Chapter 11

I always wonder if I knew something was going to be different about her. If that’s why I kind of shut off the first time I met stooph. Like it was genetically programmed for us to have to suffer together. Or for me to suffer because of her.

It was in the White House, on 200 E. She came in wearing a head wrap, with her nephew Ethan. She loves children. She loves people. To be honest, I don’t remember what her hair looked like at that point. I think it was auburn. Short.

You see, Stooph is one of those people who can get away with anything. She would wear a green polka dot shirt over a purple striped skirt and blue boots, with a camouflage bandana on her head. And no one questioned it. She was one of those people who swore casually, and did what she wanted. She did everything she wanted to do. For some reason, her car was significant; a ghetto old Volkswagen Cabriolet convertible that complained whenever you went over 15 miles an hour in it. We put the top down for the first time in march of that year. Went to sonic. Got slushies. We took pictures of everything we did. Somehow we knew it would be significant.

We met the Russians that summer; we were in our little white house, and they were outside, shirtless and smoking. So eastern European. As Grace stood in the window, I whistled. When they looked, it was her they saw and not me.

Stooph, I can to drive your car? Dima asked, slurring his words.

No.

Why not?

Because you don’t have an international driver’s license. And you’re drunk.

And?

They were so stereotypically eastern. They would drink more vodka than water, swear in Russian, and hit on anything that moved. Especially Adrian.

Leah, I want to be your boyfriend.

I know Adrian.

The only thing that got him away from me was Katie, another voluptuous American girl who captured his short attention span and held it for a few weeks.

Leah, you can to lift your skirt so I can see your legs a little, yes?

NO Adrian.

It was with them that Stooph started drinking again. One night, Adrian came to her window – on the back porch, by the swamp cooler. He was giving her a bottle of rum. Malibu. I accidentally walked in on it.

As it became more and more casual, I felt less and less in control. Every morning – get up, go to work, go to school, come home, sleep, homework, drink with the Russians (everyone except for me), go to bed while they’re still at it. I remember the day I came home at 3pm and Stooph was sitting alone on the couch with one of the big green cups. I could smell what it was as soon as I entered the room. I should have known at that point. I should have known what it all pointed to.

I never really payed attention to the many prescription bottles on her desk. Or that she had good days and bad days. That sometimes she would sleep for over 24 hours. I wonder if inside I knew, but I didn’t say anything. If part of me thought that ignoring it would make it go away.

I remember that weekend. Something felt different. Joey, Jason, Katie, Stooph and I were hanging out at the pool in Roman Gardens. Eric and Angela were there too. They’re married now. Have a baby. We ordered pizza from Nico Italiano. I payed for it. We were all swimming, having a good time. Provo was hot. So hot that our malfunctioning swamp cooler had to be filled up at least twice a night. It would electrocute you every time.

I remember I was wearing my underwear that had a plate pattern on it. I don’t know why.

Stooph went home early that night. She said she didn’t feel good. I wore Joey’s shirt as we chilled in his apartment. 103. I should have gone home with her.

I went home late. 2 or 3 in the morning. I stumbled in through the back door, which we never locked, and found my way to what used to be Grace’s bed. It was now my borrowed haven. I was late to church the next day; no one really noticed. No one ever did. It wasn’t strange or out of the ordinary that Stooph didn’t go. Sitting alone was not very fun, but I remember feeling edgy in the back of the room with my Auburn hair and dark eyeliner. I felt different. Like no one would understand me. But in a complex, good way.

It wasn’t even strange that she wasn’t awake when I came home. I did what I always did on Sundays; nap, food, and then down the street to will’s to play some Wii with the usual gang.

It was weird that she was still asleep that night when I came home. That she was on the ground instead of her bed. But I didn’t want to intrude on her personal life; she had made it clear over the months that she didn’t like to talk about herself.

Why didn’t you tell us?

I hate birthdays, she answered. Can we talk about something else?

Or what about the marks all up and down her arms? I remember coloring over them with permanent marker. Coloring over her tattoos so that her sister wouldn’t see them when she went swimming. Sometimes the marks were fresher. I wondered if they hurt. And if they did, how bad.

The next morning, I woke up late for work. I had 15 minutes to get ready and get there. I didn’t even check on her. It was Monday. It was hot. Work was mundane, I don’t actually remember anything about it. I remember going to Russian class afterward, and hearing someone give a presentation on Rasputin. I remember going home and taking a nap. I woke up at around 7; I went in to check on her.

This time, there was something different. The air was still, ominous. It wasn’t the still of a summer afternoon, or the still of midnight. It was the still of death. Of a life, slipping away. The kind of still that slows your heart and catches your attention at the same time. The kind of still I never want to feel again. I approached her. There was water spilled all over her bed- the empty cup was on the floor. The water I had brought her 2 days ago. She wasn’t moving at all. I called her name, shook her, and then opened her eye.

