The Girl Who Slept with God: A Novel (28 page)

Grace tried to rearrange her face into something resembling a smile. “Maybe we don’t really need to have any services today.”

Grip took a mock step backward. “Wait. What’s this I’m hearing?”

“It’s nothing,” said Jory. How could Grace say that Jory didn’t know her? Jory stood up and began getting a bowl and glass down from the cupboard. And worst of all—and this was a thing she could barely even stand to consider—what if it were true? Jory’s face felt tight from smiling so falsely. “Do you want some toast and oatmeal? There’s orange juice too.”

“Oatmeal!” Grip rubbed his hands together and sat down and spread his books out on the table. “I have to warn y’all, I come armed with information.”

Jory leaned over and picked up one of the books, still not daring to look at her sister. “I don’t even know how to pronounce that.”

“It’s the
Tao Te Ching
. Hey.” Grip took Jory’s chin in his hand and turned her face this way and that. “What happened to the other guy?”

Jory closed her eyes. “I just bumped my cheek, is all—no big deal.”

“That’s some bruise.” Grip took the bowl of oatmeal that Grace handed
him and started stirring in some raisins. “So,” he said. “Here’s the topic for this morning: there’s more than one way to skin a cat—sorry, So Handsome—and there’s more than one path to enlightenment.” He poured a little milk into his bowl. “And just to even things out a little, since we’ve had two Sundays with the Good Book, I thought we might extend our knowledge of all things spiritual to include some ancient Eastern wisdom. What do you say?” He took a large bite of oatmeal and one of toast.

“As long as you don’t expect to convert us,” said Grace. Jory could still hear a residual shakiness in her voice.

“Heavens, no,” Grip said, and put his hand on his heart. “So . . . anyone here know anything about Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism? Any of those ring a bell? No? Okay, well, I don’t think we’ll try to cover all of them today. We’ll just go through the bare-bones basics and see what we think.” Grip handed a small piece of paper to Jory and another one to Grace. “I wrote down some of the main ideas from the Tao. Grace, you wanna read the first few?”

Grace sighed a little as she sat down at the table across from Grip and looked at the square of paper. “‘Ice cream treats are good to eat.
Y-U-M
spells dee-licious.’” Grace put the paper down on the table. “Actually,
Y-U-M
does not spell
delicious
.”

“Turn it over, turn it over.” Grip waved his hand at Grace. He shrugged at Jory. “All I had was napkins.”

Grace flipped the napkin over.
“One whose needs are simple can fulfill them easily. Material wealth does not enrich the spirit. Self-absorption and self-importance are vain and self-destructive.”
Her reading voice had been toneless, but now it lifted in pitch. “The Bible already said these things. It’s all in Proverbs and the Beatitudes.”

“Exactly,” said Grip. “Their ideas are very, very similar. But the weird thing is that Lao-tzu said this stuff five hundred years before Christ was even born.”

Jory picked up her napkin.
“The truly wise make little of their wisdom, for the more they know, the more they realize how little they know.”
She chose another napkin from the pile on the table.
“Glorification of wealth, power, and beauty beget crime, envy, and shame. Humility is the highest virtue.”
Jory leaned her chin on her hand. “And the meek shall inherit the earth, right?”

Grace leaned over and picked up Jory’s napkin and closely examined it. “So what then? You’re trying to say that this Lao-tzu person is just as much of a God as Christ?”

“No, no—I’m not trying to make any claims about God at all. I just think it’s interesting how many of the Bible’s basic concepts are already right here, hundreds of years before the Bible was written.”

“So you’re saying the Bible is just a copycat version of this Tao thing.” Grace frowned and folded up the napkin. “Well, there is only one God, and the Bible is His holy word. And the Scriptures are more than just a collection of wise sayings. It’s more than just lists of things you should do and not do. The Bible foretells the coming of Christ. The Old Testament predicts it and the New Testament reveals it. I doubt that any of these books do that, do they?”

“Well, actually . . .” Grip raised his eyebrows and smiled and reached for the jar of raspberry jam.

Grace stood up. “You know, I could be wrong, but it seems like your whole goal here is to try to make me look stupid for believing in Christianity.” Jory could see Grace’s rib cage moving rapidly up and down.

“Hey, hey.” Grip stood up and put his hand on Grace’s arm. “I thought it would be cool to share some ideas with you, that’s all. You’ve been teaching me about the Bible and I thought it would be fun to show you some stuff.” He kept his hand on her arm even as she tried to shrug it off. “I know you’re super smart. Maybe I was just trying to show you that I’m smart too.” Grip’s voice trailed off.

Jory’s eyes darted back and forth between Grip and her sister. For more than a second, she felt completely unobserved.

Grace pulled out of Grip’s clasp and moved away from the table. She paused for a moment at the screen door. Then she opened it and went outside.

Grip sat back down and then just as suddenly scooted his chair back from the table. He stood up and walked toward the back door, where he stood looking out. “I think I’d better be taking off.”

“No,” said Jory. “You always stay on Sundays.”

“Not this Sunday.” He turned around and walked toward the living room. “Tell Grace I said good-bye, okay, and thanks for breakfast.”

“Wait.” Jory ran forward and tried desperately to think of some way to forestall his leaving.

Grip turned and gave a brief tug at the untied string on Jory’s sweatshirt. “See ya later, alligator.” He walked to the front door, pulled it open, and bolted down the front steps two at a time.

