A Girl's Guide to Missiles

by Karen Piper

  Chapter Fifteen

  How to Get a Baptist Wife

  As valedictorian of my class of seven, I received a full scholarship to California Baptist College in the fall of 1982. It was only two hours away, in Riverside. So I loaded up the blue Honda Civic that I had saved up for with my Defense earnings. It did not have air-conditioning, so I drove to college late at night, when the road was full of peace and stars and coyote yaps on lonely 395. There was something about that night drive full of animals coming out to breathe that made me feel free, as though my lungs had expanded two sizes. Not Reagan free. A different kind. Better.

  I took the road that Caltech scientists once drove out on with rockets on top of mattresses in the backs of their trucks, when they were looking for a better place to blow them up than Pasadena. It was the road that paralleled the aqueduct that carried water more than two hundred miles from Owens Lake north of Ridgecrest to LA. It was the road that burros had once walked down, twenty-mule teams pulling loads of borax. Now it was the road taking me away. I was its new history.

  The road had swells and dips that made your stomach fly up in your throat. “Roller-coaster road!” Christine and I would shout from the back seat as we traveled back and forth to Los Angeles. The whole family would laugh growing up along that road. I would watch ravens watching me, perched from the telephone wires that looked like they had no reason being there. There was no one to talk to out there. I knew the ravens knew something that I did not. Under their gaze, I felt a euphoria that did not come from Jesus or passionate kisses. It came from a warm desert night wind that would wake up your mind like it woke up the animals. It was cool enough to breathe. It was alive. It was my road.

  I passed Edwards Air Force Base, a boneyard for old planes that looked like skeletons in the dark. That was where the first space shuttle had landed, where Christine and I had waved our little American flags to welcome the astronauts home from outer space like aliens. After that was Mojave railroad junction, the only place to stop for gas, and California City, a failed mini-town I could faintly see off in the distance. Someone had once built it in hopes that it would become the next Los Angeles, but instead it became a giant dust storm—a suburb of nothing. After that was the turn-off to Boron, with its competing Twenty Mule Team and Saxon Aerospace museums, and finally the long climb over scrub-covered Cajon Pass, the threshold between desert peace and LA chaos. Instinctively, I held my breath, though I could not see the wall of smog ahead in the dark. These were the days before catalytic converters, when Los Angeles’ air looked like Bangkok’s or Shanghai’s today. A brown opaque oven.

  It was the first time I had seen California Baptist College in the dark, and it was lit up like a movie set with Spanish mission-style red tile roofs, lighted courtyards, palm trees, fountains, and long rolling lawns. So romantic. But when I got to my dorm, the scene was not what I expected. Women in sweats were dancing in the hallway to the blaring Modern English song “I Melt with You.” I stood there, suitcases in hand, as the band sang, “The future’s open wide.” Glancing to my left, I saw a woman on her dorm bed on her back with her legs spread wide open. She jumped up and started laughing. In my room, I saw Cheri, outgoing, vibrant Cheri, with dyed-red spiky hair and a polka-dot miniskirt. She looked like Cyndi Lauper. So this was my new roommate. I put down my suitcases.

  “Have you been to Chippendales?” she asked me within the week. I was still in shock that we were allowed to play the radio, especially rock ’n’ roll.

  “No,” I said.

  “Like, wow,” she replied. “Then we’ve got to go!”

  These Baptists seemed much different from the ones back home. In terms of doctrine, they were the same, but no one would drink at my church, let alone go to Chippendales. Dancing was a mortal sin, since Baptists believed it led to lust and premarital sex. Surprisingly, I was allowed to go to my boyfriend’s high school prom, where I danced for the first time—other than with Gene Kelly in the living room. ICS did not have a prom with dancing. Instead, we dressed up and drank punch in the gym, chaperoned by our parents. So it would take a while to adjust to college, where so many things were allowed.

