Chapter 28

I remember when I was new, bright eyed. I was in the MARB, waiting for some biology class I hated to start, sitting cross legged on the floor. You see, the MARB was built during the reign of President Wilkinson. The man who planted students to find people breaking the archaic honor code. He thought it innappropriate that students would be fraternizing between classes, so it is one of the few buildings on campus that was built with no benches, no chairs or tables. Just hallways. I remember listening absentmidedly to the strange conversations around me; the ones that would soon become mundane, common in this most uncommon of societies.

“We’ve only been dating for three weeks,but I know he’s the one. I know I want to marry him.”

“It was the first time I had smelled alcohol – how was I supposed to know what it is?”

And I noticed something different.

Silence.

There were two girls sitting facing each other, and their conversation had reached a lull. They had turned to their own particular tasks, one scribbling furiously in her University issued planner, the other opening some obscure textbook. And I remember feeling something I had hardly felt in my life; uncomfortable. They just sat there, not saying a word, silently acknowledging each other’s company, oblivious to the fact that their comfort was disquieting a nosy neighbor.

With Kathryn, there are no uncomfortable silences.

Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of silences. Kathryn doesn’t just talk for the sake of talking. She actually says things. So when there is silence, it is usually that her mind has moved on, or that I haven’t found the next mindless banter to throw out there.

With her, there is too much history. Its fascinating to see who she has become, because she is who she was when I first met her, 10 years ago. Slight and thin, Kathryn never follows fads or trends. She looks how she looks and she acts how she acts and she likes what she likes simply because she looks like that., acts as such, and likes those things. It has nothing to do with the fact that the pre-teen figure is all the rage, or that tan is the new red lipstick. She is herself, completely and totally. Blue eyes, dyed red hair, a birthmark where a dimple should be. She recently stopped wearing bras. Just because she wanted to.

She was there when Stooph almost left. She was a newlywed. Her husband, Jake, was the one who was joking around so much before we realized what had actually happened. Jake, for all intents and purposes, is the male version of me. He and drama have a high correlation, not necessarily causation. He is dramatic and overbearing and ridiculous, and has had a history as peppered as mine with experiences way beyond his maturity level. He is single minded to the point of recklessness, deciding what he wants and not stopping EVER until he gets it. At their rehearsal dinner, his mother was giving a toast. She seemed to think she was alone, reminiscing on how he was as a younger child, a teenager, and trying to reconcile that with the 22 year old groom sitting in front of her. She said he would get these moods, these…. things, where he would decide he wanted something, and he was relentless until he got it. He would make an excellent torturer. She became concerned, then progressively more worried until her stress reached a boiling point on the subject of Kathryn. You see, he met her and decided that she, someday, would belong to him. And he was relentless. First he tried to date her. Failed. Then, he decided to try to be her best friend. After about 4 months, he succeeded. At the end of that school year, as spring was stealing winter’s spotlight, they started to date. And they never stopped. Of course, he did what every young 19 year old mormon boy should do, he went on a mission. And the 2 years couldn’t have passed more slowly. Every time he got a chance, he would draw and think of Kathryn.

When I first met Jake, I hated him. Which makes it okay for me to think of people despising me when they meet me. It’s because the idea that someone like me or Jake exists in their world is too much for them at first. We’re caricatures, characters that only come out in comic books or tragic stories, people who things happen to. All the times you’ve sat in a movie, thinking “that never happens in real life”, let me just assure you…. It does. And Jake and I are the kind of people to which it happens. We are the tragic heroes and heroines, the heartwrenching victims and victors of stories, living life as a series of movie clips and sitcom episodes. We are the movers and shakers of our time, drawing attention to ourselves by simply existing.

Three years later, I can barely seperate the one from the other. Kathryn and Jake. Jake and Kathryn. Their identities have become one.

Chapter 27

I remember how quickly it turned cold. Overnight, It seemed. One day it was sweltering, the sun dripping all over the green roofs and cotton trees. It was a wet heat. The next morning when I woke up in the spare bed in the infirmary, it was gray and cold. In august. Vermont is an odd place.

