The Girl Who Slept with God: A Novel (20 page)

“Well, yes,” Mrs. Kleinfelter said. “I suppose so.”

Jory suddenly realized that she had just done the thing she wasn’t supposed to do. She had now told Mrs. Kleinfelter everything about their family, and before that, she had told Grip. Who wasn’t she going to tell?

Mrs. Kleinfelter made a sad, disapproving noise with her tongue.

Jory felt sickly, sharply guilty. And traitorous. “I guess it’s not so bad,” she said. “I mean, my dad just wants what’s best for us.” She pulled and straightened the Kleenex into several pieces. “He’s just trying to do what he thinks is best for everyone. For all of us.”

“Yes.” Mrs. Kleinfelter nodded slightly. “That’s a hard thing to know sometimes—what’s best, I mean.”

“Yeah,” said Jory softly. It came out more like a sigh than an actual word.

“I really hardly know what to say. I can’t think of a single phrase that seems appropriate here.” She smiled briefly and then frowned again. “Maybe, ‘This too shall pass.’” Mrs. Kleinfelter turned and put her arm across the seat of the car, then patted Jory on the shoulder, three short pats, so light that Jory could barely feel them.

“Okay. Well, then.” Mrs. Kleinfelter sat back up and turned the truck’s engine on. “I guess if we don’t need anything from any drugstores, we should just be heading on home.” She put the truck in first gear. “How does that sound to you?”

Jory nodded.

Jory watched the houses and driveways and fences go by. She felt horrible in a way that wasn’t entirely bad. Her eyes hurt and her nose was plugged, but she felt a certain amount of relief, as if she had been purged of a dreadful thing that had been housed inside her body. It was like throwing up—the worst part was beforehand and the best part was afterward, although no part of it was very good.

“I don’t understand.” Grace was standing at the front door talking to Mrs. Kleinfelter in a low voice. “Why didn’t Jory buy anything?”

Jory could hear them talking even though she was in the kitchen, mainly because she was holding her breath and listening as hard as she could.

“Well,” Mrs. Kleinfelter said, “Jory doesn’t seem to need anything after all.”

There was a small space during which no one said anything.

“I don’t understand,” Grace said again. Jory could picture the expression on Grace’s face as clearly as if she were in the living room with her.

“You should talk to Jory,” Mrs. Kleinfelter said. “And, Grace, I would be as kind as possible about it if I were you.”

From behind the kitchen door, Jory blushed.

“Well, I certainly will.” Grace sounded somewhat indignant at the
idea of her not being kind, and Jory’s face continued to burn. There was a moment of silence. “Well,” said Grace, “thank you for doing this favor for us.”

Mrs. Kleinfelter gave some sort of muffled response and Jory heard the front door shut. She scampered over to the refrigerator, pulled open its door, and tried to look interested in its contents.

Grace sat down at the kitchen table. “I’m sure you heard all that.”

Jory stood holding a box of raisins.

“So?” said Grace, her eyebrows raised.

“I don’t think raisins need to be refrigerated,” Jory said.

Grace said nothing.

“I’m just not having my period after all.” Jory said this into the refrigerator. She put a jar of mayonnaise farther back on the metal shelf and picked up and examined a can of sliced peaches. “I thought I was, but I guess I wasn’t.”

Grace remained silent.

“That happens sometimes, doesn’t it?” Jory turned and watched Grace tracing her fingernail along a crack in the table’s linoleum.

“Jory,” Grace said. “Lying is a sin.”

Jory held the can of peaches tight to her chest.

Grace sighed.
“A false witness shall not be unpunished, and he that speaketh lies shall perish.”

