The Girl Who Slept with God: A Novel (10 page)

“Grace,” their father said.

“You went to Mexico to spy on me.” Grace’s mouth grew tight. “You went to see what I had been up to, but what you didn’t realize is that you wouldn’t find anything because what you were looking for is from man, and what you see in front of you is from God.” For a moment Grace seemed about to say something more. Instead, she closed her mouth, pushed her chair back, stood up, and walked out of the room.

Their mother had both of her hands over her eyes as if to blind herself
to the situation. She shook her head back and forth. “No,” she said. “No, no,
no
. This isn’t happening.”

“Now let’s stay calm.” Their father ran his hand through his hair. “Let’s just stay calm and
think
for a minute.”

Their mother made a horrible, animal-like sound deep in her chest and sank back down in her chair. She seemed to slowly deflate and grow small, her shoulders rounding and hunching forward until her head was hanging just above her plate of uneaten food. She began to sob in an unguarded way that Jory had never heard before.

Their father’s eyes shifted around the table. His glance fell on Jory. “You two go outside and play. Now.”

“Mom,”
said Jory.

Her father gave her a look. “I mean it, Jory. Just do what I tell you to.”

Jory got up from the table. “For Pete’s sake,” she said.
“For Pete’s sake.”
Even now, it was the worst thing she was allowed to say.

Outside, it was almost dark. The days were already starting to get shorter. Jory and Frances sat on the curb and gazed out into the street. “But how can Grace have a baby?” Frances whispered, squinting up at Jory. “She’s not married.”

“Just be quiet, Frances.” Jory picked up a bottle cap and twisted it back and forth between her fingers. The bottle cap read
IT HASTA BE SHASTA
. Jory tried to spin the bottle cap off her fingers the way she had seen the boys at school do. It skidded off her finger and fell into the gutter.

“Where will it live?”

“With us, I guess.” This was a new thought to Jory. An actual baby that took up space and needed things. She had lain in her bed at night and thought about how the baby had gotten there—she had thought about that quite a bit—but she had never thought about what would happen after.

“I want it to sleep with me.” Frances turned and put her hand on Jory’s thigh. “Can it?”

“Don’t be stupid,” said Jory. Across the street, a light winked on above the porch at Mr. Garmendia’s house. Soon he would come out and take his nightly stroll around the neighborhood, his three cats trailing single
file behind him. “Maybe she’ll give it up for adoption.” As soon as she said this thought, Jory realized it was a possibility.

“No,” said Frances mildly. “We’ll keep it.”

Mr. Garmendia opened his front door and made the soft clucking sound he used to call his cats. Two of them scurried out from under the bridal wreath bush. The third sauntered slowly up from behind the garage.

“An angel’s baby,” Jory said. She ran her bare feet across the thin layer of dirt in the gutter. It was soft and slightly warm even though the sun had already gone down.

“Look,” said Frances, pointing up. “It’s the first star.”

“I know,” said Jory. “I saw it.”

“Make a wish.”

“No.” Jory squinched the dirt between her toes. “You make one.”

Frances gazed upward and began,
“Star bright, star light, first star I see tonight, I wish I may, I wish I might, have this wish I wish tonight.”
Frances closed her eyes and moved her lips silently. “There,” she said, opening her eyes.

“What’d you wish?” Jory took a twig and made a large swirling letter
G
in the dirt.

“I can’t tell you or it won’t come true.”

Jory nodded.

“But I’ll give you a clue—it’s about Grace,” Frances leaned closer and whispered. “It’s about the color of the baby’s hair.”

Jory sat on the curb long after Frances had fallen asleep in the grass. No one seemed to remember that they were even out here. Her father had been running around the backyard for quite some time now. Inside the house it was dark. She watched the moths as they fluttered around the cone of light that swirled below the corner streetlamp. The moths flitted up to the bulb as near as they dared and then dashed or fell away, scorched or filled with incandescent joy, Jory couldn’t tell which. A lawn mower droned on somewhere down the block. Who would be mowing their lawn in the dark? Someone was riding a bicycle down the street toward her; she could see its faint outlines and hear tiny pieces of gravel pinging out from under the bike tires as it came on. The bicycle moved closer and then
stopped right at her feet. She looked up and, even in the darkness, she knew him.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey,” she said, her face filling warm with blood.

He got off the bike and leaned it against their largest evergreen. “Nice night,” he said. He sat down on the curb next to her. She could smell the odor that he gave off: burned sugar and cigarette smoke and something sharp, like pepper. “The forecast said something about rain, but I don’t think so.” He rubbed at his eyes with his knuckles and then stretched his legs out in front of him. “What’s new?” he said.

“My sister’s having a baby,” she said.

He tilted his head. “I kind of thought that was old news.”

“It’s God’s baby.”

“Wow,” he said. “That
is
new.” Grip whistled softly through his teeth. “What do your parents have to say about that?”

“They’re having a nervous breakdown.”

“I suppose so, I suppose so.” He pulled a crumpled cigarette out of his shirt pocket and began bending it back and forth. “You know, my mother used to think she could communicate with angels. Or hear them or something.”