Jory slammed the door closed behind him and flopped down in the horsehair chair. So Handsome immediately scaled the side of the chair and jumped delicately onto Jory’s lap. He licked one of his front paws and then ran that paw over and over his ear. Jory pulled at the loose skin at the back of So Handsome’s neck, and as if in obedience the kitten began purring his funny gravelly purr. She petted his belly and felt its soft roundness and its tiny pinpricks of nipples. The midmorning sun poured into the living room at a sharp angle and filled the room with a false autumnal warmth, while somewhere very far away a harvester or a tractor of some sort started up its one-note drone.

When Jory woke up, her neck was stiff and the side of her cheek was covered in drool. For a strange small second, Jory could not think who she was, or even if this was what it meant to be alive. She stood up and went to the front door, and stumbled outside onto the porch. Her feet couldn’t seem to feel much anymore. Outside, it was hazily bright, as if there were a layer of smoke in the air. It smelled faintly of newly fallen leaves and the wild anise and flowering sage that grew by the side of the road. She sat down in the porch swing and tried to push off with her sleep-deadened feet. She yawned and then shivered. There was a flat cardboard box resting on the porch railing that she hadn’t seen before. She got up and walked over to the box and folded back the two large flaps on top. Inside was a white crocheted blanket. Jory pulled it out of the box and cradled it in her hands. Intricate crocheted stitches formed a tightly woven pattern of stars and moons and planets. It was a small rectangular blanket, just the right size to wrap a newborn baby in. For one wild moment she considered putting the blanket back in the box and throwing it into the bushes. “Grace,” Jory turned and called. “Grace!”

After a minute, Grace walked out through the front door. She saw Jory and what she was holding. “Ohhh,” she said. She reached out and touched a corner of the blanket. “It’s beautiful.”

Jory handed the blanket to her.

“Where did it come from?” Grace held the blanket out in front of her. “It’s the night sky. Look, it even has Saturn. And different phases of the moon!”

“It’s for you,” said Jory.

“Do you think?” Grace’s eyes were glowing.

Jory held out the napkin.

Grace took the note and read it in a quiet voice. “
The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth His handiwork.
Psalms 19:1.” She put the napkin down on the porch railing.

“I have homework I need to do.” Jory turned around and walked into the house and up the flight of stairs. She shut the door to Henry’s bedroom and lay down on the metal-framed bed. She stared up at the pink glass light fixture that hung suspended from the ceiling by three silver chains. There were two dead moths inside the fixture’s glass dome. Her father said that moths used the moon as their primary reference point and that any light source drew them toward it, even if this often meant their own demise. Jory thought this wasn’t a very smart navigational tool, but her father said that overall it worked fairly well. That the greater good was worth some individual unluckiness.

Grace knocked quietly on Jory’s door. “Can I come in?” she said from the other side of the door.

“No,” said Jory.

Grace opened the door and came in and sat on the edge of the bed. She took hold of Jory’s foot. “I think he was just trying to make up for this morning.”

“It took a long time to crochet that. Weeks. Or
months
, maybe.”

“It doesn’t mean anything. He was just trying to be nice.”

“I know that,” Jory said. She continued to gaze at the light fixture. “I’m not worried about it,” she said.

“Of course not,” said Grace. “I’m just talking to myself mainly.” She retied Jory’s moccasin. “What homework do you have?”

“I don’t know,” said Jory. “Couldn’t you wear a different dress sometime?”

Grace glanced down at the brown dress, her face flushing. “I don’t really have anything else.”

“Maybe you could crochet something.” Jory rolled over onto her side away from Grace. She closed her eyes. “You or Grip.”

For a moment it was quiet.

Grace began talking in a small serious voice. “I know you’re angry with me. And probably for a whole bunch of reasons . . . but we can’t keep having this same argument again and again.”

Jory rolled back over. “What same argument?”

“The one in which you act like anything bad that happens to you is in some way my fault.”

“That doesn’t really qualify as an argument per se.”

Grace stood up and put her hands in the pockets of the brown dress. “I am not your enemy.”

“Oh, really?” Jory leaned up on her elbows.

Grace said nothing for a moment. “I’ll see if Mrs. Kleinfelter has any more old dresses she’ll let me wear.”

“He’s
my
friend,” said Jory.

“I know he is.” Grace nodded and averted her eyes from her sister’s.

“And I do too know you.” Jory said this in a quiet voice.

Grace made no response. “Let me know if you want any help with your homework,” she said finally. She walked out of the room and Jory could hear her moving toward the stairway and going down the stairs.

Jory reached down and pulled the wedding quilt up and over her again. She lay back against her pillow and closed her eyes; one tear oozed out from beneath her lashes and made its way steadily into her ear. She turned on her side and pulled the quilt up over her head. It was like they were some old married couple who couldn’t live without each other, yet couldn’t live without fighting with each other, either.

“Don’t be a baby, you stupid baby,” Jory said. “Don’t, don’t, don’t.”

H
ear you had quite the Saturday night.” Laird Albright leaned toward Jory and grinned. It was lunchtime and Jory was sitting on the hood of someone’s car. “Tipped back a few with the big kids, huh?” Laird made a drinking motion with his thumb and little finger.

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?”

“
Je
sus.” 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 woman 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.