She had given her mother a bedtime-size dose of morphine in the morning (another failure), so she assumed her mother wouldn’t be fully aware of what she discussed with her grandfather: “I’m going to call the Temple and cancel her appointment. Then I’ll take her to the hospital to get her lungs tapped.”
“I’ll come along, keep you company,” said Grandpa Nelson.
But then Abby glanced down at her mother and saw that she was shaking her head miserably, squeezing her mouth and eyes. It often happened that when they least suspected she was aware, she was listening, and when she seemed alert, she was really far away.
“Mom,” said Abby, crouching down beside her, “you’re in no shape to go to the Temple. I’m sorry. Maybe next week.”
Sandra’s eyes looked away and filled with tears, and her hand fluttered up to tug for solace at the garment of the holy priesthood, which showed from under her nightgown. Abby could see that, for her mother, to miss an appointment at the Temple was to give in to death.
“I’m sorry, Mom, but we don’t have much choice. Maybe I could go in. Maybe they’d let me take your place.”
“Would they?” Sandra asked.
“I’ll see. Would that make you feel better, Mom?”
Sandra nodded.
“What will I have to do? Look up the names of dead people?”
“No, no, they’ve done that already. They have lists.”
“Do I have to wear anything special?”
“They have the robes there.”
“Well, I’ll see if they let me, okay, Mom? You go to the hospital.”
Again, Sandra nodded.
Grandpa Nelson followed Abby to the kitchen, where she picked up the keys to the second car. “Abby, sweetheart,” he said, “I’m afraid they’re not gonna let you do this. She’s been endowed. She is a member of the priesthood. It takes work.”
“Well, it won’t hurt to try, will it?”
“And I don’t know where I’m supposed to take her.”
“To radiology, at the hospital. The same as always.”
“Could ya help me get her out to the car?”
“I have to go or I’ll be late. Where is Grandma? She can help you. You both should go anyway.” Abby’s grandfather kicked at the floor, a childish gesture of fear and shame at being afraid. For only the third time, Abby allowed herself to snap at him. (She had to limit herself; both he and Grandma Nelson were so inept and apologetic it could easily become a habit.) “God, Grandpa,” she said. “You’re not going to break her.”
Abby knew that, to become endowed, Sandra had had to get a Temple recommend from the bishop of their home ward, and to get this, she and the church had to be “reconciled.” This was accomplished through a couple of meetings and a large offering on the part of Abby’s dad—to catch up on many years of missed tithes. Then followed hours of secret meetings at the Temple, while Abby sat in the waiting room doing homework. Now elders dropped by the house now and then, to “lay hands” on Sandra. Abby retreated to her bedroom during these visits.
It was a dazzling afternoon, and Temple Square was alive with tour groups, teenagers with their bag lunches, lawns bordered by banks of tulips. Once inside the Temple, Abby was glad to see that same woman, Sister Weller, behind the desk.
“Hello, Abby. Is everything all right?”
“Well, no. Not really. My mom’s not doing so well, and she was really upset to miss her appointment. So I told her—I’d like to take her place, if that’s allowed.”
Sister Weller took off her glasses and let them hang from a cord around her neck that was decorated with bobbles. Her hair was a perfectly symmetrical, perfectly white arrangement of ripples and curls, like one tier of a wedding cake. “Your mother’s been doing very holy work for the dead. Do you have a Temple recommend?”
“No.”
“Well, Abby, under normal circumstances I’d have to turn you down. But these aren’t normal circumstances, are they? I’ll try to track down the bishop and have a chat with him.”
“Thank you.”
“In the meantime, I’ll have you wait inside. Follow me.”
Sister Weller led Abby through a glass door into a second, smaller waiting room. “I’ll be just a minute,” Sister Weller said, and Abby was alone. In the corner of the room stood two shoe racks. One was neatly lined with white slippers, the other covered in a jumble of street shoes. A video was playing from a monitor suspended from the ceiling.