  Then there was the disorienting speed of things, the noncubicle chaos of the campus hallways and classrooms. Here, professors stood in the front of the class talking while the students seemed to copy down what he or she said. I had never seen a “lecture” in my life, only sermons, and we did not take notes at those. I could barely concentrate with everything going on at once—talking, note taking, reading books. Soon a film fell over my eyes. I saw the teacher waving his hands but saying nothing. I felt as if I were watching a movie in fast-forward and wanted to simply sit down and have someone tell me what to do.

  Maybe this was why meeting Doug felt like such a relief. He was sitting on the hallway floor, working on registration, while all the chaos rushed around him. He did not even seem to notice, though his Nike-clad feet had tripped more than one passerby. There was something about him that looked so familiar and comforting, being able to sit alone in the swirl like that. Not to mention he looked like the Six Million Dollar Man, with chlorine-bleached feathered hair and tanned skin in a bright red muscle shirt.

  One day, I pointed him out to Cheri. “Isn’t he adorable?” I whispered.

  “Oh, I know him,” she said, and pinched my arm. “Don’t you worry. I’ll take care of it.” In short order, Doug was at my dorm room window throwing rocks, which was how we all courted at Cal Baptist since men were not allowed in the women’s dorms. The goal of all women at CBC seemed to be getting thrown into the Spanish fountain and engaged. Your dorm mates would form a circle around you, holding lighted candles and laughing as you, dripping wet, struggled to get out. It was a ritual.

  Soon I was taking long walks around campus with Doug, a swimmer who said he had almost made it to the Olympics but had torn his shoulder instead. He was a “born-again” (not “grown-up-in”) Christian like my dad, which made him more intriguing. Even though Doug said this volleyball player was the prettiest girl at Cal Baptist, I thought being second choice was better than being last.

  Doug was not self-deprecating like my family or Ronald Reagan, who once said, “No matter what time it is, wake me, even if it’s in the middle of a Cabinet meeting.” Doug would never admit his foibles. Doug spoke without hesitation. He was a go-getter.

  A year later, he asked me to marry him on top of Mount Rubidoux as we were leaning against the giant white cross that dons the top. First he said, “Watch out! They like to get tangled in your hair,” and pointed at the bats hovering in the darkness. He said he could whistle to call them to us, then he did, making me cower against his chest while he covered my hair. Then he suddenly said, “Will you marry me?” By then we had already made it to second base on the sultry, smoggy Cal Baptist lawn, while my Bond boyfriend’s letters sat on my dorm room desk, unopened.

  “Yes,” I said. Doug had had sex before he was born-again, so he knew what he was doing, even though he could not do it anymore since he was revirginized. His plan was to buy a ranch outside Grand Junction, Colorado, and take me there with him. My dad had taken us to his yearly aerodynamicists conference at Snowmass, Colorado, so I was ready to pack my bags. I loved Snowmass. No smog.

  Though he worked the night shift as a security guard for Chuck E. Cheese’s, Doug said he had a “business” that would soon bring in enough money to set him up for life. “Millions,” he said, though he was very secretive about it. I assumed he was coming into a trust fund and did not want people to know he was rich. Soon we would not need college or Chuck E. Cheese’s. If I did not like Colorado, he said, we could buy a house in St. John. He had already picked out several lavish “dream houses,” which he showed me in his Island magazines. I thought I could live there. Definitely.

  “You’ll be barefoot and pregnant before you know it.” He smiled and rubbed my belly. This made me uncomfortable, though I did not say so. Babies? I
thought I needed only a husband.

  Now, for a Southern Baptist man to acquire a wife is quite complicated. First, he has to get the father’s permission. Then he has to get the church’s permission. Pastoral approval is often more difficult than parental approval, since the rule-setting arm of the church, the Southern Baptist Convention, states that ministers can “unite in marriage only those who are biblically qualified.” The husband has to prove he will love his wife the way Christ loves the church. The bride has to prove she will “submit herself graciously.” Convention rules are not clear about whether the wife can work outside the home, so the pastor ultimately decides during intensive premarital counseling.