I will never forget what it looked like when all I saw staring back at me was a black void. No color. No soul. I think she was dying at that point. It makes my stomach lurch to think of those eyes, entirely pupil. Suffering silently, while I was a room away. Sleeping soundly as one of my best friend’s lives slipped away. Going about my daily routine with my daily poor attitude as she lay, quietly and slowly dying just a few feet from me.

It’s the only time in my life when I heard a voice tell me what to do. Probably a good thing, because at that point, I think I would have just stood there. As Gretchen wieners, our guinea pig with pink fur, squeaked in her own filth from behind me, I heard it. Clear as noon day. Loud as a siren.

Now.

There are only two times in my life when fight or flight took over to the point where I didn’t know what I was doing; this was the first.

And I ran.

I ran out the back door and down the steps. Through the parking lot and around the side of the house. When I rounded the corner and sprinted down the sidewalk, my rubber sandal caught on the pavement lifted up by the walnut tree in front of the house. I tripped, and hit the sidewalk chin first. My hand came slamming down, and the fingernail of my right pointer caught on something. It came ripping upward. I got up and took off, faster than before. Not even caring that blood was bubbling up and seeping out from underneath the fingernail. That I had ripped my sandal and it was flopping awkwardly to one side.

Our FHE brothers lived across the street in a small apartment building. I ran up the two flights of stairs and burst in without knocking.

Oh hey. They saluted my casually, as if life weren’t hanging by a thread. Chris was the one who noticed.

What’s wrong?

Help. It was a voice I didn’t recognize as my own. It was the voice of a scared child. Raspy and panicked.

What’s wrong? This time with more urgency.

Help. Then I started running again. 3 of them followed me.

They lifted her limp body into my car, and had to rearrange her arms three times so that they wouldn’t flop out. One of them was in the front seat with me; I don’t know which one. We pulled up to the emergency room. I don’t actually remember the drive there. I got out and ran to the front desk. Told them someone was unconscious in my car. When they came out, I thought it was all over. It’s always all over once the doctors are there, right?

Wrong.

They rubbed her sternum, hard. Just like they did to me when I fainted. It woke me up instantly.

But she didn’t wake up.

Then they started to yell out cryptic things that I didn’t understand. Next thing I knew I was sitting in a family consult room by myself. I called Jake. Kathryn. Jake again. Kathryn again. Katie. Joey. Jason. No one was picking up. So I just sat. After a while, Kathryn called back. I told her where I was. She and Jake came. Eventually they all came. And there we sat, the most haphazard looking family. Me, redheaded and dazed, bleeding from random places. Jake and Kathryn, married for less than 2 months. Joey, the artistic pianist with a birth defect that made his right hand smaller. Katie, with her new tattoos. Scabbing over on her ribs. Hair school. And Jason, 13, and way too young to be dealing with these kinds of things.

We should have known when a social worker came in. To be honest, there were a lot of moments in which we should have known. He asked us to go back to the apartment, and bring any bottles of medicine we could find. They needed to know what she had taken. I think Kathryn and I went. She was scooping the endless bottles of antidepressants, pain medications and anxiety pills into her oversize purse when I dropped to my knees and looked under the bed.

An empty bottle of vodka.

An empty bottle of Tylenol.

And a piece of construction paper, written on with crayon.

Dear mom and dad.

I folded it and put it in an envelope. Kathryn and I didn’t say anything. We just got back in the car and went back to the hospital. I didn’t cry.

They told us a mountain of things. They told us what was happening. I don’t remember any of it.

Just that they let us see her. She was attached to endless tubes, lines, needles. She had a breathing tube down her throat. But you know what I remember most? Her swatch watch was waving around as she unconsciously pulled at the apparati to which she was connected. She was on the verge of death and yet she was still fighting so that others wouldn’t control her.

None of us slept that night. We read scriptures. Katie had flashbacks. Jason cried. I went for walks. The news kept getting worse and worse. Life flighted to salt lake. Liver transplant. Pulling the plug. If they couldn’t find a liver, that would be the end of her. It felt so odd to pray for an organ so that stooph could live, knowing that getting it would mean that someone else died.

The next few days were a blur. I remember my phone dying because so many people were calling me to talk about it. It felt so unfair, knowing that I was the one who found her, and they were leaning on ME for support. I hated them all at that point.

But not nearly as much as I hated myself. Hated myself for not noticing that something For living within inches of her, and just completely overlooking what was going on right under the surface. My eyes as clear and sightless as spider’s eggs. She suffered alone, when I was right next to her.

I’ve been alone when I’m surrounded by friends

How can the darkness be so loud?

When he spoke next to me in group, I wondered if he was voicing all the silent pain she felt. Just hearing him talk would break my heart. Sometimes I can’t even get out of bed, he would say. Sometimes, he would just look at the ground. Too heartbroken to cry. To lonely to speak.

She seemed so okay, at times.

