The Girl Who Slept with God: A Novel (33 page)

Mrs. K had a lot of junk. No,
stuff
—she had a lot of
stuff.
Jory still had a hard time thinking without her mother’s interfering voice editing her thoughts. She and Mrs. Kleinfelter had packed up at least six boxes of
stuff
from just the basement, and these were big boxes.

Jory looked up from the glass of Tang that she was drinking. She and Mrs. K were taking a momentary break.

Mrs. Kleinfelter pushed herself up from the table and walked over to the refrigerator. “How about some lunch? I have bologna and . . . bologna.”

“I’ll take bologna,” said Jory.

“Do you want mustard?”

“I don’t know. Is it good?”

“You’ve never had mustard?”

“No.” Jory pulled the rubber band off the end of one of her braids and began rebraiding her hair. “Once, when we were little, my dad took us to Givens Hot Springs and Frances said, ‘Bathtub. Big, big bathtub!’ She’d never seen a swimming pool before. But later, when we got older, we couldn’t go anymore because it would be considered mixed bathing—you know?”

“Mixed bathing?” said Mrs. Kleinfelter. She spread some mustard on Jory’s sandwich and handed it to her on a plate. “Weren’t the people wearing swimming suits?”

“Oh, sure, but in our church you’re not supposed to go swimming with men if you’re a woman and vice versa. And no dancing or going to pool halls or circuses. But anyway, at Givens we got to have hot dogs, which was exciting, but no mustard because it made my dad’s scalp tingle.”

Mrs. Kleinfelter made a funny face and then sat down at the table with her own plate. “What’s wrong with circuses?”

“Oh, they have sideshows and women wearing revealing costumes. Things like that.” Jory took a bite of her sandwich. She chewed. “Hey, that’s pretty good.” She took another large bite. “Sort of sour and tangy, but good.”

“You are a strange child,” said Mrs. Kleinfelter. She gazed fondly at Jory and then picked up her plate and carried it over to the sink. “Was that enough packing for today?”

“Yes,” said Jory. “But do you think you could teach me to dance?”

Mrs. Kleinfelter’s radio got only three stations: All-Country All-Day, Big Jack’s Rock-Around-the-Clock, and Easy Listening 95. Mrs. Kleinfelter and Jory were now slow dancing to “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.” Jory had never realized before that she and Mrs. Kleinfelter were almost exactly the same height. She had also never realized how strange it might be to hold an old woman around the waist and to lean your head against her bony shoulder and smell the strangely familiar scent of boiled potatoes that emanated from her old housedress. It was only Jory’s extreme
anxiety about not knowing how to dance that had brought her to this point, and if anyone came in Mrs. Kleinfelter’s house at this moment, Jory thought she might die of true mortification. Although the fact that Mrs. Kleinfelter was willing to do this for her also made her feel slightly like crying.

“There,” Mrs. Kleinfelter said, pulling back from Jory’s nervous embrace. “See? Nothing to it.” Mrs. Kleinfelter patted Jory on the arm and stepped briskly toward the radio. “Enough of that,” she said, and switched off the dial. “Well, I don’t know about you,” she said, wiping her hands down the front of her dress, “but I’ve got some weeding to do.” And without a backward glance, she walked to the back door and marched down the steps and left Jory alone in the house.