It was a fluke and a random coincidence that I had even gotten that job; it all started when I met Maureen. It was during the time when I worked “veg prep”, on BYU campus. It was just as boring and monotonous as it sounds. We chopped vegetables and fruit for 3 hours every morning. We had to be there at 6:00 am. Some mornings, there was extra fruit. Some mornings, my boss would whip up some cream for us, so that we could have a treat. Pineapple, strawberries, grapes. Conversation in the morning would come in waves. Heaving itself from the depth of sleeplessness, of repetitive slicing and mixing. It would heave itself, exhausted and laborious, onto the floor, washing up memories and thoughts and laughter. Splashing up our pant legs. Sometimes, there was a lull. Sometimes the wave would be enormous and powerful.

The first day Maureen was there, I remember being annoyed by her. A pattern that hasn’t changed to this day, I assure you. And even now, she just appears places. But I digress. She was assigned to wash and destem the grapes. She confidently asked where everything was, and how to do it. Only at 6 in the morning would confidence and curiosity become annoying qualities. I soon learned that Maureen is many things in one. She is rebellion and quiet contrition stirred together. Marbled. Like one of those cheesecakes with chocolate and vanilla wrapped around each other, tendrils of taste. Sometimes you would get the vanilla, the obedience. Reciting what she had be told by blind instructors, living their lives in the upper left part of their brains rather than in the world itself. She would talk about the common things she wanted, the mediocrity she craved. Other times you would get the rebellion, the chocolate. That she had funded herself to go to south Africa, and had broken the rules and started a relationship with a Black south African. That she missed him. That they had to keep their relationship a secret. That she was from Vermont, and that there were very few mormons there. That she worked every summer at an all boys summer camp. On North Hero, in Lake Champlain, Vermont.

It seemed to bizarre and random. In high school, my government teacher had told us to ignore all the states that only had 3 electoral votes. By educative mandate, I had ignored Vermont for my entire life. And yet there it was, calling to me from across a nation, 3 time zones away. Calling to me from a rainbow of leaves, sweating out the summer.

The morning in Los Angeles was like most summer mornings in Los Angeles; perfect and brilliant. I heaved my army-issue duffel bags through security, my last name branded on each in permanent marker. I thought I had packed light. I remember seeing a businessman board the flight. I thought he was attractive. Three months later we rode the same plane back home.

All I remember about Newark was the storage containers. Rows and rows of metal rectangles, painted the colors of the rainbow. That is if someone had eaten and vomited it. Rows of rusty vomit colored containers. Who knows what was in them. I don’t think I even wondered. All I know is that I devoured a pizza and that the plane I took from Newark, NJ was the smallest, most adorable airplane I had ever seen. Two seats on one side, one on the other. I think it was called a shuttle. I thought the sky could rip it apart, the way it screamed and rattled in the air. I remember how majestic the clouds looked; purple, pink, orange and yellow, all swirled together. Rainbow sherbet.

When I landed, I realized that the Burlington airport is even smaller than the Salt Lake airport, I didn’t think that was possible. I was wrong. One of the first things Maureen said to me when she picked me up was “wow. I had no idea you were so high maintenance.” Because apparently 2 suitcases for 3 months was considered excessive. The truth is, that I could have been the most rustic person alive and would still have earned the nickname “princess”, just because I came from California.

Before we left BYU in april to go home, Maureen said goodbye to Tina and I. She hugged Tina and said “I’ll miss you.” She hugged me and said “I won’t miss you because I’m going to see you in 2 months.” I remember that hurt my feelings. Maureen ended up being a curse disguised as a blessing. I don’t wish to talk bad about her, and I’m sure she could condemn me as easily as I could her for the things that happened that summer. What I will say is this; it was all a giant misunderstanding that never got resolved. She thought I was morally debase and there for the wrong reasons. I thought she was a self righteous bitch. Neither is true.