My dad came up to get me. I was supposed to be moving home, preparing to go on a mission. My mission call was due any day. He tried to pack my car all orderly, his inner mechanical engineer bursting forward as tightly packed crevices. Everything has its place, he said. As time went on, I started taking things and just shoving it anywhere it would go. He told me I was being haphazard. That a job worth doing was worth doing well. I told him that at least my trunk matched how I felt inside; torn apart. Disorganized. Like nothing had a place anymore. My brain where my spleen should be. My heart where my bladder should be. Lungs instead of kidneys.

To be honest, the next few weeks were like everything was back to normal. I went shopping with my mom. Went to Disneyland. Hung out as if one of my friends hadn’t just tried to end her life. As if I could forget the stare of her black eyes. As if she were conscious.

And then, I was gone. Shoved into a male dominated world where people cared little and listened less. Where they saw me as proud, strong, and independent. Where I stopped screaming and started whimpering. I was beaten, ripped, and forced into a tiny little box, where I stayed for months, until the end of Armenia.

All I ever thought of was her. I would have moments, with Anna, when I would forget the searing hot pain of guilt. Of almost letting her die. With Sister Smith it was constant. She kept reminding me. In the end, it was what drove me home. A need to take care of the trauma from which I never healed. My last morning in country, I dressed as usual. All black. I braided my hair and went to the airport with President Dunn. I remember walking away from him. Forcing one foot in front of the other, when all I wanted to do was turn on my heel and run back to him. Have him tell me it was going to be all right.

He would have been lying.

Chapter 8

We laughed as we remembered that night. The night after powell, when all three of us slept in the same bed. In my sleep, I got mad at her for moving too much. We all started laughing. Watching videos of ourselves, dancing, singing, being ridiculous.

That summer was the best, she said. Attached at the hip.

She was telling me this in her apartment, as the three of us sat there with her husband. A year and a half later. Almost two, really. When I got home in late march, I was not okay. Not even close. I was broken and torn and confused. I was starting from scratch again. Not knowing even where to start.

Start from now.

I remember how small she looked on her bicycle, in her white dress, her long her spilling down her back like some thick waterfall. Her bike was red. Her skin was tan.

Every day there were beads of sweat on the back of her neck, underneath her heavy hair. We would sit, stand, lie for hours on the Astroturf, listening to the warm melodies of summer.

I kissed a girl and I liked it

The taste of her cherry chapstick….

I spent way too long checking my tongue in the mirror

And bending over backwards just to try to see it clearer…..

She made me feel like I belonged. That I would always belong. And at that time, I did. We went dancing together, all of us from Armenia. We’d dance in the car to haikakan erastutsiun. We’d speak in armenglish. We’d all go every week to the TRC. There was a real bond.

Lake powell was the climax of the summer. A group of us piled in different cars and headed down on a Sunday, listening to big and rich, the Macarena, you name it. Eatchel in the front seat, me next to him. Pew, Seeley, and Bridges in the back.

It’s not like that anymore. I’m an outsider again. Not with her, but with them. To them, I’m just that girl that came and got sick and left. To them I’m someone that didn’t cut it. They all still question why I came home. Am I that easy to read? They reminisce about areas I never served in, people I never met, traditions I never saw. Things I never did. And I just get to be that one girl that was there for a little while and couldn’t handle it.

Armenia hated you, he said.

Why does it mean so much that I loved it then? I remember hating Maggie for mocking the Armenians. When she got to finish her time there. I wondered what made them different from me. Why I couldn’t be just like the rest of them, go, serve, come home. Why I always had to be different.

Thing is, Jodi treated me just like everyone else. I was a person to her, not a party favor or a plague or a toy. I was just a person. She was one of the first to treat me as such. She never demanded that I entertain her, or that I do anything really. I just had to be. Maybe that’s why I felt so comfortable.

It started out awkward. We sat across the table from her, and made small talk. Small talk with someone whose soul was eternally connected to our own. After a few hours, it was like old times. Anna with her diverse life experiences. Jodi with her simplicity. Me taking it all to the next savage level.

The princess dynasty, they called us. And still do. Beautiful, charismatic, crazy. That’s what we all turned out to be, no matter how well we hid it. Jodi was a no-fun zone. Anna concealed it well. Everyone knew me for exactly what I was.

I never was the master of disguise.

Chapter 7

Gari’s was the first morning breath I ever smelled. The night after he slept in my cabin with me. What’s funny is that we never did anything wrong, we just slept.

I remember the first time I saw him. I was wearing a bright pink t-shirt, and a miniskirt. One with shorts underneath; I think it was a bathing suit coverup. But at Abnaki, it didn’t matter. Abnaki was heat. It was natural. It was no makeup, it was barely having time or energy to shower. It was stress, and illness, and disapproval. It was being called princess because I cared about my clothes. It was being stereotyped for where I was from. It was being mistrusted, maltreated, and gossiped about. It was learning things I never wanted to know. Hearing things I never wanted to hear.

