The Book of Mormon Girl (7 page)

It was important, Marie said, to remember that so much of what I did or did not do during this special time in my life would impinge directly on my future. For example, math class—which we all knew girls were supposed to hate—would help me someday balance the family budget, and I would certainly rely on what I learned in Home Economics to care for my children and husband every day. So too what was important about diet and exercise was not only slimming and reducing, but remembering the future children we hoped to have some day. For this reason, we must not only do our morning calisthenics and eat our quick, nourishing breakfasts of fruit smoothies and hardboiled eggs, but also avoid smoking, liquor, and caffeine. This, of course, was Mormon doctrine as well, our own special Word of Wisdom, given by God through his prophets in the nineteenth century, so that we might run and not be weary and walk and not faint. I smiled because when she talked about keeping our bodies clean, or saving sex for marriage, or spending special time every Monday night with our families, I knew Marie was talking directly to me, to the sacred beliefs we shared in common. I smiled because Marie, Way Bandy, Yusuke Suga, Bob the cameraman, and all the other celebrity stylists and editors could even make our homely Mormon doctrines and customs so convincing and effortlessly gorgeous.

My very favorite advice in the whole book appeared on a page with a soft-focus photograph of Marie, wearing a tailored plaid blouse, lying on her belly in front of a row of blossoming tulips, chin tilted downward, caressing and speaking gently to a German shepherd pup. I could take stock of myself, she advised, my good points and my bad points. I could make a list, a bullet-point list, precisely numbered, of all the good. And although it might be difficult, I could also make a list, a bullet-point list, precisely numbered, of all the bad, whether it be shyness, or bossiness, or insecurity. With practice, I could improve. With practice, I could transform my minuses into plusses. “Just like dieting or studying or improving your voice, you have to practice to be perfect,” Marie wrote, and who would know better? “Not only will it make you feel better about yourself, it will make others more receptive to you.”

•   •   •

There was a song we learned to sing on Sundays in our Young Women’s classes:

I want to be a window to His love,

so when you look at me you will see Him.

I want to be so pure and clear

that you won’t even know I’m here,

’cause His love will shine brightly through me.

I too wanted to be pure and clear, an open door, a spotless window. I wanted the love of God to shine brightly through me like a perfect frame, no bitten nails, or blemishes, or extra pounds, flyaway hairs, or personal character minuses to bar the view of His eternal brightness. What, after all, was the point of the small but burdensome body I freighted about in these middling years, when already I knew, I knew, that beyond this life there was a place of total understanding, and already I hungered to evaporate into it.

•   •   •

Marie, I know that like me you were taught to “be ye therefore perfect,” as Jesus said, but that being Mormons we were taught never to go in for the bamboozle of mysterious sacraments of grace embraced by the rest of apostate Christendom. No priests in dresses placing brittle emblems of salvation on our tongues; no sudden ecstasy of renovating seizure by the Holy Ghost. No, no, we Mormons were taught that our works must carry us there, that our works would make us perfect enough for God to finally recognize us as worthy of His love.

I would be lying, though, Marie, if I did not tell you that even at twelve years old I sensed beyond the polish of your celebrity prose the urgent subtext of your program for personal perfection. I saw it there on page ninety-three, in the self-abnegating caption under the picture of long-haired,
chubby Marie making a plate full of ham and cheese sandwiches in the Osmond family kitchen: “This is
not
the way to diet!”

You and me, Marie, wrestling the dark energies of childhood depressions and nascent eating disorders. You and me, with visions of self-harm, dark impulses we could only describe as religious. These wars with our own bodies, how did we understand them but as a battle against the traitorous flesh that stood between us and our holiest inner selves, that stood between us and God?

What to do with our bodies? If they were not instruments of priesthood power, and not yet instruments of eternal procreation, what was our purpose? It was you, Marie, who gave me the doctrine of the wardrobe grid, the seven quick and healthy breakfast plans, three makeup personalities, the sanctifying discipline of daily reducing exercises, the promise that I could have as much diet gelatin, chicken bullion, or vinegar-dressed salad as I wanted and still keep my diet virtue. Impossible as all these regimens were for a girl like me without a team of celebrity stylists, or a car, or even a few dollars to spend on sable-hair brushes at the local drug store, Marie, your precisely numbered regimens gave me great comfort. Especially the idea that with a little
practice
I could change, I could convert those long columns of personal minuses into a perfect string of plusses.

