Part 11 (2/2)
When he said that, he sounded like Del, and I felt bad. I thought of all the times he'd made me come and how happy he always was when it happened. No one loved me as much as he did, and I'd hardly thought of him the past week. All I'd been thinking of was June.
”Don't think I forgot my promise to you, either, Vangie,” Del said to me then.
”What promise?”
”That you'll trust me this time.”
We could have said I love you, and I love you, too, but we didn't. We just settled into sleep-Del on his back, me on my belly-the house dark around us, all my secrets safe.
23.
ALL Del ever told me about the overdose was how the last thing he remembered was falling down and feeling the rain in his face. He never told me where he got the quaaludes, who he'd done them with, or how it all felt. Still, I knew the OD scared Del. He was scared so bad he got religion.
I guess I shouldn't have found it so hard to believe. His family was born again, but it was the first time Del was ever interested. He started talking a lot about a higher power, and he began going to church with his family. Even though I didn't believe in any of it, I thought it would be helpful for Del and me to want the same things, so I went with him to church. I told myself that if anything positive happened, I would not rule it out.
I did that a whole month: sat with my heart as open as I could get it to feel, waiting for some feeling of G.o.d to come. I didn't know what I expected to happen-a flutter, a warmth, a happiness. Something. But of course I felt nothing.
”I don't know,” I said to Del one Sunday when we were driving to the church for another hour of talk about pain and suffering. ”It makes me feel worse to go on sitting there, waiting for something that never happens.”
”You just need to keep trying. G.o.d knows what's in your heart,” Del said. His voice sounded so calm and weird that I turned to look at him, but he just kept driving.
He used that same strange voice to testify in church the next Sunday. At a certain point in the service, anyone could stand up and speak about how G.o.d was touching their lives, and that was called testifying. Del stood up, thanked everyone for helping him pa.s.s through hard times, and spoke a little about how lost he'd been when he was drinking and drugging. He said that all the people who surrounded him had been lost, too, and that he was glad he found a way to free himself from them and find G.o.d.
I couldn't believe it. To me it seemed foolish to let people know that much about you, and dangerous to declare you were on a path so different from the one you'd walked for so long. But what really bothered me was that according to Del's definition I was ”lost” because I still hadn't found that born-again G.o.d.
On the way home I was silent, but Del did not seem to notice. He took my hand and said, ”Pretty soon you can start testifying, too. You've been through as much as me.”
”I don't think so,” I said.
”It's hard at first. Then it feels okay.”
”I don't think it's my style.”
”People will listen to you, Vangie. They're with you when you're talking.”
He didn't need to tell me that-I'd heard all the amens and seen all the nodding heads.
I said, ”I don't want anyone listening to me. I don't have anything to say.”
”You will. You'll find all kinds of things to say.”
It was like there was this one plan, and he was just waiting for it to be revealed to me, and for me to go along with it. Even though Del was taking it seriously, I knew I couldn't. Wearing my ironed skirts and pretending like I somehow regretted all the drugs and drinking and the f.u.c.king that went with them-it was just play for me. No church service could help me with the things I needed help with, and after working all week and moving seven tons of pears, I didn't think I had to bow my head down to anyone.
Even though I could barely stand the low feelings Sundays gave me, I decided to keep my mouth shut for a while for Del's sake. He seemed to be getting something out of it, and I didn't want to do anything to derail him. I told myself that except for Sundays, none of the born-again stuff really affected our lives. Del and I still f.u.c.ked all the time-until our pelvis bones hurt, until I was raw and Del's b.a.l.l.s ached from banging against me. I didn't think any of it was what the Christians had in mind for us, but Del didn't seem to see the conflict.
I was suspicious of the whole religion thing, but I was also suspicious of Del. I wondered how a person could make such a drastic change so quickly. Where did all the craziness in him go to? Did it just disappear? Where was the part of him that came home in the middle of the day and needed to huff PAM in the kitchen? Where was the part of him that bit and squeezed my b.r.e.a.s.t.s until he bruised the skin black?
