We are baptized for the dead in Taber before going to A&W for burgers and root beer
Creative non-fiction by Cheryl Markosky
Listen to the author reading this piece:
We wear white temple garments that make us feel silly and special at the same time. Like dressing up as pretend angels with glitter-stuck, cardboard crowns that are somehow for real.
We go down the steps to the marble font in the temple, where our fathers and other men from the Priesthood wait in white temple garments that are equally silly. We could be fooled into thinking they’re entering into the spirit of things in ghostly sheets out trick-or-treating with their kids, but we know they’re pure and saintly and official.
We giggle in our robes billowed by aqua-jet bubbles. Bishop Walters smiles, pearly white teeth like the pearly gates of heaven, we think, as he balances us as we float on our backs. The font smells of municipal swimming pool, sort of a letdown as we imagined orange petals and lavender oil shimmering on the surface of the water. We try not to choke on the chlorine.
We hear the names of the dead called out – Amelia Brockenhurst, Sonia Melchuk, Karen McArthur, Andrea Dobcek, Ruth Malzenski – the bishop dunking us over and over and over again, our skin wrinkled from soaking too long. We feel virtuous for allowing these poor, unbaptized souls into heaven. We’re giving them a second chance.
We pray to be baptized for someone famous. Marilyn Monroe or Grace Kelly. Or an Indian princess like Pocahontas. She raced rapids in a birch bark canoe before being captured and converted to Christianity. Baptized under the name of Rebecca. A civilized savage.
Please God, let us get someone famous. Please, please God, we’ve cleaned our rooms and Ajaxed bath tubs and haven’t pinched our annoying brothers. Haven’t said darn or Jesus or Holy Moses, although some of us think Moses would be fine with the whole holy thing.
We’ve kept the faith and worn long skirts – well, except for Lauren, who safety pins hers to show off her thighs. We’ve gone to scripture chases, flicking through tissue-thin pages to find the words of the Lord quicker than the rest. No nail polish, no Maybelline sparkle-dust on our eyelids, no cotton candy Bonne Bell Lip Smackers.
Hell, we’ve the good ones, the chosen ones. No one will have to baptize us when we’re dead. We’ll be ushered straight into Paradise. In fact, the dead didn’t ask to enter Paradise, but we don’t care. Don’t think to ask.
We are given our just rewards. With dripping hair, we dive into A&W Double Teen Burgers with processed cheese, mustard and pickles. Onion rings and fries. Frothy mugs of root beer – the only beer we’re told we can ever drink. Car hops slopping liquid on trays as they hang our orders off drivers’ windows. Our dads over-tipping and calling them Sweetheart.
You go to the Mutual Improvement Association for young women the following Wednesday, while the boys get to be boys and play basketball in the gym. Shouting like savages as they run and gun, quickly scoring as many points as they can.
You get to cut out a cardboard key and coat it in glitter. Your key to a temple marriage, Sister Ada explains.
You get to paint the number of children you will bear after temple marriage on the two-dimensional key. Six, you dab. The other girls out-gun you. Eight. Ten. A dozen.
‘Aim high, Lauren,’ Sister Ada scolds, ‘for we must multiply and replenish the earth.’ Even though all children are beloved in the eyes of God, it might be good to think about having more boys, she adds. ‘This should be your goal, Lauren, if you want to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.’
You want to tell Sister Ada that you probably will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven and bear either girls or boys, because you let Jeff Gubler, a non-believer, feel you up and stick his fingers under your panties. Forget entering the Kingdom of Heaven. He says he wants to enter you.
You want to weep like Mary Magdalene at Jesus’s feet after she witnessed angels in the tomb. Weep and tell Sister Ada and all the girls glitter-flaking their keys that you drank beer with Jeff, let him lick froth off your lips. How he’s driving you home later in his Ford pickup when you meet him in the Safeway car park.
You should remain silent. You shimmer more glint on your key, because Sister Ada says you should. Says you’re one of the chosen ones, a descendant of pioneers in wagons escaping persecution. Escaping tar and feathers.
But you cannot remain silent, like the silence underwater when you were dunked by Bishop Walters at the temple. A serene silence where you could only feel the movement of your arms and the bishop’s firm hand on your back. The same profound quietude when Jeff strokes your back, your breasts, your thighs, and tells you you’re pretty as a princess.
‘I’m going to hell,’ you cry, confessing your sins to Sister Ada, who pulls you to the bishop’s office like a lifeguard hauls non-swimmers out of Grassy Lake. While the other girls pour so many pity tears, they could fill the temple font many times over.
You pray and pray, and pray some more. And you are saved. You don’t have six children. You have eight, five of whom are boys. Sister Ada is godmother to the eldest. She gifts him a Bible at the christening, with a picture of Moses parting the Red Sea at God’s command, a wall of water surrounding Moses and his people walking to safety.
Sometimes as you make tuna casserole dotted with crushed potato chips for the hundredth time, you remember Jeff’s hands caressing your taut stomach, now puckered and wrinkly after all of those boys. (And girls, but who’s really counting them?) Jeff’s gentle touch like soothing waves softly fringing the shore.
I pretend to be horrified when Lauren comes clean about Jeff. I blubber along with the others and squeeze my sister’s hand. But really, I feel a fizz of excitement lathering in my stomach.
I start to ask questions.
I ask why I have to aim for a temple marriage. What if I don’t want to get married? What if I want a career? Why am I supposed to bear so many children, I ask. What if I don’t want any children?
‘You must have faith,’ Sister Ada says. ‘Stop asking all these questions and just believe.’
So, I ask even more questions.
Why can’t women join the Priesthood? Why can’t black people join the Priesthood? What is the Priesthood, anyway? Can’t we usher in a new wave where everyone makes decisions together? What happens if I no longer have faith?
I’m summoned to the bishop’s office. Summoned to see the man who held me in the stale waters at the temple, who parted the murky liquid, plunging me again and again and again.
I nod as Bishop Walters reassures me. ‘This will pass,’ he says. ‘I will pray for you. God will watch over you.’
In fact, I don’t want reassurance. I don’t want anyone praying or watching over me. I want answers to questions I’m not meant to ask.
I throw away the key.
God does not smite me for not decorating cookies to give to families on the ward. Nothing happens when I refuse to compete in the cupcake wars. When I go on the pill, paint my nails, get a degree in English Literature and Art History, become a journalist and learn to swim.
I learn the butterfly stroke. I perform my own baptism, skimming across the water with both arms moving symmetrically, propelling myself by the pull/push of both arms and legs. I go underwater and surface.
And breathe.
Canadian-born journalist Cheryl Markosky splits her time between England and the Caribbean. Her work can be found in EllipsisZine, New Flash Fiction Review, Maudlin House, The Molotov Cocktail, Janus Literary, The Cabinet of Heed, The Drabble, WalkListenCreate (where she was writer-in-residence), and National Flash Fiction Day and Flash Fiction Festival anthologies.
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