Chapter 20

I’m just waiting for him to prove me wrong on that one.

He wants to go in to law, he said. He certainly has the logical mind for it.

But could I be with what I have been conditioned to despise? After all, it can’t be coincidence that Bro. Baldwin, President Pace, and President Stoddard were all lawyers. Things have to make sense.

But what if they just don’t? she postulated.

Then the universe has no order, and we do not exist. I believe in deductive powers. I have faith in my mind.

I’m just fickle. One moment pouring my heart into something, the next reviling from it. Relationship schizophrenia. Romantically bi-polar.

I have a history of hurting boys, not of them hurting me, she told me. We were sitting across from each other on a cold April night, the scraps of our dinner sitting untouched for at least an hour. Sabra. Her name is unique, just as she is. Different and intriguing and lovely. An exotic animal that only avid professionals ever get a glimpse of. Milk chocolate hair with dark chocolate eyes, and skin that could make a bowl of cream jealous. Freckles scattered , flecks of vanilla bean. The first time I met her, I thought she wouldn’t like me. That she was too pretty to be nice. I was wrong.

That summer comes back in clips and phrases. I can’t remember parts of it; I think that’s my body’s way of dealing with the trauma. Omitting it completely. You can’t regret a memory that doesn’t exist.

That day, 4 months later, in our new apartment. She sat on the floor by the coffee table and told me of who she was. The characteristics that used to be intricately woven into her being, a tumor to her personality. Its not who she is now. But all the same, it brought tears. Telling those kinds of things always does. It would seem heartless and detached not to cry. She was anything but heartless and detached.

Little notes on the fridge, telling us how much she loved us. Shoe boxes of cryptic gifts, complete with post-its to bring to mind the memory they sanctified. Warm evenings and bright mornings, all brightened by her presence.

Light cleaveth unto light. So be as much light as you can. Sabra is a walking lighthouse; a beacon to the rest of us that are trying to find out way. A bane to those who are trying to hide. Her light beckoned to me, and I came as a lowly fishing rig out of the storm. She didn’t calm the waters, she directed the way back to the shore. She showed me how to fix the wound. How to get from the fire back into the frying pan, and then to pray that someone would remove me from the heat entirely.

I convinced and begged and pleaded and manipulated. All so I could go to Idaho. It meant too much to me to miss. The drive up was long and hot. My clip in extensions grated into the back of my head like cleats into spring grass. Every crevice, every part sweating. Jodi and I in the backseat, talking and bonding,. Ralph and Atkinson in the front, reminiscing. We stopped at subway, and I watched in awe as that tiny 98 pound body somehow stuffed a foot-long meatball sub into it. I wondered where it all went; there’s no way her stomach was big enough to handle all that. Maybe her ancestors evolved from birds. Maybe she had extra organs to store it all.

As we came closer, my heart beat faster and faster. The car grew quieter as the speed limit dropped, rounding corners onto streets with names like Beethoven and Mozart. Finally, we made the final turn, on to Debussy. The composer of Claire de Lune. The piece that told the story of eras, lifetimes. Complicated arpeggios rolling like waves with the left, hand, while the right hand plays a pensive melody.

I gathered everything together. All the gifts I had prepared as a collective peace offering for the emotional civil war she had witnessed inside me. Gifts I hoped she would understand. CDs, with carefree songs of the past. Songs with memories attached; dew on grass. Songs that defined me, or at least what I understood to be me at the time. My own personal canon.

And then there was that book. I spent hours making that thing; a collection of writing and memories and revelations. Of pictures. 5 weeks. And yet there was so much.

That was the first time I had cried in a really long time, she said. As I saw you sitting there, tears pouring down your face. When I looked over, I saw that Jodi was crying too. The princess dynasty, all together. Sharing the joy, the pain, the frustration, the disappointment, and the moment we had all eventually reached. Of giving up who we really were to be good at something that no one can really excel at.

It’s a special kind of woman that lives life in color. Pink, purple, orange, red, and even green. Sometimes turquoise. Rarely white. Or chocolate days. Crimson nights. Only the worst days are black. How can people live without color? Clothing stores cater to those women. Most of the people forking cash over are counterfeits, wannabes.

Not us. In a room with too many women who fit too few stereotypes, we were the real deal. The perfect cut, colorless, priceless jewels. We each sparkle differently. And when you get us in a set, there is a particular shine that emanates from the three. We compound into perfect prismatic perfection. One curvy, two slender. Blonde, brunette, redhead. Enchanting. Haunting. Staggering.

At her house, we ran out to her back yard. Bounced on the nested trampoline, safe and snug in it’s perpetual cave. It was one of the magical moments, when Jodi became a cheerleader in a pencil skirt and Atkinson stopped being so freaking creepy for a change. Childhood toys are the greatest equalizer in the world.

Her parents served tiers of sliced fruit next to a rented chocolate fountain, something I’m sure she dreamed up some endless, freezing night in Armenia. It’ll be worth it for the chocolate fountain, she probably told herself. Then she would try to distract herself from the frost-nip in the apartment by focusing on home. The colors. The sounds. The smells. Reality is so much more bearable when you put it in a time frame.

I always pictured us three together, with men somewhere in the background. The usuals who fell too quickly and understood too little to mean more than just a strong arm and a warm body. We have a talent for attracting men in general. Jodi gets the modelish pretty boys, with cut pectorals and husky voices. The kind with perfect tans and perfect teeth. Anna gets the brooding emotionals, with exteriors of sandpaper and interiors of razorblades. It just always seems to be the case that if you have to work for it, its worth it. She and I have learned the hard way: it’s not. I get the ethnic boys. The latinos with a fever for freckles and blue eyes. The persistent kind that call 3 times in one day to check how you’re doing. The ones that romance you till you’ve got clichés coming out of every unholy orifice possible. Who never contribute anything once they’ve actually caught you. Catch and release fisherman, that’s what they are.

Chapter 19

I came out of the bedroom a short time later, pulled on my shoes, and said “let’s go to work.”

No puedes trabajar con tu Corazon roto. You can’t work with a broken heart.

Watch me.

We headed over to the church building, to the usual Wednesday night activity; English class. No one showed. That was what I like to call a tender mercy. Heavenly Father knew that I couldn’t even speak. That I couldn’t even breathe. He knew better than to send me vulnerable immigrants trying to learn a language of exceptions.

Back in the apartment, I had numbly pulled on my nylons, as she rattled off in Spanish.

You can’t work like this. You need to take some time off. I had listened silently, cursing her all the while. It was she that made it unbearable. She just has this quality… that makes you hate yourself. Somehow you love her, but hate you. And suddenly your own skin becomes fleshy prison walls, trapping the hatred and pain inside. If it weren’t for my skin I would have exploded.