I lived in a cabin called Windmill. It was on a hill, so the southern part of it was held up by cinderblocks. A stack of them. It had a main room and a small room with a doorless entrance. I lived there comfortably and happily. I made it my own, and I kept it tidy. Except for the yellow stain on the window where Liptack crushed a spider. Too many memories. They come back first as a trickle; a slight crack in the dam of my past. And the further I dig, the wider the crack becomes. Until it becomes a deluge. Drowning me in emotions, in visions, in stories.

There’s Rhett, supervising the laying of the carpet, a mini pitcher in his hand filled to the brim with fruit punch. His Australian accent turning everything rusty yellow. He had a hammock by his cabin. His cabin faced the lake. Next door to the arts and crafts building. Lindsey, hilarious and understanding, generous and kind. There’s Dean, towering above me, inviting us to his house. His mom made waffles for us in the morning. And there’s Gari.

The first week there, it rained cotton. I had never seen anything like it in my life. I couldn’t identify it at the time, but the air felt rich. Who knows with what. Emotion maybe. History. Turns out it was water. Humidity. I had never felt anything quite like it. And I fell in love with it. As a little girl, I would wish that I could have my own personal cloud, raining warm water on me. Keeping me wet and warm all the time. In Vermont, I discovered that the air could do that alone. That I didn’t need a cloud. Sitting in the game room off of the mess hall, I heard the lull of words, but all I could comprehend was the fluffy white rain, moving diagonally across the camp. It only lasted a week.

The second week, all the counselors came. At 19, I was about the average age. There were locals, who were born and bred in Vermont, as well as foreigners. Arthur, from france. Michael, from Germany. He was shy. Jorge from Venezuela, Juan from Colombia, James Peacock from England, Gari from Wales. All thrown together in the melting pot of Camp Abnaki. I wonder if this is what America was like back in the day; a savage mixing of cultures and foods and religions. Maybe that’s why Americans’ just ended up as an amplification of the rest of the world. There were meetings and meals and more flirting than I had encountered in a long time. You see, when you are one of 5 girls total at an isolated summer camp filled with 60 men so filled with hormones you can smell it and taste it, you get a lot of attention. Add the fact that I was blonde and new, and I became their shiny new toy/.

The summer was surreal. I cannot actually come up with any other adjectives, and as that one is fitting, I don’t see the point in trying. I felt like I was living in a dream; from summer thunderstorms to camper drama to late nights with the counselors, my life had become a movie. And just like any summer flick, this one had to climax in the oddest of ways.

It turns out that stress can violently and drastically affect your health. And as I became more and more stressed and felt more and more isolated, I realized that fact. A case of mere sore throat soon escalated to a pustule so large that I couldn’t swallow my own saliva. When I went to the doctor, he prescribed me a set of powerful antibiotics… powerful enough to make me violently ill. Add the acidic burning to the mix and it became a crisis.

Mostly I remember how everyone else seemed to think I was a probolem. How I stopped being a human being, and started becoming a liability. I remember standing in the kitchen, after almost everyone had left, and a familiar song came on the radio. Something I hadn’t expected, and something which surprised me as the lyrics poured balm into my stinging wounds.

When you find yourself in times of trouble

Mother Mary calls to me

Speaking words of wisdom:

Let it be.

I closed my eyes and let hot, bitter tears burn my face. Tricling down to my chin, pooling in the notch between my collarbones. I pushed the pain into my stomach, through my legs and out through my toes. When I boarded the plane a few days later, I never looked back.

Chapter 26

It’s called polarization. And it’s literally defined as a sharp division, as of a population or group, into opposing factions. It also explains a lot of the properties of water that are so fascinating. It’s how I live my life.

Until now I can honestly say that most of it has been by accident. I subconciously hate or love everything I encounter, from people to foods to situations to emotions. I even polarize musical instruments for Pete’s sake.

I love the cello. The vibrant, rich tones. Playing the cello has to be the most pleasurable physical experience I have ever encountered. It rests on you like no other instrument does, demanding to become a glossy, resonant limb. Playing it makes your soul mimic the vibrations of the tones you’re sweating out of that celestial wood. It makes heretofore unnoticed parts cry out in pleasure or recognition or despair, entering the instrument through the straining fingers and flowing out, amplified by the mirror image f-holes that flank the strings.