“. . . but what if the Bible is only half the story? Evidence exists that Christ reappeared in South America after his resurrection to minister to Indian tribes. You can read about these teachings in the Book of Mormon . . .” The video showed a depiction of Christ surrounded by brown people in robes and loincloths, which faded to Christ holding a little boy in his lap. The boy had stripes of red paint on his face. She had seen this before, either as a TV commercial or on the film strips they showed in Sunday school when she was little.
A glass door at the far end of the room swung open, and a large man wearing a white suit and white slippers entered. He was not only wide but tall—a mountain of a man, whose little glasses with round, black rims seemed a small attempt at combating the blinding largeness of his form, his wide lapels, and his fat white tie. “Are you Abby Hall?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“I’m Bishop Helman. I’ve met your mother several times. Sister Weller tells me she’s not feeling well today.”
“That’s right. She was very upset that she couldn’t make her appointment.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. Do you think she’ll be able to return next week?”
“I hope so.”
The bishop sat down in the chair next to Abby’s, causing it to squeak and groan. “Your mother has been doing different types of work for the dead. Some of it is very sensitive, things we don’t let teenagers do, even if they’re in good standing with the church. But she’s also been in several times for baptisms. Your friend Sister Weller seems to think that this is a ceremony where you could stand in for your mother. Is that your wish?”
“Yes.”
“It is church law that, to enter the sacred precincts of the Temple, you must have a Temple recommend from home. I understand that you don’t.”
Abby nodded.
The bishop folded his hands on one broad thigh and nodded for a while. “This is very unusual, Abby, so, first of all, I need you to assure me that you’ll keep all of this secret.”
“Of course—”
“Not just in the normal way. I’m sure you’ve noticed your mother never talks about what goes on inside the Temple. But more than that. I have the power to issue you a Temple recommend. However, it’s highly unusual that I would do so after a short chat. I’d rather not be called upon to defend my actions. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Abby, have you accepted Christ as your Lord and Savior, and do you have a firm testimony of the restored gospel?”
“Yes.” Abby had accepted Jesus one night at Camp Gabriel with the warmth of the campfire on her back, sparks in the air, all the children’s eyes aglow.
“Have you been baptized?”
“Yes.” This she had done at the Ward House in Eula when she was eleven, shortly before her family stopped attending regularly. She had worn a tight, itchy jumpsuit, and Elder Robinson had shown her how to plug her nose as he supported her head before dunking her swiftly in the lukewarm water.
“Do you live the law of chastity?”
“Yes.”
“Are you right with the church?”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you attend your church back in Idaho, and do you tithe?”
Abby lied—here in the Temple, to a bishop: “Yes.”
The bishop gave her a hard look.
“Well, I don’t tithe, really, because I don’t make any money. But my dad gave a big offering not long ago, for my mom to get her Temple recommend.” She would tell Liz tonight, and Liz would give a bi
g, whooping laugh (“You’re going to hell for sure now!”), and then Abby wouldn’t feel so bad about it.
The bishop sat back in his chair to another chorus of squeaks. “Sister Weller is much more than a secretary or a receptionist. She is a member of the priesthood herself, a faithful member of the Relief Society, and has worked in the church far longer than I have. She’s been my conscience on several occasions over the years, and sometimes I think she is an angel. Through her, I feel God calling me to do this for you and for your mother. So . . .” The bishop leaned forward again, took a breath, and smiled. “Bow your head,” he said. He laid his hand on the part of Abby’s hair and murmured a blessing.
Abby closed her eyes and folded her hands the way she had seen her mother do on that day a few weeks ago. Abby’s hunger had overcome her desire to stay hidden, and she had darted through the parlor to the kitchen, keeping her eyes low to avoid the church elders’ bleary, inviting smiles.
Then the bishop took his hand away. “Well, young lady, that is the quickest sanctification I’ve ever performed.” From a pocket inside his suit, he took a pen and what looked like a business card. “Abby Hall, is it?” he said, filling in lines on the card. “Your Temple recommend. Keep it safe. It’s good for a year. And please don’t go flashing it around your home ward. Now, if you’ll put on a pair of temple shoes, we can get started.”
