The Girl Who Slept with God: A Novel

by Val Brelinski

  “Well, of course,” Grace said, only her eyes registering her feelings about this entire turn of events. “The more the merrier.”

  Mrs. Kleinfelter sat at the table looking faintly shamed and childlike. She kept rearranging her silverware.

  “Grip is a vegetarian,” Grace told her. “Which explains our slightly unusual dinner menu.”

  “Oh, I’m hardly ever hungry this time of night anyway.” Mrs. Kleinfelter moved her fork slightly to the left. “I’ll just try some of this good-looking bread, if you don’t mind.”

  Grace passed Mrs. Kleinfelter the bread and then handed her the butter dish. “Right before you got here, Grip was talking to us about the power of prayer.”

  “Really?” Mrs. Kleinfelter continued to examine her plate. “Well, what do you know.”

  “Do you attend church?” Grace poured some iced tea into Mrs. Kleinfelter’s glass.

  “Oh, Dix and I used to go over to First Congregational every once in a while, but I’m pretty much out of the habit now.”

  “At Garden of Gethsemane we have early morning and evening services on Sundays, and midweek services on Wednesday nights too.”

  “Well, that’s certainly a lot of services. Is that where you girls go? This Garden of . . . Gethsemene?”

  “We haven’t gotten to go as much as we would like to lately.” Grace set the iced tea pitcher down. She took a shallow breath. “I’ve been having my own sort of personal services here at home, and, you know, if you’d like to join me, I’d be very happy to have you come.” She turned to Grip. “Oh, and you too, of course.”

  Mrs. Kleinfelter straightened her silverware again. “That’s a very lovely invitation,” she said.

  “Sunday morning, hm?” Grip stopped eating. “What time are we talking?”

  Grace turned toward Grip with a certain amount of amazement. “Nine thirty,” she said. “But maybe that’s too early for you.”

  “Oh, no,” he said. “I may not look like it, but I’m an early riser.” He grinned at Jory and Mrs. Kleinfelter in turn. “How about some dessert, ladies? Anybody here like ice cream?”

  They sat in the living room and ate their ice cream bars. “This is very nice,” said Mrs. Kleinfelter, with a hint of surprise in her voice. “I haven’t sat in Henry’s house like this for quite some time.”

  Grip was kneeling down next to an old wooden cabinet in the corner of the room. He opened a drawer and pulled out a record album. “These are old seventy-eights,” he said. “Really old ones.”

  “That’s a victrola of sorts,” said Mrs. Kleinfelter, licking at her butterscotch Push Up. “Although I don’t know if it still works.”

  Grip stood up and lifted the top lid on the wooden cabinet and gave a low whistle. “Would you look at that.”

  Jory came over and peered inside. She had seen something like it once in the Boise Historical Museum, along with a Teletype machine, several Indian scalps, and a stuffed two-headed calf.

  Grip was blowing dust off the record and placing it carefully on the victrola’s spindle.

  “You have to wind it up first,” said Mrs. Kleinfelter.

  Grip flipped a small switch, wound the victrola’s crank quite a few times, and then placed the needle carefully down on the record. A soft hush of staticky popping and hissing issued forth. Jory turned and grinned at Grace and Mrs. Kleinfelter. Suddenly a sound like an old-timey carnival filled the room. Grip opened both of the cabinet drawers down below and the strange dance hall music got even louder.

  “Oh, my,” said Mrs. Kleinfelter. She placed her ice cream bar down on its wrapper on the coffee table. “Oh, my. That’s—oh, who is that—what is her name? . . . Annette Hanshaw! Henry’s favorite singer. I think he had a little crush on her.”

  The tinkly sweet-sad music sounded like it was coming from far away or deep down in a well somewhere. Or maybe as if the woman singing down in the well was holding a coffee can over her mouth. She was saying that her blackbirds were bluebirds now, while kazoos or ukuleles or fiddles or something played along at a superfast tempo. As if love could only be expressed in double time. “I’ve never heard anything like it,” said Jory.