I hate the oboe. If I had any desire to hear something nasaly and irritating I would listen to a mediocre high school choir’s alto section. I’ll pass, thank you very much. I would happily destroy every oboe in the world with no regrets.

I love small quantities of perfectly spiced food. Scratch that – I love any quantity of perfectly spiced food.

I hate any quantities of bland food. I’d rather chew cardboard.

I love walking outside at night in the summer and feeling nothing but the pleasure of warmth kiss my skin. No excessive clothing., no wet unpleasantness, just…. Warm.

I hate feeling hungry. I wish I could explain that away with some traumatic experience, but all those who have known me for a significant number of years will tell you that I just hate to feel hungry. I also hate having to use the restroom and not being able to find one. Hence why I have performed my most basic of physical acts in as many places as you can think of. To name a few, in between cars in Chicago Illinois. Behind a dumpster in Provo, Utah. In the middle of the street. On top of a mountain. In a bucket in the backseat of a taxi. In countless gas stations across the western half of the united states. At squaw peak, the make out point for BYU students.

Mediocrity.

Normality.

Averageness.

This is what I crave. Some are born great, some earn greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them. Well, hate to break it too you folks, but the same goes for drama. Some are born overly dramatic. Some develop that trait over the years. And some of us, the lucky few (please note the sarcasm), have had DRAMA thrust upon us since the day we were born.

I am one of those people.

Do NOT call me dramatic. I am not dramatic. What happens with me is that unusual and sometimes disturbing circumstances place me in unusual and sometimes disturbing positions, and I react in a totally appropriate way. So NO, I am not dramatic. I simply react with the appropriate amount of drama to the life that has been thrust upon me.

Most of the time, it’s not really my choice. Most of the time, I just happen to be that 1 in 1000 chance. The fluke. The accident. The freak. The odds are against what happens to me in my daily life. From being bit by a seagull to becoming the hit part of a hit and run to the random places which I have desecrated with my urine, it has all been chance. I wonder what the numerical odds would actually be of my life, compounded into one highly entertaining but mildly screwed up statistic.

But I get ahead of myself.

Lets just put it this way. I am not a heroin in anyone’s life, including my own. So far in my life, I have made decisions based almost entirely on what others expect me to do. That’s why I chose my school, why I play instruments, why I have the job I do, and even why I have a particular hair color.

Anna says my moods are like the moon. They come in phases, she said. We sat across from each other, at the wooden table that soon she and Buck will share. We were dwarfed by the stacks of freshly printed invitations. As we folded the pearlized dreamcatchers, she explained in 30 seconds what it seems to have taken me a lifetime to understand. Sometimes, it’s a new moon. A sliver. Or a slice. Or a half-circle. Right now you’re in the full moon phase, where you get in these ‘I’m going to do something reckless just because I can’ rages.

Like leave armenia.

Or buy a cello.

Or take a secret trip to rexburg.

Count that one as a fluke as well. I took off on a random, savage trip to Rexburg, Id. A strange place to choose to “get away from it all”. And it turns out I was just jumping from one shit pool to the next. I went from swimming in my own emotional defacation into the overwhelming landfill that is marriage planning. Crossing the border from Utah into Idaho felt like cutting the puppet strings. Wandering off the stage and standing on my own two staggering feet. A foal in its first moments after birth. Except I wasn’t covered in all that slimy afterbirth crap.

In Idaho, there are certain parts where you only get 2 radio stations, and both of them are country. For the first time in my life, I rolled down my window, turned up the country and let the hot Idaho air seep into my lungs. My first free breaths in years. It was the first time in over 4 years that I was where I chose to be, in the moment I chose to be there. And it felt damn good.The vacation was, as they always are, less exciting and more mundane than I expected. But what made it so wonderful was that I was mundanely existing somewhere that I chose to be.

I had only ever done that one time before.

