A Certain Slant of Light (26 page)

  
"Honey?" Cathy opened the door immediately after one soft
knock. I jumped, sorry I hadn't locked it. She looked dumb
founded. "Did you take a shower?"

  
"No." I stopped scrubbing the panties and closed them into
y fist. "A bath."

  
"Are you feeling all right?" She looked at my hands. "What
you doing?"

  
"I was just washing a couple things by hand." I smiled at her,
t she still looked concerned. "Is anything wrong?" I asked.

  
She just raised her brows at me and closed the door again. I
slipped out with the wet panties wrapped in the dry clothes.
Before I could get to Jenny's laundry hamper, I was startled to
find Cathy standing over my open bag, looking at one of my li
brary books.

  
"What's this?" she asked, turning
Romeo and Juliet
over in
her hands.

  
"It's a play."

  
"I thought you didn't have an English class this semester."

  
"I don't," I admitted. "I just like to read."

  
Cathy looked unconvinced but placed the book back in the
bag. "Put something on. It's almost homework time," she said. "I'll meet you at the table in five." Cathy left the room with a
brush of her hands, as if she needed to dust Shakespeare off her
fingers.

  
I put on clean clothes and brought my schoolbooks into the
study, but Cathy wasn't there. I walked through the house and
found her sitting at the dining room table with a box beside her
and notepaper in front of her. She held a pink pen and smiled up
at me as I sat across from her. Her box was labeled CORRES
PONDENCE and was covered in a pink floral paper. This was a
mother-daughter ritual, though I couldn't tell whether it was per
formed daily or weekly. I glanced at Cathy every now and then as
I pretended to read history, government, and math. Like a child,
she moved her lips slightly as she wrote—ordering her words in
straight lines and her life in neat paragraphs. Although Cathy
was in all likelihood thirty-five years old or more, and I had
stopped aging at twenty-seven, I felt, just then, like the elder sister of Alice, sitting under a tree, watching her little sister lest she
tumble down a hole. But it was only an illusion. Cathy was my keeper, and I was the one fallen into a strange land. I needed to
be as clever as Alice to devise a bridge between Jenny's world and
Amelia Street.

  
I had not bothered to record any homework assignments. I
simply read to myself, random chapters, finding it difficult to re
tain any ideas. All I could think of was James.

  
"I'm finished," I said, after what seemed like hours. Cathy
had four letters written and in envelopes to her left, each fastened
with a round gold sticker.

  
"Good job," she smiled. "I'll call when I'm ready."

  
Without waiting to discover the meaning of this, I went back to my room and left my books there. Then I moved silently into
the study and closed myself in. I left the room dim and gently
picked up the phone. I dialed five, five, five, twelve twenty-five,
te Christmas. My heart was racing as it rang.

  
"Yeah?" It was Mitch who answered.

  
"May I speak to Billy?" I asked.

  
"Who's this?" he wanted to know.

  
I was a little flustered. "I'm a girl from his school. I was in his
English class," I said, which was true, in a way.

  
"What do you want?" Mitch asked.

  
I couldn't think fast enough. "I wanted to ask him about a
book," I stammered.

  
Mitch laughed. "Are you sure you want Billy?"

  
In the background, now I could hear James asking who it was. len his voice was in my ear, and I can't explain the relief.

  
"Hello?"

  
"I'm hiding in the study."

  
I could hear the rustling of James moving with the phone as
far from Mitch as he could. "I think I should come call on you,"
said James. "I could ask your parents' permission to take you out
on a date."

  
"I don't know," I whispered. "I'll try to broach the subject at
dinner."

  
"Are you all right?"

  
"It's very frightening," I confessed. "I never know what to do or how to act. I keep making dreadful mistakes."

  
"I know exactly how you feel," he laughed. "I should tell you about learning how to talk and walk and sit on a couch like Billy."

  
I heard a sound in the hall. "Someone's coming," I whispered
and hung up without even saying goodbye. I held my breath,
then gave a little cry as Dan opened the door.

