Jesus Wants Me!

    As I watched my parents drive away in their rented silver Mustang convertible, I cursed them and their damn loins that had brought me into this world. The enormous mountains that surrounded Salt Lake City on every side lost their dramatic beauty, and took on a threatening air, promising to keep me completely imprisoned within their walls for the next two weeks of my life. Behind me, my grandmother cleared her throat.
“So Maddie,” she began, “I was thinking we could go to the Temple downtown sometime if you’d like.”
I swallowed the urge to tell her that I would rather have hot oil poured on me and all my fingernails pulled out by rabid dwarves than go to the Mormon temple downtown. Then I turned and smiled:
“Sure grandma, that sounds great.”
She took my hand and we made our way into their house, past the painting of Jesus down into the dark basement that would be my home for the next fortnight.

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      My mother stopped being Mormon at the age of seventeen, after suggesting to one of her teachers that the idea that Jesus would dole out everyone’s belongings equally amongst the community when he returned, resembled communism. That and the local ward leader forbade her from dating a boy found to be wildly inappropriate by the local community. As the youngest of eighteen grandkids, daughter of the youngest, and for the most part forgotten child I went relatively unnoticed at family reunions. I learned from a young age to follow every introduction to a supposed family member with a brief description of how I was related to the Prices.
“I’m Maddie, Angela’s daughter. No she’s not married to Mark, she’s his sister. She’s Ramona’s youngest daughter? Yes. The one that’s not Mormon”
    At first this lack of awareness, and even greater lack interest frustrated me. While becoming increasingly aware that I was neither attractive nor particularly charming, the one thing I knew I had going for me was an interesting life. This was no personal accomplishment. As the child of two diplomats, I was able to move around the world, and experience extraordinary things. The Prices however, displayed little to no interest in my life, taking away the one thing that made me notable as an individual. After recovering from this blow however, and before developing the smug sense of superiority possessed mostly by democrats and people from the east-coast, I became fascinated by my Mormon family. Hiding behind sofas, greedily eating whatever I had stolen from the pantry, my small beady eyes followed them. I knew little about the Mormon religion, and didn’t really know what I was looking for. Perhaps one of them would politely excuse themselves before biting the head off a live chicken, or the great, glowing hand of God would descend directly from the heavens to wipe the Jell-o salad off their chins.
    They were all so different to my family and anyone I knew. They laughed at different things than we did, like dogs walking upright, and babies smiling. Though I tried constantly, not once was my talk flatulation, or of any other bodily function followed by a stifled giggle. The subject of midgets, needless to say, was never even broached.
      Also, they all prayed – a lot. We prayed before meals, after meals, before going shopping, before doing anything. I guess this was why they were fitter than us. All of them except for my one cousin who was morbidly obese due to a thyroid problem, and who I insisted on standing next to most of the time because it made me feel better about myself. She must not have prayed as much.
    Silent prayer was the most disorienting for me. Everyone’s eyes screwed shut with looks of extreme concentration. I knew this because I would watch them while they prayed. Sometimes one of them would pick their noses, or unstick a wedgie. I couldn’t help but think this was more insulting to God than my being baptized. I never knew what to say to God anyway. I still wasn’t sure how I felt about him having a baby with a married woman. Also, nobody ever explained what exactly his relationship with Santa was.

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    My parents had abandoned me to go take French classes in Washington D.C. before we moved to Paris.
“But you already speak French.” I begged my father as we strolled through the aisles of Big Lots.
“We need to take this class for our jobs Maddie, it’s non-negotiable.” He said, fingering a small ceramic cherub.
“Dad, they don’t even know who I am.”
“They don’t know who your mother is either and she lived with them for eighteen years. I think you can manage two weeks.”
    And now I was sitting at their dinner table, following our pre-dinner prayer, hungrily wolfing down the Mac and Cheese in front of me. Vast amounts of all-American junk food were quickly becoming one of my favorite aspects of the Mormon religion, and so far the phrase: “Maddie I think 5 Twix bars is enough for one day,” had not been spoken once. This alone was almost enough to tempt me to convert.
    We had spent the day at a farm, and while I enjoyed the animals, I was disturbed by the farmer. A fat, jolly man, everything he said seemed to fill him with joy. Not that I had anything against happy people – I was simply weary of people who were too happy. This was probably a direct result of attending the French school, which frowned on joy. As we followed him around the horses’ paddock, I imagined the man, knee deep in horse feces, happily chuckling: “This is exactly where I want to be!” On the one hand this image made me envy him; on the other it made me fear him deeply. Perhaps his irrational level of joy was a direct result of the Mormon religion. My father had mentioned people getting hit with ugly sticks, so there must be happy sticks too, that the Mormons used on a regular basis.

