My Mother, the Whore

 

              I was warned that hanging out with the wrong crowd could lead to a loss of faith. Like a balloon, my faith was supposedly a mysterious invisible pressure given to me by Heavenly Father, perfectly sealed off from the sharpness of the world, sequestered in the protective hands of my family and my Mormon community in Layton, Utah.  These were my safeguards, seemingly firm to the touch, these hands were to guide and hold my faith gingerly and tenderly for time and all eternity. My Faith Balloon type, if there are types of faith balloons, would be one of those weird, really long snake-like balloons clowns twist into shapes for children. My faith was thin, narrow, strictly purposed in structure for shaping into something else, it was clumsy and awkward if left straightened and unshaped. If I risked hanging out with the pokey people, specifically speaking Non-Mormons- the worldly people, there could be a tiny imperceptible leak started, causing a slow limpening of the Faith Balloon that could sneak up on me unawares. Vigilance was necessary.

Small leaks can be patched if caught fast enough. Patched by a session with the Bishop, or extra prayer or reading the Book of Mormon more, or a combination of all those efforts to stop the escaping force. Maybe it would be a small thing, like watching an R-rated movie at a worldly friend’s house. Something that showed an adult drinking coffee, or a man with facial hair, or maybe a woman in a bikini or worse, someone drinking alcohol or sharing a bed with someone they aren’t married to. The leak would be created by introducing doubt into our impressionable minds, especially for girls like me whose Faith Balloons are non-standard and weird from the start. With those types of balloons, when it springs a leak, instead of popping it shoots like a rocket, screaming wildly until it hits a wall and beats itself to death, leaving only a defeated empty carcass. Where did all the pressure that gave the shape and the form go? It dissipates into the atmosphere, mixing in with other ambient charged particles and molecules looking to make or break a bond. It’s invisible still, and so the lost faith goes everywhere while being nowhere- like a ghost of the unproveable haunting the faithless forever. I’d never be able to stuff it all back into the broken Faith Balloon so it was important to be careful to watch your influences.

This was the advice I was given, though in reality I had several worldly friends even at an early age whose parents drank coffee and sometimes smoked tobacco in the basement. It was OK because I was sent to earth to learn the ways of the world and as long as I don’t sully my values by drinking Coke or wearing bikinis, I shouldn’t develop a faith leak. Maybe I was wrong about that and had many small leaks already but didn’t know it because the worldly people had already weakened my Balloon walls by making it seem harmless! The Faith Balloon should remain airtight so Mormons are free to float in our Faith Balloons IN the world but not actually be OF the world. A tight seal is essential. Because we were chosen before birth for this journey on earth to travel clear into eternity, and Very Good Mormons are even equipped with magic underwear on earth in the temples for additional protection, in case the Faith Balloon was not enough.

Since I was prepared from birth to beware of the corruptive influences of anyone who isn’t Mormon lest my Faith Balloon spring a leak and carry me away from eternal reward, you can imagine how shocking it was when my Faith Balloon went shrieking out of my hands and knocked it’s way into oblivion while I was standing in a room filled the very purest Mormons in the Ward, all smiling dressed in pure while gowns and suits, opening their arms with teary eyes to the hymn on the piano, welcoming all who had entered- it was the Celestial Mormons.

Good Mormons, like me and my family who went to weekly church activities like this, in addition to Sunday Sacrament Service. There were various priesthood leadership meetings for my Dad, Chorus and Relief Society for Mom, complete with potluck tables and free childcare provided by conscribed teenagers of varying willingness. Also, there was visiting-teaching service; going to the homes of older folks or struggling members in the Ward after dinner in the evenings or sometimes participating in a food drive in the neighborhood, especially during the holidays. Good Mormons like my family also additionally had weekly Family Home Evening meetings around the table, which was just church at home- with my mother on the piano guiding the selected hymn and delegating the opening and closing prayers to one of the kids and providing a guided lesson from a special Family Home Evening workbook all Good Mormons have.

As a Good Mormon girl my weekly Church obligations would look something like this:

Sunday- Attend a 4 hour church service in full homemade dress with entire family. It’s the Sabbath so Church stuff only. No friends or playing or spending money all day.

