A Certain Slant of Light (43 page)

  
"It doesn't say anything about that in the Bible," said the bal
lerina, as if this would end the discussion.

  
"Are you saying that God can do only things printed in the
Bible?" I asked. I felt an unexplained wave of strength straighten my spine. "I thought God had no limits."

  
I heard Cathy gasp.

  
"God
can
do anything," said the redhead. "He knows everything and he sees everything."

  
I felt a fever scorch up to my temples. I stood up, which
caused Cathy to make a sound almost like a sob. "You have no idea what it's like to die or go to heaven or not go to heaven," I
told them. "Who do you think you are?" Every mouth hung open.
I noticed I was still holding a glass of lemonade. For half a moment, I thought of throwing it. And the redhead could tell I was
capable of it—she lifted a protective hand to her face. Instead I
set the glass down beside the melon eyes so hard half the con
tents splatted out. "How can you be so arrogant?" I asked. "You
don't know where her father went."

  
Then I smelled that sweet flower scent again, and I knew
what it was. Gardenias. And it wasn't coming from the fake-
flower arrangement. And it wasn't a scent Cathy wore, but I had
smelled it on Dan's shirt and in his car. Now one of the women in
this room was wearing that scent. Someone in this room had
rubbed against Dan's clothes, ridden beside him in the passenger
seat with his safety belt pressing on the skin of her throat.

  
"God speaks to us through his word," the ballerina managed
to tell me, so shaken her voice cracked.

  
"God speaks to me, too," I said. My muscles were burning. I
could do anything. "He's telling me right now that someone in
this room has been committing adultery." I studied the crowd,
hoping to figure out who had been with Dan by the shocked expression on the guilty woman's face, but unfortunately, they all
looked shocked. "One of you is having sex with someone else's
husband. How about that for a discussion topic?" I pried Cathy's
fist off my skirt and walked straight out of the house.

  
At first I paced the sidewalk, elated. Then I remembered my vow to commit kindnesses and felt confused. I waited, leaning
against the car in the dark until Cathy hurried out to me.

  
"I'm taking you to therapy tomorrow," she said, hyperventi
lating, her hands shaking so badly she dropped the keys twice be
fore she could start the car. I sat in the passenger seat three feet
from her side, but Cathy seemed very far away.

  
What had those women said that had angered me so? That
this man who hadn't called to God with his last breath was now
in hell? None of my hosts had spoken aloud to God in their last
moments, yet I felt sure they had slipped painlessly into heaven. I
myself had cried to God countless times, but, like a magic spell
that requires precision, perhaps I had to use the right words.

  
"God," I whispered. I closed my eyes, holding my hands tight.
"Come into my heart"

  
The voice I heard wasn't God. It was a baby crying, but not the
hoarse high pitch of a newborn. It was the true tears of a fright
ened two-year-old. I knew her sound. I think I said something out
loud, though I don't know what. Then I saw water running down dark steps in front of me. Mud and water. And there was a terri
ble grinding and crashing sound from above. Something howling.
My mouth tasted like metal, and I could feel the weight of the
little girl on my hip, clutching at my apron with tiny fists.

  
What I thought was a dog's bark turned into a car honking.
Water was hitting the car window on my side, running down in a
curtain. I found that I was clawing at the glass, weeping and
coughing. The car was stopped in the middle of the street, and
Cathy was shouting at me, holding the seat belt tight across me. I
stopped and felt a tingling in my hands where I'd been hitting
the window. Now several cars were honking. I looked over and
saw that Cathy was trying to dial her phone, but I put a hand over
the tiny machine.

  
"I'm all right," I said.

  
She gaped at me, horrified.

  
I hugged myself, cold to the bone. "I want to walk."

  
"What?" She snatched at me as I let myself out of the car. A
sprinkler from the yard beside us rained down on me as I
slammed the door.

  
I started walking down the sidewalk, shaking and wet now,
not caring what direction I took. I heard her car chime as the
driver door opened.

  
"Jennifer Ann, you come back here." She was following me at a distance.