What hurt more than anything was President’s remark.

I don’t know what to do with either one of you at this point.

I talked to God about that one for a long time. He told me that President Stoddard had no authorization from Him to talk to me like that. That I had acted more mature than my mission president. That it was going to be okay.

At this point, I’m just trying to make sense of it all.

I think it would be easier if you were stupid, she said. Little does she know the hundreds of hours I’ve wasted wishing to be vapid. Willing myself to change into someone totally clueless. Unaware of the injustice of it all. But instead, here I sit. Cowering in my own emotional feces. Trying to pick out some meaning from the crap. I can’t find it here. Justice and mercy right? Two eternal laws. What happens if neither applies?

It takes time.

I hate time. You know, the one thing I’ve noticed about it is that no matter how hard you kill it, it won’t die. Naps, meaningless tv shows, hours wasted browsing websites. And yet it still endures. I wish I were that resilient.

Time passed slowly that night. After she had exploded, sitting on the curb outside the church building, her long black hair draped over her face. She was humming hymns, as I sat silently in the car. I tried to talk to her. She yelled. I actually thought she was going to hurt me. That somehow she would launch her demented little self on me and injure me. Maybe it was irrational. Maybe it wasn’t. Who can tell now?

I waited till I knew she was asleep. Until her breathing became even and deep. I crawled silently out of bed and slipped out of the room. I knew if she woke up, it would cause a storm to break that hell itself could not weather. So I crept. I didn’t breathe. I sat by the window, again. Watching the sky as it pulsed from one mood to the next, with a quick succession of busy clouds. I remember the ache in my chest; so deep, so real. As if someone had filled my heart with lead. Heavy. Cold.

From then on, it got easier. Even when it was hard, it wasn’t that bad. By the next afternoon, I had returned to the land of milk and honey. The place where people knew who I was. Where I knew where everything was. Where I could do some good.

He was wrong to take me out in the first place.

He was wrong to deny me the companion I was supposed to have.

So God fixed his mistakes, partially at my expense. And I went home. Home to the apartment with a bathroom fit for the Gods. Home to the oldest car in the mission. Home to the smell of new carpet and hot chocolate. Home to the bathroom floor that had known so many nights of pain. Home to the bed where my illness left for the last time. Just…. Home.

As we went around that first day, we stopped by the member’s homes. When they saw me, Oliva, Fanny, and Ashley all started to cry. We tried to surprise them, but when Fanny opened the door, she yelled “I KNOW she’s come back! Where IS she?” I came around the corner, and fell into her open arms. Even Baby, their Chihuahua, knew who I was. Raced around their back yard out of excitement. Sister Castellanos screamed like a little child when she saw me. I actually don’t think I’ve ever had a day in my life where I felt so loved.

And I needed it. After so much time feeling like a burden; a chore. I just needed people who would love me.

Round Lake was the reason. It was the rhyme. It was a ray of light in a time of utter darkness. It was the land of milk and honey. It was there that I learned what I could become, once someone trusted me.

I became a legend. An inspiration. The numbers of lessons we were having daily baffled the mission. They baffled me. I just looked on as the Lord blessed us over and over again. I wasn’t doing anything different. It’s as if he needed me to know that it was Him that caused us to have success. They were the blessings poured out upon President Doll for trusting someone who so desperately needed to be trusted.

For months he had mistrusted me, misunderstood me and talked about me as if I were a problem. For months he had been too quick to judge and too slow to love. For as long as I had been there, he had boxed me up in his mind, confident that he had classified me correctly. Conveniently labeled and shoved into a corner, like lawnmower parts or medical reference books. I tried to be the innocent, loving sister that didn’t care. But I did. Of course I see now the folly in the act; why did I try to make excuses for the way I felt? Those were my emotions; what made them invalid?

That day, we drove out of our way to get to his oversize house. We sat there awkwardly as I tried to love a man who so cruelly handled me. She was there, his loving wife. Almost motherly, but not quite. There was something about her that I couldn’t understand. Probably the fact that she married her emotionally myopic husband. Blind to those with real needs, unwilling to listen.

It’s only now that I’m okay with saying these things. There is no sin in disliking someone.

And so I do. I heartily dislike him. Just like almost every other practicing lawyer I’ve ever met. Heartless bastards, every last one of them.

A slightly worthless interjection by the author

Very rarely, you have one of those moments - when you realize that what you are doing right then, in that very moment, is significant. Maybe when you read a new book, or a listen to a new song, or watch a new movie. Sometimes it can even be an old song, that has new meaning. Maybe it's walking outside when it should be cold, and just for a moment, its warm. The sun or God or just coincidence, showing in the written word, music staff, a falling leaf.

When that happens, that song or book or moment of philosophizing enters into your own personal canon. So what is the canon? It is the set of art, music, literature, dance, philosophy and film that is significant enough that all functioning members of western society should at least know of their existence, in order to understand why we do the things we do.

Today, I found a new film that entered into my canon.

It would be superfluous to tell you what, because it means something different than it would ever mean to you.

But basically, at one point a character in the film says that one of the main points of life, one of the things that makes us worthwhile, is when we create. When someone makes something that puts their outsides on their insides - whether it is a painting, or a pair of socks, or a poem.

Well this is mine.

-V

Chapter 18

If that summer were a story, Lake Powell would be the climax. We talked about it for months, fantasized, planned. But that was supposed to be one of those things that you dream about, that never happens.

Like when Anna and I went to Disneyland.

But suddenly we were there, baking on the sand and exploring the water. Suddenly we were riding in a speed boat with former missionaries. Young men and young women whom we had only seen in skirts and blouses, suits and ties. Eating, sleeping, living in their bathing suits. The pictures from that trip inspired a generation of jealously – the group of us, talking and laughing. Sleeping.

That first night, we made the ridiculous decision to sleep boy girl boy girl, one after another. I somehow got sandwiched between Michaelsen, whom I had never met before that evening, and Seeley, the sister with lioness hair. Halfway through the night, Christensen and Seeley began hooking up. They thought we were all asleep. But no, we were all awake. I want to be clear here; this was strictly kissing. In our world, that’s what “hooking up” means. But all the same, awkward.

There were so many memories. Anna, Jodi and I on the top of the houseboat. Three generations of the Princess Dynasty. I feel I should explain the Latter – Day – Saint mission culture; your first “companion”, or missionary that you live and work with, is your trainer. They also call them your “mom” or “dad”, depending on your gender. Anna was my trainer, Jodi was hers. We were given the nickname of the princess dynasty because, well, it fits. So those nights on top of the houseboat, it was like we got to know each other as women. Not as missionaries, sent into a savage country to preach the truth to men and women who, for the most part, don’t have any interest in listening, but as real women. Women with emotions, and likes, and dislikes, and fashion sense, and sex drives. And oh have we got that. It runs in the family, you could say. Each more volatile than the next.

