“I’ve decided to apply to the Police Academy at UVU, down in Orem. The more I see marginalized people being taken advantage of, the angrier I get. They need someone on their side. Someone inside the system who can change things.” Her tear-streaked face was bright with determination.
But it was hard for me to imagine Gwen as a police officer. It was a physically demanding job, and she’d been so slight—until recently. I guessed this was why she’d been working out more and putting on muscle.
To be honest, I had briefly considered the police academy myself a few years ago, but had decided it wasn’t for me. I was too old and too set in my ways, and my methods of information-gathering weren’t always legal. I hoped Gwen had better instincts.
“Aren’t there other jobs that would make just as much impact? You could go to law school or become a social worker.” Both would be less dangerous.
“I’m not taking the easy way out. I want to be there on the front lines, not just sit it out in a comfortable office,” she said.
Gwen herself had been abused when she was too young to know how to ask for help, and maybe she wanted to be the savior she wished she’d had. Was that what she was doing for Gabriela Suarez and her children? I thought about no one mentioning Gabriela’s husband and briefly wondered what was going on there. Maybe he was abusive? Was that part of her conversation with the “Obispo”? The church didn’t have a great history of hearing its women when it came to abuse. Many were told to go back to violent husbands to save their eternal family—and their husbands’ church careers.
“I guess I understand why you prefer the Spanish ward, then,” I said.
Gwen smiled and lowered her defenses a little. “Tomorrow morning, I’m running a road to citizenship workshop for the ward. The church supports it because it’s trying to make sure families can stay together legally. But the way people talk up here, it seems they think their families are more ‘forever’ than others.” She waved back at the church building and Shannon Carpenter.
Despite the conservative political climate of Utah, the Mormon church had made multiple pro-immigrant statements over the years, including support for the Utah Compact, which was meant to help immigrants find paths to citizenship. In addition, Mormon bishops were instructed not to ask about immigration status when giving out callings, and there was to be no prejudice on that topic among ward members, in a Spanish ward or anywhere else. Some argued that this was just the church trying to keep up its membership numbers, not to mention tithing. But it was one of the few areas in which the Mormon church as an institution was more liberal than many of its members.
“Do you want some help tomorrow?” I asked. “I don’t speak Spanish, but I’m sure I could make myself useful.” With an empty nest, my Saturdays were usually free, unless I was babysitting one of my grandchildren or hosting a family get-together.
Gwen immediately brightened. “Really? You want to come?”
“Of course. What time do you need me?” I said.
“It starts at ten and goes until one,” Gwen said.
I nodded again. “I can do that. Where is it? Our local stake building?”
“No, the Spanish ward meets at another building.” She rattled off an address and I typed it slowly into my phone, repeating it back to her when she’d finished. “It’s close to the freeway, so it’s easy to get to whether you’re coming from the north or south.”
“All right. I’ll see you tomorrow, then,” I said.
“Thank you, Linda. Thank you so much,” Gwen said tearfully. She gave me a quick hug, then began her walk home alone. I still worried about the state of her marriage. Quitting her job was a huge step to take without consulting her husband, and even if Brad didn’t mind the loss of income, it spoke volumes about Gwen’s state of mind. She was thinking like a single woman, not a married one.
I went back inside and saw that Brad had gone already. Had Kurt told him to meet Gwen at home? I knew it wasn’t my business, but it was hard not to stick my nose in.
For the next hour, I helped with the rest of the cleanup, stacking and putting away tables and chairs and loading our decorations into the back of Kurt’s truck. In the front of the truck, I kept a couple of extra bags of candy piled on the floor at my feet.
“Dinner?” I said with a laugh. We hadn’t had a chance to eat before we came.
“I certainly wouldn’t mind,” Kurt said as he pulled out a Snickers bar, his favorite.
I slapped his hand. “Don’t ruin your appetite,” I said with a grin, already planning dinner on my own terms.
Once we were home, Kurt unloaded the truck as I set the bar counter with plates and cups. The “entrée” tonight was candy bars. I plucked out a few personal favorites for my plate, including Mounds and Almond Joy, then gave Kurt the ones with peanuts.
“Do we have to use silverware?” Kurt asked, coming up from behind to kiss the back of my neck.
“We’re civilized,” I said and pulled away to unwrap the bars, then cut them into pieces using a steak knife. I stepped back and looked at the plates, then went to grab a bag of baby carrots from the fridge. I added a cup of cold milk for each of us. “There,” I said with satisfaction. “Four food groups.”
“Four?” Kurt said. “I see two food groups and candy.”
“The nuts count as protein,” I reminded him.
“That’s still only three,” Kurt said.
“You mean chocolate isn’t a food group?” I teased.
“I won’t argue,” Kurt said with the grin that had won my heart over thirty years ago.
We ate our “dinner” with the same pleasure as we would have a meal I’d spent hours slaving over. Why didn’t we do this more often?
I remembered why when the sugar headache hit after my fourth candy bar. Oh, well. There was always Excedrin Migraine, my main source of Mormon-approved caffeine.