  “It’s the thirties,” said Grip, turning another record over in his hands. “Or maybe the forties?”

  Mrs. Kleinfelter stood up and walked over to the victrola. “Henry loved this music,” she said. She shook her head as if to clear away this thought. “He was a little sappy that way.”

  “Oh, come on.” Grip took hold of both Mrs. Kleinfelter’s hands and made her sway slightly back and forth with him in time to the music.

  Jory grinned shyly and then glanced at Grace, who was sitting stock-still on the couch.

  Grip and Mrs. Kleinfelter were now slowly circling the living room, doing some kind of improvised dance steps that they both seemed to mysteriously know. Mrs. Kleinfelter was smiling but still shaking her head, even as she moved her feet in their brown work shoes with ease.

  On the record, the whip-poor-will on the hill was telling the girl in the well that it was true, her blackbirds were bluebirds now. Days of gladness had come, days of sadness were done, and yes, her blackbirds were bluuuue-birds now.

  Grip was saying something in Mrs. Kleinfelter’s ear. He dipped her down toward the floor and she gasped and said, “Oh, my,” then reached her hand back to keep her hair in place. Grip pulled her gently upright and they both laughed as if sharing a joke only the two of them understood.

  “Okay, Grace,” Grip said breathlessly after setting Mrs. Kleinfelter on her feet, “your turn.”

  Grace gave Grip a strange, lopsided smile. “No, thank you,” she said. “Dancing is a sin.”

  “Oh, dear,” said Mrs. Kleinfelter, still rearranging her hair.

  The record crackled to an end and then hummed silently, still turning on the spindle.

  “Jory?” Grip turned and held out his hand.

  Jory did not look in Grace’s direction. “That’s okay,” she said. “I guess not.”

  “Well, that is too, too bad,” said Grip, smiling and mock wiping his forehead, “because I was just getting warmed up.”

  Jory looked down at her shoes, at the fawn-colored moccasins that he had given her. She scuffed one shoe slightly against the floor and listened to the silver bell tinkle. “Maybe another time, though.” She said this so quietly that only he could hear.

  Grip smiled and bent down and pulled another record out of the victrola’s bottom cabinet. He looked at its sleeve and read the title. “‘I’ve Got Something in My Eye’?”

  “Oh, that’s a good one,” said Mrs. Kleinfelter. “I’ve got something in my eye and it’s you, you, you.” She glanced over at Grace on the couch. “At least I think that’s how it goes.”

  “I love music.” Grace stood up and smoothed Henry’s shirt down over her abdomen. “I’ve played the piano since I was five. I’ve been the church choir director. I just don’t think that God approves of men and women dancing together . . . for obvious reasons.” Grace picked up the sticky ice cream wrappers that Jory and Mrs. Kleinfelter had left lying on the coffee table. She held these gingerly between her fingertips and walked out of the living room and into the kitchen.

  Jory could hear Grace opening and shutting the kitchen cupboards and putting dishes in the sink.

  “Well.” Mrs. Kleinfelter shifted her gaze from Jory to Grip. “I think I’d better be getting on home.” She moved quickly toward the front door.

  Jory followed Mrs. Kleinfelter and leaned against the door frame. “I never got to say thank you for yesterday. I meant to, but I forgot.”

  “No need for that.” Mrs. Kleinfelter stepped out onto the porch and down the steps. She waved her hand without turning around and then was swallowed up by the darkness of the unlit space that separated their two houses. Jory could see her bone-colored hair moving just faintly through the aut
umn night.

  “I guess that’s my cue.” Grip stood behind Jory. “Hey—seriously. I’m really sorry if I caused any trouble.” He made a mock grimace that turned into a yawn, and then linked his hands and stretched his arms above his head. “Wanna walk me out to my truck?”

  Jory peeked back toward the kitchen. “Okay,” she said.