  I was not feeling very biblically qualified, having made it to second base. I knew from church that premarital sex was wrong, but I was entering some limbo, an in-between zone that no one talked about. Then there was the problem of Doug’s past. In a confessional moment at John’s Pizza, I asked my mom what she thought about marrying a man who was not a virgin. “Do you think it could cause problems?”

  “Yes,” she replied, leaning in to whisper to me. “Your father was not a virgin.”

  This was more than I wanted to know. I knew about backsliding, or falling back on your pre-Christian ways, and hoped it would not happen to Doug. What if he ran into his ballerina ex-girlfriend and just happened to have sex with her? My friends told me that once you did it with someone, you might do it again if you ever saw that person. “It’s just easier,” they said. I knew it was harder with virgins like me.

  Before long, I was mostly staying at Doug’s house, a Levitt-style brown ranch house with a brown lawn under the brown sky of Riverside. Every night, Doug and I would kneel down by the bed and pray for strength against temptation. He led the prayers because, unlike me, he was not shy about praying aloud. It seemed to work because we did not have “sex,” which meant that “nothing” really happened, or nothing that counted as sex for a Baptist. I think.

  Then he left for Chuck E. Cheese’s, propping up a sawed-off shotgun beside my bed before he went. I felt full and warm inside, listening to the LA helicopters chasing bad guys with spotlights. Doug liked to say there were a lot of “scumbags” in the world, quoting Police Chief Daryl Gates, who spoke of the “deadly plague invading our shores,” the Crips and the Bloods and drugs and Communists. He even asked for volunteers to help fight them all. Reagan had also declared a “war on drugs” and we were to be his soldiers.

  Doug and I signed up as volunteers, taking a police training course in preparation to defend the city when the plague reached us. The police teacher put a drop of mace beneath our eyes so we would know what to expect; he taught us how to handcuff and spray people. Gates also created SWAT teams and a “Red Squad” to infiltrate Communists. He believed casual drug users should be shot for “treason,” so Doug taught me how to shoot too. We shot at quail in the foothills, which were too fast for our handguns, and at human figures at the range with .44s and .357s. In the backyard, we shot .22s.

  Doug had his own police-issue handcuffs and also took ninja certification classes at an army base in San Diego on the weekends. So our bedroom was full of handcuffs, nunchakus, ninja stars, and guns. He liked to practice with them all, twirling his nunchaku naked by the bed or throwing knife-edged ninja stars into the walls. He also liked to practice with his handcuffs on me, and they felt so secure.

  The only problem was Doug’s business. I noticed that if he was asked about it, sometimes he would say he was in “real estate” and other times that he was “coming into money.” If not for the danger-filled nights and fun-filled days lying out in the foothills naked for all-over tans, I might have been more concerned. But Doug knew how to give a good massage with his Hawaiian Style Coconut Tanning Oil and could find more places to massage than I even knew existed. He said a lifeguard needed to know how to give a good massage, and he had been a lifeguard in high school.

  So I was already wearing a ring when Doug finally phoned my dad, and we headed home to get my father’s approval. I still had not told my ex-boyfriend Phil and hoped he would not see us there.

  Doug took my dad into the same room where my dad and Phil had talked about sex. But this time, Doug came out beaming. I knew then that the answer was yes. The hitch came later, when Doug discovered my father’s little black book, which sat as it always did on the built-in oak wood divider bookcase with colonial-style banisters at the top that kept the living room and dining room apart. When Doug spotted the book, he took it and would not give it back.

  “What are you doing?” I tried to grab it as he flipped through the pages.

  “Who are all these people?” he asked.

  “Mom and Dad’s friends. People they work with. I don’t know.” I lunged forward as he tucked it behind his back. He loved games like this.

  “Let me handle this,” he said, and moved out of my reach.

