A Certain Slant of Light (22 page)

  
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, ex
ploring every room except the master bedroom. Jenny's home was
as neat as a church sanctuary and like a church had no book
shelves. 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 suc
cess, 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 soft
ening 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 poi
son 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 daugh
ter 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 cor
ner. 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
Lt in the third chair, smiled at Cathy, and then they both closed Leir 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.