Anna and I snuck off as everyone else started a slide show. Too painful for me. Too recent for her. We snuck into the darkness, lit by the full moon. From that moment on, I started counting the number of full moons since that trip. I lost count in Chicago. We talked of eternity, of events too significant to voice. We wandered the shore on the quiet side of the boat, just making the moment and turning it into the memory it became. I begged my angels to makes sure to write all that down. I want to watch the footage of that walk someday.

Me moaning on the floor of the houseboat as the random chiropractor who came on the trip popped all my dislocated ribs back into place. A group of people surrounding me, fascinated by the process.

Throughout the hell that was my life in Chicago, I would look back to that trip. Considering it foreshadowing of what was to come. Hoping that someday, all the plans we made would come true. I dreamed of that trip; when the wind grew especially cold and fierce, ripping and tearing at my flesh, I would picture myself rolling around in the waves as Anna snapped photos. So hot that any part of your body that touched another part would sweat. I would imagine the water, the food, the caves. I would begin feeding off the emotional stores I had created.

It was like starvation; as the body would feed off its own fat stories, so I would feed off of the emotional haven I created that summer.

It ran out it may.

There were no more warm nights, no more careless road trips, no more memories to feed from. They all seemed a dream. A world of happiness I didn’t dare recall. It scared me what I would be willing to do to go back.

There was a night, in Chicago, where the weather reflected my heart, my mood. Usually the weather there was pretty random. But that night, it fit. The clouds swirled in black and purple mounds, a witch stirring her poisonous brew. Lightning flashed, thunder rumbled and roared. And I sat on the carpet, but the sliding glass door. The exit to the balcony. Rested my head on the cool glass, pushing the heartbreak to the ends of my fingers and toes. Trying to push it out. Emotional constipation. She slept in the other room. A scene all too common for her; while her companion lay in a heap on the floor, she slept soundly, dreaming of her own sanity.

She was deceiving. So innocent, so perky. Inside she was a she-dragon. A ravenous she-wolf, hungry for the misery of others. You know the phrase misery loves company? She was a walking, talking version of that phrase. Her own immoral past haunted her, causing her to lash out at anything living or breathing nearby. The girl before me lasted 18 days. The girl after me lasted 10. I lasted a month.

It’s difficult to explain exactly what she does to you. I heard that one of her companions wanted to jump out of an 8 storey window, rather than stay with her. I considered ending my life. I really can’t explain it to you; I wish you could see it. She is emotionally abusive to women. Probably because she was emotionally abused by the women in her life. A deadly pattern. She’s a carrier.

Somehow everything became my fault. Suddenly, the somewhat easy task of loving others became impossible. Somewhere in that hellish month, I lost myself.

Letters were my refuge. I had a typewriter that I used to write about 12 letters a week. I would write and write, every Wednesday. Pouring out my soul on paper, trying to get people to respond. That week, the letters turned into something to dread.

First from Mandy. A friend from high school passed away in a sudden and tragic car accident. No one was at fault. It was just an accident.

Then Mike. I loved him so dearly, so completely. He opened my frigid heart and taught me to let go. And he chose her over me. What’s funny is that I saw it coming. That morning, I woke up, said my prayers, and declared to Hna. Ramos that today I am going to get Dear Janed. We went about our business as usual. And when we got the mail that evening, there it was. I walked calmly into the bedroom and cried. I let the racking sobs of disappointed affection, of a fairy tale gone awry shake my frame. He was perfect, as far as I could tell. He was what I wanted. I wanted him for now, forever. I wanted to give him everything.

My mission ruined my life.

Chapter 17

Sitting next to her, you could never ignore her. Her eyes are so dark, they’re almost black. Dark melted pools of chocolate. She’s infectiously charming. She could carry on a conversation with anyone.

The first day we met, we shared. I told her of Stooph. Of Giorgiano. Of all the things that had happened to me. She told me of her brother – of waking up to find him dead in the room next door.

Turns out suicide was a theme of my mission. And it all started with Brittney.

Brittney is a walking contradiction. She declares independence, but clings to her loved ones. She comes off as naïve, but hides a past that could rival that of any tragic heroine. We knew it meant something on that first day, sharing pain as we sat on the floor of the residence hall, our backs to the tall, oblong closets. Pain is a drug, and we shared it as addicts shared a needle. Bleeding into each other, listening and talking at the same time. As I removed the needle, I would hand it to her. Figuratively sharing everything, even disease. Once you do that kind of sharing, there’s no turning back.

Our last night together was something surreal; an experience so out-of-body that I must have been in a state of trauma. All night long, Rachel, Kelia, Brittney and I arranged and rearranged my suitcases. 2 bloody suitcases for 18 months. Not even the hippies of the world could declare that fair. As I shifted the 18 month supply of tampons and vitamins from one suitcase to another, they sat on the top bunks. Encouraging me. Asking me to stay. At one point Brittney crawled in my luggage. Asked me to take her with me. Later that night Kelia gave me an hour long massage. Britney and I took pictures making faces together. One of those pictures sits on her nightstand. It has since she came home early from Argentina.

The next morning, we all woke up at 6:30. You were disobedient if you didn’t. Never mind the fact that we had slept less than 2 hours. Never mind that I would spend the next 24 hours on three different airplanes, my knees touching the seat in front of me as I tried to ignore the movies playing on the screens that surrounded me. Never mind that those girls would spend the next 12 hours crying, mourning the loss of an imprisoned sisterhood. Disregard all that. Waking up at 6:30 was much more important, or so they told us. Truthfully, at that point, it was. We had made a commitment. And doesn’t it say something about all of us that we followed it?

We loaded into the bus – all 9 of us. The four Georgian speakers, the 4 Armenian elders, and me. I was the last to board. And as I placed my stockinged foot carefully on the step, an urge pressed me. I turned. Saw the backs of the girls who had come to mean so much. I ran. I ran to them, and we embraced. I cried. It really is like a friendship forged in prison; forced to connect in shackled obedience, strict adherence to the sex-deprived rules of the MTC.

The MTC really is one of the greatest miracles in the world. 2,000 young people, committed to a rigorous moral code and study schedule, yet disobedience and delinquency are minimal. World leaders visit that campus, to see 19 year old boys speaking Russian after just 6 weeks in language training. It is a miracle. And just like any other miracles, the sacrifices made to create it and keep it up are sizable.

Family.

Music.

Films.

Late nights.

Sleeping in.