Monday- Attend 3-4 hour Family Home Evening meeting, including refreshments!

Tuesday- Attend Young Women’s Activity night at the Church- 3-4 hours.

Wednesday- Help Mother at Relief Society childcare center 4-5 hours.

Thursday- Attend Girls Stake Volleyball practice at a different church across town. 3-4 hours.

Friday- Stay home and babysit the kids so Mom and Dad can go to the Temple- 6 hours.

Saturday- Prepare Sunday clothes and do chores prior to the Sabbath. 2-3 hours Maybe work on that “Talk” assigned to give tomorrow in Young Women’s, since you’re the President. 2 more hours for Scripture research.

              This is just the Church stuff- can you imagine adding daily school homework and a normal amount of extracurricular activity to that? You can go ahead and take a minute to linger in the luxury of your imagination if you weren’t raised in a suburban semi-cult.

              When so much of your daily time and effort goes into maintaining your Celestial ideals, it gets really exhausting, as you maybe did try to imagine just now. It also keeps you from spending a lot of daily unstructured time with yourself or even your own family members, especially time with a Mom who is barely getting to know any of her 7 children between attending to her own church activities and an endless list of traditionally-held home-making duties which all take lower priority under her Most Important calling as a Soprano in the actual Mormon Tabernacle Choir, which in case you didn’t know, is actually a lifetime missionary role for which there is a special ceremony held in the Tabernacle that I did not go to because I don’t wear the garments. It’s so disorienting how you could have a “stay-at-home” mother who was never really there.

Whenever we weren’t busy with church, school or extracurricular activities, there was our duty as on-call childcare providers for my mother, and there were home chores of course, too. Good Mormon girls always have home training to do, since domesticity is our destiny. Quilting, sewing, canning, cooking. All extra lessons for the Good Mormon girl who should not have too much free time lest she be tempted with idle hands to do Satan’s work or have a college degree or even worse, a career.

              That’s just a little background detail that often gets left out in the telling of one’s loss of faith- the pressure. Every thought and feeling needs to be contributing to the pressure of the Gospel of Mormonism going into the Faith Balloon. And the shape the Gospel pressure enlarges the Faith Balloon and makes you a big huge example of perfection to the world, which is what Mormons really, really like doing, but it also is sometimes an unsustainable amount of pressure that can cause some Good Mormons to rupture and pop. It’s a little unsettling to me because if you look at youth addiction and suicide rates or salaries of women vs. men in Utah it isn’t clear that the Faith Balloon protects and provides for everyone in the Church but hey, all those sad soul attritions taking place due to Mormon homophobia and steep Mormon standards are still to this day tolerable enough for Utah Mormons as a whole to keep their own Faith Balloons aloft and not at all troubled with the loss of life and tragedy of those who are just different. It’s all about choices.

              One good way to apply good Gospel pressure to impressionable Mormon Youth who might stray into pokey places where Faith Leaks may develop is to walk them through a special activity night facing the eternal consequences of our earthly choices. I speculate the idea initially came from a Youth activity manual somewhere- maybe combined with a Mia-Maid leader’s imaginings of “It’s A Wonderful Life”, but more like “It’s A Wonderful Afterlife”. 

By this time, the neighbors in the Ward who used to hire me to babysit their kids didn’t feel comfortable with me in their houses anymore because I began dressing like an incredibly repressed female version of Robert Smith which oh boy, really says a lot. I had the blackest, pointy-ist of pointy goth hair- I am sure I terrified some moms.

                                     the author in 1990 wearing a Billy and the Boingers T-Shirt

 It was just as well; I didn’t like other people’s children anyways, the pay was not enough to support my new darker wardrobe tastes and I didn’t need the judgementalism. Unfortunately, my parents claimed I still did “Need” to attend these Youth activities, so I was there to reflect upon the eternal consequences of my earthly choices at the Stake House on a Thursday night in 1990 wearing fishnet tights and safety pins just the same.

