The Girl Who Slept with God: A Novel

by Val Brelinski

  “Um-hm. You know in that poem—what is it, you know the one, we used to have to memorize it in school—where the panther sneaks down and snatches up the girl, except he’s really a highwayman or a sultan or something powerful like that? Yes, well, his eyes are like green fire. That’s what I was trying for anyway. You mix a little ground mica in with the paint. That’s what does it. I used it on the toe shoes, too.” Mrs. Kleinfelter eased herself out of the chair and walked over next to Jory. She picked up the ballerina and handed it to her. “When I was a little girl I wanted to be a dancer. Can you imagine?” Mrs. Kleinfelter gave a soft snort through her nose. “Well,” she said. “I guess there’s no harm in dreaming, is there?”

  “I wish I knew how to paint.”

  “There’s nothing to it.” Mrs. Kleinfelter shrugged dismissively. “This kind, anyway. All it takes is patience mainly.”

  Jory placed the ballerina back next to the swan. “I can draw,” she said. “My mother taught me. When I was little, she used to let me sit on her lap and she would help me hold the pencil and guide it over the paper until I could do it on my own—until I could draw the flower petals and the leaf veins all by myself.” Jory put her hands in the front pocket of her sweater. “I’d forgotten that,” she said.

  “Sometimes I think I’ve forgotten practically everything I ever knew,” Mrs. Kleinfelter said. “They always tell you that if it’s important, you’ll remember it.” Mrs. Kleinfelter waved her hand. “Good, bad, you forget most of it sooner or later.”

  “I wish I were old,” Jory said, and then felt instantly foolish.

  Mrs. Kleinfelter made a chuckling sound way back in her throat. “Oh, no, you don’t,” she said. “No one does.”

  “I kind of do.”

  “That’s only because you’re not old yet. I’m seventy-one,” she said. “Which is better than seventy-two, I guess.”

  Jory stared at Mrs. Kleinfelter. At her old men’s work shoes and her bony arms with the blue veins running practically at the skin’s surface. She wanted to bury her head in Mrs. Kleinfelter’s flat bosom. “I’ll be fourteen,” she said. “Next week.”

  Mrs. Kleinfelter nodded. “Now that’s an age. I was engaged to my cousin when I was fourteen. Parley Pearson. I had loved him since I was ten and he was twelve. We didn’t tell anyone we were engaged, of course, but we were, just the same. He gave me a ring braided out of horsehair that he’d stolen out of his mother’s jewelry box. We thought we’d get married when I turned sixteen. Lots of girls did back then, you know. But a couple months later, he got a girl from Graham County pregnant, and that was that.” Mrs. Kleinfelter moved the Chinaman’s rickshaw back and forth on the top of the bookshelf. “I guess I remember a few things after all.”

  “What happened then?” Jory ignored the voice in her head that said she was being too nosy. “When did you meet your husband?”

  “Oh, I ran off with Dix the first chance I got. I was still mad about Parley, really, and I wanted to show him I could do the same. So I did.” Mrs. Kleinfelter laughed. “Guess I proved my point, didn’t I?”

  “Did you have any kids? I mean, do you have any kids?”

  Mrs. Kleinfelter seemed to be arranging something invisible and bothersome in her hair. “Children?” she said in a strange voice. Her hand fell from her hair. With an abrupt movement she took the ballerina from Jory’s hand and set it firmly back on the bookshelf. “What is your name?” She cocked her head at Jory. “I suppose it seems a little rude to be asking only now, doesn’t it?”

  “It’s Jory,” Jory said.

  “Jory. That’s kind of pretty. Although it sounds a little like a boy’s name, too.”

  “Yes,” Jory said.

  “Mine’s Hilda. Which I despise, but I’ve given up the idea of changing it at this late date, so you might as well call me that.”

  “All right,” said Jory, blushing at the thought of calling her this.

  “Where’s your sister? I haven’t seen much of her lately.”

  “She’s inside, probably. She’s not feeling very well.”

  “Your father didn’t explain to me why it is that you two are living out here, and I suppose it’s none of my business, so I won’t ask.”

