James carried my books to locker number 113. Reading the numbers, he opened the locker and we found a pen, a can of chocolate breakfast, and a straw wrapped in paper. I loaded the small space with sixteen of my twenty books, keeping Romeo and Juliet, Jane Eyre, a book of poetry, and Wuthering Heights.
“Why don’t you bring home library books?” I asked James.
“Mitch would think I was crazy,” he said. “Unless I put fake covers on them.”
“Do you think I need to hide these?” I asked him, concerned.
“Why should you have to hide literature?” James wanted to know.
“You’d have to see my house.”
The bell rang too soon. We agreed to meet at the parking lot at the end of school.
I sat through the rest of my classes, paying no heed to the math lessons or the film on World War II. I wanted to sit in Mr. Brown’s classroom with James, but I couldn’t. After school I waited for him at the edge of the parking lot, growing more and more worried every second that he did not appear.
“Hey,” a girl’s voice called. I turned to find a strong-looking young woman with beads in her hair glaring at me. “You going with Billy Blake?”
I was too startled to answer.
“I don’t know you from nobody,” she said. “But you should stay away from that one.”
“Why?” was all I could think to say.
“He’s a junkie and his friends are damn scary pricks, that’s why.”
“Oh.” I just watched her as she tossed her beaded braids over her shoulder and turned to leave.
My heart was pounding. When I saw James approaching, it took all my willpower to keep from running to him.
“English class is not the same without you,” he told me. I couldn’t speak and my eyes teared. “If I asked you on a date, would you go out with me?” he asked.
I laughed. “I’ve already been to the theater with you.”
He almost kissed me, but two teachers walked past us.
“Who are Billy’s friends?” I asked. “A girl warned me about them.”
“I suppose they’ve disowned me,” said James. “They got angry when I wouldn’t...” he chose the words carefully, “when I wouldn’t go on adventures with them anymore.”
Suddenly I felt cold all through. There was a man across the street. The sorrow roiled off him in a sickening wave, even at this distance. He pushed a cart of grocery bags, his eyes fixed on nothing ahead, his mouth moving as if he were singing to himself. I watched him shuffle toward the corner although he had no feet. His legs tapered at the knees to a wisp that trailed like pipe smoke from his back. Looking at him made my chest ache. I felt James’s hand warm on my back.
“It’s all right,” he whispered. “That’s one of them.”
“Can he see us?” I asked, my skin prickling.
“No,” he said. “He doesn’t know he’s dead.” He slid his hand to my waist.
“Can we help him?”
“No.”
Suddenly the man’s ghost vanished as if a curtain had been pulled between us. But this didn’t scare me as much as the next thing I saw. A serpentine dread moved through my stomach as a maroon car rolled into view.
“There’s her mother,” I said. His hand dropped from my side. “I don’t want to go with her. I only want to be with you.”
“Just think of all the amusing things that might happen tonight that you can tell me about tomorrow,” he said.
“What if I need to talk to you?” I whispered as the car neared our place on the sidewalk.
“Five five five, twelve twenty-five,” James whispered. “It’s like Christmas. Twelve twenty-five.”
I could see Cathy’s face now. She was smiling until she saw me glancing at James. She stopped the car, and the doors unlocked with a mechanical sound. I turned my back on her as I put my book bag over my shoulder. “I want to kiss you,” I whispered.
“I want to do more than that,” James whispered back.
Feeling like a prisoner, I faced the car and opened the door, managing to smile at the woman behind the wheel.
“Hello,” I said, sitting down. I slammed the door and gave James one last look. He gave a low wave of his hand. Cathy stiffened.
“Who was that?” she asked, the tension in her voice hardly masked.
“Just a boy,” I said. “He’s nice.”
“Remember what I told you about boys flirting with you,” she said.
“Don’t worry,” I told her. “He’s a gentleman.”
“Is he?” She locked the doors with a sinister snap.
Ten
WHEN WE ARRIVED, I crept to Jenny’s bathroom and bathed as before but with a cup from the sink to pour over my head. I didn’t want to lose James’s scent but was afraid that someone else would notice it on my skin, deep in my hair. When I’d put on Jenny’s robe and was picking up the dirty clothes, I found a bloodstain on the panties. I turned on the water in the sink and started scrubbing the cloth, using a bar of soap shaped like a rose from the dish on the counter.