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    I was sitting on a grassy lawn in my grandparents compound, writing my future Oscar acceptance speech and munching on my second of three nutrition bars (today was going to be a healthy day) when two extremely clean, friendly looking individuals came up to me. They were a young woman and a young man, and both had shiny blonde hair, blue eyes, and ultra-white smiles that they flashed in my direction. They wore stiff white collared shirts, black polyester pants, and shiny black shoes, and were holding books in their arms.
“Hi!” The girl said brightly, “And how are you today?”
I wiped the granola off my upper lip before hauling myself off the ground. I had always dreamed of having a summer fling, and normally my grandparents’ geriatric neighborhood would not be the place I’d expect to find them. This girl’s companion though, had come straight up to talk to me. It seemed weird therefore that he ignored my impossibly seductive eyebrow acrobatics. After brief introductions the girl leaned in close.
“Say, would you like a book of Mormon?”
I was about to suggest she go chug laundry bleach and leave me with her friend when I caught a good look at the book in her hands. It was small, with a blue leather cover. “Book of Mormon” was embossed in gold along the spine and on the front color, and while it leapt to the eye, it was not too showy. The pages looked creamy and crisp, and I knew immediately that I had to have it. Though I enjoyed reading for the sake of reading, there was nothing I loved more than holding a fresh new book in my hands.
“I don’t have any money though…”
“Well you don’t need any!” The girl laughed, “This is just a present.”
Present. I liked presents. I grinned at the boy and took the book, before waddling back to my grandparent’s house. I suspected that maybe they didn’t give the books out as presents to everyone, and they had taken pity on me personally. My father often said I looked like a homeless person like it was a bad thing. I now could cite this as a benefit.
    My grandmother buzzed with excitement when I showed her the book.
“Oh Maddie that’s so fantastic! If you have any questions, or you want me to read it with you, feel free to come and ask.”
    I lasted ten minutes with the book before growing bored and dropping it on the ground. Yanking open drawers and shuffling through closets I decided to go exploring. My search revealed nothing of interest to me. There were no letters from a spurned ex-lover, and no young Thai slave girl forced to clean the house at night while the neighbors slept.
    I then made my way into the room across from mine which had been my mother’s when she was a teenager. No traces of her were left. She had been wiped away like every other speck of dust that must have inhabited these surfaces at some time or another, but were now gone. Even the painting proudly displayed on the wall, featured only four children – it had been painted before my mother had ever been conceived. Suddenly I was filled with sadness. I didn’t understand how my mother could seem so marginal to her own family, like an afterthought to the rest of the children. I closed the door to her room and never went back in.

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    My grandparents tried everything. They took me to their local Mormon ward on Sunday morning; they brought me down to the major Mormon temple, and took me to Mormon movies. I couldn’t buy it though. At least in the Catholic Church, everyone knew religion wasn’t fun. Everyone knew it was a chore you had to complete as a sort of insurance, lest an Almighty Being try to send your soul into Eternal Damnation. The Mormons all seemed overly happy to me. Plus, my dad told me they had to wear special underwear. That was a deal breaker for me.
    I wasn’t sure where I stood with God anyway. I hadn’t been a great Catholic, so who was I to toss that aside and spoil another religion for him? Furthermore, my parents let me drink wine with dinner, and I fully intended to smoke cigarettes when I got older because they made you look unbearably cool. All in all, I did not feel like a prime candidate for Mormonism. So while I nodded, looked interested, and said things like:  “The Mormons really were mistreated weren’t they,” – I only did it to satisfy my grandparents.

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    The night before I left for Santa Barbara, my grandmother came and sat on the bed across from mine. She sat with her back straight, and her hands folded in her lap. I noticed as she sat there how totally different she was from me in every way. Where I was tall and doughy, she was small and slight. Her character, so quiet and kind, contrasted dramatically with my loud and brutish ways. She was on the whole far more put together, every hair in place, every word spoken at the appropriate time. I, on the other had appeared constantly disheveled and on principle never thought before I spoke. I sat in awe of this woman who was a quarter of who I was. Maybe that quarter had been killed seared by all the chilies I ate as a child in India, or the systematic, verbal beatings of French teachers.
“Maddie,” she began, looking down at her small hands, “I need to ask you something.”
“Sure grandma.” I said, sitting more upright in my bed.
“Does – does you mother drink alcohol?” She asked quietly in a whisper so small it almost couldn’t be heard. The question hung between us for a moment as I waited for some elaboration.
“Well yeah.” I answered, confused. “You know, wine with dinner and everything. They even let me have some sometimes.”
Her breath caught sharply and there was silence before she asked another question.
“Does she – drink coffee?”
“Yeah… Before going to work.”
Silence.
“Does she smoke?”
I couldn’t help but feeling I was giving the wrong answers. I could feel heat rise up into my cheeks as I looked around the room hoping to find a box that said Answers to Grandma’s Questions Found Here.
“I – I don’t know.” I did know. I knew perfectly well my mother smoked because I remember informing her that smoking could cause the spontaneous eruption of additional limbs.
After a moment, my grandma slowly raised her eyes. They were watery, and her bottom lip quivered. She looked at me desperately, looking for an answer somewhere in my perplexed face. She was looking for an answer I knew I could never give. It was not my face she was looking at, it was my mother’s she was searching for. I opened my mouth, could think of nothing to say, and then closed it. We sat like this for a while before she reached over and briefly buried her face in a tissue. When she looked up again, her face had returned to its usual brightness, and she wore a pleasant smile.
“Goodnight, Maddie. We’ll leave for the airport tomorrow at nine.”
She turned the lights out and began to close the door behind her before leaning in and saying: “I love you.”
The door closed, leaving me in the dark, and I thought of the young girl in the room across from mine, and of those words spoken to me, intended for her.