It was the kids, in the end, that made the summer. Something I never expected.

Why did you even come here?

Women are funny creatures. Spend time with them, and they can warm up to you. Spend time with the men they knew first, and they become your enemies. Maureen was my friend. She was nonchalant, confident. By the end of the summer she became a wound. She and Lindsay, alone in their cabin, with me alone in mine. On opposite sides of camp. Not once did they come visit me. Not once did they try to include me.

But I’m not one to let that stop me.

He called me a minx. Told me I was fit. Spoke my name softly in his thick Welch accent. At night, he could be anything. But during the day, what we were doing wasn’t allowed. He wasn’t allowed to look at me. To smile. To talk. To touch. It had to be a secret from the campers. I thought that would make it fun. But not knowing if he was actually noticing me tormented me in a way I could never describe.

He used to sneak down to my arts and crafts building during siesta. We would talk, kiss, and laugh. I think people knew, but they never told. I think people were afraid of me.

That night, he left camp. I didn’t know it until he didn’t show up at evening flagpole. We were supposed to have the same night off, to go off camp and do something fun. But he left. He went out with a few of the guys. I think they went to someone’s house and drank and talked. Not a bad pastime, but nonetheless, I was mad. All I wanted at that point was for him to tell me before he left. I felt so rejected, alone. By that point Maureen and Lindsay had decided they didn’t care. I had no one but him. Why do relationships have to sever friendships?

The first time we really spent time together, he paid attention exclusively to me. It made me feel special. In the car on the way down, I sat in the middle between him and James Peacock. They were infatuated with James. He would call my sweatshirt a jumper. He borrowed it, smoked in it, and never gave it back. For some reason I found it satisfying to watch someone take a long drag on a cigarette while the name of my church-sponsored university lit up from the glowing embers. James was polite, fun. All the campers loved him.

I was intrigued by Gari. He stood at a meager 5'7”, but he wasn't shrimpy or small. He was substantial, and he loved that I was taller than him. He loved when I would wear high heels.

Sometimes, he was too nice. It bothered me. I don't want to be treated as fragile. When I hurt my knee, I would hobble around camp with the green and white immobilizer, matching all the cabins. He wouldn't even come near me because he was afraid he was going to hurt me.

I remember being confused. People should have their first relationships long before 19. That way when they get into one, they don't act like 14 year olds, trying to figure it out. I was never more immature or irrational than when I was dating Gari. One night, I broke down. The pregnant 19 year old who worked in the kitchen talked me through it. We sat on the loading dock behind the warehouse-sized pantry that housed the food for the campers. Potatoes waiting to be whipped. 100 pounds at a time, with a beaters larger than my head. As we sat there, sweating, I told her how I felt so out of control. That's okay, she told me. We all pull some pretty bizarre shit when we're in relationships. I mean, look at me. I'm pregnant.

We fought by the showers. The outdoor ones right outside my little lopsided cabin. The one on the left had a toothbrush stuck into the ceiling. I used to wear my little lavalava as a towel when I walked back to my cabin. You could see the sky as you were in there. I remember sitting down and just resting for 45 minutes in the shower. I remember that everything smelled like coconuts. That night, my private refuge was torn open by raw emotion. Raw paranoia. I fought and he fought back. And in that moment I really started to notice that I was taller than him. Older than him. That he was just a phase. That we would never talk again.

Well, except for that one time.

I did love you, I said. Silence. It was the night he told me that he thought he loved me. I didn’t say it back. I didn’t want to, even though it was true.

The phone cut out. I tried to call back. No answer. Over a year later and nothing.

I wonder if he was laughing on the other end.

Chapter 6

That last night, I was alone. It was after Sister Sabey had left, after everyone else had gone to bed. In the scriptures, it says that Enoch’s heart swelled wide as eternity. That night, mine swelled wide as Armenia. I know what it is to regret. To wonder. To cower from the silence in shame. I know what it is to be the betrayer; Peter, realizing that he had denied the Christ three times. He wept bitterly. I wept bitterly. The tears in my soul at that point were long and jagged. And no amount of self-induced injury made it better. I remember wanting to tear the outside of me like so that it looked like the inside of me.

On Christmas, Anna wanted to have chocolate fondue. We bought everything we needed, and she was so excited. That night was especially bad. It was before she knew. I remember her coming into the room, in her brand new pajama pants that had come in her Christmas package. I was under the heavy Armenian blanket. The blanket that weighed you down so heavily that you couldn’t move.

Do I have to have Christmas by myself.?

I just lay there. If I opened my mouth, I didn’t know what was going to come out. A scream? A prayer? A song? Nothing? So I just lay there.

When I came out to brush my teeth, she was alone in the room off of the kitchen. The spices were standing in a row, casting long shadows on the ground. Basil, oregano, Mrs. Dash, Ranch packets. All watching as Anna pleaded alone. When she prayed, her body looked longer. Like she would stand up and tower over you.