  “We’re having some family problems,” said Jory. She turned the panther a centimeter to the left, and then back again.

  “Well, that’s pretty much the way with families, in my experience.”

  “I don’t know,” said Jory. “I only know mine.”

  “Most of them are pretty much the same, I think. Good and bad mixed together in a small bag. Or a small house. Although maybe your house was bigger than mine.”

  “No,” said Jory. “I don’t think so.”

  Mrs. Kleinfelter glanced up at the cuckoo clock and then made a sudden move toward the television console. She leaned down and turned a large knob on the front of the TV until it clicked. She sat down in one of the blue plaid chairs. “It’s time for my show,” she said.

  Art Fleming appeared on the screen along with three Jeopardy! contestants. Jory and Mrs. Kleinfelter watched in silence.

  “The sound is turned down,” said Jory.

  “I know,” said Mrs. Kleinfelter. She continued to stare at the screen.

  One of the contestants, a young man with a crew cut and black glasses, won fifty dollars in the category of “Potent Potables.” Jory watched Mrs. Kleinfelter watching the television. “Don’t you want to hear the answers?”

  “Not really,” said Mrs. Kleinfelter. “I kind of like pretending I’m getting them all right.”

  “Oh,” said Jory. “Okay.” She moved toward the front door. “Well, I better get going. I’ll see you later, I guess.”

  “Tell your sister I hope she gets better,” Mrs. Kleinfelter said without turning around. “I’d send her something, some soup or something, but I don’t have any.”

  “That’s okay,” said Jory. “Soup probably makes her sick.”

  “Is Antarctica the same thing as the South Pole?”

  “It’s a part of Antarctica. It’s the southernmost point.”

  Mrs. Kleinfelter nodded. “See now? That boob said something else, didn’t he? He’s going to lose, you can just tell.” She leaned forward. “Australia! What is Australia!” She grinned and leaned back. “I’m better at this than you might think.”

  They watched the next question come up.

  “Asia,” said Jory.

  “What about Africa?”

  “I think it’s smaller,” said Jory, sitting down too.

  Outside, the sun was already heading down toward the west side of the Owyhees. Jory watched two crows light in the maple tree in Mrs. Kleinfelter’s front yard. The crows were so heavy that the branches they were on dragged downward. Each time they stepped sideways, the branches bounced up and down. The crows didn’t seem to like this trampoline effect and one at a time they lifted heavily off and flew on. Jory walked out into the road and picked up her book bag. She brushed the dirt off as best she could. For some reason, she left the pencils lying there.

  Tall, dried-out hollyhocks leaned and drooped against the side of Mrs. Kleinfelter’s house. Jory plucked off one of the dying flower’s blooms. When they were little, their mother had shown her and Grace how to turn them upside down so that they could be made into dolls, their blossoms forming lacily ruffled skirts. Jory walked along the path worn into the grass that ran between the front house and the back, dragging her book bag behind her. Grace was sitting on the steps in front of the diamond-windowed house. She was wearing a pair of men’s patched denim overalls over an old white T-shirt and her bare feet looked long and pale. She was digging her bare toes in the dirt. “Where on earth have you been?” she asked. She held a hand up over her eyes.

  “Remember hollyhock dolls?” Jory held out the wilted blossom. “And how Frances called them hoopy skirts?”
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br />   “Dad called from work to see if you got home okay and you weren’t here. He’s really worried.”

  “I bet.” Jory began pulling off the flower’s silky pink petals, one at a time.

  “What happened?” Grace squinted up at her. “Did you miss the bus?”

  “Yes, I missed the bus. I missed all four of them. But it doesn’t matter because I’m not going to school there. Ever.” Jory dropped the denuded stem onto the ground. “It’s a horrible place, and I won’t go back and Dad can’t make me.” Jory sat down in the grass. “I don’t see why I can’t go to Arco Christian. It’s not like I’m pregnant.”

  Grace sat up and hugged her knees to her chest. “That’s right,” she said. “You’re not.”