Chapter 25

Sound

He thoughtfully swallowed his steak. A dishtowel draped over his shoulder. He had sat complacently as estrogen fired across the table; teams had formed, the members suited up with verbal weapons of every kind, faces had flushed, and even Ginger, our trusty golden retriever, had turned away from the glistening, charbroiled flesh to the Gettysburg now erupting at the dinner table. In a moment of silence, he took his opportunity. He exhaled deeply from his nose, and the 5 emotionally volatile women at the table looked at him with the impatience and rage of starved harpies. Incredulous, as only women can be, at the perceived idiocy of men. As we heaved, hair being pushed from unsmiling faces, he began to speak.

I had a dream, he said calmly, as if he were talking to no one but himself. As if the tension in the room were not as dense and cold as ice cream. You’d have to use some serious muscle to remove any of it. I had a dream the other night that none of you had been born yet. That, as your father, I could choose whether each of you were going to grow up beautiful or intelligent. You couldn’t be both, you see. I thought long and hard. He took another bite of steak. Chewed and swallowed. By this point he had used a rather clever battle tactic; confuse the enemy. I know what I chose for each of you. At this point he stopped talking and looked at each of us. Said nothing.

Well?! Becca shrieked. The speed with which ambience can change is at least twice as fast as the speed at which a voice can change.

He looked up, startled, as if he had just remembered that we were there. He opened his mouth to speak, but as the first calculated sounds escape, Jennifer interrupted. I like being pretty, she said. She lifted her chin, tossing her heavy, waist-length blond hair over her shoulder and settling back into her chair. It seemed to melt the female silence, as we all broke into laughter. Everyone except dad. He continued cutting and chewing his meal, amused but obviously not finished with his discourse. As our claws retracted and our laughter died down, we all turned back to him. Patiently waiting this already calculated result, he considered us. I chose correctly, he said simply. Rebecca, you chose beauty as well. Debby and Leah, you chose your intellect, sacrificing physical beauty for an unobserved complexity of mind. As your lives progressed, he continued, you all became successful, important women. Jennifer and Rebecca, your beauty got you far in life. Took you places that you otherwise couldn’t have gone. Debby and Leah, your intellect, combined with hard work, placed you finally in powerful, respectable positions.

And then he stopped talking. Returned to his dinner, as if what he had said was not profound or life changing. As if it wouldn’t inspire years of contemplation, jealousy or sleepless nights. As if I wouldn’t wish, for years, for the dissolution of my intellect. Stupid people are happier with less. Mindless 18 year old brides, content with mediocrity because their limited brain powers can’t even comprehend anything more. Smiling in identical wedding dresses with identical husbands who will grow identical pot bellies as the years pass. Tract homes, average children, never knowing defeat or victory. Why does the mundane repulse me more than failure or despair?

Dye your hair. He was saying it as if it were scripture. As if he were allowing me in on a trade secret. Condensing and condescending his extensive knowledge into three little words. And stop being so effervescent. People can’t respect a ditz. And people can work for people they don’t respect. This was not an isolated incident; George had repeatedly called me into his office throughout our entire interaction. Usually under some pretense of official business or other. Class business. I wasn’t in any of his classes at the time. To be honest, I’ve only ever been in one of his classes. Ever. And yet he would call me into his office, or I would voluntarily wander into it, to hear personal criticisms, shrouded in the soft cloak of humor and stamped with the seal of advice.

How’s your dating life? Good. I have a date tonight. Don’t wear that weird skirt you’re wearing.

Whatever you’re doing with your hair, this crinkly look, I don’t like it. And I’m a boy. Boys don’t like it.

If I didn’t know you, I would think you were unstable and foolish. That’s what you sound like.

How old are you now? 23, George. All the boys are younger than you. You’re not going to find anyone.

Somehow I would leave his office convinced that he was correct. But as time passed, I would laugh at myself. Realize that he had taken me in again.

Dye your hair. I looked at him mockingly. What is the stereotype associated with blondes?

Words can be cotton. They can be sweat. They can be a spring blossom, or death’s hand, or a mountain. His words were lead. Poisoning my brain as he delicately poured in his carefully prepared lies. Warmed to a temperature of false security, scented with falsity.

