Five Minutes in Heaven by Lisa Alther Page B

animals?”
    â€œYessum.”
    â€œNow, we would not want a vicious wild animal on our bulletin board, would we? Because it would scare us all half to death and give us bad dreams at night. But your wolf could just as well be a dog, couldn’t it? And then we could hang it up and look at it without fear.”
    â€œYessum.”
    â€œSo you can practice your letters by writing D-O-G here along the bottom.”
    â€œYessum,” said Jude miserably, printing D-O-G beneath her wolf. Maybe she wouldn’t be an artist when she grew up after all.
    Mrs. Murdoch sat down at her portable organ in the front of the room and began furiously pumping the foot pedals. “Rise, children!” she shrieked, gesturing upward with her palms. “And lift up your voices to the Lord!”
    â€œB ABY, I HAVE TO GO back to the hospital after supper,” said Jude’s father as he laid a slice of Mrs. Starnes’s German chocolate cake on a dessert plate painted with grape clusters and cantaloupe slices. He passed it to Jude. “To work on some reports. Molly’s mother said you could spend the night there. Would you mind?” He picked up his fork and studied it.
    Jude inspected his lowered face, which was turning bright red beneath his five o’clock shadow as he flicked and stroked his fork prongs. Why was he so embarrassed? He often went back to the hospital after supper if Clementine could stay late. It was no big deal. “Sure. That’s fine, Dad.”
    The next morning, Jude and Molly raced down the hall from Molly’s bedroom and into the bathroom to brush their teeth before school. Molly’s father was standing in front of the sink shaving. He was entirely covered with curly black hair, except for his white buttocks and a pale little slug that nestled in a mat of fur between his legs.
    Finally, Molly asked, “Daddy, what’s that?”
    Nicking his chin with the razor, he looked down at Molly’s pointing finger. Clutching the slug with his free hand while the shaving cream on his chin turned pink, he said, “It’s my penis, and I never want to hear you say that word again!”
    Molly and Jude crept from the bathroom, teeth unbrushed, and gathered their books from Molly’s room in silence, exchanging wolf-speak signs with their fingers that said, He’s covered with fur. Can he be a brother?
    J UDE’S GRANDMOTHER WAS SERVING garlic grits from a silver casserole dish on her Sheraton sideboard. She was using a pitted serving spoon that her own grandmother had buried in the backyard at the family farm near Fredericksburg to prevent its being stolen by the Yankees. Unable to remember where she’d buried her cache, Jude’s great-great-grandmother spent the rest of her life making her yardmen excavate the property. The week after they finally found it, she died.
    â€œA little girl belongs in dresses at school, Daniel,” her grandmother was saying, “not blue jeans. It’s the talk of the town.”
    â€œDon’t you find it sad, Momma,” said Jude’s father, loosening his striped silk Sunday tie, “that this town has nothing better to talk about than my daughter’s blue jeans?”
    â€œDon’t get smart with me, Daniel. You may be a big man down at the hospital, but you’re still my son.” She handed him a plate piled high with fried chicken, grits, shelly beans, and a salad of molded cherry Jell-O and shredded carrots topped with a mayonnaise rosette.
    He buttered and ate a Parker House roll while his mother continued her critique of Jude’s wardrobe.
    Jude, whose skirt was hiked halfway up her thighs as she sat with her feet hooked behind her front chair legs, fixed her gaze on the glass goddess in the middle of the table. Baby’s breath and pastel snapdragons were sprouting from her head. She clutched a bow and wore a quiver of arrows on her back. A pack of dogs was leaping up around her