But she’s so small.

The fondue lay barely touched in the middle of the table.

Silent night, Holy night

All is calm, all is bright

Round yon virgin mother and child…..

I wonder what she was thinking that night. If she was hating me. If she was sad. If she was lonely. I know what I was thinking; I’m sorry.

That day in the office, Sister Smith and I fought. In front of President and Sister Harris. She told me she did care. I told her she acted like she didn’t. My body shaking with pain and anxiety, I only saw hard work. At any cost. Even me?

That day, I went home with sister Harris. It was one of the longest days of my life. She is one of the calmest women in the entire world. I don’t understand how someone can be that calm. I told her stories from my girlhood. She looks at me and says God gives those children to the mothers who can handle them.

Those children?!

Was I one of those children? What did she mean? I fumed as we cut up garments together. Size 44. Size 46. Geez, were these blankets or underwear? She put in a church movie. Talked about her children. Complained about her house. She didn’t even seem to realize that my spirit was screaming for help.

When Anna came up the stairs, I was waiting behind the banister. I was so confused. Do you want to be the one to tell her? He asked.

I’m your new companion! She said, that one smile on her face, the cheesy “I’m doing this to please someone else” smile.

We stayed for a few days. I ate mashed carrots. Rice floating in orange juice. Potatoes. She ate cereal with milk. We read those books; the one about the true role of women – that we are here to cater to the needs of our husbands. The one that talked about chastity as sexual fasting. What do you do at the end of a fast? It asked. Do you just sit down and eat like savages? No, you pray and thank the lord for the food. You mind your manners. It’s the same with sex.

We took those pictures. The ones with her looking like a character from Cats. Me looking like wendy from Peter Pan. To anyone else those look like crazy pictures of two lazy sister missionaries. We are the only ones that get it. They define an era. They are pain, humiliation, hope, spontaneity, femininity.

Brtsav?

Chapter 5

Bright turquoise.

I like to figure out what color people would be. You’d be bright turquoise.

If he were a color, Giorgiano would be mahogany. He was complex. Hard to discern. So dark at times that you couldn’t tell what made him him. A combination of places, of relationships, of experiences. Over the next 2 years more would come out. Bit by bit.

Engaged. I reminded him of his ex-fiancé. I still wonder what she looked like. She gave him a shaving kit for his birthday one year. Right before they broke up. That was in Colorado. It wouldn’t have been a temple marriage, he said. That it was a dark time in his life. And that he was still recovering from it.

The first day we met, it was snowing outside. I had this savage Russian hat with ear flaps. I had curled my then auburn hair and stuffed it in the hat. When I walked into Geography 100, he smiled. To be honest, I noticed his shiny folder before him, I’m kind of a crow.

I sat down. Took my hat off, my long auburn hair came tumbling over my shoulders. I saw him look.

My name is Giorgiano, he said. He flashed the smile I would see so often for the next two years. Only a little crooked. Really? I asked. He didn’t seem Italian. Giorgiano Bertoli.

When he kissed me, he sighed. I have been wanting to do that for a long time, he said. Our heads were where our feet should have been, and our feet were resting on the pillows. I smiled, got up, turned off the light, and came back.

With Giorgiano, it meant something. He actually like me for who I was. Silly, ridiculous, tempermental, and fun. We talked for hours, kissed for hours, and held each other even longer. I wonder if it was hard for him not to do the things he had done before. It certainly didn’t seem hard. The next day was magical. We went to Disneyland. If only he knew what that meant. We kissed on the haunted mansion. We held hands and talked all day. In that moment, it was right.

I should have left a few hours earlier, he told me.

My mind raced to everything that happened in those few hours. With my family and friends just across the street, he told me his deepest darkest secrets. He told me that he would probably end up marrying me. That it had been almost 3 years since we had met, and that all can’t just mean nothing. We tried to kiss in his car, but the alarm went off. As if it was screaming at us. I felt so odd… I thought it was what I wanted.

When I finally came in a few hours later, my room was silent. Still. So I woke them up.

Victoria, have you REALLY thought about this? Is this REALLY what you want? She asked.

I think so. Maybe. Maybe not. No.

We didn’t talk for a few weeks. Nothing after the night of confessions. I finally called him. To tie up loose ends, I told myself. You can’t just let three years of loose threads hang there. And he told me that he should have left a few hours earlier. I guess it meant just as little to him as it did to me. After so much time, after countless hours driving and talking and bonding and kissing, it meant nothing.

When we walked on the beach, he found a seashell. He gave it to me. It had a perfect little hole in it; a hole that would be strung with clear fiber. I wore that seashell every day. The necklace was long enough so that no one would see it. It just sat next to my heart. I thought I was in love. When people asked me about him, about us, about anything, I would tell them the truth. Utter honesty. I remember in the MTC that they made fun of him. Drew a picture of a man with a moustache and a big pot of pasta.