It’s the sound of people’s voices; familiar or not. Just listening to his voice on the phone would stir emotions in me. It wasn’t soothing, or quiet, or deep. I just knew that he was the one choosing and uttering the sounds. But the singular vibrations of his voicebox, coming through his mouth, just… moved me. Senses are a decision. I let the vibrations of his voice resonate in my heart, my mind. And I let them turn me on. Not that it’s hard or anything.

Chapter 24

Sensual.

That’s what I am. That’s what we are, I told her. It’s different than sexual. Sexual is all appetite, greed, desperation. The hungry ravenously pouncing on a meal. Sensual is just the opposite – patient, appreciative, aware of everything. It just means we pay attention to our senses. It’s the reason I won’t eat a steak if it’s overcooked. The reason why something that hurts isn’t necessarily negative; rather, its educational.

Sight.

The color of a magnolia. Subtle, blushing. As your eye travels further and further from the base, the flower grows more swollen, pinker. As it moves further out into the polluted atmosphere, it responds by tainting its own purity, flushing deeper and deeper and cooler and cooler. Responding to the forced maturity that has been so brazenly thrust upon it by an early spring.

People went crazy, she said. There were bodies lying in the street, and the stink of them filled your nose. Buildings just collapsed, crushing not only the people in them, but those who desperately watched. Unforgiving concrete, tumbling in on itself, entombing mothers, daughters, husbands, wives, friends and lovers. The misery of the soviet union, defined by the drab, slab-like apartment buildings, dotting the land. Pockmarks on the pride of nations, misery without a foundation.

We lived in an apartment at the time, my 5 sisters and I with my parents. When the ground began to shake, my father was at work. I was trying to protect Alla, my little sister. Something fell off the wall and hit me on the back of my head. That’s why I can’t use my eyes properly. She stared from behind thick lenses, trying to help her eyes focus on the dreary world in which she lived. Black and white, grey and brown. It used to be as beautiful as Paris, she tells us.

Armenians have thousands of traditions. For valentine’s day, the women would cook salty biscuits, crusty and dry. They were supposed to absorb all the moisture in your mouth, and leave a strong aftertaste of salt. Without drinking anything, they would go to sleep. In their dreams, a man would bring them a glass of water. That man was to be their husband. I met women who married abusive, alcoholic, chauvinistic pigs simply because he was the man who brought the fateful glass of water in their unfortunate valentine’s dream.

Anna and I decided that to understand the people, we had to participate in their traditions. And I’ve come to the conclusion that our poorly contrived excuse to eat salty biscuits and dream about boys was actually a pretty legitimate way to immerse ourselves in the culture. All day we talked about how we would make the crusty spit-suckers, because you couldn’t make them in less than the precious hour we were given as “us time” every night. In the end we downed 3 pieces each of garlic bread, complete with butter, garlic, basil, and of course, piles of salt. So much of it didn’t ever dissolve. It was surprisingly delicious; warm comfort on one of the many cold nights.

6:30. The alarm goes off. We roll off our beds, already exhausted by just the thought of the day that awaits us, and routinely kneel and pray. The morning passed as usual; Anna got in the shower first, wearing sandals that flopped against her heels. They’re supposed to protect your feet from disease. The inches of accumulated filth the water had to pass through to reach our heads had grown usual, so much so that we prevented disease from below while being showered with it from above. The morning was mundane, common. She blow dried and straightened her hair, glossy and long. Separated her eyelashes with a needle. It always scared me when she did that. We even crawled back into our beds, trying to garner any warmth from the thick blankets as we explored holy writ. When it came time for us to study together, we each remembered the adventure of the night before.

In her dream, a tall, strong man had led her through a maze of her past, arriving finally at the drinking fountain of the church. She said his hands were big and strong, and that her own felt warm in his. We spoke of pasts, presents, and futures that would lead her to the handsome protector of her dreams. We giggled like schoolgirls and speculated, both of us avoiding the monotony of the day; we moved on to my dream.