“I’m worried about Gwen,” Kurt said as we put our plates in the dishwasher. “Brad told me that she’s been angry a lot lately, and that her anger is often directed at him and the church.”
I was angry at the church a lot myself these days. But I could see how Kurt would feel like it was unfair to direct it at a husband. He didn’t see sometimes how the men were part of the church system. They had the power, and sometimes it felt like the only choices for women were knuckling under or leaving. I still struggled with this and wasn’t sure I was prepared to have a conversation about it now.
“You saw how she acted tonight,” Kurt said. He seemed to assume that I’d agree it was her actions that were the most egregious. I didn’t.
“I saw her leaving the building in tears and Brad not going after her,” I said.
“He was just afraid she’d yell at him.”
This was the only source of power women seemed to have within Mormonism: the power to make men feel bad. “Well, maybe he needs to work on listening to her more,” I said.
Kurt’s eyebrows rose. “I was hoping you’d offer to go talk to Gwen,” he said.
What did he mean? I had already spoken to her. “About what?” I asked.
“About bringing politics into the church building and picking fights with other women in the ward who are just trying to do good,” he said.
Complaints about bringing politics into the church seemed to come almost entirely from the conservative end of the spectrum when the liberal segment called them out on Christian principles of love, compassion, and helping the poor and needy.
My stomach tightened as I stared at Kurt. “I support everything Gwen said.” My tone made it very clear that I wasn’t in a mood to be cajoled.
“Well then, maybe you can ask her if there’s anything we can do to help in the Spanish ward,” he finished lamely.
I explained that I’d already volunteered to help her the next day with her citizenship workshop.
“Thank you, Linda,”
he said, and I believed he was actually grateful.
“I’ll see what I can do,” I told Kurt. That was the most I could promise for now.
Chapter 3
Early Saturday morning, Gwen texted to offer to pick me up. I thanked her and accepted, since it would be easier not to have to worry about finding an unfamiliar address.
Kurt was already up and eating breakfast in the kitchen when I came downstairs, dressed and showered earlier than I wanted to be.
“Why aren’t you sleeping in?” I asked.
“There’s a scout campout today, and I wanted to visit them and go on their hike this morning,” he said.
At least he hadn’t felt obliged to risk his back on a night’s sleep on rocks.
“Good luck,” I said and kissed him just as Gwen knocked at the front door. She was looking better than she had last night, more energetic and less frazzled.
“Are you nervous about applying to the Police Academy?” I asked Gwen after I got into her car.
“Oh, definitely,” Gwen said with a little laugh. “Petrified.”
But she was doing it anyway—was that bravery or stubbornness? “How long do you think it will take to finish once you’ve gotten in?”
“Well, it’s about a year of classwork before certification, and then you have to find a position in a local department and get on-the-job training,” she said.
“I’ve heard people complain about the pay,” I said, noting that she hadn’t mentioned the rigorous physical tests she’d have to pass.
Gwen shrugged, then started down the big hill toward the freeway. “Yeah, but Brad has never really depended on my income. Isn’t he supposed to be the provider, anyway?” There was acid in her tone, and I decided not to press her about her marital issues.
It was hard for me to imagine life as a Mormon woman who wasn’t a mother. We were told so often that raising children was the most important thing we could do with our lives; that mothering was an eternal role, and even when we were resurrected and living in the celestial kingdom, we’d be silently serving our spirit children somehow, as our rarely spoken-of Heavenly Mother did.
“How’s Samuel?” Gwen asked me, glancing over when we were stopped at a light.
Samuel was my youngest son, openly gay and now in Boston on a mission for the Mormon church.
“I think he’s doing well,” I said, grateful she’d asked. Sometimes it felt like everyone in the ward danced around the topic of Samuel’s homosexuality. They’d ask about my other four boys, but not him.
Gwen sighed. “I really admire him, Linda. He has a difficult row to hoe.”
“He’s incredible,” I said. It wasn’t an exaggeration; he’d known about the prejudice he’d be exposed to as an openly gay missionary, and he’d signed up anyway, never once complaining about his own church’s views on the evils of “practicing” homosexuality and on the inherent divinity of heterosexuality.
Somehow, I’d never been bothered by those views much before. They seemed like someone else’s problems. Until Samuel announced he was gay at a family dinner at the end of his senior year of high school with Kurt and all of our other sons there, as well: Joseph, Adam, Zachary, and Kenneth. I would always feel mom-guilt about never seeing the signs before that. How could I have missed something so major in the son I’d always felt closest to?
“I wish I’d known someone like him when I was his age,” Gwen added. “It would have meant so much to see someone show that kind of courage.”
Her teen years had been spent with a father who’d sexually abused her and her sisters—her infertility was a result of that abuse. She’d been so innocent, and yet she’d faced such incredible consequences for someone else’s actions—someone who’d remained in a position of authority in the Mormon church for decades. It was heartbreaking.
