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?