He took me to dinner when he came to visit. He got me appetizers and desserts, and all the things I had never had before. It was his form of affection; money. Things. He took me out to lunch that last time. We got Peruvian sushi. He loved it. I pretended.

When he kissed me, the world stopped. It was as if everything fell into place in that moment. The problem was, that it only worked when we were together.

He could make my eyes roll back in my head and my knees go weak just from his smell. His breath.

When he stopped writing me, I closed my heart to him. It never opened again. I wonder what would have been had I said yes? Had I actually allowed him back into my heart, my life.

Giorgiano could have been my fairy tale. The prince with a dark past and a heart of gold, who was dashing and handsome and bold. He was shorter than me, but manly enough to handle that. He was gentle but firm, demanding and secure. I could have been his princess; spontaneous and insecure, ambitious and full of life. He dampened me. I sharpened him.

That one major flaw, the dealbreaker. Giorgiano can’t laugh at himself. He gets defensive and unkind.

That night, in my kitchen, by the washing machine. My roommates in the other room, watching Stardust. He took me to a movie. My mom told me to make sure to take the right girl, he said.

You look so beautiful.

Of course I do, I thought. I’ve lost weight and I’m wearing hair extensions. Why did people tell me I looked beautiful when I felt so wrong inside? I thought that we are what we eat. That technically meant at that time that I was nothing. Coke and rice. That’s what I was. He just kept reaching out for who I used to be. The carefree girl he let go over 7 months earlier.

She died. Along with my self-respect and my lightheartedness. All three murdered by the frostbitten cold of Armenia.

Chapter 4

We had seen each other around. She knew Elder Hope. From BYU Idaho. Or something like that.

But we never talked.

She was petite, with the bluest blue eyes I’ve ever seen. Wavy blonde mermaid hair. She wore her knee highs over her knees. She lived next door, in a room identical to my own, except hers looked…. Warm.

There was a map outside my door. As I was waiting for Sister Monsen one day, I started gazing at the map. Hearing my mind repeat over and over the countries it recognized.

South Africa. Botswana. Namibia. Tanzania, Kenya. Ethiopia…

Reciting something from the past in which I was good at something. The past in which I was worthwhile. Where I wasn’t a burden or a joke. The past that was less than a mile outside those walls.

I suddenly became conscious of someone besides myself doing the same thing. Except this person was eying me at the same time she was eying Burma. I think they called it Myanmar on that map.

We talked. We laughed. Both loudly. I guess quiet dignity was never really our thing. She was wearing a red skirt. I thought she was ballsy for that.

Her name was Kelia. Like my name with a KAY on the front of it. At that moment, I could never have guess who she would be. What she would mean to me. Who she would become.

She listens like no one I’ve ever met before, Anna told me. 2 years later, they met. She asks the most probing, honest questions.

The MTC has a smell. Just like any place has a smell. But this is different. It’s a smell that is also an emotion, a smell that is an era. A smell that is timeless. It smells of books, old and new. Of dust. Of chalk. Of musty church buildings. Of chapels. Of libraries. It smells of struggle, and heartache, and loss. And growth. It smells of pain, and humiliation, and hard work. It smells of over 1 million people who did this before I did.

During gym, we’d play volleyball. Her blonde hair swinging around as she positioned herself under the ball. She’s memorize verbs in Spanish. I’d throw Armenian words in here and there, never knowing that someday I would speak with her.

Him on one side, her on the other. Me in the middle. As she spoke in Spanish, he spoke in Armenian. I translated back and forth. I felt like babelfish. Back and forth, back and forth. She says she wants him to ask me out. He says he wants to take her out. I wondered why he would stay for her, and not for me. He took her to breakfast. I said it didn’t bother me. What did she have that I didn’t?

The truth is that she could do anything, and I would still love her. I would know that she did it for some reason other than the obvious one.

She loves everyone. She appreciates everyone. She can talk to anyone.

How do you know each other?

Victoria and I were in the MTC together. She went to Armenia, and I went to Argentina. Anna trained her there.

How do you get three blonde girls together that can say that? I don’t know. But somehow God did.

When I came home from Chicago, after almost 2 years apart, she called.

My mission was hard too, she says. And she begins to share. It seems like that’s all we do. That instead of gifts like lotion and books and bodywash, we give pain. We share it. I think somehow we both understand how much more that means.

I told her everything. Everything that happened. She listened. She paid attention. At the end she didn’t cry. Somehow it would cheapen it if she did. She doesn’t empathize. She improves. She knows me, so much so that it doesn’t surprise her. She knows what to expect by now. She’s just one of those people that you have to open up. Like her gaze is truth serum, and you just end up spilling your guts.

That night, as we lay on the two beds facing each other, we talked about her family. The mystery of her life so far. About my past. We talked about Anna, about meanings, about dreams. She tells me that I’m amazing. That I inspire her. That my trials are more than she could handle.