Jory stared at her sister. “So I’m going to die because I said I was having my period? What about you?” Her voice rose uncontrollably. “What about
your
lying?” With a solid
thunk
, Jory put the can of peaches down on the kitchen counter and walked across the room and then out the back door. The screen door gave an awful screech and then slapped firmly shut behind her. Jory walked through the backyard, past the clothesline and the desiccated tiger lilies and the propane tank. She bent down and scooted under the curved wooden arch of the grape arbor and crawled along until she was completely enclosed by its leafy greenness. The smell in here was intoxicating: rich and sourly purple, just like the grapes that were almost ready to be picked. Jory squatted on the moist ground and looked at the tendriled vines surrounding her. A curly bug inched its way across the thickness of a stem. Underneath the arbor, it was completely
quiet and shaded—a whole other world that existed and moved slowly and incrementally on while no one was noticing or caring. If only she could stay right here. In sixth grade she and most of the rest of the class had passed around a semi-forbidden book about a boy who got lost in the woods for a month after summer camp. The cover of the book showed two widened eyes peering out of a dense web of green branches. Jory had read the book at least twice, its scariness completely countermanded by another feeling—a sweetly gut-twisting feeling almost as lush and illicit as the one produced by the magazine pictures she had found in the detective’s underwear drawer. To be completely alone and on your own in the forest, to do exactly as you pleased, to swim and sun with no clothes on, to know your parents were sick with grief and worry . . . Each of her classmates had read the book in turn, handing it off wordlessly to the next reader in line. Jory scraped a clump of mud off her shoe. She could hear the back door open and shut, the screen door’s spring stretching and then pulling tight again. She held perfectly still. She could hear Grace moving slowly through the grass. She waited. Grace, too, seemed to be waiting. Jory had a sudden memory of the time that she and Grace had decided to run away from home. Their mother had caught Grace taking photographs of Jory kissing their next-door neighbor boy, Kenny, with her new camera. Grace had just gotten the camera for her tenth birthday and wanted to practice taking photos and thought Jory and Kenny made likely subjects. The three of them had gone out behind the garbage cans where they wouldn’t be disturbed and then Grace had had them pose: holding hands, smiling at each other, and finally kissing. Their mother had come out then with a bag of trash and had just lifted a metal lid off one of the trash bins when she spied the three of them crouched and motionless between the cans and the backyard fence. Jory could still remember the look on her mother’s face and the round, shieldlike lid she held aloft in one hand. Kenny had been sent home and Jory and Grace to their separate bedrooms. Later, their father came home from work and gave them each a lecture on the proper use of photography and then he had confiscated the roll of film. That night Grace had crept into Jory’s room with her blue suitcase. Jory had put her own pajamas and her
Wizard of Oz
book inside and they walked past their parents, who were reading in the living
room, and out through the kitchen and through the back door. They had gotten all the way to the middle of the alley when Grace decided the suitcase was too heavy and they sat down in the dirt. They decided they would wait until the next evening to run away.

Beneath the grape arbor, Jory held her breath and listened to her sister now softly calling her name. After a minute or two, Jory stood up and parted the branches and came out into the yard. Grace looked at her sister standing there in the dusky light and without saying anything the two of them walked back inside the house, letting the door fall shut behind them.

A
fter fifth period, Jory walked her bag of clothing over to the gym. She had no idea where exactly they were supposed to meet—in the locker room? By the bleachers? The printed class schedule just read,
GYM
. Jory opened the heavy metal door and stepped inside. The inside of the gymnasium was large and dim and smelled like floor varnish and stale popcorn and armpits. Boys in shorts and tennis shoes ran and dribbled basketballs up and down the hardwood floor, the rubber soles of their shoes making agonized squeaks and squawks as they pivoted and leaped and ran. The soaring height of the gym’s ceiling made each sound echo as hollowly as if the gym were gigantic, the size of some immense frightening palace where matters of national importance were decided. The somewhat sinister-edged metal bleachers had been pulled out only on the left side of the gym, and at the far end, behind one of the backboards and between the two huge scoreboards, was a stage of sorts covered by heavy maroon curtains. An outline of an enormous fanged and snarling feline had been painted in gold across the middle of the curtain.
Skullcat Country!
was printed in flowing gold script beneath the cat’s head. Jory shivered and tightened her grip on her bag of clothes. She was going to do this. She
was
.

Jory saw a girl sitting on the first row of bleachers and walked toward her as casually as she could. “Hey. Hi,” she said, then cleared her throat. “Do you know where freshman PE meets?”

“Boys or girls?” said the black-haired girl who Jory suddenly recognized as Laird’s friend from lunchtime.

“Girls,” Jory said before she could think.

“You sure?” The dark-haired girl, the principal’s daughter, rolled her black eyes and tried to stifle her laughter.

Jory walked past the dark-haired girl, her face burning. She passed a drinking fountain and walked down a short flight of cement stairs as an unforgettable smell of damp towels and wet windowless concrete and floral-scented aerosol deodorant rose up to greet her. This was the girls’ locker room. Inside it, girls walked back and forth between the small mesh cages that now held their school clothes and towels and Wella Balsam and Lemon Up shampoo. Some girls sat on wooden benches talking and laughing as they pulled on their T-shirts and bent to tie their tennis shoes. Jory sat down in an empty space on the long bench and began taking off Grace’s boots. She felt sick.

A very tall girl sitting next to her held her bare feet out in front of her. “Lookit. My toes are practically webbed,” the girl said to her friend, who was standing in front of Jory in a bright red bra and panties.

“Shut up,” the friend said. “At least they don’t look like old peanuts, like mine.”