I was relaxing on the beach in my dream, in a turquoise bikini with braided straps. I remember feeling warm and happy as the sun and I connected in an almost pagan way. I do not wonder that the Egyptians worshipped a sun-god. As I lay there, different men kept bringing me water. As the dream progressed, the beauty and size of the glasses increased. First, a humble Dixie cup. I refused that water without giving its bearer a second look. Next, there was a shaded glass, that was pink at the bottom and grew clearer until it was completely transparent around the rim. I don’t remember who carried that cup either. After, a tall bespectacled man came bearing a square glass with frosted sides. These I all refused with little, if any, consideration. Finally, a man came with a glass so ornate, so irresistible that I snatched it from him without a second glance. The cup was large enough to require both hands to grasp it. It was turquoise, bulbous, and had a long, thin stem attached to a cone-shaped base. There was sugar on the rim of the cup, pineapple cleaving to it in its last moments on God’s green earth. A pink umbrella floated to one side. As I snatched the cup from him, drinking and gulping and sloshing the life’s water down in my extreme thirst, I woke up. But not before I looked up and saw two jewels staring back at me.

The glimmer of hazel eyes. Brown encircled by green. One of those magical moments when you realize what the blind are craving. Those eyes were compassion, patience, love, desire, understanding, intelligence; everything I crave in a man. Everything I want in a companion.

Helen Keller once said “if, by some miracle, I were granted three seeing days, to be followed by a relapse into darkness…. I should want to see the people whose kindness and gentleness have made my life worth living.” At that moment, those hazel eyes became my deepest desire. Find someone who can look at me with the same intensity of feeling and clarity of judgment with which my dream eyes saw me.

I thought I had found it in Mike. That morning when I startled him, woke him up.

Pinks, oranges, yellows. Science can explain them by examining the way light scatters. Tell us why the sky burns the ocean every night. But science has yet to explain why people cross continents to stand and watch it. Why lovers swoon and children grow silent at the sight. Or why my heart burns with it every time.

Men are very responsive to sight. Something every woman learns very quickly. Sex sells. It may seem like a compliment, but “she has a great personality” is the kiss of death to any man’s interest. It means the sight of her is not worth mentioning before her personality. That it is inferior enough to be unmentionable. “She’s cute”, in the right tone of voice, means “not worth looking at.” Not worth anything.

another interjection

Chapters 22 and 23 are a set I haven't finished yet. So the next one will be 24.

Enjoy!

-V

Chapter 21

The major problem is that she got caught. He had the subtlest net of all; actually winning her heart.

Suddenly the images of the three of us were shattered. They survived Jodi’s wedding, since Tyler fit so perfectly into the freeze frame in my mind. He seamlessly wooed her and wed her and nestled into the ample folds of fabric in her life. It all happened when I was away. I don’t really know their story. What I do know is that their apartment is modest and warm, that they love each other dearly, and that she seems so peaceful.

I think this is the one I want, she said. She admired herself, her tiny form twisting in the gathered satin.

It was beautiful. Really stunning. It was strapless satin with the perfect gathers and twists to accent the smallness of her waist, the flawless lines of her arms. When she walked it slinked.

It’s funny, how girl’s minds work. We wrap so much of ourselves- our worth, our style, and our beauty- into one day. We think that if the bouquet is too small, the lights too bright, or our dress to cheap that it will somehow reflect on the future that we are just beginning. In reality, it should be the least stressful day of your life. When you get to promise yourself forever to the man who has captured your heart- or something like that. So why does it matter what food you serve, what music you play, or what dress you wear?

And yet it does.

She sauntered in and looked at Anna. Her face fell. She stood there looking concerned, as Anna blurted out you don’t like it!

No. I don’t.

She crumpled. Like one of those little pencil sharpeners they used to sell at the zoo. The ones with an elephant or a giraffe on top, and when you squeeze them, the animal tumbles into a heap. She crumpled as if someone had simultaneously removed all the bones in her body at one time. And as tears filled her eyes, blood filled the capillaries in her chest, arms, neck and face. Her skin grew splotchier and redder as the tears poured down her face. And I remembered.

