On Sunday I was sent to the basement to collect my trunk and told to pack. The next day I was put on a flight and sent home. The school had only notified my dad, but he was lecturing when my flight landed. So he sent his blonde, buxom girlfriend to pick me up. She took me back to their dark little apartment. It was strange to see my father’s favourite things in that place … his lamp, his books, my framed childhood drawing.
Later that afternoon, after sharing a bottle of red wine, my dad took me home. He dropped me off outside and didn’t come in. My gran and mom were stunned to see me. They had not been told of my expulsion.
How my dad had broken with the past. He took me out to a steakhouse even though we were vegetarians and bought us each a bottle of wine and a T-bone steak. He gave me money for the cigarette-vending machine. It seemed so out of character. Such a strange change.
My dad adored me. I had always been the ‘apple of his eye’, his ‘Darling Girl’, his ‘Fluff’, his ‘Dinky Cat’. But one night he told me that I was one of the three biggest mistakes he had ever made. These awful words swirled around in my head for years. Even though I can rationalise that he was sick and that he didn’t mean it, recalling this episode still reduces me to tears. He had, until then, given me a safe, secure, sweet and golden childhood.
Within a few months of me returning home following my expulsion, my dad was found in Victoria Park. Shot dead in his beautiful head. It was a Saturday in early October. The police arrived at our door to inform us of the news. By Monday local newspapers had a photo of him on their front pages.
His girlfriend had been the one to find the body. They had apparently had a fight that morning. His car was parked outside the park, a block or two away from the gloomy apartment they’d shared. Inside the car was a suitcase filled with the familiar clothes he had taken when he’d left us. If only he had just come home instead of going to the park, things would have been so different.
The next couple of years were a stoned blur. It became a coping mechanism for me to smoke as much weed as I could get my hands on. I promiscuously sought love and acceptance, experimented with other drugs and became only more confused, hurt and damaged as my teenage days rolled on. The Church seemed to offer a way out of all of this – a fresh start, a chance to reinvent myself. Is it any wonder that I grabbed this opportunity with both hands?
8
SEATTLE, WASHINGTON:
One morning Brother Thomas told me the Elder wanted to have a word with me. I knew it had something to do with my departure – my American visa was reaching its expiry date.
With the days ticking to a close, I could see no other way out. I had to get back to Boston and fly home. I was dreading it. To go back would be like ‘the sow that was washed, returning to her wallowing in the mire’. I’d embraced the doctrines of the Church and I found it hard to reconcile myself to the fact that I’d soon have to leave.
Thomas took me to a little park on the outskirts of Seattle’s China Town. Sitting there on a bench was the Elder, looking thoughtful, like he was in prayer. He stood up when he saw us and nodded a grave welcome. Thomas left. The Elder looked down at the ground, clasped his hands behind his back, and, not mincing his words, he said, ‘A brother, knowing your situation, has offered to marry you. Do you have anything to say, Sister Lesley?’
I shook my head, stunned and bewildered. This was not what I had expected. I thought he was going to give me some counsel about returning home. ‘Would you like to know which brother it is?’ he asked. I nodded. ‘It’s that brother over there,’ he said, pointing to Thomas, who was nervously pacing the pavement across the road. ‘Would you like to talk to him?’ Again I shook my head. I was speechless. Even though I’d travelled across America with Thomas, it still felt like he was a complete stranger. He was a very difficult guy to get to know because he spoke so little.
Brother Evangelist told me to go down town to the local law court and find out in which states one could marry without having to have a blood test. The Church was very against the giving of blood. He then said I was to meet Thomas at a reservoir later in the day.
I found out that North Carolina had the most lenient marriage laws. There was no waiting period and no blood tests required. The Elder had suggested that, ahead of our nuptials, I should seek the advice of Sister Daniella, an older sister in the Church. I met her in town and together, deep in conversation, we walked to the reservoir on Capitol Hill.
Daniella told me that Thomas was an honourable and faithful brother who had been a committed member of the Church for almost a decade. She spoke highly of him. I felt very awkward as we reached out destination. Brother Evangelist was there. He told me Thomas was on the other side of the reservoir, expecting me. Shy and embarrassed, I walked there slowly as if in a lucid dream.
Brother Thomas was there, waiting. He stepped up to me and started talking very quickly, telling me he had been praying for a wife for years, that he’d had a prophetic dream on the day that he met me in New York. He dreamed he ‘caught a big fish that had two heads.’ (It seemed he thought I was the fish but I couldn’t say for sure.) He said he knew he wasn’t very comely to look upon. I wasn’t sure how to respond to that so I stayed silent.
He asked about the marriage laws in the different states and, when I told him, he told me that we would catch a bus to North Carolina that evening, and that it would take three days to get there. I had three days to decide if I wanted to marry this nervous American.
I had only just turned nineteen. I barely knew this man and was certainly not in love. The only time we had ever touched before, was on our journey to Seattle, when he had baptised me in the Eau Claire River. Thomas had a beard and a thick neck, but I did not know what colour his eyes were because he never looked at me. He did remind me quite a lot of my paternal grandfather, Tiger. He was nine years older than me – this felt like a huge age gap and yet, because he was so very different to me and so silent, I found him mysteriously intriguing.
Going back to the camp I felt full of secrets. The Elder had told Shoshanna and she and Daniella helped me pack. They talked in whispers, very excited because there hadn’t been a marriage in the Church for seven years. I glibly went along with it all.
The other sisters thought I was leaving to go back to South Africa so they lined the path to say their goodbyes. It was terribly poignant. I had grown to love these unique women and desperately wanted to stay with them. It was because of them, my new sisters, that I didn’t want to leave. But I was torn. I also didn’t want to get married – but if I didn’t, how could I stay?
The Elder was waiting at the exit of the forest. He gave Thomas and me food for the road and warned us that ‘playing with fornication was playing with death’. It was just after twilight and I could see the lights of the cars on the Interstate 5. Standing there in his long green coat with his silver-streaked beard, the Elder looked like a mythological Keeper of the Trees. After his admonishment, he wished us godspeed and silently disappeared into the shadows of the ever-darkening woods.
9
The night seemed to thicken and my pack grew heavier, the walk felt long and I had trouble keeping up with Thomas, who strode quickly ahead. Finally we reached the crowded station and boarded our bus just seconds before it departed. I got the last seat right at the back and poor Thomas had to sit on the steps all night long. We disembarked the next morning.
SPOKANE, WASHINGTON:
Washington was one of the states that did not require a blood test to get married, but there was a three-day waiting period. It would have taken us three days to get to North Carolina, anyway, so Thomas decided that we should rather stay in Spokane and