All the treasured past times of a carefree generation, stolen overnight by a religious fortitude not usually displayed in teenage boys and young adult women.

Then there are the real sacrifices.

Time.

Sanity.

Being alone.

Comforts of home, of friends, of anything familiar.

The walls are brick and coated with paint probably used in juvenile detention centers or insane asylums. You begin to feel like you’re in one. Same routine, day after day, our nylon shackles binding us to the commitment we didn’t understand before we made it. The pain of misunderstanding and dislike, of competition for something that shouldn’t matter. The need to prove yourself.

I can see why they didn’t like me. Why they acted the way they did. The truth is, I don’t blame them. Looking back, it all seems a daze anyway. I was still in emotional Trauma from the Stooph incident. All I knew is that I felt unloved. Lonely. Hated. Feelings I didn’t understand. And blast it, I had none of my former vices to dull the intensity of the self-loathing that filled my veins. Loud music. Long midnight drives. Kissing strangers to feel something more powerful than it. Anger. I had none of those. Instead I had to turn to a God that I didn’t know. That I didn’t trust.

So I turned.

And the biggest miracle of all? I found him there. Waiting, as he said he would be, with open arms. And every time after that, I found him again. I found him that first time in a late night in November. Staying up too late to be alone; the white handbook says not to do that, I know, but I did. I sat first at my desk, reading the scriptures. Marking them, trying to glean any comfort I could from those thin, fragile pages. For the first time in my life, coming to the Lord with a need. The feeling was so strong that it filled me. It was warm, and pleasant, but so powerful it made my body shake. As I trembled, tears flowed out of my eyes, down my nose and cheeks, dripping onto the untouched pages I had neglected for so long. I tried to relish it, to feel every last sensation. I do that with every strong emotion – push it to its limits, making sure I understand what it is trying to teach me.

The next time, it was late at night. I found him comforting me in the searing pain of illness, as I cried alone on the ancient couch in our apartment. Sister Smith sleeping just a few yards away. I clutched at my stomach, wishing I could tear it open and rip out whatever was causing the pain. And I felt him there, cradling my sweaty brow and whispering words of comfort.

He was even there in that taxi, when I felt the angels bow in reverence to my pain.

And now? He sustains my every footstep. Corrects when I stumble. Steadies my trembling hand as I reach out to others. Assures me that by giving, I will receive everything I need.

He is no longer a God I don’t know or trust. He is my Father. Wise, kind, and all knowing. I’m still learning to trust.

Chapter 16

She volunteered to take me home. The same bright blue eyes, the bluest I’ve ever seen. The same long, curly blonde hair.

The night had been an interesting one. A huge but unexpected hoard of people had crowded the small kitchen, eating marinated walnuts and candied pumpkin. Those of us that felt like outcasts would periodically retreat to one of the other rooms – the living room, with its musical instruments, or the family room, removed from the kitchen by a banister and just a few stairs.

When I walked in her house that night, I had no idea if she would be there. I heard her voice up the stairs, and I hurriedly thrust the cupcakes I bore into someone else’s surprised hands, sprinting up to meet her. She was just as beautiful as I remembered her. She just emits light. A walking prism; rainbows bouncing off of every curl, out of every fleck in her eyes. Her skin has a quality about it; a quality that evokes thoughts of mythical creatures, combinations of divine women and even more divine creatures. Pale, but not colorless. It shimmers like precious metal; if the women that surround her are counterfeits of the real thing, she is the diamond. When placed next to something else inferior, the difference is immediately apparent.

We have an eternal friendship, she tells me.

Is that why we can separate physically but still stay connected somehow?

I spent quality time alone, reliving memories from that strange land. Memories that brought joy and laughter. Memories that stung. Memories that made me want to recoil from my own mind.

He was there. Standing in the corner, quiet as always. He is one of the few that knows of that day; that saw me in the extremity of human suffering. In fact, he never saw me in anything but the extremity of human suffering. I spent the night avoiding him. What do you say to someone who saw you beg for death?

What can you say to God?

It’s like she sees me for what I can become, rather than the person I am right now. I hold you on a pedestal so high, that nothing you could say or do could make you fall, she told me. So energetic as she stepped side to side, trotting like a horse about to receive fresh oats after a long day’s work.

We paused in front of my house. She was telling me of books she has read. It was then that I realized.

Tonight would never have happened had I not served a mission.

Memories are made, I think, by a combination of many factors. Location. Season. People. Time. Food. Smells. The list could go on and on.

This particular recipe had a key ingredient: me.

I met Kelia in the MTC. She and Anna met that weekend in Rexburg. Early October; still warm enough to leave our jackets packed away in boxes, waiting to air their heavy, soiled selves and dominate our tired shoulders for the many months of winter to come. It was one of the last days of freedom. We went to the local gas station and traded a few quarters for some Mexican coca-cola. She showed me her secret place; the tree like a saddle, overlooking the river. It flowed slowly there. Like her thoughts. I pictured her there, mourning the many different losses that have characterized her life so far.

Ashley. The beautiful farm girl whose tragic accident darkened a time that should have been lighthearted. I see pictures of old friends, drinking and frolicking in the naïve frivolity of young adulthood. Anna never got that opportunity.

Ben. The boy that waited a year and a half, writing consistently if sparingly, only to choose someone else when she came home. Their final goodbye so bittersweet. I wonder if she sat just there, watching the water pass by. Slowly. I wonder what she felt. If she felt the unfairness of it all; how can one life be filled with so much loss?

When she drove to Malad, her car broke down. I imagined her telling me this in person, but we were separated by over two hundred miles. She left the car by the freeway underpass, and began walking towards the field of wildflowers. I wonder if she knows how different that makes her. She plucked the flowers, gathering them in her small, flexible hands. She could bend the fingers backwards, touching her wrist with the delicate fingernails. Pink like rose petals.

That weekend, the three of us got into a car. Spontaneous. Full of life. We just drove over the Idaho plains, golden in the final stages of the harvest. We came to an overpass that bridged a river. Anna pulled the car to the side of the highway, that gleam in her eye. The same gleam she had in her eye when she applied red dye to my hair in that tiny bathroom. The gleam that I saw when I caught her eye in a mirror in the salon by chulogni hraprak, depi tigran mets, as heavy eyebrowed Armenians pulled at our hair, brushing it and styling it in the late 90s style they still use there. It means so many things at once: adventure, liveliness, importance; as if the moment we are about to enter, the memory we are about to create will define her. Something to hide from the grandchildren, unless they display the spunk necessary to appreciate it.

Let’s go swimming,

We thought about it. But then our clothes would be wet. They would get Anna’s car wet. It would be cold.

She started the car again.

We just need to buy some underwear.