              Our church was the Stake House across the alfalfa field from our neighborhood. A Stake House is a larger Mormon church building that hosts several smaller groups called Wards. There were maybe 3 or 4 Wards at this Stake House. I was in the 12^th Ward, if that matters. This church was built in the 50’s with yellow brick and polished hardwood outside and in. Three large baseball diamonds and a treacherous metallic playground sat adjacent to the church’s parking lot. I can recall many hours hopping pavillion tables, jumping out of swings and climbing sap-caked pine trees. There were also several alarming injuries sustained on those grounds as a child under 5, who was often left to play outside while Mom was in the church at some kind of Relief Society meeting.  If not alone, I was “supervised” by my older sisters, which was about as safe as leaving me with a couple of bored coyotes, but leaving young girls to supervise small children is all part of the Mormon Home Training Program so doing so regularly just made Mom an even better Good Mormon.

              This Church building had an enormous basketball court in it’s center. It had old school hardwood floors that gleamed from heavy polish and squeaked whenever you walked across it in sneakers, sending delightfully spooky echoes up through the air through the huge space overhead for the Baskets, up to the rafters and then fading at the high frosted glass windows at the top of the walls. The basketball court also had a large elevated stage at the front of it- like what you would expect to see at a school, with heavy maroon velvet curtains and a full back-stage set up for productions, because we used to put on Ward shows- talent shows and melodramas and such. I loved sneaking out of Sacrament service into the dark, empty basketball court- tiptoeing quietly to the empty stage area where I could slip behind the closed curtains and hide out where I could have my own thoughts surrounded by the quiet insulation created by the stage curtains. I was happy sneaking away to forbidden places apart from all the people and all the Church for a minute.

              But on this night all the lights inside the church were on for this special Youth Activity, and the parking lot was full of familiar cars. It seemed like the entire Ward must have come out for it. We were all guided to the basketball court- aka the gym where there was a table of refreshments, manned dutifully by a few Relief Society regulars equipped with a large stock of paper cups, cake and napkins. After the opening meeting in the gym, involving the opening prayer and hymn, our Ward’s Youth, consisting of boys and girls shepherded by adult youth leaders formed into 3 or 4 groups, given a color coded badge to identify our group affiliation and then lined up at the door to wait our turn for a surprise tour. It was all some sort of mystery like the entrance of the Spook Alley at the Annual 12^th Ward Halloween Party last month.

I learned early in my days as a Good Mormon girl that if I jumped in to the first group of any group youth activity, I would also be the first to complete the activity so I could leave, while also maintaining the required image of leadership expected of a Perfect Hall Girl. In this first group of youths there were several peers I hated to the point of near homicide but at sixteen, this was becoming more and more unavoidable as my Faith Balloon was hissing away, so I was just going to have to use patience that night. I was stuck in a group yet again with Heather Densley. I’d learned that if you are hopelessly trapped with someone and can’t escape because of church, just think of one quality you like about them and make that the focus of all your energy when you have to be around them. Heather Densley, I had resolved, possessed waist-length strawberry blonde hair that cascaded over her shoulders and down her back. It also helped to not think of her as a person- so I pictured her as only the hair of a horse’s mane, and nothing else. So Heather Densley lead the group down the hallway towards the Primary Room trotting like a horseless head of hair, mane swinging back and forth as she walked and babbled.

              My group had the usual suspects in it, along with the golden haired horse-mane. Spring, who was also my age and would become a mother in less than a year from this activity was also there. Chad was there- he was the most benign, quiet gentle kid in the Ward- had to wear braces on his legs when he was younger and was bullied mercilessly in the Ward when he waddled through the halls at church. He didn’t have the braces anymore, but the invisible marks I am sure never left him. We all crammed into the corner of the room, all the primary kid’s chairs had been stacked against the wall, leaving a staging area where some of the Ward adults were dressed in some kind of role playing costume, waiting for us to quiet down before reciting their lines. Sister Mulvey was the first one to speak. She was sitting in a rocking chair with a shawl draped over her lap, like she was trying to look older and sadder (than she already was!!) she looked at all of us as we all took our positions in a half circle on the perimeter of the room and timidly started the script.