Jory wondered what had happened to his mother, and then realized she wasn’t sure she wanted to know. She watched as pieces of tobacco dropped onto Grip’s pant leg. “Where’s your ice cream truck?”

“Home. I think the clutch is going out, but I’m too lazy to do anything about it. Hey,” he said suddenly, “want to go for a ride?” He made pedaling motions with his hands. “Around and around?” He tilted his head at her. “C’mon,” he said, “it’s a beautiful night.”

Jory sat sideways on the front of the bike’s metal crossbar while he pedaled and steered and leaned around her shoulder looking for cars. They rode all the way down Ninth Avenue, veering around parked cars and cats and potholes. They rode faster, whizzing past people in bathrobes watering their lawns or putting out their garbage cans. The night air blew her hair back behind her and he kept having to spit wayward strands of it out of his mouth. Jory felt like laughing and screaming at the same time. Did you ever see
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
? he yelled
into her ear. Is it a movie? she asked. Yep, he said. Then I didn’t, she said. That’s too bad, he said. You’re Katharine Ross and I’m Paul Newman, stealing Robert Redford’s girlfriend away for a little two-wheel rendezvous. He pedaled furiously up the long incline of Deer Flat Hill, standing up on the pedals and leaning forward and making the bike wobble. She screamed and clutched his arm and then they reached the top, and then just as suddenly they were flying downhill. Jory was all feeling. The rush of the wind past her ears and the black road forever unzipping beneath the bicycle’s wheel left almost no room for thought. If she died like this, she would just have to die. We have to slow down now, he yelled, but not too quick or we’ll wreck. He turned the handlebars and they began to loop crazily from one side of the road to the other. Now it felt more like swimming than flying. The bottom of the hill was coming up, she knew. There was a stop sign at the very bottom. We’ll have to run it, he said. Hang on. But she already was. There was nothing more to hang on to. They flew past the stop sign and through the cross street. He had just started to brake when they hit the patch of gravel. She knew then that they were in trouble, but there was nothing to be done. The bike tilted and skidded sideways in a way that no bike should, the back tire sliding clear around toward the front. Jory flew off the bike, sliding flat and hard against the graveled pavement, her palms and hip burning like fire.

She could hear Grip swearing now in the dark, and the sound of a bicycle tire spinning all on its own in the air. “Where are you?” he said.
“Shit.”

She stood up from the ground and tried to examine her hands, but it was too dark and she couldn’t tell what was blood and what was just shadow. “I’m here,” she said.

He helped her up and dusted off her shorts. He examined her hands and hip and made a sharp whistling sound through his teeth. The bike too looked ruined, its front wheel now oddly bent and misshapen. They left the bike where it was and started walking. After a half mile or so, he saw her limping, and he had her jump up onto his back so he could carry her piggyback-style. “Hey,” he said as they bumped along with her feet banging clumsily into his thighs. “I’m sorry. I’m a complete idiot and a jerk. If you hate me for the rest of your life, I’ll understand.”

“So much for Paul Newman,” she said, and kicked her heels against his legs a little.

He turned his face toward hers with a look of surprise and then kissed her quickly on the nose. “You are all right,” he said.
“All right.”

She closed her eyes and rested her chin on his shoulder and smiled the rest of the way home.

Her father was sitting on the front step. The porch light was on and he had his pocketknife out and was peeling the bark off a willow branch. She had seen him a block away and had made Grip stop and let her walk on by herself. “Hi, Dad,” she said, holding her hands casually behind her.

“Where’ve you been?” He said this without raising his head from the careful notches he was cutting.

“Out,” she said. She sat down gingerly next to him. “Just taking a walk.”

“Taking a walk at ten thirty at night—is this the type of thing you’ve gotten used to doing while I was away?” He cleaned the last bit of bark from the very end of the branch, then folded the blade back into the knife handle. “Is this your typical nighttime activity?”

“No,” she said.

“Good,” he said. He stood up and stretched. “Let’s see that it stays that way. We’ve got enough to worry about already.” He held the screen door open for her. “Right?”

“Right,” she said.

As she passed by him through the open door, he put his hand on her shoulder. “I’m counting on you, Jory.” He gave her shoulder a squeeze and then stood unmoving on the porch step.

“Aren’t you coming in?”

“No,” he said. “I think I’m going to stay up and watch the sky for a bit. Vega is especially bright tonight.”

She latched the screen door and stared at him from behind the mesh. “What does that mean?”

He sat down on the top step. “Nothing,” he said, and pulled his knife out of his pocket. “It just means that August is through. Summer is over. It will be a fall sky from now on.”

Jory watched him wipe both sides of the knife blade on his pant leg. “Good night, Dad,” she said.

“Good night.” Her father picked up the willow branch again and turned it over in his hands. “By the way,” he said, his back turned toward her, “don’t leave your sister sleeping in the front yard like that ever again.” He cut a small notch in the base of the branch. “She’s just little. You have to watch out for her.”