I've met a mormon girl before

  I started this blog as a place for the stories that unravel our lives. And the essay below is an essay I wrote in my nonfiction class in my last semester of college .While not particularly well done, the work represented my first articulation of an unraveling of my mormon youth. Far more than the grade or the writing practice, the words below meant I wanted the world to know about my secret battle with religious doubt. I believe I was brave.

IVE MET A MORMON GIRL BEFORE

I claimed the arid mountains of Northern Utah, a land settled and ruled by my Mormon ancestors. I felt the heritage deep within my blood—the same blood my ancestors used to write stories across sagebrush on their journey out west. Nobody in the mid-west liked the Mormons back in 1850. They had multiple wives, refused alcohol, and built temples. In a desperate response to escape persecution, my Mormon ancestors moved west in early summer— they sewed money into quilts and walked their feet raw pushing dying relatives into a desert valley full of salt and seagulls. One hundred and thirty-seven years later, I was born in Ogden, a city fifty miles north of Salt Lake City. Their choice to adventure intrigued me. Embracing my blood, I moved from what was familiar in the summer after my freshman year of college. I flew east to work as a camp counselor at a private girls’ camp in Fryeburg Maine.

“I’ve met a Mormon girl before.”

“Oh yeah? Did you like her?”

“Yeah. I mean I didn’t really know her, but she seemed nice.”

“So that’s a good thing then?”

She laughed, and my upper back softened. I had just met Kristen and I couldn’t tell if her body language meant nervous, interested, or both. We sat inside the canoe, lingering with the rest of our co-workers. Today was the annual ‘Float’, a drinking binge designed to christen our summer of work at Camp Green Hill. The kids wouldn’t come for another week and fellow counselors around me piled six-pack after six-pack into the 15 surrounding canoes positioned near the river’s loading dock.

“You packing vodka?” Brandon called out to me, pointing to my blue water bottle strapped to my side.  

“Just water. I’m not drinking today.” I didn’t look him in my eye as I turned to see his feet approach. Just sober enough to notice, he laughed and threw his things in the canoe.

“Yeah right. Good one. I bet you can hold it down like the rest of them,” He followed, his breath soaked in morning booze.

“We’ll see,” I laughed, grateful for Kristen’s entrance. “We brought reserves!” I raised my head to see the new subject of conversation between Brandon and Kristen, a box of wine cradled in her left arm. By then, everyone started to move the canoes down the ramp into the river.

Throughout the day, I laughed at slow jokes, steered moody chit-chat, and ate pretzel after pretzel from my snack bag. When people started to notice I didn’t have a beer in my hand, I resorted to sun bathing on the front of the canoe with a wet bandanna draped over my face. The canoe barge moved slower as the alcohol seeped deeper into blood streams. The sounds of splashing and off-tune singing increasing as I sipped at my water bottle to nothing, my limp hand tracing the river at the side of the canoe.

While I perceived my effort to get out of Utah closely linked with the same adventurous spirits of my Mormon ancestors, that summer exposed the naivety of my assumption. My ancestors moved for sacrifice, a sanctifying act of their religion. My agenda included nothing about building a temple or preaching the good news of Jesus. Rather, I spent more and more off days with my drunken co-workers, wishing I had more reason behind my increasingly weak excuses not to join. The humid air had softened my definitions of Mormon conviction that summer near the banks of the river and sent me back to Utah craving the mountains of my youth. In order to avoid the sin of casual belief, I came back carrying my full set of scriptures preaching tolerance. Drinking in the dry air of the university, I planned a study trip to Europe. Maybe European air would shed more light on my own reasons to be Mormon.

My best friend shook my arm. “Ruth, we have to go.”

           “But he works for the hostel! I don’t trust him.” I laid my head back on the pillow. Jacque was a French German working at our hostel in Southern Spain. He’d invited us to a club with some of his close friends.

           “I’ll be there. I promise. We’ll stay together.” Marie reached into my bag and pulled out the black dress we’d purchased earlier in the day. “You’re going to look amazing,” she said, crawling across the bed to her suitcase.

           I groaned out of the bed and ten minutes later, we pushed the worn elevator button to join Jacque and his greased friends in the hotel lobby.  

I flirted heavily, ordered a mineral water, and applauded the second shot drink my best friend accepted from Jacque. Our arms flew around eye shadows and neon pulsing lights--the music strange and new. My attentions focused and soon, the familiar sensation of brushing lips against mine found me navigating the outer rims of the dance floor. Fabiano and I sat on a couch still under the smoke cloud, jaws moving to the faint music beat. The contrast of his lip ring with soft flesh erased all hesitation I had expressed earlier to Marie in the hostel. His hands found the small of my back, and he pressed me gently towards his hips. “I buy you beverage,” His cheek stroked my face.