It’s that spirit that makes her different. To be honest, it’s so many things. But this is one of the major ones. You don’t give up the chance to make memories just because a small obstacle threatens your path. You move it. You jump over it. You go around. Even if the obstacle is a mountain – get a shovel and start moving it.

For verily I say unto you, if ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.

Sometimes, she told me, having faith to move a mountain means the faith to get a shovel and start moving it.

We ended up in some tiny Idaho town; so small it didn’t have a grocery store. We wandered into the only shop with a sign of life in it, realizing as we entered that it was a second-hand store. We had come with the intention of asking where to find a wal-mart. While I questioned the middle-aged woman, Anna and Kelia wandered to the back of the store, examining the old prom dresses and lingerie. Skeletons of important nights gone by. Someone’s hopes and dreams were realized or ruined in those clothes. Or out of them…. Now they were discarded, sloughed as a snake’s skin. Left behind as tattered ruins of a colorful past. Haphazardly arranged on cheap plastic hangers for strangers to handle, judge, and leave behind. Just as we handle, judge, and abandon our memories.

We walked out of the store a few moments later, carrying our booty. Anna, a black, slinky, lacy number in her hand. Kelia chose red velour. I somehow ended up with a floor-length white, gauzy, transparent negligee. We drove back to the bridge, and changed in the car. We waited for all the trucks to pass, and snuck down the side of the hill. We headed upstream, hair tumbling over bare shoulders and bare feet stumbling over the river rocks that had been left behind as the water level fell. Global warming, everyone tells me.

The only evidences we have of that moment are the pictures of our shadows, posing in the autumn light, the negligees, and the images etched in our minds. Of Kelia laughing as she ventured into the rapid stream. Of my nightgown becoming immediately see through as soon as it came in contact with water. Of Anna, barely submerging her toe before declaring it too cold. As we sat on the rocks, mermaids with satin tails, sunning ourselves, a group of boys approached. We clutched at ourselves as they asked if we knew where the rope swing was. NO! A chorus of sirens. Tempting from the rocks.

The magic of the memory lived on as we crawled into the car, grasping our sides from laughing and clutching for the clothes we had so rapidly shoved into plastic crevices. As we drove and grew nearer and nearer to Rexburg, we seemed to be driving from myth back into reality. From legend into life.

It all started there. From there they grew into friends, then sisters. Now they are connected by the same strings which connect me to them. The twine of regret, guilt, memory, joy, tears, comfort. Jewels in the tapestry of life, trapped by our circumstances, but our brilliance not dimmed by them. Kelia is a diamond. Light and prisms all through. She keeps none of her beauty for herself; she just receives and gives back, making the gift more beautiful as it passes through her. Anna, a pearl. She is opaque, hard to discern. Looking at her is like looking at eternity. The harder you stare, the less you can see. She only shows herself as she chooses. She is uncommon, from obscure origins. Formed from pain – her own, and that of others. Brilliant but not blinding. You only see what she really is if you invest the time. And then there’s me. I don’t know what jewel to compare myself to. Probably an opal. Not everyone likes them, but those that do find that their faults are what make them beautiful. Strings of purple, green and blue that make each opal unique.

That night was made by location. By food. By people. Forged from the pain of my past, connected by the mythology of the present. Cemented by our hope of the future.

Chapter 15

15 isn't done yet. Sorry. It will be posted soonly.

But because I'm just that nice, I will post 16.

Thanks for your time.

-V

Chapter 14

It was a new morning. One that smells like rain. One of those mornings when you can feel the invisible dust rise up to meet the distilling vapor. One of those mornings that oozes spring.

Who would have known the turmoil of the night before?

In a word? He said. Girls.

Then I started to wonder; am I part of the problem? And why is it plural? Do I actually mean something to him or am I part of a bigger problem he is having with double-x chromosomes in general?

It’s not a problem with my testimony, I told them. I know it’s true. It’s a problem with my desires and convictions. If I leave, I know I will be sinning against the greater light. And yet there they are, in my mind. Those two pathways. Rapidly separating, but remarkably similar, from what I can see. The one to the left leads into a thick forest. It leads into the trials of a life rich with the gospel. The one to the right leads into an equally dense grove of trees. But this one leads to the trials of a life devoid of hope. I have to choose which one I want. And even though I know which one is “right”, I still see the choice.

They tell me to choose the gospel. They tell me that it’s worth it.

Then he terrifies me, and tells me that maybe I have to take the wrong one to appreciate the right one.

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. Wrong is the time when we are not right. The question is, then, can any decision be made at all? Any decision at all? Last time I tried this he almost killed me. Is it going to take my life being threatened to turn me around this time too? Why does it feel like he hates me?

I know you are all called to this mission, I told them with tears in my eyes. I just have a hard time believing that I am.

I know that Heavenly Father loves you, but I can’t feel that he loves me. It’s kind of the “with friends like this who needs enemies” philosophy. With a father like this, who needs satan? He is supposed to be the source of all unhappiness and the source of all lies. Then why does it feel so wrong to do what’s right?

He told me to stop tiptoeing down a road that would lead me straight to my bishop’s office. He told me to make my decision and stick by it. But it’s not that easy. He told me to go back to the crossroads and wait there safely, or to jump in head first and risk it all. Stop skirting the line, he said.

Do I have to know wrong to do right? Is that why keeping the commandments is so hard? And if so, then God planned for us to sin, and that seems against his nature. I don’t doubt His existence. I don’t doubt that he is. I doubt that he cares. What kind of sick person enjoys watching other people suffer?

They do it because they want what they see on the outside to match what they feel on the inside.

Because looking at unharmed, innocent flesh is too painful when your soul is screaming in agony.

Rock bottom looks the same every time. Well, both times. It looks like 4am on an uncharacteristically warm morning in march. It looks like loneliness, it feels as if you’re past feeling. It’s your body going into shock because of what you are feeling emotionally and spiritually. It’s the ends of the nerves going fuzzy and feeling as if they’re asleep. Because otherwise they can’t process the exquisite pain. Exquisite. Carefully or elaborately done; very intense.

This time, I didn’t yell. This time, I didn’t run. This time, I stayed. Probably because I couldn’t move.

Does this have anything to do with conversations you’ve been having with Brenner? She asked?

It was then that I realized. When I was 19, I went sledding. I went the wrong way because no one had told me where to go. I realized that I was going towards a drop off. So I put my hands back in the snow. I tried to stop myself. By that time, I was going too fast. I went off the edge and lost the sled. I landed on my hands. And as they poured blood all over the slippery rocks, the only feeling I felt was the ice-burn. Of trying to stop myself. Not the pain of losing the skin, or the splinters. They were peripheral damage. I felt the ice-burn more keenly than anything else.