Abby stepped out of her sneakers and found a pair of slippers marked 6 inside the heel. She followed the bishop down a long, white hallway, hung with paintings of scenes from the Bible.
This trip to the Temple had, at first, seemed a convenient escape from her grandparents and from spending another long morning at the hospital. Then, when she got here, it had turned into a chore. She had hoped they wouldn’t let her in. But now Abby felt a thrill of fear and mystery. She passed a group of people wearing slippers and formal suits and dresses with white, shimmering togas draped over one shoulder, then cinched at the waist. They nodded respectfully to the bishop as they passed. The men wore hats made of white paper, like short-order cooks, and the women wore miniature bridal veils, thrown back. Abby bit her lip to keep from laughing. The people looked so silly, and she was so nervous.
“Here is your dressing room,” said the bishop. He opened a door, flipped a switch, and a fluorescent light flickered, then bleakly glowed, revealing a couch, a mirror, a stack of fluffy white towels, and a row of robes covered in dry-cleaner’s cellophane hanging on a rack. “Most people bring a change of clothes. The robes are designed to keep you dry underneath, but I’m afraid they don’t always work. Go ahead and put one on, and I’ll meet you on the other side.” He nodded at a door on the opposite side of the room.
When she was alone, Abby took a robe off the rack and tore off the cellophane. She couldn’t walk through Temple Square, then drive home in wet clothes. She hadn’t even brought a bag to put her underwear in if it got wet. So, with another profane thrill, she slipped out of all of her clothes and pulled the cold, stiff plastic robe up over her naked body. It was a jumpsuit, really, with Velcro at the wrists, ankles, and collar. She cinched and fastened each cuff hard, but she could see that this would never keep her completely dry.
When Abby was a girl, she had had a farmer-girl doll who wore overalls and a gingham shirt. You weren’t supposed to undress her, but Abby had anyway, ripping apart the stitches of the doll’s clothing. She wanted to see the doll’s private parts, but was disappointed to see that the body revealed was made of soft cotton up to the neck and down to the wrists and ankles. Only her head, hands, and feet were pink porcelain. This was just how Abby now appeared to herself in the mirror.
She opened the door and entered the baptistry.
She was surprised at the size of the room. It was nearly as big as a gymnasium, with white tiles covering the floor and walls, and one vast domed skylight lighting the room from above. It smelled of chlorine with a hint of mildew underneath. To Abby’s right was a long marble bench, which held six teenage boys, sitting on their hands, whispering to each other and curling their bare feet against the cold tile floor. Smiling demurely, Abby took an empty spot at the end of the bench. Most of the room was taken up by a huge baptismal font. Its base was made of stiff-legged life-sized oxen with bored looks on their faces, made from the same white stone as the goblet-shaped pool. Two great, sweeping staircases led to a catwalk from which a teenage boy was just now descending into the pool. A white-haired man helped the boy down the last steps, then said some words, which Abby couldn’t make out for all the echoes. The man put one hand to the back of the boy’s head, and one to the wrist of the hand with which the boy plugged his nose. The man said some more words, and swiftly dunked the boy. The room was suddenly filled with the tinkling, questioning notes of water—the cozy music of indoor swimming in the winter. The boy wiped his eyes and blinked. Then the man said some more words and dunked the boy again.
Abby’s guts hardened, and she shuddered. There was something so violent about this, so calculated and cruel, like an execution. She didn’t pity the boy or fear for herself, she was angry: Had they been doing this week after week to her mother? How had she been able to handle it? Abby had once gone in while her mother had her lungs tapped, and the doctor had shown her, on a blurred sonogram screen, how full her lungs were, how she was breathing only with that iceberg-tip of lung space—how she was drowning.
The bishop, who was suddenly beside her, must have seen the horror in her face. “With your mother,” he said, “we go very slowly.”
Abby nodded.