The tall girl squawked with laughter. “Your toes look like an old
penis
?”

Jory looked at the red-bra girl, who was now pulling on a pair of cutoff jean shorts. The girl had an amazing line of dark hair that began at her navel and ran downward. Jory scootched out of her pants and quickly replaced them with the pair of gray sweatpants from the Albertsons bag.

“You’re supposed to wear shorts,” the tall girl said, looking at Jory.

“Oh,” said Jory, blushing again. “I didn’t know.”

“It probably doesn’t matter,” said the girl with the red bra. “Miss Smith won’t give a shit as long as you show up and run around and stuff.”

“What kind of thing are we going to be doing today?” Jory asked, nervously pulling off her sweater and pulling on her T-shirt in two swift motions.

“I don’t know,” said the red-bra girl. “Something stupid.”

“Yeah,” said the tall girl. “Something stupid with balls.”

“Sounds like Stuart,” said a third girl, who stood up on the other side of Jory.

“You liar,” said the tall girl. “You think he looks just like Tom Jones.”

“What’s new, pussycat? Whoa-o-oh-oh,”
sang the red-bra girl into her fist.

“Eat shit, Luanne,” said the third girl, who flipped her long brown hair
up into a ponytail. She examined the results in the mirror that ran directly above the length of the bench.

“Eat it yourself,” said the tall girl. “I know you went to the submarine races with him.”

“You made out with Stuart Stossel?” The girl in the red bra had a look of horror on her face.

The girl with the ponytail threw her hairbrush at the tall girl. It hit her on the side of the head and bounced off onto the locker room floor. The locker room grew suddenly quiet, except for the tall girl, who was swearing, and one very thin girl, who leaned against the wall of mesh lockers, giggling.

“All right, ladies.” A highly freckled woman in a stiffly pleated navy skirt walked over to the bench and held up a clipboard. She turned a page and ran her index finger down it. “Who’s here? Everyone that needs to be? Great.” The woman smiled and revealed some smallish white teeth with a prominent gap between the front two. “All of you, upstairs,” she said. “Now.”

They were doing the Presidential Fitness Test. John F. Kennedy still wanted them all to be fit Americans, even though he was dead. There were five stations and five fitness skills to perform: sit-ups, push-ups, pull-ups, rope climbing, and running. Jory stood in line with the other girls who were waiting to do sit-ups. Miss Smith would blow her whistle and one girl would do as many sit-ups as she could in the time allowed, while another girl held her feet. Jory was paired with the red-bra girl. “Do you want to go first or what?” The red bra-girl stood with her hand on her hip.

“No,” said Jory. “You can go first.”

“Gee, thanks,” said the girl. She sighed and looked behind her, apparently hoping to see something more interesting than freshman girls doing exercises. “What’s your name?”

“Jory,” said Jory. “What’s yours?”

The girl sighed again. “It’s Rhea,” she said. “As in diarrhea, and yeah, I’ve already heard it. Come on. We’re up.”

Rhea lay down on the floor with her hands behind her head and Jory kneeled by her feet and held her ankles. “God,” said Rhea. “I fucking hate sit-ups.”

Miss Smith blew her whistle and Rhea lurched upward. Jory felt the tension of Rhea’s whole body underneath her hands. It was strangely intimate. Rhea was wearing a pair of boys’ red-and-white-striped sports socks and they slid up and down beneath Jory’s hands each time Rhea wrenched herself up and back. Jory moved her grip higher onto Rhea’s bare knees; she could feel the hairs on Rhea’s legs and the slip of lotion and sweat. “Twelve,” said Jory. “Keep going.” She felt a sudden surge of competitive thrill, as if the two of them were striving toward a goal. As if they needed to beat the others. “Sixteen. Seventeen. Eighteen.” Miss Smith’s whistle blew. Rhea lay flat on the floor.

“Switch,” yelled Miss Smith.

Jory scooted over onto the floor and Rhea kneeled below her, her forehead gleaming with sweat. “Don’t try too hard,” Rhea said.

“What?” said Jory, leaning up on her elbows and squinting at Rhea.

“If you do good now, you get a bad grade at the end.” She gripped Jory’s ankles. “It’s how much you improve that matters. Or some bullshit like that.” Rhea took a hand off Jory’s leg and wiped at her face.

The whistle blew.

“One,” said Rhea, loudly, even though Jory had not even lain down or begun.

Jory flopped onto the hard floor and then wrenched herself upward.

“Four,” said Rhea.

“Cut it out,” said Jory, and fell back onto the floor, her neck quivering with the effort.

“Thirteen,” said Rhea.

Jory’s heart was racing. She tightened her stomach muscles and pulled and heaved, over and over.

