Certification of Righteousness
Creative Commons When I am twelve years old, my mother asks if I have ever been molested by a relative. Yes, I say.
She begins to ask who it was, then stops herself. Just tell me, she says, if he’s been through the temple.
Mormons go through the temple when they become adults, usually just before they marry or go on a mission. It is a particularly sacred rite: you must complete a set of interviews with the bishop and the stake president before you are given a temple recommend, a white card many Mormons carry in their wallets, certification of righteousness. I will never go through the temple, never achieve that level of righteousness as an adult. By the time I am twenty-one, I will leave the church for good. I will never know how it feels when temple workers part my clothes to anoint my skin with consecrated oil here, here, here.
I’m seven years old, the youngest in a family of six kids, it’s a Saturday morning, and my parents’ bedroom door is open. Sunlight shines into the hallway from the window. We all pile into bed with Mom and Dad, and Mom says, This is why we wanted a king-size bed, so we could all fit. Her eyes are shining crescents. All of us kids have the same eyes, almost disappearing when we smile. She buries her nose into Micah’s blond hair, everyone’s favorite, and he laughs and squirms.
She pulls Jacob close on her other side. Sponge babies, she says, are always the sweetest.
She is talking about the unreliable birth control she was using when Jacob was conceived, when I was conceived. He and I were sweet babies, and we are sweet children.
Although I can’t articulate it, I know already that sweetness is more important in a girl than in a boy; it’s what I have going for me.
I am sweet and I am cheerful and I stay where I am, but I want to crawl over my brothers’ bodies, squeeze in beside Mom. I want to burrow my head into her guts. I want to pry open her lips, stuff my hands in her mouth, I want to print her smiling face on my insides, place her in me like a moon, smiling and smiling until I’m stuffed overfull with her. I want to own her. I want to obliterate her.
After Dad’s pancakes, it’s Bugs Bunny and Roadrunner on TV, and after , it’s time for
: seven-year-old girl : teenage boy, a cousin : 1975. The girl wears red-white-and-blue shorts. : her home, the basement family room. Sunlight shines in through a sliding glass door, stripes the yellow and orange shag carpet. : The boy is watching TV, invites the girl to sit on his lap. He takes her hand and places it first on his belly. They both watch the TV screen, they watch but don’t see. He opens his shorts and moves her hand millimeter by millimeter, wraps her hand around his penis. Silky skin, hard and hot underneath, his hand on top of hers. : a few seconds, thirty seconds, a minute, an hour.