For when I was lying there at twelve years old on the brown carpet in the early morning hours with
Marie
Osmond’s Guide to Beauty, Health & Style
by my side, doing my calisthenics by the light of the clock radio, I felt that in time, with enough discipline, and a few implements from the local drugstore, I too might fade away into nothing at all.

I could dissolve under the heat of stage lights into a shimmer of perfection.

I could be so pure and clear, no one would know I was even here.

I too might disappear.

mormons vs. born-agains
dance-off, rose bowl, 1985

I
t was the summer of the great Mormon Dance Festival of 1985. I was just thirteen years old. But I knew that there was no place I’d rather be than among fifteen thousand strapping, sateen-clad young California Mormons moving in precisely choreographed patterns across the floor of the world-famous Rose Bowl. The sight of all of us youth of the latter days: God would be so stoked!

So I enlisted with all my thirteen-year-old girlfriends—Natasha, Shirley, Shayne, Charlotte—and we were assigned, as were all of the other thirteen-year-old girls in Southern California, to the all-girls’ “Singin’ in the Rain” number. Wednesday and Saturday afternoons, down at the church cultural hall, we learned to dance in time with Gene Kelly. Umbrellas—
left, then right, then left, then right
. It was no wonder that Mormon girls willing to participate in the great Mormon Dance Festival of 1985 outnumbered willing Mormon boys. Oh no. Just one look down the pew each Sunday at the pock-faced dorks who were my Mormon male contemporaries and the perfectly groomed Mormon girls with their ribbons tied and their scriptures poised serenely on their laps and I knew that faithful girls would always outnumber faithful boys. Which is why, of course, polygamy was inevitable in the highest levels of heaven. Girls would certainly outnumber boys there, and everyone had to marry to get in, or else remain single, a ministering angel, in the third-highest level in heaven. An eternal A–.

At least we girls would always have each other, whether as ministering angels, or plural wives. That much we could count on. And on Saturdays my skinny redheaded best friend Natasha, Shayne, Charlotte, Shirley, and I learned how to move together as pieces of a soon-to-be cosmic whole.
Left, then right, left again, and right again
; chorus line, spinning wheel, square. Yes, we Mormons needed one another.

Especially because here in California, outside Idaho, Utah, and Arizona, we were so vastly outnumbered. Not as outnumbered, of course, as the kids who lived in improbable Mormon places like Florida, New York, Ohio, or Michigan, places our forethinking ancestors had abandoned generations ago for their westward trek. Why would you ever go back? We Mormons in California at least had the wisdom to realize the full arc of our people’s trajectory, pushing past the western rim of the Great Basin, through the desert
passes, and down to the incomparable beaches of Southern California.

But California also presented special challenges, for though we Mormons were few, we were many enough to get the attention of the local born-again Christians. Orange County in particular was home to tens of thousands of born-agains. On Sundays, they filled up great stuccoed stadium-style megachurches with one-word names: Melodyland. Calvary. Saddleback. No more
Methodist
,
Baptist
,
Presbyterian
—empty words rooted in archaic European schisms. For the orange-grove suburbs were full of people who had moved from somewhere else, ready to forget everything, even the names of their ancestral Christian denominations. Forget it all. That was the born-again way: just confess the name of Jesus, say
Jesus-I-take-you-into-my-heart
and poof! it could all be sun bleached away into a sanctified balm of year-round 70-degree weather and swaying palms.

Born-agains. There were so many of them. And I wouldn’t care, except for the fact that their born-again pastors had declared battle against Mormons. Yes, at some point all of the megachurch pastors had gotten together and decided that Mormonism was a dangerous cult that needed confrontation, and the born-again kids, they took this quite seriously. One day in seventh grade I opened my locker door to find a typed-up screed taped inside. It accused me of believing in the wrong Jesus. Another day, in pre-algebra, an unsigned note came down the row of desks to me, bearing an ominous
message warning me to get to the summer megarevival at Angel Stadium. Someone even scribbled little “John 3:16” warnings throughout my yearbook.