  The night grass was wet and Jory stopped and took her moccasins off, carefully setting them back on the porch. They walked through the grass and down the dirt driveway and stopped next to the ice cream truck. Grip’s shirtfront glowed a dull green in the bit of light shed by a slivered moon. “That’s a waxing crescent,” said Jory.

  “A what?” Grip reached into the truck’s interior, rummaged around for a moment, and then surreptitiously pulled out a can of Old Milwaukee. He quickly popped the top and took a long swig. “Your sister doesn’t have binoculars, does she?” He grinned and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “What were you saying?”

  Jory shrugged. “Nothing. Just dumb stuff my dad taught me.”

  “Like what?” He took another long drink.

  “Oh, you know, just that if the left side of the moon is dark, then the light part is growing bigger, so that’s waxing, and if the right side of the moon is dark, then the light part is shrinking, and that’s waning.”

  “Hm,” said Grip. He gazed up at the moon. “So wait—if I can see the right side of the moon, like now, it means the moon’s gonna get bigger, and if I can see the left side, it’s getting smaller. Right?”

  “Right.” Jory smiled.

  “I never thought about this before, but I guess we always only see that one side of the moon, don’t we? The side with the sad old guy’s face.”

  “We don’t really even know what the other side looks like, the dark side. It’s there, but we don’t ever see it.”

  “Just like some people.” Grip waggled his eyebrows and then lowered the pitch of his voice. “With their dark sides all safely hidden away.”

  Jory stared into his browny-gold eyes trying to judge the level of his seriousness. With Grip it was often hard to tell when he was joking and when he wasn’t.

  “You’ll have to teach me some more of this stuff. This astronomy stuff,” he said. “The sun and the moon and the stars.”

  “And the planets,” said Jory. “And the constellations and the galaxies and solar flares and white dwarves and red giants and black holes.”

  “Wow,” said Grip. “Sounds like it’s getting pretty crowded up there.” He climbed up onto the truck’s driver’s seat, and then leaned down and planted a kiss on the top of Jory’s head. On her hair, where her middle part was. “See you later, stargazer.”

  As soon as he put the truck in reverse, she peeked up and watched the truck’s taillights glowing small and smaller all the way down the road. Then she turned back to the diamond-windowed house and went inside to help her sister put the dishes away.

  Chapter Ten

  It was a beautiful Sunday morning in October, and it was her fourteenth birthday. Jory lay in Henry Kleinfelter’s old metal-framed bed beneath the wedding quilt and inspected the rays of sunlight filling her bedroom. It was going to be warm and sunny. And she was going to be fourteen! Jory stretched her toes out beneath the quilt luxuriously. She had been born at noon exactly. Her mother had told her this story many times, how Dr. Henry had had to be called out of church, and how everyone knew exactly where he was going since Jory’s mother was the only pregnant lady in their church at that particular time, and how Pastor Ron had said, right in the middle of his sermon, “Well, I guess there’ll be another Quanbeck joining us for church next Sunday,” and how everyone in the congregation had smiled and laughed and then how the moment the service was over they had all (or nearly all) trooped over to the Good Samaritan Hospital, which was right across the block, and peered in at Jory in her incubator bed or whatever it was that the nurses put the newborns in. And then her father was there and he had dragged some of his graduate students over to see Jory too because he was so proud and he really didn’t want any sons anyway—they were nothing but trouble—but girls, well, girls were lovely and sweet.

  The phone rang downstairs, which meant her father was calling, since no one else knew (or was allowed to know) their number. Although Jory was thinking of giving it to Grip, since he’d already met Grace now and there was no more real harm to be done.

  Already in the birthday dress she’d chosen—sleeveless lavender—Jory ran down the stairs and into the kitchen. Grace was sitting at the table with her Bible and book of commentary open in front of her. Jory gazed around the kitchen, looking expectantly at the oven, at the countertops. The kitchen looked the way it always did—slightly old and messy and yellowish. “Hey,” said Jory.

  “Hey,” said Grace, not looking up. She underlined something in her book of commentary.