Jory stood in the living room still feeling the imprint of Mrs. Kleinfelter’s knobby hand in her own. She put her hands in her pants pocket and pulled out the tiny square of paper she found there. It was the paper the guitar man at Hope House had given her—the one with the orange stars on it. Jory ran her finger across the tiny stars and the orange print came off on her thumb. Jory licked the orange stars off and put the square back in her pocket. She remembered the guitar man pressing the paper into the palm of her hand with a certain firmness and singing that song she was embarrassed to hope was directed at her. Jory blushed in remembrance and sat down on the floor next to the row of boxes that she and Hilda had packed up. She picked up the roll of packing tape that was lying next to the boxes. The tape dispenser was unwieldy, though, and she kept getting the tape stuck to itself instead of to the box. “Poop,” she said out loud, picking vainly at the edge of the tape. She finally pulled a length of tape off the roll, but she couldn’t seem to manage to hold the box’s lid down while also smoothing the tape down onto it. After several more tries, she sighed and stood up. She walked over to the row of porcelain figurines on Mrs. Kleinfelter’s bookshelf and examined them all again, one at a time. Who would think that Mrs. Kleinfelter would make such tiny, exquisitely painted things? Jory picked up the glossy black panther. For some reason this one was her favorite. Maybe it was the jeweled green eyes or the panther’s tiny pink tongue that seemed so incongruously sweet and candylike coming from between those long white fangs. Jory
touched the panther’s tongue to her own. It had an actual taste—almost like chalk or dust—although it seemed like she was really smelling this dusty moldiness rather than tasting it. She pricked her finger on the point of the panther’s fang. It was actually sharp. In fact, it felt like the panther was sliding its tiny fang deeply and sweetly into the tip of Jory’s finger. It seemed to be deliberately biting her. “Hey, cut it out,” she said and laughed, then put the panther down next to the ballerina. “Now behave,” she said, and laughed again. Jory slid the tiny rickshaw driver back and forth across the smooth surface of the shelf. The rickshaw’s wheels seemed to leave little blue-gold trails behind them. It was as if flames from the oven’s gas burner were following behind the wheels. Jory closed her eyes, but the tiny wavering meteor trails were still there—in fact, they were now sort of looping and spiraling in the most amazing and horrifying way. Jory put the rickshaw down and started heading toward the back door, her heart in her throat. The kitchen, Mrs. Kleinfelter’s kitchen, was now the most amazing shade of golden yellow, the warmest, most encompassing yellow Jory had ever seen. The kitchen’s walls were like some kind of butter, heavenly butter that leaned warmly toward Jory and breathed in and out through buttery, fluttery gills. Why hadn’t she ever noticed this before? She put her hand against the wall and tried to pet it, to let it know that it was breathing beautifully.
Wait,
she thought.
Wait, this is not right.
Something was utterly and terribly wrong with the way her mind was seeing or thinking, and the minute she thought this, a blank sort of encompassing horror swept over her. Jory stumbled to the door and seemingly went out it and maybe down the steps. The sky outside was green like a 7Up bottle, exactly like that, like the beautiful transparent green of some candy that a girl had brought for birthday treats in fourth grade once. “It’s called glass candy,” the girl had said, and it had tasted like spearmint, only sweeter, like spearmint mixed with clover. That was the sky now too, and Jory could taste the sky on her tongue like smoothest sweetest greenest glass. Jory sank down into the grass and gazed up at the sky, which was also gazing back at her. She smiled and it was like she could feel the sky filling her mouth, it was filling her mouth in a new sort of kissing, and it was like she had been doing this forever. She had been doing this forever, lying back against the curved surface of
the world, or else this was what time actually was: one long moment that expanded out past the horizon, like the green glass sky that went on and up and out and all around. Or else it was all very small—time, that is—but the most concentrated small, like a tiny, dense black hole and the way things became too, too heavy in a black hole.
Too dense,
she thought. Too leaden. Too heavy laden.
Oh, no,
she thought.
Oh
. Her thoughts seemed to be like the words in a first-grade reading book and also the most amazing thoughts she had ever had, although she wasn’t sure, absolutely sure, which thoughts she had ever had. There was one lone cloud in the vast green of the sky that separated out into letters, or maybe numbers. Maybe it was Aramaic. Ancient Aramaic. Maybe she should go to Blackfoot since she was obviously crazy. Maybe she and Grace were sisters in everything. More than sisters.
Grace,
she thought, and got up from the grass. The diamond-windowed house wavered into view. She climbed the front steps and it took forever because she kept having to step on the same step over and over. She watched a foot in a shoe stepping onto a stair and then the same foot (maybe) stepped onto a different (or maybe the same) stair.
That’s my foot,
she said to herself.
And that’s my shoe, my sweet old shoe.
She felt a sudden, overwhelming fondness for her shoe. But really, was it
her
shoe, or did it really just belong to itself, in all its very particular shoeness? And could you truly own a shoe, and if so, what did that mean or entail? Did ownership encompass or involve more than just housing a shoe in your closet and claiming it with your foot? The door to Henry’s house opened of its own accord and someone was standing there and saying words. It was probably Grace, but Grace with a face that kept changing into someone else’s face just long enough that Jory couldn’t tell for sure who it was. Each time she was sure it was Grace, Grace would slyly switch her face. It was like a test that Jory was supposed to pass, but for a class she hadn’t taken. “Don’t do that anymore,” Jory said. “Your nose looks too much like Pastor Ron’s and your teeth aren’t right either.” Jory could tell from the look on Grace/Pastor Ron’s face that neither of them was happy with her. She tried to tell them that she was sorry, very sorry, but they didn’t seem to understand. “It’s in ancient Aramaic,” she kept saying. “I only just learned it today.”

G

It took until Friday for Jory to come back to herself all the way. On Thursday night, the emergency room nurse had found the tiny square of paper in her pants pocket and then the doctor had given her a shot of something strong to counteract the effects of the first drug. Mrs. Kleinfelter had driven her home stretched out in the front seat of the truck and Grace had put her to bed, where she slept for the next fourteen hours. On Friday evening, Grip came to see her, but Grace met him at the door and sent him away. On Saturday night, Jory was lying on the dead cat couch trying to read Act IV in
Romeo and Juliet
when the back door opened and Grip walked clear through the kitchen and into the living room before Grace could stop him.

“Grip,” said Grace, standing up. “Go away.”

“Nope,” said Grip. “Not going.” He moved over to the couch, right next to where Jory was lying. “I’m so, so sorry, Jory,” he said. He had an old brown hat that he kept twisting around in his hands.

Jory realized with a sudden little jolt that she had never heard him say her name before. Ever.

“It’s okay,” she said. “It’s not your fault.” Her voice sounded faint and unconvincing, even to her. She cleared her throat. “It was just an accident. I mean, I didn’t know what I was doing or anything.”

“I should never have taken you out there. It was a stupid idea. Stupid.”

Grace coughed briefly.

Jory sat up on the couch and pulled her knees up to her chest. “It’s no one’s fault. And I’m okay, so let’s just forget about it.”

Grip sighed and sat down on the arm of the couch. He glanced at Jory and then at Grace. “I took a little drive back out there last night,” he said, “after you kicked me out.” He gave the brown hat a toss and it sailed across the room and landed with a skid next to the horsehair chair. The kitten pounced on it and tried to drag it off toward the kitchen, his head held high.

“To the hippie house?” Grace put her crocheting down on the floor. “Why? What for?”

“Just wanted to repay the favor, that’s all.”

“Oh, no,” said Grace. “What did you do?”

“Not much. Not nearly as much as I wanted to.”

Jory’s eyes widened. “You hit him?”

“Only a couple of times.”

Jory let out a whoop of laughter and then covered her mouth with both her hands. “Oh, wow. That’s awful,” she said, suddenly looking serious. “No, it really is.”