  
I turned to her, suddenly angry again. "You have no idea what you did."

  
She waved in apology to a honking truck, having parked her
car in the right lane of traffic.

  
"Stop this right now and get back in the car." She tried to look
angry, but fear swirled through her. The hand that held her
phone was shaking. She didn't try to touch me. She'd stopped a
coffin length away.

  
"You crushed the life out of your own daughter," I told her.
"She ran away because she'd rather wander in limbo than live
with you."

  
"What are you saying? You sound crazy."

  
"She just wanted to write down what she was feeling and take
pictures—"

  
"Is this about the camera?"

  
"Listen!" I charged forward, wanting to slap her, and she felt
it. Panicking, she tried to dial her phone and dropped it on the
pavement, where it broke in pieces.

  
I was right in front of her now, but still she made no move to
reach for me. "Jenny tried to obey you. She said her prayers and
fasted and copied down Scriptures for you until she couldn't stand
it anymore, and then she left."

  
Cathy was kneeling on the sidewalk clutching the pieces of
her cell phone. "Who left?"

  
"And I tried, too. I tried to fit into your house." I knelt beside
her and took her arm in my hand. It seemed so alien to feel her
flesh so hot under my grip. I remembered weeping at the feet of
my first host, wanting to grip her hand, but it was Cathy who was
weeping now.

  
"I tried, but I can't anymore, and I don't know how to get out
of her body."

  
"Jenny." Tears were running off her chin. "You're hurting
me."

  
"Jenny's dead!"

  
I released her arm. I'd said it out loud, and as soon as I heard the words, I believed it. Jenny would never come back. I was
trapped in her body and in her life forever. I waited for Cathy to
put her arms around me in comfort, but there was no embrace.
Cars honked and Cathy dragged herself to her feet, but I stayed
on my knees and wept into my hands until I heard Cathy talking to someone. I looked up. A blue van had pulled over, and Cathy
was asking to borrow the driver's phone. For one peculiar mo
ment, I imagined the police arriving and taking me to the same
cell as James. But a mental ward was more likely my fate.

  
"No," I said, rising. "I'll get in the car now."

  
Cathy turned to me, white and stained with eye makeup. She
returned the phone and the van pulled away. The porch light of the house across the street came on. Two other cars had also
stopped, their passengers watching this strange drama—a fright
ened mother and her distraught child weeping on the pavement
in a strange neighborhood. A dog barked at us from the yard next
door.

  
The lawn sprinkler stopped just as I approached the car. Cathy
kept her distance until I was buckled into my seat again. She said
not a word the rest of the trip but muttered to herself, sitting far
forward against the steering wheel.

  
As we rolled up the driveway, Dan was putting something into
the back of his car. He slammed the door and waited, arms
crossed, as we got out.

  
"Go to your room," said Cathy. Her knees were still shaking.

  
I went into Jenny's room and sat on her bed. Strangely, the
clothes I had used as a fake body under the covers were neatly
stacked by the pillow. If Mitch had found Billy missing, the clothes would've been thrown about in a rage. But Cathy had
carefully folded sweaters and buttoned blouses closed up to the
collars.

  
Through the wall I could hear the rise and fall of anxious
voices though not the actual words. When Cathy opened my door
at last, her face was stiff. She looked at the floor when she told me
to come to Prayer Corner. Dan was standing by the chairs. Cathy
asked me to sit, so I sat where I always did. They both stayed
standing. The Bible and the journal were gone.

  
"We're afraid for you," Dan told me. "You lie to us and
humiliate your mother in front of her friends, cause a scene on a
public street."

  
"She had some kind of episode," Cathy said. I regretted scar
ing her so badly. There were scrapes on her knees from the pave
ment. "I think we should take her to the emergency room," she
whispered.

  
"Don't get hysterical." Dan's voice was low, but she suc
cumbed instantly.

  
"We made you an appointment for a counseling session with
the pastor in the morning," said Dan. "And your mother will
be getting home-schooling materials from the district office to
morrow."

  
Cathy hovered behind her chair, a marginal player, craving
power.