dangling my legs and crossed ankles over the edge of the stage, gossiping and watching the sweaty boys run around bouncing basketballs.
I bet my teacher Sister Duncan would rather have been somewhere else too, maybe home baking bread for her husband, Boyd, a soft-spoken man who had lost one of his fingers in the war. But just as my father and mother did, so too Sister Duncan felt keenly the currents of worldly peril rushing around us on all sides. We were her girls. It was her job to keep us safe from the disastrous mess the MTV world made of men and women, safe until we could find someone like Brother Duncan to take us to the temple and promiseto work hard and love us forever and ever. No, it was not an easy job talking to a room of sixteen-year-old girls about so sensitive a subject, but Sister Duncan set herself to it, a bird-voiced soldier.
So there I sat, along with Shayne, Juli, Jennifer, and Natasha, all of us in our Sunday dresses on a Wednesday evening, shifting on our metal folding chairs, the hollow sound of bouncing basketballs echoing in the halls.
Sister Duncan took one white rose from the vase and handed it to Shayne.
“I want each of you to take a turn with this rose,” Sister Duncan told us. “Go ahead, smell its fragrance, feel the soft petals. Each of you, have a turn.”
We did as we were told, one after another, pressing our noses into the velvety lobes and fingering the outer petals.
By the time the rose made it back to Sister Duncan, it was a different creature: its tight inner bud pried open, petals missing, others crimped and browning.
“Now, girls, who would want to take this rose home,” she said, holding up the damaged flower, then drawing an untouched rose from the vase, “when they could have one as pure and delicate as this?”
Standards Nights were all about object lessons.
Some years, it was not roses but cupcakes, or doughnuts, passed from girl to girl around the semicircle of folding chairs, losing glaze or frosting, fingers getting sticky, andthe inevitable question: “Who would like to eat this damaged doughnut? And who would rather have one of these untouched doughnuts here in this pink box?”
Natasha told me that once, in her old ward, the bishop stood before the girls pounding a series of nails into a board, then removing them one by one with the back end of his hammer.
“You see,” he would say, holding the board up before them, “even when the nail is removed, the hole is still there, and there’s nothing we can do to make it right again.”
• • •
At Standards Night, they always taught the rules about things that are done with the body that must be confessed.
Kissing: okay.
French kissing: maybe okay, maybe not—be careful.
Light petting (breasts involved): must confess to bishop.
Heavy petting (below the waist involved): must confess to bishop.
Oral sex (unthinkable): must confess to bishop, possibly serious.
Fornication: must confess to bishop, definitely serious, may be required to confess before a court of church leaders, may be disfellowshipped.
I never had anything to confess until the summer after my freshman year in college. I had just promised myself to a blond boy from Orem, Utah. His name was John Swenson.All spring, while the cherry trees blossomed on the hills, John Swenson stood under my second-floor dorm-room window making plaintive noises. One Sunday after dinner at his family home in Orem, I saw for the first time the miracle of the Utah irrigation canals, how a crank turned up the block sent a flood of cold mountain water through the carefully dug canals to water the neighborhood orchards. There were no irrigation canals in my arid orange-grove suburb.
In June, John Swenson was to leave for a two-year mission to Portugal, and he was terrified. His hands were stiff and cold. His tongue made dry, urgent forays into my mouth. Of course, I loved him, compulsively, the way one cannot help but love a drowning
I bet my teacher Sister Duncan would rather have been somewhere else too, maybe home baking bread for her husband, Boyd, a soft-spoken man who had lost one of his fingers in the war. But just as my father and mother did, so too Sister Duncan felt keenly the currents of worldly peril rushing around us on all sides. We were her girls. It was her job to keep us safe from the disastrous mess the MTV world made of men and women, safe until we could find someone like Brother Duncan to take us to the temple and promiseto work hard and love us forever and ever. No, it was not an easy job talking to a room of sixteen-year-old girls about so sensitive a subject, but Sister Duncan set herself to it, a bird-voiced soldier.
So there I sat, along with Shayne, Juli, Jennifer, and Natasha, all of us in our Sunday dresses on a Wednesday evening, shifting on our metal folding chairs, the hollow sound of bouncing basketballs echoing in the halls.
Sister Duncan took one white rose from the vase and handed it to Shayne.
“I want each of you to take a turn with this rose,” Sister Duncan told us. “Go ahead, smell its fragrance, feel the soft petals. Each of you, have a turn.”
We did as we were told, one after another, pressing our noses into the velvety lobes and fingering the outer petals.
By the time the rose made it back to Sister Duncan, it was a different creature: its tight inner bud pried open, petals missing, others crimped and browning.
“Now, girls, who would want to take this rose home,” she said, holding up the damaged flower, then drawing an untouched rose from the vase, “when they could have one as pure and delicate as this?”
Standards Nights were all about object lessons.
Some years, it was not roses but cupcakes, or doughnuts, passed from girl to girl around the semicircle of folding chairs, losing glaze or frosting, fingers getting sticky, andthe inevitable question: “Who would like to eat this damaged doughnut? And who would rather have one of these untouched doughnuts here in this pink box?”
Natasha told me that once, in her old ward, the bishop stood before the girls pounding a series of nails into a board, then removing them one by one with the back end of his hammer.
“You see,” he would say, holding the board up before them, “even when the nail is removed, the hole is still there, and there’s nothing we can do to make it right again.”
• • •
At Standards Night, they always taught the rules about things that are done with the body that must be confessed.
Kissing: okay.
French kissing: maybe okay, maybe not—be careful.
Light petting (breasts involved): must confess to bishop.
Heavy petting (below the waist involved): must confess to bishop.
Oral sex (unthinkable): must confess to bishop, possibly serious.
Fornication: must confess to bishop, definitely serious, may be required to confess before a court of church leaders, may be disfellowshipped.
I never had anything to confess until the summer after my freshman year in college. I had just promised myself to a blond boy from Orem, Utah. His name was John Swenson.All spring, while the cherry trees blossomed on the hills, John Swenson stood under my second-floor dorm-room window making plaintive noises. One Sunday after dinner at his family home in Orem, I saw for the first time the miracle of the Utah irrigation canals, how a crank turned up the block sent a flood of cold mountain water through the carefully dug canals to water the neighborhood orchards. There were no irrigation canals in my arid orange-grove suburb.
In June, John Swenson was to leave for a two-year mission to Portugal, and he was terrified. His hands were stiff and cold. His tongue made dry, urgent forays into my mouth. Of course, I loved him, compulsively, the way one cannot help but love a drowning
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