I didn't miss that crazy person, but I wondered where he went all the same.
IN TIME, the vast number of secrets I was keeping began to eat away at me. I lied whenever I didn't tell Del that June was f.u.c.king Ray's brother. I lied every time I didn't tell Del about his own brother and me. And of course I lied every time I got into bed with Del and didn't tell him about Kevin Keel.
The lie about Kevin Keel was so dark that it began to work on me in funny ways. Sometimes in the middle of the night I would have to get up from bed and go to the bath-room and pinch a mirror between my legs. I worried that in having s.e.x with Del, I would somehow reopen or infect my scar. I couldn't stop thinking about it, and I got to the point where I was checking myself two and three times a day. When I started having o.r.g.a.s.ms again, I got even worse, because I worried that when my c.l.i.toris swelled up a little from being excited, the scar might get bigger, too. I felt a little crazy, and I felt like it was getting harder and harder to hide it all from Del.
One night after I came wetly on Del's mouth-the first time I came that way since he got home-I was terrified. I climbed off him right away and lay with my head down by his feet. He kept his fingers on me, though, playing with me, and when I heard him go to speak, I was sure he would ask me about that little forked place. But instead he said, ”Can I get you pregnant?”
After I understood he wasn't asking me about the scar, I said, ”What are you talking about? You know I'm on the pill.”
”No, I mean can I get you pregnant? Can I knock you up?”
His voice was all full of hope, and for a minute I thought he was drunk again, that's how crazy it all sounded.
”I want to knock you up. I've been thinking of marrying you, Vangie, and I want to knock you up.”
”You're crazy.”
”No, I'm not. Go off the pill. I want to put a kid inside you.”
”Are you saying this just to get me wet?” I asked, because the whole time he was talking, he was playing with me.
”I'm serious, Vangie. I want to come home from work every day and see you like that.”
”You are out of your motherf.u.c.king mind,” I said. ”I am not interested in a baby.”
”You will be. And you will go off the pill.” He said it just like that, the same way he told me I would testify. Like it was a simple matter of time until his will overtook mine.
Because Del couldn't get inside me fast enough after he said that, I figured it was all a new kind of s.e.x talk. Since he wasn't drinking or smoking weed anymore and couldn't f.u.c.k for hours, he had to take off in a new direction in his fantasies. The new fantasy somehow involved me being pregnant, and I thought it had to do with being born again and the sober life he was trying to lead. He'd stopped drinking and was going to church, and maybe he thought that having a baby and settling down was the next step.
A baby was the last thing I wanted. I figured I'd be a disaster at raising it, just the way my folks were, and I didn't care if I had to take Lo/Ovral the rest of my life to avoid it. There were times I even thought of getting sterilized, because the idea of having a baby scared me so bad. But the scariest thing about listening to Del talk about getting me pregnant was something I could hardly admit to myself, and I got sick when I realized that I liked the way his voice sounded when he said, I've been thinking of marrying you, Vangie, and I want to knock you up.
Even though I was terrified by the idea of having a baby, I could feel a thirsty place in me that had drunk in those words and the kind, hopeful sound of Del's voice as he said them. It was just a little place in me, but I could feel it all the same.
24.
JUST as d'Anjou season was finis.h.i.+ng, Joe Spancake asked me if I wanted to run a stand at Daubert's Farmers Market, over in Nila Gap. It was a start-up sort of a deal, Joe said, until they saw if it would fly. I'd work three ten-hour s.h.i.+fts by myself and be responsible for loading up the truck every morning and bringing back unsold produce at the end of the day. At first I didn't know what to think, then I got glad thinking about the change. So I said yes.
”It's not a sure thing,” Joe said. ”I have to clear it with the owner. I'm just feeling you out.”
But he kept telling me how I'd be perfect for the job at Daubert's because I was ”good with the public,” which I figured was a reference to my waitressing days, and when the owner agreed to give me the job, I think Joe was happier than I was.
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