“Welcome to the Terrestrial Kingdom,” Sister Mulvey began, rocking a little nervously- she was a shy mousy lady with at least 6 kids, mostly boys. I rarely saw her at youth activities or interacted with her at church much, so it was significant to see her there participating. At least 3 of her Mulvey boys were there for the activity too. “I lived my life on earth as a member of the church, and I had a testimony, but my faith was lukewarm,” Sister Mulvey looked down at her hands as she recited the lines. “I am here because I was fooled by the craftiness of men.” The crowd of kids that lined the walls blinked and shifted their weight, remaining properly reverent, we were just there to observe.

At this point Brother Croft chimed in on the other side of the rocking chair with his opening line, dressed in an orange tunic with corduroy pants a band of feathers around his head. It was a very rudimentary and by today’s standards offensive facsimile of Native American garb- utterly inaccurate, sewn crudely from a pattern by a Relief Society Sister and stored in the costume box backstage to await just this kind of opportunity. This outfit was the best Brother Croft could come up with on a Thursday night. He was 6’10 in height- a towering but gentle natured father of seven children and was a respected member of the Bishopric and had high esteem in the Ward. He was also the guy who abruptly left his devoted wife after she was diagnosed with terminal cancer for the Young Women’s President, Rolene. Brother Croft went on to become Bishop of the 12^th Ward after his first eternal companion died and he married his second eternal companion, Rolene. She was my next door neighbor, and lost her home in the divorce but that’s okay because she upgraded to “Bishop’s Wife”.

Clearing his throat and taking his time, he started, “I lived in this land during the times before Jesus Christ. I was an honorable man who lived a clean life, but I never had the chance to accept the gospel, so I remain here until I have another chance at exaltation.” He cast his brown eyes across the group of kids with a broad smile at the teens, now beginning to zone out. Me included. 

              “I don’t get to see my children of my husband very often anymore.” Sister Mulvey continued, “They do come visit me, though sometimes.” Sister Mulvey said to Brother Croft. He nodded sadly, “None of us here earned the glory of God’s realm because our faith was not strong.” Poor Sister Mulvey has been torn from her perfect family due to her weak faith, and now she sits alone in a rocking chair contemplating her life choices forever.

              “I was an honorable man of earth,” Brother Croft replied to Sister Mulvey with the kind of stilted stiffness you’d expect from two completely non-professional actors. “But even though I spent my life doing the best that I could and was kind to fellow men, I don’t receive the fullness of the Celestial Kingdom because the gospel was not on earth while I was alive. I only have the glory of the Moon, the spirit of Heavenly Father and his son can never visit me.”

              “I was a faithful sister in the church and was blessed with many children and loving husband. We were a happy family with may friends and lots of blessings in the church but I was led away by the guile of a teacher in college, and my faith slipped away.” For the record, Sister Mulvey’s husband was a jack-Mormon who never came to church and was suspected by the ward whisperers to have alcohol in the home. I suspect she was not in a stable happy marriage, and the kids that I did know were generally dirty and unkept due to poverty. The boys ran roughshod over the overwhelmed introverted mother right in front of everyone in the Ward. I wondered what kingdom Sister Mulvey would be in if she were to say her real truth instead of the lines.

              The two of them exchanged more stiff lines and we were allowed to leave the room to ponder the choices of the two examples in the Primary Room who were decent people, but just not good enough for God’s top level, I guess. I found it very disturbing that a person could be ethical and morally upright and still end up in a sad place- and that was the point.  Our next stop was in the Boy Scout room in the Church basement. The lights in the hallway had been deliberately turned off so there was darkness on approach to the staircase. Horsehair Heather was still leading the charge into our next visit, which I already had suspicions would be one of the other three Kingdoms of Glory. As Heather pushed open the door, we could see some more church members milling around in the room with a fog machine pumping thin chalky chemical fog down the stairs, spilling onto the linoleum floor and spreading slowly into corners. This room had a little more preparation- florescent lights had been plugged in, with the overhead lights off, so the room was eerie and mysterious. I hit the third step when I caught the music coming from the darkened room. It was Bauhaus. Bauhaus? Wait….Bela Lugosis Dead? What the holy heck is Bauhaus doing playing in the Church? Like the most goth, most scary song was playing in the Boy Scout Room. I was beginning to feel like something very wrong was about to happen, and I was correct. The blood drained from my face as I started to make sense of what was going on.