“Sixty-two,” said Rhea, taking her hand off to wave at a basketball boy who was walking past. “Hey, Lewis,” she said. “You going to Frankamp’s after school?”

Jory could feel something like laughter coming up in her stomach. She closed her eyes and pulled and heaved some more.

The whistle blew.

“Seven,” said Rhea as Miss Smith paused next to them with her clipboard.

“What?”
said Jory, sitting up as fast as she could. “I did way more than that!”

Miss Smith had already moved on to the next couple.

“You’ll thank me later,” said Rhea, who stood up and was swiping at the back of her shorts. “Did you see that guy, Lewis?”

Jory stood up. “I did at least eleven,” Jory said. She could hear the whininess in her own voice.

“He’s got a Band-Aid box full of dope. He keeps it in his locker.”

“So what?” said Jory. She couldn’t believe that Miss Smith now thought she could do only seven sit-ups.

“Well, geez, you’re loads of fun,” said Rhea. She pulled up her socks and headed toward the chin-up bar.

Jory trailed slowly behind her.

The principal’s daughter was the one holding the clipboard next to the pull-up bar.

“Who put you in charge?” Rhea eyed the black-haired girl.

“I forgot my PE clothes,” said Jude, smiling. “So Miss Smith asked me to help her out.”

“Oh, sure,” said Rhea. “Very convenient.”

Jory watched as a short, bone-thin girl from her Spanish class tried unsuccessfully to pull her chin up and over the bar. The girl hung straight down from the bar by her arms for several seconds and then dropped to the floor.

“You can’t pass PE if you don’t do the fitness test.” Rhea pushed back the cuticle on her thumbnail.

“Oooh, I’m really worried.” Jude wrote 0 next to the skinny girl’s name and then looked at Jory. “Your turn,” she said.

Jory felt her stomach tighten. It didn’t matter if she couldn’t do this. It was better, in fact, if she didn’t. That’s what Rhea had said. Jory walked over to the lowest of the three bars. She reached up with one hand and then the other. She pulled upward. It took forever for her eyes to come even with the metal bar.
“Jesus,”
said the dark-haired girl, “just forget it.” Jory pulled and pulled. Hard. “One,” someone said quietly. “Two,” the same voice said. “Three.” It was Rhea. “Four.” Jory’s arms were quivering. She could feel herself making a terrible, teeth-baring face. “Come on,”
said Rhea. “One more.” Jory felt as if her arm muscles might be actually tearing. She lifted her chin. It was almost up to the bar. Almost. She hung there, quivering, not moving up or down. “Drop,” someone said. It was the principal’s daughter. “Drop,” she said again. “You’re done.” Jory pulled a fraction of an inch more.
“Five,”
Rhea crowed. Jory dropped to the ground. She held her hands up toward her face. She couldn’t uncurl her fingers.

“That last one doesn’t count.”

“Don’t be such a dick, Jude.” Rhea tried to grab the clipboard.

Jude stepped away from Rhea. “What does it matter? Nobody wants to do well on the first try anyway.” She wrote the number 4 next to Jory’s name. “There,” she said.

Rhea shook her head.

“It’s okay,” said Jory. And for some reason, it was. Jory flexed her fingers. They felt marvelously sore.

Jory and Rhea ran laps around the gym. They puffed and pumped their arms back and forth, their tennis shoes slapping echoes against the gym walls. “We’re the only two left,” Rhea said as they curved past the bleachers. She grinned at Jory. At some point during the Presidential Fitness Test, they had decided to do well. They had now run everyone else off the floor.

“Why aren’t you in any of my classes?” Jory asked.

“I am. I’m in world history and speech, you idiot.”

“What?” Jory laughed. “I never saw you.”

“Yes, you did. You just didn’t notice. You were too busy being a stuck-up snob.” Rhea wiped the arm of her T-shirt across her face. “C’mon. Let’s stop now. I feel sick.”

“Just one more,” said Jory. She was filled with a kind of airy feeling, as if her stomach and head had been scooped hollow and pumped full of helium. She felt suddenly sure she could run forever.

“That’s fourteen laps, girls,” said Miss Smith as they ran past. “Let’s call it good.”

“Everyone else is taking showers,” said Rhea. “Come on, Jory.”

“Just one more,” said Jory. “One more time around.”

“You’re insane,” said Rhea, chugging next to her.

They ran around the bleachers on the other side, under the backboard and past the stage, and then Jory veered to the right, jogging past the drinking fountain. They pounded down the cement steps and into the locker room. “Fucking
A
,” said Rhea, flopping down on the wooden bench. “We’re track stars.”