Her eyes get bluer when she cries.

As she hung up the phone with her mom, I pulled her into my arms. I felt her tears, hot and bitter, as they trickled down my skin. Once someone’s tears roll down your chest, there is no turning back. Not that there was any option at this point anyway.

Like drug addicts sharing a needle, I said.

We were trying to put our friendship into words. One of those conversations that only happens when everyone else leaves, and the lateness of the hour and the exorbitantly high sugar content of the food you’ve eaten leaves everyone slightly delirious. It’s like when addicts are coming down from a high. It makes you think.

It’s not even worth it to say yes anymore. To handsome strangers with intriguing accents and persistence that could make a mosquito jealous. They used to be fascinating, something to experiment with and explore. They’d take me to dinner or out to a show. Driving. They’d take me to scenic views and pour honey into my hears. Eres tan bonita they’d say. Quiero besarte. What do you do once flirting becomes a bore and superficial conversations become itchy? Just sitting there listening to such moronic filth makes me feel like someone has poured thistles in my prom dress. I just want to leave the formality and get the pestering little buggers off of me.

What is it like to have a conversation with the man who will share your bed, your home, and your heart for the rest of your life?

No one ever understands. Buck, he is starting to get it. That when you marry one of us you get a package deal. You don’t just get one of us; you get us all.

They met over 3 years ago, as both were sworn to a level of chastity that only priests and nuns could understand. As they sweat and toiled over a new alphabet, they would talk. They would attract attention. They would be scolded for giving such singular attention to another.

Over the next 18 months, her hair would grow darker. Armenian winters will do that to you. He would lose a lot of weight. Armenian winters will do that too, if you let them. She would get sick and quiet and lose the alacrity that causes women to mimic her and men to follow her. She would conform to the image of what people thought sister missionaries should be; quiet, dignified gospel mules, carrying a message as the beasts of burden carry food and materials. Completely stifling the innate sparkle, the subtle sex appeal she was born with. At times they even convinced us that it was our fault for being born with such a bawdy hair color. At least they convinced me. I think she had an inner strength that made her know that being attractive is not a sin. She would obey complacently as they told us that wearing our hair down was inappropriate. Then they said it was hair dye or a hat. She wore a hat. I dyed mine. By that point I saw the color of my own hair as a curse, a problem, a source of all my stress. But not her.

Even when that man chased them on the railroad tracks, she knew it was not her fault. She knew that being beautiful is a gift. Even as other Sisters would say she craved that kind of attention. That she acted a certain way to earn it. She knew. More than I knew. Knew that it was, for lack of a more expressive word, crap. So as I cowered home, redheaded and dejected, she stood forward, beautiful, bold, and blonde, and declared to the jealous women that secretly craved to be her, and the men who silently stereotyped her that she was who she was. That god had made her that way. And that she wasn’t changing.

Who knew a hair color could say so much, huh?

She would be home for over a year before anything would happen. Men came and left, growing more and more entranced with her beauty of mind and heart as they grew more and more impatient with her passion for life and her indecisiveness, he waited.

And then he cast his net. Weaved of sparkling honesty, of boyish charm. Of controlled heat. Of trust, simple and pure. And as she swam along, he surrounded her. All the shimmering warmth of his embrace. They forgave each other and learned to love. Before she had realized what was going on, he had completely caught her. Offered her a tank in which to swim. A big, lovely tank. Where she would always have enough food and she would be protected from predators. Where she would never consider the miracle of other fish again. There are other fish in the sea, just not for her.

What are you doing, what is that, what are you doing?! She exclaimed, more and more frantic with every syllable.

I don’t know! He answered. Honesty.

Before we all expected, even before he expected, they had committed themselves to one another. She had voluntarily put the diamond on her hand, baffling the world and him with her consent.

And now he is starting to understand. He watches as she makes decisions, determined to please everyone else along with herself. What do you call the opposite of bridezilla? Bridemegalon? Bride Japanese tourist?

Skilled fisherman. Tyler and Buck. Gentle, skilled fisherman.

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.