  The next day, while my parents were at work, Doug started making phone calls to people from my church. I was mortified, especially since he said he wanted to talk “business.” Before I knew it, we had been invited to Mr. Porter’s house for coffee and cake. Mr. Porter was the test and evaluation director for the whole base by then, after he had built the Shrike missile and run the HARM program, the “High-Speed Anti-Radiation Missile.” Mr. Porter liked to call it the “Happy Armageddon Rabbit Masher.” He was also a deacon at church, like my dad, and so they did deacon things together, such as carrying the offering trays and making the church rules. My mom would bristle that she could not be one. No women. I knew that since Mr. Porter was more important than my dad on the base, my dad would not approve of us asking them to feed us coffee and cake for no good reason. But what could I do?

  On the ten-mile drive to their pistachio and horse farm in the desert, I shrank back in the front seat, arms crossed. “What are we even doing?” I asked, trying to pout my way into changing his mind while thinking about jumping out of the car.

  Doug slapped me on the thigh and said, “Cheer up. We’re celebrating our engagement with your friends. We have an announcement, right?” But something in me did not trust him.

  Mrs. Porter, a demure thin woman with coiffed hair, greeted us at the door with a simple smile and “Hello.” Behind her smile, however, I thought I saw suspicion. Walking in, I saw that she had set out her good Royal Doulton plates and the same kind of flowery teacups that my mom had. “I baked a cake for us.” She suddenly beamed. “Congratulations, Karen!” I sighed, and my shoulders slumped a little.

  Though the property was large, with a horse corral outside, the house itself was a simple ranch like ours. The dining table, the place settings, and the cake all looked familiar and safe. Like a church picnic, with Mr. Porter serving cake instead of communion wafers. But when the cake was done, Doug pulled out a piece of paper and started drawing circles. My back stiffened slightly. “Let me show you something, sir,” he said to Mr. Porter, who was still chuckling at his last desert joke. “Tell me where you would live if you could live anywhere in the world.” He looked ready to write it down in one of the circles.

  Mr. Porter hesitated. “Actually, we’re pretty happy here.”

  “Okay, that’s fine, sir,” Doug said, not moving his pen. “So then, what would your dream house be if you could have any kind of house?”

  Mr. Porter leaned back against his chair and looked around the room as if he were wondering what was wrong with it. “Actually, I really like this house,” he replied.

  Doug was caught off guard, thinking everyone had a “dream house.”

  “Well, let me tell you, sir,” he continued, “the house I’m going to build is on St. John in the Caribbean. I’ve already picked out the plans and now am looking for the right architect.” Then he wrote “St. John” in one of the circles, switching tactics.

  “Well, that’s lovely for you!” Mrs. Porter said brightly. I proudly grabbed Doug’s arm to signify that I wo
uld be going with him.

  “How would you like to live a life like that, where you don’t have to worry about money?” Doug continued. I dropped his arm. It was impolite to talk about money.

  “You know, we’re not too worried about money,” Mr. Porter replied. “My job—”

  Doug reached across the table and grabbed Mr. Porter’s hand. “Sir, your job . . . your job has obviously made you stop dreaming. I want you to start dreaming again. Think of a life without that job, think of what you would do. . . .”

  Mr. Porter pulled away his hand. “Are you trying to sell something?” he asked.

  “Just a dream,” Doug said, “just a dream.”

  When my parents found out Doug had tried to sell Amway to Mr. and Mrs. Porter, they were mortified. “You were selling them soap?” my mom asked incredulously.

  “It’s a pyramid scheme,” my dad said. “They get one person in, then take a cut of what he sells, and so on down the line.” It sounded like Police Chief Gates talking about drug dealers on TV. “You should have told us you were coming here to sell Amway.”

  “I, I . . . we weren’t,” I stuttered.

  On the way back to Riverside, Doug said, “Your mother is the most negative person I’ve ever met.”

  * * *

  —

  Before that day, I thought I was lucky not to be marrying into the military like my sister, whose soon-to-be husband, Mitch, had joined the ROTC as soon as he could. He was studying to become an engineer, commuting to college in San Bernardino, and ultimately planning to work at China Lake. He was smart and Fred Astaire tall but had vitiligo on his face, white splotches that left him lacking in confidence and looking down all the time.