I feel the pain of trying to stop the already-rapidly moving process more than the actual pain of the other parts.

Of being sent home. Of wondering and doubting. Of humiliation.

Don’t get me wrong, I had to get those out. I had to fish them out while still bleeding, just as I had to scrub the skin off my hands and get the dirt out before my skin could heal over it.

There was one splinter left in my thumb. I didn’t realize it until it had healed over. So a few days later, I went upstairs to the apartment above me, where they had the strong stomachs necessary to dig it all out.

It HURT as they reopened the wound. Tearing away at the freshly healed, tender flesh. It bled and bled as they tried to get the splinter out. It had nestled its way down into my flesh so that it rested right near the bone.

The conversations with Brenner dug away all the freshly healed skin, so that I could see that it was still there.

The doubt.

Two years ago, I ran away. And I made my decision. That He asks too much. And that I wasn’t going to do it anymore. Two years ago, I met Jodi. She never even asked me if I believed. She just expected me to stay.

So I did. And then it started to heal. And it continued. And as time wore on, the real thorn dug itself closer and closer to my soul. To the essence of who I am.

Talking to Brenner opened it back up. Made it necessary for me to get it out this time. It turned my room into a temple-prison. Where the pattern of the light coming through the bamboo blinds is etched on my memory. Where the fever broke. A two year long illness, where different symptoms came and went and came and went. It’s finally over. The worst part, at least.

The moment when the fever broke came when I went back to the taxi.

I left her there, standing on the side of the road in Artashat. She was wearing that black skirt she always wore, and her blue shoulder back hung by her side. I watched as she got smaller. She had called the taxi. She had put me in it. When we rounded the corner, I somehow choked out in Armenian “turn around. Go back.” But by the time we got there, she was gone. I couldn’t see her anymore. In that long taxi-ride to Yerevan, I kept singing the same thing over and over again.

Indz het eghir du misht, Im ter bari

Ko dzaina togh hokus , Hangist beri

Indz het eghir du misht ter

Kez misht karoghtem yes

Orhnir indz im purkich

Galis em kez

So this time, I went back to that moment. I got out my hymnal in Armenian. I opened it to page tasnaerku. I began to sing.

The tears began to flow. By the end of the song, I was full-out crying. And as I prayed, I felt the world go still. I felt the angels that surround me, busy though they are, bow their heads in reverence. This time, I felt who they were.

Ancestors, from years past. Descendants yet to come. Brothers and sisters who were never born.

He told me he loved me. He told me he loved me because I brought so many people together with my pain.

The thing is, I know it’s not over. I know that. But as I prayed, I felt those hands on my shoulders, my legs, my feet, turning me down the path to the left And now that I’ve chosen, I can see where it ends. Somewhere higher up than I am right now. That’s all. The path that looks exactly like the other one. The path of the gospel. I know this is an uphill battle. Just because the fever has broken, doesn’t mean that it’s over. I have so much further to go.

But the splinter is out. The thorn is gone. I had to dig deep to get it.

He brought me back to two years ago. To deal with the root issues.

Like I said, I make connections quickly.

Just as a side note

Today I posted 12 and 13. Read 12 first or 13 wont' make any sense.

Please post comments as you read.... I want to hear your feedback.

-V

Chapter 13

That last night we had together, I left to take a shower at around 6:00. We were both so tired. Both unwilling to let sleep take over – that would make the few precious moments we had left pass too fast. When I came back upstairs, he was asleep. As I kneeled beside his sleeping form on the couch, we woke up with a start. When he saw who it was, he gave me this look. It was a look of complete infatuation. A look of pure love. I had never seen anyone look at me that way before.

I thought it was forever. I thought it meant more. I thought it meant anything.

His letters started out with the same emotion that he had given me when he looked at me that night. Love. Adoration. Praise. Fidelity. Loyalty. He would tell me he loved me. That his favorite memory was when I fell asleep in his arms. That he couldn’t wait for me to come home and go on more roller coasters with him. That every Monday was like Christmas because those were the days when Chicago would peek out of his mailbox.

Before two months were out, he started dating some girl named nancy. She was in his ward. She was a elementary ed major. She was petite and innocent. I remember the day I got that letter. I had to sing in a fireside.. I felt numb.

She didn’t last long. He said that I was so superior to her that he couldn’t even enjoy her company after spending time with me.

The months passed. I grew dimmer and dimmer in his memory, as he grew brighter and brighter in mine. One day, I got a letter.

I started dating this girl, it said. Her name is Hannah and she is from Salt Lake. It has ended up far more serious than I could have anticipated.

I hope all is well with you, and I hope we can be best friends when you come home.

Every type of heartache is the same. Every type of pain. It starts out as a throbbing in your heart. A dead, weighted throbbing. Eventually the throbbing takes over your whole body, the pulsating of the heartbreak eventually manifesting itself as racking sobs. The window over my bed showed swirling black and purple skies; there was a tornado warning that night.

He tried to be my friend when I came home. I told him it wasn’t going to work. I told him I needed my space.

The truth is, that if he had wanted me when I came home, I would have been his.

And still I dream he’ll come to me

And we will live the years together

But those are dreams that cannot be

And there are storms we cannot weather

I loved him so powerfully that sometimes it scared me. It took me 10 months to even start to feel okay about it. And now?

I don’t know.

Sometimes I wonder what I would do if he came back. If I would be the strong, independent heroine people see me to be. Or if the dormant love I have for him would take over. It really is like a volcano – it isn’t gone. Just hidden. Vesuvius, ready to blow at any moment.

Chapter 12

Mike told me in an email that he wondered if he lied to me. If, in the moment, he actually felt like he said he did.

He was so different from any other man I had ever dated. Known. He was tall- taller than me, at least. He had dark, thick hair and dark, thick eyebrows. He was solid muscle. He had the prettiest honey colored eyes. When he smiled they squinted. His smile was wide and sincere, and he could grow a beard in a day. You eventually get used to the scruff. He was strong and handsome, with a jaw that could make women melt and a boyish charm that could soften the hardest disposition. He could pick me up and throw me around as if I weighed no more than a dried leaf. We would play like children – wrestle around and laugh and run and sing and dance and skip. But we had the most adult conversations that I had ever had.

I don’t remember the first time we stayed up almost all night. I just know that it kept happening. Night after night, on the lawn outside my apartment. We would bring two blankets, and just stare and the moon and talk. For hours. About his mission. About mine. About family, and heartbreak, and our pasts. I felt so safe and protected near him; sometimes I would fall asleep, and when I woke up in his arms he would kiss me on the forehead. This is what I’m going to remember, he said.