  Jory smoothed her hand back and forth across the nap of the grass. “Sorry,” she said, though she could hear that her voice didn’t really sound very sorry at all.

  Grace looked up. “I know it doesn’t seem fair. That you have to live out here too, along with me.”

  Jory said nothing. She knew she should feel grateful that Grace was saying this, but instead it was as if Grace’s words validated all of Jory’s feelings of being persecuted unjustly. A hot flicker of self-righteousness rose up inside her. “Dad and Mom stuck me out here to keep an eye on you. Because they think you’re nuts. Did you know that? They think you’re completely insane. That’s why we’re living out here—because they don’t want anyone else to know that you’re crazy. And pregnant.” Jory could feel her heart speeding up to keep pace with the flight of furious thoughts in her head. The day’s events and their effects were finally spilling out in a bright, bitter stream. “And because they’re too ashamed to have anyone know that this is what happened to their daughter. Their wonderful, holy, Christlike daughter.”

  Grace’s face grew very pale, but her eyes seemed to take on more light. She pushed her hair back, revealing the now pinkening edge of her birthmark. “No one thinks that I am crazy,” she said slowly, enunciating each word as if she thought Jory had suddenly gone deaf. “Not Mom or Dad or even that . . . psychiatrist they made me go to.”

  Jory said nothing, but she refused to look away from her sister’s face.

  “They’re just scared, that’s all.”

  “Yes,” said Jory, “of you.”

  “That’s always the way it is with people when they first encounter an act of God.” Grace sounded as if she might be explaining this to herself. “Even Moses didn’t recognize the burning bush, and Jacob thought he was wrestling with a man, not an angel.”

  “Oh, Grace—this isn’t the Bible. It’s just Arco.”

  Grace ran her hands down the thigh portion of her overalls. “I’ve prayed and prayed, and God has told me that He will open their eyes to the truth when it’s time, and that for now I’ll just have to be patient. And have faith. Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you. But rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ’s sufferings; that, when his glory shall be revealed, ye may be glad also with exceeding joy.”

  Jory bent down and picked up her book bag and hefted its strap onto her shoulder. “‘Glad with exceeding joy.’” She shook her head at Grace. “Is that really how you feel?”

  “Yes,” Grace said, and then paused. “Sometimes.”

  “Not always?”

  “Not all the time. But maybe it’s not supposed to be that kind of rejoicing. Maybe it’s more of a solemn gladness.”

  “You sound like Dad.”

  Grace looked surprised. “Really?”

  “It wasn’t a compliment.”

  The sun had crept down and was beginning to hide itself behind the tallest of the mountains. What was left of the light poured across the Kleinfelters’ yard in concentrated beams, turning the branches and leaves and tips of everything a luminous golden red, as if the outside edges of each had suddenly caught fire. She was reminded of those gilded capital letters that monks outlined in scarlet and gold in old illuminated manuscripts. Jory stood on the porch and stared out across the smallish stretch of grass that separated the two houses from each other. “Who do you love?” she asked suddenly.

  Grace glanced up at Jory from her seated perch on the bottom step. “Well, God, of course, and you and Mom and Dad and Frances.” She was silent for a second. “That’s about it, I guess, in terms of real love.”

  “Who do you love most?”

  Grace rubbed her bare foot through a patch of weeds below the step. “I don’t know. I try to love God with all my heart.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Jory!”

  “I don’t. I love someone else instead.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “It’s true. I never loved God that much to begin with and now there’s not enough room left over for him anyway.”

  Grace stood up and dusted off the seat of Henry Kleinfelter’s overalls and then she leaned against the wooden porch railing. Her voice, when she spoke, was so quiet that Jory could just barely make out the words. “Dad didn’t really say I was crazy, did he?”

  Jory pulled the rubber band off of one of her braids, giving it a sharp yank. She rolled the rubber band into a ball and threw it out into the yard. “Even if he did, it doesn’t matter, since he already thinks you’re some kind of saint or something.”

  “Not anymore, he doesn’t.”

  “Well, whose fault is that?”

  Grace gave her sister a look of pained forbearance. “You don’t understand anything.”