  Jory sat down at the table across from Grace. She watched as Grace wrote a sentence down on a small sheet of paper. “What are you doing?”

  “My daily devotions.” Grace turned a page in the Bible.

  “Nothing else?”

  Grace put her pen down and turned toward Jory. “I’m reading about the Parable of the Ten Virgins. Do you remember how it goes?”

  “Sure,” said Jory. “I think so.”

  Grace looked down at her Bible. “Matthew 25,” she said. She cleared her throat and began reading. “The kingdom of heaven shall be likened to ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom. Now five of them were wise, and five of them were foolish. Those who were foolish took their lamps and took no oil with them, but the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps. But while the bridegroom was delayed, they all slumbered and slept.” Grace turned the page and began reading again. “And at midnight a cry was heard: ‘Behold, the bridegroom is coming; go out to meet him!’ Then all those virgins arose and trimmed their lamps. And the foolish said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.’ But the wise answered, saying, ‘No, lest there should not be enough for us and you; but go rather to those who sell, and buy for yourselves.’ And while they went to buy, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him to the wedding; and the door was shut. Afterward the other virgins came also, saying, ‘Lord, Lord, open to us!’ But he answered and said, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, I do not know you.’ Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour in which the Son of Man is coming.”

  Grace put the Bible down on the table. “Now, what do you think that means?”

  “Well.” Jory examined her own thumbnail. “I guess it means that you should always be doing whatever it is that you’re supposed to be doing because you never know when you might be caught not doing it.”

  Grace sighed. “Seriously, Jory, what does God want us to be doing?”

  “Not sharing our oil with foolish virgins?” Jory glanced up at Grace. “I know all about what it means. I went to Sunday School and Junior Church and Bible School, too, you know.”

  “Okay, then you understand that God wants us to be ever vigilant—to be ever ready for the world that is to come after this one. Which means sometimes not doing the fun, easy thing that everyone else is doing, and instead doing the difficult, self-sacrificing thing that would make Jesus happy. That would make Jesus proud to say that he knows us.”

  Jory put her hands in her lap. “Are we talking about dancing now?”

  Grace shut the Bible and stacked it carefully on top of her commentary. “This passage concerns all kinds of behavior,” she said. “Not just dancing.”

  “Today’s my birthday.” Jory trained her eyes on Grace.

  Grace picked up her books and stood up. “That’s right,” she said, “which makes it the perfect time to think about how you’d like to live the rest of your life. How you’d like to develop spiritually as a young Christian woman.”

 
Jory cocked her head. “Did you make me a cake?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  Jory hopped up. “Where is it? I didn’t smell it baking.”

  “Mrs. Kleinfelter has it at her house. She helped me make it yesterday. It’s supposed to be a surprise, so when she brings it over, look surprised, all right?”

  “Is it chocolate with white frosting?”

  Grace smiled.

  “Ha!” Jory did a tiny dance on the kitchen floor. “Do I get any presents?”

  “Yes, but you have to wait until Mom and Dad get here.”

  “Is Frances coming?”

  “Of course. What’s she going to do—stay home by herself?”

  “This is going to be weird,” said Jory. She walked into the living room and sat down on the couch.

  Grace followed her into the room. “It’ll be okay,” Grace said, but she didn’t look entirely convinced.

  There was a faint knocking on the front door. “That has to be Hilda,” said Grace.

  Jory hardly had time to register her surprise at this sudden familiarity since Mrs. Kleinfelter was already opening the door and stepping inside. “Many happy returns,” Mrs. Kleinfelter said. She was holding a white-frosted layer cake in one hand and a grocery sack in the other. She seemed slightly frazzled and her large men’s cardigan was buttoned wrong.

  “A cake?” Jory clasped her hands together. “For me?”

  Mrs. Kleinfelter frowned. “I just pray it’s any good. I haven’t baked a cake in years. Your sister did most of it.” She handed the cake to Grace and the grocery sack to Jory. “That’s your birthday present,” she said. “I hope you’re not allergic.”