He slept a summer by my side

He filled my days with endless wonder

He took my childhood in his stride

But he was gone when autumn came…..

My dad came up to get me, again. This time, I wasn’t going so far. Just a hop, skip and a jump away. In my kitchen, they talked about Ruffle’s structural integrity over that of Lay’s. That the ridges make it more sound for holding dip.

Jennifer Mackay.

Rebecca Mock.

Victoria McCain.

His name has to start with an M and have a C in it, she told me matter of factly. Inside, my stomach leapt. He fits.

I want to stay here all night with you, he said. I want to savor every moment.

Sweety, you have a test tomorrow.

I don’t care. Let’s go swimming.

Somehow he convinced me, and we ended up swimming around in some public pool. Overtanned blondes in pink and turquoise bikinis sucking in and pushing out to impress the boys that crowded the hot tub. And then there was me and Mike. Alone in the pool. Teach me how to do swimmer stuff, he said. To be honest, he was pretty terrible at it. At one point, he lifted me up out of the pool by my ribs. My ribs that had been dislocated only 3 weeks earlier. I cried out like a child. He held me.

For a few weeks, Tiare had been trying to hook us up. He liked me, it turned out. One night, after racing home from work on my rusty bike, I launched my sweaty self up the stairs to get a drink of water. I was still out of breath, and didn’t notice him sitting, looking at me. Tiare tastefully left us alone, and in almost no time we were on the same couch, him holding me.

The first time he kissed me, he was so nervous his whole body was shaking. His lips were cold.

This isn’t like, a one time thing, is it? I asked him.

Of course not.

I liked him so much. And like quickly turned to love. I fell for that boy faster than a cripple without crutches. He only had to breathe and I loved him for it. Just his existence made everything that had happened okay. There was nothing bitter about it. It was all sweet.

Eatchel called me that Thursday. Said he wanted to come hang out with me before I headed back out on my mission. That he had someone he wanted me to meet. I said of course! Mike and I were sitting on my big leather couch – the beige one. No matter what it stayed cold. The leather was always cold. Eatchel called. I ran out the front door and down the cul de sac to meet him. I hugged him, and he said I brought you a present. And then she rounded the corner.

I can honestly say that no one could have given me a better gift. That no one has ever known my needs and wants as deeply as eatchel did when he drove to Idaho and back just so I could see her one more time before I left. I didn’t even try to hide the tears as she gave me that look. The one I know so well. The look that means that I matter. That entire weekend was a wonderful, colorful blur. I was with Mike when he rode his first roller coaster. We went on ride after ride after ride. Mike kissed me in the rain, in front of hundreds of people. Dipped me and planted one on me. It was that moment that I became his.

As we were riding the ski-lift over the park, he kicked my sandal off. I didn’t care. All I knew at that point is that I loved him. And that he was what I wanted. For the rest of my life.

When we left the park, we walked to Eatchel’s car. That ridiculous Mercedes that no 21 year old should feasibly own. The boys just stood there as we started to say goodbye. We giggled and ran away, far enough so they could just see our silhouettes. Mine voluptuous, curvy, tall. Hers small, petite. Her hair flowing down her back like a haphazard waterfall. Mine in two buns. Kinda like princess leia. She said that she loved me. That she didn’t know why, but keep going. That she would miss me.

When mike and I started walking away, I didn’t look back. I knew it would make it harder. I just started to cry. The further and further we walked, the harder and harder I cried. This time, I wouldn’t have her to help me. To understand me. This time, I wouldn’t be in Armenia. I wouldn’t be in that forgotten parcel of land where time stopped 100 years ago. Where blonde is gold and mountains are bare. You already proved to me and Him that you would do anything for him. Now go finish. Her last words to me face to face.

On the drive back to provo, Mike and I talked about the plan of salvation. We listened to our favorite genre, sex rock. That night, we said I love you.

Chapter 10

There was really only one person there.

Why are my brakes squealing?

Because they’re excited. He laughed at my feeble joke. I remember the day I stopped making them altogether. The day that the effort it took to please others was too much for my suffering mind, my aching body. I still thought of them. But it didn’t matter anymore.

She drove me home from church that night, that night when my body rejected home. When it rejected friends and neighbors and…. Love? At the stoplight I realized that she was trying to act calm. I wonder what she was feeling then. I wondered if she thought I was faking.

All it took was some antacids. All it took was a magic pill, a pill with which I had created a placebo effect so strong that it worked.

I got this shirt at a maternity store. It was striped, rainbow, tight. She told us this as we sat on the merry go round at borchard park. Eating our ice tickles, our otter pops of the Gods. It was hot. It was dark. We all laughed.

Too much history. Too long. Too little knowledge or sharing or anything else real. Too late to start.

That night, I wanted to open up. To read to her parts of my soul. The dark parts, that no one ever sees.

I’m tired. My eyes hurt. I’m going to bed.

I know the people who care about me because they care about my writing, I told him.

Does she? The truth is, I don’t know. Part of me wants to share. Part of me wants to keep this going. This 10- year old friendship we have based on who we were 10 years ago. I know she doesn’t know who I am now. Do I know her anymore? Almost 2 years apart. Almost long enough to forget.

Grace is one of those people that does magic simply by existing. I don’t know what kind of magic it is. It depends on what t role you play. Are you part of the spell or just a bystander? Thing is, she hypnotizes people into paying attention only to her. And leaves out everyone else. Sometimes she picks you. Most of the time she doesn’t.

With Grace, I find myself more on the outside than on the inside. With Grace, I find myself begging for validation, for concern and not getting it. I can actually declare the relationship I have with Grace at this point in my life to be entirely unhealthy. Then again, most of my relationships are entirely unhealthy.

Magical, he called her. He hated me. I could never really figure out why. And even today, he adores her. Despises me.

Grace is a polarizer. There is no middle ground.

Right after I came home, I found solace with Grace, about to leave on her mission, and Sam, who had come home early from hers. She seemed so much happier than I. We drove down to the temple together, her with the assurance that that period of her life is over. That time seems so warm compared to now.

We would go out to dinner, proud to be in each other’s company. They were both strikingly beautiful; no matter where we went, people would stare. With Grace, people always stare. She looks like you plucked her straight out of a 50s catalog and placed her haphazardly into the bleak post-modern era in which we find ourselves.

Her last morning, Grace got a group together to go to Denny’s. Right before she entered the MTC. The Denny’s where Kathryn used to go with Jake and Natalie their freshmen year, when I and Grace remained in California. The Denny’s where Giorgiano and I used to go to have late night hot chocolate and talk. The Denny’s where Erica, Diane, Tina and I all would walk after midnight on Sunday night, to feed our voracious 18-year old appetites. It is a place of memories, good and bad. Of jokes, and sugar packets, and unrivaled people watching. That morning, crisp and new, countless people came. I was there. I watched her enchant a group, casting her spell over all at once. They looked at her adoringly as they cast sideways glances at me out of the side of their eyes.

