Carolyn Jessop; Laura Palmer by Escape Page A

she said in her best little nuss voice.
    Jayne witnessed the entire episode. Afterward she went up to Merrilyn and said, “So, Merrilyn, how does it feel to have your teacher turn your crank?” The teacher looked pretty sheepish when he realized what he’d been lured into. The nusses were so arrogant it was impossible for them to believe that we were making fun of them. They were so steeped in their own superiority.
    The old maids’ party was turning into a big deal. All the girls were talking about it at school. One of Merril’s more serious daughters, Audrey, seemed bothered that we weren’t invited. She approached me in sewing class and asked if I’d come with some of my friends. She wanted us to put together a skit and be part of the entertainment. Other girls would be doing songs. I tried to back out of it—there wouldn’t be enough time, et cetera—but Audrey was persistent, and I knew her intentions were good.
    Jayne and Shannon thought it would be fun. They loved the idea of performing before a captive audience of nusses and picked a song from Fiddler on the Roof that was about arranged marriages. I was sure the nusses would think we were mocking the prophet if we sang this song, and so I opted out of the skit, but my cousins persisted. They did a great job, and I thought if they were allowed to perform it, they’d be the hit of the party.
    There was a dress rehearsal before the party, and each contingent of girls got up and did its part. But Merril’s daughter, who’d organized the party, hated my cousins’ song. A song about an arranged marriage somehow exacerbated the state of misery she was in about being unmarried. She told my cousins that they could come to the party, but they’d have to find another song. Of course, there wasn’t enough time for that.
    The nusses’ old maids’ party was the following weekend. The day of the party, my father got a call from Merril Jessop, who was, in effect, king of the nusses. Merril and my father had been business partners for years. He was prominent in the FLDS and very tight with Uncle Roy. Merril wanted me and my cousins to come. Dad explained we hadn’t been invited, and Merril went into a whole song and dance about how that wasn’t the case. Dad didn’t see any reason why we should go to the party and let the matter drop.
    Then Margaret, who had been the one to throw us out of the party, came over the week afterward to try to clear up what she felt was a misunderstanding. Rosie, Annette, and I all sat quietly in the living room and listened to her state her case. She had been at the dress rehearsal and said she loved our song. She said the problem was Uncle Fred. He opposed it and had told her to talk to my cousins about doing something different.
    She felt bad that we had not been at the party. After it was over, she said, Uncle Fred announced that every girl present at that party would obtain her salvation and make it into the highest degree of the Celestial Kingdom of God—the downtown of heaven. He didn’t have the power to make that actually come true. But Uncle Fred was so revered in the community as a godly man that his pronouncements were seen as the next best thing to divine intervention.
    I couldn’t figure out her motivation. Was she trying to say that because we’d rebelled and not come up with another song, we were disgraced and would never obtain our salvation? I thought she had set up the meeting to apologize. But it seemed like the only point she wanted to make was that she and the other nusses were going to heaven and we were not.
    My sewing teacher, Mrs. Johnson, was one of the few who stood up to the nusses. She had no patience for the way they assumed that rules did not apply to them. When it came time for parent-teacher conferences, Mrs. Johnson let Merril’s wife Ruth have it when she came up to her and said, “How are our girls doing?” Mrs. Johnson unleashed a tirade against the nusses. She told Ruth that her daughters