“No, gracias. No bebo.” My teeth edged his top lip. Apparently, this man was Italian, living in Spain for a study abroad. My right elbow found the top of his shoulder and I smiled, kissing his ear. He liked Spanish, but felt more comfortable speaking English to me. Our bodies turned, and he pushed his face to my neck, lower into the top hem of my dress. Moving his hand off my upper thigh, I pushed his head back with more kissing. He wanted me to come home with him. “My Spanish isn’t good enough” I whispered. He kissed deeper, the liquor saturating my mouth with metal and skin.  I grabbed his belt buckle, not trusting my lowered hand. I hugged his neck and looked back to the dance floor, seeing Marie entangled with Jacque.

After that summer submerged in clubs, I couldn’t understand why my ancestors would ever want to leave Europe. I apologized to the Irishman about Mormonism’s discriminatory doctrines. I toured Swiss museums on Sundays instead of locating a church meeting. My blood boiled through my fingers at the touch of a building older than my religion. At the end of the summer, I spent more energy covering up my beliefs than promoting them. While I still claimed the faith of my fathers, I told no-one of my embarrassing heritage. Looking for more reasons to leave my desert home of salt and seagulls, I took an opportunity to work in Rwanda the next summer. Rwanda and her people had to to be more interesting. I traveled light and my palm size Book of Mormon barely made the cut.

Tonight, like the past four nights, a power outage darkened the entire neighborhood. Senses heightened from the dark, Jeff’s unmistakable laughter curved around the walls, interrupting our conversation. Jeff is our houseboy—hired on help for meals and basic house keeping. He is Congolese and lives alone in a room near our kitchen.  When I walked outside to the kitchen to check on dinner, Jeff had the cap of a banana liquor bottle in his hand. One small, white candle lit the room next to the kitchen. He sat on the couch, the flickering light accenting his white eyes, missing the black skin. I noticed stains smeared across his wife beater shirt slouched against his body.  Raw vegetables sat mid-cut on the counter. I smelled the burning coals in the outdoor stoves. Given that it was already a quarter passed 8:00 p.m., I guessed dinner wouldn’t be ready for another two hours. I sat down with Jeff, and asked in poor French how his daughter was doing. She lives across the border with her birth mother. After taking the job at our house, Jeff hadn’t seen her in three months. He breathed through a hiccup. His white eyes narrowed and his hand grabbed my arm. When he muttered something in Lingala, his fingers felt like dried out leather recently oiled. I knew by his squeeze that he missed her. His other arm stretched out to offer me a capful of the banana liquor and I refused. He laughed again, pointing to the vegetables and telling me that dinner was almost done.

           “Do you think Jeff likes his job?” I asked out loud to no one when I returned to the living room. The silence infected the group and the responses ranged between mutterings and grunts. Bored, I retired to my bedroom under the mosquito net to converse with the geckos on the walls. I slowly replayed the day through my head. I remembered the image of the woman I’d met on the bus in the morning. She wore traditional clothing, swaths of brightly colored cloth wrapping her dark, wrinkled body. I remember smelling the rotting river next to the soccer field—the murky rifts. Jeff knocked and cracked my door open. “C’est fini,” he whispered through the net, telling me dinner was finished. Growing up, my mother yelled down the stairs at us watching television. Until now, I hadn’t known the monotone taste of cabbage.

“Merci beaucoup, Jeff.” I followed, lifting myself out of the bed. I slumped through the dark to the candle-lit dining room and released the night to conversation over cabbage.  

My embarrassment in a heritage entrenched in religious conviction eased in Rwanda’s hills. By the time my ancestors finished chiseling at the granite of the Salt Lake City Temple, African lands had already passed through several colonial governments. I never asked Jeff to explain to me his reasons for moving across borders to serve hungry white people. Was it fair ancestors have to explain to me why they chose a dry desert? My ancestors knew nothing of what sagebrush smelled like, but they crossed borders to build a life - something I should thank them for, not resent. What then, was my agenda? Although much less stemmed from the religion of my youth, I began the process of embracing my polygamist Mormon ancestors’ need to build something for themselves.

The next morning, two candles stood alone as remnants of Jeff’s dinner. I was the first awake in the still light. Standing in the dining room, I gazed out at the rising sun over the swaying banana trees. After pouring myself some boiled water into a vitamin drink, I opened the fridge to look for yesterday’s pineapple. The bottle of banana liquor sat in the door shelf, still and yellow like stone. I picked up the bottle and with my knee still touching the fridge door, I twisted off the cap. After smelling the rim, I poured myself a capfull and lifted the contents to my lips. Apathetic to the coming day, I drank the cap. The burn rolled down my tongue, hot and acrid. I slowly put the bottle back in the fridge, the chilled cap still hanging at my side. The memory of Jeff’s laughter had woken me up early. Now, the rise and fall of his voice maintained a storm through my blood.