At that point, she was the golden girl. I the rejected band whose seemingly pure makeup was tarnished and retracting to reveal what it really was. Brass. A brazen counterfeit of what it should be. The stuff of cheap trophies and saxophones. Before I left, people looked at me like that.

The morning was what was significant. It was April in Utah; nothing beats it. Warm, but not baking. Mysterious as the sun climbs over the mountains. If it were a color it would be mint green. If it were a fruit it would be an apple. She left, and over the next year and a half, our friendship would be characterized by sporadic postcards and letters from the Midwest; exchanged as a peace offering, while both knew that we could never be the same again.

How do you explain what it’s like to go through the hardest times of your life to someone who still sees you as 17?

That morning, we got up early and met at Denny’s at 6:00. Kathryn, Abbey, Stooph, Grace, and I. Kathryn was peppy, abbey quiet, Stooph loving, Grace cranky, and me insane. I thought to almost 3 years back. To what it felt like in march of 2007, before anything had happened.

Are we genetically destined for catastrophe? Is it programmed into our genome? Would we have acted different if we had known?

Chapter 9

That fall we stayed home together, Ashley and I. I still don’t know that had happened to her that summer. But for some reason we just live parallel lives. We separate, we come back together, and everything’s the same. No catching up, no delay. Just comfortable.

That night in the Gholdston’s kitchen, we made bowls of strawberry ice cream with blueberries. We watched Mansfield Park. That was the one time in my life that I knew that my time was being defined by my actions. That those days and night and heartbreaks were with Ashley.

She wants to be a chef. I knew that ever since I met her. I helped her cook thanksgiving dinner one time our senior year of high school. She steamed the broccoli. Who steams broccoli? It was for mister Coffman. Than crazy old man with the federalism tie and the separation of powers and checks and balances belt. He drank only apple cider. Wore the same worn beret every day.

Even back then, I laughed too much.

With Ashley, it was enough. Never too much. We could make each other cry. Laugh. Sing. She could turn me shy and I could turn her bold.

I always wondered what it would be like to grow up in a home that didn’t welcome you. Ashley didn’t have to wonder. Ashley knew. But somehow, she always came out strong. She was strong and stable and loving. She knew her standards and she wouldn’t lower them for anyone. Ashley is small, petite, and French-like. She is delicate looking. With one of the prettiest faces I’ve seen in real life; the kind of face that makeup ruins. That fall, her hair was long. Down past her shoulders.

We’d go to the zoo. We’d go to church. We’d go to the mall. Out to dinner. To the temple. No matter what, and no matter where we went, it was comfortable. It was right. At that moment, God had designed Ashley for me. She became the bandage to my wounds, the Neosporin to my scrapes. She became the Tylenol and the alcohol too. She dressed my wounds, when hers were so much deeper.

Take a picture of us kissing.

He turned bright red. I turned bright red. I mean, I faltered, take a picture of us making kissy faces.

How is it that Ashley was the only one not flustered by that moment? What secret confidence does she hide?

We were going to go on our missions together. We prepared. We talked. We submitted at the same time. And the mine came.

Armenia. September 19^th.

France, January.

Four months?

When I came home from the MTC because they thought I needed knee surgery, she was there. She was so excited. She was so ready. She was so everything that I was not. We sat in my living room. In the too-formal chairs stuffed in the too-small space. I didn’t tell her anything. I wanted her to have her own experiences, make her own judgment. So I didn’t tell her.

I didn’t tell her how they made fun of me. How they didn’t like me. How they thought I was prideful. How they would forget about me and leave me. How it was my own personal hell.

Victoria, it sounds like your mission was your own personal hell.

If you only knew.

One night, we decided to watch a movie with James. James, who was in love with and completely flustered by Ashley at all times. We watched it in my house, on the L-shaped couch that just begged you to curl up in the fetal position and sleep. I was on the edge, on the chaise lounge. Ashley curled up in the corner. James in between us. Ashley and I fell asleep.

I felt like I was protecting you, he told us.

We slept as he watched, guarding us, caring for us. He was one of the most unique people I have ever met; caring more for the welfare of those he loved than for himself. It’s not as common as it sounds.

I remember feeling so sick, so weak, and so un-protected. Exposed. Raw. Like scratching the white part off of strep throat; all that’s left is pulsing flesh, each breath burning and each swallow choking. I remember asking the Lord to give her patience to deal with me. Give me strength to meet up to her expectations.

Have you ever preg-tested a cow? She asked.

Are you trying to say prag-tested and just are Canadian?

No, like pregnancy tested.

Sister, I’ve never even come within 50 feet of a cow.

She looked at me as if I was crazy. It was that look that she always gave me; it was like her face just automatically turned to pity and loathing when I crossed her path of vision. When she listened, she looked like she was in pain. When she was mad, she looked calm. Her face was so deceiving.

Companionship unity is one of the most important things, he told us. We knew that. But how do you reconcile the differences of a peacock and a workhorse? Of a California blonde and a Canadian farm girl?

Lika like dziun ka aintegh.

Even Siranush made fun of her.

Where was James when I felt so alone, so sick, so wrong in the middle of the night. Curled up, sweating on that olive green couch. Our apartment looked like it was from the 40’s it had the entrance, where we kept our heavy boots and heavy coats, heavy with Armenian mud. Heavy with dread. The toilet, that so often ran out of water. We’d carry the borsch pot from the kitchen, down through the breakfast hall, through the living room, and into the entrance just so we could flush.

The shower was off of the kitchen. The bok filled with reddish silt from years of unfiltered water, a clawfooted bathtub underneath to catch the water. But then it spat it back out onto the floor, which had a drain. What was the point of the bathtub, just receiving water to spit it back out haphazardly onto the cold tile? What was the point of Armenia, receiving me only to spit me back, cold, alone, and hurting?

Our beds were in the breakfast hall. I bet it was beautiful in the summertime, that hallway. I bet it was warm and light. My bed had a windowsill that led into our study room. I could literally crawl out of bed and through the window to study.

Where was James the night I woke up in agony, bleeding from unholy orifices, writhing in pain? Where was he when I was awake, night after night, with only the cockroaches for company? Where was he when I needed a strong, loving body by my side?

Where was he the day I came home, when there was no Ashley to console me. When she was gone, living her life no longer parallel to mine. When she was thriving in paris, Versailles. When she was inspiring hundreds and influencing thousands. Where was he?

Then again, where was she?