              I scanned the room in the dim light for the boombox. I spotted it in the corner and immediately recognized it from our house. My stomach sank as I realized that was probably MY Bauhaus tape because one of the figures standing in the dark room was my mother. The other kids were gasping and whispering about the scary music- I am sure none of these lily white wussies had ever heard of the Smiths, much less Bauhaus or Siouxsie and the Banshees or Love and Rockets. “Undead, undead undead……….Bela Lugosis dead” Peter Murphy drones on much to my increasing mortification. Palms started sweating.

              My mother was a compulsive entertainer. This was a woman ready to perform a duet at the drop of a hat. Is there an accompanist in the house? Because that’s all she needs to spring into a spontaneous spirit-tugging heart-warming show-tune soprano performance, with a masterful vibrato she touts like a diamond platter.  She missed her destiny as a soap opera actress somewhere before marrying my dad.  She was in full show mode tonight, draped in my goth costume jewelry purloined sometime earlier in the day I suppose from my room. Skulls and crosses somehow equated prostitute to her. Showcasing her thinning conservative “Mom-bob” hair teased up in a pointy manner, garish makeup with a fake black beauty mark drawn on her cheek and Lee Press-On Nails, much to my mortification, she was trying to look like a lady of the evening draping herself over the window frame, waiting for her cue. I was frozen.

              When I entered the room, spotted the boombox and my mother “in scene”, I had to stop for a minute to take in the horror of what was unfolding before me. All the other kids were settling in the same semi-circular formation, shuffling in and settling into the ambiance of creepiness and worldly scariness. Like the Spook Alley, but satanic because of the Bauhaus tape Mom took out of my room without asking and had decided to use as a prop. One of the other actors in this already chilling chapter in our lesson of life choices stood up from a folding chair and started his portion of the skit.  It was Bishop Shelton in a beige trench coat!

He also happened to be a tall man, wider shoulders- he used to be a football player, I’d heard. Dark curly hair with a receding hairline and baggy dark circles under his eyes because although he had a full time job and 2 kids already, he was also at the church at least 30 hours a week additionally to take care of his responsibilities to the Ward. Sleep was rare for him, and he was always obviously exhausted, falling asleep in the front at Sacrament Meeting, to everyone’s concern. His wife Karla eventually left him after also having an affair with someone else in the Ward.

“You are now in the Telestial Kingdom,” Brother Shelton said with theatrical grimness, “And this is the lowest degree of glory in the afterlife. Those who did not receive the testimony of Christ, along with liars, sorcerers, adulterers, whores and whoremongers shall live here forever, and will never see where God dwells.”

               With that, he gestures to my mother wearing my black purposely ripped black pantyhose she must have found by rummaging through my underwear drawer. She had to hike up her special secret Church garments so you couldn’t see them, revealing her middle-aged ample full-figure with a shade of sexuality never before witnessed by me, much less the rest of the youth group, and it wasn’t sexy at all. It was an attempt to construct her TV idea of promiscuous attire, which was a miniskirt cut about 2 inches above the knee and a red satin buttoned up top tied at the waist and buttoned seductively low like Daisy Duke, except she had a shirt on underneath to hide her garments, you know, for modesty. She only owned church flats, but had somehow procured a pair of ludicrously racy patent leather high heels, and as a result was leaning hard against the wall in her “Mormon-obscene” outfit to steady herself as she delivered her lines. She took a deep breath and looked out the frosted glass window forlornly. Then she recited her lines.

But I couldn’t hear anything she was saying over the overpowering violin-screeching, crescendo-reaching rage mixed with embarrassment and siren wailing feelings of violation for having my own mother rifle through my room for things she thought would look appropriate wearing as a whore in “Mormon Hell”. My face was red-hot, and I decided it was too hot in the Telestial for me so I spun on my heel and stomped in my combat boots up the stairs, out of the Boy Scout basement meeting room, and into the empty Women’s Restroom where there was no one. Only quiet, and the sounds of other people being not near me. What planet would that be, the planet where other people are not, and when I die can I go to that Place? What planet can I go to where there are cool people who don’t have to wear weird underwear? Does my Mom have to be there?