  “Right,” said Jory. “It’s all too mysterious and wonderful for someone like me to comprehend.”

  Grace allowed a second or two to pass. “You know, I think Dad just moved us out here because he was worried he’d lose his job. That the people at the college wouldn’t understand.”

  “Which they wouldn’t, of course. Since the whole thing is completely insane.”

  “That would make sense, though,” Grace mused on obliviously. “Since he has to support all of us on his teaching salary.”

  “Didn’t you hear anything I said?” Jory shook her head. “He just doesn’t want anyone in town or at church or anywhere to know you’re pregnant because it would ruin his own perfect reputation.”

  “That’s a terrible thing to say,” Grace said quietly.

  “It’s true, though,” said Jory. “How could he be a church elder or academic dean at Northwestern Bible College with you sticking out to there?” Jory curved her hands out in front of her.

  The two sisters stood looking at each other. The early evening air was taking on a sweet coolness and somewhere high above them in a maple tree a flicker gave a wistful one-note call.

  “You’ve just had a long day,” Grace said finally, soothingly—although Jory couldn’t tell quite who it was she was trying to soothe. Whom. Whom she was trying to soothe. “And you’re feeling cross. You always say things you don’t mean when you’re cross.” Grace gave Jory one of her most radiant and patient smiles. “I’m sorry, Jory. I know all of this is really hard for you.”

  Jory studied her sister, knowing this was the exact moment at which she, too, could and should apologize. “I’m starving,” she said. “What are we having for dinner?”

  Grace tried to blink back her disappointment. “Whatever we want,” she said, her smile dimming just slightly. “Imagine that.”

  Jory opened the double-doored cupboard that hung directly over the sink. Their father’s feelings of guilt could be read in the amazing grocery purchases he had made: Nestlé’s Strawberry Quik, Mystic Mint cookies, Peter Pan peanut butter, Lay’s barbecue potato chips. Forbidden food full of sugar and chemicals and carcinogenic dye. The good stuff.

  Neither Jory nor Grace could cook. They could clean and iron and sew—these they had all learned in Caravans, in Indian Maidens and Pathfinders on Wednesday n
ights at church, earning diamond-shaped badges to put across their green sashes—but their mother had always done the cooking because their father liked things “a certain way”: unflavored, unsweetened, with the peel still on and the vitamins and minerals still intact. Plain and healthy and raw was the way their father liked his food. No salt or sugar, and only legumes and nuts for protein. Spices like garlic and pepper and onions made his scalp tingle. As did pop. Once, at a party in high school, he frequently liked to recall, he had been given a Coca-Cola (he always shook his head at this point) and the scalp tingling had lasted for days. The body was a temple. An untingling temple. “Animals have the right idea,” he would say, munching down another Jonathan apple, core and seeds and all. “At least when it comes to food,” their mother would amend.

  Jory watched as Grace bent and tried to light the stove burner with a match. They both jumped back when it caught with a whoomp of blue flame. “Whoa,” Grace said, blowing on the match. “I have no idea what I’m doing here.”

  “You’re doing fine,” Jory said, and handed her the black skillet. She peeled the bacon strips apart from each other and dropped them one at a time into the pan, where they began to sputter and pop.

  “How do you know when they’re done?” Grace poked at a piece of the bacon with a fork.

  “When they turn nearly black,” Jory said. “They have to crinkle up like old snakes.” She could feel herself getting slightly giddy at the prospect. At the two of them here in this house choosing and preparing their own food. Alone. All by themselves. It reminded her of when they were little and they had made a secret fort on Grace’s bed with blankets and the yardstick. The light underneath the blanket was the warmest yellow imaginable. They had turned their desk chairs upside down on their desks too, and then sat between the legs, pretending they were using the pivoting feet on the chair legs to copilot a plane soaring over the high Himalayas and the vast African savanna. But they were low on gas, and one after the other the plane’s engines began to sputter and choke and die. Finally they were forced to parachute out above the dark and deadly Amazon, where enormous snakes and jungle cats slithered and roamed. Jory shivered even in remembrance. When had they stopped doing that? How long ago had that been?