I think she lied.

ENFP. One of the rarest types. And oh, she is. She gives more than anyone else I’ve ever met.

Do I love people? I don’t know if I do, she says. If I do, I feel it different. I feel it in loyalty. In actions. Not in emotions.

I think you choose your connections quickly, I tell her. You chose me. What made me different?

Chapter 3

Before beginning this, the most epic adventure I have yet taken, the journey into my past, I need to make a few things clear.

Para que entiendan.

In writing this I am not declaring myself as different, unique, or special in any way. I am not declaring myself worthwhile; commandeering a coveted spot in your consciousness under the title “heroines of note” or some such nobility. I am not declaring myself as anything. I am what I am. Judge for yourself.

But judge wisely.

I am not what I seem. I am not bubbly, happy, audacious and kind. I am not those things. I am only me. And maybe after you read this you’ll be able to classify me.

Maybe it will be harder than ever.

The point is, that this is just what it is. It is not a story of honor or valor or sex or violence or rock and roll or anything else. This is my life. And as much as we try to define what life really means, we can’t. It means something different to everyone who lives it.

Does purple look the same to you as to me?

Does life?

So I guess we’ll start there. According to the all powerful, all- knowing Webster’s New World Dictionary, life is “ that property of plants and animals (ending at death) which makes it possible for them to take in food, get energy from it, grow, etc.”

Am I the only one that finds it odd that something is defined by its opposite? Life is the time when we are not dead. Love is the time when we are not alone. Happiness is the time when we are not sad.

As I lay curled up on the floor in the apartment, I noticed that my insides felt cold, and my outsides felt hot.

Hot like when you lay in the sun for hours, and your face becomes another moon – reflecting and emitting the sun’s energy. If you’re lucky like me, that usually ends in sunburn.

Damn Scottish ancestors.

Cold like when you get used to the pacific. It’s not unpleasant, it’s just… strange. I can feel that there should be certain things.

A heart.

Lungs.

A soul.

I just can’t comprehend that they’re there. Not when everything is searing hot pain. Like when you get into a bath so hot that your body can’t detect its true temperature. I’m talking about the kind of pain that makes you writhe and tear at your hair and scream with agony. This isn’t your average, everyday pain.

This is my personal hell.

It is all encompassing.

As my body pulsed with self-destructing acid, disintegrating and distorting as it went, my mind pulsed with regrets. My spirit with doubts. My heart with hatred. Not of others, but of self.

“Chronic Salmonella” is what they called it.

If my brother had known it was happening, or cared, he would have called it “Victoria cancer”. The disease specific to me.

The truth is, nobody knows what it was. All we knew is that my body was dying. Slowly. My hair was falling out, my intestines were bleeding, and food was out of the question. I was losing weight at an alarming rate. I had lost all color in my face. Skin. Soul.

So there I was. I was slowly being killed. Can you call it manslaughter if it was my own fault? Or is it really what I fear it is: suicide? I knew that something big was coming. Something that would define the course of my life.

If you don’t get better, you might have to go home, she said.

I got so angry I threw a rock at the crumbling wall across the street from the church building. It shattered.

The next morning, I made my decision. Or someone did. The point is, the decision was made. Using the passive voice makes that easier to say.

And I wrote.

"Do you think it would be poignant to note the end of the fight?

After years and years of open rebellion- sticking it to the man over and over again, the fight is gone.

Jump, Victoria.

How high.

Sit, Victoria.

Where.

Study, Victoria.

Okay.

Are missions supposed to break your spirit? If so, then I've already learned my lesson.

So can I go home now?

Like the disobedient schoolgirl, who, after the extra hour of doing lines, goes home with a mind still set on mischief, I went out everyday, determined to do missionary work with my name attached to it.

But now I don't really even feel like my name belongs to me any more. Victoria was a fiery, flirty teenager.

Sister Hart doesn't even seem to fit anymore.

So if those don't fit, then who am I?

I've learned my lesson.

So do I continue for another year, like a horse whipped into submission? Carrying the burden of the very whip?

I suppose that this is what one would call a gradual emotional breakdown. And I'm pretty sure it's not over. But "no one should have to deal with this", right, mom?

You're right.

No one should have to deal with this.

So I won't make them.

After all, I am ridiculous, right?

Let's count the lashes.

President Bird – ever word out of that man's mouth stung.

The wounds never closed.

Sister Hart, you are ridiculous.

I suppose alcohol cleans them, right?

My companionship with sister smith.

That was like burdens placed over the still- open sores.

Illness. That's when the other horses, bridled though they may be, saw how much more my master hates me.

"Did you just come here so other missionaries would think you're special?"

So what if I did?

No one ever thought I was before. It'd be nice, for once.

I have no dignity.

I'm a joke.

People who don't even know me, think they do."

And then it happened.

For the sake of self-preservation, I will refrain from defining what “it” is. All you need to know is that it happened.