The bishop addressed the boys: “I hope you all will understand if I take this young lady in before you. She’s got to get back to her mother, who isn’t well.”
The boys shrugged and nodded.
“Follow me.”
The bishop wore the same jumpsuit Abby did, but huge. He looked like a star-shaped Mylar birthday balloon, partly deflated, as he crinklingly led Abby up the staircase. The boy was just climbing up the stairs out of the font. His bottom eyelids were red and there was spit on his chin. “Elder Lowell,” the bishop said to the white-haired man in the pool, “would you like to get some lunch?”
“Don’t mind if I do.”
The man climbed the stairs out of the pool, and the bishop, then Abby, slowly descended into the water, allowing the air to be squeezed from the jumpsuits and out of the collars. Abby felt a deep shiver behind her sternum, despite the warmth of the water.
“It’s just like when you were baptized at home,” the bishop said. “When you’re ready, plug your nose. I’ll bear your weight as I submerge you. I won’t let you fall. Are you cold?”
“No,” said Abby through chattering teeth.
The bishop gave her a worried nod. He turned to a tile podium built into the side of the pool. There was a matching one on the opposite side. They can do two baptisms at once, Abby thought; an assembly line. A stack of papers that had been individually slipped into plastic sleeves lay on the podium. The white-haired man, who had not yet followed the boy down from the catwalk, knelt and pointed to a name on a long list. “Start there, Joe.”
Even Abby, so unfamiliar with the ways of the Temple, knew that the man had slipped up by using the bishop’s first name. Joe. A small name for such a big man. Your average Joe.
The bishop, Joe, put his hand to Abby’s shoulder. She plugged her nose. “Having authority given me of Jesus Christ, I baptize you for and on behalf of Hannah Shuck, who is dead, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.” The bishop’s large hand covered Abby’s and took her down into the water. Even though she was expecting it, she still gasped a little, and inhaled water. She came up coughing.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Shut your mouth this time. Having authority given me of Jesus Christ, I baptize you for and on behalf of Hans Shuck, who is dead . . .”
The bishop baptized Abby for one after another member of the family Shuck, strangers whose names m
ight have been lost to the great vacuum of the past if a Mormon volunteer hadn’t looked them up in the records of some hospital, coroner’s office, or church.
Bridget Shuck.
Rudolph Shuck.
Abby was glad for the water streaming down her face when she came up, and the fact that she could sputter and gasp, because that way the bishop—Joe, her mother’s gentle murderer—couldn’t see her cry.
Chapter 20
Enrique was no longer a lone wolf, he was a spy plane flying above the town. This sensation that arose from riding his bike. On Christmas day, when Enrique had raced across town to retrieve Jay from the Van Bekes’, he had been impressed by how quickly he had gotten there. Now, as the weather warmed and the soil softened and began to give off a loamy aroma, Enrique realized he could zip to and from school on his bike and avoid having to walk past Gene, who still sat alone at the front of the bus. The bicycle afforded him new views of his hometown, ones that could only be caught by someone at a certain altitude, who was moving at a certain speed. When in a car, he was too confined and moved too fast; when he was on foot, he was too exposed, worried too much for his safety. But on his bike he could swoop in, check things out, and still be home in time for dinner. And it was exhilarating, freeing, to fly about town using his own strength and balance—his own wings, if you will.
He especially loved to cruise the back alleys downtown. Most of these were tidy lanes populated by delivery trucks and employees on smoke break milling among the aluminum trash barrels. There was one exception. The stretch of alleyway behind the Greyhound station was by far the most colorful in Eula. The area was always littered with bottles and was very rarely deserted. Enrique was guaranteed a glimpse of life, whether it be sleeping, drinking, playing, or fighting. Hobos sat on milk crates and played dominos on a makeshift table; once a woman in a leather jacket with tassels hanging from the sleeves like bat wings screamed at a man who cowered against the blue cement wall, demanding he give her the money he owed her. It was a one-block stretch of a big, faraway city in the heart of Eula.
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