Gwen Ferris’s life was one of the things I’d set on my “shelf,” the place church leaders suggested we place our doubts about various problems in the church. Her fate would be the first thing I asked God about in the afterlife. I wanted some explanation—why did some people get miracles, but not Gwen? Why did some people suffer such enormous sins against them and never see justice? The fact that she’d survived that to become a functional adult was as a testament of her own strength, in my opinion, not God’s intervention.
“You’re plenty courageous, Gwen,” I told her.
“Thank you, Linda,” she said, staring straight ahead through the windshield.
I knew she felt that the other women in the ward judged her for not having children, even if they didn’t know the circumstances. Shannon Carpenter wasn’t the only one who made assumptions. Gwen could have set them straight, but it was almost as if she was proud to serve as a reminder that not all women had to fit in the stay-at-home mother box to be part of Mormonism.
I reached over and patted her leg. “Don’t ever doubt that you matter, Gwen. We need faithful women like you in our ward.”
She let out a breath and shook her head. “Do I still have faith? I don’t know anymore.”
Eventually, we pulled into the parking lot of a faceless industrial building on the other side of the freeway. It was cement on the front, and there were several businesses listed near the entrance inside. One of the offices bore a plaque with the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints engraved into it and beneath that, the same in Spanish: la iglesia de jesucristo de los santos de los últimos días.
I followed Gwen to the front door, which she opened with a key. The interior was chilly. There was a thermostat, which I turned up, hoping that would warm the room. It looked like they couldn’t fit more than a hundred people in here, and there were no padded seats like in our building on the hill. I felt guilt at the contrast. I noticed the banged-up piano in the front for services—pretty bare-bones for a Mormon chapel.
“I’ve got to set up,” Gwen said. “I have some signs in the car. Can you put them up so any non-Mormons who show up know where to go?”
I went back to the car, retrieved the signs, and posted them on the grass and in front of the building.
“Do you have anyone else coming from the ward to help?” I asked when I came back inside.
Gwen shifted uncomfortably. “I didn’t really ask official permission,” she said.
I knew there was more to it than that. “Do you think the bishop wouldn’t want you hosting this?” I asked, confused. How had she gotten the keys to open the building if she hadn’t gone through the proper channels?
“Bishop Hope didn’t seem thrilled when I brought it up. That was the last time I went to talk to him about what I could do to help.” It didn’t seem like she was too pleased with him, and I recalled Gabriela mentioning his name during her unhappy phone call at our chapel.
“So you’re doing this behind his back?”
She shrugged. “Not quite. He told me I could do it if I was willing to man it by myself.”
“Do you think anyone will come?” I asked. In our ward, if the bishop didn’t advertise and encourage members to come, an activity was dead in the water.
“I hope they trust me more than him,” Gwen said.
It seemed like her relationship with the bishop was pretty adversarial. If he didn’t like her, did he have the power to get her calling changed and kick her out, since she wasn’t naturally part of the Spanish ward herself? It seemed like a bad omen for Gwen’s last attempt to stay connected to Mormonism.
For the next hour we sat there, waiting quietly. Gwen kept standing up to check the door to see if anyone was coming. She clearly cared a lot about this workshop and the people in the Spanish ward, and I understood the point she’d made to Shannon Carpenter, that we Mormons could often be all too happy to remain where it was comfortable, to choose service that was easy.
“Maybe we don’t always live up to the ideal in the Book of Mormon of no poor and needy,” I admitted, think
ing of the period after Christ had visited the Americas, when generation after generation lived in perfect gospel unity. They’d had everything “in common,” the scriptures said. Times had clearly changed.
“The Book of Mormon,” Gwen muttered. “Do you have any idea what it means for the people in this ward to be told they’re Lamanites?”
“No. Is that such a bad thing?” Of course, the Lamanites were the descendants of the two “bad” brothers, cursed with dark skin for their unrighteousness, but they’d also been the ones who believed in Christ in the end. They’d been the ones saved when the destruction of the Land of Zarahemla happened at Christ’s death in Jerusalem. By the end of the book, the Nephites had all fallen away and the Lamanites were the ones God wanted to reclaim.
Gwen rolled her eyes. “Look, I’m not interested in arguing about whether or not the Book of Mormon is a historical record of a real group of people or not, but Linda, surely you of all people can see the problems with telling Latinos that they’re descendants of Israelites.”
I felt a niggling worry. I hadn’t meant to get into such a deep discussion about the history of Mormonism and race. In the early days of the church, Joseph Smith had sent missionaries to the native tribes near where the church was located—never with much success. But the message in those days was that the descendants of the Lamanites had to accept the gospel before the Second Coming of Christ. Then Joseph Smith had been martyred in 1844.
A few years later, when Mormons had come west to Utah, the new Mormon prophet Brigham Young had alternately made pacts with the American Indians against the United States government, blamed them for things the Mormons themselves had done, and used them as he wished. But after that, there hadn’t been much discussion of Lamanites as real people until the 1970s, when Spencer W. Kimball had sent Navajo children into the homes of white Mormons as foster children and had claimed that their skin was getting whiter. The program had been so disastrous that the church was still facing lawsuits over it, for ignoring abusive situations in particular.
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