Her father moved the place mat forward and backward on the table. “We can talk about that.”

“I’m not going to go there.”

“Well,” he said again, “we need to think about what’s best here. The law says you have to go to school until you’re sixteen, so that part’s not open to debate. Schism is close by and it’s a perfectly decent school. Its curriculum is a little outdated, that’s true, but it seems to be covering the bases fairly well academically.”

Jory shook her head.

“The kids may not be quite what you’re used to.”

Grace sat down and handed Jory a sandwich. Jory looked at it, then set it down on her plate. “I want to go back to Arco Christian.”

Her father took a deep breath and let it out through his nose. “I realize that. But we’ve already discussed why that might not be the best idea right now.”

“I wouldn’t talk to anyone about anything, if that’s what you’re worried about.” Jory glanced at Grace and then back at her father. “I wouldn’t say a word.”

“I’m sure you wouldn’t mean to.” He readjusted the place mat, aligning its edges with the table’s. “But that’s not the whole reason.”

“You’re punishing me, aren’t you? I can’t go back to my school because of the earrings, right?”

“No. No. That’s not true. Mom and I have forgiven you for that. It’s just, well, we think it might be good for you to have some time away from things—to rethink your situation a bit. Reappraise the way you want to live your life.”

Grace put her sandwich down. “That sounds a lot like punishment, don’t you think?”

Jory gave Grace a fleeting look of amazement. She sat up in her chair. “The kids all smoke and swear, Dad. Aren’t you worried about what kind of influence that will be on me? Don’t you care if I start to smoke? Or drink?”

Her father leaned forward and spread his hands out flat against the tabletop. “I don’t think you will, Jory. I’m fairly certain of the things we’ve taught you.”

“Fairly certain?”

“Fairly certain.”

“I just won’t go, then.” Jory pushed back from the table. She stood up and leaned against her chair. “The truant officer will have to come and get me.”

“All right,” her father said slowly.

“All right,” said Jory. She turned and walked through the living room and out the front door.

Outside it was dark and cool, with a hint of what real fall would bring. Jory sat in the porch swing next to her book bag. She pushed off against the porch’s wooden flooring with her feet and swung back and forth in the darkness. A light was on in Mrs. Kleinfelter’s house. Jory wondered if she was still in the living room watching a silent television. She wondered what Mrs. Kleinfelter was having for dinner. What was it like to live all by yourself, with absolutely no one there? No one to talk to or cry with or even to touch, ever? Jory pulled her sweater sleeves down until they covered her hands. She listened to the swing’s chains groaning where they had been screwed into the wooden slats in the porch’s ceiling.