And if these daytime indignities were not enough, every night the air around me was saturated with invisible radio waves of anti-Mormonism, which spiraled out into the dark over the orange groves from a studio down the freeway in San Juan Capistrano. “This is Dr. Walter Martin, the Bible Answer Man, coming to you live from the Christian Research Institute in Southern California,” the broadcasts began. Dr. Walter Martin was definitely at war: against us, Seventh-day Adventists, Hare Krishnas, and UFOs, and everything and everyone else he considered enemies of Jesus. He especially liked to make fun of the Mormon teaching that the Spirit speaks to us by a burning in our bosoms. “How do you know,” he would intone, I imagined, leaning into the microphone, greasy comb-over, eyes closed, “that’s not a bad bit of beef you’ve eaten?”

The smartest Mormon boy I knew, fifteen-year-old Garrett Jones, who wore big square glasses, would phone in to the station just to give Dr. Walter Martin a hard time. He’d dial up during the call-in segments and push back on Martin point for point, speaking in a deep, superrational, grown-up sounding voice. I did not have a deep, superrational voice, and I thought it very brave of Garrett to battle back against the Bible Answer Man. Even if he was hopelessly outnumbered
as the only Mormon calling into the show. Even if all of us Mormons were hopelessly outnumbered.

Even if he was all alone.

•   •   •

One night my friend Jeannette (who was a born-again Christian) invited me to The Door, a youth gathering at the giant six-thousand-member Calvary Church. I walked in and scanned the room to see if I could recognize any other Mormon kids—but I was all alone. Hundreds of born-again kids sat at long tables in the dark auditorium, passing free pizza on thin paper plates down the rows. Rock music boomed from the loudspeakers: some kind of Christian Bachman-Turner Overdrive. The
real
BTO was Mormon,
thank you very much
.

Jeannette and I found seats. Out of the darkness, plates of pizza arrived, and a stand-up comic materialized on a makeshift stage in the gym. He had dark hair, a puffy face, a thick middle; he wore rumpled, baggy pants, a Windbreaker, and white basketball high-tops. The comic told ten minutes of car crash jokes, pacing and waving his arms in the air. And then, throwing a dramatic switch, he arrived at his
very important message
:

“Now, kids,” he said, stepping to the front of the makeshift stage, bringing his microphone in close to his chest. The rock music stopped. The comic drew a serious expression.
“I want you to know . . .” (dramatic pause) “that the Mormon Church is a cult.”

I swallowed hard. Anger burned between my temples. Again, I scanned the room to see if I could find other Mormons.

“The Mormons say that the Bible is the word of God insofar as it is translated correctly.”

The comic paused for dramatic effect, scanning the crowds under a scrim of feathered dark bangs, looking for approval.

“Well, let me tell you, I have seen the original manuscripts from which the Bible is translated, and it
is
translated correctly.”

With hard eyes, I scrutinized the anti-Mormon comic: his baggy pants, Windbreaker, and high-tops. If you’re such a genius of original scriptural translation, I thought, if you have
seen
the
original Bible
(one set of manuscripts? where?) and can verify its translated accuracy (against which of the fifty-five watered down vernacular translations you people use, no match for our mighty King James version), what are you doing performing anti-Mormon stand-up comedy routines for high school crowds in Orange County, California, on Friday night?

“So, whatever you do, remember that you must be born again, you must take Jesus into your heart to be saved. Thank you.” He threw a fist into the air, the lights clamped off, the fake Bachman-Turner Overdrive came back on, and all the born-again kids went wild.

In the dark, I looked at my friend Jeannette, redheaded, pink eyed, sniffing nervously like the rabbits she raised and showed at 4-H.

Did she bring me here knowing this would be the evening’s entertainment? Did she bring me here to save me, or shame me? Did she imagine this spiritual battle against Mormonism was for my benefit?