              Since all Mormon women are destined to eventually lactate because they all are supposed to become mothers, there’s always an adjacent room and a comfy rocking chair in Mormon Women’s Restrooms where they can nurse babies.  That’s also where I liked to spend my time hiding at Church, especially when my Mother was acting like a whore in front of the entire Youth group. I thought about all the nice but really boring people in the Ward who follow all the rules, pay the tithing, make the salads, have the kids, and are spending their free time putting on this show for these kids; are they going to be in the Celestial Kingdom after they die? They go to the Temple and know their secret names, so they should, right? But I hate Heather Densley. What if I don’t want to be trapped with Heather Densley forever? What if you don’t want to be stuck with your family forever? What if you do want to be stuck with them but you’re separated in the afterlife just because are gay or don’t get married in the Temple or didn’t have children? Eventually, my vacation from reality would come to an end and I would have to rejoin the group on the tour, as they were shuffling up the stairs and beginning to mill about the corridor by the Restroom of Refuge.

              This last stop took place in the Relief Society Room. It was a large room with double doors because there are a lot of women in the Relief Society. It was the first official Women’s Organization in the United States of America, as a matter of fact. The carpet was a loud aqua blue, and the podium was at the front, facing large windows and two rows of cushioned folding chairs for all the ladies to have a more comfy sit during meetings. We all sat compliantly, a bit restless as it was 8:37 in the evening on a weeknight. It was the finale, the final Kingdom we were to visit.

              Bishop Shelton came in and gave his final speech about the last kingdom the faithful shall inherit, should they inherit all the keys of the priesthood; the Celestial! Yay! All the Glory of Heavenly Father could be ours- yes, we could all have the same creative powers as the God of this planet (if you’re a man) if we follow the gospel accordingly, through baptism, faith, good works, marriage, having many children, missionary work and of course temple work, we would live forever with everyone else who also do all these very specific right things in a perfect place that is not Earth, but another planet called the Celestial Kingdom.

He explained how this is something that we should all want and strive for, and that there are a lot of worldly temptations but stay strong kids- you won’t be alone- you are surrounded by people who are strong in the faith like you. I couldn’t help but run a list in my head of all the people I thought were interesting but don’t qualify they will not be in the Celestial Kingdom: Andy Warhol, Robert Smith, Elvis, John Lennon, MLK Jr, Shirley Chisolm, Frank Oz, Frank Zappa, Oscar Wilde…they all probably had premarital s-e-x or were gay or did not follow the Word of Wisdom or did not wear garments are not white or didn’t get married or did not go on a mission. They’ll all be in the Telestial where my boombox is probably still playing Bauhaus! That sounds way more fun than this!

              And that is when the climax of the evening happened. What we came to the church stake house for. Bishop Shelton shimmied in his tan trench coat over to the double-doors over on the south end of the room, grinned and pushed them both open, allowing a flood of Church members to enter the room, all dressed in their White Temple Clothes, White 3-piece suits, White full-length gowns, white socks and shoes and even some ladies had some white necklaces and dress gloves. He opened up his coat and revealed his Temple Whites underneath and joined the crowd. My Mother, ever the stage professional, had managed a costume change from her Whore outfit into her Temple Whites, which I also had never seen her in before, and had also joined the swarm of loving Celestial adult eternal guides.

The intent was to envelop the youth group with the much-preached about unconditional love- they swarmed the kids with an outpouring of welcoming and outstretched arms, hugs and phrases like “I’m so glad you joined us” or “You made it to the Celestial Kingdom!” Beaming with pride! It was a proper love-fest unfolding before my eyes. There were smiles and tears and so much bonding while I stood in the corner and watched it all with a sense of revulsion and mild horror.

I took in the sight before me and never felt more alien; the entire purpose of the Youth Activity had backfired for me, and my Faith Balloon had finally given up it’s last breath of fight, having been first skewered by my Mother the Whore, and then finished by the most wholesome people I knew- the Celestial Mormons. Instead of scaring me straight into the gates of the Celestial Kingdom, that night made it obvious that I did not belong with those people at that moment or in the future or on any planet and in any time and I never went back.

….And I installed a lock on my bedroom door shortly afterwards.