“Honey?” Cathy opened the door immediately after one soft knock. I jumped, sorry I hadn’t locked it. She looked dumbfounded. “Did you take a shower?”
“No.” I stopped scrubbing the panties and closed them into my fist. “A bath.”
“Are you feeling all right?” She looked at my hands. “What are you doing?”
“I was just washing a couple things by hand.” I smiled at her, but 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 library 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 CORRESPONDENCE and was covered in a pink floral paper. This was a mother-daughter ritual, though I couldn’t tell whether it was performed 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 retain 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, like Christmas. My heart was racing as it rang.
&nb
sp; “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. Then 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 carefully 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 be 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.
I knew that denying Jenny food was meant as a punishment, but to me it was a relief. I was too anxious to eat. For the rest of the meal, I stayed quiet, passing the bread when asked, ever silent, drinking my water as slowly as a flower might. I had to think. How was I to escape?
When Cathy and Dan had finished, I rose and carefully began to clear the plates from the table. Dan carried two of the serving platters but then left the kitchen without a word. Cathy busied herself wrapping food with nervous fumblings and loud clatters. When the table was cleared, I lingered, at a loss.
“Go to your room,” said Cathy. “You’re on fasting and Bible.”
It seemed this was my release, and I took it. I navigated the hall as quietly as if I were Light again and listened at the study door, which stood ajar. The lamp was on inside and I could hear the ominous rumble of Dan speaking on the telephone.
Back in my room, I felt so restless I didn’t know what to do with myself. I started pacing, back and forth, watching my own shadow warp and dance on the carpet. I tried to sit on the bed and read poetry, but I couldn’t be still. I stood in front of the dressing table and brushed my hair over and over again, with each stroke thinking, Only twelve hours more. Finally I sat at the desk and opened the drawer. There was the usual assortment of paper clips, pens, and rubber bands, all neatly separated by plastic dividers. In one compartment sat a plastic button printed with the letters “WWJD?” I had seen this arrangement of initials before but couldn’t remember the significance.
There was also a folder curiously labeled PROGRESS. I opened it to find Jenny’s report cards clipped together in groups. The first stack had the report card for fall semester of the previous year on top. She had taken seven classes, received seven As. The next semester, spring, was the same, every grade an A. The third card down was for summer school and, of the three classes listed, two were A minus and one was a B. The date of that report card was July 6. That date flared in my memory, but I couldn’t place it. I closed the folder and found myself a tablet of writing paper and a pen.
With these I began to write James a love letter, though I knew
I wouldn’t need to. I could tell him everything I wanted to tell him the next morning. But I sat at the small desk and wrote: “Dear sir: twelve hours is as twelve years to me. I imagine you in your home, smiling, thinking of me. That I am your heart’s secret fills me with song. I wish I could sing of you here in my cage. You are my heart’s hidden poem. I reread you, memorize you, every moment we’re apart.” Silly, girlish lines, but they wrapped around my anxious thoughts and calmed me.
The sharp knock made my pen scratch a scar of ink on the bottom of the page. I hid the paper in the top drawer of the desk as Dan opened the door. He looked from me to the Bible that lay closed on the dressing table. I folded my hands as if praying.
“When your heart is clear, go to bed.”
“All right.” The slam of the door made the picture of Jesus jump on the wall.
I undressed and put on pajamas, as I had the night before. When I returned from the bathroom, Cathy was already sitting on my bed with her magazine in her lap.
“Are you right with God?” she asked, her expression icy.
No, I thought, but he’s already punishing me. Aloud I answered, “Yes.” I couldn’t face discovering the next step if I were to tell her no.
“You need to watch your tongue, young lady. I don’t want another dinner like that one.”
“Neither do I.” I glanced at her magazine. “I thought I’d read you something tonight,” I said. I got under the covers and took the library book from the bedside table.
Cathy frowned.
“It’s about heaven,” I reassured her.
Why do they shut me out of heaven?
Did I sing too loud?
But I can say a little minor
Timid as a bird.
Wouldn’t the angels try me
Just once more,
Just see if I troubled them
But don’t shut the door.
I glanced up, but she hadn’t moved. As I read on, she watched the floor, her lips pressed together as if she tasted something sour. I didn’t need to look at the page, as this was one of Mr. Brown’s favorites.
Oh, if I were the gentleman
A Certain Slant of Light Page 13