  
"Did I scare you?" he asked, frowning.

  
"No."

  
"Mom's ready for you to set."

  
I'm not certain why, but something in me was convinced that
the thing that would make them realize I was not their daughter,
rather than something significant, like not recognizing a grandparent, would in fact be something as simple as not knowing in
which cupboard to find the dishes. For this reason, my long walk
to the kitchen filled me with despair. By some miracle Cathy, who
was cooking a beef stew, and Dan, who was looking through the
newspaper, didn't notice my quiet fumblings. It wasn't until
Cathy was bringing the food to the table that she stopped.

  
"No place mats?" she asked me. "What's come over you?"

  
Dan put the water pitcher on the table and then slid three
blue rectangles of cloth out of the china cabinet drawer. "They're
 
just place mats," he said, but Cathy still looked bothered. I care
fully arranged each place setting on a mat, relieved that there
wasn't more I had done suspiciously wrong.

  
By the time they had seated themselves at the far ends of the
table, the tension was making my head ache behind my eyes. I sat
down, close to tears. They talked of Cathy's day as the dishes of
food were passed around.

  
"Your mother tells me you were talking to a strange boy at
school." His voice was so controlled, I knew there was nothing
matter-of-fact about the subject.

  
"He wasn't strange," I said.

  
"You've talked to him before?" Dan asked. They both
watched me.

  
I didn't know whether Jenny had ever said a word to Billy before today. "I see him in the hall."

  
"So he's not from church?" Dan asked.

  
"No," I said.

  
"Does he even attend a church?" asked Cathy.

  
"I didn't ask him," I said, but I had been with James and
Mitch on a Sunday morning and knew, of course, that they did
not. "He might ask me on a date." I had hoped this would sound
natural, but they both stopped eating.

  
"Don't be ridiculous." Cathy was breathless.

  
"I thought we agreed she was too young to date," said Dan.

  
"Well..." My heart was pounding so hard it made my vision
shake with each throb. "Mother mentioned that someone might
be asking me out."

  
Cathy put her silverware down. "Brad Smith. From youth
group. And that was only to a church party, for heaven's sake."

  
She looked at her husband as if explaining her innocence in the
crime.

  
"I could invite him to church," I said.

  
"No," Cathy shook her head. "Out of the question."

  
I had the absurd feeling I'd just been sentenced without a
trial. "Why?"

  
"I thought you two had already talked about this." Dan
looked at Cathy with reproach.

  
"We read every word of that book together. She knows she's not to date outside the church," she told him. Then she turned to
me, shaking her head in that absolute way. "Never date a boy
hoping he'll convert. It said that right in the first chapter."

  
"It's a moot point," said Dan. "She's not going to date for another year, isn't that what we agreed?"

  
Those who cry to be young again should think twice before
they seal those prayers. My stomach threatened to send back
what little I had already swallowed. I took a deep breath.

  
"Are people of no value to you unless they're from our
church?" I asked them. It was too late. The words were out before
I realized how harsh they sounded.

  
The shock kicked Cathy against the back of her chair as if
she'd fired a rifle. "Jennifer Ann."

  
Dan cocked his head at me, slow as a cannon changing targets.
"You know perfectly well I do business with Catholics and Jews.
We're glad you go to school with children from other faiths. But
if that's how you're being taught to speak to your elders, you'll be out of that school tomorrow."

  
"I'm sorry." Then I rushed on. "So, I may have friends who
aren't Christian? I could study with a friend—"

  
"Unchurched high school boys," Cathy interrupted, "do not
want to
he friends
with high school girls."

  
"What are you afraid of ?" I asked her.

  
"That's enough." Dan slid my plate of food away from me,
into the center of the table. Cathy stood and took my dinner into
the kitchen without speaking, returning with a glass of water.
She set the glass in front of me, the lemon wedge in it bobbing
like a dead fish.