And I came home.

Broken, torn, burned through and through. Hating only myself, with no one. Not even one person who could or would listen or understand.

Promise me you’ll never go through something like that by yourself again, she said.

That’s fine coming almost 2 years later.

How do you tell someone what it’s like to bleed internally? To lose what you know, what you love, what you believe and who you are at the same time?

Sometimes I just wanted people to be there. To exist in my general area but not to pay attention to me. When they paid attention, it just reminded me that I existed. And for the first time in my short life, I craved non-existence.

Death.

That I would just explode into infinite chinks of carbon-based matter and no longer have a consciousness. That no one would ever know I did exist. That accountability is the stuff of human folklore. Consequences are a legend.

Unfortunately, I know better.

I wish I didn’t know, I told her that Christmas eve.

Don’t you DARE say something like that ever again, she said. Do you know what He did for you? What he suffered? Don’t you DARE say that you wish you didn’t know. That is selfish and hateful and I won’t listen to it, she said.

I guess a man can’t be saved in ignorance.

But does that explain why it’s so hard? Why we have to crave for, pray for, yearn for death before we really know what it means to be alive?

It also says that life is “the time a person or thing is alive or exists”. So does that mean that I wasn’t alive until I really started to exist? I’m not talking existential here, just…. I don’t think I really existed until I was about 15. What were the rest of those years? Or the time before it?

I was an odd child. People would say “different”, but they meant odd. I preferred my own company to that of others, I read far too much for any healthy child, and I created a world that only included the things I wanted. I don’t think my small self ever comprehended the word “shy”. My mother loves to tell the story of when the missionaries from our church came over when I was about 3 and I came tumbling down the stairs naked. As I handed my Disney underwear to one of them, I asked with innocence neath the tumble of strawberry blonde tangles if he could “turn my bambis outside right.” Blushing, he did so, and I sat right down and started pulling them on, one leg at a time. Haphazardly exposing myself to strangers.

Connections happen fast with me.

Chapter 2

As she stood there, her eyes welled with tears again.

That morning, we had woken up as if everything was the same. It was, to us. She showered first, and I second. She wore shower sandals. She always did. We studied in our beds, counting down the minutes till we could race out the slab we called a door and down the concrete steps. Until we would trot across the inches of packed snow and ice, and dog urine and blood. It was the only day we would trot.

P-day.

An oasis in a bleak time of isolation. A beacon of light in those dark, lonely days, when we would sit down in the basement of some Armenian Khanut and email our families. Our friends. Talk of home. Of what was. Of what would be. Sometimes there was even American music. Sometimes Elder Halcomb would get a letter from one of the many girls he was writing. Sometimes Bullock would be awkward.

But no matter what, there was me and Anna. No matter what, we sat next to each other. No matter what, we would share. And talk. And laugh.

And cry?

This morning, something was different. Not all was the same. The phone rang. Anna picked it up. I watched as her face changed. I don’t remember her side of the conversation at all. Just one part:

Do I have a choice?

She hung up, and turned and told me the news.

I’m leaving. I hate my life. Why do all the good companions only last for a short time?

We both started crying. We hugged. Turns out the guy next to us spoke English…. Who cares.

That day, we did whatever she wanted to do. We raged around the city. We hunted for baghbaghakWe went to the outdoor market, where freshly slaughtered carcasses dripped blood in the snow and jesus-shaped bottles of vodka glared at us with all their hypocritical might. Where cheap, shoddy jewelry was sold by rough Armenian men, and where a lemon became a gift.

When we went back to the apartment, I thought my chest was going to explode.

She started to head for the door. Back to work, with a sigh.

It’s like I’ve been standing in a crowded room my whole life, screaming at the top of my lungs, and no one heard me. Until you, I told her.

She didn’t say anything.

But that’s just how she is. She holds it in. She thinks. And then she writes.

And she wrote.

No one would ever get it. Until this point in my life, no one has. To be honest, no one has really tried.

I wonder if that’s what’s going to be the difference someday? That someone is going to try? And he’s going to work until I trust him and work until I tell him and then work to make it better.

Who knows how long I’ve loved you

You know I love you still

Will I wait a lonely lifetime

If you want me to, I will

I wonder if I’ll ever love anyone as much as I love Anna. I don’t know. Now don’t misunderstand me; there are as many forms of love as there are moments in time, as Jane Austen puts it. The love I have for Anna is the love of a sister, a friend, and a confidant. I just wonder if the love I will eventually feel for the man I marry will measure up to the filial love I feel for her. I know it will be different. But will it be enough?

The thing is, I have a simple heart.

Simple tastes. The thing is, I am a remarkably simple human being.

Yes means yes. No means no. Silence means….. no.

This is my life. (Almost) unedited, unchanged, and open for comments. I want all the feedback you can throw at me. Please read, reread, and give me all the comments you wish.

Thanks!

-V